English

This course offers an introduction to the ways in which migration and diaspora shape cultures across a range of transnational and country contexts. Through reference to multiple sources, such as selected literature, blogs, film, and photography, the course familiarizes students with key issues relating to migration and diaspora, offering both a comparative view across cultural specificities and an understanding of transnational cultural dynamics. Topics covered include migration, places and times; (im)mobilities, borders and policies; religion, rituals and diasporic communities; home and homeland; food, family and memory; digital technologies and transnational connections; inventing memory and identities across generations. A range of sources, including fiction, documentary film, photography, blogs and music are analyzed to explore these topics.

This course introduces students to the critical study of global cross-cultural encounters in the early modern period. The course's main materials are Portuguese travel narratives, geographical and ethnographic texts produced between c.1450 and 1650. Students read a selection of translated primary texts narrating travels, encounters, and confrontations with extra-European cultures, accompanied by a selection of secondary literature highlighting the quandaries of the genre’s intertwinements with imperial expansion and the making of colonial societies in Brazil, Africa and Asia. To highlight the unique characteristics of Portuguese travel writing, the course covers the entire globe, but some emphasis is placed on early colonial Brazil, West and South Africa, and the so-called East Indies. 

This course introduces basic properties of materials; how properties are related to microstructures; how microstructures are controlled by processing, and how materials are formed and joined. This course deals mostly with metals; however, properties of other engineering materials are discussed. 

This course introduces students to the history of the area surrounding the present-day political boundary between the United States and Mexico. How did this peripheral region, far from the centers of state power, become a place of great interest for those who sought to sustain and resist that power? As the course grapples with that question, students learn to think historically across and about national borders. They begin with the first contacts between Spanish explorers and native peoples and continue through NAFTA, the war on drugs, and the contemporary migration crisis. Students look for common trends in regional history that nation-based surveys and nationalistic media coverage tend to overlook. Simultaneously, they chart the emergence of the border as a political boundary, a social space, and a cultural entity.

In this course, students progress through a series of weekly workbooks that consist of structure practical tasks, each with specific outputs and objectives. Reference images are provided for many of these tasks, so that students may assess their own progress and determine when they have successfully achieved the objectives of a workbook. Completion of these formative tasks provides students with the skills and knowledge required to pass the assessments. 

The course considers the contribution made by ten films directed by women to feature film making. Do these films deal with female experience in a different way than their male-directed counterparts? Are their women characters always presented positively? How do they portray male characters and masculine settings? How do they represent (or not represent) sexual behavior and desire? How do they represent violence, poverty, and social restrictions? 

This course introduces the fundamental theory and concepts of computational intelligence methods, in particular neural networks, fuzzy systems, genetic algorithms and their applications in the area of machine intelligence. Topics include: (1) Understand the concepts of fuzzy sets, knowledge representation using fuzzy rules, approximate reasoning, fuzzy inference systems, and fuzzy logic control and other machine intelligence applications of fuzzy logic. (2) Understand the basics of an evolutionary computing paradigm known as genetic algorithms and its application to engineering optimization problems. (3) Understand the fundamental theory and concepts of neural networks, neuro-modeling, several neural network paradigms and its applications. (4) Contents: Introduction to Fuzzy Logic. Introduction to Fuzzy Sets. Introduction to Fuzzy Inference Systems. Fuzzy Logic Applications. Introduction to Genetic Algorithm. Fundamental Concepts of Artificial Neural Networks and Neural Network Architectures.

This course introduces algorithms and algorithmic thinking. Students examine common algorithms, algorithmic paradigms, and data structures that can be used to solve computational problems. Emphasis is placed on understanding why algorithms work, and how to analyze the complexity of algorithms. Students learn the underlying thought process on how to design their own algorithms, including how to use suitable data structures and techniques such as dynamic programming to design algorithms that are efficient. The course includes a prerequisite.

The course explores genders and sexual diversity in the modern society. Students discuss and investigate challenges in international politics, economics that different gender groups including, men, women, and LGBTQ face as the world becomes globalized. The course will contribute to the development of students’ ability to conceptualize their understanding of genders and sexuality with a global perspective. 

Students learn about the basic cellular mechanisms underlying common human diseases and understand how drugs act on cellular and tissue dysfunctions to treat these diseases. Students study topics including autoimmune disease, cancer, and arthritis.