Dietrich College Interdisciplinary Courses

66-003 Contested Histories: The Israel-Palestine Conflict

Intermittent: 1 unit
Join one of several small groups of students, faculty and staff in discussing Neil Caplan's remarkable book "The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories" (Second Edition). There will be six options for book discussion groups, each led by an expert faculty member, taking place in late February and early March. In-person and remote options will be available. Discussions will explore the contested Palestinian and Israeli narratives of events and aim to move readers beyond assigning blame to wrestling with the complexities and contradictions of the conflict. Is there a chance for peaceful resolution? Registered CMU students who attend a discussion group lead by a university expert and a discussion group with Caplan will receive one unit of academic credit.

66-101 Dietrich Introductory Seminar: College & University Success Strategies

Fall: 3 units
This interactive course is designed to help new students transition successfully to academic and student life in the Dietrich College at Carnegie Mellon. Students will explore campus resources and opportunities; their skills, identity, interests, and goals; and strategies for personal and academic success to help them make the most of their Dietrich experience. This course is only available to be taken by first year students in their first semester at Dietrich College.

66-106 Applied Quantitative Social Science I (QSSS students)

Fall: 9 units
The first course in the QSSS core sequence provides a fast-paced introduction to a range of methods in the quantitative social sciences. Organized around a set of case studies, the course introduces the language and methods of empirical research through a combination of seminar-style discussions of academic papers, and hands-on lab work using the statistical software R. Students will replicate results from a high-profile labor market discrimination paper, explore agent-based models of neighborhood segregation, and scrape Wikipedia data to examine imbalances in gender representation. Enrollment restricted to QSSS students.

66-122 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Beyond Earth

Spring: 9 units
The aim in the course is to foster in students a planetary perspective, to see Earth in its context of the cosmos and to see humans in their relation to real or possible forms of life in the universe. The obsession with outer space is found among scientists, business people and politicians, in deed and story, in film and even computer games. If we are to fully appreciate the potentials of space, we must also consider the search for intelligent life in its scientific and societal aspects, and investigate how we could adapt our systems of communication to reach species across distances that may be physically insurmountable. This interdisciplinary course will be taught by scholars from distinct cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Course materials will be taken from scientific literature, the history of science, and science fiction. We will explore scientific writing and reasoning, the space race between global powers, space travel and colonization, and the promise and pitfalls of interspecies and interspace communication. A planetary perspective, once achieved, can change the way one sees other inhabitants of this planet - as partners in survival in a universe which sets enormous odds against it, or as unwelcome intruders grasping for scant resources within this thin epidermis of soil, air, and water which surrounds Earth and makes our lives possible.

66-123 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Science on Stage

Spring: 9 units
Art and Science and #8212; two fields of study that are most often considered diametrically opposed. Art is frivolous entertainment. Science is hard rational fact. In this Grand Challenge course, we hope to break that supposition or at least examine it in great detail. Specifically, we will use theater to argue that drama can produce challenging, demanding and intelligent work that showcases the impact of science on current discourse. We want to link the two cultures. The word "theater" has the same etymological root as "theory" - both words come from the Greek thea meaning view. This shared origin demonstrates ways we can work to analyze and interpret both fields and show the common ground between these two cultures. As we attend to plays and writing ranging from Tom Stoppards Arcadia and Michael Frayns Copenhagen to Caryl Churchills A Number and Oliver Sacks Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, our class discussions will consider questions that include: Why is science a trend in contemporary theater? Does it reflect on our dependence on technology? What kinds of questions are being asked when science or scientific theory is presented on the stage? Are people attracted to plays about science because of their difficult subject matter or does it does it lack the engagement of popular culture? In addition to integrating humanities and scientific approaches within Dietrich College, this course will utilize the expertise of both individuals in the School of Drama and the producers in the local theater community, and local science writers. Finally, in addition to weekly writing assignments, the course will ask students to produce original dramatic scenes that incorporate scientific exploration which will, ultimately, lead to staged readings of their work.

66-125 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Democracy & Data

Fall: 9 units
From gerrymandering to online political ads, data is being used in ways that raise urgent questions about the integrity of democratic elections. But the relationship between democracy and data goes far beyond elections. In a world of constant surveillance, in which vast amounts of data are gathered from our phones, our computers, and from other facets of our lives - and in which new breakthroughs in machine learning and data analytics make such data dramatically more powerful - what does it mean for average citizens to have control over their own lives? What does democracy mean?

66-126 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Voting: An American Tradition

Fall: 9 units
This course investigates the sacred American practice of voting, the cornerstone of American democracy, using the 2020 election cycle as our laboratory. The course uses a multi-disciplinary approach, examining the topic from several different perspectives. We'll investigate social movements to expand the vote, the role of technology, game theory, polling, predictions, electoral mapping, social media, the structures of American governance, and more. Questions include: What is the electoral college? Who gets to vote and why? How well is that vote accounted for? How can voting systems be compromised? Why is it so hard to predict who will win? How do people make decisions? How useful are polling and amp; predictions? What disrupts voting? Why is turnout so low? How does money play a role in the election cycle? Why do we vote the way we do? How is social media changing elections? What are global best practices? Did the founders even intend for a mass democracy? (The answer is no!) Many of you will be first-time, eligible voters in one of the most remarkable presidential campaigns in American history. We'll build your skills as new democratic citizens, of this nation or others, and help you make sense of the history-making U.S. news cycle. A note on partisanship: All political viewpoints are welcome in this class. This is a course on how we navigate and account for political difference in a diverse, disparate nation. This is something we'll practice in class, while we will also study that very process across the nation.

