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The Quran and Narrative Theory; ENGL-2XX
How does the Quran tell stories? How does it convey character, plot, the passage of time, the beginning and the end of things? What constitutes narrative voice in the Quran, and who are its objects of address? Finally, in what ways does a deeper understanding of Quranic approaches to representation shift our understanding of what constitutes narrative? This course will ask these and other deceptively simple questions while engaging in a close and sustained reading of the Muslim holy scripture. Students will read the Quran alongside major works of narrative and aesthetic theory both in order to draw out its inherent literary dimensions and to think through the way it itself is presenting various theories of narrative and non-narrative storytelling. Course Attributes: CI 

Edward Said; ENGL-3XX
This course offers a focused and sustained examination of the writings of Edward Said, paying especial attention to his reflections on what constitutes the work of the intellectual. While we will spend a great deal of time with his material on postcoloniality and the role of empire in the European cultural imagination, we will also situate this more well-known facet of his oeuvre within the broader context of his reflections on the relationship of the critic to the world, secularism to religion, and exile to states of belonging. Readings include but are not limited to Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism, The World, the Text, and the Critic, Representations of the Intellectual, and Beginnings: Intention and Method. Course Attributes:      No Approach   

Global Environmental Justice; ENVS-3XX
In this class, you will explore how communities around the world are responding to unequal environmental burdens, and how these local-scale issues fit into broader global trends such as climate change. We will engage with key environmental justice issues surrounding waste, pollution, water, mining, energy, and more in regions ranging from Latin America to the Arctic and from Sub-Saharan Africa to South and East Asia. At the same time, we will consider how broader geopolitical and economic structures affect environmental justice between countries and regions, and the status of environmental justice work in the US in the current era. The course will prepare you to research and take action on specific environmental justice issues of interest to you, both in and beyond the classroom. Course Attributes:      PIJ
 

Eco Studio I; ENVS-2XX
Poems and plants are both teachers, and many poets have looked to plants for essential wisdom about the nature of being alive. From Louise Gluck’s terror “The Wild Iris" to Kwame Dawes’ “Purple,” plants have nourished and transformed the poetic imagination across the late twentieth century, offering new modes of considering the world and ourselves in it. What happens when we work with plants and poems on the same terrain, bringing both to the the table of imaginative craft? This environmental studies studio takes up our own capacity for radical biospheric imaginings through an engagement with invasive plant dye-making, alongside poetic analysis. In this course, we will explore lessons about transformation, change, and sustainability that only poems and plants together can teach. Students should be comfortable using burners, collecting native plants, and have a basic familiarity (or passion for) contemporary poetry.  Course Attributes: CI 

Mobility and Modernity; HEBR-2XX
This upper-level seminar, Mobility and Modernity: A Jewish History of Modern Migration, immerses students in the vibrant history of not only Jewish migration, but how Jewish mobility became intertwined with vital trends in international migration, ranging from the rise of mercantilist trade networks in the early modern period to the codification of international migration law in the mid-to-late twentieth century.  Over the semester, students will follow Sephardi merchants who traversed the Mediterranean, working-class Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side, and Holocaust survivors who confronted their newfound statelessness.  Like their historical subjects, students will travel the globe, from seventeenth century Surinam to the Soviet Union.  This seminar encourages students to ask incisive questions, as they deliberate the legal, social, and cultural history of not only Jewish migration, but global migration.  What circumstances compelled Jews to move? How did migration place Jews in new political systems, power dynamics, and cultural milieus? And finally, how do narratives of Jewish movement enhance our understanding of provocative themes at the center of the history of migration, such as open borders, free trade, forced deportation, and assimilation? Course Attributes:     PIJ

The Philosophy of Karl Marx; PHIL-2XX
Karl Marx is one of the most influential thinkers in human history. He is also one of the most controversial. There are many “Marxists” in the world, and there are many who regard Marx as a dangerous and pernicious figure. Often, however, people form strong opinions like these based on second-hand information. Although most know Marx’s name, it is a rarer thing to have actually read him. Marx contributed to many fields: he studied law, he worked as a journalist, he wrote works in classics, economics, history, and anthropology, and he led a major political movement. He was also a philosopher – and it was arguably as a philosopher that he produced his most original works. In this course, we will read a broad selection of Marx’s writings with the aim of developing an understanding of his distinctive philosophy. In the process, we will explore fundamental questions, including but not limited to the following: What is the meaning of freedom? Is true equality possible? What is the value of work? What is capitalism? What is class? How and why do revolutions occur? Do ideas have the power to make history? What impact does technology have on our lives? And what, ultimately, does the future hold in store for us? Course Attributes:      No Approach   

Cosmology; PHYS-3XX
Cosmology is the study of the universe, or cosmos, as a whole. This course covers the theoretical foundations and observational pillars that shape our modern understanding of the universe’s origin, evolution, and large scale structure. Topics include the expansion of the universe, cosmological distance measures, the Friedmann equations, the hot Big Bang model, thermal history and primordial nucleosynthesis, the cosmic microwave background, the growth of cosmic structure, dark matter, dark energy, and current constraints on cosmological parameters. Students will learn how cosmological data and observations -- ranging from cosmic microwave background anisotropies to galaxy redshift and gravitational lensing surveys -- inform and challenge theoretical models. Course Attributes:      No Approach   

Cuentos cortos del Gran Caribe; SPAN-3XX
This course examines the short story as a literary and material form in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, a region that runs from the north in the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico), to the west along the Yucatán Peninsula, through the Central American isthmus, and culminating east towards the Caribbean coasts of Colombia and Venezuela. How have shared historical conditions, such as colonial slavery, imperial rivalries, modern underdevelopment and the legacies of the plantation, shaped the short story in its formal composition and material circulation? How has it in turn relied on form and medium to tackle the most pressing issues facing the Caribbean at different moments in time? Students will be asked to explore these questions through a diverse corpus, which will include colonial poetry and crónicas, the “little magazines” of the 20th-century, and contemporary cartonera books. In addition, students will develop their digital competencies by collaborating throughout the semester on the creation of a digital archive about the history and scope of the short story in the Hispanic Caribbean Basin. The course is taught in Spanish. Course Attributes:      PIJ