English

This course mainly investigates questions and problems related to theories of human nature and ethics and their interconnectedness. It covers works by key figures in the Classical and Post-Classical periods of Islamic Philosophy including Avicenna, Averroes, Ibn ‘Arabi, al-Ījī and al-Dawwānī, and by figures in Modern and Enlightenment philosophy including Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel. Among the main themes the course tackles is the relationship between mind and body and its implications for understanding good and evil as ethical categories in the two traditions, examining the convergences and divergences among them. Methodologically, the class combines both a thematic approach focusing on the main themes in philosophy of mind and its connection with key ethical problems with a historical approach investigating the historical development of these themes and their moral implications. This course is offered to both graduate and undergraduate students with distinct assessment requirements for each; this represents the undergraduate version of the course. 

This course explores the concepts of sustainability and social responsibility through a multidisciplinary approach, examining them from a scientific, social, economic, political, and artistic viewpoint. This course investigates the relationship between planetary boundaries, resource consumption and social development, and explores the range of interdisciplinary approaches to address these global challenges. It also covers the topics of sustainability metrics, personal contributions and sustainable lifestyles, as well as considering systems thinking, ways of knowing, power and responsibility as well as systemic structures and biases that may hold us in particular ways of thinking, being, and doing.

This upper division course introduces students to the basic concepts, theories, and applications in aerodynamics. Major topics are: Characteristics and parameters for airfoil and wing aerodynamics; Incompressible flow past thin airfoils and finite-span wings; Aerodynamic design considerations; Compressible subsonic, transonic and supersonic flows past airfoils and supersonic flow past thin wings. The course is for students who are interested in aerodynamics, especially those who intend to work in the aviation industry or those who intend to conduct R & D work in the aerodynamics area. The course requires students to take prerequisites.

This course considers the relationship between philosophical reflection and aesthetic practice through the lens of cinema, with the purpose of engaging students of both philosophy and film theory in a cross-disciplinary investigation into cinema. The course draws both from philosophical texts on film, and classical and contemporary film theory. Topics may include epistemological, ontological, and ethical questions about film; the role of memory, subjectivity, identity, and desire in cinema; time, space, and the nature of the image; perspectives on sexuality, gender, and race in film; psychoanalytic, feminist, and postcolonial film theory; and analytic and continental approaches to film and philosophy. This course is offered to both graduate and undergraduate students with distinct assessment requirements for each; this represents the graduate version of the course. 

This course explores basic statistical concepts and tools to analyze real world data, understand concepts of of uncertainty and probability, and apply distribution models to solve relevant problems. Topics include: analysis of univariate data; analysis of bivariate data; introduction to probability; random variables; distribution models; linear regression.

What does anthropology have to say about some of the most important issues facing us today? Anthropologists don't just engage with small-scale exotic societies but have always contributed to public debates about global issues that affect us all. In this course, students examine how concepts and ideas that have driven anthropology help us shed new light on debates that are at the heart of contemporary questions about how our societies work. The issues explored vary from year-to-year, examples include climate change, hunger, well-being, body modification, and human rights.

This is an integrative and interdisciplinary course, which takes a general management perspective. It views the firm as a whole, and examines how policies in each functional area (such as accounting, economics, finance, marketing, and organizational behavior) are integrated into an overall competitive strategy. The course develops a general management point of view. This point of view is the best vantage point for making decisions that lead to sustainable business performance. The key strategic business decisions of concern involve determining organizational purpose to evolving opportunities, creating competitive advantages, choosing competitive strategies, securing and defending sustainable market positions, and allocating critical resources over long periods. Decisions such as these can only be made effectively by viewing a firm holistically, and over the long term. 

This course introduces the main kinds of derivatives, with an emphasis on pricing and hedging issues, and on how investors and corporations can use these instruments in practice. The main contents of the course are: introduction to financial derivatives; forwards, futures, and swaps (institutional apsects, pricing, hedging); options (institutional aspects, pricing, hedging); and basics of credit risk and credit derivatives. Prerequisites: a solid understanding of financial economics; familiarity with the mathematics of interest rates (discounting/compounding, equivalence of rates at different maturities), with basic statistics (expected values, standard deviation and variance, ordinary least squares), and calculus (limits, differentials, differentiation, Taylor expansions, partial differentiation, optimization, basic integration). 

This course examines the cultural fascination with the supernatural from the nineteenth century to the present. It explores a range of topics including the publication of important horror novels such as Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN (1818) and Bram Stoker’s DRACULA (1897), studies of séances and psychic investigations, as well as paranormal media and its online culture. Themes such as the otherworldly, monsters, magic, and supernatural forces continue to feature regularly in our modern society. Therefore, the course asks: how does the fascination with horror manifest itself in culture? And why are humans so drawn to the dark, evil, and macabre? By delving into the intersection of science, literature, media and the occult, this interdisciplinary exploration provides a deep understanding of the multiple contexts and social factors in which supernatural phenomena and the occult emerged and grew over the past two centuries. The course has a significant digital humanities component that takes up around 50% of the course.

This course covers current topics on aerobiology and public health. The particular topics of interest include, but are not limited to, cutting-edge technologies used for aerobiological research, effects of airborne microorganisms on global climate, emerging airborne infectious diseases, or biodefense associated with airborne microbial agents. Prerequisites: Aerobiology and Public Health