Course Search Results

This course introduces students to the study of economic activity at the national level. It analyzes how households, firms, and the government interact and how they affect and are affected by economic growth, unemployment, and inflation. The goals of the course are to teach students to use the economist's lens to view the world more clearly and to give them the tools to understand and analyze aggregate economic measures, monetary and fiscal policies, and the role of the United States in a global economy.

The European Union, a political project begun after World War II to bring peace to war-ravaged continent, today constitutes the world’s second largest economy and its third largest population. In this course, we will examine the history and political institutions of the European Union and its member states as well as the challenges the EU faces today. Possible topics include Brexit and relations with the United Kingdom, separatism, euroskepticism, the democratic deficit, the migrant crisis, authoritarianism and erosion of the rule of law, the recurrent crises of the eurozone, and the European Union’s prospects for further expansion. Grades will be based on quizzes, short writing assignments, eight low-stakes exams, and class participation.

When do infants learn to reach, crawl, and walk? When do children learn their first words? When do children learn to read? These questions, although interesting, all focus on what happens at different ages. But as you will learn in this course, developmental science is not just about children or child development—it's also about how human behavior changes over time. Thus, the main questions developmental scientists ask revolve around the word "how": How do infants learn to reach? How do children learn their first words? How do children learn to read? Emphasis is placed on understanding the processes that underlie child development at multiple levels--from neurons to neighborhoods--and across multiple time scales. Topics include prenatal development, brain development in children, motor and physical development, perceptual development, language development, cognitive development, and aspects of social and emotional development. Lectures, supplementary readings, and discussion section exercises will give you an appreciation for how science is conducted by stepping back from the "facts" in the textbook to explore current research in developmental science and how this research impacts the real world.

This course is an introduction to the study of crime.  The course begins with a discussion of the extent and patterns of crime in the United States, and then reviews the basics of the major explanations of the causes of crime.  The heart of the course focuses on introducing students to research on the major categories of crime, sometimes called the “criminal behavior systems,” including:  property crime, violent crime, corporate crime, organized crime, political crime, and drug crime.  

Imagine any of the following:

• You start school as a child and are not taught in your home language, the only one you speak well.
• You are arrested by the police, but you don’t understand the language they speak.
• You go to the Department of Motor Vehicles or another government office, and the people speak to you in an unfamiliar language.
• You talk to your friends in public but can’t use the language you use with them in private.
• Your parents give you one name, but the government insists you be called something else.

All around the world these very things happen. How would your life be affected? How do you think you would react?

In this course we examine issues of linguistic human rights: the fundamental right to use one's language and the efforts made to secure those rights and deny them. We explore how language rights are integral to human rights in general and an individual's definition of personal and cultural identity through studying a variety of case studies of the abrogation of language rights locally, nationally, and internationally. Course requirements include one midterm exam, four 1-2 page written assignments, a group project and presentation focusing on a particular case of language rights, and regular discussion posts.

Social Media Today is a survey course with no prerequisites, intended for students of any major and interest. This course offers an overview of our current understanding of a wide range of social media phenomena from the point of view of researchers, professionals, and critics. We will begin with a brief history of communication technologies, including the first instances of social engagement on the Web. Next, we will discuss key conceptual and theoretical developments that ground informed discussions of social media. We then will examine what the rise of social media means for contemporary culture and society, focusing on a range of topics including: journalism, politics, justice, romance, and marketing. Finally, we will consider future possibilities for digital and social media.

As museums collect and preserve artifacts and objects from our world, they reflect the values, creativity, and aspirations of human culture. This course intends to provide a broad overview of the past and present of museums (and take a good look into future possibilities).  Using examples from various types of museums (e.g., art, history, natural history, science, culturally specific) this course will present the foundations of museum studies and explain how museums function.  Students will investigate evolving approaches to collection and curatorial practice; governance and operations; audience and community engagement; and ethical issues. This course will present the variety of career pathways available in the field and link students to internship and service learning opportunities. This course is meant to encourage students to think about and contribute to a larger conversation about the significant role museums play in our society.

