Course descriptions

The 21st century has witnessed an explosive growth in the presence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the world scene, in particular, their role in the ?development industry.? Yet ?development? has consistently failed to deliver on promises of poverty reduction and social justice. In this course we will explore the politics of the NGO world through an investigation of the causes of failure and success in development and humanitarian aid programs. We will question popular buzzwords such as ?participation? and ?empowerment? and consider how an anthropological perspective can contribute to improving development interventions and outcomes. Students will become familiar with how scholars in anthropology utilize various forms of evidence to construct effective arguments and in so doing will learn to identify weaknesses in their own. Students will leave this course with the critical thinking and writing skills necessary to work across disciplines and to follow their own interests wherever they may lead.

For families on the road to the Ivy League, the extracurricular activities of elementary school children shape parenting strategies. After-school activities, such as soccer, dance, and chess teach lifelong lessons about internalized winning, bouncing back from loss, and performance under pressure. As a highly desired trait in the university system, competitiveness demonstrates a student's ambition and ability to adapt. This class looks at the contemporary effects of after-school activities and their connection to parenting, gender and social inequality in American families.

For families on the road to the Ivy League, the extracurricular activities of elementary school children shape parenting strategies. After-school activities, such as soccer, dance, and chess teach lifelong lessons about internalized winning, bouncing back from loss, and performance under pressure. As a highly desired trait in the university system, competitiveness demonstrates a student's ambition and ability to adapt. This class looks at the contemporary effects of after-school activities and their connection to parenting, gender and social inequality in American families.

The United States is popularly known as the land of opportunity. According to the mythology of the American Dream, we earn our success by working hard. How do we then explain the existence and maintenance of stark socioeconomic hierarchies? Studies of social inequality and the myth of meritocracy often focus on the construction of disadvantage. Instead of focusing on disadvantage, this course will decode the construction of advantage in the United States. Through readings in social science and philosophy we will explore how systems of credentialing, class culture, and the achievement ideology contribute to the maintenance of power and privilege. In reading, writing and class discussions, we will ask: How do cultural constructions of ?success? and ?achievement? impact aspirations and attainment for people in the United States, and perhaps contribute to social inequality? How do liberalism and market-based models of competition in education intertwine with present day meritocracy myths?

In most of the world, multiple therapeutic traditions co-exist, sometimes symbiotically and at others competitively. Many societies have radically different ideas and practices concerning health, the body and disease than in the US. And these ideas and practices are contested both within these societies and between different societies in an emerging global world. In this writing seminar, we will examine several contested topics within the field of medical anthropology in Haiti, Ghana, Eastern Europe, Japan, India, Southern Africa and the US: holistic versus ontological approaches towards disease, the politics of suffering, religious healing and contestation, the meaning(s) of organ donation, biomedicine under conditions of poverty, female circumcision, the ethics of clinical trials in the developing world, and finally, HIV/AIDS. This course is designed to improve students? writing skills via peer review, multiple drafts and revisions of essays, and midterm and final portfolios.

How does archaeology support or refute the historical narratives found in the Old Testament of the Bible and contemporary texts? For example, does the available material evidence support a united kingdom of Israel ruled by Saul, David, and Solomon? Was monotheism the really dominant religious practice during the Iron Age, as the Book of Kings indicates? Underlying these specific questions is the larger debate between history and archaeology. That is, do historical sources ?speak? more about the past than material objects, or do material remains present a more ?objective? perspective? Although these questions drive the content of the course, emphasis will be placed upon the development of critical reading and writing skills through drafting, peer review, and synthesis. Students will compose several exercises in reasoning and produce a short research paper in stages.

Snapchat, Facebook, Skype, texting, instant messaging and Twitter all influence ideas about acceptable social behavior. In an increasingly digital world, many relationships enter into an exposed space imbued with indirect connections. Private information becomes public. Through looking at an ethnography of Facebook, this seminar will examine how social media impacts the communication of romantic information.

In most of the world, multiple therapeutic traditions co-exist, sometimes symbiotically and at others competitively. Many societies have radically different ideas and practices concerning health, the body and disease than in the US. And these ideas and practices are contested both within these societies and between different societies in an emerging global world. In this writing seminar, we will examine several contested topics within the field of medical anthropology in Haiti, Ghana, Eastern Europe, Japan, India, Southern Africa and the US: holistic versus ontological approaches towards disease, the politics of suffering, religious healing and contestation, the meaning(s) of organ donation, biomedicine under conditions of poverty, female circumcision, the ethics of clinical trials in the developing world, and finally, HIV/AIDS. This course is designed to improve students? writing skills via peer review, multiple drafts and revisions of essays, and midterm and final portfolios.

What do Beyonce?s song ?Flawless,? Andy Warhol?s painting Marilyn Diptych, and a mash-up on the television show Glee have in common? Each samples ? or borrows ? from existing works of art to make something new. Sampling structures the way we make and consume fine art and popular culture. We watch parody versions of Miley Cyrus?s ?Wrecking Ball,? remix movies and television shows to make YouTube videos, and listen to music that samples from dozens of existing songs. Sampling raises key questions about scholarship and creativity: Who owns ideas? What does it mean to be original? How do artists and scholars balance old and new? In this class, we will develop our own scholarly voices as we engage in ongoing discourse about the very nature of learning and creating. We will see how citation and borrowing inform rhetorical strategies, and develop the rhetorical and research skills needed to enter the conversation.

