Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE)

Javanese shadow theatre, Bedouin love poems, and American community life are but a few of the sociocultural worlds that anthropologists have effectively studied and written about. This is no easy task, given the substantial difficulties involved in understanding and portraying the concerns, activities, and lifeworlds other than one’s own. Despite these challenges, ethnographic research is generally considered one of the best ways to form a nuanced and contextually rich understanding of a particular social world. To gain an informed sense of the methods, challenges, and benefits of such an approach, students will try their hands at ethnographic research and writing. In fall, each student will be asked to undertake an ethnographic research project in order to investigate the features of a specific social world—such as a homeless shelter, a religious festival, or a neighborhood in Brooklyn. In spring, students will craft a fully realized piece of ethnographic writing that conveys something of the features and dynamics of that world in lively, accurate, and comprehensive terms. Along the way, and with the help of anthropological writings that are either exceptional or experimental in nature, we will collectively think through some of the most important features of ethnographic projects, such as interviewing others, the use of field notes, the interlacing of theory and data, the role of dialogue and the author’s voice in ethnographic prose, and the ethical and political responsibilities that come with any attempt to understand and portray the lives of others.

Throughout history, settler colonial and industrial extractive projects have displaced Native American and Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and instigated the environmental crises that plague our current world and threaten future survival. Indigenous peoples in the Americas and beyond have long been at the forefront of resistance movements against environmentally exploitative projects, engaged in an ongoing struggle that links Indigenous sovereignty with care for the natural world. In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will explore the humanistic concerns and ethics at stake regarding people’s role in ecosystems, our collective responsibility to protect the natural world, and the necessary work toward environmental and climate justice as intimately linked to Indigenous ecological knowledge, governance, and rights. This course will include readings on Native American and Indigenous oral history; land dispossession, displacement, and migration; ecological knowledge, practices, and biodiversity; decolonizing food systems, agriculture, and sustainability; health, medicine, and healing; resistance movements and social alliances; and the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty, climate change, and environmental justice. We will look to case studies covering topics such as the links between language and land in Arctic environmental education; regenerative food systems in New Zealand, Mexico, and Peru; the effects of oil drilling in Ecuador and uranium mining in Navajo country; and resistance movements like Standing Rock/NoDAPL. Our texts will include poetry, interviews, multimedia pieces, book chapters, and journal articles primarily authored by Indigenous scholars and artists. We will explore Indigenous knowledge and decolonizing approaches as we re-envision an ethical path to a sustainable future that integrates environmental protection with social justice.

This year-long seminar offers an introduction to histories of modern and contemporary art through two distinct themes: place and space. In fall, we will explore the place of the Hudson Valley through the category of Hudson River School landscape painting, asking how Euro-American artists portrayed ideologies of imperialism, settler-colonialism, and Western expansionism through the genre of landscape. We will also explore how Indigenous and Black artists have defined place, land, and embodiment as counter-histories to the dominant, white, western norm. Along the way, we will ask broader questions such as: What can art tell us about humans’ relationships to land and environment? How does art shape our understanding of climate crisis and the Anthropocene, or how humans have indelibly altered the earth? In spring, we will explore the category of sculpture in relationship to the body, light, and touch; the pedestal, the space of the museum, the monument, and the public sphere; commodities and everyday objects; and photography, video, and film. Our aim will be to explore how sculptures and installations shape how we perceive objects, sites, and spaces in the world. We will also research the Sarah Lawrence College archives to write about public sculptures past and present on campus. This course will introduce students to the skills of close reading, visual analytical writing, and archival and library research. Assignments may include visual analysis essays, reading responses, peer reviews, and collaborative digital humanities projects. Conference projects will entail writing a long-form research paper or presenting your research in an alternate format, such as a podcast or online exhibition. Biweekly in fall, students will alternate between individual conferences with the instructor and small-group activities that will include field trips to area museums, introductions to campus resource, and research sessions. Biweekly in spring, students will meet with the instructor for individual conferences.

