Courses

Autumn Quarter Courses Integrating ExoTerra

Self, Culture, and Society 1 
Self, Culture, and Society – 1 is the first part in a three part year-long exploration of the social sciences. This part of the sequence focuses on past efforts to comprehend the grand arc of social change. Some of the questions we will consider include: Why does the cohesion of a society seem to wax and wane over time? What explains the emergence of persistent inequality between societies? Is there a necessary relationship between technological innovation and social transformation? And to what extent are social changes prefigured in the moral imagination of movements that seek reform? We will consider these questions through the works of authors who witnessed the emergence of the modern world system across various moments of its development, from pre-capitalist formations of regional trade and cyclical patterns of urbanization (Ibn Khaldun), to the rise of European hegemony over global circuits of exchange (Adam Smith), to the industrial revolution in humanity’s productive forces (Karl Marx), and, finally, to the emergence of a moral and ethical system that could accommodate the political domination of the capitalist class (Max Weber). Through close readings and collaborative discussions of each author’s work, we will strive to comprehend these big, difficult arguments on their own terms. Then, just as each author attempted to grasp the dynamics taking shape around them, we will confront the challenge of pushing these works beyond their moment and ask how their insights can elucidate our own experiences of global society in turbulent times.

Instructor: Zachary Sheldon
Course Code: SOSC 12400/16 [87853] & 21 [87858]

America in World Civilization I
You are the members of the ExoTerra Historical Advisory Commission. Your task is to comb the data archives from the last major colonial effort in human history—the European colonization of North America—to guide decision-making on the new planet. Unfortunately, the data banks have suffered extensive damage, so all that is left from this era of history—roughly 1500-1800—is isolated fragments.
After deep analysis of these fragments, you will produce a series of reports that weigh the complexities of these historical examples. You must give due consideration to the serious differences between the historical conditions in early modern North America versus the conditions on the current exoplanet. Your goal is to provide your leaders with the knowledge needed to build on the successes of the past, to avoid its mistakes, and to improve upon the outcomes from that tumultuous era in history. To do so, you will need to articulate a deep understanding of the complexity of the historical forces at work, including the ways that America’s most impressive achievements were inextricable from its most shameful failures. The reports that you produce are vital to the future of humanity among the stars.

Instructor: Matthew Kruer
Course Code: HIST 13500

Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast (Flipped Class)
This course presents the science behind the forecast of global warming to enable the student to evaluate the likelihood and potential severity of anthropogenic climate change in the coming centuries. It includes an overview of the physics of the greenhouse effect, including comparisons with Venus and Mars; predictions and reliability of climate model forecasts of the greenhouse world. This course is part of the College Course Cluster program, Climate Change, Culture, and Society. This course covers the same material as PHSC 13400, but is organized using a flipped classroom approach in order to increase student engagement and learning.
Note: ExoTerra will be an extra credit track in this course.

Instructor: Dorian Abbot
Course Code: PHSC13410, GEOS 13410, ENST 13410
Part of the cluster Climate Change, Culture, and Society.

The Politics of Health Care
In this course we will tackle some of the complexity of health care head on, considering how cultural, legal and structural factors shape the delivery of care. Our goal will be to address foundational questions about how we as a society imagine health care, the professionals who work within the field, and the patients. We will draw on evidence from the United States to ask: How have shifts in the institutional context in which medical professionals work altered their task? How do we imagine patients and their choices? How do external and internal pressures shape what issues are prioritized and who receives care?

Instructor: Sorcha Brophy
Course Code: PBPL 26690/HLTH 26690

Public Policy Practicum: Interview Project on Policing
This one-quarter practicum in qualitative methods aims to develop interview research skills—including instrument design, questioning, transcription, thematic analysis, and write-up—in the context of a mini-BA thesis trial run. The topic of this version of the practicum is policing in America. Students will engage in several in-class interviews with informants with wide-ranging vantage points on police-citizen relations as a social and policy issue including scholars, activists, police officers, and policy-makers. Meant to prepare Public Policy students for the BA thesis process, each student, using in-class interviews conducted by students—and supplemented by interviews, observations, and other data exercises of their own—will formulate a question related to policing and construct the component parts of their own “Mini-Thesis,” which they will submit at the end of the quarter. In addition, this course will have an ExoTerra component in which students will develop—based on what they’ve learned in class—a system of policing and punishment de novo as part of an educational role-playing game. Students can volunteer to participate in this component all quarter. Open only to Public Policy Studies majors. Can fulfill either the “Methods” or “Windows” major requirement. Strongly recommended for third-year students.

