Core: Structures of Thought & Society (CSTS-UH)

Thinking is what we do when we solve problems, compare alternatives, and plan for the future. But what is thinking, and how do thoughts form? People throughout history have come to very different answers to this question and have offered different metaphors for thought. The French Philosopher Descartes drew inspiration for his theories of the mind from mechanisms that were powered by pneumatics. Our modern understanding of thinking is shaped by the computer revolution. The class will discuss the underpinnings of the main fields of Psychology (e.g. Behaviorism, Freudian, Cognitive), as well as to how thinking has been viewed in a broader historical and multicultural context. We will explore how thoughts on thinking have shaped our understanding of who we are and how our metaphors of thought have been inspired by technological developments and shaped by culture.

Chance is a common word whose meaning can vary, but which generally applies to situations involving a certain amount of unpredictability. We all spend a lot of time and effort to evaluate and possibly increase our chances of success, or to minimize certain risks. If philosophical discussions about chance and randomness can be traced back to antiquity, probabilistic and statistical concepts appeared more recently in mathematics. The ambition of the theory of chance has been to deal rationally with this elusive notion. Starting with gambling strategies, the theory now applies to the core of almost all scientific and technical fields, including statistical and quantum mechanics, chaotic dynamics, phylogenetics, sociology, economics, risk management, and quality control. We will provide a broad introduction, organized as a journey in the history of ideas. We will investigate key concepts (including independence, expectation, confidence intervals, or tests), consider their applications to specific fields of science, and illustrate them by computer experiments. Readings include excerpts from Lucretius, Pascal, Hume, Laplace, Peirce, and Hacking.

When was science invented or discovered? And is this issue still relevant to our interpretation and use of the scientific method? Because of the great wealth of scientific results obtained in the Hellenistic period of ancient Greece, the course will take up such questions starting from that period. We will analyze the works of Euclid and Archimedes and others in Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, and Geography, with a particular focus on very modern, and maybe still undiscovered, contents. The achievements of Hellenistic science and the issues it raised will be compared with some of those appearing in other golden ages of science, such as ancient Babylonia, the Islamic Golden Age, the Renaissance, and our times. The course will not consist of a review of established facts, but rather the exploration of sometimes controversial interpretations.

Can all physical aspects of nature be described by one coherent and all-encompassing set of physical laws? This course provides a global viewpoint on some of the most theoretical foundations of science, which take place within and across theoretical physics and mathematics. The course will survey the theories that describe the universe from smallest scale (particles) to the largest scale (cosmology) and emphasize general guiding principles which include symmetry and consistency. "Everything" is about the concept of the (sought after) theory of everything or grand unification of all the natural forces of nature: Gravity (e.g. falling objects, planets), weak nuclear force (e.g. radiation), strong nuclear force (e.g. nuclei of atoms), and electromagnetism. Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life on a quest to unify the forces of nature (known at the time). While his attempts were not successful, his pursuit was certainly worthwhile and the mantle is being carried today by researchers from modern perspectives. The course will survey these fascinating topics and pursue a conceptual approach that is accessible to students.

For thousands of years humans have studied the skies to help them grow crops, navigate the seas, and earn favor from their gods. We still look to the stars today to answer fundamental questions: How did the Universe begin? Will the Universe end, and if so, how? And what is our place in the Universe? Astronomy and Cosmology help us answer these questions. We have learned that our place in the Universe is not special: the Earth is not at the center of the Universe; the Sun is an ordinary star; and the Milky Way is an ordinary galaxy. Astronomers have even suggested that the Universe itself may not be unique. This course aims to understand the Universe from the Big Bang to its future.

Why are there economic disparities across countries? Why did some countries grow steadily over the past 200 years while many others did not? What has been the role of geography, culture, and institutions in the development process? What prevents poor countries from adopting the technologies and practices that seem to define the success of richer countries? What has been the role of the international community in the development of countries? These are some of the questions discussed in this course. Following a historical and cross-cultural perspective, students will explore the origins of economic development and the path that led to the configuration of the modern global economy.

What are the foundations of political legitimacy and to what extent do governments abide by them? This course will explore these questions using both classical and contemporary accounts. The first half will focus on political systems in Ancient Greece, Rome, Medieval Europe, and Early Modern Europe through the lens of great thinkers, including Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Burke, Weber, and Marx, as well as a series of primary source documents. We then proceed to the "post-1789" world and discuss legitimacy in the context of democratic government. Topics covered include the role of legislators, issue representation, descriptive vs. substantive governance, and the ongoing debate between advocates of majoritarianism and those of proportionalism.

