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

How does science develop and change? What sorts of considerations are used to assess and evaluate scientific theories, particularly when those theories upend our entire picture of the physical world and our place in it? Are there factors that go beyond the empirical data itself, such as broader conceptual and religious considerations? And are these “extra-empirical” considerations legitimate constraints on scientific inquiry? This course will examine these big questions about the nature of science in the context of Galileo’s groundbreaking theory on the nature of motion - a theory that laid the groundwork for Newton and the rise of modern science. We will look at the many conflicts in which Galileo became embroiled - scientific, religious, and personal - and study the historical developments that eventually led to widespread acceptance of the Galilean worldview. Our aim will be to understand the complicated way in which Galileo’s physics emerged, was resisted, and eventually triumphed, and to situate that evolution within a broader narrative about the nature of scientific development and change.

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.

From Ancient Mesopotamia to modern times, the idea of sovereignty - beginning with kingly power and leading to modern popular democracy and law-based forms of rule - has dominated political theory as well as theater, literature, and philosophy. The central questions of this course concern political power: hegemony, dominion, rulership, but also democracy, law, and economics. How do we think about power and its history? What does it mean for kings, the people, or particular parties to be called "sovereign"? How is this sovereignty to be depicted? Through a series of literary, philosophical, and political readings in the Western, Islamic, and Chinese traditions, we will examine these questions against the extraordinary backdrop of Florence and its history amidst - above all - the conflict and extraordinary artistic and intellectual production of the Renaissance and again the nineteenth century.

The Ghetto: Today many people understandably dislike the word "ghetto" for its associations with stigmatizing and harmful stereotypes, but what does the deeper study of this idea reveal about the dynamic and often surprising nature of both persecution and the history of ideas? What is a ghetto? How have ghettos evolved across time and cultures? What are the social, economic, and political forces that create and sustain ghettos? How have marginalized communities resisted and flourished within these spaces? And ultimately, what can the study of ghettos teach us about broader issues of power, inequality, and the human experience? In this course, we trace the ghetto from its beginnings in Venice and Rome in the 16th century to its revival by the Nazis in the early 20th century to the contemporary U.S. black experience. Along the way, we will study gay ghettos and Chinatowns and a little-known moment in the ghetto’s history: when thousands of Jews escaped to Shanghai, where they were settled into what is known today as the Hongkew ghetto. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

Idea of the University: What is higher education for? Who is it for? Who gets to decide? How do the certificates issued by historical madrasas prefigure today’s postdocs? Why were the University of Cambridge and the Beijing Confucian academy united in administering standardized exams? What is the university’s role in nation building, economic advancement, or the liberation of humanity? In this course we will explore and interrogate institutions of higher education past, present, and future, worldwide and in the unique global crossroads that is London’s Bloomsbury. We will climb the monastic spires of knowledge in Oxford; delve into the origins of revolutionary research in the Royal Society; and ponder imperial knowledge production at London’s famous School of Oriental and African Studies. We will debate what the role of the university is and what it should be. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

Global Perspectives on Inequality: Why is inequality such a common and persistent characteristic across drastically different societies? We will approach this question from both theoretical and empirical perspectives to better understand inequalities by gender, race/ethnicity, immigration/migration status, nationality, sexuality, and the intersection of these lenses. A particular focus will be placed on inequality in China and the US, with examples from many other contexts. Through site visits to migrant schools, community-based organizations, and cultural centers and meetings with local experts in Shanghai, students will learn to compare, contrast, and analyze different forms of inequality and inequities critically. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

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.

Culture and Context in Psychology: The aim of this class is to explore and analyze theories of and research on culture and context in psychology and anthropology, with a specific emphasis on understanding how these processes shape youth from around the world. To explore these topics, students will read extensively from research studies and learn the method of transformative interviewing by conducting interviews with classmates and interviewing journalists from around the world. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

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?

Ideology: What is an ideology? How do a series of sometimes disparate beliefs about issues come together to form an ideology? Perhaps most importantly, do ordinary people have ideologies? In this course, we explore these fundamental questions about political belief systems in societies across the globe. We begin by defining ideology and looking at examples from key intellectual movements of the last millennium (e.g., liberalism/conservatism, communism, fascism, political religious movements, and ethnic nationalism). Using a combination of primary source texts and popular media, we will explore both the elite discourse as well as the perspectives of laypeople in order to better understand how ideologies have shaped our world. Leveraging the unique geopolitical location of Washington, D.C., we will explore the practical consequences of these belief systems with daily extracurricular engagements. These will include interviews with major American political thought leaders and visits to major museums and institutes dedicated to the study of political ideas and to the U.S. Capitol. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

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.

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.

