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Graduate School Classes
AFAM 557au, Introduction to Jazz Studies. Tuesday 1.30-3.20
An overview of the music and its cultural history, with consideration of the influence of jazz on the visual arts, dance, literature, and film; an introduction to the scholarship and methods of jazz studies. Also AMST 703au, ANTH 681au. John
Szwed.
AFAM 682au, Race, Class, and Public Policy. An investigation into the state of black-white inequality since the 1960s. This research seminar addresses theories of race; the role of societal institutions in perpetuating or ameliorating racial inequality; the race-class debate; the issues of affirmative action and social policy. Also SOCY 652au. Dalton Conley.
AMST 703au, Introduction to Jazz Studies. An overview of the music and its cultural history, with consideration of the influence of jazz on the visual arts, dance, literature, and film; an introduction to the scholarship and methods of jazz studies. Also AFAM 557au, ANTH 681au. John
Szwed.
ANTH 569au, Economic Anthropology. An introduction to understanding economic systems in other cultures and societies. How work and leisure is organized, who gets what and how, and how economic concerns tie into other aspects of social life. Major debates and controversies examined, and examples from different parts of the world are presented. No prior training in economics or anthropology necessary. Enrique Mayer.
ANTH 597a, Sustainable Development and Conservation: Introduction to Social
Aspects. This course provides a fundamental understanding of the social aspects involved in implementing sustainable development and conservation projects, focusing on applied problems regarding the participation of people in such projects and the impacts such projects have on people. Communities are a major focus, particularly the social divisions and social ties relevant to the community management of resources. The course reviews different types of development and conservation projects and the particular problems they pose for indigenous people. It also examines short-term methodologies for evaluating the social aspects of such projects. This course is a prerequisite for F&ES 752b and F&ES 759b. Also F&ES 757a. Carol Carpenter.
ANTH 626bu, Anthropological Perspectives on Gender and Health.
Examines how issues of gender articulate with health as examined by anthropologists. Topics include women's health (reproductive issues, STDs, sexual violence, genital surgry, etc.), men's health (especially alcohol and drug use, STDs, violence, occupational issues), and issues of sexual identity, with a special emphasis on political, economic, and cultural aspects of gender and health. In addition, we look at moral/political issues like abortion and new reproductive technologies from an anthropological perspective. Linda-Anne
Rebhun.
ANTH 629bu, Rhetorics and Publics. An examination of the relationship between ideas of language use and function and the organization and imaginary of sociopolitical practice. We query such concepts as "rhetoric" and "the public" in a variety of historical and ethnographic contexts, from the ideas of language among Spanish and Nahuatl speakers during the conquest of Mexico to the oratory of Patrick Henry and Abraham Lincoln. Bernard Bate.
E&EB 515au, Conservation Biology and the Environment. An introduction to the basic ecological and evolutionary principles underpinning efforts to conserve the earth's biodiversity. These principles are then examined in the context of efforts to halt the rapidly increasing disappearance of both plants and animals. Case studies are examined in detail. While some sociological and economic issues are discussed, the emphasis is on the biological aspects of these crucial problems. Jeffrey Powell, Oswald Schmitz, Stephen Stearns, Adalgisa
Caccone.
E&EB 520au, Population Ecology. An introduction to the theoretical context and empirical grounding of the science of population ecology. Emphasis is placed on the determinants of patterns of distribution and abundance from demographic and population perspectives. Animal behavior is treated in an ecological context, as exemplars of life history consequences of demography, and as modulators of competitive and predatory responses. Staff.
E&EB 540au, AIDS and Society. The natural history, biology, and epidemiology of AIDS; social, ethical, public policy, and political aspects of AIDS and of the ways societies address a medical crisis. Alvin
Novick.
E&EB 545bu, Problems in Bioethics. A consideration of social and ethical problems raised by advances in biological and medical research. Several timely topics examined in depth, with frequent student oral reports.
