This course explores the increasing presence of all the arts in prisons throughout the country and examines the increasing scholarship surrounding arts programs and their efficacy for incarcerated persons. The course uses video’s, archival material, reading material and in-person or Zoom interviews to investigate how and why art is taught in prisons. The course will also look at art produced by incarcerated artists as well as art by those who are still practicing after going home. And finally, the course will explore the increasing scholarship around the impact practicing the arts while incarcerated has on recidivism rates and preparation for re-entry.

This course investigates social, political, and economic life in the age of the “Anthropocene”: the current geological era in which humans have irrevocably altered the earth’s biophysical systems. We analyze what political-economic dynamics have led to this, how climate change is known and predicted scientifically, and the impacts it has on politics, economies, environments, and societies across scales. Drawing on case studies from around the world, we investigate topics including climate change impacts on land, oceans, animals, and forests; climate migrants and political instability; (un)natural disasters such as fires, floods, and hurricanes; and sea level rise and cities. We also investigate existing and potential political and economic responses to climate change ranging from international governance agreements and green markets to local climate justice movements.

In recent years, poverty and inequality have become increasingly common topics of public debate, as academics, journalists, and politicians attempt to come to terms with growing income inequality, with the increasing visibility of inter-country differences in wealth and income, and with the persistence of racial, ethnic, and gender stratification. This course introduces students to ongoing social scientific debates about the sources and consequences of inequality, as well as the types of public policy that might appropriately be pursued to reduce (or increase) inequality. These topics will be addressed in related units, some of which include guest lectures by faculty from other universities (funded by the Center for the Study of Inequality). Each unit culminates with a highly spirited class discussion and debate.

Enables students to increase critical reading and thinking abilities. Examines theory and research associated with a wide range of reading, thinking, and learning skills. Emphasis is placed on developing and applying analytical and evaluative skills.

This course will introduce students to the meaning and significance of forms of cultural diversity for the understanding of contemporary issues. Drawing from films, videos, and selected readings, students will be confronted with different representational forms that portray cultures in various parts of the world, and they will be asked to examine critically their own prejudices as they influence the perception and evaluation of cultural differences. We shall approach cultures holistically, assuming the inseparability of economies, kinship, religion, and politics, as well as interconnections and dependencies between world areas such as Africa, Latin America, the West. Among the issues considered: political correctness and truth; nativism and ecological diversity; race, ethnicity, and sexuality; sin, religion, and war; global process and cultural integrity.

Students are additionally required to interact on discussion board outside published class time and view asynchronous course lectures. Will accommodate time zone difference to ensure participation does not extend beyond 10pm in their local time.

Global Mental Health is a growing and important field within the general category of Global Public Health. Anthropology has an established and long history of contributing to the debates about cross-cultural psychiatry and psychotherapy, as well as to the perennial questions of nature versus nurture in defining normal versus pathological ways of being human. Cross-cultural explanations for varied and/or universal forms of human subjectivity, affect, and personality are increasingly relevant given new research into neurological plasticity, genomics, and the dissemination and practice of evidence-based and pharmaceutically-oriented psychiatry at the expense of more holistic and culturally nuanced forms of care. We examine the efficacy of traditional and community-based mental health practices in non-Western contexts as well as the challenges to accessibile care posed by inequality and precarity, as well as the stigmas surrounding mental illness in varied cultural contexts.

This course introduces students to a design toolkit and mindset for creative problem solving that enables a shift from a 20th century, market-based perspective to a more sustainable, human-centered approach appropriate to this century’s systemic challenges. Topics covered include: opportunity finding and innovation; the design thinking cycle of inspiration-interpretation-ideation-implementation; and visual communication. Students will learn to apply design strategies to their work to make it more integrated and collaborative. This course will require openness to new ways of (divergent) thinking.

This course will use digital resources to study the history of African-American resistance to and organization against slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration/racialized policing from 1619 to the present. We will also build new resources. In addition to the historical content, students will participate in designing, building, and testing digital humanities resources that are reshaping how we understand the past and the present.

This course uses a multi-disciplinary approach to examine the importance of textiles in African social and economic history. It combines art history, anthropology, social and economic history to explore the role of textiles in marking status, gender, political authority and ethnicity. In addition, we examine the production and distribution of indigenous cloth and the consequences of colonial rule on African textile industries. Our analysis also considers the principles of African dress and clothing that shaped the African diaspora in the Americas as well as the more recent popularity and use of African fabrics and dress in the United States.

