Medicine, Science, and the Humanities

Cancer, the ‘emperor of all maladies,’ is a leading cause of death worldwide. Cancer is, seemingly, everywhere: it brings to mind screening programs, pinkwashed fundraisers, promises of a cure, and myriad memoirs and fictions, lending cancer an abundance of meaning in our contemporary world. With developments in genetic testing and early detection, many aspects of contemporary cancer care have transformed—and with them, questions around risk and responsibility. In the clinic, cancer outcomes are increasingly understood in terms of individualized risk. Yet, these developments and ways of understanding cancer are limited to urban centers of the world, largely in the U.S. and Europe, with access to costly medical technologies. Further, experiences and outcomes of cancer care, from surveillance to treatment, refract along lines of race, gender, and geography, and the disease is a frame through which the politics of healthcare can be starkly seen and traced. In this upper-level undergraduate seminar, students are invited to explore cancer care—inequalities, experiences, and poetics—through literary and ethnographic analysis.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

Writing Intensive

This course will trace the history of an idea - how to make the human body physically immortal - in two Indian systems of knowledge, Yoga and Ayurveda. The course will follow the development of this idea in both theory and practice in the ancient and medieval Indian world. Beginning with accounts of immortal humans that are found in early Sanskrit literature, the course will move on to the elaboration of yogic practice in the tantric movements and to the refinements to alchemical theory (rasayana-sastra) in Ayurvedic texts. The course will then move to the emergence of postural yoga (ha?ha-yoga) as an independent discipline, which marks a new phase in the pursuit of corporeal immortality. Throughout we will keep track of competing theories of the body - its systems, components, processes, subtle dimensions, channels, centers, layers of physicality, and interactions with breath and spirit - as these form the ground on which to apply bespoke, immortality-creating methods.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4)

This course investigates the Greek and Latin roots of modern medical terminology, with additional focus on the history of ancient medicine and its role in the development of that terminology.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

This course takes us on an exploratory journey through the ancient astronomical imaginary. We will focus on ancient Greek and Roman ideas about the structure of the cosmos, the substance and nature of the stars, the Earth’s place and role in the universe, ancient attempts to map the stars, and ancient beliefs about the significance of cosmic phenomena for events in the human world. The course will culminate in the extraordinary ancient tradition of lunar fictions, which are our earliest imaginative accounts of life on other worlds. Come join us for a voyage to the stars!

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

Writing Intensive

The Timaeus is often seen today as one of Plato’s more mysterious and puzzling dialogues. But it was also historically one of his most influential. Its account of creation, the cosmos, and its numerical ordering formed the foundation for considerable work at the junctures of science, mathematics, and philosophy, from Antiquity through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This course will explore the complex and fascinating story told in the Timaeus together with its long-reaching legacy. We will read the dialogue in translation in its entirety as well as select later thinkers who build on its picture of the cosmos and its important mathematical, philosophical, and theological themes.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Science and Data (FA2), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

Knowing who or what counts as a person seems straightforward, until we consider the many kinds of creatures, objects, and artificial beings that have been granted—or demanded or denied—that status. This course explores recent debates on being a person in culture, law, and philosophy. Questions examined will include: Should trees have standing? Can corporations have religious beliefs? Could a robot sign a contract? Materials examined will be wide-ranging, including essays, philosophy, novels, science fiction, television, film. No special background is required.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

Knowing who or what counts as a person seems straightforward, until we consider the many kinds of creatures, objects, and artificial beings that have been granted—or demanded or denied—that status. This course explores recent debates on being a person in culture, law, and philosophy. Questions examined will include: Should trees have standing? Can corporations have religious beliefs? Could a robot sign a contract? Materials examined will be wide-ranging, including essays, philosophy, novels, science fiction, television, film. No special background is required.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

Worldwide, there has been rapidly growing interest in research, education, and discourse around the Food-Energy-Water-Nexus (FEW-Nexus). This course will provide students with a framework to describe, analyze, and assist in addressing these complex interrelationships associated with coupled human-natural systems at local, regional, and global scales. The course integrates physical and biological sciences, social and behavioral sciences, humanities, and engineering while covering broad frameworks such as ecosystem-based approaches, critical historical and ethnographic analysis, decision science, and relevant research methods. The course culminates in a funded field work experience at several sites in Brazil. Admission by permission of instructors.

Distribution Area: Natural Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Science and Data (FA2), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

This lecture survey will attempt to answer why the zombie has become such a fixture in contemporary literature and cinema. We will track this figure across its many incarnations--from its late-eighteenth-century appearance in ethnographic fictions growing out of the modern cultures of racialized slavery in the Americas right up to twenty-first-century Hollywood blockbusters in which the origins of the figure in the cultures of racialized slavery are perhaps not overt yet continue to manifest. What are the implications of the zombie's arc from a particular human being targeted for domination by a sorcerer to a living-dead horde created by radiation or epidemic? "Texts" may include: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Edgar Allan Poe, "The Man Who Was Used Up"; H.P. Lovecraft, "Herbert West--Re-Animator"; Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse; Victor Halperin, dir., White Zombie; George Romero, dir., Dead series; Edgar Wright, dir., Shaun of the Dead; Alejandro Brugués, dir., Juan de los Muertos; Colm McCarthy, dir., The Girl with All the Gifts; Colson Whitehead, Zone One; Jordan Peele, dir., Get Out. Fulfills the Global and Minority Literatures requirement.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

From quacks to plague, from humors to hypochondria, from AIDS to cancer, this lecture course examines literary representations of suffering, disease and treatment across genres and across time. In particular it explores how early modern literature represents and occasionally satirizes medicine, and how contemporary writers inherit and revise early modern modes. Over the semester, students will become familiar with the diverse array of forms of medical practice, the classed and gendered hierarchies in which medical practitioners were organized during different historical periods, and the various stances and attitudes towards medicine as discourse, profession, and field of knowledge that result. After an initial grounding in some historical and methodological basics, we will proceed to wrestle with a range of literary texts (prose works, poetry, drama, and memoir). Authors will include Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, Moliere, Gunn, Sontag, Lorde, and Boyer.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

