Interdisciplinary Studies

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020
This course is a broad survey of major canonical works (“Great Books”) emphasizing from the premodern traditions of Western Civilization since the Greeks. These texts offer responses to central questions that, across the disciplinary divides, continue to inform contemporary work in the social sciences and the humanities. By considering these enduring questions and the responses of writers in Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern Europe, we seek to examine core issues of the liberal arts as they find expression across what would later become disciplinary divisions.

Enduring Questions and Great Books of the Western Tradition: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.
Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019
It’s hard not to open a newspaper or magazine today and see claims being made for artificial intelligence. Advocates argue that software programs will now be able to even perform creative jobs (as opposed to just routine ones) and that this is both a matter of celebration and concern. Critics argue that these claims are hyperbolic, while others argue that they are too close to reality and an indication of how much autonomy we have ceded to machines. In this course, we will pick apart all of these claims. We will ask: how have different human societies conceived of “intelligence,” natural or artificial, and how has this varied with place and time?
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2020, Spring 2018
If science and technology are value-laden activities, then where exactly do the values lie? In this class, we will pick apart the black-box of science and technology and look for values not just in terms of bad actors, corruption, or "implications," but in the processes that constitute modern technoscience itself. These processes include: the ways in which researchers construct problems, solutions, facts, and artifacts; the norms, standards, stories, and patronage relations that underlie science and technology; and finally, how the future is imagined and realized. Readings will include academic and journalistic texts as well as science fiction.
Technology and Values: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Fall 2016, Spring 2015
This is an interdisciplinary survey course that seeks to understand how we define justice, evil, and individual responsibility in modern society. In particular we are going to probe carefully how humans reflect on and practice the process of moral reasoning. We will focus on human behavior in extreme situations: war, life and death conflicts, genocide and mass killing, as well as competing conceptions of human freedom. The course has a distinctive dual purpose. On the one hand we want to encourage the learning of critical thinking skills. This includes the ability to systematically evaluate information and competing moral claims. Also, it is intended as an exposure to the interdisciplinary approach. That is, how can different perspectives illuminate the same issue? With this in mind the course draws on important work from philosophy and ethics, social psychology, jurisprudential analysis, historical-political accounts, and personal memoirs.
Moral Reasoning and Human Action: The Quest for Judgment: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2012, Spring 2012
In this course, we will utilize works in the humanities and the social sciences in order to explore a number of dimensions of self-deception in the modern world. The focus will be upon the willingness to falsify both personal life as well as one's position in the public sphere. The course will begin with an examination of the psychological dimension, emphasizing the importance of the nature of unconscious experience. In this context, we will examine how self-awareness is shaped by personal relationships, especially family arrangements. In addition, we will look at the manner in which people often engage in acts of self-deception with regard to the political realm.
Representations of Self-Deception in the Modern World: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Seminars for the group study of selected topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses. Topics will vary from semester to semester.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session
This course, required of all ISF majors but open to all students, provides an introduction to the works of foundational social theorists of the nineteenth century, including Karl Marx and Max Weber. Writing in what might be called the “pre disciplinary” period of the modern social sciences, their works cross the boundaries of anthropology, economics, history, political science, sociology, and are today claimed by these and other disciplines as essential texts. We will read intensively and critically from their respective works, situating their intellectual contributions in the history of social transformations wrought by industrialization and urbanization, political revolution, and the development of modern consumer society.
Introduction to Social Theory and Cultural Analysis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2022
This course will explore how people come to develop and value the self as well their specific social identities. The course will draw on anthropology, sociology, neurobiology and philosophy to grapple with that which is most intimate yet often most opaque to us: our own selves. Yet we shall also explore the cultural limits of our unstable understanding of our individuated selves as well as the dialectic of self and other in the formation of identity.
Interdisciplinary Theories of the Self and Identity: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course examines the role of language in the construction of social identities, and how language is tied to various forms of symbolic power at the national and international levels.? Drawing on case studies from Southeast Asia, Europe, Canada, and the U.S., we will pay special attention to topics such as the legitimization of a national language, the political use of language in nation-building processes, the endangerment of indigenous languages, and processes of linguistic subordination and domination. This course will be interdisciplinary in its attempt to understand language in terms of history, politics, anthropology and sociology.
Language and Identity: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2024
This course surveys the technological revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, it then focuses on the development of the computer and the Internet. The final part examines the impact of the Internet on social movements.
Introduction to Technology, Society, and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2019 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2018 First 6 Week Session
This interdisciplinary course is an introduction to the complex interplay of transnational values, international rights and legal institutions that increasingly govern social, cultural and geopolitical interactions in our contemporary world. Theoretical and methodological tools from the social sciences, jurisprudence, and philosophy will be applied im the analyses of these interplays. A study of rights and norms presupposes not only an understanding of the empirical evolution of rights traditions (including constitutional traditions) in a variety of global regions, but also an understanding of the theories of rights and laws that support such traditions as they are embedded in them (just war theories, peace theories, etc.) The study of rights and norms also requires an exploration of the transformations of crucial international norms and rights due to the formation of supranational institutions and organizations in the 20th century (UN, UNESCO, GO's, etc.). The course will provide the students with an opportunity to place emerging transnational rights institutions into a historical and geopolitical framework.
The Globalization of Rights, Values, and Laws in the 21st Century: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
The focus of this course will be on the various ways the nature and trajectory of modern capitalism has been interpreted. Our stress will be on post-Marxist works of analysis. The initial focal point will be on the work of Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter, as well as important current debates in economic history and social theory generated by their work. Both Weber and Schumpeter display a strong fascination and elaboration with the work of Marx. The way they analyze Marx is very revealing about the way contemporary analysts seek to understand the capitalist system. We will also consider a number of current efforts that look at the systemic nature of capitalism. In particular, we are interested in how economic historians now see the development of capitalism. We also want to examine the Weberian tradition in terms of the role of culture in shaping economic behavior. Debates about the nature of globalization will also be considered as well as analysis of the changing nature of work.
Theorizing Modern Capitalism: Controversies and Interpretations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2019, Spring 2017
This interdisciplinary course will explore whether it has proven possible and desirable to understand society through value-free and positivistic scientific methods as predominantly developed in the transatlantic worlds of the 19th centuries. We shall explore questions that may be applied to the realms of public health and human biology, or to the social sciences generally, including anthropology, sociology, economics, and political science.
Introduction to Science, Society, and Ethics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2022 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2017, Spring 2015
How have international actors used media to construct public opinion about salient issues, such as war, terrorism and intervention, international trade and finance, and global warming and resource depletion? The purpose of this course is to introduce students to key concepts, methods, and theories in the analysis of media effects, particularly in the areas of public opinion formation and international relations.
Introduction to Media and International Relations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2021
In many ways, consumption defines our lives – our identities as consumers are even more important, some would argue, our identities as workers or producers. But what are the implications of a society in which “you are what you consume?” In this class, we will address questions such as: Under what conditions does a “consumer society” develop? What does global commodity chain tell us about colonialization, global inequality, and environmental injustice? How can we shape the life cycle of basic commodities—from raw materials to iPhones--in a socially sustainable way? This course will be interdisciplinary in its attempt to understand consumer society and culture in terms of political economy, geography, history, anthropology and sociology.
Consumer Society and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
In this class, we will look at computing as a social phenomenon: to see it not just as a technology that transforms but to see it as a technology that has evolved, and is being put to use, in very particular ways, by particular groups of people. We will be doing this by employing a variety of methods, primarily historical and ethnographic, oriented around a study of practices. We will pay attention to technical details but ground these technical details in social organization (a term whose meaning should become clearer and clearer as the class progresses). We will study the social organization of computing around different kinds of hardware, software, ideologies, and ideas.
The Social Life of Computing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Health, wealth, love, and happiness are the most desirable yet tenuous elements of a satisfying life. To achieve them, there has been an overemphasis on wealth accumulation or economic growth. But does economic growth automatically translate into health, love, and happiness? When our environment is degraded with an increasing depletion of natural resources, can we live healthily and happily? Is economic growth sustainable without a healthy planet and healthy people? How do we achieve health, wealth, love, and happiness without harming nature and society? This course will critically examine these and other questions from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Health, Wealth, Love, and Happiness: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Spring 2007, Spring 2004
This course is designed to sharpen our skills in understanding what happens when the world of images and words meet. Starting with the work from the Western "classical" tradition we will proceed to investigate how word/image constellations operate in a variety of media, including sculpture and poetry, painting and prose, death masks, tableaux vivants, photography, and advertising.
Word and Image: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This course provides an overview of the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) as a way to study how our knowledge and technology shape and are shaped by social, political, historical, economic, and other factors. We will learn key concepts of the field (e.g., how technologies are understood and used differently in different communities) and apply them to a wide range of topics, including geography, history, environmental and information science, and others. Questions this course will address include: how are scientific facts constructed? How are values embedded in technical systems?

Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Introduction to central theoretical investigations concerning the construction and organization of social life. Using some works from the "classical" traditions of social theory as well as some examples of contemporary analysis, this course will explore such topics as the nature of power and social/historical change, the nature of economic production and consumption, the meaning of difference--racial, sexual, class--the development of institutions, etc.
Introduction to Social Theory and Cultural Analysis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course surveys the technological revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, then focuses on the development of the computer and the Internet. The final part examines the impact of the Internet on social movements.
Introduction to Technology, Society, and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
This course is designed primarily to allow faculty to develop courses which address specific issues, themes, or problems of interdisciplinary interest. Topics vary semester to semester. Students should consult the department's webpage for current offerings before the start of the semester.
Special Topics in Interdisciplinary Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This class is an introduction to research methods, leading students through different units built around specific learning goals and practical exercises. The course is designed to teach a range of research skills, including the ability to formulate research questions and to engage in scholarly conversations and arguments; the identification, evaluation, mobilization, and interpretation of sources; methods and instruments of field research (interviews, questionnaires, and sampling) and statistical thinking; and the construction of viable arguments and explanation in the human sciences. At the same time, the course is designed to help students identify their own thesis topic, bibliography, and methodological orientation.
Interdisciplinary Research Methods: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
The ISF Senior Thesis requirement is the capstone experience and final product of the ISF major. The thesis is a sustained, original, and critical examination of a central interdisciplinary research question, developed under the guidance of the ISF 190 instructor. The thesis represents a mature synthesis of research skills, critical thinking, and competent writing. As the final product of a student's work in the major, the thesis is not the place to explore a new set of disciplines or research problems for the first time, but should develop methods of inquiry and bridge the several disciplines that students have developed in their course of study.
Senior Thesis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Supervised experience relevant to the student's specific area of concentration in the Interdisciplinary Studies Field Major in off-campus organizations. Regular individual meetings with faculty sponsor and written reports required.
Field Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2022
Seminars for the group study of selected topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses. Topics will vary from semester to semester.
Directed Group Study for Advanced Undergraduates: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Summer 2011 10 Week Session
Directed individual independent study and research of special topics by arrangement with faculty.
Supervised Independent Study and Research for Upper Division Majors: Read More [+]