Climate Justice
Climate injustice includes the disproportionate effects of climate change on people who benefit little from the activities that cause it, generally the poor, people of color, and people marginalized in other ways. Given the complex economic, physical, social, and political realities of climate change, what might climate justice entail? This course explores this complex question through an examination of classical and contemporary theories of justice; the gendered, colonial, and racial dimensions of climate change; and climate justice movements.
Histories of Women in Science
In the mid-1980s, only two female students drew women when asked what a scientist looked like and none of the male students in the study did. Only 8% of STEM workers in 1970 were women; in 2019 that number was still only 27%. This would seem to suggest that the history of women in science is a recent one. Yet historians of science have foregrounded women’s involvement in fields ranging from early modern medicine to twentieth century astrophysics. This class introduces students to these histories, investigates how and why science came to be a gendered as male, and asks to what extent gendered values continue to inform modern conceptions scientific achievement or value. In so doing, this course also introduces students to feminist science studies and challenges students to reflect upon their own (gendered) experiences of science. Students are strongly encouraged to develop final research projects that draw upon their own interests, scientific expertise, and linguistic competencies.
No prior experience with history is required for this course, although an enthusiasm for history is advised.
Introduction to Philosophy of Science
We will begin by trying to explicate the manner in which science is a rational response to observational facts. This will involve a discussion of inductivism, Popper's deductivism, Lakatos and Kuhn. After this, we will briefly survey some other important topics in the philosophy of science, including underdetermination, theories of evidence, Bayesianism, the problem of induction, explanation, and laws of nature. (B) (II)
Anthropology of Food and Cuisine
Eating is a physiological precondition for the reproduction of human life. Yet while human beings
are omnivores in biological terms, human food intake is neither random, nor based on genetically
encoded taste preferences. Rather, contemporary patterns of food recognition, procurement,
preparation, and consumption are highly differentiated in cultural and social terms, and have long
and complicated histories. It is not just that local and regional cuisines exhibit historically and
culturally contingent preferences for certain foods and food preparations but also that the foods
people consume within a single society can come to symbolize both powerful senses of allegiance
and deep social divisions. Similarly, patterns of food-sharing (or its avoidance) have long
characterized the ways in which people conceptualize, inhabit, express, and delimit their ethnic,
religious, political or even gender identities. What is more, certain foods (e.g. sugar, potatoes, corn,
cocoa, coffee, codfish, or beef) have played a decisive role in processes of European expansion
overseas, the establishment of colonial regimes, and the emergence of what is sometimes called the
“modern capitalist world system”. Since the 19th century, the mechanization of agriculture, new
techniques of conservation and conveyance, and industrial food preparation have, not only driven
processes of global commerce and capital accumulation – and social dislocation; such dynamics
have also significantly impacted the way the world eats today.
Anthropologists have long given attention to human foodways – but up until quite recently,
they have done so in an unsystematic, haphazard fashion. Food has figured prominently in theories
of gift exchange, religious sacrifice, classificatory systems, the analysis of social structure and
symbolic systems, but also political economy, cultural ecology, and applied work in famine-
modeling, food security, and medical anthropology. More recently, food and eating have become the
focus of an anthropology of the body, and have come to figure in attempts to theorize sensuality and
the politics of pleasure and suffering. This course will explore several such themes with a view
towards both the micro- and macro-politics of food. For what historical reason are people eating
what they eat today? What kinds of historical and present power relations underwrite contemporary
dietary patterns in different parts of the world? How does food come to express our identities? Why
are some people starving in the midst of global plenty, and why are others perceiving obesity as a
threat to their collective health? What relations exist between food, race, and gender? And why are
patterns of food-intake (similar to patterns of sexual behavior) so strongly and pervasively tied to
ideas about morality?
By examining a range of case studies and theoretical texts, this course aims to provide the
students not so much with specific answers to such questions than with an ethnographic, historical,
and theoretical basis for an informed and engaged discussion of them. The course takes the format of
a seminar augmented by lectures (during the first few weeks), scheduled video screenings, and
individual student presentations during the rest of the course.
