John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values

A course developing the basic ideas of energy and power and their applications. The fossil fuels are considered together with their limitations, particularly as related to global warming, pollution, and their nonrenewable character. The advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power are studied and compared with alternative energy sources such as solar energy, wind, and geothermal and hydroelectric power. Various aspects of energy storage and energy conservation are also considered. This course is designed for the non-specialist. It is open to first-year students only.

The course will provide a survey of relationships between man and microorganisms. General information about microbial physiology, biochemistry, and ecology will support more detailed discussions of interesting topics in food, medical, and applied microbial biology. Included will be subjects of general and historical interest, as well as current newsworthy topics. The student should get a better understanding of the role of microorganisms in disease, the production of common foods, relevant environmental issues, and biotechnology. This course counts as general elective credit only for students in the College of Science.

Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biological sciences. This course will highlight evolution as well as ecology and biodiversity. Emphasis will be placed on the evolution of animal behavior, including human behavior. Sexual selection and its role in shaping many forms of life, including humans, will be extensively covered. Open classroom discussion is a central and required part of the course.

Have you ever pondered how people live(d) in a world without television, YouTube, smartphones, and automobiles? Why have bellbottoms come and gone twice in the last 50 years? Will we be forced to relive the fashion mistakes of the 1970s and 1980s? What new stuff will people invent and sell next? In asking and answering these questions, we must focus on one underlying query: What does our stuff really say about who we are and who we want to be? This course combines lectures, discussions, and interactive small group activities to explore the nature and breadth of peoples' relationships with their things. We will investigate why and how people make and use different types of objects, and how the use of these material goods resonates with peoples' identities in the deep past, recent history, and today. Since everyone in the class will already be an expert user and consumer of things, we will consider how people today use material objects to assert, remake, reclaim, and create identities, and compare today's practices to those of people who lived long ago. Class members will learn about how anthropologists, including ethnographers (studying people today) and archaeologists (studying past peoples) think about and approach the material nature of our social, economic, and political lives. We will discuss why styles and technologies change through time, and why, in the end, there is very little new under the sun in terms of human behaviors and the way people produce and consume goods. The topical breadth of this workshop encompasses most social science disciplines, including history, economics, psychology, and anthropology, and resonates with classics, art history, and gender studies.

Science and technology play a powerful role in structuring our world, making possible everything from our physical environment to our culture. It is thus imperative that we understand them not just as objects, but as practices and processes. What constitutes reliable knowledge? How do the technological systems in which we are embedded throughout our lives come to be, and how can they be changed? These questions are more urgent than ever. This course introduces students to the field of Science & Technology Studies in order to provide them with analytical and conceptual tools needed to confront the complex questions that arise where science and society intersect. Its objective is thus not so much to present a particular body of empirical information as it is to equip students with the analytical skills to understand complex multi-dimensional phenomena. The purpose is to give students both the opportunity and the tools to consider science and technology in a broader political, social, historical and economic context, and to reflect on how the practices of scientific and technological development shape their own individual and collective experience.

This course will provide a broad overview about one of the most divisive scientific topics in our society. Both the scientific and societal aspects of radioactivity will be considered. This provides an understanding of the physical principles for cause and effects of radioactive decay and radiation. It will also provide a basis to evaluate the cost benefit in the growing use of radioactivity as a tool in industry and technology. To cover the broad range of material, the course will be offered in four topical sections that address the science and scientific effects of radioactivity, as well as the environmental consequences and the societal impact of its growing number of applications: 1. The phenomenon of radioactivity 2. The origin of radioactivity 3. The environmental impact of radioactivity 4. Societal impact of radioactivity.

Design thinking has emerged as a powerful methodology to catalyze breakthrough innovation for an array of complex business, social and humanitarian challenges. Business and industry have embraced design thinking as one of the most potent drivers of innovation, growth and prosperity for its’ deeply human-centered approach to problem solving. During this fast paced, hybrid, hands-on journey through the design thinking process, students will immerse themselves in a series of overlapping modules that introduce the various phases in the design thinking process and familiarize students with the tools and techniques. This course will unleash your creativity and ingenuity in addressing problems through a human centered framework and mindset, applying this methodology to a vast array of human-centered problems, and complementing disciplines from science and engineering to business and the liberal arts. This course fulfills a Core Curriculum Liberal Arts 4 Way of Knowing (Arts) as well as the gateway to the Collaborative Innovation minor and cross-listed with other minors including: Sustainability, Computing & Digital Technologies, Education, Schooling & Society, Entrepreneurship and Anthropology.

This course introduces students to the field of social-cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropologists are primarily interested in exploring issues of human cultural diversity across cultures and through time. This course will explore key theoretical, topical, and ethical issues of interest to cultural anthropologists. We will examine diverse ways in which people around the globe have constructed social organizations (such as kinship, and political and economic systems) and cultural identities (such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, race, and class) and we will consider the impact of increasing globalization on such processes. Throughout the course we will consider how different anthropologists go about their work as they engage in research and as they represent others through the writing of ethnographies.

This course explores the ethical challenges posed by the ongoing revolution in the technology of war. After learning about some general, philosophical approaches to ethical decision making, we will examine a wide range of new weapons technologies, from "smart" bombs, drones, and robots to em (electromagnetic) weapons, cyberwar, and bio-enhancement, asking the question whether the existing framework of Just War Theory and the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) are adequate for war as it will be fought in the 21st century.

In an age where ‘identity politics’ figures as both an accusation and a creed in public and private spaces, a careful and critical examination of how we construct our individual and collective selves is more important than ever. Science and technology are crucial resources in these identity formation projects, serving as fundamental structuring elements of our world. They are crucial in shaping not only our physical environment but the very conditions of possibility within which we construct our collective and individual identities. This integration course is an exploration of the ways that the practice of science and the production and marketing of technology supply the material that gets taken up in the work of identity formation, focusing on two closely linked technoscientific domains: neuroscience and genetics.

Since the dawn of history, human beings have been telling stories about their origin and destiny. From the Dreamtime of Aboriginals to the gods of the Hellenes, Norse tales to Abrahamic revelations, our ability to weave imagination and reason, tradition and experience, has underpinned our collective identity and shaped our history. Today, we are increasingly turning to science to tell these stories of origin and destiny. Concepts like entropy and evolution are giving us cosmic and biological arrows of history, one inexorably tending to disorder, the other to ever-increasing complexity. Unfolding across a series of identifiable thresholds, the budding field of Big History combines our nature as storytellers with our skill as scientists to provide a coherent narrative of life and the universe from the big bang to the present, offering what has been called a new creation story for our time. What tale does Big History tell, what sources of knowledge does it draw on, in what ways does it challenge traditional beliefs, and what futures does it imagine? Bridging the chasm between C.P. Snow's Two Cultures of the sciences and humanities, this interdisciplinary course engages big questions about religion, nature, science, culture, and meaning through great books in popular science with the help of theoretical contributions from science and technology studies. The class welcomes non-scientists who are interested in acquiring scientific literacy as well as scientists seeking to acquire religious and social science literacy. We will look for the best descriptions of nature available to us today (the "is") to draw inspiration for unique insights on how to be (the "ought"). The readings and discussions of this class will provide global citizens in the twenty-first century of diverse religious, theological, or philosophical persuasions a common framework of the past, a sense of presence in the Anthropocene, and conceptual tools to imagine a shared future.

This course examines global environmental change within Earth systems and how these evolve under natural and human influence. Topics covered encompass atmosphere, oceans, water, land and ecosystems and how natural and human-induced processes are reshaping Earth’s environments. Central to this discussion are water and air pollution, water management, freshwater availability and scarcity and impact of these issues on society. Sustainable energy is investigated and renewable energy sources that meet current needs and those of future generations are explored. This discussion includes energy production but also incorporates energy efficiency measures and responsible energy consumption. The course concludes with a discussion on the implications of climate change for Earth systems and human society.

Discussion of basic chemical processes occurring in the environment, particularly those relating to the impact of humanity's technological enterprise.

What are the contributions of anthropology to the study of contemporary science and technology? In this course, we will respond to this question by examining the history of anthropological studies of the technosciences from the post-war period to the present. We will cover the history of ethnographic engagements with the biological and natural sciences, the debates about the nature of knowledge production, and the contemporary studies of computing and engineering with a focus on Artificial Intelligence. We will organize the class as a seminar, so be prepared to engage in close readings of the material and workshopping a research project of your own.

Introduction to Criminology provides students with an overview of the sociological study of law making, law breaking and the resulting social responses. In this class we not only look at a variety of crimes, but we also discuss the varying methods sociologists use to collect, interpret and evaluate data, as well as how we theorize about crime and punishment. We address questions such as "Why are some people or groups labeled as criminal, while others are not?" "Do laws in both their construction and enforcement serve everyone's interests equally?" "How can the communities in which people are embedded be considered as criminogenic?" "How are poverty, race, gender and other social factors related to crime?"

This course introduces students to important concepts, issues, and debates in applied ethics. It begins with a brief overview of normative ethics, familiarizing students with two major approaches in this area: consequentialism and deontology. The remainder of the course tackles real-world issues, and proceeds in four parts. PART I: We engage with questions concerning our duties to non-human animals, as well as related questions concerning their moral status. Do non-human animals have moral rights? Do they matter less from the moral point of view than human beings? We’ll also be engaging with some important questions about the ethics of eating meat. PART II: We consider the moral challenges raised by certain kinds of markets, including commercial surrogacy, sweatshops, and the black market in human organs. On the one hand, these practices seem objectionably exploitative. On the other hand, we might think that these individuals’ choices—to sell their organs, rent out their wombs, or undertake risky labor—should be respected. PART III: We investigate ongoing controversies in the ethics of medicine. One such controversy concerns the shape that a state’s organ donation system ought to take: should such systems be ‘opt-in’, or ‘opt-out’? Another important issue is how we ought to conceive of disabilities: are disabilities neutral differences—as opposed to good or bad ones? We’ll also look into related controversies surrounding human enhancement and genetic engineering. Finally, we’ll explore the ethics of voluntary Euthanasia. PART IV: The course concludes by examining matters of justice. Among these are matters of global justice raised by widespread poverty; what duties do those of us living in affluent countries have to the global poor, and why? Another such issue is justice in the distribution of educational opportunities. Does justice require that all children receive the same quality education? Or does it simply require that all children receive a good enough education?

Communicating about science has always been a necessity in public discourse, but communicating complex or ongoing science, health, and technology issues can be a challenge. This one-semester core Writing Intensive course, taught in Spring and Fall semesters, immerses students in the art of communicating about science in many forms, from writing for magazines and newspapers, to institutional writing for universities or medical centers, to giving speeches to lay audiences and creating descriptive museum displays. The areas of focus will be on writing concisely without jargon, workshopping/re-writing/editing, communicating and writing with accuracy, and developing empathy for both the scientist and the science communicator. Each week will include short reading assignments, as reading about science is critical to writing about science. Communicating about science has always been a necessity in public discourse, but communicating complex or ongoing science, health, and technology issues can be a challenge. This one-semester core Writing Intensive course, taught in Spring and Fall semesters, immerses students in the art of communicating about science in many forms, from writing for magazines and newspapers, to institutional writing for universities or medical centers, to giving speeches to lay audiences and creating descriptive museum displays. The areas of focus will be on writing concisely without jargon, workshopping/re-writing/editing, communicating and writing with accuracy, and developing empathy for both the scientist and the science communicator. Each week will include short reading assignments, as reading about science is critical to writing about science.

We all recognize that the biomedical sciences change rapidly, but amid the seemingly intractable and interminable debate about healthcare reform in the US, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that the same is true of the healthcare system. This interdisciplinary course will examine the American healthcare system in historical and comparative perspective. We look at its institutional structure, its professional composition, and its governance at various levels, with the end learning objective being to understand how these facets of the healthcare system shape not only national health outcomes, but also provider and patient experience. The course draws on the history, sociology and anthropology of medicine, and serves as one the core courses in the new Health, Humanities and Society Minor.

Science and technology play a powerful role in structuring our world, in everything from our physical environment to our culture. It is thus imperative that we understand how these entities work. What constitutes reliable knowledge? How do the technological systems in which we are embedded throughout our lives come to be, and how can they be changed? In this historic moment of a global pandemic playing out against a backdrop of fake news, alternative facts and increasingly autonomous technologies, these questions are more critical than ever. This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of Science & Technology Studies in order to provide them with analytical and conceptual tools needed to confront the complex questions that arise where science and society intersect. Its objective is thus not so much to present a particular body of empirical information as it is to equip students with the analytical skills to understand complex multi-dimensional phenomena. The purpose is to give students both the opportunity and the tools to consider science and technology in a broader political, social, historical and economic context, and to reflect on how the practices of scientific and technological development shape their own individual and collective experience.

This course will introduce students to scientific illustration and visual documentation through basic drawing skills and techniques utilizing traditional and contemporary art approaches, media and tools. Students will learn to create representational renderings through close and careful observation of natural subjects including botanical, animal, insect and/or aquatic life based on field observations, study at the Museum of Biodiversity and other sites as available. Emphasis will be on accuracy, form and structure as well as integrating personal vision through developmental, conceptual and compositional sketches and exercises leading to several completed drawings and include a field journal and sketchbook. Students do not need any prior drawing experience and can be pursuing any major!

We live and act in an ecological theater created by God that includes all other living organisms and their ecosystems within the biosphere. Urgent questions abound today about what our relationship is to the rest of the natural world. What is our place in the world? This course investigates the Christian understanding of God as Creator, creation, and our human relationship to God, one another, and the natural world. We will examine the theology of creation beginning with Scripture and the Creed and progressing through the Early Church, Medieval, and modern time periods. We will also discuss theological anthropology in terms of our identity and mission within our ecological home. To this end, we will apply Pope Francis' notion of integral ecology to the specific case of the Great Lakes watershed in which we live, examining topics such as biodiversity, water, agriculture, and energy. As ecological citizens and creatures of God, we will also address the connection between liturgy and ecology. This course will have a special appeal to students interested in the intersection of theology and science, especially ecology and environmental studies.

Today’s artificial intelligence did not spring fully grown from any head in silicon valley but took slow and gradual shape under the influence of many historical forces. To think philosophically and productively about artificial intelligence, to understand the scope of its influence, the credibility of its claims, and ultimately to consider its present meaning for our lives, we must critically investigate the material, conceptual, and historical forces that have brought it into being. Therefore, as a kind of analysis of the concept of artificial intelligence, this class will proceed by examining some major elements that constitute the very phrase "artificial intelligence." We will examine the concept of artifice, or technology, then examine the concept of intelligence, before seeing how these two concepts have co-evolved and shaped one another. This is followed by two units on the architecture of AI, where we will develop a basic understanding of the structure of some contemporary AI models. The class will conclude by discussing a central function of AI processing: prediction. We will discuss how AI prediction relates to our concepts of freedom and creativity.

A discussion of ethical problems in the medical profession in light of natural law and Christian moral principles.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming society, impacting how we live as individuals and communities. This course will examine the issues raised by AI from the perspective of the Catholic understanding of the human person, Catholic theological anthropology. The course will particularly focus on how to ensure that AI promotes rather than prevents human flourishing. In the process of exploring those broad concerns, the course will address specific issues related to AI, such as whether AI could be a person, relationships with chatbots, surveillance capitalism, the implications of Catholic Social Teaching for AI, AI in warfare, bias, transhumanism, and the impacts of social media.

This course combines hands-on introduction to the basic concepts and technologies of computing with critical discussion of the historical, social, and cultural dimensions of computing, data, and digital technology. The work of the course includes content discussions that foreground the cultural, social, and historical dimensions of computing technologies, along with exploration and foundational skill building with various computing tools and methods. By studying how computing technologies have developed over time, as well as how they work, we’ll consider what kind of technological future we want, and how to build it, via a critical examination of the technologies and platforms that shape our lives together. Along the way, we’ll explore what computer science educators have identified as seven “big ideas” in computing: creativity, abstraction, data and information, algorithms, programming, the internet, and global impacts (AP Computer Science Principles).

The Earth's climate is changing faster than expected. Industrialization, fossil fuel use, consumption, and exploitation are radically transforming the planet we live on. In "Witnessing Climate Change," we work to make sense of the science behind this planetary crisis and practice writing about it for the public. This is a large, writing-intensive, public-facing course that engages key contemporary issues and core ways of knowing from a values-oriented perspective, through large lectures and small group workshops. Readings include Jeff VanderMeer, Nukariik, Barry Lopez, Aldo Leopold, Wanda Coleman, J.M. Coetzee, and St. Francis, among others.

This course will introduce students to the important roles that medicine played in shaping colonial contexts and the broader trajectory of global history. Since Christopher Columbus first landed on the shores of the West Indies in 1492, European imperialists have been acutely tuned in to matters of health and disease in the colonial enterprise. The health of colonists, the spread of diseases both new and old, the potential of novel medicines, and the control of native populations were all crucial matters in managing and expanding new empires. Our contemporary world is a byproduct of these colonial ambitions, a world in which medicine and science continue to play indispensable roles. Potential topics include: the early Americas; indigenous healers; colonial Africa, India, New Zealand, and Korea; medical missions; medical research in colonial contexts; race and gender; U.S. imperialism; modern global health. Some background knowledge of U.S. and World history useful but not required.

Many students are working to equip themselves with the practical skills that they will need to use AI in their chosen fields after graduation, but it is equally important to think critically about the bigger challenges that AI presents: changes to how and why we learn; increases in academic and professional misconduct; and questions of justice, social and environmental responsibility, and spiritual well-being. This weekly course will present an overview of these issues and encourage students to think through their implications for the good life in the 21st century.

This course investigates the Christian understanding of creation and how this doctrine relates to contemporary scientific issues. We will examine the development of the doctrine beginning with Scripture and the Creed and progressing through the early Church period into the Medieval and Scholastic era, focusing on the concepts of creation ex nihilo, creation continua, divine Providence, and divine action in the world. With the rise of the modern era, we will analyze the origin of and principles involved with the purported conflict between science and theology. We will bring the doctrine of creation into dialogue with three contemporary issues in the sciences: cosmology, evolution, and ecology. Integral to this course will be the relationship and response of humankind to God and to creation. This course will have a special appeal to students interested in the intersection of science and theology.

This course investigates the relationship between the Catholic Faith and modern science for the sake of an integrated worldview in which they are brought into a "relational unity," i.e. a dynamic interchange in which their distinct perspectives and methods are carefully respected. We will begin with historical, philosophical, biblical and theological resources for engaging science from the perspective of faith. These will be brought into dialogue with modern cosmology, evolutionary biology and the sciences of human origins in an attempt to forge a holistic perspective in which science, philosophy and theology are treated as distinct but mutually enriching paths to truth. Specific topics will include the conflict model of science and religion, the Galileo Affair, the biblical creation accounts, the doctrines of divine creation and divine providence, and the human person as the image of God.

Organized violence between human communities is one of the unfortunate realities of human existence, and its causes and consequences have consequently been of great interest. Is war an inevitable outcome of human nature, or the result of specific social, historical, and environmental circumstances? Archaeology is uniquely positioned to provide concrete insights into the history of human violence through study of its direct material correlates, including traumatic injuries on skeletons, fortified settlements, weaponry, and iconography. However, the archaeological record also documents the impacts of violence (reduced nutritional status and health, evidence for enslavement, cannibalism, and population decline) and can provide insights into why war occurred through examination of environment, population, and social conditions. In this course, we will explore what the archaeological record tells us about violence, human nature, and the veracity of claims for either a more violent or more peaceful past. We will examine theoretical models of war, anthropological studies of conflict, and archaeological case studies of both violent and peaceful times to understand the role that organized violence has played in human history and evolution.

What does writing look like in the age of generative AI? What does it mean to communicate with others, or to seek to persuade others, or to write for the sake of learning about a topic (or about oneself) at a time when generative AI has radically shifted the very sense of our educational, professional, and personal lives? These are the questions that will guide our work in this course, as we will experiment with generative AI to gain a deeper, clearer understanding of its impact on writing and our writerly identities. We will examine the role of AI during various parts of the writing process and in various genres and modes of writing in order to better assess, on the one hand, where generative AI can develop our thinking and writing in useful (and perhaps even astonishing) ways, and, on the other hand, where it requires us to think critically and ethically about its impacts on our own learning and ways of being.

This London Seminar focuses on The Nature of Man and the Order of the World throughout the history of philosophy and the history of medicine from Hippocrates to the discovery of DNA. It is a demanding course that is taught using primary texts and original manuscript sources available in the Museums, Libraries and Archives of London. Classes will include the analysis of texts and artifacts and site visits to The British Library, The British Museum, The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, The National Gallery, The Wellcome Collection Library and Archives, The Royal Society of London, The Royal College of Physicians, The Science Museum London, The Old Operating Theatre Museum as well as The Gordon Museum at Guy's Hospital, London, which is one of the largest pathology museums in the world and the largest medical museum in the United Kingdom. The course will place an emphasis on the close reading of selected primary texts, supplemented by secondary specialist sources which will enable students to critically evaluate and interpret medical texts, terms, concepts, and theories in a philosophical context. It will also enable students to gain practical knowledge of how to use archival sources for philosophical research. It will give students a unique opportunity to study works of canonical philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Galen, Bacon, Boyle, Locke, and Descartes in a medical context in relation to the works of historically significant physicians, naturalists, and scientists, such as Hippocrates, Vesalius, Harvey, Burton, Willis, Newton, Darwin, Crick and Watson. This course will enable students to understand the close inter-relationship between the study of natural philosophy and the study of medicine from antiquity to the 21st century, since both are dedicated to gaining knowledge about the function of the human body and soul, the order of nature, the cosmos, and the natural world.

In his famous farewell address, President Eisenhower warned that the partnership between science and the state that emerged after World War II had given rise to two “equal and opposite” dangers. First, with the creation of a “military-industrial complex,” public policy risked becoming “captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Second, given universities’ growing dependence on federal funding, there was the potential “domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money.” Both dangers—science’s threat to democracy, and the government’s threat to science—have reemerged as central points of conflict in our politics today. This course offers an introduction to science policy by exploring its historical, philosophical, and political dimensions. It will consider key historical episodes, from the invention of the atom bomb to Covid-19 pandemic, and the moral and political debates they engendered. We will take up questions of contemporary relevance, including: What is the relationship between scientific knowledge and technological and political power? What are scientists’ obligations to society? Is science morally or politically neutral? What role should non-experts place in science policy? How can public policies preserve the freedom necessary for science to flourish while ensuring that scientific institutions remain democratically accountable?

One way to improve our understanding of ourselves is to compare ourselves with the animals who most resemble us, in informative, challenging and disturbing ways. In this course, we'll look at the relationship that has done most to change human self-perceptions. With a focus on Western texts and experiences, but with reference to many other cultures, we'll concentrate on the problems of how and why human attitudes to other apes have changed since the Middle Ages, and how they have influenced thinking in science, religion, politics, sociology, literature, and ethics.