Writing Intensive

Hospitals: Virtually all of us were born in one, most of us will eventually die in one, and in between all of us will spend at least some time in one. Lots of you likely aspire to spend your careers in one. Along the way we, or some third-party payer, will spend a considerable amount of our health care benefits there. Our focus will be on the history of the hospital from its origins in early modern Europe and the Islamic world, through the early modern period, to the rise of the modern urban mega hospital. The Johns Hopkins Hospital has been ranked as one of the nation’s best by US News and World Report since its annual survey began, and spent nineteen straight years at number one. So we will devote some time to its history, and the history of its affiliated programs—The School of Medicine, The Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the School of Nursing. For your major project, you will serve as advisors to the university’s Planning and Architecture committee. Drawing on your extensive knowledge of the history hospitals and medicine, you will re-envision the medical campus of the 21st century

How have fish and other aquatic animals contributed to the understanding of nature, the environment, and life itself? What features of aquatic organisms and the medium of water facilitated these investigations and why did certain research take place at certain times and places? This First-Year Seminar guides students to address these questions through the perspectives of the history of science and technology. Readings are composed of primary literature in biological studies of aquatic animals and related secondary literature in history of the life sciences. Through readings, lectures, discussions, field trips to local laboratories and aquarium, and an original research project, students will gain experience for future research in the life sciences or in historical studies of science. Topics include “fish” in natural history, taxonomy, physiology, embryology, genetics, neuroscience, fisheries /aquaculture, environmental testing, and molecular biology.

Join us for a road trip through American history, from the horseless carriage to the latest EVs. In this First-Year Seminar, we'll explore the evolving automotive industry, car culture in film, novels, and music, auto racing, the great American highway, labor relations, environmental issues, and more. You'll be writing an 'autobiography' of a car driven by someone in your family, visit a classic car museum in Hershey, PA, and build a Visible V-8 engine, just like the one in my own 1964 Buick Riviera. We'll screen some classic car films--'Grand Prix', 'Bullit', 'Gone in 60 Seconds', 'American Graffiti''--and unpack some class car tunes like 'Little Deuce Coupe', 'Route 66' and 'Hot Rod Lincoln'. Should be a fun ride!

As interactions with virtual companions, chatbots, and emotionally responsive AI become increasingly common, this First-Year Seminar asks a set of urgent questions: What does it mean for a machine to simulate empathy? Who defines “care,” agency, and trust in human–machine relationships? Why do these technologies feel so persuasive? What new forms of bias, manipulation, dependency, or surveillance might these technologies enable?To address these questions, our course emphasizes not only ethical critique but also historical and technical understanding. We will examine how the concept and practice of emulated empathy was imagined, built, and justified, tracing key moments in the history of artificial intelligence and human–computer interaction. Core sources include Alan Turing’s writings on machine intelligence; ELIZA (1966), the first computer therapist; contemporary AI ethics frameworks such as the IEEE standard on emulated empathy in autonomous systems; popular media, including the film Her; and global case studies such as Japanese advertising for avatar girlfriends. The seminar discussion will be based on hands-on encounters with AI systems and sustained scrutiny of historical sources. Screenings and in-class demonstrations will anchor the discussion, while comparative analysis of archival materials and contemporary standards will enable students to learn how the history of technology informs ethical debates. Throughout the course, students will actively evaluate the promises and limitations of emulated empathy by contrasting what these technologies were designed to do with our expectations for human empathy, understanding, and companionship.

Stories give shape to human lives. Although AI now seems capable of generating plots that appear life-like, only humans can be affected by stories and carry this knowledge into the real world.Short stories are central to this seminar, which explores how modern fiction does not so much “copy” the world as offer new perspectives born from nothing more than signs inscribed on a page. Materials drawn from studies in narratology and research on the reading brain will support this argument.This course invites you to actively engage in class activities that combine writing and discussion. As part of the experiential learning that is a feature of FYS seminars, you will have a chance to discuss the art of storytelling with one or two local authors or with writers at Hopkins. Our classwork will depend on attentive, in-depth readings of a selection of short stories chosen because they can lead to productive encounters that reveal the wealth of meanings and wisdom that inhabit literary works. As studies in narrative have shown, fiction can introduce us to the views, memories, and feelings of other human beings, even though these entities are born from nothing more than words cast on a page.For a broader perspective, we will also explore recent scientific studies that offer models for the reading brain and argue that our existence as humans depends on our capacity to elaborate and transmit stories across time as part of apprehending the world we inhabit. We will read selections from Stanislas Dehaenne, Maryanne Wolf, Roy Schafer, and Fritz Breithaupt.Our initial sampling of short works includes stories written over the last twenty years by authors such as Alison Baker, Tessa Hadley, Junot Díaz, Xuan Juliana Wang, Joy Ladin, and Sidik Fofana. As readers yourselves, you may suggest additional stories to present, or even choose to cap the course with a story of your own inspired by the approaches to storytelling we will explore together.

This First-Year Seminar explores the intersection between medicine and film, looking at how medicine, medical providers, and narratives of illness and health are depicted in cinematic works. Some of the questions that the seminar pursues are: What are some of the medical issues that filmmakers focus on? How did the cinematic portrayal of medicine change over time? What role do these films play in shaping public perceptions of medicine, medical providers, and medical institutions? By watching a number of films throughout the semester and reading some accompanying texts, students will develop deeper knowledge both of the history of medicine in cinema and the tools that cinema offers to the telling medical stories.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans report taking at least one prescription medication daily, and twenty-six percent say they’re taking at least four prescriptions per day. What are the ecological effects of the production and consumption of pharmaceuticals? Where do drugs go when they leave the body–and how are organisms and ecosystems affected? How are nonhumans implicated in drug testing and other exposures? What knowledge regimes undergird understandings of the human body as (1) treatable by medications and (2) dissociated from the natural world? What ecological knowledge has contributed to the biomedical pharmacopeia? In this seminar, we will learn about dolphins on LSD, the botanical links between the mafia and scurvy, cocaine-addicted animals, yams and the contraceptive pill, plants and the war on drugs, and more. Students will engage with historical, anthropological, cultural studies, and environmental health texts and media to examine these questions. Students will visit a clinical herbalist’s medicinal plant cultivation site, an open source insulin production lab, and a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioner. We will also conduct water quality testing in the Chesapeake Bay watershed to determine the presence of pharmaceuticals. Using planetary health and cross-cultural lenses, we will ask after the relationship between drugs, bodies, and the environment, and consider nonbiomedical healing regimes that posit different relationships between them.

