In this course, you will explore our world through the lens of artistic creation and aesthetic encounter in its many forms: from the arts of painting and sculpture to literature, music, and theater, to experiences of the natural world. Through a series of encounters with specific objects, interpretive and critical readings, interactions with practicing artists, and your own hands-on creative exercises, you will become familiar with some of the many ways that art and aesthetics shape human experience and culture. By the end of the semester you will have learned:

• some of the principles of description and analysis of aesthetic experience and objects;
• how historical, geographical, and cultural differences have shaped ideas and experiences of arts;
• what creativity looks like “from the inside”: that is, from the perspective of practicing artists an in your own creative enterprises;
• how art has been understood to affect and even transform us as individuals and cultures.

With the UVA Grounds and the Charlottesville community as our laboratory, our work in this course will embrace visits to studios and from practicing artists, and will extend to museums, film, and musical and theatrical performance. In every case we will bring to bear our readings and discussion of arts criticism, philosophy, and commentary--including your own. We will think together about the power of art as well as notions of art’s ‘aura’; about the range of cultural frameworks for art and aesthetic encounter (institutions, experience, critique); about the “time” of art and its changing nature over historical periods; and about aesthetic wonder and artistic creativity as dispositions you can harness and take forward into other realms of your lives.

 Do you believe in ghosts? Or rather: What does it mean to believe in ghosts? What are ghosts as objects of belief and why are they confined to the framework of belief, as opposed to knowledge? If one could “know” ghosts, how would one prove their existence—and what would proof or evidence mean in these contexts? At the same time, ghosts exist, at least in stories told across many cultures in the world and over the long histories of these cultures. And, to be sure, the representation of ghosts differs across these cultures and time spans, in ways that are often dependent on historical contexts, cultural understandings, and belief systems. For some cultures, the ghost is an unwanted guest, but for others, the ghost is connected by kinship and owed certain services and dignities; and in some periods, the ghost speaks to (and for) larger religious frameworks, while for others, the ghost is a malevolent force unmoored from all logics.

 This course will take up the problem of the ghost from a variety of perspectives—aesthetic, epistemological, ethical, and empirical. As a class, we will read ghost stories, watch ghost films, and even participate in a ghost tour (and consider the critiques of such tours). Much of our work will begin with the question of how to think critically about cultural texts, whether these are literary works, films, philosophical writings, religious texts, or folkloric tales, and to be able to read these in a rigorously analytic manner. We will also discuss what the ghost represents in its specific cultural locus and historical moment, how the ghost complicates the boundaries of the living and the dead, what we owe to ghosts (if anything), what it means to be haunted, what evidence there is for the existence of ghosts, how we recognize a ghost, and above all, why there should be ghosts in the first place?

Why do we hold hands? If you think about it, it's a peculiar behavior. What is its function? What does it accomplish? Why do so many people all around the world do it? I hadn’t given it much thought until I embarked on the scientific study of how—at the level of brain function—people soothe each other’s fears and anxieties. In my early work, hand holding was little more to me than a convenient way to study social support in the restrictive environment of the brain scanner. But as the years, and studies, have gone by, a deeper understanding of simple hand holding has unlocked for me many of the secrets of our shared humanity—and helped me explain why, for humans, social isolation is the quickest route to misery, poor health, and even early death. We’ll use the mystery of hand holding as our point of departure on a scientific journey toward understanding the way social relationships affect our earliest sensory experiences, the length of our lives, and everything in between. We’ll also explore the likeliest theories about the evolution of Homo sapiens, and how that evolution is reflected in the structure and function of the human brain. 

What is a genome? What can you do with your genome? How can others use your genome? In this course, you will learn about the human genome, from how it is measured to what information it contains. You will have the opportunity to take a glimpse at your own genetic information and we will discuss the implications of this knowledge. Through this course, you will gain an understanding of the profound role that the human genome plays in your life and your future.

The Takeaway (what will you know 5 years from now… My hope for students upon completion of this course is the ability to discuss genetic concepts confidently with their colleagues, to know what can and can’t be done with their genetic information especially as reported by the popular press, and to use this information to guide them in making informed decisions in their own lives in years to come. And along the way, you will become empirically engaged.