This course is an intellectual history of western medicine. It is intended to familiarize students with the multiple explanatory problems that occur in medicine and the most important approaches to them. Its focus will be much more on medical theory and knowledge than on medical practice and institutions. The course will begin with a review the Hippocratic and Galenic heritages and early modern appeals to chemical and physical explanations of disease and of health. A middle section will explore the 17th-18th century syntheses of Sydenham, Boerhaave, and Cullen, consider the difficult problem of nosology, and examine the empiricist critique in the clinics of early nineteenth-century Paris, including the conflict between ontological and physiological concepts of disease. The final section will examine several distinct trends in the nineteenth century: the impact of experimental physiology, the growth of clinical science, the emergence of epidemiology and tropical medicine, the rise of bacteriology, immunology, and virology; and the impact of new statistical methods. Reading assignments will be a mix of scholarly articles by medical historians and extracts from primary sources. Requirements include critical reviews of primary sources, journal, quizzes, and final exam. There are no prerequisites for the course. While some familiarity with the human body and its ailments and vulnerabilities, and some comfort with modes of biological explanation will be helpful, the course is intended for persons with general interests.

Although the mass media is not formally part of the U.S. government, it is arguably the most powerful institution shaping public attitudes, creating and producing information, and communicating political information to individual citizens. Almost all exposure to politics comes not from direct experience but from mediated stories. And, with the rise of the Internet, the growth of 24-hour cable news, and the decline of the "Big Three" television networks has created, a more diffuse media environment has been created. The primary purpose of this course is to analyze the role of the media in American politics and its relationship with the public, government, and candidates for office in a democratic society.

Around 1600, Japan closed itself off for 250 years, neither importing food nor exporting people. It was, in short, an almost hermetic ecological system, and yet, instead of outstripping their natural resources, Japanese people managed to attain a level of well-being above that of most other people. Some scholars have acclaimed this era an "eco-utopia" while others point to problems with this view. This course explores the interplay between political, social, economic, and ecological forces asking whether Tokugawa Japan modeled resilience.

This introduction to modern Japanese history focuses on political, social, economic, and military affairs in Japan from around 1600 to the early post-WWII period. It considers such paradoxes as samurai bureaucrats, entrepreneurial peasants, upper-class revolutionaries, and Asian fascists. The course has two purposes: (1) to provide a chronological and structural framework for understanding the debates over modern Japanese history; and (2) to develop the skill of reading texts analytically to discover the argument being made. The assumption operating both in the selection of readings and in the lectures is that Japanese history, as with all histories, is the site of controversy. Our efforts at this introductory level will be dedicated to understanding the contours of some of the most important of these controversies and judging, as far as possible, the evidence brought to bear in them.

It has been 20+ years since the first draft sequence of the entire human genome was published, spurring development of genetic technologies that were previously impossible, such as CRISPR genome editing. These technologies carry potential to identify, treat, or even prevent genetic conditions; at the same time, they often rely on assumptions that genes determine one’s fate and are shaping contemporary ideals of health, wellness, and disability. This course will examine how genetics and genetic technologies raise a host of complicated ethical questions, such as concerns about “new” forms of eugenics and genetic determinism, the ownership and commodification of genetic material, the ethics of genetics research in marginalized communities, legislative efforts to prevent genetic discrimination, and more. We will use a case study approach, pairing examinations of the biological and technical bases of specific genetic technologies with bioethical analysis to consider costs and benefits from a variety of stakeholder perspectives. This will entail engagement with perspectives from the history of science, genetics, bioethics, genetic counseling, etc. to explore complicated questions about the relationships between genetics, research, medicine, and society.

This course is an introduction to the new field of environmental history. While many people think "The Environment" suddenly became important with the first "Earth Day" in 1970 (or a few years earlier), environmental issues have in fact long been of central importance. In recent decades historians have begun actively to explore the past sensibilities of various groups toward their surroundings and fellow creatures. They have also increasingly paid attention to the ways environmental factors have affected history. This course will range widely, from world history to the story of a single river, from arguments about climate change to the significance of pink flamingos, and will survey a number of types of history including cultural, demographic, religious, and animal.

This course aims to change the way you think not only about the way that we play games, but also about the way that video games teach their players to behave within their digital worlds. This course will encourage students to reflect on and utilize their lived experiences as players, and utilize these experiences to locate themselves within their analysis and writing as well as their design practices. This course will undertake an intensive, interdisciplinary focus on the history of video game development, representation in video games, and the languages that digital games work in as well as decolonial theory and diverse theories of design. This class will engage with a variety of scholarly texts, video games, media posts, videos, and design exercises, in order to illustrate the ways in which video games have shaped the ways we play, think, and behave within their spaces. Students will be required to write and design around these lessons and address and push back against the problematic behaviors and colonial narratives around violence, race, gender, sexuality, and relationship to the land that these gamic languages and lessons have created.

Many approaches to policy, development, and governance emphasize universal goals and patterns. In practice, however, all policies and processes of social development unfold in specific places, at specific historical moments. In this course, we will explore a vibrant body of scholarship from multiple disciplines, called “critical policy studies,” that combines social and cultural analysis with policy studies. Students will learn how to analyze global policy interventions and outcomes as the products of specific communities, cultural contexts, and historical settings. We will examine the history of core categories in policy, like “poverty,” “growth,” “progress,” and even “development” itself. We will then use case studies to explore specific examples of how cultural and historical context shape policy interventions and outcomes. In so doing, students will learn the core methods of critical and interpretive policy studies, in order to develop valuable skills for analyzing how policies are shaped by, and act on, social life in unexpected ways.

Where were you in March 2020? When did you first learn about the COVID-19 pandemic? How has the pandemic affected your life, your community, and your world? Although many of us think of the pandemic as a singular and unprecedented event, pandemics actually have a long history in America (and around the world) and have profoundly shaped the American experience. In this course, we will study epidemics in America from the precolonial period to the present, paying particular attention to their cultural as well as biological dimensions. As we will see, disease outbreaks have influenced government policy, economic and market relations, media, popular culture, religious beliefs, and ideas about race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and citizenship. Throughout the course, we will place these histories in conversation with the present, reflecting on how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our nation and our world. Assignments include analytical papers, personal reflections, class presentations, and collaborative projects.

Video Games of the American West will utilize digital games as the primary case studies to examine the modern cultural image, understanding of, and interaction with the "space" of the American West. This class will provide historical understandings of the vast, varied, and often mythologized history of the American West, as well as its place as a cite of continued colonial narratives and hegemonic imagery in contemporary popular media such as film, television, and video games. Through the close-playing of a variety of Western games including installations from the Call of Juarez series, Red Dead Redemption, series, Horizon, series, and many others, students will be asked to apply their knowledge of the historical and contemporary understandings and employments of the West as a physical space and a cultural space to the visual and mechanical recreations of it within the digital realm of video games.

Sports play a big role in American culture. From pick up soccer and the Baraka Bouts to fantasy football and the Olympics, sports articulate American identities, priorities, aspirations, and concerns. They reflect our dominant values but also highlight our divisions and serve as a means to question those values. Athletes, organizers, spectators, fans, and the media all have a stake. This course will examine sport's role in American society and culture thematically, covering the late 19th century to present and paying special attention to sport as a physical performance (including issues of danger, drugs, disability, spectatorship, and fandom), sport as an expression of identity (the construction of race, gender, class, community, and nation), sport as a form of labor (with issues of power and control, safety, and amateurism), and sport as a cultural narrative (how do writers, historians, and the media attach meaning to it?). We will examine history, journalism, documentary film, and television coverage; topics will range from Victorian bicyclists and early college football to Muhammad Ali. Requirements include reading and regular discussion, a variety of short analytical papers, and a culminating project in which students will choose one course theme to analyze through a topic of their own choice.

In the 20th century, the “Mall” was an indelible component of the American Dream. It was a social, economic, and cultural space that signified American prosperity alongside automobile and home ownership. However, in the 21st century, the mall is no longer the center of conspicuous consumption in the US. Instead, it has become a site of fiscal crisis, it has been dislodged from the cultural imagination, and it has firmly been replaced by Amazon and Instacart as the premier intermediaries of consumption. While its physical “ruins“ have become a dystopic reminder of decline, stagnation, and obsolesce illustrating what happens when capital is injected and then forcibly extracted from the landscape. This course will examine the complex relationship between the “Mall” and American culture through popular culture, print media, digital media, planning and zoning ordinances, retail practices, and technological innovation. From the Mall of America in Minneapolis to The Grove in Los Angeles to The Galleria in Houston, the “Mall” will serve as an entry point to think about America at its current moment. Central to this course will be understanding the roles that technology, consumer culture, and capital accumulation and dispossession play in contemporary US culture.

This course serves as a gateway for subsequent coursework in international security. It is a required course in the Notre Dame International Security Center's undergraduate certificate program requirements, but it is also appropriate for, and open to, any Notre Dame students interested in U.S. national security policymaking. It will begin with an account of the history and development of U.S. national security policy from the Founding through the present. Next, it examines the current state of the primary institutions involved in U.S. national security policymaking. Finally, it explores the tools and instruments of military statecraft as applied by the United States. The course culminates with a simulation exercise in which students will role-play key participants in the U.S. national security policymaking process. At a minimum, that students will gain from it the analytical tools, historical knowledge, and current-events background to become more informed citizens, particularly with respect to important national debates about when and how our country should use military force. At a maximum, the course may lead some students to become interested enough in the topic to pursue a career in either the practice or the study of U.S. national security policy. The current draft version of the syllabus is posted at https://www3.nd.edu/~dlindley/handouts/ND_NDISC_cert_gateway_syl.pdf.

The focus of the course will be an examination of the advances in medicine over the last 30 years that have challenged traditional values and ethical norms, and the institutional processes and procedures in place that facilitate decision-making in the health care setting. It will include a sketch of the most recent advances in the various fields of medicine, followed by an examination of the clinical and ethical questions they raise and how they have affected the physician-patient relationship.

The ancestors interrelated with the environments we live in today and will interact with in the future. This course explores indigenous cultures and perspectives on the importance of traditional knowledge and the environment. In this seminar-style course, we will learn about how indigenous groups in the Americas, both past and present, think about the world around us and how their cultural livelihoods are threatened by climate change and ongoing development. The goal is to provide students with a strong foundation in indigenous environmental issues. We will cover a range of topics that intersect with traditional ecological knowledge, land use and perceptions, reciprocity, sense of place, memory-making, and environmental justice.

This course will examine the representation of medicine in film, still art and texts. The point of view will be to examine the interdisciplinary arts, primarily film plus secondary readings of literary texts, with the goal of broadening the understanding of the lives of patients, families and providers for future health care professionals, particularly physicians. The goal is to heighten the awareness of the world surrounding medical encounters and encourage an open minded approach to people in medical need. Based on Cinemeducation training in medical schools and residency programs, topics examined include delivering bad news, end of life issues, medical malpractice, family dynamics, professionalism, cultural diversity, gender issues, grief, balance of professional and personal life and medical errors. Film clips will be introduced and reviewed with specific discussion points. Strong emphasis will be placed on group discussion, with four short papers, one discussion lead and a final paper.

Spirit possession in Africa, Catholic piety in Mexico, and mortuary rituals in Borneo could all be described as manifestations of religion. But what do we mean by the term “religion,” and how might we compare different religions (and their corollaries, myth and magic) across the globe? By building upon these examples and many others, this course will help you think about religion from a comparative perspective, both across various cultures and between your own beliefs and those of others. Along the way, you will encounter and evaluate core concepts in the anthropology of religion such as purity and pollution, the sacred and the profane, ritual, sacrifice, and witchcraft. You will learn to articulate prominent theories of religion, and, by pairing foundational texts in anthropology with select case studies, you will grow in your ability to think and see as a budding ethnographer of religion.

Models of human communication developed in linguistic anthropology have long relied on empirical analysis and cross-cultural comparison of how people talk to other people, and to a variety of non-human “persons” as well. This course examines how anthropologists study communication between humans and non-humans, and how communication helps make persons out of non-humans. The class concerns research on seances and related scenes of spirit possession where the dead speak, talking with animals whether pets or prey, learning spiritual lessons from teacher plants, and contemporary conversations people have with artificial intelligence language models. We compare how anthropologists have asked questions about personhood when considering speech across species boundaries or across divides such as life and death. We ask how communication constructs interlocutors and makes relationships possible, and we consider the commonality and variety among communicative approaches and tactics. We ask if communication with non-humans connects people to other worlds of experience, or if it is more instructive as a projection of our own social life onto others.

This course is designed to provide the theoretical and practical foundation to providing compassionate care in the medical professions. It will provide an introduction to the field of Caring Science and provide the behavioral and attitudinal components to providing effective patient care as well as teaching how practitioners can be balanced in providing patient care. Topics include Caring Science theory, clinician burnout, compassion fatigue, maintaining caring in the encounter with suffering, and physician self-care. While designed specifically for the future medical professional, the course is open as enrollment allows to students in allied helping professions. Class material will include research from medical, psychological, caring science, business, and spiritual sources.

Fracking, Water Wars, Deforestation of the Amazon, Droughts, Global Warming, Climate Change, Unsustainable Agriculture, Hurricanes, Pollution, Species Extinction, Invasive Species, Poaching, Overfishing, Depletion of Fossil Fuels, Overpopulation, Wastes, Ocean Acidification, Wildfires, Oil Spills, Overpopulation, Overconsumption, Land degradation - the list goes on! These complex environmental problems are occurring constantly and rapidly; their consequences are global in scope and transcend national boundaries; and they embody the complex relationship between humans and the natural environment. This course is about developing an interdisciplinary understanding of the relationship between humans (society) and the environment. We will examine the historical and contemporary environmental challenges of global concern, the underlying role of humans, and attempts by society to address, mitigate, and adapt to such complex problems through policies, institutions, and governance. We will pay attention to the roles of different state and non-state actors in environmental policy making. Overall, students will draw from both the social and natural sciences to develop a deeper understanding of how society - through consumption, culture, politics, power, ethics, values, economic growth, location, etc... contribute to, or solve, environmental problems.

Between the early rumblings of the Reformations and the last cannon shot of World War I, Europeans profoundly changed how they conceptualized bodies as experience and metaphors. During these four centuries, Europeans grounded the ways in which they interacted with each other and the world in bodily imaginings. On an individual level, the living, human body provided a means of accessing and understanding the material or spiritual world. On a collective scale, the physical body, its adornments, and its gestures provided markers that Europeans used to fracture society along axes of gender, sexuality, class, race, mental aptitude, and even sacrality. Drawing in part from their myriad imaginings of the human body, Europeans constructed metaphorical political bodies. The body politic assumed diverse forms spanning from divine right monarchs to revolutionary republics to modern nation states. Our course will lay bare the human body as culturally constructed, while fleshing out how Europeans' evolving visions affected political imaginings.

Television has been widely available in the United States for only half a century, yet already it has become a key means through which we understand our culture. Our course examines this vital medium from three perspectives. First, we will look at the industrial, economic and technological forces that have shaped U.S. television since its inception. These factors help explain how U.S. television adopted the format of advertiser-supported broadcast networks and why this format is changing today. Second, we will explore television's role in American social and political life: how TV has represented cultural changes in the areas of gender, class, race and ethnicity. Third, we will discuss specific narrative and visual strategies that characterize program formats. Throughout the semester we will demonstrate how television and U.S. culture mutually influence one another, as television both constructs our view of the world and is affected by social and cultural forces within the U.S.

Building on recent ecocritical approaches to the discipline of art history, this course will explore human-environmental relations and changing ideas about the natural world from the industrial revolution to the present. Structured around four elemental modules and drawing on a diverse range of visual media including scientific ‘specimen’ prints, Romantic landscape paintings, contemporary photography, and installation art (with works by J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Cole, and Edward Burtynsky), we will discuss natural history, landscape gardening, and land art (earth), global maritime trade, colonial expansion, and its visual culture (water), climate and disease (air), and the impacts of industrialisation and the burning of fossil fuels (fire). Major themes will include interactions between science and art, the global movement of people, ideas, flora, and fauna through colonial networks, developments in environmental theory, indigenous perspectives, materiality (especially as it relates to natural resources), and art as a form of critical intervention. This course will include visits to the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, the Museum of Biodiversity, and Rare Books and Special Collections. Finally, the course will introduce students to the discipline of art history and its knowledge-making techniques.

This course explores the myriad of national security policy challenges facing the United States and the policy options to address these challenges. The course will explore security issues with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as well as climate change, global health/pandemics, cyber threats/security and terrorism/extremism. The course will include lectures by policy experts and student engagement with these experts to explore policy options and their potential for success. Students will conduct research of primary source policy documents to develop a policy memorandum for the US National Security Council that will outline a policy challenge for the United States and recommend policy options for consideration.

Over the last two decades, there has been a groundswell of interest in global health across multiple disciplines and professional fields. The field of global health recognizes the multidimensionality of health as well as the interconnectedness of everyone living in the world today; its primary goal is to eliminate health disparities to achieve health equity for all. This course will provide foundational knowledge necessary to understand what global health is today; its history and evolution; how social theory contributes to understanding specific global health problems; the importance of understanding health and designing interventions by using a biosocial model that includes a myriad of cultural, social, political, economic factors; and an understanding of the role of various actors on the global health stage including international, bilateral, and civil society organizations.

Social Entrepreneurship has sparked dialogue and debate for two decades. Its very definition is much debated, as well as its capacity to create sustainable, scalable, systems-changing impact. This course explores the theoretical concepts, practices and strategies associated with the dynamic discipline of social enterprise and innovation. For our purposes, social entrepreneurship is the landscape, of which paradigm-shifting solutions like microfinance, MSME (Micro-Small-Medium Enterprise) development, bottom of the pyramid, fair trade, impact investing, and the like, are components. This course will study many of these concepts, focusing on their opportunity for social impact, and as a vehicle for wealth creation in vulnerable and disenfranchised communities across the globe. Further, the course covers examples of various social enterprise models (for-profit, non-profit, hybrid), requiring students to analyze and devise strategies to improve the efficacy of these ventures. Finally, the course engages students in research seeking to advance the field of social entrepreneurship at the Keough School of Global Affairs and Notre Dame.

This course introduces the foundational theories of human-centered design (HCD), its critiques, and the subsequent development of design principles, followed by a practical, hands-on exploration of HCD methods. It approaches design as a broadly applicable practice across multiple domains, including – but not limited to – social innovation and computing for social good. The course is organized into four modules. The first module examines the foundations of HCD, its critiques, and its evolution toward community-driven, value-aligned, and justice-oriented approaches. The next two modules provide hands-on experience in design research, prototyping, and reflection, where students learn to integrate technical, ethical, and social insights into actionable design strategies. In the final module, students will address real-world design challenges drawn from domains such as global development, sustainability, and public policy. The course welcomes students from the social entrepreneurship and innovation minor, global affairs, computer science and engineering, poverty studies, business, public policy, science-technology-values, and peace studies who are interested in designing for social impact.

This course is designed to introduce students to a wide range of health issues affecting women globally, with particular emphasis on Africa, Asia, and the United States. The topics will focus on a woman's life, from infancy and childhood, through adolescence and reproductive years, to old age. We will examine the physiological, social, psychological, economic, cultural, political, behavioral, and environmental factors that influence women's health, and the role of poverty, discrimination, and unequal health access. Topics such as determinants of women's health, reproductive health, sexual health, cardiovascular health, maternal health, cancers of the reproductive tract, mental and emotional health, substance use and abuse, and various forms of violence against women will be discussed. At the end of the course, students should have a solid grasp of key issues affecting the health of women in different cultural contexts globally, and how women can be empowered to take actions that positively influence their health.

This course examines how economic analysis can be applied to various components of the health care system. Microeconomic theory is used to understand the operation of health care markets and the behavior of participants (consumers, insurers, physicians, and hospitals) in the health care industry. International comparisons and the role of the public sector are discussed.

Explore the responsibility inherent in using, creating, and developing new technology. Students will begin with the following questions: What is justice? How does Technology promote or reduce justice? Does it do both? We will engage these questions through ancient frameworks such as the thinking of Plato and through modern frameworks outlined in Catholic Social Teaching. We then turn to the question of what scientists and engineers owe their creations, which we address through engaging with the classic literary work, Frankenstein. Finally we will look into the relationship between technology and economy through the lens of community. We will ask how we actually create meaningful change and what systems are at play. We will read the work of technology ethicists and economists as well as moral theologians. Technologies and economies work together and against each other to create community; we will explore how to create and promote a just future.

This course focuses on selected legal and policy issues related to K-12 education in the United States. A central theme is the intersection of K-12 schooling and the state, with a particular focus on Constitutional issues of religious freedom and establishment, student speech and privacy, parental choice, educational opportunity, and education reform trends such as charter schools and accountability measures. Questions examined over the course of the semester include: What are the most basic obligations of the state with regard to its regulation of K-12 education? What are the most basic rights of parents in this regard? In what ways does the 1st Amendment protect - and limit - the speech and privacy rights of K-12 schoolchildren? In what ways may the state accommodate K-12 schools with an explicitly religious character? What are the Constitutional requirements with regard to religious speech or expression within K-12 public schools? To what degree is the principle of equality manifest in the form of educational opportunity? How has this changed over time? In what ways have education reform trends such as charter schooling and increased accountability changed the policy landscape of K-12 education?

Few American regions have generated as many cultural narratives, myths, and icons as the American West. Exploring conflicts and conquests alongside Western culture and the creation of the mythic West, we will examine the West through the multiple perspectives of the many peoples who have lived there. Using novels, histories, first-hand accounts, art, and film, we will trace the history and culture of the West. While discussing the evolution of the West's regional identity, we'll explore topics like episodes of violence and conquest, the creation of the US-Mexico border, the rise of national parks and tourism, and the West Coast's counterculture. In this course, we will investigate how violent frontier battles and brutal discrimination became tamed and commodified to sell the West to Americans through fashion, film, and tourism. This course is open to all students; no previous knowledge of the topic is required.

This course gives students the opportunity to learn more about how Americans have thought about criminal responsibility and how their ideas have changed over time. Historians contend that the 19th century witnessed a transformation in the understanding of the origins of criminal behavior in the United States. The earlier religious emphasis on the sinfulness of all mankind, which made the murderer into merely another sinner, gave way to a belief in the inherent goodness of humankind. But if humans were naturally good, how are we to explain their evil actions? And crime rates varied widely by sex and race; European women were said to have been domesticated out of crime doing. What do those variations tell us about a common human nature? The criminal might be a flawed specimen of humankind born lacking a healthy and sane mind. Relying in part upon studies done in Europe, American doctors, preachers, and lawyers debated whether insanity explained criminality over the century and how it expressed itself in different races and sexes. Alternative theories were offered. Environment, heredity, and free will were all said to have determined the actions of the criminal. By the early 20th century, lawyers and doctors had largely succeeded in medicalizing criminality. Psychiatrists now treated criminals as patients; judges invoked hereditary eugenics in sentencing criminals. Science, not sin, had apparently become the preferred mode of explanation for the origins of crime. But was this a better explanation than what had come before? Can it explain the turbulent debates in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries over variations in crime rates by race? Can it explain why men, not women, are still more likely to commit murder?