This seminar in art theory and curatorial practice will explore ecological aesthetics in the era of anthropogenic climate change. The course’s guiding question will be: What forms might an aesthetic experience of nature take when it no longer privileges the human observer but, rather, cultivates an equality and reciprocity between all forms of life? Possible answers will be drawn from recent work in critical theory, Black studies, Indigenous studies, queer theory, continental philosophy, and science and technology studies. Case studies on the work of selected contemporary artists will complement the theoretical frameworks under consideration. The course’s topics will include: post-Enlightenment aesthetics of nature, biopower, vitalism, post- and antihumanisms, plant philosophies, bacteria and fungi studies, and deep time. The course will also incorporate a curatorial practicum that will allow students to participate in the production of an on-campus exhibition exploring ecological themes. In addition to exercises on exhibition writing, model making, and art installation, we will meet with artworld professionals working at museums in the New York area.

Ecology is a scientific discipline that studies interactions between living organisms and their environments, as well as processes governing how species are distributed, how they interact, and how nutrients and energy cycle through ecosystems. Ecologists might ask questions about how plant growth responds to climate change, how squirrel population size or behavior changes in response to acorn availability, or how nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous cycle in rivers and streams. In this course, students will develop a strong foundational understanding of the science of ecology at the individual, population, community, and ecosystem scales. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on how carefully-designed experiments and data analysis can help us find predictable patterns despite the complexity of nature. Students will be expected to design and carry out a field experiment, either individually or in small groups. The course will include a weekly lab, with most labs held outdoors. 

Plants are all around us and are essential to life on Earth but are often overlooked or taken for granted. Especially as climate change and habitat loss threaten global biodiversity, understanding the biology of plants is fundamental to understanding the complex web of life on Earth. This course will be an introductory survey of botany. The first half of the course will cover topics such as plant anatomy, morphology, physiology, and reproduction; the second half will explore plant genetics, diversity, ecology, and evolution. Weekly discussions and textbook readings will be complemented by lab activities and a field trip to the New York Botanical Garden.

Humans are bathing in a sea of microbes. Microbes coat our environments, live within our bodies, and perform functions both beneficial and detrimental to human well-being. This course will explore the biology of microorganisms, broadly defined as bacteria, archaea, viruses, single-celled eukaryotes, and fungi. We will study microbes at multiple scales, including the individual cell, the growing population, and populations interacting with one another or their environments. Microbial physiology, genetics, diversity, and ecology will be covered in depth. Particular emphasis will be given to the role of microbes that cause infectious disease in humans and microbes that play critical roles in ecological processes. Seminars will be supplemented by a weekly lab section to learn key microbiological techniques and methods, most notably culturing and identifying bacteria. 

With more than 350,000 known species, plants form the foundations of ecosystems and are crucial to life on Earth. This course will examine the diversity, ecology, and evolutionary history of major land plant groups—bryophytes, ferns, lycophytes, gymnosperms, and angiosperms. Through lectures, discussion of scientific literature, and hands-on investigation of live and preserved material, students will learn how to decipher botanical terminology; identify major plant families using diagnostic characters and dichotomous keys; analyze evolutionary relationships and adaptations across plant lineages; and investigate plant interactions with fungi, bacteria, animals, and their environment.

This course focuses on the intersection of economic development and environmental and natural-resource management. We will focus on the unique environmental and natural-resource challenges in the context of sustainable development, seeking to understand how economic development goals can be achieved without sacrificing the economic and environmental well-being of future generations. We will bring together relevant theoretical and empirical insights obtained from environmental economics, ecological economics, political economy, and development studies. A sample of guiding topics include: how the relationship between economic growth, demographic change, and environmental pollution has evolved; how to approach and deal with climate change in the context of sustainable development; how globalization distributes and redistributes environmental benefits and costs between the Global South and Global North; whether a Global Green New Deal can address both environmental sustainability and economic development; why developing countries suffer from the natural-resource curse; what local communities in developing countries can teach us about sustainable resource management; what property-right regimes work for sustainable development; and what renewable energy policies work for developing countries.

