Conflict Studies Courses

Courses in Art History

Monsters and Marvels: Visualizing the Other in Medieval Art

This course seeks to uncover and analyze strategies of difference in the pre-modern years of 1000-1550. Our modern categories of difference and conflict involve race, class and gender: what categories did medieval culture use to mark difference, and what can we learn from them? Starting in northern Europe with the warrior Beowulf's battle against Grendel the monster, moving to Spain and its geopolitics of Convivencia, continuing to the Middle East with the Crusades, and ending in the fantastic maps and travel writings and images of the kingdoms of India, Africa, and China we will study categories of ethnicity, dynastic loyalty, religion, and language, among others, as they constructed difference in medieval textual and visual culture. At stake in this class is a critical understanding of the historical construction of difference, and the lessons it can give us for understanding strategies of difference in our own culture.

Courses in Conflict Studies

Introduction to Conflict Studies

This course surveys the process of conflict, including conflict management, from a multidisciplinary perspective. As such, it deals with the causes, dynamics, types, levels, management functions and outcomes of conflict. The implementation of the course involves, in part, case-study simulations and occasional guest lecturers from various disciplines on campus. This course is a prerequisite for upper-level courses in conflict studies and required for the conflict studies major and minor.

Topics in Conflict Studies

An examination of selected topics dealing with conflict or peace studies. Courses, while interdisciplinary in nature, will generally be taught from a conflict studies perspective.

Advanced Conflict Analysis and Resolution

This course serves as a bridge between the introductory course in Conflict Studies Program (CFT 100) and the Program's senior capstone experience (CFT 430) and is designed to be fully integrative in terms of conflict theory, practice, and research. The class is intended to provide students with an understanding or how to integrate theory and analytical knowledge into developing effective research methodology and practice. In addition to regular class-time, students will complete a 2-hour practicum lab each week, which immerses them in extensive simulated case studies and equips them with tools for applied conflict analysis and resolution. Prerequisite: CFT 100.

Topics in Conflict Studies

An examination of selected topics dealing with conflict or peace studies. Courses, while interdisciplinary in nature, will generally be taught from a conflict studies perspective.

Senior Seminar: The Study and Analysis of Conflict

This course fulfills the senior experience requirement for the Conflict Studies major. It is a capstone course in which students bring together their diverse course experiences into a meaningful summation of the study and analysis of conflict. The course involves a core of common readings on theories of conflict analysis, discussions and the writing and presentation of a senior research paper relevant to the seminar.

Alternative Dispute Resolution

This course surveys the repertoire of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), with a focus on negotiation and mediation. Students will be introduced to theory and skills relevant to their facilitation of, and participation in, ADR processes. As such, the course examines how culture, class, ideology, and personality affect execution of the various roles within an ADR process, shape the unfolding of the process, and cast the process's outcome. Controversies and dilemmas pertaining to ADR will be considered, including third-party bias, value-based conflicts, how to transform adversaries into collaborators, and the privatization of justice. Implementation of the course involves, in part, review of case studies and simulation of ADR processes.

Courses in Communication and Theatre

Public Communication and Controversy

An exploration of the nature and methods of persuasive communication, including motivational theories, attention, logical argument, audience analysis and the role of personality, integrated with practice in public speaking.

Intercultural Communication

A consideration of the influence of such cultural variables as language values, institutions, traditions, customs and nonverbal behavior on the communication process.

Topics in Conflict Communication

While refining students' analytical and critical skills, this course offers intensive examination of specific issues related to conflict and communication at interpersonal, social, and cultural levels. Possible topics may include environmental communication, alternative dispute resolution, civil rights and communication, and political communication. Repeatable for credit with different topics.

Courses in Economics & Management

Urban Economics

Survey of basic urban economic problems. Topics covered include why cities exist, where they develop, how they grow and how different activities are arranged within cities. Additional topics covered include economics of urban problems, such as poverty, inadequate housing, congestion, pollution and crime. Prerequisite: ECON 100.