ECON 737au, Economics of Natural Resources. Linking of abstract economic concepts to concrete policy and management decisions. Application of theoretical tools of economics to global warming, pollution control, fisheries, forestry, recreation, and mining. Robert
Mendelsohn.
ECON 738a/b, Workshop on Environmental and Natural Resources.
William Nordhaus, Christopher Timmins, and Robert Mendelsohn.
ECON 749a and 750b, Trade and Development Workshop. A forum for graduate students and faculty with an interest in the economic problems of developing countries. Faculty, students, and a limited number of outside speakers discuss research in progress. Faculty.
ECON 776bu, Economics of Population. Analysis of economic aspects of population change, including fertility, mortality and health, composition of households, migration, and labor force behavior. Microeconomic models of household behavior and demographic measurement theory used to account for economic and demographic behavior of persons in low- and high-income countries. T. Paul Schultz.
ENAS 641a, Biological Processes in Environmental Engineering.
Fundamental aspects of microbiology and biochemistry, including stoichiometry, kinetics, and energetics of biochemical reactions, microbial growth, and microbial ecology, as they pertain to biological processes for the transformation of environmental contaminants; principles for analysis and design of aerobic and anaerobic processes including suspended- and attached-growth systems, for treatment of conventional and hazardous pollutants in municipal and industrial wastewaters and in groundwater. Robert Ely. Mon/Wed 9-10.15
ENAS 643a, Transport and Fate of Organic Chemicals in the
Environment. Fundamental chemical and physical processes controlling the distribution, transport, and transformation of anthropogenic organic chemicals in aqueous environments including soils, sediments, and groundwater. The course provides basic knowledge about the following: (1) the use of chemical and physical principles to quantify the thermodynamics and kinetics of individual processes, (2) the use of chemical structure to understand these processes at the molecular level, and (3) a framework for evaluating the relative importance of these processes so that the fate of a particular chemical in a particular environment may be predicted. Joseph
Pignatello.
ENAS 645b, Industrial Ecology. Industrial ecology is an organizing concept that is increasingly applied to define various interactions of today's technological society with both natural and altered environments. Technology and its potential for modification and change are central to this topic, as are implications for government policy and corporate response. The course discusses how industrial ecology is being applied in corporations to minimize the environmental impacts of products, processes, and services, and shows how industrial ecology serves as a technological framework for science, policy, and management in government and society. Also F&ES 501b. Thomas Graedel, William Ellis.
ENAS 646a, Environmental Hydrogeology. An introduction to the essential elements of hydrogeologic processes. Course topics include groundwater flow, occurrence and movement of water in the vadose zone, streamflow generation, groundwater contamination, and transport of chemicals in groundwater. Computer software packages are used to reinforce concepts presented in class. A modest background in general physics and calculus is required. James
Saiers.
HPA 510a, Health Policy and Health Systems. An introduction to the making and understanding of health policy. The various goals of policy making and the alternative means of achieving those goals examined. Health issues placed in the context of broader social goals and values. The current performance of the health care system assessed, with particular emphasis on shifting needs, rising costs, and changing institutional arrangements. An overview of the important actors in the health care and political systems and introduction to methods for understanding their behavior. Students apply these methods to a set of concrete policy issues. Mark
Schlesinger.
HPA 514b, Government and Health Policy. The various processes by which governmental health policy is made in the United States and the substance and background of current policy debates. Primary emphasis on Congress and executive branch agencies, with attention given to both the financing and organization of health services and to public health problems like AIDS. Different policy actions or problems discussed weekly, selected for both their importance and their usefulness in illuminating important aspects of the policy process. Karl
Kronebusch.
HPA 521a, Health Services Epidemiology. Epidemiologic methods and data may be used to understand and improve public health practice, health services research, and health policy. This course emphasizes methodological and conceptual issues through a research-oriented approach to health promotion and disease prevention, the measurement of health status, assessment of health needs and population-based planning, health-related behaviors and beliefs, evaluation of medical practices and health programs, and public health decision making. Prerequisite: first-term core. Alexander Ortega.