The question of God(s) pertains to the existence, manifestations, meaning, and attributes of the sacred. Although conceptions about the sacred are inevitably shaped by history and culture, the fundamental question of God(s) has had an enduring presence throughout human experience. This course takes up this perennial human question from the context of some of the world's major religious traditions including Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Taoism. What similarities do these great traditions share, and how does their understanding of the sacred differ? Additionally, the course explores the relation between reason and faith. How does the empirical verification characteristic of an increasingly pervasive scientific and technological worldview impact on belief in God(s)? Readings for the course are drawn from a variety of disciplines with a focus on primary sources and seminal works.

Why do revolutions occur in some places and times but not others? Why are some revolutions successful in taking state power, and why do most of them fail? When are successful revolutions able to dramatically transform the politics, economy and culture of a society? With these general questions in mind, we explore the history of different types of revolutions throughout the world. Drawing on several disciplines, using academic essays, films, novels, and poems to explore both the causes and the consequences of revolutions (the forcible overthrow and replacement of a government by the governed) from their inception in the 17th century until today. After discussing general theories of revolutions, the course turns to the early modern democratic revolutions in England (1688) and France (1789), then turn to the Marxist-inspired revolutions in Russia (1917) and China (1949), anti-colonial revolutions in the United States (1776), Latin America (19th century), and Africa (mostly post-WWII), and conclude with the revolutions in Iran (1979) and North Africa and the Middle East known as “Arab Spring” (early 2010s).

How are boundaries created and what are their roles in society? This class will explore human, natural, and political boundaries as processes accompanying genetic, linguistic, religious, and cultural divergence. It will also investigate changing boundaries over time in various regions to see how these changes explain both socioeconomic and political outcomes today. Students will be exposed to various interdisciplinary literature and will learn to create their own digital maps using both archival and contemporary resources. They will also work with these novel data to present their own research ideas. NOTE: This course maybe used in place of SOCSC-UH 1011 (GEPS) for Social Science Majors or Minors.

Why is it so difficult to eliminate some of the greatest causes of human suffering - war, state-failure, poverty, and tyranny? This course examines moral and practical controversies over how we ought to respond to these problems. We will focus in particular on whether, and if so how, the international community is justified in intervening in poor and violent parts of the world. By the end of the course students will be better at analyzing and discerning the plausibility of policy proposals and ideas.

Science is a social enterprise, although one traditionally thought to be grounded in facts and reason. Scientists collaborate with each other, undermine one another, and compete for funding of research. Whether a scientific idea ever sees the light of day may depend on these distinctly social factors. So how much of what we call "scientific progress" is the result of social negotiation, and how much is rational deliberation? That is the big question this course investigates - the question of the competing roles of rationality and rhetoric in the development of science. Do theoretical pictures change on account of reasoned argument, or rhetorical persuasion? The course examines this question through the lens of several important scientific revolutions, particularly the quantum one. The starting point will be Thomas Kuhn’s influential account of scientific progress. Does his picture really fit the historical facts? Several competing models of scientific progress will also be discussed. Along the way, students will consider why many scientific revolutions occurred in Europe and not elsewhere. Are some cultural and social features more hospitable than others to scientific inquiry?

In 1500 the economic, social, and political differences between Europe and Asia were small. By the twentieth century, the gaps were enormous. How can we explain this Great Divergence between Europe and Asia? The course will discuss the classical answers to this question given by Weber, Smith, Marx, and Malthus. Has modern research confirmed or contradicted their views? The roles of demography, politics, law, globalization, social structure, science, and technology will be discussed as well as the interconnections between them. The course aims to expose the methods that social scientists and historians use to answer grand questions of social evolution, so that the approaches can be compared, contrasted, and assessed.

Humans have a strong tendency to group and divide objects, people, emotions, and events into different concepts and categories. These seemingly effortless acts pose fundamental questions about our understanding of the self and the nature of the world. This course examines texts from history, literature, philosophy, and scientific sources to ask why we conceptualize the world in particular ways, whether any categories are fundamental, and the degree to which concepts and categories are innate or learned. From the conceptual taxonomies proposed as fundamental from thinkers such as Aristotle and Kant, to the findings from psychology and neuroscience that inform us about our predilections for object concepts and social groups, students will reflect on what this knowledge can tell us about the forces that shape self and society.