Colonizations 1
This course is the first part of a three-quarter core sequence that explores the centrality of
colonialism to the making of the modern world. Rather than treating contemporary geohistorical
units such as e.g. Europe, Africa, Asia or the Americas as having separate “histories” that have
only recently come to converge through so-called processes of “globalization”, this course places
specific emphasis on a long-time perspective on cross-cultural/societal connections. Readings
and discussions consider the changing dynamics of conquest, enslavement, and colonialism and
their reciprocal relationships to resistance, freedom, and political independence. The first quarter
(Colonization I) takes slavery, colonization, and the making of the Atlantic world as its central
thematic. The second quarter (Colonization II) emphasizes colonization in Asia and the Pacific,
giving special attention to the pre-modern Arab and Chinese empires, European and Japanese
colonialism, and decolonization in Asia. The third quarter (Colonizations III) focuses on
processes of decolonization and the emergence of the so-called Third World.
Narratives of American Religious History
How do we tell the story of religion in America? Is it a story of Protestant dominance? Of religious diversity? Of transnational connections? Of secularization? This course examines how historians have grappled with such questions. We will read the work of scholars who have offered narratives explaining American religious history, including figures like Sydney Ahlstrom, Albert Raboteau, Mark Noll, Ann Braude, Catherine Albanese, and Thomas Tweed. This course will introduce students to key historiographical questions in the study of American religion, as well as to classic texts which have shaped the field’s development.
Judaism, Medicine, and the Body
For centuries the “Jewish doctor” has existed as an archetype, but is there such a thing as Jewish medicine? Does Judaism teach a distinct approach to the body, illness, and healing? And more significantly, why should religion have anything to do with one’s health today? In this course we will grapple with our assumptions regarding modern Western medicine by discussing topics in Jewish medical thought and ethics. We will study how Judaism – its texts, history, laws, and traditions – intersect with issues of science, medicine, and the body. In particular we will think about how a Jewish approach to medicine, and more broadly a religious approach, might complicate contemporary assumptions about the body and healing. We will also consider how Jewish bodies have been imagined and stereotyped, and think about how that might affect Jewish approaches to disease and medical ethics. This course will thus offer students a way to think about alternatives to assumptions about medicine, the body, and ethics in the secular West, which will be explored both in class materials and in personal projects. No prior work in Jewish studies, medical ethics, or religious studies necessary.
Chinese Thought and The Good Life
This course examines the ideas of thinkers with vastly different responses to the question: What is the life well lived? In our study, we will focus on early China (5th century to 221 BCE), a seminal and vibrant period in Chinese thought. Some thinkers (such as “Laozi”) argue the good life is the simple one, others (Xunzi) insist that it is the life of achieved great intellectual, aesthetic, or moral ambition. Yet others argue that central to the life well lived are rich, nuanced, and strong ties to family (Confucius), acting on one’s developed intuitions (Mengzi), or developing one’s capacity to play in the moment whatever the circumstances (Zhuangzi). Two thinkers we will study focus on the means for making the social world supportive of a life that is good. Hanfeizi argues for the importance of well-defined, objective, enforced laws. Sunzi illuminates the art of war. We will explore topics such as notions of the self, conceptions of the greater cosmos, the role of rituals, ideas about human nature, and the tension between tradition and self-expression. The course includes lectures, class discussions, self-designed spiritual exercises, creating a class “Commentary” on the Analects, essays of varied lengths, and writers’ circles.
Hope in Theological, Philosophical, and Political Perspective
What is hope? What role does it play in our lives? What role can it play in our politics? Is it a virtue—theological or otherwise? When is hope problematic? What happens when people lose hope? To address questions like these, this course will consider a wide range of recent work on the topic, from authors including Gabriel Marcel, Josef Pieper, Adrienne Martin, Cheshire Calhoun, Katie Stockdale, Kelly Brown Douglas, and Michael Lamb.
Good Hands: Research Ethics
Basic research is intended to explore and evaluate truth claims at the edge of our understanding of the natural and physical world, and it is this very quality that renders it useful as science. Yet, this often creates significant ethical questions for the research as well as for the social order in which all research takes place. Often, courses in research ethics focus on the establishment and enforcement of canonical rules of behavior, where the goal is to inform the investigator about how to follow these established rules. This course will turn to a different set of problems in research ethics. While we will begin with a foundation in the history of research ethics, reviewing the key cases that shaped the policies about which we have consensus, (human and animal subject protections; authorship, etc.) will consider the problems about which there is not yet a clear ethical course: what are the limits of human mastery? Why is research deception so prevalent? Are there experiments which are impermissible and why? What is the obligation of the researcher toward their community? How can we think clearly and ethically in situations of deep uncertainty? We will consider how moral philosophy as well as theological arguments have shaped research science and reflect on the nature, goal and meaning of basic and translational research in modernity. Course Note: Required course for new MS program in Biological Sciences.