ASEM 2402 Culture and Identity in American Political Development (4 Credits)

This course considers the development of American politics over time, through the lens of struggles over culture and identity. We discuss how political and institutional change around these topics happens in the American political system. The first section of the course reviews broad theories in the field of American Political Development, addressing the role of culture, institutions, and policy. We then turn to closer consideration of the ways in which scholars from multiple disciplines have applied these theories to specific areas of American politics. Enforced Prerequisites and Restrictions: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements. However, students may enroll under special circumstances with prior permission of the instructor.

ASEM 2403 Versions of Egypt (4 Credits)

This course will study a handful of books that lead up to and study the recent Egyptian Revolutions. We will read Alifa Rifaat’s Distant View of the Minaret, Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land, Alaa al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building, Wael Ghonim’s Revolution 2.0, and excerpts from Peter Hessler’s forthcoming book about post-revolutionary Egypt. The class will attempt to understand both 21st century Egypt and the aftereffects of the dramatic changes in Egypt since the first revolution of February 2011. Students will write both critical and creative essays for this seminar.

ASEM 2404 Music Preference, Identity, Genre, and Recommendation (4 Credits)

Students examine the relationship between music preferences, personality, and identity. Because music preferences are strongly mediated by cultural industries and institutions, students also examine two of the music industry's tools for connecting listeners to their preferred music: genre systems and a more recent tool, automated music recommendation engines. The course includes three medium-length papers and many written responses to scholarly writing drawn from music psychology, musicology, and music informatics.

ASEM 2405 Decision-making and Neuroeconomics (4 Credits)

How do you decide what to buy, who to trust, which job to take, or what you'll want to eat tomorrow? This seminar-style course integrates perspectives from psychology, neuroscience, and economics to understand decision-making, how it is affected by emotions or social contexts, and how it is implemented in the human brain. The course emphasizes active participation, and relies upon primary scientific sources (i.e. peer-reviewed empirical articles). Recommended: a familiarity with at least one of cognitive psychology, human neuroscience, or behavioral economics. Recommended: a familiarity with at least one of cognitive psychology, human neuroscience, or behavioral economics.

ASEM 2406 Myths of Medieval Encounter (4 Credits)

Using three case studies (Vikings, Crusaders, and Conquistadors) this course examines how pre-modern authors shaped the image of Europe by depicting foreign cultures and how we sue the texts of the past to understand not just the cultures they describe, but also the changing face of Europe across the centuries.

ASEM 2407 The Individual in Modern Economies (4 Credits)

This course discusses the role of the individual in modern economies, and the impact that modern economic systems have on individuals and their lives. The course will include objectives that people pursue in societies, and how the structure of the economic system can help or hinder achieving them. To that end, a conceptual understanding of different perspectives on modern economies will be at the center of the class. Those perspectives will be drawn not only from economic concepts in a narrow sense, but also be informed by sociology, political science, and psychology, among other disciplines.

ASEM 2414 Wealth, Power & Justice in the European Union (4 Credits)

This course explores the regional integration of Europe in the postwar era. Since the European Union "began" back in 1950, the central question we consider is why states that fought devastating wars for centuries chose to put down their arms and merge their destinies with a common market, single currency, and binding "supranational" legal system. We focus on the evolution of economic and political motivations for integration and the legal pressures that erode state sovereignty today. Completion of all common curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2420 The Cultured Ape (4 Credits)

Examines the field of human evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary Psychology examines how human behavior is influenced by our heritage as evolved primates. It challenges the understanding of humans as "blank slates" primarily shaped by their social and cultural environments. The course considers the implications of this perspective for social policy.

ASEM 2422 Textual Bodies: Discourse and the Corporeal in American Culture (4 Credits)

This course explores how bodies acquire meanings, and how those meanings are created, represented, disseminated, or contested through discursive and embodied means. Course practices include close readings of literary, philosophical and visual texts; creative and auto-ethnographic writing exercises; and in-class dance-based movement drills. Prerequisite: Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2423 The American Road Trip (4 Credits)

As Frederick Jackson Turner told us back in the 19th Century, American cultural identity has hinged on the idea of an ever-receding frontier and the possibility of reaching it. We will chart how the road figures as both a promise and a burden, and how it reflects changing social and cultural issues in American life. We will consider documents of fiction, philosophy and history as well as film and aspects of popular culture as we consider the America fascination with the road and the careers of its many and diverse travelers. Enrollment restricted to students in the Honors Program.

ASEM 2424 Poetic Minds (4 Credits)

How do we know who we are? How do we know what is real? How do we decide what is right? In this ASEM, course participants will trace these key questions from Enlightenment philosophy to British Romantic literature and, finally, to their echoes and afterlives in contemporary literature.

ASEM 2426 Narrating Memory, History, Space in the City (4 Credits)

This course draws on a variety of anthropological questions, theoretical approaches, and methodological techniques to examine the city and city life. It begins with the origins and development of cities and the identification of urban areas as sites for investigation in social theory. It next turns attention to exploring how ethnographers link everyday life on the social periphery to larger historical, political, and economic processes. A major course theme is understanding how urban spaces shape identities and communities, and it uses Denver's changing urban landscape to illustrate the theme. The course considers the basic human practice of listening to stories, as well as the meaning of narration in and about the city.

ASEM 2430 Romanticism in Germany (4 Credits)

The German Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th-centuries was one of the most exciting and perilous intellectual adventures in the history of western culture. Some of the most daring, creative and prophetic work was done at this time, and it dramatically affected nearly every facet of German culture, inspiring novel, sometimes unprecedented, developments in philosophy, aesthetics, poetry, literature, music and criticism. Nor were these developments limited to German culture, but extended to its politics and efforts to form a unified national front against the deracinating effects of industrialization and modernization. The course traces these developments through an exploration of some of the seminal figures, themes and ideas of the Romantic period, primarily in relation to their intersection with philosophy, politics and art and German history. Prerequisites: Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2434 American Film Censorship and the Hollywood Production Code (4 Credits)

This course focuses on the evolution of censorship in American cinema and its wider implications. Such focus involves careful examination of the moral, political, and social choices that impact "what" stories can be told and "how" they are told. The course emphasizes critical analyses of how social values and norms influence cinematic storytelling and aesthetics. Prerequisites: Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2436 Life and Death (4 Credits)

In this course, students examine several of the moral issues concerning the circumstances under which it is appropriate for humans to bring about life or death. For example, is it morally permissible to bring about, and subsequently destroy, human life in a petri dish? Is it permissible to bring about the death of people who have killed others? We examine and evaluate others' responses to such issues. En route to answering these questions, we pay significant attention to the scientific and empirical factors relevant to which moral responses we should have and to the legal factors determining the actual policies we do have.

ASEM 2440 Traumatic Encounters through the Lenses of Philosophy and Literature (4 Credits)

The course explores the intersection of philosophy and literature in relationship to trauma, art, politics and the modern ecological crisis. The course is divided into three parts, each exploring a way that philosophy and literature address the challenges and dilemmas of our contemporary situation, from questions about human sovereignty, freedom and dignity to questions concerning technology, the natural world and global economic justice. In part one, “Sovereignty and Bare Life,” questions related to state power, love, intergenerational conflict and displacement are explored through consideringShakespeare’s King Lear and Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer. Part two, “Remembering the Future: Trauma and Time’s Remainders,” considers how F. W. J. Schelling’s Ages of the World and Toni Morrison’s Beloved respond to personal and historical traumas, and how these works redefine time, memory and belonging. Part three, “The Ends of the World: Poetry and Philosophy in a Time of Crisis,” confronts the unfolding ecological crisis through an exploration of W. S. Merwin’s poetry and the late, poetically inspired philosophy of Martin Heidegger. The course is multiperspectival in terms of disciplinary and thematic content an in terms of methodology. Readings highlight how concepts, methods and interpretive strategies of philosophy, can augment analysis of literary works, while literature can not only enliven philosophical argument but approach the limits of what can be communicated philosophically.

ASEM 2441 Changing Meaning of Adulthood (4 Credits)

When does a person reach adulthood? Age 18? Age 40? Never? What is adulthood, and how do we measure it? Is it when one's frontal lobe matures, when one starts a family of their own, or simply when one feels "mature"? This class surveys various, competing perspectives on what adulthood means and questions whether adulthood has changed. It approaches adulthood from several disciplinary perspectives, mainly neuroscience, psychology, sociology. Students also engage with the media's angst about Millennials' "failure to adult" by writing Op-eds that draw on academic research. Prerequisites: Completion of all of Common Curriculum Requirements.

ASEM 2443 "All the world's a stage": Shakespeare Then and Now (4 Credits)

“All the world’s a stage”: Shakespeare Then and Now is an ASEM team-taught by faculty from the Departments of English and Literary Arts and Theatre. It emphasizes close reading, writing and interpretation as well as acting techniques and dramatic performance of selected scenes. The four plays and two contemporary novels based on the plays are chosen to underscore the range and diversity Shakespeare displayed in his choice of plot, setting and character and to demonstrate Shakespeare’s continuing relevance to political, racial, religious and gender issues. Prerequisites: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements.

