Global Arc

These courses cover one or more advanced topics in modern Earth science. They are offered only when there is an opportunity to present material not included in the established curriculum; the subjects vary from year to year. Three classes or a three-hour seminar.

We will consider the art of music for the moving image. We will look at historic examples, scoring styles and techniques, and the choices that directors and composers make. We will begin by looking at the basic elements of film and music. Then we will consider the role of genre and style, focusing especially on early Hollywood and Russian filmmakers. Finally, we will look at a range of modern scoring techniques.

Moving from Baghdad to Paris, Jerusalem to Addis Ababa, Iceland to Dunhuang, this course examines the musical cultures of some of the most vibrant centers of the Middle Ages. We consider what it means to study medieval music "globally," focusing on key moments of cultural contact (trade, pilgrimage, conflict), while remaining attuned to the particularities of specific places. Emphasis is on the physical traces of premodern music, and we encounter the distant musical past in a variety of materials and formats (paper manuscripts, papyrus fragments, parchment rolls, stone steles), meeting weekly in Special Collections.

Are we living at the hinge of history? Is the best future for humanity one in which we become a vast interstellar civilization? Can we positively influence the long-term trajectory of our species? This course will examine both motivations and difficulties for longtermism, a novel position in ethics which says that ensuring a flourishing future for humanity should be our top moral priority. Topics will include population ethics,decision theory, the size of the future,cluelessness about the long-run effects of our actions, moral uncertainty, advanced artificial intelligence, and what to do if you are interested in existential risk mitigation.

Vladimir Putin has confounded world leaders and defied their assumptions as they tried to figure him out, only to misjudge him time and again. In 2022, against all predictions the authoritarian leader started Europe's bloodiest war since WWII. While looking at Putin's rise to power (and his impending fall), we will also seek during this course to go beneath politics and policy to look at how human beings experience state power within the cultural phenomena including visual arts, literature, cinema, TV, Internet, popular music, and photography.

In this course, envisioned as both a language and literature course, we will explore Anton Chekhov's humor, Mikhail Zoshchenko's satire, and Fazil Iskander's irony, which will give us a glimpse into daily life in 19th century Russia and Soviet Union. The entire course will be conducted in Russian. Special emphasis will be placed on active use of language and expansion of vocabulary.

This seminar will examine social implications of the American food system as it developed during the twentieth century by delving into topics that range from gender, race, and labor to the construction of supermarkets, development of industrial meat production, and the increasing use of biotechnology in food production.

Surveying key moments from the 19th century to the present, this course tracks how networked communications, numerical calculation, symbolic reasoning, and information processing converged to create contemporary information technologies. The course introduces students to the major kinds of historical inquiry-philosophical, engineering, labor, material, social, gender, legal, and cultural-needed for studying information technologies in the last 150 years. Topics include Silicon Valley, software engineering, PCs, hacking, artificial intelligence, information, cryptography, outsourcing, privacy, information warfare, social networks, surveillance

A course intended as an introduction to the general problem of historical consciousness. How has the past been conceived in different times and places? How has knowledge of the past been sought, expressed, and conveyed? How does the past remain "present" - practically, politically, psychologically? What are the implications (existential, ethical, epistemic) of our being historical creatures? By means of readings in disciplinary history, creative literature, and philosophy, and through select encounters with works of visual art and film, this class will investigate the history (and diversity) of historical reflection.

The course aims to help students think critically about the ethical and social aspects of computing technology. Topics include ethical foundations; political economy of the tech industry; algorithmic fairness; AI and labor; AI safety; AI and climate; social media and platform power; information security; privacy; values in design; research ethics; professional ethics; technology and social good; digital colonialism; law & policy. Activities will include readings, technical work, and case studies of contemporary debates.