Community Engagement (in a Changing Climate) | STSO-4961 
Professor Brian Tolle 

Description: Strong community engagement supports climate resilience. This course supports students in working with civic, community, and government organizations in the context of climate change. The course is a project-based experience that connects students to ongoing initiatives in Troy and the Capital region. Students will explore a variety of “theories of change,” connecting these theories to approaches used by a wide variety of organizations, developing their own stances on how to effectively contribute to goals of community resilience, environmental justice, and social cohesion. Students will develop skills in project management, communication, community building, and civic engagement.

CRN: 69652    
Credits: 4.00
Course Type: Seminar
Prerequisites: INQR 1240, INQR 1110, INQR/STSO 1100, STSO 2300, STSO 2500, or permission of instructor
Restrictions: None

Course can be applied to the following areas:

Major Electives:
STS BS: Advanced STS Elective 
SUST BS: Advanced STS Option  
DSIS BS: Advanced STS Elective  

Integrative Pathways:
Ethics, Integrity, and Social Responsibility  
Sustainability
Science, Technology, and Society 

Minors:
Sustainability
Science, Technology, and Society

Critical Public and Global Health | STSO-4963 
Professor Atuk Tankut  
 
Description: The history of epidemics illustrates quite dramatically the effect social forces have in the distribution of medical risk. The disproportionate and continuing rise in rates of HIV infection among African Americans, gay men, women, and adolescents, as well as the persistent stigma of HIV, and the devastating impact of the epidemic on the Global South have made the social dimensions of this disease more apparent. Likewise, those who are exposed to structural violence and debilitated due to their race, class, and ethnic background, such as homeless people, native populations, African-Americans, and immigrants suffered not only higher numbers of Coronavirus infection but also more severe syndromes of COVID-19 and higher numbers of death.  

In this course, you will examine the HIV/AIDS, Covid-19, MPox, and other pandemics and epidemics from a sociological and anthropological perspective. You will study the multiple ways in which the conditions of health and illness are determined by the categories of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, citizenship, immigration etc. In other words, you will learn how the effects of pandemics and epidemics follow the societal fault lines created by structural inequalities and violence.  

Are epidemics and pandemics bio-medical or socio-political phenomena? Which countries and communities bear the burden of diseases and why? What role does neoliberal capitalism have in the emergence of epidemics and pandemics? What conditions put vulnerable communities at risk of communicable infections? These are some of the questions you will address throughout this course.  

By the end of this course, you will be able to discuss the historical, political, economic, social, cultural, and biological factors that contribute to public health outbreaks across the globe. In addition, you will learn about the interdisciplinary fields of social epidemiology and social public health, as well as how they define vulnerability and risk contextually. 

CRN: 69491
Credits: 4.00
Course Type: Lecture
Prerequisites: None
Restrictions: None

Course can be applied to the following areas:

Major Electives:
STS BS: Advanced STS Elective 
SUST BS: Advanced STS Option  
DSIS BS: Advanced STS Elective  

Integrative Pathways:
Ethics, Integrity, and Social Responsibility  
Public Health  
Sustainability
Science, Technology, and Society 

Minors:
Public Health
Sustainability
Science, Technology, and Society

HISTORY OF MOTION PICTURES | LITR-4960 
Professor Christopher Jeansonne  
 
Description: This class could be subtitled “Reflecting on Photographic Images and Motion Picture History Through Undying Eyes: 200-Year-Old Vampires.” Using a role-playing framework for learning, students will engage with the history of the moving image.  

In a format not unlike a table-top roleplaying game, students will create characters that were born sometime in the early 19th century and became vampires shortly after the invention of the photographic image. Small groups of students/vampires will have come together as covens, and then witnessed the evolution of motion pictures up until the present day. From the perspective of their characters, students will study various films, TV shows, and streaming digital media, as well as film and media theory, across 200 years.  

The semester will culminate in a festival of the history of images and motion pictures, recounting the undeath of images as it relates to living histories. 

CRN: 69723
Credits: 4.00
Course Type: Lecture
Prerequisites: None
Restrictions: None

Course can be applied to the following areas:

Major Electives:
COMD BS: Major Elective 

Integrative Pathways:
History
Media and Culture 
Narrative and Storytelling 

Minors:
Media and Culture 
Narrative and Storytelling 

HISTORY OF RACE, SCIENCE, AND MEDICINE| STSO-4960 
Professor Adam Biggs 
 
Description: This course explores the relationship between race, science, medicine, and history. Primarily (but not exclusively) focusing on the Atlantic world from the 16th century to the present, we’ll look at the role white supremacy has played in shaping scientific endeavors and strengthening perceptions of science as a viable alternative to religious ideologies. We’ll explore how eugenic notions of race have shaped (and continue to shape) our understandings of health and healing and impacted the relationship between communities of color and the medical profession.  

Students will have opportunities to analyze and interpret a range of historical primary source materials (including letters, memoirs, oral histories, newspaper articles, and works of fiction) and to explore the ethical complexities embedded within the practice of medicine and production of scientific knowledge when confronting the problem of race. 

CRN: 69375
Credits: 4.00
Course Type: Seminar
Prerequisites: None
Restrictions: None
 

Course can be applied to the following areas:

Major Electives:
STS BS: Advanced STS Elective 
DSIS BS: Advanced STS Elective  

Integrative Pathways:
History
Public Health  

Minors:
History
Public Health  

Introduction to Logic-Based Artificial Intelligence | PHIL 496x, COGS 496x, CSCI 497x, COGS 696x
Professor Selmer Bringsjord
 

Description: This course is an introduction to logic-based artificial intelligence (AI).  We learn techniques for designing and engineering AIs with human-level (or higher) cognitive intelligence, enabled by automated reasoning as the basis for: planning, learning, decision-making, communicating, creativity, and perceiving.  A special emphasis is placed upon giving AIs intellectual powers that are acutely problematic for the likes of GPT-4 and other so-called “foundation models,” which are congenitally prone to poor performance in applications that require high precision and accuracy, and/or require formally verified ethically correct behavior.  We explore how to remedy these deficiencies via AI based on computational logic.  Our programming paradigm is pure logic programming, introduced and taught from scratch. 