ASEM 2445 Freestyle: Technology, Culture, and Improvisation (4 Credits)

This course introduces the recent history of musical and cultural forms devoted to improvisation, including jazz, free music, psychedelic and progressive rock, and jam bands, culminating with a focus on the practice of freestyling within hip-hop. It explores the importance of civil rights and human rights discourses to these musical and cultural forms, as well as the critical role these forms have played in civil and human rights movements. The course emphasizes how diverse subcultures of artists, producers, concert organizers, and audience/listeners form around these types of musical expression. It examines improvisation as a response to emerging technological forms (new musical instruments, recording technologies, concert presentation, accessibility and distribution, particularly those enabled by networking technologies) by which musicians and listeners embody new personal as well as collective identities.

ASEM 2446 Ethics of Creating the Impossible in Modernity and Postmodernity (4 Credits)

In modernity and post-modernity, good intentions have not always led to good results, and even “good” results come with costs. Creating the Impossible turns to ethical studies to analyze the most amazing technological successes--and the social, ecological, and economic costs associated with scientifically and technologically engineering the impossible. Using a case study model covering topics including ecology, biomedical research, enslavement, gender reassignment, urban planning/policing, the technological singularity, internet privacy, contemporary eugenics, and cutting-edge military research and development, this course addresses a central question: “Sure, we can make that happen, but should we?”.

ASEM 2447 Arab Feminisms in Everyday Life (4 Credits)

This course is designed to introduce students to Arab feminism. We use Arab feminism to analyze and reflect on everyday life experiences of Arabs around the world and how they relate to larger political and social structures. Feminism is represented as incompatible with Arab societies. The goal for this class is to engage with texts that privilege Arab feminist perspectives to analyze issues of social and political importance. Further, we focus on texts that resist historical and contemporary Orientalist discourses that directly link Islam to the Middle East and Arab identity. The main objective of this course is to offer an overview of the study of feminism through a non-white and underrepresented positionality taking into account religion, race, class, gender and citizenship. Completion of all other Common Curriculum requirements is required before registering for this class.

ASEM 2448 Letters to the History of Photography (4 Credits)

Through presentations, readings and writing assignments, this course advances the multidisciplinary impact of photography and how photography is directly or obliquely linked to all fields of experience and knowledge. The course objectives embrace interdisciplinary learning and promote the premise that absolutely everything is connected. Employing an epistolary approach (wring letters) students respond to weekly assignments by corresponding with a diversity of practitioners and scholars related to the cultural, historical, and scientific evolution of photography. Completion of all other Common Curriculum requirements is required before registering for this class.

ASEM 2449 American Material Culture: Honors (4 Credits)

The aim of the class is to engender a richer understanding of everyday life in the United States, both in the past and the present. Material culture around which the course centers is broadly defined and includes settlement structure, architecture, domestic artifacts, art, foodways, and trash disposal. These phenomena are investigated telescopically, as a way to view national structures and trends and, microscopically, to focus on individual actions and lives. Enrollment restricted to students in the Honors Program.

ASEM 2452 Media and Terrorism (4 Credits)

A recent Pew national survey showed that almost 3/4 of Americans rank terrorism as a major threat that should be addressed despite terrorism accounting for 0.03% of deaths worldwide in 2021. The media play a role in that disconnect. We live in a world where no single entity can exercise a monopoly over communication channels. Hence, partisan media, ideologically-driven news outlets, social networking sites, and encrypted messaging apps serve as venues harboring polarizing, contested rhetoric that catalyzes fear. Media & Terrorism is a seminar that investigates the media-terrorism nexus. The readings, online discussions, and writing projects aim to empower students to grasp how the media cover terrorism, violent actors co-opt the media, and various players craft anti-extremism messaging campaigns.

ASEM 2454 Psychology of Religious and Spiritual Practices (4 Credits)

This writing-intensive course focuses on understanding religious and spiritual practices integrating multiple sources of information. Examples include meditation, prayer, group worship, psychedelics, and gratitude. Students find and analyze scholarly and non-scholarly information and integrate multiple disciplines and perspectives in understanding these practices. Students communicate and extend their understandings through discussion, writing, and presentation. The goal is for students to gain a deeper understanding of these practices, learn multiple approaches to studying human activities, and improve their writing skills. Completion of all common curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2456 Remembering Medieval Iberia, from 711 to 2020 (4 Credits)

Medieval Iberia was home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews who lived together and interacted in complex ways that were both conflictive and cooperative. This course explores the complexities and contradictions of medieval Iberia by paying particular attention to the divergent ways that the period itself has been understood and instrumentalized in post-medieval times. The course uses a range of disciplinary perspectives, informed by religious studies, literary and cultural studies, history, political science, anthropology, and linguistics, to address some key questions. How has the 'coexistence' of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in Iberia been interpreted in modern times? How do the categories of politics, nationalism, race, language, or faith shape opposing readings of the past? What can medieval Iberia teach us today about the world we live in? Prerequisites: Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2457 Bioethics in Today's World (4 Credits)

Bioethics is a field fueled by the need for information, analysis and consultation among policy makers, health-care professionals and institutions. Ethical issues related to scientific research and health care have recently gained much attention, generating significant demand for students and citizens to understand their moral, legal and risk/benefit aspects. This course operates on a cooperative learning basis, using a debate model to inform and involve students in controversies in bioethics. Course readings represent the arguments of leading philosophers and social commentators, treating such topics as death and dying; choices in reproduction; children and bioethics; and genetics. Additionally, the course examines some basic ethics tests: harm/beneficence, publicity, reversibility, code of ethics, and feasibility. Completion of all other Common Curriculum requirements is required before registering for this class.

ASEM 2459 Anti-Social Media (4 Credits)

This course addresses the negative effects of our connective technologies. Examining the media landscape of 100 years ago through the lenses of literary analysis, media theory, and history, it presents the 20th-century origins of our concerns with the media "bubble," with the threat that new media pose to democracy, and with loneliness. By grounding the question of media in history and in the disciplined analysis of literary form, this course seeks to generate more effective modes of thinking about the mediated life. Prerequisite: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements. However, students may enroll under special circumstances with prior permission of the instructor.

ASEM 2462 Psychedelia in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (4 Credits)

This course introduces the history and current status of psychedelic music. In pop, rock, electronic dance music and techno, hip-hop, and other forms, psychedelia is examined as a symptom of and response to emerging cultural, technological, and scientific ways of knowing and being in the world. Particular attention is given to the intersection of contemporary psychedelic research and recent developments in cognitive and computer science, including machine learning and artificial intelligence. Prerequisites: Completion of all other common curriculum requirements.

ASEM 2463 Identity and Politics: Multidisciplinary Approaches (4 Credits)

What is identity? Are some types of identity (e.g., religion or "race") more likely to influence political outcomes than other types of identity (e.g., profession or class)? If so, why? This course introduces three different approaches to the study of identity and politics, including political science, evolutionary psychology (and biology), and comparative historical sociology. We analyze what is useful and problematic about each approach, and use these periods of reflection to hone critical reading, writing, and discussion skills. students walk away from the course with significantly greater insights into the processes by which individuals and societies construct identities, including our conscious social behavior, unconscious cognitive tendencies, and struggles over political institutions and social norms. Enforced Prerequisites and Restrictions: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements. However, students may enroll under special circumstances with prior permission of the instructor.

ASEM 2466 When Love Becomes Weapon: Charm in International Relations (4 Credits)

Scholars of international relations have long believed that it is better to be feared than to be loved. However, as America prevailed over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, a new theory emerged: America won simply because it was perceived to be more attractive than the Soviet Union. America won because of its values, not its guns. How might we assess this argument? What goes into the making of American power: missiles or Rock’n’Roll? To what extent has China, among other competitors, challenged American soft power? Where should one draw the line between soft power and propaganda? What is the future of soft power, as countries' pursuits of their national interest often collide with transnational common issues like protecting the environment? This course explores these questions through multiple perspectives drawn not only from political science and history but also from sociology, philosophy, cultural studies/popular culture, and so on. Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2467 Queer Memoirs (4 Credits)

The memoir, or the fictionalized autobiography, holds an important place in LGBTQ culture. In some ways it is the most complex and lasting form of coming out, a permanent announcement of the author’s queer identity to a potentially vast audience in a way that allows for intricate explorations of the body, gender, sex, and the self. The course traces the importance and predominance of this queer art form over the past half century, starting with very recent work, such as Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater and Ocean Voung’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and work its way back to earlier work dealing with moments in which homosexuality was still criminalized in Great Britain and the United States, such as James Balwin’s Giovanni’s Room and Quentin Crisp’s Naked Civil Servant.Objects of study will include literary works as well as other art forms, such as the Magnetic Field’s 50 Song Memoir, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and Mike Nichols’s adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Such a topic and a trajectory will necessitate an interdisciplinary approach. In examining literary texts, music, film, and other forms of visual arts, the course will approach them with methods drawn from art history, history, legal studies, literature, media studies, music, philosophy, and sociology. Students produce different sorts of writing, including advanced scholarly and creative work. Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2469 Imagining the Amazon (4 Credits)

Representations of Amazonia often invoke images of either an earthly paradise or a green inferno. This course begins by challenging students to critically (re)frame their images of the Amazon by underscoring the unequal power dynamics that have come into play whenever outsiders have represented the landscapes and the peoples of Amazonia over the past 500 years. Using a variety of theoretical paradigms, students in this course study representations of Amazonia created both by indigenous writers and activists, as well as several widely disseminated (and critically heralded) novels, films, and journalistic essays created by 'outsider' authors and auteurs from Latin America, the U.S., and Europe.

