Terms offered: Fall 2016, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
This is a course for entering students, particularly those who are undecided about the major they would like to pursue. It provides an introduction to the intellectual landscape of the College of Letters and Science, revealing the underlying assumptions, goals, and structure of a liberal arts education. Topics include the difference between the College of Letters and Science and the professional schools, the rationale behind the breadth requirement, the approaches and methodologies of each of the divisions in the college, and the benefits of engaging in research as an undergraduate. The ultimate goal of the course is to transform the students into informed participants in their own educational experiences, so that they can make the most of their years at Berkeley.

Terms offered: Fall 2017
A hybrid course for entering students, particularly those who are undecided about the major they would like to pursue. It provides an introduction to the intellectual landscape of the College of Letters and Science, revealing the underlying assumptions, goals, and structure of a liberal arts education. Topics include the rationale behind the breadth requirement, the approaches and methodologies of each of the divisions in the college, and the benefits of engaging in research as an undergraduate. The ultimate goal of the course is to transform the students into informed participants in their own educational experiences, so that they can make the most of their years at Cal.

Terms offered: Summer 2017 8 Week Session, Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 8 Week Session
This is a course for entering students, particularly those who are excited to be here but uncertain of where to start their explorations. It provides an introduction to the intellectual landscape of the College of Letters and Science, revealing the underlying assumptions, goals and structure of a liberal arts education. Guest speakers, drawn largely from the faculty and recent graduates of L&S, will shed light on the nature and attractions of their disciplines. The ultimate goal of the course is to transform students into informed participants in their own educational experiences at Berkeley.

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Spring 2012, Fall 2011
This course is designed for freshmen and sophomores who wish to know about entrepreneurship, its importance to our society, and its role in bringing new ideas to market. Students will understand the entrepreneurial business process and how they might become involved in those processes in their future careers--in whatever direction those careers might lead. This class will explore the structure and framework of entrepreneurial endeavors--both inside and outside the business world. The course will answer questions such as: What is entrepreneurship? What is opportunity recognition and selection? How can you create and define competitive advantage? How can you think about people in the entrepreneurial context? How can you garner support (financial and other) for an entrepreneurial venture? What do you do when nothing works as planned? And, how do you focus on doing right and doing well?

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
Designed for students who wish to know about entrepreneurship, its importance to our society, and its role in bringing new ideas to market. Students will understand the entrepreneurial business process and how they might become involved in those processes in their future careers--in whatever direction those careers might lead. What is entrepreneurship? What is opportunity recognition and selection? How can you create competitive advantage? How do you focus on doing right and doing well?

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
This is a course for new students (freshmen or transfers) who would like to engage with the On the Same Page book or theme for their year in a more in-depth way than the average student might. They will take full advantage of the On the Same Page events and programming planned for the fall of each year, and will enjoy opportunities to discuss the book or theme with faculty and fellow students.

Terms offered: Spring 2009
This course features significant engagement with arts, literature or language, either through critical study of works of art or through the creation of art. Art enables us to see the familiar world with new, often questioning eyes, and makes distant times and places, characters, and issues come alive in our imagination, which is essential to almost all intellectual endeavor. The Arts and Literature breadth requirement is intended to provide students with knowledge and appreciation of the creative arts so that, for the duration of their lives, engagement with art can be, variously, a wellspring of creativity, a lodestar for critical perspectives, and a touchstone of aesthetic quality--in sum, a continuing source of learning and serious pleasure.

Terms offered: Fall 2008
This course features significant engagement with arts, literature or language, either through critical study of works of art or through the creation of art. Art enables us to see the familiar world with new, often questioning eyes, and makes distant times and places, characters, and issues come alive in our imagination, which is essential to almost all intellectual endeavor. The Arts and Literature breadth requirement is intended to provide students with knowledge and appreciation of the creative arts so that, for the duration of their lives, engagement with art can be, variously, a wellspring of creativity, a lodestar for critical perspectives, and a touchstone of aesthetic quality--in sum, a continuing source of learning and serious pleasure.

