This course will explore one enduring question: Why and how has hip-hop become equally a tool for revolution and capitalist expansion across the world? As hip-hop has attained the interest of corporate America, it has gone from being vilified by many in the mainstream to a source of expansion for American ideals. As hip-hop began […]
culture
Dying, Death, & the Afterlife
Few ideas have stirred the human imagination as has the question of the end of life. This course examines visions of the process of dying and accounts of a possible second life from Judaism to Hinduism, Dante to Milarepa, The Wings of Desire to the Book of Mormon, offering a wide-ranging examination of pathways to […]
Navigating Intimacy
The complexity of forming intimate relationships is an enduring topic of research, fascination and questioning throughout time. This course offers the unique opportunity for an intensive exploration of how the current state of navigating intimacy in emerging adults was shaped through the lens of modern history. Navigating Intimacy exposes students to an exciting and timely […]
Education: Problem or Solution
While there is agreement that education is key to individual and community well-being, much controversy exists over education’s goals and how to achieve them. Issues include identifying education challenges and effective solutions, recognizing how social or economic status interacts with education, and examining what role political ideologies play. Students engage with a variety of speakers, […]
Place and Politics
So much of our lives today takes place in the virtual world of the internet that it is easy to forget or ignore the ways in which our physical environment affects our behavior and our self-understanding. This class will explore different theories of place and why it matters for politics. This will include an examination […]
Harsh Justice
The United States leads the Western world in the use of harsh punishments: life sentences, death sentences, and extended solitary confinement. Each of these punishments is a type of death penalty: life sentence prisoners are sentenced to die in prison, death sentence prisoners are sentenced to be killed in prison, and prisoners sentenced to extended […]
Defining American
This course examines the question: What does it mean to be an American? We ask questions about race and ethnicity, as well as about ideology and beliefs. While we explore our own identities whether American or not we can all learn about ourselves by understanding the other. Analyzing historical as well as contemporary […]
The Persistence of Pirates
This course would bring together AU students across a diverse set of disciplinary foci and from a diverse set of educational and cultural backgrounds in the study of a truly complex problem for all of humanity: piracy. Piracy, in this sense, refers to criminal activities conducted at a specific kind of intersection between a more-or-less […]
Is Global Citizenship a Dream
With the recent rise of populism across the Western world, this course will help students with international aspirations to critically examine the emerging issues related to “being a global person.” Course readings and team projects explore global citizenry and cover topics such as globalization, the sovereign state, economic interdependence, the global enterprise, ethics, prejudice, and […]
Happiness: Pursuit of the Good Life
Happiness is considered by many to be the ultimate goal in life; indeed, virtually everyone wants to be happy. The American Colonies Declaration of Independence takes it as a self-evident truth that the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right comparable to life and liberty. In the late 1980s, the fourth king of Bhutan, Jigme […]