This course is designed for students interested in the social sciences who wish to understand the methodology and techniques involved in the estimation of structural relationships between variables (i.e., regression analysis). The course is intended for students who wish to be able to carry out empirical work in their particular field, both at Sarah Lawrence College and beyond, and critically engage with empirical work done by academic or professional social scientists. In fall, the course will cover the theoretical and applied statistical principles that underlie Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression techniques. The course will begin with a review of basic statistical and probability theory, as well as relevant mathematical techniques. We will then study the assumptions needed to obtain the Best Linear Unbiased Estimates (BLUE) conditions of a regression equation. Particular emphasis will be placed on the assumptions regarding the distribution of a model’s error term and other BLUE conditions. The course will cover hypothesis testing, sample selection, and the critical role of the t- and F-statistic in determining the statistical significance of an econometric model and its associated slope or “β” parameters. Further, we will address three main problems associated with the violation of a particular BLUE assumption: multicollinearity, serial correlation, and heteroscedasticity. We will learn how to identify, address, and remedy each of these problems. In addition, the course will take a similar approach to understanding and correcting model specification errors. In spring, the course will build on fall learning by introducing advanced econometrics topics. We will study difference-in-difference estimators, autoregressive dependent lag (ARDL) models, co-integration, and error correction models involving nonstationary time series. We will investigate simultaneous equations systems, vector error correction (VEC), and vector autoregressive (VAR) models. The final part of the course will involve the study of panel data, as well as logit and probit models. Students will receive ample exposure to concrete issues while also being encouraged to consider basic methodological questions, including the debates between John Maynard Keynes and Jan Tinbergen regarding the power and limitations of econometric analysis. Spring is particularly relevant to students who wish to pursue graduate studies in a social-science discipline but equally relevant for other types of graduate degrees that involve knowledge of intermediate-level quantitative analysis. The practical "hands-on" approach taken in this course will be useful to those students who wish to do future conference projects, internships, or enter the job market in the social (or natural) sciences with significant empirical content. The goal is for students to be able to analyze questions such as: What is the relationship between slavery and industrialization in the United States? What effects do race, gender, and educational attainment have in the determination of wages? How does the female literacy rate affect the child mortality rate? How can one model the effect of economic growth on carbon-dioxide emissions? What is the relationship among sociopolitical instability, inequality, and economic growth? How do geographic location and state spending affect average public-school teacher salaries? How does one study global inequalities in terms of access to COVID-19 vaccines?

This seminar, broadly speaking, will cover introductory microeconomics and macroeconomics from a wide range of theoretical perspectives, including neoclassical, post-Keynesian, Marxian, feminist, and institutional political economy perspectives. The course will enable students to understand the more "technical aspects" of economics (e.g., usage of supply/demand analysis within and outside neoclassical economics), as well as significant economic history and the history of economic thought. Theoretical issues will be applied to contemporary policy debates such as industrial policy, foreign trade, global warming, and inequality.

Geospatial data is information associated with locations on the surface of the Earth and can include a variety of different types of data used in environmental science, such as sample collection locations at a field-study site, the areal extent of a forest biome, or the output generated by global climate models. The analysis of geospatial data also allows social scientists to identify disparities in access to natural resources or exposure to pollutants and hazards and has been critical to the study of environmental justice. This course provides an introduction to foundational concepts in physical geography and geodesy, cartography and geostatistics, along with practical experience in geospatial data analysis using open source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. Although we will focus primarily on environmental applications, the skills learned in this course can be utilized in many natural and social-science disciplines, as well as to help you avoid getting lost!

A watershed is an area of land (and the ground that underlies it) that drains to a common outlet. This simple concept provides a critically important framework for understanding our most important water-management issues, along with many processes in environmental science and ecology. Watersheds can be defined across a range of spatial scales—from a suburban parking lot to the drainage basin of the Amazon River—and their diverse forms and characteristics represent a variety of climates, land-use practices, and topographies. In this course, we will learn how watersheds are delineated. The course will explore the flow of surface water through watersheds, covering topics such as precipitation, evapotranspiration, infiltration, and stream and river networks. In spring, students will build on this foundation to study groundwater flow and estuaries, along with topics in watershed management such as water infrastructure, urbanization, interbasin transfers, flooding, water quality, and the impacts of global climate change on hydrologic processes. Along with indoor seminars and data analysis activities, the course will include field visits to local waterways and water infrastructure sites. As the course will include problem sets, prior experience in algebra and geometry is required.

The pollution of our air, water, and soils is responsible for millions of deaths across the world each year, along with immeasurable harm to natural ecosystems. In this seminar, we will study the chemistry of environmental pollutants that are most salient today—including lead, soot, pesticides, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), sewage, nutrients, and greenhouse gases—and how their chemistry influences their fate and transport through the environment and, in turn, their impacts on human health and natural ecosystems. We will also learn about basic techniques of pollutant monitoring and strategies to remediate different types of pollution and restore healthy ecosystems and communities. Beyond this, we will explore the broader concept of pollution, considering how compounds that can be vital to our survival can also harm our environment and how thresholds for when a compound becomes a “pollutant” are determined. Course work will include both chemistry problem sets and diverse readings about historic and current pollution issues. Conference work will allow students to develop a case study of a pollution incident or ongoing issue.