Does Liberal Democracy Have A Future?: A generation ago, political thinkers widely agreed that liberal democracy was becoming the world's default governing system. The post-Soviet nations chose liberal democracy; so, increasingly, did many developing nations emerging from dictatorship. That moment now looks like mass delusion. In 2016 the United States elected a president who openly scorned democratic norms; he may have been elected once again by the time class meets. India and Israel have descended into illiberal nationalism. The number of liberal democracies declines almost every year. Our class will ask, and seek to answer, fundamental questions: Is liberal democracy worth caring about? If so, what has caused its erosion? How, if at all, can it be preserved and fortified? We will explore these issues not only through careful reading but through conversations with scholars and political leaders in France - a country which itself is teetering on the brink of populist nationalism. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

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 religion? Is it possible not to? Does philosophy have something to contribute to the study of religion? What about religion: Does it have something to say to philosophy? If so, whose concept of philosophy are we talking about? Whose conception of religion or religions? What would a global philosophy of religion look like? How would it reframe ancient questions concerning God or the gods, the sacred and the transcendent, good and evil, and the rest? Or will any attempt to do so reveal fractures in how the very concepts are applied in different cultures and different times? These and many more questions will not receive a definitive answer in this highly experimental course. But we will crisscross the world's many religious and philosophical traditions, in an effort to understand what is involved in the attempt to understand the ineffable.

Well-Being and the Design of the Built Environment: How do the cities, neighborhoods and streets where we live affect our well-being? To explore this question, this course will draw on approaches from urban planning and design, psychology and other social sciences, and urban ecology and environmental justice. We will discuss the evolution and definition of the concept of well-being and its increasing use by public officials as both aspiration and metric. We will then examine how the design of the built environment affects well-being through three of its determinants: mobility: how people move from place to place in their daily lives; social connections: the effects on people of pro-social public and communal spaces; and nature contact: the type and extent of contact people have with greenery and the natural world. Assignments will use three areas of Abu Dhabi as case studies. Students will learn through interactive lectures and classroom discussions and debates; guest lectures; the screening of documentary films and TED talks; a small ethnographic project on campus; field exercises in two contrasting neighborhoods of Abu Dhabi - a dense older central district and a new suburb; and a design project on Saadiyat Island. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

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?

After spending our early lives with our parents, what can we say about how they influenced our personalities and development? How have our parents affected what we learn, how we act, and how we manage our health and mental health? Just as you have wondered about these questions, so have scientists and professionals. We study parenting styles in detail to identify qualities that foster healthy child development. The course reviews research on the importance of parenting practices within a family context. We will discuss how parents and parenting practices have been presented in popular culture and the arts to determine if those depictions are accurate and fair. The presentations in varied cultures around the world and within countries will be reviewed. Students also learn how to interact effectively with parents, how to mobilize parents, and what efforts have been successful in changing detrimental parenting actions. This course is for the curious and those interested in careers in education, health, and mental health.

Nation-building is a process that is closely tied to post-colonial state formation across the world. In constructing post-colonial political identities, societies have to define membership in the national community and to distinguish themselves from the former colonial masters and neighboring proto-national communities. The process of defining the national community is usually contested and often leads to violence. In many societies, this process is still ongoing. In this class, we will examine the process of post-colonial nation building, which among other things engages with concepts of race, class, and belonging, study the relationship between late imperial strategies of governance and educational policies, interrogate the current shape of nations, engage with the idea of national communities as fixed, and consider the legacies of imperial nation-building on present-day politics. The class draws on readings from the disciplines of political science, sociology, history, and literature. We will learn about late imperial and post-colonial nation-building in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.

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?

Is migration a crisis or a fundamental facet of humanity? Migration is framed as a crisis when it challenges ideas about who belongs where. If we think of "place" as a geographical location tied to a particular community, movement to another place challenges assumptions about belonging and connections. If "place" is governed by the state, then migration will likely be constructed as a crisis. Two facts question this framing. First, international migration has remained stable since 1950 (about 3 percent of the world's population). What has changed since then is the direction of migration and the proportion going to different places. Second, migration has been a basic survival strategy throughout human history. Literary accounts from Homer's Odyssey to Hamid's Exit West wrestle with migration's causes and consequences. Taking this longer view, the course examines historical and contemporary fiction about migration and the making of borders. Given Spain's contemporary position as the "southern border of Europe", students will examine how it constructs migration as a crisis through infrastructure and discourse.

Our lives are ultimately the products not only of individual experiences, but also of a bio-cultural heritage shaped by the history of our species and our societies. How we recreate and imagine those histories are complex activities with consequences and implications that extend far beyond biology, which is why the question “Where did we come from?” is of universal interest. We will examine the process of constructing a scientific origin narrative, and how it contrasts with other kinds of origin stories. We will look at the concepts of ancestry and evolution in biological, social, and symbolic contexts. Then we will look at the ways in which diverse aspects of modern life are consequences of our biological and social histories. We will conclude by examining the concept of race as a symbolic bio-political identity in the modern world.