66-127 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Environmental Justice

Fall: 9 units
Wondering what the "Green New Deal" proposal is about? Does it seem like you have to choose between protecting people and protecting the planet? How does environmentalism connect to struggles over social justice and human rights? This first-year interdisciplinary seminar is an introduction to the Grand Challenge: Environmental Justice. In Giovanna de Chiro's words, the environmental justice movement is working "toward building diverse, dynamic, and powerful coalitions to address the world's most pressing social and environmental crises global poverty and global climate change by organizing across scales and 'seeking a global vision' for healthy, resilient, and sustainable communities." In this seminar, we'll study the history and science behind two interconnected challenges for environmental justice: global climate change and fine-particulate air pollution. Both types of pollution start with combustion of fossil fuels. Particulate air pollution kills roughly 7 million globally each year; these air pollution deaths happen close to the source, with unequal levels of exposure and risk for people according to class and race. Climate change, mostly from carbon dioxide and methane emissions, is spread globally and lasts well beyond our lifetimes, yet the effects are again disproportionately based on class and race. In this course, we'll explore the science, history, ethics, and public perception of these problems, with implications for Pittsburgh and the planet, and for the near- and long-term future.

66-128 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Palestinian and Israeli Food Cultures

Spring: 9 units
In a region beset by conflict, how do food cultures allow us to approach cultural intersections and connections? This course is designed to provide students with a historical, cultural, and linguistic understanding of the hybrid nature of Jewish and Arab cultures, and the multiple ethnic contributions to local food cultures in Israel and Palestine. The two instructors, from the fields of Jewish history and Arabic Studies, will introduce students to the history, literature, film, and languages of the region, as well as to critical scholarship on food and foodways in the Palestinian and Israeli context. Students will have the opportunity to engage in cooking either locally or in Philadelphia - subject to travel restrictions - and to learn from Michael Solomonov and Reem Kassis, two award-winning US-based celebrity chefs and authors of Israeli and Palestinian cook books respectively. Throughout the semester we will also host a range of guest speakers who will deliver lectures on our course topic in the classroom and in the community.

66-129 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Unreality: Immersive and Spatial Media

Intermittent: 9 units
Virtual news stories and game worlds are accessible by putting on cardboard goggles, theme parks are engineered to provide convincing multisensory experiences, and workforces are reliant on augmented views of factory floors. Immersive and spatial media constitute a suite of emerging technologies that offer the opportunity to expand arts, entertainment, science, design, commercial enterprises and countless other domains in ways that were previously limited to science fiction. The potential for augmented reality to disrupt our current technological ecosystem is tremendous. Many of these technologies are now 50 years old and just starting to enter the commercial realm. As immersive experiences and augmented realities become more integrated into our work and leisure, do we need to worry about the ways that unreality affect our experiences of reality, or our interactions with each other? How do we know that we can trust our senses to tell us what is real? How do we begin to grapple with the ethical, cultural, social, technological, and regulatory implications of this shift?

66-131 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Culture, Sports, and Conflict in/and VR

Intermittent: 9 units
Sports have been celebrated for bringing people together; yet, sports have also been a locus of tensions and conflict that most of us only experience from the sidelines. We understand sports, the people, and their cultural impact through the stories that we tell about them in such places as museums, stadium tours, and Halls of Fame as well as in books, documentaries, and podcasts. Through immersive technologies, these stories are brought to life and bring fans to the heart of the action. In this course, students and faculty together will seek to achieve two main objectives: (1) examine ways in which cultural and societal values are reflected in sports and (2) how Virtual Reality (VR) technology can help design experiences that enhance the users awareness of these issues by engaging with these cultural and societal perspectives. We will first unpack sports stories that are squarely situated at the crossroads of sports and culture(s) (e.g., racism, human rights, and the role of government and/in national politics). Then we will explore the role of VR technology to help craft these narratives. Students, then, will discover what it means to write stories for VR experiences. The course will culminate in students designing an immersive experience about a sports conflict of their choice, which will be developed more fully to be displayed in the Askwith Kenner Global Languages and Cultures Room.

66-132 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Health in Unhealthy Times

Intermittent: 9 units
We live in times when health is a major global concern, whether we worry about the increase in Covid-19 cases, await our immunization, strive to understand the disproportionate impact of the disease on BIPOC populations, or debate mitigation measuresnot to mention ongoing concerns with common chronic illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disease, depression, anxiety, etc.. Health, or lack thereof, has always been a critical part of the human experience, and it is fundamentally impacted by different human experiences. This seminar will introduce students to the scientific aspects of health, its political and social determinants, ethical constraints, historical roots, as well as to the cultural and communicative skills required to dialogue about health, make decisions, and engage empathically with others in their health stories. We will read and discuss a broad variety of materials from medical science articles to social psychological experimental reports and personal or literary narratives about health. The course is divided into three components: health and preventative behaviors, managing chronic health challenges, and coping with disruptive health experiences. We believe these components can represent a broad array of interest and engage students on a personal level.

66-133 DC Grand Challenge Seminar: We're Not Beyond Race: Race and Identity in America

Intermittent: 9 units
Race matters. How have social institutions and historical factors led to the belief systems and stereotypes that shape how race is experienced in American society, and how do these belief systems affect the way individuals come to view and define themselves and others? This course considers how race and identity affect peoples lived experiences - how they think, feel, and act - in America. In this course, we will examine the structural and systemic origins of the racial status quo, as well as the way that individuals navigate the social and racial landscape of modern-day America. Including insights from psychology, literature, economics, sociology, and history, the course will focus on how race matters at both a societal level and an individual level. We will consider different racial situations throughout American society to understand how individuals navigate and experience race and identity. Throughout the course, we will watch films, read literature, and analyze music and art that reflect the experience of race and identity.

