Mites are extremely abundant and variable in habitat but are not commonly seen by casual observers due to their small size. In fact, some mites are invisible to the naked eye. Many parasitic forms are vectors of diseases and some are serious agricultural pests. An entire branch of biology call Acarology is devoted to the study of these remarkable organisms. This course covers mites under two parts. Part 1 gives general information about the taxonomic status of mites, collecting, preparation, mounting and reserving of mites, and the external (morphological) and internal (physiological) features of mites. Part 2 deals with economic important mites infesting vegetables. Brief information about the scientific and common names of important species, species description, geographical distribution, hosts, life cycle, damage symptoms, and management are documented.

Omid Joharchi — read more..

In this course we will trace a literary genealogy of what we now call depression, and of its associated pathologies, from Homer’s Odyssey, through the biblical Psalms, and the writings of Christian monks who described a demon of noontide that robbed them of their sense of meaning and purpose. In modernity experiences of meaning-loss are often connected with the scientific enlightenment and the decline of religious belief. Writers use a variety of images to describe such experiences: they sometimes take place under the sign of noon, at other times they are symbolically connected with the planet Saturn, and at others they use the imagery of winter cold and darkness. We will read a selection of modern poems and stories, by writers such as Coleridge, Dickinson, and Lawrence, as well as creative non-fiction works such as W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon, and William Styron’s Darkness Visible. Depression is a signature human experience that comes to everybody at some point in their lives, either in its clinical form or otherwise, and literature is one of the methods we have developed for living the questions it asks of us, such that, as Rilke says, we can sometimes live our way into the answers.

John Tangney — read more..

Is it still possible to distinguish human culture from the natural world? Or does this distinction make no sense today?

Have humans become "planetary actors" in the sense that our actions now no longer simply have consequences for the human social world, but also for the bio- and geophysical systems of planet Earth? What are the political and ethical implications of recognizing humans as the cause of global climate change? These are all questions raised in recent discussions of the Anthropocene. This course will approach the Anthropocene as a troubling and contested concept linked with geology, biology, and climate change science, as well as underlying diverse political, ethical, and social assumptions. Students will learn to investigate and speak knowledgably about the relationship between nature and culture, come to understand how this relationship is and always has been changing, and explore the political-ethical implications of these changes.

Zachary Reyna — read more..

The events of May ’68 inaugurated four decades of unprecedented vigor in leftist thought in France. Starting from that radical moment, this course will uncover and assess the most potent writings in the genre from the 1970s until now. In doing so, we will also try to understand the structural changes taking place in French society alongside the outpouring of new philosophical materials. Lastly, we will investigate how “French theory,” as it is often known, has had a decisive, lasting and global influence on how we approach our work in the humanities and social sciences to the present day. Authors we will be investigating together over this eight-week introductory course include Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou, Roland Barthes, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Bernard Stiegler, Catharine Malabou and the Tiqqun collective.

Anne Mulhall — read more..

Economics is a formal science based on assumptions about individual behavior. Sophisticated models with positive predictions follow up from these assumptions. Real decisions made by firms and policy makers (including Central Bank and Parliament) arise from these predictions. Nonetheless, should we blindly believe that these classical assumptions are correct? Are people infinitely rational and can they always correctly anticipate unexpected shocks? Should we care about our pension savings in the beginning of our careers? Are sports fans rational in the process of buying tickets? Why is it so difficult to do home assignments in advance?

This course will answer these questions, challenge classical assumptions and substitute them for something more realistic. We will conduct experiments, analyze various data sets and study fundamental papers in behavioral economics in order to show that standard economics sometimes gives wrong answers to diverse questions. As well as acquiring up-to-date knowledge of current economic theory, this course will also familiarize you with different statistical methods of data analysis. 

Arseniy Stolyarov — read more..

Pavel Egorov — read more..

Louis Vervoort — read more..

Are humans animals? Are animals persons?

This is not a traditional animal ethics course. Rather than taking the category "animal" as a given, the course will challenge students to question the category itself, to trace its origins and map its potential effects. How has the idea of the animal, co-constituted with that of the human, affected the development of animal- and environmental ethics? How are race and gender imagined in terms of the relationship between humanity and animality, domestication and wilderness? What can humans learn from other animals about friendship, politics, monstrosity, difference, communication, and community?

The course includes a trip to the University's biological field station at Lake Kuchak, where we will join bio students for parts of their winter practicum in zoology, and learn about conservation in Western Siberia from scientists working in the field.

Назад

University of Tyumen's biological field station at Lake Kuchak features simple, comfortable, communal lodging and a cafeteria. During their study away week, SAS students will join students from UTMN's Institute for Biology for their zoology field research practicum inside the Siberian forest. Students will receive instruction in cross country skiing, collecting samples, ice fishing (voluntary), and preparing food together. They will be accompanied by their professor and classes will continue thoroughout the week.

Margret Grebowicz — read more..

In this course, we view selected Japanese anime and manga to examine contemporary issues in ecology and technology. In a world of global climate change, genetic engineering, industrial materials, cyborgs, robots, and other sentient non-humans, Japanese anime and manga offer intriguing, creepy, and enjoyable ways to introduce and examine pertinent issues in ecological critique, and science and technology studies. Along with watching selected anime films and shows, we will read texts from ecological critique and science and technology studies. The class will explore issues and themes like global warming, extinction, bioethics, anthropomorphism, becoming animal, becoming machine, and other human nonhuman relations - both technological and biological, augmentation and alteration. Each week will require extensive viewing and up to 50 pages of reading. Every student will be required to submit weekly short writing responses and a final essay or critical creative project. This course prepares students for any major but particularly Film and Media, Cultural Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology.

Duskin Drum — read more..

Are there natural limits to economic growth and human prosperity?

Today a consensus exists among scholars, administrators and experts dealing with environment: contemporary global challenges of climate change and alarming resource depletion require a profound reevaluation and restructuring of the relationship between humans, society and nature. In other words, pressing issues of environmental degradation cannot be solved by a simple recourse to technology or more efficient “management of biodiversity.”

