CHN 410/510 / A Reading and Discussion of the Great Imaginative Buddhist Novel Journey to the West (Xiyou ji) / Professor Stephen Durrant
Few novels in world history have been more beloved and have contributed more to popular culture than the sixteenth century Chinese novel Journey to the West, or the shorter version we will read The Monkey & The Monk (497 pp). The inspiration was an actual journey from China to India in the sixth century by the great Buddhist scholar-monk Xuanzang (596?-664 CE) to obtain Buddhist scriptures, which he could then translate and share with the Chinese world of his time. His trip across the deserts and mountains of Central Asia inspired stories, some highly fantastic. Despite the novel’s fantasy and playfulness, it is often read as a serious Buddhist allegory of the journey toward enlightenment and has been classified as one of the four masterworks of Ming dynasty (1368-1644) fiction. Reading and discussing this novel, I promise, will be quite a trip!
GEOG 410 / Geography of the Mexican-American Borderland / Scott Warren
This regional geography course explores the environment, history, culture, politics, and economy of the United States and Mexico borderland. The borderland is a contact zone where cultures come together and break apart, where multibillion dollar industries exist alongside intense poverty, and where crises and problems (both real and imagined) seem to never end. As a geography course, we are especially interested in the relationship between people and place in the borderland, and how people’s lives are impacted by the international line. In this class we will put the problems of the border into a larger context and move toward a deeper understanding of this important region.
MATH 106 / University Math / Craig Tingey
Topics include mathematics of finance, applied geometry, exponential growth and decay, and a nontechnical introduction to the concepts of calculus. The goal of the course is to begin to think and reason mathematically in many different areas which is why formulas and memorization are not emphasized.
PPPM 410 / End-of-Life Care in the United States
We will discuss issues around end-of-life care, including what it means to die in the U.S. and problems with our current healthcare system and ways to improve it. This includes discussions of health policy, medical ethics, different philosophies toward death, as well as end-of-life care for incarcerated individuals. This issue has become more urgent in the U.S. for both the general and incarcerated populations; by 2030, 20% of the U.S. population will be elderly (aged 65+) and exceed the number of children for the first time in the history of the U.S. It is well recognized that the current system is not working and is incredibly costly.
PSY 410 / Psychological Perspectives on Self and Identity / Inga Schowengerd
The psychological constructs of identity and self will be utilized to survey the varying ways in which the experience and nature of “one’s own sense of self” is examined and elucidated across the major sub-fields of psychology, including: developmental; personality, social, cognitive, abnormal, counseling, organizational, occupational, humanistic, existential, and transpersonal psychology. Particular consideration will be given to the significance of such cultural and contextual factors as race, ethnicity and gender.
PSY 510 / Evolutionary Psychology: Theories, Findings, and Future Possibilities / Holly Arrow
This course investigates how the tools of evolutionary theory have been applied to develop and test ideas about human behavior and the many forces (cognition, culture, development, emotion, social influence) that shape this behavior. We will examine the intellectual history of evolutionary psychology, including the insights, assumptions, and blind spots that have guided the development of theories, the choice of questions, and the collection and interpretation of data. We will also speculate about new questions / ideas / hypotheses that could be explored using the concepts and methods developed by evolutionary psychology and associated fields.