Ireland

This course provides a description of intracellular mechanisms associated with cell communication. Students examine the details of the molecular components of signal transduction cascades, including first messengers, cell surface and nuclear receptors, intracellular signaling molecules, and target proteins. The course includes a discussion of the biochemical and pharmacological techniques used in the study of signaling pathways. Practical classes include both laboratory-based and computer-aided learning (CAL) exercises that illustrate specific aspects of cell signaling pathways.

This course explores developmental themes that occur across different stages of life from birth and infancy through adulthood and into old age. Although development at each stage of life has unique features, there are also important themes that recur across the lifespan. The course draws on ecological theory and the lifespan perspective to organize our understanding of these developmental themes including physical growth and aging, health and wellness, attachment, cognition, moral development, personality and self, gender and sexuality, parenting, and death and dying. The course draws on an assigned textbook as well as on readings from international, peer reviewed literature.

This course examines some of the wealth of artistic production in the Netherlands in the 17th century. The course is based around the study of Rembrandt and Vermeer as contrasting and complementary figures who represent some of the diverse tendencies of the time. This entails the study of the development of individual styles and subject matter ranging from history painting to portraiture, landscape, and genre painting. The distinct artistic character associated with centers of production, even ones that were geographically close, is assessed with an emphasis on Amsterdam, Delft, and Utrecht. The final block of the course looks at the posthumous reputations of Rembrandt and Vermeer, examining questions of attribution, authenticity, canonicity, and rediscovery.

This course offers a study of major processes influencing weather. Particular attention is given to weather conditions that occur during the period of the course. Students discuss weather events in terms of meteorological processes, analyze meteorological charts and satellite images in terms of theoretical meteorological processes for forecasting and diagnostic purposes, and present appropriately referenced reports on the role of meteorological processes in producing specific weather events.

In this course, students explore standard rhythmic notation, and learn how to notate non-standard rhythms. Students perform a range of rhythmic devices and examine rhythmic techniques borrowed from diverse places ranging from mouse-song to Radiohead, Indian taal to Conlon Nancarrow, and Minimal Techno to frogs.

This course explores how digital technologies and networked culture are influencing our sense of self and community, from the crafting and presentation of personal identity to the empowerment of individual voices to create and incite change, and to the curational practices of the self that have formed within the sphere of digital marketing. The course discusses digital media theories and the impacts of social media interactions on issues of representation, self-perception, and cultural understandings in society. The course provides the necessary scholarship for digital media studies, with an emphasis of analysis on what people say on social media, what they do through their digital interactions, and how the technology is implicated in the way certain discourses, presentations, and cultural views are consolidated in contemporary society, particularly amongst minority communities.

War is as old as mankind, but it has changed its character over the centuries. This course introduces students to the changing character of war from ancient times to the present, highlighting the latest research results on a large variety of conflicts and themes: wars, piracy and civil wars in the ancient world, the Viking conquests in Europe, the Crusades, the Wars of Religion, the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century and the American Civil War to the total wars of the 20th century. The course takes an interdisciplinary perspective on war, combining insights from history, classics, politics , medicine, and sociology. Together, faculty from these diverse disciplines introduce some of the latest cutting edge research on violence and gender, medical responses to the outbreaks of war, and the "new wars" on terror in today's Middle East.

This course examines some of the most significant works of science fiction and "speculative fiction." Students explore the genre's literary genealogy from the post-apocalyptic fiction of Mary Shelley's THE LAST MAN through the so-called "golden age" of cold war science fiction to its present day status as mainstream literature in works such as Margaret Atwood's ORYX AND CRAKE. Studying a range of texts, students compare the works and situate them in their historical and social contexts, exploring what it means to be human in a technologically changing world, the politics of science and speculation, imagining humanity, and the forms of the future.