ASEM 2472 Islamic Art and Mysticism (4 Credits)

This course introduces Islamic art and architecture, focusing on appreciating and understanding formal qualities of works of art, their meaning, and their cultural significance in larger contexts. The course discusses the intimate connections between art, literature, and historical events, with readings that include texts in art history, Middle Eastern history, the rise of Islam, and translated literature. The course includes units in Painting and Literature, Early Islamic Literature and Material Culture, and Islamic Mysticism and the Arts. Like all ASEM courses, Islamic Art and Mysticism is writing intensive. Prerequisites: Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2475 U.S. Immigrant Narratives (4 Credits)

U.S. migrant narratives tell a story about nation-building, citizenship, and globalization. This course explores the diverse ethno-racial experiences of migration in the 20th and 21st century through literature and film. Course readings provide a nuanced lens for considering the broader policies and discourses on nativism, immigration law, media representations, and border fortification. What do these stories tell us about the past, present, and future of migration/immigration? How are these narratives encoded with popular and political practices and discourses? How do these stories disrupt, challenge, or consolidate these discourses? Prerequisite: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements. However, students may enroll under special circumstances with prior permission of the instructor.

ASEM 2479 Environmental Culture in East Asia (4 Credits)

This course explores current environmental and ecological challenges in major East Asian countries such as Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan through the lens of ancient and contemporary cultural and philosophical traditions. The course examines 1)primary traditional Asian philosophic and religious concepts about Nature, such as Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, as well as traditional literatures and arts that reflect those concepts; 2)contemporary eco-literature and eco-cinema that function as responses to, and critical reflections of, the urgent environmental crises in those countries; 3)cultural practices that are officially, communally, or privately implemented for eco-preservation and environmental-protection. Prerequisite: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements.

ASEM 2482 Africa (4 Credits)

In this course, we study the literature, politics and culture of Africa from pre-colonial times to the present. We begin by examining Africa as the locus of the world's oldest civilization and by discussing some key moments in African history. We then focus on the four regions of Africa, on country- or region-based examples of culture and politics in Africa--such as colonial rule in East Africa, war of independence in North Africa, military rule in West Africa, Apartheid in Southern Africa. We also discuss Africa and the world, or Africa in the context of modern-day globalization. In each case, we discuss historical accounts and literary representations as well as political and cultural contexts.

ASEM 2483 Tabletop Games as Social Texts (4 Credits)

Since the early 2000s, board and tabletop games have experienced a renaissance of sorts in sales and popularity. These games and the contexts in which they exist and are played provide interesting foci for cultural study and production. This ASEM focuses on possibilities and implications within the realm of physical games. It complicates traditional understandings of understand gaming or “play” in the sense of diversion, a framework in which games are viewed mostly as sold through major markets as tools for fun. This course values that form of cultural meaning but pushes class members to study and make games that serve different purposes. The course examines cultural and psychological studies of games and players, histories of gaming, statistical modeling, rhetoric and other topics and disciplinary lenses. Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2484 Culture of Desire (4 Credits)

How does desire shape the identity of a culture or society, how is it expressed, and how is it limited? This course examines four different postulated societies to see how they shape their gendered desire. Using queer theory and its impact on interpreting the body and its limitations and freedom, the course examines questions raised by these future imaginings, testing them in applications to contemporary society and our understanding of ourselves. This course brings together literature, sociology, anthropology, linguistics in queer journey through reality and the imagination. Prerequisites: Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2488 Exploring Contemporary Art "in situ (4 Credits)

Exploring Contemporary Art "in situ" is an exploration of contemporary artworks situated in galleries, museums, and public sites in greater Denver. Students will closely observe artworks by various living artists and read them as primary texts to which they will respond with their own writings in contemporary social media. The course will meet on location at least once each week to be in the presence of the source art works.

ASEM 2492 Animals and Human Societies (4 Credits)

This course considers human-animal relationships from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Focusing on Western Europe and America, we explore the many ways in which people interact with non-human species--killing them for pleasure, eating them, observing them and caring for them--and the effects of these interactions on both animals and people. Thinking about animals sheds light on crucial issues in today's society, with implications for everything from environmental change to the impact of consumer culture to the ethics of euthanasia.

ASEM 2493 Caring in a Capitalist Economy (4 Credits)

How does a good society address the needs of members of that society who cannot fully take care of themselves? Does caring have a place in our capitalist economy? Do we organize the provision of care in a just way? How do we balance our caregiving responsibilities in our daily lives? Through course lecture, discussion and community caregiving, we explore these challenging questions using insight from economists, philosophers, sociologists and others to help us better understand how we provide care within our capitalist economy.

ASEM 2499 Mountains: Ecology, Imagination, Aesthetics, and Challenges (4 Credits)

Why are people drawn to mountains? What geological and biological features account for our interest, and how might the psychology and philosophy of aesthetics explain why mountains have multiple uses and effects, recreational to religious? How have writers, artists, filmmakers, climbers, skiers, and hikers historically represented mountain experiences? And what are the economic and ecological consequences of all this attention? Can we “ruin” mountains? This writing-intensive course addresses these complex questions through multiple perspectives drawn from the several disciplines noted above. Equally complementing scholarly readings are several popular personal and creative works: films, stories, adventure memoirs, diaries, and so on. Course may include, when circumstances permit, field experiences in the Colorado Rockies and archival work at the American Alpine Club Library in Golden. This ASEM course is open and accessible to advanced undergraduates from all majors, regardless of experience and academic background. Prerequisites: Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2500 Migration Politics (4 Credits)

This seminar will focus on the political economy of international migration. Since the 1970s, many countries have liberalized trade and capital flows, however migration policies trended the opposite way. This seminar will explore how international migration have affected the political economy of both migrant-receiving and migrant-sending countries. This course will have three parts: causes of migration, the political/policy reception that immigrants face in receiving countries, and consequent effects of migration on sending countries. Doing so will allow us to examine the political economy of international migration as a process and cover specific subfields of migration research.

ASEM 2502 Fictitious Ecologies: Envisioning Provisioning Through Science Fiction (4 Credits)

This course uses science fiction to examine some of humankind’s social and ecological ills through multiple perspectives and disciplines. These include environmental science, ecology, ecocriticism, and science fiction, especially its history, genres, and topics, for example, climate fiction (cli-fi), Afrofuturism, cyberpunk, indigenous epistemologies, ecodystopias, and post-apocalypses. The course also includes different paradigms of economic analysis, including ecological, feminist, and institutional. A goal of the course is to envision future provisioning possibilities that are in line with Earth System stabilization and reducing social disharmony. As an ASEM, the course is writing intensive. Prerequisite: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements. However, students may enroll under special circumstances with prior permission of the instructor.

ASEM 2503 AIDS: Then and Now (4 Credits)

HIV/AIDS is for the most part forgotten in the developed world; it has morphed into a manageable chronic disease. But it has not disappeared, and it has had an enormous impact on our lives and identities. This course will examine the ongoing cultural legacy of HIV/AIDS, concentrating on activist movements in the United States, followed by an examination of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa today. This course brings together biology, literature, sociology, and linguistics in a queer journey through the impact of HIV/AIDS. As an Advanced Seminar, this course is writing-intensive, and you will be working on your written expression during the quarter. Enforced Prerequisites and Restrictions: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements. However, students may enroll under special circumstances with prior permission of the instructor.

ASEM 2504 Land and Law in Africa: The Politics of Land Acquisition and Distribution (4 Credits)

In settler colonies in Southern and East Africa, millions of African people were displaced from the land on which they had lived for centuries to make way for European settlement and agriculture. In the postcolonial era, these countries have attempted to redress these legacies by legally redistributing land from the descendants of white farmers to Black farmers and shareholders, with controversial results. Focusing on Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, this class considers the histories of precolonial systems of land tenure and the colonial legal mechanisms enforced in the often-forced acquisition of land, and how contested meanings over land to different communities are articulated in the postcolonial world in considering who the land belongs to today. Enforced Prerequisites and Restrictions: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements. However, students may enroll under special circumstances with prior permission of the instructor.

ASEM 2505 Early Social Experiences and Health Throughout the Lifespan (4 Credits)

This writing-intensive course focuses on how social experiences during infancy, childhood, and adolescence influence mental and physical health throughout the lifespan. It covers social experiences broadly, including close relationships, neighborhood-level factors, policy, built environments, and social stress, among others. It discusses the positive and negative experiences that can shape development directly and indirectly, and students innovate ways to enhance the public good through applying research. Prerequisites: Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2506 Creativity (4 Credits)

The course inspires students to be creative in all facets of life and provides extensive practice, with feedback, in being creative through daily class activities, outside-of-class writing assignments, and class presentations. Students learn the classic techniques for getting novel ideas as well as how to navigate the obstacles that so often restrict creative expression. Students learn how to be creative in a wide variety of different genres so as to fashion their own personal styles.