Disability, Technology, and Media: Starting from the premise that disability is a social phenomenon, rather than an individual and medical one, this course asks: How does the built environment shape disability? And how might disability activism and disability studies inform better design? In our seminar discussions, we will consider the significance of media and technology to the definition and experience of disability in a cross-cultural perspective. Topics include: universal and critical design; the contested category of "assistive technology"; visual rhetorics of disability in photography and film; staring and other practices of looking; disability aesthetics; biomedicine/biotech and the establishment of norms. Following the disability activist principle "nothing about us without us", we will host lecturers with a wide range of disability expertise. Drawing on disability arts and activism, we will also practice access techniques such as captioning, alt text, plain language, and video description. An overarching question for this course will be how to shift access from a retrofit and a compliance issue to a creative practice. We will hold lessons on disability aesthetics and arts access at Mawaheb (Dubai) among other art spaces, and we will partner with Zayed National Museum to help them make their exhibitions accessible and visitor experience welcoming. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

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.

Are we destined to be a multi-planetary species? Will it be possible, worthwhile, and sustainable to live and work beyond the Earth’s limits? How do such questions affect the way we think about space and imagine our future? Through advances in science, technology, and geopolitics, human activities in space over the last 60 years have opened additional dimensions for understanding how we communicate and work in our societies. What are the possibilities for innovation in space technology, business, law, economics, politics, and creative industries? What are the societal, ethical, and cultural aspects of this new activity? How can we anticipate challenges, including the involvement of both private actors and competitive national agendas? Drawing on scholarship in politics, business, economics, sociology, science, engineering, and the arts, students will also learn directly from leaders in the space field, including the UAE Space Agency, Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center, the former director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, and the European Space Agency. They will search for other planets at the Al Sadeem Observatory. The course will culminate in the students’ writing a policy paper.

How can we understand climate change? On one level, the unfolding climate crisis is a story of graphs, charts, and scientific evidence. On another level, it is a chorus of present and future narratives of those victimized by their predecessors' short-sighted choices. We will engage climate change on both levels. Our discussions center on two works of climate fiction that reify the human costs of climate change through narrative and lay bare the intimate connection between our choices and the climate crisis. These works also draw on the physical and social sciences and humanities to illustrate important themes: geo-engineering; the human cost of climate change; the science of prediction; climate-induced conflict; the ethics of violent protest; interdependence; accountability and governance; and the problematic primacy of human life on Earth. In each meeting, we discuss a few fiction chapters together with shorter works on the science, ethics, and meaning of climate change.

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.

Human activities are having an unprecedented impact on the planet. In this course, we will study some of the most serious environmental threats facing humanity and how they are being managed, if at all. Topics include climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, nutrient pollution, and biodiversity loss. For each of these issues, we will investigate a set of central questions, including The Science: What is the scientific basis for acting on this issue? How much scientific uncertainty is there and how does it impact the development of policy? The Policy: How have national governments and the international community dealt with this issue so far, if at all? What institutions have been created? How has responsibility for action been allocated? The Actors: What role are various actors playing – from business to indigenous groups? What are their interests? Do they help or hinder action?

This course explores the long history of pandemics in order to contextualize modern trends, contemporary problems, and pressing policy challenges. Our central concern is to understand how pandemic disease mobility interacts with territorial social formations; with that concern, we focus particularly on the expanding scale of pandemic mobility among territorial structures of social power and inequity. In the NYUAD 2024 J-Term, we travel to Bangladesh to study the complexity of pandemic health environments in poverty environments. We will spend three full days in class and in field visits at the James P. Grant School of Public Health, at the International Center for Diarrheal Diseases Research, Bangladesh. Note: This course will include a regional academic seminar to Bangladesh.

Transnational Cities: Abu Dhabi, Paris, Dubai: How do buildings and public space - architecture and infrastructure - shed light on larger social, economic, and cultural dynamics? What goes into the making of transnational cities? We will take as our primary cases the cities of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Paris. Abu Dhabi and Dubai are extreme cases of transnational cities, each having great wealth, transnational connections, and distinctive modes of planning, resource use, and citizenship. The Gulf is, in many ways, a lab to see how cities connect internationally and transform locally. Paris has been a model for other cities in the West and the Middle East - the UAE included. Paris will provide evidence of how Gulf cities are linked in complex networks of planning, finance, and consumption. Through engagement with local experts and practitioners, site visits and multidisciplinary explorations in these three cities, students will become able to "see" how concepts of urban policy and architectural design "travel," land, hybridize, or come into conflict locally. With continuous attention to broader social and environmental effects, we will investigate the prospects for governing, transforming, and reforming emerging global cities. This course includes a regional academic seminar to France. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

Feminist Solidarity, Islam, and Transnational Capital: What does global feminist solidarity look like in a world driven by legacies of colonialism, slavery, racial capitalism, and a deeply asymmetrical economic and political order? This course takes up this question as it is refracted through the lens of global capitalism, religion/Islam, and development discourse. The readings bring transnational feminist thought - which opens up ways to negotiate historically fraught, easily sensationalized practices such 'veiling' and 'sweatshop' labor - into conversation with the anthropology of Islam, and with critical development studies, which complicates dominant understandings of what counts as women's economic and social empowerment. A deep dive into Bangladesh's garment industry -- including supply chain disruptions during the pandemic - serves as the ground from which to think through the many vexed issues involved. Class time will be complemented by a regional academic seminar in Bangladesh where we will visit garment factories and the offices of labor activists. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Bangladesh. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