66-134 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Native Americas: Facts and Fictions

Intermittent: 9 units
How did Indigenous people respond to the challenges of populating the American hemisphere and creating complex, diverse and dynamic cultures, languages and political entities? How did they survive, adapt to, and resist the conquest and colonization of their lands, and ensuing social and cultural dislocations? How have they resurged politically, culturally, artistically and intellectually in recent years? This course considers the history, experiences, and perspectives of native populations across the Americas. It seeks to reckon with the facts of the Native American experience, while challenging the fictions of stereotypes and narratives that have often relegated Indigenous people to the social and cultural margins of the nations in which they now live. After introducing students to a few of the myriad Indigenous groups of North, Central and South America, we will then survey the implications of the era of European conquest and colonization. Well consider the implications of the rise of new nations in the Americas, as new and intensifying campaigns of violence were unleashed against Indigenous populations. We will consider the rise of Native American civil rights and political and cultural sovereignty movements from the late 20th century forward, as they coalesced into major political challenges to native marginalization and demands for recognition and reparation of historical injustices. Finally, we will explore how contemporary Indigenous artists, authors, and political and social activists are reimagining indigeneity (the condition and experience of being Indigenous) in ways that demonstrate how indigeneity is not a fixed kind of identity, not one that is confined or defined in any way by a static conception of tradition, but rather one that challenges the present and reimagines the future in dynamic and creative ways.

66-135 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Designing Better Human-AI Futures

Intermittent: 9 units
This course will explore the societal impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) based decision-making systems, especially focusing on the societal biases they may enhance or reduce. Students will gain a fundamental understanding of how these systems are designed and work, as well as the role of data in mitigating or enhancing biases. The course is multidisciplinary in nature and brings together social scientists, engineers, data scientists, and designers to tackle the grand challenge of dealing with issues of bias and fairness in Human-AI collaborative systems, ranging from the data that is used to train them, to their human creators that are responsible for deciding how they work and get used. Students will investigate policy, technology and societal elements aimed at reducing and mitigating the impact of AI biases that can negatively impact society, especially its vulnerable members.

66-136 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Becoming Resilient in Challenging Times

Spring: 9 units
"My heart is in my work" - a phrase that once rang true to many CMU students and remains the motto our institution lives by. But what happens if life has been interrupted by a global pandemic and our hearts suddenly aren't in our work anymore? How do we as a society respond to challenges and struggles that go beyond our daily work routine and encompass threats to our physical and mental health, social interactions, family life, and hobbies and leisure activities? Today, when the "new normal" seems to be lasting forever and we face an unprecedented mental health crisis, how can we address questions of resilience, wellbeing and perseverance in the classroom, both from an academic and a personal point of view? How can we rebuild communities and societies after traumatic and scarring events, communicate and collaborate across disciplines to solve complex problems, and establish a world where we thrive and succeed again? In a more fundamental way, what does it mean to be resilient, and where is the boundary between our own health and wellness and the cultural, societal, or economic expectations around these ideas? To answer these questions, this course will use graphic novels from English-speaking, German-speaking, and Spanish-speaking countries as its core to introduce students to a variety of graphic approaches to the concept of resilience, including from the graphic medicine genre. We will explore mental and physical health and healing in innovative ways to analyze different perspectives on and models for wellbeing. Working comparatively across cultures, the graphic novels in the course will help re-examine and re-define our understanding of wellbeing and health and explore how visual storytelling can drive social change around issues of individual and community resilience.

66-137 DC Grand Challenge Seminar: Causes and Consequences of Health Disparities

Spring: 9 units
Why do some people live well into their nineties while others are more likely to die at an earlier age? The answer to this question can be more complex than one might think. Life expectancy can be influenced by a host of individual and population-level factors. This course is designed to critically examine the social factors research has found to impact individual and population health experiences. This course will introduce students to the multiple approaches to researching the complex problem of health disparities in the United States with particular emphasis on perspectives from the social sciences and humanities. Specifically, students will examine how factors such as socioeconomic status, education, crime, housing, health care and food availability play important roles in the production of disparate health. Students will examine psychological factors that can create disparate health experiences and the impact of such disparities on psychological health. We will address health disparities at the individual and population levels, learning how disparate health experiences are historically and socially produced, and how such disparities produce negative physical and mental health outcomes for individuals and minoritized populations. At the end of the course, students will present a collaborative group project that examines a specific facet of US health disparities and offer a proposed solution. Using a multi- disciplinary perspective, we will challenge students to discover just how important seemly unimportant interpersonal and structural factors can be in explaining health disparities and how important it is for society to take measures to address these disparities.

66-138 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Militarizing Freedom Arms in U.S. Culture

Spring: 9 units
This seminar examines the way American culture and politics have utilized the tools, tactics, and values of the military during both war and peacetime. Utilizing several disciplinary perspectives, including history, rhetorical criticism, fictional narrative, and the discourse of public policy, we will consider the different ways that gun culture, military mobilization, veteran affairs, and police power have influenced American society, including how people relate toor fearone another. We will explore some historical roots of the U.S.'s militarized culture, alongside the linguistic, argumentative, and narrative trends that have contributed to urgent democratic issues like police brutality, domestic terrorism, and the rise of the carceral state. This course will address themes and questions such as: - American exceptionalism: Does violence play an extraordinary role in American and culture, in contrast to other nations? What are its historical antecedents? - The escalation of violence in American political culture: Why does political polarization engender violence? Do traditional appeals to "freedom" accelerate such violence? - How has America become a country of prisons and mass incarceration? - Global impacts: How does the U.S.'s militarized political culture impact nations and people beyond its borders?

66-139 DC Grand Challenge Seminar: Reducing Conflict Around Identity and Positionality

Spring: 9 units
Learning to reduce conflict requires understanding positionality and identities, and why and how societies build barriers in their populations. In this interdisciplinary course, students will learn how to talk to each other and strangers about identity: its defining characteristics and how our bias influences our judgments. The social sciences elements will stress Social Identity Theory, bias, stereotypes, and in-groups and out-groups. The humanities elements will include close-reading strategies and incorporate conceptual frameworks from cultural studies, literary studies, and narrative theory. In addition to practicing the methodologies in these two disciplines, students will undertake two projects. In the first project, they will develop and implement a semi-structured interview protocol for their campus peers centered around belonging. In the second project, students will employ close reading techniques to analyze Young Adult novels that address complex questions of identity, isolation, bias, and rejection. Working with one novel and Project 1 data, each team of social sciences, humanities, and data specialists will create a website to highlight inclusive successes and challenges. This final cohesive 'picture' of themes pertaining to feelings of belonging on our campus will help guide the CMU community toward deeper understanding and acceptance practices.