This First-Year Seminar is designed to introduce you to the human side of medicine by exploring ways in which patients and medical practitioners describe their personal experience. It has been structured to allow you to engage that material by reading it, viewing it in film, discussing it, writing about it and meeting with a practicing physician. Its a course not only about content, but also about process, the process of thoughtfully and openly engaging work about the lives of others. It is a seminar style course that emphasizes a friendly, protected setting in which to explore these issues. The course is facilitated by an experienced member of the Hopkins Medical Faculty, and has been designed to open a window through which you can begin to study the human concerns of patients and practitioners. The course is most likely to appeal to premedical and pre-health related students who are interested in exploring the human side of medicine, but also to students interested in biography, memoir and life-writing. At the end of this course, you will have gained an appreciation for some of the ways in which people express themselves about the illness experience or about working with the sick. You will have had a chance to develop longer, more personal relationship to such accounts than you are likely to have in clinical encounters in medical schools, training programs or even in clinical rotations. It takes time to listen. The course draws a small sample from a very wide range of such accounts that number in the thousands, so there is no attempt to generalize; rather, every effort is made to immerse ourselves into one account at a time and to understand one person’s experience at a time. Through this kind of immersion, you will develop a sense of how illness can affect a life, and the way in which practitioners become involved to find themselves in their own work.

Poisons aren't what they seem. Sometimes they look like food. Sometimes they look like drugs. From cinnabar to cinnamon, from dragon blood to goat bezoars, poisons result from careful human construction, collection, and creation. They are objects of early chemistry. Far from killing us, poisons have been central to the history of medicine. Physicians in the past and present monitor dosage, drug combination, and drug preparation to mitigate poison toxicity while still maintaining drugs' therapeutic potencies. Knowledge about poisons, in other words, quietly undergirds most of human civilization. Poisons are what keep us alive. Or not.This First-Year Seminar comes to understand poisons in three ways. First, it takes on individual poisons (mercury, opium, among others) to introduce major themes in the history of science and science studies. Second, it engages with global perspectives in the history of medicine to understand how poisons were deployed, refined, and neutralized around the world. Third, it introduces frameworks in the philosophy of chemistry to analyze the social, conceptual, and practical demands on empiricism. Together, these three perspectives will shift students’ perspectives on poisons from objects that kill to critiquing them as objects that are intimately tied to ideas of cure.

This course combines historical and ethnographic investigations of the wastefulness of modern medicine in ecological, economic, and bodily terms. Why, in the past half-century, has the production of medical waste skyrocketed? Who bears the environmental costs of the incineration of disposable medical technologies? What new sustainable solutions might be retrieved from past practices? At the intersection of medicine, science, and humanities, this course explores the human and planetary costs of our wasteful healthcare systems, and what can be done to envision a more sustainable future. Readings will be centered in historical and ethnographic investigation but will stretch across other humanities and social science disciplines, in conjunction with primary source readings from medical and public health journals, lawsuits and Congressional hearings, and new approaches to materials design for sustainable healthcare. Experiential partnerships with local, regional, and international advocacy groups will be important for this course as well, including the Planetary Health Alliance based in the Bloomberg Center in Washington DC, the Sustainability Leadership Council of Johns Hopkins University, and local environmental justice advocacy surrounding the Curtis Bay Energy medical incinerator, which was recently the subject of the largest environmental fine in Maryland history.

How do we understand and represent ourselves and others in the realm of digitally mediated love and intimacy? Through interdisciplinary readings and hands-on projects, this First-Year Seminar explores the intersection of technology, identity, and relationships, both before and after the advent of the computer age. Seemingly inescapable, computational systems shape the way we connect. However, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and search engines are not neutral—they are deeply entangled with questions of gender and sexuality. Amidst the promises of revolutionary changes brought by technological progress, we will critically examine how digital platforms both challenge and reinforce traditional norms around love, desire, and identity.

Can a government control what people believe? Who gets to decide what counts as “truth”—and how is it made to stick? This First-Year Seminar traces a century of information, communication, and warfare in Russia, from Lenin’s revolutionary use of radio to Putin’s troll farms and deepfakes. Along the way, we will grapple with questions that remain urgent today: What is propaganda, and how can we recognize it? Can the press respond to peoples’ concerns under an authoritarian regime, or does power inevitably shape the narrative? And in an age of algorithms and viral misinformation, are citizens of democracies any better at resisting manipulation than those living under dictatorships?We’ll dig into the technologies themselves—print, radio, television, and digital networks—to understand how each new medium created fresh possibilities for persuasion, resistance, and control. And we’ll get hands-on: working with rare propaganda posters, samizdat publications, and archival materials in JHU’s special collections, you’ll encounter the physical artifacts of ideological warfare—the paper, ink, and design choices that shaped how messages landed. By the end of our seminar, you’ll never watch the news (or scroll your feed) the same way again.

How do we know the truth? Which beliefs are valid? What sources of intellectual authority should we follow? US history has been shaped by fierce disagreements over these questions. This course will explore many of the proposed answers, focusing on scientific and religious frameworks. As citizens, it is crucial to understand conflicts over truth, belief, and authority. Yet very few people have a sense of the history of these disputes or a language for discussing them constructively. This class provides both.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

This seminar explores how the sex and gender binary was produced through US colonialism since the nineteenth century. Topics include domestic settler colonialism, as well as Hawaii, the Caribbean, and Asia.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course explores seven centuries of fruitful collaboration between physicians and artists, uncovering the shared discourses and therapeutic agendas that united the art of picture-making with the art of healing. Topics include understandings of the gendered body in ancient natural philosophy and Christian theology; astrological medicine; physiognomics and the visual diagnosis of mental and physical disease; medieval medical diagrams; the anatomical investigations of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; depictions of pain and suffering in the art of Matthias Grünewald, melancholy in the prints of Albrecht Dürer, and the cross-cultural history of the therapeutic artefact; the spectacularization of the body in Enlightenment science, and the ethics of medical specimen display today -- all bringing into view the dynamic intersections of the history of medicine and the history of art.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

This course analyzes the role of artists and the visual arts in shaping ancient Greek medicine and the afterlife of these ideas. Grounded in the visual arts, we will explore class, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, and sexuality as they intersect with developments in ancient medicine and later interpretations of this history. Includes excursions to local museums.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

This course examines curative medicine in the Americas through its visual culture and oral histories. Philosophies about the body, health, and causes of illness are considered, as are representations of practitioners and their pharmacology. Case studies are drawn from cross the Americas (Aztec, Moche, Aymara, Paracas, American SW). Collections study in museums, Special Collections.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Science and Data (FA2), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)

