Spain

This course offers a study of ethology and evolution of behavior. It analyzes the relative importance of different ecological and social factors that shape behavior, as well as how evolution and adaptation contribute to the development of individual and social behavior. Through evolutionary reasoning, it examines the socio-spatial, sexual, and reproductive behavior in the human species and in other animal species.

This course analyzes the main contemporary art manifestations in their various forms of expression. It focuses on their origin, evolution and meaning, and plastic and stylistic values within their historical and social contexts. 

This course offers an introduction to individual decision-making. It explores game theory techniques that can be useful to understand strategic situations that appear in all areas of everyday life. Topics include: preferences; simultaneous games; nash equilibrium; backward induction; subgame perfect nash equilibrium; behavioral economics; neuroeconomics.

This course explores the development of Pop Art in the U.S. throughout the 1960s, with particular focus on its most prominent practitioner, Andy Warhol. It discusses how artists of the era created a new paradigm of modern art that often depicted consumerism and banality. This course also examines the ways some pop artists engaged with social issues such at the Vietnam war and the Civil Rights movement.

At the end of the 20th century, the official reinvention of the city for the 1992 Olympic games placed Barcelona on the map for the rest of the world. The dramatic changes in the cityscape post-1992, as well as the clever marketing campaigns, rapidly turned Barcelona into the place to be. In the wave of that international renown, Ferran Adrià’s worldwide fame influenced and revolutionized not only the work of many chefs, but also the ways in which we all understand the creative process behind transforming food into cooking and cuisine. The city and industry would never again be the same, but thirty years later and with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 on the horizon, Barcelona is now looking at the significant tensions that this transformation involved in terms of gentrification, food insecurity, and social inequalities. This course explores the clash between the celebrated innovation of cuisine that transformed Barcelona and the complex challenges of the resulting 21st century global city, thus deconstructing the myths of food and celebrity.