66-140 Grand Challenge Seminar: Equitable Access and Success in Higher Education at CMU

Spring: 9 units
With the Supreme Court poised to rule on affirmative action, the challenge of equitable access to higher education is back in the public spotlight. Carnegie Mellon, as a university that brings together students from a wide variety of backgrounds, serves as a case study for exploring the challenges and opportunities for achieving equitable access and success in higher education. The array of social identities (e.g., race, gender, national origin, etc.) represented on campus creates an environment where students can engage with a diversity of ideas and experiences. However, this same diversity can also present challenges when students are viewed as "equal" (i.e., all the same) rather than as unique individuals with a diverse set of needs and assets (i.e., equity). Using archival materials, students will explore the history of Carnegie Mellon University from its founding to present day, with attention to the composition of its student body, its approach(es) to equitable access (e.g., admission policies), and students' experiences at the university. Through historical and linguistic analyses, students will examine how language about social identities and equitable access changed over time and how those changes may have impacted student experiences and success at CMU. The historical and linguistic focus of this course will be enhanced via guest speakers involved with initiatives related to equitable access and success at CMU as well as via class materials from other disciplines (e.g., educational psychology). During class meetings and guest speaker sessions, students will be expected to engage with ideas and with each other through discussion. Outside of class, students will complete a variety of course assignments, including readings, written assignments, reflections, and a collaborative project.

66-141 DC Grand Challenge Seminar: Freedom of Speech & Academic Freedom

Intermittent: 9 units
This Grand Challenge course offers a comprehensive exploration of the principles, controversies, and significance of Freedom of Speech (FOS) and Academic Freedom (AF). By exploring actual and hypothetical cases, students will analyze the complex dilemmas that arise when we try to balance two interests: maximizing freedom of expression and creating an inclusive, respectful community. By engaging a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and methods of inquiry from philosophy, history, psychology, law, etc., students will examine how different policies and norms impact these competing interests and vice versa. Students will practice informed and constructive dialogue within the seminar to facilitate independent thought, rigorous inquiry, and how to discuss difficult topics productively. Course topics will include: - the rights and responsibilities involved in FOS for both individuals and institutions, - the history and current state of the law with respect to FOS, - the history and state of university policies and practices about AF for research and education, including scholarship, artistic freedom, teaching, in particular trigger warnings, safe spaces, censorship, protest, and controversial outside speakers, - developmental perspectives on how children learn about freedom of expression, - FOS in advertising, media, and social media, including recommendation algorithms. The broader goal is to empower students to become informed, responsible, and productive members of Carnegie Mellon's transformative university community.

66-142 DC 1st Year Seminar: The Mirror of Technology: Biases in Computation & Cognition

Spring: 9 units
The title of the show, Black Mirror, refers to the blank screens of tech devices that reflect back an image of the human user. The image captures some parts of us, say our facial expression, while deemphasizing, distorting or missing others, say the color of our eyes or skin. Further, the reflection is silent about what goes on under the surface in our heads, what we feel, think and value. At the same time, the screen presents a cover for a computational device which, when activated, is massively interconnected with local and global structures around us and with our minds in ways that we do not notice. Can we understand and explain this increasingly symbiotic relation, sometimes healthy, sometimes not? Through active discussion, group work, engaging with local and national experts, and argument and analysis in written work, we will explore the ways in which recent technologies mirror our minds as well as how our minds are impacted by and come to mirror those technologies. We will focus on the idea of bias and a type of informational selectivity we capture as attention. Topics will include: the nature of meaning, thinking and understanding in animals and machines, tests for cognition in artificial systems with focus on recent large language models such as CHAT GPT, biases in cognition and attention in humans and biases in algorithms and the impacts of these on society, the attention economy and the manipulation of our attention therein, and the symbiosis between mind and machine where machines extend our minds. These topics span philosophy, cognitive science and computer science. Our goal will be to acquire the analytical skills needed to help critically engage with and transform this symbiotic relation between mind and machine, moving it systematically towards a virtuous and healthy state.

66-143 DC Grand Challenge Seminar: Realizing Human Rights

Spring: 9 units
This course will introduce first year students to the challenge of protecting and promoting human rights in a world fraught with conflict, political strife, economic exploitation, and environmental hazards. We will focus on how human rights frameworks can be used to make the world more just, equitable, and free. We will begin by discussing the theoretical foundations of human rights and the development of human rights institutions in the 20th century. Students will learn how rights have been constructed through legal action, activism, and treaty negotiations in the past and examine the emergence and contestation of new rights today. We will explore why particular rights frameworks are privileged in some societies but not others. We will then focus on how practitioners investigate and document potential rights violations around the world, including in our own backyard. The instructors bring disciplinary expertise in history, journalism, and data analysis, and the course will feature guest lectures by legal experts and human rights practitioners. Topics covered will include genocide and other war crimes; political repression; economic, social, and cultural rights; environmental rights; migration and refugees; gender identity and sexuality; and indigenous rights. By the end of semester, students will be prepared to propose an action plan to address a specific human rights challenge in a community that they are familiar with. In previous semesters, our students have worked on projects related to deaths in Pennsylvanias jails and prisons in partnership with local organizations, proposed a project to assess human rights violations of migrants at the US/Mexico border, and conducted an international open source investigation of human rights violations using online media and satellite imagery.