Course provides an introduction to health and healing in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Topics include religion and medicine; medicine in the Islamicate world; women and healing; patients and practitioners.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

The history of medicine and public health from the Enlightenment to the present, with emphasis on ideas, science, practices, practitioners, and institutions, and the relationship of these to the broad social context.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This class explores histories of diseases, epidemics, and therapeutics in Asia. We will examine the rise of public health and the nation-state and the social and political factors that guided the outcomes of public health campaigns. Who was helped? Who was harmed? Why? How? To answer these questions, we will compare both top-down and bottom-up movements to understand questions of access and ethics in different communities—ethnic, racial, and religious—and the handling of different diseases that were acute, infectious, and chronic.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

Religion is often portrayed as being at odds with science. From Galileo’s treatment by the Roman Inquisition to contemporary Creationism museums, we are told that religious institutions do not support science. Likewise, religious people don’t make good scientists – or do they? Is religion really the thorn in the side of science that so many claim it is? In this class, we will discover the interwoven history between scientific practice and religion, beginning with the atomism and humoral theories of the Ancient Greeks and culminating in 21st century debates about stem cells and cloning. Many of the great scientific minds were also deeply religious – how did their beliefs shape their practice of science and approach to the natural world? Is religion truly antithetical to scientific practice? And if not, why do we so readily assume that it is?

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

This class offers a critical history of the mind sciences, examining how fields such as neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry developed through a variety of empirical methods and technologies. It opens a window into how scientists, philosophers, medical practitioners, writers, patients, and physiologists constructed theories of cognition, sensation, and the emotions. What were the challenges in locating, opening, and reading the mind? Why? How? To what ends did these impulses serve? The core reading for this class will derive from the history of medicine, history of science, science studies, disability studies, medical anthropology, as well as recent publications in the mind sciences. Students will learn about the history of using animal models to inform human cognition and the consequences of sensations that failed to fit neat categories of sensing, for instance. We will also explore the relationship between behaviorist and cognitive sciences, the rise of fMRI, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and psychopharmaceutical randomized control trials. We will further interrogate the politics of knowing the mind across centuries of experimentation and contemplation in different historical and cultural contexts.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

The first part of a three-part survey of the history of science. This course deals with the origins, practice, ideas, and cultural role of scientific thought in Graeco-Roman, Arabic/Islamic, and Medieval Latin/Christian societies. Interactions across cultures and among science, art, technology, and theology are highlighted.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course surveys major scientific developments from the mid-18th century to the present, with a focus on the physical and the life sciences. Topics include the chemical "revolution", evolution by natural selection, genetics, and the recombinant DNA technology. Throughout, the course highlights the institutional context of scientific work. It also situates scientific developments within their broader techno-social context, paying special attention to the political, economic, and/or technological factors that enabled these developments in the first place, and to the social, political, and environmental impacts that accompanied the rise of modern science.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

What is “Science”? How do we do “science”? How have the boundaries of these definitions – what we consider to be science and the proper methods of gathering scientific information – changed over the centuries? Have scientists always held the same beliefs about what kinds of knowledge and evidence constitute “science”? In this class, we will examine how science was done in the period before the “Scientific Revolution”. We will learn about the ways in which Medieval scientists classified types of knowledge and what they considered to be acceptable means of determining truths about the world around them.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course examines the relations of the scientific and technical enterprise and government in the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics will include the funding of research and development, public health, national defense, etc. Case studies will include the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic, the Depression-era Science Advisory Board, the founding of the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, the institution of the President’s Science Advisor, the failure of the Superconducting Supercollider, the Hubble Space Telescope, the covid pandemic, etc.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

This course takes a historical approach to the relationship between modern science and fascism. During the 20th century, fascist movements often exploited scientific traditions for economic, military, and rhetorical power. At the same time, scientists relied on fascist regimes to confer legitimacy on their research programs. In this seminar-style course, students will examine these difficult linkages through several case studies on science under fascism, which are drawn from Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain, Portugal, and their empires. The course will address several overarching questions. Is it possible to define fascist science? How have research programs supported fascist regimes, and vice versa? How have scientists reckoned with, remembered, and forgotten these difficult histories?

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Science and Data (FA2), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

Is the mind identical to the brain? Is the mind (or brain) a computer? Could a computer reason, have emotions, or be morally responsible? This course examines such questions philosophically and historically. Topics include the history of AI research from 1940s to present; debates in cognitive science related to AI (computationalism, connectionism, and 4E cognition); and AI ethics.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Science and Data (FA2), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

Water supplies are becoming scarcer globally due to climate change. We use clean water—fresh and salt—in a variety of ways that provide comfort, stability, and health, making it one of the most valuable commodities on Earth. While countries in the Global North are beginning to see more frequent and lengthier droughts, those in the Latin America, Africa, and South Asia have long struggled over how to distribute and use their clean water supplies. This class will examine how colonialism and its far-reaching effects have created an environment of scarce water supplies in many areas of the world. Water access is difficult to achieve, but for much of the Global South, the colonial period helped craft the problems we see today. This class will ask what colonial and postcolonial technologies’ construction and use teach us about equitable clean water distribution, how social and cultural identities influence water supplies and use, and why water has been such an important element—and commodity—in our world, especially where Europeans settled and oppressed local populations.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

What can the medium of horror tell us about popular understandings of medicine? What sorts of anxieties and concerns about the fields of health, bodily autonomy and the relationships between medicine and society can be drawn from the horror genre? Connecting film and some literature in the genres of horror to historical sources and readings in the field of the history of medicine, this class will use popular media as a window into key themes in the history of medicine. Some key topics of this class include reproductive rights and autonomy, the relationship(s) between medicine and religion, racism, xenophobia and disease and surgical horror. This class will meet twice a week with an additional film screening every other week in the evening. This class with its focus upon horror and especially horror films will deal with disturbing and violent material including graphic violence. Please be advised.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

How did the Western understanding of nature change between 1500 and 1720? We'll study the period through the works of astronomers and astrologers, naturalists and magi, natural philosophers and experimentalists, doctors and alchemists & many others.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

This seminar will explore the complex interaction between science, technology and utopian/dystopian thought from the late nineteenth century. Major utopians will include Bellamy, H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, Frank Lloyd Wright, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Sinclair Lewis, B.F. Skinner, Margaret Atwood, and Walt Disney.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

