Course Schedule and Catalog

Long Title: THE SHAPING OF WESTERN THOUGHT

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: Study of the foundational intellectual and artistic texts of the western tradition from Ancient Greece to Medieval Islam. Consideration of texts and images over time and in their historical development as we reflect on who we are and how we got here. Readings would include: The Gilgamesh Epic, Homer's Illad, Thucydides' War, Plato's Republic, Book of Genesis, Virgil's Aeneid, Gospels of Luke and of Thomas, Augustine's Confessions and The Qur'an. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: OUR ENVIRONMENT: SCIENCE AND CULTURE

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: In this course, students will learn environmental concepts, the science and culture behind them, and possible reactions to related problems from a political, economic, and cultural perspective. The instructor will introduce the necessary background material in biology, ecology, and chemistry as needed but the emphasis will be on obtaining scientific literacy in environmental studies.

Long Title: VIOLENCE AND HUMAN NATURE

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: The topic of violence has engaged social scientists from many fields and can provide an illuminating and interesting focus for understanding the research and rationale of psychologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and sociologists. Topics covered in this course include the early concepts of human behavior, evolutionary, biological, cross cultural, and historic approaches, cultural factors and the mass media, the sociology of violence, Freud and other emotion theorists, group violence, and legal, political and psychological solutions to controlling violence.

Long Title: ISLAM: STATE AND SOCIETY

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course offers an analytical and theoretical examination of government and social systems in the Arab and Muslim world. Because no one discipline is sufficient for an adequate understanding, this course reaches across the disciplines to include various subjects. History, economics, political science, gender studies, as well as literary and cinematic are the venues for learning about the region. The course will maximize student participation and students will be expected to be fully engaged through class discussion, oral presentations and writing assignments.

Long Title: SHAKESPEARE AND FILM

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course will examine several Shakespeare plays and their theatrical productions. The instructor will teach each play as a text (and a script) first, and then study the films of these plays in an effort to understand the choices the film-makers have made in adapting Shakespeare's plays to the screen. In this course, then, we will be concerned with studying both Shakespeare's plays and what happens to those plays in the hands of a creative film-maker.

Long Title: THE SOLAR SYSTEM AND THE MIND OF MAN

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course will explore the beauty of the solar system, both as majestic work of nature and from the standpoint of a challenge to the observational and analytical capabilities of human beings. We will review our knowledge of the solar system from Ptolemy to the present day using contributions of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and finally, robotic spacecraft. We will examine each planet and its satellite(s) using data and photographs from space probes and the Apollo missions. We will study the earth's atmosphere including present-day changes such as global warming. Finally, we will review briefly how the solar system came into being, the contemporary search for planets around other stars, and the probability of extraterrestrial life and intelligence. The course will be non-mathematical.

Long Title: THE WHOLE IS GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: There are a series of interrelated themes in this course. We want to study and discuss ideas that can be relevant to a number of disciplines in the social sciences. We want to use these ideas to explore some interesting questions that are asked in the social sciences. But just because an idea is interesting does not mean it is valid. So we also want to think about how we might determine if these ideas actually account for behavior in the real world (i.e., how would we test these ideas and insights?).

Long Title: EARTH SYSTEMS DYNAMICS

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course involves exposing the advanced student to the interactions among the several mechanisms tht combine to produce a working Earth. It would include concepts of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geology, Meteorology and Ecology.

Long Title: STEREOTYPES, PREJUDICE, AND DISCRIMINATION

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: In the past century social scientists have learned an enormous amount about stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, yet they remain poorly understood by the public at large and especially by public policy makers. We all have hold stereotypes, show prejudices, and discriminate although not necessarily in traditional racist or sexist ways. This course will explore what social scientists, especially social psychologists, have learned about these issues especially in the last quarter century. While we will cover traditional racial and gender issues, we will also consider material related to obesity, homosexuality, mental and phsical disability, and age among other topics.

Long Title: MUSIC AND OTHER ARTS: COLLABORATION AND FUSION

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course will introduce students to the collaboration between music and other arts - poetry, drama, mythology, the visual arts (as applied to set and costume design), and dance - that often occurs during the creation of large musical works such as symphonies, operas, and ballets. By invetigating six musical materpieces, it will be possible to discuss aspects of the collaborative process and how they lead to artistic fusion. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ROMAN EMPIRE: SOCIETY & CULTURE DURING THE PAX ROMANA