What do Beyonce?s song ?Flawless,? Andy Warhol?s painting Marilyn Diptych, and a mash-up on the television show Glee have in common? Each samples ? or borrows ? from existing works of art to make something new. Sampling structures the way we make and consume fine art and popular culture. We watch parody versions of Miley Cyrus?s ?Wrecking Ball,? remix movies and television shows to make YouTube videos, and listen to music that samples from dozens of existing songs. Sampling raises key questions about scholarship and creativity: Who owns ideas? What does it mean to be original? How do artists and scholars balance old and new? In this class, we will develop our own scholarly voices as we engage in ongoing discourse about the very nature of learning and creating. We will see how citation and borrowing inform rhetorical strategies, and develop the rhetorical and research skills needed to enter the conversation.

Medieval and Renaissance Europe saw the Black Death and recurrent plagues, the rise and dominance of Christianity and its rituals, and the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation and its focus on individual spirituality, all of which conditioned the popular cultural response to and representation of death and its associated issues. Students will examine death and dying in the visual arts of Western Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (c. 1000-1600): illuminated manuscripts, tombs, sculpture, painting, and prints. This course will explore how themes of Christian spirituality, personal devotion, martyrdom, the preservation and worship of saints? relics, salvation and damnation, corpses and burial, disease, ghosts, purgatory, and the macabre appear in the arts. Students will also consider the ways in which death and dying in the visual arts inform and shape cultural attitudes surrounding these themes. Finally, we will explore how historical responses to death have influenced modern perceptions of these subjects.

Celebrated at its release and frequently voted the best British film of all time, The Third Man figures among the most iconic and influential movies in cinema history. An early espionage thriller, it anticipates a modern genre of anti-heroic spy films that runs from The Spy Who Came in From the Cold to The Bourne Identity. Set in the rubble of postwar Vienna, the film is about its location as much as its plot and raises fascinating questions about what roles cities play in contemporary cinema ? from backdrop to action, agent in the action, or actual film subject. But The Third Man occupies an equally striking place in political history. Because of its postwar occupied Vienna setting and its American character who tries to ?do the right thing,? the film is a standard in American foreign policy courses. In this writing seminar, we will explore some of the many interpretations of The Third Man, together with the remarkable role played by the film in cinema history.

Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back?sound familiar? Romantic comedies may offer few surprises in the way of plot, but they never fail to please, as their blockbuster status attests. This course will investigate why we can?t resist these ?chick flicks,? and what, beyond the guaranteed happy ending, we can gain from these movies. Are these films?starring women, for women, and sometimes even by women?feminist? What do they tell us about gender? Genre? About politics and race? About consumerism or careerism? In this course, we will analyze and research both the production and the reception of several ?new millennial? ?rom coms,? such as Enchanted, Maid in Manhattan, and The Proposal. We will learn to read, write, and watch critically in order to better understand the various ideologies at play in the film industry and contemporary culture as a whole. All genders very welcome, but purse-sized pooches need special permit.

We have all heard that elephants never forget. But how many of us know that they also weep? Or that captive orcas can learn to "speak dolphin?" Scholars from areas as diverse as philosophy, biology, social justice, and the arts are currently formulating a new field: animal studies. These scholars are exploring how animals think, what they feel, and in some cases working with animal rights activists to question our laws and personal behaviors in light of these discoveries. In this course we will add to the conversation by looking at how popular culture - especially films like Blackfish and the Cove - reflect and shape our understanding of non-human animals.

From Zeus and Europa to Pan and Prometheus, the myths of ancient Greece and Rome seem to exert a timeless power over us. But what do these myths represent, and why are they so enduringly fascinating? In this seminar, we will explore the rich history and diverse interpretations of classical mythology. Examining how myths are used and understood in both high art and popular culture, we will travel from the ruins of Pompeii to the skyscrapers in New York and find classical myths in a variety of unexpected places: from arabic poetry and Hollywood films to psychoanalysis, the bible and New Age spiritualism.

During the fifth and sixth centuries, the Roman Empire underwent a dramatic shift. The Western half of the empire dissolved into a collection of barbarian kingdoms, while the East gradually transformed into what is now commonly known as the Byzantine Empire. Traditional narratives characterize this change as the monumental collapse of a civilization leading to the ?Dark Ages.? But what actually happened? In this seminar, we will explore the political, military, cultural and religious developments from the late Roman Empire into an age modern scholarship commonly defines as Late Antiquity.

From Zeus and Europa to Pan and Prometheus, the myths of ancient Greece and Rome seem to exert a timeless power over us. But what do these myths represent, and why are they so enduringly fascinating? In this seminar, we will explore the rich history and diverse interpretations of classical mythology. Examining how myths are used and understood in both high art and popular culture, we will travel from the ruins of Pompeii to the skyscrapers in New York and find classical myths in a variety of unexpected places: from arabic poetry and Hollywood films to psychoanalysis, the bible and New Age spiritualism.

Are you having a terrible time in a library that may not exist? Is it unclear whether you are writing a story, or the story has been writing you? Have you discovered an alternate order of the universe? If so, you may be living in a Jorge Luis Borges story. In this course, we will use the tools of literary analysis to immerse ourselves in the mind-bending universe of the famous Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. We will read selections from Borges?s collection of stories, Fictions (1944), to explore what it means to research, write, and define truth. Borges invites us to ponder the limits of language, the separation of fiction and reality, the difference between an original and its copy, and the question of authorship?polemical topics that will require us to sharpen our own critical writing skills. No prior knowledge of Spanish or Latin American literature required.

Starting in the late 1980s, "I'm going to Disneyland!" became a familiar slogan in North America. Disneyland and other theme parks are known as places of fun and as destinations for travel. In this course, we look at the theme park as a framework through which to understand society. Topics will range from the visual themes and marketing strategies used by theme parks, to how theme parks reorganize ideas about labor and consumption. This course is neither a love letter to, nor an indictment of Disney and other theme park companies. Rather, this class raises questions about how we organize our lives in line with how we view and experience theme parks. Special attention will be paid to how films motivate travel and the idea of a "Jolly Holiday."