As the desire to engage in individual and collective efforts toward sustainable and climate-change mitigating solutions increases, this workshop offers an opportunity for students to explore the multiple ways in which “sustainability” can be fostered and developed at an institution like Sarah Lawrence College. Students will work in small groups on a variety of projects and produce research and educational material that can lead to concrete and actionable proposals for the College and our community to consider. Students will determine their own areas of interest and research from energy and water-usage monitoring to composting solutions, recycling/reusing and consumer sobriety, landscaping choices, pollinators and natural diversity, food growing, natural and human history of the land, and community collaborations, to name a few. As part of their project efforts, students will engage with College administrators who are actively working toward sustainable solutions, as well as students, staff, and faculty groups such as the Warren Green vegetable garden, the Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collective on the Environment (SLICE), and the Sustainability Committee. We will also explore the possibility of writing grants in coordination with other actors at the College. Most of the coursework will happen during class time. Skills in areas of any expertise are welcome, from environmental science to writing to visual and studio arts—but any interest in issues of sustainability and a strong sense of dedication will suffice.

Throughout history, settler colonial and industrial extractive projects have displaced Native American and Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and instigated the environmental crises that plague our current world and threaten future survival. Indigenous peoples in the Americas and beyond have long been at the forefront of resistance movements against environmentally exploitative projects, engaged in an ongoing struggle that links Indigenous sovereignty with care for the natural world. In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will explore the humanistic concerns and ethics at stake regarding people’s role in ecosystems, our collective responsibility to protect the natural world, and the necessary work toward environmental and climate justice as intimately linked to Indigenous ecological knowledge, governance, and rights. This course will include readings on Native American and Indigenous oral history; land dispossession, displacement, and migration; ecological knowledge, practices, and biodiversity; decolonizing food systems, agriculture, and sustainability; health, medicine, and healing; resistance movements and social alliances; and the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty, climate change, and environmental justice. We will look to case studies covering topics such as the links between language and land in Arctic environmental education; regenerative food systems in New Zealand, Mexico, and Peru; the effects of oil drilling in Ecuador and uranium mining in Navajo country; and resistance movements like Standing Rock/NoDAPL. Our texts will include poetry, interviews, multimedia pieces, book chapters, and journal articles primarily authored by Indigenous scholars and artists. We will explore Indigenous knowledge and decolonizing approaches as we re-envision an ethical path to a sustainable future that integrates environmental protection with social justice.

Building on the foundations learned in Intermediate French I (FREN 3501), this course will include a systematic review of French grammar and vocabulary, with a focus on writing papers according to French expectations alongside reinforcing linguistic correctness in spontaneous oral communication, in order to develop real fluency. This yearlong course will be divided into two separate themes. In fall, the focus will be on the literary and cultural revolutions brought on by World War II in France, from Sartre’s existentialist novel, La Nausée, to Camus’ absurd novel, L’Etranger; alongside Beauvoir’s revolutionary book, Le Deuxième Sexe, and Beckett’s play, En attendant Godot; to new experimentations in the genre of the novel, including Butor’s La Modification and Duras’ Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein. We will also study this time frame as one of the darkest periods of recent French history, learning about the collaboration of the French state in the deportation of Jews to Nazi death camps and the violence of colonization that led to the Algerian war. In spring, the focus will be on the history and contemporary ramifications of the notion of nature and the environment in France. We will read and discuss extensively the current debates in France around the question of climate change and protecting biodiversity, exploring exciting initiatives happening all over the country. These discussions will be anchored in an exploration of the cultural origins of the French relationship with the natural world, from the notion of “terroir” of aristocratic origins, to Romantic admiration for natural landscapes, to colonialist constructions of the “exotic,” and philosophical reflections on the human/animal divide, to name a few topics of potential discussion. In addition to conferences, a weekly conversation session with a French language assistant will be required. Attendance at the weekly French lunch table and French film screenings are both highly encouraged. Aimed at consolidating students’ B1 level (Common European Framework of Reference, CEFR) and bringing students to B2 level, sufficient to potentially attend French universities, this course is specifically designed to help prepare students to study in the Paris global education program. The spring semester will also be an opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration with the Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) courses offered at the College.

