University of British Columbia

This course examines the cultures of control that target the commerce and consumption of illegal drugs. Students consider the evolution of these policies and explore their impact in a variety of historical moments and social worlds. The course reviews how the criminalization of drugs has created an alternative market around which distinctive lifestyles and cultural practices have emerged with several specific case studies focused on the Americas. Those lifestyles and practices are commonly called narco-culture and have in recent years been the source of inspiration for a varied aesthetic genre in music, literature, and popular television (among them narco corridos, narco novelas, narand~ co graffiti). While surveying and interpreting a selection of these aesthetic productions, this course discusses the social history of a variety of substances constructed as drugs including cocaine, Ayahuasca, valium, and fentanyl. To illustrate the wide-ranging impacts of criminalization, the course tracks the historical transformation of these commodities from legal to illegal and sometimes back again.

This course offers a study of computer graphics. Topics include: human vision and color; geometric transformations; algorithms for 2-D and 3-D graphics; hardware and system architectures; shading and alighting; animation.

This course offerings a study of internet computing. It discusses computer networking, basic communication protocols, network infrastructure, and routing. This course examines common application0level protocols and principles associated with developing distributed applications.

This introductory course discusses basic concepts of film editing through a series of editing exercises and class lectures. Ideas around representation of space and time in film create a frame of reference for much of the discussion in class. Concepts such as continuity editing, discrete editing, editing consistency, and completeness are introduced and discussed in detail. Formally the course could be broken down into three components that correlate with the three assignments given: documentary scene editing, dramatic dialogue scene editing, and free style editing.

This course explores a wide-range of psychological and social issues related to death, dying, and loss, including the development of attitudes toward death; the psychosocial, and cultural, contexts of dying; the mental life of the dying person; palliative and hospice care; assisted suicide; trauma; and adjustment to loss. Students consider the experiences of the dying, the bereaved, and those who work with them in formal and informal care settings. The purpose of this course is to provide a primarily psychosocial perspective on these topics.

This course discusses sociological perspectives on social inequality including contemporary theories and research on the topic.