Development Economics

Explores the economic conditions and problems facing developing economies. Examines the main theories and sources of economic growth and development. Topics may include poverty, inequality, education, health care, population growth, urbanization and migration, agrarian reform, trade policy, foreign debt, foreign aid, structural adjustment policies and globalization. Prerequisite: ECON 100.

Courses in Education Studies

Understanding Diverse Classrooms

(includes field experience) Explores the cultural foundations of American education and examines the challenge to the schooling process presented by cultural diversity. Focuses on the existing definitions of knowledge, learning, cultural assimilation, the distribution of power and academic achievement. Field experience is required and students should register for lab time concurrently. May not be taken pass/fail. Open only to Music Education students.

Critical Multiculturalism

Explores the cultural foundations of American education and examines the challenge to the schooling process, presented by cultural diversity. Focuses on the existing definitions of knowledge, learning, cultural assimilation, the distribution of power and academic achievement. Particular attention is paid to school policy and the system as a site of political and cultural contestation. Prerequisite: EDUC 223 highly recommended. May not be taken pass/fail.

Education and Social Change

Examines issues related to the school's function as a catalyst for social change. Analyzes the school's role in the reformation of society and formation of attitudes and behaviors, and determination of outcomes. May not be taken pass/fail.

Courses in History

African Civilizations

The precolonial and colonial history of Africa from 1500 to 1945: the early socioeconomic and political organization of African society; problems of state formation; organization of an acephalous society and African production and trade; the impact of capital on the African formation as seen in the slave trade; and the era of legitimate commerce and early capitalist penetration.

Modern Africa

Africa since 1945: the diverse socioeconomic and political concerns of a mature colonialism on the eve of decolonization; the many contradictions of a colonialism caught up in a wind of change, concession-prone in some areas, stolidly uncompromising in others; political independence and the policies it produced; and the path to Africa's present state of dependency and political instability.

The Founding of United States Civilization

A survey of North American history from Columbus through the War of 1812, emphasizing territories that ultimately became part of the United States. Course includes such subjects as European-Indian interaction, African slavery in early America, the development of English colonies, the American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution and politics in the early republic.

Twentieth-Century United States

United States social, economic, political and diplomatic history from 1900 to the present.

African American History

A survey of the black experience in the United States focusing on ways African Americans reacted individually and collectively to their condition and how they have contributed to the development of the United States.

Women and Family in Modern China

The role and status of women and the evolution of the Chinese family from the late imperial period to the present. It draws on materials from novels and biographical case studies.

African Nationalism, 1890-1985

A survey of African resistance to European imperialism with emphasis on the national peculiarities of the European penetration, the experience of Settler and non-Settler Africa, the personnel and methodology of proto-nationalist and nationalist resistance, and the general outcome of these efforts.

Gender and Sexuality in the Middle East

This course seeks to explore the evolution of gendered and sexual identities in the Middle East from the rise of Islam to the present. We shall explore ways in which people in the Middle East have shaped and redefined gender and sexual identities from the earliest days of Islam to the present. Although the primary focus of the course will be the Muslim populations in the Middle East, the course will also examine conceptions of gender and sexuality amongst non-Muslim populations in the Middle East, before and after the rise of Islam.

Civil War and Reconstruction

The causes, impact and consequences of the Civil War: origins of sectional conflict, the secession crisis, emancipation, Reconstruction policies, political and military leadership, the impact of events on civilians and soldiers and long-term effects of this period on American society and political institutions.

The Civil Rights Movement

The black-led freedom movement in the South from the end of World War II to the late 1960s. Prerequisites: HIST 265, HIST 275 or permission of instructor.

United States in the Sixties

The decade of the 1960s was a tumultuous and often bewildering period in recent United States history. The course assesses the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Causes and manifestations of social, political and cultural change are examined. The Civil Rights, Black Power, New Left, Anti-War and Women's Liberation movements are studied, as well as the war in Southeast Asia.

Courses in Philosophy

Ethical Theory (formerly PHIL 213)

Historical and contemporary answers to some of the main problems of ethics, including the standard of right and wrong, the criteria of goodness, the possibility of ethical knowledge and the place of reason in ethics.