In the world we live today, what kind of role can anthropology play? We have violence, climate change, economic inequalities, racism and other forms of discrimination. Taking examples from around the world, the class will discuss how everyday people navigate their lives and attempt to address societal challenges amidst constraint. This course offers a venue to think about the problems in relation to anthropology as a scholarly discipline.

Examination of contemporary economic geography; types of national economies, uneven development, role of government in shaping economy, multinational corporations; foundation for understanding national economies and economic statistics; contemporary issues including economic globalization, commodification of nature, de-industrialization.

Why are various economic activities located in different places? How are these locations changing? What is globalization and how does it affect local economies? This course, designed for students in all majors, examines the economic geography of the world. During the first 12 weeks, we focus on important factors that affect the location and distribution of economic activities across the globe. Major topics include population distributions, variation in regional economies, natural resource distribution, industrial location, foreign investment, and international trade. The remaining weeks are devoted to examining the position of selected nations and groups of nations in the international economy. Here, the key topics are world economic development, regional economic structures, and regional growth and decline. Class meetings include lectures and discussions. Final grades are based on four assignments, two midterms, the final exam, and participation. One or more sections may be assigned to a TILE classroom.

How individuals are organized into social groups, ranging from intimate groups to bureaucracies, and how these influence individual behavior; nature and interrelationships of basic social institutions (family, education, religion, economy).

Sociology is the systematic study of the social world. Sociologists study many phenomena, such as small groups, organizations, cultures, and societies. Some of the topics we will cover are what some may call a “social problem,” for example, crime or poverty. Sociologists also examine social institutions like education, religion, and family. We will build on and probe beyond popular understandings of these topics, to achieve a deeper level of critical analysis. Moreover, we will explore the kinds of questions sociologists ask, why and how they ask them. In other words, the goal of this course is to learn how to “think sociologically.”

This course is designed to help you improve your international literacy. The first part of the course is structured around an International Studies framework with four themes: global interactions, global tensions, global forces, and inside-out and outside-in interactions. The second part of the course focuses on eight complex global challenges, each of which requires multifaceted solutions which transcend international boundaries and reach multiple populations across the globe all at once. By applying an International Studies approach to these eight global challenges, you will begin to appreciate how taking an interdisciplinary approach is becoming not only increasingly relevant, but indispensable. This class consists of two weekly lectures and a discussion session; you are expected to have read the required readings before each session. You are expected to attend all lecture and discussion sessions; This class fulfils the CLAS International and Global Issues general education (GE) requirements.

We first examine the Soviet Union: its founding, political evolution, and what life was like for its citizens. The Soviet period continues to exert a strong influence on politics in the 15 countries that were once part of the Soviet Union as well as on the Soviet satellite countries. Knowing the Soviet legacy is vital for understanding the current issues in all these countries, stretching from the Baltic republics to Central Asia and Mongolia. The course then turns to the politics of the largest Soviet successor country, Russia. Students will examine Russia’s formal political institutions and its informal political processes, the country’s political economy, how Russian citizens interact with the political system, and how Russia deals with other countries. Russia’s political system is a leading example of one type of authoritarianism, making Russia a valuable point of comparison with other countries. Russia is also a regional great power and a significant emerging economy. It represents a major world culture, with contributions to literature, science, music and athletics rivaled by few other countries. Knowledge of Russian politics can therefore benefit all future citizens and should be particularly valuable for those who will go into government service, the non-profit sector, journalism, the military, or international business. This course fulfills a general education requirement in International and Global Issues. It also fulfills a requirement for the following degrees or programs: Political Science International Relations (Regional Politics and Relations), International Studies (Development; or Russian, East European and Eurasian), and the International Business Certificate.

Textbook and materials:

All reading material, including the two assigned books, are available digitally without charge, but you may wish to purchase these two books for convenience:

• Sakwa, Hale and White, Developments in Russian Politics 9 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019); ISBN: 978-1478004806.
• Garrels, Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia (New York: Farrah, Straus & Giroux, 2016); ISBN: 978-1250118110.

