When Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in 1813, the novel did not even bear her name as its author. In the over two centuries since then, Pride and Prejudice has become a tour de force, spawning countless film adaptations, conferences, festivals, tea cozies, action figures, and even a Mr. Darcy statue in Hyde Park. In this class, we will ask how and why this novel seeped into the zeitgeist and never left, changing the face of global literature and bookish culture. To do so, we will start by reading Pride and Prejudice with depth and care. Then we’ll take a global genre tour to investigate how the novel has been adapted, co-opted, misread, ignored, commercialized, rewritten, and repurposed. Along the way, we will take adaptation seriously as a mode of cultural critique. How do these twentieth- and twenty-first-century genres arise from their own moment of production and how do they reflect back on the nineteenth century? When and how do genres become gendered? How would Mr. Darcy perform on The Bachelor?
This class is designed for all majors. Whether you already sleep with a copy of Pride and Prejudice under your pillow or you’ve been living under a rock and this is the first you’ve ever heard of a lady named Jane Austen, you are welcome here. We will tackle Austen’s fiction and legacy rigorously and accessibly, making space for chemists, humanists, and everyone in between. All students should consider themselves forewarned: Pride and Prejudice may become your new favorite novel.
This course is part of the Tech Sabbatical pilot program: https://summer.virginia.edu/summer-technology-sabbatical
This course acquaints students with the contemporary essay’s origins, formal considerations, conventions, experiments, and expressive and interpretive potential. The essay’s elasticity, inclusiveness, and breadth allow fiction’s narrative arc to mingle with poetry’s associative reasoning. We’ll read a variety of living authors, focusing on aspects of narrative and discursive balance, locus of meaning, and allegiance to or departure from the concepts of nonfiction and fact. In written work, students will explore the relationship between writer, subject matter, and reader; credibility and authority to speak; and the nature of claims based on evidence and first-hand personal experience. The course readings generally begin with more topically oriented writing driven by research that de-emphasize the narrative first person, moving through the semester toward more abstract, personal, or formally inventive examples of new work.
This course explores contemporary global fiction as an antidote to encountering the effects of the climate crisis - extreme weather, displacement, flooding - primarily through social media, 'doomscrolling', and online discourses of climate despair. We’ll examine the possibilities for fiction as a way in to engaging urgent planetary issues from climate displacement to climate-intensified conflict zones. This course has two aims. First, it explores whether long-form fiction can both build more durable engagement with the multiple crises arising from a warming planet. Second, students will develop greater cognitive endurance for reading longer texts and participating in meaningful collective discussion in a seminar context. Through climate and humanitarian crisis fiction, we will develop (or recover) techniques for increasing reading stamina (reading for longer, uninterrupted periods), stretch students’ abilities to read texts immersively (reading with different kinds of attention), and being intentional about different kinds of reading (skimming, reading for specific details, etc.).
Consequently, we’ll not only be practicing close reading techniques that literature courses help develop, we’ll also be discussing and practicing different approaches to reading and asking what to read for in long-form literary texts. We’ll periodically spend some time in class practicing different reading techniques and modes of reading, and then reflecting upon them. Participants will commit to tech-free hours while engaged in reading and writing for class, silencing notifications, and refraining from using phone apps, social media, text/chat and messaging, email, etc. Daily short writing and daily seminar conversations, two essays and a final reflection paper.
This course is part of the tech sabbatical pilot program. More information can be found here: https://summer.virginia.edu/summer-technology-sabbatical
This class focuses on how popular culture influences media and writing. We will look at movies, tv shows, songs, newspaper articles and more to see how events and people are discussed and influence our writing.
ENWR 3500
Topics in Advanced Writing & Rhetoric
Making Books: Intro to Book Editing and Publishing
Students in Making Books will gain a broad view of book editing and publishing in the 21st century, with an emphasis on late-stage editing and material production. In particular, as a digital-minimalist pilot, this Summer 2024 section will focus on artist’s books as meaningful and meaning-making objects.
By enrolling in this “tech sabbatical” course, you commit to turning off your digital devices for at least 4 waking hours each day for the duration of the course (July 15-August 9, 2024), beyond the digital-free classroom environment. No phones, no laptops, no tablets during class or for any 4 hours of your choice, not including when you’re asleep. Yes; we will help you figure out how to spend your time in ways you enjoy away from your phones! In terms of how we’ll actually conduct the class—we’ll use old-school methods to edit short texts on hard copy (think: writing notes over sentences and in the margins), and then we’ll produce custom editions of those texts through artisan methods including paper-making, hand-drawing, print-making, typesetting/printing, and sewing/binding according to each student’s vision.
This is a chance for you to get offline, slow down, and take pleasure in reading that is wonderfully tangible. Artistic prowess NOT required.
The course will focus on critical moments in the development of climate science and climate change policy as well as the role of contemporary visual art to express anthropogenic concepts. Students will be asked to engage with members of their community and others to gather language and ideas about our climate story experiences and options for change, particularly related to our use of material resources and the resulting waste production. Using content gathered from the community and various book art techniques, students will create individual and collaborative works to draw attention to the material consumption of our community and highlight our need to reduce the amount of waste we create. The class is based on learning while doing--engaging others and acting on what we know, using visual art as a tool for advocacy.
Environmental Sciences
EVSC 5020
Introduction to Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Where is the law? Where does legal order come from? Can people construct legal orders without a state? How do people experience and shape the laws and the legal institutions that they live among? And what does this mean for how we understand historical processes and history more broadly? These are but a few of the questions this course will shed light on.
