Global Arc

This course provides an introduction to Bayesian analysis---a powerful statistical framework for making inferences and modeling uncertainty in a wide range of applications. Students will explore the fundamental principles of Bayesian statistics, probability theory, Bayesian inference, and practical applications of Bayesian modeling. The course will cover both the theory and hands-on implementation using data science software and the R programming language.

This course offers an introduction to deep learning, which is the core technology behind most modern AI applications, aimed at students with minimal coding experience/mathematical background. Emphasis will be placed on gaining a conceptual understanding of deep learning models and on practicing the basic coding skills required to use them in simple contexts. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand, code and train a variety of basic deep learning models, including basic neural nets, image recognition models, and natural language processing models. As a capstone, students will build their own tiny GPT-style text generator.

Considers key issues in American Food Studies today, from what it means to speak of "American food" to how artists intervene in our habituated practices, with a focus on what creativity means with regard to food, and on food sovereignty as self-determination and agency. Students will deepen their historical understanding of US culture, broaden their grasp of the forces that shape American foodways, and take creative and practical action through food. While grounded in key historical readings, this course points steadily to the present- to understand where we are- and to the future.

Seminar sociologically explores elements of the American Jewish experience: identity, ethnicity, Jewish diversity, denominationalism, adaptation, acculturation vs. contra-acculturation, including intermarriage. We investigate Jewish population and attitudes, ritual and rites of passage, popular culture, Jewish education, antisemitism and philosemitism, messianism, and the role of Israel. Students will analyze one of these topics in depth in the real life of Jews. A field trip to Brooklyn is included.

Can reality television offer a new theory of reality? This course examines a prominent aspect of US popular culture--structured reality television programs--to explore questions of reality central to the Western intellectual tradition. Each week, we pair philosophical or theoretical texts with episodes of reality television, and see how these programs can elaborate, contravene, or reframe our conceptions of reality. Some questions include: What is reality, anyway, and why do we care about it? How do we know we're looking at reality? How is reality made, and can reality television do anything else than reflect its structures?

This course will explore the intersections between commemoration, heritage, social and political movements, and urban (re)evelopment. Through field trips to local institutions, museums, historic sites, and community groups planning for the upcoming Semiquincentennial, we will examine how Americans have mobilized the memory and meaning of Revolution to press for greater political rights, challenge commemorative projects, and launch revolutionary practices of memorialization. Students will develop a digital exhibition exploring past and present struggles to define the Revolution that have fueled the region's commemorative and urban landscapes.

This course examines the diversity of the American Jewish experiences in South America, North America, and the Caribbean. Moving from the early colonial era to the present, we will examine Jewish life using historical, literary, religious, and cultural evidence. This course offers an introduction to the methods of digital humanities and will culminate in each student creating an online digital exhibit using ArtSteps. Special attention will be paid to the experiences of women as well as multiracial Jews and Jews of color.

This class will grapple with literary, visual and media texts that represent and theorize violence on a transnational field. We will consider the representation of pain as an industry and as a cultural phenomenon. Drawing from critical race theories, queer and psychoanalytic theories, and transnational feminist work, this course analyzes pain/violence narratives from a wide range of genres--film, essay, memoir, and policy--to explore how pain and violence is narrated and depicted and how such narrations become part of a collective consciousness that keeps systematic forms of oppression intact.

This course centers on the environment as a mediator for social action to understand how ecological change impacts and is impacted by structures of race and indigeneity. Using historical and present-day examples, this course will investigate the intersections of race and indigeneity in ecological change in the United States as experienced by Native people. Assignments for this course include written reflections based on weekly readings, an end-of the-term research paper, a creative collage, and a class presentation.

This class looks at the histories, religion, and material culture of Caribbean Jews from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, and traces their impact on the US Jewish life. Prior to 1825, the largest, wealthiest, and best educated Jewish American communities were in the Caribbean. In the early nineteenth century many Caribbean Jews traveled North and settled in the United States, but the region would once again play a key role between WWI and WWII as a sanctuary for Holocaust refugees. Communities we will cover include Recife, Curaçao, Jamaica, Suriname, Barbados, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.