This course will provide students with an introduction to the field of public health. Students will be introduced to key disciplines, methods, and topics in public health practice and research. Foundational concepts used throughout the course include social determinants of health, health equity, behavioral theories and epidemiological methods. Lectures will cover a wide range of current public health topics, including infectious disease, maternal and child health, agricultural health, health policy, and indigenous health. Students will also hear from graduate students in public health and explore career options in public health.

By the end of the course, student should be able to:

Identify the differences between population-based health and individual-based health.

Describe how scientific evidence is utilized to develop public health practices and interventions.

Describe the major disciplines in public health.

Describe various career paths in public health.

Explain the major achievements of public health, including the impact they have had on the health of the population.

Apply creative problem-solving strategies to address specific issues in public health.

Describe future challenges for public health in the 21st century.

The original tree huggers were rural Indian women who in the 1970s wrapped themselves around tree trunks to keep loggers at bay. It is this class of women who today trek long distances in search of firewood to cook dinner on wood stoves now deemed harmful to their own health, local forests, and the earth’s climate. From policy to individual livelihoods and aspirations, this course introduces you to the politics of environment in India from the colonial period (19th century) to today. Gender, class, caste, and indigeneity are key to understanding ‘environmentalism from below’ in India, where tiger protection, forest conservation, mega dams, industrial agriculture, the global patent regime and family planning initiatives have sparked public protest, everyday resistance, and social change. While the course will focus primarily on India, occasional comparative case studies offer insight into the Indian situation. We will reflect on these questions: How is your life connected to environmental and social processes unfolding on the other side of the planet? How do the questions we ask shape the knowledge we produce?  How can we bring together knowledge from different fields to address complex human problems?  Assignments include quizzes, exams, essays, and a final research project. This course assumes no prior knowledge of India or South Asia and meets a General Education requirement in the area of International and Global Issues. It is also an approved course for the Sustainability Certificate. For GWSS majors, it will fill the Global/Comparative Focus distribution requirement. For SJUS majors, it qualifies for two Social Justice Emphasis Areas: The Environment and Ecological Justice and Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies.

This course examines leisure and play from a social science perspective. Psychology, sociology, economic, and political science literature is used to inform the phenomenon of leisure behavior. Psychological readings emphasize individual motivation for play. Sociological literature informs how social groups use leisure and play as part of culture. Economic topics include the work ethic, overwork, and retirement. Political aspects of leisure behavior are examined through consideration of the prospects for a better society.

Processes by which people perceive, respond to, create, and use music in their daily lives; basic physics of musical stimuli, psychoacoustics of musical perception, principles of musical cognition, neurological and physiological responses to music, theories of musical learning and development, and social psychology of musical activity; previous musical performing experience helpful but not required.

From the favelas of Brazil to the townships of South Africa, the social dynamics of urban places has served as a long-standing area of interest in the discipline of anthropology. Today more than half of the world’s population lives in cities, with this number projected to grow further. In order to address the growth and importance of urban social formations, the course will take different approaches to understanding the culture of cities. Class readings will derive from anthropology, history, geography and urban studies in order to offer a multidisciplinary perspective on urban space and society. Further, case studies will be drawn from the United States, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere in order to offer a cross-cultural perspective.

As we move into the twenty-first century, it has become common to think of social life as increasingly connected across formerly separate domains of existence. In keeping with this shift, this course will take an approach to understanding culture and society that takes seriously the interconnected social, political, economic and cultural dynamics associated with the contemporary phase of globalization. For the analysis of urban space and society, much work has focused on the rise of neoliberal models of socio-economic organization and their effects on everyday people. This point of focus will serve as a common thread in the course, which will give students the requisite knowledge to answer the following questions over the course of the semester:

• How do urban environments and the experience of urban space influence the behavior of people?
• What social and institutional mechanisms do groups of people develop in order to meet their material and cultural needs in urban spaces?
• How does social inequality manifest in urban settings?
• How have groups of people gone about changing challenging social conditions they face in their everyday lives? This course will take a cross-cultural approach in introducing students to the ways that anthropologists and social scientists have understood the cultural complexity of urban areas around the world. Within this broad focus, the emphasis will be on how people living in urban areas navigate their lives within a set of historically particular political, economic, institutional and cultural conditions.

