Undergraduate Courses

In this course students think across disciplines to consider what it means to satisfy our literal and metaphorical hunger. Students analyze the relationships between body and soul, self and surrounding, hunger and satiety and visit NYC-based institutions like Essex Street Crossing and the Street Vendor Project to further understand how feeding body and soul works outside of the classroom. Liberal Arts Core/CORE Equivalent- satisfies the requirement for Cultures and Contexts.

This course is designed to put in perspective the interactions between culture, food systems, migration, and globalization, and how the interactions are impacting on the food security and nutrition of the people. The course will detail the culture and traditions (including changes over the years), food ways, the current food environment in Accra, and the drivers of the nutrition transition. This course will also help students to understand the importance of nutrition sensitive agriculture in
food systems, the impacts of urbanization / migration on these, and the
influence of government policies on the dynamics. The course also has a
field component which includes visits to a traditional ruler (to learn
about food culture and festivals), markets (traditional and modern), and
fast-food outlets/restaurants.

This course will examine the origins, development, and meanings of so-called cultural conflict in the United States. Topics will include abortion, gay rights, bilingualism, and the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Liberal Arts Core/CORE Equivalent - satisfies the requirement for Cultures & Contexts

Examination of food from historical and transnational perspectives. Topics considered are: the origins of agriculture, the phenomenon of famine, the co-evolution of world cuisines and civilizations, the international exchange and spread of foods and food technologies following 1492, issues of hunger and thirst, and the effects of the emergent global economy on food production, diets, and health.

Liberal Arts Core/MAP Equivalent - satisfies the requirement for Cultures and Contexts

The purpose of this course on religion and public education in an international context is for us to engage together in a critical analysis of what continues to be an important contemporary issue. The seminar is designed especially for students preparing for careers in teaching - in both public and private/religious schools, educational administration, educational research, or other professions which will involve them in the ongoing public debates about the uneasy relationship of religion and public education in the United States and other countries. The course will examine these issues historically and in terms of current policy debates and students will be asked to make connections to their own educational practice. Liberal Arts Core/CORE Equivalent - satisfies the requirement for Context and Cultures.

A deep sense of a descending dystopian future has become more pronounced with the global pandemic, economic shutdowns, and the rise of extremism and authoritarianism. Scholars, novelists, journalists, filmmakers, and activists around the world have been writing and speaking about political systems and leadership classes incapable of addressing such issues for decades. Students explore dystopia through literature, film, and scholarly works, and examine strategies for resisting dystopia. Students participate in a social action project and create video projects.

This course will build on a core concept of Lewis Mumford who understood media ecology as a component of spatial and urban ecology. Emphasis will be given on how space socially organizes human meaning and on the 'inscription' of space. How do people, through, their practices and their being in the world, form relationships with the locales they occupy (both the natural world and the build environment)? How do they attach meanings to spaces to create places? and how do the experiences of inhabiting viewing and hearing those places shape their meanings, communicative practices, cultural performance memories and habits? Course themes include; mapping and the imagination; vision and space, soundscape, architecture and landscape; new media and space/time compression; space and identity; spatial violence; spatialization of memory.

Liberal Arts Core/CORE Equivalent - satisfies the requirement for Cultures & Contexts