Starting in the late 1980s, "I'm going to Disneyland!" became a familiar slogan in North America. Disneyland and other theme parks are known as places of fun and as destinations for travel. In this course, we look at the theme park as a framework through which to understand society. Topics will range from the visual themes and marketing strategies used by theme parks, to how theme parks reorganize ideas about labor and consumption. This course is neither a love letter to, nor an indictment of Disney and other theme park companies. Rather, this class raises questions about how we organize our lives in line with how we view and experience theme parks. Special attention will be paid to how films motivate travel and the idea of a "Jolly Holiday."

From Facebook pages read by a few hundred ?friends? to YouTube videos with over a billion views, digital media have created opportunities for its users to reach a far-flung and potentially massive following. By allowing, at least in theory, anyone with a laptop, an internet connection, and the necessary degree of digital literacy to access the kind of audience that was previously available only to institutions like television stations or movie studios, digital tools have changed our relationship to media production and consumption. At the same time, they have created new challenges, including the need to manage one?s online image and the inability to predict who will be in one?s audience. In this class, we will consider the power and the contradictions of online audiences, exploring such topics as Twitter etiquette, online memes, and the rise of a so-called sharing economy. In so doing, we will deepen and complicate our understanding of one of the oldest relationships in the study of rhetoric and writing, that between the author and the audience.

First love and passion, peer pressure, impulsiveness, experimentation with all sorts of things, exuberance, sleeping until noon, the music, and for some, existential neurosis. For the teenage years, neuroscience is finding out that it?s not all about hormones?..what?s going in above the neck is where much of the action is. The teenage brain is going through a growing stage, and maturity doesn?t set in until mid-twenties. The teen brain is far from a finished product. Of all the growth going on in the brain during teen years, the last to develop fully is?the frontal lobes, the region of judgment. This seminar exposes you to the most recent studies from neuroscientists, psychiatrists, primatologists, sociologists, and endocrinologists who have studied these new findings about the human brain during our teen years and into the 20s. And of course, since it is a writing seminar, you?ll get the chance to research, explore, and write about this new area of neuro-scientific inquiry.

Fulfills the Writing Requirement The late 1800s-early 1900s was a rich period of time both in science and the arts. New ideas and discoveries were flooding the cultural environment in ways that inspired both artists and scientists. Although Einstein and Picasso never met or knew of each other's work, the social, scientific and intellectual milieus in which they lived led each to ideas in science and art which forced us to dramatically reconsider the very nature of reality. This course will explore the cultural and intellectual environments of the late 1800s, the lives of two revolutionary thinkers and the nature of their creativity, and how and why the revolutionary concepts E=mc2 and Cubism came within two years of each other in the early 1900s.

Through no fault of their own, Comedy Central late-night hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have become media messiahs to a whole generation. How did Stewart?s `Daily Show? and Colbert?s `Colbert Report,? both created as faux-news shows, gain legitimacy among the political elite? Why are they increasingly cited as primary news sources by Americans under 30? We will examine the unique humor and growing influence of these insurrectionary `newsmen,? and what is says about us as a culture. Or, as Colbert puts it, ?I am America, and so can you!?

Through no fault of their own, Comedy Central late-night hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have become media messiahs to a whole generation. How did Stewart?s `Daily Show? and Colbert?s `Colbert Report,? both created as faux-news shows, gain legitimacy among the political elite? Why are they increasingly cited as primary news sources by Americans under 30? We will examine the unique humor and growing influence of these insurrectionary `newsmen,? and what is says about us as a culture. Or, as Colbert puts it, ?I am America, and so can you!?

Once outside the province of the art world, street art has emerged as a central genre in contemporary 21st century art, meaning what was once relegated to the streets has now gained value in art auctions and private collection -- American Jean-Michel Basquiat?s meteoric rise to art-world fame, as well as the more recent celebrity of the UK graffiti artist Bansky, are but two examples. In this course, we will examine commercial and art historical distinctions about street art and high art. We will explore how street art resonates for artists, collectors, and scholars. We will discuss individual works by artists and artist collectives, learn about how street art has developed, and explore the ways scholars investigate the changing relationship of street art with various communities, within the art world, and global politics. Students will develop critical reading and writing skills through several exercises in reasoning and synthesis.

Home: at its simplest, home is the physical space of residence, the place we return to regularly, and where our belongings are stored. More broadly, though, home is the feeling of familiarity, comfort, and belonging. It is both something we are born into and something we have to create for ourselves. In this class, we will think about the idea of home as the site of identity creation as well as how the concept of home overlaps with political entities like city, state, and, nation. By studying selected essays and poems as well as the film The Wizard of Oz, and guided by Jan Duyvendak's sociological study on home, this class will encourage students to explore the different meanings of home and think about the politics of identity.

Home: at its simplest, home is the physical space of residence, the place we return to regularly, and where our belongings are stored. More broadly, though, home is the feeling of familiarity, comfort, and belonging. It is both something we are born into and something we have to create for ourselves. In this class, we will think about the idea of home as the site of identity creation as well as how the concept of home overlaps with political entities like city, state, and, nation. By studying selected essays and poems as well as the film The Wizard of Oz, and guided by Jan Duyvendak's sociological study on home, this class will encourage students to explore the different meanings of home and think about the politics of identity.

Suzanne Collins?s Hunger Games trilogy has sold millions of copies worldwide, been translated into dozens of languages, and spawned a successful Hollywood film franchise. More recently, critics and scholars have also turned their attention to Collins?s work, recognizing its importance as both literary production and cultural artifact. This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to some of the fundamental strategies of literary and cultural criticism as we approach the Hunger Games trilogy from various perspectives, including (but not limited to) those of literary studies, gender studies, media studies, peace and conflict studies, history, and psychology. Class discussions and assignments will assume that students have read the entire trilogy and/or seen all films released to date.