What is "the environment" and how can we conceptualize its history? Many historians are concerned with questions of voice, agency and power. How do we deal with these questions when writing about non-human actors like donkeys, cotton and coral reefs? Does focusing on the roles of non-human actors obscure other human dynamics like class, race, gender and sexuality? Further, the scholarly consensus on climate change and the varied responses to that consensus have motivated historians to contribute to the public discussion more actively. What is the relationship between understandings of environmental history and environmental activism? We will address these and other questions using the Middle East region as a case study, paying particular attention to how historians have approached these challenges in conversation with ecologists and other natural scientists. Students will also have the opportunity to write short environmental histories based on field trips, interviews, and sojourns into the digital humanities in the final part of the course.

Why do humans continue to build and flock to cities? What makes a city work? How do we measure qualities of urban life? This course sheds light on the complex process of urbanization. It begins with debates about the different recent trajectories of urbanization in light of economic and political dynamics. Why have some trajectories been more successful than others? What factors have shaped a certain trajectory? What lessons we can learn from them? The focus will then shift to a myriad of contemporary cases from around the globe. The aim is to deconstruct common conceptions of dualities: development/underdevelopment, wealth/poverty, formality/informality, and centrality/marginality. The course material is structured around themes that highlight the main challenges that urban dwellers and policy makers face in the following areas: the economy, income inequality, marginalization, service provision, housing, infrastructure, immigration, safety, and the environment. These themes will allow students to engage with various forms of contestations and to consider the role of urban social movements.

This course explores actors, narratives, experiences, and historical processes that have combined to produce violent cities and societies in the last century. Using the modern and contemporary Middle East as a case study, it addresses a number of salient questions arising from the relentless global advance of sprawling urbanization, conflict, and social inequality. How can we interpret the increasingly close relationship between violence and the city in the 20th and 21st centuries? Can understanding past histories of violence open up new areas of urban activism and public engagement? Can we study, debate, and represent urban violence without offending its past and present victims? Aiming to territorialize and historicize the "urban" as an analytical category, the course scrutinizes the role of cities as frameworks for ordering knowledge, experience, power, inequality, suffering, and civility in the modern world.

This course explores actors, narratives, experiences, and historical processes that have combined to produce violent cities and societies in the last century. Using the modern and contemporary Middle East as a case study, it addresses a number of salient questions arising from the relentless global advance of sprawling urbanization, conflict, and social inequality. How can we interpret the increasingly close relationship between violence and the city in the 20th and 21st centuries? Can understanding past histories of violence open up new areas of urban activism and public engagement? Can we study, debate, and represent urban violence without offending its past and present victims? Aiming to territorialize and historicize the "urban" as an analytical category, the course scrutinizes the role of cities as frameworks for ordering knowledge, experience, power, inequality, suffering, and civility in the modern world.

Is it possible to argue about religious belief? Is it possible not to? Is religion about belief in some set of propositions, anyway, or about something else entirely? Whose concept of religion are we to follow when deciding? Whose standard of reasonability? The world is a big place. What would a truly global philosophy of religion look like? How would it reframe ancient questions concerning God and the gods, the sacred and the transcendent, good and evil, and the rest? These and many more questions will not receive a definitive answer in this highly experimental course. But we will criss-cross the world's many religious and philosophical traditions, in an effort to understand what is involved in any attempt to understand the ineffable.

Cities are constantly on the move. Half the world's population lives in urban areas, with numbers steadily rising. How have cities depended on, and been shaped by, such mobility? What will future systems of movement look like? Can emerging technologies and information networks increase sustainability in urban transport? Can we develop prosperous, safe, and connected cities while also managing impacts on climate and public health? Bringing global and critical perspectives to bear on such questions, the course reckons with the realization that optimal mobility systems are a constantly moving target. Drawing on material from multiple disciplines, students will examine changes and challenges throughout history and across regions as they ask how mobility shapes cities, how physical mobility relates to "upward" social mobility, and how planners and citizens might better address the mobility needs and wellbeing of diverse groups. Students will engage in ongoing debates and will explore different media (e.g. animations, photography, essays) to address such questions.

