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 does gender as a category of analysis indicate? How does gender intersect with other axes of identity such as class, nation, and ethnicity in a globalized world? The course introduces students to select women’s issues (e.g. employment, political participation, reproductive rights and healthcare, feminism vs. multiculturalism, gender-based violence, and peace building) that have emerged in the global context and the international debates that surround them. In addition, the course looks at the relevance of women’s representation to address barriers to gender equality in the “democratic process” as well as the shortcomings of democratic mechanisms to achieve women’s rights and some proposed solutions to these limitations.

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.

What makes a university? What is it for? Who is it for? Above all, who gets to decide? What are a university's necessary components and what its desirable accouterments? How does the university’s avowedly pure pursuit of knowledge relate to the professions it simultaneously serves and helps to define, the societies which it builds and by which it is sustained? What distinguishes the university from other institutions of higher learning and research? Is the university’s idea universally translatable, or may the university be transformed as it goes global? This course takes a longitudinal survey of the debates and controversies surrounding the university and its place in society. It will canvas ancient Athens and Alexandria; medieval Islamic colleges and European cathedral schools; Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and student and faculty life at early universities; early modern scientific societies and confessional universities; nationalist and cosmopolitan agendas in the modern era. Students will furthermore examine how the university compares with classical Indian and Chinese educational schemes. The course concludes with a critical look at competing visions for the 21st-century university.

This course seeks to address a central question: although societies drastically differ from one another, why is inequality such a common and persistent characteristic? 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 Shanghai and the urban-rural and migration divides that organize much of Chinese society. Students will learn to critically analyze different forms of inequality and inequities. Readings from this course will cover ideas such as those proposed in early texts by Karl Marx and more contemporary arguments made by Black feminists such as Patricia Hill Collins.

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.

The aim of this class is to explore and analyze classic theories of culture and context in the field of psychology, with a specific emphasis on understanding how these processes shape human development. We will also examine research that explores cultural and contextual variability among youth and families from different parts of the world. To explore these topics, students will learn the method of transformative interviewing and conduct interviews with classmates and family members.

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?

The institution of property describes one of the fundamental relationships between people and things. This seminar explores how understandings of property have been influenced by cultural and ethical norms in different civilizations; how property rights have evolved with technological progress and changes in the demands of the environment; how property is affected by and influences the sphere of individual freedom, the relation between the individual and the state, and the organization of productive activity. As examples, students will look at property in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome; consider the views on property expressed in Christianity and Islam; and discuss the role that changing views on property played in the Declaration of Independence, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution. Insights from these discussions will inform debates about contemporary issues in property rights, including intellectual property, rights to genetic material, inheritance, airwaves, financial regulation, the rights of indigenous peoples, claims on the Arctic, or the trade-off between rights to privacy and freedom of the press.

This course examines slavery in historical and comparative perspective by focusing on Greek and Roman slavery, African and Islamic slavery, and slavery in the American South, Brazil, and the Caribbean. We examine the difference between societies in which slavery existed and those which can be thought of as "slave societies," asking how enslavement occurred, who was enslaved, and in what ways did they differ from non-slaves. What "rights" or standing in the law if any did slaves possess? What was the nature and extent of the master’s power over slaves? What were the social, economic, and political functions of slavery? But the study of slavery also inevitably involves broader, more fundamental issues concerning freedom, personhood, social inclusion, and belonging. As Orlando Patterson put it in Slavery and Social Death, "the idea of freedom and the concept of property were both intimately bound up with the rise of slavery, their very antithesis. Once we understand the dynamics of slavery, we immediately realize why there is nothing in the least anomalous about the fact that an Aristotle or a Jefferson owned slaves."

What is an ideology? How do a series of sometimes disparate beliefs about issues come together to form an ideology? How do ideologies change and reform over time? In this course, we explore these fundamental questions about beliefs in societies across the globe. We begin by defining ide- ologies and looking at examples from key intellectual movements of the last millennium (e.g., cru- saderism/jihadism, liberalism, communism, fascism, religious nationalism, ethnic nationalism). In this intellectual journey, we read some of the great thinkers who have shaped the concept of ide- ology over time, including Burke, Marx, Mussolini, and (Benedict) Anderson. Thereafter, we look at how to measure ideologies. Students are introduced to quantitative tools for assessing ideologies from both individual-level surveys, voting behavior, and text (e.g., speeches and Twitter). This course will include required participation in community-based learning activities outside of class, including weekends.