Alcohol Use Disorder is a chronic relapsing brain disease. But when presented on screen, it's entertainment. Why do we laugh, why do we cry, why do we emulate fictional characters whose drinking habits result in a life of debilitating addiction? From James Bond to Jonah Hill, the psychology and seduction of alcohol on film, television, and online will be analyzed. Furthermore, what is the relationship between the manner in which alcohol use/abuse is presented on screen and the manner in which alcohol is used and abused on, for example, college campuses? Surveying recent film history, we will examine how alcohol is used in story structure, as a character flaw or strength, and as a narrative device in the story arc of films across multiple film genres, (teen rom-coms, sports films, etc). Why do characters drink, where do they drink, and how does the result of their "getting drunk" advance the narrative? We'll also look at non-fiction media that tackle issues of addiction, as a way of comparing character development in fictional films to the results of this same behavior in everyday life. Film materials will include weekly screenings outside of class, and academic articles relating to the portrayal and analysis of alcohol use in film and television, including the business of marketing alcohol from social media to televised sports. From the psychological perspective we will discuss the topic and process of social influence and how the presence of others influences our behavior. Questions of interest will include the following: what are the mechanisms by which group influence unfolds? How and why might we be persuaded? Does the manner, and if so how, in which alcohol use is portrayed in movies and the media reflect the processes and principles of social influence? Readings will include chapters on social influence, persuasion and academic articles evaluating the manner in which alcohol is portrayed and advertised and the effect this has on alcohol consumption. In addition, issues of addiction will be discussed - from understanding the basis of addiction to examining the efficacy of addiction treatment.

The journeys of human beings into space have captivated the imagination but have also raised significant ethical issues. As the human presence in space for research, recreation, commerce, and possible future habitation becomes more frequent and the goals of space exploration more clear, the urgency of addressing the ethical issues surrounding the human presence in space has also increased. This course begins with an examination of theological understandings of the origin and meaning of the cosmos across a number of different religious traditions, with a particular focus on Christian theological account of creation. The second part of the course reviews the various ways that human beings have approached and are considering the human presence in space, including lunar exploration, commercial exploitation, and possible habitation. The third part of the course considers the ethical issues associated with space commerce, and the course concludes with a comparison between past sublunary colonizations and as-yet-unrealized space colonizations.

This course will offer students a rigorous and lively encounter with multiple energy sources and their manifold effects on American society, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Recent political developments in the US offer plenty of reasons for a course of this sort, one that can contextualize contemporary debates over energy-related matters such as global warming, national security, federal regulation, and sustainability in broad sweeps of change over time. Yet the primary goal of this course will be to provide a history of energy on its own terms. One Cannot grasp the complexities and entanglements of modern life in its entirety without first coming to terms with the ways humans demand, consume, and interact with energy - and in turn, the ways it shapes and reshapes our social structures, realigns our lived and material infrastructures, and even dictates cultural values and trends. We will interrogate these values and structural outcomes with the help of path-breaking scholarship - books and articles about coal, petroleum, electricity, and nuclear energy that not only chart their development over time, but also reveal the ways in which, at key junctures in the nation's past, they forged new patterns of labor and race relations, corporate and community growth, state governance and land-use policy, gender and religion, regional growth and America's global reach. Moving from the Civil War to the present, from the oil patches of western Pennsylvania and West Texas to American petroleum sites in the Middle East - from the electrification of east-coast cities in the late nineteenth century to the damming of western rivers for hydropower in the early-twentieth, this course will give students the opportunity to ponder past and present energy systems within prisms of vast societal impact.

This seminar explores the dynamic and complex history of medicine in the United States, from colonial times to the present, with a focus on how race, gender, class, and geography have shaped medical practices, healthcare institutions, and public health policies. Medicine in America has never operated in a vacuum? It has both shaped and been shaped by broader social structures. The course critically examines how medical authority was established and legitimized, often at the expense of marginalized communities, and how those communities have responded and resisted.

Digital technologies present many opportunities for people to work, play, and find community online, but there is a persistent desire to unplug and avoid the ire of social media, information overload, and mass surveillance. Abstaining from technology involves actively assessing how a given tool may enhance, detract from, or reconfigure one’s values, whether that be for reasons of privacy, health and wellbeing, leisure, community, or others. This will look different depending on the context: the traditional lifestyle of Amish communities, the neo-luddism movement, Catholic contemplative practices, and “digital detox” trends each have something unique to say about the potential to abstain from technology (even if only temporarily or unsuccessfully in some cases). How do we identify when a tool is working for or against our needs? What are some strategies to reclaim mindfulness and agency over the barrage of social media and generative AI? What are the potential affordances of making more attention in non-digital spaces? At the same time, is it possible to develop an ethical stance on refusal when we are living in a digital society that appears nearly impossible to disconnect from? This course will explore perspectives from human-computer interaction, media studies, philosophy, theology, and psychology on what it could mean to rethink digital engagement not as a default but a deliberate choice. Students will be asked to complete oral and written communication assignments and engage in debates and discussions about the topics at hand.

Generative AI is a form of computing in which computer systems generate media such as text, images, sound, video, or combinations based on prompts or other information provided to the computer. These systems, including, but are not limited to, ChatGPT, Midjourney & DALLE, have been evolving rapidly and have led to extreme excitement, confusion, and fear. This course provides a survey of how to understand and use a number of these tools including explorations in prompt engineering as well as addressing issues from across the liberal arts including artistic, economic, social/psychological, educational and legal concerns and opportunities.

In the last decade, the field of artificial intelligence (AI) ethics has been receiving significant attention in academic, professional, and public discourses. AI ethics research not only faces and attempts to counter a variety of sociotechnical issues relating to algorithmic decision making, mis/disinformation, and fairness, accountability and transparency, but also must reckon with broader social, political, and economic forces. To engage with these conversations, this course will introduce modern AI and technical aspects of predictive systems, discuss the underlying social and political assumptions of AI development, analyze current and future impacts of AI on humanity and the environment, and consider the significance of these conversations in everyday terms. Through the lens of AI ethics discourse, students will learn to analyze persuasive arguments, describe genres, norms, and values of communication, and understand concepts including perception, expertise, meaning making, and responsibility. Students are asked to complete oral and written communication assignments, engage in debates and discussions, and participate in experimental research-creation workshops to think critically about the AI ethics issues at hand.

The course adopts an entrepreneurial perspective in exploring the role of business in helping to address the poverty challenge in developing and developed economies. The multi-faceted nature of poverty and its implications when it comes to business and entrepreneurship are explored. Attention is devoted to venture creation as a pathway out of poverty, and to how the larger business community can be leveraged in poverty alleviation efforts. Students will examine case studies and meet low income entrepreneurs.

In her book, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, Edwidge Danticat states that "we are all living dyingly." The concept of death and/or dying is part of our collective and shared experience. It presents us with the larger possibilities on how to live, how to experience, how to persevere, and how to change. In this course we will examine the politics of trauma, disaster, and memory. We will read across genres in fiction, essays, and poetry in order to write work that contemplates memory as a locus for resilience. We will look at how writers are grappling with some of the more pressing issues of our time i.e., climate change, natural disaster, femicide, colonialism, war, among others. Students will write prose that looks to redress what it means to "live dyingly."

Sociological theory is the foundation of sociology. Students in this course will learn two things: first, what theorists do and why and, second, how to use fundamental theoretic concepts - such as exploitation and alienation, social structure and solidarity, bureaucracy and charisma - to analyze and explain contemporary society.

Sociology 30902 is designed to provide an overview of research methods in the social sciences. Topics covered include (1) hypothesis formulation and theory construction; (2) the measurement of sociological variables; and (3) data collection techniques - experimental, survey, and observational. At the end of the course, students should appreciate both the strengths and the limitations of sociological research methods.

This course examines the financial and economic tools that support sustainable solutions to social challenges, with a focus beyond traditional government aid and philanthropy. Students will explore the rapidly expanding fields of impact investing and microfinance, evaluating their roles in advancing social entrepreneurship, broad-based wealth creation, and equality of opportunity. Topics include emerging approaches to microcredit, the benefits and limitations of financial innovations, and the role of public policy in fostering effective initiatives. Through a combination of case studies, critical analyses, and applied projects, students will engage directly with real-world challenges such as poverty alleviation and inclusive economic development. No prior background in business or finance is required; the course is designed for students from all disciplines who bring curiosity, creativity, and a commitment to social problem-solving.

The aim of this class is to try to understand what conquest, as we have traditionally called it, meant to the people who experienced it in some parts of the Americas that joined the Spanish monarchy in the sixteenth century. We'll concentrate on indigenous sources - documentary, pictorial, and material - and try to adopt the indigenous point of view, without neglecting sources mediated by Europeans. Although the class will concentrate on selected cases from Mesoamerica, the lecturer will try to set the materials in the context of other encounters, both within the Americas and further afield; and students will be free, if they wish, to explore case-studies from anywhere they choose in the Americas (in consultation with the lecturer and subject to his approval) in their individual projects.

The difference between rich and poor nations is not, as Ernest Hemingway once said, that the rich have more money than the poor, but is in part because the rich produce more goods and services. Industrialization, in other words, has often brought wealth (as well as social dislocation and protest) to those who have succeeded. This course examines the process of industrialization from a comparative perspective and integrates the history of industrialization and its social consequences for Western Europe (Britain and Germany), the United States, Latin America (Mexico), and East Asia (Japan and South Korea). We will concentrate on these countries' transition from agriculture-based societies to industrial societies. We will analyze the process of industrialization on two levels from above the role of political authority and from below a view of factory life, industrial relations, and protest from the perspective of workers and the working classes. No specific prerequisites in history or economics are necessary.

This class examines the history of engineering in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its relationship with capitalism and development on a global scale, with the use of digital tools. Engineers came to design, implement, and manage nearly all elements of the modern world from their positions within corporations and state bureaucracies; they quickly became the primary agents in development in the 20th century. We will examine the history of engineering, introduce students to basic tools in data science, digital humanities, and data visualization, and students will develop data-intensive research projects using the skills they have learned. The class is designed for students from both Arts & Letters and STEM disciplines as a window onto historical methods and an introduction to using qualitative data for analysis and data visualization. There are no prerequisites. This course emerges from a three-year NSF-funded research grant to the instructors, which includes a commitment to develop new undergraduate courses on the subject and the development of open access course materials. Student projects from this course are eligible for inclusion in our global dataset and for hosting on the project website.

As an emergent field of ethnographic theory and methods, design anthropology involves talking to people, figuring out what they want, and creating ways to improve our shared lives. These practices are focused on developing ideas and forms based on people’s needs while anticipating conscious practice and considerate use. Design anthropologists create potentials for future selves, anticipating projected needs and transcending potential limitations. This seminar introduces the emerging phenomenon and ongoing merger of the anthropology of design. It integrates sources in design anthropology, ethnographic design, cultural marketing, and other applied methodologies. We will engage with theoretical discussions, analytical approaches, practicing exercises, and portfolio development to explore the holistic depths of this nascent field.

Students in today’s information age are consuming greater amounts of quantitative information on a daily basis than ever before. This information comes in many forms and typically involves large data sets that tell “number stories” such as social media activity, politics, global health concerns, and educational achievement. How those number stories are displayed, numerically, text narrative, or graphically holds both power and peril. In this course, we will consider the evolution of visual displays of quantitative information, analyze the characteristics of visualizations, and explore the ways in which the interaction between data and design influence the communication of a number story. These ideas will be investigated through the lens of societal issues and student learning.

This course is designed to introduce students to the cultural and social issues of the Appalachian region - its history, people, culture, challenges, and strengths - through study and experiential learning. The course also provides engagement with the people of Appalachia through a required immersion over Break. The Appalachia Seminar utilizes a Catholic Social Tradition (CST) framework to build skills around social analysis, critical thinking, and theological reflection. Students examine the relationship between solidarity and service and consider how the Common Good is expressed in local communities across the region. This course has a fee.

Animals are everywhere in North American history. From the living room to the back alley, animals created history on their own and with humans help. Steeds bore generals into battle while rats bore fleas with diseases that flattened armies. This course will introduce students to animal studies and offer them a sampling of the manifold ways non-human creatures drove economies, shouldered burdens, entered families, and entertained audiences. The topics covered in the class will include co-evolution, the fur trade, people eating animals and animals eating people, pet keeping, animal symbolism, and endangered species. The course invites students to see North American history anew through the eyes of a race horse, a sled dog, a passenger pigeon, a grizzly bear, or a field mouse.

This course is an upper-level history seminar aimed at exploring the history of space flight from political, military, diplomatic, technological, and cultural perspectives. It begins with works of imagination - like Jules Vernes' From the Earth to the Moon - that inspired the early generation of rocket scientists, like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Goddard. It then traces how the military utility of modern rockets, first mass produced for use as a weapons system in the First World War, turned the new science into a key strategic competition between Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1930s. From Germany's V-2 rocket program to the missile race of the 1950s, the course then explores the strategic impetus behind the highly militarized space competition of the early Cold War. Following the success of Apollo, the strategic aims and goals shifted, and resources drained away from the American and Soviet space programs; readings will then explore the role of spaceflight in intelligence gathering and science diplomacy. Following the Cold War, competition in space seemed to be at an end, but the privatization revolution and growing strategic competition with China and Russia have given birth to a new space race, with targets including the Moon and Mars. In sum, students will address the key question: why space? How has the human imagination, technological change, and strategic necessity driven humanity into orbit, to the moon, and beyond?

The new wave of technologies, such as robotics and AI, will have long-lasting impacts on the labor market. Jobs will be displaced, new tasks created, different skills demanded, teams reshaped, and new management practices will emerge. Organizations and the broader economy will also change. These technologies may benefit and disadvantage workers unevenly, potentially increasing inequality. Education and training systems, along with the institutions that support them, must adapt. At the same time, demographic challenges driven by aging populations and declining fertility will significantly affect labor. How will these forces shape the future of work, and how should we prepare for them? How might the meaning of work evolve, and what policies will be needed to ensure the dignity of workers? We are entering a new era of increasing uncertainty regarding labor and work. Addressing these challenges requires a holistic understanding. This course will be interdisciplinary—grounded in economics but also drawing on insights from history, philosophy, public policy, computer science, and related disciplines. The goal of this course is to provide students with a framework for understanding and analyzing how new technologies like robotics and AI are affecting and will affect the labor market. Students will (1) read and discuss both economics and less quantitative materials, (2) conduct original research by collecting and analyzing data on the labor market, and (3) experiment with AI agents to gain firsthand experience of the future of work. Ultimately, students will develop perspectives on how cognitive and physical AI may impact jobs, occupations, income distribution, and social institutions. They will also consider how education, training, and redistribution policies can help mitigate the disruptions created by technological change.

“Climate and Environmental Justice” is a lecture- and discussion-based class primarily targeted at undergraduates. It is designed to introduce you to the core and crucial concepts of climate justice and environmental justice, with a particular emphasis on existing legacy injustices and the injustices we are currently creating as environmental pollution, climate change, and human systems interact. We will discuss existing patterns of burden, inequality, poverty, and threats to human dignity, and discuss opportunities and mechanisms to repair and avoid injustice. In particular we will discuss environmental injustice as a widely experienced but largely localized experience of disproportionate burden (e.g., on the basis of race and class) associated with extraction, industrialization, and non-greenhouse gas environmental pollution, alongside climate injustice as a global and emergent phenomenon of severe and disproportionate impacts from climate change. We will address concepts of reparations and remediation, as well as governance and other strategies for enacting justice. We will also address links between climate and environmental justice with related movements focused on adaptation, energy, housing, transportation, health, and land. Our focus will be both domestic and international, with attention directed to power dynamics, vulnerabilities, and opportunities for corrective action. Climate change and the energy transition will be major themes given their deep relationship with both climate and environmental justice, particularly as processes of industrialization and deindustrialization associated with decarbonization proceed. Overall, the course will focus on patterns, drivers, and opportunities for corrective action associated with severe injustices associated with climate change and environmental burden.

Almost all crimes, or even human interactions, contain a digital component. The fact that "old" laws don't always fit "new" problems is no more apparent than in the area of cybercrimes. This course will include discussion of topics including: the methodology of typical cyber investigations, the application of the Fourth Amendment to digital evidence, and different types of cyber-specific laws enforced today. The course will also focus on the responses of both courts and legislators to the ever-evolving issues presented by computer crimes.

“Life Cycle Assessment” is a lecture- and practicum-based class primarily targeted at graduate students. The class is designed as a once-per-week session where we will spend about half the time on lectures and the other half on hands-on activities to practice LCA. The class is designed to introduce you to Life Cycle Assessment as a method for evaluating environmental, and social impacts of products, policies, systems, and services, with a focus on International Standards Organization (ISO)-compliant LCA. We will primarily be using OpenLCA, with some exposure to alternative tools. This course will particularly focus on LCA practice in the context of policy development, with emphasis on LCA’s role as a decision support tool. We will address the implications of LCA and related methods being increasingly required in policy contexts (e.g., for prioritizing grant recipients and allocating tax subsidies). We will also address the challenges associated with disparities in the maturity of various life cycle methods, most notably social LCA in comparison to environmental LCA and life cycle costing. We will evaluate published LCAs in forms like Environmental Assessments and Environmental Impact Statements, and also investigate the use of life cycle thinking and LCA for Environmental Product Declarations. The course will also emphasize the role of LCA in the energy transition, particularly given LCA’s strong role in greenhouse gas accounting, and explore how both technological and climate dynamics pose challenges for LCA practice. This course is primarily a methods course, and we will work through case studies and examples together both in and out of class, with a topical emphasis on energy, buildings, and climate due to LCA’s particular relevance in those areas.

From the late 1960s debates on environmental degradation and overpopulation to the present concerns with sociotechnical and climate change, the "commons" has returned as a key symbol for social analysis, political organizing, and collective resource management. Since then, various currents have claimed and reclaimed the concept under the guide of "communality," "conviviality," and "common-pool resources" as concrete alternatives to public and private modes of governance of tangible and intangible goods. In the past two decades, the concept has been central for the discussion of the "digital commons" with decentralized, community-based governance of information production and sharing. In this seminar, we will map out the key definitions of the "commons" with a focus on the introduction of algorithmic forms of governance. This course will be organized as a seminar for the study of concepts, case studies, and methodological approaches for the study of the digital commons. We welcome students working on Internet-based research and Free and Open Source technologies as well as climate change, conservation, and sustainability to join the seminar.

In this class we analyze the many modes of human interaction, from our original invention/discovery of spoken language, to the invention of writing, to telegraphy, telephony, radio, movies, television, and the Internet, smart phones, and social media. We examine the affordances of each medium and modality, and develop tools to understand the ones that aren't even here yet. We draw on linguistic anthropology, biological anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science, psychology, sociology, conversation analysis, media studies, and communications.

Data-informed decision making has created new opportunities, but also expands the set of possible risks to organizations. One of these risks comes from grappling with the "should we?" question with regard to data and analytics, and associated concerns with identity, privacy, ownership, and reputation. In this course, we will explore several frameworks to address the issues related to the proper roles of public law, government regulation, professional codes, organizational approaches, and individual ethics in performing and managing analytics activities. The course will cover applicable theory and guidelines, and also make use of case studies. Upon completion, the student should be comfortable adapting one of these ethical frameworks for use in alignment with their organizational mission.

The study of morality has been judged “one of the hottest topics in the life sciences.” Scholars working in fields like evolutionary biology, paleoanthropology, primatology, evolutionary psychology, child psychology, social psychology, social neuroscience, and biomathematical modeling now routinely release accounts of the biological “origin” or “basis” of morality. Many authors of such studies claim that their findings either invalidate or make obsolete religious views of morality. This course will provide you an occasion to investigate the work of several scientists who advocate “biologizing” the study of morality as a way of de-theologizing the subject. I will equip you to place this endeavor in historical context, to evaluate its empirical and philosophical warrants, and to incorporate its valid aspects in moral theology. This course therefore promotes Notre Dame’s mission of exploring how Christian thought “may intersect with all the forms of knowledge,” including the sciences.

This seminar examines a number of important topics in medicine and society today, including shared health responsibility, race and class-based inequities, vaccinations, opioid crisis, beginning and end-of-life care, organ donation and body modification, health of imprisoned populations, mental health of healthcare providers, and health in the age of social media. Students in this class will gain an understanding of the ethical, social, and practical dimensions of a variety of healthcare and health policy issues and how providers navigate these dimensions in their care. A key part of the class is the opportunity for students to engage directly with healthcare workers who will serve as guest speakers. The seminar will emphasize writing and journaling, and will directly integrate matters of health care with broader humanistic and social science approaches to health, wellbeing, the body, etc. to deepen students' understandings of what medicine is. This is a core course in the Health, Humanities, and Society minor.

This course provides an intensive introduction to statistical methods of use for anthropological research. It will examine why and when to use quantitative methods, and how such methods can be incorporated into a holistic anthropological research design. Topics covered include probability theory, and parametric, non-parametric, and Bayesian principles of hypothesis testing, data ordination, and methods of analyzing non-independent data, including network analysis. All course work will be undertaken using free statistical packages available through the R programming language. No prior mathematical or programming experience is needed.

Behind the rhetoric of disruption and progress lies a deeper spiritual story. This course examines the religious and apocalyptic dimensions of technology through thinkers ancient and modern—from Augustine and Dostoevsky to McLuhan, René Girard, and Peter Thiel. We will explore how digital technology functions as both idol and oracle, promising salvation through data and control. Students will analyze the cultural myths of transhumanism, the occult fascination of tech elites, and the challenge of recovering a theology of creation, incarnation, and human freedom in a technocratic age.

This course is an introduction to political, economic, and social issues through the medium of visual displays. This kind of course has become feasible because data are now abundant and easy to access and software for displaying and analyzing data are available and easy to use. The ability to examine and display data is an increasingly valuable skill in many fields. However, this skill must be complemented by the ability to interpret visual displays orally, and by a commitment to use data responsibly: to reveal, rather than slant or distort, the truth. We will discuss examples concerning drugs, marriage, climate change, development, economic performance, social policy, democracy, voting, public opinion, and conflict, but the main emphasis is on helping you explore many facets of an issue of particular interest to you. You will learn to manage data and produce your own graphics to describe and explain political, social, economic (or other!) relationships. The graphics will include line and bar graphs, 2D and 3D scatterplots, motion charts, maps, and others.