This class will examine the history of women’s health and medicine in America from the 17th century to the mid-19th century, a period in which settler colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade mixed European, Indigenous American, and African people and belief systems, resulting in diverse healing practices and understandings of the body and gender. Major themes addressed in the course include reproductive health, domestic and “alternative” medicine, as well as enslavement, racialized medicine, poverty, disability, and sexuality.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This class will cover the history alchemy from its Greco-Egyptian and Arabic roots, through its popularization in the European Middle Ages, to its zenith in the Early Modern period. Using both primary and secondary sources, students will see how alchemy, rather than being a mystical quest or nothing more than the desire to turn lead into gold, was in fact a complex system of belief about the natural world and the generation of materials, both organic and inorganic. Reading works by historical alchemists such as Roger Bacon, Paul of Taranto, Paracelsus, and others, students will understand how alchemy was incorporated into numerous intellectual and practical disciplines, including metallurgy, medical theory, pharmacology, natural philosophy, and even theology. At the conclusion of the course, students should be able to answer: what role did the translation movements and cross-cultural exchanges play in the development of European alchemy? In what ways were (al)chemical theories different than modern chemistry? And in what ways are they the same? How do technology and culture drive changes in scientific theories? All majors are welcome, although students may find that a high-school level understanding of general chemistry will be helpful.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course will explore the ancient idea of the artificial human (“human-made human”) from the Renaissance to the 21st century, focusing on its relationship to the prevalent scientific/philosophical/religious views of the time. Readings will include fictional classics such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, H.G. Wells’s Island of Dr. Moreau, and Karel Capek’s R.U.R., as well as essays by scientists and philosophers. Readings, films, discussions, lectures.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

America’s scientific connections with China, its East Asian allies, and the rest of the world are heavily shaped by geopolitics nowadays. This course traces the historical root of these connections and invites you to explore the movement of knowledge and people, the omnipresence of the state and concerns about national security, and the career of Asian American students and scientists. It aims to equip you with a set of analytical tools to understand the complicated dynamics of the transnational scientific community between America and East Asian countries. As nationalism regains momentum globally, it is time to look back on history and think about how we should approach the increasingly tumultuous world!

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

How did photography change science and medicine, and vice versa? This course explores how and why photography and related imaging techniques became central to a broad variety of fields of science and medicine, ranging from anthropology and astronomy to embryology, nuclear physics, and radiology. It also considers how these techniques were created in the first place and to what extent they affected the standing of photography as an “art-science.” Central themes will include (among others) the status and objectivity of photographic evidence; the historical relationships between technical, scientific, and artistic change; the role of photography in disseminating scientific and medical knowledge and (mis)information; the racial and gender biases of scientific and medical photography; and photography’s use as a tool of scientific exploration, measurement, and surveillance. Students will be developing their own research projects in consultation with the instructor.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

According to the latest data from the National Safety Council, accidents cause over 173,000 deaths and 48,300,000 injuries per year across the United States. Since the nineteenth century, accidents ranging from burns to car crashes to the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster have become increasingly central to American life. This course examines the history of accidents and why Americans have chosen to control some hazards but not others. We will investigate how accidents have changed over time alongside the introduction and spread of new technologies; cultural beliefs about safety; the economic and political interests of different stakeholders; and the efforts of safety experts, nonprofits, corporations, families, and the government to protect Americans from harm. On one level, this course traces the unexpected consequences of remaking the United States with modern industry, transportation, infrastructure, and consumer products. At the same time, it captures how the principles of free enterprise and personal responsibility continue to influence the American safety movement.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course explores key themes in the global history of engineering. Engineering can refer to a profession, a kind of practical knowledge, or even a disciplined way of seeing the world. We will seek historical answers to three questions: Who is an engineer? What do engineers do? What do engineers know? Readings and discussions are structured around case studies from across the globe and from the fourth century BCE to the present. Although engineering students will find it particularly useful for understanding the historical context of their chosen field, all students interested in the historical relationship between society, the built environment, and expertise are encouraged to enroll.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

Will we end up oppressed by robot overlords? Will robots become our lovers and caretakers? Can we solve societal problems by building yet more sophisticated robotic machines? Will we find ourselves out of work as technologies take over tasks once considered the exclusive domain of humans?In this course we will question our hopes and fears by examining the global development of robotics, the entanglement of technology with politics and economics, and the impact—real or imagined—that robots are having on society. We will marvel at the ingenuity of French and Japanese automata of centuries past, scrutinize assumptions about labor, race and gender in automation and “labor saving” technologies, examine how the “intelligence” of AI is understood differently in Japan vs the US, ponder the “uncanny valley” phenomenon, and meet a quirky cast of robotic prototypes including Shakey, Eliza, Wabot I and II, Aibo, Kismet, Paro, Asimo, Actroids, Repelees, Sophia, Pepper, and Hyodol. By contrasting technological and social histories of actual robots with fictional representations in literature, animation, and film, we will seek answers to persistent questions about our inevitable robotic futures.

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

Writing Intensive

The science, social thought, and cultures of heredity since the 19th century. We cover pre-Mendelian heredity, Mendelism, classical genetics and cytogenetics, molecular biology and genomics, including the Human Genome Project. We discuss eugenics, social Darwinism, scientific racism. We consider DNA in medicine, popular culture, art, commerce. Big questions include: Why are we so obsessed with heredity? Is Mendelism wrong? Is intelligence genetic? Is it possible to do meaningful science on race and intelligence? To what extent is your genome “you”?

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course covers the history of horoscopic astrology from ancient times to the Scientific Revolution. We will read key astrological sources from the ancient Greek and Islamicate worlds, learning about prevailing theories of celestial influence and methods for making horoscopes. We will consider the key scientific and religious divisions that led to a millennium-long (and more!) debate over astrology’s credibility. Using readings from modern historians, students will become familiar with a period during which divination by the stars was largely accepted. We will discuss the role astrological culture played in pre-modern Europeans’ conception of the physical world and society.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course analyzes various episodes of “luddism” in the history of science and technology, from the destruction of textile machinery in the early 1800s up to recent controversies about robots, vaccines, and AI chatbots. What explains why different groups of actors did (or did not) resist the introduction of new technologies, ranging from the bicycle and the automobile to the nuclear energy plant? What types of fears did these technologies arouse? What can history teach us about the recurring concern that technological innovation might destroy more jobs than it generates? These are some of the themes we will be examining in this seminar on the basis of research presentations and classroom discussions of primary and secondary historical sources.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