Terms offered: Fall 2016
This course features significant engagement with arts, literature or language, either through critical study of works of art or through the creation of art. Art enables us to see the familiar world with new, often questioning eyes, and makes distant times and places, characters, and issues come alive in our imagination, which is essential to almost all intellectual endeavor. The Arts and Literature breadth requirement is intended to provide students with knowledge and appreciation of the creative arts so that, for the duration of their lives, engagement with art can be, variously, a wellspring of creativity, a lodestar for critical perspectives, and a touchstone of aesthetic quality--in sum, a continuing source of learning and serious pleasure.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2014
The approaches to problem solving developed by scientists have proven to be effective, and yet we as individuals, groups, and larger societies do not often seem to be able to take advantage even of rational approaches to problems--let alone the "hyperrationality" offered by science. Rationality by itself does not solve any problems or answer any questions. Its efficaciousness depends on how we combine it with our drives, goals, and desires--and perhaps our less-linear algorithm-based intuitions.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Fall 2015, Fall 2001
Today the humanities, once considered the jewels of a liberal arts education, find they must justify their very existence. In 1967, Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California, argued against taxpayers "subsidizing intellectual curiosity." By 2015, the Wisconsin governor had reduced his university's mission to "meeting the state's workforce needs." Is this self-styled "commonsensical" thinking valid? Should the humanities try to make themselves more professional or "scientific"? Rather than seeing the humanities as a series of independent disciplines focused on different specific ends, this course argues that the humanities map the many ways that human beings have sought to be human throughout human history.

Terms offered: Fall 2016, Fall 2013, Fall 2012
The Freshman and Sophomore Seminars program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small-seminar setting. Freshman Seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2002
This course introduces students to key vocabularies, forms, and histories from the many arts and design disciplines represented at UC Berkeley. It is conceived each year around a central theme that responds to significant works and events on the campus, providing an introduction to the many art and design resources available to students on campus. Students will compare practices from across the fields of visual art, film, dance, theater, music, architecture, graphic design, new media, and creative writing, and explore how different artists respond formally to the central themes of the course, considering how similar questions and arguments are differently addressed in visual, material, embodied, sonic, spatial, and linguistic forms.
 

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
The history, chemical nature, botanical origins, and effects on the human brain and behavior of drugs such as stimulants, depressants, psychedelics, analgesics, antidepressants, antipsychotics, steroids, and other psychoactive substances of both natural and synthetic origin. The necessary biological, chemical, and psychological background material for understanding the content of this course will be contained within the course itself.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This course challenges students to think about how individual and American consumer decisions affect forest ecosystems around the world. A survey course that highlights the consequences of different ways of thinking about the forest as a global ecosystem and as a source of goods like trees, water, wildlife, food, jobs, and services. The scientific tools and concepts that have guided management of the forest for the last 100 years, and the laws, rules, and informal institutions that have shaped use of the forests, are analyzed.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Spring 2016
Relationship between human society and the natural environment; case studies of ecosystem maintenance and disruption. Issues of economic development, population, energy, resources, technology, and alternative systems.

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2012
An introduction for students who do not intend to major in biology but who wish to satisfy their breadth requirement in Biological Sciences. Some major concepts of modern biology, ranging from the role of DNA and the way cells communicate, to interactions of cells and creatures with their environment, will be discussed without jargon and with attention to their relevance in contemporary life and culture.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
This is a Discovery Course for non-Biology majors designed to introduce lower-division college students to biology through the lens of the contemporary problems facing people, the planet and the species of the planet. Modern genetic contributions will be presented on such issues as genetic engineering of plants and animals, the emergence of new pathogens, the role of genetic variation among individuals, and the extent to which DNA is and isn’t destiny. Each week will close with the presentation and discussion of a defining biological challenge facing the world.