Students, in a structured format, are involved in assessing, prioritizing and creatively solving problems encountered by low-income and other disadvantaged South Bend entrepreneurs. A process consulting approach is employed and a number of useful tools and frameworks are introduced. Students work with both for-profit and non-profit enterprises, producing tangible deliverables that help clients launch, grow and sustain their ventures. In addition to class time, students will meet with clients on a weekly basis at a Notre Dame facility located downtown. Assistance with transportation will be available for students needing it. Class will meet on Tuesdays. On Thursdays, students will consult with local entrepreneurs in one hour blocks during the hours of 5p to 9p at the Center for Civic Innovation. This consulting time is flexible with students' schedules and based on appointments made by local entrepreneurs.

The course will focus on why and how political institutions affect economic development. The goal is to understand core theoretical concepts in political economy, discuss the political determinants of economic policy choices and learn how to understand and evaluate empirical evidence. The course will use evidence and examples from both developed and developing countries. Topics will include the role of historical circumstances and political leaders in fostering economic development, the incentives and constraints of political leaders, and the economic determinants of corruption and conflict. Readings for the class will comprise academic journal papers, case studies and book chapters.

In this seminar, students will engage with texts published within the last five years in the field of transgender studies. Along with academic writing, we will work with literature, memoir, film, and popular culture. Together, these texts expand our shared understanding of what trans* means; pose challenging questions about Western transgender studies and its canon; and link the field of transgender studies with global movements for justice. Students will have opportunities for collaboration and community engagement, and to create their own theory and creative work.

Knowledge about the relationship between built environment development and global and local challenges, such as climate change, resource depletion, environmental impact, justice and health, is of key importance to move towards a sustainable and resilient future. This course takes a trans-disciplinary approach to understanding how to decarbonize the built environment. Linkages between and perspectives from engineering, architectural design, and social sciences are emphasized throughout the course. This course provides students with real-world problems to work with such as urbanization-related pollution in China and urban revitalization needs for the aging building stock in Germany. This course is composed of two modules: (1) Carbon neutral development at the urban scale is examined through three real case studies to explore the different development principles, design strategies and patterns. (2) Net zero building design and related environmental impact are examined through research literature and real case projects.

Science has traditionally been billed as our foremost producer of knowledge. For more than a decade, however, science has also been billed as an important source of ignorance, and this aspect of science is now being studied in a new interdisciplinary area of enquiry sometimes called agnotology. In this course we shall explore this new area of ignorance studies and its relation to the knowledge studies of philosophy—epistemology and philosophy of science. Accordingly, readings will be drawn from the work of a broad array of scholars—scientists, historians, journalists, and social critics as well as philosophers.

This course examines a range of metaphysical, ethical, and social questions about artificial intelligence. Questions to be addressed include: Could a computer be conscious? Is there anything the human mind can do that a machine couldn't be programmed to do? What are the similarities and differences between human and artificial intelligence? What are the likely cultural and economic effects of AI? What moral principles should guide our use of AI? Is it likely that we'll create AGI (artificial general intelligence), and would this pose an existential threat to humanity?

In "Neuropharmacology in Great Britain," you will learn about the basic tenants of pharmacology and classes of drugs that affect the brain, with particular emphasis on drugs that have been important in Great Britain's culture and history.

Independent research or readings taken under the supervision of an STV faculty member. An approved proposal for the research/readings will be filed with the STV office. (In order to receive STV credit, the student's proposal will need to be approved by the faculty member supervising the student's research/readings and by the director of the STV program.)

Undergraduates will conduct research or elaborated readings on a topic of interest.

GLOBES registration course

This zero credit course is required of all GLOBES students in order to be eligible for the GLOBES mini grants.

The course will provide a survey of relationships between man and microorganisms. General information about microbial physiology, biochemistry, and ecology will support more detailed discussions of interesting topics in food, medical, and applied microbial biology. Included will be subjects of general and historical interest, as well as current newsworthy topics. The student should get a better understanding of the role of microorganisms in disease, the production of common foods, relevant environmental issues, and biotechnology. This course counts as general elective credit only for students in the College of Science.

The overarching goal of this course is to provide students with a working knowledge of social psychology and, with that knowledge, to increase awareness of ourselves, the social world around us, and the connections between the two. This is a course about social interaction - how the self shapes and is shaped by others, how we interact in and with groups and social structures, and how we perceive the world around us. Because the subject of the course is the very social interactions in which we are immersed, it is expected that students will develop the habit of applying social psychological concepts to everyday life.

The United States is beset by many serious social problems such as educational inequality, extreme poverty alongside unparalleled abundance, crime and deviance, health disparities, mass incarceration, and the persistence of discrimination along lines of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, class, gender, and sexuality. Course materials are designed to engage student learning, illustrate the distinctive features of the sociological perspective, and to start you thinking sociologically about yourself and the broader world. To think sociologically requires you to recognize that our contemporary world, with its enduring cultural, political, and economic institutions, is as much a social product as we are. In this course, students will learn to take a sociological perspective not only in examining the causes, consequences, and solutions to some of society’s most troubling social problems, but also in taking a critical look at their own perceptions of problems.

This writing-intensive course will immerse students in the rich literary tradition of physician-writers by inviting them to engage in the practice of life writing (personal essay, memoir, diary, journal keeping, and oral history) in response to their experiences as patients, as caregivers, and as aspiring medical professionals pursuing a variety of majors (in the Sciences and Humanities) at the University. In addition to regular creative prompts, students will write analytically and critically in response to work by a diverse list of medical professionals, patients, and caregivers from the last 100 years. Special focus will be placed on the ways writing aids in the development of a sense of personal ethics, and how the practice of writing can be used as a therapeutic tool. The course will cover a wide range of genres and texts from the late 19th century to the present, with an emphasis on writings where the author is engaged in self-analysis, reflection on class, privilege, difference, and advocacy.

This course introduces students to the field of social-cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropologists are primarily interested in exploring issues of human cultural diversity across cultures and through time. This course will explore key theoretical, topical, and ethical issues of interest to cultural anthropologists. We will examine diverse ways in which people around the globe have constructed social organizations (such as kinship, and political and economic systems) and cultural identities (such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, race, and class) and we will consider the impact of increasing globalization on such processes. Throughout the course we will consider how different anthropologists go about their work as they engage in research and as they represent others through the writing of ethnographies.

This course introduces students to the field of social-cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropologists are primarily interested in exploring issues of human cultural diversity across cultures and through time. This course will explore key theoretical, topical, and ethical issues of interest to cultural anthropologists. We will examine diverse ways in which people around the globe have constructed social organizations (such as kinship, and political and economic systems) and cultural identities (such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, race, and class) and we will consider the impact of increasing globalization on such processes. Throughout the course we will consider how different anthropologists go about their work as they engage in research and as they represent others through the writing of ethnographies.

An examination of the following questions: What kind of differences separate men and women? Are these differences natural or are they socially produced, and are these differences beneficial to us or are they limiting? What does equality mean for people characterized by such differences?

This course will treat some central issues in the philosophy of mind, such as freedom of the will, personal identity, and the relationship between mind and body.

Psychiatry and mental healthcare have been the target of criticism and controversy for decades. Common critiques are that the field is not grounded in medical science, that it pathologizes normal problems in living, or that it is a method of social control. This course will focus on the social movements that have been critical of mental healthcare from the second half of the twentieth century to today. We will begin by considering questions such as: What is the proper role of mental healthcare? What is a social movement? What is the relationship between mental healthcare and politics? Then we will shift to discussing particular social movements including antipsychiatry, Mad Pride, the emergence of the concepts of disability and neurodiversity as alternatives to pathology, and other examples of service-user led activism. The goal of the course will be to better understand the ways that psychiatry has abused it power and imagine changes that could be made to the system to improve the lives of those who suffer from mental health conditions.

This course examines contemporary issues in bioethics and care ethics through the lenses of feminist philosophy, queer and crip theory, and critical disability studies. Traditional bioethics often assumes an abstract, universal subject detached from social context. In contrast, this course foregrounds the bodymind—a term from Margaret Price and Eli Clare that emphasizes the interconnection of mental and physical experience—as a site of power, vulnerability, and resistance. We will read essays and case studies from philosophers of disability, bioethicists, and critical disability scholars such as Shelley Tremain, Kim Hall, Alison Kafer, Eli Clare, Eunjung Kim, Jina Kim, and Mel Chen, etc. This course will introduce essential theoretical tools such as biopolitics, cripistemology, compulsory able-bodiedness, curative violence, crip temporality, etc.

How do the technologies around us shape our lives, our bodies, and our engagements with the world—and what hidden social dynamics shape them? In this course, we will explore the fascinating intersections of science, technology, medicine, and society, focusing on how contemporary innovations—like AI, smart algorithms, and new medical technologies—are deeply intertwined with issues of social power and control. Through case studies, social theory, and discussions, students will discover how technologies are never neutral, but instead reflect and reinforce issues of inequity, ethical dilemmas, and dynamics of uneven political and economic power. This course will challenge you to think critically about the power dynamics embedded within the tools we use to heal, to communicate, and to engage with the world around us. Prepare to question everything you thought you knew about science and technology!

This class will explore what anthropology can teach us about surgery, such as surgical processes, variability, and outcomes, as well as what these topics can in turn teach us about broader social issues. Questions to be addressed in class will include the history of surgery, what is surgery, how are surgeons trained, how does surgical practice vary across cultures and time-periods, outcomes and impacts of surgery, the impacts of resource scarcity, and dangerous/unnecessary/life-saving surgeries. Students will engage in questions about the aesthetics of scars, physician and patient decision-making, and how patient background (race, gender, class, identity) impacts access, experience, and outcomes. Types of surgery to be explored will include, plastic surgery, cesarean section, fistulas, organ donation, among others.

Many have claimed that the American educational system is the "great equalizer." In other words, the educational system gives everyone a chance to prosper in American society regardless of their social origins. In this course, we will explore the validity of this claim. We will consider questions such as: 1) Does our educational system promote social mobility or social reproduction? 2) How has the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational performance changed in the last few decades? 3) How do social class and gender shape the kinds of educational experiences students have? 4) How does educational policy influence the kinds of experiences kids have in school? Can policy reduce inequality?

Work plays a deeply important role in our lives. Finding good work -- which, for many of us, means getting a meaningful job you're passionate about -- can seem like the crucial factor in determining whether your life goes well or poorly, and whether you end up happy and fulfilled or miserable and empty. But things aren't nearly so simple. What kind of work is available to anyone in particular is largely determined by factors outside of our control. And when it comes to work, we're notoriously bad at predicting what aspects of a job we'll find meaningful and fulfilling, and which will drain us of life and energy. In this course, we will focus on the most urgent questions facing anyone trying to discern what their life's work will be, such as: - What causes alienation, anxiety, and burnout at work, and are these things that can be avoided with foresight and careful planning? - What is "leisure" (as contrasted with "time off") and what role should it play if we want to be healthy, flourishing persons? Is there such a thing as "work-life balance"? - Do we live in a genuine meritocracy? And, if so, is this a good thing or a bad thing? How should we think about equity and equality in the workplace? - Is it dangerous (or perhaps wise) to see your work purely as an instrument of financial gain? Does work have the power to nurture (or destroy) your soul? The course will be organized by topic, and we'll read a broad range of thinkers from St. Benedict to Karl Marx and Max Weber to more contemporary thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, and David Graeber (author of the provocative book "Bullshit Jobs"). We'll also watch a lot of the TV show " Survivor." Students will leave the course with their own "philosophy of work," captured in a living document that details their core beliefs about the role of work in living a good life.

This course examines the origins, causes, environmental settings and cultural factors within which natural selective forces converged throughout human evolution to create the human infant, one of the most vulnerable, slowest developing, and energetically demanding mammal infants of all. We consider who the caregivers are, and how and why they might "share care" which was needed to keep our highly vulnerable infants and children alive, and to nurture them throughout their exceedingly long childhoods. Specifically, we trace the origins of modern parenting systems from their mammalian base paying especial attention to the transaction between infant care practices themselves and how they relate to, if not depend on, the emergence of other characteristics that define us as human. These include bipedalism, empathy, learning, food sharing, and a "theory of mind". Here we will examine not only the unique roles that mothers and fathers and other important caregivers (allomothers) play but the underlying biology that both inclines that care but also responds to it biologically. We also emphasize the manner in which social values, ideologies, cultural expectations, social roles, and economic pressures assert critical influences on caregiver physiology and behavior.

What are the cultures of medicine? How does belief create possibilities for healing? How do cultural, social, and political forces shape experiences of illness? When can care be a form of violence? How can histories of oppression make you sick? Medical anthropology is an expansive field of research concerned with the study of medicine, affliction, and healing in historical and cultural context. This course provides an introduction to topics in medical anthropology, from classical texts on belief, illness experience, and structural violence to contemporary work on disability, care, and critical global health. Over the course of the semester, students will gain experience in methods, critical thinking, independent research, and public communication as we collectively explore what medical anthropology can contribute to the urgent health challenges that we face in the contemporary world today.

The family is often agreed to be the primary and most fundamental of social institutions. It is within this institution that early socialization and care-giving usually take place, and therefore, many of our ideas about the world are closely tied to our families. This course will give students the opportunity to learn about the diverse forms the family has taken over time and across different groups. This knowledge will be useful in examining the ongoing debate about the place of the family in social life. By taking a sociological approach to learning about the family and by gaining knowledge about national family trends and patterns in the U.S., this course will give students the theoretical and empirical tools for understanding how family life is linked to the social structure, to economic, cultural, and historical events and transitions, and to societal factors like race, class, and gender. Enrollment questions should be directed to Sociology's DUS at mthoma13@nd.edu.

How is the chronic stress of poverty related to negative health outcomes? Why are infant mortality rates higher among some groups than others? What is the relationship between gender and mental health care? We will address these and several other important questions as we discuss the complex and dynamic intersections of health, medicine, and society. In this class, we also pay particular attention to differential access to health care among various groups in society, changing perceptions of health and medicine over time, and the role of social networks in both health behaviors as well as the diffusion of illness.

This course introduces students to important concepts, issues, and debates in applied ethics. It begins with a brief overview of normative ethics, familiarizing students with two major approaches in this area: consequentialism and deontology. The remainder of the course tackles real-world issues, and proceeds in four parts. PART I: We engage with questions concerning our duties to non-human animals, as well as related questions concerning their moral status. Do non-human animals have moral rights? Do they matter less from the moral point of view than human beings? We’ll also be engaging with some important questions about the ethics of eating meat. PART II: We consider the moral challenges raised by certain kinds of markets, including commercial surrogacy, sweatshops, and the black market in human organs. On the one hand, these practices seem objectionably exploitative. On the other hand, we might think that these individuals’ choices—to sell their organs, rent out their wombs, or undertake risky labor—should be respected. PART III: We investigate ongoing controversies in the ethics of medicine. One such controversy concerns the shape that a state’s organ donation system ought to take: should such systems be ‘opt-in’, or ‘opt-out’? Another important issue is how we ought to conceive of disabilities: are disabilities neutral differences—as opposed to good or bad ones? We’ll also look into related controversies surrounding human enhancement and genetic engineering. Finally, we’ll explore the ethics of voluntary Euthanasia. PART IV: The course concludes by examining matters of justice. Among these are matters of global justice raised by widespread poverty; what duties do those of us living in affluent countries have to the global poor, and why? Another such issue is justice in the distribution of educational opportunities. Does justice require that all children receive the same quality education? Or does it simply require that all children receive a good enough education?

This course uses an intersectional lens to explore contemporary issues in health and medicine. In this course we will examine how race, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and class shape and are shaped by health agendas, discourses, and practices. Topics covered include: embodiment and health experiences, medicalization and intersectionality, inequalities in health, healing cultures, reproductive justice, social movements, and structural and institutional intersections that affect health and illness.

Health and medicine have long been intertwined with cultural factors. This course will interrogate pressing bioethical questions: such as the treatment of mental illness, patient confidentiality, physician-assisted death, and women's and LGBTQ access to health care through literature and culture over the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Long before the emergence of bioethics as a field of scholarly inquiry, American writers were investigating these issues. They were also paying attention to the social and political factors that shaped health care, such as minoritized populations' entrance into the medical professions, health disparities, and the effects of contagious outbreaks on society. In this course, we will explore literary texts and films that portray illness and health care alongside non-fictional sources that take up similar questions. Moving from Walt Whitman's writings about his nursing in Civil War hospitals to contemporary narratives of contagion, this course will take up critiques of racism in public health; questions of gender, sexuality, and illness; and the politics of disability. How do early debates within the medical profession speak to twenty-first-century concerns about the future of healthcare? The course will involve short writing assignments and class discussion. Prior training in the humanities is not required.

This seminar examines a number of important topics in medicine and society today, including shared health responsibility, race and class-based inequities, vaccinations, opioid crisis, beginning and end-of-life care, organ donation and body modification, health of imprisoned populations, mental health of healthcare providers, and health in the age of social media. Students in this class will gain an understanding of the ethical, social, and practical dimensions of a variety of healthcare and health policy issues and how providers navigate these dimensions in their care. A key part of the class is the opportunity for students to engage directly with healthcare workers who will serve as guest speakers. The seminar will emphasize writing and journaling, and will directly integrate matters of health care with broader humanistic and social science approaches to health, wellbeing, the body, etc. to deepen students' understandings of what medicine is. This is a core course in the Health, Humanities, and Society minor

We all recognize that the biomedical sciences change rapidly, but amid the seemingly intractable and interminable debate about healthcare reform in the US, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that the same is true of the healthcare system. This interdisciplinary course will examine the American healthcare system in historical and comparative perspective. We look at its institutional structure, its professional composition, and its governance at various levels, with the end learning objective being to understand how these facets of the healthcare system shape not only national health outcomes, but also provider and patient experience. The course draws on the history, sociology and anthropology of medicine, and serves as one the core courses in the new Health, Humanities and Society Minor.

Science and technology play a powerful role in structuring our world, in everything from our physical environment to our culture. It is thus imperative that we understand how these entities work. What constitutes reliable knowledge? How do the technological systems in which we are embedded throughout our lives come to be, and how can they be changed? In this historic moment of a global pandemic playing out against a backdrop of fake news, alternative facts and increasingly autonomous technologies, these questions are more critical than ever. This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of Science & Technology Studies in order to provide them with analytical and conceptual tools needed to confront the complex questions that arise where science and society intersect. Its objective is thus not so much to present a particular body of empirical information as it is to equip students with the analytical skills to understand complex multi-dimensional phenomena. The purpose is to give students both the opportunity and the tools to consider science and technology in a broader political, social, historical and economic context, and to reflect on how the practices of scientific and technological development shape their own individual and collective experience.

Measurement is a fundamental activity in modern science, both the natural and social sciences. While measurement is often considered as the hallmark of science that makes an activity “scientific,” there is little consensus among philosophers about how to define measurement, what kinds of things are measurable, or which conditions make measurement possible. By engaging with texts that build on concrete practices of measurement in historical and contemporary case studies, we will collectively explore questions such as: How do we know that an instrument, such as a thermometer, measures the quantity it is intended to measure? How are measurement units established, and how do they vary across different fields of science and culture? What does it mean to measure human attributes, such as feeling, if possible at all? Our journey begins with in-depth discussions on accuracy and precision, calibration, and standardization—the foundational concepts that make measurement possible. We then navigate the diverse landscape of philosophical viewpoints on measurement, encompassing operationalism, conventionalism, and realism. With these concepts and perspectives in mind, we will explore more case studies across various scientific domains, ranging from the physical and biological sciences to clinical medicine and social sciences, where you will discover issues more closely related to your own field of study. In the course, you will bring and elaborate your own case study related to your specific interests or fields of study. This case study serves as a focal point for actively applying concepts and approaches learned throughout the course, which will eventually crystallize into your final paper. From the course, you will come to see measurement not merely as a technical process but as a complex epistemic activity that demands critical examination, from experimental design to data interpretation. No prior background in specialized sciences is necessary to enroll in this course.

This course focuses on the theological and ethical issues that arise in the practice of health care. Through the lectures, discussions, and assignments in this course, students will gain a command of Catholic moral principles such as human dignity, the preferential option for the poor, and the common good as they pertain to health care. The course will explore issues related to the beginning and end of life, to health care justice, to moral conflicts in research and health care delivery, and to emerging issues in genetics and biotechnology.

This course is an introduction to environmental sociology, the sociology of food, and Catholic social teachings on creation, solidarity, human dignity and rights, and social justice as they relate to the environment and food issues. The course has two directly linked central purposes. One is to learn descriptive and analytical sociological perspectives on environmental and food issues, as well as related matters of agriculture, globalization, consumerism, rural America, health, social movements, and human futures. A second purpose is to learn Catholic social teachings on the environment and food issues, in order to deepen our capacity to reflect normatively from a particular moral perspective about crucial social problems. Achieving these two purposes will require us recurrently to engage the sociological and the Catholic perspectives and contributions in mutually informative and critical conversation. This is fundamentally a sociology course, but one in which Catholic social ethics stand front and center. In other words, this course will engage in multiple, ongoing exercises of "reflexivity," engaging the sociological imagination, issues of environment and food, and Catholic social teachings - to consider what possible fruitful understandings each may provide for and about the others. Students need not be Catholic (or even religious) to benefit from this course, but everyone must be open to learning about and reflecting upon Catholic ethical teachings as they relate to the environment and food. FILM LAB IS REQUIRED, SOC 21666 This course will explore a number of interconnected substantive issues, descriptively, analytically, and normatively. These will include technological development, energy consumption, global warming/climate change, neoliberal capitalism, interests of nation states, corporate power, the role of mass media, population dynamics, the maldistribution of wealth, political decision-making, the status of science, ocean environments, extreme weather, sustainable development, environmentalist movements, agribusiness, nutrition, food supply systems, hunger and obesity, organics, fair trade, localism, agrarianism, human dignity, the common good, the option for the poor, the universal destiny of the earth's goods, creation care, and the moral goods of solidarity, subsidiarity, and participation, among other relevant topics.

In this course we examine how knowledge about drugs - legal, regulated, and patented drugs - is produced, distributed among diverse scientific-technical and social communities, and how it is received and/or consumed by them. As we will learn, the question of how drugs are produced and how they should be consumed is a highly contentious one. We will study how pharmaceutical companies work not just to distribute, but also to shape scientific knowledge about their products, and we will trace the mechanisms used to transfer that knowledge to researchers, physicians, and potential consumers. We will discuss a range of important issues that arise as our lives become more medicalized, for example: what is the nature of the diseases that researchers and companies target - are their characteristics and limits easily fixed? What are, and what should be the bounds of the use of pharmaceuticals for cosmetic purposes? How can society engage and deal with conflicts of interest - profits versus regulated safety; how can one ensure the integrity of researchers and research? What rules should be placed on how researchers and companies enroll research subjects, both in the US and abroad? We will start off exploring the history of pharmaceuticals regulation in the US, and then explore the peculiar history that led to the unique research infrastructure in the area of pharmaceutical research and development. Then we will turn to explore the wider range of implications of our system of drug production for society at larger, exploring the questions above in the context of diverse cases. In this course you will develop a far-reaching understanding of how scientific and technical knowledge in the medical-pharmaceutical world is produced and distributed, an understanding that you can apply to many other areas of knowledge production.