ASEM 2507 Earth Sound - Earth Listening (4 Credits)

This course is an environmental humanities seminar that takes an art/science approach to the study of ecoacoustics: the relationship between human beings and their environment through sound. The seminar approaches ecoacoustics through sound studies and ecological sciences. It emphasizes transdisciplinary problem-solving and developing proficiencies in critical dialogue. The course introduces ecoacoustic literacy as an exemplary art/science toolkit for understanding noise pollution and acoustic ecology extinction as emerging environmental crises, and it develops the case for preserving personal, societal and biospheric spaces. Prerequisites: Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2508 The Cinematic Essay (4 Credits)

As an Advanced Seminar, The Cinematic Essay is a creative and critical praxis course which focuses on formal and thematic analysis of documentary films from a wide range of international directors for the purpose of developing new methods of visual written work. Directors include filmmakers like Dziga Vertov, Anges Varda, Farrough Farakzad, Chris Marker, Abas Kiarostami, John Akomfrah, Ari Folman, and Chantal Akerman. Students watch films, read theory related to both cinematic technique and lyric essay, write both critical and creative short assignments, with the goal toward transferring cinematic documentary techniques and cinematic theoretical approach into creative, nonfiction essays, developed in a workshop environment. The course also promotes cultural knowledge, investigates hidden biases, and explores culture privilege. Prerequisite: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements. However, students may enroll under special circumstances with prior permission of the instructor.

ASEM 2510 India: Caste/race/religion (4 Credits)

India: Caste/race/religion explores the idea that caste is the foundational structure of Indian society and that all the modern problems that plague India—casteism and untouchability, the genocidal treatment of Dalits and Muslims, the degradation of women and queer people, communalism, and the systematic disenfranchisement of a majority of Indian society, to name a few—have their foundations in caste. We will also pay special attention to how progressive movements founded on anticaste values have challenged social exclusion by drawing upon indigenous and other liberatory philosophical traditions.

ASEM 2512 Humor Theory and Application (4 Credits)

Students in this course study psychology of humor and practice skills in comedic performance. Students learn the psychological theories of humor and apply these theories to the work of a variety of comedians and humorists and to satires or parodies, such as mockumentaries. Additionally, students analyze humor from a cross cultural perspective and learn about humor and laughter research in experimental psychology. As the ability to understand and use humor appropriately is a key component of interpersonal and occupational success, this course additionally helps students recognize and develop their own humor styles.

ASEM 2513 Constructing Freedom and Bondage (4 Credits)

Historically, claims about what it means to be free -- or even human -- have been made through discourses about enslavement and imprisonment; some have used bondage as a trope to explore philosophical or artistic projects, while others have used it to interrogate the assumptions of various political and economic paradigms. Others, still, have used these tropes as a means of advocating for social change, notably through slavery and prison abolition movements. This course examines how writers such as Hegel, Frederick Douglass, Angela Davis, and Dylan Rodríguez define the relationship between freedom and bondage, and it examines the stakes of those definitions for an American ethos deeply invested in the concept of freedom. The course uses frameworks of critical discourse analysis to consider peer-reviewed scholarship, political speeches, reality TV, music videos, and documentary films. The course also explores conceptions of civic identity in the United States. Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2521 Youth in Italian Fiction (4 Credits)

This class explores broad questions about the representation of youth and adolescence, using the lens of fictional representations of youth in Italian literature and cinema of the 20th and 21st century, especially contemporary Italy. In addition to studying novels and films, the course will feature historical and sociological sources (including from youth studies), and will provide tools for a methodological approach to storytelling. Prerequisite: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements. However, students may enroll under special circumstances with prior permission of the instructor.

ASEM 2522 Social Change and Interview-Based Theatre (4 Credits)

This course is an exploration of the theory, techniques and processes used to create interview-based theatre. This course will explore both the theoretical and practical side of this specific theatre form. Students will read, analyze and reflect on past examples of interview-based theatre in order to gain a stronger sense of the ethics, limitations, possibilities and aesthetics that impact this particular theatre practice. In addition to the theoretical, students will have the opportunity to craft an interview-based play as groups in class, based on an exploration of the theme of their choosing. In a small group, students will craft interview questions, facilitate interviews, transcribe interviews, craft a script and have a staged reading of the final text. Additionally, students will write short reflections and a final paper. The objective of this course is to provide students, regardless of previous experience, with a deeper understanding of how to tell stories using interview as data - through a practical and analytical lens. This course will give students a general and specific understanding of the creative process used to produce an interview-based play as well as give them an opportunity to critique and analyze the form.

ASEM 2523 Utopian Urbanism: Reimagining the City (4 Credits)

This course examines alternative utopian visions of the city and their impact on human behavior and psychology. It covers over 9000 years of city planning and design, beginning with ancient Mesopotamia and ending with the present day. Course material draws on anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology, political science, architecture, geography, evolutionary ecology, cognitive science, civil engineering, and other disciplines. It generates new transdisciplinary understandings of cities that students can use in their lives as citizens.

ASEM 2527 Life's Aim (4 Credits)

How do our everyday activities and our short-term goals, like graduating from college and finding a job, fit together with some of our less concrete and more long-term concerns like finding happiness and meaning in our lives? Is there some way to understand our daily activities as coherent with and supportive of these overarching goals? Using philosophical, literary, psychological and economic texts, this course consists of an examination of the conceptual dichotomy of means vs. ends and the role that it plays in our analysis of human activity.

ASEM 2532 Death & Dying in Hindu Traditions (4 Credits)

This course explores the meanings of death and dying in Hindu perspectives. The inevitability of death has led cultures throughout the world to speculate on what happens to the individual during, at the moment of, and after death. Until the modern period, religions have typically been the first or only place where people turned for answers to basic questions of existence: What happens at death? Will I and the people I love disappear forever? Or will we continue on after death in some way? Is this the only life we have? What is the relationship between the life we lead now and what happens at and after death? These kinds of universal questions have led to culturally specific and conditioned answers and speculations, some of which we will examine in this course.

ASEM 2534 Trade Wars and Agreements (4 Credits)

Trade between nations and its governance are as old as the history of interaction among human beings. But they have gone through major changes throughout the history since changing economic and geopolitical conditions have long challenged the international system of trade governance. This course investigates the evolution of international trade agreements as well as wars. It is about an inquiry of trade wars and agreements in the context of case studies (such as the 2018 US-China trade war) from a political economy perspective. Have the parties involved in trade been (un)fair to each other (e.g., China vs. the U.S.)? Are they (e.g., the U.S. and China) so interdependent that they must resolve trade conflicts? These questions remain valid even when countries reach a trade agreement. The course addresses those questions from the perspectives of various fields such as economics, political science, history, and cultural studies, and it illustrates the effects of trade wars on ordinary citizens. Prerequisites: Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2536 Ways of Seeing and Sensing (4 Credits)

This interdisciplinary course explores the natural environment of DU’s Kennedy Mountain Campus (KMC). Students learn and communicate content knowledge in astronomy, ecology, and filmmaking in a place- and project-based curriculum revolving around the idea that what we know about our surroundings depends on how we “see” or “sense.” We examine natural systems specific to the KMC using both micro and macro approaches to seeing, and explore the ways plants and animals in this ecosystem sense their surroundings through non-visible light and other stimuli. Students collaborate to produce documentary film stories and written descriptions of the KMC sensory landscape for public audiences. The class meets one week in residence at KMC and one on the main campus with remote participation options.

ASEM 2539 Health, Media and the Self (4 Credits)

What are cultural beliefs about health, about prevention and about risk? We focus on how culture, media, peers, medical professionals and family influence how we construct and define health and the many key concepts scholars have linked to the notion of being healthy, preventing ill health and pursuing good health. We also examine the impact and function of these definitions on our everyday lives by exploring what health perceptions have to do with one's self concept, identity, self esteem, relationships, expectations, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.

ASEM 2543 Sound and Music in Early Modern England (4 Credits)

Imagine waking to the sound of bells, getting the latest news and gossip via song, singing bawdy rounds at the tavern, or gathering in a secret location to hear forbidden music. This course examines the profound cultural changes taking place in seventeenth-century England and the English empire and how music reflected and helped create these transformations. It considers religious extremism, colonialism, political and scientific revolutions, and their connection to our own political and cultural conflicts. No prior music experience required.

ASEM 2544 From Crisis To Solution: Indigenous Knowledge and the Path to Sustainable Living (4 Credits)

This course wants to offer new lenses to examine the current world challenges. It is not about further examining the problems that we face, but to appreciate that we already have the solutions that we are looking for. It is about exploring the possibilities for embracing a fundamental consciousness shift that restores connection with nature, between people, and within oneself. Reconnecting with Indigenous knowledge provides the teachings that can guide our civilization back to a more balanced way of being. The first part of this course examines the fundamental sources of the imbalances that we face, which lie in the illusions of individualism and materialism, and disconnection from natural laws. The second part discusses the historical roots of our present challenges. Understanding colonization, in all of its forms, is essential to appreciate the role that decolonization (of both our way of thinking and living) plays for the future of the planet. The third section is about the meaning of sustainable living. What does it entail? What are its foundations? Learning about the indigenous way of life will help reconnect with the values and the practices that can inspire the transformation that we are looking for. The last part of the course will shed light on the seeds of change that are well underway. Grassroot initiatives, activism, collective imagination, and spiritual awakenings are not only sources of hope, but they are co-creating the shift to a just civilization.

ASEM 2545 Medievalism in Music and Popular Culture (4 Credits)

This course explores the phenomenon of medievalism—that is, the perception and representation of medieval culture in post-medieval eras—and examines its impact on Western (that is, primarily European-derived and influenced) popular cultures, especially in music. The course examines ways that artists past and present have used images of the medieval past to connote authenticity, spirituality, liberty, virtue, class, gender, race, rebellion, democracy, alienation, horror, romanticism, and magic. Sites of medievalism discussed in the course include novels, films, operas and musical theatre, folk songs, visual art and architecture, politics (including disturbing elements such as fascist and white supremacist movements), hip-hop, new media, and digital cultures that draw on medievalism. As are all ASEM courses, this one is writing-intensive. Enforced Prerequisites and Restrictions: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements. However, students may enroll under special circumstances with prior permission of the instructor.

