The modern term "Black Death" refers to an epidemic disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, specifically to a cycle of epidemics that struck Europe beginning in 1348. This plague killed an estimated 30% of the population with mortality approaching 80% in some areas. Such wholesale loss of life caused a number of changes in the attitudes of survivors. This course will examine the dramatic effects wrought by this bacterium as both a pathogen and a cultural phenomenon. These issues will be cast in the light of modern knowledge of disease and current, as well as possible future, plagues.

This course will begin with a few lectures to introduce some basic concepts of microbiology and the host/pathogen relationship. Following this introduction, students will be assigned readings from primary and secondary texts on the subject for class discussion. These texts will include, where possible, first hand accounts of the plague of 1348. Students will be assigned a short paper early in the course and will complete a project concerning some aspect of bubonic plague; this will be presented to the class orally at the end of the quarter.

The central theme for this focal point seminar is climate change, the delicate physical balance that exists between "ice age" and "greenhouse" climate conditions, and the social or other consequences that could accompany significant climate changes. Approximately a third to a half of the course will involve the scientific study of climate change and will use primary literature to try to assess our present condition. Colleen McCullough's book: A Creed for the Third Millenium will be used to start the discussion of the human side of climate change in the vein that On the Beach and Alas, Babylon started a past generation thinking about the human consequences of a nuclear conflict.

Throughout the course, the students will be asked to write short papers primarily addressing the book and scientific papers. In a final, longer paper, the student will be asked to reflect upon how his or her thinking has changed because of the book and/or discussion about climate change. Small group oral presentations concerning historical, psychological, social, ethical, religious or other approaches to potential consequences of climate change will be the third major tool for student evaluation in this course.

This seminar examines the events surrounding the construction of the first atomic bomb, beginning with the discovery of the atomic nucleus at the turn of the twentieth century, and continuing through to the first three nuclear explosions: the Trinity test in New Mexico and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The main goal of the seminar is to understand how and why a group of scientists (supplemented by thousands of technicians, construction workers, machinists, etc.) came to build what they called "the gadget." We will first discuss how and why the bomb came to be built, including both the scientific discoveries that made an atomic bomb possible and the historical events that led to the large-scale, secret military-run project to build the bomb. We will then focus on the relationship between science and society: how society affects the way science is done and how society decides whether and how to use the technological products of science. Finally, we will discuss the ethics of the Manhattan Project from the perspectives of the scientists involved, the government, and the citizenry at large.

This course is by nature interdisciplinary-it draws on topics and methods from several different academic areas. It is partly a science course, partly a history course, partly a political science, and partly a philosophy course. Because of this, we will draw upon and develop skills from all these disciplines. Much of our introduction to this wide range of subjects will be through the assigned readings and selected videos; the main focus of the seminar is on learning to analyze and synthesize this material and on developing the ability to communicate, both verbally and in writing, at the university level. However, we will also make use of some of the quantitative reasoning skills that are characteristic of the physical sciences.

This is also a seminar course, in which all students are expected to participate in the classroom discussions. Most days we will spend discussing and analyzing the assigned reading for that day. In addition to discussing the readings, students will write a series of two-page papers throughout the quarter. The topic of each writing assignment will be a question based on the readings and classroom discussion. Students will be expected to answer the question, basing their responses on the material in the readings, or formulate an opinion on the topic and support it with facts. There will also be a midterm and a comprehensive final exam.

This Focal Point class will concentrate on Mural painters and their influence on the Art World in history. Mural making has been around as long as humankind. This class, in a general sense, will explore the influences that effected the great mural painters such as Giotto, Rapheal, and Michelangelo.

In turn the student would see how these works influenced later artists such as Benton, Siquieros, and others. Finally it can be shown as to how these influences had an effect on present day artists (both local and international) such as Weber, Wyland, Gude, and others.

This course can be presented by these methods:

• Slide lecture
• Films
• Discussion
• Field Trips to Mural sites
• Small Projects

Evaluation will be a culmination of of the following:

• Journal entry reflections
• Mid-term and Final
• Small Projects

The greatest immigration of Eastern European Jews to America occurred between 1880-1920. They brought with them the joys and sorrows of a Jewish culture, incorporating and influencing literature, music, art, theater, film, food, and comedy. As a group/class working together, we will attempt to understand the journey that created a cultural perspective and how a culture is influenced and influences current society. Course evaluation will be based on a reading log, reading responses, a midterm, final, and concluding with a bagel-eating contest.

The concept of "globalization" builds on the intellectual tradition of the study of the world economy as a system. This structural interpretation of worldwide economic activity recognizes that some parts of the world constitute a "core" (about 15% of the world’s population), in which reside critical financial, technological, and managerial resources. Other regions make up a "periphery," which is significantly dependent on inputs from the "core" and thus in many ways contingent, subservient, and vulnerable. This theoretical kernel has many visible manifestations in how people run their lives today, from New York’s financial district to the flood-prone lowlands of Bangladesh, and from the garment sweatshops in the Honduras to the post-industrial "green" cities of the European Union.