Suzanne Collins?s Hunger Games trilogy has sold millions of copies worldwide, been translated into dozens of languages, and spawned a successful Hollywood film franchise. More recently, critics and scholars have also turned their attention to Collins?s work, recognizing its importance as both literary production and cultural artifact. This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to some of the fundamental strategies of literary and cultural criticism as we approach the Hunger Games trilogy from various perspectives, including (but not limited to) those of literary studies, gender studies, media studies, peace and conflict studies, history, and psychology. Class discussions and assignments will assume that students have read the entire trilogy and/or seen all films released to date.

In 2000, world leaders and experts declared the eradication of hunger to be an urgent and attainable goal. Since then, the rise in commodity food prices has been linked to both a widening global gap between the rich and the poor, and to political unrest from the Arab Spring to Latin America. With the right-wing focused on private sector solutions and the left-wing dedicated to the use of public money, new forms of technocratic philanthropy have promised a humanitarian relief model capable of transcending traditional political categories. Speaking to G20 leaders in 2011, Bill Gates argued that ?people who are pessimistic about the future tend to extrapolate from the present in a straight line.? The Gates Foundation would break that straight line. Yet, can a philanthrocapitalism that David Rieff recently described as ?irreducibly undemocratic? live up to its big promises? This seminar examines controversies of global food security and the troubled new solutions for extra food production.

Fairy tales have endured through generations and help to convey and reinforce cultural values within the community. In this class, we will focus, among other things, on the fairy tale as a genre: who is its intended audience and who is its narrator? What prompts us to tell fairy tales, and how is it that they retain their impact over the years? Reading Jack Snipes' "Irresistible Fairy Tales: A Cultural and Social History," as well as analyzing a few examples of the genre, we will reflect on fairy tales as a particular kind of story and its ways of making meaning in different social and historical moments.

With increasing interest in the study of happiness, from philosophy to economics, this course will explore the extent to which we can make reasonable claims about happiness: what kinds of methods and data, if any, are meaningful? Our perspective will be global as we question whether there can be anything universal or consistent about happiness across cultures and nations. Is happiness a quality of individuals, cultures, or particular achievements or economic conditions? Can happiness be made a legitimate policy objective? Focusing on Carol Graham's Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires, we will advance our understanding through reading, analysis, and research on the topic of happiness in countries ranging from Peru and Russia to Afghanistan and the U.S..

With increasing interest in the study of happiness, from philosophy to economics, this course will explore the extent to which we can make reasonable claims about happiness: what kinds of methods and data, if any, are meaningful? Our perspective will be global as we question whether there can be anything universal or consistent about happiness across cultures and nations. Is happiness a quality of individuals, cultures, or particular achievements or economic conditions? Can happiness be made a legitimate policy objective? Focusing on Carol Graham's Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires, we will advance our understanding through reading, analysis, and research on the topic of happiness in countries ranging from Peru and Russia to Afghanistan and the U.S..

With increasing interest in the study of happiness, from philosophy to economics, this course will explore the extent to which we can make reasonable claims about happiness: what kinds of methods and data, if any, are meaningful? Our perspective will be global as we question whether there can be anything universal or consistent about happiness across cultures and nations. Is happiness a quality of individuals, cultures, or particular achievements or economic conditions? Can happiness be made a legitimate policy objective? Focusing on Carol Graham's Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires, we will advance our understanding through reading, analysis, and research on the topic of happiness in countries ranging from Peru and Russia to Afghanistan and the U.S..

With increasing interest in the study of happiness, from philosophy to economics, this course will explore the extent to which we can make reasonable claims about happiness: what kinds of methods and data, if any, are meaningful? Our perspective will be global as we question whether there can be anything universal or consistent about happiness across cultures and nations. Is happiness a quality of individuals, cultures, or particular achievements or economic conditions? Can happiness be made a legitimate policy objective? Focusing on Carol Graham's Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires, we will advance our understanding through reading, analysis, and research on the topic of happiness in countries ranging from Peru and Russia to Afghanistan and the U.S..

With increasing interest in the study of happiness, from philosophy to economics, this course will explore the extent to which we can make reasonable claims about happiness: what kinds of methods and data, if any, are meaningful? Our perspective will be global as we question whether there can be anything universal or consistent about happiness across cultures and nations. Is happiness a quality of individuals, cultures, or particular achievements or economic conditions? Can happiness be made a legitimate policy objective? Focusing on Carol Graham's Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires, we will advance our understanding through reading, analysis, and research on the topic of happiness in countries ranging from Peru and Russia to Afghanistan and the U.S..

With increasing interest in the study of happiness, from philosophy to economics, this course will explore the extent to which we can make reasonable claims about happiness: what kinds of methods and data, if any, are meaningful? Our perspective will be global as we question whether there can be anything universal or consistent about happiness across cultures and nations. Is happiness a quality of individuals, cultures, or particular achievements or economic conditions? Can happiness be made a legitimate policy objective? Focusing on Carol Graham's Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires, we will advance our understanding through reading, analysis, and research on the topic of happiness in countries ranging from Peru and Russia to Afghanistan and the U.S..

With increasing interest in the study of happiness, from philosophy to economics, this course will explore the extent to which we can make reasonable claims about happiness: what kinds of methods and data, if any, are meaningful? Our perspective will be global as we question whether there can be anything universal or consistent about happiness across cultures and nations. Is happiness a quality of individuals, cultures, or particular achievements or economic conditions? Can happiness be made a legitimate policy objective? Focusing on Carol Graham's Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires, we will advance our understanding through reading, analysis, and research on the topic of happiness in countries ranging from Peru and Russia to Afghanistan and the U.S..