Two added bonuses are coverage of AI-relevant quantum computing, analyzed by way of formal logic; as well as so-called artificial general intelligence (AGI).  Students should have taken standard high-school math progression with Algebra 2 (or equivalent) through some calculus; some prior study of formal logic and proofs; and some prior programming (in at least one or more procedural or functional languages; no prior experience with logic programming necessary).

Pre-requisites: None
 

CRN: TBA
Credits: 4.00
Course Type: Lecture
Prerequisites: None
Restrictions: None

Course can be applied to the following areas:

Major Electives:
COGS BS: Cognitive Science Elective Option

Integrative Pathways:
Philosophy and Logic
Artificial Intelligence 

Minors:
Philosophy of Logic, Computation, and Mind

MODELS In MENTAL PROCESSES | PSYC-4961
Professor Yingrui Yang
 
Description: This course will cover a wide range of topics in high cognition. From normative theoretic perspectives, we will introduce the conceptual architectures of standard logic, decision theory, game theory, standard educational testing design, and measurement theory. From empirical perspectives, we will cover mental model theory and mental logic theory in psychology of reasoning, bounded rationality, psychology of decision making, small-grand world decision problem, behavioral game theory, and the field study in standard educational testing. A set of empirical and theoretical issues, including longstanding controversies and debates, will be addressed and discussed. The course will take an integrated approach to unify the normative theories and empirical research, particularly from modeling perspectives. The course is designed as conceptually self-contained and instrumentally self-sufficient. There are no pre-requisites for this course. We will go through basic concepts, touch very fundamental issues, and move to the frontlines of research. This course is largely based on the instructor’s lectures. Reading references will be distributed each week, and lecture/reading notes will be collected week

CRN: 69835
Credits: 4.00
Course Type: 
Prerequisites: None
Restrictions: None
 

Course can be applied to the following areas:

Major electives:
Cognitive Science

Pathways:
Cognitive Science

Minors:
Cognitive Science

PHYSICS MEETS SOCIAL SCIENCES | PSYC-4962
Professor Yingrui Yang
 
Description: The modeling methodologies in current social sciences, such as psychology and economics, are largely influenced by the Newtonian physics. There are certain limitations of this long-standing tradition. This course will apply modern theoretical physics as a logic to develop new modeling technologies in social science. We will show how to apply the ideas from quantum mechanics, special theory and general theory of relativity, quantum field theory, and string theory, in psychology, economics, and political science. The course is designed as conceptually self -contained and instrumentally self-sufficient. There are no pre-requisites for this course. We will go through very basic concepts, touch very fundamental issues, and move to very front lines of research. This course is largely based on the instructor’s lectures. Reading references will be distributed each week, and lecture/reading notes will be collected weekly. 

CRN: 69836
Credits: 4.00
Course Type: 
Prerequisites: None
Restrictions: None
 

Course can be applied to the following areas:

Major electives:
Psych Science

Pathways:
Psych Science
General Psychology

Minors:
Psych Science
Understanding Human Behavior

SOUND STUDIES: SONIC SPACES | ARTS-4500 and ARTS-6960 
Professor Kate Galloway 
 
Description: The interdisciplinary field of sound studies is concerned with the histories, science, and technologies of sound and listening, the relationship between sound and natural and built architectures, sound within specific settings, and the critical and creative exploration of the production and consumption of sound.  

Music and sound circulates, moves, and is mapped through places, pathways, materials, bodies, and technologies. Together, we will encounter a series of conceptual frameworks and case studies that map the nodes, pathways, boundaries, and movements of sonic phenomena, listening bodies, sonic spaces, sound art (e.g., Raven Chacon, Christine Sun Kim, Janet Cardiff), and musical life. The seminar also raises questions of how technologies and modes of mobility interface with issues of identity, race, disability, and gender.  

Some of the questions we will address include:  

• How do built and natural architectural environments shape the ways people experience sound and music?  
• How has our experience of sound changed as we move from the phonograph to the personal computer, from the phonograph to the mp3?  
• How did human hearing become the gauge to evaluate and design materials, listening devices, hearing tests, and nonhuman beings?  
• How do sound and music flow and vibrate through, in, and among places (e.g., urban streets and neighborhoods, spaces of protest, music scenes, performance venues)?  
• How do the movements of music and musicians, the places they occupy, and the boundaries they negotiate communicate spatial information about music practices?  
• How does music and sound circulate through our virtual online networks and digital experiential media (e.g., video games, extended reality, internet platforms)? 

Credits: 4.00
Course Type: Seminar
Prerequisites: None

CRN and Restrictions:

1. ARTS-4500-01 (CRN: 69524) | Restricted to Juniors and Seniors
2. ARTS-4500-02 (CRN: 69526) | Restricted to Juniors, Seniors, EARTS, GSAS, and MUSC
3. ARTS-6960-01 (CRN: 69527) | Restricted to Graduate Students (or by permission of OGE)

Course can be applied to the following areas:

Major Electives:
Music BS: History and Culture Option, Culminating Experience
EARTS BS: History and Culture Option
GSAS BS: Music Concentration Option 

Integrative Pathways:
Electronic Arts
Music and Sound  

Minors:
Electronic Arts 
Music