ASEM 2547 Writing About Music in the 21st Century (4 Credits)

Students analyze music from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including historical, political, and sociological approaches, and then learn to write about music in genres ranging from album reviews, musician and/or scene profiles, cultural criticism, liner notes, music blogs, performance reviews, and personal essays. Students read nonfiction about music, attend concerts, and research musicians, their music, and musical communities. With an eye toward broader publication, students craft and share their findings with public audiences. Course texts such as How to Write About Music will be supplemented by historical and theoretical readings and by works from music writers like Lester Bangs, Amiri Baraka, Jeff Chang, Gerald Early, bell hooks, Amanda Petrusich, Ellen Willis, and so on.

ASEM 2548 Critical Consumer Culture (4 Credits)

Students will engage in critical analysis of consumer culture, with a focus on how media, social media, advertising, spectacles/mega-events, and consumption spaces are a part of meaning-making in everyday life. In addition to reading historical and contemporary research articles about many facets of advertising and consumption, students will conduct their own analysis and write about various practices that make up this culture. To the extent possible, students will approach the study of consumer culture in the United States as if they were anthropologist or ethnographers, attempting to 'make strange' a set of familiar spaces and practices around consumption.

ASEM 2549 Disease- Money, Sex, Politics, and Religion (4 Credits)

This course will unpack human diseases from across the ages through various lenses such as power, prestige, politics, business, domination, love, morality, and culture. Diseases such as Hansen's Disease (Leprosy), Plague, Smallpox, Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, Syphilis, Malaria, Polio, Influenza, Cholera, and several others will be deconstructed to highlight the many societal layers of health and disease. This course will utilize historical texts, current literature, health journal articles, and multi-media content (movies, Ted Talks, etc.).

ASEM 2557 Body & Sexuality in Religion (4 Credits)

This course examines the unique place of the body in biblical religion. We ask how the Bible and its interpreters have shaped current views on sex and the gendered body in Western society. How has the Bible been (mis)used in relation to current understandings of the physical body? Is the saying that a "human" does not have a body, but is a body as true for the Hebrew Bible as the Christian New Testament? How has Judaism and Christianity (de)valued sexuality, procreation and celibacy? How do the biblical traditions shape our modern opinions about the ideal physical body and body modification? How can we understand "out-of-body" experiences and notions of death and afterlife in Western religion? Students are encouraged to interpret the Bible and their own beliefs from a uniquely embodied perspective.

ASEM 2558 Digital Gods: Media and Religion in the 21st Century (4 Credits)

This course explores the intersections between media, religion and culture in the United States. Religion continues to hold sway in the 21st Century as a social, cultural, and political force. Religion, broadly defined, remains active in the media age and is increasingly mediated through television, film, politics, and consumer culture. This course examines TV, film, sports, social media, and more to explore digital gods of the 21st century and how they influence and inform US culture.

ASEM 2559 Globalization and Film (4 Credits)

This course explores the varying ways that globalization impacts cinema on a national and transnational level. Designed as a seminar, this course is broken down into three units: theories on globalization; implications of globalization behind-the-scenes; and representations of globalization onscreen. Through a selection of assigned readings and filmic texts, you will be encouraged to think critically about what “globalization” means and how it influences films, both behind-the-scenes and onscreen. To reify your understanding of globalization, you will research and write original scholarship on globalization and a select film to contribute to the academic community.

ASEM 2560 America Through Foreign Eyes (4 Credits)

The United States, and Americans, occupy a unique, privileged and powerful position in the contemporary world order. Indeed, according to many scholarly and public accounts, the U.S. has achieved unprecedented status as the preeminent world power. Yet, despite or, paradoxically, perhaps because of its status as what some have called a world "hyperpower," large numbers of Americans are mostly, if not totally unaware of what U.S. global preeminence means to them and to other people around the world. This course aims to inspire critical reflection on the student's part about the role of the United States - its political and economic systems and practices, its culture, and most fundamentally its social actors, meaning its people(s), in a globalizing world.

ASEM 2566 Society Through Literature and Cinema (4 Credits)

This course will study the interconnection of human societies (or nation states) as evident in different kinds of narratives. Discussing literary and film narratives in particular, we will examine the beliefs and influences that shape relationships within the same society as well as the beliefs and influences that shape relationships between different peoples and societies. Our examination will include an exploration of how these beliefs and influences are generated and modified. Our study will be aided by the interpretive insights of artists and visionaries. Our examples will be taken from different regions of the world.

ASEM 2567 Violence, Law, & the State (4 Credits)

This class is built on interrogating arguably the fundamental issue facing every state: how to deal with violence. Through a mix of academic readings, films, documentaries, and reputable media, we will consider a range of issues regarding violence and the state in the modern world. The three organizing themes for the class are understanding the lived problems of violence, the nature and value of freedom in relation to violence and the state, and the question of how law relates to violence and the state.

ASEM 2568 Outsiders in Italian Fiction (4 Credits)

This class addresses the recurring representation of the character as an outsider in the Italian literary and cinematic tradition of the 20th and 21st centuries. Novels, theatrical plays, and films will be supplemented by a collection of secondary sources on psychology and sociology, providing the tools for a correct thematic and methodological approach to storytelling.

ASEM 2576 Art, Thought, Spirituality (4 Credits)

This course examines the close and complex relationship between esthetic expression and private religiosity, or "spirituality." The course will examine how theories as well as personal accounts of artistic creativity, experience and appreciation can both broaden and deepen our understanding of the inner life that is otherwise communicated in religious terms and how artistic expression can also have a quasi-religious or "spiritual" character. The central objective will be to illumine the way in which the construction of the individual self and the formation of the personal identity are intimately tied to different quests that are artistic and spiritual at once.

ASEM 2577 Cultural Intersections (4 Credits)

In this course, we explore the dynamics of cultural reception or the translational dimension of modern culture, particularly the reception of narratives within particular cultures and beyond. Our main focus is the principles that integrate and divide people along the lines of race, class, ethnicity and culture. Our journey involves studies of cultural contacts, contexts and narratives from Africa and the Caribbean, Asia and the Middle East, Europe and the Americas.

ASEM 2579 From Literature to Film (4 Credits)

In this course, we examine the adaptation of literary works into films. We closely study selected modern literary works and the film interpretations of each work. Focusing on the transition from one narrative form to another, the course enhances the critical skill of students as well as their creative ability with respect to cinematic translations. We, therefore, also have mini scriptwriting workshops as a way of imaginatively highlighting the sort of considerations that go into the making of the film script.

ASEM 2580 Celtic Identities and Nationalisms (4 Credits)

Every March 17th, millions of people around the world engage in invented rituals of drinking, parades, & music in celebration of St. Patrick's Day. Summer finds Scottish Highland Games enacted by kilt-wearing, bagpipe-playing, Celtic-culture aficionados across the English-speaking world. The European Union has funded Celtic-History Trails & sites across Western Europe to link itself to an earlier period of 'unification.' Millions of people claim Celtic heritage and ancestry in the U.S.A. and across the globe. But what does that really mean? Who is entitled to claim such identities? Who is not? How do people reconcile 'Celticness' with other elements of individual, national, and group identities across the globe? This course uses Celtic identity as a means of engaging students in a critical examination of the meaning and process of identity formation. Students identify, compare, and evaluate the methods used to define and claim legitimate and illegitimate definitions of "Celtic" identity espoused by past and current nationalists, musicians, archaeologists, political scientists, historians, governments, film-makers, shopkeepers in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Europe.

ASEM 2581 Forgiveness, Politics and Film (4 Credits)

This course covers a number of reconciliation frameworks that have been employed as transformative and peacemaking strategies in various interpersonal, social and political contexts. We discuss the value (and limitations) of core reconciliation concepts, see how they have been used productively, and consider their possible application to ongoing problems in the world today.

ASEM 2589 Thinking (4 Credits)

This course helps students both learn how to think well and to understand why they often don't think well. The course addresses a wide range of topics in which thinking is relevant including creativity, science, argumentation, rhetoric and intelligence. Students come to understand their personal strengths and weaknesses in thinking and students spend a substantial amount of time improving their areas of both strength and weakness.

ASEM 2596 Politics of Reconciliation (4 Credits)

This class addresses the national and international efforts to seek justice and achieve reconciliation. It examines how state and non-state actors reflect on an unfortunate or hostile past with a designated "other": how did their relations and interactions with this targeted "other" go wrong? What were the material, philosophical and emotional grounds to breed such hostilities? What were the consequences? Has the memory of the "past self" and "past others" shaped the way the two groups interact today? Why do some actors refuse to say "sorry," and why do some victims refuse to forgive? What are the similarities and differences among various reconciliation projects? In this class, we lead students to explore these challenging yet exciting questions.

