This course will survey the discipline of molecular genetics. Mendelian and molecular genetics will be discussed as well as the use of genetic analysis to address questions in all areas of biology. The processes of DNA replication, transcription, and translation will be discussed at the molecular level. Other topics include the regulation of gene expression and genomics. This course is open to students in the College of Liberal and Professional Studies only.

Focusing on movies made after 1945, this course allows students to learn and to sharpen methods, terminologies, and tools needed for the critical analysis of film. Beginning with the cinematic revolution signaled by the Italian Neo-Realism (of Rossellini and De Sica), we will follow the evolution of postwar cinema through the French New Wave (of Godard, Resnais, and Varda), American movies of the 1950s and 1960s (including the New Hollywood cinema of Coppola and Scorsese), and the various other new wave movements of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (such as the New German Cinema). We will then selectively examine some of the most important films of the last two decades, including those of U.S. independent film movement and movies from Iran, China, and elsewhere in an expanding global cinema culture. There will be precise attention paid to formal and stylistic techniques in editing, mise-en-scene, and sound, as well as to the narrative, non-narrative, and generic organizations of film. At the same time, those formal features will be closely linked to historical and cultural distinctions and changes, ranging from the Paramount Decision of 1948 to the digital convergences that are defining screen culture today. There are no perquisites. Requirements will include readings in film history and film analysis, an analytical essay, a research paper, a final exam, and active participation.

Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life. This piece of conventional wisdom has long led Americans to believe that if we love to do something, it can’t be work. It becomes, essentially, a labor of love–and yet, doesn’t even a work of art require… work? In this survey course of twentieth-century American literature, we will consider the relationship between the American Dream, the figure of the “worker,” and artistic labor writ large. Through our readings of novels, poetry, and films, we will explore contemporary notions about workers in the context of social and economic developments throughout the century, paying particular attention to texts that challenge the association of the figure of “the worker” with heteronormative white masculinity and the industrial jobs that make up a shrinking portion of the U.S. economy.

Thinking, judgment, and personal and societal decision making, with emphasis on fallacies and biases.

A basic laboratory course in which both the theoretical and practical aspects of a variety of organic reactions and multistep syntheses are emphasized. Modern chromatographic, instrumental, and spectroscopic techniques are applied to experimental organic chemistry.

Introduction to the theory of international trade and international monetary economics. The theoretical background is used as a basis for discussion of policy issues. Patterns of international trade and production; gains from trade; tariffs, and impediments to trade; foreign exchange markets, balance of payments, capital flows, financial crises, coordination of monetary and fiscal policy in a global economy.

The academic component of the course will focus on several areas: (1) The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap. Students will read this book throughout the semester to support their understanding of the community that they will be serving. (2) Statutory tax system. Students will learn about the tax system as it relates to individuals and sole proprietors. The VITA training covers general tax preparation, with a specific focus on tax credits available to VITA-eligible taxpayers and the use of VITA software. In addition, one session of the course will include a guest lecture/discussion. It will focus on statutory tax issues related to organizational form choice for self-employed and gig economy workers, which is an important statutory issue in low-income communities. (3) Social policy debate. Tax policy, including deductions, subsidies and credits, are one tool that lawmakers can use to get more cash in the hands of individuals and families, especially for low-income groups. Students will consider the effectiveness and usefulness of tax policies relative to other tools that the government has available. There are three guest lecturers for the sessions on tax policy. (4) Working with people. Volunteering with VITA requires students to work with people from a low-income community on the sensitive issue of personal finances. Students will learn to discuss sensitive financial issues with lower-income adults (including many seniors) through readings and in-class discussions, and by reflecting on their real-life experiences in the local community. This skill is important in a variety of roles such as healthcare (physicians and nurses), business (e.g., the HR function), and education. The community service part of the course is volunteering with VITA, which is the IRS’s “Volunteer Income Tax Assistance” program. Following training, students will perform tax services for the West Philadelphia community during the tax season. The course will meet once a week in three-hour sessions for 8-9 weeks during the Spring semester. Students are expected to be in the field performing service throughout a significant portion of the semester. As described on the IRS website, the VITA program has operated for over 50 years. Volunteers offer free tax help to people who need assistance in preparing their own tax returns, including: • People who generally make $58,000 or less • Persons with disabilities; and • Limited English-speaking taxpayers.

From the immigrant shirtwaist sewers’ strike of 1909 to the 2021 union declaration by engineers Google, MGMT004 examines imbalances of power in the workplace and responses to perceived abuses of employer power. We investigate, via an exploration of government regulations and an examination of movements like #MeToo, how government and firm-level human capital policies shape workforce inequalities of race and gender. Throughout the course, we compare the United States with other countries to assess how national institutions influence both productivity and profitability (for firms) and fairness and stability (for workers).

This course will introduce students to the ways in which sex, gender, and sexuality mark our bodies, influence our perceptions of self and others, organize families and work like, delimit opportunities for individuals and groups of people, as well as impact the terms of local and transnational economic exchange. We will explore the ways in which sex, gender, and sexuality work with other markers of difference and social status such as race, age, nationality, and ability to further demarcate possibilities, freedoms, choices, and opportunities available to people.

This course examines how we as consumers in the “Western” world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways– particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of “World Music” by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process.