This course will introduce students to the important roles that medicine played in shaping colonial contexts and the broader trajectory of global history. Since Christopher Columbus first landed on the shores of the West Indies in 1492, European imperialists have been acutely tuned in to matters of health and disease in the colonial enterprise. The health of colonists, the spread of diseases both new and old, the potential of novel medicines, and the control of native populations were all crucial matters in managing and expanding new empires. Our contemporary world is a byproduct of these colonial ambitions, a world in which medicine and science continue to play indispensable roles. Potential topics include: the early Americas; indigenous healers; colonial Africa, India, New Zealand, and Korea; medical missions; medical research in colonial contexts; race and gender; U.S. imperialism; modern global health. Some background knowledge of U.S. and World history useful but not required.

We are living through a watershed moment in United States history. Structural racism is at the forefront of the national discourse. Yet, the threat that racism holds on our nation's most cherished ideals of democracy and justice is hardly new. Generations of activists, scholars, and everyday people have fought and persevered to bring about social, cultural, and policy change. This course engages deeply with topics relevant to the national discourse on racial and ethnic relations in the U.S. The first part of the course examines key concepts, focusing on the social construction of race and ethnicity, prejudice, and discrimination. The second part reviews the historical experiences of Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and African Americans. The third and final part of the course centers on four critical issues that are especially relevant in 2020: (1) immigration; (2) political disenfranchisement; (3) racial and ethnic disparities in health; and (4) racism in the criminal justice system.

Most Americans think of the “inner city” as a place of misery, danger, and despair. Why do most American cities have racially segregated areas dominated by concentrated poverty? What are the lives of inner city residents like? Why do the legal, political, economic, and educational institutions that serve these communities struggle so mightily to improve the lives of inner city residents? In this course, we will address all of these questions by viewing all five seasons of The Wire, David Simon’s epic tale of life in inner city Baltimore. Sociological theory and research will serve as powerful tools to help students “decode” The Wire, and better understand the social forces that create and sustain inner city poverty, violence, and disorder.

An introduction to common topics encountered in philosophical reflection on medicine. The goal of this introduction is to enable students to personally reflect on problems they will encounter as practitioners of a health profession today: What is the nature and task of specialized medical care delivered in densely instrumentalized hospital settings? What is the role of clinical judgment, and can it be replaced by technology? Where does science feed into this, if there is even a difference between medicine and science? And why is everybody in health care exhausted and overworked? So as to facilitate a richer discussion of these questions, students will also learn about the historical development of medicine as we have come to know it today.

Algorithms and data increasingly influence our behavior, steer resources, and inform institutional decisions that affect our everyday lives. This course will examine the social forces that shape what information gets recorded in databases and how algorithms are constructed and used. It will also introduce various approaches for assessing how algorithms and big data impact the social world. Along the way, we'll tackle important questions raised by these technological developments: What opportunities and challenges emerge when machine learning is applied to data about people? How should we evaluate whether algorithms are better or worse than the systems they replace? How might algorithms shape our agency, relationships, and access to opportunity?

The science we produce helps us understand the world. But how does the world around us impact how we produce and understand science? Whatever our social lives outside of the lab, in the laboratory workspace, we consider our work to be largely devoid of bias and influence from the outside world. However, the science we encounter is a product of the scientists who have gathered this knowledge - the answer to the “why” depends on “who” came up with it. The goal of this course is to consider “who”, “what”, “when”, and “where” as important questions that affect the scientist, the science they produce, and the way this science is introduced to society. We will be reading scientific literature alongside texts from the discipline of science and technology studies, focusing on the language used by science. Specifically, we will work together to uncover the history and context surrounding commonly used metaphors and critically analyze them through the lenses of race, gender, disability, and indigeneity. We will think about how these word choices impact our scientific hypotheses and interpretations, and sometimes even determines who gets to ask these questions. Could an alternate, more inclusive vocabulary uncover what scientific knowledge lies beyond the stereotypes? This course is open to all students interested in exploring the interplay of science and society. Practical research experience (in a lab) will help but is not required!

What does it mean to explore gender through a sociological lens? Why does gender inequality persist in contemporary society? What can we do to advocate for social change? In this course we will discuss gender in families, politics, and history. The class will analyze gender at an individual, interactional, and institutional level. How gender intersects with race, class, and sexuality will be the bedrock of our learning together. The course will intellectually challenge students to continue becoming sociological scholars, educated activists, and justice-seeking individuals.

The course emphasises the motivational correlates of involvement in physical activity, sport, and other health behavior. Topics include motivation, communication, self concept, competition and cooperation, physical literacy, health related persuasion, stress and resilence, performance psychology, and exercise and well being

This London Seminar focuses on The Nature of Man and the Order of the World throughout the history of philosophy and the history of medicine from Hippocrates to the discovery of DNA. It is a demanding course that is taught using primary texts and original manuscript sources available in the Museums, Libraries and Archives of London. Classes will include the analysis of texts and artifacts and site visits to The British Library, The British Museum, The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, The National Gallery, The Wellcome Collection Library and Archives, The Royal Society of London, The Royal College of Physicians, The Science Museum London, The Old Operating Theatre Museum as well as The Gordon Museum at Guy???s Hospital, London, which is one of the largest pathology museums in the world and the largest medical museum in the United Kingdom. The course will place an emphasis on the close reading of selected primary texts, supplemented by secondary specialist sources which will enable students to critically evaluate and interpret medical texts, terms, concepts, and theories in a philosophical context. It will also enable students to gain practical knowledge of how to use archival sources for philosophical research. It will give students a unique opportunity to study works of canonical philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Galen, Bacon, Boyle, Locke, and Descartes in a medical context in relation to the works of historically significant physicians, naturalists, and scientists, such as Hippocrates, Vesalius, Harvey, Burton, Willis, Newton, Darwin, Crick and Watson. This course will enable students to understand the close inter-relationship between the study of natural philosophy and the study of medicine from antiquity to the 21st century, since both are dedicated to gaining knowledge about the function of the human body and soul, the order of nature, the cosmos, and the natural world.

In an age where ‘identity politics’ figures as both an accusation and a creed in public and private spaces, a careful and critical examination of how we construct our individual and collective selves is more important than ever. Science and technology are crucial resources in these identity formation projects, serving as fundamental structuring elements of our world. They are crucial in shaping not only our physical environment but the very conditions of possibility within which we construct our collective and individual identities. This integration course is an exploration of the ways that the practice of science and the production and marketing of technology supply the material that gets taken up in the work of identity formation, focusing on two closely linked technoscientific domains: neuroscience and genetics.

This elective will examine the role of human psychology: human thought and behavior in the climate and biodiversity crises. First how did we get here? What is it about human thought and behavior and the structures and systems we have created that produced these crises and prevents action? Second, what are the effects? How is the Climate Crisis affecting human health, behavior, and well being? In what way are these effects unevenly distributed across the world and what are the implications of this inequity? And finally, what does psychology have to offer in terms of solutions? How we can leverage our understanding of human thought and behavior to enact climate justice?

The current generation of colleges students will face a host of challenges in their lifetimes, including a global population that will potentially reach 9 billion by the early 2040s, depleting resources, and declining ecosystems. Additionally, the world is currently experiencing the worst global pandemic it has faced in over a century, whose effects will linger for years to come while foreshadowing the potential impact of other impending shocks. If current economic growth continues in a "business as usual" framework, future generations will face an increased dearth of decent jobs, growing social divisions, and devastating threats to the environment. This course will explore this confluence of issues and help students to consider a new roadmap for economic development and human flourishing that respects the dignity of every individual and the environment. Readings and lectures will look at the intersection of economic growth, industry, food security, water scarcity, health, religion, innovation science, and climate change. Case studies and real world examples will link theory to policy and practice. A major component of this course will be in-class discussions and case studies that will push students to think critically and debate the important questions within the study of sustainable development. The objective of these discussions will be to a) explore the interconnectedness of many of these issues and their varying degrees of impact on the wealthy, the middle class, and the poor or marginalized; b) understand different models of governance at international, national, and local levels that are trying to work through these issues; and c) bridge theory to policy and practice. This course requires active student participation in class as well as group projects and quizzes to gauge how well students are absorbing the material.

What happens when we examine medicine not just as science, but as shaped by the same forces that create interlocking systems of racial dispossession in housing, education, employment, policing, and incarceration? Drawing on accounts from anthropologists, historians, artists, physicians, journalists, philosophers, and epidemiologists, students will learn to use narrative accounts and concepts in Africana Studies and the medical humanities to explore the conditions that create illness and disease. Throughout the semester, our seminar discussions will engage with successful models of community care, grassroots organizations that have developed innovative health practices, and centers led by Black midwives. Central to our investigation is reimagining what medical practice and education might become when approached through a different analytic lens, one that includes the insights of Audre Lorde, Franz Fanon, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. Du Bois, and more. Perhaps in this work of reimagining, we might begin to understand what it takes to build equitable health systems.

What does it mean to love—deliberately, politically, rhythmically—under conditions of precarity, displacement, and exhaustion? How does love shape legislation, organize communities, and drive political movements? What does love do for the body? How does love structure who we eat with, grieve with, fight for, and tend to? This course positions love not as a private sentiment, but as both a research methodology and strategic form of political action. Drawing from Black studies, performance theory, feminist thought, and critical data studies, students will examine love across multiple analytic scales: from saved voicemails and lullabies to photographs tucked into wallets and letters never sent. Moving between the quantitative and the qualitative, the archive and the body, students will interrogate those critical gaps between ‘countable’ institutional metrics and the depths of our affective lives. In doing so, we might be able to build a world accountable to both.

Disability Studies is an academic discipline that explores social categories and lived experiences of disability in order to create a more equitable and accessible world. This course introduces students to the central questions, methods, and debates in this field. Topics include definitions and conceptual models of disability; the history of disabled people and communities; ableism and its intersections with racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression; disability rights and disability justice movements; representations of disability in art, literature, and popular culture; theories and perspectives on normalcy and difference, and legal and social policy frameworks. The course culminates in a student-driven project aimed at increasing access, inclusiveness, and awareness of disability and ableism on campus.

This course will introduce students to Narrative Medicine, a burgeoning interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on the close reading of literature as a means of helping physicians, nurses, therapists, and other caregivers to develop narrative competencies that will assist them in improving patient care. Students in the course will explore seminal texts in the field of narrative medicine and begin to develop these competencies through the close reading of works by novelists John Green (the 2025 Ruskin Lecturer at Notre Dame) and Garth Greenwell, as well as works of memoir, fiction and graphic novel by Marya Hornbacher, Joan Didion, and Storozynski Writers in Residence Cleo Quian and Joan Reilly. The course will explore the connections between reading literature and the development of empathy, the role that reading plays in the development of Theory of Mind, and the ways that literary study helps to articulate professional standards in caregiving.

This course is intended as the first of a two-part survey of Western science. We begin with a survey of the heritage of ancient (largely Greek) contributions to natural philosophy, mathematics, and medicine. We will continue with medieval studies of mathematics, motion, the heavens, living things, optics, materials, and alchemy in Arabic and Latin cultures. Given the importance of religion to the formation of these historical cultures, we will pay particular attention to the relations between broader philosophy, theology, and the emerging activities bearing the hallmarks of naturalistic and rational approaches we often distinguish as "science." Changing institutional homes for the study of nature also contextualize our study of key ideas and methods, from early philosophical schools to monasteries, universities, courts, and academies. Ultimately, we will consider whether there was such a thing as "the Scientific Revolution," and, if there was, what was so revolutionary about it.

What does it mean when some of the sharpest insights about health justice come packaged in punchlines? Through satire, the hit-series The Boondocks elevates overlooked aspects of health and material security, transforming systemic failures into resonate comedic sequences. Through engagement with The Boondocks, this course explores the use of humor and other forms of cultural expression to challenge and reimagine our current healthcare practices. Additionally, this course examines how film, video, photography, drawing, and interactive media function as an archive of community health knowledge — ethnographic resources that illuminate the complexities of our social world. Students will explore pressing health issues as well as engage core readings in cultural studies and visual anthropology to develop analytic approaches that extend beyond summaries and plot descriptions. By emphasizing these interpretive skills, students will learn to extract health discourses from different cultural forms, recognizing how seemingly disparate texts — from academic articles to animated satire — collectively participate in broader conversations about well-being, justice, and community care.

One way to improve our understanding of ourselves is to compare ourselves with the animals who most resemble us, in informative, challenging and disturbing ways. In this course, we'll look at the relationship that has done most to change human self-perceptions. With a focus on Western texts and experiences, but with reference to many other cultures, we'll concentrate on the problems of how and why human attitudes to other apes have changed since the Middle Ages, and how they have influenced thinking in science, religion, politics, sociology, literature, and ethics.

This course is an intellectual history of western medicine. It is intended to familiarize students with the multiple explanatory problems that occur in medicine and the most important approaches to them. Its focus will be much more on medical theory and knowledge than on medical practice and institutions. The course will begin with a review the Hippocratic and Galenic heritages and early modern appeals to chemical and physical explanations of disease and of health. A middle section will explore the 17th-18th century syntheses of Sydenham, Boerhaave, and Cullen, consider the difficult problem of nosology, and examine the empiricist critique in the clinics of early nineteenth-century Paris, including the conflict between ontological and physiological concepts of disease. The final section will examine several distinct trends in the nineteenth century: the impact of experimental physiology, the growth of clinical science, the emergence of epidemiology and tropical medicine, the rise of bacteriology, immunology, and virology; and the impact of new statistical methods. Reading assignments will be a mix of scholarly articles by medical historians and extracts from primary sources. Requirements include critical reviews of primary sources, journal, quizzes, and final exam. There are no prerequisites for the course. While some familiarity with the human body and its ailments and vulnerabilities, and some comfort with modes of biological explanation will be helpful, the course is intended for persons with general interests.

Open any medical journal or textbook, go to the doctor's office and look at the walls, or do an internet search for the little pain that's been bothering you for the last few days. You'll notice that medical pictures, diagrams, and computer-generated images are everywhere. This may seem obvious, and it may seem natural that physicians and scientists need to learn to "read" complex visual information. Science and medicine were not, however, always so visual. How did the medical field become so thoroughly image dependent? What kind of information—whether obvious or hidden—have medical images conveyed in the past up to the present? What roles have images played in the spread of Western medicine? And what can such images tell us about the communities and societies, including our own, in which they were created? In this class we will analyze images related to nature, the body, and medicine, covering the middle ages through the twentieth century. It is both a history of medicine seen through the lens of visual techniques and technologies developed over time, as well as a history of visual representation itself as revealed through the history of medicine.

In the modern world, sports and sport-like spectacles are a source of livelihood, entertainment, and social interaction for huge swathes of the global population. Fans and practitioners of physical feats of strength were likewise a major component of ancient Greco-Roman society, from the earliest Olympic Games at the dawn of Greek history to the gladiatorial contests and chariot races that characterized the most decadent phases of the Roman Empire. The purpose of this course is to provide an interdisciplinary examination of the origin and nature of sport and spectacle in the Classical world and to compare the role that athletics played in ancient society to the position it occupies in our own lives - from the point of view of athletes, spectators, and patrons alike. Topics covered will include: Near Eastern precursors to Greco-Roman sport; the development of Greek and Roman sport and spectacle through time, the Olympic Games; the role of religious thought in ancient sport; the position of the athlete within society; ancient and modern rewards for athletic valor; athletes in architecture, literature, and art; and the political appropriation of athletes and athletics. The course will focus mostly on formal athletic contests in ancient Greece and on athletic spectacles in ancient Rome, but general recreation and physical education will be considered as well.

This course tells the history of Appalachia through humans' relationships with the natural environment. The class starts in geologic time with the formation of the mountains and spools forward through ebb and flow of Native American homelands, the colonial wars and the fur trade, the American invasion, the growth of an agrarian economy centered on corn, pigs, and whiskey, the arrival of the railroads and the extractive industries of coal and timber, and finally the difficulties wrought by de-industrialization, climate change, and the opioid epidemic. The central characters throughout are the men and women who wrested their living from the mountains and the hollows, and their struggles as a series of political, economic, and ecological transformations dispossessed them. Over time, Appalachia was impoverished and made marginal; in the eyes of many, the place and the people were deemed exploitable and expendable. This class seeks to understand how Appalachia became synonymous with grinding poverty and environmental degradation. The class argues that ecosystems and people advanced and declined in tandem and that history shows neither were destined for impoverishment. This course is intended to give current Notre Dame students who have or who might visit and volunteer in Appalachia the historical perspective they may need to fully appreciate the region's problems and potential.

This class is about widespread illness, its mitigation, and the consequences of both. We deal with how populations are defined socially, economically, and politically and trace out the interventions that are made to preserve populations. We also contemplate the pandemic's pariahs; those who get blamed, excluded, and persecuted in times of plague. This class analyzes medicine as power; specifically, Michel Foucault's description of biopower (making live and letting die). A major source of reflection and analysis will be the instructor's experience nursing during the first and second COVID-19 surges in New York City. We will analyze film, documentary, podcast, literature, and medical science. In short, we will study theories, practices, and stories of healing.

The United Nations estimates that an unprecedented 71 million people around the world have been forced to flee from their respective homes. Among them are nearly 26 million refugees, half of whom are under the age of 18. Media and social science scholarship represent refugees as passive recipients of western aid and avoid critical examination of the global and historical conditions that create "refugees." This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of critical refugee studies (CRS) to re-conceptualize the refugee not as a problem to be solved but as a site of social and political critiques. CRS illuminates the processes of colonization, war, and displacement. This course examines militarism and migration as well as refugee voices written in their own words. We will assess a variety of sources, including oral history, ethnography, art, graphic novels, and interdisciplinary scholarship from humanities and social science.

Disability has long been constructed as the opposite of higher education. Universities are places that valorize, even demand, physical and intellectual ability. Disability, in turn, is often seen as something that does not fit within a university context, a problem that must be fixed. This antithetical relationship between disability and the university is rooted in history—eugenical curriculums, research programs that study disabled people—but it continues today. Despite a growing focus on diversity in university admissions and populations, disabled students enter higher education at a lower rate than non-disabled students and are less likely to graduate. In addition, universities perpetuate cultures of ableism in both faculty and students by prioritizing ability, perfection, and achievement.

With help from athletes such as Billie Jean King, Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James, Serena Williams, and Megan Rapinoe, Americans are growing accustomed to thinking about sports as embedded in the politics of gender, class, race, sexuality, and the nation. Consider the variety of places where sports happen, however, and the ways we develop and consume those places, and it becomes apparent that sports are also environmental in significant and complex ways. This course will examine the environmental politics of sports from conservation to climate change through the lenses of history and cultural studies. Course content will range from 19th century hunting, Indigenous surfing, and BASE jumping, to pick-up basketball, pro stadiums, and Notre Dame Athletics. Topical sections include outdoor sports and conservation, mountain sports and public land use, parks and recreation, stadiums and environmental justice, sports and climate change, and sustainability in the NCAA. Course requirements include regular reading and discussion, midterm and final essays, and a research project on a topic of the student's choice.

Inflammation is a fundamental biological phenomenon - whether it preserves or destroys is often a matter of context. In this course, we focus specifically on neuroinflammation - i.e., inflammation as it relates to the central (and peripheral) nervous system. We begin with the founding principles of molecular and cellular immunology in the context of the human nervous system. Next, we will explore the biological, environmental, and human components of (neuro)inflammatory disease through clinical case studies and representations in literature and media. Finally, we ask: how do medical, healthcare, and pharmaceutical constructs define the sociocultural experience of disease? Thus in this class, we integrate the scientific and the social: How do humans, how does humanity at large, deal with (neuro)inflammation? Can we firefight our collective future? This course is open to all majors. Strongly recommended prerequisites: Biology I: Big Questions (BIOS10171) OR Neuroscience and Behavior (BIOS20450) OR Cell Biology (BIOS30341) OR Cellular Biology: Stem Cells to Disease (BIOS30410)

This class will survey the various historical and contemporary dimensions of Asian American experiences including immigration & integration, family & community dynamics, ethnic/gender/class identity, as well as transnational and diasporic experiences. We will explore contemporary and historical issues of racism, the model minority myth, inter-generational relationships, and the educational experiences of Asian Americans. To accomplish this, our class will pose such questions as: Who is Asian American? How did racism create Chinatown? Is there an Asian advantage? Coursework includes essays based on topics of your choice, presentations, and a creative narrative.

If you were to perform a Google image search of “human evolution,” you would see endless pictures of men linearly evolving from apes to modern humans. These overwhelmingly one-sided depictions are because much of our human evolutionary story has been written by and about men to the exclusion of women. Consequently, many of the key theories explaining the unique suite of human features seem to assume that evolutionary forces act only upon men, and women are merely passive beneficiaries. Not only is this exclusion of roughly half the population sexist, it is also bad science – bad science that to this day has been repeated and perpetuated to justify the status quo. In this class, we will explore human evolution from a feminist perspective intellectually drawing upon human biology, archaeology, cultural anthropology, primatology, exercise physiology, and reproductive health to demonstrate that women were and still are a driving force in human evolution. Using non-traditional learning methods and assignments, we will cover: 1) foundational feminist human evolutionary theory, 2) the pervasiveness of estrogen, 3) physical/athletic performance and sexual division of labor; 4) the significance and frequency of alloparenting; 5) multiple orgasms and the control of women’s sexuality; 6) cooperation and competition among women; 7) concealment (or not) of human ovulation; 8) evolutionary reasons for the difficulty of human birth; 9) the physical and mental resilience of women; and 10) the crucial role grandmothers and menopause. It is my hope that this class not only provides an alternative perspective to current thinking in human evolution, but also encourages students to bring their experiences and perspectives to bear. Because who asks the questions matters, and a greater diversity of views can only improve and enrich our holistic understanding of human evolution.

It has been 20+ years since the first draft sequence of the entire human genome was published, spurring development of genetic technologies that were previously impossible, such as CRISPR genome editing. These technologies carry potential to identify, treat, or even prevent genetic conditions; at the same time, they often rely on assumptions that genes determine one’s fate and are shaping contemporary ideals of health, wellness, and disability. This course will examine how genetics and genetic technologies raise a host of complicated ethical questions, such as concerns about “new” forms of eugenics and genetic determinism, the ownership and commodification of genetic material, the ethics of genetics research in marginalized communities, legislative efforts to prevent genetic discrimination, and more. We will use a case study approach, pairing examinations of the biological and technical bases of specific genetic technologies with bioethical analysis to consider costs and benefits from a variety of stakeholder perspectives. This will entail engagement with perspectives from the history of science, genetics, bioethics, genetic counseling, etc. to explore complicated questions about the relationships between genetics, research, medicine, and society.