This course will seek to understand the origins and rise of the New Right in the United States and elsewhere as it has taken shape in the latter half of the 20th century to the present. We will seek to identify the origins of the New Right and what defines it, alongside exploring the varied geographies of the movement and its numerous strands and identifying the constituents of the contemporary right coalition. In addition, we will explore the actors and institutions that have played a role in the expansion of the New Right (e.g., courts, state and local governments, the Tea Party movement, conservative think tanks, lawyers, media platforms, evangelical Christians, billionaires, militias, and more) and the issues that motivate the movement (e.g., anti-communism, immigration, environment, white supremacy and nationalism, voter suppression, neoliberal economic policies, anti-globalization, free speech). This is a reading-intensive, discussion-oriented seminar in which we will survey a broad sweep of the recent literature on the New Right. While the course will focus most specifically on United States context, conference papers based on international/comparative case studies are welcome. Students will be required to attend associated talk and film viewings; write weekly essays and engage classmates in conversation online the night before seminar; and write two short research papers that link the themes of the class with their own interests, creative products, research agenda, and/or political engagement. Students will also conduct two associated creative projects/expressions. Transdisciplinary collaborative activities across the college and community are encouraged. Film, performance, written commentary, podcasts, workshops, and other forms of action can provide additional outlets for student creative projects and engagement.

Despite widespread daily reporting on China’s rise to superpower status, and both its challenge to and necessary partnership with the United States, what do we really know about the country? We will explore China’s evolving place in the world through political-economic integration and globalization processes. Throughout the seminar, we will compare China with other areas of the world within the context of broader theoretical and thematic questions. We will consistently focus efforts on reframing debates, both academic and in mass media, to enable new insights and analyses not only concerning China but also in terms of the major global questions—in theory, policy, and practice—of this particular historical moment. The course will begin with an overview of contemporary China, discussing the unique aspects of China’s modern history and the changes and continuities from one era to the next. We will explore Revolutionary China and the subsequent socialist period to ground the primary focus of post-1978 reform and transformation to present day. Rooted in the questions of agrarian change and rural development, we will also study seismic shifts in urban and industrial form and China’s emergence as a global superpower on its way to becoming the world’s largest economy. We will analyze the complex intertwining of the environmental, political-economic, and sociocultural aspects of these processes as we interpret the geography of contemporary China. Using a variety of theoretical perspectives, we will analyze a series of contemporary global debates: Is there a fundamental conflict between the environment and rapid development? What is the role of the peasantry in the modern world? What is the impact of different forms of state power and practice? How does globalization shape China’s regional transformation? How does China’s global integration impact development in every other country and region of the world? Modern China provides immense opportunities for exploring key theoretical and substantive questions of our time. A product of its own complex history, other nation-states and international actors and institutions—such as the World Bank, transnational corporations, and civil society—have also heavily influenced China. The “China Model” of rapid growth is widely debated in terms of its efficacy as a development pathway, yet it defies simple understandings and labels. Termed everything from neoliberalism, to market socialism, to authoritarian Keynesian capitalism, China is a model full of paradoxes and contradictions, not least of which is China’s impact on global climate change. Other challenges include changing gender relations, rapid urbanization, and massive internal migration. In China today, contentious debates continue on land reform, the pros and cons of global market integration, the role of popular culture and the arts in society, how to define ethical behavior, the roots of China’s social movements—from Tiananmen to contemporary widespread social unrest and discontent among workers, peasants, students, and intellectuals—and the meaning and potential resolution of minority conflicts in China’s hinterlands. Land and resource grabs in China and abroad are central to its rapid growth and role as the largest industrial platform for the world. But resulting social inequality and environmental degradation challenge the legitimacy of China’s leadership like never before—as recent protests in Hong Kong and elsewhere attest. The COVID-19 pandemic and the state’s response revealed new challenges to state legitimacy. And China’s role as a foil for the Trump administration, in its tariff wars, accompanies the nationalistic turn in both countries. As China borders many of the most volatile places in the contemporary world—and increasingly projects its power to the far corners of the planet and beyond—the seminar will conclude with a discussion of global security issues, geopolitics, and potential scenarios for China’s future. Weekly selected readings, films, mass media, and books will be used to inform debate and discussion. A structured conference project will integrate closely with one of the diverse topics of the seminar.