HPA 529a, Policy Analysis and Health Politics. Provides students with policy analytic skills and teaches students to think critically and write succinctly about health care policy. Integrates the study of policy analysis and the world of health politics as analysts must do in real life. Considers the nature of public policy and the theories of policy analysis and policy decision making, eight key components of the policy analysis process, and jointly examines the impact of major political organizations and institutions on the process of analyzing and selecting public health care policy. Prerequisite: HPA 510a. Karl
Kronebusch.
HPA 538a, Regulation and Public Health Policy. This course provides students with an understanding of the role of government regulation in public health and health-related markets. Students learn to analyze how economic and political forces can influence both the development and the implementation of public health regulations. The course utilizes theories and empirical evidence from economics, political science, law, and public health to help students answer five questions relating to government intervention in health-related markets: Why regulate? How are regulatory rules made? How are regulations enforced? How do we determine whether regulations are successful? What alternatives exist to regulation? Students also apply insights and concepts from the course to explain policy making in public health bureaucracies. Mary Olson.
HPA 544a, Public Law and Public Health: The Law, the Individual, and the
State. A basic orientation to the law, the legal system, and legal decision making as they relate to the public's health. Emphasis on the relation between the autonomy of the individual and the power of the state in addressing issues affecting the public's health. Topics include civil commitment, right to refuse treatment, procreation, human experimentation and clinical research, domestic violence, adoption and foster care, religious practices, and seat belt and helmet laws. Issues that must be considered in assessing the state's silence, omission, intervention, or intrusion into health matters of the person, the family, or the group discussed. Prerequisite: first-term core. John
Culhane.
HPA 546b, Ethical Issues in Public Health. Public health policy is always the product of controversy. Scientific considerations blend with political and ethical conflicts in public health, and questions of autonomy, coercion, justice, and the common good are central. This seminar discusses these issues of ethics and political theory in reference to selected public health issues like preventive medicine and behavior modification, smoking, control of infectious diseases, and contraception and teen pregnancy. Bruce Jennings.
HPA 547b, Law and the Management of Health Care Organizations.
A survey course of legal topics important to the management of health care organizations designed to acquaint the future health care manager with the basic legal issues that daily impact the provision of health care services. Examination of the relations among the parties involved in the delivery of health care; the law of business organizations, including that of corporations, partnerships, and professional corporations; the legal constraints that operate upon health care organizations, including state and federal regulatory laws, labor relations, and antitrust doctrines; and doctrines particularly applicable to managed care organizations. Consideration of a variety of emerging legal issues in the health care field. W. John Thomas.
HPA 560b, Issues in Health Care, Financing, and Reimbursement.
This course introduces students to the organization and operation of the American health care system. The course examines systems of health care delivery and finance and recent trends in their organization, including the growth of managed care. The course seeks to provide students with an understanding of the existing structure of the system and to provide them with conceptual frameworks to consider forces for change and the implications of recent trends for policy and management. Susan Busch.
HPA 570a, Cost-Effectiveness Analysis and Decision Making.
Introduction to the methods of decision analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis in health-related technology assessment, resource allocation, and clinical decision making. Aims to develop technical competence in the methods used; practical skills in applying these tools to case-based studies of medical decisions and public health choices; and an appreciation of the uses and limitations of these methods at the levels of national policy, health care organizations, and individual patient care. A. David
Paltiel.
HPA 588a, Economics of Alcohol, Drugs, and Crime. This course uses economics as a base discipline in studying the use and abuse of alcohol and illicit drugs and the various social problems produced by each-such as crime, lost productivity, misuse of health care, and impact on families and children. Other topics included are cost-effectiveness of treatment versus the criminal justice system, racial and gender differences, comorbidity with psychiatric problems, inner-city drug problems, problems of youth, and the history of drug use. Such policy alternatives as prevention, treatment, taxation of alcohol, legalization of illicit drugs, and the criminal justice system are analyzed. Jody
Sindelar.