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: When the emperor Augustus achieved supreme power in 31 BC, the Roman state began a period of stable rule and prosperity that lasted for more than two centuries. This course will examine the basic elements of Roman civilization during the Pax Romana. How was imperial power exercised and represented in art and architecture? What place did women, soldiers, slaves, and foreigners have in Roman society? What were the basic modes of religious expression? What were the basic parameters of law and administration? How did the city of Rome develop as the hub of a multi-ethnic state? To answer these and other questions, we will discuss ancient texts in translation and modern interpretations. Time will be devoted each week to methods of scholarly research and writing. No previous knowledge of Roman history is required. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: CONTEMPORARY CHINA AND THE CHINESE DIASPORA

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course explores the transnational forces changing the lives of nearly a quarter of humanity, the 1.4 billion people of Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the diasporic Chinese communities of the Americas, Europe, and East and Southeast Asia. In order to explore the political, economic and social processes of liberalization that have created this new era of the increased circulation of people, ideas, commodieties and technologies across national boundaries, seminar participants will use materials and methods from many scholarly disciplines and traditions: political science, history, economics, anthropology, economics, anthropology, gender and media/cultureal studies. And in order to study these increasingly mobile populations that often fall outside the boundaries of conventional studies approaches in the social sciences, students will critically examine innovative comparative case studes and survey methodologies. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: DNA: HUMAN IDENTITY AND ORIGINS

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: "Who am I?" "Where did I come from?" All branches of knowledge address these fundamental questions. This course examines how DNA informs the structure and function of humans, and how humans have in turn used DNA as a source of information to solve mysteries and improve lives. We will introduce the structure of DNA and show how it influences physical traits and is passed on from parent to child. We will review the original goals of the Human Genome Project and discuss how the surprising results that emerged from it have altered the way we view the role of genes in human development. We will examine how breakthroughs in DNA technology have allowed us to answer questions about human origins, worldwide migrations and personal genealogy and aided criminal investigations and medical treatment. This course will also use the specifics of DNA investigation as examples of science in action. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: SOUTH BY SOUTHEAST ASIA: CRUCIBLE OF DIVERSITY IN RELIGION AND POLITICS

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course will cover an ethnological and pre-colonial review of the region and cover such topics as: the role of religion in framing culture and politics in the region; the impact of colonialism and its long-term impact on the culture and politics of the region; the past and present impact of nationalism on politics, economics and culture in the region, what forces frame them and how they operate; the prospects for democracy in the region; the challenge of economic growth equity and moderniation in the region; the foreign policy issues facing the area including efforts at regional cooperation; and key contemporary problems facing the region such as the rise of radical Islam, The India-Pakistan Issue and demands and problems of minority groups in countries of the region. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: SCIENCE IN THE FIRST PERSON

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: Have you wondered what it would be like to participate in a major scientific discovery, or to deal with highly competitive or cantankerous colleagues, or to convince a skeptical world that your idea is right and the rest of the world has got it wrong? By reading material written by scientists who have made major discoveries, we will look at how science is done from the first-person perspective. We will see how scientists confront troubling thoughts when they see the modern world in conflict with the nature they love, and why science has been called a "contact sport." Department Permission Required.

Long Title: PICTURES AND WORDS: A VIEW OF MUSLIM POLITICS THROUGH THE ARTS

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: In this course comprised of three realted segments, students will take a deeper look into the topics introduced in Islam: State and Society (MLSC 504). They will first consider Iranian film and its relationship to the only revolution in the region and have an opportunity to hypothesize about the relationship between the visual arts and politics. Students will next look at the work of fiction authors and consider the themes that dominate the literature. Finally, students will apply the skills gained in the first two segments by focusing on one country whose selection is to be determined by the current political situation. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: INTRODUCTION TO WESTERN ART: CAVES TO CATHEDRALS

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course will introduce students to major art historical periods and monuments of the western world from the first appearance of images in the caves of Paleolithic Europe to the construction of Medieval cathedrals and the illumination of books of hours in the fifteenth century.

Long Title: AGAINST THE GRAIN: DISSENTERS IN AMERICAN SOCIETY

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course will offer a biographical focus on ten Americans who challenged the orthodoxies of their time and place. Where these radical dissenters visionaries or cranks? What led them to challenge the conventional wisdom of their day? Which of their ideas came to fruition, and which ones were rejected? By examining unpopular ideas and the man and women who propounded them, prehaps we can understand the dynamics of social change.

Long Title: HOW COME COMMUNISM COLLAPSED?

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This history course will investigate the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1991 and related historical issues. Why did Marxism, which is based on a citique of capitalism, succeed in Russia in the first place, since Russia was essentially an agrarian state? What led to the emergence of the Cold War after World War II? Was it the Yalta agreements, agression by the Soviet Union, American intransigence, or what? When did the Soviet system sign its own death warrant? Who was the prime mover in the events of 1989 - Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, or the East Europeans themselves? And what about Yugoslavia? Why did the collapse of communism there mean bloody warfare, whereas it did not in the USSR and in Czechoslovakia? Department Permission Required.