In 2007, after decades of organizing on the part of indigenous activists, the United Nations issued a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Declaration was the result of years of work by people from particular communities--each with its own history, culture, language, and home--who decided to call themselves, and work together as, Indigenous people. This creative step allowed indigenous peoples to work collectively for justice on a global scale, rather than individually and in confrontation with single states. This class explores the concept, and reality, of Indigeneity in both historical and contemporary perspective: we will consider the many shared struggles and opportunities of indigenous peoples around the globe today and the ways that similar (or distinct) histories have led to similar (or distinct) present realities.

Nearly one in four people is an immigrant or child of immigrants in the United States. This course critically examines what it means to be an immigrant or child of immigrants through interdisciplinary sources, including memoirs, blogs, art, and popular journalism. Since the liberalization of immigration policy in 1965, immigrants from Latin America and Asia are becoming an increasing and emergent demographic of American society. In major American cities such as Los Angeles and New York, they comprise over 50% of the population. This course focuses on how immigrants and the children of immigrants experience the United States. How are immigrants changing the US racial and ethnic structure? How do their experiences differ, given varying legal statuses? How is the second generation becoming American? We will explore these questions through family, media representation, religion, education, dating, and sexuality. Students will participate in a service-learning opportunity related to migration and social justice and learn skills in quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Service learning will be 2-3 hours outside of class each week.

This course explores the history, meanings, myths, and realities associated with narcotics in the United States. We will consider, for example, the fascinating history of cocaine as it went from miracle drug and panacea (as well as the active ingredient in Coca-Cola) in the early twentieth century to elite party drug in the 1970s to public health threat in the 1980s and 1990s. Through this example and many others, including marijuana’s dramatic shift from illegal to legal substance, we will pay special attention to drugs and social difference, exploring the ways that American ideas about narcotics relate to such matters as race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, citizenship, and nation.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 26% of Americans (about 61 million people) have a disability—a physical, intellectual, sensory, or self-care impediment that affects major life activities. This course considers this population, their stories and experiences, as well as how disability—as a social, cultural, legal, and political construct—has shaped the nation and its history. A particular focus of the course will be on disability and social justice. Throughout American history, and still today, disabled people have been excluded from basic civil rights, such as voting, marrying, holding property, and living independently. This course will examine how these restrictions developed and changed over time as well as how disabled people have fought for greater access and equality. Coursework may include response papers, primary source analysis, and a final project

This course explores the interconnections between health, nutrition, and poverty in low- and middle-income countries. The course will examine how poor health and malnutrition perpetuate poverty, and how poverty in turn undermines health and nutritional outcomes. Drawing on perspectives from economics, public health, and development studies, the course introduces theoretical and empirical evidence to analyze interventions such as nutrition programs, cash transfers, agricultural policies, and health systems reforms. Students will engage with both academic literature and real-world case studies, with an emphasis on understanding policy design and evaluation.

In this course, we will examine how policy frameworks around the world address patterns of gender difference and gender inequality. While policy experts often assume that gender and sexuality are stable, coherent categories of identity, scholars have long shown that both take socially and historically specific forms. In this course we will read a range of critical case studies that demonstrate the complicated ways that local and global beliefs about gender, sexuality, and development intersect in everyday life around the world. This course will help you approach "gender" and "sexuality"—two key terms in development discourse and global affairs—with an understanding of how these categories shape not just individuals but institutions, processes, and practices.

Where were you in March 2020? When did you first learn about the COVID-19 pandemic? How has the pandemic affected your life, your community, and your world? Although many of us think of the pandemic as a singular and unprecedented event, pandemics actually have a long history in America (and around the world) and have profoundly shaped the American experience. In this course, we will study epidemics in America from the precolonial period to the present, paying particular attention to their cultural as well as biological dimensions. As we will see, disease outbreaks have influenced government policy, economic and market relations, media, popular culture, religious beliefs, and ideas about race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and citizenship. Throughout the course, we will place these histories in conversation with the present, reflecting on how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our nation and our world. Assignments include analytical papers, personal reflections, class presentations, and collaborative projects.

What did shopping, tavern-keeping, and midwifery have in common in early America? They could all be considered legitimate forms of women's and girls' labors both inside and outside of the home. We will consider work that was skilled or unskilled, free or enslaved, and paid or unpaid, and how changing definitions of "women's work" helped to shape boundaries of race and class. Servants were restricted from marrying and procreating while the value of enslaved women resided in both their work and their reproductive potential. Hence this course will also consider the dual facets of women's labor in work and their laboring in childbirth.

Loss of health is a part of life. Medicine is one means by which this part of life is addressed, negotiated with, or battled against. In this course, we will explore the questions surrounding the nature and use of medicine in a variety of historical and social contexts. These questions will include, but are not limited to, the following: What is medicine, exactly? Is it a science or an art? How has the answer to this question evolved over the course of certain histories? Are diseases and medical causes, as typically conceived, mind-independent entities or human constructions? How do our worldviews and philosophical commitments affect what we observe and what we count as evidence? What kinds of medical epistemology are possible? Which ways of knowing should be granted authority? If medicine is defined as the practice of alleviating suffering, whose suffering should be alleviated and whose suffering is justified by the acquisition of further medical knowledge? What does it mean, existentially, to lose one's health? Finally, what should the aims of medical practice be? We will explore these questions in a philosophical manner using a variety of intellectual resources from philosophy, history, sociology, and contemporary medical science.

How has the HIV/AIDS crisis shaped U.S. political culture, public health, and artistic production since coming to public attention in the early 1980s? In this course, we explore the history of the AIDS crisis, including medical, religious, and moral constructions of the epidemic that arose amid heated culture wars debates over gender and sexuality. We look at competing strategies to define and combat the epidemic, from Christian Right leaders who have described AIDS as a divine punishment to public health workers and religious leaders who championed comprehensive AIDS education. We will be especially attuned to grassroots activism that emerged from the communities most affected by the AIDS crisis, including LGBT communities. We explore how AIDS activists drew upon the lessons of feminist, queer, and Black civil rights movements to fight for political and medical resources for people with AIDS. And we will see how art became central to these efforts by exploring how feminist and queer activists and other people with AIDS produced a vast (and still growing) archive of cultural production, including visual and performance art, film, and literary work, through which they processed the grief and trauma of this crisis while forging new political and artistic visions.

How have LGBTQ people shaped modern America? And how has modern America shaped LGBTQ lives and experiences? In the popular imagination, the Stonewall Riots often mark the beginning of the modern gay rights movement and a turning point in the visibility and cultural acceptance of LGBTQ people. In this course, we will think about the longer and wider histories of LGBTQ people in the United States, tracking their cultural and political histories from the late 19th century to the historical present. We will also discuss theoretical approaches to studying the history of sexuality, including how sexual and gender categories (and people’s experiences of them) have changed over time and how they intersect with histories of race, class, religion, and region. In true American studies fashion, we will think with a wide range of primary texts—spanning across music, political zines, photography, film, law, and historical newspapers—and read interdisciplinary scholarship ranging from classics in LGBTQ history to more recent works that expand our archive of LGBTQ studies. Students will also pursue a historical research project on a topic of their own choosing, bringing their own interests and insights to the class.

Sports play a big role in American culture. From pick up soccer and the Baraka Bouts to fantasy football and the Olympics, sports articulate American identities, priorities, aspirations, and concerns. They reflect our dominant values but also highlight our divisions and serve as a means to question those values. Athletes, organizers, spectators, fans, and the media all have a stake. This course will examine sport's role in American society and culture thematically, covering the late 19th century to present and paying special attention to sport as a physical performance (including issues of danger, drugs, disability, spectatorship, and fandom), sport as an expression of identity (the construction of race, gender, class, community, and nation), sport as a form of labor (with issues of power and control, safety, and amateurism), and sport as a cultural narrative (how do writers, historians, and the media attach meaning to it?). We will examine history, journalism, documentary film, and television coverage; topics will range from Victorian bicyclists and early college football to Muhammad Ali. Requirements include reading and regular discussion, a variety of short analytical papers, and a culminating project in which students will choose one course theme to analyze through a topic of their own choice.

What is psychic life? The word psyche has encompassed a range of definitions as it has travelled through time, from notions of mind, soul, spirit, and the conscious and unconscious mind, to a mirror, an asteroid discovered in 1852, a moth or butterfly, and anima mundi, "the animating principle of the universe" itself. Today an additional constellation of concepts may also be drawn into psyche's orbit, including brain, emotion, feeling, affect, self, subjectivity, person, ego, and experience. As opposed to terms like "mental health," the concept of psychic life provides a language with which to speak about a range of phenomena across multiple traditions, epistemologies, and histories, without prioritizing any one conceptualization over another or locating the psyche within the boundaries of an individual mind, as distinct from the body and the world (Eileen Barany, cc:d here, has the full course description if you are interested).

In the twentieth century, the design profession took shape in such fields as graphic design, information design, product design, industrial design, and design management. Today, design has grown from a focus on products and services to a robust and diverse set of methods and methodologies that are applicable to a wide range of cultural and societal challenges. With a focus on understanding natural environments, behaviors, and relationships, in all their inherent complexities, design research is uniquely qualified to understand and help address today’s complex challenges. The objective of this class is to introduce students to the principles and practices of qualitative design research, and the practical application of these ideas to understanding cultural needs and challenges. This course is offered every semester and is open to Collaborative Innovation Minors and Design Majors.

Illness and disease have been part of the human experience for as long as we have existed. The nature of these challenges, and how we have responded to them, has evolved over time. In this course, we will dig into evidence from the archaeological record and bioarchaeological data from skeletal remains to trace the history of human health. From prehistoric pandemics to ancient healing practices, we’ll uncover the sick and tired side of archaeology that reveals how illness and the pursuit of health have shaped—and been shaped by—human history. You’ll learn how archaeologists and bioarchaeologists reconstruct stories of past health, exploring how humans have cared for one another since our evolutionary origins and how our understanding of “health” has shifted across time.

The focus of the course will be an examination of the advances in medicine over the last 30 years that have challenged traditional values and ethical norms, and the institutional processes and procedures in place that facilitate decision-making in the health care setting. It will include a sketch of the most recent advances in the various fields of medicine, followed by an examination of the clinical and ethical questions they raise and how they have affected the physician-patient relationship.

Migration is a prevailing global phenomenon that affects millions of peoples around the world. According to the UNHCR report, at the end of 2019, there had been 79.5 million forcibly displaced people around the world. At the same time, refugees and migrants experience migration- and displacement-related physical and psychosocial stress and trauma, which may increase their vulnerability and affects their health and well-being. This course will explore, engage, and analyze contemporary migration flows - movements of people across national and international borders - and the ways human mobility shape refugees' and migrants' lived experiences, cultural meanings, social values, and health. How and why particular modes of mobility are permitted, encouraged, and enabled while others are conversely, banned, regulated, policed, and prevented? How do contemporary forms of displacement may challenge conventional understandings of who gets to be defined and accepted as a refugee? Why do we have so many different categories of people who simply seek refuge? Do these different categories indicate different treatments? How is migration associated with higher levels of mental health disorders among refugee/migrant populations? The course will engage with such questions by focusing on events that occurred in the second half of the twenty-first century in Europe, including both the EU and non-EU states. We will rely on the selected readings and documentaries as they reflect an integrative anthropological approach to migration, displacement, and refugeeness. Taking into account lived experiences, identity, social values, cultural meanings, health, and well-being, we will explore migration, borders, and displacement as a subjective experience and sites of ethical, socioeconomic, political, and cultural examinations and critiques. Topics will include transnational migration, terminology, citizenship, borders, asylum policy, health, and well-being. This course will also enrich your understanding of the fluidity of different categories, processes underlying refugees and migrants' cultural and social tuning, as well as their biosocial responses, resilience, and adaptability under conditions of migration and displacement. The course will be run in a seminar-style, and students will be expected to analyze and debate core readings in class.

This course offers an in-depth analysis of the roles of structural and cultural violence in peace studies. Unit 1 (conceptual/theoretical) explores field-formative debates over the nature, basis, and viability of "structural violence" and "cultural violence" as analytical concepts, asking how they have shaped (or failed to, but perhaps ought to shape) the field of peace studies. We will examine their critical appropriations of early critical theory, and assess comparable theoretical approaches such as reflexive sociology (Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant), post-structural analysis (Michel Foucault), and later critical theory (Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth) while asking what advantages, if any, lenses of structural and cultural violence have vis-a-vis these resources for peace analysis and peacebuilding, and where they need to be supplemented. Unit 2 (cases/agents) studies cases in which some version of these analytical lenses have been deployed for purposes of peace analysis and peacebuilding. We examine recent uses of these lenses to examine poverty, global development, and global health in building peace (e.g. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Paul Farmer, Peter Uvin), religious/cultural identity (Veena Das), and race, class, and gender (Joshua Price on incarceration and prison abolition in the U.S; Alex Mikulich and Laurie Cassidy on white complicity in hyper incarceration).

The course will begin with a short history of the American health care system and will be followed by a discussion of the major components of the system (patients, providers, payers), health insurance coverage, managed care programs, the movement for quality health care, physicians in the changing medical marketplace, health care expenditures, and academic medical centers. This course counts as a general elective. Fall.

This course will examine the representation of medicine in film, still art and texts. The point of view will be to examine the interdisciplinary arts, primarily film plus secondary readings of literary texts, with the goal of broadening the understanding of the lives of patients, families and providers for future health care professionals, particularly physicians. The goal is to heighten the awareness of the world surrounding medical encounters and encourage an open minded approach to people in medical need. Based on Cinemeducation training in medical schools and residency programs, topics examined include delivering bad news, end of life issues, medical malpractice, family dynamics, professionalism, cultural diversity, gender issues, grief, balance of professional and personal life and medical errors. Film clips will be introduced and reviewed with specific discussion points. Strong emphasis will be placed on group discussion, with four short papers, one discussion lead and a final paper.

This course delves into the intersections of art, culture, and public health, particularly Hip Hop as a form of public health knowledge acquisition. Through an examination of various texts, archives, and research methods such as ethnography, autobiography, and social and oral history, students will explore how different forms of creative and cultural expression force us to reimagine what health justice looks like, feels like, and sounds like. Students will also reflect on Hip Hop and its presence in everyday life, from questions about narrative medicine to its use in public health campaigns.

This course examines how gender and sexuality are understood, constructed, and implicated in relations of social power in various regions of the world. It will integrate scholarship from anthropology and women and gender studies to explore how ideas of maleness, femaleness, trans, queer, and heterosexual are reproduced, contested, and transgressed within different social contexts and the everydayness of these categories. We will learn about cultural changes in conceptions of gender and sexuality in North and South America, SWANA (South West Asia/North Africa), Southeast and East Asia, Central and Southern Africa, and Europe. In the first half of this course, we will consider traditional themes in cultural anthropology, including kinship, morality, ritual, emotion, politics, and the circulation of goods and labor, to examine how different communities produce cultural knowledge about gender and sexuality. The second half of this course will address contemporary themes such as activism, violence, and gender and sexual oppression. Using our knowledge of anthropological theories developed in the first half of the course, we will take up topics of concern such as masculinity and violence, LGBTQ rights and pinkwashing, and gender and nationalism to understand how gender and sexuality are relevant to post-colonial contexts and settler-colonial resistance movements.

This course will foster thoughtful dialogue on the importance of cultural humility in healthcare. Students will work to grow their cultural awareness and understanding of the social determinants of health by exploring the lived-experiences of individuals. Through the utilizations of skills based in the compassion science framework, students will consider how cultural humility impacts patient outcomes. An exploration of current topics in healthcare disparities will deepen classroom discussion. This course provides an added entry point into the understanding of the important place cultural humility and understanding hold in the healthcare relationship. The course is open to CCIM minors. Permission is required for those outside of the minor who are planning to pursue the health professions as space permits.

This course is designed to provide the theoretical and practical foundation to providing compassionate care in the medical professions. It will provide an introduction to the field of Caring Science and provide the behavioral and attitudinal components to providing effective patient care as well as teaching how practitioners can be balanced in providing patient care. Topics include Caring Science theory, clinician burnout, compassion fatigue, maintaining caring in the encounter with suffering, and physician self-care. While designed specifically for the future medical professional, the course is open as enrollment allows to students in allied helping professions. Class material will include research from medical, psychological, caring science, business, and spiritual sources.

This course provides an overview of the complex ways in which gender and sexuality are relevant to a study of the state, both domestically and on the international stage. This course will look at the gendered and sexual dynamics of war, state-building, nationalisms, international governance, as well as feminist and queer social movement responses to the state.

Between the early rumblings of the Reformations and the last cannon shot of World War I, Europeans profoundly changed how they conceptualized bodies as experience and metaphors. During these four centuries, Europeans grounded the ways in which they interacted with each other and the world in bodily imaginings. On an individual level, the living, human body provided a means of accessing and understanding the material or spiritual world. On a collective scale, the physical body, its adornments, and its gestures provided markers that Europeans used to fracture society along axes of gender, sexuality, class, race, mental aptitude, and even sacrality. Drawing in part from their myriad imaginings of the human body, Europeans constructed metaphorical political bodies. The body politic assumed diverse forms spanning from divine right monarchs to revolutionary republics to modern nation states. Our course will lay bare the human body as culturally constructed, while fleshing out how Europeans' evolving visions affected political imaginings.

Statistics is one of the most important tools in the 21st century for conducting scientific research, assessing the benefits of public policy, and understanding business administration and management. Yet despite its ubiquity the prominence of statistical reasoning we see today is of a relatively recent date. This course will introduce students to important topics in the history of statistics, tracing its emergence in the 19th to its use and misuse in the public health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. While broadly chronological, the course will also be organized topically and will address both the content of evolving statistical techniques as well as its social and political contexts. A central theme for this subject will be the complex dynamic between claims that statistics represent facts about the world while at the same time being the product of competing social, political, racial, and cultural interests. We will look at multiple aspects of this interplay including how the intended use of statistics has shaped the development of its techniques and methods; the dependence it has had on certain data-gathering institutions and the role governmental and corporate power plays in such data gathering; and the relationship between statistics, misinformation, and objectivity. By the end of this course you will be able to better appreciate the different criticisms of statistics within their historical context as well as articulate its benefits and the important role it plays in understanding the world today.

An introduction to the economics of housing, with particular attention to issues of homelessness and the low-income housing market. Topics includes economic models of homelessness, housing subsidies and regulations, housing market filtering, concentrated poverty and neighborhoods effects, and public policy responses to housing problems.

In an age where ‘identity politics’ figures as both an accusation and a creed in public and private spaces, a careful and critical examination of how we construct our individual and collective selves is more important than ever. Science and technology are crucial resources in these projects, serving as fundamental structuring elements of our world. They are crucial in shaping not only our physical environment but the very conditions of possibility within which we construct our collective and individual identities. This course is an exploration of the ways that the practice of science and the production and marketing of technology supply the material that gets taken up in the project of identity formation, focusing on two closely linked technoscientific domains: neuroscience and genetics.

Over the last two decades, there has been a groundswell of interest in global health across multiple disciplines and professional fields. The field of global health recognizes the multidimensionality of health as well as the interconnectedness of everyone living in the world today; its primary goal is to eliminate health disparities to achieve health equity for all. This course will provide foundational knowledge necessary to understand what global health is today; its history and evolution; how social theory contributes to understanding specific global health problems; the importance of understanding health and designing interventions by using a biosocial model that includes a myriad of cultural, social, political, economic factors; and an understanding of the role of various actors on the global health stage including international, bilateral, and civil society organizations.

This course examines how economic analysis can be applied to various components of the health care system. Microeconomic theory is used to understand the operation of health care markets and the behavior of participants (consumers, insurers, physicians, and hospitals) in the health care industry. International comparisons and the role of the public sector are discussed.

This course is designed to introduce students to a wide range of health issues affecting women globally, with particular emphasis on Africa, Asia, and the United States. The topics will focus on a woman's life, from infancy and childhood, through adolescence and reproductive years, to old age. We will examine the physiological, social, psychological, economic, cultural, political, behavioral, and environmental factors that influence women's health, and the role of poverty, discrimination, and unequal health access. Topics such as determinants of women's health, reproductive health, sexual health, cardiovascular health, maternal health, cancers of the reproductive tract, mental and emotional health, substance use and abuse, and various forms of violence against women will be discussed. At the end of the course, students should have a solid grasp of key issues affecting the health of women in different cultural contexts globally, and how women can be empowered to take actions that positively influence their health.

In many societies around the world, culture plays a major role in health and wellbeing. This course will provide a global overview of how society and culture influence the health and wellbeing of people, with discussions on strategies for health promotion and awareness that are sensitive to cultural settings. Focusing mostly on developing countries, we will examine the ways in which different aspects of culture, such as gender and social norms, values and belief systems, and religion influence health, with particular emphasis on physical health, mental & emotional health, and sexual & reproductive health.

This course examines how economic analysis can be applied to various components of the health care system. Microeconomic theory is used to understand the operation of health care markets and the behavior of participants (consumers, insurers, physicians, and hospitals) in the health care industry. International comparisons and the role of the public sector are discussed.

This course focuses on selected legal and policy issues related to K-12 education in the United States. A central theme is the intersection of K-12 schooling and the state, with a particular focus on Constitutional issues of religious freedom and establishment, student speech and privacy, parental choice, educational opportunity, and education reform trends such as charter schools and accountability measures. Questions examined over the course of the semester include: What are the most basic obligations of the state with regard to its regulation of K-12 education? What are the most basic rights of parents in this regard? In what ways does the 1st Amendment protect - and limit - the speech and privacy rights of K-12 schoolchildren? In what ways may the state accommodate K-12 schools with an explicitly religious character? What are the Constitutional requirements with regard to religious speech or expression within K-12 public schools? To what degree is the principle of equality manifest in the form of educational opportunity? How has this changed over time? In what ways have education reform trends such as charter schooling and increased accountability changed the policy landscape of K-12 education?

This course covers the various issues relevant to the current early childhood education landscape. This includes theories of early learning and child development, policy development in the United States, the issues of inequality and the achievement gap, and research on interventions or "what works" in early childhood programming. The advantage to understanding the theories of child development, the policy context and the intervention research is that it gives future teachers and future policymakers a foundational premise upon which to grow, analyze, learn and teach. Topics covered will include: Theories of Child Development (Infant Schools to Present), Head Start and the CCDBG, State Preschool, Inequality and the Achievement Gap in the Early Years and Interventions in Early Childhood (HighScope/Perry Preschool, Abecedarian and Chicago Parent Studies, Head Start Research). The goal of this class is to come away with a greater understanding of the language, the history, the goals and the possibilities in this policy area as well as its connections to other social welfare programs and to K-12 schooling. Students will become more fluent in the language of early childhood education and will gain the foundational knowledge of past and current theories, laws, policies and educational interventions.