Our objectives this semester... By the end of this course, you will have glimpsed at the foundation of life and you will:

• Be able to describe and discuss the human genome and its utility in medicine and life
• Become curious about the ways in which you and others can use your genome
• Gain skills that will allow you to think about and interpret genetic data
• Help others better understand the use of genetic information in their future

How can we cure sickle cell disease?  Why don’t snakes have legs?  How do we make a seedless (insert your favorite fruit or vegetable here)?  How do we bypass egg allergies by genetically modifying chickens?  What contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire?  Was Thomas Jefferson the father of Sally Hemings’s children?  Is violent behavior a genetic disease?  Can we cure (insert disease of interest here) through gene therapy?

These are all analytical questions/problems that have been addressed through genetic/DNA analysis.  We’ll use examples like these to explore how our increasingly sophisticated understanding of genomes and the genetic basis of life can be used to approach a wide variety of puzzles or problems.  In each case, we’ll examine how investigators framed a specific scientific question, what analytical approach was designed to address that question, what results were produced by the analyses, and what conclusions could be drawn from those results.  Wherever possible, we’ll consider any related ethical dilemmas that continue to arise, as our rapidly expanding genetic knowledge impacts both individuals and society.  And, best of all:  You’ll learn some genetics along the way!

Who are we? How do we develop from an egg into a walking, talking, thinking human? What happens when development goes wrong? Or why does it go wrong? These are some questions that have intrigued many of us. Studying Biology tells us that, Every animal form starts from a single egg and follows a developmental program coded by its DNA. Our DNA governs the similarities and differences we share with other living beings. It defines the way our cells divide and differentiate and transform into our beautiful, healthy bodies. And, if some part of this program fails, it may result in disease.

To understand and study human health and disease, scientists use other organisms. We are connected to these other organisms as we share a common ancestor and, thus, some parts of our DNA. In this course, you will develop an understanding of how scientists have utilized model organisms to answer some of the questions listed above. We will use frogs as an example model organism, mainly for a few reasons. First, their body plan is very similar to ours; second, they are easy to work with, and third, they develop outside the mother's body, making it easy to watch development in action. We will, as a team, look at some case studies, evaluate experiments, and do some hands-on activities to learn how the use of empirical methods has transformed scientific inquiry. We will also discuss the human values involved in using animals in medical research and the ethical implications. You will also have the opportunity to connect to a scientist who uses frogs to study human health and visit their lab. My goal for you is to be able to evaluate and analyze a news piece about human health and judge for yourself the validity and implications of the data presented in the article.

This Engagement course is designed to explore how economic inequalities shape human differences and social conflicts nationally and globally, and whether they are compatible with the common good and democratic rule. According to Oxfam “almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population” and the wealth of that one percent totals approximately $110 trillion, which in turn amounts to “65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.”  Are these disparities so extreme, and the lives of the haves versus the have-nots so fundamentally different, that it becomes a stretch to speak of a common humanity?  Do income and wealth inequalities exacerbate other types of inequalities based on gender and race, and how do they affect human health and dignity?  Are they an invitation to new forms of authoritarianism and a world of violent conflicts?  Or, are current levels of inequality the just and legitimate rewards for entrepreneurial, innovating, and risk-taking behavior? In short, are economic disparities the logical and inevitable consequence of the contradictory processes of wealth creation and poverty reduction, and are they justifiable and ultimately sustainable?

Students will explore these questions by investigating various controversies involving the nature, and potential costs or benefits of inequalities. We will draw our examples from the experiences of both the advanced industrialized nations and the “global south.”  We will also examine what analytical approaches scholars have used to study the social, economic, and political consequences of inequalities. 

*Note: Since this class satifies both EGMT 1530 (Differences) and EGMT 1540 (Ethics), students must enroll in both Fall Session 1 and Fall Session 2 quarters.

Democracy is currently face daunting challenges in the U.S. and around the world.  Authoritarian leaders and populist parties have undermined democratic values across the globe, including Brazil, Hungary, Algeria, Poland, and the United States.  In the U.S., there are attempts to make it more difficult for citizens to vote. Practices of gerrymandering and unethical campaign finance undermine citizen’s interests in representative government. In Charlottesville, especially in the wake of events of August 2017, questions have been raised about the responsiveness of local government to the needs of its citizens and the city’s failure to protect the safety of those who protested against the actions of self-admitted racist and fascist groups.

In the midst of these challenges, do we still have faith in democracy and, if so, why?  Must we have faith in democracy in order for it to succeed?   What do we mean by faith?  How might the resources of democracy itself (its ideas and its practices) help societies respond to these crises?