Terms offered: Spring 2017
Bioinspired design views the process of how we learn from Nature as an innovation strategy translating principles of function, performance and aesthetics from biology to human technology. The creative design process is driven by interdisciplinary exchange among engineering, biology, art, architecture and business. Diverse teams of students will collaborate on, create, and present original bioinspired design projects. Lectures discuss biomimicry, challenges of extracting principles from Nature, scaling, robustness, and entrepreneurship through case studies highlighting robots that run, fly, and swim, materials like gecko-inspired adhesives, artificial muscles, medical prosthetic devices, and translation to start-ups.

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2011, Spring 2011
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Spring 2013
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Fall 2015
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Fall 2015
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Fall 2015
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Fall 2015
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Fall 2015
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Fall 2015
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Fall 2015
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2015, Fall 2011
Each lower-division course in this series deals primarily with the human events, institutions and activities of the past. Historical Studies are particularly important because, to paraphrase the philosopher George Santayana, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. The study of history provides us with perspective on the human condition and with an appreciation of the origins and evolution of the numerous cultures and social orders that have populated the earth. Whether students study history to understand how our world evolved from the past or to focus on the distinctions between the present and previous eras, they will come away with a richer understanding of and appreciation for human experience.

Terms offered: Spring 2013
This course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of American Studies, taking the "Hollywood Dream Factory" as the central theme. Focusing on both parts of that phrase, the course will proceed along a double path. We will examine the historical and geographical development of the motion picture industry from the rise of the studio system to the "new" entertainment economy of the 1980's and we will examine ways Hollywood is represented in literature and film.

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2009
Each lower-division course in this series deals primarily with the human events, institutions and activities of the past. Historical Studies are particularly important because, to paraphrase the philosopher George Santayana, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. The study of history provides us with perspective on the human condition and with an appreciation of the origins and evolution of the numerous cultures and social orders that have populated the earth. Whether students study history to understand how our world evolved from the past or to focus on the distinctions between the present and previous eras, they will come away with a richer understanding of and appreciation for human experience.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016
Introduction to California geography, environment, and society, past and future climates, and the potential impacts of 21st-century climate change on ecosystems and human well-being. Topics include fundamentals of climate science and the carbon cycle; relationships between human and natural systems, including water supplies, agriculture, public health, and biodiversity; and the science, law, and politics of possible solutions that can reduce the magnitude and impacts of climate change.

Terms offered: Fall 2011
What or who decides whether something is beautiful or not? What purpose do beauty and art serve? Where do originality, genius, and inspiration come from? What do art and beauty have to do with freedom and human progress? We will examine primarily western European and North American approaches to beauty as presented in works of philosophy, literary theory, and theories of art and aesthetics, exploring key theoretical questions as they evolve among several intellectual arenas over many centuries.

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Spring 2013, Fall 2012
We will explore the ways in which Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud--three of the most important thinkers in modern Western thought--can be read as responding to the Enlightenment and its notions of reason and progress. We will consider how each remakes a scientific understanding of truth, knowledge, and subjectivity, such that rationality, logic, and the powers of human cognition are shown to be distorted, limited, and subject to forces outside our individual control. All lectures and readings in English.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
Physics and Music is a course designed to help students think about how to approach the world with the eyes, ears, and mind of a scientist. We will use the domain of music and sound to ask what we can learn about the nature of reality and the methods that we humans have developed to discover how the world works. The mysteries of music have long inspired scientists to invent new tools of thought, and some of the earliest scientific concepts were invented to understand music. Surprisingly the concepts that underlie our approach to music appear again and again in the world around us, and they are still at play in the very latest theories and experiments of fundamental physics.

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Fall 2013, Spring 2011
Physical scientists seek to understand the universe, from its microscopic substructure to its largest structures, from our own earth to the edge of the universe and the beginning of time. Students fulfilling Physical Science breadth in the College of Letters & Science may be motivated by the pure pleasure of penetrating the mysteries of the universe, or by more practical considerations such as a desire to take an intelligent stance on such topics as greenhouse gases and space exploration. Whether students opt for the practical or the theoretical or a combination of both, students choosing a lower-division course in this series will learn to formulate problems clearly and think quantitatively, critically, and abstractly.

