This course explores the myths of ancient Greece and Rome through Homer’s epics and Hesiod’s works. Students engage with mythology, ritual, and religion while learning to think critically about cultural narratives. They also gain insights into our culture’s connection with these timeless stories.

This course focuses on how fiction, poetry, and nonfiction imagine the relation between humans and nature, in particular as climate change looms. Literature helps us reflect on the equilibrium between human activity (industry, development, technology) and the planet on which we make our home.

The photo above is the painting Coalbrookdale at Night (1801) by Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740-1812)

How has the rise of AI-assisted writing changed digital composition, editing, and publishing? This course look at recent developments in digital writing and publishing in light of the emergence of large language models.

Students will spend three weeks abroad studying stage performances at top international arts festivals in Galway, Dublin, Stratford, and London. They will experience Irish theater, Royal Shakespeare Company plays, and London’s cultural venues. The course will also include time for side trips to the Aran Islands and the Cotswolds and a free long weekend to tour a destination of their choice—Paris is just a train trip away!

This course explores the fascinating history of the American Presidency, an office that has been controversial and constantly changing ever since its creation. We will study how the presidency has evolved, how individual presidents have left their stamp on the office, and how presidents have interacted with other branches of government, with leaders of other countries, and with the nation’s varied people from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. 

Photo credit: The White House, Washington, DC, south facade, with large conservatory wing at left and American flag flying above. Date between 1898 and 1914 © Library of Congress

In the twenty-first century, video games have exploded in popularity, eclipsing older pop culture formats like film and television. But if the medium is new, many of the most popular games today look backward to the past, such as history-intensive franchises like Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed, Ghost of Tsushima, or Civilization. This course uses the fictional content of select video games to explore major social, cultural, economic, and political dilemmas in the human past, while pondering how games can both reveal and conceal historical truths. 

This course examines both historical and contemporary witchcraft. It looks at various beliefs and accusations and the contested terms of “magic” and “religion” in a variety of social and cultural settings.

Photo credit: The Magic Circle (1886) by John William Waterhouse

Your work is not going to matter if you do not know how to present it. We will work toward understanding why the behavioral elements of presence (voice, body language, and breathing) are crucial for communicating to an audience. We will study what a story is, how it works, and how to use it to create an impactful presentation.

Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote is often said to be a book about books, and in the broadest sense, a book about readers and reading. Cervantes still has a lot to teach us about reading, and becoming more attuned “readers” of the reality around us. Written at a time when the massive proliferation of media produced a crisis in knowledge, Don Quixote and its enduring insights will serve as a vehicle to introduce students to textual analysis and media literacy. 

Can you save the Yggdrasil? In “Tales from the Yggdrasi,” students learn the science and skills they’ll need to save a multi-generational spaceship (the Yggdrasil) after an asteroid-like object hits the craft, leaving behind loss and destruction. If the survivors are to make it to a new home among the stars, students will have to collaborate and use problem-solving, creativity, and critical thinking skills. Blending science fiction with sound scientific principles, this innovative course is a new way for students to engage in experiential learning.

This class has a combination of lab exercises to illustrate various aspects of plant physiology and molecular biology. It includes several open-ended lab investigations including two that are testing ideas being explored in the Binder’s research lab and that are funded through NSF; one that explores chemicals that prime plants to survive better and another examining plant-microbe interactions.

This lecture course incorporates biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology concepts learned in the BCMB curriculum to our final frontier, the brain. Students will integrate data from traditional and modern Neuroscience techniques and conceptual knowledge from these various fields to our current understanding of cellular and molecular components of the brain, early development, wiring and function. Ultimately, they apply the information learned in the class to understanding neurological disorders.

This course gives students hands-on experience working with computational tools to investigate real biomedical questions by analyzing the ever-increasing wealth of genomic and proteomic data becoming available. Students learn R programming, statistical approaches, and online analysis tools as they investigate how a single DNA point mutation can lead to a devastating premature aging disease, dive into the molecular biology of COVID and cancer, and analyze single-cell sequencing of neurons in the brain.

This course examines the evolutionary, ecological, and societal responses to past, current, and future anthropogenic changes. Climate change, habitat destruction, invasive species, and pollution are the most important stressors our planet experiences and have immense consequences for all organisms on earth. These changes can alter natural systems and change the benefits that ecosystems provide to human societies. Using hands-on approaches to teach skills in writing, communication and policy, the course emphasizes ways to expand multidisciplinary approaches to the complex problem of global change.

Analyzes the key sources of political change in the modern world—from military coup plotters to empowered women and climate change. Focuses on the agents of political change in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and can serve as an introduction to more region-specific 400-level offerings in Comparative Politics.

This course focuses on the causes and consequences of terrorism and political violence. Students will be introduced to theoretical and empirical research on violent political conflict and the role of non-state actors in our world today. Topics will vary, but may include: trends in armed conflict, underlying causes of terrorism and political violence, characteristics of violent non-state actors, strategies of violent non-state actors, the process of radicalization, and efforts to counter violent non-state actors.

This special topics course, Vertebrate Neuroanatomy, will introduce the common features and some evolutionary modifications of vertebrate central nervous system organization by examining the embryological processes. Beyond the early developmental phase, we will focus most closely on mammalian central nervous system organization.

This special topics course, Behavior, Hormones, and the Brain will focus on the role of hormones in neural function and behavior. A variety of basic topics related to reproduction, sexual differentiation, parental behavior and aggression will be covered.