Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016
This course is a broad survey of major canonical works (“Great Books”) emphasizing from the premodern traditions of Western Civilization since the Greeks. These texts offer responses to central questions that, across the disciplinary divides, continue to inform contemporary work in the social sciences and the humanities. By considering these enduring questions and the responses of writers in Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern Europe, we seek to examine core issues of the liberal arts as they find expression across what would later become disciplinary divisions.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
This is an interdisciplinary survey course that seeks to understand how we define justice, evil, and individual responsibility in modern society. In particular we are going to probe carefully how humans reflect on and practice the process of moral reasoning. We will focus on human behavior in extreme situations: war, life and death conflicts, genocide and mass killing, as well as competing conceptions of human freedom. The course has a distinctive dual purpose. On the one hand we want to encourage the learning of critical thinking skills. This includes the ability to systematically evaluate information and competing moral claims. Also, it is intended as an exposure to the interdisciplinary approach. That is, how can different perspectives illuminate the same issue? With this in mind the course draws on important work from philosophy and ethics, social psychology, jurisprudential analysis, historical-political accounts, and personal memoirs.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Seminars for the group study of selected topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses. Topics will vary from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Summer 2017 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2017
This course, required of all ISF majors but open to all students, provides an introduction to the works of foundational social theorists of the nineteenth century, including Karl Marx and Max Weber. Writing in what might be called the “pre disciplinary” period of the modern social sciences, their works cross the boundaries of anthropology, economics, history, political science, sociology, and are today claimed by these and other disciplines as essential texts. We will read intensively and critically from their respective works, situating their intellectual contributions in the history of social transformations wrought by industrialization and urbanization, political revolution, and the development of modern consumer society.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This is a course exploring how we understand the idea of the self in contemporary social worlds. The course shares the presumption that the modern self is a created endeavor. It charts traditional and contemporary understandings of individual identity, the maturation process and the notion of an inner life, the concepts of freedom and individual agency, the force of evolution and heredity, and the influence of social causation. The course stresses the complex interplay between the development of a sense of self, and the socialization pressures at work in the family, society, and global cultures.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Summer 2014 Second 6 Week Session
This course examines the role of language in the construction of social identities, and how language is tied to various forms of symbolic power at the national and international levels.? Drawing on case studies from Southeast Asia, Europe, Canada, and the U.S., we will pay special attention to topics such as the legitimization of a national language, the political use of language in nation-building processes, the endangerment of indigenous languages, and processes of linguistic subordination and domination. This course will be interdisciplinary in its attempt to understand language in terms of history, politics, anthropology and sociology.

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Spring 2007, Spring 2004
This course is designed to sharpen our skills in understanding what happens when the world of images and words meet. Starting with the work from the Western "classical" tradition we will proceed to investigate how word/image constellations operate in a variety of media, including sculpture and poetry, painting and prose, death masks, tableaux vivants, photography, and advertising.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This course provides an overview of the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) as a way to study how our knowledge and technology shape and are shaped by social, political, historical, economic, and other factors. We will learn key concepts of the field (e.g., how technologies are understood and used differently in different communities) and apply them to a wide range of topics, including geography, history, environmental and information science, and others. Questions this course will address include: how are scientific facts constructed? How are values embedded in technical systems?

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Spring 2014, Fall 2013
This course surveys the technological revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, it then focuses on the development of the computer and the Internet. The final part examines the impact of the Internet on social movements.

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2014, Fall 2013
This interdisciplinary course is an introduction to the complex interplay of transnational values, international rights and legal institutions that increasingly govern social, cultural and geopolitical interactions in our contemporary world. Theoretical and methodological tools from the social sciences, jurisprudence, and philosophy will be applied im the analyses of these interplays. A study of rights and norms presupposes not only an understanding of the empirical evolution of rights traditions (including constitutional traditions) in a variety of global regions, but also an understanding of the theories of rights and laws that support such traditions as they are embedded in them (just war theories, peace theories, etc.) The study of rights and norms also requires an exploration of the transformations of crucial international norms and rights due to the formation of supranational institutions and organizations in the 20th century (UN, UNESCO, GO's, etc.). The course will provide the students with an opportunity to place emerging transnational rights institutions into a historical and geopolitical framework.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
The focus of this course will be on the various ways the nature and trajectory of modern capitalism has been interpreted. Our stress will be on post-Marxist works of analysis. The initial focal point will be on the work of Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter, as well as important current debates in economic history and social theory generated by their work. Both Weber and Schumpeter display a strong fascination and elaboration with the work of Marx. The way they analyze Marx is very revealing about the way contemporary analysts seek to understand the capitalist system. We will also consider a number of current efforts that look at the systemic nature of capitalism. In particular, we are interested in how economic historians now see the development of capitalism. We also want to examine the Weberian tradition in terms of the role of culture in shaping economic behavior. Debates about the nature of globalization will also be considered as well as analysis of the changing nature of work.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This interdisciplinary course will explore whether it has proven possible and desirable to understand society through value-free and positivistic scientific methods as predominantly developed in the transatlantic worlds of the 19th centuries. We shall explore questions that may be applied to the realms of public health and human biology, or to the social sciences generally, including anthropology, sociology, economics, and political science.