Long Title: EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY IN ANTARCTICA

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course will introduce students to the seventh continent through the history of austral exploration and through an explaination of the scientific research that has happened, is happening, and will happen there. This course will begin with a basic scientific description of the highest, driest, coldest, windiest continent on Earth. Participants will then study journals of some of the original explores as well as recent works analyzing the "glory days" of polar exploration. The class will then move from the period of exploration, through the early scientific work, and on to the modern hypothesis-driven science that is taking place now and is being planned for the future, particularly that for the International Polar Year scheduled for March 2007 to February 2009. The class will close with an examination of tourism and its effects on the nature of the Antarctic ecosystems and cryosphere. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: TRANSNATIONAL CHINA: THE MIDDLE KINGDOM IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: Almost everyone in the contemporary world is aware that the 21st century may well be "China's century." This course will focus on the ways that geography, history and the forces of "globalization" have shaped the politics, social life, and culture of East Asia. Although the focus of this course will be primarily on China, we will give some attention to other parts of East Asia, including pre-modern and contemporary Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: THE HEBREW BIBLE AND ITS INTERPRETERS

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This seminar seeks to acquaint students with the principal parts of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, with the modern, historical-critical study of the Bible as an academic discipline, and a few episodes in the reception history of the Bible in the West. Our reading of the biblical literature will primarily be historical-critical in the sense that it emphasizes that the Hebrew Bible is rooted in the ancient Near East, its history and literature. At the same time we will be sensitive to traditional, Jewish and Christian readings of the Bible as they evolved over two millennia and examine how these faith-based traditions arose, how they differ from modern critical approaches, and how the two can complement each other. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course examines how the body, health, illness and healing have been conceptualized across different cultures and different historical periods. This course also explores the complex interrelationship between biology and culture, and discusses how historical, political and cultural factors have helped shape our biology to produce specific disbributions of health and disease. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: THE CHALLENGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: Global climate change is actively studied and critically assessed at four different levels: (1) detecting a change in the global climate, (2) attributing that change to anthropogenic causes, (3) modeling future climate to determine the degree change under different economic and culture scenarious and (4) an emerging study of possible human and environmental responses to climate change either by strategies of mitigation or adaptation. The degree of uncertainty among scientists and level of skepticism among informed others increases as we progress from an assessment of detection, to attribution, to prediction and finally to response. This course addresses these four levels of understanding, attempting to provide reasonable evidence for a particular position at each level and a consideration of the validity and accuracy of those positions. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: EYE AND BRAIN, MIND AND WORLD

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: How do humans know about the world around us? How does any system, natural or artificial, know about any other system? The question of epistemology is among the most fundamental in all of philosophy, and there is no better example with which to begin an answer than human perception, because it is through our senses that we acquire most of the knowledge we gain in our lifetimes. This course focuses on vision because it is the best understood, and perhaps the most important, of the human sensory systems, and it reveals how the eye and brain interact to give us reliable (albeit usually misleading) understanding of the world. We approach vision and the other senses from several disciplines. Along the way, we learn about how other animals perceive as well as about how our ability to perceive develops from infancy into old age. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: PSYCHOLOGY OF HAPPINESS

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: Truth, beauty and, yes, happiness, are issues that have engaged thoughtful people over the centuries. What is happiness (and what makes us happy)? Until recently we have relied on philosophers and religious thinkers for answers to that question, and many of them have provided useful recipes that seem to work for at least some people some of the time. The last century or so has seen many psychologists and self-help gurus who have also handed out (well, more often sold) recipes that generally seem to be less satisfactory than the wisdom of the ancients. Interestingly until recently psychologists have tended to ignore this seeming important topic, but in the past 10 or so years social and personality psychologists neuroscientists and even economists have begun to pose empirically answerable questions about happiness and to find some data-based answers to what makes people happy. In this course we will read some of the traditional wisdom provided by religious and philosophical thinkers but we will focus primarily on questions and issues that are subject to empirical resolution. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: JOURNALISM IN CRISIS: TRANSFORMATION OF THE NEWS MEDIA & IMPLICATIONS FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course will examine historic, social, economic and political aspects of the transformation of American news media. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls a little over a half a century ago in the Judean desert has been celebrated as the most significant manuscript discovery of the 20th century. Students will study the fascinating history of the discovery and publication of the Scrolls. They will read the most important Scrolls, learn about the beliefs and practices of the Jewish group that authored them, and discuss what can be learned from the Scrolls about the nature of Early Judaism and the origins of Christianity. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: CAPSTONE

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Research

Credit Hours: 3

Description: Departmental permission required. To be completed after all MLS core and elective courses have been successfully completed. Offered fall, winter, and spring terms only. Department Permission Required.