How does international law respond to global challenges confronting refugees and states? In recent years 68.5 million men, women, and children worldwide have fled their homes due to conflict, natural disaster, violence, and persecution, amounting to the highest level of forced migration since WWII. Those who manage to cross international borders confront a global refugee system in crisis, with no consensus as to how it should be reformed. This course explores the history of the international refugee regime and the limitations of international law and governance. It asks how the ever-present tension between the sovereign right of states to control their borders and the international duties owed to refugees has influenced the way that international law has been shaped and interpreted by countries across the world’s major regions. Taking a comparative approach via African, Latin American, Asian, European and Middle Eastern case studies, the course will conclude by examining the UN Global Compact for Migration, adopted in Dec 2018, which provides an occasion for critical analysis of the international community’s attempt to create an effective and humane regime for protecting refugees.

Why is property key to so many societies and social institutions? How do various understandings of its origins, definitions and limitations, distributions and regulations sit at the core of current debates about the environment, fairness and equality, the public and the private, the private and the commons, and more broadly the future of liberal societies? Focusing on the western legal tradition and its increasingly global implications, this course critically approaches various theories of property while constantly attending to contemporary debates about the institution and its legitimacy. The method is genealogical. After a brief presentation of premodern conceptions, the course will follow the rise and triumph of the canonical definition of Property as a subjective, absolute and exclusive right, through the careful study of conflicting theories about its nature, origins, grounds, purposes. What challenges have these canonical definitions faced - whether through social, analytical, or realist critique - and what implications do current ways of theorizing property have for its future?

Is law above politics? When lawyers act according to ideological and political preferences, we think they betray the law. But we also often wish to be politically more autonomous, that is to be the authors of the laws we are subjected to. When the law is made only by lawyers and only based on legal technique, we think some important principles of political freedom are lost. This course aims to inquire about this paradox. To do so, the course will begin with a moment, at the end of the 18th century, when realizing political autonomy came by exiting the western legal tradition, but through law, imagining something like a “law without lawyers.” It will then study the reaction to and internalization of this project by eminent Jurists. In what ways has the resulting status quo defined the structure of modern law and legal science? Does raising such a question depend on an ongoing negotiation between law and politics? What narratives might we develop in order to understand the roles played by law and legal science (and their critique) in establishing supposedly politically autonomous societies?

Is there a link between advanced education and the improvement of human society? In this seminar, students will critically examine historical and contemporary frameworks for advanced education, drawing lessons from film, literature, neuroscience, and social science research to explore trends in education across time and cultures. Which models of post-secondary education are best suited to advance the betterment of humanity? Who has been excluded from higher education, why, and to what consequence? What theoretical frameworks drive education policies and philosophies today and are they suited for the disruptions of Covid-19, automation, and climate change? Debates rage regarding education’s role in society: utilitarian technical skills that emphasize employability versus satisfying intellectual curiosities in the liberal arts tradition. As students examine past, current, and potential future frameworks for the social organization of post-secondary education, they will review industry’s role in adult education, upskilling, and lifelong learning.

The "Ancient World" is a powerful category of social thought and cultural analysis that appears to designate a period of time - albeit, millennia - in a neutral, self-evident manner. In fact, it distinguishes between remote and current forms of human experience, while simultaneously defining a relationship between the two. For some, the Ancient World is an origin of civilization; for others, its ways of life exemplify what we have left behind; for many it still designates a "Classical World' of Greece and Rome, privileged for study because of its presumed exceptional status. However defined, the "Ancient World" helps create a sense of who we are today and so is constantly remade and reinvented. Thinking Big about the Ancient World means looking for new answers to questions presumed to have special relevance to modern history, including the promise and perils of globalization (Are pandemics inevitable?); social inequality (Do states make or eradicate poverty?); and environmental crisis (Was there an Early Anthropocene?). What can we learn from studying the collapse of ancient civilizations, as we contemplate the possibility of the collapse of our own?

Can you imagine a day without satellites? You will be astonished at the number of things you cannot do anymore if this happens. Students will explore the importance of space activities for life on Earth and for sustainable development. The course will provide in-depth knowledge of the major space programs developed in international cooperation, showing how space is a tool for diplomacy. It will give an overview of the status of the development of the space sector around the world, and of the various kinds of organizations that operate in the space sector. Students will learn key elements for defining and developing new space programs in cooperation at the international level, and will realize that the same elements are common to management and leadership in other areas of science and technology. Students will learn how to negotiate on space activities in an international environment. The importance of a global strategy for preserving outer space for future generations will be underlined. The course is by nature interdisciplinary, and addresses a subject very inspirational, and at the same time very concrete in terms of real life applications.