Terms offered: Spring 2017
Introduction to the geologic setting and natural hazards along the Pacific Rim and a general discussion of their impacts current and future development of the coastal zone. Dangers posed by earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, extreme climatic events, landscapes affecting human health, and sea level rise will be discussed using observations of response to past events in the context of analyzing long-term risks to society and options for future development and mitigation.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Summer 2015 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2014
A tour of the mysteries and inner workings of our solar system. What are planets made of? Why do they orbit the sun the way they do? How do planets form, and what are they made of? Why do some bizarre moons have oceans, volcanoes, and ice floes? What makes the Earth hospitable for life? Is the Earth a common type of planet or some cosmic quirk? This course will introduce basic physics, chemistry, and math to understand planets, moons, rings, comets, asteroids, atmospheres, and oceans. Understanding other worlds will help us save our own planet and help us understand our place in the universe.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
A description of modern astronomy with emphasis on the structure and evolution of stars, galaxies, and the Universe. Additional topics optionally discussed include quasars, pulsars, black holes, and extraterrestrial communication, etc. Individual instructor's synopses available from the department.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
The most interesting and important topics in physics, stressing conceptual understanding rather than math, with applications to current events. Topics covered may vary and may include energy and conservation, radioactivity, nuclear physics, the Theory of Relativity, lasers, explosions, earthquakes, superconductors, and quantum physics.

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2012, Spring 2010
What can we learn about the nature of reality and the ways that we humans have invented to discover how the world works? An exploration of these questions through the physical principles encountered in the study of music. The applicable laws of mechanics, fundamentals of sound, harmonic content, principles of sound production in musical instruments, musical scales. Numerous illustrative lecture demonstrations will be given. Only the basics of high school algebra and geometry will be used.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
Introduction to earthquakes, their causes and effects. General discussion of basic principles and methods of seismology and geological tectonics, distribution of earthquakes in space and time, effects of earthquakes, and earthquake hazard and risk, with particular emphasis on the situation in California.

Terms offered: Fall 2017
This seminar-style course will take up a range of questions related to art works, aesthetic theory, the politics of art, and the relationship between artistic form and meaningful content by way of examinations of specific works at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA). Students will see how experts from several different disciplines approach works of art: What questions do scholars bring to an art work? What is a formal analysis vs. a critical interpretation of an art work? How do curators approach art? Are we supposed to ‘learn from’ an art work or ‘experience’ it or have some particular ‘relationship’ to it? Is art a matter of conveying feeling, a message, or an encounter with beauty?

Terms offered: Fall 2016, Spring 2016
Connector courses are intended to connect the Foundations of Data Science (COMPSCI C8/INFO C8/STAT C8) course with particular fields of study. They will apply the concepts and techniques of the foundation course to topics of interest in a particular discipline in order for students to develop critical thinking in data in subject areas that most interest them; these courses also provide a more nuanced understanding of the context in which the data comes into existence.

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
As a subject, food is multi-disciplinary, drawing on everything from economics and agronomy to sociology, anthropology, and the arts. Each week experts on organic agriculture, school lunch reform, food safety, animal welfare, hunger and food security, farm bill reform, farm-to-school efforts, urban agriculture, food sovereignty, local food economies, etc. will lecture on what their areas of expertise have to offer the food movement to help it define and achieve its goals.

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Fall 2012
As the costs of our industrialized food system become impossible to ignore, a national debate over the future of food and farming has begun. Telling stories about where food comes from, how it is produced (and might be produced differently) plays a critical role in bringing attention to the issues and shifting politics. Each week a prominent figure in this debate explores what can be done to make the food system healthier more equitable, more sustainable, and the role of storytelling in the process.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This course provides students interested in the arts and/or business with an opportunity to develop an idea for an arts organization and turn it into a functioning, sustainable enterprise. Building on each student's own connection to the arts, the course teaches how to invent an arts organization, define its mission, locate the organization within a community, develop its offerings via products, services, and public programs, and manage the organization's numerous operational features.

