Global Arc

This course will critically examine the unequal distribution of disease and mortality in the United States along the axes of race, ethnicity, class and place. Through in-depth engagement with case studies, critical historical texts and public health literature we will explore why individuals from some race/ethnicities, class backgrounds, and geographies are more vulnerable to premature death and adverse outcomes than others. Student work will culminate in a policy memo and a presentation, allowing them to hone valuable skillsets for future participation in the research and policy processes.

The course will apply analytical tools in economics to investigate various economic and social consequences of population change and conversely the demographic consequences of economic growth. The course will emphasize both microeconomic and macroeconomic approaches. We will examine the economic determinants of population change and demographic behavior including household decisions, mortality (particularly infant mortality) and key forms of human capital investment including health, schooling and migration.

This seminar will introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of planetary health, which investigates how human activities are transforming the environment in which we live and thereby introducing new challenges to health. Through examining diverse case studies in planetary health -- from areas such as emerging and re-emerging infectious disease, nutrition, and environmental health -- the course will outline major themes and provide students with analytical tools and conceptual frameworks that may help further understanding and innovation in this field.

This course explores how the environment and health are perceived to interact, and how technologies have been designed to mediate that relationship. We will consider the intersection of health, technology, and the environment from colonial medicine in the 19th century, to international health, to present day concepts of global health. We will critically examine the historical actors, institutions, value systems, and policy decisions that led to the present climate crisis and the unequal burden it imposes on some populations relative to others and elaborate on implications of a shift to the idea of planetary health.

What makes a pandemic? COVID-19 has illuminated inequities and unpreparedness of global health mechanisms and national health provision systems, and put ways of predicting and preventing catastrophes under scrutiny. While preventable and treatable diseases such as AIDS remain pandemic and take millions of lives yearly, they no longer mobilize the emergency-based governance responses, financial resources, media attention, and modes of surveillance that COVID-19 does. We will examine frameworks, rationales, values, forms of knowledge, collaboration, governance and surveillance around which pandemics coalesce and are also eventually forgotten.

Introductory course develops skills of reading, speaking, comprehension, and writing through various techniques, with an emphasis on a solid grammatical basis and awareness of idiomatic usage of the language. Teaching materials include ones developed in Israel. Five classes. No credit is given for HEB 101 unless followed by HEB 102.

A continuation of 101, with emphasis on the development of all skills. The course will expose students to contemporary Israeli culture by using authentic material such as films, TV series, newspaper articles, and Web-based material. Class activities include role-playing, drills, group discussion, and oral presentations. Five classes.

Expansion of reading, oral, aural, and written skills, as well as coverage of more advanced grammar. Students will be gradually introduced to contemporary Israeli prose and poetry. Maximum participation by students is encouraged through discussion of readings and films. Five classes.

A continuation of 105, covering remainder of grammar. Further explores contemporary Israeli prose, poetry, and more complex essays from textbooks and photocopied material. Five classes.

This course, which is taught entirely in Hebrew, evaluates the main themes of Israeli cinema. The course will present various issues that concern Israelis today (e.g., immigration, multiculturalism, identity, Israeli-Palestinian/Arab conflict, Holocaust, Jerusalem). The goal of the course is to give students an understanding of the issues that concern Israel today by means of examining trends in Israeli cinema from the earliest films until today.