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Features the research of faculty in the Stanford Prevention Research Center and focuses on key health issues over the life course (prenatal through childhood, young to middle-aged, older and elderly adults). Topics include chronic disease (global and U.S.) epidemiology; application of behavioral science to risk reduction; nutrition; weight management; physical activity; stopping smoking; public health; community health and community-based prevention; national prevention strategy; applying communication technology to health promotion. Prerequisite: HumBio 126 or concurrent enrollment in CHPR 201.

What is Utopia and why does it generate so many different versions of itself, including, most powerfully, negations of itself as dystopia? As a vision of human perfectibility, Utopian literature has from its inception in Thomas More's Utopia (1517) been concerned with the social nature of humanity. It is always therefore political in nature. Almost exactly contemporaneous with the defining moments of the modern era (the conquest of the Americas, Machiavelli and modern politics, the emergence of modern literature in Cervantes, Luther and modern consciousness, printing and the beginning of the modern public sphere), Utopia is also unavoidably a product of the literary and imaginary worlds. Concerned with the development of Utopian and anti-Utopian thinking in the modern world, we will see how issues of science and technology, race and sexuality, freedom and determination, and salvation and apocalypse are embedded in the history of utopian literature and contemporary science fiction. Why did the modern world develop as it did? Can we imagine alternative worlds and histories? As future-oriented thinking, how does utopian literature offer possibilities for a better life? As a forum for future thinking Utopia also offers a platform for thinking anew the working of race and racial formations as well as constructions of gender in the contexts of what has been called "the Subject of Utopia." This course addresses the poetics and generative power of classic Utopian forms to examine how differing aesthetics as well as differing conceptions of history are linked fundamentally to the possibility of reshaping conceptions of race and gender in sustainable future orientations. Concerned with understanding how the traditional forms of the novel are altered in the context of the contemporary drive to represent a new stage in global and hemispheric race relations as well as by the forces of global climate change and the imperatives of decolonization, our readings will investigate how contemporary versions of literary realism change to represent the experiences of the crises of our time and the need to imagine alternative futures.

This course will explore changing notions of truth in a world in which technology, global risks, and societal developments are blurring the boundaries of humanity and boring through traditional notions of nation states, institutions, and human identity. It will also offer a parallel journey to consider truth in your own life and how truth contributes to your own resilience in the face of life challenges. We will ask one over-arching question: Does truth matter anymore? If so, why and how? If not, why not? Either way, how does truth relate to ethical decision-making by individuals and institutions and to an ethical society? How does truth relate to a life well lived? Seven themes will organize our exploration of more specific topics: science and subjectivity; identity; memory; authenticity; artificial intelligence; imagination; and a life well-lived. Examples of topics to be explored include, among others: truth and technology (from ChatGPT to home devices); white supremacy; DNA testing and the 'identify as' movement, and identity; University history (Rhodes, Georgetown slavery, Yale Calhoun College, Junipero Serra...); the connections among truth, memory, and history; new questions in gender and racial identity; Chinese beautifying app Meitu and other social media "truth modifiers"; the sharing economy; the impact of AI and DNA testing sites on legal truth. We will consider how we determine and verify the truth; how we "do" truth; the role of truth in ethical decision-making; the importance of truth to effective ethical policy; and the relationship of the truth to a life well lived. An analytically rigorous short final paper in lieu of exam. This three-credit seminar may be taken as a stand-alone course or may accompany PUBLPOL 134 Ethics on the Edge to fulfill the Public Policy major ethics requirement. The course is open to undergraduate and graduate students. Undergraduates will not be at a disadvantage. Everyone will be challenged. Distinguished Career Institute Fellows are welcome and should contact Dr. Susan Liautaud directly at susanliautaud@googlemail.com. Students wishing to take the course who are unable to sign up within the enrollment limit should contact Dr. Susan Liautaud at susanliautaud@googlemail.com. *Public Policy majors taking the course to complete the core requirements and students taking the course for Ways credit must obtain a letter grade. Other students may take the course for a letter grade or C/NC. To satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units.