This research seminar will examine how urban elites attempted to shape public opinion about the future of their city using world’s fairs (international expositions) in their words “to educate” the population about trends and possibilities. Expositions from 1851 until the present will be examined. Each student will be asked (in consultation with the faculty) to write a research paper in lieu of a final examination. Lectures, discussion, films.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

How have wars shaped the natural world, and vice versa? How have affected communities responded to environmental harm? This course explores the environmental history of warfare from the 18th century through the 20th century. It interrogates the relationship between imperialism, nation-building, and environmental destruction, while asking how the natural world might or might not have influenced the outcome of these military conflicts. The course demonstrates how warfare drew attention to environmental vulnerabilities, both on a local and a global scale. Topics include resource extraction in Euro-American empires, WWII recycling campaigns, ecological violence in the Vietnam War, and nuclear weapons testing.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

Technical cooperation has been one of the most favored formats of international development because it aims to provide internal capacity for future development. Nevertheless, technical cooperation has been a site of political conflicts where different countries, social groups, capital funds, forms of knowledge, expertise, and opportunities collide. This course critically analyzes the political, diplomatic, social, and cultural surroundings of technical cooperation projects between the United States and East Asia during the second half of the 20th century. The course has three parts, each focusing on 1) theoretical and conceptual approaches to technical cooperation projects in East Asia, 2) different stakeholders, and 3) specific examples that display how the projects unfolded in real-life situations. Throughout the course, students will analyze various formats of historical sources such as photography, diary, correspondence, pamphlet, interview transcripts, and more!

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

This course explores health and society in England, 1500 to 1800 including healing practices at all levels of society, concepts of health and illness, patient experiences, and patterns of disease. Recommended Course Background: At least one course in History or History of Science, Medicine, and Technology.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This seminar will explore scientific-technological innovations and how they affected politics and communication in the United States from the introduction of steam railways and boats, the newspaper, the telegraph, telephone, photography, radio, the movies, television, and the digital computer. In lieu of a final examination, each student will be asked to write a research paper in consultation with the faculty. Lectures, discussions, films.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

This course will analyze how “Islam” and “medicine” interacted and intersected from the medieval and into the modern and contemporary world. We will look at the rise of Islamic medicine in the medieval and early modern period, the modernization of medicine in the Islamic world, and we will also investigate questions and challenges facing Muslim physicians and patients in the US, Europe and inside and outside the Muslim-majority world.We will address questions related to modernization of medical education in the Islamic world, colonization and decolonization, questions related to gender and sexuality, issues related to Islamic bioethics from organ transplantation and clinical death to abortion, artificial fertilization among other similar questions.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

This is a reading seminar on foundational scientific writings and historical literature related to history of our understanding of the biological cell and molecules. From the idea of spontaneous generation to Schleiden and Schwann’s cell theory, from the “organizer” concept in embryology, to the comparative studies of Hox genes, from tissue culture to genomics, students explore how different tools, methods, and styles of reasoning became employed in creating and evaluating empirical observations, and how religious believes, metaphors, ideologies, state funding, and infrastructure became pivotal in organizing data and producing knowledge. The final project can be a historiographical essay, or a research paper related to the topic.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Science and Data (FA2), Citizens and Society (FA4), Projects and Methods (FA6)

Writing Intensive

A reading and research seminar where students read and discuss about history of modern life sciences in East Asia. The final paper can be an original research paper or an historiographical essay

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

Here is a common claim:All of what we know and want is filtered through the states of the body. If we know something, it is by means of our experiences; if we experience something, it is by means of our senses; if we want something, it is something about the body.The relationship between the body and the self has been one of the most contested questions in the history of knowledge. In the early-modern period, the question of the relationship between the “self” and the “body” was deeply tied up with medicine, with explanations of the workings of organic bodies, and with answers to basic questions about the nature of the world and humans in that world. For all of our work in medicine, natural science, and philosophy, the question still remains: what do we mean when we talk about selves? What is their relationship with the thing we call bodies? How does the moral principle of “wellness” apply to that relationship? By the end of this class, I hope you will have thought about your ingrained assumptions about your body and your relationship to it (and other people and their relationships with their bodies!)This course is grounded on weekly close reading of early-modern argument-bearing texts, ranging from Plato’s “Phaedo” to Newton’s “On Gravity” to Stahl’s “Idle work.” Each of these texts represents an attempt to understand and express the nature of the body, the relationship of that body to the “self” and what constitutes wellness in that relationship. I have chosen these text not because reading didactic accounts of wellness comprises a complete understanding of the way that people thought about the body – people interact with their bodies as patients, partners, owners, pleasure-seekers, prisoners, and other roles – but because these ideas question deeply understood dogma about what it means to have a body. I hope you can bring these ideas to bear on your experiences and ideas so you can deploy an arsenal of thoughts when you inspect your bodily experiences.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

For History of Science, Medicine, and Technology majors preparing a senior honors thesis.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Projects and Methods (FA6)

Writing Intensive

This course surveys the history of chemical weapons from the battlefields of World War I to the metropolitan streets of the 21st century. Emphasis is given to questions of research, development, and regulation. How have scientists participated in the invention and production of novel chemical weapons agents at different times in the past? What challenges have confronted organizations tasked with preventing the development, stockpiling, and use of these weapons? The course will explore these questions through case studies from both world wars, the Italo-Ethiopian War, the Vietnam War, and recent histories of domestic policing. Please note that this is a reading and writing-intensive seminar course. Students should be prepared to read 80-100 pages per week and write an original research paper by the end of the term.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This seminar explores the economic history of science and technology, mainly but not exclusively in the 19th-21st centuries. It takes stock of the historiography of capitalism and evaluates its application in, and relevance to, histories of science and technology (and vice versa). Specific topics that will be covered include, among others: market and moral economies in science; resource extraction; management-labor relations; intellectual property and knowledge circulation in science and technology; the economic valuation of life and nature; the trustworthiness of commercial science; and the histories of different types of knowledge work. The final selection themes will be determined in consultation with the students, who will be developing their own research project over the course of the semester.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5), Projects and Methods (FA6)

Writing Intensive

What is time? How does time function in the making of science, technology and medicine? How did the meaning of time change through colonial encounter and through postcolonial economies of knowledge? This course will investigate the meanings and articulations of time and temporality in the context of scientific and medical knowledge and practice. The course will also investigate how colonial history impacts the production of time.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Medical Spanish is a comprehensive examination of vocabulary and grammar for students who either work or intend to work in medicine and health-related fields in Spanish-speaking environments. The student will be able to participate in conversations on topics such as contrasting health systems, body structures, disorders and conditions, consulting your doctor, physical and mental health, first-aid, hospitalization and surgery on completion of this course. In completing the course’s final project students will apply, synthesize, and reflect on what has been learned in the class by creating a professional dossier individualized to their professional interests. There is no final exam. Not open to native speakers of Spanish. No new enrollments permitted after the third class session.

