Note: Additional course information, including meeting days and time, can be found through Online Course Information and on the Yale Classes*v2 server.
SCIE 030 and 031
Current Topics in Science
Douglas Kankel
A series of modules in lecture and discussion format addressing scientific issues arising in current affairs. Topics are selected for their scientific interest and contemporary relevance, and may include global warming, human cloning, and the existence of extrasolar planets. One course credit is awarded for successful completion of the year's work.
AMST 004
Narrations of Native America
Alyssa Mt. Pleasant
Introduction to contemporary and historic writing by American Indian authors of nonfiction and fiction. Focus on the varied ways American Indians have employed literacy and recorded oratory as means to document, interpret, represent, and comment on their histories and experiences. Use of materials from the Beinecke Library.
AMST 006
Violence and Justice in America
John Mack Faragher
The problem of violence and justice in American society, history, and culture. Introduction to the disciplinary approaches in social science, history, and cultural criticism that comprise the interdisciplinary practice of American Studies.
ANTH 011
Reproductive Technologies
Marcia Inhorn
Introduction to scholarship on the anthropology of reproduction. Focus on reproductive technologies such as contraceptives, prenatal diagnostics, childbirth technologies, abortion, assisted reproduction, surrogacy, and embryonic stem cells. The globalization of reproductive technologies, including social, cultural, legal, and ethical responses.
APHY 050/PHYS 050
Science of Modern Technology
Daniel Prober
Examination of the science behind selected advances in modern technology. Focus on the scientific and contextual basis of each advance. Topics are developed by the participants with the instructor and with guest lecturers, and may include nanotechnology, quantum computation and cryptography, optical systems for communication and medical diagnostics, transistors, satellite imaging and global positioning systems, large-scale immunization, and DNA made to order.
ART 001
Studies in Visual Biography
Jessica Helfand
Study of diaries, journals, and scrapbooks as authoritative examples of visual autobiography. Social history and visual methods, focusing on American and British cultural life between the world wars. Exercises in collecting, collage, and composition; methods of visually navigating space, time, and memory; discussion of the asynchronous nature of biography.
ASTR 030
Search for Extraterrestrial Life
Hector Arce
Introduction to the search for extraterrestrial life. Review of current knowledge on the origins and evolution of life on Earth; applications to the search for life elsewhere in the universe. Discussion of what makes a planet habitable, how common these worlds are in the universe, and how we might search for them. Survey of past, current, and future searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.
CPSC 079
Digital Photorealism
Julie Dorsey
Basic methods used to define shapes, materials, and lighting when creating computer-generated images. Mathematical models for shape, texture models, and lighting techniques. Principles are applied through the use of modeling/rendering/animation software. Proficiency in high school–level mathematics is assumed. No previous programming experience necessary.
ENGL 010
Jane Austen
Stefanie Markovits
Close study of Austen's novels, with special attention to the critique of social and literary convention.
ENGL 011/PLSC 025
Lincoln in Thought and Action
David Bromwich
An intensive examination of the career, political thought, and speeches of Abraham Lincoln in their historical context.
F&ES 012
Urban Ecology in New Haven
Gordon Geballe
Methods from ecosystem ecology, landscape ecology, and industrial ecology applied to questions of how cities work and how they can be more sustainable. Guest speakers, community projects, and field trips in New Haven. Application of theory to New Haven and to cities around the world.
FILM 040/AFAM 040
Spike Lee
Terri Francis
Introduction to the study of film and issues in contemporary black culture through study of Spike Lee's films and writings. Close analysis of Lee's style, sources, creative dilemmas, and collaborations, as well as the conversations he and his films generate. Topics include concepts of black leadership, cinematic reflexivity, early film history, race and racism, stereotypes, auteurism, cinema of attractions, defining black cinema, and questions of audience and authenticity.
