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This course is an introduction to contemporary ethical thought with a focus on the morality of harming others and saving others from harm. It aims to develop students' ability to think carefully and rationally about moral issues, to acquaint them with modern moral theory, and to encourage them to develop their own considered positions about important real-world issues. In the first part of the course, we will explore fundamental topics in the ethics of harm. Among other questions, we will ask: How extensive are one's moral duties to improve the lives of the less fortunate? When is it permissible to inflict harm on others for the sake of the greater good? Does the moral permissibility of a person's action depend on her intentions? Can a person be harmed by being brought into existence? In the second part of the course, we will turn to practical questions. Some of these will be familiar; for example: Is abortion morally permissible? What obligations do we have to protect the planet for the sake of future generations? Other questions we will ask are newer and less well-trodden. These will include: How does the availability of new technology, in particular artificial intelligence, change the moral landscape of the ethics of war? What moral principles should govern the programming and operation of autonomous vehicles?

Most people agree that democracy is a good thing, but do we agree on what democracy is? This course will examine the concept of democracy in political philosophy. We will address the following questions: What reason(s), if any, do we have for valuing democracy? What does it mean to treat people as political equals? When does a group of individuals constitute "a people," and how can a people make genuinely collective decisions? Can democracy really be compatible with social inequality? With an entrenched constitution? With representation?

When it comes to healthcare, whose bodies matter, who deserves care? How do scholars, activists, and patients confront and combat widespread healthcare disparities? This course explores prevailing epidemics of our moment (including HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, opioid addiction, and Lyme disease) in order to consider how infectious disease, moral panic, and national identity interplay across public health platforms, scientific research, and popular rhetoric. We will utilize intersectional frameworks to consider the histories, politics, and broader context of current epidemiological data and larger questions about doctor bias, the gender gap in pain, and cultural fears related to illness and the body. How do treatment, media coverage, policy, and access to care change according to population, location, and technology?

If feminism is a political practice aimed at ending patriarchy, what is the point of feminist philosophy? This course provides an introduction to feminist philosophy by exploring how important theoretical questions around sex and gender bear on practical ethical and political debates. The first part of the course will examine some of the broader theoretical questions in feminist philosophy, including: the metaphysics of gender, the demands of intersectionality, and feminist critiques of capitalism and liberalism. Questions will include: How should we understand the category `woman¿? How does gender intersect with other axes of oppression? Is capitalism inherently patriarchal? The second part of the course will address more applied topics of ethical and political debate, such as: objectification, pornography, consent, markets in women¿s sexual and reproductive labor, and the institution of marriage.

This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? This third and final quarter focuses on the modern period, from the rise of revolutionary ideas to the experiences of totalitarianism and decolonization in the twentieth century. Authors include Locke, Mary Shelley, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Primo Levi, and Frantz Fanon.

How STS and the Humanities can together help think out the looming catastrophes that put the future of humankind in jeopardy.

Preference to sophomores. Focus is on human genetics; also assisted reproduction and neuroscience. Topics include forensic use of DNA, genetic testing, genetic discrimination, eugenics, cloning, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, neuroscientific methods of lie detection, and genetic or neuroscience enhancement. Student presentations on research paper conclusions.

This course explores the conflict called "the Vietnam War" in the United States and "the American War" in Vietnam - one of the longest and most violent wars of the twentieth century - from the perspectives of those who experienced it. Engaging diverse primary sources from Vietnam, the U.S., and beyond, the course traces the conflict's global roots and consequences as well as challenges of interpreting war generally. Students have the option of a final paper or an oral history.

This course will bring together the disciplines of history and literary studies by looking closely at the work of one major twentieth-century author: the British writer and political polemicist George Orwell. In 1946, Orwell writes, "What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art." In these years, Orwell writes about-- and often participates in or witnesses first-hand--a series of major events and crises. These include British imperialism in Burma, urban poverty in Europe, class inequality in England, the conflict between Socialism and Fascism in Spain, and the rise of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union. In engaging all of these events, Orwell experiments with different literary forms, moving between fiction and non-fiction, novel and autobiography, essay and memoir, manifesto and fable, literature and journalism. Few writers demand such sustained and equal attention to text and context: in this course we will move back-and-forth between Orwell's varied writing and the urgent social and political contexts it addresses.