HPA 596b, Critical Policy Issues in the AIDS Pandemic. Seminar for students with an understanding of the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS (either through work experience or course work). Students in public health, medicine, nursing, law, management, and international studies will appreciate this in-depth interdisciplinary examination of key policy challenges that this pandemic presents, as well as the sharpened skills in policy analysis that such examination necessarily fosters. Class size limited to eighteen students. Prerequisite: first-term core. Michael
Merson.
HSAR 500a, Introduction to the Study of Art History. This class introduces students to the methods of the discipline of art history, such as, for example, connoisseurship, iconography, feminism, and social art history. The class is reserved for incoming graduate students in the History of Art department. Christine Mehring.
PHIL 700a, Heidegger: The Origin of the Work of Art. A critical reading of this central text. Special emphasis is placed on its relationship to Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics. Also CPLT 700a. Karsten Harries.
PHIL 701b, Kant: The Critique of Judgment. Karsten Harries. Also CPLT 701b.
PHIL 702bu, Political Philosophy and Political Membership.
Conditions of membership have not been subjected to rigorous philosophical examination in liberal-democratic theory. How can boundaries and borders be justified? In a world of deterritorialized politics, what is the moral justification, if any, for retaining nation-state borders? By focusing on Rawls, Walzer, Habermas, Arendt, and contemporary theories of citizenship (Beiner, Carens, Nussbaum, Bauboeck), this course deals with the ethics and politics of membership. Seyla Benhabib.
PHIL 657bu, Civic Republicanism. This course examines the republican criticism of and alternative to liberalism, where the latter is understood broadly so as to include any political ideal that emphasizes individual freedom and individual rights, thus incorporating both what are popularly described as liberals and conservatives (Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians). We examine the contemporary debate, focusing on the liberalism of John Rawls (A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism) and the republicanism of Michael Sandel (Democracy's Discontent). Michael Weber.
PHIL 658au, Ethical Theory and the Virtues. Examination of questions about what it is to be a virtuous, or morally good, person; the relation of virtues and vices (good and bad traits of character) to good and bad motives, to right and wrong actions, and to social, political, and religious contexts. Readings mainly from contemporary authors. Robert Adams.
PLSC 506au, Game Theory and Politics. This course introduces students to equilibrium concepts of game theory and their applications to voting behavior, multiparty competition, government and coalition formation in parliamentary systems, comparative institutional analysis, and rational choice models of democratization. Alastair Smith.
PLSC 710a,b, Analytic Comparative Politics. This course supplements the more traditional approaches to comparative politics with contemporary research on social forces and institutions. The goal is to give students the tools to evaluate and produce systematic and generalizable arguments about comparative politics. The course emphasizes causes and consequences of political institutions, including electoral rules, forms of government, legislatures, and state institutions such as the judiciary, the bureaucracy, and the central bank. Arun Agrawal [F], Frances Rosenbluth [Sp].
PLSC 714a, Corruption, Economic Development, and Democracy.
A seminar on the link between political and bureaucratic institutions on the one hand, and economic development on the other. Consideration is given to the role of international aid and lending organizations such as the World Bank. Particular focus on the impact of corruption on development. Also LAW 20098. Susan Rose-Ackerman.
PLSC 732bu, Markets and States in Comparative Perspective. Victoria Murillo.
PLSC 748au, Political Economy, Governance, and Development.
The link between government structure, on the one hand, and economic growth and development, on the other, is contested, and the empirical evidence is inconclusive. For some, the problem with democracy is that the median voter will not support policies that require sacrifice in the present in order to produce growth in the longer term. For others, democracy is necessary for growth because it assures that the policies adopted will benefit the majority who then become supporters of growth. Leonard Wantchekon.
