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Join CourseHorse for our one-hour special virtual trivia night! Test your knowledge across a wide range of topics including music, movies, pop culture, history, sports, frozen foods, dog breeds, Seinfeld characters, ice cream flavors and many other surprises... How this will work: This will take place live over a Zoom conference. You will either...

Mesopotamia: Civilization, Archaeology, and Material Culture What qualifies as a “civilization”? And why is Mesopotamia commonly called its “cradle”? Art, agriculture, and animal husbandry all pre-existed the settlements that dotted the “fertile crescent” between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. But it was there, amongst the cities of...

Environmentalists frequently describe the planet as “Mother Earth,” decry the “rape” of the planet, and call on humans to “love your mother.” But why is the earth seen as a woman? Should it be? Ecofeminists for some time and Xenofeminisists more recently have taken up these questions in remarkably different, sometimes complementary, ways....

Jewish Tradition and Abortion: What Does Judaism Say? In view of the recent Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade, the issue of abortion has rightfully garnered considerable public attention. This session will focus on both classical Jewish sources and modern Jewish religious writings (Liberal and Orthodox) on abortion to clarify how Jewish tradition...

The late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez was many things—baseball player, soldier, coup-leader, elected revolutionary, political symbol. So too Chavismo, which first surfaced as an epithet slung at the poor by a wealthy, white Venezuelan opposition, before coming to embody many of the hopes and aspirations of the poor in Venezuela and beyond. Powered...

Full Course Name: Introduction to Gun Studies: History, Politics, and American Violence Few objects loom larger in American history, media, and politics than guns. Americans own more firearms than citizens of any other country on Earth. The United States is the largest manufacturer, importer, and exporter of guns on the planet. Alongside currency,...

From zero-sum games and the “prisoner’s dilemma” to rational actors and the Nash equilibrium, game theory has grown from a bold conjecture into a deeply influential mode of analysis in political science, economics, psychology, business, mathematics, and even military strategy. Based on a theory of simple card games developed by John Von Neumann...

While Judaism is undeniably pro-life, Jewish tradition has for thousands of years seen a pregnant person’s life as invaluable and permitted abortion in many cases. In three sessions, we will explore the Jewish legal texts and recent Jewish feminist scholarship that address this timely issue.

When Robert Hooke discovered the cell in 1665, modern science acquired an enduring metaphor: the cell as the building block of life. Since then, cell theory has evolved three central tenets: the cell is the basic unit of life, all living organisms are composed of cells, and all cells come from other cells. But cells themselves have also come to be...

The Political Economy of Climate Change: From Green Planning to Climate Colonialism Climate is now on everyone’s agenda: in the minds of some, the cause of all causes, and the movement of all movements. As it has burst across public attention, we have everywhere Green New Deals, eco-socialists, great transformations, just transitions—a constellation...

Sexual desire—ancient Greek eros—is fundamental to the philosophical dialogues of Plato and the lyric poetry of Sappho, as well as to Michel Foucault’s genealogy of the modern self. Both Plato and Sappho begin with contemporary ideas of eros as madness, even as they also argue for the centrality of eros to new forms of self-knowledge and...

This class will take place online. Registered students will receive login instructions. Explore theories, traditions, and principles that have shaped the design of landscapes from antiquity to the present, through visual presentations, assigned readings, projects, and classroom discussion. Please note that the final essay for this class emphasizes...

Do you love animals...especially dogs?  Learn how to make extra money after school or work by watching dogs or other pets, usually in the pet's home.  You will learn about feeding, watering, and exercising pets, how to make a good impression as well as what questions to ask when interviewing for a pet sitting job, and what to do when a dog...

Happiness and Capitalism: Work, Wealth, and Misery “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” So observed the “father” of political economy, Adam Smith, in his classic The Wealth of Nations. Nearly 250 years later, Smith’s self-appointed children, secure in economics...

This class will take place online. Registered students will receive login instructions. Discover the power, the allure, and the science of psychedelic mushrooms. Food journalist and former president of the New York Mycological Society, Eugenia Bone, author of Mycophilia, will discuss the biology of these potent fungi, their cultural history, and contemporary...