This course provides students with an opportunity to develop their existing critical thinking skills through a specific focus on the concept and empirical phenomenon of competitive advantage in business ((i.e., superior stakeholder value creation). The course addresses a variety of sources of competitive advantage and the interactions between them (including macroenvironmental and industry forces, corporate, business and functional strategies), as well as issues associated with the history and role of business in society, stakeholder engagement, and performance measurement. Readings and assignments will focus on critically analyzing current media coverage of competitive advantage in business, as well as cases. Professor Heather Elms

America leads the western world in the use of harsh punishments: life sentences, death sentences, and extended solitary confinement. Each of these punishments is a type of death penalty: individuals sentenced to life are sentenced to die in prison (death by incarceration), individuals sentenced to death are sentenced to be killed in prison (death by execution, usually lethal injection), and those sentenced to extended terms in solitary confinement are consigned to a “living death” in which they exist as objects to be stored rather than live as human beings with a modicum of autonomy, security, and relationships with other human beings. As a general matter, conditions in American prisons are uniquely painful and degrading, and have been described by researchers as “dehumanizing” and “hellish,” and ultimately “un-survivable” in the face of psychological damage produced by routine violations of human dignity. We will consider harsh sanctions—starting with arrest and moving on to incarceration in jails and prisons, and culminating in executions in the death house. To better understand the dimensions of harsh justice, we will draw on the arts (primarily poetry) and the social sciences (primarily criminology, sociology, and some economics). Professor Robert Johnson

Insecurity is a problem of great scale and complexity that “... stretches across all the levels of analysis from individual to global, and across a spectrum of sectors ranging from cultural and social, through economic and political, to military.”[1] The purpose of this course is to provide students with a deeper appreciation for this complexity by examining both the military and non-military sources, manifestations, and responses to “insecurity” in the Arab/Persian Gulf. The course adopts an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the changes underway and the challenges faced by and emanating from the countries of this region. It examines the ways in which energy resources, ethnic and religious identity, the various forms of governance, as well as interstate rivalries and conflicts and the policies of foreign powers have shaped threat perceptions and security-seeking behaviors.  Professor John Calabrese

[1] Barry Buzan, “Peace, Power, and Security: Contending Concepts in the Study of International Relations,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1984): 110.

Drug use is often characterized as being an individual problem, typically rooted in concepts of free will and choice, character flaws and misdirected (and inappropriate) motivation. This class will provide students with an opportunity to step outside the normal context in which drug use is generally discussed to gain an awareness of the multifaceted nature of the complexity of the drug problem in America that is shaped, driven and impacted by social, cultural, economic, legal, political and biological factors, often outside of the individual’s control. We will pose the question of why we use drugs and discuss how our answers affect the way we think about our own drug use, use by others and the general approaches to drug use and abuse in America. Professor Alexandre Kisner

This course examines why nannies are trusted with our dearest possession, our children, yet are viewed with ambivalence and why there has been such little curiosity, in terms of biography, social history, and psychology, about the contribution these "second mothers" have had on the children they cared for. The course traces the historical evolution of the governess and her status as a threshold figure, suspended between the middle and working class. Likewise, the nanny enjoys a remarkable intimacy with the family, yet ultimately stands apart from it. Students consider the narrative tropes and pop culture stereotypes the nanny has accumulated over time: the magical nanny who restores order to the family; the nanny as the truer mother; the rival nanny who will steal your husband and your children's love; and the evil nanny who may hurt the children she is charged with protecting, as well as looking at the struggles and marginalization of the immigrant working class nanny. Overall, the course employs governesses and nannies to explore issues of class, gender, feminism, ethnicity and race, globalization, outsider-within status, and ways of mothering. Course materials include fiction, film, memoir, theory, social science, and psychology texts. Professor Caimeen Garrett

How do we learn about sex? It’s a complicated question with unique answers based on our families, friends, schools, and identities. It’s also a question that continually plagues students, parents, teachers, administrators, and policymakers. And despite these enduring disputes, U.S. institutions still have no consistent answers even for whether we ought to include sexual education in our curricula, much less what such courses should entail. This class will explore these conversations by examining perspectives on sex education from media, history, scholars, and a variety of professionals currently working in the field. Ultimately, we’ll be interested in when, how, and what we learn about sex from both state-sanctioned and “unapproved” sources. Professor Marnie Twigg

The complexity of forming intimate relationships is an enduring topic of research, fascination and questioning throughout time. This course offers the unique opportunity for an intensive exploration of how the current state of navigating intimacy in emerging adults was shaped through the lens of modern history. “Navigating Intimacy” exposes students to an exciting and timely selection of study materials crossing print, online and visual mediums. Through their research and classroom discussions, the course will propel them on a multi-dimensional academic journey through the various cultural movements that led them to where they are today -- in unprecedented times of confusion and experimentation with their intimate relationships. Students entering college in 2017 are confronted with a staggering amount of choices in lifestyles and love. This course takes them out of casual clusters of confusing self-help conversations into a unique forum to air and debate diverse views on shifting relationship and sexual behaviors from historic and academic perspectives. Our range of study will include a focus on how former cultural shake-ups such as the emergence of the "wild flappers" of the 1920 opened up puritanical mores. We will also dissect how the sexual revolution of the late 1960-and early-1970s paved the way for the modern dating culture students engage in today. Among the complex problems and questions students face when entering college are whether to date one-one-one, group date, hook-up on Tinder, have friends with benefits, embrace gender/sexual fluidity and deal with how peer pressure affects all of their choices. I plan to enlarge the academic study of intimate relationships to include platonic friendships as well, with research materials and discussions that examine the challenges of forming close bonds with persons of diverse backgrounds, cultures and views. Overall, “Navigating Intimacy” is a crucial introductory step into college life, giving students a broad-based knowledge of love relationships and dating trends, with historical benchmarks to give deeper perspective The goal is to provide a foundation of increased clarity on the complexity of forming healthy intimate relationships – a problem and challenge that binds us all as humans and has perplexed scholars throughout history. Professor Iris Krasnow

Although many prefer to view the modern age as one of progress and enlightenment, it has also witnessed some of history’s worst atrocity crimes, that is, crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes. What makes these crimes so horrific is not only their magnitude but also the fact that they were usually carried out by people who can be considered, more or less, to be normal, even banal. Thus, the persistence of atrocity crimes not only challenges the view that moral progress is inevitable but also raises profound questions about the human capacity to inflict suffering on others, even when they are our neighbors. This course explores several atrocities of the modern era, including slavery in the United States, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, apartheid in South Africa, the Rwanda genocide, and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. The course first considers the history of these atrocities and the context in which they occurred and then looks at the contemporaneous responses to these atrocities by communities, nations, and the international community. Why has the response more often than not been one of inaction, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of the extent of the crimes being committed? Students also look at the responses to atrocities after the violence has ended, whether through reparation, war crimes tribunals, truth and reconciliation commissions, or no response at all. What should be the goal of a society’s response to an atrocity it, or many of its members, perpetrated, to what extent have particular responses led to a group’s acknowledgment of responsibility, and can acknowledgement pave the way towards reconciliation? Finally, the course looks at the complex issue of responsibility and how to apportion responsibility. Can only individuals be held responsible for atrocity crimes and if so, the leaders only or also the followers? Does the idea of collective responsibility have merit and, if so, how does this affect the nature of reparation and acknowledgment? Part history and part group psychology, this course is unique in that it requires students to reflect on the foundations of their own moral views and class discussions animate deeply held assumptions about human nature and human responsibility. Professor Daniel Schneider