Online courses directory (2511)

This subject examines the paradoxes of contemporary globalization. Through lectures, discussions and student presentations, we will study the cultural, linguistic, social and political impact of globalization across broad international borders.

We will pay attention to the subtle interplay of history, geography, language and cultural norms that gave rise to specific ways of life. The materials for the course include fiction, nonfiction, audio pieces, maps and visual materials.

Through investigating cross-cultural case studies, this course introduces students to the anthropological study of the social institutions and symbolic meanings of family, gender, and sexuality. We will explores the myriad forms that families and households take and considers their social, emotional, and economic dynamics.

This course is designed around analyzing what’s so funny and why is it that we laugh when we do. How is comedy characterized on the fictional page, the screen, and the stage? And what might the comic teach us about the self and culture(s), especially when we come to understand its patterns of transgression as confounding social norms through jokes and laughter? Tracking a history of comedy, beginning with the first Greek humorists, Aristophanes and Plautus, we will traverse genres, periods and cultures to reflect on various types of humor: satire, farce, slapstick, love, tragedy, parody, and screwball.

This seminar is about the pleasures and power of reading. From the Sumerian clay tablets of more than four millenia ago through the spectacular emergence of the electronic text, the written word—in all its forms—has captivated the human mind, embodied our insights into the world around us, and made enduring our most profound artistic creations and scientific discoveries.

This class is developed around the concept of disobedient interference within the existing models of production of space and knowledge.

Modeling is the main modus operandi of the class as students will be required to make critical diagrammatic cuts through processes of production in different thematic registers – from chemistry, law and economy to art, architecture and urbanism – in order to investigate the sense of social responsibility and control over the complex agendas embedded in models that supports production of everyday objects and surroundings. Students will be encouraged to explore relations between material or immaterial aspects and agencies of production, whether they emerged as a consequence of connection of mind, body and space, or the infrastructural, geographical and ecological complexities of the Anthropocene. These production environments will be taken as modeling settings.

This seminar examines the global history of the last millennium, including technological change, commodity exchange, systems of production, and economic growth. Students engage with economic history, medieval and early modern origins of modern systems of production, consumption and global exchange. Topics include the long pre-history of modern economic development; medieval world systems; the age of discovery; the global crisis of the 17^th century; demographic systems; global population movements; the industrial revolution; the rise of the modern consumer; colonialism and empire building; patterns of inequality, within and across states; the curse of natural resources fate of Africa; and the threat of climate change to modern economic systems. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.

The United States Congress is the most open of the national branches of government, and therefore the most closely studied. This course aims to find ways to deal with the vast array of information we have about Congress by asking two basic questions: What does Congress do (and why), and what are the various ways of studying congressional behavior? This course focuses on both the internal processes of the House and Senate, and on the place of Congress in the American political system.

This course explores the political, social, and economic factors commonly offered to explain the fall of the Roman Republic: growth of the territorial empire, increased intensity of aristocratic competition, transformation of the Italian economy, growth of the city of Rome and dependence of the urban plebs, changes in military recruitment and dependence of soldiers on their generals. There is an emphasis on the reading of ancient sources in translation, including Cicero, Sallust, Caesar, Augustus, Appian, Plutarch, and Suetonius.

6.0002 is the continuation of 6.0001 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python and is intended for students with little or no programming experience. It aims to provide students with an understanding of the role computation can play in solving problems and to help students, regardless of their major, feel justifiably confident of their ability to write small programs that allow them to accomplish useful goals. The class uses the Python 3.5 programming language.

This course approaches the question of what constitutes Frenchness in today's era of globalization through issues of memory, belonging, and cultural production. It explores the role of timeless traditions – common technologies, an internationally-spoken language, monuments open to the world, and foods such as wine and cheese – that remain quintessentially French. The course also covers recent scandals about France's role in the world, such as its colonial identity and Dominique Strauss-Kahn's New York debacle.

Taught in French.

This course takes rhetoric as a system for designing meaning that helps us understand complex situations and ideas, enlighten and persuade others to act, and thus reshape our world. We’ll study rhetoric systematically and empirically, both analyzing how it works on us as readers, and testing how we can make informed rhetorical choices as we design our own texts.