Where does the food we eat come from? Why do some people have enough food to eat and others do not? Are there too many people for the world to feed? Who controls the world’s food? Will global food prices continue their recent rapid rise and, if so, what will be the consequences? What are the environmental impacts of our food-production systems? How do answers to these questions differ by place or the person asking the question? How have they changed over time? This course will explore the following fundamental issue: the relationship between development and the environment, focusing in particular on agriculture and the production and consumption of food. The questions above often hinge on the contentious debate concerning population, natural resources, and the environment. We will begin by critically assessing the fundamental ideological positions and philosophical paradigms of “modernization,” as well as critical counterpoints that lie at the heart of this debate. Within this context of competing sets of philosophical assumptions concerning the population-resource debate, we will investigate the concept of poverty and the making of the “Third World,” access to food, hunger, grain production and food aid, agricultural productivity (e.g., the Green and Gene revolutions), biofuels, the role of transnational corporations (TNCs), the international division of labor, migration, globalization and global commodity chains, and the different strategies adopted by nation states to develop natural resources and agricultural production. Through a historical investigation of environmental change and the biogeography of plant domestication and dispersal, we will look at the creation of indigenous, subsistence, peasant, plantation, collective, and commercial forms of agriculture. We will analyze the physical environment and ecology that help shape but rarely determine the organization of resource use and agriculture rather, through the dialectical rise of various political-economic systems—such as feudalism, slavery, mercantilism, colonialism, capitalism, and socialism—we will study how humans have transformed the world’s environments. The course will follow with studies of specific issues: technological change in food production; commercialization and industrialization of agriculture and the decline of the family farm; food and public health, culture, and family; land grabbing and food security; the role of markets and transnational corporations in transforming the environment; and the global environmental changes stemming from modern agriculture, dams, deforestation, grassland destruction, desertification, biodiversity loss, and the interrelationship with climate change. Case studies of particular regions and issues will be drawn from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the United States. The final part of the course will examine the restructuring of the global economy and its relation to emergent international laws and institutions regulating trade, the environment, agriculture, resource extraction treaties, the changing role of the state, and competing conceptualizations of territoriality and control. We will end with discussions of emergent local, regional, and transnational coalitions for food self-reliance and food sovereignty, alternative and community-supported agriculture, community-based resource-management systems, sustainable development, and grassroots movements for social and environmental justice. Films, multimedia materials, and potential distinguished guest lectures will be interspersed throughout the course. Attendance will be required for one farm/factory field trip. Regular postings of short essays will be required, as well as follow-up commentaries with classmates. There will be occasional in-class essays and a final quiz at the end of the semester. Group conferences will focus on in-depth analysis of certain course topics and will include debates, a film, workshopping, and small-group discussions. Students will prepare a poster project over the semester on a related topic presented at the end of the course in the final group conference.

Our existence lies in a perpetual state of change. An apple falls from a tree, clouds move across expansive farmland, blocking out the sun for days; meanwhile, satellites zip around the Earth, transmitting and receiving signals to our cell phones. Calculus was invented to develop a language to accurately describe the motion and change happening all around us. The ancient Greeks began a detailed study of change, but they were scared to wrestle with the infinite; so it was not until the 17th century that Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, among others, tamed the infinite and gave birth to this extremely successful branch of mathematics. Though just a few hundred years old, calculus has become an indispensable research tool in both the natural and social sciences. Our study begins with the central concept of the limit and proceeds to explore the dual processes of differentiation and integration. Numerous applications of the theory will be examined. Weekly group conferences will be run in hands-on workshop mode. This course is intended for students interested in advanced study in mathematics or sciences, students preparing for careers in the health sciences or engineering, and any student wishing to broaden and enrich the life of the mind. 