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.

When the Berlin Wall fell, in 1989, it seemed that the great ideological struggles of the twentieth century had come to a decisive end, with liberal democracy emerging the winner. We can now see that this triumphalism was a delusion. The election of Donald Trump constituted a shocking repudiation of liberal values. But those precepts have also been retreating across Europe, and in emerging democracies like Turkey and India. Hostility towards elites, and towards immigrants, outsiders and political minorities has fueled virulent forms of populism. Our world is much darker today than it was only a decade ago. This class will explore the origins of liberalism in the works of thinkers like John Stuart Mill, and the later development of liberal thinking in the twentieth century. It will look at the thrilling advent of liberal democracy in eastern Europe after 1989 then turn to exploring the way globalization, free trade, immigration and the refugee crisis have dissolved this apparently consensual worldview.

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.

The design of our cities and buildings shapes our health and well-being. The Coronavirus pandemic reinforced mounting evidence about the spatial determinants of both infectious and non-infectious diseases. Drawing on approaches from public health, urban and transport planning, architectural design, sociology, psychology and neuroscience, students will be challenged to think beyond the confines of a single discipline. A social justice framework guides the analysis of technical issues. The insights gained will benefit future designers, but also those who choose careers as policy makers and health practitioners; who employ architects for residential and workplace projects; and who, as citizens and activists, hope to make the places in which they live, work and relax better for everyone. Readings include case studies from Europe and North America, and new research from the Gulf. Students will learn through interactive lectures and classroom discussions and debates; the screening of documentary films and TED talks; one small ethnographic project on campus; a field visit in Abu Dhabi; a close analysis of their own university campus; and a design project on Saadiyat Island.

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.

Starting from the premise that disability is a social phenomenon, rather than an individual and medical one, this course asks: How do media and technology shape disability? And how might disability activism and disability studies inform better design? We will consider the significance of 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. Drawing on disability arts and activism, we will also practice techniques for media accessibility such as captioning, alt text, plain language, and video description. Note: Pending feasible travel conditions we will hold lessons on disability aesthetics and museum access at Louvre Abu Dhabi among other art spaces. We will also partner with Mawaheb Art Studio for People of Determination to help them make their exhibition for the Quoz Arts Festival accessible. Following the disability activist principle "nothing about us without us," we will host guest lecturers with a wide range of disability expertise.

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.

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. Note: Pending feasible international travel conditions this course will include a regional academic seminar to Paris

What are the promises and perils of global solidarity movements that center feminist praxis? What colonial legacies and contemporary practices complicate this venture? How, for instance, is feminist rhetoric weaponized in the service of transnational capital and the interests of nation-states? To address these and other questions, this course brings transnational feminist thought - which opens up ways to negotiate historically fraught, easily sensationalized practices such as veiling and 'sweatshop' labor - into conversation with critical development studies, which problematizes neoliberal progress narratives embedded in dominant discourses of female empowerment. Readings will be complemented by a field trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh, a paradigmatic 'global' space where struggles over Islam, development, and transnational capital have been at the forefront of feminist and labor rights movements. Discussions with activists, workers, and policy makers will allow students to gain a deeper appreciation of the interlocking forces that connect everyday lives and labors across global spaces. Specific topics studied include supply chains and garment workers, micro-credit and financialization, and religious extremism and the girl child. Note: Pending feasible international travel conditions, this course will include a regional seminar in Bangladesh.