ASEM 2600 Humans and Their Stuff: Our Relationships to Material and Immaterial Worlds (4 Credits)

Anthropologists, art historians, artists, makers, and inventors of all sorts have long studied things in the form of material culture, such as technology, artifacts, and art. They have been interested not only in how things are made and used, but also in how things mediate social relations and interactions, shape and express identity, record and spark memories, and how they make us feel and do things. In short, they have been concerned with how “persons make things and things make persons.” Anthropologists, in particular, have also been interested in people’s adaptations and changing relationships to the natural environment, the extraction of natural resources for producing things, and the impact of this behavior on the planet. This interdisciplinary course explores people’s diverse and multidimensional relationships with material and immaterial worlds through deep time and across cultures, through lectures, guest speakers, labs, and experiential-learning, hands-on exercises. Learning Outcomes: As a result of taking this course students are able to articulate an awareness of the importance of things in their individual and social lives; monitor, collect and record data and use basic statistical methods (frequencies, averages, percentages) for analysis of personal consumption/consumer habits; and conduct material culture and object-based research using collections from the University of Denver Museum of Anthropology; develop and use visual literacy/observational and multi-sensory skills that complement text-based learning and writing.

ASEM 2601 Urban Economic History Through Cinema (4 Credits)

We have recently passed the threshold where more than half of the population globally is living in urban areas. Perhaps more striking is that in 1850 only 3 cities (London, Beijing and Paris) had populations that exceeded a million people, while today there are over 300 such cities, with the largest city, Tokyo, having nearly 40 million inhabitants. Coincidentally, the growth in urban areas coincided with the emergence of cinema. In the popular imagination cities have been sites of both promise and terror and this has been well captured in movies since the early 20th century. This course will consider the economic cycle of cities from the early 20th century to the present as seen through film representations. While the films we will watch are works of art this is not a course on film appreciation. What we are interested in is how the emergence of large clusters of people living together in relatively small areas is being depicted over time. Furthermore, we want to understand how the economic arrangements that define these clusters, these cities, are documented and provide a new way of thinking about how humans decide to live and work in common spaces.

ASEM 2606 Japanese Film (4 Credits)

This course examines some of the most iconic films in the Japanese cinematic tradition in order to identify and critically engage in narratives of Japanese aesthetics and cultural identity, especially ones that take culture as the site for locating tradition and/or modernity. No previous knowledge of Japanese or film required.

ASEM 2609 Literature of Nature and Apocalypse (4 Credits)

Concern about the declining state of the environment has been a topic of longstanding interest, from Henry David Thoreau to John Muir, and writers like Edward Abbey, Ernest Callenbach, Louise Erdrich, T.C. Boyle, Octavia Burtler, Cormac McCarthy and others. This writing intensive course examines questions relating to environmental activism and social structures predicated upon technological and materialist culture. It considers how American writers have reassessed the relation between religious beliefs and notions of utopia and apocalypse. It examines and analyzes timely and relevant historical, literary, and philosophical issues relating to the current state of the environment.

ASEM 2610 The Politics of Bilingualism (4 Credits)

While more and more college students are required to take a “foreign” language and bilingual programs grow in popularity in the K-12 systems, formal education in languages other than English in the US has often been at the heart of fierce debates claiming it is impractical, irrelevant and even “un-American”. This course addresses a variety of concerns around the perception and manifestations of bi- and multilingual policies in the US. We examine how the perception of English as a “national language” and a “language of opportunity”, contrasted with other languages (and the people who speak them) as a “distraction” or “threat” contribute to personal and public policies surrounding language use in the US.

ASEM 2611 Being Human: Sex and Sexuality (4 Credits)

Relationships are the greatest thing in the world--until they end. Many people have experienced both the exhilaration and the misery of a romantic relationship. The same can be true for other types of social relationships. How do you make sense of the relationships around you? To navigate better our complex human landscape, understanding the basis of human sexuality and sexual expression is important. This course examines behavior and emotion by introducing the results of high-quality scientific studies of sexual behavior and its evolution and expression. Prerequisites: Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2615 Disease in World History (4 Credits)

This course examines the social and political impact of disease in global history, and also considers how understandings of disease have changed over time. We will focus on the modern period (roughly the past two hundred years) and examine demographically significant diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and smallpox. Themes that we'll explore together include how the distribution of power and wealth in the 19th-20th centuries helped determine global distribution of diseases today; how our ideas about a disease influence how willing and able we are to deal with it effectively; and the notion that disease is as much as socioeconomic problem as a biotechnical one.

ASEM 2620 Inventing America (4 Credits)

This class introduces students to exemplary public documents, primarily in the form of speeches, which address the promises set out in the preamble of the U.S. Declaration of Independence: the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The course traces how these promises have been articulated by a succession of public actors ranging from U.S. Presidents to members of radical political factions. The course always addresses three major political movements: (1) the movement for political inclusion of Blacks, beginning with early abolitionists and extending to the struggle for civil rights, including the black power movement; (2) the movement for the political inclusion of women, beginning with the suffragists and extending to include feminism, including the fights over sexual freedom; and (3) the struggle over economic rights, beginning with early U.S. socialist and anarchist movements and extending into the contest over the creation and pruning of the U.S. welfare system.

ASEM 2627 Translingual Perspectives (4 Credits)

Our languages and dialects are essential components of our identities. In an increasingly multilingual society, linguistic diversity is a personal, academic, and professional advantage. Nevertheless, linguistic justice is a more urgent issue than ever, since there is often pressure in both academic and professional communities for speakers and writers to conform to Standard English, a practice that can lead to a devaluing of one’s heritage languages or dialects. “Translingual Perspectives” introduces difference in language as a resource for producing meaning. After reading framing articles from different fields—such as writing studies, sociolinguistics, and anthropology—students are invited to explore their own linguistic identities and to conduct related ethnographic and oral history research. Enforced Prerequisites and Restrictions: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements. However, students may enroll under special circumstances with prior permission of the instructor.

ASEM 2637 James Joyce's Ulysses (4 Credits)

This Advanced Seminar will focus on James Joyce’s famously difficult—but in many ways not all that difficult—modernist masterpiece Ulysses, which will in turn be the subject of three writing assignments that will allow you to explore the roles and responsibilities of the reader, the writer, and the critic. There are many reasons to devote an entire quarter to James Joyce’s Ulysses, which turned 100 years old on 2/2/2022, but here are two: 1) its reputation as a “difficult” book often overshadows the fact that it’s beautiful, funny, and in many ways quite accessible, and 2) it’s a useful book for thinking about being with (and without) other people. In this course, we will try to find out both what this book can teach us and what we can teach one another about it.

ASEM 2640 New England: Myth and Memory (4 Credits)

The subject of this course is historical memory or, to put it simply, the relationship of the present to the past. Historians take for granted what has been called "the invention of tradition," but most people do not appreciate the constructed nature of the past and do not recognize the possibility that there have been (and continue to be) contests over which version of key historical events or movements is to be disseminated to the public. This course focuses on region--New England--and its racial history as a case study of the process of fabricating historical memory. New England's history is particularly useful for this purpose because the region has had an inordinate impact on our national history.

ASEM 2641 Globalization from Above and Below (4 Credits)

This course provides a unique and challenging opportunity for students to clarify the concept of globalization by exploring parallel and interesting forces "from above and below." This course draws widely from international studies, economics, political science, sociology, environmental studies, and feminist theory to examine processes of global social change and conflict. Through academic theorizing and activist writings, the course familiarizes students with some of the landmark debates on globalization. Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2646 Dance in India (4 Credits)

As a discipline in which the body is trained to become "naturalized" in very specific ways, dance tells us much about the culture in which it is a part. Dance movements and meanings also become sites of conflict during periods of cultural transition, and yet because of dance's ephemeral nature, its relative adherence to tradition, or lack thereof, is difficult to ascertain, and thus often hotly contested. This course explores the tension between change (innovation) and continuity (tradition) in four different forms of dance from the Indian subcontinent: Bharata Natyam, a classical dance form from South India; Kathak, a classical dance form from North India; Bhangra, a folk dance form from Northwestern India; and the mass-mediated, syncretic form of dance predominant in the Bollywood film industry.

ASEM 2651 The Peopling of the Western Hemisphere: Science, Evidence, Controversy (4 Credits)

The migration and colonization of North and South America is analyzed based on data and observations made from the archaeological record. While it is evident that people did arrive in the Western Hemisphere in the distant past, there is a great deal of dispute about where they came from, when they arrived, and how they adapted to the new environments they encountered. The course evaluates various claims about all these important aspects of human migration. It tests conflicting models about which people arrived first, where they first landed, and what they did when they got here. The primary tools for this analysis are archaeological materials, but the course also draws on recent DNA and linguistic evidence of living Native American groups.

ASEM 2663 The Dark Knight Exposed: Exploring the Complicatedness of Superheroes (4 Credits)

The 21st century has seen a rebirth of interest in fictional superheroes, and this course will explore how such characters can be seen as representing aspects of contemporary society. Especially noteworthy are conflicts between good and evil that so many superheroes embody. As Batman character Harvey Dent explains, “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” The course uses readings from psychology, literary studies, and popular culture to explore figures from the X-Men, Superman, the Avengers, and other comics and movies, with a central case study focus on Batman. The goal is for students to come away with a deep understanding of and appreciation for the complexities of superheroes and what they represent: what conflicts hide below their surfaces and our society’s?.

ASEM 2665 Occupied France in Perspective (4 Credits)

This course deals with the Occupation of France during World War II. Students, throughout the course, learn to understand, describe and articulate selected crucial aspects of this four-year period of military occupation. This course examines the question of the image of the Resistance and Occupation in cultural memory; this is a much studied and debated issue today, and forms the conclusion to the course. Forms of collaboration and resistance are very much in question in historical, cultural and literary debates today.