Terms offered: Summer 2016 8 Week Session, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
How have international actors used media to construct public opinion about salient issues, such as war, terrorism and intervention, international trade and finance, and global warming and resource depletion? The purpose of this course is to introduce students to key concepts, methods, and theories in the analysis of media effects, particularly in the areas of public opinion formation and international relations.

Terms offered: Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session
In many ways, consumption defines our lives – our identities as consumers are even more important, some would argue, our identities as workers or producers. But what are the implications of a society in which “you are what you consume?” In this class, we will address questions such as: Under what conditions does a “consumer society” develop? What does global commodity chain tell us about colonialization, global inequality, and environmental injustice? How can we shape the life cycle of basic commodities—from raw materials to iPhones--in a socially sustainable way? This course will be interdisciplinary in its attempt to understand consumer society and culture in terms of political economy, geography, history, anthropology and sociology.

Terms offered: Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session
In this class, we will look at computing as a social phenomenon: to see it not just as a technology that transforms but to see it as a technology that has evolved, and is being put to use, in very particular ways, by particular groups of people. We will be doing this by employing a variety of methods, primarily historical and ethnographic, oriented around a study of practices. We will pay attention to technical details but ground these technical details in social organization (a term whose meaning should become clearer and clearer as the class progresses). We will study the social organization of computing around different kinds of hardware, software, ideologies, and ideas.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Introduction to central theoretical investigations concerning the construction and organization of social life. Using some works from the "classical" traditions of social theory as well as some examples of contemporary analysis, this course will explore such topics as the nature of power and social/historical change, the nature of economic production and consumption, the meaning of difference--racial, sexual, class--the development of institutions, etc.

Terms offered: Not yet offered
This course surveys the technological revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, then focuses on the development of the computer and the Internet. The final part examines the impact of the Internet on social movements.

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Summer 2012 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2010 Second 6 Week Session
This course is designed primarily to allow faculty to develop courses which address specific issues, themes, or problems of interdisciplinary interest. Topics vary semester to semester. Students should consult the department's webpage for current offerings before the start of the semester.

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Spring 2007, Fall 2005
In this course, we will trace some of the substantive changes and transformations taking place in contemporary Europe in the areas of culture, society, and politics. In particular, we will look at the effects of massive migration flows--due to globalization processes--on the national culture of the core countries and examine the ways in which particular national cultures react to the increasing multiculturization of Europe. The goal of the course is, first of all, to familiarize students with a variety of cultural, social, and political innovations that accompany the formation of multicultural Europe. This involves (1) an examination of the traditional concepts of nationhood and citizenship, and (2)a study of the Europeanization of culture.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Summer 2017 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2017
This class is an introduction to research methods, leading students through different units built around specific learning goals and practical exercises. The course is designed to teach a range of research skills, including the ability to formulate research questions and to engage in scholarly conversations and arguments; the identification, evaluation, mobilization, and interpretation of sources; methods and instruments of field research (interviews, questionnaires, and sampling) and statistical thinking; and the construction of viable arguments and explanation in the human sciences. At the same time, the course is designed to help students identify their own thesis topic, bibliography, and methodological orientation.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Summer 2017 8 Week Session, Spring 2017
The ISF Senior Thesis requirement is the capstone experience and final product of the ISF major. The thesis is a sustained, original, and critical examination of a central interdisciplinary research question, developed under the guidance of the ISF 190 instructor. The thesis represents a mature synthesis of research skills, critical thinking, and competent writing. As the final product of a student's work in the major, the thesis is not the place to explore a new set of disciplines or research problems for the first time, but should develop methods of inquiry and bridge the several disciplines that students have developed in their course of study.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Supervised experience relevant to the student's specific area of concentration in the Interdisciplinary Studies Field Major in off-campus organizations. Regular individual meetings with faculty sponsor and written reports required.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Fall 2015
Seminars for the group study of selected topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses. Topics will vary from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Summer 2017 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session
Directed individual independent study and research of special topics by arrangement with faculty.