Featured Courses

Instructor: Jana Harper, Professor of the Practice of Art

This course examines the history, theory, and practice of making socially engaged art. Through a combination of seminar and studio, students will investigate the pressing issues engaging local communities here in Nashville, and then work on collaborative and individual projects that amplify and examine these concerns.

Instructor: Mabel Gergan, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies

This course identifies political and environmental struggles which affect Indigenous peoples in Asia. We will examine Indigenous relationships with the modern nation-state, colonial projects and Indigenous resistance, and definitions and theoretical discussions in indigeneity and decolonization, and then will explore these topics in a comparative framework, examining how they transcend location and affect Indigenous peoples of North America, Amazonia, and Australia/New Zealand. These topics lead to a central investigation: What do Indigenous visions and desires for our shared future look like?

Instructor: Gianni Castiglioni

Molecular evolution of adaptation and disease. Molecular mechanisms of human disease approached through analysis of evolutionary adaptation in extremophile animals. Comparative analysis of multiple protein systems that facilitate adaptation in some species but are implicated in human conditions such as cancer, visual impairment, and aging.

Instructor: Leonora Zilkha Williamson

In this course, we will learn the basics of companies and capital markets through a lens of business's responsibility in and to society. You will form your own opinion/ethical code on the role of business in society, including climate and people, and will have the ability to assess these items through corporate disclosures. You will understand how governance helps or harms these outcomes, and use your personal ethical code to inform their choices as employees, customers, investors, and other stakeholders roles. You will exhibit curiosity and empathy for people who think differently than you do.

Instructor: Marcy Binkley

This course will equip students with an information systems-related skill set which will provide value throughout their career. It is intended for aspiring business leaders across all functional areas who wish to understand more about business intelligence and information systems (BI&IS) and how it can be leveraged at the strategic level within enterprises. The following topics are included: foundations of BI&IS, organization of BI&IS, BI&IS risk management, and key emerging technologies.

 

Instructor: Sasha Crawford-Holland

How do digital technologies impact social justice? In this class, we will explore the political challenges and possibilities that arise from the prevalence of digital media in contemporary society. We will analyze how social media, mobile apps, videogames, surveillance systems, AI platforms, and other technologies affect political agency along axes of social difference including race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and ability. Students will acquire familiarity with the fundamentals of digital media analysis and develop the skills to participate in academic and popular debates about the politics of digital technologies.

Multiple Instructors

This interdisciplinary course investigates what it means to live and flourish in a scientific, technological civilization, ranging from ancient considerations of science to modern global era. With a dynamic, multi-disciplinary instructional team, students will investigate varying perspectives from natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities.

Instructor: Emily Greble, Nelson O. Tyrone, Jr. Chair in History

What drives people to become revolutionaries? What do they hope to accomplish? How do their ideas of revolution shape states, societies, cultures, mass movements, and everyday lives? And what does life look like after revolution? This course will consider the history and lived experience of revolution and its aftermath. It will trace a variety of revolutionary movements from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, exploring how revolutionary ideas shaped Eastern Europe, Russia, Italy, the Americas, Iran, and more. Through a range of media including diaries, novels, manifestos, poetry, posters, graffiti, statistical reports, art, and film, we'll study how intellectuals, artists, workers, and activists portray revolution and envision its uncertain futures. We will look at both the broad political forces that shape revolution and the intimate reaches of revolutionary theory to the private lives of individuals.

Instructor: Thilo Womelsdorf

Brain-Computer-Interfaces (BCI's) are direct communication pathways between brain circuits and external devices such as smartphones, cameras, or robotic arms. This course surveys the BCIs that augment, assist, and restore brain functions compromised in neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions.

Instructor: Paul Durst, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Communication of Science and Technology

This course addresses major advancements in genetics and genomics and their impacst. We will examine scientific practices to critique both the scientific literature and the popular coverage of this work. Students will learn to recognize how science produces new questions, not definitive answers, and how these questions emerge within the context of the societies that produce them.

Instructor: Marcus Dillender, Assistant Professor of Economics

This course investigates the theories and empirical evidence of the determinants of wages and employment. Students will learn how labor markets operate through exploration of compensating differencials, education and human capital, and consider how migration, labor mobility, discrimination, incentive pay, wage inequality affect employment in the United States.

Instructor: Anthony Reed

The Great Migration, which saw thousands of African Americans relocate from rural to urban spaces and from the South to the West and North, was among the most consequential transformations to U.S. life and society in the twentieth century. For those who stayed, remained, or returned, the South lingers in daily life like an unclaimed or unwanted inheritance. In this course, we will read works by Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Natasha Trethewey, Kiese Laymon, and others to consider the ways African Americans have figured the South as at once ancestral and modern, regional and paradigmatic of the nation, while grappling with the intertwined racial and sexual legacies of chattel slavery and Emancipation.

Instructor: Ajay Batra

Why are Americans obsessed with work? How did our productivity become a measure of our worth as human beings? Is there anything we can do to change this state of affairs? In search of answers to these questions, this seminar will examine the emergence of labor as a central, defining theme in U.S. literature and culture during the nineteenth century. Reading poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction (such as autobiographies and manifestos), we will assess the formal and aesthetic strategies that early American writers used to portray and to comprehend the effects of capitalist expansion, racism, and sexism on the diverse constituents of a burgeoning working class: sailors, servants, enslaved laborers, sex workers, factory girls, hustlers, and more. In the process, we will consider how social norms and power relations that first arose during this formative period in U.S. history continue to influence our lives as overworked participants in the modern economy. Throughout the semester, students in this course will complete critical, creative, and collaborative assignments designed to improve their skills in writing, research, and literary analysis, as well as their fluency in discussing issues of race, class, gender, and inequality.

Instructor: Lara Lookabaugh

This course explores what it means to take a feminist approach to archives and other research methods. We will begin by exploring archives as political spaces tied up in contested terrains of how we understand the past and envision the future. From there, we will take a feminist and decolonial lens to explore other research methods like ethnography, interviewing, mapping, and data analysis. We will explore participatory methodologies like photovoice and community archives to ask pressing questions about how research is done and who it represents.

Instructor: Lee Ann Custer

How does art convey environmental concerns, historically and today? In this course, we will discuss how art and the environment impacted each other in the United States from roughly 1800 to the present. While not a survey, we will thematically and chronologically chart movements including land and empire; nature and U.S. national identity; landscape painting; materiality and ecology; the city and nature; land art/environment as medium; and photography and the visualization of disaster. We will study how art historians and other interdisciplinary scholars have interpreted these topics in recent scholarship, including eco-criticism and new materialism. Discussions will be situated with respect to concepts shaping the broader field of environmental studies, such as the Anthropocene (and its derivatives, like the Capitalocene, etc.), political ecology, and traditional ecological knowledge/Indigenous approaches to the natural world. Encounter with art objects and environmental settings at museums and local sites will be prioritized.

Instructor: Susan Dine

Case-based introduction to digital applications in history of art and archaeology. Theory, research design, current methods of photogrammetry, 2D and 3D modeling, and immersive environments. Mapping and spatial analysis. Data management, digital publishing, writing formats.

Instructor: Samuel Dolbee, Assistant Professor of History

This course introduces students to the fundamental tools of the historian through a focus on the theme of environmental history, which is to say a general concern with interactions between humans and the non-human world. We will reconstruct the past using primary documents, and apply historical research and reasoning through topics including animals, climate, colonialism, disease, labor, science, and more.

Instructor: Anna Marra

What is at stake when we talk about food? What ideas are associated with Italian cuisine? This course provides an in-depth survey of Italian foodways in geographical, historical, and socio-economic contexts from the Middle Ages to today. Food and cooking have a critical role in Italian traditions and are intertwined into all aspects of Italian society. The course offers an interdisciplinary analysis of eating habits and culinary practices focusing on food as a root to understand identity and culture. Through a social justice framework, the course highlights the diverse roles and functions of food such as physical and mental nourishment, embodiment of pleasure, symbol of health and wealth, means of communication, and a social unifier. By combining theory and practice, students will explore topics including the "Mediterranean diet" and its nutrition guidelines, regional products and localism, the Slow Food revolution, the role of immigrants in the production and consumption of food, and food insecurity.

Instructor: Re'ee Hagay

This course will cover the history of the Arab Jew as an identity and a concept in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through analyzing political activism, poetry, film, music, and other mediums.

