Courses tagged with "Information Theory" (133)

This will be a seminar on classic and contemporary work on central topics in ethics. The first third of the course will focus on metaethics: we will examine the meaning of moral claims and ask whether there is any sense in which moral principles are objectively valid. The second third of the course will focus on normative ethics: what makes our lives worth living, what makes our actions right or wrong, and what do we owe to others? The final third of the course will focus on moral character: what is virtue, and how important is it? Can we be held responsible for what we do? When and why?

An introduction to the cross-cultural study of ethnic and national identity. We examine the concept of social identity, and consider the ways in which gendered, linguistic, religious, and ethno-racial identity components interact. We explore the history of nationalism, including the emergence of the idea of the nation-state, as well as ethnic conflict, globalization, identity politics, and human rights.

This course is designed to provide students with a broad overview of the major theories on the relationship between ethnicity and politics. The course is divided into three sections. The first covers general theory and discusses the social construction of ethnicity as well as the limits of construction. The second section discusses ethnicity as a dependent variable. This section studies the forces that shape the development of ethnic identities and their motivating power. The third section addresses ethnicity as an independent variable. In other words, it focuses on how ethnicity operates to affect important political and economic outcomes.

This course is the first semester of a year-long sequence on ethnic politics. However, each semester is self-contained and students may take the course in either or both semesters. Ethnic Politics I aims for breadth over depth. It covers many works in the “canon” of texts on ethnic politics as well as addressing many major topics (modernization, entrepreneurship, prejudice, ethnic party formation, etc.) in one week sessions. Ethnic Politics II covers some of these topics in greater depth and also requires a major research paper.

From pineapples grown in Hawaii to English-speaking call centers outsourced to India, the legacy of the "Age of Imperialism" appears everywhere in our modern world. This class explores the history of European imperialism in its political, economic, and cultural dimensions from the 1840s through the 1960s.

This subject surveys main currents of European cultural and intellectual history in the modern period. Such a foundation course is central to the humanities in Europe. The curriculum introduces a set of ideas and arguments that have played a formative role in European cultural history, and acquaints them with some exemplars of critical thought. Among the topics to be considered: the critique of religion, the promise of independence, the advance of capitalism, the temptations of Marxism, the origins of totalitarianism, and the dialects of enlightenment. In addition to texts, we will also discuss pieces of art, incl. paintings and film.

This course uses scale models to design environments that orchestrate contrasting material properties and conventional constructional systems to create places that foster specific ways of inhabiting space. It also demonstrates how architecture differs from other forms of design. Intended for students to test aptitude for architectural design and to experience an unfamiliar mode of thought, it's conducted in a studio format, with lectures on architectural theory and history, and structured for students with no previous experience in design.

Required of Architecture majors.

This section of Expository Writing provides the opportunity for students- as readers, viewers, writers and speakers - to engage with social and ethical issues that they care deeply about. Through discussing selected documentary and feature films and the writings of such authors as Maya Angelou, Robert Coles, Charles Dickens, Barbara Ehrenreich, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jonathan Kozol, and Alice Walker, we will explore different perspectives on a range of social problems such as poverty, homelessness, and racial and gender inequality. In assigned essays, students will have the opportunity to write about social and ethical issues of their own choice. This course aims to help students to grow significantly in their ability to understand and grapple with arguments, to integrate secondary print and visual sources and to craft well-reasoned and elegant essays. Students will also keep a reader-writer notebook and give at least one oral presentation. In class we will discuss assigned films and readings, explore strategies for successful academic writing, freewrite and critique one another's essays. Satisfies Phase I and CI Writing Requirements.

In this class, food serves as both the subject and the object of historical analysis. As a subject, food has been transformed over the last 100 years, largely as a result of ever more elaborate scientific and technological innovations. From a need to preserve surplus foods for leaner times grew an elaborate array of techniques – drying, freezing, canning, salting, etc – that changed not only what people ate, but how far they could/had to travel, the space in which they lived, their relations with neighbors and relatives, and most of all, their place in the economic order of things. The role of capitalism in supporting and extending food preservation and development was fundamental. As an object, food offers us a way into cultural, political, economic, and techno-scientific history. Long ignored by historians of science and technology, food offers a rich source for exploring, e.g., the creation and maintenance of mass-production techniques, industrial farming initiatives, the politics of consumption, vertical integration of business firms, globalization, changing race and gender identities, labor movements, and so forth. How is food different in these contexts, from other sorts of industrial goods? What does the trip from farm to table tell us about American culture and history?

Advances in cognitive science have resolved, clarified, and sometimes complicated some of the great questions of Western philosophy: what is the structure of the world and how do we come to know it; does everyone represent the world the same way; what is the best way for us to act in the world. Specific topics include color, objects, number, categories, similarity, inductive inference, space, time, causality, reasoning, decision-making, morality and consciousness. Readings and discussion include a brief philosophical history of each topic and focus on advances in cognitive and developmental psychology, computation, neuroscience, and related fields. At least one subject in cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, or artificial intelligence is required. An additional project is required for graduate credit.