What does it mean to act justly? In Book I of Politics, Aristotle says that "justice is the bond of men in states" and that "the determination of what is just is the principle of order in political society." Aristotle’s point is that justice is not merely personal, but depends on the social practices and institutions that determine how social life turns out to be. He implies by this that we are responsible for the ordering of our communities, not merely for our particular actions. The way the world is around us and the way in which the burdens and benefits of social life are allocated is not something that just happens, a matter of the natural world. These are determined by human choice and action. This realization opens up a domain of moral inquiry that concerns the justification of the institutions that allocate benefits and burdens in the social world. This course takes up six such questions of justice: war, criminal punishment, citizenship, poverty, inequality, and snobbery. In it, students will explore the idea of justice for institutions through examples of legal and political controversy, combining ancient and modern readings.

What do Elon Musk, Roger Federer, Lubna Olayan, Sachin Tendulkar, Mohamed Salah, Lady Gaga, Tom Cruise, Nancy Ajram, Lebron James, Jackie Chan, and Priyanka Chopra have in common? They are all high performers who have consistently stayed at their best for a long period of time, across sports, business, and entertainment. What does it mean to be "high performance"? Is there a source code for high performance across fields, and can students apply it to their own lives? Leveraging psychology and neuroscience, this course draws from practices and strategies of high performers to decipher what it takes to be in flow, that state of consciousness where performance is exceptional, consistent, and automatic. Using varied activities to generate personalized insights, the course will center students as the case study. Students will define their sense of purpose and examine their habits and use of language for unleashing meaningful impact and influence for the rest of their lives. They will build a personalized roadmap for their futures, while learning and applying frameworks, tools, and habits for high performance that positively influence family, business, and society at large.

Using a historical perspective, the course aims to acquaint students with Latin American theories, practices and representations of the media. Departing from a critical approach to Habermas theory of the public sphere, the course will trace the arc of the media in Latin America since independence to the incumbent post-neoliberal area and the so-called "Media Wars". Given that Argentina is facing an extraordinary conflict between the government and the Clarín media conglomerate (the largest of its kind in Latin America), the students will engage in the current incendiary debates about the role of the media, the new media law and the complex relationship between the media, politics and the state.

This course considers the Black Atlantic as a socio-cultural economic space from the first arrival of Africans in the 'New World,' beginning around in the 15th century, through the rise of slavery in the Americas. We will trace the origins and importance of the concept of the Black Atlantic within broad political contexts, paying special attention to the changing social, cultural and economic relations that shaped community formation among people of African descent and laid the foundations for modern political and economic orders. Once we have established those foundations, we will think about the Black Atlantic as a critical site of cultural production. Using the frame of the Atlantic to ask questions about the relationship between culture and political economy. Topics to be covered include African enslavement and settlement in Africa and the Americas; the development of transatlantic racial capitalism; variations in politics and culture between empires in the Atlantic world; creolization, plantation slavery and slave society; the politics and culture of the enslaved; the Haitian Revolution; slave emancipation; and contemporary black Atlantic politics and racial capitalism.

This course explores the social determinants of health at local, national and global levels, and how understanding of historical, behavioral and political contexts can be used to improve public health. Health is determined by a range of influences, both risk factors and positive assets. Population sciences will inform our concepts of health, as well as individual biology and life stories. We will consider the rights of the individual alongside the welfare of the public. The class will discuss how our understanding of health and well-being relates to our experiences of health care systems, our personal values and our assumptions.

It would be a misnomer to assume that technology is something we "use." Rather, the human appears as embedded in a matrix of the socio-techno-material. In this sense, there is something quite non-technical about technology which has an intrinsically social nature and can take the form of bodily and socializing techniques, the canalization of creative powers, becomings of all sorts, and of course the mechanical and material manipulation of ourselves and our life-worlds. We must thus speak of a biological and technical habitus of dependency and over-coming, one constituted by everything from creating art, to language, to ideological persuasion, to human enhancement and post-humanism, and various forms of convergence. What is the relationship between these various techniques and technologies and their respective effects (ethical, cultural, aesthetic) on the category of the human? Within such a milieu, which is both internal and external to actors and agents implicated within it, the "essence" of the human is not only potentially redefined, but indeed dissolved. In such a potential redefinition and dissolution, one finds a radically new ethical and political threshold that has yet to be adequately theorized.