International Peacebuilding and the Role of Education: This course explores the politics of conflict, peacebuilding, humanitarianism and the role of education in promoting violence or peace. We ask, what causes conflict and how is peace built? How do education, civil society, peacekeeping, and humanitarian aid factor in? What role do young people have in this process? Preliminary case studies include Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, the US. We will meet with local and international organizations supporting peacebuilding (e.g., Human Rights Watch, LEGO, UNHCR, USAID) as well as activists in exile. We will consider conflict-affected populations' access to quality education during conflict or displacement, refugee migration, reconstruction, and peacebuilding. The class includes a regional seminar in Greece, in collaboration with the class Reporting on Migration, to meet with displaced populations and work in partnership with a local organization that trains refugee youth in media arts and migration reporting. Students will work closely with local collaborators to learn firsthand about refugee life and to write a short research article based on data collected while in Greece. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Greece. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

The Media, Climate Crisis and other Calamities: The world is facing crises on a global scale at a time when the media has also become global. How is information on the climate crisis, global pandemics, and other calamities covered and disseminated by the mainstream press and social media? What role does communication play in serving as an early warning system to inspire urgent, inter-generational change in human behavior to address these threats? What are the ethics of reporting on people affected by the climate emergency? This course analyzes mass media coverage of both sudden disasters and slow-moving crises. Using the Himalayan region as a case study, we will explore both adaptation and mitigation in response to climate impacts. Through fieldwork and site visits in Nepal, we will also examine how social media has transformed the way citizens receive, spread, and react to information and how those responses impact policy. Additionally, we will investigate the role of information technology in shaping societal awareness and reaction to calamities. Students will travel to Nepal for a Regional Academic Seminar, and use social media and journalistic tools to cover the trip. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Nepal. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

What makes some forms of inclusion more radical than others? What does disability justice mean in the context of global rights for disabled populations? The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of 2006, signed by members of the United Nations, established the education of disabled individuals as a human right. This has implications and meaning for disabled people in global contexts. The overarching goal is to introduce students to the voice of expert disabled activists as they lead the way and seek to advance inclusion and demand systemic change in spheres of influence including education, politics, healthcare, the arts, culture, social welfare, and everyday life. This course introduces students to how strength-based strategies can be implemented to promote culturally relevant transformation. It examines how public and private policies and practices in these sectors as well as evolving legislation affect the inclusion of disabled people. The students will also explore and identify factors, including how local cultural beliefs and global systemic biases, influence inclusion within the context of Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, and beyond.

What is the relationship between urbanism, political and economic growth, and cultural transformations in the arts and sciences? Is there a link between the sociality of urban living, economic prosperity, and innovation? How have cities historically been hubs for intercultural communication and innovations in education, public health, and general welfare. What is the future of innovation in emerging global cities such as Abu Dhabi? How can innovations such as artificial intelligence help create more equitable, safe, and healthy communities? This course will explore the nature of innovation in urban environments, from Renaissance Florence to 20th- century New York and 21st- century Abu Dhabi. Students will focus on four main themes in historical context: aesthetics and cultural development; education and the development of knowledge economies; social welfare and the idea of the commons; and the science and politics of public health, from medieval plagues to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Class discussions will be supplemented by guest lectures, field trips, and experiential learning. NOTE: Pending feasible international travel conditions, this course will include a seminar in Italy.

Leadership and Innovation: What constitutes a leader? What are the relationships of leaders to innovation, organizational and societal change? The dynamic shifts taking place in societies and organizations globally increasingly require leaders to be agile learners, be self-aware of strengths and growth areas, and be adept at leading by influence, with and through others. Moreover, these leadership skills, among others, are also foundational for innovating at organizational and systems levels, leveraging diverse human talent and potential while being open to new ideas and adaptive approaches to ever changing circumstances in our lives and communities. To successfully lead and innovate, does place matter? Does context matter? Does genealogy and gender matter? Do[es] people [individual characteristics] matter? In this course students will learn leadership theory and frameworks; how they are applied in cross-sectoral environments; and explore how design thinking principles foster innovation and change. The course leverages resources in the local context of Abu Dhabi where students will examine how leadership and innovation are taking shape in this context and how they align with the goals outlined in Abu Dhabi 2030. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