This course gives students the opportunity to learn more about how Americans have thought about criminal responsibility and how their ideas have changed over time. Historians contend that the 19th century witnessed a transformation in the understanding of the origins of criminal behavior in the United States. The earlier religious emphasis on the sinfulness of all mankind, which made the murderer into merely another sinner, gave way to a belief in the inherent goodness of humankind. But if humans were naturally good, how are we to explain their evil actions? And crime rates varied widely by sex and race; European women were said to have been domesticated out of crime doing. What do those variations tell us about a common human nature? The criminal might be a flawed specimen of humankind born lacking a healthy and sane mind. Relying in part upon studies done in Europe, American doctors, preachers, and lawyers debated whether insanity explained criminality over the century and how it expressed itself in different races and sexes. Alternative theories were offered. Environment, heredity, and free will were all said to have determined the actions of the criminal. By the early 20th century, lawyers and doctors had largely succeeded in medicalizing criminality. Psychiatrists now treated criminals as patients; judges invoked hereditary eugenics in sentencing criminals. Science, not sin, had apparently become the preferred mode of explanation for the origins of crime. But was this a better explanation than what had come before? Can it explain the turbulent debates in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries over variations in crime rates by race? Can it explain why men, not women, are still more likely to commit murder?

Alcohol Use Disorder is a chronic relapsing brain disease. But when presented on screen, it's entertainment. Why do we laugh, why do we cry, why do we emulate fictional characters whose drinking habits result in a life of debilitating addiction? From James Bond to Jonah Hill, the psychology and seduction of alcohol on film, television, and online will be analyzed. Furthermore, what is the relationship between the manner in which alcohol use/abuse is presented on screen and the manner in which alcohol is used and abused on, for example, college campuses? Surveying recent film history, we will examine how alcohol is used in story structure, as a character flaw or strength, and as a narrative device in the story arc of films across multiple film genres, (teen rom-coms, sports films, etc). Why do characters drink, where do they drink, and how does the result of their "getting drunk" advance the narrative? We'll also look at non-fiction media that tackle issues of addiction, as a way of comparing character development in fictional films to the results of this same behavior in everyday life. Film materials will include weekly screenings outside of class, and academic articles relating to the portrayal and analysis of alcohol use in film and television, including the business of marketing alcohol from social media to televised sports. From the psychological perspective we will discuss the topic and process of social influence and how the presence of others influences our behavior. Questions of interest will include the following: what are the mechanisms by which group influence unfolds? How and why might we be persuaded? Does the manner, and if so how, in which alcohol use is portrayed in movies and the media reflect the processes and principles of social influence? Readings will include chapters on social influence, persuasion and academic articles evaluating the manner in which alcohol is portrayed and advertised and the effect this has on alcohol consumption. In addition, issues of addiction will be discussed - from understanding the basis of addiction to examining the efficacy of addiction treatment.

This course, taught by a cardiovascular physician, explores the dynamics of emergencies as they occur in society, and specifically, emergency care in the hospital setting. We will emphasize the role of medical professionals analyzing their clinical acumen and judgment, ethical dilemmas, and psychological challenges. We will study real-world hospital emergencies, focusing on both the human and structural responses to medical crises. A major focus will be the portrayal of emergency medicine in popular media, employing TV series (primarily The Pitt) and select movies as appropriate. Students will engage with the ethical complexities of treating patients in the Emergency Room (ER), exploring issues like patient autonomy, resource allocation, and most importantly, decision-making under pressure. Through media portrayals, case studies, guest speakers, lectures, and discussions, students will gain a comprehensive understanding of the emergency medical field and its media representations.

This seminar explores the dynamic and complex history of medicine in the United States, from colonial times to the present, with a focus on how race, gender, class, and geography have shaped medical practices, healthcare institutions, and public health policies. Medicine in America has never operated in a vacuum—it has both shaped and been shaped by broader social structures. The course critically examines how medical authority was established and legitimized, often at the expense of marginalized communities, and how those communities have responded and resisted. We will investigate the professionalization of medicine, the role of public health, the ethical dilemmas surrounding medical experimentation, and the evolution of biomedicine and the pharmaceutical industry. Through historical analysis, case studies, and discussions, students will develop a deeper understanding of how historical developments in medicine continue to inform contemporary debates on healthcare access, inequality, and medical ethics.

The goal of Art, Medicine, and Observation is to employ the benefits of learning through works of art at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art in service of a humanistic study and practice of clinical medicine. This course positions the practice of medicine, like that of art, as a deeply human endeavor; it is the product of different types of person-to-person communication: patient and physician, physician and colleagues, physician and self, and physician and society and other contexts. By using works of art as “texts” through which to listen to, acknowledge, interpret, and respond to the experiences of others, this course will focus on building students’ skills of observation and communication as they relate to medical professions. Sustained encounters with works of art—specifically works with themes such as health and healing, caregiving, suffering, mortality, and the human body, among other topics that demonstrate what art and medicine have to offer each other—will surface issues of bias, objectivity, and ambiguity in observation and communication. Ultimately, this effort will lead students to develop an empathic disposition in their study of medicine, the capacity to think deeply about the experience of others, and the predilection to treat patients with care and attention. This one-credit class is co-led by Museum staff and an emergency medicine physician and runs for the first half of the semester only.

This course will provide an overview of communication concepts and strategies that can shape health practices and promote public health goals. You will become familiar with theories, communication channels, and some social and cultural complexities to consider in the design and analysis of persuasive health communication materials.

With an increasing number of complex domestic and international health challenges, the need for clear, effective, and timely health communication has become more apparent. This course will provide an overview of communication concepts and strategies that can shape health practices and promote public health goals. Students will become familiar with theories, communication channels, and some factors to consider in the design and analysis of persuasive health communication materials.

This seminar will provide an overview of and framework to understand the global refugee crisis. We will trace the evolution of international refugee law and policy dealing with this ever-growing population. Central are the ethical challenges that refugees pose for the international community. What is the nature of our collective obligation to refugees? What determines the extent of this obligation? Through a series of legal and sociological case studies, students will also grapple with the social, legal , political and ethical challenges posed by humanitarian intervention on behalf of refugees and the often unintended consequences of such policies. How do the different models for dealing with refugee resettlement affect the life chances of refugees? This project-based course will pair students with a refugee community to address a pressing social concern.

Almost 40% of the world's population is overweight or has obesity. Obesity has become a central focus in biological research as well as policy. Billions of dollars have been spent on public health interventions, biological interventions, diets, and exercise regimens. However, the obesity rate among adults and children has been steadily increasing globally. Why is this happening? How do we even define obesity? Does that definition truly reflect health? Why do we even have fat to begin with...actually what even is fat?!? Why are humans prone to obesity? These are just some of the questions we will address in this class. Using non-traditional methods and assignments, we will discuss adipose tissue and digestive physiology, the role evolution has played in the human propensity to hold onto fat, diet and exercise, food insecurity, therapeutic interventions, as well as the physical and mental health consequences of having obesity. We will use this as a basis to investigate the biological and cultural factors including stigma, race, and gender that shape our perceptions of body image and health in the midst of the obesity epidemic. Finally, this course will include occasional laboratory exercises to familiarize you with the methods used to assess body mass, body composition, metabolic rate, and point of care measures of biomarkers like glucose and cholesterol.

This class provides an introduction to the world of development policy in the face of massive and persistent world poverty. It focuses on the important tools and concepts required for both understand and create policy aimed at combatting challenges posed by third-world poverty. This includes understanding when it is proper to intervene in markets, along with the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and government institutions.

This course explores the relationships among and between workers, employers, government policymakers, unions, and social movements since the end of World War II, as well as the ways in which those relationships have shaped and been shaped by American politics and culture more broadly. The United States emerged from the Second World War as the globe's unequaled economic and political power, and its citizens parlayed that preeminence into a long postwar economic boom that created, however imperfectly, the first truly mass middle-class society in world history. At the heart of that new society was the American labor movement, whose leaders and members ensured that at least some of the heady postwar profits made it into the wallets of workers and their families - and not just the wallets of union members, as working Americans generally experienced great improvement in wages, benefits, and economic opportunity during the quarter-century ending in 1970. During those same years, civil rights activists challenged the historic workplace discrimination that kept African Americans at the bottom of the labor market, confronting the racism of employers, unions, and the government, and inspiring others, primarily Mexican Americans and women, to broaden the push for equality at the workplace. Since that time, however, Americans have experienced a transformation in the workplace -- an erosion of manufacturing and the massive growth of service and government work; a rapid decline in number of union members and power of organized labor; and unresolved conflicts over affirmative action to redress centuries of racial and gender discrimination. Meanwhile, income inequality and wealth disparities have grown every year over the past three decades. What accounts for the decline of organized labor since 1970, and why have the people of the mythic land of milk and honey experienced declining upward mobility and widening gaps between the rich and everyone else? Are these phenomena linked? What has the decline of the labor movement meant for workers specifically, and the American economy and politics more broadly? How and why have popular perceptions of unions changed over time? What has been the relationship of organized labor to the civil rights movement, feminism, modern conservatism, and the fortunes of individual freedom more broadly? What is globalization, and what has been its impact upon American workers? Through an exploration of historical scholarship, memoirs, polemical writings, and films, this course will try to answer these questions and many others. It will also address the prospects for working people and labor unions in the twenty-first century.

In her book, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, Edwidge Danticat states that "we are all living dyingly." The concept of death and/or dying is part of our collective and shared experience. It presents us with the larger possibilities on how to live, how to experience, how to persevere, and how to change. In this course we will examine the politics of trauma, disaster, and memory. We will read across genres in fiction, essays, and poetry in order to write work that contemplates memory as a locus for resilience. We will look at how writers are grappling with some of the more pressing issues of our time i.e., climate change, natural disaster, femicide, colonialism, war, among others. Students will write prose that looks to redress what it means to "live dyingly."

The aim of this class is to try to understand what conquest, as we have traditionally called it, meant to the people who experienced it in some parts of the Americas that joined the Spanish monarchy in the sixteenth century. We'll concentrate on indigenous sources - documentary, pictorial, and material - and try to adopt the indigenous point of view, without neglecting sources mediated by Europeans. Although the class will concentrate on selected cases from Mesoamerica, the lecturer will try to set the materials in the context of other encounters, both within the Americas and further afield; and students will be free, if they wish, to explore case-studies from anywhere they choose in the Americas (in consultation with the lecturer and subject to his approval) in their individual projects.

In this seminar we will examine the historical construction of gendered and sexual roles in the Spanish colonial world.  This will entail thinking about gender and sexuality in the societies which “encountered” each other in the New World (European, indigenous American, and African), and also thinking about how that encounter produced new forms of racialized gender and sexual relations.  Among the questions we’ll consider: how was the conquest gendered? How did colonial society produce masculinities and femininities? What gendered forms of power were available to women?  How did Atlantic slavery contribute to new racialized notions of gender? How did ethnicity and casta (a status attributed to mixed race peoples), as well as gender and class, determine people’s sense of themselves and their “others”? What were normative and non-normative sexual roles in the early modern Americas?

This course explores how ideas about race and racism have been intertwined with scientific, medical, and technological developments, shaping society since the 18th century. While recognizing that race is fundamentally a social construct, the course delves into scientific efforts to quantify, measure, and categorize individuals by race from early anthropometry to contemporary developments like the Human Genome Project and artificial intelligence. By critically analyzing scientific theories that produced and built upon ideas of racial hierarchy, students will develop a deep understanding of how race, racism, and racial inequality have been embedded into scientific knowledge, and thus, societal understanding. Students will also examine the historical context of racial disparities in healthcare, including the development of racialized medical theories, and will explore the role of technology in reinforcing or challenging racial biases, from the early days of photography to modern AI and surveillance technologies. This course is tailored for students with interests in the history of science and the production of scientific knowledge, as well as those curious about the origins of scientific racism and racial inequality.

Is there a formula for becoming happier? Yes. Drawing on my 40 year practice as a cardiovascular physician, we will merge the art and science of medicine while discovering that happiness and well-being indeed can be nurtured. This course explores the intersection of medical science, positive psychology, individual well-being, and philosophical reflections on life and death by examining the scientific literature, and most importantly, sharing our personal stories. A major point of emphasis involves how we deal with, and protect ourselves from loss, suffering, and death, and how this informs the way we live our lives. The course will emphasize personal stories; practices to promote a healthy mind and body; explore the concepts of positive and negative emotions, savoring, resilience, and how to harness our own character strengths; and investigate both the impediments and pillars to building a happier life. We will examine the ethics and means by which modern medicine prolongs life, implements organ transplantations, and confronts the dying process.

In ancient and medieval texts the soul is the principle of life, of sense-perception, emotions, passions, rational thought and ethical behavior. Throughout history, the investigation of the soul has been special in two ways. First of all, we are not addressing an external topic; we are treating ourselves. Secondly, this study of ourselves is not merely meant to describe and analyze, but to change and to form. Ancient philosophers thought of their work as "care of the soul". The soul is not a mechanism or machine, but something living which can err and go wrong. Pre-modern authorities often described this in the terms of sickness: The body may be sick and need the help of the doctor, and the soul may need therapy if it is sick.In the course, we will address a selection of texts and topics from ancient and medieval sources (Plato, Aristotle, Galen, the Stoics, Neoplatonic authors and Christian authors from late Antiquity and the Middle Ages), and compare them with select contemporary texts. What constitutes a healthy soul? What are the sicknesses of the soul? What therapies are recommended? How can one build resilience and how much resilience is right? What role does gender play? The course will also integrate lectures/discussions with practicing therapists and a field trip to "mindworks" (Chicago Museum of cognitive psychology).

What exactly is a mental disorder? We often use this term, but rarely stop to think about what it means. It seems like our answers to this question will vary depending on our personal opinions and the society we grew up in. So, who gets to decide what is a real mental disorder and what is not? Is it a matter of scientific discovery, value judgments, or even cultural preference? These and other questions will be discussed in this course. Other topics include ethics and mental health, the concepts of function and dysfunction, and critiques of the mental health field. Please note: this is a philosophy course and not a clinical course, no clinical skills or diagnostic methods will be covered.

By helping us step back to see humans as primates, mammals, vertebrates, and beyond, evolutionary theory provides a framework for understanding many aspects of our day-to-day lives that shape the health and well-being, including weight gain-diet, psychosocial stress, immune function, sleep patterns, risky behavior, and child development. But, increasing evidence from the exciting field of "developmental origins of health and disease" suggests that our biological and behavioral patterns are far from being determined solely by our genes. Our early life contexts, from before birth, and possibly even the experiences of our parents and grandparents in prior generations influence how our brains and biological systems function, including how genes are expressed, and thus impact our health and behavior. This course will bring these dynamic perspectives together to answer questions regarding why we get sick, how our bodies flexibly respond to the world around us, and the inheritances we receive from our ancestors.

Because behavior plays a significant role in people's health, psychology has emerged as an important contributor to the process of coping with disease, disease prevention, and health enhancement. This course is designed to be an overview of health psychology and behavioral medicine. Topics will include psychology and medicine, health psychology models, stress and health, adaptation to illness, psychological aspects of cancer, pain, coronary artery disease, rehabilitation, infectious disease, health promotion and disease prevention, and professional opportunities in health psychology.

An array of diseases plague our human population and the number is ever-expanding. It is critical that we understand how societal structures influence when and how we all get sick. When we understand problems more fully, then we can make real change. In this course, we will examine the framework for disease causation. We will then examine various ways to respond to or control disease and consider how these responses could be improved from a basic research, medical, structural, and governance perspective. This is a space to think about what is causing poor health and to ponder current national and global structures that are in place to address it. There is no one right answer for how to control the diseases we will talk about, but there are more complete ways to understand them. This course will be mostly discussion and group-project-based because multidisciplinary approaches require multidisciplinary teams.

This course blends the History of Education and American Indian History and is open to students interested in action research on these two topics. The course may include an opportunity to collaborate on a project with a school that is part of the Native mission network schools and may include travel to a Native community. The class will feature some digital components, including the use of data analytics to formulate ideas about Native education in the United States. Students need no prior knowledge of this kind of work; even those with the most basic computer skills can learn how to use data to formulate important questions about education.

This course focuses on applied micro-economic issues related to health and education in developing countries and gives particular attention to empirical analysis, research methods in program evaluation and writing an original economics research paper. The class alternates between lectures and computer lab work. In lecture, we discuss new ideas or concepts and the assigned readings. The classroom labs help students apply the concepts from readings and lecture to actual data using Stata. The major focus of the topics in the class is human capital – ie. Health and education, particularly in poor settings.

This course is designed to introduce students to the cultural and social issues of the Appalachian region - its history, people, culture, challenges, and strengths - through study and experiential learning. The course also provides engagement with the people of Appalachia through a required immersion over Break. The Appalachia Seminar utilizes a Catholic Social Tradition (CST) framework to build skills around social analysis, critical thinking, and theological reflection. Students examine the relationship between solidarity and service and consider how the Common Good is expressed in local communities across the region. This course has a fee.

Traditional strategies to fight against poverty, inequality and climate change have proved ineffective in the last decades. New and creative solutions are required where cutting-edge technological innovation and multidisciplinary work serve the common good. In this course, you will explore the state of the art in AI business development and its ethical implications in relation to current global societal and environmental challenges. You will reflect on your individual role in society and develop critical thinking about the current socio-technical value system. Our readings will include original works of philosophers, economists and computer scientists as well as examples of state-of-the-art AI supported business and institutional projects. As a result of the readings and class discussions, you will acquire well-informed understanding about the implications of the AI Trustworthy principle of justice and fairness, including non-discrimination and avoidance of unfair bias. You will become aware of the potential for AI to contribute, if well managed, towards fairer and more sustainable societies as well as the dangers it entails to widen inequalities and aggravate the discrimination suffered by vulnerable communities. This is a hands-on course where you will be ideating and planning projects for the social good. I will accompany you in the development of business plans where ethics is the driver and AI is the key instrument. I will help you define your project idea in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Therefore, your projects will be designed to work towards mitigating poverty, reducing gender and race inequality, combating climate change, improving the sustainability of cities and communities, ensuring affordable and clean energy, achieving responsible consumption and production, improving the quality of education, providing better health and well-being services, ensuring decent work and economic growth or promoting peaceful and inclusive societies. The goal of the course is to encourage and support you, as new entrepreneurs and future leaders, to work in multidisciplinary teams and develop interdisciplinary skills, being able to take advantage of new technology to create and manage projects for ethics in action.

Global Health is a relatively new though rapidly expanding field of enquiry in which scholars and public health practitioners seek to understand the challenge that globalization presents for human health. Globalization has led to a shift from national to global medicine in which the leading determinants of health are no longer circumscribed by the territorial boundaries of individual states, leaving nations less able to control the health outcomes of their citizens. The causes of this globalization are still not fully understood, and its effects are hotly debated, especially with respect to its potential benefits and negative consequences for human health. This course seeks to provide a conceptual framework for identifying the different types of global change that impact public health and for understanding the key drivers of this change. More particularly, the course investigates how the new stakeholders in healthcare have shaped medical services to serve their own vested interests and ideological commitments. including national governments, international agencies, advocacy groups, commercial companies, and the pharmaceutical industry. The course concludes by assessing the current state of public health in light of the globalization and "commodification" of healthcare at the beginning of the 21st century.

Global Health is an interdisciplinary field that requires the integration of lived experiences and narratives into health discourses. The premise of SHAER is to establish a theoretical platform for the development of story-telling interventions in Global Health. SHAER is embedded into the meanings of health and suffering related to distress and disease from various contexts that are the landscape of global health research and practice such as health system development, humanitarian health efforts, conflict and disaster settings, and the universal human right to health and justice.   The concept of SHAER has been developed as part of a research collaboration with an international network to develop a traditional story-telling trauma therapeutic intervention for gender-based violence and conflict-related trauma. Collective collaborations from trauma studies, psychiatry, literature, political and social science, philosophy and ethics produced a manual for a storytelling intervention in Afghanistan, Kashmir Valley, and Turkey, which embodied storytelling traditions and cultural histories of what a story means and who are the storytellers. This course will foster the principles and premises through which SHAER are founded on, namely the need to create spaces for marginalised narratives through humanities-based methodologies to improve global health practice and research, including other relevant health fields such as medicine. The course offers the pedagogical aspect of the theoretical frameworks of storytelling and narratives from literary perspectives.  Another important aspect of the course is the learning of skills related to health interventions. Through a collaboration with an arts foundation, the students will learn how to propose and form a storytelling intervention. Students shall have the opportunity to choose a particular cultural context of their interest and form a student engagement activity through the facilitation of the arts foundation, Invisible Flock, and to apply the theoretical knowledge to an applied aspect of global health.

This course will introduce students to important topics in the history of modern medicine in the Western world, tracing the changing experience of health, disease, and the healing professions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While broadly chronological, the course will also be organized topically, particularly for the twentieth century, and will address both the content of evolving medical knowledge as well as its social and political contexts. Possible topics include: hospitals; asylums and mental health; the development of bacteriology; transformations in surgery, such as the introduction of anesthesia and antisepsis; the rise of public health; the intersections of gender, race, and medicine; the growth of the modern drug industry; and case studies of individual diseases, such as syphilis and HIV/AIDS.

This course will examine the intersection between psychological distress and confinement. We will explore narratives and lived experiences of mental illness, including first person accounts, essays, works of fiction, poetry, films, and scholarly articles. Through these texts, we will consider questions such as: What is psychological suffering? What is it like to navigate the mental healthcare system? What is the relationship between mental illness and autonomy? Another major aim of the course will be to understand confinement, both physical and mental. We will address questions such as: What are the harms that people experience in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, and other institutional settings? When is forced confinement justified? What is psychological confinement? The goal of the course is to both gain better understanding and empathy for different types of suffering, and imagine ways that healthcare and criminal justice systems can be reformed to better serve those who suffer.

What shall I say, because talk I must? That I have found a cure for the sick? I have found no cure for the sick but this crooked flower which only to look upon all men are cured. (Excerpt from "The Yellow Flower" in Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962) by poet and physician William Carlos Williams.) The ancient Greek word for poet was poetes (ποητής), meaning at once author and maker. It comes from the root poein (ποεῖν), to make or create, and this root is still used extensively in medicine: haemopoiesis, for example, refers to the creation of blood cells in bone marrow. The Greek poet was a maker in a divine sense—someone with a connection to the gods (or indeed a god themselves, as some claimed). Through this divine connection poets accessed truths about nature, the body and mind, and the principles of heath and disease. With economic, cultural, and political changes the types of knowledge conveyed via poetic writing versus medical writing became distinct. Natural philosophy—the basis of medical knowledge—was set in opposition to poetry. Knowledge of the body and the principles of health and disease were to be transmitted in prose, not verse; dialectic and scientific reasoning, not poetic inspiration, were the means of both discovering and conveying truths about nature and the corporeal body. In this course we will investigate shifting notions of what it means to be healthy and to be sick through the (at times overlapping) roles of the poet and the physician, together with the evolving kinds of writing and language used by each. We will map ever-changing ideas about the relationship between the mind and the body, that of health and the passions, as well as the interventions on health (or sickness) that literature and medicine were, according various historical vantage points, each able to accomplish.