Therefore, this course draws on influential research in the sociology of knowledge and social studies of sustainability. It inquires into two fundamental problems. First, we will look at how our ways of knowing and self-understanding are implicated in environmental degradation. How do we acquire knowledge? How do we draw the line between right and wrong? How we can distinguish between knowledge, myth and error? We will assess which ways of making sense of this world can break fragile environmental equilibria or, to the contrary, help keeping them intact. Second, we will critically revisit a number of fundamental concepts, such as “development” and “resources.” Discussing the interactions between society and environment in various domains, including air, land, food, transport and energy, we will explore how political and social contestations often spill over to environmental issues. Case studies will animate these discussions.

Matvey Lomonosov — read more..

This seminar introduces the basic principles of film form and film technique, as well as the language of their description and various models for their analysis. The filmic image, movie formats, the composition of the frame and filmic space, camera movement, lighting and different types of color processing, sound design and musical scores, the cinematic body and its voice, film genres, and the principles of filmic narration and editing—from Eisenstein’s montage of attractions to classical Hollywood continuity and Jean-Luc Godard’s jump cuts—are the central topics of the course. We will move from classical drama to the flashback dramaturgy of film noir, and to contemporary forms of unreliable narration, mind games and twisted endings as seen in the work of Christopher Nolan. We will also look into the dramaturgy of episodic series, paying attention to horizontal narration, arcs, bits, etc. The seminar will include fictional and nonfictional, narrative and experimental films from different periods. At the end of the seminar the participants will be able to identify intradiegetic sound and internal focalization, and understand how Hitchcock's work with color differs from that of Tarkovsky.

Oksana Bulgakowa — read more..

This course will explore various models of film writing and film reading within a variety of frameworks (production history, reception, genre, author, intertextuality and intemediality, social history, etc.), represented through a series of select instances:

• The history of film as a history of styles (German expressionism vs. French Impressionism in the1920s)
• The history of film as a history of technical and technological development (the first and second sound revolution)
• The history of film and the history of production (Hollywood studios vs. German and Soviet cinema in the 1930s. Festivals and Archives)
• Film forms and social history (The Classical Hollywood style, the French New Wave)
• The categories of description (Genre and stars, film noir as genre or style?)
• Italian neo-realism as a historical, political and intermedial phenomenon
• The author within the production system. European Modernism and the legacy of Cinema d’auteur (New waves in France, Eastern Europe, Germany and Brazil)
• The history of film as the history of globalization (the phenomenon of Chinese cinema)

Oksana Bulgakowa — read more..

Logic is about reasoning. We all reason, but logic helps us distinguishing what is good reasoning from bad reasoning. The study of logic improves our natural capacity to reason, and it proves especially helpful when our reasoning faces abstract and challenging questions.

Formal logic is the study of what follows from what, or what inferences are valid. It originated with the work of Aristotle and it has been developing ever since. Nowadays it is used in Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, and other fields. Logic studies reasoning by means of a regimented formal language that aims at clarifying our natural languages.

In class we will cover the following topics: the nature of an inference, reasoning fallacies, validity and soundness, how to set up a formal language, logical connectives, quantifiers, truth tables, predicate calculus, and some basics of modal logic (the study of what is possible and impossible).

Giacomo Andreoletti — read more..

This is a course on the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt. In particular, we will look at what she has to say about the problem of political violence. We will pay especially close attention to how her analysis of violence relates the the US’ targeted killing program, but not merely so. Over 40 countries now have weaponized drones, and many more are pursuing autonomous weapons of varying kinds. Do these kinds of weapons undermine democratic institutions? Arendt's immediate relationship with drones stems from an obscure passage in her celebrated essay On Violence in which she voices concern about the rise of robot soldiers. She writes, “Only the development of robot soldiers, which … would eliminate the human factor completely and, conceivably, permit one man with the push of a button to destroy whomever he pleased, could change this fundamental ascendancy of power over violence.” This class will be dedicated to assessing the targeted killing program — and automated weapons more broadly — in light of Arendt’s concern that it will upset the “fundamental ascendancy of power over violence.”

Brian Smith — read more..

This course is an introduction to concepts and theories without which no student of philosophy can do. These concepts and theories will be studied here in their historical lineage, in order to highlight their connections and their evolution as they were developed by key figures of philosophy. Thus we will investigate essential ideas by a limited number of thinkers, starting with Parmenides and ending with Kant. (Great philosophers were born after Kant, but Kant is perhaps the last philosopher who is considered ‘indispensable’ by all contemporary philosophers.) Other names we will meet are: Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume and a few others.

The teacher of this course will attempt:

• to introduce the ideas in a very simple and yet precise way
• to classify concepts and theories into a small number of groups, in order to better understand their links
• to show, whenever possible, how philosophy gave rise to modern scientific developments and disciplines

The teacher therefore hopes that this course cannot only serve as an introduction to philosophy for philosophy students, but also for future students of social, human or natural sciences.

Form: mainly lectures, sometimes reading seminars.

Louis Vervoort — read more..

This course is designed to introduce students to two different types of knowledge about the past – historical memory and academic history-writing. It will examine the key problems in Russian history from the period of Kievan Rus’ to the present through the lens of major feature films, which reflect on historical memory and at the same time form it. The exploration of Russian cinematography is accompanied by the analysis of historic documents and contemporary scholarly research, so that students can understand how the films reinforce or depart from conventional history-writing.

Evgeny Grishin — read more..

This course will examine the major developmental trajectories of capitalism in different countries, and how it has touched a wide array of people's lives. Topics will range from historical paths of capitalism and the analysis of forms of production to the impact of these factors on changing gender relations, configurations of work and leisure, forms of labor, ideology and beliefs. The syllabus will include a wide range of authors, from historians such as Fernand Braudel, to sociologists and philosophers.

Natalia Savelyeva — read more..

In recent years, with the global economy in ever revolving turmoil, mainstream economics, not being helpful in understanding the causes of meltdowns and growing global imbalances, has hit the fan. Inevitably, studying economics through the lens of both Keynesian and Marxian schools has become even more relevant. In this respect, the history of economic thought is not a study of old-fashioned ideas; instead, it is essential for understanding capitalism today. This course surveys a range of major economic doctrines and their evolution. Although classical political economy, the neoclassical school, and Keynesian thought will be the three major themes, we will also touch on their somewhat minor sub-branches. Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen and John Maynard Keynes will be the highlighted figures. Each school’s historical context and their ideological underpinnings will also be discussed throughout the course. Hunt and Lautzenheiser’s legendary text will guide our path, with Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers and Foley’s Adam’s Fallacy complementing our seminars. Students are expected to develop their own interpretations of the role of economic ideas and their relevance to social science and everyday politics. As Joan Robinson has put it, “The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.”