Prerequisite(s): AS.210.311 OR AS.210.312 or appropriate Spanish placement exam score.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

How long has AI been part of our cultural imagination? This course critically engages instances of artificial intelligence in thought, literature, and film from the 17th century to the present. In conversation with the realities of machine learning, algorithms, generative AI, large language models, automation, and so on, we will investigate the nature of artificial intelligence vis-à-vis issues of labor, consciousness, collectivity, individualism, fantasy, and futurity. Students will consider philosophical texts alongside works of science fiction, literature, and film. Readings may include texts by Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Poe, Hofmannsthal, Marx, Foucault, Alan Turin, Charles Babbage, Philip K. Dick, and Ursula Le Guin. No technical knowledge or prior courses are required!

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course is a broad introduction to the fields of medical and mental health interpreting. Modules will include: (1) Three-way communication: managing role expectations and interpersonal dynamics; (2) Basic interpreting skills and techniques in a healthcare setting; (3) Ethical principles, dilemmas, and confidentiality; (4) Elements of medical interpreting; (5) Elements of mental health interpreting; (6) Trauma-informed interpreting: serving the refugee population. The course is taught in English, and has no foreign language pre-requisites.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Over the last three decades Italy, historically a country of emigrants—many of whom suffered from discrimination in the societies they joined—became a destination for hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees from various countries, and particularly from Africa. Significant numbers of these immigrants came to Italy as a result of the country’s limited, though violent colonial history; others arrive because Italy is the closest entry-point to Europe. How have these migratory flows challenged Italian society’s sense of itself? How have they transformed the notion of Italian national identity? In recent years, growing numbers of Afro- and Afro-descendant writers, filmmakers, artists and Black activists are responding through their work to pervasive xenophobia and racism while challenging Italy’s self-representation as a ‘White’ country. How are they forcing it to broaden the idea of ‘Italianess’? How do their counternarratives compel Italy to confront its ignored colonial past? And, in what way have Black youth in Italy embraced the #Blacklivesmatter movement? This multimedia course examines representation of blackness and racialized otherness, whiteness, and national identity through literary, film, and visual archival material in an intersectional framework. Examining Italy’s internal, ‘Southern question,’ retracing Italy’s colonial history, and recognizing the experiences of Italians of immigrant origins and those of immigrants themselves, we’ll explore compelling works by writers and filmmakers such as Igiaba Scego, Gagriella Ghermandi, Maza Megniste, Dagmawi Yimer, and others.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

What does immunity have to do with literary studies? We will explore this question by examining the concept of immunity, not only as a medical and legal concept, but also as a cultural phenomenon. Students will analyze what “immunity” can teach us about the ideas of tolerance and defense and about the ways we come into contact and build relationships with others. Through attention to French novels and graphic novels, students will investigate the grammars and images linked to the concept of immunity and research how these languages and images shape how we think of mental and physical illnesses, vulnerability, exposure, as well as how they permeate body representations in French literature. Secondary sources such as philosophical texts, movies, and photographs will embed these narratives into larger issues within the history of medicine and postwar French literature.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

This course explores how French films have interrogated the body. We will ask how they have attempted to come to terms with human physicality, desire, and fragility--and with the ability of cinema itself to move spectators emotionally and even physically. Themes explored will include sexuality, gender identity and illness and disability. Conducted in French. Students will have the opportunity to progress in French oral expression and critical analysis. Screenings include works of Céline Sciamma, Michael Haneke, Agnès Varda, Jacques Audiard, and Alain Resnais.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

This seminar explores the history of thinking about non-human and human animals in France from the late sixteenth through the late nineteenth centuries. Topics to be explored include non-human sentience, interspecies relations, animals and industrialization, and the emergence of anti-cruelty laws. Taught in French.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

This course considers the importance of philosophical, literary, aesthetic, and other humanist approaches to ecology and environmental issues.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

Writing Intensive

In this course we will explore how literature and film depict the material relationships between our human bodies and more-than-human worlds within and around us. We will consider not only how the classical elements (earth, air, fire, water) are media and how they connect our individual bodies with other bodies, but how the body itself is a medium. We will examine a range of ecologically conscious literary texts and films from the German and Nordic worlds as they engage themes including elementality, the nuclear age, the Anthropocene, and queer ecologies.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course explores the local, global, and universal natures of the speculative genre of science fiction (SF) from the early twentieth century through the present. It highlights works from the Golden Age (late 1930s-’50s), the New Wave of the 1960s and ’70s, cyberpunk in the 1980s, and today’s various sub-genres and cross-over incarnations. We will approach the genre as a mode of thought-experimentation and world-building that problematizes actual and possible political, cultural, natural, cosmic, and techno-scientific realities. Among the themes included are the human-machine interface, environmental apocalypse, the alien, utopia-dystopia. Readings/viewings/listenings include short stories from nearly every continent, short films and tv episodes, visual art, music, journalism, and literary criticism. All materials and lectures in English.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

What is an illness? How do we define a sick body? How can literature, films and art convey suffering and healing? How do traditional histories of medicine structure sickness? Is there a perception––and representation––of illness that can be specific to Latin American culture? How does the Spanish language address issues of sickness, disability, and pain? This course will explore experiences of illness, suffering, pain, and healing through the readings of narratives, works of theory and criticism, and the writings of artists themselves, as well as film, artistic practices, and documentaries. Discussions will place the narratives of illness in the intersections with the history of public health, biomedical history, and the sociocultural history of disease in Latin America. Within the framework of the Medicine, Science, and the Humanities major, students will learn to recognize the value and relevance of literature and art to their personal, educational, and professional growth.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

This hybrid seminar examines in depth a series of artistic case studies over a 3000 year period in the region of what is today Iraq, Syria, and southeastern Turkey, from c, 3500-500 BCE. Discussion will focus on processes of making and contexts of using myriad forms of art and architecture. Topics will include the invention of writing and complex imagery; portraiture and ritual practice; the symbolic value of materials; visual narration; and the uses of space for expressive purposes. We will approach these and other topics through critical engagement with existing scholarship, as well as by direct study of objects in nearby museum collections.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