Communities across the globe are increasingly concerned that the byproducts from our industrial lives are causing climate change and irreparable damage to our natural environment. Anthropology provides a rich source of information on how humans interact with nature, and provides a baseline for understanding ecosystems’ dynamic pasts, which together can be used to place today's environmental crisis in perspective. Using examples and case studies from around the world, this course surveys the changing nature of human-environmental interactions over the last 60,000 years. The lecture component of the course explores how long-term changes in social organization, subsistence patterns, population growth, and settlement practices have influenced the nature and scale of human impacts on the environment through time. This part of the course is organized around major categories of human impacts including animal extinction, habitat destruction, agricultural practices, effects of urban growth and development, and impacts of state level societies on the environment. The discussion section takes the themes and concepts outlined in lecture and applies them to our modern life to show how our relationship with the environment is an expansion of the human experience for the last several thousand years.

This course satisfies the Social Sciences GE.

A person is born every 8 seconds, a person dies every 12. Five thousand years ago only 10 million people populated the earth. Today, there are nearly 20 megacities with populations over 10 million and the global population has swelled to over 7 billion. In this course you will learn how this dramatic increase in population size has changed fundamental characteristics of populations and processes such as migration, social networks and household structure. We will also examine the consequences of population changes such as environmental degradation, the spread of disease and armed conflict. The course material provides an important foundation for future study in topics such as environmental science and policy, public health, political science, international affairs and business.

Structure and processes of American national government; how the United States manages political conflict; impact of the U.S. Constitution; effect of public opinion, interest groups, and media on government; role and evolution of Congress, presidency, bureaucracy, and Supreme Court.

This course is a general introduction to American government and politics. Topics covered include the Constitution, civil liberties and civil rights, voting behavior, political parties, interest groups, Congress, the presidency, and the courts.

Why do we act the way we do?  This course introduces psychology as the science of behavior. Psychological science addresses the major experiences of every person:  How do we perceive the world around us?  How do we learn, remember, and think?  How do we develop?  What causes mental illnesses, and how can those illnesses be treated?  To answer these questions, the course focuses on sensation and perception, learning, child development, memory and cognition, neuroscience, psychotherapy, abnormal behavior, and social influences on behavior. Course format consists of lectures and a discussion section. Requirements include assigned readings in the text, class lectures, short papers, and participation in discussions. Students also are required to become familiar with research methods in psychology either by participation in research studies or through brief reviews of selected research literature. Readings are primarily taken from a text, but additional readings and class materials may be assigned.

Provides an overview of theoretical approaches to the study of language. Topics include: origins of language use by humans; components of language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantic); processes involved in learning and using language (under normal and special circumstances); cognitive and brain mechanisms of language.

This course covers the social, psychological, and biological aspects of aging. Major topics include demography of aging, health, economic issues, primary relationships, and social services.  Evaluation of student performance may include any combination of papers, exams, class presentations, and class participation. The specific evaluation procedure and the percentage of the grade assigned to each aspect of the evaluation is delineated in a course outline distributed by the individual instructor within the first two weeks of the semester.

This course introduces students to the tools used by economists to analyze markets and social issues. Students will gain an understanding of how individual economic agents, such as households and firms, make decisions and interact in markets and how markets allocate inputs among producers and output among consumers. Students will also learn how to evaluate the successes and failures of market systems and how government policies affect the economic well-being of the nation as a whole and of particular groups in the population.

Examination of contemporary global society, focusing on world regions, including physical environment, culture, economy, and politics of each region and relationships between regions; analysis of current conflicts within and between regions, including social, religious, political, and economic issues.

Have you ever wanted to learn more about counseling and psychotherapy approaches to addressing mental health? Are you curious how contemporary social and cultural issues have an impact on our mental health? Have you wondered how psychologists can enact change at the individual and societal level? This course is designed to answer these questions and to provide an overview of the profession of counseling psychology.

Counseling psychology is a profession that helps clients remedy problems, engage in prevention strategies, and develop and enhance their strengths and skills. Counseling psychologists also study social and cultural factors of mental health, such as race and racism, sexism, and other forms and systems of oppression, as well as social justice and community activist approaches to create change at the individual and societal level.