Anil Aba — read more..

This course will equip you with in-depth knowledge of the ways in which the access to energy carriers has been politicized by nation-states and other large corporate actors in the global arena, and with what consequences for international relations. We will explore this theme from timber and coal in the pre-industrial era, to the Arctic shale gas and minerals in space today. We will take a look at the critical junctures between international security, conflict, war, power politics and technology, in a historical and analytical light. We begin with the recognition that energy has long been a major determinant of the balance of power in the international system for at least a few centuries, and that every major change in global energy consumption and production technologies has catalyzed major geopolitical shifts, with no region of the world being exempt from this fundamental relationship. We will take a closer look at how states design long-term strategies to satisfy their energy demands, as well as at what their actions imply for other players on the global scene. The course will eventually touch upon contemporary issues ranging from the energiewende, shale gas exploration, natural resource extraction in (almost) inaccessible environments (the Arctic, deep Ocean floors, space), pipeline politics, nuclear power anxiety, pollution caps, CO2 trading quotas, liquefied gas transportation, and many other topics at the very top of today’s agenda. The course will also take a look at recent technological innovations, such as electric cars or the increasing reliability of wind and solar power, and will trace how they are changing global trade dependencies and logistical routes. We will try to imagine how these innovations could shape new alliances and exacerbate existing conflicts. Finally, we will consider whether the shift away from oil-based-economies is really a thing, and if yes – we will try to anticipate how a hypothetical new energy order could alter the global geopolitical landscape in the twenty-first century.

Tomasz Blusiewicz — read more..

Erika Wolf — read more..

This course will investigate the history of diverse religious experiences in the territory of Russia, including not only the Russian Orthodox Church, but also other Christian denominations, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and indigenous traditions. Starting from pre-Christian beliefs of Eastern Slavs and their Finno-Ugric, Nordic, and Turkic neighbors, we will trace the development of religious traditions over the wide territory of Eurasia up to the present. In addition to weekly lectures, students will examine primary sources and current scholarship on the issues. The purpose of the course is twofold: to demonstrate the complex and dynamic picture of religious life in Russia’s past and present, as well as to introduce students to the academic study of religion.

Evgeny Grishin — read more..

This course introduces students to a broad cross section of 20th century art and culture through the study of the related creative techniques of collage, assemblage, montage, construction, and appropriation. The collage technique (the incorporation of found or appropriated “non-original” or “non-art” material) is arguably the most significant and original technical innovation of 20th century art. During the past century, these techniques have been central to questioning traditional pictorial and sculpture models, conceptions of the nature of the art object, the connection of art to reality, the relation of high art to popular culture, and the commodity status of art. In short, these techniques have been central to the theorization of modern and contemporary art. We will examine the deployment of these techniques in the context of Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, Constructivism, Pop Art, Minimalism, and more recent art. Through the close study of works of art employing these techniques and relevant primary texts, this course will provide students with a visually informed critical understanding of some of the central issues of 20th century art.

Prerequisites: Art History core course

Erika Wolf — read more..

Taking into consideration the theoretical concepts above, this course will provide participants the opportunity to explore various approaches to the analysis of a Nonpolar world through the presentation of several case studies based upon operational and strategic interests in a contemporary global context.

Particular questions to be address are:

With states' willingness and capacity to commit to global security and economic arrangements in flux, to what extent will non-state actors, regional and / or local interests be able to fill whatever gap is left behind?

David Dusseault — read more..

This class introduces indigenous approaches to nature, technology, and environmental justice through both popular media and critical texts. Anime and manga stories and characters offer an accessible approach to complex ideas like animism, nonhuman people, technological relations, and global ecological devastation. This course puts anime in conversation with readings from indigenous studies, sociocultural anthropology, and environmental humanities, and feminist science and technology studies, in order to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of what we mean by "ecology".

Duskin Drum — read more..

Mowgli, the main character of Rudyard Kipling’s famous book, was abandoned by his parents and brought up by a pack of wolves in the jungle. Nevertheless he learned how to speak (at least the animals’ language), how to understand, and how to empathize. In other words, he became a human. Unfortunately, such an uplifting story could never be true in the real world. Social science tells us that only a human, or more precisely only a human society, is able to turn a crying and screaming baby into a (wo)man. How does this happen? How do we learn to speak, to think, and to understand others – and ourselves? Why is it that even total strangers share similar perceptions of what is good and what is bad? Why are the things which are natural for us strange to people brought up and educated in different countries, or in different times, or, more broadly, by different societies? Why do we cooperate with each other and create groups, families, schools, states, and sometimes even unite with each other to change these groups – that is, to do politics? What does it mean to say that “society” made us who we are? What is this “society” – parents, teachers, the institutes of education, state officials? To put it another way, by who and how do we become educated?

This course will propose answers to these and others questions. It is devoted to the process of making the individual a part of society, a process called “socialization” by sociologists. In the first part of the course we will consider the different explanations for this process offered by sociologists, anthropologists, and physiologists. In the second part, we will discuss not just socialization, but also education and pedagogy. We will ask, for example, if education always presupposes coercion and suppression, or whether “free” education is ever possible? We will also consider the merits and drawbacks of discipline as an educational strategy. Finally, the third part of the course will be devoted to political socialization. How do people, especially children and adolescents, learn to think about politics and become active citizens, and how do adults react to the political participation of children? While the course will mainly involve discussions of texts in sociology, anthropology, political science, and psychology, we will also explore works of literature, videos, movies, games, and public debates.

Svetlana Erpyleva — read more..

The course explores the rolls that insects play in human history, food security, culture, science, literature, and medicine. Topics will cross disciplinary covering fields of natural science, physics, Information technology, mathematics, music, athletics, anatomy, diseases, agriculture, forestry, and more. Students will learn the importance of insects for human wellbeing and to acknowledge the role that insects play in our everyday lives. The course consists of lecture, discussions, readings, hands-on activities, and potential field trips.