Variance, correlation coefficient, regression analysis, statistical significance, and margin of error—these terms and other statistical phrases have been bantered about before and seen interspersed in news reports and research articles. But what do they mean? How are they used? And why are they so important? Serving as an introduction to the concepts, techniques, and reasoning central to the understanding of data, this course will focus on the fundamental methods of statistical analysis used to gain insight into diverse areas of human interest. The use, misuse, and abuse of statistics will be the central focus of the course; and specific topics of exploration will be drawn from experimental design theory, sampling theory, data analysis. and statistical inference. Applications will be considered in current events, business, psychology, politics, medicine, and many other areas of the natural and social sciences. Statistical software will be introduced and used extensively in this course, but no prior experience with spreadsheet technology is assumed. Group conferences, conducted in workshop mode, will serve to reinforce student understanding of the course material. This course is recommended for any student wishing to be a better-informed consumer of data, and strongly recommended for those planning to pursue advanced undergraduate or graduate research in the natural sciences or social sciences. 

One of the biggest challenges humanity currently faces is the need to revamp our energy systems to avoid the most hazardous impacts due to global warming. Unfortunately, our predominately carbon-based energy system—the largest source of greenhouse gases from human activities in the United States—has significantly contributed to climate change. One of our best chances to mitigate environmental impacts is to switch to renewable, and ideally carbon-free, energy systems. Using both theory and experiments, we will explore the physics behind current renewable energy systems—including geothermal, wind, solar, and nuclear fission—as well as investigate the future potential of the hydrogen strategy and nuclear fusion. We will look at both the practical challenges and the potential promises of decarbonizing global energy production to become more informed consumers and citizens in our rapidly changing world. While students are not expected to have taken any physics courses before this course, a basic comfort with algebra is desirable and a natural curiosity to learn is essential.

We encounter temperature on a daily basis when we check our weather apps and have undoubtedly heard discussions about the greenhouse effect and Earth’s warming climate. But what do scientists mean by warming? How can they model it? And what even is temperature? In this course, we will dig into the fascinating world of thermal physics, which is important for delving into many more advanced topics in physics, geosciences, or chemistry. Topics will include: thermodynamics, including energy, temperature, work, heat, and ideal gases; statistical mechanics, including entropy, partition functions, distributions, chemical potential, nonideal gases, bosonic gas, and fermionic gas; and applications from physics, chemistry, and engineering, such as engines, refrigerators, Bose-Einstein condensates, black holes, and climate models. For conference work, students will be encouraged to model a simple thermal system of their choice, using the mathematical and numerical methods developed throughout the course.

This community-partnership course will focus on the health of humans living within physical, social, and psychological urban spaces. We will use a constructivist, multidisciplinary, multilevel lens to examine the interrelationship between humans and the natural and built environment, to explore the impact of social-group (ethnic, racial, sexuality/gender) membership on person/environment interactions, and to explore an overview of theoretical and research issues in the psychological study of health and illness across the lifespan. We will examine theoretical perspectives in the psychology of health, health cognition, illness prevention, stress, and coping with illness. We will also highlight research, methods, and applied issues. This class is appropriate for those interested in a variety of health careers or for anyone interested in city life. The community-partnership/service-learning component is an important part of this class; for one morning or afternoon per week, students will work in local community agencies to promote health-adaptive, person-environment interactions within our community. Biweekly in fall, students will alternate between individual conferences with the instructor and group conferences that will include discussion of the nature of academic work, and research, reading, writing, and editing skills. Biweekly in spring, students will meet with the instructor for individual conferences. This course required on-campus arrival for pre-orientation.

The growing recognition of Latin American comics as a subject of academic study in the 21st century has further diversified the medium in the region. This course will explore the representation of Indigenous identities and cultural narratives in contemporary Chilean comics, focusing on works published during the 2000s boom. This moment was driven by various factors, such as collaborative projects, the strengthening of distribution circuits, efforts by independent publishers, access to global comic industries, and state funding opportunities. Students will engage with frameworks from comics studies and critical theory to analyze how these graphic sources challenge hegemonic representations and contribute to broader discussions on Indigenous representation, cultural resistance, and transnational dialogues on race and ethnicity. Students will analyze comic genres ranging from historical fiction and fantasy to superheroes and horror, the course will examine how Indigenous cultures are represented within the framework of post-indigenism, as studied through Alemani's research. Rather than merely recalling pre-Hispanic myths or questioning identity in response to colonial wounds, contemporary Chilean comics position Indigenous narratives within a globalized world through complex sequential narratives and hybrid aesthetics. Among other references, Chajnantor draws on Japanese manga to depict cultural aspects of the high plateau and the Atacama desert, while the Varua saga examines historical milestones and oral traditions to reconstruct Rapa Nui cultural memory. Adventure comics shape Mapuche superhero resistance in Guardianes del Sur, and manga-inspired robots depict a Selk’nam futurist society after settler colonialism in Mecha Selk’nam. The collaborative project Mitoverso creates a universe of superheroes inspired by folk stories, while Los fantasmas del viento articulates the intersection of Indigenous groups and European descendants in the Patagonian region. Throughout this course and biweekly conference meetings, students will develop communication skills in Spanish and critical-thinking abilities. Students will further advance their research skills through a semester-long multimedia project that enhances multiliteracy and public humanities competencies. The course also contemplates one field research visit to relevant local museum exhibits and artist conventions, such as the Society of Illustrators, Brooklyn Independent Comics Showcase, and The Drawing Center. All primary sources, class discussions, and assignments will be in Spanish.

