This course offers an introduction to Women's and Gender Studies, an interdisciplinary field that asks critical questions about the meanings of sex and gender in society. The primary goal of this course is to familiarize students with key issues, questions and debates in Women's and Gender Studies, both historical and contemporary. Gender studies scholarship critically analyzes themes of gendered performance and power in a range of social spheres, such as education, law, culture, work, medicine and the family. WGS. 101 draws on multiple disciplines--such as literature, history, economics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, political science, anthropology and media studies-- to examine cultural assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality. This course integrates analysis of current events through student presentations, aiming to increase awareness of contemporary and historical experiences of women, and of the multiple ways that sex and gender interact with race, class, nationality and other social identities.

An introduction to diverse musical traditions of the world. Music from a wide range of geographical areas are studied in terms of structure, performance practice, social use, aesthetics, and cross-cultural contact. Includes hands-on music making, live demonstrations by guest artists, and ethnographic research projects. This course explores the ways that music is both shaped by and gives shape to the cultural settings in which it is performed, through studying selected musical traditions from around the world. Specific case studies will be examined closely through listening, analysis, and hands-on instruction. The syllabus centers around weekly listening assignments and readings from a textbook with CDs, supplemented by hands-on workshops, lecture/demonstrations and concerts by master musicians from around the world.

This class introduces students to innovative as well as classic approaches to studying U.S. government. The writing assignments will help you explore, through a variety of lenses, statis and change in the American political system over the last three decades. In the end each student will have a solid grounding in our national political institutions and processes, sharper reading and writing skills, and insight into approaching politics critically and analytically.

This course is a global-oriented survey of the history of architecture, from the prehistoric to the sixteenth century. It treats buildings and environments, including cities, in the context of the cultural and civilizational history. It offers an introduction to design principles and analysis. Being global, it aims to give the student perspective on the larger pushes and pulls that influence architecture and its meanings, whether these be economic, political, religious or climatic.

This course is an introduction to the consideration of technology as the outcome of particular technical, historical, cultural, and political efforts, especially in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics include industrialization of production and consumption, development of engineering professions, the emergence of management and its role in shaping technological forms, the technological construction of gender roles, and the relationship between humans and machines.

Introduction to artistic practice and aesthetic analysis through studio work and lectures. Students communicate ideas and experiences through various media such as sculpture, installation, performance, and video. Projects evolve through stages of conceptual and material development to final presentation. Lectures, visiting artist presentations, field trips, and readings supplement studio practice, providing an index to the historical, cultural, and environmental forces that affect both development of artistic vision and reception of works of art.

Introductory experimental laboratory explores the design, construction, and debugging of analog electronic circuits. Lectures and six laboratory projects investigate the performance characteristics of diodes, transistors, JFETs and op-amps, including the construction of a small audio amplifier and preamplifier. Seven weeks are devoted to the design and implementation of a project in an environment similar to that of engineering design teams in industry. Provides opportunity to simulate real-world problems and solutions that involve tradeoffs and the use of engineering judgment.

The MIT Biology Department core courses, 7.012, 7.013, and 7.014, all cover the same core material, which includes the fundamental principles of biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, and cell biology. 7.013 focuses on the application of the fundamental principles toward an understanding of human biology. Topics include genetics, cell biology, molecular biology, disease (infectious agents, inherited diseases and cancer), developmental biology, neurobiology and evolution.Biological function at the molecular level is particularly emphasized in all courses and covers the structure and regulation of genes, as well as, the structure and synthesis of proteins, how these molecules are integrated into cells, and how these cells are integrated into multicellular systems and organisms. In addition, each version of the subject has its own distinctive material.  

Fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics: wave properties, uncertainty principles, Schrodinger equation, and operator and matrix methods. Basic applications to: one-dimensional potentials (harmonic oscillator), three-dimensional centrosymetric potentials (hydrogen atom), and angular momentum and spin. Approximation methods: WKB method, variational principle, and perturbation theory.

" This course covers topics in time-dependent quantum mechanics, spectroscopy, and relaxation, with an emphasis on descriptions applicable to condensed phase problems and a statistical description of ensembles."

This course examines the major aesthetic, social, and political elements which have shaped modern Japanese culture and society. There are readings on contemporary Japan and historical evolution of the culture are coordinated with study of literary texts, film, and art, along with an analysis of everyday life and leisure activities.

In the decades following the Second World War, a cluster of extraordinary French thinkers were widely translated and read in American universities. Their works were soon labeled as "French Theory." Why would sharing the same nationality make authors such as Lacan, Cixous, Derrida, Foucault or Debord, ambassadors of a specifically "French" theory? The course will explore the maze of transatlantic intellectual debates since 1945 and the heyday of French existentialism. We will study the debates on communism, decolonization, neo_liberalism, gender, youth culture and mass media. This course is taught in English.