With increasing interest in the study of happiness, from philosophy to economics, this course will explore the extent to which we can make reasonable claims about happiness: what kinds of methods and data, if any, are meaningful? Our perspective will be global as we question whether there can be anything universal or consistent about happiness across cultures and nations. Is happiness a quality of individuals, cultures, or particular achievements or economic conditions? Can happiness be made a legitimate policy objective? Focusing on Carol Graham's Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires, we will advance our understanding through reading, analysis, and research on the topic of happiness in countries ranging from Peru and Russia to Afghanistan and the U.S..

This discipline and topic-based course will focus on the fundamentals of academic and professional writing with the goal of sharpening students? reasoning and providing them with strategies for its effective expression. Through a series of short formal exercises, revisions, peer reviews, and timed writings, students will practice generating and expressing their own ideas in response to readings, collaborative exercises, and discussions about the course topic. Focus will be on the basics of critical writing: formulating and supporting propositions; reasoning and evidence; explanatory as well as justificatory reasoning. With an emphasis on rhetoric, students will learn how to write and revise for the various audiences they will encounter at Penn and beyond. Attention will also be paid to mechanics, usage, and style, as well as an introduction to citing and documenting sources. All elements of the seminar include guidance from an experienced instructor and feedback from fellow students to provide writers with the challenge of addressing diverse readers. The emphasis throughout is on creative thinking precisely expressed. (Part 1 of 2 part Critical Writing Sequence for LPS BA candidates)

This discipline and topic-based course will focus on the fundamentals of academic and professional writing with the goal of sharpening students? reasoning and providing them with strategies for its effective expression. Through a series of short formal exercises, revisions, peer reviews, and timed writings, students will practice generating and expressing their own ideas in response to readings, collaborative exercises, and discussions about the course topic. Focus will be on the basics of critical writing: formulating and supporting propositions; reasoning and evidence; explanatory as well as justificatory reasoning. With an emphasis on rhetoric, students will learn how to write and revise for the various audiences they will encounter at Penn and beyond. Attention will also be paid to mechanics, usage, and style, as well as an introduction to citing and documenting sources. All elements of the seminar include guidance from an experienced instructor and feedback from fellow students to provide writers with the challenge of addressing diverse readers. The emphasis throughout is on creative thinking precisely expressed. (Part 1 of 2 part Critical Writing Sequence for LPS BA candidates)

This discipline and topic-based course will focus on the fundamentals of academic and professional writing with the goal of sharpening students? reasoning and providing them with strategies for its effective expression. Through a series of short formal exercises, revisions, peer reviews, and timed writings, students will practice generating and expressing their own ideas in response to readings, collaborative exercises, and discussions about the course topic. Focus will be on the basics of critical writing: formulating and supporting propositions; reasoning and evidence; explanatory as well as justificatory reasoning. With an emphasis on rhetoric, students will learn how to write and revise for the various audiences they will encounter at Penn and beyond. Attention will also be paid to mechanics, usage, and style, as well as an introduction to citing and documenting sources. All elements of the seminar include guidance from an experienced instructor and feedback from fellow students to provide writers with the challenge of addressing diverse readers. The emphasis throughout is on creative thinking precisely expressed. (Part 1 of 2 part Critical Writing Sequence for LPS BA candidates)

While the study of engineering involves performing calculations and solving equations, what does the practice of engineering involve, and how has this changed over time? Guided by Eugene Ferguson?s Engineering and the Mind?s Eye, we will consider the concept of engineering knowledge and how it has been developed and disseminated through the centuries. From moving the Vatican Obelisk in the 16th century to launching satellites into orbit in the 21st century, visual and communication skills have been critical to the successful completion of engineering projects, even though they may be more arts than sciences. Taught by a licensed Professional Engineer, this seminar will lead students through an exploration of engineering as a multifaceted endeavor and it will encourage students to enrich their understanding of the breadth of skills that successful participation in the field encompasses.

The term "Comic Art" today encompasses many types of expression with one thing in common: words and pictures working together to tell a story. Originating, some say, hundreds of years ago, but taking off in modern form in the early twentieth century, comic art has been used to tell jokes, weave tales of fantasy and adventure, make political and social commentary, and much more. And in the last two or three decades, the study of Comic Art has blossomed into a lively academic discipline. This seminar is an inquiry into what defines Comic Art, how it functions, and what modern audiences can derive from it. We will read examples of the art, from comic strips to graphical novels and anime, spanning more than a hundred years, and we?ll also read scholarly literature on the subject. Students will write and revise several short essays, participate in numerous workgroup writing exercises, produce a research-based writing sequence, and prepare midterm and final portfolios of their work.

In this course, we will learn about contemporary writers who do not separate the humanities from the sciences; the left brain from the right brain; or inspiration, creativity and expression, from data, logic, and rules. Writers experimenting at the intersections of creative writing and mathematics will help us examine how, and why, these two fields of inquiry are so often divided--and what can happen when we bring them together. Do you find yourself obsessing over your next move in Words with Friends? Do you like palindromes ("was it a cat I saw", "now I won," rotator, sagas, civic) and anagrams (dormitory, dirty room)? If so, you are probably already engaged in the practice of ?Writing by the Numb3rs," and in this class you will be in good company.

In this course, we will learn about contemporary writers who do not separate the humanities from the sciences; the left brain from the right brain; or inspiration, creativity and expression, from data, logic, and rules. Writers experimenting at the intersections of creative writing and mathematics will help us examine how, and why, these two fields of inquiry are so often divided--and what can happen when we bring them together. Do you find yourself obsessing over your next move in Words with Friends? Do you like palindromes ("was it a cat I saw", "now I won," rotator, sagas, civic) and anagrams (dormitory, dirty room)? If so, you are probably already engaged in the practice of ?Writing by the Numb3rs," and in this class you will be in good company.

Scholars have written variously about the The Beat Generation as a group of writers unified around a new vision, a common writing style, a shared philosophy or social theory, and more often, as a group of writers joined by friendship. The Beat label indicated a post-war generation beat down by society. Jack Kerouac expounds, the label of Beat means ?down and out, but full of intense conviction.? Fifty-plus years later, the Beat classic ?Howl? has sold over 1 million copies, and Ginsberg and his fellow Beat writers including Jack Kerouac (On the Road) and William Burroughs (Naked Lunch) are embedded in both the literary cannon and popular culture. Using Bill Morgan?s ?The Typewriter is Holy: The Uncensored History of the Beat Generation? as our guide, we?ll take up questions of materiality, counterculture, individuality, expression, and the influence a group of writers in the 1940s and 1950s has on current culture. We will ask how and why a group of writers might, as Jason Schinder writes, enact a "loosening of breath," which influences individuals, a public, and, the nation.

If every age gets the hero it deserves, twenty-first-century America is apparently in need of plenty?The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Spider Man, Superman, Captain America, X-Men, Hellboy. From 2002-2012, over fifty high-profile Hollywood films featuring superheroes were made. Obsessively returning to events such as terrorism, war, and financial crisis, but also the concerns of what an American hero or antihero should look like, these films sit uncomfortably at the intersection of private and public fantasies. What can these stories tell us about politics, particularly in an era where political rhetoric (such as Bush?s ?you?re either with us or against us?) sounds like the script of a film, and the Terminator was the Governor of California? What can they tell us about the expectations, desires, fears, and anxieties that constitute everyday life in contemporary America? In this seminar, we will use the "superhero rhetoric" so central to our political age as a way to think about rhetoric in general, about logical coherence, and about navigating real-world genres of writing.

What exactly is ?chick lit?? Is it the literary equivalent of cotton candy or just a label to apply to something written by a woman? What kind of ?chicks? get to be the subject of this ?lit?: can or should these texts claim to speak for all women, or do they only speak for a narrow segment of the population? What do we make of the genre?s dominant narratives of cities, consumerism, and courtship? In our quest to answer these questions and more, we?ll consider the ways books such as Sex and the City, The Secret Diary of Bridget Jones, and Kavita Daswani?s For Matrimonial Purposes. We will also turn our critical gaze to current media representations of women in blogs and magazines. What does chick lit reveal about gender, race and power in American culture?

What exactly is ?chick lit?? Is it the literary equivalent of cotton candy or just a label to apply to something written by a woman? What kind of ?chicks? get to be the subject of this ?lit?: can or should these texts claim to speak for all women, or do they only speak for a narrow segment of the population? What do we make of the genre?s dominant narratives of cities, consumerism, and courtship? In our quest to answer these questions and more, we?ll consider the ways books such as Sex and the City, The Secret Diary of Bridget Jones, and Kavita Daswani?s For Matrimonial Purposes. We will also turn our critical gaze to current media representations of women in blogs and magazines. What does chick lit reveal about gender, race and power in American culture?

This writing seminar will consider how law shapes and influences some of the most basic facets of human life: how we define ourselves, where we live, and how we interact with our environments. For example, what impact does the Americans with Disabilities Act have on our notions of civil rights, free access, and mobility? How has our freedom of speech and assembly been altered by the transformation of the town square into an enclosed shopping mall? How does the law mediate between competing claims for land and resources, and how do our physical environments reflect important differences in power that lawmakers may need to address? Readings will be drawn from the fields of law, geography, political science, education and cultural studies. Assignments include a series of reasoning and synthesis exercises, as well as peer review and midterm and final portfolios.

Released in 1994 to wide acclaim, Disney?s The Lion King brought an animated and anthropomorphized Africa to American audiences. Though rooted in biblical and Shakespearean stories, The Lion King also echoes the ancient epic of Sundiata, the so-called ?lion king? of 13th century Mali. As such, the movie is both about Africa and a about how the West imagines the continent to be. This course uses The Lion King as a window onto questions of how the West views and uses Africa in popular culture. As a writing seminar, these questions will become fodder for multiple short writing exercises as well as a longer research paper. Students will learn to think, read, and write critically in an atmosphere centered on collaborative learning.

This course will focus on award-winning food writer Bee Wilson?s best selling book, Consider the Fork, which explores the way humans across different cultures have used tools to transform raw ingredients into a variety of edible foods. We will learn how everyday utensils such as knives and spoons have fascinating histories, and how technology has changed what and how we eat and think about food. Blending history, anthropology, and science, this course will examine how our culinary tools and processes have developed and shaped today?s food culture.

Voting is the cornerstone of democratic government. Yet, on the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, equal access to the ballot box has come under increased attack in states across the nation. In this course, we will examine the history of the ?crown jewel? of the Civil Rights Movement?the Voting Rights Act?as well as the broader social, political and legal landscape in which this landmark piece of legislation was passed. More broadly, we will explore the historical relationship between race, equality, democracy, and political representation throughout the twentieth century. Over the course of the semester, students will be introduced to major texts in the fields of civil rights and legal history. Through critical engagement with major texts in the fields of civil rights and legal history, students will familiarize themselves with how scholars use evidence and craft arguments. In so doing, they will develop a deeper understanding of the important connections between the past and the present.

If the 1960s are remembered as a political whirlwind, Vietnam stood at its center. America?s war abroad led to a war within as a wide spectrum of Americans not only demonstrated against the war, but began to question the political order itself. Why did Americans protest their government during a time of war? Who was most opposed to the war and who supported it ? hippies or hardhats, elites or the poor, whites or people of color? How did the war challenge American identity? In this course, students will take a close look at the origins, composition, and legacy of the antiwar movement, paying particular attention to how the war is remembered today. In approaching this movement simultaneously as history, myth, and memory, we will see how the war in Vietnam altered the domestic political landscape, transformed class identities, and redefined postwar American history.

Imagine the roar of the crowd in a football stadium. Now imagine the rustling anticipation in a concert hall as the orchestra tunes their instruments. From the sounds of traffic and passersby to birdsong in the woods; from the echoes of hushed footsteps in a cathedral to the insufferable pen-tapping of the student working across from you in an otherwise quiet library: we can learn much from the soundscape about a particular environment and our place within it. This course explores how scholars and musicians have conceptualized the sound environment, and how these concepts have been mobilized to inspire creativity, critique society, and define our place in the world as humans. How do we shape our sound environment and what is at stake when we do so? And how, in turn, does that environment shape us? No prior musical training is required.

What is computer art? How can we understand it, and technology in general, as an art form? This class explores both of these questions with help from Dominic McIver Lopes's book *A Philosophy of Computer Art.* We'll discuss traditional aesthetics concepts such as: form, expression, artist, and spectator. In doing so, we'll ask: do these same concepts apply to computer art? Or is the production and consumption of computer art different from non-technological art forms like literature and painting? With Lopes's book and contemporary essays, we will engage in this discussion in order to understand more specifically just what computer art is, what it does, and how we interact with it.

In the coming decades, we?ll grapple with tremendous environmental problems. Climate change, an exploding global population, and radical inequality of access to resources will threaten the persistence of human culture. In this course, we?ll evaluate the standard idea in evolutionary psychology, sometimes called ?biofatalism,? that our basic biology makes us incapable of meeting and adapting to these challenges. How open is human nature to societal change? What types of societies are possible for us, given our natures? Do we naturally seek cooperative, egalitarian and inclusive societies? Or are we doomed to be driven by selfishness and greed? In exploring these and other questions, we?ll read about amazing new work in evolutionary theory, the cognitive sciences, economics and environmental philosophy.

?So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist.? - Epicurus This course examines the value of human existence and contemporary debates surrounding our responsibilities to potential/future people. Our discussions and assignments will emerge from a careful reading of the anti-natalist philosophy of David Benatar, as presented in Better Never to Have Been (Oxford, 2006). Most importantly, the course will ask students to confront the significance of potential or future people and the ultimate meaning of human extinction. Students participating in the course will be introduced to a variety of written genres within contemporary philosophy and catastrophic/existential risk studies.

"What would happen if we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we want them?" ? Richard Feynman This course will introduce students to the immense potential and risks of nanotechnology through the work of Colin Milburn, Nanovision: Engineering the Future (Duke, 2008). The assignments and discussions of the course will primarily revolve around the science of atomically precise manufacturing and the way in which nanotechnology elicits visions of the best and worst for the human future. Students participating in the course will be introduced to a variety of written genres within related areas of science and engineering, as well as contemporary philosophy, aesthetics and catastrophic/existential risk studies.

?So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist.? - Epicurus This course examines the value of human existence and contemporary debates surrounding our responsibilities to potential/future people. Our discussions and assignments will emerge from a careful reading of the anti-natalist philosophy of David Benatar, as presented in Better Never to Have Been (Oxford, 2006). Most importantly, the course will ask students to confront the significance of potential or future people and the ultimate meaning of human extinction. Students participating in the course will be introduced to a variety of written genres within contemporary philosophy and catastrophic/existential risk studies.

If you visit just about any American city, you?ll find formerly-poor neighborhoods ? including the area right next to Penn ? now filled with yoga studios, upscale restaurants, recently renovated condos, and (often young) residents who seem eager to tell you, ?this neighborhood used to be so different 10 years ago; it really gentrified.? That term, gentrification, is used to describe what happens to a neighborhood when wealthier people move in, land values and rents go up, and former residents (often minorities) are (often) pushed out. But like cities themselves, the reality is never so simple. In this class, students will develop their own answers to a number of questions: How and why did once-neglected neighborhoods all over the country suddenly become attractive and cool? Does gentrification make neighborhoods better or worse, and how do you decide what ?better? means? What happens to the people who pushed out? Who does a neighborhood belong to, anyway? Students will improve their analytic and narrative writing abilities, and use both individual and collaborative writing assignments to develop and articulate well-informed opinions about a complex, real-world issue with no cut-and-dry answers.

If you visit just about any American city, you?ll find formerly-poor neighborhoods ? including the area right next to Penn ? now filled with yoga studios, upscale restaurants, recently renovated condos, and (often young) residents who seem eager to tell you, ?this neighborhood used to be so different 10 years ago; it really gentrified.? That term, gentrification, is used to describe what happens to a neighborhood when wealthier people move in, land values and rents go up, and former residents (often minorities) are (often) pushed out. But like cities themselves, the reality is never so simple. In this class, students will develop their own answers to a number of questions: How and why did once-neglected neighborhoods all over the country suddenly become attractive and cool? Does gentrification make neighborhoods better or worse, and how do you decide what ?better? means? What happens to the people who pushed out? Who does a neighborhood belong to, anyway? Students will improve their analytic and narrative writing abilities, and use both individual and collaborative writing assignments to develop and articulate well-informed opinions about a complex, real-world issue with no cut-and-dry answers.

There are currently over two million people behind bars in the United States, making up the largest prison system in the world. The majority of these prisoners are racial minorities and the urban poor, causing some to argue that problems of mass incarceration are among the greatest social injustices of our time. How did we get to this point? What effect does mass incarceration have on inmates, their families, and society generally? What strategies exist for reversing the tide of imprisonment? In this course we will draw from two central texts: *The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness* (2010) by Michelle Alexander and *Punishing the Poor* (2009) by Loic Wacquant. We will use these works to analyze the role of race and class in explaining the rise of mass incarceration and to debate different approaches to solving this social justice crisis.

The physician Cesare Lombroso, in the late 1800?s, believed that criminals could be identified on the basis of ?atavistic stigmata,??physical features such as a sloping forehead, a furrowed tongue, and low-set ears. This model of criminality gained traction for half a century before falling out of favor with the mid-20th-century emphasis on the sociological roots of behavior. In this seminar, we will explore the causes and cures of criminal behavior through a twin biological-sociological lens. Guided by the latest book of Adrian Raine, a leading researcher in the fields of psychology and criminology, we will explore how violent brains malfunction; how abnormalities in the autonomic nervous system?for example, a low resting heart rate?give rise to violent behavior; how early nutrition and health contribute to violence; and finally, how new biosocial treatments may be able to change brains and prevent violence.

The physician Cesare Lombroso, in the late 1800?s, believed that criminals could be identified on the basis of ?atavistic stigmata,??physical features such as a sloping forehead, a furrowed tongue, and low-set ears. This model of criminality gained traction for half a century before falling out of favor with the mid-20th-century emphasis on the sociological roots of behavior. In this seminar, we will explore the causes and cures of criminal behavior through a twin biological-sociological lens. Guided by the latest book of Adrian Raine, a leading researcher in the fields of psychology and criminology, we will explore how violent brains malfunction; how abnormalities in the autonomic nervous system?for example, a low resting heart rate?give rise to violent behavior; how early nutrition and health contribute to violence; and finally, how new biosocial treatments may be able to change brains and prevent violence.

Picasso, Einstein, Steve Jobs -- three of the individuals, among many others, who have been proclaimed to be "creative" geniuses. In this course, we will examine how we define creativity and the factors that make a person more or less creative. As we explore the scientific study of creativity, we will consider its relationship to personality, motivation, and intelligence. We will ask whether creativity has a dark side. We will discuss emerging psychological theories of creativity, learn about research in this developing field, and explore the ways researchers have used the methods of science to answer questions about creativity.

Memories form an integral component of our personal identity. However, an understanding of how memories are created as well as enhanced, destroyed, or modified is the topic of extensive debate. This seminar explores the biological basis of memory, the importance of memory within society, and the various ways in which memory can be affected. We will examine different types of memory and discuss the role of memory in defining our identity. We will compare and contrast current theories of how our brain forms, stores, and modifies memories. We will encounter examples of how memory can play a role in different diseases including amnesia, Alzheimer?s disease and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And we will consider memory reconstruction and distortion, which suggest how this integral part of our self-identity can be easily altered. Students will practice persuasive writing and produce a synthesis of research for their final writing portfolio.

For centuries, scientists and philosophers have grappled with the desire to understand the basis of our human behaviors. Are we biological machines, whose ?brains made us do it?? Or do we have full choice over our actions? Recent findings from the field of neuroscience have provided important insights on this dilemma. Through this course we will examine the relationship between the mind and the brain, keeping in mind its relevance to individual responsibility. We will investigate the underlying ?hardwiring? of the human brain that leads to inherent reflexes as well as shared perceptions and actions. Conversely, we will also see how our human behaviors do not happen in an isolated vacuum, and our interactions with other people, the environment, and our own personal sense of responsibility play a crucial role in our actions. These findings have important implications in the examination of legal responsibility as well as in our ability to understand our own behavior. Throughout this course, we will advance our understanding of the biological basis of free will through reading, researching, and writing about the topic.

The titular character of Tina Fey?s comedy ?The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,? is a young woman who is unbelievably, almost inappropriately optimistic, given that she has just recently been rescued from a doomsday cult. Yet, at the heart of ?Kimmy Schmidt? is the paradox of why someone who has experienced such brutalities would still be so positive? In this course, we will examine this paradox from a sociological perspective as we look at why rich, American families experience acute anxiety and insecurity while poorer families don?t feel as insecure. In examining American society from this perspective, we will discuss how emotions are socially constructed, including whose feelings matter more in our society.

Each month, magazines oriented toward human females feature articles and tips on how to find ?Mr. Right.? Similar male-oriented magazines tell men how to construct themselves in order to attract women. These magazines reflect a cultural understanding that the human male displays and the human female selects her mate based upon this display. But where does this understanding come from and why is it so ubiquitous in modern society? This class examines the history of research on female sexual selection from Darwin to the present. Researchers interested in human mate selection have explored the issue through a variety of approaches and have subsequently arrived at a wide range of theories. While some of these theories have been quickly overturned, others continue to be upheld and explored by the scientific community. Students will develop an understanding of the historical development of this research and its impact on our current beliefs in human sexual selection.

Each month, magazines oriented toward human females feature articles and tips on how to find ?Mr. Right.? Similar male-oriented magazines tell men how to construct themselves in order to attract women. These magazines reflect a cultural understanding that the human male displays and the human female selects her mate based upon this display. But where does this understanding come from and why is it so ubiquitous in modern society? This class examines the history of research on female sexual selection from Darwin to the present. Researchers interested in human mate selection have explored the issue through a variety of approaches and have subsequently arrived at a wide range of theories. While some of these theories have been quickly overturned, others continue to be upheld and explored by the scientific community. Students will develop an understanding of the historical development of this research and its impact on our current beliefs in human sexual selection.