Global Arc

This course emphasizes continued development of the four skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) used in academic or professional settings. Materials include novels, essays, reports, films, and documentaries. Prerequisite: JPN 402 or equivalent.

A continuation of JPN 407. This course emphasizes continued development of the four skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) used in academic or professional settings. Materials include novels, essays, reports, films, and documentaries. Prerequisite: JPN 407 or equivalent.

In both wealthy and low and middle income countries, the most disadvantaged people in societies are more likely to be exposed to health threats and more likely to suffer the consequences of those threats. We see evidence and the consequences of health inequities across countries and within them, and across socioeconomic, gender, racial and ethnic groups. In this course, we consider differences in the burden of disease and explore the myriad reasons for these differences. We also examine how the structure of health systems and health services, and the ways these are resources, can exacerbate inequities.

India's post-independence journey is a lens to study fundamental questions of economic development and political economy. Despite attempts at big-push industrialization, followed by economic liberalization in the 1990's, the country struggled to create jobs and provide public goods at par with rapid population growth. Extreme economic inequality is now only one concern amidst environmental degradation, gender-based violence, and a Hindu-nationalist political agenda. When, and how, will India achieve sustainable development? The seminar will draw on scholarly works and Indian cinema for a well-rounded economic, social and political commentary.

The course examines the history of financial innovation and its consequences. It examines the evolution of trading practices, bills of exchange, government bonds, equities, banking activity, derivatives markets, and securitization. How do these evolve in particular state or national settings, how are the practices regulated, how do they relate to broader development? What happens as financial instruments are traded across state boundaries, and how does an international financial order evolve? What are the effects of international capital mobility? How is resulting conflict and instability managed, on both a national and international level?

Special Topics in Institutions and Networks will house courses related to communications, media influence and information networks, international organizations and global governance, law and legal systems, political systems and social networks.

This course explores transnational and diasporic formations of race in the Americas. Drawing on Ethnic Studies, Latin American Studies, and anthropological and historical approaches, we explore racial formations in Latin America and its transnational communities. A central goal for this course is to understand race and racial formations as culturally contextualized and situated within the politics of difference. How are U.S. racial-ethnic categories embraced, contested, or reconfigured across the Americas, and vice versa? Topics include multiculturalism, mestizaje, border thinking, transnationalism, and racial democracy among others.

Epic poetry is like a blockbuster film (with war, sex, downfall, exaltation) and was considered "the best and most accomplished kind of poetry" in the Renaissance. Four-hundred years later, its greatest practitioners are rarely read. Our course aims to compensate for this neglect by immersing students in the greatest eddies of epic activity from two interrelated vantage points. First, Milton's Paradise Lost, that culmination of the entire (neo)classical epic tradition. And second, disability studies, which interrogates how certain physical and mental features (often coded as deviations from the able-bodied norm) become stigmatized.

This course examines the transnational intersection of law and natural resources in the Spanish Borderlands of North America. We will study how the Spanish empire (and later an independent Mexico and the emerging United States) defined natural resources as property rights and allocated such resources to Europeans and Indigenous peoples who lived in the arid landscapes of the far northern frontier (what became present-day Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, & California). The course also explores the conflict that developed in the U.S. over natural resources after 1848 between the Hispanic civil law and Anglo-American common law.

Designed for students with advanced training in modern Chinese, this course will further develop their language comprehension, communication skills, and cultural understanding. Students will improve their spoken Chinese in various situations, from informal conversations to professional presentations suitable for business and academic settings. Students will also develop their ability to speak and write Chinese using more engaging, complex, and occasion-appropriate language. Course topics will focus on contemporary Chinese society, including cultural identities, pop culture, the economy, environmentalism, law, and social discourse.