ASEM 2666 Murder in America (4 Credits)

This course draws on research from several perspectives in order to examine: (1) the definitions, scope, consequences and historical trends of homicide in America over the last century, including a case study investigation of why the murder rate dropped dramatically in New York City by the late 1990s; (2) past and current sociological/cultural and psychological explanations for lethal violence, including an in-depth look at serial, mass and spree killers; (3) crime policies and techniques aimed at reducing lethal violence, which entails a critical look at Three Strikes and You're Out laws aimed at violent offenders; and (4) media representations of homicide defendants and victims.

ASEM 2670 Development in Latin America (4 Credits)

This is a writing-intensive course centered on examining in a critical manner the continued efforts made by several countries in Latin America throughout the 20th century in promoting different projects of national economic and political development. Among other topics, we analyze the incorporation of Latin American countries into the international economy and the consolidation of its local oligarchic regimes (circa 1880s to 1930s); the importance of populism and elite pacts (of the 1940s and 1950s) for the promotion of industrial programs; the process of radicalization of the left, the democratic breakdowns and the ensuing military rule (of the mid-1960s and 1970s); the transitions to democratic rule (1980s); the implementation of market-reforms (1990s); and the current challenges for democratic consolidation.

ASEM 2672 The Berlin Republic: Germany since 1990 (4 Credits)

For roughly two decades, Germany, a once divided nation in the heart of Europe held responsible for World Wars, has been re-united. Forty years of division between West- and East-Germany--a division exacerbated by their respective geopolitical roles in the Cold War--left its mark on what many intellectuals considered a 'cultural nation' in spite of their political separation. This class examines the pains and gains of twenty years of unity, a process that has repeatedly been described as an attempt to "normalize" Germany's complicated history. We analyze various political, historical, but mostly cultural developments (and debates) that have accomplished and, at times, questioned this unification.

ASEM 2677 The Sixties: Swinging London (4 Credits)

Most of us are familiar with the main images of the 1960s in Britain, miniskirts, Mods, scooters, hippies, free love, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and James Bond. Considered the great decade of change, students' parents and other baby-boomers look back on it with nostalgia and the media continues to romanticize the period as being more innocent than today. Yet scholars continue to argue about the degree to which the Sixties really changed British society. While popular culture was clearly departing from that of the pre and immediately post-war era, many scholars from various disciplines assert that these changes, including the rise of the music industry, the teenager and youth culture, consumer-oriented society, spy literature, gender and racial issues found their roots in the post-war experience. Other scholars assert that the decade was dominated by contradictory impulses and that the major changes were uneven and often on the surface. This course traces the major themes of the period, including the rise of popular youth-based consumer culture, an unfettered media in Fleet Street, the center of world fashion-Carnaby Street, espionage literature on the page and on the screen, race and immigration issues, challenges to gender norms and sexual 'liberation', Britain's changing position in the world, the end of the British Empire, and the redefining of British national identity. These themes are investigated using a variety of sources including popular and documentary films, personal memoirs, novels, primary documents, secondary literature, fashion, poster art and other non-traditional sources.

ASEM 2680 Jewish Latin America (4 Credits)

This course examines Jewish presence in Latin America from colonial times to the present, focusing on Jewish writers in Spanish America throughout the 20th century and considering Jewish-Brazilian and Jewish-Latino writers, Jewish themes in non-Jewish Latin American literature, and the various waves of Jewish immigration to Latin America. This course considers how they helped shape their specific communities and their responses to assimilation, state-sponsored anti-Semitism and Aliyah. Topics to be discussed include assimilation vs. integration; the construction of Jewish and national identities; and anti-Semitism in literature, film and political discourse. The course integrates critical readings alongside the literature, specifically in the areas of trauma and representation. No knowledge of Spanish is required, as the language of instruction is English and all required texts are available in English translation.

ASEM 2685 Religion and Filmmaking (4 Credits)

This course examines film and television representations of religions from around the world in an effort to understand the goals of the media makers and the effects of their productions. The techniques, theory and rhetoric of the films viewed are dissected and discussed. The course enables students to participate in critical, yet respectful debates about the cinematic mediation of religious concepts.

ASEM 2692 Philosophy of Migration and Global Citizenship (4 Credits)

The 21st century is already being described by many as "The Age of Migration." This course explores the implications of mass global migration for the political philosophies of citizenship on which sovereign states are founded. Is something like a global citizenship possible? This seminar offers a cross-disciplinary perspective on this and other related issues. Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2696 Communication and Adoption (4 Credits)

This course explores the communicative dynamics of adoptive families. This course focuses on issues surrounding identity, cultural context, race, sexual orientation, loss and ethics. Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2697 Muslims and Identity in Europe (4 Credits)

This course introduces students to the diverse Muslim populations across Europe, taking a case study approach that focuses on the histories, national politics, and societal contexts that help form Muslim European identities. Students gain exposure to anthropological, historical, political science, and religious studies techniques and perspectives, while writings focus on real-world genres that support students' professional development. Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2713 Food Culture: Foodies, Foragers and Food Politics (4 Credits)

Culture, history, identity, sustainability, power: food is the bridge that connects us. Food is used to nourish and heal, mark celebrations, build community, and symbolize identity. This seminar investigates the connections between our food choices and political and cultural power. Completion of all common curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2715 Belonging in America (4 Credits)

Who belongs in America? Who is on the inside/outside, and why? How do we define, experience, maintain, reject, and embrace our own insider/outsider status? Finally, how do American novels and dramas conceptualize and dramatize the many negotiations involved in belonging? This course explores the social, cultural, and experiential aspects of belonging in America. Completion of all common curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2720 Nazi Germany: History, Literature, Culture (4 Credits)

This course explores Germany's Nazi era. It focuses on themes like redemption, temptation, national community, conflict and memory while analyzing both texts and visuals from and related to the period. Prerequisite: Completion of all other Common Curriculum Requirements.

ASEM 2728 Identity, Power, and Media Culture (4 Credits)

In our contemporary cultural landscape, information is delivered in many formats, through various mediums, to global audiences. Understanding media systems as information delivery is often tied to journalism and/or financial institutions; “news” and “data,” have become synonymous with what we officially learn from media culture. However, those same images and messages that help us understand our social condition are also delivering important meanings about ourselves and those around us. This course focuses on this branch of inquiry within media studies—highlighted by the work of cultural studies—and focuses on the intersections of identity and power. As a fundamental source of the signification of identity, media culture becomes a social tool, and therefore must be understood as a system that shapes our relationships to individuals and communities. This course will explore the importance of this process, will equip students with the means to critically analyze media texts and production, and will sharpen awareness to dominant norms and values in our society. Overall, this course provides students an opportunity to directly confront the questions: How do media shape our understandings of intersecting identities such as gender, race, ability and class? How can we critically identify stereotypes and misrepresentation, including our own privilege? How do dynamics of identity operate at the production level(s)? What are the implications of these representations and how are they related to power dynamics in contemporary culture?.

ASEM 2734 Music and Spirituality (4 Credits)

At a time when "spiritual" music appears in a wide variety of contexts such as churches, yoga studios, raves, and radio broadcasts, "Music and Spirituality" explores individual and collective perspectives on music and transcendence, and teaches how a deeper understanding of those perspectives can lead to a broader view of meaning in human experience.

ASEM 2736 Spirituals and the Blues (4 Credits)

This course examines spirituals and the blues, two song forms from the canon of African American music. A multifaceted approach (both historical and analytical) reveals the ways in which the music is transformative, healing, and liberating, as well as providing a vehicle for agency. The course also studies the music's larger sociopolitical landscape.

ASEM 2738 Brands, Culture, and Identity (4 Credits)

Brands have become ubiquitous in every aspect of life in contemporary culture. How has this come to pass and what are the social, political and cultural consequences of living in a culture saturated by brands? This course explores critically the roles and meanings of brands in the making of cultures and identities.

ASEM 2740 Rhetorics of Belonging (4 Credits)

This course explores how particular uses of language shape and convey historical and current understandings of American citizenship. Students examine how language creates, reinforces, and challenges the idea of "belonging." What is at stake in accepting or denying identities for certain groups? The course analyzes the role literacy has played in constructions of citizenship, pertinent relationships between culture and language, and the rhetorics of belonging. The course uses both primary and secondary texts to examine the complicated, dynamic, and nuanced history of immigration from multiple perspectives.

ASEM 2742 Media and Marketplace Feminism (4 Credits)

This course tracks the historical trajectory of marketplace feminism—also known as commodity feminism, lifestyle feminism, or white feminism—through its dynamic relationship to media culture. In an effort to highlight the complexities surrounding both feminism as political praxis, as well as feminism as a commodity, multiple perspectives are offered for classroom discussion and critique, including readings from feminists, pop culture/literary critics, media studies scholars and feminist media studies scholars.

ASEM 2743 Bad Words: The Ideologies of Profanity (4 Credits)

Students explore bad words in all of their variations (e.g., expletives, obscenities, profanities, etc.). The course combines an historical study of bad words with an examination of current usage and issues, looking at bad words through a range of readings from history, neurology, ideology, psychology, and other fields.

