Interdisciplinary Studies

Courses

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ISF 10 Enduring Questions and Great Books of the Western Tradition 4 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Spring 2018
This course is a broad survey of major canonical works (“Great Books”) emphasizing from the premodern traditions of Western Civilization since the Greeks. These texts offer responses to central questions that, across the disciplinary divides, continue to inform contemporary work in the social sciences and the humanities. By considering these enduring questions and the responses of writers in Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern Europe, we seek to examine core issues of the liberal arts as they find expression across what would later become disciplinary divisions.

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Objectives & Outcomes

Course Objectives: To offer students an intense engagement with canonical thinkers of the western tradition, demonstrating the enduring nature of their queries and questions across the disciplines of the social sciences and humanities.

Student Learning Outcomes: Students are expected to acquire a familiarity with many core debates in the western intellectual tradition, and to be able to identify the pre-disciplinary and interdisciplinary roots of contemporary inquiries in the social sciences and humanities.

Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj/Undergraduate

Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.

Instructor: Bhandari

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ISF 50 Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence 3 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Spring 2019
It’s hard not to open a newspaper or magazine today and see claims being made for artificial intelligence. Advocates argue that software programs will now be able to even perform creative jobs (as opposed to just routine ones) and that this is both a matter of celebration and concern. Critics argue that these claims are hyperbolic, while others argue that they are too close to reality and an indication of how much autonomy we have ceded to machines. In this course, we will pick apart all of these claims. We will ask: how have different human societies conceived of “intelligence,” natural or artificial, and how has this varied with place and time?
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Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj/Undergraduate

Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.

Instructor: Kelkar

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence: Read Less [-]

ISF 60 Technology and Values 3 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2008, Fall 2006
If science and technology are value-laden activities, then where exactly do the values lie? In this class, we will pick apart the black-box of science and technology and look for values not just in terms of bad actors, corruption, or "implications," but in the processes that constitute modern technoscience itself. These processes include: the ways in which researchers construct problems, solutions, facts, and artifacts; the norms, standards, stories, and patronage relations that underlie science and technology; and finally, how the future is imagined and realized. Readings will include academic and journalistic texts as well as science fiction.
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Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj/Undergraduate

Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.

Technology and Values: Read Less [-]

ISF 61 Moral Reasoning and Human Action: The Quest for Judgment 3 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Fall 2016, Spring 2015
This is an interdisciplinary survey course that seeks to understand how we define justice, evil, and individual responsibility in modern society. In particular we are going to probe carefully how humans reflect on and practice the process of moral reasoning. We will focus on human behavior in extreme situations: war, life and death conflicts, genocide and mass killing, as well as competing conceptions of human freedom. The course has a distinctive dual purpose. On the one hand we want to encourage the learning of critical thinking skills. This includes the ability to systematically evaluate information and competing moral claims. Also, it is intended as an exposure to the interdisciplinary approach. That is, how can different perspectives illuminate the same issue? With this in mind the course draws on important work from philosophy and ethics, social psychology, jurisprudential analysis, historical-political accounts, and personal memoirs.
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Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj/Undergraduate

Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.

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ISF 62 Representations of Self-Deception in the Modern World 3 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2012, Spring 2012
In this course, we will utilize works in the humanities and the social sciences in order to explore a number of dimensions of self-deception in the modern world. The focus will be upon the willingness to falsify both personal life as well as one's position in the public sphere. The course will begin with an examination of the psychological dimension, emphasizing the importance of the nature of unconscious experience. In this context, we will examine how self-awareness is shaped by personal relationships, especially family arrangements. In addition, we will look at the manner in which people often engage in acts of self-deception with regard to the political realm.
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Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj/Undergraduate

Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.

Representations of Self-Deception in the Modern World: Read Less [-]

ISF 98 Directed Group Study 1 - 3 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2017, Spring 2016
Seminars for the group study of selected topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses. Topics will vary from semester to semester.
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Rules & Requirements

Credit Restrictions: Enrollment is restricted; see the Introduction to Courses and Curricula section of this catalog.

Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.

Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 1-3 hours of lecture per week

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj/Undergraduate

Grading/Final exam status: Offered for pass/not pass grade only. Final exam not required.

