Courses

This course examines the idea of health capability.  Health capability is the ability to be healthy; it integrates health functioning and health agency. Health capability helps us understand the conditions that facilitate and barriers that impede health and the ability to make healthy choices.

This is primarily an art and planning course that centers on the representation of the oriental, specifically the Chinese, in both its historical and present contexts.

This course is an introduction to the theories, practices, and processes of making public policy. It is designed for undergraduates majoring in political science and PPE and for curious students who want to better understand how policies get made and why they look the way they do.

This course proposes an examination of race with a two-pronged approach: one that broadly links the study of race in the United States with a multi-disciplinary approach and also simultaneously situates specific conversations within the immediate location of Philadelphia, home to the University. The broad historical examination advances key concepts of race and racialization, explores theoretical methodologies, and highlights major scholarly works.

This highly engaged course integrates the process of learning about positive psychology with personal experience and reflection. We explore topics such as well-being, positive affect, optimism, relationships, and character strengths.

This course focuses to enrich students understanding, communication, and access of and to research in the biological sciences.

When and how can we justify using the power of the government to force our fellow citizens to follow rules with which they disagree?

The purpose of this course is to provide students with an understanding of how decisions and policy are really made in Washington. Weekly travel to Washington D.C. required.

This course will introduce the student to the many ways in which mindfulness is currently being implemented to support the health and success of students of all ages.  Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), in particular, which utilizes secularized practices from Asian and South Asian traditions for the remediation of various health concerns, has revolutionized behavioral medicine, and the scientific evaluation of MBSR has shed new light on the bio-mechanical pathways linking mind and body.

This course seeks to understand contemporary political divisions in the United States.  Guiding our analysis will be scholarship from the discipline of political science, with particular attention given to political culture, American political development and federalism while incorporating scholarship from several other disciplines.

This course is an exploration of dialogue across difference through three lenses: theoretical, practical, and representational. Rather than prescribe a particular model of what dialogue should look like and accomplish, the course exposes students to a diverse range of ideas and narratives related to dialogue. By the end of the course, you’ll have begun to develop and practice your own working theory and model of dialogue that is relevant to your values and goals and meaningful to the kinds of work you are most invested in doing.

The class is part of a broader multi-year project that is designed to address the gendered dimensions of broader social inequalities.

The aims of Grit Lab are three-fold: (1) to equip you with generalizable knowledge about the science of passion and perseverance; (2) to help you apply these insights to your own life; and (3) to provide an experience worth sharing with others.

Rhetoric and the Community is a class designed to improve the quality of students’ speaking abilities. Through debates, impromptu speeches and various other types of oral reports, students develop their skills as speakers.

This course is a basic introduction to certain fundamental topics in political theory. It aims to provide students with concepts and ideas by which to more clearly make sense of political reality.

We will explore conservatism’s triumphs and failures politically, as well as the cultural changes that have helped, hindered, and shaped its rise. In many ways, this class is a study in the transformation of American politics and in American culture over the last sixty-five years. Its focus is on the hows and the whys of the rise of conservatism from the low point of the early 50s to the rise of the Tea Party and Trumpism in the 2000s and 2010s.

Every society limits speech in significant ways. What are these limits in the United States, why are these the limits, and are they the ones we want? Explore these topics and more.