ASEM 2744 The Academy Awards & Academia (4 Credits)

This course introduces students to the history and politics of the Academy Awards, through weekly film screenings and a variety of scholarly texts from across the disciplines. From war sagas and romantic comedies to horror flicks and musicals, the films covered represent the best of the best, at least according to members of the voting Academy. The course's scholarly lenses will range from statistical analyses of features of Best Picture winners to historical, political, sociological, and cultural interpretations of how the Oscars have reflected shifting societal values.

ASEM 2747 Complexity in the Social Sciences with a Focus on Economics (4 Credits)

The course introduces basic approaches for the analysis of complex systems and their applications informing policy decisions, drawing particularly from an economics perspective. It addresses how complex systems approaches can be used to analyze and understand issues in the social sciences, and explains how a complexity view can change perspectives on situations that are often viewed only from a linear understanding. To illustrate characteristics such as emergence and self-organization, different theoretical methods are introduced. Key issues are addressed without extensive mathematical background. Theoretical issues as well as applications in policy are included in the class. The course introduces basic approaches for the analysis of complex systems and their applications informing policy decisions, drawing particularly from an economics perspective. It addresses how complex systems approaches can be used to analyze and understand issues in the social sciences, and explains how a complexity view can change perspectives on situations that are often viewed only from a linear understanding. To illustrate characteristics such as emergence and self-organization, different theoretical methods are introduced. Key issues are addressed without extensive mathematical background. Theoretical issues as well as applications in policy are included in the class. Completion of all Common Curriculum requirements is required prior to registering for this class.

ASEM 2748 What We Eat Matters: The Political Economy of Food (4 Credits)

This course examines the historical development of our global food system, its imbalances, and alternative perspectives on how to address them. In the first section, the course examines how food production and food consumption have evolved in the era of globalization, and discusses the defining features of global food markets. The second section examines the economic, social, and environmental challenges associated with the globalization of food. The third and last section discusses alternative perspectives on how to build robust, just, and sustainable food system.

ASEM 2749 Art, Writing, and Propaganda in Occupied France (4 Credits)

On June 22, 1940, France having been defeated, the French Maréchal Pétain signed an Armistice with Germany and became head of the "Vichy" régime which would now collaborate with the Nazis. The course takes several perspectives on Occupied France, delving into the Vichy régime's policies, practices, and propaganda; daily life under Occupation; types of collaboration and resistance; anti-Semitism in France at this period and before, the art world under Vichy, and the Liberation (1944-5). Course readings (and "viewings") are varied: including historical accounts, Vichy propaganda posters, poetry by members of the French Resistance, post-war films looking back on Vichy with new perspectives, and much more.

ASEM 2750 Latin American Sci-fi Film (4 Credits)

This course focuses on a new generation of Latin American independent filmmakers that offer a unique perspective on science fiction and examines how Latin American sci-fi cinema of the 21st century reflects on the present and reimagines the future. Featured films in this course are from Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.

ASEM 2751 Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories in America (4 Credits)

This course focuses on the history and consequences of misinformation and conspiracy theories in the United States. Students read from multiple disciplines, including history, sociology, psychology, and political science, to understand not only why misinformation and conspiracy theories persist, but also how they affect our health, democracy, and social lives. This course takes a pluralistic approach, with readings from academics as well as political practitioners, journalists, and others to underscore the many ways the misinformation and conspiracies are concerning for the United States.

ASEM 2752 World Migration in Literature and Film (4 Credits)

The course examines the nature and history of contemporary world migration. Focusing on significant issues concerning migration and diaspora as well as pertinent contexts and experiences in different regions of the world (such as Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas), we explore a transnational process that has changed the world. An important aspect of the course is the study of narratives capable of providing insights into a global phenomenon that has been described as "the history of the world.

ASEM 2777 Stranger Things – Monsters, Spirits, and the Supernatural from Asia (4 Credits)

Following the Enlightenment, our modern world is supposed to be disenchanted. Supernatural beings no longer dwell among us, and individuals are governed by the principles of reason and secularism. But we know from our everyday life that modern people remain fascinated by the fantastic, the grotesque, and the monstrous. From many Asian cultures, the encounter between traditional beliefs and Western modern rationality has been historically complicated by even more extrinsic factors: colonial rule, diasporic movements, authoritarian experiences, and the Cold War. More recently, Asian naturalist thinking and philosophies are touted as a critical alternative to the environmental exploitation and the ecological crisis resulted from our capitalist present. On the other hand, religious extremism and ethnonationalism are also implicated in the anything-but-secular political life of many Asian countries. Drawing from history, anthropology, and studies of literature, cinema, visual arts and video games, this class explores how seemingly irrational, supernatural beliefs and pious practices permeate Asia's modern life as creative imaginaries and criticisms about society, as images of monstrosity channel social outcasts and marginal voices.

ASEM 2789 Deviant Bodies (4 Credits)

Students will explore the meanings of deviant bodies. They will examine narratives of fatness, illness, disabilities, sexualities, femininities, masculinities, race, and contamination from sociological, historical, anthropological, and feminist perspectives. Discussions and intensive writing about deviant bodies will be prompted by scholarship on embodiment, gender, and social inequality, through examinations of popular culture, social media, film, and students' own social interactions.

ASEM 2833 Geographies of Conquest: Christian, Jewish, and Islamic societies in Andalusia (4 Credits)

This ASEM introduces students to the cultural landscapes, former and current, of the different societies that converged in Iberia. The class will focus on medieval Al-Andalus, the Islamic kingdoms that flourished there. During medieval times, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish societies lived side by side in an environment that oscillated between tolerance and open persecution. Science, art, scholarship, and political strategy motivated tolerance while religious fundamentalism and geopolitical considerations motivated persecution. This class will cover the human-environment interactions in the landscapes medieval and modern Andalusia through an immersive field study and travel experience. Over a period of 4 online days plus 9 travel days we will visit the cities and surroundings of Madrid, Cordoba, Toledo, Seville, and Granada in Spain where we will examine and compare cultural geographic, historical, religious, and anthropological issues surrounding the communities that interacted in Al-Andalus/Andalusia (past and present). Through pre-departure lessons and preparations, observations, lectures, discussions, readings, assignments, and immersion, the course will stress the development of in-situ critical thinking skills and the promotion of cultural diversity, tolerance, and global awareness. This class fulfills ASEM requirements.

ASEM 2860 Critical Disability and Culture (4 Credits)

This course explores how the concept of disability (physical, developmental, cognitive, emotional, psychosocial and so on) is constructed through a variety of lenses. Topics may include biomedical discourse of disability in everyday life; relationships and the workspace; the discourse of normalcy as it is constructed by persons with disabilities; and meaning-making process of disability in various cultural and contextual spaces. Utilizing academic research, popular culture references, visual media and writing, students deconstruct, critique, and analyze the different discourses of disability through basic character-driven gaming, using standards of Universal Design.

ASEM 2861 Taboo Tales: Cultural Literacy through Fairy Tales (4 Credits)

Cultural literacy requires that we grapple not only with social boundaries, but also with what lies beyond them – the taboos that frighten us, and the taboos that intrigue us. In this course, we will explore the topic of taboo through the lens of storytelling, with a particular focus on the unsettling themes represented in folklore. We will approach the study of taboo in a multi-disciplinary manner, using a blend of folklore, history, psychology, film, and textual studies to examine various tales of taboo from diverse cultures, including Native American, Chinese, Indian, European, Russian, and African fairy tales. Please note that this course will cover unsettling and violent topics; be prepared to read about these themes.

ASEM 2862 Racism, Schooling, & Development (4 Credits)

This course will focus on ways everyday school practices can perpetuate racial inequity in school and society as well as impacting racially minoritized youth development. Specifically, we will explore how various school practices (e.g., discipline) disproportionately impact Black and Latine youth schooling experiences as well as their social, emotional, and cognitive development. Students will read empirical and popular press articles and engage the literature with in class and out of class written assignments.

ASEM 2863 Religion and Science Fiction (4 Credits)

Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? What happens when we die? How do we define what it means to be human? What do we do when others look at us as Others? These are some of the questions that human communities have explored through philosophy and theology. Science fiction (SF) and fantasy represent a massive amount of cultural production, creating a space in which we collectively explore many of these same questions. In this course we will examine novels, short stories, film, and television programs in order to analyze the production of popular culture, meaning making, and modern-day mythology, all with an eye towards resonances with these vital questions about what it means to be human.

ASEM 2864 Ethics of AI (4 Credits)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and technology, including robotic technology, are already widespread and only becoming more so. As these technologies are developed and integrated into human life, what are the ethical implications? In this interdisciplinary course, we will read work by philosophers, feminist and critical race and ethnic studies scholars, computer scientists, engineers, and military professionals in order to acquire a detailed, nuanced perspective on the ethics of AI. Using these multiple perspectives, we will focus several topics, including: bias in algorithms, privacy and data rights, whether we should be trying to create machines that represent and act on moral values like humans, the social impacts of AI and technology, and AI and Robotics in Warfare.

ASEM 2865 Water in the West (4 Credits)

Both increasing population size and the impacts of global warming have placed considerable stress on urban water resources in the arid and semi-arid west. This course provides 1) an historical review of the development of water resources in the western United States, 2) a current overview of both active and theoretical proposals to manage water resources to ensure long-term water supply sustainability, 3) highlight the difficulties in implementing sustainability strategies, focusing on questions of economics, politics and distributional equity. Prerequisites: ECON 1020.