66-144 DC Grand Challenge Seminar: In Transit: Exile, Migration, and Culture

Spring: 9 units
The world is currently experiencing the worst refugee crisis since the end of World War II. Large numbers of people are forced from home for political, personal, or racial reasons, and many others leave home because of grinding poverty and need. Conflicts about the mass migration provoked by this crisis have emerged all over the globe, from the United States, Latin America, and Europe, to Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and even Oceania. Writers, filmmakers, and artists have attempted to address the plight of refugees and migrants in their works, and many writers, filmmakers, and other artists are themselves refugees or migrants. Pittsburgh has a unique institution, City of Asylum, whose mission is to assist and advocate for persecuted writers and other artists. It hosts the largest residency program in the world for writers living in exile under threat of persecution or worse: death. The goal of this Grand Challenge Seminar is (1) to familiarize students with todays plight of refugees (e.g., social, political, economic factors; cross-cultural comparisons; dynamics of class, race, gender, and nationality), and (2) introduce them to a variety of textual (literary and theoretical) and visual materials and to the resources available through City of Asylum. Through readings, discussions, guest speakers, short papers, and group film projects/presentations, students will examine the ways in which writers, filmmakers, musicians, and other artists have addressed exile and migration in their work by constructing, revising, and reinventing images and cultures of the homeland. Students will explore a variety of texts (e.g., films, documentaries, art, music, photography; prose, poems, and presentations by exiled artists; archival materials; news reports, articles) and meet with and interview exiled writers and other artists.

66-145 DC First Year Seminar: Appalachia: Development, Decline, and Identity in America

Spring: 9 units
The Appalachian region, which stretches from Georgia to New York's southern tier, has a particular place in American history and memory. This course will examine the political, literary, economic, and historical narratives that surround the region, as well as examining the role that Appalachia can play as a model for developing regions in other parts of the world. The paradoxes of Appalachia have confronted American culture since its first settlement by Europeans in the 18th century: a region of unparalleled biodiversity, it has nevertheless been characterized by ongoing poverty and isolation. Politically, it has given rise to both progressive collective action and conservative rhetoric. Economically, its natural resources have been widely exploited by outside economic and industrial interests. Its inhabitants have been characterized as either fiercely independent or widely dysfunctional, giving rise to the archetypes of Mountaineers, Rednecks, or Hillbillies. Its cultural ethos has resisted ready inclusion into mainstream culture. This course will examine these paradoxes by utilizing history, literature, and public policy documents that detail the ongoing debates surrounding Appalachian development, while consulting with several invited writers, political figures, and artists who have interpreted the regions role in American history.

66-146 DC 1st Year Seminar: From Pandemics to Politics: Modeling Complex Social Systems

Fall: 9 units
TBA

66-147 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: (Mis)Trust in Research

Fall: 9 units
TBA

66-148 Introduction to Community Engagement

Intermittent: 3 units
This course is designed to prepare students to actively and thoughtfully engage in their community. Students will evaluate various models for community engagement and community-based leadership and examine ethical and social justice issues related to college and university involvement in the community. Through course discussions and direct engagement with community leaders, students will develop the ability to consider multiple perspectives, demonstrate cultural humility and critically reflect to make meaning from experiences. Students will create a plan to infuse community engagement into their academic journey that aligns with their values. This is part of the Dietrich College Community Engagement Fellowship and is only open to students that have been accepted into the program.

66-151 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Equity and the Environment

Fall: 9 units
TBA

66-181 Grand Challenge Seminar

Fall and Spring: 9 units
In their firm desire to perfect the new Constitution, which defined and limited the powers and roles of their new government, the founding fathers insisted on explicit statements that would protect the rights of the new nation's citizens. Indeed, the protection of these essential rights in many ways drove and defined their successful rebellion from Britain. This impulse resulted in ten amendments to the Constitution, which we have come to know as the Bill of Rights. The very first (and arguably considered at the time as the most essential) of these was the First Amendment, which we sometimes call the "free speech" amendment to the Constitution. This amendment guarantees every U.S. citizen five freedoms: freedom of religion, speech, press, peaceable assembly, and the freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances. This course examines the historical and philosophical roots of this key constitutional amendment, how it has been fleshed out and defined over time through case law, and the bases of some more recent critics of this amendments and current interpretations.

66-182 Grand Challenges Seminar: Preserving History with Blockchain Technology

Spring: 9 units
Historical information, artifacts, and relics provide a window to our past and help us understand our present and foresee and prepare for the future. During times of conflict and internecine warfare, it is essential to preserve objects of historical and cultural heritage. Blockchain is a block of data chained together. It does three noteworthy things: 1. digitization, 2. tracing, and 3. security. For any non-digital historical data, Blockchain can provide digitization. For any data that requires tracing, such as scientific findings, religious information, or scriptures (including Hadith/sayings of the Prophet (s)), so on, tracing can play a pivotal role in going back to the originator and understanding the change on the way, as well as preserving it from any changes (which is part of security). Blockchain also involves a mining process, which includes stakeholders that audit the information of any newly added block of data, making Blockchain auditable, which is significant for history. Using topics from blockchain technology, history, preservation, and science, this course provides students with the grand challenge of understanding how bitcoin and cryptocurrency can assist in providing potential solutions to the problems of authorship, impermanence, managing shared ownership, and stewardship of artifacts taken through war or colonialism. Many institutions and archives are considering and advocating the merits of blockchain-based repositories. In this Grand Challenge course, we want to examine how the seemingly opposed fields of study - history and blockchain technology - can be synergized to create a futuristic museum that captures monuments and artifacts, making them accessible to future generations.

