RESULTS:College of Arts & Sciences, Advent Semester 2023

Psychology

An introduction to basic research approaches in psychology, including observational studies, correlational studies, true experiments, and quasi-experiments. Ethics, sampling, measurement, and data analysis are considered. Intended for psychology majors or for students planning to major in psychology. Weekly laboratory sessions focus on the process of scientific inquiry, giving students experience in the application of class principles.
An intermediate-level course focusing on a topic or sub-discipline within psychology.
An intermediate-level course focusing on a topic or sub-discipline within psychology.
An examination of the effects of drugs on the brain and behavior. Content focuses on the mechanism by which legal and illicit drugs affect the brain and on how drug-induced brain changes alter behavior. In addition, major biological and psychological theories of addiction are examined. This class also explores how drugs are used and abused in different societies and cultures, the effects of this use and abuse on psychology and behavior, and how addiction is treated. Laboratory course. This course cannot be taken for credit if the student has already received credit for PSYC 349.
An examination of the effects of drugs on the brain and behavior. Content focuses on the mechanism by which legal and illicit drugs affect the brain and on how drug-induced brain changes alter behavior. In addition, major biological and psychological theories of addiction are examined. This class also explores how drugs are used and abused in different societies and cultures, the effects of this use and abuse on psychology and behavior, and how addiction is treated. Laboratory course. This course cannot be taken for credit if the student has already received credit for PSYC 349.
An examination of the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development of infants and children, with a primary emphasis on theoretical issues and scientific methodology. Development is presented as a process of progressive interaction between the active, growing individual and his or her constantly changing and multifaceted environment. Organized chronologically with an approximately equal emphasis on the prenatal through middle childhood periods of development. Includes a laboratory that focuses on designing and conducting studies (including data analyses) to answer empirical questions on human development. Not open for credit to students who have received credit for PSYC 219.
An examination of the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development of infants and children, with a primary emphasis on theoretical issues and scientific methodology. Development is presented as a process of progressive interaction between the active, growing individual and his or her constantly changing and multifaceted environment. Organized chronologically with an approximately equal emphasis on the prenatal through middle childhood periods of development. Includes a laboratory that focuses on designing and conducting studies (including data analyses) to answer empirical questions on human development. Not open for credit to students who have received credit for PSYC 219.
This course will be an examination of gender differences and similarities in behavior, major theories of gender, and the role that gender plays in interacting with others. Students will design, implement, analyze, and present original research in the area of gender.
This course will be an examination of gender differences and similarities in behavior, major theories of gender, and the role that gender plays in interacting with others. Students will design, implement, analyze, and present original research in the area of gender.
An introduction to theoretical and methodological approaches to structuring, collecting, analyzing, and reporting qualitative data. The course begins with various theoretical perspectives on critical thinking and analysis relevant to designing and implementing research, including post-positivist, social constructivist, phenomenology, and critical theory. Research approaches studied in this course include ethnography, phenomenology, case studies, grounded theory, naturalistic inquiry, thematic synthesis, and mixed-method techniques. Various data types used in qualitative analysis are considered, including textual, visual, and observational data. The course also explores the appropriateness of analysis in addressing research questions and solving practical, real-world issues.
A study of the major conceptual approaches that are adopted as clinicians assess, define, and conduct clinical interventions. Topics addressed include the nature of the client-therapist relationship, results from empirical investigation of therapeutic outcomes, ethical dilemmas faced in clinical practice and research, and problems peculiar to subspecialties such as forensic psychology and community psychology.
This seminar examines selected topics and issues in human judgment and decision-making. Drawing largely from primary sources, the course considers various approaches to the study of decision-making, as well as descriptions and theories of human decision-making derived from those approaches. Students are led to reflect on the relevance and application of such issues to real-world choices in arenas such as economics, politics, business and marketing, health and medicine, and at individual, organizational, and broadly social levels.
An examination of current scientific study of consciousness and the cognitive unconscious, including neural correlates of conscious actions, the emergence of consciousness in evolution, and related topics. The course emphasizes how scientific results inform understanding of the mind-body problem, the tenability of competing philosophical and neurobiological approaches to consciousness, the extent to which methods of psychology and neuroscience can provide new insights into the nature of consciousness, and how these issues take on a new form in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.
This seminar considers how psychologists put their skills and training to work in support of transformative futures for individuals, communities, and society. To understand how social change happens, this course draw on theories from community psychology, organizational psychology, and liberation/critical psychology to explore the types of leadership practices and organizational structures needed to create and sustain social change efforts.

Religious Studies

A survey of American religious history and an introduction to the critical interrogation of each of the course’s orienting terms--American, religion, and history. This course considers key concepts, central questions, and select archival material in the historical study of American religion through the examination of specific figures, signal moments, and significant movements from colonial encounter to the present, and it explores how the study of religion in American history intersects with other categories of human distinction and difference-making, including race, space, gender, sex, and class.
This course explores Buddhist contributions to global conversations on poverty, environment, racism, capitalism, and gender. The central questions examined will be: what should the world look like and how do Buddhists engage to make that vision a reality?
An examination of the Holocaust from theological, historical and social psychological perspectives. Exploration of diverse religious and moral worldviews with particular attention to the ethical and unethical responses of victims, perpetrators and witnesses. What are the implications of the Holocaust for transformation of moral thought and behavior? Topics include cruelty, social conformity, altruism, forgiveness, survival and the function of conscience during and in the aftermath of atrocity. Authors include Emil Fackenheim, Elie Wiesel, Raul Hilberg, Christopher Browing, Primo Levi, Marion Kapland, Philip Hallie, and Lawrence Langer.
An examination of the Holocaust from theological, historical and social psychological perspectives. Exploration of diverse religious and moral worldviews with particular attention to the ethical and unethical responses of victims, perpetrators and witnesses. What are the implications of the Holocaust for transformation of moral thought and behavior? Topics include cruelty, social conformity, altruism, forgiveness, survival and the function of conscience during and in the aftermath of atrocity. Authors include Emil Fackenheim, Elie Wiesel, Raul Hilberg, Christopher Browing, Primo Levi, Marion Kapland, Philip Hallie, and Lawrence Langer.
This seminar examines the history and methodological development of the discipline of religious studies. After surveying the discipline's inception in textual studies in the late Enlightenment period, the course examines its connections to earlier theological traditions, and the branching out into sociological, hermeneutical, and phenomenological approaches in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The seminar aims to acquaint junior majors with the complexities involved in studying religious phenomena, as well as with the categories and frameworks that constitute the contemporary multi-disciplinary field of religious studies.
In this course students examine human relationships with non-human animals through the lenses of Buddhism, Christianity, theories and methods in religious studies, and through reflection on their own lives. What roles have non-human animals played and do they play now in these religious traditions, in other aspects of culture, and in the lives of students themselves? How does having a body, an attribute that human and non-human animals share, relate to religion, its study, and human-animal relations? Students volunteer in animal-related groups (veterinarian offices, animal shelters, and farms, for example) as they find their own voices in this emerging interdisciplinary field.