GMST 050
Spectatorship and Visual Culture
Brigitte Peucker
The position of the Western spectator from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries in a variety of paradigmatic situations. Spectatorship in the contexts of landscape, painting, the city, and film. Looking and the imagination; the relation of the represented to the real; vision and the senses; the nature and politics of looking.
HIST 006/HSHM 005
Medicine and Society in American History
Rebecca Tannenbaum
Disease and healing in American history from colonial times to the present. The changing role of the physician, alternative healers and therapies, and the social impact of epidemics from smallpox to AIDS.
HIST 008/HUMS 080/RLST 001
Essential Heresies
Carlos Eire
Introduction to individuals and movements that have challenged the intellectual and spiritual status quo in Western civilization.
HIST 022
What History Teaches
John Gaddis
An introduction to the discipline of history. History viewed as an art, a science, and something in between; differences between fact, interpretation, and consensus; history as a predictor of future events. Focus on issues such as the interdependence of variables, causation and verification, the role of individuals, and to what extent historical inquiry can or should be a moral enterprise.
HIST 023
War and Rebellion in Early America
Alejandra Dubcovsky-Joseph
The role of war and rebellion in early American history, from precontact to the War of 1812. Changing roles and meanings of war and rebellion; the impact of these violent events on European, Indian, and African populations; implications of using war and rebellion as historical categories.
HSAR 002/AMST 007
Furniture and American Life
Edward Cooke, Jr.
In-depth study and interpretation of American furniture from the past four centuries. Hands-on experience with furniture in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery to explore such topics as materials, techniques, styles, use, and meaning.
HSHM 008/HUMS 090
History of Scientific Medicine
Sherwin Nuland
The development of scientific medicine traced from classical antiquity to the dawning of the modern biomedical era. Focus on the biographies of major contributors and on cultural and intellectual currents affecting discovery.
HUMS 076
Epidemics in Global Perspective
William Summers
Interaction of epidemic diseases and society. The response of government, medicine, and the public to the threat or actual presence of widespread contagious diseases. The notion of major epidemics as one of the key contingencies of history, critically examined through contemporary medical, political, and literary accounts. The changing responses of societies and governments to epidemics as well as the reasons for those responses.
MCDB 050
Immunology and Microorganisms
Paula Kavathas
Principles of immunology, microbiology, and host-microbe interaction. Innate and adaptive immunity; principles of vaccination. Organisms studied include HIV, influenza, human papilloma virus, polio, and commensal bacteria.
MUSI 009
Jazz and Architecture
Michael Veal
A conceptual and structural comparison between modern jazz and modern architecture after World War II, focusing on recent experimental currents in each discipline. Effects of digital technology on both sonic and architectural practices. Form, structure, and material used in free jazz; processes in contemporary architecture that can be compared with those in modern jazz.
PHIL 082
Cognitive Science of Morality
Joshua Knobe
An exploration of recent work in psychology and philosophy on the nature of moral judgment. Topics include whether the capacity for moral judgment is innate or learned, whether moral judgments rely on reasoning or on emotion, and what light the science of morality can shed on broader philosophical questions about how one ought to live one's life.
PHYS 095
Radiation and the Universe
Peter Parker
An exploration of nuclear physics in the cosmos and on Earth, without intense mathematics. Nuclei as the heart of matter and the cores of stars; nuclear reactions as they power the stars and are responsible for the existence of every element; the role of radioactivity in our lives, including nuclear medicine, X rays, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and terrorism.
SOCY 041
Sociology of Social Control and Criminal Justice
Philip Smith
The criminal justice system from a sociological perspective. Transformations in social control arising with the onset of modernity. Topics include policing, courts, the law, and prisons; costs and benefits of contemporary solutions to the problem of social control; and the role of power and culture in shaping current policy and activity.
AMST 008/AFAM 023
The Memory of Slavery
Edward Ball
The conflict over the story of American slavery as it has been told since the Civil War. Film, family history, fiction, and the competing tales of historians that make up the collective memory of the slave past.