66-195 Documenting Israeli and Palestinian Food Cultures: Teaching and Travel

Spring: 9 units
How does the study of food cultures allow us to approach cultural intersections, conflict, and peacemaking, especially in a region as fraught as Israel and Palestine? This course, cotaught by CMU faculty in the departments of History, Modern Languages, and the Entertainment Technology Center, is designed to provide students with a historical and cultural background about the hybrid nature of Jewish and Palestinian-Arab cultures and the multiple ethnic contributions to food cultures in Israel/Palestine, as well as with media-tech skills, with the aim of preparing them for travel to Israel and the West Bank during Spring Break 2023. In the weeks leading up to the trip, the professors will introduce students to the history, literature, film, and language(s) of the region, as well as to critical scholarship in food studies. Students will also begin developing and creating their own personal narrative experience in the media of their choice. During the trip, students will participate in documenting local food cultures through film and other media. Upon their return, they will work on the production of a collaborative multi-layered interactive documentary (iDoc) meant to capture their first-hand experiences with local and regional cuisine practices in Israel and the West Bank, and present separate small group final projects based on these experiences. Specific course themes will include: the shared history of Arabs and Jews from the rise of Islam to Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) and the Ottoman Empire to the modern and contemporary history of the Arab-Israeli conflict; the history of Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi Jewish immigration and contributions to Israeli cuisine; Palestinian identity, culinary traditions and gendered aspects of food practices; the politics of food; and Palestinian and Jewish voices in literary contexts. To apply to be considered for this course, go to https://forms.gle/UbixDaA9xCBhNaoP8

Course Website: https://forms.gle/UbixDaA9xCBhNaoP8

66-204 Film Festival

Spring
Students will take on the project of planning and managing a film festival that draws a college- and city-wide audience. Students will collaborate on all aspects of the festival: selecting films, generating and distributing marketing materials, designing and scheduling events, arranging facilities and general logistics, coordinating internal and external public relations, organizing fundraisers, rallying the local communities - in short, all the aspects involved in making the event a spectacular/sensational success! A unique feature of this course-cum-festival will be several directors' participation as guest speakers on the festival theme and other issues informing their films. Previous Film Festivals have covered such topics as: Democracy, Mechanization, Realism, Globalization, Migration, Media and Work. This course is also designed to supplement the study of film with the historical, political and sociological background that students need for critically analyzing the images and ideologies they see on the screen and understand how those images effect our views of the past and present time. NOTE: Interview with course instructor required prior the registration.

66-215 The Innovation Trials

Fall: 9 units
This course will examine some of the most influential intellectual property court battles throughout history and their impact on innovation. This course is geared toward students curious about Americas industrial development and interested in the political and business strategies behind the greatest innovations and technological advances of the past several centuries. The course will answer the who, what, where, when, why and how of a number of legal cases involving various technologies and areas of innovation and place them in their historical context.

66-216 Connecting with the Pittsburgh Community

Spring: 1 unit
This course is designed to engage students in an exploration of various communities within the Pittsburgh area. Students will examine the ways that local organizers have been able to effectively promote positive social change. Students will develop the ability to honor the histories of diverse communities in the region while learning about the communities and the ingredients of successful communities. This course is part of the Dietrich College Community Engagement Fellowship and is only open to students who have been accepted into the program.
Prerequisite: 66-148

66-221 Topics of Law: Introduction to Intellectual Property Law

Intermittent: 9 units
This course provides students with an overview of patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret laws. Goals for the course include identifying intellectual property (IP) rights and understanding how to take the necessary steps to protect and enforce those rights. Many recent developments in IP law will also be covered.

66-225 Politics, Persuasion, and the Press

Intermittent: 6 units
This course, conducted in the wake of a brutal presidential election, an assault on the Capitol, and a second impeachment, is intended to examine American politics and to look at how the political system in the United States and its interchange with the press shape the process of making policy. It is one part history, one part political science, one part policy studies, with special emphasis on local and national politics. In this course, students will be exposed to the 18th century Constitutional origins of the American political system as well as the 21st century implications of the American political systemall in the context of political upheaval in a country that, until recently, cultivated an air of stability. Through challenging readings, guest speakers, and yeasty class conversation, this course is intended to provide insights into the political system of the preeminent power in North America and, even now, around the world. In addition to the course readings alluded to below, students will be expected each day to have read in detail the Post-Gazette and either The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, plus websites of your choice. (Rationale: Even in the Internet age, it remains the case that, in the United States, when one person involved in politics and government encounters another by 9 AM, each will have assumed of the other that they have read both The Journal and The Times.)

66-236 Introduction to Environmental Ideas

Fall and Spring: 9 units
By recognizing that environmental problems are themselves complex and require insights from social, political, and scientific perspectives, the interdisciplinary Program in Environmental and Sustainability Studies (ESS) prepares students to gain proficiency in different disciplinary habits of thinking. As part of this endeavor, students take part in informed discussions about interpretive lenses; ways of seeing; and thinking about social, cultural, and historical contexts for interpretations of environment and sustainability. This seminar-style course introduces key methods and approaches for interdisciplinary inquiry within a framework of Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice. Scholar Giovanna de Chiro writes: "The term 'environmental justice' emerged from the activism of communities of color in the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century...They advocate for social policies that uphold the right to meaningful, democratic participation of frontline communities in environmental decision making." The implications of disciplinary narratives and approaches to questions of environment and sustainability, and the implications for social justice, are a key and repeated question in the course. The role of poverty as a cultural, political, and historical phenomenon is a motif in many of our discussions. We'll explore contrasting historical, cultural, and disciplinary explanations for hunger, famine, and food insecurity. Further, we'll explore how so-called "environmental" explanations for food scarcity, which rationalize the persistence of hunger and poverty in the 21st century, have distracted from decades of expertise, reminding us that hunger and poverty are social problems. In contrast to these so-called "environmental" explanations, there is no scarcity of food in the present era. This course will examine how these narratives contradict each other, and why it matters.

66-300 Using Collective Leadership to Pursue Community Goals

Fall: 6 units
This course serves as the third required course in the Dietrich College Community Engagement Fellowship. This course is designed to further prepare students to actively and thoughtfully engage alongside a community focusing on a topic of the students choice. This course will bring together prior topics of cultural humility, asset-based framing, cultural competence, and community-based leadership models alongside additional topics (such as collective leadership, tailored community-focused communication, among others) responsive to their community-based learning experiences. This will prepare students to narrow their focus on a topic and community in preparation for their capstone project.
Prerequisites: 66-148 and 66-216

66-307 Independent Study

All Semesters
This course is intended for students with a special interest in an interdisciplinary area in the humanities and/or social sciences not covered by a normal course. Readings and other works are developed by the student and an individual faculty member. The number of units will be assigned at the time of registration based on the number of hours to be completed (decided in advance with the sponsoring faculty member).