This course examines the character of democracy:

• What is a democracy and what distinguishes it from other forms of governments?
• What are the practices of democracy and the role of education in preparation for democratic participation? 
• What does it mean to be a citizen of a democracy and who counts as a citizen?
• What are the challenges and opportunities of pluralism (religious, cultural, racial, political) to the life of democracy?

A major goal of the class is to prepare students to connect questions about democracy to the different settings they will encounter in their years at UVA, from the classroom to the many social and political situations they negotiate.

In addition to reading assignments and short papers, students will be required to move out of the classroom and select, observe and reflect upon a real-life instance of democratic politics in action (e.g., city council meetings, school board meetings, and so forth).     

What is Noise? Who gets to make noise and who gets punished for making it?  What are some sites of Noise in Charlottesville today? What are the differences between sound, noise, and music?  How has the concept of noise changed through history? What for example was the loudest sound imaginable in 1607, when settlers came to Jamestown? How do birds respond to car alarms?  This class engages aesthetics through the concept of noise.  We will use the idea of noise to ask questions about aesthetics and difference. We will think about the ways that our positions as listeners effect our ability to move through the world. We will listen to noise as it relates to power, economics, the environment, love, the body, race, gender, and class. in our own city. The class will include a playlist of aural encounters including music, readings from a variety of fields, and hands on noise making activities. Readings will range from primary sources in Special Collections Library, fiction, to acoustics, environmental science, and journalistic accounts of public debates around noise pollution. Through listening, close reading, shared experience, small group work, sound walks and other experiences, this course encourages you to make an unmake your ideas about noise. The course will create a space for students to productively engage others in discussions of aesthetics, creativity, and politics. Finally, we will make some noise!

It can be unnerving to make something from what seems like nothing. But we all improvise when we play, so what is it that you draw upon? Is playing fun because it offers an avenue to re-imagine yourself, to get to know other people, even to form communities? These are some questions we delve into during this course.

We will attend to practices from several places in the world, both nearby and distant, ranging from kids' clapping games to song styles from the African rain forest. We'll explore proportions of freedom versus constraint, preparation versus spontaneity, and individuality within a collective, considering how these dynamic balances inform our sense of taste -- that is when and why an expression, experience, or style just feels "right" or doesn't. Working with live materials (rhythms, speech, gestures, melodies, beats, fragments of text or conversation, memories, dreams, jokes) we’ll develop a grab bag of shared practices/skills. Our active responses to reading, research, and poetic invocations about play and improvisation will take the form of "reading collages" (drawn from weekly reading assignments and spoken aloud), along with brief writing activities. We will pay attention to our poetic sensibilities -- noticing moments of affect and micro-politics in our everyday lives.  As the course progresses, we will test out a variety of mini-projects in groups that range in size, devising brief ‘happenings’ in class and around grounds. We end the term with an all-class flash mob or related event that we design and enact together. The details of any of these endeavors will depend on: 1) who is in the class and how we combine to create a shared aesthetic 2) our immediate circumstances moment to moment and our responses to local, national, or global events, and 3) the directions we decide to take along the way. Students should expect to step out of their comfort zones, to be challenged to think independently, and to engage in lively and open debate.

Where do we find art? Where does art find us? To what kinds of real and imagined places does art take us? How does it make us think and feel? Is your impression of a new place affected by the art you find there? Where have you encountered art at UVA and in Charlottesville?

In this course, we will investigate the relationship between people, places, and art. We will encounter works of visual art that are in place (sculpture and architecture) as well as those that take place in a particular location (photography, film). These works are all located at UVA or in Charlottesville, but some of them take place elsewhere. They were made by people in a variety of different cultures, social situations, and historical moments. We will explore the locations in which these works are found or take place, the visual forms the artists have chosen, and the debates, conversations and controversies they have provoked. We will also reflect on the influence of digital connectivity on the experience and creation of visual art and our access to it. By critically engaging with a variety of works of art, as well as inhabiting and reflecting on your own creative practice as a “maker”, you will develop a familiarity with a few of the many ways that art and aesthetic experience can locate and mediate humans’ understanding of their place in the world and their experience of it.