Directed Group Study: Read Less [-]

ISF 100A Introduction to Social Theory and Cultural Analysis 4 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Summer 2019 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2019
This course, required of all ISF majors but open to all students, provides an introduction to the works of foundational social theorists of the nineteenth century, including Karl Marx and Max Weber. Writing in what might be called the “pre disciplinary” period of the modern social sciences, their works cross the boundaries of anthropology, economics, history, political science, sociology, and are today claimed by these and other disciplines as essential texts. We will read intensively and critically from their respective works, situating their intellectual contributions in the history of social transformations wrought by industrialization and urbanization, political revolution, and the development of modern consumer society.
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Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3-4 hours of lecture and 0-1 hours of discussion per week

Summer:
6 weeks - 8-10 hours of lecture and 0-2.5 hours of discussion per week
8 weeks - 6-7.5 hours of lecture and 0-1.5 hours of discussion per week

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj/Undergraduate

Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.

Introduction to Social Theory and Cultural Analysis: Read Less [-]

ISF 100B Interdisciplinary Theories of the Self and Identity 4 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2018, Spring 2015
This course will explore how people come to develop and value the self as well their specific social identities. The course will draw on anthropology, sociology, neurobiology and philosophy to grapple with that which is most intimate yet often most opaque to us: our own selves. Yet we shall also explore the cultural limits of our unstable understanding of our individuated selves as well as the dialectic of self and other in the formation of identity.
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Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 4 hours of lecture per week

Summer:
6 weeks - 10 hours of lecture per week
8 weeks - 7.5 hours of lecture per week

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj/Undergraduate

Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.

Instructor: Bhandari

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ISF 100C Language and Identity 4 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2018, Spring 2017
This course examines the role of language in the construction of social identities, and how language is tied to various forms of symbolic power at the national and international levels.? Drawing on case studies from Southeast Asia, Europe, Canada, and the U.S., we will pay special attention to topics such as the legitimization of a national language, the political use of language in nation-building processes, the endangerment of indigenous languages, and processes of linguistic subordination and domination. This course will be interdisciplinary in its attempt to understand language in terms of history, politics, anthropology and sociology.
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Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week

Summer:
6 weeks - 7.5 hours of lecture per week
8 weeks - 5.5 hours of lecture per week
10 weeks - 4.5 hours of lecture per week

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj/Undergraduate

Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.

Instructor: Xu

Language and Identity: Read Less [-]

ISF C100C Word and Image 4 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Spring 2007, Spring 2004
This course is designed to sharpen our skills in understanding what happens when the world of images and words meet. Starting with the work from the Western "classical" tradition we will proceed to investigate how word/image constellations operate in a variety of media, including sculpture and poetry, painting and prose, death masks, tableaux vivants, photography, and advertising.
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Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj/Undergraduate

Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.

Instructor: Sanders

Also listed as: SCANDIN C114

Word and Image: Read Less [-]

ISF C100G Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society 4 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Spring 2018, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This course provides an overview of the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) as a way to study how our knowledge and technology shape and are shaped by social, political, historical, economic, and other factors. We will learn key concepts of the field (e.g., how technologies are understood and used differently in different communities) and apply them to a wide range of topics, including geography, history, environmental and information science, and others. Questions this course will address include: how are scientific facts constructed? How are values embedded in technical systems?

Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society: Read More [+]

Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1.5 hours of discussion per week

Summer:
6 weeks - 7.5 hours of lecture and 3.5 hours of discussion per week
8 weeks - 6 hours of lecture and 3 hours of discussion per week

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj/Undergraduate

Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.

Instructors: Mazzotti, Winickoff

Also listed as: HISTORY C182C/STS C100

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ISF 100D Introduction to Technology, Society, and Culture 4 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2018 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2014
This course surveys the technological revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, it then focuses on the development of the computer and the Internet. The final part examines the impact of the Internet on social movements.
Introduction to Technology, Society, and Culture: Read More [+]

Hours & Format

Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3-4 hours of lecture per week

Summer:
6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture per week
8 weeks - 6 hours of lecture per week

Additional Details

Subject/Course Level: Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj/Undergraduate

Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.

Introduction to Technology, Society, and Culture: Read Less [-]

ISF 100E The Globalization of Rights, Values, and Laws in the 21st Century 4 Units [+]Expand course description

Terms offered: Summer 2019 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2018 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2013
. This interdisciplinary course is an introduction to the complex interplay of transnational values, international rights and legal institutions that increasingly govern social, cultural and geopolitical interactions in our contemporary world ong Read More...