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The 2006 film Pursuit of Happyness, an unabashed celebration of the American Dream, was enthusiastically embraced by Chinese audiences. It seems that the pursuit of happiness has become truly globalized, even as the American Dream is slipping away for many. Are Americans still convinced that their conception of happiness is a self-evident truth and a universal gospel? Is there anything that Americans might learn about what it means to live a good life from not only the distant past, but also cultures in which happiness is envisioned and sought after very differently? This course takes a multi-disciplinary approach to the question of happiness and invites undergraduate students to reflect on its relationship to virtue, wisdom, health, love, pleasure, prosperity, justice, and solidarity. Giving equal weight to Chinese and Western sources, it seeks to defamiliarize some of the most deeply held ideas and values in American society through the lens of crosscultural inquiry. During the summer, students will read a selection of novels, memoirs, and reflections by philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists. In September, we will review these texts and place them alongside movies, short fiction, news stories, and social commentary while we interrogate the chimera of happiness. In addition, we will experiment with meditation, short-form life writing (including mock-obituaries!), and service-learning. (Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center)

Preference to sophomores. Focus is on several of the best and lesser known plays of Shakespeare, on theatrical and other kinds of playing, and on ambiguities of both gender and playing gender. Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.

Modern East Asia was almost continuously convulsed by war and revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. But the everyday experience of modernity was structured more profoundly by the widening gulf between the country and the city, economically, politically, and culturally. This course examines literary and cinematic works from China and Japan that respond to and reflect on the city/country divide, framing it against issues of class, gender, national identity, and ethnicity. It also explores changing ideas about home/hometown, native soil, the folk, roots, migration, enlightenment, civilization, progress, modernization, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and sustainability. All materials are in English. N.B. This is the third of three courses in the East Asian track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study East Asian history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.

This course tells the story of the cradle of civilization. We will start from the earliest human stories, and follow the path from Gligamesh to the Quran via Babylon, the Hebrew Bible, and ancient philosophy. We will read letters, myths, and religious texts in order to pose questions about how how different we are we now in Silicon Valley. What are our traditions? Our faiths? Our foundational stories, or myths? Should we connect ourselves in deep ways to the most ancient past of civilization, or seek to distance ourselves from those origins? N.B. This is the first of three courses in the Middle Eastern track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study Middle Eastern history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.

How should we live? This course explores two ethical pathways: mysticism and rationality. They seem to be opposites, but as we'll see, some important historical figures managed to follow both at once. We will read works by successful judges, bureaucrats, academics, and lovers written between 700 and 1900 C.E. We will ask ourselves whether we agree with their choices and judgments about professional success and politics. What would we do differently today? We certainly organize knowledge differently, but do we think about ethics the same way? N.B. This is the second of three courses in the Middle Eastern track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study Middle Eastern history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.

How do we face the future? What resources do we have? Which power structures hold us back and which empower us? What are our identities here at college on the far Western edge of the Western world? In 1850s Lebabnon, Abu Faris Shidyaq faced all these same questions except for the last of course though he did face a version of even that question, one proper to a mid-19th c. Christian magazine editor. In HumCore Middle East III - Future, we engage with global claims about identity culture and politics. Ganzeer's graphic novel speaks to California as much as to Egypt; Ataturk's speeches are about power and identity just like Donald Trump's. Whether in Turkish novels or Arabic poetry, the people we engage in this course are looking to their pasts and futures, just like us. N.B. This is the third of three courses in the Middle Eastern track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study Middle Eastern history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.

Ideas matter. Concepts such as race, progress, and equality have inspired social movements, shaped political systems, and dramatically influenced the lives of individuals. Others, like gender identity, universal basic income, and historical memory play an important role in contemporary debates in the United States. All of these ideas are contested, and they have a real power to change lives, for better and for worse. In this one-unit class we will examine these dangerous ideas. Each week, a faculty member from a different department in the humanities and arts will explore a concept that has shaped human experience across time and space. Some weeks will have short reading assignments, but you are not required to purchase any materials.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Zionism emerged as a political movement to establish a national homeland for the Jews, eventually leading to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. This seminar uses novels to explore the changes in Zionism, the roots of the conflict in the Middle East, and the potentials for the future. We will take a close look at novels by Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, in order to understand multiple perspectives, and we will also consider works by authors from the North America and from Europe. Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.

We may "know" "who" we "are," but we are, after all, social creatures. How does our sense of self interact with those around us? How does literature provide a particular medium for not only self expression, but also for meditations on what goes into the construction of "the Self"? After all, don't we tell stories in response to the question, "who are you"? Besides a list of nouns and names and attributes, we give our lives flesh and blood in telling how we process the world. Our course focuses in particular on this question--Does this universal issue ("who am I") become skewed differently when we add a qualifier before it, like "ethnic"? Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take course for a Letter Grade.