Ethics and Business (formerly PHIL 207)

An examination of ethical questions relating to business activity. Topics include: economic justice, the moral responsibilities of corporations, rights and responsibilities of employers and employees, business and consumers, regulation of business.

Biomedical Ethics (formerly PHIL 208)

Perplexing moral issues arising in contemporary biomedical practice, research and medical care. Readings from a variety of sources.

Philosophy of Law (formerly PHIL 315)

An inquiry into topics, such as, the nature of law, the relation of law to morality, the notion of responsibility in the law, punishment and the import for law of liberty of expression. Readings from classical and recent philosophers of law.

Courses in Political Science

Elements of Political Theory

This course offers an introduction to selected topics in Political Theory. It covers a range of thinkers, from the ancient Greeks to the Enlightenment thinkers of Europe and closes on a contemporary note that asks us to reflect on the theoretical underpinnings of our time. It explores the political implications and limits of texts by Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Mill, Burke, Marx, and Arendt, reading them in chronological order with an eye toward changes in concerns and concepts across time. May count towards European Studies minor.

International Politics (formerly POLS 270)

An analysis of continuity and change in world politics, focusing on the units of analysis; patterns of conflict and competition, cooperation and order, and constraint; the structure of the international system; the international agenda and emerging trends and issues such as globalization and terrorism; and the current state of world order and its future.

Equality and Justice

This course investigates multiple dimensions of the principle of equality, such as equality in nature, equality among the sexes, equality among classes and equality before the law. It puts them in the context of broader discussions of justice and interrogates the relationship between the two through a close reading of texts by Cicero, Locke, Goldman, Fanon, Nietzsche and Wendy Brown. Some of the questions raised by this course include, does an embrace of equality lead to a tolerant and socially just polity where resources and opportunity are available to all? Or does an uncritical adoption of equality lead to a stunted and conformist politics that is reluctant to accept change and restricts individual freedom?

Politics of Civil Rights and Liberties

Analysis of civil rights and civil liberties policies in the United States and of the processes that produce those policies. Emphasis will be on policies relating to the practice of democracy (freedom of expression and associated freedoms), criminal justice, and "discrimination". Treatment of the policy process will include an examination of the roles of judicial, legislative and executive branches and the activities of interest groups.

Governments and Politics of the Middle East

This course focuses on the Middle East in international politics as well as the internal politics of the region. Special attention is given to the rise of the state system, the dynamics of modernization, major political movements, ideologies, religions and social and economic change.

Government and Politics of Russia and the CIS

Examines the origins and nature of Bolshevik movement and the 1917 revolution; the ideological and institutional sources of the Soviet state and party structures; Stalinism as totalitarian experiment; the erosion of the Soviet system; its economic decline and crisis; the reasons for the failure of the Gorbachev reform effort; the Moscow coup and implosion of the system; subsequent Russian political and economic reforms; selected events in some CIS republics. May count towards European Studies minor.

Politics of Developing Nations

An introduction to the similarities and unifying characteristics of heterogeneous developing nations. Emphasis on diversities to be found in different regions of the Third World. The focus is on issues and problems and not countries and regions, though case studies are used for illustrative purposes. The course covers theories and approaches to the study of the Third World; changes in the Third World (political, economic, governmental and regime); contemporary issues (hunger and famine, multinationals, foreign debt and the New International Economic Order); and Third World ideologies and movements (nonalignment, developmental socialism, anti-Americanism and Islamic revivalism).

American Foreign Policy

The process of formulating and implementing American foreign policy. The development of American traditions regarding foreign policy, the main factors influencing American foreign policy since World War II and specific policies toward regions and countries of the world.

Courses in Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology

This course examines how evolution has shaped behavioral, cognitive, and emotional mechanisms in humans and other animals. The course begins with coverage of evolutionary theory and then examines the nature of evidence for evolved mechanisms, including how evidence from other species may inform us about human characteristics. The course also examines why evolutionary approaches and explanations of human behavior are so controversial and the implications of evolutionary explanations for society. The course is interdisciplinary and draws on ideas and information from psychology, biology, anthropology and other fields. Prerequisite: PSY 100 or permission of instructor.