Ultimately, the dominance of capitalist modes of production and consumption internationally, the hypermobility of finance capital across national borders, the emergence of New York, London, and Tokyo as primary "global cities" and command, control, and communication centers of the world economy, the erosion of national sovereignty and its measured replacement by intergovernmental and supranational regional cooperation, as well as the advent of extraordinary and accessible information technologies, have increasingly enabled the unification of national economies, cultures, societies, and polities in an unprecedented manner. The "MacDonaldization" of the world, as globalization critics call this restructuring trend, is highly controversial. Since the core regions tend to dominate trade, technology, capital, and increasingly culture, resistance has been growing: consumer advocate groups, environmentalists, worker-rights groups, and states that belong to the "periphery" are challenging globalization entities like the World trade Organization and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to amend their procedures and cushion the vulnerable periphery from what they see at the predatory tactics of the core upon the planet’s poor and the environment. In this course we will explore the mechanics of globalization and investigate the claims of its discontents.

Did you know that "sex" was included as one of the protected classes in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a political effort to get the entire Act voted down? Interestingly, this failed effort led to legal protection from sexual harassment on the job. With readings including excerpts from Catharine MacKinnon's seminal 1979 work Sexual Harassment of Working Women, which first outlined sexual harassment as sex discrimination, the recent (1998) Supreme Court decisions in Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellereth and Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, transcripts from women involved in sexual harassment litigation, as well as research on the psychology of sexual harassment, students will come to understand this complex topic as one that lives at the overlap of the psychological and legal worlds. Not only will this class discuss how sexual harassment is defined in both of these worlds, but it will also explicitly examine the influence that these worlds have on one another.

Aside from reading both primary and secondary source material, this course will ask students to engage in critical analysis of concepts presented in class via written (e.g., responses to daily thought questions, interview with an employee discrimination attorney, analysis of recent court case) and verbal (as student leader, class participant, and formal project presentations) projects. Classroom activities will also involve video documentaries about women's experiences with sexual harassment as well as several guest lecturers.

We live in the most technologically advanced society in the most technologically advanced time in history. Yet, "weird" beliefs and superstitions are widespread. Many people believe in mind reading, past-life regression therapy, abductions by extra-errestrials, witches, ghosts, and other supernatural notions. Although science is the foundation of modern technological achievements, many eschew real science in favor of pseudoscience notions such as "scientific creationism", "scientific evidence of racial superiority", "recovered memory syndrome", "alternative medicine". Such supernatural beliefs are prevalent among people of all occupations and every educational and income level. In this course, the student examines several well-understood, psychological processes such as, 1) our sensitivity to coincidence, 2) penchant for developing rituals

and habits to counteract feelings of anxiety or impatience when filling time or when marking expected changes in lifestyles, 3) a fear of failure, 4) attempts to cope with uncertainty, and 5) a need for control of our destinies that often result in irrational beliefs and superstitious and erroneous behavior. The student will discover exactly how

superstitions, erroneous decisions, and weird beliefs are a result of common thinking patterns invoked by attempts to cope with the complexity and uncertainties of life (especially the social aspects of life). Many of these thinking patterns are close to good norms of rationality, whereas others depart sharply from them. Since the good and poor thinking patterns co-exist, we are simultaneously both rational and irrational. The student is introduced to, and encouraged to use, the methods of skepticism to counteract the twin mental positions of cynicism and gullibility that result from the typical application of our typical thinking patterns as coping techniques.

The seminar will follow Hansberry's spectacular, if short, career. We will start with her sources of inspiration--Irish theatre, Langston Hughes, her family history--and view film of her childhood experiences before moving into reading her pathbreaking play, A Raisin in the Sun. Discussing Raisin in terms of its sources and accomplishments, we will also look at the two

Filmed versions and briefly consider the later musical, Raisin. Student assignments for this part of the course will include reading biographical material on Hansberry, reading and summarizing reviews of the original Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun, and trying our hand at writing drama out of our own lives--first monologues, then dialogues. We will Read--maybe act--scene in class.

The second half of the class will be reading the variety of Hansberry's Post-Raisin plays: Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, Les Blancs, etc. The final assignment will be reading a number of critical articles on Hansberry's work generally and on A Raisin in the Sun specifically. Students will choose an article with which they disagree and write a paper summarizing the original article's argument and contrasting it with their own conclusions, supported by specific examples from the dramatic texts and other readings. Students will have opportunities to submit preliminary drafts of this final paper and to revise before final grading. Attendance and participation are required.

