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Death and the Afterlife in East Asian Religions
No full textThis course engages the rich textual and visual traditions of China, Korea, and Japan to illuminate funerary and memorial practices and explore the terrain of the next world. The course is not a chronological survey,but rather alternates between modern and ancient narratives and practices to draw a picture of the relationship between the living and the dead as conceived in various East Asian religious contexts.\ud
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I am interested in providing an integrated and somewhat multidimensional look at the topic. Given the great variety over time and region, to develop any sense of cohesion will be a challenge. This will no doubt be part of our work as a class. If, however, in the end we find it hard to make generalizations, this will not be considered a failure. It seems important to me that we incorporate some means of “experiencing” the religious practices, rituals, and performances we are reading about. To this end, in addition to the usual scholarly works drawn (primarily) from the fields of Anthropology and Religious Studies, we will also be watching a number of films, reading a memoir, and extensively using visual materials in our exploration.\ud
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The written assignments and in-class activities are meant to inculcate skills in reading, analysis, interpretation, collaboration, oral expression, and observation. The final paper project will require you to develop research skills and allow you to be creative in developing a topic.\ud
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Some of the themes and questions we will explore include: the meaning of funerals in a modern, secular society; the very idea of communication with and negotiation with the dead; disposition and disposal of the corpse; the landscape and geography of life after death; the nature of the soul; the relationship between death ritual and beliefs about gender
Japanese Avant-gardes
No full text“Avant-garde” originally referred to the vanguard of an army, and there is certainly an element of combat in much of the radical art of Japan. In this seminar we will look into the events and emotions that have driven collaborative networks of Japanese theater, visual art, dance, film, poetry, and music in the last century. As part of our study we will consider how Japanese avant-gardes have tapped into international currents as well as started international trends. Student work will include both critical and creative components. Prerequisite: Sophomore, junior, or senior standing. First-year students need permission
Introduction to the History of Science
No full textWhat is the history of science? When did science begin? Where? Who were the first scientists? What does it even mean to say science has a history? When you think about it for a minute, you begin to see all sorts of interesting questions: Is the history of science a timeline of scientific \ud
discoveries or a series of biographies of long-dead scientists? Does the history of science recount science’s liberation from bonds of superstition and the shackles of religion? By studying the history of science from antiquity until the end of the middle ages, we will explore these and\ud
related questions about the theory and practice of past science.\ud
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Over the semester we will study why and how people in the past investigate the natural world. We will try to understand what they meant by the natural world, what intellectual tools they developed to study that world, their motivations for studying it, what knowledge they produced, and the ends to which they put that knowledge. While chronology will generally guide our investigation, a number of specific topics and problems will recur, such as religion, cartography, society and culture. In each case, we will work to understand science as part of a broader set of social, intellectual, and cultural developments
Social Identity vs. Rational Choice: An Experimental Approach to Understanding Political Preferences
No full textThis thesis contributes to the literature on voters’ preferences for political candidates. The experimental design of the study controls for voters’ use of social identity as an information shortcut to inferring candidates’ policy views. I evaluate the evidence for two theories of voter choice: rational choice theory, which suggests that voters’ preferences are issue-based, and social identity theory, which argues that individuals vote for members of their social group. Using two experiments, I analyze these theories with respect to gender and race. I find strong support for rational choice theory and subgroup-dependent support for social identity theory
Multivariable Calculus
No full textIn this course, we introduce multivariable functions, and we extend the techniques of calculus to them. We will generalize the four topics that are listed above. In each case, the situation for multivariable functions is richer and more interesting than for single-variable functions. In multivariable calculus, there is not one Fundamental Theorem, but several; their study is part of vector calculus, which is the final unit of the course
“It’s a Business Doing Pleasure with You”: A Case for the Decriminalization of Sex Work in South Africa