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Spring 2013, Spring 2012
Exploration of various topics from the multitude of disciplines taught at UC Berkeley. Weekly guest lectures by prominent members of the UC Berkeley academic community. Topics will include groundbreaking research from the past, present, and future; UC Berkeley's unique contributions to society; and topics from speakers' areas of expertise. Learn about many of the remarkable fields of study UC Berkeley has to offer.

Terms offered: Fall 2008
This upper division course features significant engagement with arts, literature or language, either through critical study of works of art or through the creation of art. Art enables us to see the familiar world with new, often questioning eyes, and makes distant times and places, characters, and issues come alive in our imagination, which is essential to almost all intellectual endeavor. The Arts and Literature breadth requirement is intended to provide students with knowledge and appreciation of the creative arts so that, for the duration of their lives, engagement with art can be, variously, a wellspring of creativity, a lodestar for critical perspectives, and a touchstone of aesthetic quality--in sum, a continuing source of learning and serious pleasure.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2015, Fall 2013
This upper division course features significant engagement with arts, literature or language, either through critical study of works of art or through the creation of art. Art enables us to see the familiar world with new, often questioning eyes, and makes distant times and places, characters, and issues come alive in our imagination, which is essential to almost all intellectual endeavor. The Arts and Literature breadth requirement is intended to provide students with knowledge and appreciation of the creative arts so that, for the duration of their lives, engagement with art can be, variously, a wellspring of creativity, a lodestar for critical perspectives, and a touchstone of aesthetic quality--in sum, a continuing source of learning and serious pleasure.

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Spring 2013, Spring 2003
This course explores the concepts of origins in science and religion and their cultural contexts and entanglements, from antiquity to the present. Guiding questions include these: What are origins, and why do we want to know about them? How does this desire manifest itself in different ways of constructing and analyzing knowledge? What sorts of intellectual processes, standards, and tests can be applied to different concepts of origins? What happens when different notions of origins clash?

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2013, Spring 2003
Augustine said, famously, that he always thought he understood what time was until he started thinking about it. That was when he realized he had no idea. This course will address various aspects of the nature of time, including the way we experience it, the way it organizes our everday world, and the way it stands if it does at the foundation of the physical universe. The course will be devoted both to understanding, and to understanding the relations among, these three aspects of temporality.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2014, Spring 2002
Twenty-five years ago the Dalai Lama suggested that a dialogue between Buddhist practitioners and Western scientists interested in the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the world might lead to new ideas and be of benefit to both communities. While science and religion are not generally considered to be natural collaborators, the dialogue that ensued quickly gained momentum and catalyzed new strands of research, most notably in the area of the neuroscience of meditation and emotion. We will continue this dialogue, first by laying the necessary groundwork in our respective fields, and then by exploring areas of convergence and divergence around certain themes.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This Big Ideas course will challenge students to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of the concept and manifestations of time, through the lenses of physics, cosmology, geology, psychology and human perception, and big history. Topics will include the following: What is time? How do we organize time? Time in the cosmos. Time in Earth history. Time in life history. Time in human history.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2004
Energy is one of the main drivers of civilization. Today we are at the precipice of what many hope will be a major paradigm shift in energy production and use. Two transitions are needed. On the one hand, we must find ways to extend the benefits of our existing energy system to the impoverished people living in the developing world while continuing to provide these benefits to the people of the developed world. On the other hand, we must completely overhaul the existing system to fight climate change and other forms of air and water pollution. Are these shifts truly within our reach? Can we achieve both simultaneously? If so, how? This Big Ideas course will grapple with these questions using an interdisciplinary systems approach.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Spring 2015
This course explores the intersections between aesthetic practice and social change. Students will investigate—in both theory and practice—the capacity of art making to cultivate transformation of themselves, their relationships, their practices, their institutions, and the larger economic and socio-political structures in which they function, locally and globally. Focusing on historical and contemporary artists and political issues, we ask: 1) How is art impacted by social change? 2) How has art been used toward social change? and 3) How can we, as course participants, use art to bring about social change?