What role does speculation play in subverting the past, rethinking the present, and building different futures within the Americas? The field of speculative fiction uses multiple forms of arts and media to craft fictional imaginaries that have become a vehicle to narrate historical horror by studying Merla-Watson and Olguín and to criticize versions of modernity imposed across the Americas by studying Colanzi. While these speculative imaginaries use the codes of fiction—such as space-time travel, horror, robots, alternative realities, zombies, and genetics—they also expand upon them to address struggles of the Americas’ history of colonialism, dispossession, and mestizaje. In this advanced seminar, we will engage in a cross-cultural trajectory of contemporary speculative fiction in multiple forms, such as literature, comics, film, and performance within the United States-Mexico border, the Caribbean, and the Southern Cone. Topics studied may include: from Anzaldúa’s Borderlands to her theory on Queer Futurities and from critical race theory to movies such as La Llorona, Juan de los muertos, and Sleep Dealer. This trajectory will also range from mainstream franchises, such as Marvel and Star Wars, to superheroes depiction in El Alto and Tierra del Fuego. We will focus on transdisciplinary works by Rita Indiana and Luis Carlos Barragán and artwork by Marion Matínez, Amalia Ortiz, and Edgar Clement. We will also reflect on Futurisms made by mestizos, Indigenous, and Afro-Caribbeans while assessing the scopes of climate change and environmental crisis within these communities. Throughout this course and biweekly conference meetings, students will develop communication skills in Spanish and critical-thinking abilities. Students will further advance their research skills through a semester-long multimedia project that enhances multiliteracy and public humanities competencies. The course also contemplates one field research trip to relevant local museum exhibits and artist conventions, such as the Center for Fiction, Feria Internacional del Libro de la Ciudad de Nueva York, and Museum of the Moving Image. Sources will be in Spanish, English, and Spanglish, while class discussions and assignments will be conducted entirely in Spanish.

This studio course will look at art-making through a sustainable lens. How can artists create in an ecological way? How can we imagine an alternate future through art-making? How can we use visual art to communicate ideas when language fails? We will explore various modes of creation—working with found objects, engaging the landscape, temporal artworks, and ecological narratives. We will look at different modes of sculptural creation, thinking about the material footprint and the life of the artwork beyond the studio. Studio work will be accompanied by an analysis of historical and contemporary artists whose work addresses ideas around sustainability and the environment, including Walter de Maria, Richard Long, Nancy Holt, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Maren Hassinger, Agnes Denes, Maya Lin, Meg Webster, Amy Balkin, Delcy Morelos, Mark Dion, and Theaster Gates. In fall and spring, students will meet biweekly with the instructor for individual conferences, alongside corequisite First-Year Studies Project (ARTS 1000), which will meet weekly as a group.

This studio course will look at art making through a sustainable lens. How can artists create in an ecological way? How can we imagine an alternate future through art making? How can we use visual art to communicate ideas when language fails? We will explore various modes of creation—working with found objects, engaging the landscape, temporal artworks, and ecological narratives. We will look at different modes of sculptural creation, thinking about the material footprint and the life of the artwork beyond the studio. Studio work will be accompanied by an analysis of historical and contemporary artists whose work addresses ideas around sustainability and the environment, including Walter de Maria, Richard Long, Nancy Holt, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Maren Hassinger, Agnes Denes, Maya Lin, Meg Webster, Amy Balkin, Delcy Morelos, Mark Dion, and Theaster Gates.