 

Instructor: Eliav Grossman

This course will address Muslim-Jewish relations from the birth of Islam to the twenty-first century, including the Quran and the Jews, Jews in the Islamic world, Jewish culture and Islamic cultures, Jewish exodus from the Islamic world, and Muslims in Israel today.

 

Instructor: Georgiy Syunyaev

This course examines the political, social, and economic transformations in Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet states. The course explores why regimes collapse, how new political systems emerge, and how political structures influence economic development. Using a comparative political science approach, it addresses the challenges of democratization, market-building, and nation-state formation, while connecting these historical shifts to contemporary events. Russia and Ukraine serve as key examples to illustrate broader issues in political and economic transitions.

Instructor: Wendy Tam Cho

This course will cover various legal issues related to political representation. We will focus on the legal issues as well as how these legal issues are related to and affect political representation. Along the way, we will examine the foundations of democracy, how democratic structures and institutions affect political outcomes, the implications of various voting systems, how to conceive of and understand the concept of political representation, the representation of minority interests in democratic institutions, and how different electoral structures are consistent with different notions of democratic politics.

Instructor: Bill Purcell, Adjunct Professor of Public Policy Studies

Students will develop policy research and discourse skills in order to become effective public advocates. Together we will explore how to navigate policy bureaucracy, frame issues, tell stories, and investigate the ethics and responsibilities involved in the selection and presentation of facts in support of a policy position.

Instructors: Rachel A. Heath, Assistant Director, Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality

This course will explore the ways that femaleness and woman-gendered identities configure religious consciousness and performance across cultures and chronologies. Through an examination of women's sacred productions and roles in Native American, West African, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Vodou, and other religious traditions, we will interrogate how religion shapes gender identity, and conversely, how woman-gendered identity informs religiosity. Finally, the course will analyze woman-centered movements, such as feminism and womanism, in light of religious women's experiences and seek new ways to categorize these experiences.

Instructor: Heraldo Falconi, Principal Senior Lecturer of Spanish & Portuguese

This course aims to familiarize students with interdisciplinary content relevant to the Spanish-speaking world through the lens of different professions students are likely to encounter in todays workplace. Students will be encouraged to find cohesive and organic ways to reflect on sustainability and the environment in their own chosen career path (such as law, health sciences, public policy, engineering, or education), while exposing them to interconnected issues in Spanish-speaking communities in the U.S. and abroad. We will survey a variety of issues, regions, industries, and solutions, through case studies and collaborative class work. The course may include immersive experiences in surrounding communities. 

ANTH 3890: Special Topics - Managing Health Inequalities

Instructor: T.S. Harvey (Associate Professor of Anthropology)

This course introduces students to the promise of the One Health model as a transdisciplinary and multi-sectoral approach to working across local regional, national, and global levels to improve health outcomes, and the public health paradox of a world of unequal care resistant to change. Beyond a critical examination of the histories, theories, ethnographies, and public health policies that will help students identify and understand the problems and challenges of "managing health inequalities," students will be invited to collectively reimagine a model of public health that fills in the systemic gaps, reducing inequalities and promoting healthier outcomes, futures, and life chances.

ANTH 4154/6154: Environmental Anthropology

Instructor: Jack Sauer (Senior Lecturer of Anthropology)

This course investigates the relationship between human beings and the environments that sustain them. Topics include: global diversity of human ecological adaptations; hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads, slash-and-burn agriculturalists, and irrigation agriculturalists; human impact on the environment; and theories of human ecological interaction.

ASIA 3891: Special Topics - Crytpocurrency, Coolies, and TikTok: The Makings of the Asian Century

Instructor: Ben Tran (Associate Professor of Asian Studies)

This course is an introduction to contemporary Asian capitalism and the Asian Century. Students will study 1) the emergence of the Asian Century as the Cold War gave way to globalization; 2) the movement of money and labor between empires and nation states; and 3) how the Asian Century has changed after the 2008 financial crisis, the rise of cryptocurrency, and the emergence of Chinese companies, like Alibaba, that threaten their Silicon Valley counterparts.

ARTS 3891: Selected Topics - Melodious Mud

Instructor: Raheleh Filsoofi (Assistant Professor of Art)

This multi-faceted course explores the intersection of visual art and music with consideration to global and cultural diversity. Students will pursue various methods of ceramic production to create instruments and develop skills to play them. They will gain fundamental knowledge of each medium (clay and music) and acquire deeper understanding regarding the history of ceramics, ceramic, ceramic instruments, surface decoration techniques, glaze science and firing methods, and performance factors. Various faculty scholars and musicians will be guest speakers and provide insight into topics related to clay and music and enhance the interdisciplinary nature of this course. In a culminating public performance, the instruments created during the semester will be played in the Clay Ensemble's inaugural presentation.

BSCI 3230: Biological Clocks

Instructors: Carl Johnson (Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Biological Sciences)

This course is about the study of innate mechanisms for measurement of time in living organisms, with an emphasis on the functional significance and physiological basis of biological clocks in animals and humans. Topics include circadian rhythms, time-compensated celestial navigation, photoperiodism, and the role of biological clocks in human behavior.

FREN 1111: Caribbean and Latin American Writers

Instructor: Paul B. Miller (Associate Professor of French)

The aim of this comparative seminar is to study writers from Latin America and the Caribbean that have been awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature. These writers hail from areas generally considered "remote" from and marginal to Europe, and yet the Nobel prize, conferred by a small Scandinavian committee, bestows upon them instant canonical status. This paradox evokes other existential and historical conflicts that have always been central to Latin American and Caribbean identity, such as Old/New World, Colonizer/Colonized, Center/Periphery. While these authors strive to stake out a sovereign poetic or discursive realm, the Nobel Prize reaffirms the centrality of European criteria, thus subverting the sovereignty they had painstakingly sought. Writers will include Mistral (Chile), Perse (Guadeloupe/France), Neruda (Chile), García Márquez (Colombia), Paz (Mexico), Walcott (St. Lucia), Naipaul (Trinidad), Vargas Llosa (Peru), and Condé (Guadeloupe).

GER 2555: Topics in German Studies - Monuments and Memory

Instructor: Simone Stirner (Assistant Professor of German Studies, Max Kade Foundation's Dean's Faculty Fellow)

This course studies the art and politics of how societies remember the past through public monuments and memorials. Bringing together insights from memory studies, art history, and urban studies, we will ask: How do societies remember histories of violence in public space? What are communal spaces of mourning? Who decides which monuments are built (and which ones are destroyed)? What is a counter monument? Is there a wrong way to interact with public memorials? With a focus on Germany and the United States, the course explores a range of case studies from the Holocaust memorial in Berlin to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and from grassroots AIDS memorials and installation art to local public memory in Nashville.

LAS 1111: Music Is Power

Instructor: Lidiana De Moraes dos Santos (Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow)

What is the role of music in historical and ongoing struggles for social justice across Latin America, the Caribbean, and the U.S.? In Music is Power, we answer this question by examining music's potential for personal and collective expression and as art and political activism. We will learn about the power of music from the early twentieth century to the present day, tracing commonalities and seeking the specificities of seminal moments in the region's sociopolitical history. As we listen to a wide variety of musical genres, i.e., Rap, Jazz, Samba, Calypso, Norteño, Cumbia, and Garifuna, we will explore the development of social movements connected to different topics, such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and environment.

MATH 3890: Selected Topics - Introduction to Game Theory

Instructor: Lori Rafter (Principal Senior Lecturer of Mathematics)

Game theory is the study of strategic behavior. How should decision-makers behave when they must interact to achieve their goals? These goals might be in conflict (non-cooperative games) or in concert (cooperative games). It may be with full knowledge of the outcomes in different scenarios (perfect information games) or with uncertainty about what the outcomes might be (imperfect information games). Winning strategies might be unique (pure strategy solutions) or have a random element (mixed strategies). Even the very notion of what constitutes a solution may vary (Nash equilibria, perfect Bayesian equilibria, sequential equilibria, core, etc.). There are as many variations as there are strategic interactions. In this course, we will set a firm mathematical foundation so student can advance to more advanced models and their applications to fields such as economics, political science, and law.