Terms offered: Fall 2008
Each upper-division course in this series deals primarily with the human events, institutions and activities of the past. Historical Studies are particularly important because, to paraphrase the philosopher George Santayana, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. The study of history provides us with perspective on the human condition and with an appreciation of the origins and evolution of the numerous cultures and social orders that have populated the earth. Whether students study history to understand how our world evolved from the past or to focus on the distinctions between the present and previous eras, they will come away with a richer understanding of and appreciation for human experience.

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Spring 2011
This course explores how archaeologists and bioarchaeologists study human families' and communities' conceptualizations and experiences of health and health care cross-culturally and through time. Students will be exposed to case studies drawing upon skeletal and material cultural evidence.

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
A required class for students in the human rights minor (but open to others), this course examines the development of human rights. More than a history of origins, it explores the relationships between human rights and other crucial themes in the history of the modern era. As a history of international trends and an examination of specific practices, it will ask students to make comparisons across space and time and to reflect upon the evolution of human rights in both thought and action.

Terms offered: Spring 2010
Each upper-division course in this series deals primarily with the human events, institutions and activities of the past. Historical Studies are particularly important because, to paraphrase the philosopher George Santayana, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. The study of history provides us with perspective on the human condition and with an appreciation of the origins and evolution of the numerous cultures and social orders that have populated the earth. Whether students study history to understand how our world evolved from the past or to focus on the distinctions between the present and previous eras, they will come away with a richer understanding of and appreciation for human experience.

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Spring 2009, Spring 2008
Each upper-division course in this series involves the study of the contemporary politics, culture, arts or socio-economic structure of at least one country other than the United States. International Studies courses sensitize students to the immense diversity of cultures and social orders in the world today. As connections and communication between nations become more frequent, it is important that students of the College of Letters & Science have exposure to the essential difference and similarities among various peoples of the earth. The International Studies breadth requirement is designed to foster a spirit of open-mindedness that characterizes a well-educated citizen of the world, and to equip our graduates to thrive in an age of increasing globalization

Terms offered: Spring 2010
Each upper-division course in this series involves the study of the contemporary politics, culture, arts or socio-economic structure of at least one country other than the United States. International Studies courses sensitize students to the immense diversity of cultures and social orders in the world today. As connections and communication between nations become more frequent, it is important that students of the College of Letters & Science have exposure to the essential difference and similarities among various peoples of the earth. The International Studies breadth requirement is designed to foster a spirit of open-mindedness that characterizes a well-educated citizen of the world, and to equip our graduates to thrive in an age of increasing globalization

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
Each ethical decision we make (or avoid) co-creates who we are, our lives, our relationships, and the world we live in. Readings from Aristotle through the existentialists, an exploration of comparative religion, studies in intra- and inter-personal psychology, and cases from literature to business will orient and inspire and support students’ quests to find and live their deepest values. We will investigate those characteristics and habits of human nature that hinder affirmative ethical behavior (and the realization of maximum human potential generally), and explore characteristics and practices that can foster each student’s inherent imagination, creative capacity, integration, and fully satisfying participation in his or her life.

Terms offered: Fall 2008, Fall 2006
Mind and matter; other minds; the concept of "person."

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2012
This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to an understanding of happiness. The first part of the course will be devoted to the different treatments of happiness in the world's philosophical traditions, focusing up close on conceptions or the good life in classical Greek and Judeo-Christian thought, the great traditions in East Asian thought (Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism), and ideas about happiness that emerged more recently in the age of Enlightenment. With these different perspectives as a framework, the course will then turn to treatments of happiness in the behavioral sciences, evolutionary scholarship, and neuroscience. Special emphasis will be given to understanding how happiness arises in experiences of the moral emotions, including gratitude, compassion, reverence and awe, as well as aesthetic emotions like humor and beauty.