Richard Hofstetter — read more..

Karen London — read more..

Anthropology (from Greek ‘anthropos’ – human and ‘logos’ – study) is the study of human condition through time and space. This course will introduce you to this broad academic discipline, which builds upon knowledge from four fields: cultural anthropology, archaeology, biological anthropology, and linguistics. The questions that we will discuss include: How did humans evolve? What is culture? How do different societies differentially understand gender and age? What cultural and environmental influences affect human variation throughout the world? During the semester, we will be dealing with important and challenging contemporary issues regarding race, human, evolution, gender, and language. In this class, you will learn not only how anthropologists collect and analyze data, but also how they use it to address social problems, like poverty, crime, disease, illiteracy, etc. One of the objectives of this course is to challenge you to explore and reflect upon our similarities and differences as human beings. Exploring the range of the cultural and social diversity that exists in the world will make it easier for you to interact with people from other cultures - a skill that is of vital importance in today’s globalized world.

Denis Sharapov — read more..

The processes of economic growth and the causes of differences in economic performance across nations are some of the most interesting, important and challenging fields in modern social sciences. This course will introduce students to economic discourses about the nature of the huge disparity in standards of living among different countries. By analyzing divergent pathways of economic development across history and geography, we will be discussing the following key questions pertaining to the problem of economic growth: Why do the disparities in income between two countries appear? How can the rate of economic growth be accelerated? What is the price of economic growth? Who wins and who loses when the rate of growth is high? Answering these questions we will seek to understand the range of factors that stimulate economic growth, as well as its most important characteristics and major consequences. In the process, we will also address how to manage economic growth, and the art of maintaining a balance between its advantages and disadvantages. As well as helping students develop a holistic view of economic growth as a phenomenon, this course will also familiarize them with the economic analysis of empirical examples and big data.

Taisia Pogodaeva — read more..

Until very recently scholars, along with society in general, considered the only real audience of the video game industry to be children and dedicated fans. Accordingly, when studies dealt with video games they mostly focused on their influence on socialization and child development. Today however, with the growth of the video game market almost matching that of the film industry, it is widely acknowledged that games are being bought and played by very different social and age groups. This in turn has led to the rapid growth of a separate academic field of game studies, which we will consider in this course. As well as examining the history of video games, this course will offer various research approaches for studying them in more critical depth. What is a video game – Is it a game or a narrative? What are the major genres of video games, and how did they evolve? How are games related to identity, sexuality, violence, education, economy, and politics? What is counter-gaming, and how have the modifications produced by gamers themselves become embedded in the video game industry? What is the relation between war, the military-industrial complex, and video games, and how can video games contribute to science? We will address these and many other questions through the multiple theories and research that constitute the emerging field of game studies.

Maxim Alyukov — read more..

Evolution is the unifying theory in biology, a science trying to answer fundamental questions related to the origins and diversity of life in time and space. One of its basic goals is to understand relationships among biological lineages, which then could allow us to address more complex questions, such as the impact of evolutionary novelties on lineage diversification, or the detection of mass extinctions that have occurred in the past. Inferring accurate phylogenies is also crucial for discovering the origin of pathogen outbreaks, or the evolution of bacterial resistance. In recent years, there has been an explosive growth in usage of DNA sequence data for phylogenetic inference. In addition, an array of analytical and computational techniques questions have been developed for answering phylogenetically-explicit evolutionary questions.

In this course, we will outline the principal methods used in molecular phylogenetic inference: DNA sequencing (including Next Generation Sequencing techniques which allow sequencing entire genomes); DNA or amino acid sequence alignment; methods of phylogenetic inference (parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference); models of sequence evolution; and estimating the timing of lineage divergence using fossil calibration priors and the molecular clock. We will also give a brief introduction to tree-based statistical hypothesis testing.

Almir Pepato — read more..

Pavel Klimov — read more..

The central focus of political philosophy historically has been the relationship between humans and their political institutions. A number of important questions stem from this relationship: the nature of political authority; the end or purpose of government, and what counts as a legitimate government; the obligations citizens may have to one another; the justifications for resisting political authority, engaging in civil disobedience; the justifications for political violence, more broadly; the nature and character of liberty; among other things. The exact readings for this class will vary from quarter to quarter, but we will look at an assortment of the following political philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, More, Machiavelli, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Mill, Thoreau, Marx, Arendt, Weil, Camus, and King. This class is designed to introduce you to the discipline. 

Brian Smith — read more..

• Where does the border between human and machine lie?
• To what extent does technological evolution and human interactions with developing technology require corresponding modifications to the way in which a Post-human reality functions and is governed?
• To what degree can we observe and identify contributing factors which will serve to better conceptualise a Post-human era?

David Dusseault — read more..

The evolution of an information society, from the expansion of IT into social, political, economic and military domains to the rapid growth of IT in people's everyday lives, has resulted in an increasing range of security issues on every level of usage, from government to personal.

This course will examine the impact of information security on external and internal political processes, as well as on the economy and the social sphere. It will also assess information security’s growing influence on human rights performance and journalistic activity, while considering detailed practical solutions to these problems. Ultimately, the aim of the course is to increase student awareness in theoretical issues of information security, as well as giving them key survival skills for a world of continuous information threats.

Ruslan Gasseev — read more..

When there is such a surplus of words, does it matter what one says?

This course introduces students to what is called "the linguistic turn" in 20th Century French philosophy, with particular attention to the role of language in what it means to be a person in the world. We will begin with a close reading of Emmanuel Levinas's groundbreaking 1961 work,Totality and Infinity, and continue with important texts which followed, by Maurice Blanchot, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida, among others. These works, the first to offer an involved exploration of the ethical importance of language, provide tools for thinking about contemporary questions, such as: How is it that words can harm, and what is the nature of this harm? Is there a fundamental human right to speak, and if so, what is the nature of this freedom? Can animals speak? Can writing ever faithfully reflect reality? And if not, why write? What is worth writing about? Is there really a right to remain silent, and if so, what does this right tell us about the kinds of creatures humans are? 

Prerequisite: none

Margret Grebowicz — read more..

What is the relationship between law and love? At first glance, law and love seem to be opposed. Whereas law governs through distant rules, love emerges in intimate and often surprising circumstances. Whereas law strives to present itself in the language of reason and utility, love communicates through affect and sentiment. Law prohibits, yet “love endures all things” St Paul tell us at the beginning of the Christian tradition. This course draws on both legal cases and literary and theoretical works on love to question the premise of this opposition. We explore both love’s place in law through an examination of the way courts and legislatures in the United States and Russia have defined and redefined love, as well as law’s place in love. Ultimately, we ask, what would it mean — and is it even possible — to say that law is somehow like love?

Zachary Reyna — read more..

The natural environment fulfills a variety of roles in literature. It can at once be a site of inspiration, a backdrop to anxiety, a portal to fantasy or a mirror to the self. Likewise, literature can help us to gain a better understanding of nature, such as when science fiction explores environmental crises and solutions to them, or tragedy tries to get at the heart of what it means to be human, or an animal or something in between.

This intensive co-taught course is structured around four themes, each one designed to promote in-depth exploration of the complex interactive relationship between literature and nature. Across eight weeks we will be reading works by Euripides, Shakespeare, Goethe, Defoe, Kafka, and Thoreau, as well as a selection of more contemporary works, including science fiction. At the same time, we will be putting these literary examples into contact with philosophical materials that problematize our relationship to the natural world, such as critical climate change studies, feminist theories, indigenous theories, geo-aesthetics and critical animal studies.

Anne Mulhall — read more..

Margret Grebowicz — read more..

In this course students will read two classics of spiritual autobiography, Augustine of Hippo’s ‘Confessions’ and Carl Jung’s ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Augustine was a rebel against authority and a seeker after esoteric knowledge in his youth, but ultimately became a religious authority figure for his own time and for subsequent ages. Jung began his career within the psychiatric establishment and rebelled against it in his 40s, thereafter becoming a countercultural figure. Jung was a mythographer who taught us about the language of dreams and the unconscious, while Augustine was a philosopher-theologian and one of the first people to turn his inner life into a compelling literary narrative. Using different vocabularies, they give us insight into the forces beyond our command by which we are lived as human beings. In the process they explore themes of time and memory, death and transcendence, and the fact that wisdom can be modelled for us by those who have attained it, but never taught according to a formula, because each individual’s journey is unique and unrepeatable.

John Tangney — read more..

This course introduces students to the principles of economic science and their application to social relations and interactions.

During this elective course, we will study:

• economic efficiency vs. justice
• later methods of microeconomic analysis
• economic reasons and evolution of social interaction
• modern institutional economics
• elements of political economics and economics of law
• redistribution of wealth
• diversity economics and happiness economics

What is imperfect competition? How is the Protestant ethic linked to the contents of the course? How do social development goals evolve? What are the reasons and problems of intellectual property protection? How do happiness level and economic progress correlate with each other?

Looking for answers to these questions, students will analyze convergence of methods and get the idea of what place economics has in the landscape of social sciences.

Denis Davydov — read more..

Matvey Lomonosov — read more..

This course examines the work of one of the 19th century’s most influential and (in)famous thinkers: Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche provocatively proclaimed both the death of God and a “revaluation” of all values beyond good and evil to the alarm of some of his contemporaries. He also repeatedly signs his texts as the antichrist. Moreover, his terse, aphoristic writing style and self-laudatory tendency—chapters of his books are titled “Why I am so Wise,” Why I write such good Books,” etc.—have earned him a conflicting reputation. This course will examine Nietzsche’s writings beginning with his autobiography Ecce Homo, which he wrote shortly before his mental collapse, and then proceeding chronologically. The goal of the course is to become as familiarly acquainted as possible with an influential thinker whose works have profoundly shaped our contemporary world yet are often misunderstood and taken out of context. Themes to be explored include Nietzsche’s account of the death of God and the will to truth and what this means, his notions of the eternal return and overman (Übermensch), his account of the origin of morality and revaluation of all values, and the conflict between the Apollonian and Dionysian that runs throughout his entire work.

Zachary Reyna — read more..

This class will devise and perform a novel spectacle about human ecology and the near future of the Tyumen bioregion. Students will learn methods of acting, design, dance, dramaturgy and critical research for devising ensemble performances and post-dramatic theatre. We will study aspects of Tyumen’s geography, ecology, economy, history, current events, and bioregion. The main focus of the course will be developing student performance skills. The final spectacle will be publically performed.

Duskin Drum — read more..

Louis Vervoort — read more..

This course examines the main approaches to the analysis of media, and their relation to politics and public opinion. How do media institutions function? How does media influence elites, and how do elites influence media? How does media, and TV in particular, affect views and opinions, behaviors, and the way people cast ballots in elections? How do people perceive, remember, and analyze information received from the media, and how do they form opinions and make decisions based on this information? What is the role of new media, such as the Internet and social networks, in politics and opinion formation? The course considers all these questions through the lenses of both classical and contemporary literature in media and communication research, social and cognitive psychology, sociology and political science. At the end of the course we will also consider specific features of the post-soviet media landscape, with a particular focus on Russia. This course is both theoretical and practical: we will apply knowledge and methods from political communication by analyzing and explaining real news.

Maxim Alyukov — read more..

The course deals with the problem of the relationship between public and private spheres, between collective and individual modes of existence, and between political and personal experiences. We will consider this problem through the lens of various theoretical approaches, from contemporary republican political thought (Hannah Arendt, Jurgen Habermas etc.), to sociology and social history. The course also considers recent empirical research of the public and private spheres in contemporary societies that challenge the initial theoretical assumptions.

Oleg Zhuravlev — read more..

Is it possible to conduct scientific research just by talking to or observing people? Is experiment in social science possible? Why is it that contemporary social scientists don’t always trust statistics and polls alone? What is the difference between a qualitative sociologist and a journalist – or a quantitative sociologist? And most importantly, how do we organize qualitative social research?

In this course we will discuss the main methods of conducting qualitative research, including interviews, observation, experiments, discourse and content analysis, as well as other approaches. We will also consider the problems researchers usually face when organizing their fieldwork: how to find informants, how to empathize with their feelings, how to preserve the emotional distance necessary for analysis, how to work in a dangerous field, and whether or not it is appropriate to hide the real goals of research. Throughout we will not only read some of the major texts in social research methods, but we will also experiment with different types of fieldwork together, trying out a number of different methods in practice.

Natalia Savelyeva — read more..

Svetlana Erpyleva — read more..

What is sex, anyway? Is there such a thing as a normal sexuality? Where does desire come from? If sex is such a natural, basic function of the body, then why do sexual practices change so drastically from culture to culture and over the course of time? The list of questions people ask about sex seems endless. Why are these questions so pressing and so difficult to answer? How can something which is a source of so much oppression also be the source of so much creative energy and imagination? This class will explore texts from two traditions which take sex seriously as central to questions of power and social organization. Feminist theory and queer theory have some things in common, but are often in conflict. Are these conflicts resolvable? There will be readings from American and French feminism, Black feminism, queer of color critique, lesbian separatism, masculinity studies, and porn studies.

Prerequisite: Great Books: Philosophy and Social Thought

Margret Grebowicz — read more..

The course aims to familiarize you with the discipline of sociology and prepare to take additional classes in social sciences. In North America and beyond this course often serves as a prerequisite for several other classes and is a key requirement for many social science majors. The course has four specific objectives:

• to introduce you to common sociological subjects and concepts
• to shed light on different perspectives within sociology
• to encourage you to think deeply, critically, and coherently about our social world
• to help you establish links between theory, problems, and policy

Notably, Sociological Perspectives are purposefully designed to spark interest in social sciences. In class you will learn how to be professional marijuana user, what are the social mechanics beyond student hook up, when education can lead to bigotry and ethnic violence, and what employers ultimately seek from you. In order to retain the greatest amount of knowledge, students are encouraged to raise both conventional and controversial questions in class and after.

By the end of Sociological Perspectives course you will be familiar with the sociological perspective, its key theories, concepts, ideas and insights. In addition, you will likely be well-equipped to use social scientific tools to analyze and think critically on social and political issues.

Matvey Lomonosov — read more..

Species are fundamental units in evolutionary biology, ecology, and systematics. It is common sense that life forms are not morphological and genetically continuous, but occur in groups that we usually refer to as “species”. At same time, objective species delimitation is often blurred; since it is the product of the long chain of descent that we call evolution. What are species? Are they real entities with well-defined properties or arbitrary human constructs, useful only for operational purposes? The answer to this question is not only purely academic, but it also has direct consequences for biodiversity conservation. For example, biodiversity loss can occur if a conservation program underestimates the number of species.

In this course, we will discuss philosophical, conceptual, and practical issues related to species concepts and their implication for ecological studies and conservation. For inferring boundaries between species, we will use underlying assumptions of population genetics and recently developed approaches, such as multi-species coalescence. The course will offer hands-on sessions which will help with learning about leading species delimitation programs (GMYC, BPP, STACEY, *BEAST, etc).

Almir Pepato — read more..

Pavel Klimov — read more..

In our increasingly interconnected and globalized world more and more people wonder how international migration transforms receiving societies, sending states and migrants themselves. Media pundits, experts and scholars no longer view migrant cultures as entrapped and frozen in the countries of destination. Instead they emphasize transnational experiences of moving populations. Migrants actively shape their lives, participate in global cultural change and stay involved “here and there.” Exactly for this reason the course adopts a diaspora lens. Originally, the term diaspora referred to the ancient Jewish, Greek and Armenian dispersions – the reputed “classical diasporas.” In recent decades the meaning of “diaspora” has been expanded to include migrant, refugee and émigré populations as groups defined primarily in relation to their historic “homelands.”

Therefore, in the course we will explore to what extent the archetypical diasporas can serve as a useful analytical framework for understanding migrations, displacements and resettlements of modern times. On the one hand, we will review key theories of international migration, inquire into the issues of contemporary border control, immigration policy and citizenship, and assess how migrants’ characteristics and host country conditions affect integration and international involvement. On the other hand, we will closely look at how diaspora communities and organizations function in receiving societies and across borders. The course covers long-distance politics, nationalism, lobbying, investment, tourism and family experiences among trading, victim, cultural and other diasporic groups. Its geographic focus is global. The course’s rich conceptual toolkit will be illustrated with cases from Europe, Russia, North America and Southeast Asia.

Matvey Lomonosov — read more..

The sustainability of the world's ecosystem is coming under increased scrutiny in the face of increasing levels of extreme climatic events. Part and parcel of this discourse is a re-examination of the world's energy trade. The oil and gas fields, pipelines, power plants and feeling stations which lit, heated, cooled and drove the 20th century are now being challenged by a new generation of technological and business logics touting a cleaner and more sustainable future when compared to older generation fuels.

What this class sets out to examine is the degree to which windmills, solar farms, smart cities, flexible grids and other green solutions can lead to a more sustainable society when the underlying logic for these value chains remains couched in the language of economic responsibility and dependent upon vast amounts of political consensus in an age when both are seemingly hard to come by.

Beyond the standard set of lectures, students will be offered the unique opportunity to tackle these issues in a real world context by meeting and discussing various perspectives on the meaning of sustainability with relevant stakeholders, energy companies and representatives of the regional administration here in Tyumen.

David Dusseault — read more..

The course explores the important symbiotic relations between organisms, including humans. Species associations are important for reproduction, development, defenses, communication, and acquiring resources. All animals and plants have symbiotic organisms both internal and external, and these associations influence the evolution of species. Topics will cross disciplinary covering fields botany, zoology, behavior, chemistry, evolution, physiology, and many other areas. Students will learn the importance of symbionts for human wellbeing and for maintenance of life on the planet. The course consists of lecture, discussions, readings, hands-on activities, and potential field trips.

Richard Hofstetter — read more..

Karen London — read more..

The Twentieth Century witnessed the globalization and standardization of everything from the way human beings eat (think: McDonald's) to the way they kill each other (think: nuclear weapons). This course takes a closer look at the most destructive conflicts known to man: World War I and World War II, and tries to answer the following (and related) questions: what was different about WWI and WWII compared to all the other conflicts in history? Why did they grow out of a local dispute into a conflagration that consumed every major country in the world? Why has World War III not happened? Is it likely to happen in the Twenty-First Century? Do nuclear weapons help to prevent wars or to the contrary? What was fascism and might it return? What about “the global Cold War” – was it another global conflict that simply has not been registered as such in Europe?

This course will offer an introduction to fields of study and topics such as: international relations; political, diplomatic and military history; balance of power and system of alliances; imperialism and nationalism; great power and superpower confrontation; genocide and ethnic cleansing; clash of ideologies and civilizations; religion as a source of tension; conflict prevention and resolution; international organizations (League of Nations, United Nations) and peacekeeping. We will think about the differences between global versus localized and regional conflicts, and how the former get contained to prevent escalation into something bigger, both historically and today. We will study both original historical sources from the time as well as read the greatest works of international relations theorists, from Clausewitz, through Henry Kissinger to Joseph Nye and Niall Ferguson. This course, taught by a historian, will equip you with the knowledge and skills necessary to critically evaluate current world affairs, independently and from a historical angle, a perspective that many commentators in the world media now lack and badly need.

Tomasz Blusiewicz — read more..

In order to make sense of contemporary societies, we need to give serious consideration to the history of ideas and societies. The broad economic problem faced by societies throughout history has been 1) what to produce, 2) how to produce, 3) for whom to produce, and 4) how to distribute the output. Free market capitalism today offers one - but not the only - set of solutions to this economic problem. Alternative solutions, such as tradition and command, have existed and continue to exist to a certain degree. The objective of this seminar is to reveal and discuss the social forces around material production and distribution that have gradually created the modern economic world in which we live. Following the works of Robert Heilbroner and William Millberg, we will lay down the main tenets of different economic systems —such as slavery, feudalism, and capitalism— which will allow students to rethink economic development, the effectiveness of unregulated markets, the role of government, world poverty, and global imbalances. After studying the dynamics of the Great Depression, the Golden Age of Capitalism, and the Great Recession from a historical perspective, we will close the module by discussing current economic issues and possibilities for the future of our world. Will there be an overcrowding of markets, in the coming three or four decades? Will the social and ecological costs of the system lead to a collapse? How can we stop climate change? What are the limits of capitalist growth? Under which conditions might a reformed capitalism be saved? Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Georgi Derlugian and Craig Calhoun’s projections regarding the future of capitalism will help us answer these interesting questions.

Anil Aba — read more..

Between the years 500 and 1500, Western Europeans experienced an era of enormous creativity and cultural change. Kingdoms rose and fell, while poets agonized over courtly love, thousands of knights fought and died on epic crusades, and scholars debated the nature of God at the world’s first universities. This course will introduce students to a foundational epoch in the history of the West, exploring the core medieval ideas and institutions that helped to make Europe into what it is today. At the same time, we will also investigate the radically different answers medieval people had to the fundamental questions of human existence. Studying a wide range of texts and images, from autobiographies and confessional poems to gothic sculptures and fantastical maps, we will unearth the intellectual universe of an ancient culture, probing its continuities and ruptures with the world we inhabit now.

Peter Jones — read more..

Conventional wisdom tends to see revolution as radical social upheaval. Revolutionaries, driven by some world-historical ideology, forcefully take the reigns of the state through armed struggle. In this process, they fundamentally alter political institutions, legitimating mythology, and social institutions more broadly. While this definition may give us some descriptive leverage over revolutionary struggle in the early 20th century, the revolutions of the late 20th, early 21st century (the Third Wave of Democracy, the Color Revolutions, and the Arab Spring) took a decidedly different form. Many of these revolutions were characterized by a resurgence of democratic principles and institutions (if only short-lived). The purpose of this class is to explore the origins of the idea of revolution. How have political philosophers understood revolution throughout history? This longue durée approach to revolution will take us through several eras of revolutionary thought: the Classical Greeks, the Scholastics and Early Moderns, the three British revolutions (1641, 1688, & 1776), the French Revolution, Marx and the Russian Revolution, Anarchist struggle, and up to revolution in the 21st century. The goal of this class is to discover the legacy of revolutionary thinking today.

Brian Smith — read more..

Louis Vervoort — read more..

Jay Silverstein — read more..

The Theory of Market Organization (TMO) is the main subject in Economics (Microeconomics). How do firms compete? What strategies do firms have to compete better? When is it more profitable for firms to act aggressively and when not? The answers to these and other questions are very important for understanding the firms’ behavior and the practical functioning of markets. This subject is taught in all business schools («Strategy»). When can firms conspire to raise prices? The Theory of Market Organization is the basis for anti-monopoly legislation.

Specialists in this field might consult anti-monopoly authorities and companies, and act as experts in court. The course will begin with a review of the basic concepts of Microeconomics related to production and firms, such as costs function, profit function, demand and supply curves. Then we will continue the analysis of monopoly behavior. After that, we will explore a few basic models of competition. They allow us to illustrate the possible strategies employed by firms in different situations. For better understanding the strategic interaction of firms in these models, we will consult the basic concepts of Game Theory. This is a key instrument in modern economic theories. At the end of the course, we will examine the incentives and barriers to collusion between firms.

Mikhail Drugov — read more..

On a cold winter night of March, Jane finds herself thinking `If only I had invested my money on those stocks back in 2008, I would be incredibly rich by now.' All of a sudden, a mysterious woman shows up in Jane's room and offers her a life-changing opportunity. She gives her a time machine. Although scared by the unknown consequences of using such a device, out of courage and hope Jane decides to use the time machine to go back to 2008 and reveal to her younger self what she easily knows will be the top performing stocks in the next decade…

We might be acquainted with time travel stories like the one just outlined thanks to science fiction. Time travel involves traveling to different times. But, is time travel a genuine possibility? And if time travel were possible, how would it look like? What can and cannot be achieved by taking advantage of time machines? Will Jane succeed in making herself rich?

Once we attempt to answer these questions, we might find ourselves into puzzlement or run into paradoxes. Fortunately, contemporary philosophy of time can provide us with the tools to have a better understanding of time travel and the paradoxes it raises. And not only that, it turns out that thinking about time travel can teach us quite a lot about the nature of time itself. In fact, time travel raises philosophical time-related issues such as change, causation, the nature of past and future, freedom and determinism, fate, and identity over time.

In this course we will cover:

• an introduction to different theories of time
• whether time travel is metaphysically possible
• some paradoxes related to time travel

Unfortunately, no plans about how to build a time machine will be provided during class (unless a time traveler from the future will join in to teach us how to build one).

PREREQUISITES:

Writing and Thinking (Fall 2018). A predisposition for abstract thinking is desirable.

Giacomo Andreoletti — read more..

The objective of this course is two-fold. First, to provide a relatively comprehensive overview of the phenomena involving DNA so that the students will not only gain a broad basic understanding of the nucleus but hopefully also an appreciation for its amazingly elaborate and effective world. What are genes, introns, inteins, transposable elements, microRNAs, telomeres, enhancers, transcription factors, etc.? Second, that the students become able to situate this knowledge in its socio-historical context, and to critically reflect upon this interaction. For instance, what do we mean, from the biological and the philosophical standpoints, when we talk about health issues or behaviors and say, “That’s in my genes”, or “That’s in my DNA”? Is it always an accurate and useful view, based on today’s knowledge? How did we arrive at this way of thinking? What are its psychological and social consequences? Discussion and coursework will be based on readings drawn from primary research articles, historical and philosophical essays as well as media for the general public.

Juliette Colinas — read more..

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that is interested in what the world is like. It deals with several general questions about the fundamental nature of reality. Questions such as: what is time? Do we have free will? What are properties? What are numbers?

In this course we will approach four different and related topics in metaphysics:

• Identity over time. You are different from how you were, say, 7 years ago. Very different from that person in the past. You grew up, you maybe don't live in the same place where you lived 7 years ago, you don't like what you used to like, your knowledge increased, and your body changed almost entirely. Almost all the cells making up your body 7 years ago are gone for good. Can we say that despite all this change you are still the same person. And if yes, how so?
• Objects are made of parts. Everyone who bought furniture at IKEA knows that very well. Take the legs, the top and the stretchers before you assemble them. Is that already a table? Or you need to wait and assemble it before having a table? This part investigates when two or more objects compose a further object.
• Physics teaches us many things. For instance, it tells us that electrons must repel each other, because there is a law of nature that dictates so. Where does this `must' come from? What is the source of this necessity? This part investigates what it is for something to be a law of nature.
• The quest for truthmakers. The statements we make are sometimes true, and sometimes false. What is it exactly that makes our statements true or false?

This course will present different views from contemporary philosophy on the previous problems. We will see how philosophers are in debate with each other on these issues.

PREREQUISITES:

There are no prerequisites. A predisposition for abstract thinking is desirable.

Giacomo Andreoletti — read more..

Jay Silverstein — read more..

How can we think politically about terrorism? Is terror a dimension of politics, or, does it mark the end of politics? Is terrorism something that can be thought about and engaged politically, or, is violent state action the only feasible response to terrorism? Terrorism has been an intimate part of modern politics since the French Revolution. However, since the events of September 11, 2001 in the United States and the rise of “Islamic radicalism” globally, the relationship between politics and terror has taken on a new dimension. In this course we will critically examine these new developments in global politics. Beginning with the historical origins of modern terrorism as a democratic force during the French Revolution, the course moves to a set of contemporary theoretical texts on terrorism to help students cultivate critical distance from the current war on terror and begin a thoughtful exploration of the topic. The course then considers how fear and trust effect politics and produce certain types of citizens. The goal in this middle section is to critically explore the ways contemporary security states use fear as a political tool. The course concludes by analyzing the contemporary phenomenon of terrorism: how it arises, its aims, the intended and unintended consequences of its occurrence, and its utopian aspirations.

The main questions of the course include: Is terrorism ever justified? To what extent does a politics of fear and the contemporary security state structure succeed in its responses to terrorism? What is the relationship between a politics of fear, the development of security states, and the resurgence of nationalist politics we have witnessed across the world in recent years? Are there ways to think about fear, trust, and politics that point to possibilities for democratic forms of political engagement in an age of terror?

Zachary Reyna — read more..

This course deals with the eventful approach in the social sciences that has been widely discussed during the last two decades. Within the course, we will consider various approaches to defining and theorizing events. We will read and discuss sociological, anthropological and historical works that are dedicated to various kinds of event: love, scientific discovery, revolution etc. We will consider different methods, both quantitative and qualitative that are used within the eventful approach. Finally, we will touch on the philosophy of the event as well as some other disciplines that deal with events.

Oleg Zhuravlev — read more..

This course will be dedicated to the different approaches to the question of why we attribute this or that meaning to different events and things that are proposed by such disciplines as history, sociology, philosophy and anthropology. How can we explain the way Indians see the world? How did education, as well as social and cultural context, influence the world-view of an Italian miller in 16th century such that he was denounced as heretic? And, finally, why do we believe (or disbelieve) propaganda? During the course we will answer these questions using the works of C. Levi-Strauss, E. Durkheim, M. Douglas, C. Ginzburg and others.

Natalia Savelyeva — read more..

How has “work” and our attitude towards it figured in the both the popular and the radical imagination over two hundred years? Starting with the Industrial Revolution in Britain, this eight-week investigation will use literature, philosophy, sociological studies and historical documents to investigate labor in its diverse global incarnations over the past two centuries. Throughout the course, students will become familiar with the major topics and theories in the comparative study of work. Areas of investigation will include the industrial and pastoral novel, the sociology of work, Marxist theories of work, slavery, fugivity and marronage, the refusal of work, feminist approaches to work, Fordism and the assembly line, material and immaterial labor, the “work” of art, cognitive capitalism, global care-work and the politics of housework. Texts we will investigate together will include works by Dickens, Gaskell, Hardy, Marx and Engels, Benjamin, Chaplin, Satoshi Kamata, the Detroit factory workers, Sadiya Hartmann, Neil Roberts, Maurizio Lazaratto, Franco Berardi, Antoni Negri, Silvia Federici and the International Wages for Housework Movement.

Anne Mulhall — read more..