PHYS 3890: Selected Topics - Nanoscale Innovation & Making

Instructor: Philippe Fauchet (Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering)

This course will cover the varied and wonderful applications of nanotechnology from concept through commercialization. Topics include case studies, nanotechnology, entrepreneurship, and business strategy. All students will carry out a hands-on project in the Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (VINSE) facilities and develop a product pitch from their own nanotechnology research.

PSCI 1150: U.S. Elections

Instructors: Josh Clinton (Abby and Jon Winkelried Professor of Political Science, co-director of the Vanderbilt Poll, and senior election analyst for NBC News), John Geer (Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science, senior advisor to the chancellor, co-director of the Vanderbilt Poll, and leader of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy), Nicole Hemmer (associate professor of history and director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency), Jon Meacham (Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Professor of Political Science and Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential biographer)

Offered every four years, this co-taught class provides a systematic overview of how elections work in the U.S. We blend a deep understanding of history with the extensive research from political science. Leveraging the insights of the instructors, we will cover topics including past elections (e.g. 1800, 1860, 1992), the nomination process, and campaigning. The class will also host several prominent guest speakers who will shed light on pressing topics and offer a sense of our contemporary, and often divisive, politics. Following the November elections, the class will turn attention to assessment of what happened and implications for governing beginning in January 2025.

PSY 1111: The Language Parade

Instructor: Elizabeth H. Sandberg (Senior Lecturer of Psychology)

Language is like a parade—it is exciting and surprising, but also orderly and predictable. Language is always on the move. We will explore the factors that underlie acquiring, producing, and comprehending language. Where did the complex communication system of language come from? Is it unique to humans? How does it change? Why does it change? How do we use it? Do we use the same language for speaking, thinking, and writing?

CSET 3890: Improv in Science Communication

Instructor: Thomas Clements (Senior Lecturer of Biological Sciences)

How can we effectively communicate science? We can know the basics, but we need to be able to respond to, connect with, and bring our audience along for the journey. Students will learn the basics of improv comedy through play, deep dive into the literature around this field, talk with experts, and then apply this knowledge to create their own science communication "brand" in a final project.

AMER 3890: Responsible Advocacy in a Complicated World

Instructor: Victoria Hensley (Mellon Assistant Professor of American Studies)

This course will consider the ethics of community-based advocacy work across multiple disciplines (including those from the public humanities and social sciences). Students will engage with scholarly articles on community engagement, shared authority, and public leadership to understand best practices and possible issues in working directly with a variety of communities. Students will also write their own best practices, engage with an organization or group throughout the semester to develop a public-facing project, and meet local leaders from across Nashville to understand how to responsibly work and advocate alongside communities and organizations. 

ANTH 2150-01: Urban Ecology

Instructor: Kimberley McKinson (Assistant Professor of Anthropology)

This course examines environmental conditions and consequences of human and non-human life processes in cities through history. We will examine the transformations of landscapes, food systems, social inequality, and built environments, taking into account the origins of cities, gentrification, urban planning, green activism, and environmental justice. Students will be able to articulate long-term perspectives on climate change, political ecology, environmental history, green politics, and prospects for sustainability.

BSCI 5272-01: Genome Science

Instructor: Allison Walker (Assistant Professor of Chemistry)

In this course, we will explore the various aims and importance of genome science. Students will retrieve genome data from public databases and investigate the experimental and computational methods used in analysis of genome data and their annotation. Topics covered: functional aspects of genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics; use of phylogenetics and population genomics to infer evolutionary relationships; and mechanisms of genome evolution.

CMA 2290-01: Alternate Media Modes - Waves & Loops: DIY Media Production

Instructor: Maria Titova (Assistant Professor of Economics)

This is a course on microeconomic and game-theory analysis of political institutions and elections. Students will engage rigorously with the theories and practices around party and candidate positioning; efficiency of political competition; polarization; and information provision and processing.

HIST 1735W: United States Intelligence Community, 1940 to the Present

Instructor: Moses Ochonu (Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of History)

This course begins in the 1870s and moves through to the present. We will examine the role of diamonds, gold, rubber, and oil in the resulting conflicts in modern Africa. Topics include: multinationals, mineral extraction,  politics, poverty, war, child labor, corruption, local and international mining and mineral syndicates, and the implications for Africans and their livelihoods.

JS 1001: Commons iSeminar - Israel/Palestine- A Culinary History

Instructor: Michael  Griffin (Senior Lecturer of Mathematics)

This course focuses on the applications of algebra to reliability and secrecy of information transmission. Topics include: error-correcting codes, including linear, Hamming, and cyclic codes, and possibly BCH or Reed-Solomon codes. Cryptography, including symmetric-key, DES and RSA encryption.

MHS 1001: Commons iSeminar - LGBTQ Rights, Health & Wellness

Instructor: Gilbert Gonzales (Associate Professor of Medicine, Health & Society)

This seminar will provide students an opportunity to discuss LGBTQ+ rights and how public policies like marriage equality, bathroom bills, and non-discrimination protections in education, health care, and other public settings impact the health and wellness of LGBTQ+ families and individuals. The primary off-campus immersive experience will include a visit to the Belcourt Theatre to view a film on themes related to LGBTQ+ politics, policy, and/or health.

SPAN 3345-01: Spanish in Business and the Global Economy

Instructor: Loraine Catanzaro (Principal Senior Lecturer of Spanish)

This course focuses on cultural competency in terminology related to the global economy, management, banking and accounting, human resources, marketing, finance, imports, and exports. Together we will examine economies of the Spanish-speaking world and its current economic realities through business case study analysis, individual research, and entrepreneurial engagement.

 

AADS 1706: Capoeira - Afro-Brazilian Race, Culture, and Expression

Instructor: Gilman Whiting (Associate Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies)

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines elements of music, dance, history and language. The art was born in Africa and developed by enslaved Africans in Brazil as a form of resistance and cultural expression. It is characterized by fluid movements and strategic play, often disguised as a dance to preserve its practice during periods of oppression. Drawing on sociology,  history, and more, this course uses the activity as a lens through which to learn about slavery, race, and democracy in Brazil.

ANTH 3890: Special Topics - Forensics, Genocide & Human Rights

Instructor: Tiffany Saul (Lecturer of Anthropology)

Forensic scientists have played an important role in human rights investigations and prosecutions since the 1970s. This class will address the practical, ethical, and theoretical implications of scientific work in the human rights arena, with an emphasis upon the work of forensic anthropologists. A broad overview will be provided, followed by in-depth case studies that will illustrate the complexity of human rights-oriented forensic science work. Through these case studies, the course will address topics related to practitioners, victims, survivors, and perpetrators of human rights atrocities. Additional topics will include tensions between evidentiary procedures and community needs, inequality in access to forensic resources, local involvement as opposed to the exclusive utilization of outside expertise, and ethical implications of data collection during human rights investigations.

ANTH 6869: Special Topics - Infodemics - Misinformation and Health Inequalities

Instructor: T. S. Harvey (Associate Professor of Anthropology)

This course exams the public health and social implications of what the WHO identified as infodemics, too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments that can cause confusion, mistrust, and risk-taking behaviors that can lead not only to misunderstandings but health inequalities and even death. 

ASIA 2308: Narratives of Disaster and Apocalypse

Instructor: Mabel Gergan (Assistant Professor of Asian Studies)

This course takes as its starting point three environmental concerns pertinent to both scientific and popular debates on climate change: 1) the massive build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere beginning with the Industrial Revolution, 2) nuclear waste and radioactivity in layers of earth and ice, and 3) over-population in ‘developing’ nations. Taking an environmental humanities approach, we examine how apocalyptic science fiction films and American popular culture represent these concerns in ways that both reveal and obscure broader socio-cultural and political anxieties.

BSCI 3232: Biodiversity, Climate Change, and our Health

Instructor: Amanda Benson (Senior Lecturer of Biological Sciences) 

Drought,  forest fires, and extreme weather events are drastically affecting our health and the planet's health. This course examines how climate impacts biodiversity by studying nature's evolutionary responses to past climate cycles. Understanding these pattern processes provides us with insight to create a resilient world: where and what crops are best for our future, what diseases might dominate, and how life in the oceans might be altered.

BUSA 3891: Special Topics - Environmental/Social Governance Investing

Instructor: Leonora Williamson (Associate Professor of the Practice of Managerial Studies)

This course explores the U.S. investing ecosystem holistically from an ESG (environmental/social governance) lens. Topics covered include public and debt equity markets, private equity and debt markets, seed/early-stage investing, disclosures, and the role of governance.