No full textThis work centralizes a ubiquitous yet often ignored sector of global society: sex work. Situated in the criminalized context of the South African sex work market, my work attempts to predict how the welfare of sex workers might change in a decriminalized climate. Under a criminalized state, sex workers remain one of the South Africa’s most marginalized and targeted populations. Those who participate in the trade run the highest risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and are susceptible to much community and state-based stigma and violence. The motivations for this research, then, are to understand the ways in which opposing legal models affect a globally vulnerable population. There are two notable case studies (New South Wales and New Zealand) that present evidence to oppose criminalization policy from a rights-based perspective. This work furthers such research by approaching the question of sex work and (de)criminalization with economic assessments and applications. My work attempts to estimate three measurements of security and safety for sex workers – condom use and accessibility, symptoms of STIs, and experiences with violence – when moving from criminalization policies to decriminalization policies. My findings demonstrate that place of work has tremendous effects on all of measurements of sex worker welfare. Working outdoors decreased the likelihood of condom use by 4.91 percentage points and the likelihood of always having access to condoms by 4.97 percentage points. In estimating the impacts of policy on sex worker health, I find that working outdoors increases the likelihood of experiencing STI symptoms for sex workers by 19.8 percentage points as compared to working indoors. Finally, estimates on experienced violence illustrate that working outdoors increases the likelihood of experiencing violence by 30.9 percentage points. Given that evidence shows decriminalization policy to shift sex work indoors, my research offers strong cause for the consideration of such policies
The Yellow Piece of the Mosaic: The Racialization of Asian American Students at the Nation’s Most Diverse High School
No full textMosaic High School, named the most diverse in 2015, subtlety upholds two problematic stereotypes of Asian Americans thus impacting diversity and inclusion at Mosaic and beyond. Racialized as the forever foreigner, Asian Americans serve as justification that inclusivity efforts are ineffective. Racialized as the model minority, Asian Americans are the perfect “victim” of affirmative action. This lack of diversity and inclusion is overall harmful, but it specifically leaves Asian Americans with narrow comparative frames of reference thus upholding toxic “success frames”
“The Problems in Our School”: Female Authors in Spanish Journals of Education, 1922-1936
No full textThe educational reform project of the Second Spanish Republic stemmed from the educational reform movement in Spain beginning in the late 19th century. The Spanish movement was heavily influenced by foreign ideas and was closely linked to the international New Education movement. Women played important roles in the Spanish educational reform movement as transmitters of foreign ideas and practitioners of new methods. Education was an accepted professional field for women in Spain, and in this field, women went beyond their traditional role as teachers to travel abroad, publish books, and direct schools. This thesis examines articles written by women in two Spanish journals of education, the BILE and the Revista de Pedagogía from 1922-1936. In these articles, women do not simply report on foreign methods or dispense classroom advice, they call for fundamental change to the Spanish educational system and more broadly, to Spanish society. Through their status as experts in education, women were able to enter the public sphere and suggest changes at a national level even at a time when they had no political rights. These women can be classified as social feminists and they worked towards fundamental reform in Spanish society, especially for poor women and children. Although they did not explicitly advocate for women’s rights, they subtly extended their traditional role into the public sphere and entered the political conversation at a time when women were often excluded
Concealed Criticism: The Uses of History in Anglo-Norman Literature, 1130-1210
No full textThe twelfth century in western Europe was marked by tensions and negotiations between Church, aristocracy, and monarchies, each of which vied with the others for power and influence. At the same time, a developing literary culture discovered new ways to provide social commentary, including commentary on the power-negotiations among the ruling elite. This thesis examines the the functions of history in four works by authors writing in England and Normandy during the twelfth century to argue that historians used their work as commentary on the policies of Kings Stephen, Henry II, and John between 1130 and 1210. The four works, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, Master Wace’s Roman de Brut, John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, and Gerald of Wales’ Expugnatio Hibernica, each use descriptions of the past to criticize the monarchy by implying that the reigning king is not as good as rulers from history. Three of these works, the Historia, the Roman, and the Expugnatio, take the form of narrative histories of a variety of subjects both imaginary and within the author’s living memory, while the fourth, the Policraticus, is a guidebook for princes that uses historical examples to prove the truth of its points. By examining the way that the authors, despite the differences between their works, all use the past to condemn royal policies by implication, this thesis will argue that Anglo-Norman writers in the twelfth century found history-writing a means to criticize reigning kings without facing royal retribution
Cultural Psychology
No full textThere is a tendency to think of psychological processes as being universal with definite rules that wholly govern the human mind and behavior. However, humans are a cultural species and the way we think, feel, and act is shaped by our context and experiences. Culture is critical in providing us with certain contexts and experiences. By culture, we refer to “systems of meanings” \ud
(e.g., social norms, roles, values, beliefs) that are “learned, socially shared, and variable” (Betancourt & Lopez, 1993). Cultural psychology is the systematic study of how psychological processes are different (as well as similar) across different cultures and groups of people.\ud
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This course provides an overview of theory and research on cultural variation in human development, social behavior, personality, motivation, cognition and perception, emotion, and physical and mental health. We also address cultural identities and examine race and ethnicity, immigrant experiences, and acculturation. While part of this course requires some self-exploration and application to personal experience, students are advised that the emphasis of the course is primarily on critically examining the theory and research in cultural psychology as a science