According to the sociologist Amitai Etzioni, "We are born in organizations, and most of us spend much of our lives working for organizations." But what is an organization and how do we organize? Over the past century, scholars have theorized organizations, organizational practices, and organizational behaviors. Can these theories still be applied to today's world and are these in fact universal? This multidisciplinary course draws on a range of materials to approach such questions. On a macro-level, the course describes the various organizational theories and encourages students to critically evaluate them. For example, can nineteenth-century principles of scientific management still be identified in today's organizations? And if so, how? On a meso-level, the course explores the management and leadership practices within organizations. Students will use a cross-cultural lens to assess whether there is a best way to manage and lead within and across organizations and societies. On a micro-level, this course addresses individuals within organizations and seeks to understand what influences (positive) behavior such as job satisfaction, commitment, and proactive behavior at work.

One of the most significant global challenges humanity faces today is the fair distribution of justice to individuals and groups. Many nation-states are struggling to curb discrimination based on race, religion, and gender, amongst others, with legal activists pointing towards the proper implementation of the 'rule of law' as a potential solution to humanity's woes. But what do we mean by the rule of law and can this system bring about these desired transformations? In order to help resolve this question, this course turns to Empire, the political structure under which people have lived for much of human existence and where debates around justice, order, and the rule of law first entered the modern political canon. Our course will further explore the role of law in the framework of imperial expansion and the possibilities and limitations of a rules-based society for imperial subjects. Employing a historical, political, economic, sociological, and legal lens, we will begin by analyzing the different dimensions through which law altered and was shaped by social behavior. Our emphasis will be on British imperialism during the nineteenth and twentieth century. We will link particular colonial legal institutions like prisons, police, and court cases to social life and, amongst other themes, analyze the role of religion, mainly Muslim thought in South Asia, race and class, gender and family, property and criminal law, as well as labor and the market.

"How does gender intersect with political power?" This course attempts to explore this question by examining the interaction of gender, political participation, and violence in Asia. The course has two aims. First it seeks to understand the historical and social contexts that form sexual norms and gender roles and how these are influenced by class, race, religion, culture, and power in Asia. Second, it offers theoretical and empirical insights into understanding the concepts of gender, violence, and political participation, using comparative cases at the local, national and global levels. This course investigates a variety of questions in this domain, including: How does gender impact our lived experience? How and why do people’s perceptions about gender vary? How are these perceptions related to social, cultural, and political power? How do social and cultural norms contribute to or mitigate gender-based violence? How do patriarchal values and social norms in Asian society obstruct gender and women’s political participation? And how do social movements initiate societal transformations towards or away from gender equality and justice?

What is responsible capitalism? Can a corporation (and individuals, including managers, entrepreneurs, and investors) be responsible under the incentives generated by the current capitalist system? Can socially responsible firms thrive, or are they bound to fade? This course takes a multidisciplinary approach to understand the interplay between ethics and capitalism. Since Milton Friedman's 1970 celebrated article "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits" the dominant story about capitalism has been centered around the "Shareholder Value Maximization" view. This view dichotomizes profit and purpose, conceptualizes business as a purely economic (and not social) institution, characterizes human beings as motivated by self-interest (and not values), and ultimately separates business and ethics. A new story of business has started to emerge that rejects all these false dichotomies and suggests we look at business as a human institution. Reading contributions from ethics, economics, entrepreneurship, law and psychoanalysis, students will present and develop their own understanding of Responsible Capitalism and will critically examine ongoing business practices.

How will the rise of automation and artificial intelligence transform the future of work? It is not only the nature of how and where we work that will change; policy decisions will need to respond to an ever-changing world of work. What will this look like for different groups of people? What types of skills will be necessary to meet the demands of the future work? This course will introduce students to the different type of technological changes that will characterize the future of work and the types of skills that will be necessary to prepare for work futures. The course covers a range of topics from the rise of machines to the implications of work changes on different groups, the changing demand for hard and human skills, changing policy contexts, and the ways and implications of bias in AI and its associated decision-making. It will also provide a sociological overview of what these shifts mean for broader trends in inequality, class, race, and gender.

