Featured Courses

Instructor: Amanda Lea

Modern biology runs on large, complex datasets. In this course, you’ll get hands-on experience using the R programming language to wrangle, analyze, visualize, and draw conclusions from real biological datasets. No prior programming experience is required; you’ll build your coding and data-analysis skills from the ground up. If you want to become more confident working with data—and develop computational skills that are useful across many areas of biology—this course is for you.

Instructor: Daniel Funk

Insects are the Earth's most rich and ecologically diverse group of organisms, and they exemplify fundamental biological patterns and processes of both basic and applied interest. This course treats recent reviews and primary literature to investigate varied topics in the ecology and evolution of insects from climate change to social behavior to plant-insect interactions. Critical thinking skills will be nurtured and developed throughout.

Instructor: Charlane Oliver

Every institution has a written curriculum—the rules, expectations, and credentials visible to everyone who enters it. But there is another curriculum, rarely taught and never published, mastered only by those who have had to navigate spaces not designed for them. This is a discussion-based, case-study-driven, action-oriented seminar that puts this invisible curriculum at the center of leadership study. Students explore 12 sophisticated, transferable leadership competencies for what the late Congressman John Lewis called "good trouble, necessary trouble": the courage to disagree, to challenge, and to change a system so that it works for everyone, not only the traditional few.

Instructor: Alina McIntyre

This course introduces environmental health, an interdisciplinary field that examines how the physical, built, social, and policy environments influence human health. Students investigate how environmental hazards move from their sources through the environment, into the human body, and ultimately contribute to health outcomes. Along the way, students will learn the scientific tools used to study environmental health, evaluate evidence from toxicology and epidemiology, explore environmental justice and community engaged approaches, analyze environmental policies, and develop strategies for communicating environmental health science to varied audiences.

Instructor: Zdravka Tzankova

This course integrates perspectives and insights from sociology, political science, public policy, comparative politics, and the growing field of nonprofit studies to 1) develop an understanding of the nonprofit sector as a sector comprised of complex organizations with complex management needs and dilemmas; 2) analyze the role of nonprofit organizations and the nonprofit sector in contemporary societies, focusing on both the U.S. and on cross-national comparisons of nonprofit organizations operating within different countries; and 3) study the roles and activities of ENGOs as setters and implementers of environmental policy and management agendas, and as agents of social and environmental change. We will cover organizational theory perspective on environmental NGOs and the basics of nonprofit management.

Instructor: Chiara Sulprizio

Fate. Hubris. Suffering. The Darkness within us all. The ancient Greeks wove these concepts together to create the intricate and impassioned artform known as tragedy. In this course we will read the major works of the tragic poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and immerse ourselves in the ideas and debates that shaped their dramatic worlds in the 5th century BCE. We will wrestle with the big questions—about free will, divinity, violence, family ties, and identity—that these plays asked of their original audiences and still ask of us today.

Instructor: Jonathan Rattner

What does it mean to build and sustain a creative life today? How do people working in cinema and media arts navigate changing technologies, audiences, and opportunities as they develop their work? Through weekly conversations with alumni, filmmakers, media artists, writers, theorists, actors, producers, and other creative professionals, students consider the different ways people make a living, make work, and build a life in the arts. Weekly readings and writing assignments extend these conversations, asking students to think critically about creativity, perception, representation, collaboration, and the role of film and arts in society.

Instructor: Teresa Goddu

How does contemporary literature engage the climate crisis and offer us ways to approach its challenges and possibilities? How can fiction help us to perceive the world that is already here and prepare us for the one yet to come? We will investigate a wide array of contemporary literature—from science fiction to realist novels—and film as we explore how stories act as powerful agents that shape our understanding of this growing crisis.

Instructor: Alex Dubilet

Dissolution of the self, intensification of desire and pleasure, refusals of law and order, experimental speech and writing, bodies in ecstasy: these are some characteristics of mysticism. This course will introduce students to important (late antique, medieval, and early modern) texts of Christian mystical theology and their surprising modern and contemporary afterlives across literature, culture, and theoretical discourse.

Instructor: Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller

Ready to move beyond textbook French? Welcome to our Café francophone—bring your coffee, grab a snack, and come ready to talk! Through films, series such as Call My Agent!, podcasts, news, and social media, students will discover French as it is actually spoken—from standard French to français familier, slang, and everyday expressions—while building fluency, confidence, and cultural awareness through conversation, debates, and lively discussions.

Instructors: James McFarland & Christoph Zeller

Few writers of the past century have shaped how we read and think as decisively as Kafka. His prose, diaries, and letters continue to mesmerize and unsettle readers because they resist easy explanation. This course brings you into some of the most compelling texts in modern literature, into the world that produced them, and into the tools needed to make sense of what they leave unresolved.

Instructor: Rebecca Epstein-Levi

What are some ways Jewish voices have constructed the categories of “woman,” “man,” and anything outside or in-between? And what happens when we deliberately foreground questions of gender, and the voices and experiences of Jewish women, and other Jews who aren’t cisgender men, for a whole semester?