International Peacebuilding and the Role of Education: How do state and nonstate actors build peaceful, inclusive states and societies? What is the role of education in this process? And how might peace agreements, peacekeeping and humanitarian aid, or conspiracy theories and disinformation factor in? This seminar explores the politics of conflict, peacebuilding, humanitarianism and the role of education in promoting violence or peace. Preliminary case studies include Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, the US. We will meet with local and international organizations supporting peacebuilding (e.g., QRF, 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 seminar in Greece, in collaboration with the class Reporting on Migration to meet with displaced populations and work in partnership with Refocus Media Labs, an organization that specializes in training refugee youth in media arts and migration reporting. Students will produce a short research article while in Greece in addition to several other writing assignments in Abu Dhabi. Note: Pending feasible international travel conditions, this course will include a regional seminar in Greece.

The Media, Climate Crisis and other Calamities: The world is facing crises on a global scale at a time when the media has also gone global. How is information on the climate crisis, global pandemics, and other calamities covered and disseminated by the mainstream press and social media? What is the role of communication play in serving as an early warning system to induce 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. Earthquakes and floods are "natural disasters", but the death and destruction they cause are often human-induced. We will take the Himalayan ecology, and culture, along with current and future climate impact as a case study of adaptation and mitigation. We examine how social media has transformed the way citizens receive, spread, and react to information and how those responses impact policy. We also explore how information technology has determined the way society is informed about calamities and its response. Note: Pending feasible international travel conditions students will travel to Nepal for a regional academic seminar. Students should expect to do hiking.

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.

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. For J-Term 2024 students, they will participate in a Summit on Innovation and Leadership at NYUAD as part of this course.

Inclusion can mean many things, from providing equal access to opportunities and resources for those who might be excluded on the basis of 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. Can the cultivation of inclusive mindsets advance social cohesion and reduce conflict? What is the relationship between inclusion and social-emotional skills? To what extent can and should public schools promote the development of an inclusive mindset in students, faculty, administrators, and the local community? What are the challenges of cultivating a more inclusive mindset in schools and communities where people of determination continue to be excluded? Using the US and the UAE as case studies, students will explore these broad questions about the intersection of psychosocial development, educational policy and social change through readings, discussions, and interviews with scholars, educators and policymakers, including the leaders of the new Center for Global Inclusion in Education, established by H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and Special Olympics International in Abu Dhabi.

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.

What are the purposes of public schools and how they have changed over time and across cultures Who and what should be taught? Who should teach? Who should operate schools? Almost all nations have developed universal, free, primary and secondary school systems. Schools are typically publicly funded and publicly operated, providing citizens with basic literacy and numeracy. Schools are also expected to help produce other outcomes - moral and virtuous human beings, productive workers for the 21st-century global economy, and informed citizens able to participate in national governance. How did this form of education become dominant around the world? The course uses U.S. historical and contemporary debates juxtaposed against those in the UAE and considers the perspectives of teachers, school leaders, and policymakers. Students' own-country perspectives will also be used to compare and contrast public schooling across contexts. The course will conclude with a consideration of whether new technology, demographic shifts, and global economic changes necessitate a fundamental rethinking of the purposes of public education. In January 2024, this course will include a regional seminar to the United Kingdom pending any travel restrictions.

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.

Are you ready to leave Earth and work in space in your lifetime? The space economy is expected to become a trillion-dollar economy by 2040, 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? How important are space and space economy for a socio-economic sustainable development? How can decision and policy makers tackle global challenges with the support of space technologies? And how dependent are the 17 Sustainable Development goals of the UN 2030 Agenda for sustainable development from space? With space and non-space technologies and related skills on the rise in the world, 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 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. Note: Pending feasible international travel conditions, this course will include a seminar in Italy.

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.

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.

How does the media represent our world? How do these representations in turn construct meaning about our world? How is Africa as a continent represented, and constructed, in the media? Is there such a thing as an African representation of Africa? How do the media represent and construct narratives about mass violence? How do journalists covering such atrocities in African contexts balance the quest for coverage with the ethics of representation? Over the last century, several instances of mass violence have unfolded in Africa, the most notable being the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi, and ongoing atrocities in Darfur, Central Africa Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This course will investigate how these instances of mass violence have been represented by African media and journalists will. Through focused readings, discussion, and site visits and guest lectures by leading journalists in Rwanda, we will focus on how journalists both generate, and rely on existing repositories of, knowledge. Pending international travel conditions this course will include a regional academic seminar to Rwanda.