ANTH 012
Exploring Sport, Society, and Culture
William Kelly
Introduction to critical sport studies. Exploration of the nature of sports, the emergence of modern sports, and implications of sports for health, technology, ethics, gender, sexuality, class, race, nationalism, and globalization.
ARCH 001
Architecture and Utopia
Peggy Deamer
The relationship between utopian thought and architecture; architectural visions of utopia. The idea of designing the perfect social environment as inspiration for architects. Utopian thinking as a point of contention among architectural theorists, either for avoiding the difficulty of reality or for giving an image of hope in compromised times.
Paper as a material for making art. How paper is made; myriad ways that it is used in the collections of Yale's galleries and libraries. Creation of paper objects to explore the formal properties of sculpture, including volume, mass, line, and structure.
ENAS 060/APHY 060/PHYS 060
Energy Technology and Society
CANCELLED
FREN 095
The French Enlightenment
Thomas Kavanagh
A study of the French Enlightenment through its literature, art, and social thought. The culture of eighteenth-century France as a transition from absolute monarchy to the foundations of a secular society based on new understandings of nature, value, sexuality, liberty, tolerance, and social concord. Readings and discussion in English.
HIST 001/AFAM 095/AMST 001
African American Freedom Movements in the Twentieth Century
Crystal Feimster
Introduction to the study and writing of history, focusing on how African Americans fought for civil rights throughout the twentieth century. The civil rights movement placed in its historical context; African American freedom struggles placed in the larger narrative of U.S. history.
HLTH 091
Leadership and Global Thinking
Elizabeth Bradley
Key concepts in leadership in global contexts, with application to selected topics in public health and medicine. Focus on four interrelated challenges: working across boundaries defined by roles, power, and race; managing common resources to maximize social welfare; anticipating and responding to change at social, organizational, and individual levels; and paradoxes in leadership in a complex world.
HUMS 093/MUSI 024
The Beatles, Dylan, and the 1960s
Gary Tomlinson
A musical and cultural analysis of the achievements and impact of the Beatles and Bob Dylan in the 1960s. Roots in American popular culture of the 1950s; the Beatles and postwar Britain; the influence of Dylan and the Beatles on each other; new musical styles and new roles for musical style itself; the shaping of youth culture by mass media.
JDST 015/HUMS 094/RLST 002
Abraham and the Abrahamic Religions
Jonathan Kaplan
Exploration of Abraham's presentation in the book of Genesis and of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim retellings of Abraham's story that transform him into a key figure in each tradition. Interpretive strategies employed by each religion as it utilizes the story of Abraham to construct its community's narrative of chosenness. No background in religious studies or biblical literature assumed.
LING 009
Grammatical Diversity in U.S. English
Raffaella Zanuttini
Study of differences among varieties of English spoken in North America, focusing in particular on morphosyntatic variation: double modals ("I might could go to the store"), a-prefixing ("She was a-building a house"), negative inversion ("Don't nobody want to ride the bus"), aspect marking ("Bruce be running," "I done pushed it"). Emphasis on the grammatical richness and complexity of each variety.
MUSI 003
Shakespeare and Music
Judith Malafronte
The use of music in Shakespeare's plays, from the original stagings and seventeenth-century adaptations to modern productions. Consideration of operatic versions of the plays from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.
PORT 001/LAST 001/SPAN 050
Latin American Short Fiction
Paulo Moreira
Introduction to Latin American literature through one of its highest achievements: the short narrative from Brazil and Spanish America. Works of Brazilian authors (Machado de Assis, Guimarães Rosa, Graciliano Ramos, Clarice Lispector) compared with short stories from Spanish America (Quiroga, Rulfo, Carpentier, Borges) and the United States (Faulkner, Ellison, Chopin). Narrative structure and expressive qualities of the texts; literary currents; and social, psychological, and existential themes. Readings and discussion in English; texts available in the original languages.