Specific topics to be covered in this course will include the definition and history of counseling psychology, the theory and practice of psychotherapy, career counseling, multiculturalism and social justice, suicide, counseling skills, social/cultural issues, ethics, and various applications of counseling psychology.

There are an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 living languages in the world. Despite the dizzying number of languages and the fact that they can appear to be extremely different from one another, when viewed through the right lens, there are some remarkable similarities lurking below the surface. 

The main goal of the course is to look at both of those sides of languages and seek answers to two seemingly very simple questions: How are languages alike and how are they different? In order to get at answers to those questions, we will survey the diverse forms that human languages may take, and examine some of the underlying similarities.  Approaching such a variety of human languages also necessitates developing a vocabulary equal to the task. This vocabulary will indeed allow us to capture the surprisingly small number of ways that languages can differ and how they are alike. We will also survey less technical topics such as writing systems, social registers, and others. No prior experience in linguistics is required for the course, simply an interest in languages and a willingness to work.

People inhabit and reshape natural landscapes. In this course, we’ll use the perspectives of Human Geography to develop a deeper understanding of the ways human populations manipulate landscapes and how landscapes reflect the cultures of the populations within them. In our focus on people, places and culture, we’ll examine globalization, development, cultural conflicts between groups, and population policies such as migration, citizenship and population growth. We’ll learn to “read” landscapes as cultural spaces shaped by religious practices, economic activities, political systems and other social forces. We’ll also consider how social identities may strengthen communities but can also exclude or marginalize others, leading to increased tensions between groups and conflicts over the control of territory.

Grades are based on short written assignments (30%), attendance and participation (5%), three mid-term exams (15%), and a final exam (20%).

This General Education course is appropriate for freshmen and sophomores and fulfills the College of Liberal Arts and Science’s Social Science requirement. As an introductory level course, it is designed to aid the transition to university coursework through (1) short assignments that provide feedback on academic writing as well as content, (2) weekly section meetings to discuss topics, introduce and review assignments, and prepare for mid-term exams, and (3) a detailed schedule to ensure students are ready for section meeting and prepared for exams.

The course textbook is The Human Mosaic: A Cultural Approach to Human Geography, 12th edition, 2012, by Mona Domosh, Roderick Newmann, and Patricia Price, published by W. H. Freeman. Please note that both paper and digital versions of the textbook are available. The eText will be available at no cost to students through the University of Iowa’s Fall 2013 eText Pilot Project.

This course is an introduction to the study of modern Latin American politics, with a specific focus on roadblocks to economic and political development within the region. In particular we will explore Latin America?s cycles of democratic and authoritarian rule, and its political institutions.

This course is designed to introduce you to the concepts and methods of the science of clinical psychology. It has three areas of emphasis: 1) fundamentals of scientific clinical psychology; 2) evidence-based psychological assessment; and 3) evidence-based psychological intervention.  This course will provide an introduction to (a) major theoretical models and research methods in scientific clinical psychology; (b) several psychological problems, with topics varying by semester but commonly including problems that are particularly relevant to college students (e.g., depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse, and eating disorders); (c) the general principles underlying the construction, administration, and interpretation of evidence-based clinical assessments; and (d) empirically supported approaches to psychological intervention. You are urged to reconsider your decision to take this class if you are reluctant to examine these topics in a scientific manner.  Taking this course should make you a more informed consumer of claims about contemporary clinical psychology and may assist in your evaluation of clinical psychology or other related potential career goals. This course is not designed to provide extensive information on the nature of psychological disorders (see Abnormal Psychology course) or to provide you with the skills to assess and treat psychological problems.

Introduction to a range of theories that seek to explain behavior of people within their groups, and dynamics between groups, at various levels of society.

Social Psychology is the study of influences on, processes of, and results from social interaction and our relationships with other people. This course presents an overview of theory and research in social psychology. Social psychology borders both sociology and psychology and brings together insights from both fields. Students already have some familiarity with much of this course’s content simply by being a competent member of society. They have formed opinions about other people, tried to change somebody’s mind, tried to get into and possibly out of a romantic relationship, wondered about who they really were, been a member of a group, and so on. The goal of the course is not to tell students things you are aware of; rather, it is to offer a sociological perspective about daily life and explore fundamental processes that constitute our world. We will cover issues about how and why people think, feel and behave as members of a shared social reality.

