[UConn Storrs]

Requires ECON 1200 or both ECON 1201 and 1202. Not open for credit for students who have completed ECON 2103.

This course examines the sources of challenging issues facing modern societies, such as inequality, racism, sexism, and armed conflict. You will learn pathbreaking approaches that inform our understanding of these issues by revealing their historical roots and the channels that transmitted these roots to today.

The course will consist of three parts. In the first part, we will survey a brief economic history of the World, our long journey from a period in which human life was “nasty, brutish, and short,” to highly developed modern societies with vastly higher but unequal living standards. The second part will examine the origins of our journey by differentiating between the proximate reasons and deep roots of today’s problems and the channels of transmission between the past and present. We will study the relative importance of institutions, culture, geographic endowment, agricultural history, and human diversity. In the third part, we will apply these insights to examine the deep roots of some of the important problems facing modern societies.

Each student will choose a geographic region of the world and one topic from each of the three parts of the course. These choices will guide your individual research and exploration and be the basis for your writing and presentation assignments. You will have the opportunity to contribute to class discussion from the perspective of your region and topics.

Note This class has a catalog-level pre-requisite of ECON 2201, ECON 2202, ECON 2211Q, or ECON 2212Q. We can override this requirement so long as you have credit for ECON 1200 or both ECON 1201 and 1202. If you are an Honors student, you may register by emailing honors@uconn.edu and including (1) your name; (2) your 7-digit Student Admin number; (3) confirmation that you have credit for ECON 1200 or both ECON 1201 and 1202; (4) your registration “pick time”; (5) the course number and section; (6) the class number from Student Admin; and (7) confirmation that there are seats available in the course.

This class has a catalog-level pre-requisite of ECON 2201, ECON 2202, ECON 2211Q, or ECON 2212Q, but we can override this requirement. If you are bringing in credit for both ECON 1201 and 1202, talk to your Orientation advisor about enrolling in this course.

Introduction to game theory examines applications in the natural and social sciences and technology, which may include electric power auctions, evolutionary biology, and elections. The course is an opportunity for students to begin to think strategically about many types of problems found in science, social settings, and even university life.

In this course, students will learn: To recognize strategic behavior—and the potential for strategic behavior—in a variety of situations, for example, in social and political situations and even in the natural sciences. To solve games, use solutions to predict and explain behavior, and recognize and learn from the successes and failures of their analyses. How to work through a sequence of short directed projects to learn that choosing a topic for the Honors thesis is not quite as daunting as they may believe.

We are often told that we live in a singularly visual age, where most information is communicated to us via some platform, frame, or program. Yet as we are increasingly dominated by the visual, we seem to be learning less and less about how to read, interpret, engage, or resist the visual culture that swirls around us. This class looks to intervene in that trend and will be a beginning investigation into the issues of what is visual culture and how we might define visual literacy. Thematically then, this class will focus on how we see, or do not see, race, gender, and sexuality.

With those parameters, the major questions the class seeks to address are: What does gender look like? Who has historically been invested in particular ideas of “men” and “women?” How do people “know” race visually? How have artists and others attempted to intervene or disrupt these sight lines? Can we remake how we see race and gender? How do different mediums (sculpture, print, film, or digital) affect how we see bodies?

2000-level. No previous art or visual culture courses needed. An introduction to both visual culture and critical race and gender studies.