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Fall 2013, Spring 2013
According to Aristotle, every exercise of our faculties has some good for its aim. Every discipline taught in the College of Letters & Science has ethical implications, and to study a particular subject without considering these implications can be a sterile--and in extreme cases hazardous--exercise. The urge and ability to ponder such questions as the meaning of life distinguish human beings from the other animals. In an increasingly complex world, in which traditional values are often called into question, students of the College are encouraged to reflect upon their own assumptions as well as the assumptions of other times and cultures. In these upper-division Philosophy and Values courses students in the College will be encouraged to ponder the types of questions that will enhance their ability to understand their heritage, their contemporaries, and themselves.

Terms offered: Spring 2010
According to Aristotle, every exercise of our faculties has some good for its aim. Every discipline taught in the College of L&S has ethical implications, and to study a particular subject without considering these implications can be a sterile--and in extreme cases hazardous--exercise. In an increasingly complex world, in which traditional values are often called into question, students of the College are encouraged to reflect upon their own assumptions as well as the assumptions of other times and cultures. In these upper-division Philosophy and Values courses students in the College will be encouraged to ponder the questions that will enhance their ability to understand their heritage, their contemporaries, and themselves.

Terms offered: Spring 2009, Spring 2008, Spring 2007
Upper-division courses in this Social and Behavioral Sciences series provide students with the tools they need to analyze the determinants of human behavior and the dynamics of social interaction among human beings. While fulfilling this breadth requirement, students may find that they look upon the world with a fresh perspective: every encounter or gathering provides an opportunity to observe society in action. Students of the College of Letters & Science will also find that the ability to analyze the complex political, economic, social, cultural, and psychological factors at play in contemporary life will equip them to evaluate the evidence mustered in support of key public policy decision

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Spring 2014, Spring 2013
Brings together theoretical work on sex and gender from gender and women's studies, science studies, philosophy, and the social sciences, with archaeological case studies from the forefront of comtemporary scholarship. Emphasizes the experience of people with different cultures of sex/gender in the U.S., tracing specific historical traditions and examining how different conceptions of sex and gender were mediated when people of different racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds came together in the U.S. past.

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Fall 2013, Spring 2013
Multidisciplinary explorations into the origins, nature, and exercise of language as social symbolic power, drawing on readings taken from anthropology, social and cultural theory, and critical discourse analysis. Topics include language and myth, the meaning of meaning, the economy of verbal exchanges, perspective and ideology in language, institutional discourse, gender and discourse, and linguistic imperialism.

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This course is designed to provide students with a deeper understanding both of the organization of the political economy in the United States and of other advanced economies, and of why the distribution of earnings, wealth, and opportunity have been diverging in the United States and in other nations. It also is intended to provide insights into the political and public-policy debates that have arisen in light of this divergence, as well as possible means of reversing it.

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Spring 2011
A cross-disciplinary exploration of cultural heritage on a global and local scale through discussion, debate, in-class activities, and team-based research projects that draw attention to the impacts of digital technology. Themes include the creation and management of heritage sites; the ethics of archaeologists as stewards of heritage; listening to multiple voices of interest groups; destruction and looting; and the preservation, conservation, and public presentation of heritage.

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2013
Survey of government policy toward the arts (especially direct subsidy, copyright and regulation, and indirect assistance) and its effects on artists, audiences, and institutions. Emphasizes "highbrow" arts, U.S. policy, and the social and economic roles of participants in the arts. Readings, field trips, and case discussion. One paper in two drafts required for undergraduate credit; graduate credit awarded for an additional short paper to be arranged and attendance at four advanced colloquia throughout the term. Undergraduate level of 257.