This course is an introduction to the political behavior of the American electorate. The basic goals of this course are to explain political behavior and investigate the consequences of it. In this course, political behavior is broadly defined, and topics include voter turnout, vote choice, partisanship, ideology, issue attitudes, public opinion, socialization, and representation. In class, we will mainly address the following questions: Who votes? Who votes for whom? What moves public opinion? In order to address these questions, we will explore literature, controversies, and theories of political behavior.

Officially an introduction to sociolinguistics, this course looks at how people use language when they interact with each other. The focus is on dialects of English. You will learn how your way of speaking is different from the way they speak English in, for example, Chicago, Minnesota, Texas, Kentucky, the Boston area, and the east coast states, as well as in England. You will be able, among other things, to characterize the differences between Standard American English and Received Pronunciation, the dialect spoken by the Queen of England.

Further, you will discover why you do not understand the earlier forms of English, for example, the English spoken by Geoffrey Chaucer, a 14th century English poet. It will become clear why English spelling is so hard to learn.

We will also look at how you vary your language depending on the situation you are in and who you talk to. You will also see how the use of language can tell you about social classes.

The course meets twice a week and is, for the most part, taught in a lecture format, but some part of the course (about 30%) is in a discussion format, which provides an opportunity to enhance your analytical skills. The lecture is taught in an interactive way, whereby the students who wish to work with the instructor provide the data by, for example, pronouncing certain words that are then analyzed in the lecture. The emphasis is on what we do in class, not on the readings.

Course requirements include short homework assignments, two midterms and a final.

The demands on earth’s resources have never been greater, leading to a wide array of environmental impacts on a grand scale. This introductory course profiles the leading global environmental issues of our time, particularly those associated with land use, population change, pollution, energy, and climate change.  The class adopts an interdisciplinary perspective that emphasizes their causes, consequences, and solutions. The major goals of the course are to: 1) explore the most urgent global environmental issues and their relationships with physical, social, biological, and economic processes; and 2) introduce you to basic geographic concepts in the context of current environmental challenges.

This course is an introduction to contemporary linguistic anthropology, the study of language use in comparative social and cultural contexts. We will cover some basic concepts from the theoretical perspectives of the discipline and explore a range of topics that show how language and ideas about language contribute to the construction of our reality and social worlds. We will consider how the effects of language use emerge from interactions beyond individual control, and will explore relationships between language and group identity, including categories of ethnicity and gender. We will examine how language use derives its authority from specific institutions that promote particular forms and deny access both within individual states and globally. We will also evaluate differences in language’s social power across media (spoken, written, signed) of communication. Along the way students will come to appreciate a view of human language as a particularly structured system of signs. The student who completes this course will have new tools for understanding the social significance of different forms of language use both with which she or he comes in contact on a daily basis and that exist across the globe.

We spend more time using media than doing almost anything else. All that media must have some effect on us, but what? In this class we’ll apply the theories and methods of social science to understanding media effects. We’ll explore questions such as: Does violent media really cause violence? Does news influence the political process? How does entertainment media create and reinforce harmful stereotypes? And if media does affect us, what can we do about it? The class fulfills the General Education requirement for Social Sciences.

How sociopolitical life in China is shaped by political structure, economic modernization, and traditional political culture; topics include historical, political, economic, and social conditions in contemporary China; course objectives are to broaden student's horizons in global affairs by learning about a foreign country that seems completely different and to sharpen student's analytical and communication skills.

One of the most significant world events in the 21st century is the rise of China. Today, China’s economic and political influence can be felt in almost every corner of the world. Yet the interaction between China and the rest of the world, particularly the Western world, is often challenged by misperceptions, stereotypes, biases, fear and even ignorance on both sides. The goal of this course is to provide a comprehensive understanding of how China has achieved its fast growth, the problems that are troubling its further development and interaction with the outside world, and its future role in international politics.