Where am I? This is a question we often pose only when we’re lost, or need directions. The answer we are looking for is usually quite straightforward, and thanks to our smartphones, easy to come by. Yet there are other ways to pose this question that lead to more complex answers, ones that hit much closer to home. How has this place – my home, my city, my country – shaped the person I have become, and how does it continue to define my possibilities? Where do the lives of others play out, and what does that mean for the way we treat each other? It turns out that life has an irreducibly spatial dimension and that dimension has profound ethical dimensions. We learn who we are and who we can be from spaces that are gendered, racialized, and nationalized in a variety of ways, not only when we are young, but an on ongoing basis, yet we do not often think about this aspect of life. In this class, we will learn to think about this“hidden dimension” of life, its spatial dimension, and how it shapes, or tries to shape, who we are, who we can be, and how we relate to our fellow human beings.

Can things speak, and are we listening? If objects can be used as evidence, then how can we interpret them?  And why think about objects at all?  In this class, students will learn how to use material—from pot sherds to iPhones—to develop and test hypotheses about societies and individuals past and the present. Using things from our own daily lives (sweatshirts, toothbrushes, photos of grandma) as case studies, we’ll together investigate what things can tell us about the people who make and use them, and about ourselves and our own relationship with our possessions. Over the course of seven weeks, we’ll create portfolios based on our own objects, working toward a thick description of it and making a case for its worthiness as evidence.  Along the way, we’ll explore the potentials and pitfalls of different kinds of interpretation and reasoning, and also explore the biases and assumptions that impact on the very notion of empiricism itself.

Throughout history, the most egregious violations of human rights have been justified by exclusionary theories of human “difference.” These atrocities have been resisted by small groups of thoughtful individuals banding together to challenge the way dehumanizing notions of difference are used to justify large-scale oppression. This course will examine how oppositional movements intervene in and produce media to resist these oppressive practices and theories, both historically and in the context of current social movements. Movements for social change that are led by members of oppressed groups often face hostile, even physically violent, political opposition. This has necessitated that proponents of social change who are deemed “different” from the majority, challenge the majority public opinion —which often presents itself as the moderate voice of reason—through coordinated media campaigns. Students will examine a series of historical case studies focusing on how leaders of social change movements have engaged the media (or created their own media) to challenge conventional wisdom, to wrest rhetorical control from the dominant narrative, and to frame their struggle in terms which are politically favorable.

All humans are 99.5% genetically similar to any other human yet there is tremendous variation among us.  Why is there variation in skin color?  Why do most of us suffer from altitude sickness but there are people in the Andes and the Himalayas who live at extreme elevations?  How does malaria explain why, for over 30 years, all the finalists in the men’s Olympic 100-meters had a recent ancestry in Sub-Saharan West Africa?  To understand variation we need to understand how evolution has shaped us and how the environment has influenced our evolution.

We will use empirical approaches to understand patterns of variation in appearance, in physiology, and in (athletic) performance among individuals across the world.  The questions that we will address are important, not only to understand diversity among individuals, but also because the foundational approaches that you will develop in this class will provide you with skills to understand how science is done.  You will learn to think like a scientist and to interpret data.  In the future when you read in the New York Times about the latest discoveries, you will be able put these discoveries into context and make your own evaluation about the validity of new findings

Throughout history, the most egregious violations of human rights have been justified by exclusionary theories of human “difference.” These atrocities have been resisted by small groups of thoughtful individuals banding together to challenge the way dehumanizing notions of difference are used to justify large-scale oppression. This course will examine how oppositional movements intervene in and produce media to resist these oppressive practices and theories, both historically and in the context of current social movements. Movements for social change that are led by members of oppressed groups often face hostile, even physically violent, political opposition. This has necessitated that proponents of social change who are deemed “different” from the majority, challenge the majority public opinion —which often presents itself as the moderate voice of reason—through coordinated media campaigns. Students will examine a series of historical case studies focusing on how leaders of social change movements have engaged the media (or created their own media) to challenge conventional wisdom, to wrest rhetorical control from the dominant narrative, and to frame their struggle in terms which are politically favorable.

There are many things in life we value, and which it seems unproblematic to buy or sell: houses, sweaters, and ice cream, for example.  But there are other things we value, which it seems impossible to buy or sell: love, moral goodness, or happiness, for example.  And there are still others which we can buy or sell, but might think we should not: kidneys, sexual or reproductive labor, ideas, or spiritual goods, for example.

Students in this engagement will consider whether there is anything that it is either impossible or wrong to sell.  We will focus on examples from a wide variety of domains and draw on readings from philosophy, religious studies, and fiction.  Our aim throughout will be to understand more clearly the value of the particular goods in question and the role such goods might play in making our own lives good and meaningful.