CLAS 3333: Pandemics and Society in Historical Perspective

Instructor: William Caferro (Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History)

The course examines the religious, political, economic and human/psychological consequences of global pandemics in the pre-modern world, from Antiquity to the Black Death (1348). It examines the ways that contagion transformed societies and its relation to issues of violence and social justice. Studying culture far removed from us chronologically and geographically will allow us to better understand our contemporary world and its responses to pandemics and violence.

DS 3891: Intro to Generative Artificial Intelligence

Instructors: Jesse Spencer-Smith (Adjunct Professor of Psychology), Charreau Bell (Assistant Professor of the Practice of Computer Science)

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) models encompass ChatGPT, GPT4 and successors, and related transformer-based deep learning models. This introductory course aims to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of generative AI models and their applications. This course introduces the theory and use of these models, including prompt engineering, the building of agents and bots, and the basics of the architecture and training of transformer models. Students will explore the fundamental concepts, techniques, and algorithms used to create generative AI systems, such as deep learning and attentional mechanisms. Through a combination of interactive lectures, hands-on exercises, and projects, students will gain practical experience in designing, training, and evaluating generative AI models for various tasks. 

GSS 111: First Year Writing Seminar - Gendered Lives

Instructor: Rory Dicker (Senior Lecturer of Gender and Sexuality Studies)

This course examines how literary texts represent gendered lives. Using contemporary critical techniques and historical approaches, the course will explore how gender is determined by environment, personal choice, and social expectations. Authors will include Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Virginia Woolf.

MHS 6500: Special Topics - Guns in America

Instructors: Jonathan Metzl (Frederick B. Rentschler II Chair and Professor of Medicine, Health, & Society and Sociology), JuLeigh Petty (Principal Senior Lecturer of Medicine, Health, & Society)

This course explores the multifaceted role guns play in the U.S. through the lenses of history, sociology, law, medicine, and other disciplines. Topics include guns in U.S. society, the prevalence and distribution of guns, lawful possession and use of firearms, gun crimes, injuries, and a special topic of mass homicide and mental illness. Over the semester we will seek to demystify and question what is meant by “gun culture” and to introduce some popular databases by which gun ownership and gun violence have been tracked and studied. We’ll also delve into the history of U.S. gun politics – such as looking closely at what happened in the 1960s when African Americans mobilized their Second Amendment rights to defend communal safety and claim the privileges and protections of full citizenship.

PHYS 3890: Selected Topics - Nanoscale Innovation & Making

Instructor: Sharon Weiss (Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics & Astronomy)

This course examines the applications of nanotechnology from concept through commercialization. Topics include case studies, nanotechnology, entrepreneurship, and business strategy. Students will carry out a hands-on project in the Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering facilities and develop a product pitch.

SOC 3322: Immigration in America

Instructor: Mariano Sana (Associate Professor of Sociology)

This course examines immigration to the United States. Most of the course focuses on the immigrant experience, which includes work, social networks, race relations, ethnic politics, language, health, and religion, all of which have commonalities and differences across the many types of immigrants and immigrant groups in the United States. We also study theories of international migration, history, and policy. Immigration is a hot topic. Practically everyone has an opinion on immigration and on immigrants, but sometimes assumptions substitute for knowledge. By the end of the course, regardless of your own preferences and ideological leanings, you will be someone who really knows about immigration and immigrants in America.

SPAN 3345: Spanish in Business and the Global Economy

Instructor: Lorraine Catanzaro (Principal Senior Lecturer of Spanish and Portuguese)

This course is a comprehensive linguistic overview of the functional areas of business including Management, Supply Chain and Logistics, Operations, Human Resources, Marketing, and Finance in the context of the Spanish-speaking countries in the global economy, underscoring current social, political, and economic issues such as climate change, sustainability, and human costs. The course takes a student-driven, hands-on approach as we study the current economies of all the Spanish-speaking countries, analyzing dozens of case studies of both small and large companies, interviewing executives in a broad range of global industries, and, as a final project, student teams will research and create their own businesses (a company launched in a Spanish-speaking market), which they pitch to investors in "Shark Tank" style.

AMER 3890: Topics in American Studies - Political Campaigns in America

Instructors: Mario Rewers (Senior Lecturer of American Studies), James Sasser (Research Assistant of Political Science)

Elections are the foundation of American democracy but they could also be undermining the democratic experiment from within. Jumping off from Alexis de Tocqueville's observation that presidential campaigns increase "intrigue and agitation" and divide citizens into "hostile camps," this course examines the often divisive yet still unifying role political campaigns have had on American culture. In addition to reading historical accounts of past national campaigns, students will have the opportunity to engage with the mixed media of the modern American political process (ranging from audio recordings dating from the dawn of the radio era to contemporary social media) and to interact with individuals orchestrating todays campaigns. Surveying the past, present, and future of American political culture, and covering both theory and practice, this course is aimed at students interested in political science, public policy, and modern U.S. history.

AMER 3890 - Topics in American Studies - Writing the Blues

Instructor: Caroline Williams (Writer in Residence of Medicine, Health, and Society)

Writing the Blues - Blues Narratives and the Written Word: This course will explore the tradition of blues literature. How do we define the blues and its work? What is a blues poem? A blues novel? Over the course of the semester we will seek to navigate the liminal spaces between the blues as a feeling (I have the blues), the blues as a genre of music inspired by said feeling, and the rich body of literature inspired by the intersection of the two.

ASIA 2620: Chinese Culture Through Calligraphy

Instructor: Pengfei Li (Senior Lecturer of Asian Studies)

Being the most revered form of art in China, Chinese calligraphy is an essential part of the Chinese culture. This course introduces students to the historical development and aesthetic principles of Chinese calligraphy, Chinese ancient calligraphers and their masterpieces, and calligraphy’s close relationships with seal, painting, and poetry. In addition to hands-on experience in performing Chinese calligraphy in various scripts, students also have the opportunity to create artistic projects that connect Chinese calligraphy to their personal life. 

ASTR 3890: Special Topics - Black Holes in Our Universe

Instructor: Karan Jani (Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy)

This course will provide an overview of black holes as well as explore the historical development, astrophysical origins, and gravitational-wave discoveries. 

CMA 3892: Special Topics in the Sudy of Film - Race in Film and Media

Instructor: Cesar Ignacio Ruiz Cortez (Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Arts)

This course explores how cinema and other modern technologies produce race as an object of knowledge and control, covering the concept of race across Hollywood cinema, independent film, contemporary art, television, social media, and surveillance networks. Students are required to attend one weekly film screening.

CMST 3890: Selected Topics in Communication Studies - Space, Place, and Media

Instructor: Courtney Travers (Senior Lecturer of Communication Studies)

What makes the suburbs "safe," the city "progressive," or the country "idyllic?" In this course, we examine the idea that material spaces often influence our social “places” and that these spaces are historically and rhetorically constructed. We will shift between learning about (a) key moments in (mostly) American history where spaces helped establish people’s social places and (b) how media challenge or affirm our perceptions of those histories, stories, and people.

CSET 2130: The Trial of Galileo and its Background

Instructor: David Weintraub (Professor of Astronomy)

This course explores the interdependence of cosmological theories and religious teachings from the eighth century BCE to the end of the seventeenth century. It examines scientific works and religious texts, including those of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Copernicus, Luther, Galileo, and Newton.

CSET 2550: Genetic Breakthroughs: The Promise and the Problems

Instructor: Paul Durst (Assistant Professor of the Practice of Biological Sciences)

This course covers major advancements in genetics and genomics and their impacts, including: an examination of scientific practices to critique both the scientific literature and the popular coverage of this work; and recognizing how science produces new questions, not definitive answers, and how these questions emerge in the context of the societies that produce them.

CSET 3090: Introduction to Science and Technology Policy Analysis

Instructor: David Wright (Professor of Chemistry)

Science and technology intersect with many areas of public policy. Think of the regulatory failures behind patient deaths from Vioxx; water quality in Flint Michigan; the debate over the reality and extent of climate change; widespread public perception of eroding American research and development competitiveness in a globalizing world; and the public health failures during the COVID pandemic. This course examines such questions by surveying the interactions between science, technology, and policy. Over the course of the semester, the assignments will focus on the challenge of reorganizing the CDC into a modern, responsive public health resource.

