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The new space industry has the potential to impact and sustain life on Earth and beyond. For example, emerging space technology can shape the way we design habitats, food, and spacecraft for low-Earth orbit or the Lunar surface, as well as the products we use here on Earth. However, this requires us to take a deeper look at the potential influence on humanity and pushes us to declare our life mission as a lens for what we engineer. The aim of this IntroSem is to help undergraduate students "shoot for the moon" and "declare their mission" via an integration of curriculum from aerospace engineering and human-centered design. In this 10-week course, students will engage with some of life's hardest questions: Who are you?; Why are you here (i.e., on Earth and at Stanford)?; What do you want?; and How will you get there (i.e., Mars or your dream job after Stanford)? In addition, students will pitch new space-related, human-centered technology to potential stakeholders. To give students exposure to actual careers in aerospace design and engineering, mentors from industry will be invited to engage with students throughout the course and provide feedback on design projects. Are you go for launch?

This course encourages students to think critically about historical sources and to use creative and rigorous historical methods to recover African American women's experiences, which often have been placed on the periphery of American history and American life.

This seminar introduces a variety of themes and issues in linguistic anthropology, with a particular emphasis on the link between language and power. The seminar highlights that language is a constitutive of social realities, including social relationships and identities, rather than a passive tool for communication. The seminar delves into subjects such as the linguistic construction of gender, class, and race, hate speech, censorship, and the interplay of language and power unique to various institutions such as social media, and also explores the strategies of challenging the linguistic forms of power and domination. Students are expected to develop their own research project that involves empirical data collection and analysis, and thus gain hands-on linguistic anthropological research experience.

Ethnicity is one of the most compelling and most modern ways in which people - in the midst of considerable global and local uncertainty - all across the world imagine and narrate themselves. This seminar will take an anthropological look at both the modernity and the compulsions of ethnic allegiance, and, why struggles over ethnic identity are so frequently violent. Our questions will be both historical; how, why and when did people come to think of themselves as possessing different ethnic identities - and contemporary; how are these identities lived, understood, narrated, and transformed and what is the consequence of such ethnicisation. We follow this through anthropological perspectives which ask persistently how people themselves locally narrate and act upon their experiences and histories. Through this we will approach some of the really big and yet everyday questions that many of us around the world face: how do we relate to ourselves and to those we define as others; and how do we live through and after profound violence? The seminar will take these larger questions through a global perspective focusing on cases from Rwanda and Burundi, India, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, Guatemala, and the countries of Former Yugoslavia among others. These cases cover a broad canvas of issues from questions of historicity, racial purity, cultural holism, and relations to the state, to contests over religious community, indigeneity, minority identities, globalization, gender, and generation.

This course is specifically designed for social science and humanities students who want to learn how to use art to expand their research questions and/or develop an art practice, and for arts students who want to find ways to deeply engage social science and humanities research in their practice. The course will: 1. Introduce students to the work of artists who used their practice to deeply engage social issues (Ian Rowland, Cornelia Parker, Fred Wilson and many others). These artists will be contextualized with readings including: critical commentaries on their work; theoretical literature; and primary literature on the issues they address (in these examples, slavery, material culture, museum studies). Critical questions will include: Why did the artist select particular media for their work? How does the art provide a different perspective on, engagement with, or relationship to the issues they address? How does the meaning of the art change with or without contextualization? How does this artist draw on and expand art history and other artists' work? Are there critical issues the work raises but is underpowered to address? 2. Provide support for students to work on their own quarter-length independent projects and research based in drawing, photography, creative writing, or other art practice which may shift according to research findings in the duration of the course. Part of the syllabus will be contingent on student projects. Regular group crit/support sessions will be held in class based on clear deadlines. 3. Introduce students to various methods of working with primary and source materials for arts-based projects, such as improvisation, juxtaposition, performance, role-play, "moment work" and scenography. "Makers" workshops will be held to introduce students to arts methods and may include: wax casting, life drawing, graphic art, etc. (The instructor will apply for Maker's funding to support these workshops.) Students will complete the course with a solid introduction to at least 20 contemporary artists and an understanding of how to discuss and contextualize artwork in the context of several disciplines: art, social science theory, and art criticism. They will also have experience in building and completing their own project and learn how to justify their work, understand how different art media impact their exploration and ultimate product, and work through various challenges in the process. They will also gain experience in crit sessions, which will be directed by the profession with a question-based format, in both giving and receiving feedback. They will document their work and learn how to produce a portfolio of the project.

What is quantum physics and what makes it so weird? We'll introduce key aspects of quantum physics with an aim to explain why it differs from everyday 'classical' physics. Quantum-enabled devices like the laser and atomic clocks for GPS will be explained. We will also discuss the breakthroughs driving the 2nd quantum technology revolution surrounding quantum simulators, sensors, and computers. Seminar discussions and a laser lab will help illustrate core principles, including the atomic clock mechanism. Visits to campus laboratories will introduce cutting-edge quantum experiments. This IntroSem is designed for those likely to go on to major in the humanities or in a STEM program outside of the natural sciences. (Likely STEM majors are instead encouraged to take 100-level quantum courses upon completion of pre-requirements.) While basic familiarity with high school physics is recommended, qualitative explanations will be emphasized. By the end of the quarter, you will be able to explain the key tenets of quantum physics, how it has enabled current technology, and what new technologies might emerge from the 2nd quantum revolution.

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 frosh. 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.

More than excavating ancient sites and managing collections of old things, Archaeology is a way of experiencing the world: imagining past lives through ruins and remains; telling the story of a prehistoric village through the remains of the site and its artifacts; dealing with the return of childhood memories; designing a museum for a community. The archaeological imagination is a creative capacity mobilized when we experience traces and vestiges of the past, when we gather, classify, conserve and restore, when we work with such remains to deliver stories, reconstructions, accounts, explanations, or whatever. This class will explore such a wide archaeological perspective in novels, poetry, fantasy literature, the arts, movies, online gaming, and through some key debates in contemporary archaeology about human origins, the spread of urban life, the rise and fall of ancient empires.