In this course, we will examine the particular social, cultural, and political positions occupied by children and youth in contexts of violence, which constitutes direct violence, structural violence, and cultural violence. We will examine how their identities are molded by and mold their experiences of violence, and the practices in which they engage to survive. Children have inhabited a position in popular imagination as unmitigated victims of violence—as refugees, child laborers, kidnapped child soldiers—while “youth” have contrarily been portrayed as the willing perpetrators of violence: its rebels, gang members, and “troublemakers”. These positions have become more mutable as stories emanating from around the world and domestically show both the agency of young people and their unique vulnerabilities. Is the “problem” of children and violence one of turning victims into killers, or is the position taken by other cultures—that children are “unfinished” and therefore inherently unpredictable—more likely to provide answers? What is the role of structures of violence and cultural expectations of the young in creating these cultural frameworks, and in creating possible futures for young people? In this course we will investigate notions of child and youth autonomy, gendering, socialization, liminality and resistance through case studies ranging from “at risk” youth in the US, to child prostitutes in Thailand, to juvenile courts in France in order to understand how ideas of violence and the “unfinished” age of humans are entangled.

Why do weight lifters wear lifting belts? How does athletic training and diet differ between endurance athletes and strength athletes? What are the sex-based differences in athletic performance? What impact do supplements and performance enhancing drugs have on athletic performance? Through the use of peer reviewed research, popular media articles, podcasts, and film we will answer these and many other questions within the field of exercise physiology. The course will be split into two broad units: 1) Powerlifters and 2) Marathoners. Topics covered will include cellular metabolism, muscle physiology, training programs, response to training, basic nutrition, body composition, some methodological exercise testing, supplements and performance enhancing drugs, recovery, fatigue, and activity in extreme environments. Through this use of mixed media, we will also discuss how the media misrepresents and misreports exercise physiology studies, making us all more discerning consumers of information.

Feminist and queer literary criticism and cultural theory, with an emphasis on the past half-century. How have gender and sexuality, as well as collective ideas about gender and sexuality, affected the creation and reception of literature and other art forms? We'll spend the semester thinking with scholars, artists, writers, and activists who have taken up this question. Course materials will be a mix of literary, critical, and theoretical texts, including classic texts from second-wave feminist literary criticism and archival efforts; Black and Third World feminisms; Marxist feminism and feminist theology; clashing approaches to sexual practices and identities; feminist takes on psychoanalysis and deconstruction; and the genesis of queer theory and trans studies. Class will be entirely discussion-based; written work will include frequent reading responses, research-based term papers, and contributions to a class anthology.

Global health is an area of study, research and practice that focuses on achieving equity in health for all people worldwide. The health status of individuals and populations arise from a myriad of complex biological, social, economic, political, and environmental factors that operate synergistically. Through a social justice lens, we will examine how these factors shape health outcomes and how interventions must be developed that include addressing the root causes of inequity. We will use a case-based approach, focusing on specific health problems in several countries, including the United States. Cases will include a variety of themes including health disparities arising from stress-associated racial discrimination, the epidemiological transition from infectious to non-communicable diseases, and how the health effects of climate change disproportionately affect the most vulnerable

This class examines the intellectual, practical, and social dimensions of medicine in the ancient and early Christian world. We will focus first on the nature and development of ancient medical thought, especially in the writings of Hippocrates and Galen. What were its dietetic, pharmacological, and surgical practices? What diseases did patients have? How did doctors understand disease and practice their craft? What instruments did they use? Then, we will turn to the early Christian world to see how this knowledge influenced miracle narratives, dietary regimes, and the reputation for holiness. Finally, we will examine the birth of the hospital as a monastic institution.

This course provides grounding in some of the methods of qualitative analysis present in the field of anthropology. The focus of the course is on developing skills that students can use to do systematic analysis of anthropological data. The perspective guiding the course is that anthropology is an empirical, scientific approach for describing social and cultural aspects of human life, and that qualitative data can be analyzed in systematic and rigorous ways. The course will explore a range of approaches and will cover analytic skills that cut across traditions, including theme identification, code definition, and pattern recognition. Advanced topics covered will include content analysis, text analysis, and schema analysis. Students will learn techniques and protocols in data arrangement and visualization that are appropriate for different analytical methods. It is a hands-on class where students will be able to work on data provided to them as well as on their own. Collaboration will be integral to the course success.

This course investigates the cultural meanings attached to extraordinary bodies and minds. Cultural and literary scholarship has extensively explored issues connected with identities derived from race, gender and sexuality. Only recently have concepts of bodily identity, impairment, stigma, monstrosity, marginalization, deformity, deviance, and difference begun to cohere around disability as a concept. Discussions of these issues are now part of a discipline called Disability Studies. We will cover topics such as communication, inclusion, passing, medical attitudes, social stigma, normalcy, life narratives, bodily representation, mental impairment, the politics of charity, community and collective culture, the built environment, and empowerment. This course fulfills the English Major 1700-1900 requirement.

This course offers a theory-driven exploration of the literature on disability in the Romantic and Victorian eras. In this class, we will read Romantic and Victorian texts alongside modern disability theory (chapters and articles) to develop a disability studies lens as a critical approach. We will study Romantic and Victorian texts in dialogue and in topic groups. Key topics will include physical disability; deformity; communication disabilities; and dwarfism. Although intended as a companion course to Romantic and Victorian Disability, this class can be taken as a standalone. There is no overlap between the classes, and they can be taken in any order.

A major source of conflict - increasingly so - is environmental issues; both climate change-related conflicts about (more and more scarce) resources as well as secondary conflicts (conflicts that arise because of the resource conflict, i.e. climate migrants) pose a major challenge to the planet. Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si has offered ways to think about an "integral ecology" that takes the environment, life on the planet, the human condition and culture seriously. The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor cannot be separated. Laudato Si has to be read against the background of the concept of "Integral Human Development." This concept, inspired by the works of Joseph Lebret, OP, was introduced by Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967). It refers to "the development of the whole person and the development of all persons." The course explores the connection (intersectionality) between peace, (integral) ecology, and (integral human) development. It will do so with in-class room teaching sessions and working with select case studies on integral ecology.

Sometimes called the ‘English Malady’, madness in the long 19th century was an unstable term, subject to shifting definitions, and encompassing many different mental states. This course examines the role of madness in the Anglophone literary tradition, and how that tradition intersects with medical accounts and psychiatric survivor experiences. There is much debate in the period over the behavioral and physiological indications of madness, and even whether it could be diagnosed at all. The scholarly fields of disability studies and mad studies ask important questions about the kind of cultural work that madness does. This course explores the language and cultures around madness, melancholy, hysteria, monomania and other conditions in the context of contemporary debates on gender, normalcy, and social order.

The interdisciplinary field of transnational transgender studies reveals how concepts, systems, and experiences of gender cross political and geographic boundaries, and how people move within, across, and against the gender categories available to them. Centering transgender knowledges and practices, this course explores how gender moves across space and time. How and why have some persons transitioned across gender boundaries, and what happens when they do? How do ideas about gender travel across national borders, and how are those ideas (and those borders) transformed along the way? What does transgender studies have to do with nation-states, economics, and global political dynamics? How have political and economic structures of movement - such as empire, migration, globalization, settler colonialism, and tourism - shaped gender in local and global contexts? And what social movements, cultures, visions, forms of resistance, and possible futures emerge out of these encounters? This seminar is discussion-based and centered on collaborative learning. Students will pursue independent research on a topic related to transnational transgender studies, share their research in class, and help to lead and facilitate class

Although advances in science and technology have made tremendous gains in promoting health and longevity, these achievements have not been experienced evenly. Instead, devastating health and disability-based inequities persist, such as environmental racism and disability-based discrimination. As a result, social movement groups and organizations are fighting to protect vulnerable communities and promote civil rights. This class will therefore address how social movements have impacted the health and human rights of vulnerable social groups in the US and beyond today. To do so, we will (1) use a sociological perspective to investigate the structural determinants of health and the social construction of disabilities, and (2) investigate how advocates, activists, and organizations fight for good health and disability justice. This course will require participation in a daylong multi-fieldsite visit, weekly readings, presentations, and a final paper.

In this course students will make a close and critical reading of Giovanni Boccaccio's collection of one hundred short stories, the Decameron. A founding work of Italian literature, recognized for centuries as its best example of prose writing, its author wanted it to be an ethical manual for critically understanding reality and its political, social, and religious tenets, under the appearance of a mere entertaining work. From the experience of the 1348 Black Plague to daily issues in protocapitalist Florence, from tales of magicians and enchanted gardens to tongue-in-cheek stories, from relationships between husbands and wives, children and parents, to those between kings, sultans, and their subjects, Boccaccio's stories allow us to better understand our past, while challenging our views on the self, faith, society, and the other.

Is it possible to think of the 21st century as a post-racial, post-feminist world? In her provocative 2012 study, Body as Evidence: Mediating Race, Globalizing Gender, Janell Hobson suggests that rather than having been eradicated, millennial hopes that the historical difficulties represented by race and gender have lost their significance in the present day are as far, if not even further away from the mark as they have ever been. For Hobson, policing the body, whether that be in terms of its race, its gender, or its sexuality, has remained paramount. "[W]hile the early-twenty-first century discourse of 'postracial' and 'postfeminist' often declares the loss of meaning attached to race and gender," she argues, "..the global scope of our media-reliant information culture insists on perpetuating raced and gendered meanings that support ideologies of dominance, privilege, and power." In Hobson's view, the body and how it is imagined rests at the center of such ideologies, pointing also to a number of crucial questions that become particularly important when considering the significance of race and gender through the lens of modernity. How might a reconsideration of race point also to a rethinking of gender and vice-versa? What does race actually mean? How does/can it alter the way we understand gender? Is it possible to think race beyond the idea of race? What might a new conception of race actually look like, and how might this influence our thinking on gender? How are the problems of race and gender intertwined, and how is/has the body been imagined in and through them? What can such questions tell us about today's racial and gendered realities, both inside and outside the university, both in the past and the present? This course takes a step backward to investigate these and other like questions in the context of the utopic impulse and its emphasis on the imagination in several 19th-century American authors whose work may be viewed as participating in a broad yet under-acknowledged vision of race, gender and Atlantic modernity that seeks to interrogate hierarchies of race and gender as these have been constructed and maintained within dominant ideologies. Grounding our analysis in a number of 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century political philosophical texts on law and utopia and drawing on insights from critical race theory, gender studies, feminist theory, theories of law and literature, and utopian studies, our goal will be to gain a more nuanced understanding of our racialized past and its troubled link to questions of gender both then and now, so that we may better hope to imagine - and reimagine - the shape of our collective democratic future in the 21st century's global community.

This course examines the intersection of gender, health policy, and health care organization around the world. Gender is frequently a central contributing (though sometimes ignored) factor to people's health. Men and women have different biologies, and it thus stands to reason that their lives—social, economic, political, and biological—would have an effect on their health. What causes men to have different illnesses than women? What places one gender at greater risk for illness than the other? How do men and women across the world experience health policies? Are they affected and constrained by similar factors? How do their work lives affect their experiences with health? How is the body medically produced? How do poverty and development play a role in people's well-being? Through an inquiry-based approach, these and other topics will be addressed in this class.

In this class, we will explore various American migrant communities. Along with Sui Sin Far's Mrs. Spring Fragrance, we will begin with W.E.B. DuBois's classic sociological and literary text, The Souls of Black Folk, initiating the semester with a provocative and urgent question: Should we consider the European colonists the paradigmatic bearers of American identity, or rather the people whose labor and/or land was used to build the United States? By pursuing this question, we will explore the many facets and difficulties of American identity. We will end the semester with Janet Campbell Hale's Women on the Run. Thus, rather than positioning American Indians at the beginning of American history - and thus repeating the myth of their disappearance - we will end with an exploration of what it means to survive, renew, and flourish in contemporary America, a question made particularly poignant and potent in Hale's novel.The various migrant communities we will explore are: African Americans, Chinese Americans, Caribbean Americans, Filipino Americans, Anglo Americans, Southern Americans, "Okies," Armenian Americans, Mexican Americans, Dominican Americans, and American Indians. While this is by no means exhaustive, it gives us an idea of the diversity of peoples who find themselves in the demonym "American" - and what it means to navigate this identity as a migrant. What are the benefits and pitfalls of migration? What should one's relationship be to assimilation? What does migration do to the idea of homeland? As you can see, we will also tackle tough political issues while keeping in mind the role of literature in creating identities: national, local, ethnic, and racial (and that's just the beginning). Although we will be working chronologically through the 20th Century, our progress will be atypical. Our circuitous route through the literature in this class will be a literary journey that echoes the various movements of people in the American 20th Century. Potential course texts include: Mrs. Spring Fragrance, Sui sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton); Bread Givers, Anzia Yezierska; Quicksand, Nella Larsen; Whose Names Are Unknown, Sanora Babb; My Name is Aram, William Saroyan; Migration (series of paintings), Jacob Lawrence; America Is in the Heart, Carlos Bulosan; Maude Martha, Gwendolyn Brooks; ...y no se lo tragó la tierra, Tomás Rivera; The Rain God, Arturo Islas; How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez; Women on the Run, Janet Campbell Hale.

This graduate level seminar will explore the philosophical, theoretical, and ethical underpinnings for inclusive and collaborative practices in anthropology, particularly research that combines approaches from more than one anthropological subfield. Taking a global approach, students will examine a wide range of case studies in community-based and collaborative anthropology, aiming to identify best practices and develop skills which students can then apply to their own projects. Attention will be paid to the importance of context, including geography, colonial histories and decolonization, war and conflict, economy, and environment, that shape engaged approaches to working for and serving communities instead of working on or studying communities with an extractive approach.

Students in the Interdisciplinary Seminar read widely across feminist and queer scholarship in multiple fields, including the interdisciplinary field of Gender Studies, and consider how disciplinary norms and boundaries shape scholarly inquiry. Student research and writing for the course will synthesize disciplinary ways of knowing and produce original, interdisciplinary Gender Studies scholarship or creative work. The Interdisciplinary Seminar fulfills both the IS requirement for Gender Studies graduate minors and the capstone requirement for Gender Studies primary and supplemental majors. Although each iteration of the course focuses on a unique topic, all Interdisciplinary Seminars put multiple disciplines in conversation in order to deepen students' mastery of key Gender Studies concepts. Course descriptions for current and upcoming semesters can be found at https://genderstudies.nd.edu.

This course will examine the health of Latinos in South Bend from an interdisciplinary perspective drawing on biology, medicine and cultural anthropology. We will consider both the scientific bases of specific diseases affecting Latinos and the social, cultural, economic and environmental factors that increase risk and limit access to therapy. We will discuss topics such as antimicrobial resistance, chronic illnesses, labor-related afflictions, mental health and the effects of climate change on Latino well-being. We take seriously subjects' holistic, embodied understandings of suffering and their pragmatic quest for treatment across a pluralistic continuum from curanderismo to biomedicine. A critical analysis of health injustice and ways to cure this systemic dis-ease guide our class research, seminar discussions and scholarly goals.

What is the relation between life and politics? In the late 18th century, a new technology of governance emerged. This technology, armed with a new science of statistics, focused on the management of life and death within the population-its rates of fertility, mortality, and illness. How could life expectancy be increased? How could rates of mortality be lowered? How could biological threats be eliminated? These questions of life and death were not only biological; life itself had emerged as a political problem. Michel Foucault called this new technology of power biopolitics. Since Foucault's formulation, the concept of biopolitics has demarcated an object of inquiry that has been taken up by scholars in a wide range of academic fields, including anthropology, sociology, literature, philosophy, and history. Through the lens of biopolitics, we will study a number of contemporary issues in which the politics of life and death are at stake, including humanitarianism, new medical technologies, public health interventions, disaster, incarceration, and global pandemics. In class, we will think through these topics together using examples drawn from visual and print media including film, journalism, literature, and photography.

This course will survey a variety of philosophical issues pertaining to gender and feminism. Topics we expect to cover include the metaphysics of gender (e.g., the sex-gender distinction, the nature of masculinity and femininity, gender essentialism vs. gender constructivism); implicit bias and hermeneutic injustice; sexual harassment, violence, and the nature of consent; gender, feminism, and religion; and intersectionality.

In this seminar, students will engage with texts published within the last five years in the field of transgender studies. Along with academic writing, we will work with literature, memoir, film, and popular culture. Together, these texts expand our shared understanding of what trans* means; pose challenging questions about Western transgender studies and its canon; and link the field of transgender studies with global movements for justice. Students will have opportunities for collaboration and community engagement, and to create their own theory and creative work.

The goal of this class is to help students think philosophically about ways in which social structures and norms involving gender, race and class affect our personal decisions about what and how much to eat, contribute to disordered eating, impact the environment and workers in the industries that produce our food, and impinge on a variety of other concerns that have been the focus of feminist theorizing.

Demography, the science of population, is concerned with virtually everything that influences, or can be influenced by, population size, distribution, processes, structure, or characteristics. This course pays particular attention to the causes and consequences of population change. Changes in fertility, mortality, migration, technology, lifestyle, and culture have dramatically affected the United States and the other nations of the world. These changes have implications for a number of areas: hunger, the spread of illness and disease, environmental degradation, health services, household formation, the labor force, marriage and divorce, care for the elderly, birth control, poverty, urbanization, business marketing strategies, and political power. An understanding of these is important as business, government, and individuals attempt to deal with the demands of the changing population.

Is mental illness solely a biological or genetic issue or are there social and environmental aspects as well? Sociological research shows that mental health is shaped by social conditions, such as socioeconomic position, gender and race/ethnicity. In this course, we will consider such topics as how the definition of mental illness changes over time and place; the social determinants of mental health and mental illness; how inequality in resources, power and status influence mental health; the stigma of mental illness; and the social organization of treatments. We will focus on causes and consequences as well as the lived experience of mental illness.

This course will use economic theory and empirical economic research to study the family. Topics will include household decision making; the determinants of marriage and fertility; how marriage, fertility, and family structure are related to other outcomes; and public policies that affect the family and family formation. Students will learn to read and evaluate empirical economic research. This is a writing-intensive seminar course.

A detailed consideration of the central methodological and epistemological questions bearing on science.

Given the dramatic rise in mass incarceration over the last 50 years, understanding the spillover consequences of this uniquely American phenomenon has become increasingly important as a growing number of families now have direct experience with imprisonment. This course will provide a broad overview of the ripple effects of mass imprisonment on family life and how it shapes opportunity and structures disadvantage for communities, families, and especially children. This will be done through 1) exposure to mixed-media portrayals of imprisonment's effects on family and community life and 2) the close analysis of empirical research on the spillover and intergenerational consequences of incarceration across a range of outcomes. With the concentration of imprisonment falling among poor, minority families, much of the readings in this course will focus on family life in urban communities of color, however, we will spend a little time exploring broader accounts, including those of rural communities and encourage students to consider impacts for families exposed to incarceration due to white-collar crimes.

When people think about sexuality, they often adopt a biological view - seeing sexuality as "driven" by hormones and nature. This course adopts a different approach by viewing sexuality through the lens of sociology - as shaped by social processes, including social interaction, institutions, and ideologies. The course will focus on examining three sociological aspects of sexuality: 1) The social, historical, and cultural factors that shape sexual behaviors, desires, identities, and communities; 2) The ways in which sex and sexuality are constantly regulated and contested at multiple levels of society, including within families, schools, workplaces, and religious and political institutions; and 3) The sources, causes, and effects of sexual inequality. While our focus will be on sexuality, we will also study how other identities (including gender, race, class, religion, etc.) influence and affect it. Students will be encouraged to question their taken-for-granted assumptions about sex and sexualities and to formulate critical perspectives on issues pertaining to sexuality in today's public discourses. This course is sex-positive in that it assumes that knowledge about sexuality is empowering, not dangerous. The readings and discussions will be frank, and students will be assisted in developing a language for and comfort level with discussing a wide range of sexual topics in a respectful and sociological way. In the process, students will be challenged to improve their critical thinking, researching, writing, and public speaking skills.

America is the richest country in the world and yet roughly three million American children now grow up in families surviving on just $2 a day. As America's richest 0.1% have seen their incomes more than quadruple over the last forty years, the incomes for 90% of Americans have barely changed. These financial disparities reflect deeper inequities in educational opportunity, incarceration rates, social status and more. In this course, we will examine the nature and consequences of American inequality. Through close reading and spirited discussion, we will address such questions as: What is the meaning of meritocracy in an age of profound inequality? What is the lived experience of American poverty and American privilege? How are race and gender inequalities (re)produced throughout the life course? And, finally, how do all of these issues manifest in the successes and struggles of students at Notre Dame?

In "Neuropharmacology in Great Britain," you will learn about the basic tenants of pharmacology and classes of drugs that affect the brain, with particular emphasis on drugs that have been important in Great Britain's culture and history.

Race is a social construct. So why have scientists spent centuries trying to quantify, measure, and categorize people by race? From early anthropometry to the Human Genome Project, this course examines the production and embedding of race into scientific knowledge since the 18th century. Designed for students interested in the history of science and the production of scientific knowledge or those curious about the origins of scientific racism and racial inequality, this course is also well-suited for students pursuing careers in the health professions. By focusing on historical discourses on the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge of race, students will be able to: 1. Understand how race, racism, and racial inequality are embedded in scientific knowledge 2. Outline the various methodologies different fields of science have used to group people into races 3. Carefully evaluate scientific technologies for racial biases This is an upper level undergraduate and graduate seminar.

Independent research or readings taken under the supervision of an HHS faculty member. An approved proposal for the research/readings will be filed with the HHS office. (In order to receive HHS credit, the student's proposal will need to be approved by the faculty member supervising the student's research/readings and by the director of the HHS program.)

Independent research or readings taken under the supervision of an HHS faculty member. An approved proposal for the research/readings will be filed with the HHS office. (In order to receive HHS credit, the student's proposal will need to be approved by the faculty member supervising the student's research/readings and by the director of the HHS program.)

Independent research or readings taken under the supervision of an HHS faculty member. An approved proposal for the research/readings will be filed with the HHS office. (In order to receive HHS credit, the student's proposal will need to be approved by the faculty member supervising the student's research/readings and by the director of the HHS program.)

This course will be for students to register for the HHS Internships taken during the regular semester.

Undergraduates will conduct research or elaborated readings on a topic of interest.

Undergraduates will conduct research or elaborated readings on a topic of interest.