HIST 1530: Climate History

Instructor: Samuel Dolbee (Assistant Professor of History)

The course gives perspective on the fossil-fuel-driven crisis of climate change today by looking at the long legacy of how climate has shaped human history, and how people have understood these processes. A central premise is that there is no such thing as a “natural disaster”—that all cataclysms and their unequally borne consequences are a reflection of human politics.

HIST 2691: Barack Obama: Man and President

Instructor: Nicole Hemmer (Associate Professor of History)

The election of Barack Obama represented a dramatic change in U.S. politics: not only was he the first Black president, but he was the first Democratic president to win a majority of the popular vote in over 30 years. This course will explore the historical forces that forged the Obama presidency: the experiences that brought Obama to the White House, the party transformations that made his candidacy possible, the policies his administration enacted (and failed to enact), and the grassroots movements that shaped his eight years in office.

HIST 3890: Selected Topics in History - Higher Education & the Nation

Instructor: Christopher Loss (Associate Professor of History)

This course will explore the role of U.S. colleges and universities as key sites of state-building, citizenship training and professionalization, identity formation, and national belonging and exclusion. Using lectures, readings, discussions, group projects, and writing assignments, we will study the history of American higher education from a range of different perspectives that consider the triumphs, sacrifices, and injustices that are part of this story.

RLST 3890: Special Topics in Religious Studies - Visions of the Future

Instructor: Laurel Schneider (Professor of Religious Studies)

Religious and scientific visions and fears of the future have shaped human horizons and social movements in multiple ways throughout history. Through engagement with critical theory, religious writings, literature, speeches, artist renderings and cinematic accounts, this course examines the influence of future imagining (utopic, positivist, dystopic) on critical appraisals of the present and possibilities for creative social change.

AADS 3006: James Baldwin: Five Ways of Looking at His Life

Instructors: Gilman Whiting (Associate Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies), Michael Dyson (University Distinguished Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies)

The author through literature, art, film, politics, and place. Five places critical in his artistic evolution: Harlem and Greenwich Village, New York; Paris and St. Paul-de-Vence, France; and Turkey. Film recreations of his life and writings. [3] (INT)

AADS 4851: Special Topics in Humanities—From Dr. King to Lil Wayne

Instructors: Gilman Whiting (Associate Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies), Michael Dyson (University Distinguished Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies)

Will explore central themes of Black existence by wrestling with the possibilities, conflicts and contradictions of popular articulations of Black identity glimpsed in iconic figures. Course will feature in-person and virtual visits by figures like Nas, Al Sharpton, Common, Joy Ann Reid, William Barber, Ben Crump, and many more.

AMER 3890: Topics in American Studies—Jesus in American Culture

Instructor: Clarence Stauffer (Adjunct Assistant Professor of American Studies)

This course will analyze the role and influence of Jesus in American culture. The course is geared for both religious and non religious students. For many, Jesus is their lord and savior. For others, he is a moral exemplar. How do the teachings of Jesus continue to impact American life? How have we Americanized Jesus in this country? What can we learn about morality and ethics from his teachings and parables? Why do so many Christians fail to follow Jesus teachings? Themes will include - love, peace, hope, forgiveness, joy, morality, mercy, and compassion.

AMER 3890: Topics in American Studies—Gold, God and Glory in Making

Instructor: Danyelle Valentine (Senior Lecturer of Gender and Sexuality Studies)

How does the past inform the present? What role does one’s geographic location and culture play in the monetary success of their country? And in shaping their political and religious beliefs? From exploration to the process of colonization American society continues to be driven by a lust for Gold, a religious faith in God, and a yearning for Glory. In this course we will trace the emergence of religious communities and trade relations in America’s nation building efforts.

AMER 3890: Topics in American Studies—American Journeys

Instructor: Mario Rewers (Lecturer of American Studies)

From the sixteenth century to the present, using feet, hooves, and wheels, driven by curiosity, fear, or desire, men and women have traveled across North America while documenting their experiences in text, image, music, and film. Discussing Spanish explorers and French philosophers, eighteenth-century scientists and modern-day hoboes, this course asks what accounts of travel and movement reveal about American nature, culture, and politics.

ANTH 3890: Special Topics—Forensics, Genocide & Human Rights

Instructor: Tiffany Saul (Lecturer of Anthropology)

Forensic scientists have played an important role in human rights investigations and prosecutions since the 1970s. This class will address the practical, ethical, and theoretical implications of scientific work in the human rights arena, with an emphasis upon the work of forensic anthropologists. A broad overview will be provided, followed by in-depth case studies that will illustrate the complexity of human rights-oriented forensic science work. Through these case studies, the course will address topics related to practitioners, victims, survivors, and perpetrators of human rights atrocities. Additional topics will include tensions between evidentiary procedures and community needs, inequality in access to forensic resources, local involvement as opposed to the exclusive utilization of outside expertise, and ethical implications of data collection during human rights investigations.

CSET 2500: Science for Everyone

Instructor: David Wright (Stevenson Chair of Chemistry)

Science for Everyone focuses on the great ideas of science to help students become fluent in the way science touches our everyday lives. Science is hierarchical in nature, and these great ideas form the framework of our understanding of the universe across all disciplines of science. The goal of this course is to prepare students to use these ideas in their future role as citizens, allowing them to participate in the public discourse that is the fabric of our democracy.

CSET 3890: Special Topics—Ethical Questions in Communication

Instructor: Dusan Danilovic (Senior Lecturer of Communication of Science and Technology)

An examination of ethical questions that might arise upon the First Contact between humankind and extraterrestrial sentient entities, as found in science fiction literature. Focus on events that emerge from ineffective communication. The potential influence of these questions and novels on modern society. Satisfies the advanced science communication skills requirement for the CSET major and the CSET minor.

ENGL 3890: Movements in Literature—The New Negro Movement

Instructor: Gabriel Briggs (Senior Lecturer in English)

Studies in intellectual currents that create a group or school of writers within a historical period. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [3] (HCA)

ENVS 1101: Foundations in Climate Studies

Instructor: Zdravka Tzankova (Research Associate Professor of Sociology)

Scholarship from across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. History and science of climate change;, the cultural and political-economic systems that shape climate injustice. Challenges and possible solutions to the climate crisis. [3] (P)

MHS 3890: Special Topics—COVID and Society

Instructors: Jonathan Metzl (Frederick B. Rentschler II Chair), Caroline Williams (Writer in Residence of Medicine, Health, & Society), Celina Callahan-Kappor (Senior Lecturer of Medicine, Health, & Society)

The COVID-19 pandemic set into motion a series of events that will reshape society in lasting ways, from how we live, to how we learn, to the future of jobs and careers, to the issues about which we protest and aim to change, to the movies we watch, the music we hear, and the stories we read. These changes will be shaped by innovations from fields including technology, medicine, architecture, humanities, politics, science, and economics. Ultimately, the COVID-era will affect how we think about ourselves, and our relationships with others, our sense of social and racial justice, and our place in the world for years to come. This interactive new class will explore the pandemics impact on our past, present, and future, as told through the narratives of thought and opinion leaders. 

RLST 3472: Religion and Climate Change

Role of religion in climate change and as response to planetary catastrophe. Religious and literary texts. Historical, philosophical, and anthropological work. [3] (P)

RPW 3890W: Special Topics—Revolutions

Instructor: Holly Tucker (Mellon Foundation Chair in the Humanities)

Through an immersive role-playing game, students plunge into the intellectual and political currents that surged through revolutionary Paris in 1791. How does one find a balance between individual desires/goals and the responsibilities of citizenship? Do revolutionaries have a right to use violence to eliminate an oppressive government? Conversely, does a state have the right to employ violent means to suppress rebellion?

ANTH 2105: Race in the Americas

Instructor: Lesley Gill (Professor of Anthropology)

This course examines the origins of the concept of race. We will compare past and present racial ideologies and practices in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and explore the intersection of race with gender, ethnicity, class, nationalism, and colonialism.

ASIA-2309W and EES-2309W: Mountains to the Sea: Perspectives on Society, Politics, and the Environment

Instructors: Mabel Gergan (Assistant Professor of Asian Studies) and Steve Goodbred (Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences)

This class will explore how physical environments shape politics, religion, economy, cultural practices, and infrastructure. The class will study climate, soils, natural hazards, transportation, water, food, and mineral resources, as well as contestation over climate change and pollution.

