Course Description: Using a multi-media and interdisciplinary cultural studies approach, this seminar focuses on four metropolitan centers that typify modern life. Paris, Berlin, New York and Tokyo appear as "case studies" through which we attain a better understanding of what it means to live in a modern world increasingly characterized by dense urbanization, the interaction of diverse cultures, the appearance of "shrinking" time-space relations though mass media and telecommunication technologies, and other phenomena that seem to peak in our present age of accelerated globalization.

Course Description: Focusing on the study and production of science writing across a variety of disciplines, this course is centered on writing as a means to bridge science and art. By the end of the course, students will be familiar with several important works by science writers, will be skilled at recognizing the components of effective science writing, and will have developed their voice as a science writer. Prerequisites: completion of the first-year writing sequence.