Non-Western Cultures

Health and Healing in Africa
Pearson Managed Program
Starting: 5/31 – 7/8
56:606:681:BP
Instructor: Professor Nicholson

This class will use the concept of health and healing to examine larger social, economic and political trends in Africa. Focusing on diseases such as Ebola, HIV/AIDS and cholera, and by examining such topics as traditional healing, reproductive health and inoculations, this class will highlight changes and continuities that Africans experienced over the last two hundred years. A range of primary and secondary sources will be used to highlight African concerns, outside stereotypes, local responses to changing medical views and African agency with regard to health and healing. The class will link notions of health and healing with the colonial and postcolonial state and global changes. Students will be expected to post weekly forum responses, upload weekly small papers and develop an argumentative essay over the course of the class.

Politics and Society

Serial Killers
Pearson Managed Program
Starting: 7/11 – 8/17
56:606:621:HP
Instructor: Professor Caputo

This course will explore the topic of serial murder, including motivations, methods, and types of killers, serial killer victims, as well as prosecution and social impact of serial homicide. Topics also include gender, race, myth, and the media. Case analysis of serial killers will be a central part of the class. The course incorporates academic and popular literature as well as film and official statistics.

Arts & Literature

New Media Art
Starting: 7/25 – 8/17
56:606:609:J1
Cross listed with 50:080:224:J1
Instructor: Professor Demaray

This class is dedicated to advancing the conceptual and practical uses of digital media in a fine arts context. Focused on a nexus of theory and studio-based work, the course utilizes much of the technology already available in our day-to-day lives to make video art, mash-ups, interactive media and web based artworks. New Media Art also offers the opportunity to actively participate in the innovations that are the hallmark of this new medium while tracing the historic significance of computing, hacktivism and shared interfaces. Students need no prior background in art to take this class.

An Immersion into Experience: Writing from Life
?56:606:610:A1
Cross-listed with 50:989:307:90
Instructor: Professor Grodstein

This course is designed to allow students to plumb their own lives for subject matter for short stories or essays. The four subjects we’ll tackle are childhood, travel, grief, and work, but these subjects are broad enough that they welcome other topics into their scope. For instance, when considering travel, we might think about food, international norms, or the sad state of the airline industry; when we write about work, we might write about our houses, our hobbies, our loves. Each unit contains a lecture, several mandatory readings, a few suggested readings and/or videos (which are designed to help inspire you to write your weekly submission), and a mandatory discussion forum, in which you must respond to the readings and to one another’s posts). Graduate students are responsible for one six-nine page submission weekly, and undergraduates are responsible for four-seven page submissions