printer friendly pageTHINK 23: The Cancer Problem: Causes, Treatments, and Prevention
How has our approach to cancer been affected by clinical observations, scientific discoveries, social norms, politics, and economic interests?nnnApproximately one in three Americans will develop invasive cancer during their lifetime; one in five Americans will die as a result of this disease. This course will expose you to multiple ways of approaching the cancer problem, including laboratory research, clinical trials, population studies, public health interventions and health care economics. We will start with the 18th century discovery of the relationship between coal tar and cancer, and trace the role of scientific research in revealing the genetic basis of cancer. We will then discuss the development of new treatments for cancer as well as measures to screen for and prevent cancer, including the ongoing debate over tobacco control. Using cancer as a case study, you will learn important aspects of the scientific method including experimental design, data analysis, and the difference between correlation and causation. You will learn how science can be used and misused with regard to the public good. You will also learn about ways in which social, political, and economic forces shape our knowledge about and response to disease.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: THINK, WAY-AQR, WAY-SMA, College
THINK 24: Evil
What is evil? Are we naturally good or evil? How should we respond to evil? nnnThere are many books and courses that focus on the good life or the virtues. Yet despite their obvious apparent presence in our life and world, evil and the vices are rarely taken as explicit topics. We will read philosophical and literary texts that deal with the question of evil at an abstract level and then use other readings that help us focus on more practical implications of the meaning and consequences of evil. By exploring the issue of evil, we will confront larger questions about the nature of humans, the responsibility to address evil as a society, and the moral and ethical ways we might begin to define what is evil.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER, College
Instructors:
Bobonich, C. (PI)
;
Giberman, D. (PI)
;
Olson, N. (PI)
...
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Instructors:
Bobonich, C. (PI)
;
Giberman, D. (PI)
;
Olson, N. (PI)
;
Pollok, A. (PI)
;
Tierney, K. (PI)
THINK 25: Evolution on Earth
How does evolution, the foundation of biology, underlie the diversification of life on earth? What are the mechanisms of evolution, and how are they discovered and explored? What are the practical implications of evolution for agriculture, medicine, and the future of life on earth?nnnThe history of life on earth is inextricably intertwined with the history of geological change on earth. From a primordial soup containing building block molecules emerged early forms of single-celled organisms, which existed for billions of years as continents formed, moved, and dissolved. Multicellular forms evolved and changed as a result of atmospheric changes, the cooling of the earth, and the contributions of other living organisms. Early ideas about biological evolution came from young people who went on wild adventures. Their observations generated ideas about what must have happened; but since, at the time, little was known about the mechanisms of inheritance, they were never to know how it happened. In time, two major advances came along: a much more comprehensive fossil record that substantiated many of their ideas, and a deep understanding of genetic mechanisms of inheritance. In parallel, the idea of geologic forms as dynamic, especially vulcanism and plate tectonics, provided a new narrative of earth history that informed ideas about spreading and changing life forms. Then mechanisms of developmental biology showed how inherited genes carry out recipes for building bodies with certain structures. We will examine evolution from scientific, historical, and artistic perspectives, including evolution of microbes, plants, animals, and humans, and implications of evolution for medicine. The course will include introductory lectures, some in class and some online, discussion sessions, and three team projects for each student. Student teams will examine topics of their choosing in depth and create reports that will be assembled into a comprehensive book.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: THINK, WAY-SMA, College
THINK 26: How Do You Build a Nation? Inclusion and Exclusion in the Making of Modern Iran
Why were minority religious groups excluded from the majority¿s vision of a Shi¿i Iranian nation? How and when were women included as citizens of a new Iran? nnnIn this course, specific attention will be paid to key events of the 20th century that shaped modern Iran: the Constitutional Revolution (1905-11), the 1953 coup, the White Revolution (1963), the Islamic Revolution (1978-79), the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), and the post-revolutionary period in general. Through a close reading of key poems, short stories, and films created in this period, this course will identify major inclusionary and exclusionary forces in the process of nation-building in 20th-century Iran. Specific attention will be paid to issues of ethnicity, religion, and gender. In addition to reading texts (poetry and prose) and watching films, students will be called on to present critiques of these literary and cinematic products in the form of brief oral presentations and short writing assignments. The final project will involve interviewing Iranian expatriates on issues covered in the lectures. Students will work in small groups to produce short videos of these interpersonal encounters.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: THINK, College
THINK 27: Human Rights and Humanitarianism
Why do certain governments and citizens feel obliged to ease the suffering of distant people in need? How did the humanitarian sensibilities and human rights discourses that now define global politics come into being?nnnnIn this course, you will consider how contemporary ethical motivations for human rights and humanitarianism have developed. We will investigate the emergence and transformation of these ideas through the study of key historical events in the modern world ¿ slavery and its abolition, colonialism, the World Wars, apartheid, decolonization, and the Cold War. We will then consider how this longer history has influenced the ways activists, NGOs, and governments today draw attention to global crises and abuses. Our ultimate objective is to gain an understanding of how the language and ideals of human rights and humanitarianism emerged from the context of liberalism, capitalism, and imperialism.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: THINK, College
THINK 28: Media and Message
How do different media embody information? What are the implications for the ways we understand the world and our place in it?nnnVisual media are conduits for information and narrative but are experienced very differently. We will explore a range of historical and contemporary media, with an emphasis on the ways that different media present, organize, and structure information as forms that are ¿read¿ or experienced. You will be asked to compare, for example, how two different media explore the same or similar content: examples of this kind of comparison might be a film Western and the video game Red Dead Redemption or the Book of Genesis and R. Crumb¿s comic adaptation of the same text. We start with considerations of the illuminated book, print, painting, and photography and move to the more recent cinema, television, and interactive and computational media.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: THINK, WAY-A-II, College
Instructors:
Bukatman, S. (PI)
;
Culverhouse, Z. (PI)
;
Lowood, H. (PI)
...
