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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...

Babylon is a symbol of both pain and possibility for the Jewish diaspora. But it is more than just a symbol—it is a site in Iraq that still exists today. This three-part program will investigate the complicated relationships that Jews have with Babylon, an ancient city home to the first Jewish exile, the Babylonian Talmud, and, more recently, a...

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....

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...

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...

In its stark portrayal of the quest for meaning amidst great suffering, the book of Job stands alone not only in the Hebrew Bible, but also among the wisdom literature of the ancient Near East. A work of magnificent poetic beauty, it raises the perennial question of why bad things happen to good people—but with surprising responses. The character...

Money, Prices, and Commerce: an Introduction to Inflation Inflation is often regarded as the gravest of all financial diseases. In devaluing the wealth and wages of the rich and poor alike (though at varying rates), it has the potency to engender political and social turmoil, even to the point of upending the social order. Definitionally, inflation...

Across an oeuvre stunning in its scope—including fiction, drama, theory, and criticism—the work of Jamaican writer Sylvia Wynter represents one of the greatest contributions to Black radical thought in the twentieth century. Rivaling its scope is the eclecticism of disciplines that Wynter marshals—from science studies to literary theory, psychoanalysis,...

F.W.J. Schelling is (in)famous for his seemingly ever-changing views and proliferating “systems.” But underlying his philosophizing was a single obsession: to heal the rift between nature and reason that had been newly ruptured in the work of his immediate and venerable predecessor, Immanuel Kant. Schelling developed a philosophy of nature (Naturphilosophie...

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...

On the face of it, autofiction appears self-explanatory—a simple combination of two familiar genres, autobiography and fiction. But the simple combination is also an uneasy one. Part of what makes autofiction so thrilling—and so controversial—is the challenge it poses to the readerly expectations that are established in no small part by generic...

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...

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...

Have you ever thought about turning your life’s trials and tribulations into a NY Times bestseller? In this five-week Online Memoir Writing Workshop, Erika Schickel (2 Memoirs, LA Times) will share her secrets for turning your life’s twists and turns into lively drama! Her fun, all new in-class exercises will help you infuse your most fascinating...