ENROLL

Christopher M Elias

An exploration of how the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 and the subsequent War on Terror impacted American culture. We will focus on issues of both form (the elements determining the look and feel of post-9/11 artwork) and content (the social and moral concerns driving post-9/11 culture). Shared texts will include novels, short stories, poetry, music, art, and films. Particular attention will be paid to themes such as race and racism, religion and religious discrimination, immigration and xenophobia, debates over American exceptionalism, critiques of American capitalism, the "death of irony," attempts to define "truth," and the spread of conspiracy theories. 

Yingtong Xie

Jonathan M Lafky

This course introduces experimental economics and behavioral economics as two complementary approaches to understanding economic decision making. We will study the use of controlled experiments to test and critique economic theories, as well as how these theories can be improved by introducing psychologically plausible assumptions to our models. We will read a broad survey of experimental and behavioral results, including risk and time preferences, prospect theory, other-regarding preferences, the design of laboratory and field experiments, and biases in decision making.

Prerequisite: Economics 110 and 111

Colleen M Carpenter

How are artists today engaging with climate change, pollution, and other aspects of the planet’s environmental crisis? And are their creative works making any difference? In The Great Derangement, novelist and social anthropologist Amitav Ghosh argues that today’s literary fiction has failed to engage climate change in a meaningful and transformative way: we will read several “climate novels” to test his claim. We will also look at visual arts and music, including work by Maya Lin, Patricia Johanson, and collaborative artist/science/community projects such as those led by CALL, City as Living Laboratory.

Morgan Rood

Prerequisite: Linguistics 115

Dan Stevens

When we study the decisions of political leaders, we often consider them in terms of power relations between states. The class examines psychological explanations of leaders’ decision-making. We focus on political elites’ actions, especially in foreign policy asking, why otherwise intelligent and savvy individuals and groups often make very poor decisions. Students will learn about different theoretical perspectives and how to apply them to different historical examples in the study of elite decision-making from the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the Covid pandemic. Students will evaluate contending theories, joining theory and practice to explain elites’ motives and decisions shaping world politics.

2nd 5 weeks