The Pre-College Program

This course is an introduction to the visual arts including painting, sculpture, print culture, and new media such as photography, film, performance and installation art in Europe and the United States from 1400 to the present. It offers a broad historical overview of the key movements and the artists of the period, as well as an investigation into the crucial themes and contexts that mark visual art production after the middle ages. Such themes include the secularization of art; the (gendered) role of the artist in society; the sites of art production and consumption such as the artist's studio, the royal courts, and the art exhibition; the materials of art; the import of technology and science to art's making, content and distribution; the rise of art criticism; and the socio-political contexts of patronage and audience; among others.

A general survey, designed for the non-major, of the facts and theories of the astronomical universe, from solar system, to stars, to galaxies and cosmology. Topics include planets, satellites, small objects in the solar system, and extraterrestrial life; stars, their evolution, and their final state as white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes; galaxies, quasars, large structures, background radiation, and big bang cosmology. Elementary algebra and geometry will be used. This course is not recommended for physical-science majors or engineering students.

General principles of biology that have been established by studies of microbes, animals, and plants and the viruses of these organisms will be covered. Emphasis will be on the basic chemistry of life, cell biology, molecular biology, and genetics. The study of developmental pathways and evolutionary trends in life cycles will be explored using plants as model organisms.

Representations of war are created for as many reasons as wars are fought: to legitimate armed conflict, to critique brutality, to vilify an enemy, to mobilize popular support, to generate national pride, etc. In this course we will examine a series of representations of war drawn from the literature, film, state propaganda, memoirs, visual art, etc. of Russia, Europe, and the United States. We will pursue an investigation of these images of conflict and bloodshed in the larger context of the history of military technology, social life, and communications media over the last two centuries. Students will be expected to write two papers, take part in a group presentation on an assigned topic, and take a final exam. The goal of the course will be to gain knowledge of literary history in social and historical context, and to acquire critical skills for analysis of rhetoric and visual representations.

This course provides a rigorous introduction to the academic study of Japanese popular culture. Through careful attention to forms of popular culture such as anime (animated films or television shows), manga (comic books), TV dramas, short stories, popular music, fashion and contemporary art, each one of us will be able to develop a better understanding of contemporary Japan. In order to deepen our knowledge, we will learn various methods for studying and writing about the relation between our everyday lives, the processes of globalization, and the pleasures or displeasures that we derive from the objects of popular culture. Through the application of theoretical models to our practical experience of different forms of Japanese popular culture, we will learn to analyze critically some of the functions that these objects serve as sources of meaning, escape, and identity formation in our everyday lives.

Introduction to economic analysis and its application. Theory of supply and demand, costs and revenues of the firm under perfect competition, monopoly, and oligopoly, pricing of factors of production, income distribution, and theory of international trade.

This class will cover ten major figures in contemporary American poetry: Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, James Merrill, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Stanley Kunitz, Adrienne Rich, and Anne Sexton.  These poets belong to that generation—or generations—of poets who came after the Modernists and inherited the mantle of William Carlos Williams' dictum 'No ideas but in things.'  We will read work by and about them to broaden our awareness of what contemporary American poetry means, tracing both the continuing influence of Modernism and important distinctions from that movement. While all of these figures wrote during roughly the same period and in some cases formed intimate relationships with each other, they span a wide spectrum of poetic voices and concerns. We’ll study John Berryman's fragmented Dream Songs against Gwendolyn Brooks’ formally perfect sonnets; explore James Merrill’s elegant indecision next to Sylvia Plath’s aural brutality; follow Elizabeth Bishop’s shy precision with Adrienne Rich’s political vigilance, and generally familiarize ourselves with the many foundations of contemporary American poetry.  

Assignments will include an oral presentation, several brief response papers on particular poems, and a final paper comparing the work of several poets or concentrating on an aspect of a poet’s trajectory.  

