English

This course approaches the history of authorship by focusing on texts either purporting to be written by fictional characters (by authors such as Defoe, Swift, Robinson, or Beckett), or featuring fictionalized versions of "real" authorial figures (such as Chaucer, Lessing, Joyce, Roth). Students study texts that deliberately or mischievously blur those boundaries. In addition to thinking about authorship, students explore the development of kinds of literary characters.

The class will explore a range of topics in the philosophy of mind, such as the nature of consciousness and thought, the nature of human action and the problem of determinism, the relation between mind (or mental phenomena) and body (or physical phenomena), and the possibility of artificial intelligence. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the interplay between philosophical research in these areas and research across a broad range of scientific disciplines, such as neuroscience, life sciences, medicine and computing. By comparing the work of thinkers as diverse as Dennett, Davidson, Putnam, the Churchlands, Fodor, Ryle, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, students will encounter and critically evaluate the cutting edge of modern thinking about the mind, and to the issues that must be resolved before embarking on any scientific exploration of the mind.

This course examines the link between journalism and social change since the emergence of the mass media, with a special focus on the 19th century to present . It explores the influence of journalism on historical evolution, both in the sense of change or in maintaining the established order. This course discusses the role of the media and information during WWI, WWII, the Cold War, processes of de-colonization, and the post-Cold War world. NOTE: This course is the same as COMM 111, but taught in English.

The course provides an overview of some of the most salient developments in the history of science. These include the influence of Ancient Greek philosophy and Christian theology on the origins of modern scientific thinking, the development of the experimental method, of modern views on the nature of the cosmos, of Newtonian science, and of theories of biological evolution. In addition, the course looks at the more recent history of science, covering the industrial revolution and the role of science in World Wars I and II and their aftermath including the space race, the increasing importance of ICT in science, and the development of the Human Genome Project. It provides an understanding of the intellectual bases of these developments as well as the chronological framework within which they took place.

Today's world relies much on the accumulation, presentation, and interpretation of large quantities of information. Statistics is a tool that enables us to organize our data in an efficient manner, and provides us with methods that help us understand the relationships that occur in our data and our increasingly complex world. This course draws on examples from multiple disciplines, such as political science, economics, medical sciences, and biology to demonstrate how to search for and evaluate patterns in large amounts of data, as well as to interpret what these patterns tell us about the world. The material in this course covers data display, statistical inference, regression and experimental design. The course primarily focuses on developing substantive and precise understanding of the various quantitative research designs and corresponding statistical methods. Students develop individual projects, applying their knowledge to real-world problems using elementary computer programming in the R statistical programming package. This course is designed to be accessible for students at all levels of mathematical skill. The focus is on developing conceptual understanding of statistics without heavy reliance on rigorous mathematical background. The knowledge obtained from this course should provide solid background for students who wish to continue their statistical education with more advanced courses as well as prepare students to perform their own statistical analyses in their coursework and beyond. Upon completion the course aims to provide the students with the following skills: apply scientific research process, including theory formulation and hypothesis testing; critically analyze various types of data and learn to select most appropriate elementary statistical technique to answer their research question; use statistical programming to enter data, generate descriptive statistics and graphs, and estimate basic statistical models; communicate and present statistical results to a variety of audiences – academic experts and policy-makers.

In this course, students learn to develop and film their own creative projects for the screen. Students are encouraged to explore and experiment with the medium, and to further develop their own creative interests. Students are challenged to bring some of the techniques they have explored in film analysis to their creative work – translating the theory into practice. They have the opportunity to learn more advanced practical skills through participation in film- making activities and to develop skills and understanding through lectures, exercises, and hands-on workshop-based activities.

Stochastic differential equations (SDEs) are used extensively in finance, industry, and in sciences. This course provides an introduction to SDEs that discusses the fundamental concepts and properties of SDEs and presents strategies for their exact, approximate, and numerical solution. The first part of the course focuses on theoretical concepts, including the definition of Brownian motion and stochastic integrals, and on analytical techniques for the solution of SDEs. The second part centers on numerical methods for both strong and weak approximations of solutions and introduces widely used numerical schemes. The last part of the course concentrates on identifying the long time properties of solutions of SDEs.

Information and communications technology (ICT) has been transforming the way we teach and learn. At the same time we have observed serious challenges that it has created in the lives of students. This course examines various cases where ICT has supported teaching and learning and discusses ways to use computers and other digital tools effectively and efficiently for education, analyzes major challenges and issues in such ICT applications in education, and explores possible solutions.