Courses in Religious Studies

Islam

A survey of the major beliefs, rituals and institutions of Islam. Special emphasis will be given to recurring themes and issues that have shaped Muslim self-understanding throughout history.

Liberation Theology

An examination of the interaction between Western religious traditions and the foremost liberation movements: Third-World, black, gay and women's liberation.

Jewish and Christian Origins

This course focuses on the history, literature, and religious communities in the period that defines the background and the emergence of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism (400BCE-400CE). We deal with a vast array of ancient primary sources ranging from late biblical literature, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament and early Christian texts, and the literature of Rabbinic Judaism. These texts allow us to discuss the formations and developments of communities such as the Jerusalem Priesthood, the Dead Sea Scrolls Community, the Pharisees, and the various communities of Early Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, and Jewish-Christianity.

Courses in Anthropology

Human Cultures

An introduction to the perspectives, methods and ideas of cultural anthropology. Analysis of human diversity and similarities among people throughout the world, both Western and non-Western, through cross-cultural comparison. Topics include: culture and society; ethnographic research; ethnocentrism vs. cultural relativism; how societies adapt to their environment; different forms of marriage and social relationships; male, female and other forms of gender; the social functions of religion; and processes of socio-cultural change. May not be taken pass/fail.

The Anthropology of Gender

This class explores anthropological theories of gender differences and inequalities in cross-cultural contexts. The course examines the role of kinship, reproduction, politics and economic systems in the shifting determinations of gender in various contexts. It also questions the meanings of masculinity, transsexual/transgender issues and the roles of women in global contexts. In this course, the various ways that anthropology has theorized and understood questions of gender are explored and made relevant to contemporary societies. Prerequisite: ANTH 151, sophomore standing or permission of instructor.

Courses in Sociology

Gender and Society

This course examines the role of gender systems in human societies. How do societies vary in the positions assigned to men and women? In the power and privileges accorded each sex? How do we acquire a gender identity? What are the consequences of sex-typing and sex-stratified societies? The role of religion, intellectual traditions, language, families and schools, economic organization, labor markets and the state is explored. The focus is on contemporary U.S. society and recent changes in gender relations. Prerequisite: SOC 100 or sophomore standing.

Social Deviance

This course is an examination of the changing definitions and explanations of deviance. Conceptions of deviance are looked at within historical, political and cultural contexts. Implications for policies of social control are explored. Prerequisites: SOC 100 or sophomore standing.

Racial and Ethnic Relations

This course explores the origins, changes and possible futures of racial and ethnic relations. It is concerned with both the development of sociological explanations of ethnic and racial conflict, competition and cooperation as well as with practical approaches to improving inter-group relations. The course surveys global and historical patterns of inter-group relations but focuses on late 20th-century and early 21st-century United States. Prerequisite: SOC 100 or sophomore standing.

Protest, Activism and Change

An investigation of activists who have mobilized to change the shape of American society. Explores how protest has changed American society; the forces giving rise to it; the dilemmas in mobilizing social movements; tactical, ethical and organizational issues; and the role of movement opponents in affecting what can be achieved. Grassroots organizing and large-scale social movements. such as civil rights, labor, feminist, student, gay and lesbian, and peace activism, are considered. Prerequisite: one course in Sociology or permission of instructor.

Courses in Women's Studies

Introduction to Women's Studies

This course introduces some key issues in contemporary women's studies and provides a starting vocabulary and background in the field. Because Women's Studies is an interdisciplinary field, readings come from a number of different areas, including literature, history, philosophy, psychology and sociology.

Feminist Theory

This course focuses on contemporary feminist thought. Throughout the semester, students emphasize the relationship between feminist theory and feminist practice and ways in which feminism changes our fundamental understanding of the world.

Topics in Women's Studies

An interdisciplinary exploration of a particular theme, area or period, with respect to issues of women and gender.