Shall we live forever?  Why not?  While ours is the species that knows it must die – or because of that brute fact – humankind has a long, broad tradition of indulging immortal longings by imagining a life beyond this one.  The gods live forever, we say, or the soul does, or the durable productions of culture and art do.  The return of our mortal remains to the planet’s biomass may represent a mode of ecological life after death; so may the survival into posterity of our selfish genes.  The recent proliferation of photographic and phonographic modes, and the contemporary possibility of perennial cryogenic storage, have in modern times afforded new versions of technological afterlife.  Meanwhile, religion and art continue to rehearse what might be called the eternity of the now, through ritual and aesthetic patterns that step not outside mortal time but right inside it.  After comparing imaginations of immortality that are found in cultural practices both secular and devout, we’ll focus on a set of aesthetic versions drawn from poetry, painting, science-fiction, and cinema.  Our survey will dwell on the challenge of describing immortality in mortal human terms.  Our abiding questions will be on one hand whether immortality is something we really want after all, and on the other hand whether it’s something we can ever quite live without.

It’s difficult to separate humans from their tools. We eat with them, we communicate with them, we think with them, we worship with them. Our tools and technologies give us insight into but also power over ourselves, others, and the world. And this is both the promise and peril of this most basic of relations, that of humans and their technologies. 

To what extent do we not only make our technologies but our technologies remake us? In this course, we will consider a spectrum of outlooks: from the claims of techno-utopians anticipating a future in which humans finally merge with their machines to the warnings of technology skeptics fearing a future in which humans finally forego what makes them human. We consider the kinds of empirical and ethical knowledge we need to make sense of these competing visions of how humans relate to their technologies. What kinds of evidence do we need? What are the possibilities and limits of empirical knowledge when reflecting on the reciprocity of humans and their technologies? How do our technologies shape how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world? How do they inform different visions of the good life?

We’ll consider these big questions by focusing on key empirical and ethical questions surrounding a series of contemporary debates, which could include: genetic engineering, eugenics, human reproduction and cloning, radical life extension and enhancement, biohacking, self-quantification and algorithmic self-hood, and machine learning. In each of these case studies, we’ll be concerned with the core elements of the Empirical as well as the Ethical Engagements.

For many people “The Big Bang Theory” is a CBS sitcom following the tangled lives of four geeky Caltech students. But what is the real Big Bang Theory? Most people know it concerns the beginning of the Universe, but exactly what does the theory say and how firm is the evidence for it? In this class, we’ll journey out into the galaxies and back to the primordial fireball, always paying attention to how we know what we claim to know. Ultimately, we’re pursuing an idea that has been present in all cultures at all times: what is the origin of our world, with its land and sky, sun and stars, and even ourselves?

During this class, we’ll be exploring some wonderful themes. We’ll see how cosmic expansion helps us understand the unusual nature of the universe’s explosive origin about 14 billion years ago. We’ll use high-caliber data from large telescopes to unpack the evidence for two major, but invisible, components of today’s universe: dark matter and dark energy. Astronomers are extremely lucky because they can actually see the past simply by looking far away. Our largest telescopes reveal a billion year old universe filled with chaotic “infant” galaxies quite unlike today’s majestic “adult” spirals and ellipticals. We can even see the primordial fireball using microwave telescopes that reveal in exquisite detail the incandescent glow from hot gas, laced with deep harmonic tones of primordial sound. Pushing even earlier we arrive at the first hour and even the first minute, where we find conditions similar to the sun’s center or the inside a hydrogen bomb. Remarkably, the “heavy” hydrogen in the water you drink every day was made in that first minute! Finally, stepping back to frame everything, we’ll calculate the total energy of the Universe and find that it is zero – it sums to nothing! This in turn suggests a truly remarkable creation mechanism, called inflation, that creates everything from nothing and launches the expansion. While the evidence for inflation is not yet robust, there are important observations in the next decade or two that may help confirm its reality.

Throughout, we will honor the overall intent of the “empirical engagement” by using the Big Bang Theory as a test case to explore how science works – how observations are used to test and refine a theory that is built using the known laws of physics. After a century of effort, this theory – with the exception of the creation mechanism itself – is about as detailed and robust as the theories of evolution and atomic structure. While these theories reached maturity some time ago, modern cosmology has only recently gelled and is therefore, arguably, the greatest scientific narrative of our current time.