Scientists discover a large comet that is expected to collide with the Earth in six months. If not prevented, this comet is large enough to end all life on earth upon impact. What will the world's leaders do to avert the catastrophe? While this scenario is the plot of a movie ("Don't Look Up," Netflix, 2021), humans face many different environmental challenges, natural or man-made, that require policy action at a global scale like in the comet story: climate change, air pollution, pandemics, clean water access, ozone layer depletion, overfishing and deforestation all require international cooperation. Are there ways in which humans can eliminate the existential threat from climate change, and mitigate the immediate or long-term negative impacts? In this course, we will analyze the nature of different environmental issues, analyze the severity of the cooperation problem in each issue area and try to understand the sources of differences among and within societies in their preferences for environmental action. We will study the role of media and social media in facilitating environmental cooperation and policymaking. In achieving its learning objectives, this course will take a multidisciplinary approach, bringing insights from political science, history, economics, public policy, climate sciences and engineering.

What is energy? E=mc2, one simple equation, encapsulates the power to grant life and death in equal measure. Energy, associated with fusion in the sun, radiation therapy, and nuclear energy is life-granting, in contrast to the destructive energy of nuclear bombs and nuclear disasters. This course examines the chemistry of the atomic nucleus and its technological applications and the processes that led to breakthroughs in the nuclear energy field, such as the first observation of nuclear reaction, the discovery of radioactivity, and nuclear fission. We also explore alternative forms of energy and renewable energy concepts, including aspects of energy storage and waste. Analyzing arguments for and against nuclear power plants, we assess the power and threat of nuclear weapons. We study international treaties designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, focusing on the challenges that policymakers and citizens face in guiding the use of nuclear power. This course helps students to think critically about the alternatives to nuclear energy and to what degree these alternative sources can provide the energy needed for the future.

What does it mean to govern well in the 21st century from a gender angle? How are political institutions gendered? And, what role do states, political institutions, and governance processes play in socially and politically constructing gender across time and diverse regions and contexts? How does gender shape our political identities, ways of thinking, and ways of acting, including how we act and interact within governance and state structures? How do social, cultural, economic, political, and historical dynamics in the context of the state produce gender arrangements and dynamics, as well as how does gender in this context intersect with other social identities, including race and ethnicity, class, nation, and sexualities. This course examines how gender, as a social category, shapes and is shaped by the state, political institutions, and governance processes from historical, contemporary, and global perspectives. It critically interrogates how the constitutional foundations, political institutions, and the formal and informal processes through which states operate are gendered. The materials of this class reach from feminist theories, state and governance paradigms to several subfields of gender and politics.

Is economic globalization sustainable? This course examines how late 20th century’s hyper-globalization has been underpinned by norms and practices that have fostered global economic growth but also increased economic inequalities between and among countries, and fueled a global race-to-the-bottom in tax, labor and environmental regulations. It will trace the roots of the quadruple crisis that we are now facing globally (economic, ecological, social and political) to the legal foundations of international business. While always restating legal issues within their broader context, the course will enable students to gain technical knowledge on several areas of the law that are relevant to international business (private international law, international trade and investment law, tax law, contract law, tort law, competition law, corporate law and governance). This course will also highlight forward- looking analyses and reform proposals aimed at aligning international business conduct with sustainable development goals through the law.

This course explores the fascinating world of social status: who earns it, who bestows it, and why it matters so much. We will delve into how status emerges and solidifies, examining it both as a driver of social stratification and as a key element of social identity. From awards and accolades to more subtle forms of recognition like applause and peer reviews, we will investigate how status operates in diverse settings, including the arts, markets, sports, cuisine, science, and the workplace. We will tackle questions like: Why do status hierarchies appear in nearly all forms of social organization? How do these hierarchies influence access to resources and opportunities? Drawing on insights from sociology, psychology, organizational research, anthropology, and economics, this course offers a rich and interdisciplinary perspective. No prior background in these fields is necessary – just a keen interest in the dynamics of social standing.

How does settler colonialism work as a unique way of organizing societies, and what does it mean for understanding political power, governance, and relationships with indigenous peoples across different times and places? How do 'technologies of rule' such as religion, education, law, and policy work to transform and eradicate indigenous notions of land, property and territory? This interdisciplinary course explores the literature on settler colonialism, examining its theoretical, ethnographic, and historical dimensions. Settler colonialism is studied as a theory of political legitimacy, a set of governmental practices, and a process of domesticating seized lands and indigenous peoples which are central to this process, as their lands and bodies are claimed within a racial hierarchy led by whiteness. The course includes several case studies on empire, colonialism, and the intersections of modernity, property, dispossession, biopolitics, gender, and capitalism.