Registrar

Courses numbered in the 490′s are offered only once and focus on a specialized topic. Typically, 490′s are not appropriate for first-year students.

Descriptions of additional 490′s will be be posted as they become available.

The courses listed first are offered in Fall; 2013; scroll down for a listing of Spring, 2014, courses.

History 491: The History of Healing in Africa and the Diaspora. Professor Hardin. MWF 3:30-4:20.

An historical study of healing in the African continent and the African Diaspora.  Students examine the concepts of the social basis of health and healing, public healing, and the figure of the public healer.  Topics include indigenous medicine, colonial medical practices, postcolonial health care, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

INTDS 490: Italy:  Past and Present, Pride and Shame. Professor David Miller. MWF 10-10:50.

An interdisciplinary exploration of Italy that probes traditions, contradictions, and crises across the sweep of Italian history.  Students consider the classical heritage of Rome, including the Aeneid and historians of the Republic and Empire, and its influence on the early Renaissance as exemplified in Dante’s Inferno. We then examine key aspects of the Italian Renaissance, including art, economics, politics, and theatricality.  We conclude by looking at recent Italian culture, including Fascism, post-war film, and Italy’s uneasy entry into the twenty-first century.

Note: this course is recommended, but not required, for students planning to take the subsequent EL seminar in Italy.

Women’s Studies 490:  Women and Violence. Professor Barbara Shaw. TTh 9:30-10:45.

An exploration of how identity, socio-historical shifts, cultural production, and geo-political systems provide frameworks for understanding violence and women.  Violence against and by women is accomplished through a wide range of socially institutionalized and individually perpetuated events and circumstances and takes place across socially constructed categories.  Students examine theoretical frameworks, U.S. and transnational violence, how violence is represented in popular culture, and examples of how scholars, artists, and activists take action to create social change.  Prerequisites:  WOMST 100, and WOMST 200 or permission of the instructor.

SPRING, 2014, Advanced Special Topics Classes:

Math 490: Introduction to Computability Theory.  Professor Lakins.

The study of sets and functions that an idealized computer (without restrictions of time or memory) can compute and the theoretical limits of computation. We study several approaches that formalize the notion of computability, and their equivalence, leading to the Church-Turing Thesis that these formalizations capture the intuitive notion of computability.  Other topics include the halting problem and other undecidable problems, relative computability, and degrees of unsolvability.  Prerequisite: Math 205.