PLSC 712a,b, Political Economy. The course introduces graduate students to the basic theoretical and methodological approaches to political economy (most notably rational choice and game theory), as well as analyzing important empirical questions, and providing a forum for students to undertake their own research. Some of the empirical topics include transitions to democracy and the market, political competition and economic outcomes, globalization, deregulations, environment, regional integration, federalism and corruption. Frances Rosenbluth [F], Fiona McGillivray [Sp].
PLSC 871a, Health, Law, and Policy. Law and medicine are among the oldest professions, traditionally defined as occupations that collectively set and enforce standards of education, apprenticeship, and the quality of ethics and practice; that grant individual members a large autonomous discretion to determine how to apply those standards in practice in caring for the interests of clients, patients, and the public interest in justice and health; and that in return for adherence to such professional standards are protected from the competition of nonprofessionals and accorded high social status and the chance to earn a comfortable living. In the last twenty years both law and medicine have been undergoing massive structural changes in the organization and financing of their services, in large part driven by intense pressures (in law, chiefly from corporate clients; in medicine, from insurers and the federal government) to cut escalating costs. In both, the result of changes has been significantly to erode the authority and autonomy of professionals to control their markets and the terms on which their services will be rendered; both lawyers and doctors increasingly find that their decisions regarding service and treatment are subject to the direction, supervision, and second-guessing of outside monitors, bureaucratic hierarchies, and regulators. These developments (often coupled with new forms of competition from inside and outside the professions) have given rise to much protest and debate-with traditional lawyers and physicians claiming that new pressures toward standardization and regulation and increased competition are seriously compromising professional values of quality and care for clients/patients; and proponents countering that the new structures promote superior as well as more cost-effective service. This seminar aims to examine and compare the structural changes occurring in law and medicine and to assess their effects on professional values. Also LAW 20130, MGMT 985a. Theodore Marmor, Robert Gordon.
SOCY 501a, Foundations of Sociological Theory. An intensive reading seminar on the textual groundwork of the sociological tradition. An examination of the philosophical commitments, conceptual resources, and empirical arguments of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, Gerry Simmel, and W. E. B. DuBois. Joseph Soares.
SOCY 525a, Issues in Cultural Sociology. After a review of a broad range of contemporary perspectives, the seminar examines in depth, and in its variations, the "strong program" in cultural sociology. We look at theoretical ideas about hermeneutics and interpretation, semiotics and structuralism, social drama and ritual, performance studies, and social approaches to symbolic process. The course also considers empirical studies that apply cultural methods to such issues as politics, violence, civil society, and collective trauma. Readings include works by: Dilthey, Ricoeur, Geertz, Durkheim, Shils, Turner, Saussure, Sahlins, White, Brooks, Wagner-Pacifici, Eyerman, Gibson, Sewell, Alexander, Jacobs, and Smith. Jeffrey Alexander.
SOCY 550a, The Future of Work. This graduate seminar examines the ongoing changes in employment and occupational structures as well as conditions of work as a consequence of information technology, global economic competition, increasing gender equality, and changing work values. Special emphasis is placed on labor markets and career mobility as well as cross-national comparative studies. Karl Ulrich Mayer.
SOCY 555b, Poverty in the United States. Nature, causes, and consequences of poverty in the United States. Topics include: poverty dynamics; distribution across social and demographic characteristics; role of labor markets, family structure, human and social capital; quantitative and qualitative studies; history of antipoverty measures and proposals in the U.S. and other industrialized countries. Lawrence Wu.
SOCY 557a, Current Debates in Political Sociology. Examination of current topics in the sociology of the state and politics. Initial survey of development of the field since the 1960s; primary focus then turns to recent debates, including the racial and gendered character of politics, restructuring of the welfare state, relations between state and civil society and/or social movements. Christopher
Rhomberg.
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