This course is an investigation to distinguish episodic memory, which is memory of personal events, from semantic memory, which is general knowledge independent of time and place.

Financial theory and empirical evidence useful when making investment decisions. Topics include: portfolio theory, equilibrium models of security prices (including the capital asset pricing model and the arbitrage pricing theory), the empirical behavior of security prices, market efficiency, performance evaluation, and behavioral finance.

This learning video addresses a particular problem of selection bias, a statistical bias in which there is an error in choosing the individuals or groups to make broader inferences. Rather than delve into this broad topic via formal statistics, we investigate how it may appear in our everyday lives, sometimes distorting our perceptions of people, places and events, unless we are careful. When people are picked at random from two groups of different sizes, most of those selected usually come from the bigger group. That means we will hear more about the experience of the bigger group than that of the smaller one. This isn't always a bad thing, but it isn't always a good thing either. Because big groups ''speak louder,'' we have to be careful when we write mathematical formulas about what happened in the two groups. We think about this issue in this video, with examples that involve theaters, buses, and lemons. The prerequisite for this video lesson is a familiarity with algebra. It will take about one hour to complete, and the only materials needed are a blackboard and chalk.

The aim of this video lesson is to teach students about the different topologies of computer networks and how they function. The approach that is used is highly correlated with common knowledge about weddings and the local Malay culture associated with weddings. Students should be able to relate the act of delivering food to a large crowd of people to the basic principles of network topologies and the method of data transfer within each type of topology. The lesson will begin in a classroom with students working in small groups, answering assigned questions. Teaching aids such as color cards will be used. One student from each group will be appointed as the wedding event manager, and she/he will have to discuss and act out with group members in order to answer more challenging questions. At the end of the lesson, students will be asked to come up with their own version of a hybrid computer network topology. The lesson concept taught here not only educates students on computer topologies, but also introduces students to an important cultural perspective of Malaysia. Above all, this video is designed to assist students with their study of Computer Literacy in schools. The lesson will take up to 60 minutes to complete. Materials needed include: 10 red cards representing waitresses; 10 green cards representing waiters; 10 blue cards representing tables in the hall; a sketch book; and classroom tables and chairs.

Surveys the major political, socio-economic, and cultural changes in the Middle East from the rise of Islam to present times (A.D. 600-2002), with special emphasis on Islam's encounter with the West. Examines the rise and fall of Islamic empires; the place of Arabs, Persian and Turkic peoples, as well as minorities in Islamic society; scientific and technological achievements and their transmission to the West; and the impact of European expansion after 1800. Considers contemporary crises and upheavals facing the Middle East in light of the historical past. This course aims to provide students with a general overview of basic themes and issues in Middle Eastern history from the rise of Islam to the present, with an emphasis on the encounters and exchanges between the "Middle East" (Southwest Asia and North Africa) and the "West" (Europe and the United States).

This subject investigates the special relation of women to several musical folk traditions in the British Isles and North America. Throughout, we will be examining the implications of gender in the creation, transmission, and performance of music. Because virtually all societies operate to some extent on a gendered division of labor (and of expressive roles) the music of these societies is marked by the gendering of musical repertoires, traditions of instrumentation, performance settings, and styles. This seminar will examine the gendered dimensions of the music -- the song texts, the performance styles, processes of dissemination (collection, literary representation) and issues of historiography -- with respect to selected traditions within the folk musics of North America and the British Isles, with the aim of analyzing the special contributions of women to these traditions. In addition to telling stories about women's musical lives, and studying elements of female identity and subjectivity in song texts and music, we will investigate the ways in which women's work and women's cultural roles have affected the folk traditions of these several countries.

"This course covers Japanese: The Spoken Language lessons 17 through 22. It will further develop the four basic skills, speaking, listening, reading and writing, that students have acquired through Japanese I, II and III courses, with emphasis on oral communication skills in various practical situations. Students will learn approximately 100 Kanji characters in this course. Sessions in English cover grammar explanation, socio-cultural information and other important issues for using the language, while Japanese lessons focus on the actual use of the language, integrating students' prior knowledge with newly learned patterns, and communicating within the frame given in the class."

This course surveys both cinematic and literary representations of diverse eras and aspects of Japanese culture such as the classical era, the samurai age, wartime Japan and the atomic bombings, social change in the postwar period, and the appropriation of foreign cultural themes, with an emphasis on the modern period. Directors include Akira Kurosawa and Hiroshi Teshigahara. Authors include Kobo Abe and Yukio Mishima. Films shown have subtitles in English. Taught in English.