printer friendly pageANTHRO 348B: Bodies, Technologies, and Natures in Africa (AFRICAST 249, HISTORY 349)
This interdisciplinary course explores how modern African histories, bodies, and natures have been entangled with technological activities. Viewing Africans as experts and innovators, we consider how technologies have mediated, represented, or performed power in African societies. Topics include infrastructure, extraction, medicine, weapons, communications, sanitation, and more. Themes woven through the course include citizenship, mobility, labor, bricolage, in/formal economies, and technopolitical geographies, among others. Readings draw from history, anthropology, geography, and social/cultural theory.
Last offered: Spring 2018
ANTHRO 353: Landscape
This graduate seminar introduces interdisciplinary approaches to landscape study. The broad range of theoretical approaches includes human and non-human interactions and overlapping and divergent, spatial and temporal questions derived from the exchange between landscapes and humans. Fields such as Art history, Political Ecology, Anthropology, Geography, and Natural History draw attention to representational and non-representational ways that material and symbolic aspects of landscapes help constitute the making of place. Throughout the seminar students will development their research question or project. The requirements for this course are demanding. Prerequisite: Those not at the graduate level must seek the instructor's consent for enrollment.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Ebron, P. (PI)
APPPHYS 229: Statistical Mechanics of Learning and Computation
Recent years have witnessed the successful application of time-honored techniques from the statistical physics of disordered systems, like the replica method and the cavity method, to understanding modern advances in machine learning and computation. We will develop the foundations of these methods, starting with a crash course in statistical mechanics, and then progressing to the basic theory of spin glasses, associative memories, random matrices, and random landscapes. We will additionally learn how to apply this theory to problems in learning and computation, including high dimensional statistics and deep learning. Overall, this foundations course will prepare students to read the growing interdisciplinary literature spanning physics, learning and computation.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Ganguli, S. (PI)
ARTHIST 305B: Medieval Journeys: Introduction through the Art and Architecture (ARTHIST 105B, DLCL 123)
The course explores the experience and imagination of medieval journeys through an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and skills-based approaches. As a foundations class, this survey of medieval culture engages in particular the art and architecture of the period. The Middle Ages is presented as a network of global economies, fueled by a desire for natural resources, access to luxury goods and holy sites. We will study a large geographical area encompassing the British Isles, Europe, the Mediterranean, Central Asia, India, and East Africa and trace the connectivity of these lands in economic, political, religious, and artistic terms from the fourth to the fourteenth century C.E. The students will have two lectures and one discussion session per week. Depending on the size of the class, it is possible that a graduate student TA will run the discussion session. Our goal is to give a skills-oriented approach to the Middle Ages and to engage students in creative projects that will satisfy either the Ways-Creative Expression requirement or Ways-Engaging Difference. NOTE: for AY 2018-19
HISTORY 115D Europe in the Middle Ages, 300-1500 counts for
DLCL 123.
Last offered: Spring 2020
ARTHIST 418A: Michelangelo: Gateway to Early Modern Italy (ARTHIST 218A, HISTORY 237B, HISTORY 337B, ITALIAN 237, ITALIAN 337)
Revered as one of the greatest artists in history, Michelangelo Buonarroti's extraordinarily long and prodigious existence (1475-1564) spanned the Renaissance and the Reformation in Italy. The celebrity artist left behind not only sculptures, paintings, drawings, and architectural designs, but also an abundantly rich and heterogeneous collection of artifacts, including direct and indirect correspondence (approximately 1400 letters), an eclectic assortment of personal notes, documents and contracts, and 302 poems and 41 poetic fragments. This course will explore the life and production of Michelangelo in relation to those of his contemporaries. Using the biography of the artist as a thread, this interdisciplinary course will draw on a range of critical methodologies and approaches to investigate the civilization and culture of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Course themes will follow key tensions that defined the period and that found expression in Michelangelo: physical-spiritual, classical-Christian, tradition-innovation, individual-collective.
Last offered: Spring 2022
ARTHIST 431: Leonardo's World: Science, Technology, and Art (ARTHIST 231, HISTORY 231, HISTORY 331, ITALIAN 231, ITALIAN 331)
Leonardo da Vinci is emblematic of creativity and innovation. His art is iconic, his inventions legendary. His understanding of nature, the human body, and machines made him a scientist and engineer as well as an artist. His fascination with drawing buildings made him an architect, at least on paper. This class explores the historical Leonardo, considering his interests and accomplishments as a product of the society of Renaissance Italy. Why did this world produce a Leonardo? Special attention will be given to interdisciplinary connections between religion, art, science, and technology.
Last offered: Autumn 2018
ARTHIST 469: Drugs and the Visual Imagination (FILMEDIA 469)
Drugs have profoundly shaped human culture across space and time, from ancient cave paintings to the psychedelic Sixties and contemporary opioid epidemic. This seminar explores the relationship between visual culture and "drugs," broadly conceived, asking how consciousness-altering substances have been understood and represented in various contexts. We will examine how drugs blur boundaries between nature and culture and describe major symbolic, narrative, and aesthetic structures by considering representations of drug use across media. This interdisciplinary seminar integrates perspectives from art, literature, popular culture, theory, film, philosophy, and science. Topics include perception, subjectivity, addiction, deviancy, capitalism, politics, technology, globalization, and critical approaches to race, class, sexuality, and gender. Limited to graduate students; undergraduates must contact instructor for permission (seniors only).
Last offered: Spring 2021
ARTHIST 474A: The Art of the Uncanny (ARTHIST 274A)
From murderous dolls to evil doppelgängers, humanoid doubles haunt the Western cultural imagination. Beginning with an in-depth look at the contested concept of the "uncanny", the seminar traces the history of anxiety about non-human humans in the West. An interdisciplinary inquiry, this course draws its sources from art, film, literature, psychology, and science.
Last offered: Spring 2023
ASNAMST 272: Science and History of Traditional Chinese Medicine (CHINA 272, MED 272)
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a unique system for the diagnosis and treatment of disease, as well as for the cultivation of life-long health and well-being. This course introduces basic TCM theories, practices, and treatment methods including acupuncture, Taichi, and herbal medicine. We will introduce historical figures and events in the history of Traditional Chinese Medicine and East-West integrative health. Drawing on science, cultural history, and philosophy, this interdisciplinary approach will help us to understand Traditional Chinese Medicine in its intellectual, social, and cultural context. We will discuss the scientific exploration of TCM and how modern science shapes our understanding of East-West integrative health.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1
Instructors:
Lin, B. (PI)
;
Ring, H. (PI)
BIO 208: Spanish in Science/Science in Spanish (EARTHSYS 207, LATINAM 207)
For graduate and undergraduate students interested in the natural sciences and the Spanish language. Students will acquire the ability to communicate in Spanish using scientific language and will enhance their ability to read scientific literature written in Spanish. Emphasis on the development of science in Spanish-speaking countries or regions. Course is conducted in Spanish and intended for students pursuing degrees in the sciences, particularly disciplines such as ecology, environmental science, sustainability, resource management, anthropology, and archeology.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 4 units total)
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