ARTS 3333: Engine for Art, Democracy, and Justice

Instructor: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons (Professor of Art)

This course will focus on the study of art’s relationship to social justice. It will include visual representation and multiple art forms as means to develop new knowledge, new perspectives, and new practices toward inclusive discussion of cultural interconnections, historical entanglements, and the consequences of geographies, histories, and politics. There will be special attention paid to the expansion of the so-called South and its relations and interdependence with other geographies, as well as historical legacies more generally and their relationships to progress toward more just and democratic futures. The course will include critical analysis and experiential projects and models of innovative art practices.

CMA 3892: The Native Lens: Indigeneity and Cinema

Instructor: Lutz Koepnick (Professor of Cinema and Media Arts)

This seminar engages with films by and about Native Americans, Inuits, Sami, Aboriginal Australians, Moiri, and Pacific Islanders in order to explore different figurations of indigenous life on screen and the place of indigenous filmmaking within the larger history of popular and art cinema. Special attention will be given to the work of indigenous filmmakers and artists that actively challenge the tropes, genres, and narratives mainstream cinema has developed for the representation of indigenous people. We will also read a number of relevant texts drawn from indigenous (media) studies to discuss past and present efforts to decolonize cinema and transform dominant circuits of cinematic distribution, exhibition, and spectatorship.

EES-4891-01: Community Engaged Research

Instructor: Lily Claiborne (Principal Senior Lecturer of Earth and Environmental Sciences) and Jessica Oster (Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences)

This course is designed for active, research-based, learning that places environmental issues in affected communities, particularly those that are under-served. 

GSS 3305: Gender and Sexuality in Times of Pandemic

Instructor: Allison Hammer (Senior Lecturer of Gender and Sexuality Studies)

This course will explore the integration of science and medicine to the social construction of race, gender, and identity. It will cover interconnections with national security, economic growth, and natural risks such as sex, death, and illness; challenges to gender and sexual justice by infectious diseases; historical and literary research; sex, sexuality, and gender during times of dis-ease; and expressions, regulations, and resistance of sex, sexuality, and gender during medical/scientific crises.

HIST 1162: The East India Company, 1600-1858: The Company that Ruled the World

Instructor: Samira Sheikh (Associate Professor of History)

This course will explore the formation of an English joint-stock company to trade in Asia. It will cover the establishment of trading posts (factories); conflicts with Mughals, Portuguese, Dutch, and pirates; the shift from trade to politics; Company government in South Asia; resource extraction; colonialism; the Rebellion of 1857; the abolition of the Company; and how it became a forerunner of modern corporations.

HIST 1383: Slave Resistance in the Americas

Instructor: Jane Lander (Professor of History)

This course will explore slave resistance across North and South America, including slave flight, marronage, and full-blown rebellion. We will study free black towns in Florida, Mexico, Panama, and Colombia created by former slaves; problems of evidence and voice through primary sources of free and enslaved Africans and their descendants; sources by historians and archaeologists; and art and material culture of rebels.

HIST 1665: Capital, Labor and Democracy in the United States

Instructor: Jeff Cowie (James G. Stahlman Chair in American History)

Covering the nineteenth century to the present, this course covers the tensions and connections between capitalism and democracy. It provides a basic introduction to the social and political history of workers, business, politics, and organized labor, and addresses questions of power and economic inequality as expressed in American political culture.

HIST 1710W: Writing for Social Change

Instructor: Paul Kramer (Associate Professor of History)

This course covers the practice of narrative, nonfiction writing for social change. It explores the history of American investigative journalism and scholarship, including interviewing, research, narrative, and revision skills.

HIST 2780: Superhuman Civilization

Instructor: Michael Bess (Chancellor's Professor of History)

This course addresses trends in human biological enhancement through the re-engineering of basic physical and mental traits. It will explore debates over transhumanism, designer babies, neuroethics, technological determinism, and the long-term implications for social justice and human identity.

SOC 1030: Environment and Society

Instructor: Zdravka Tzankova (Research Associate Professor of Sociology)

This course explores inequality, population, social change, technology, and the state. It applies concepts from general sociology and environmental sociology to environmental problems across institutional sectors such as food, water, energy, health, and transportation.

SOC 1111: Mass Incarceration in the U.S.

Instructor: Evelyn Patterson (Associate Professor of Sociology)

Why does the U.S. have the highest incarceration rate in the world? We will begin our study of U.S. prisons with the period at the end of the Civil War, and consider several historical eras. We will give particular attention to the period from the 1970s to the present, when rates of incarceration rose sharply, especially among African-American men. Throughout the course, we will examine sociological explanations for the changing role of incarceration in the U.S. and for the effects of mass incarceration on society.

SOC 3322: Immigration in America

Instructor: Mariano Sana (Associate Professor of Sociology)

This course focuses on theories of international migration, with an emphasis on migration as a social process. It covers economic and social impact, including assimilation, immigrant incorporation, and the second generation; the migrant experience, including transnational practices; how immigration redefines race, ethnicity, and gender; immigration history of the United States; and current U.S. immigration law and policy. The class will also study the debate on open borders.

SOC 3333: Policing in America

Instructor: Laurie Woods (Senior Lecturer of Sociology)

This course looks at the history of American policing: how and where police derived their power and how that power is sustained. We will trace the roots of police in America and the evolution of police power through unions, public support, and political emphasis. Special attention will be given to police brutality issues, the role of media in framing our ideas of policing, the militarization of police forces, and the relationships between law enforcement and the citizens they are paid to serve. We will try to answer the question: What is the function of police?

AADS 2654: Memoirs and Biographies

Instructor: Alice Randall (Writer-in-Residence, African American and Diaspora Studies)

In this class, biographies and autobiographies are used as lenses for the study of historical trends and events; including the development of gender, sexual, and racial identities in subjects.

AMER 3890-01: Morality and Happiness in Post Corona America

Instructor: Clarence Stauffer (Adjunct Assistant Professor of American Studies)

This class will focus on research done in the field of morality and happiness and how it is relevant to our nation emerging from the Coronavirus Pandemic. It will also explore the implications of living in a “post-truth” culture, where many seem to disregard facts and evidence. How can human beings find meaning and purpose in life in the midst of crisis and struggle? What will be different after COVID?

ANTH 2105: Race in the Americas

Instructor: Lesley Gill (Professor of Anthropology)

This course explores the origins of the concept of race. It offers a comparison of past and present racial ideologies and practices in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and explores the intersection of race with gender, ethnicity, class, nationalism, and colonialism.

BUSA 3333-01: Leading Business Through Crisis

Instructor: Patrick Leddin (Associate Professor of Managerial Studies)

Leading an organization is tough, especially in times of high uncertainty (e.g. climate change, global pandemic, cultural shifts). Students will explore and discover how organizational purpose, effective communication, and solid planning/execution can inform and dramatically improve a leader's response to events that threaten an organization's very survival. This course is also about understanding and developing individual and organizational resilience - the ability to anticipate potential threats, cope effectively with adverse events when they occur, and adapt to changing conditions, ensuring a viable path forward for yourself, your team, and your organization.

CMA 3892-02: Special Topics in the Study of Film – Race in Film and Media

Instructor: Cesar Ignacio Ruiz Cortez (Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Arts)

This course will explore how cinema and other modern technologies produce race as an object of knowledge and control: the concept of race across Hollywood cinema, independent film, contemporary art, television, social media, and surveillance networks.

CMST 2850: Science, Rhetoric, and Public Controversy

Instructor: Bonnie Dow (Professor of Communication Studies)

This course explores the intersections of scientific issues, the public controversies around them, and the rhetorical strategies used by the public advocates involved in those controversies. Through a variety of historical and contemporary case studies, we will focus on the clash between different audiences for scientific information, on the different ways of understanding what counts as evidence in the scientific and public spheres, and the varied rhetorical strategies that public advocates use to communicate about scientific issues. Our goal is greater understanding of the problems and possibilities of public communication and deliberation about science.