This course is divided into three components. First, it will review the historical legacies of Chinese society, including the 19th century encounter with the Western world, the communist revolution, the Cultural Revolution, the 1989 Tiananmen protest, and how these legacies contribute to the recent domestic political developments and Chinese foreign policy in the 21^st century. Second, it will examine the current Chinese political system, its political culture and the relationship between the state and the public. Third, the course will look into several political, social and economic policies and their consequences. We will cover some hot topics in Chinese politics and society, including economic inequality, ethnic relations, freedom of press and media, contentious politics, gender and women rights, and among others.

Survey of key issues in international relations, including causes of wars, different types of theories of international relations, international organizations, and global environmental problems.

Politics worldwide, including all regions and levels of development; wide-ranging themes, including regime types, political change, political culture, public opinion, government structures, state-society relationship, electoral systems, public policy issues.

Comparative politics is the field that uses evidence to answer questions about the workings of domestic politics by comparing the experiences of different countries. Our study of the topic begins with countries relatively similar to the one most of you know best, the United States. We will investigate why the advanced industrial democracies have pursued such different social and economic policies, the policies that have the most direct impact on the wellbeing of their citizens. In doing so, we will also learn how political institutions differ across democracies and the effects that these differences have on politics. During the second half of the course, we will turn to recently democratizing countries to study how authoritarian regimes maintain power, the circumstances in which they give way to democracy, and the problems often faced by new democratic governments in the developing world. Throughout the course, we will consider how comparison allows us to draw conclusions about political processes. Grades will be based on quizzes, short writing assignments, eight low-stakes exams, and class participation.

How do humans think? How does memory work, and how do we prevent ourselves from being distracted? These questions center around problems in cognitive psychology, the area devoted to understanding thought processes. This course will provide a general introduction to human cognition, focusing on topics such as the brain mechanisms of cognition, perception, attention, memory, language, categorization, imagery, and intelligence. Students will learn the major theories and findings in various areas of cognitive psychology. The class also will discuss the contribution of other perspectives on cognition, such as relevant work in computer science and neuroscience. Readings are primarily taken from a textbook, but additional readings and class materials may be assigned.

How and why do human communities develop their ways of living, change these over time, and differ from one another? How is this cultural diversity impacted by globalization, and why does such diversity continue to matter in the 21^st century?  Cultural anthropology asks and answers these questions through a comparative lens that includes widely diverse peoples, places and times. The field is known for “making the strange familiar, and the familiar strange,” meaning that it sparks reflection not only about cultural differences but also about what we all often take for granted in our own daily experiences. Through readings, lectures, films and other media, we will explore anthropology’s findings about key lifeways, cultural similarities and differences among peoples across the globe, and consider key questions about how anthropologists produce this knowledge.   

This course combines lectures, discussions, and in-class activities with assignments that are designed to promote critical thinking and analytical writing skills. Graded work includes three exams, class participation/discussion activities, and two short writing assignments—including one in which students get to try out their own ethnographic research skills, by examining key social and cultural features of life on campus.

Utilizing a combination of class projects and lecture content, this course covers the development of language skills from birth through age 18, including all components of language (syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics). You will learn about the time course of typical language development, learning mechanisms involved in typical language development, the application of scientific methods to studying language development, observation methods, and the ability to describe language differences.

The selection of countries to be studied includes Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Palestine and Israel. Topics to be studied include: The Foundations of Islam, the Legacy of Western Colonial Rule and Imperialism, Government Structures and Processes, Political Leaders and Oppositional Movements, the Political Economy of Oil, War and Regional Conflicts, plus Religious and Nationalist Ideologies. The course focuses on political behavior in the Muslim world and on the institutions and social systems that shape and are shaped by that behavior. Through comparative political inquiry we will evaluate the operation of government institutions in the context of specific historical legacies, natural resources, economic structure, population characteristics, and geographic position of the region.

Requirements include attendance at lectures, completion of required readings in preparation for discussion section participation, writing a research paper, and taking two midterms and one final exam. The course is designed to meet the comprehensive criteria of the GE Program as well as the criteria for the Social Sciences and Intl and Global Issues areas.