66-310 Internship

All Semesters: 10 units
Internships-for-credit allow students to apply course-based knowledge in a non-classroom setting, under joint supervision and evaluation by an on-site supervisor and a faculty sponsor. Approved internships must conform to college guidelines for internships-for-credit, and are available by permission only arranged through the Associate Dean's Office in Baker Hall 154.

66-320 Dietrich College Experiential Learning

All Semesters
Experiential Learning occurs when a student participates in an opportunity that allows them to apply what they are learning in the classroom to a real-world context. This may include internships, undergraduate research with a faculty member, community engaged learning, study abroad or work-based learning through structured consulting projects. Students enrolled in this course will be expected to identify several learning goals for their experience, identify a mentor and complete a reflection upon completion. Registration is by permission-only; contact the Director of Experiential Learning.

66-400 Dietrich College Senior Honors Colloquium

Fall: 1 unit
The purpose of this course is to provide students admitted to the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program with a shared set of intellectual and practical sessions that will enhance their senior honors thesis experience. The course will consist of seven bi-weekly 80-minute meetings. Each will be organized around a theme and related topics that are relevant to the senior honors thesis experience, and that take advantage of both the high caliber and interdisciplinary diversity of the course members. Guest visitors will also be a common feature of the course. Topics could include: the meaning(s) of "honors;" getting started and keeping pace: the ebb and flow of an independent research project (including how to recognize and avoid procrastination; forging a successful relationship with your thesis advisor - the myth of the separation of research from writing; writing for publication); ethics in research; "interdisciplinarity," or the "unity of knowledge;" funding for research; preparing for and delivering effective presentations; intellectual property rights, and human subjects policy. Guest speakers invited to address and engage class members in discussion/debate of topics that lend themselves to interdisciplinary discussion and debate (e.g., stem cell research, which calls into play science, ethics, etc.). Course requirements will include mandatory attendance, occasional readings (where appropriate), acting as co-leader for at least one session, and - at course's end - (a) a written, formal preliminary thesis statement and action plan, endorsed by the thesis advisor, and tentatively, (b) a brief oral presentation of the thesis statement and plan to the class + thesis advisors during the last class meeting. All students will participate in critiques of fellow-students' presentations and plans.

66-402 Dietrich Leadership Development Seminar

Fall and Spring: 9 units
The Dietrich Leadership Development Seminar is for juniors and seniors in Dietrich College wishing to advance their understanding of leadership theory and practice and to develop their own skills in this regard, while creating a context for their lifelong leadership development. The course is predicated on a six pillar model proposing that ideal leaders must at once be visionary, ethical, engaging, tactical, technical - including sub-expert conversancy in realms beyond their own expertise, and reflective - including both personal mindfulness and assessment against clear metrics. In this context, the course includes a focus on strategic planning, teamwork, cultural awareness, conflict resolution, risk management, sustainability and personal welfare, professionalism, personal financial planning, and ongoing professional development. The course includes an attendance requirement and active engagement in class discussion, assigned readings/videos/podcasts (2 hours/week), self-selected experiential opportunities (2 hours/week), reflective journaling (2 hours/week), three hour-long one:ones per semester with the instructor, special guests who are leaders in various occupational and service domains, a mid-term, a final, and a final presentation. The course includes case studies and role plays to amplify the learning experience. The course is limited to twelve students, with registration based on approval of the faculty member.

66-403 Community Engagement Fellowship Capstone

Spring
This course serves as the final component of the Dietrich College Community Engagement Fellowship and is designed to engage students in completion of their culminating project. The course will build on students' work in the previous semester in which they identified a community, established an understanding of the community goals and proposed a plan to pursue one of these goals. During the semester, students will implement their capstone project utilizing the knowledge and skills developed during earlier stages of the program. Working with a mentor who is also a community stakeholder, students will implement their project, solicit feedback from the community, evaluate project effectiveness and make appropriate changes. Students will also articulate ways their project can be sustained and present their findings to a variety of audiences.
Prerequisites: 66-148 and 66-216 and 66-300

66-501 Dietrich College Senior Honors Thesis I

Fall and Spring: 9 units
This is the first semester of a two-semester sequence that culminates in an original, year-long independent research or creative project. The course is open only to students who have been approved for entry into the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program. Thesis topics are selected by faculty and students, and reviewed and approved through the senior honors program application process. Dietrich College senior honors students are also required to participate in the annual Meeting of the Minds Undergraduate Research Symposium, offering either an oral presentation or poster session based on their senior honors thesis

Course Website: http://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/undergraduate/programs/shp/index.html

66-502 Dietrich College Senior Honors Thesis II

Fall and Spring: 9 units
This is the second semester of a two-semester sequence that is the culmination of an original, year-long independent research or creative project. The course is open only to students who have been approved for entry into the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program. Thesis topics are selected by faculty and students, and reviewed and approved through the senior honors program application process. Dietrich College senior honors students are also required to participate in the annual Meeting of the Minds Undergraduate Research Symposium, offering either an oral presentation or poster session based on their senior honors thesis
Prerequisite: 66-501
Course Website: http://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/undergraduate/programs/shp/index.html

66-503 Dietrich College Senior Honors Thesis

All Semesters: 18 units
This course is a one-semester alternative to the two-semester Dietrich College Senior Honors Thesis sequence 66-501/66-502. The course is open only to students who have been approved for entry into the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program, and whose senior honors thesis project has been approved as a one-semester undertaking. Thesis topics are selected by faculty and students, and reviewed and approved through the senior honors program application process. The thesis culminates in an original independent research or creative project. Dietrich College senior honors students are also required to participate in the annual Meeting of the Minds Undergraduate Research Symposium, offering either an oral presentation or poster session based on their senior honors thesis.