ENGL 3890W-01: Movements in Literature – Cultures of the US-Mexico Border

Instructor: Carlos Alonso Nugent (Assistant Professor of English)

In recent years, the U.S. has built a multi-billion-dollar wall along the Mexican border. While the wall may appear to be an anomaly, it rests on longstanding legacies of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. In this seminar, we will look at these legacies through the eyes of the Natives, Latinxs, whites, and others who have lived in the US-Mexico borderlands. We will ask such questions as: Are borders physical boundaries, or are they psychosocial conditions? Are nations stable and homogeneous groups, or are they flexible and diverse communities? Ultimately, can human beings be branded as illegal aliens, or do they have inalienable rights?

GER 2432/CMST 2432: Soccer: Media, Art, Society

Instructors: Lutz Koepnick (Gertrude Conaway Professor of German, Cinema and Media Arts), John Sloop (Professor of Communication Studies)

The great Brazilian athlete Pelé once called soccer the “beautiful game”—a sport second to none in inspiring memorable performances, grand passions, deep commitments, potent conflicts, media spectacles, and artistic representations. In a series of cross-cultural case studies, this course will investigate the game's relationship to issues such as political power, globalization, gender, migration, economic and social inequality, national identity, and transnational commerce. It will discuss the history of the game and the development of its tactics, as much as we will study the particularities of soccer in Germany, Spain, England, and the United States. Funds provided through an Immersion Grant may allow us to take 5-6 students to London and Liverpool over spring break 2022 to conduct research on soccer on site as part of an ongoing or future Immersion project.

HIST 4444: The Politics of American Democracy

Instructor: Jefferson Cowie (James G. Stahlman Chair in American History)

The crisis of American political process and policy has a history, it has causes, and it has solutions. This course, presented in conjunction with the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, will explore the background of six key issues, read and analyze six books by public intellectuals, debate their content, and discuss the ideas with the authors.

MHS 2020: Health Care in the United States

Instructor: Gilbert Gonzales (Assistant Professor of Medicine, Health, and Society)

This class covers public health and health care delivery systems, and the evolving social and economic climates that shape health. Topics include health care access, cost, quality, and health disparities; trends in health care industries; the global COVID-19 pandemic; and comparative health systems.

MHS 3890: COVID and Society

Instructors: Jonathan Metzl (Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Medicine, Health, and Society), Caroline Randall-Williams (Writer-in-Residence of Medicine, Health, and Society), Celina Callahan Kapoor (Senior Lecturer of Medicine, Health, and Society)

This interactive class will explore how the COVID-19 pandemic will reshape society in lasting ways, from how we live, to how we learn, to the future of jobs and careers, to the issues about which we protest and aim to change, to the movies we watch, the music we hear, and the stories we read. We’ll engage with politicians, artists, protesters, activists, doctors and scientists, educators, musicians, and many others to better understand how the pandemic moment has impacted what they do in their daily lives, and their sense of what the future holds. Along the way, the class will explore some of the deep questions of the pandemic era—e.g., How can we best address racial inequities and structural racism? How can we regain trust in science and in global and public health? How did masks become political symbols? What works of literature and art best capture the moment? How will the pandemic change the future of jobs and careers? What will college look like?

PSCI 2213: Democratization and Political Development

Instructor: Keith R. Weghorst (Assistant Professor in Political Science)

This course is a comparative study of political development, with a focus on institutions. It examines the effect of political choices about voting systems, executive and legislative powers, cabinet formation, and other institutions on political competition, parties, and government stability. The class uses cases from established democracies and countries undergoing democratization.

PSCI 2245: The American Presidency

Instructor: David Lewis (Rebecca Webb Wilson University Distinguished Professor)

This course examines the constitutional, historical, and political aspects of the American presidency. It gives attention to electing and nominating the president, presidential leadership and personality, governing, and relations with Congress and the public.

PSCI 3896: Bernie Sanders and His Milieus

Instructor: Robert Barsky (Professor of French, European Studies, and Jewish Studies)

In this course, we will explore the political milieus from which Bernie Sanders has drawn for his “political revolution.” We will explore his own writings, and then undertake a critical engagement with his ‘New Deal’ style liberalism, his ‘democratic socialism,’ and his long-standing interest in Eugene V. Debs’s work as a labor leader and a candidate for office. In so doing, we aim to identify the intellectual and political strands that have informed Sanders’s approach to governing, while at the same time identifying what makes Sanders unique in the history of American socialism.

 

PSCI 4444: Unity and American Democracy

Instructors: Samar Ali (Research Professor in Political Science and Law), John Geer (Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science and Professor of Political Science), Jon Meacham (Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Chair in American Presidency)

The United States is struggling amid deep polarization, and the divisions we see today have undermined trust in our political institutions. While disagreement is the oxygen of democracy, not since the Civil War have so many Americans held such radically different views not just of politics but of reality itself. This course seeks to explore how to heal our national fissures and seek a path towards a more united states. Embracing unity is like exercise: a great and noble idea, but difficult and all too easy to forego. Yet the history of American democracy has proven that in extraordinary moments of unity, Americans can accomplish extraordinary things. Our class will examine these moments in history as evidence and focus on evidence-based reasoning to understand and to advance unity.

 

ANTH/CSET 3333-01: Technology and the Ecologies of Materials

Instructor: Grace Kim-Butler (ACLS Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow in Communication of Science and Technology)

This class offers an interdisciplinary study of technology, material culture, and social and cultural experience. It opens a window into technologies’ effects on the material ecologies of everyday life by examining the experiences of, for example, breathing toxic air, navigating oceans of microplastics, caring for art in museum galleries, and circulating waste in the food system. How does technology affect the material substances of people’s bodies and environments? How do these changes then influence the production of scientific knowledge, and actions to intervene in issues of identity, health, and environment? These questions are explored through historical and ethnographic case studies. This class takes seriously the need for cross-disciplinary exchange among the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. It encourages students to sharpen skills in the critical analysis of science and technology, and to use those skills to forge creative paths in scientific interventions and the public engagement of science. Hands-on activities and a field trip are included in the semester.

ASIA 3333-01: Disaster and Apocalypse

Instructor: Mabel Gergan (Assistant Professor of Asian Studies)

Environmental scientists and scholars are proposing that we have entered a new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene, wherein the current era of planetary history is being shaped by the actions of one species: Anthropos (Greek for Human). This course turns to popular culture and media, particularly Hollywood films, to analyze ecological and cultural anxieties regarding the impending human-induced apocalypse, and analyzes how representations of disaster and apocalypse in American popular culture both reveal and obscure broader cultural anxieties. 

ASIA 3333-02: Overseas Encounters: Reading the World

Instructor: Guojun Wang (Assistant Professor of Asian Studies)

This course focuses on the history of overseas studies and international students. It includes literary materials from different cultural and national traditions and emphasizes the experiences of overseas students in higher education, with a focus on U.S. institutions. Themes include literary exploration of difficulties encountered in a global context, as well as national identities, religious encountering, languages, home, loneliness, and romantic relations. Attention is also given to studying and living in a foreign country and identifying struggles and coping strategies.

BSCI/CHEM 3333: Contagion (OPEN TO NON-SCIENCE MAJORS)

Instructors: John McLean (Stevenson Professor of Chemistry), Antonis Rokas (Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Biological Sciences), Holly Algood (Associate Professor of Medicine, VUMC), Steven Townsend (Assistant Professor of Chemistry)

The COVID-19 global pandemic has dramatically illustrated the importance of science in tackling epidemics caused by infectious diseases. Drawing on COVID-19 and numerous other infectious diseases as examples and featuring an interdisciplinary team of faculty, the course will present a comprehensive view of the topic of contagion. How and why do new pathogens originate? How do we identify them and track their spread? How do we restrict their spread? How do we develop diagnostics? How do we develop therapies? How can we prevent future pandemics? The course is open to all undergraduates.

CLAS/HIST 3333: Pandemics and Society in Historical Perspective

Instructors: William Caferro (Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History and Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Studies) and Jason Harris (Senior Lecturer of Classical and Mediterranean Studies)

The course examines the religious, racial, political, economic and human (psychological) consequences of global pandemics in the pre-modern world, from Antiquity to the Black Death (1348). There will be a close reading of wide-ranging sources to assess the ways contagion transformed societies and its relation to concurrent issues, including violence and social justice.  

