English

One of the hallmarks of being human is that we can suffer as well as flourish. Focusing on positive psychology and clinical psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, this course offers a sustained investigation of the conceptual and philosophical problems at the heart of the study of human well-being and human ill-being. Central topics include the nature of happiness and well-being; the nature and classification/diagnosis of mental disorder; the relation between mental health and mental illness (is happiness more than the mere absence of suffering?); differing perspectives on mental disorder (neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, existentialism, phenomenology); the implicit philosophical assumptions behind major psychotherapeutic traditions, especially concerning the good life. One guiding assumption of the course is that studying well-being and ill-being side by side can be mutually illuminating. By the end of the semester, students are equipped to interpret psychological theories and therapeutic practices through a philosophical lens, as well as consider how conceptions of the good life both inform and are informed by the science and practice of psychology.

The general idea of “narrating” is to detect “history” through various expressions by those who lived it, interacted with it, and “narrated” it through various vehicles: literature, music, poetry, the cinema, visual arts, photography, chronicles and memoirs, customs and habits, etc. “History” here is traced not as a narrative of the grand struggle for political power, or a succession of past events within a singular or mainstream narrative of it that suppresses variations in perspectives, but as a set of experienced realities and processes that conditioned “LIFE”--viz. the plurality of different lives--in different ways and at different times. Documentaries, films, literature, music, live narratives, historical anecdotes, etc. are all seen as possible forms of narratives. It is through the freely-flowing combination of all of those and other sources that the course exposes an assortment of voices, perspectives, and representations: by travelers, novelists, poets and colloquial poets, singers and composers, film directors, journalists, historians, statesmen and politicians, and of “ordinary people” as well as activists. All of these sources define the broad framework of the seminar and the potential opportunities it opens up. This course is run in the spirit of a Cultural Salon: in a free-flow style of discussion, seeking contribution from all of its participants, in the form each finds most conducive to expressing themselves, while all get engaged in a collective exploration, and are all bound by a collective commitment and understanding rather than a preconceived agenda or menu of requirements.
 

This course gives an introduction to analytical techniques for partial differential equations, in particular to separation of variables. In addition the course treats qualitative properties of solutions, such as maximum principles and energy estimates. The course also gives a basic introduction to difference methods and their stability analysis.

This course provides an overview of computer systems security. Students build a comprehensive understanding of central problems in software and hardware security and solutions to them. 

Topics include the basic concepts of threats and security, access control, authentication, cryptography, and low-level software and hardware security. In addition to the principles and theories presented in the class, students are able to develop practical skills by completing six programming assignments along the way. Students perform threat modeling and security analysis of existing computer systems, write attack payloads that compromise insecure programs, and develop defensive programming skills and be able to use existing defensive mechanisms.

Prerequisite: Operating Systems; Computer Architecture

This course focuses on understanding the basic methodological principles of the science of Economics. It starts with an introduction to the history of the notion of Economics, and then it specializes in the basic economic thought throughout the centuries. The second part of the course focuses in the general philosophy of science with an interest in the philosophy of social sciences. The course discusses in depth the basic methodological principles of the major Economic theories and the philosophers/scientists who evolved these theories (i.e. Rousseau, Hume, Locke, Hobbes, Mill, Proudhon, Smith, Ricardo, Marx).

This course examines how the 1960s saw enormous transformations in both the matter and the forms of American prose writing. It considers how writers and artists battled for new freedoms, and sex and sexuality began to be featured in books published by mainstream publishers for the first time. Accompanying the famous revolutionary political movements that marked the decade, and responding to many of the same cultural and political pressures, were various revolutions of the word. The 1960s saw a widespread reaction against a now-institutionalized modernism, and the first great statements of what would come to be thought of as literary postmodernism (Thomas Pynchon, John Barth). This course discusses how critics like Susan Sontag argued for the continued validity of the modernist project, and for the need to extend it; and novelists like Saul Bellow and Mary McCarthy sought to extend the traditions of realism and modernism in novels like Herzog (1964) and The Group (1963). American prose writing of the 1960s was also shaped and informed by the sexual revolutions that marked the decade, and writers such as Ursula Le Guin began to use the tools of imaginative writing to interrogate embedded cultural assumptions about gender, sexuality, patriarchy, and power. This course considers how in many ways, all of the key streams of 20th century American literature converged in the 1960s. The decade and its key texts explores issues central to American studies more broadly: American exceptionalism, the utopian promise underwriting the American experiment, the legacies of modernism, the meaning(s) of postmodernity, the political transformations of the postwar era, and the “hangover” of the early 1970s.

In this advanced research course, students are placed in small research groups of 2 students and complete research in analytical, organic, inorganic, and biochemistry. Each group is part of an active research project led by University of Alicante faculty, providing hands-on lab experience and close faculty mentorship. 

This course explores the relation between art and activism as a way of engaging critically with issues such as coloniality, gender inequality, xenophobia, and exploitative labour practices. Students study the work of leading practitioners and theorists in the field of politically-engaged art, with a focus on how dialogue and provocation afford a variety of ways of calling power relations into question through participatory practice and/or collaboration as a process of co-creation.

This course examines the importance of the mining industry in our lives. It explores how commodities are extracted from the ground and who are involved at various stages of the mining operation. The topics covered include geology, mining, mineral processing, safety, the impact of mining on the environment, and economics. It also covers employability in the mining industry, which employs people of various backgrounds (e.g. geologists, mining engineers, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, environmental engineers, process & chemical engineers, lawyers, finance, etc.)