Instructor: Chad Broughton
Course Code: PBPL 26304

Education and Social Inequality
How and why do educational outcomes and experiences vary across student populations? What role do schools play in a society’s system of stratification? How do schools both contribute to social mobility and to the reproduction of the prevailing social order? This course examines these questions through the lens of social and cultural theory, engaging current academic debates on the causes and consequences of social inequality in educational outcomes. We will engage these debates by studying foundational and emerging theories and examining empirical research on how social inequalities are reproduced or ameliorated through schools. Through close readings of historical, anthropological and sociological case studies of schooling in the U.S, students will develop an understanding of the structural forces and cultural processes that produce inequality in neighborhoods and schools, how they contribute to unequal opportunities, experiences, and achievement outcomes for students along lines of race/ethnicity, class, gender, and immigration status, and how students themselves navigate and interpret this unequal terrain. We will cover such topics as neighborhood and school segregation; peer culture; social networks; elite schooling; the interaction between home, society and educational institutions; and dynamics of assimilation for students from immigrant communities.

Instructor: Lisa Rosen
Course Code: EDSO 23005/SOCI 20297/CHDV 23005, CRES 23005

Schooling and Social Inequality
How and why do educational outcomes and experiences vary across student populations? What role do schools play in a society’s system of stratification? How do schools both contribute to social mobility and to the reproduction of the prevailing social order? This course examines these questions through the lens of social and cultural theory, engaging current academic debates on the causes and consequences of social inequality in educational outcomes. We will engage these debates by studying foundational and emerging theories and examining empirical research on how social inequalities are reproduced or ameliorated through schools. Through close readings of historical, anthropological and sociological case studies of schooling in the U.S, students will develop an understanding of the structural forces and cultural processes that produce inequality in neighborhoods and schools, how they contribute to unequal opportunities, experiences, and achievement outcomes for students along lines of race/ethnicity, class, gender, and immigration status, and how students themselves navigate and interpret this unequal terrain. We will cover such topics as neighborhood and school segregation; peer culture; social networks; elite schooling; the interaction between home, society and educational institutions; and dynamics of assimilation for students from immigrant communities.

Instructor: Lisa Rosen
Course Code: EDSO 22006/33006; SOCI 20298; SOCI 30298; MAPS 33007, CRES 22006

Europe’s Intellectual Transformations
The foundational transformations of Western thought from the end of the Middle Ages to the threshold of modernity. Overview of the three self-conscious and interlinked intellectual revolutions which reshaped early modern Europe: the Renaissance revival of antiquity, the “new philosophy” of the seventeenth century, and the light and dark faces of the Enlightenment. Treats scholasticism, humanism, the scientific revolution, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire, Diderot, Sade. First-year students and non-History majors welcome. Course will be wholly online, with both synchronous and asynchronous content; ExoTerra will be one of three optional assignment tracks.

Instructor: Ada Palmer
Course Code: HIST 29522, FREN 29322/39322, SIGN 26036, HCHR 39522/RLST 22605, HIST 39522, KNOW 29522/39522

Child Development in the Classroom
This discussion-based, advanced seminar is designed to investigate how preschool and elementary students think, act, and learn, as well as examine developmentally appropriate practices and culturally responsive teaching in the classroom. This course emphasizes the application of theory and research from the field of psychology to the realm of teaching and learning in contemporary classrooms. Course concepts will be grounded in empirical research and activities geared towards understanding the nuances and complexities of topics such as cognitive development (memory, attention, language), early assessment systems, standardized testing, “mindset”, “grit”, exercise/nutrition, emotion regulation, and more.

Instructor: Kate O’Doherty
Course Code: PSYC 22580, HLTH 22580, EDSO 22580, CHDV 22580