The course will explore the history and practice of popular culture and culture studies in the United States. We will begin by challenging the concepts of "folk," "mass," and "popular" as well as "American" and "culture." Furthermore, we will interrogate various media such as television, film, music, comics, and popular romances to gain insights into the conditions for the reproduction of social relations. Through an analysis of audience response to performed or viewed events we will explore how and why people actively negotiate and interpret popular materials. This class will attempt to situate popular culture within a larger social, cultural, and political framework. Some areas of popular culture we may investigate include MTV, talk shows, fashion, club cultures, rap and other musics, snaps, pro wrestling, professional sports, Hollywood movies, advertising, and McDonald's, and and there will be room to explore other areas students may find interesting. We will end by looking into the exportation of American popular culture and its reception, interpretation, adaptation, and consumption around the world.

In this course, we will think of democracy as a controversial and contested value in the history of the United States.  With attention to the period of American history between the ratification of the Constitution and the conclusion of the Civil War, we will explore a range of problems in American political thought and culture, such as the challenges of applying the nation’s founding principles of justice and equality in a stratified society; changing forms of civic engagement and political activism; the growth of the federal government and debates over its role in public life; the forms and meanings of citizenship; and the terms on which different groups have been included within or excluded from the political community, with special attention to slavery and its abolition.  Our exploration of these themes will be structured around a semester-long reading and discussion of French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840 .  Supplementing our reading of this text with other contemporary sources and modern works of scholarship, we will consider, as Tocqueville did, the interconnections between democracy and other historical trends, such as the rise of industrial capitalism, religious awakenings, moral reform, the changing ethnic and cultural composition of the nation, the spread of Enlightenment ideas of science and learning, and the growth of an American empire across the western part of North America. Ultimately, we hope to gain a better sense of what it means to live in a democracy and how best to nurture and maintain democratic practices.

Human language viewed from a social and historical perspective. Students will acquire the tools of linguistic analysis through interactive computer programs, covering phonetics, phonology and morphology, in English and other languages. These techniques will then be used to trace social differences in the use of language, and changing patterns of social stratification. The course will focus on linguistic changes in progress in American society, in both mainstream and minority communities, and the social problems associated with them. Students will engage in field projects to search for the social correlates of linguistic behavior, and use quantitative methods to analyze the results.

Brief review of High School calculus, applications of integrals, transcendental functions, methods of integration, infinite series, Taylor's theorem. Use of symbolic manipulation and graphics software in calculus.

An introduction to the basic notational and theoretical materials of music, complemented by work in ear-training and sight-singing. Topics covered include the notation of time and pitch, scales, intervals, chords, progressions, melodic and formal construction, and key change. Open to all students.

In this introductory level class, we will address a number of basic questions in political philosophy through the works of major historical figures.  Among the central questions that we will focus on are:  How can legitimate political power be justified?  On what grounds can one defend a view of basic human rights?  What might justify a system of property?  Why would equality be important for society?  What are the arguments that favor capitalism over socialism or a welfare state?  What are the requirements for a functioning democracy?

We will primarily engage with these questions through the social contract tradition and its critics.  We begin by following the development of the social contract view beginning with Thomas Hobbes and continuing through John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant.  Then, we will look at three criticisms of this challenge--Utilitarianism, Marxism, and Libertarianism.  In examining these criticisms, we will examine the work of David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, Adam Smith, John Stewart Mill, Karl Marx, and Robert Nozick.  The course will end with the contemporary revival of the social contract tradition offered by John Rawls, and we will assess his response to these three alternative views.

This course is an introduction to the major theories and issues in international politics. The goals of the course are to give students a broad familiarity with the field of international relations, and to help them develop the analytical skills necessary to think critically about international politics. The course is divided into four parts: 1) Concepts and Theories of International Relations; 2) War and Security; 3) The Global Economy; and 4) Emerging Issues in International Relations.

The election of Barack Obama as the United States’ first Black president has raised questions about whether we have entered a post-racial society. This course examines the idea of racial progress that is at the heart of such a question, paying close attention to how social scientists have defined and measured racial inequality and progress in the last century. We will consider how dramatic demographic shifts, the growing number of interracial families and individuals who identify as mixed-race, trans-racial adoptions, and the increased visibility of people of color in media, positions of influence, and as celebrities inform scholarly and popular debates about racial progress. Along with some classic works, we will also read literature regarding the class-versus-race debate and color-blind racism. In the process, students will become familiar with sociological data often drawn from in debates about racial progress and will also develop analytical and critical thinking skills.