This course seeks to introduce students to different ways of thinking about how law functions in society. In addition to re-examining the legislative functions of the state and its bureaucracies, it explores how people construct normative orders beyond the law, and how people draw on the language of the law in negotiating their relationships with one another. In short, it asks students to reflect on the broader question of where one finds the law, and how societies throughout history have understood and made use of law and legal institutions.
Although once primarily a religious idea, interest in immortality has surged among the religious and non-religious alike. By the end of this course, students will have an understanding of a variety of philosophical debates, including the existence of the soul, the criteria of personal identity, and the desirability of immortality. Students will be exposed to a variety of canonical philosophical texts from different eras and traditions, as well as music, literature, and film that weighs in on the subject.
"What is corruption?" In this course, we aim to unfold the challenges and prospects for understanding different concepts of corruption in modern societies. By analyzing case studies, theories, and solutions, students will gain a deeper understanding of corruption's global impact on democratic processes and institutions, shedding light on its effects on our daily lives.
With more than half of the world’s population living in urban areas, cities have increasingly become regarded as laboratories of governance and democracy home to distinctive political behavior and institutions. In this course, we will examine urban politics in the comparative and global setting through various lenses of urban planning, politics, and poverty in connection to current global events.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." "Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential." We hear phrases like this all the time. Is human life fated to improve over time? Where does this idea of progress come from? Have people always thought this way? These are the basic themes this course will discuss: the idea of progress in the history of political thought, along with some of the primary critics of such a notion. We will explore these themes through a variety of mediums including treatises, novels, pamphlets, plays, films, television, and visual art.
What is this class about?
Dialogues in Neuroscience is a special edition of PSYC 4200-think of it as the instructor’s cut! This edition uses observations and simple experiments to discuss the neural mechanisms of sensory processing, learning and behavior.
Class will be completely tech-free, meaning no slides, no computers, no phones, just old-fashioned analogue props: glass prisms for discussing brain plasticity, stopwatches for discussing myelination, yarn for understanding sound localization, etc. You will get a notebook and a pen for sketching, taking class notes and experiment logs.
Outside of the class, you will continue with experiments started in class or conduct new ones (completely tech-free). Why? Because you can apply your neuroscience knowledge everywhere around you, without Googling anything, and this class will teach you how! Think of this tech-free class as lent, which will replace all digital tools we are used to with analogue ones.
Given the small size, the class will rely on discussions-hence the name. Think of it more of as a round table than a lecture. Interactive discussion facilitates understanding of complex concepts and experiment troubleshooting. Your grades will be determined through a transparent, open grading process at the end of the class and will be based on your class participation and assignment work.
This course is offered Online Asynchronous.
This course will introduce you to the historic and modern methods and techniques for modeling and managing supply chain and logistics systems. The course covers both the managerial and technical side of supply chain management. Topics covered in this course include (but are not limited to) forecasting, inventory control/management, transportation systems, the bullwhip effect, risk analytics, and contemporary supply chain best practices.
This course will be offered asynchronously.
The textbook for the course is "The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook" by George, Rowlands, Price, and Maxey (~$18 on Amazon)
This course covers an introduction to Lean enterprise and Six Sigma, and will introduce students to various process improvement tools and techniques. These tools/techniques include (but are not limited to) DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control), value stream mapping, process mapping, gage R&R, data analysis, multivari-analysis, design of experiments, statistical process control, and process capability analysis. Through this course, students will gain enough proficiency to apply these tools, techniques, and methodologies to real-world situations.
Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:
• Recognize key attributes of a successful Six Sigma program
• Understand the fundamentals of DMAIC methodology
• Learn and be able to utilize Six Sigma problem-solving tools and techniques
• Learn the lean concept and utilize pertinent Lean tools
• Understand the need for advanced methodologies
Ultimately, this course should prepare students for Green Belt certification (if they choose to pursue it).
This course does not have official prereqs, but working knowledge of Statistics will be beneficial. The course will be offered asynchronously with lecture materials, assigned readings, etc. posted early so students can get ahead to better balance their schedules.
This course is offered Online Asynchronous.
This course will introduce you to the historic and modern methods and techniques for modeling and managing supply chain and logistics systems. The course covers both the managerial and technical side of supply chain management. Topics covered in this course include (but are not limited to) forecasting, inventory control/management, transportation systems, the bullwhip effect, risk analytics, and contemporary supply chain best practices.
This course will be offered asynchronously.
The textbook for the course is "The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook" by George, Rowlands, Price, and Maxey (~$18 on Amazon)
This course covers an introduction to Lean enterprise and Six Sigma, and will introduce students to various process improvement tools and techniques. These tools/techniques include (but are not limited to) DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control), value stream mapping, process mapping, gage R&R, data analysis, multivari-analysis, design of experiments, statistical process control, and process capability analysis. Through this course, students will gain enough proficiency to apply these tools, techniques, and methodologies to real-world situations.
Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:
• Recognize key attributes of a successful Six Sigma program
• Understand the fundamentals of DMAIC methodology
• Learn and be able to utilize Six Sigma problem-solving tools and techniques
• Learn the lean concept and utilize pertinent Lean tools
• Understand the need for advanced methodologies
Ultimately, this course should prepare students for Green Belt certification (if they choose to pursue it).
This course does not have official prereqs, but working knowledge of Statistics will be beneficial. The course will be offered asynchronously with lecture materials, assigned readings, etc. posted early so students can get ahead to better balance their schedules.
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ENGL 2508
MoTuWeThFr 10:30am - 12:45pm
Web-Based Course
MoTuWeThFr 10:30am - 12:45pm
06/22 Sa 10:30am - 12:45pm
TBA