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Preference to freshmen. Mark Twain defined the rhythms of our prose and the contours of our moral map. He recognized our extravagant promise and stunning failures, our comic foibles and tragic flaws. He is viewed as the most American of American authors--and as one of the most universal. How does his work illuminate his society¿s (and our society¿s) responses to such issues as race, gender, technology, heredity vs. environment, religion, education, art, imperialism, animal welfare, and what it means to be ¿American¿?

From Mark Twain¿s Roughin¿ It to Cheryl Strayed¿s Wild, this seminar explores epic road trips of the twentieth century. Travel is a cultural practice through which Americans have constructed ideas about the self, society, race, the past, and the future. Engaging historical and literary texts, film, autobiography, photography, and music, we will consider how writers have explored the theme of travel and what the differences in their texts tell us about American writing, American history, and American life.

In this seminar you will explore theory and practice, sociological data, spiritual writing, and case studies in an effort to gain a more nuanced understanding about how religion, spirituality, and secularism attempt to make legible the constellation of concerns, commitments, and behaviors that bridge the moral and the personal, the communal and the national, the sacred, the profane, and the rational. Together we will cultivate critical perspectives on practices and politics, beliefs and belonging that we typically take for granted.

Examines the various factors involved in shaping the critical care illness experience for three groups of people: the clinicians, the patients, and patients' families. Medical issues, economic forces and cost concerns, cultural biases, and communication errors can all influence one's perception. Helps students understand the arc of critical illness, and how various factors contribute to the interactions between those various groups. Includes an immersion experience (students are expected to round with clinicians in the ICU and to attend Schwartz rounds, a debriefing meeting about difficult emotional situation) and a mentoring experience (with critical care fellows), in addition to routine class work.

The Art of Medical Diagnosis: Enhancing Observational Skills through the Study of Art is an interactive, multidisciplinary undergraduate course that explores various ways in which studying art increases critical observational skills vital for aspiring health care providers. Students will be introduced to the concept of `Visual Thinking Strategies¿ through classroom, art creation, and museum based activities. Students will apply these skills to both works of art and medical cases. Significant focus will be on engaging in group discussions where they will collaboratively use visual evidence to generate and defend hypothesis. Drawing and sketching from life will play a critical role in honing observational skills through weekly assignments, workshops, and a final project. The interactive nature of this course pivots students away from a typical lecture based course to a self-directed learning experience.

Is the middle class shrinking? How do people who live at the extremes of American society- the super rich, the working poor and those who live on the margins, imagine and experience "the good life"? How do we understand phenomena such as gang cultures, addiction and the realignment of white consciousness? This class uses the methods and modes of ethnographic study in an examination of American culture. Ethnographic materials range from an examination of the new American wealth boom of the last 20 years (Richistan by Robert Frank) to the extreme and deadlynworld of the invisible underclass of homeless addicts on the streets of San Francisco (Righteous Dopefiend by Phillipe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg). The experiences of Hispanic immigrants and the struggle to escape gang life in Los Angeles are highlighted in the story of Homeboy Industries a job creation program initiated by a priest working in LA's most deadly neighborhoods (G-Dog and the Homeboys by Celeste Fremon). Finally in Searching for Whitopia: an improbable journeyninto the heart of White America, Rich Benjamin explores the creation on ethnic enclaves (whitopias) as fear over immigration and the shrinking white majority redefine race consciousnessnin the 21st century. Each of these narratives provides a window into the various ways in which Americans approach the subjects of wealth and the good life, poverty and the underclass, and thenconstruction of class, race, and gender in American society. Students will not be required to have any previous knowledge, just curiosity and an open mind.

A few years ago, health experts began calling out tobacco as engendering a global health crisis, categorizing the cigarette as the world's greatest weapon of mass destruction. A "global health crisis"? What merits that title if not tobacco use? A hundred million people were killed by tobacco in the 20th century, and ten times that number ¿ a billion people ¿ are predicted to die prematurely from exposure to cigarette smoke over the next hundred years. How has tobacconcome to be labeled a global health crisis over the last decade and what has been the political response? From whence does activism and ongoing complacency regarding tobacco arise? How are they created in different cultural contexts?nnThis course aims to provide students conceptual tools to tackle two specific thought projects: (1) to understand how institutional actors compete to define a situation in the world today as a problem of global health, and (2) to understand the sociocultural means by which something highly dangerous to health such as the cigarette is made both politically contentious and inert. On both fronts, special attention will be given to the ways global health activism and complacency unfold in the U.S. and China.

Preference to freshmen. Exploration via case studies how functional materials have been developed and incorporated into modern devices. Particular emphasis is on magnetic and dielectric materials and devices. Recommended: high school physics course including electricity and magnetism.

Preference to freshmen. Choices for meeting the future energy needs of the U.S. and the world. Basic physics of energy sources, technologies that might be employed, and related public policy issues. Trade-offs and societal impacts of different energy sources. Policy options for making rational choices for a sustainable world energy economy.