This course examines moral and ethical issues in communication, new media, and technology. Using theories and research in moral philosophy and psychology, we examine how people perceive and reason about ethical issues presented by media and technology, and how moral action is influenced by cognitive, emotional, and ethical belief systems. Issues of autonomy, transparency, harm, privacy, manipulation, justice, democracy, equality, and care are discussed. We analyze the consistency between personal and professional ethics, the importance of moral character and agency, and the translation of moral thought to ethical action, and address the development of professional and personal ethical codes of conduct and research for communication professionals in the areas of new media and technology.

Outcome 1: Students will be able to increase awareness of moral and ethical issues in media, technology, and communication.

Outcome 2: Students will be able to explain moral psychology and ethical principles.

Outcome 3: Students will be able to examine moral reasoning and ethical responsibilities—both personal and professional—that affect people and society.

Outcome 4: Students will be able to examine issues and implications of ethical relativism and ethical principles.

Outcome 5: Students will be able to reason thoughtfully and ethically about current cases and news items in communication, media, and technology.

Introduction to linear algebra, probability, and Markov chains that develops the parts of the theory most relevant for applications. Specific topics include equations of lines, the method of least squares, solutions of linear systems, matrices; basic concepts of probability, permutations, combinations, binomial distribution, mean and variance, and the normal approximation to the binomial distribution. Examples from biology and the social sciences are used

To what extent does the ideal of the US as a vanguard for democracy and freedom in the world match up with other aspects—military, economic, and humanitarian—of US foreign policy? This same question about the degree to which discourses and practices correspond might be asked of other countries, like the Soviet Union, China, and Britain, but this course examines the ways in which US foreign policy has been deployed over the course of the twentieth century and the ways those policies have been perceived and received by people living in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Particular case studies will be addressed stemming from the faculty’s specializations (for example, Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala, and Chile) and the emphasis is on the role of the United States in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Prominent themes will include forms of subversion, from military muscle to economic coercion, and how and why they have changed over time; meanings of liberty, democracy, freedom, and sovereignty in different places and times; popular responses to policies and actions of foreign administrations; the relationships between sovereign states and transnational corporations; the uses and abuses of History in the formulation and justification of policy initiatives and in local responses to them; and the complexities involved in discerning internal and external forces in an increasingly transnational world.

This course will help us understand how our ideas about free speech are shifting in an age of global information by surveying the history of censorship from the late 16th-century to the present day. In democratic societies, freedom of expression is both a cultural value and protected right, and yet governments also routinely regulate speech through a variety of mechanisms: from direct censorship, to licensing and copyright laws, to high court decisions about what qualifies as “speech”. We will consider how the categories of dangerous speech—blasphemy, pornography, treason, libel—and thresholds of toleration, have changed over time. And we will also consider forms of censorship that have sought to protect freedoms and ensure civil discourse, such as restrictions on hate speech, genocide denial, and “fake news”. Authors and subjects may include Milton, Defoe, Freud, Foucault, Joyce, MacKinnon, Butler, Wiki-Leaks, campus speech debates, Anonymous, social media, net neutrality and the economic determinants of free speech.

This course is offered by four Departments at Cornell, in collaboration with two Universities in China and one India. Video conferencing will be used to connect classrooms in the three countries in real time. Important issues related to the food, energy, and water nexus and its implications for nutrition security, one health, environmental sustainability, and economic development the US and these two countries will be described. Challenges associated with these issues will be evaluated and strategies to address them will be proposed. Engagement of these countries with each other and the rest of the world will be explored. The course serves as a platform for students from Cornell, China, and India to learn from and interact with each other in the same class, and to share their thinking, creativity, and perspectives on these issues.

Course focuses on global health challenges, and how they are related to poverty and inequality.

Outcome 1: Understand the nature and extent of global health challenges and inequalities in health at various levels, including across countries, at the national level, and even within the household, both current and historical.

Outcome 2: Understand possible policy responses to improving health and well-being and reducing observed disparities, differentiating the appropriate role of government and the private sector in crafting solutions to global health programs, including priority setting and resource allocation.

Outcome 3: Prepare convincing and policy relevant documents that outline major global health challenges, including their causes, magnitude (prevalence and incidence), and feasible opportunities to address these problems, taking into account the political and economic dimensions, as well as considerations such as the time frame, and positive and negative externalities, both anticipated and unanticipated.