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 West and the MENA regions, specifically the UAE and South Africa. By engaging with various speakers and texts from different geographical locations, 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 (US, Europe, UAE, South Africa) and how does this intersect with leadership? What are transnational similarities and differences? How does gender inter-relate to nation, language, 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. Pending international travel conditions this course will include a regional academic seminar to South Africa.

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.

What does it mean to be green? How did green become the solution to the dual challenge of urbanization and climate change and its consequent association with specific means and forms of urban development and practices? Over the last three decades new cities built from scratch, such as ecocities and smart cities, have become the modish way for governments across the world to push for sustainable development in their quest to face numerous challenges. Governments of the oil-rich Gulf Arab states are no exception but the scale and speed of adopting these forms there 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 many more by introducing students to this phenomenon of new smart ecocities 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 a number of megaprojects and mega-events from across the region in lectures and in-class activities.

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.

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. During the first week, students will read foundational theories on gender, religion, and embodiment. In the second and third weeks, we will read 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. Fieldwork will take students into the urban landscapes of the UAE. We will visit mosques, community organizations and ethnic enclaves, observing how religion and gender interact in spaces of home, work, play and governance. Assignments will ask students to reflect on the physical environment, how it constrains their own and/or others’ bodies, and the types of subjects and selves produced by these encounters.

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 these historical legacies have played out in the 21st century by focusing on two areas of on-going contestation within the UK and globally: debt and migration. First, we will examine how contemporary British media institutions are addressing the brutal legacy of slavery and indigenous genocide through calls for reparations; and secondly, we will consider the role of both legacy and social media in shaping policies and activism around migration, race and class in post-Brexit London.

Conflict and violence are pervasive in the world. Violent conflicts erode the fabric of communities by diminishing social bonds and trust. How do societies build peace after violent conflict? How can groups learn to live and work together in peace? Can the wounds of violence heal? This course will tackle these questions 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 culture. Then, we will explore whether and how peacebuilding can heal the wounds of collective violence. The peacebuilding strategies that we will cover include intergroup contact, social cohesion interventions, peace education, truth commissions and transitional justice, mass media campaigns, etc. Fieldwork will take students to Bosnia where they will observe the impact of collective violence and explore peacebuilding activities. Students will interact with practitioners to critically assess how peacebuilding strategies have worked in Bosnia. Assignments will ask students to reflect and apply this knowledge to other contexts of their interest. Pending international travel conditions this course will include a regional academic seminar to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

How can women contribute to conflict resolution and peacebuilding? How does gender influence the processes of conflict resolution and conflict prevention? How do women leaders offer unique capacities in promoting peace? Despite their demonstrated strengths in consensus-building and business management and the growing awareness that empowering women is key to solving many of the world's most challenging problems, women remain underrepresented at the peace table. Providing a rare opportunity to hear directly from peace practitioners who are mediating the largest and most intractable conflicts around the world, the course will explore the important nexus of gender and conflict resolution, drawing on case studies of women's participation in peacebuilding from Colombia, Yemen, North Macedonia, Taiwan, and Tunisia. Guided by a leading participant in the peace negotiations in the aftermath of Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution of 2011, students will gain first-hand knowledge of the main dimensions and challenges of peace mediation. Through class discussions, role-playing, engagements with peace practitioners, and conflict mediation exercises, students will learn how deep listening, dialogue, and storytelling are critical tools for creating spaces for conflict resolution and peacemaking.

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 widespread debate about the decay of social life. Planners and designers criticize the excessive over-scaled urbanism seen in post-1990s developments, characterized by hyper-commodification of urban land, grand designs, fragmented streets, vast expanses of glass and metal, and a loss of spontaneity and everyday life within the urban environment. In contrast to the traditional urban neighborhoods of the pre-1990s era, many new developments lack simplicity and dense physical layouts, which hampers neighborliness and has become a prevalent global trend. To address this decline, understanding the factors that enable everyday urbanism, a product of good urban planning, is essential. One approach is to identify specific elements that facilitate everyday encounters and strong communities. 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.