Master of Arts in Liberal Studies

Why do people appear to believe things that are so clearly false? The course will explore the cognitive science behind cognitive biases and heuristics that make us vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation. We will examine select historic propaganda campaigns, but will focus on more recent and present disinformation and persuasion campaigns. We will also work to address and compensate for the constraints of human cognition that have been exploited by disinformation campaigns. In addition to covering the psychology of propaganda and cognitive biases, the course will incorporate readings from political science, philosophy, linguistics, marketing, and computer science to compare how each discipline provides the tools for identifying and overcoming misinformation and polarization that has been increasing with the rise of social media. The goal of the course is for students to recognize their biases, practice techniques for identifying misinformation and disinformation, and develop a model of ethical decision-making for sharing information.

 

Edmund Husserl called earth “the originary ark.” Martin Heidegger wrote that earth must not be associated with “the merely astronomical idea of a planet.” After the launch of Sputnik, Hannah Arendt called earth “the quintessence of the human condition,” a “free gift from nowhere” that we now wish to exchange for something we have made ourselves. All three were worried about the fate of the world once we left earth and ventured into space. This course takes up these anxieties from the perspective of our own world by placing them in conversation with science, art, and film. What “world picture” comes into focus through the lens of Earth System Science, contemporary climate modeling, and astrobiology? Primary texts are “The Age of the World Picture,” “The Origins of the Work of Art” and “The Question Concerning Technology,” the final chapter of The Human Condition, along with excerpts from Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences and Alexandre Koyré’s From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. Our contemporary archive includes images of the earth from space, the concepts of the Anthropocene and technosphere, the history of climate modeling and the future of geoengineering, the films Koyaanisqatsi and Gravity, and Yinka Shonibare’s Refugee Astronaut. No scientific or technical knowledge is required – only curiosity and a sense of wonder.

 

 

Things expose relations in and between societies that inform the past. As Arjun Appadurai argues, "even though from a theoretical point of view human actors encode things with significance, from a methodological point of view it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their human and social context." In this course, we will mobilize early modern things to explore what inanimate objects reveal about the animate world. We will study the social significance and cultural value of such things to look at and beyond their materiality. In particular, we will examine objects such as clothing from England, earthenware from the Italian peninsula, featherwork from the New World, and carpets from the Ottoman Empire to rethink how such things construct biography, impact memory, produce ambiguity, and dictate taste.

0.5 units

Dana Katz, Joshua C. Taylor Professor of Art History and Humanities

Tuesdays, 6:00–7:30 p.m.

What is taught in the natural sciences, and why? What should be taught? What best supports science learning, and how can we make it more equitable and inclusive? STEM Education Research takes a scientific approach to answering questions like these, integrating knowledge of the natural sciences with methods widely used in the natural and social sciences. In this course, we will examine how discipline-specific knowledge about science education is generated, and what implications this knowledge has for improving STEM learning and student outcomes. In this course we will critically evaluate the evidence about STEM teaching and learning, assessing scholarly claims by considering their methodological and analytical strengths and limitations. Through this, we will discuss well-established evidence-supported practices for science teaching and learning, context-specific factors that can cause these practices to fail to support learning, and systemic and societal barriers that complicate STEM course reforms.

0.5 units

Nicole James, Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Wednesdays, 5:40–7:10 p.m.

The Indian Ocean has been a site of cultural exchange across continents for several millennia, but it has often been marginalized from discussions of modernity based on Euro-American and trans-Atlantic models. What does it mean to be modern in the context of the Indian Ocean, a region crisscrossed by multiple empires, competing religions, and movements of migrants, merchants, slaves, pilgrims and soldiers?  How have individuals and communities in the Indian Ocean been framed by larger transnational processes like colonization, decolonization, slavery, trade, migration, and displacement? How do the non-Western sources of globalization and transnationalism in the Indian Ocean provide modes for thinking about alternative experiences of modernity? Using literature as the primary mode of thinking, this course will consider the ways in which the unique history of circulation of people, objects and ideas in the Indian Ocean shape ideas of modernity distinct from those developed in the West. This course will draw on readings from literary studies, history, anthropology, philosophy, and critical race studies, to form a contextually informed approach to the study of the literature from the region. The course aims to rethink major concepts associated with modernity such as nation, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, and globalization in relation to the categories of race, gender, ethnicity, caste and religion in the Indian ocean context.

0.5 units

This course will explore the biochemistry, cell biology, neurobiology, and the societal impacts of the opioid receptor. We will track how a receptor is made, how it is transported in the cell, and how it functions with regards to pain and sedation. We will then discuss the origins of the opioid pandemic starting from a historical perspective transitioning to how it affects the economy, race relations, and the society at large. In order to do so, we will read primary literature pulling from cell biology/neurobiology, sociology, and economics to taking a holistic, interdisciplinary approach.

0.5 units

 

How are relationships - relationships between friends, spouses, lovers, children and parents, fellow citizens, soldiers and commanders, students and teachers - like or unlike commercial transactions? And what, in fact, characterizes commercial transactions? In Classical Athens these were especially pressing questions, since Athenian society had been transformed by monetization, which provided a new conceptual framework for thinking about social relationships and obligations, and put pressure on traditional understandings. The great literary forms of this period - tragedy, comedy, the Socratic dialogue - reflect and respond to this conceptual pressure, and this course will explore both the process of monetization and how Classical Athenian intellectuals responded to the questions it raised by interrogating different kinds of relationship in works such as Euripides' Medea, Sophocles' Antigone, Aristophanes' Knights, Xenophon's Memorabilia and Plato's Republic.

0.5 units

 

0.5 units

Christian Kroll, Associate Professor of Spanish and Humanities

Tuesdays, 6:00–7:30 p.m.