Instructor: Shatema Threadcraft

This course brings together key insights from Black feminist and spatial feminist thought to propose design solutions to 1) femicide, 2) sexual and reproductive violence, and 3) housing insecurity. Inspired by Toni Morrison’s account of home as the site of justice; Eva Kail’s work with Vienna’s Frauenbüro and in particular her Aspern Seestadt wherein the neighborhood has been designed to center the needs of caretakers and to accommodate the “mobility of care;” Bogotá Mayor Claudia López’s “Manzanas del Cuidado” or careblocks and their adaptation; to the informal settlement Susan's Bay in Freetown, Sierra Leone, this course asks what might a Black Feminist City look like?

Instructor: Tracy Miller

This course explores the rich cultural traditions of China, Korea, and Japan from the 2nd millennium BCE to the 19th century. From ancient royal tombs and sacred Buddhist pagodas to the patronage of shoguns and Hokusai's iconic woodblock prints, you will uncover the social significance and aesthetic beauty behind masterworks of architecture, painting, ceramics, and sculpture. Build a lasting visual vocabulary, master the techniques of formal analysis of original artworks in the Vanderbilt Museum collection, and discover how creative expression shaped the history of East Asia.

Instructor: Raisa Rexer

No invention has changed the way we perceive and reproduce the world around us more dramatically than the photograph. This class surveys the first six decades of French photography (1839-1900) in a series of thematic units. Examining photography in the context of fiction, nonfiction, and critical readings, it will offer a discussion-based exploration of early photography in its contemporary political, social, and artistic context. Students will also have the unique opportunity to work closely with newly accessioned images from the Jennifer and Marc S. Lipschultz Photography Collection.

Great writers. Powerful words. Living legacies. Journey from Khusrau, Mir, and Ghalib to Manto, Faiz, Parveen Shakir, and beyond as Urdu literature comes alive through poetry, stories, film, music, and performance. Discover how its most compelling voices continue to speak to love, identity, resistance, memory, and our world today.

Instructor: Letizia Modena

After studying so much Italian grammar, the Conversation class offers the exciting chance to finally put it into practice. Through lively discussions, you’ll build confidence and fluency while exploring contemporary Italian society and culture. It’s a fun, engaging way to bring the language to life—and discover how Italians think, talk, and live today.

Instructor: William Franke

What can a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise teach us about our own lives? Explore Dante’s Divine Comedy, one of the most imaginative and influential works in world literature. Through unforgettable characters and dramatic encounters, discover Dante’s powerful exploration of love, justice, desire, freedom, and the search for meaning, and why his extraordinary journey still speaks to us today. Course is taught in English.

Instructor: Sayan Das

How can we determine whether a treatment changes bacterial growth, whether criminal sentencing patterns differ meaningfully, or whether a grading process is truly random? This course builds on Math 3640: Probability to explore the mathematical foundations of statistical inference, including distribution theory, estimation, hypothesis testing, Bayesian methods, regression, and nonparametric statistics. Students develop both the theoretical depth to understand why statistical methods work and the practical skills to apply them to meaningful problems in fields ranging from engineering and actuarial science to economics and the social sciences.

Instructor: Blane Hollingsworth

Want to learn the mathematics behind how financial markets are modeled and how modern derivatives are priced? This course combines rigorous mathematics with hands-on computational tools like Monte Carlo simulation to explore Brownian motion, martingales, stochastic integration, option pricing, and delta hedging. Whether you're interested in mathematics, finance, economics, or quantitative modeling, this course will give you a powerful foundation for understanding and working with uncertainty in financial markets.

Instructor: Pamela Popp

In this course, we will explore the emerging field of NeuroAI. How are neuroscientists using AI tools to advance research, and how does neuroscience inform AI development? We will compare biological and artificial intelligences to see what makes brains unique from machines, and what they can learn from each other.

Instructor: Pamela Popp

Develop skills in programming, data science, and math relevant to modern neuroscience applications. No prerequisites; great for freshmen and sophomores in the neuroscience major to build foundations in computation. The course introduces students to Python programming.

Instructor: René Marois

The greatest mystery of the brain is how it gives rise to our conscious experience of the world and as the source of our actions. Do people have free will? How would neural activity produce it? This course considers perspectives from neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy, and computational psychology on this issue.

Instructor: André Bastos

Hands-on experience creating, conducting, and evaluating experiments in neuroscience are the backbone of this course. Students use sensitive neuroscience measurement equipment to measure micro-volt level changes in the excitability of their own brains (EEG) and to measure action potentials emitted from the nerve fiber of insects. Students will receive individual attention to gain research skills that will help them succeed in research and medical fields related to neuroscience and psychology.

Instructor: William Franke

The Bible remains, like no other, a primary source of Western culture, of values and worldviews. Even through the dramatic upheavals of current history, it remains a powerfully influential guide to the meaning of life and death. Our course will show how much of this power comes from its art, as we explore patterns of myth, epic history, and prophetic poetry. Its dramatic storytelling will be explored as the basis for intelligent conversations on all kinds of current topics, from the battle of good vs. evil to possible paths for humanity amid the rise of AI.

Instructor: Jessica Ho

Are people living longer and getting healthier over time? What factors are contributing to improvements in health or to declines in life expectancy? Are some countries experiencing more rapid gains in health than other countries? This course will draw on insights from the fields of demography, sociology, epidemiology, public health, anthropology, and economics, among others. The course is applicable to multiple majors.