66-504 Senior Capstone I

All Semesters: 9 units
Dietrich College student-defined majors (primary or additional) must complete a senior capstone project for at least 9 units (in one semester), or 18 units across both semesters of the senior year. The capstone project culminates in an original independent research or creative project that draws on all of the strands of the student's particular student-defined program. This course is the first in a two-course capstone sequence open only to seniors who have been admitted to the Dietrich College Student-Defined Program as a primary or additional major, and who choose the two-semester capstone sequence option. The second course in the sequence is 66-505, Senior Capstone II. Projects are proposed by eligible students, and must be approved by a member of the faculty who agrees to be the project's primary advisor, as well as by the Dietrich College Student-Defined Program Director. These approvals must be secured no later than registration week of the semester prior to the start of the student's senior year. NOTE: For Dietrich College student-defined majors (primary or additional) who are accepted into the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program and who successfully complete a senior honors thesis based primarily on their student-defined major, the senior honors thesis fulfills the student-defined major capstone requirement.

66-505 Senior Capstone II

All Semesters: 9 units
Dietrich College student-defined majors (primary or additional) must complete a senior capstone project for at least 9 units (in one semester), or 18 units across both semesters of the senior year. The capstone project culminates in an original independent research or creative project that draws on all of the strands of the student's particular student-defined program. This course is the second in the two-course capstone sequence, and is open only to seniors who have been admitted to the Dietrich College Student-Defined Program as a primary or additional major, and who have chosen the two-semester capstone option. The first course in the sequence is 66-504, Senior Capstone I. Projects are proposed by eligible students, and must be approved by a member of the faculty who agrees to be the project's primary advisor, as well as by the Dietrich College Student-Defined Program Director. These approvals must be secured no later than registration week of the semester prior to the start of the student's senior year. NOTE: For Dietrich College student-defined majors (primary or additional) who are accepted into the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program and who successfully complete a senior honors thesis based primarily on their student-defined major, the senior honors thesis fulfills the student-defined major capstone requirement.

66-506 Senior Capstone

All Semesters: 9 units
Dietrich College student-defined majors (primary or additional) must complete a senior capstone project for at least 9 units (in one semester), or 18 units usually spread across both semesters of the senior year. The capstone project culminates in an original independent research or creative project that draws on all of the strands of the student's particular student-defined program. This course is a one-semester option for student-defined majors who propose a 9-unit/one-semester capstone project; it is also an 18-unit/one-semester alternative to the two-semester Senior Capstone sequence (66-504/66-505) for Dietrich College student-defined majors who choose the 18-unit capstone option, but who are unable to spread these units across both semesters of the senior year. The course is open only to seniors who have been admitted to the Dietrich College Student-Defined Program as either a primary or additional major. Projects and unit values are proposed by eligible students, and must be approved by a member of the faculty who agrees to be the project's primary advisor, as well as by the Dietrich College Student-Defined Program Director. These approvals must be secured no later than registration week of the semester prior to the start of the student's senior year. NOTE: For Dietrich College student-defined majors (primary or additional) who are accepted into the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program and who successfully complete a senior honors thesis, the senior honors thesis fulfills the student-defined major capstone requirement.

General Dietrich College Courses

65-198 Research Training: History

Intermittent: 9 units
For Fall 2021: The Pittsburgh Queer History Project The Pittsburgh Queer History Project (PQHP) is an ongoing research effort to collect and catalog archival material that document the experiences of LGBTQ people in Pittsburgh and its environs from the second half of the 20th century to the present. The PQHP is co-directed by Prof. Tim Haggerty, the Director of the Humanities Scholars Program and Dr. Harrison Apple, a BXA graduate of Carnegie Mellon who received a doctorate degree from the University of Arizona in 2021, studying with the noted trans scholar Susan Stryker. Students will meet with community activists, learn how to conduct community outreach, organize archival material, and help formulate research questions based on these documents. There is no prior experience needed. The Dietrich College research training program is open to second-semester first-year students and sophomores with a 3.0 QPA or by petition. By permission of the relevant professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Students sign up for these courses through both the History Department and the Dietrich College Dean's Office.

65-200 Applied Quantitative Social Science I

Fall: 9 units
The first course in the QSSS core sequence provides a fast-paced introduction to a range of methods in the quantitative social sciences. Organized around a set of case studies, the course introduces the language and methods of empirical research through a combination of seminar-style discussions of academic papers, and hands-on lab work using the statistical software R. Students will replicate results from a high-profile labor market discrimination paper, explore agent-based models of neighborhood segregation, and scrape Wikipedia data to examine imbalances in gender representation. Enrollment restricted to QSSS students.

65-201 Humanities Scholars III

Fall: 9 units
Fall 2021: Modern Love As an emotional state love is central to the human experience, whether it is the bonding that occurs between parents and their children, the camaradierie that happens between friends, colleagues, or compatriots, or the romantic attachments that occur between partners. In the modern era, love underwent a transformation: children became more precious, comradeship was reexamined and romance assumed a preeminent place in psychology, legal theory, and social organization. None of this was immutable or unchanging. This class, utilizing fiction, social science and other media, will examine the manner in which love has transformed over time and the consequences that these changes have had upon our understanding of personal interactions, sexualities, and conceptions of health, wellness and social order.
Prerequisite: 65-102

Course Website: http://www.hss.cmu.edu/hsp/

65-203 Applied Quantitative Social Science II

Spring: 9 units
Applied Quantitative Social Science II is the second course in the QSSS core sequence. Conducted in a seminar format, the course will feature guest lectures from a series of faculty at CMU. Students will discuss ongoing research across the social sciences, and over the course of the semester will develop a research project proposal. Seminar participation is limited to QSSS students.