Writing Intensive

Philosophy helps us form consistent beliefs. Science helps us learn about the world and our relationship to it. Philosophy of science, then, sits at the interface—helping us form consistent beliefs about the world and our relationship to it. How do we construct a narrative of (our) reality from scientific theories (i.e., the scientific image)? How do we conceptualize the worldly backers of scientific explanations, such as natural laws and causation?Philosophy of science also treats science itself as a subject of philosophical inquiry. What counts as science, and why is it considered a privileged source of knowledge? Are there shared methods across the sciences? Does science transcend—or reflect—social, political, and economic forces?Throughout this course, we will explore these questions by engaging with contemporary works in the metaphysics of science, social epistemology, and the philosophy of specific sciences—from physics to the social sciences.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Natural Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Science and Data (FA2), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

Introduction to a wide range of moral issues arising in the biomedical fields, e.g. physician-assisted suicide, human cloning, abortion, surrogacy, and human subjects research. Cross listed with Public Health Studies.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

Writing Intensive

If we know anything, it is natural to think it is our own minds. Despite this, philosophers have long disagreed about the natures of the states which make up our minds. And there is equally little agreement as to what makes such states count as mental in the first place. This course will investigate the nature of different aspects of mind and their interrelations. Time permitting, we will explore debates and puzzles about perception, memory, imagination, dreaming, pain and bodily sensation, emotion, action, volition and those states commonly classed as propositional attitudes: knowledge, belief, desire and intention. This will put us in a position to ask what if anything unifies such phenomena as mental

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

This course will consider the bearing of theories of justice on health care. Topics will include national health insurance, rationing and cost containment, and what justice requires of researchers in developing countries.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course surveys museums, from their origins to their most contemporary forms, in the context of broader historical, intellectual, and cultural trends including the social movements of the 20th century. Anthropology, art, history, and science museums are considered.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course critically examines the role of exhibitions in shaping cultural narratives and public understanding of people and places across the globe. Students will explore the history, theory, and practice of exhibiting cultures in museums, galleries, and digital platforms. Topics include curatorial ethics, representation and identity, postcolonial critiques, audience engagement, and the impact of emerging technologies on exhibition design. Through case studies and hands-on projects, students will analyze how cultural heritage is displayed and interpreted, considering issues of appropriation, authenticity, and inclusivity. The course culminates in a final project where students conceptualize and design their own cultural exhibition proposal.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

Museums across the globe are rewriting their infrastructure, energy use, waste management, and exhibitions and conservation policies and practices to respond to our ecological crises. Students will conduct field research and analyze data; investigate “next” practices, case studies, and the challenges particular to museums; and write a white paper; all with an eye towards contributing to the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative - an eco-challenge, sustainability planning, and suite of art exhibitions dedicated to environmental themes.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

Writing Intensive

Taking its name from the work of scholar Katherine Verdery, who investigates why and how certain corpses took on a political life in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, this course examines ways that human bodies have been collected, displayed, concealed and disappeared across cemeteries, museums, universities and other sites. We will trace various valuations (and devaluations) imposed on bodies across the life course and examine how some bodies are made to matter more than others in both life and death. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives across anthropology, Black studies, history of medicine and more, we will engage with case studies from across the globe, from the 18th century to the present day.

Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

An introduction to Urban Health with Baltimore as a case study: wellbeing, nutrition, education, violence and city-wide geographic variation. Lectures by JH Faculty, local government/service providers and advocates.

Prerequisite(s): Students who have taken AS.280.320 are not eligible to take AS.280.120.

Distribution Area: Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

The field of medicine has been a key site where race has been constructed, deployed, and contested. Race and racism have played a crucial role in the development of medicine in the United States, from the medicalization of Blackness to different racialized health indicators. Through this course we will ask: How has the field of medicine constructed race? And how have race and racism been challenged within medicine? This is an upper-level, reading intensive seminar course.

Distribution Area: Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

Students will learn core concepts that define the sociological approach to health, illness and health care. Classes will involve a combination of lectures and examples, as well as weekly discussion sections.

Distribution Area: Social and Behavioral Sciences

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

In this cutting-edge course, an acting class designed for pre-med students who are interested in a career in either clinical work or research, we will explore ways in which collaboration, curiosity, and connection can enhance your understanding and ability to be an effective medical professional. Empathy, perspective-taking, analysis of dramatic literature with medical themes, and devising a piece around medical ethics will be the focus of the activities. No acting experience is required, just a willingness to explore your creativity in an inclusive environment.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

These courses invite students to explore diverse writing contexts and develop rhetorical skills and strategies within them. Topics vary; please see the specific semester for current offerings. Please see the specific semester for current offerings. Please see "Special Notes" under each section and refer to the section-level information for applicable Foundational Abilities.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Science and Data (FA2), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5), Projects and Methods (FA6)

Writing Intensive

In these courses, students study and practice the rhetorics within a specific field. Topics vary; please see the specific semester for current offerings. Please see "Special Notes" under each section and refer to the section-level information for applicable Foundational Abilities.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Science and Data (FA2), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

In these courses, students write with the purpose of benefiting a community in real, tangible ways. Students work closely with community partners to pursue writing that meets concrete needs and allows authentic civic engagement. Topics vary; please see the specific semester for current offerings. Please see "Special Notes" under each section and refer to the section-level information for applicable Foundational Abilities.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Science and Data (FA2), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

In these courses, students study and practice the rhetorics within a specific field. Topics vary; please see the specific semester for current offerings. Please see "Special Notes" under each section and refer to the section-level information for applicable Foundational Abilities.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Science and Data (FA2), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course is half reading seminar, half writing workshop. The two halves build on one underlying principle: Both the scientific method and the traditional literary narrative follow the same storytelling structure: What do you know? What do you want to know? What do you learn? Now what do you know? Etc. In the seminar half of the class, we read and discuss samples of the writings of scientists throughout history—focusing especially on what those works would have meant to the authors and to their readers. Primary sources include Plato, Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Heisenberg, plus many more. In the workshop half of the class, students will write—in a step-by-step, week-by-week process, in close collaboration with their peers—a midterm paper and a final paper on any science topic and in any form of their choosing, while applying storytelling lessons from the seminar half of the course.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Science and Data (FA2), Citizens and Society (FA4)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive