All Courses

This course provides instruction in writing for students considering careers or advanced study in the natural, computational, or applied sciences. Through critical reading of key examples of the genres of scientific literature, students study how scientific…

What are the effects of displacement on tradition, storytelling, and cultural belonging? How does forced migration influence narration, creative expression, and imagination? What are the powers and potentials of artistic communication after existential…

What do humanist scholars do and how do they do it? This preparatory course introduces students to the fundamental skills, techniques, and methods that are applicable for study in any one of the disciplines offered in the humanities, including languages and…

This course analyzes the ethical, social, and policy implications of global demographic change. Through a sustainability lens, students engage with issues such as declining fertility, population aging, migration pressures, and climate-related displacement.…

The goal of this course is to develop skills for making corporate investment and financing decisions. Topics include discounted cash flow and other valuation techniques; risk and return; capital asset pricing model; corporate capital structure and financial…

This course surveys William Shakespeare's comedies, including famous works such as A Midsummer Night's Dream , Twelfth Night , and The Tempest , as well as less produced plays like The Two Gentlemen of Verona . Although the primary focus of study is the plays…

Visions, spirit possession, near-death experiences—experiences of ecstasy are universal in the history of religions. Psychology of religion attempts to explain such experiences using current understandings of the mind. At times, the study of ecstatic…

In this course, we investigate trust, the buyer's decision process, modern selling methodologies, persuasion, and the art of influence. Students apply ideas from each class in their own environment and have the opportunity to sharpen their skills in an…

Born in Florence to expatriate parents and widely familiar with Europe from boyhood family trips, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) displayed social savoir faire already in 1874 at eighteen on arrival in Paris to train as a professional painter. His portfolio…

In Rabelais and His World , Mikhail Bakhtin argues that the grotesque—the exaggerated, the excessive, the strange, and the malformed—lowers what is elevated and elevates what is low, collapsing distinctions between sacred and profane, ruler and fool, and…

This course is intended to provide a thorough introduction to the poetry of Archaic Greek lyric. Readings cover the major Archaic Greek lyric poets, from Archilochus through Bacchylides and Pindar. Over the course of the semester, students become proficient…

This advanced fiction-writing course focuses on writing thrillers—dark, engrossing, and suspenseful plot-driven stories involving the push and pull between protagonist and antagonist. The course is intended for students who want to write a thriller novel; it…

This course tackles one of the most urgent questions in global politics today: what should societies do after mass violence, civil war, or state repression? Focusing on truth and reconciliation commissions as a central tool of transitional justice, we explore…

This course helps business professionals improve their writing so that they are better equipped to accomplish their educational and professional goals. Students practice some of the essential forms of business writing, including e-mail messages, cover…

This course is designed for students seeking preparation for EXPO E-25 and for others wanting to review such basics of academic argument as thesis, evidence, and structure. Short writing assignments help students develop the skills essential for producing…

The goal of this course is to introduce abstract mathematical thought and formal proof writing. We begin by introducing logic and proof strategies, with emphasis on proofs related to sets, relations, functions, and elementary number theory. Then, we study…

Our brains make us what we are. How did they get that way? How are they different from other animals' and how are they similar? This course explores the structure and function of the modern human brain and examines the selective pressures that have impacted…

Geometry is about symmetry, shape, and space. This course emphasizes mathematical reasoning and the role of mathematical discourse in geometry classrooms. Our explorations begin with the classic work on geometry, Euclid's The Elements . We study straightedge…

During the early modern period, episodes of feverish witch hunts gripped both Britain and America. In this interdisciplinary course, students explore three of the most infamous and well-documented witch crazes, specifically: North Berwick, Scotland in 1590;…

What is the connection between physical and mental health? How does this relationship affect our performance, potential for disease development, and overall wellness? Drawing on research from historical, philosophical, psychological, and medical perspectives,…

This course explores injury analysis and the determination of trauma etiology and mechanics. Starting with an examination of injury and emergency department tables from the Centers for Disease Control, students move on to case analyses and self and team-run…

What do babies know about the world? How does that early knowledge transform into the rich, complex thinking of older children and adults? And how do scientists answer these questions? This course covers several of the big topics in developmental psychology.…

This course is a broadly-based investigation into the psychological, sociological, and literary functions of laughter and humor. Socrates notoriously never got around to explaining how comedy and tragedy are actually two versions of the same thing (like the…

This intensive poetry workshop offers students the opportunity to further develop their aptitude and affinity for the practice of writing in verse lines. In this case verse is understood to mean any and all forms of writing in lines as opposed to prose…

Although nature often appears as the most fixed and self-evident category in social and political thought, its meaning, like other foundational concepts, has been historically constructed and politically contested. This course examines how ideas of nature…

This course examines the foundations and applications of sustainable economic growth, with an emphasis on public value, development finance, inequality, and place-based policy. Students engage with theoretical and empirical frameworks to understand how cities…

This course is meant to follow CREA E-597 , in which students built the imaginative world of their books and produced the first story or chapter of them. In this workshop, students write two additional chapters or stories, or approximately 30 pages of new…

The First World War was one of the largest and most devastating conflicts the world has ever seen. It was also one of the first wars that was waged across the entire earth—from Europe to Africa, China, and the Middle East. This course examines the First World…

"All men would be tyrants if they could." You would have seen this on many bumper stickers in 1776 if there were such things. How did the Revolutionary generation address this problem of power? How did they create a system which would protect individual…

In the last ten years, many new discoveries were made about the origin and initial development of Mahayana Buddhism. This course aims at reading major Mahayana texts against the historical and archeological background of Buddhism in ancient India, and by…