This class covers the history of 20th century art and design from the perspective of the technologist. Methods for visual analysis, oral critique, and digital expression are introduced. Class projects this term use the OLPC XO (One Laptop Per Child) laptop, Csound and Python software.

Furniture making is in many ways like bridge building, connections holding posts apart with spans to support a deck. Many architects have tried their hand at furniture design, Wright, Mies Van Der Rohe, Aalto, Saarinen, Le Corbusier, and Gerhy.

We will review the history of furniture making in America with a visit to the Decorative Arts Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and have Cambridge artist/craftsman Mitch Ryerson show us his work and talk about design process. Students will learn traditional woodworking techniques beginning with the use of hand tools, power tools and finally woodworking machines.

Students will build a single piece of furniture of an original design that must support someone weighing 185 lbs. sitting on it 12 inches off the ground made primarily of wood. Students should expect to spend approximately 80 hours in the shop outside of class time.

Preregistered architecture students will get first priority but first meeting attendance is mandatory. Twelve student maximum, no exceptions.

The purpose of the course is to cultivate the sensibilities necessary for effective planning practice. This objective rests on one key assumption: that a set of key sensibilities creates the right mindset for practice.

This course explores stereotypes associated with Asian women in colonial, nationalist, state-authoritarian, and global/diasporic narratives about gender and power. Students will read ethnography, cultural studies, and history, and view films to examine the politics and circumstances that create and perpetuate the representation of Asian women as dragon ladies, lotus blossoms, despotic tyrants, desexualized servants, and docile subordinates. Students are introduced to the debates about Orientalism, gender, and power.

This subject explores the legal history of the United States as a gendered system. It examines how women have shaped the meanings of American citizenship through pursuit of political rights such as suffrage, jury duty, and military service, how those political struggles have varied for across race, religion, and class, as well as how the legal system has shaped gender relations for both women and men through regulation of such issues as marriage, divorce, work, reproduction, and the family. The course readings will draw from primary and secondary materials in American history, as well as some court cases. However, the focus of the class is on the broader relationship between law and society, and no technical legal knowledge is required or assumed.

After decades of efforts to promote development, why is there so much poverty in the world? What are some of the root causes of inequality world-wide and why do poverty, economic transformations and development policies often have different consequences for women and men? This course explores these issues while also examining the history of development itself, its underlying assumptions, and its range of supporters and critics. It considers the various meanings given to development by women and men, primarily as residents of particular regions, but also as aid workers, policy makers and government officials. In considering how development projects and policies are experienced in daily life in urban and rural areas in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Melanesia, this course asks what are the underlying political, economic, social, and gender dynamics that make "development" an ongoing problem world-wide.

This course seeks to examine how people experience gender - what it means to be a man or a woman - and sexuality in a variety of historical and cultural contexts. We will explore how gender and sexuality relate to other categories of social identity and difference, such as race and ethnicity, economic and social standing, urban or rural life, etc. One goal of the class is to learn how to critically assess media and other popular representations of gender roles and stereotypes. Another is to gain a greater sense of the diversity of human social practices and beliefs in the United States and around the world.

In this course students are exposed to history and culture of German-speaking countries through audio, video, and Web materials. It focuses on the expansion of basic communication skills and further development of linguistic competency, and includes the review and completion of basic grammar, building of vocabulary, and practice in writing short essays. Students will also read short literary texts.

For the first time in history, the global demand for freshwater is overtaking its supply in many parts of the world. The U.N. predicts that by 2025, more than half of the countries in the world will be experiencing water stress or outright shortages. Lack of water can cause disease, food shortages, starvation, migrations, political conflict, and even lead to war. Models of cooperation, both historic and contemporary, show the way forward. The first half of the course details the multiple facets of the water crisis. Topics include water systems, water transfers, dams, pollution, climate change, scarcity, water conflict/cooperation, food security, and agriculture. The second half of the course describes innovative solutions: Adaptive technologies and adaptation through policy, planning, management, economic tools, and finally, human behaviors required to preserve this precious and imperiled resource. Several field trips to water/wastewater/biosolids reuse and water-energy sites will help us to better comprehend both local and international challenges and solutions.

This course is designed to give the student a clear understanding of the pathophysiology of the menstrual cycle, fertilization, implantation, ovum growth development, differentiation and associated abnormalities. Disorders of fetal development including the principles of teratology and the mechanism of normal and abnormal parturition will be covered as well as the pathophysiology of the breast and disorders of lactation. Fetal asphyxia and its consequences will be reviewed with emphasis on the technology currently available for its detection. In addition the conclusion of the reproductive cycle, menopause, and the use of hormonal replacement will be covered.

This course is designed to explore the human side of medicine: the nature of the physician's identity and obligations; the history and philosophy of the Western medical tradition; the experience of being ill and being a patient; and the challenges of medical ethics. The writing in this class is therefore conceived as an instrument of exploration, and is an integral part of the class's activities.