An overview of cognitive science, an interdisciplinary field exploring cognition in living and artificial systems and including psychology, neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, cultural anthropology, and linguistics. This course provides a comparative analysis of key models and approaches to cognition, relying upon experimental, neurophysiological, and clinical data and computational models, and builds a systematic understanding of the interdisciplinary problems, principles, and methods of cognitive science. Current trends, including the most recent approaches (e.g. embodied, embedded, emotional, and extended cognition) and emerging research areas (e.g., social and cultural neuroscience, neuroarchaeology, and neuroaesthetics) are considered.
This seminar course will review questions and controversies in current theory and research on human sexual behavior. The focus of class discussion will be the scientific literature within the field.
Selected topics in psychology, typically incorporating relevant primary literature. Prerequisites vary by topic.
Selected topics in psychology, typically incorporating relevant primary literature. Prerequisites vary by topic.
Religious Studies
Can religion be entertaining? Can entertainment be religious? How have religions used entertainment to connect with followers or advance their aims? How has entertainment served the forms and functions of religions, both historically and today? This course introduces students to the field of Religious Studies through a series of case studies from popular culture and the entertainment industry.
This course introduces students to the fantastic, a fundamental analytic category across the humanities, including Religious Studies. In Asia, the fantastic takes on new dimensions through an extraordinary plurality of religious traditions, narratives, beliefs, and artistic practices. Focusing especially on figures such as gods, ghosts, and gurus, students consider how religious practitioners articulate ideas about these entities through various media. These inquiries encourage students to critically engage with a central question: How can the study of fantastical figures affirm and expand conventional notions of religion?
This course examines how religious ritual, ecosystems, and economies function as networks of exchange through which flows of power, nutrients, and wealth move and are distributed. Through the lens of ritual theory this course investigates the dynamics of transfer in the form of debt, profit, and sacrifice in environmental, monetary, and religious systems. How might an examination of ritual exchange processes illuminate the conditions of planetary ecological disruption and late capitalism?
This course examines how religious ritual, ecosystems, and economies function as networks of exchange through which flows of power, nutrients, and wealth move and are distributed. Through the lens of ritual theory this course investigates the dynamics of transfer in the form of debt, profit, and sacrifice in environmental, monetary, and religious systems. How might an examination of ritual exchange processes illuminate the conditions of planetary ecological disruption and late capitalism?
Fitness. Flexibility. Focus. Freedom. These are just a sampling of popular buzzwords associated with the trans-sectarian array of disciplines that have come to be gathered under the term “yoga.” This course tracks the historical evolution of yogic systems from their mythologized origins in South Asia to their diverse expressions in the globalized present. Along the way, it asks how yogic technologies of contemplation and physical practice have come to promise seemingly dissimilar images of human flourishing, ranging from spiritual liberation to optimal health and wellness, commercial success, and bodily transformation.
Fitness. Flexibility. Focus. Freedom. These are just a sampling of popular buzzwords associated with the trans-sectarian array of disciplines that have come to be gathered under the term “yoga.” This course tracks the historical evolution of yogic systems from their mythologized origins in South Asia to their diverse expressions in the globalized present. Along the way, it asks how yogic technologies of contemplation and physical practice have come to promise seemingly dissimilar images of human flourishing, ranging from spiritual liberation to optimal health and wellness, commercial success, and bodily transformation.
Introduces and explores new religious movements, sectarian spin-offs, and alternative communities in the U.S. that have tested the parameters of acceptable "religion" at different moments in history. Particular attention is given to intersectional dynamics. The class questions the politics and practices of labeling, especially the language of "cults," and centers on specific historical case studies in order to illustrate and analyze major theoretical and methodological challenges in and for the study of religion(s). It considers what draws people to create and join new religious movements, the distinctive worlds such groups endeavor to build, and the controversies that have historically attended them.
This seminar examines the history and methodological development of the discipline of religious studies. After surveying the discipline's inception in textual studies in the late Enlightenment period, the course examines its connections to earlier theological traditions, and the branching out into sociological, hermeneutical, and phenomenological approaches in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The seminar aims to acquaint junior majors with the complexities involved in studying religious phenomena, as well as with the categories and frameworks that constitute the contemporary multi-disciplinary field of religious studies.
Rhetoric
Study of the principles, precepts, and strategies of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speaking. Emphasis is placed on assessing the rhetorical situation and researching, composing, practicing, and delivering a speech. Ethical, political, and social questions raised by speaking in public are considered. Students deliver speeches, practice effective listening, and serve as speech critics and interlocutors.
Study of the principles, precepts, and strategies of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speaking. Emphasis is placed on assessing the rhetorical situation and researching, composing, practicing, and delivering a speech. Ethical, political, and social questions raised by speaking in public are considered. Students deliver speeches, practice effective listening, and serve as speech critics and interlocutors.
Topical survey of the major questions and controversies in rhetorical theory, criticism, and practice, including rhetorical situations, classical canons of rhetoric, the role of rhetoric in civic life, and the relationship of rhetoric to power, politics, law, education, and ethics. Students consider the rights and responsibilities of speakers and critics. Accordingly, readings include selections from a wide array of rhetorical theorists and critics as well as a diverse and open canon of orators and speakers.
In this survey of the expectations for successful speaking across several disciplines, students will explore the techniques, strategies, and precepts peer and professional tutors may employ to help student speakers and listeners attain their goals. Participants will examine samples of student speaking and listening, discuss possible responses, and develop model interactions between and among tutors and students.
Survey of the principles and practices of rhetorical inquiry. Focus on approaches to rhetorical criticism, rhetorical history, the history of rhetoric, and archival research. Exposure to the wide array of methodologies, critical perspectives, and citation standards in humanities-based scholarship. Prepares students to write senior-level papers and theses in rhetorical studies.
History of rhetorical theory and practice from Homer to Augustine. Primary focus on the relationship of rhetoric to politics, law, religion, philosophy, liberal education and culture in ancient Greece and Rome, along with an examination of the influence of ancient rhetoric on medieval rhetoric. Readings include selections from the Iliad, the sophists, Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Philodemus, Cicero, Quintilian, Tacitus, Augustine, and others. Texts are read in English translation.
A study of the discursive and non-discursive aspects of protest from 1974-2024. Focus on the forms and functions of rhetorics and counter-rhetorics in U.S. controversies over civil rights, women’s rights, LBGTQIA+ rights, the environment, anti-war protests, and disability rights, among other social movements. Prerequisite: One course in rhetoric.
Russian
An introduction to the fundamentals of the language and culture with emphasis on communicative proficiency, clarity of pronunciation and basic skills in reading, writing, and conversation. Use of language laboratory required. Four hours of class each week, plus an additional conversation meeting with a native speaker.