From Abu Dhabi to the World: The Journey Toward Inclusion: What is Inclusion? Can and should public schools promote inclusive mindsets in students, faculty, administrators, and the local community? Can inclusive mindsets be cultivated to advance social cohesion and reduce conflict in schools? What are the challenges in creating schools where young people of determination are full members of their learning community?Inclusion can mean many things, from providing equal opportunities for those who may be excluded based on age, sex, ability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, or economic or other status, to embracing the concepts of awareness, acceptance, understanding, equality, and equity; that is, a mindset. Using the UAE as a case study, students will explore these questions examining psychosocial development and education policy and practice through readings, discussions, fieldwork, and guest speakers from global NGOs. While based in Washington DC, we will focus on Special Olympics and its Global Center for Inclusion in Abu Dhabi, established by H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. Student teams will engage in an applied component designing an intervention linking inclusive practice to broader system change. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

The course addresses these major questions: What is identity? What is the nature of social identity? How do gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, and religion define or influence our identities? Which of those elements affect who we are? How does material culture - buildings, paintings, sculptures, and other artifacts - play a role in shaping identities? We begin with ideas about the nature of social identities - like gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, and religion - developing an account of their general structure. Next, we look at how identities matter in shaping our lives and our well-being, and why that matters for ethics. Finally, we'll look at gender, sexuality, race, nationality, class, culture, and religion in particular, before ending with a discussion of political identities in contemporary democratic politics. We'll use the British Museum to look at how material culture plays a role in shaping identities, and visit two other significant sites of identity in London: the East End, a site for new immigrant communities; and Parliament Square. We will discuss how sites shape identity and identity shapes sites.

This course explores food justice and the complex landscape of food accessibility by starting with two questions: What is food security? Moreover, how are social justice and food security linked? In a post-pandemic world experiencing increased conflicts and environmental stressors, this course examines the conditions creating food insecurity. In recent years, governments have ended food subsidies for vulnerable communities and ordered growers to destroy crops and even terminate livestock. Why do governments exacerbate problems of equitable access to food? Furthermore, can we reform the industrial agricultural system to meet the needs of the global population? If not, what are viable alternatives? Such questions have long been debated, yet climate change, political instabilities and structural racism raised the stakes for finding new models to address a rapidly changing food system. In this class, students will develop an intersectional lens to analyze how global food systems fail certain populations, but how these communities negotiate inequities and injustices. Additionally, students will be challenged to develop their own models of equitable and successful global food systems.

Are scarcity and inequality inevitable? Why does inequality matter? Given the limited and unevenly distributed amounts of time, energy, money, and resources in our world, how should we live our lives and how should we structure society? What are the ethical implications of living amidst scarcity and inequality? Are there practical solutions to global problems? What sort of politics do they imply? This seminar will explore existential questions concerning how we should live our lives given that we have only one life to live and a limited amount of time to live it. We will also grapple with ethical questions concerning what, if any, obligations we have to others (especially those who are less fortunate than ourselves), and explore practical questions concerning how to set priorities in such domains as health care and the distribution of wealth. These in turn raise complex political questions concerning how to create a more just and equitable society.

How have race and racism affected the lived experiences of individuals and societies across the globe? The field of genetics has been a cornerstone in discourses on the origins, meanings, and consequences of the concept of race and racial classifications in humans. This transdisciplinary, international comparative course examines the contributions of genetics (and genomics) and other biological sciences as well as social sciences to both the manufacturing and dispelling of notions of race and racial hierarchies. We will explore ethical, psychosocial, cultural, societal, scientific, and clinical issues concerning historical and contemporary intersections among race, human variation, human identity, and human health. Through large and small group interactions, students will co-create practical strategies for dismantling racial ideologies and advancing narratives that foster equity and sustained global transformation.

This course examines the evolving purposes of public education across historical periods and global contexts, with a focus on the Italian educational landscape. Key questions include: what should be taught, who should teach, and who should manage educational institutions? Despite the widespread establishment of universal, free primary and secondary education, equitable access to post-secondary education remains a challenge. Rooted in the educational landscapes of Florence and Reggio Emilia, this course employs place-based experiential learning. Students will engage directly with the environments, institutions, and communities that shape educational practices in these regions. Florence’s rich historical and cultural backdrop will serve as a living classroom, while Reggio Emilia's innovative approach to early childhood education will provide insights into contemporary pedagogical methods. Students will compare public schooling systems in Italy and their own countries, reflecting on colonial legacies and systemic biases. The course also critically assesses the role of SDG #4 (Quality Education) and SDG #5 (Gender Equality) in fostering meaningful global learning experiences. Finally, we will consider if advancements in technology, demographic shifts, and global economic changes necessitate rethinking the purpose of public education in the 21st century. This course will include a regional academic seminar to Italy. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

What can the preponderance of heatwaves and water scarcity around the world teach us about designing a well-built environment in economies that will need to become ever more self-sufficient? How do we understand the challenges for design and living in historically arid regions like the Arabian Peninsula as well as other regions rapidly becoming hotter and dryer? At what point is a region no longer livable? Using both the UAE and the island state of Malta as case studies, students will explore traditional and contemporary solutions to designing for high temperatures and water scarcity while debating the economic, political, social, and ethical issues those approaches present for dwelling in the future. Students will read texts by Henry David Thoreau, László Moholy-Nagy, H. G. Wells, as well as environmental movers and urban planners. They will practice design and develop an ecologically driven and conceptual final design project. Note: Pending feasibility, this course will include a Regional Academic Seminar in Malta.