more instructors for THINK 28 »
Instructors:
Bukatman, S. (PI)
;
Culverhouse, Z. (PI)
;
Lowood, H. (PI)
;
Pierson, I. (PI)
;
Schwegman, J. (PI)
;
Stevenson, M. (PI)
;
Sukhonos, N. (PI)
THINK 29: Networks: Ecological, Revolutionary, Digital
Why is the word network used to describe the behavior of computers, ants, and people? Do all these networks share certain properties, and what might we learn by comparing them?nnnWe like to think of social networks as a contemporary phenomenon. But before Facebook, individuals organized themselves in social networks; before Twitter, revolutionaries used media to communicate and coordinate their messages. In fact, even animal societies are networked. Through project-based exercises, you will learn to study, analyze, and write about networks from the perspectives of a biologist, a computer scientist, and a historian. We will retrace social networks in the 18th and 21st centuries, observe the organization of animal networks, and investigate the structure of online networks. Our goal is to use the concept of the network to deepen our understanding of the natural world, historical change, and our own social lives.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: THINK, WAY-SI, College
Instructors:
Coggeshall, E. (PI)
;
Conroy, M. (PI)
;
Edelstein, D. (PI)
...
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Instructors:
Coggeshall, E. (PI)
;
Conroy, M. (PI)
;
Edelstein, D. (PI)
;
Gordon, D. (PI)
;
Martinez, N. (PI)
THINK 30: Race Matters
What are race and ethnicity? How do they shape society and individual experience? What role do they play in identity formation?nnnGoing to school and work, renting an apartment, going to the doctor, watching television, voting, reading books and newspaper, or attending religious services are all activities that are influenced ¿ consciously and unconsciously ¿ by race and ethnicity. In this course, we will draw on scholarship from psychology, genetics, history, and cultural studies to understand contemporary racial formations and cultural representations. We will look at how recent research on the human genome has reinvigorated biological conceptions of race and ethnicity, engage in activities that highlight the psychological consequences of race and ethnicity, and analyze selected race-relevant memes that appear in popular media.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: THINK, College
THINK 31: Reimagining America: Cultural Memory and Identity Since the Civil War
How have Americans remembered the Civil War ¿ what it meant, what it accomplished, and what it failed to accomplish? How did Americans reimagine the United States as a nation after the war ¿ who belonged in the national community and who would be excluded?nnnIn 1865, the peace treaty was signed at Appomattox and the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery, but the battle over memory and national identity had just begun. The questions that the Civil War addressed ¿ and failed to address ¿ continue to affect our lives today. We will focus on how Americans negotiated issues of cultural memory and national identity through a close analysis of historical texts, novels, poems, films, paintings, cartoons, photographs, and music. Our interpretations will foreground the particular themes of race and nationhood; freedom and citizenship; and changing notions of individual and collective identity. Our assumption in this course is that history is not available to us as a set of events ¿ fixed, past, and unchanging. Rather, history is known through each generation¿s interpretations of those events, and these interpretations are shaped by each generation¿s lived experience. What stories get told? Whose? And in what ways? The stories we choose to tell about the past can shape not only our understanding of the present, but also the kind of future we can imagine and strive to realize.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: THINK, College, WAY-EDP
THINK 32: Subversive Acts: Invention and Convention in the 20th Century
Can art subvert social practice and politics? nnnIn this course, we will learn how to ¿read¿ art and analyze the ways aesthetic objects can raise larger conceptual questions about culture, society, and change. We will do this by investigating the broad range of artistic, social, and political meanings of the term¿ avant-garde¿ in the 20th century. The course looks at some of the key moments in avant-garde art in Europe, including Dadaism and Futurism, with a particular emphasis on Russia. Through an examination of various aesthetic case studies, we will be able to ask the larger question of whether art can actually challenge social conventions and established political ideologies.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: THINK, College
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