FNEC 3333: Consumer Finance

Instructor: Willis Hulings, Associate Professor of the Practice of Managerial Studies

As the nation grapples with the greatest economic challenge since 2008, the financial strain placed on individuals has never been greater. This course will examine how consumers spend, invest, and borrow funds. It will explore the vagaries of consumer finance, and best practices for managing money and debts when earnings and credit scores get adversely affected. It will look at the benefits of various asset classes, and methods to accomplish optimal asset allocation. It will study how financial institutions entice customers with investment and borrowing products, while analyzing the real cost of using them. It will also assess new payment mechanisms and virtual currencies. The semester will mirror the consumer financial planning life cycle; it will start by discussing borrowing and asset gathering during one’s early years, and will end with strategies utilized by consumers to insure, enhance, and ultimately distribute wealth as they grow older.

ENGL 3333: How to Think about Shakespeare

Instructors: Lynn Enterline (Nancy Perot Professor of English), Peter Lake (University Distinguished Professor of History)

How do we think about Shakespeare? Team-taught by an historian and a literary critic, this lecture course allows you to consider this question from two angles. The readings are arranged chronologically over the course of Shakespeare’s career and cover all genres of his writing. We will read each work in light of contemporary historical events as well as literary history and theory. On one hand, we will examine his work in the context of 16th century religious and political issues as well as the way his contemporaries read and thought about those issues. On the other, we will explore the impact of rhetorical training and ancient literary invention on Shakespeare’s modes of invention as well as his representations of subjectivity, gender, and emotion. Though historicist and literary-theoretical approaches are sometimes thought to be incompatible, this course will encourage students to think how they can be put into conversation.

GER/RUSS 3333: Monuments & Memory: The Art and Politics of Remembering

Instructor: Kathryn David (Mellon Assistant Professor of Russian and East European Studies) and Simone Stirner (Assistant Professor of German Studies)

In this course, we will explore the art and politics of public memory, through monuments, memorials, literature and art: How do societies remember histories of violence? Who decides which monuments are built (and which ones are destroyed)? How do individuals interact with public memorials? What is the role of social media in shaping cultural memory today? And who gets to tell the story of the past in the first place? Case studies take us from the Holocaust memorial in Berlin to statues of Lenin in Ukraine, from the National AIDS Memorial in California to gulag cemeteries in Siberia, investigating the political, aesthetic, and ethical dimension of memory in the public space. Collaborative projects on local public memory in Nashville and the American South as well as digital memorial projects for remote students will provide opportunities for public engagement and learning beyond the classroom.

GER 2444: German Fairy Tales: From Brothers Grimm to Walt Disney

Instructor: Christoph Zeller, Professor of German and European Studies

Fairy tales are central to our shared cultural narrative and have long fueled the imagination of both children and adults. In the past two centuries they have undergone radical transformations in form and meaning. This course focuses on the forces that cause these changes, the reasons for fairy tales’ enduring popularity, and the controversies around the function and value of fairy tales. Students will focus on the collected tales of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, learn about their sources, their heritage, and the many transformations their tales display until today. Students will examine how the Grimm stories became staples of U.S. and worldwide popular culture through movie production, most notably by Disney Studios. At the end of the course, students will be able to identify the characteristics of fairy tales, understand their historicity, determine their sources, understand their meanings according to various interpretative models, and recognize their metamorphoses in different genres and aesthetic forms. We will discuss problematic aspects of original tales such as stereotypical gender roles, lack of diversity, excessive violence, and archaic pedagogical practices. This course is designed to strengthen critical thinking and writing skills and to practice close reading and analysis of literary, visual, and cinematic material. Taught in English.

HIST 1320: The Senses of Happiness: A History

Instructors: Catherine Molineux (Associate Professor of History) and Celia Applegate (Professor of History)

How do humans experience happiness? How has the idea of happiness changed over time? An overview of that evolution from Greco-Roman through modern times will lead to an exploration of various aspects of the experience of happiness through a history of the senses and emotions. Topics include: laughter, ecstasy, tasting and smelling, looking and hearing, prosperity, great outdoors, home and hearth, intimacy, creature companions, and health.

MGRL 3333-01: Leading Businesses in Times of Crisis

Instructor: Patrick Leddin, Associate Professor of the Practice of Managerial Studies

Leading an organization is tough, especially in times of high uncertainty (e.g. climate change, global pandemic, cultural shifts). Students will explore and discover how organizational purpose, effective communication, and solid planning/execution can inform and dramatically improve a leader's response to events that threaten an organization's very survival. During the course, participants will spend time with C-level executives who have guided their organizations through major disruptions and have lessons to share from their experiences. Students will also learn from their own experiences via case studies that will strengthen their understanding of how to lead in uncertain times. This course is also about understanding and developing individual and organizational resilience - the ability to anticipate potential threats, cope effectively with adverse events when they occur, and adapt to changing conditions, ensuring a viable path forward for yourself, your team, and your organization.

MRGL 3333-02: Corporate Social Responsibility

Instructor: Leonora Williamson, Lecturer of the Practice of Managerial Studies

According to investing website Investopedia, corporate social responsibility (CSR) “is a self-regulating business model that helps a company be socially accountable—to itself, its stakeholders, and the public. By practicing corporate social responsibility, also called corporate citizenship, companies can be conscious of the kind of impact they are having on all aspects of society, including economic, social, and environmental.” For over a century, American business practices have focused on the shareholder as the primary stakeholder in companies. Today, we are watching these traditions cede to broader concern for a variety of stakeholders, including employees, the community, and the environment. This course will introduce students to the key concepts and practices of CSR.

PHIL 3333: Racial Justice

Instructors: Paul Taylor (W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy), Lyn Radke (post-doctoral scholar), Sarah Gorman (teaching staff in Philosophy)

What does it mean that a firestorm of anti-racist protests rocked the U.S. during the summer of 2020? Participants in this course will work together to assemble some resources for answering this question. This collaborative investigation will revolve around four broader framing questions:

(1) What does justice mean when it comes to race?

(2) How do questions of racial justice relate to police work?

(3) What do policing and race have to do with the broader distribution of societal advantages and disadvantages?

(4) How do racialized social distributions relate to the history of the American experiment, and to the prospects for conducting the experiment more successfully?

SOC 3333: Policing in America

Instructor: Laurie Woods (Senior Lecturer in Sociology)

This course looks at the history of American policing: how and where police derived their power and how that power is sustained. We will trace the roots of police in America and the evolution of police power through unions, public support, and political emphasis. Special attention will be given to police brutality issues, the role of media in framing our ideas of policing, the militarization of police forces, and the relationships between law enforcement and the citizens they are paid to serve. We will try to answer the question: What is the function of police?  

SPAN 3333: Pandemics in World Literature (taught in English)

Instructor: Benigno Trigo (Professor of Spanish)

A pandemic is a widespread epidemic. The word comes from the Greek Pandemos, meaning “of all the people.” COVID-19 is a pandemic disease because it has spread around the globe. It has affected virtually everybody on earth. What happens when a disease is so widespread that it makes us feel that nobody is safe, that it will contaminate everyone eventually? Does the experience make us more aware of our shared mortality? Does it make us take stock of our vulnerable condition? Does it change our perspective? Do we look differently at ourselves and at others? Does it challenge our illusions of personal invincibility and collective superiority? These are very old questions that writers the world over have addressed in literature. In this course, we will read examples from the literature of pandemics with these questions in mind. We will explore their elaboration, in fiction, of the connection between our shared vulnerable bodies and the illusion of our personal or collective invulnerability. We will explore, again, the lessons that pandemic diseases, like COVID-19, teach us, with a view to develop a different ethical relation to our world and to others.

THTR 3333: Cultural Identity and the American Musical

Instructor: Christin Essin (Associate Professor of Theatre)

This online course engages students in practices of critical spectatorship through an examination of the artistry and cultural history of the American musical. As popular entertainment, the musical has shaped each generation’s perceptions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality; recognizing this influence, this course prioritizes activities that give students familiarity with languages of social identity and ability to "read" musical productions as progressive and regressive cultural influences. Students will view a series of musical performances, recorded live on stage and for film and television, including: The King and I, Fiddler on the Roof, 42nd Street, The Wiz, In the Heights, Newsies, and Hamilton. Professor Essin will share her current research and expertise on Broadway’s backstage labor in lecture materials, helping students understand the practices behind the creation of musicals and the industry biases that impact onstage and onscreen representations of cultural identity.