The first half of the course focuses on the creation of images of the American Indian woman. Using historical accounts from the diaries of Columbus, Lewis and Clark, U.S. Army soldiers, as well as political art from the Columbian to the Revolutionary War era, we will examine the emergence of the "noble savage" image of American Indian women. Particular attention will be given to understanding American Indian women as symbols of the American landscape: her fertility, her uncultured natural state, her availability to European colonists, and her childlike status. The class will then turn to anthropological accounts of tribes and focus on three themes that shaped American's views of Indian women: the characterization of tribes as "primitive"; the invisibility of Indian women in studies (she becomes the nameless squaw); and the assumption that women had a secondary and insignificant role in tribal society. We will then turn to the American Indian woman as icon of American popular culture from the 1950s to the present, and focus on controversial issues of using Indian culture out of context, divorced from the realities of colonialism and Native women's experience. We will explore two predominant popular culture images. First, using children's books and films, we will examine romanticized images of the Indian Princess (as exemplified by Pocahontas). Then, focusing on American Indian women as "the authentic" Earth Mother, we will examine a study of the Campfire Girls and examine how girls sought wholesomeness by "playing Indian" (sleeping in tipis and wigwams at camps, decorating themselves in "Indian" clothes, and giving themselves "Indian" names). Finally we will watch a thought-provoking film that depicts California, New Age women constructing a sweat lodge.

The second half of the course focuses on writings since the American Indian Movement (1960s) and contemporary Indian's women's struggles for cultural continuity, cultural renewal, and self-definition. Using autobiographical writings by American Indian women, and American Indian women's poetry and prose, we will focus on issues of acculturation to White society, insider/outsider status, and "mixed blood" identities. Finally, the course will end with a focus on Native American women and their encounter with feminism, exploring conflicts, contradictions and continuities between the Women's Movement and American Indian women. Students will complete a variety of written assignments, including keeping a journal.

An important feature of the much discussed movement toward globalization is the formation of preferential trading groups. Among these, the North American Free Trade Agreement is unique in attempting to integrate developing and developed countries. The differences in income levels between Canada and the United States on one hand, and Mexico on the other, pose a challenge to the orthodox theory of economic integration, and have given rise to much political rhetoric. The cultural differences between the NAFTA trading partners is also profound, and further complicate the attempt to remove economic barriers. In this course, we will focus on economic aspects of integration in North America, but beyond that, we will try to see how historic, cultural, and political forces influence economic policy, and how that, in turn, affects economic performance. We will examine globalization and the concerns it raises, the terms of the NAFTA agreement, the motivations of the parties, and the effects of NAFTA on each of the three economies, as well as on non-members. We will also discuss the theory of economic integration, compare NAFTA to the European Union, and analyze the expected effects of the agreement on capital, skilled labor, and unskilled labor. Finally, we will try to consider NAFTA from the point of view of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, as well as of business and unions.

Students in this course are exposed to a number of disciplines (economics, history, political science), as well as a number of different points of view, from outside speakers. In the past such speakers have included representatives from the Canadian consulate, the Mexican trade office, and the Chicago Federation of Labor.

Since the course deals with a contemporary and evolving subject, a number of articles from current periodical will be assigned, apart from the textbook. Students will write six short papers between one and two pages in length, as well as a midterm and final examination.

This focal point will explore how humor empowers different groups, whether defined by their gender, religion, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation or in some other way. We will take a look at how issues of power and the historical treatment of various social groups influence what is deemed funny versus mean spirited. In addressing such questions, the inherent tensions between issues of so-called political correctness, the limits of taste and tolerance, and the forbidden-like nature of what makes something hilariously funny will be noted. Also slated for discussion is how individual members from non-majority groups can find their voice and identity through comedy. So bring your funny bone and put on your thinking cap to seriously dissect an amusing subject area.

Students will be required to keep weekly journals in response to questions posed by the instructor about issues of humor and group identity. In addition, there will be two short research papers on different topics of the student's choice, with a classroom presentation devoted to one of them. In general, class time will be spent viewing humorous materials representative of different social groups, after which students (with the help of the instructor) will lead the class in a critical analysis of various raised issues. There is also at least one field trip to a comedy club planned for this course.

Predicting the future has always been a human obsession. Film, more than any other medium, has the ability and power to envision times and places that have never, or never yet, existed. These two facts are the basis of this course. We will study the nature of film, to see how and why things appear on the screen as they do and how writers and directors present their vision through the medium of motion pictures. We will then view films (one per week) to see how the future has been envisioned in this medium. We will try to understand the contemporary social, political, cultural and economic realities within which the films were made, to see how these existing realities affected visions of the future. We will be concerned only with the future Earth and its people; there will be no spaceships, no monsters (except the human variety) and no interstellar battles.

Students will read lengthy passages concerning film techniques and about the films they will see. They will write an analytical paper each week on the film seen, and will write a extensive and comparative paper at the end of the course. Each week will also have an extensive discussion period, in which students are expected to seriously discuss and analyze the films seen and the broader topics of the course. Discussion, weekly papers and final paper will be the basis of the course grade.