Space Economy and Sustainability: Are you ready to leave Earth and work in space in your lifetime? How can you support the acceleration of a global socio-economic sustainable development through the adoption of space technologies? The space economy is expected to become a 1.8 trillion dollar economy by 2035, and "made in space" may flourish soon. How will space economy inform our future economies and lives? What competencies will be needed to be part of the space economy and outer space affairs? With space technologies, and emerging technologies such as Gen AI and robotics, on the rise in the world, and focusing on the need to develop related skills, how do we understand "space for space" and "space for Earth" as the two main pillars for the integration between new frontier technologies? The class will also explore how the democratization of space increases access to space for all and brings with it the need to maintain the safety, security, and sustainability of outer space activities to ensure a commercially viable, sustainable, green, and safe space environment for a reliable future for humanity. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Italy. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

News. Evidence. Truth?: In a post-truth world, we wrestle with questions such as, "What is evidence?" "What is enough evidence?" "Is objectivity irrelevant or even impossible?" And, most basically, "What is news anyway?" News. Evidence. Truth? will explore the strategies and social dynamics of one of the media's most revelatory forms: investigative journalism. Through case histories and by interviewing highly regarded journalists, the class will analyze how media organizations executed text, aural and visual investigations, including their methods of gathering information and modes of presentation. We will also explore journalism's increasing reliance on data in story construction. Students will put theory into practice by assuming the roles of reporters in a newsroom. They will collaboratively produce news stories and undergo the news editing process. They will develop reporter-to-editor memos that summarize research on investigative projects and propose strategies for further reporting. They will gain heightened understanding of the media, deepened insights into the interplay of fact and rhetoric, and sharpened capacities to synthesize and convey information. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

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.

This course explores the relationship between border crossings, freedom of movement and racialization. How does race become a border concept when it moves across national borders and what can such movement teach us about the process of racialization? How are racial designations constructed and how to they translate into different languages? We will address these and other questions using the Middle East region as a case study, drawing on literature from several disciplines - including anthropology, social and political science, history, geography, law, and philosophy - and applying theory to a range of empirical contexts. We begin with theoretical and historical questions that help make sense of the difference between race, racism, and racialization. Then, we trace how notions of race (such as jins and 'unsur) have been translated and understood in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We will look closely at practices, policies and beliefs that designate racial terms in relation to power, biology, exclusion, and inclusion. Towards the end, we will consider recent social and political movements working to resist contemporary forms of bordering and closure.

Around the world, the labor of paid and unpaid care is being transformed by global migration flows, in addition to changing demographics, the increasing labor force participation of native women, and the advent of new communication technologies. More and more families are relying on migrant domestic workers to care for children and elderly dependents. But how does this care across borders impact the lives of the migrant domestic workers and their own kin? Who cares for the children these migrants leave behind in their home countries? Is sending financial remittances from overseas to support their left-behind families equivalent to being physically present in their children’s lives? Is the labor of caring for one’s family and other people’s families sufficiently valued (and remunerated) in the twenty-first century? How do migrant domestic workers engage in self- and community-care overseas? Students will explore these questions by engaging with feminist scholarship on migration, domestic work and care labor. Students will analyze the care policy regimes in the United Arab Emirates and Singapore to understand how migrant domestic workers engage in transnational carework in these countries and with their families back home, and how their carework is perceived and protected. Pending feasible international travel conditions this course will include a regional academic seminar to Singapore.

Why do disparities in health outcomes exist according to social factors such as immigration status, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and gender? How do social contexts like networks and community environments shape health risks? How can public policies such as immigration, zoning and educational policies – policies designed with no explicit focus on health – have significant health effects? Students in this course will learn about the relationship between human health and social forces. We will focus on how social factors shape patterns and experiences of health and illness for individuals and populations—not simply through their impact on accessing medical care, but also via many other mechanisms or pathways, such as social and physical environments, discrimination, stress, and access to resources, that may promote or harm health. Students will have the opportunity to interview leading scholars in the sociology of health and will write a research report suggesting concrete policy goals directed towards increasing health equity by targeting social factors.

Media and Mass Atrocities in Africa: Is there such a thing as an African representation of Africa? Over the last century, several instances of mass violence have unfolded in Africa, the most notable being the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and ongoing atrocities in Darfur, Central Africa Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. How journalists have represented these instances of violence will form the main body of this class. We will focus on how news organizations create and reinforce knowledge about mass atrocities by analyzing how journalists generate and rely on knowledge. To appreciate this relationship between journalism/journalists and knowledge, there will be a regional seminar in Kigali, where students will visit media organizations, genocide memorials, and cultural sites. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Rwanda. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

This course will delve into the definitions, histories, and emerging theories about women leaders globally. Students will consider the role of women across countries/nations with a specific focus on the UAE and South Africa. By engaging with various speakers and texts from different geographical locations and intellectual traditions, such as philosophy, cultural anthropology, political science, history, art, sociology, and economics, students will explore the following questions: How has the role of women and women's leadership shifted? How is “woman and gender” imagined in different national, political, social, and environmental contexts, and how does this intersect with leadership? What are transnational similarities and differences? How does gender interrelate to nation, language, and identity? What, where, when, how, and who “counts” as “woman"? What are the tensions and possibilities for synergy across various definitions of women's leadership globally? In doing so, students will gain a nuanced understanding of the contrasting and emerging definitions of woman, gender, and leadership in relation to emerging and practical policy and leadership implications and global interconnectedness.

"Black like me?" A Global Exploration of Race, Colorism, and Racial Identity: The question, who am I? is universal across human societies, but it is intimately shaped by sociohistorical and political contexts. In this course, we explore identity questions related to race and Blackness, such as: What is race and how was it constructed? Who is Black and what does it mean to be Black across time and place? How do we learn about ourselves in relation to Blackness (and anti-Blackness)? Students will engage with multiple texts and materials that explore the subjectivities of racial identity within sociocultural, political, and historical contexts. Through class discussions and activities, journal prompts and qualitative interviewing, we will reflect on racial structures of a global society "as is" as well as Afro-futurism and "figured worlds" to collectively reimagine who and what we are beyond structures of anti-Black racism. Methodologically, students will practice asking real questions and use critical qualitative methods to design an interview protocol, conduct their own identity-focused interview, and analyze and interpret their data to come to new ways of knowing about themselves, each other, and the world. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

'Greening' Arabian Gulf Cities: Analyzing Interventions for Sustainable Development: What does it mean to be 'green'? How did 'green' become the solution to the dual challenge of urbanization and climate change? How is ‘green’ associated with specific means and forms of urban development and practices? Over the last three decades, new cities built from scratch, such as eco-cities and smart cities, have become the trend for governments worldwide to push for sustainable development in their quest to face numerous challenges. Governments of the oil-rich Gulf Arab states are no exception. Still, the scale and speed of adopting these forms in the region and their advancement through hosting global mega-events make them compelling cases to examine. The Gulf states' new cities are green megaprojects deemed essential to help transition to a post-carbon economy. This course will answer these questions and more by introducing students to this phenomenon of new smart eco-cities and will focus on 'greening' practices of Arab Gulf States. Students will become familiar with the different approaches governments have adopted to promote sustainable development by exploring several megaprojects and mega-events from across the region in lectures and in-class activities. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

What big societal impact are nano-scale materials capable of? How are these earthly minerals changing our everyday lives? What ethical and social consequences result? Earth has an abundance of minerals and materials that are “small,” that prior to 30 years ago, were never deeply explored because they were not visible to the human eyes. Nanometer education also known as Nanotechnology is the utilization of these earthly minerals with chemical, electrical, mechanical, optical, magnetic, and thermal properties to create useful/functional materials, devices, and systems through control/manipulation of matter on the nanometer length scale and exploitation of their properties which arise because of that scale. Devices made from nanometer materials have shaped and impacted our daily human lives in many ways including information technology (computing, communication, memory, and data storage), manufacturing, healthcare (biosensors based chips for COVID-19 detection), medicine (COVID-19 vaccine development), alternative energy, environment, transportation, space. Through lectures, discussions, readings, and writings, students in this seminar will gain a multidisciplinary and cross-cultural understanding of nanotechnology and its application to humanity.

How do ordinary people live amidst a history of enmity? This course invites students on an urban journey into the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For more than a century, the cities of Jaffa and Tel Aviv have been at the center of a struggle over territory and identity. Tel Aviv, the first Hebrew city, embodies the secular modernity of the Zionist project. Conversely, neighboring Jaffa, the “Bride of Palestine,” is often portrayed as a quaint oriental quarter, a run-down district that turned into a hotspot for gentrification. However, the history of the two cities is inextricably linked: Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 as a Jewish suburb of Arab Jaffa only to conquer its mother city during the 1948 war and annex it. The two cities were made into one municipality: Tel Aviv-Jaffa. How is the hyphen between the cities made visible in everyday life? What are the limits of coexistence and when does violence break out? Bringing into conversation urban theory, social history, and ethnographic methods, students will explore a dramatic case study of cities that change the course of national history. The J-Term 2024 section of this course will be offered in Tel Aviv pending international travel conditions.

Gendering Islam in the Global City: How does urban geography mediate the relationship between gender and religion? How is that relationship, in turn, embodied? What types of citizens and subjects are produced by different configurations of space, religion, and gender? This course will examine these questions through the lens of Muslim societies across the Middle East and the globe. Students will read foundational theories on gender, religion, and embodiment as well as cutting edge research on gender in contemporary Muslim societies, with a focus on the role of urban environments. Comparing Muslim communities across time and space, we will ask the degree to which Islam can explain different configurations of public piety and moral governance. We will closely examine how religion is used and molded by the state, capitalism, and other social institutions to produce gendered regimes and gendered subjectivities. Through fieldwork in the urban landscapes of the UAE and a regional seminar in Egypt, students will observe how configurations of the "Islamic city" have evolved. We will visit mosques, community organizations and ethnic enclaves, examining how religion and gender interact in spaces of home, work, play and governance. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Egypt. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

How do educational institutions maintain or narrow equalities and inequalities around the world? How can public policies reduce educational inequalities? We first consider the kinds of inequalities that exist in our society, their bases, and some of the policies enacted to target them. We then turn the attention to the analysis of educational structures related to the production and maintenance of equalities and inequalities, with concrete examples both from the Italian case and from a range of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The consequences of educational opportunities of recent reform proposals will be discussed, as will the relation of education to occupational opportunities in selected contexts worldwide. At the end of the course, students will be able to think critically about the linkages between research, policymaking, and practice in improving the quality of education in various contexts, especially those in LMICs. The course is interactive, dynamic, and complements lectures and in-class debates with experiential learning such as visits to the oldest university in the world (Bologna) and the UNICEF Innocenti Office of Research (Florence).

We are living in a moment of highly mediatized racial and colonial reckoning. Our seminar will take a historical and interdisciplinary overview of the role of media technologies in shaping the racial grammar, sometimes visible often latent, that constricts ‘knowledge’ about the inequities of modern capitalist dispossession, displacement and death. The first part of seminar will focus on the historical legacies of European and more specifically, British racial and colonial violence which have given rise to “common sense” notions about race, naturalizing uneven distributions of resources, debt, cultural worth and life chances across borders. Simultaneously, we will consider the history of anti-colonial resistance and anti-racist dissent that has long challenged British imperialism. The second part of our seminar, will allow students to examine how historical legacies have played out in the 21st century by focusing on three inter-related areas of on-going contestation within the UK and globally: reparations, migration and war. To do this, we will examine how contemporary British media institutions are addressing the brutal legacy of slavery and indigenous genocide through calls for reparations and justice; we will also consider the role of the social media in shaping policies and activism around migration and the “migrant crisis” and British backed wars—from the War on Terror to the War in Gaza.

The Science and Art of Building Peace after Violent Conflict: Violent conflicts erode the fabric of communities by diminishing social bonds and trust. What is the impact of violence on societies, and how can groups learn to live and work together in peace? This course will tackle this question by exploring the science and art of building peace in the aftermath of collective violence. We will examine how violent conflict affects individuals, communities, institutions, and socio-political culture. Then, we will investigate the promise and shortcomings of various peacebuilding strategies including intergroup contact, peace education, transitional justice, and mass media campaigns. Fieldwork will take students to Bosnia where they will learn about the impact of collective violence on communities and examine peacebuilding activities after the war. Students will interact with practitioners to critically assess the challenges of peacebuilding in Bosnia. Assignments will ask students to reflect on these experiences, and apply this knowledge to other contexts of their interest. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Bosnia. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

Behind the Nobel Peace Prize: First-Hand Explorations of Conflict Resolution: How can the world’s thorniest, most intractable conflicts be resolved? How can autocracies become democracies, or war crimes and ethnic cleansing give way to justice and peaceful coexistence? Does gender contribute to conflict resolution, and what is the role of psychology in peacebuilding? Questions like these have long been debated by scholars, conflict analysts and peace practitioners. This course offers a rare opportunity to hear responses to these and related questions from dozens of renowned peace practitioners mediating the world's largest conflicts. Guided by a key participant in the peace negotiations post-Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution of 2011, students will acquire many first-hand practical insights into the dimensions and challenges of peace mediation. Through class discussions, role-playing, interactions with peace practitioners, and conflict mediation exercises, students learn the importance of deep listening, dialogue, and storytelling as critical tools for creating spaces conducive to conflict resolution and peacemaking. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

Beyond Bigness: The Everyday City: How is one to evaluate which urban design ideology to subscribe to, and thus design better environments? What are the different urban design ideals informing the design of cities? How can urban design facilitate everyday encounters? These questions underscore Jane Jacobs' warning of a global "dark age" in community life. Our neighborhoods are experiencing a collapse in everyday social interactions, sparking a debate about the decay of social life. Planners and designers criticize the excessive over-scaled urbanism seen in post-1990s developments, characterized by grand designs, fragmentation, vast expanses of glass and metal, and a loss of spontaneity within cities. In contrast to the traditional neighborhoods of the pre-1990s era, many new developments lack simplicity and dense physical layouts, which hampers neighborliness. To address this decline, understanding the factors that enable everyday urbanism, a product of good urbanism, is essential. The course draws perspectives on everyday urbanism from Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The course materials and engagement with sites are structured to unravel the complexities of urban design and promote vibrant, interconnected communities. This course may have an overnight community-based learning activity in Dubai. This is a JUNE-Term 2025 course.

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.