Course Description: We will look at playful media (games, role play & other interactive experiences) not for how they entertain but for how they challenge social, economic & political systems in the world. We will address: Games for coping with trying times, for promoting systems thinking (including modeling, interrogating, & disrupting these systems), as well as world-building & "the civic imagination." No experience with games is necessary.Requisite: MDST 3704 or MDST 3712 OR instructor permission

Course Description: This course traces the rise of Christianity in the first millennium of the Common Era, covering the development of doctrine, the evolution of its institutional structures, and its impact on the cultures in which it flourished. Students will become acquainted with the key figures, issues, and events from this formative period, when Christianity evolved from marginal Jewish sect to the dominant religion in the Roman Empire.

Course Description: Analyzes the theory of strategically interdependent decision making, with applications to auctions, bargaining, oligopoly, signaling, and strategic voting. Prerequisite: ECON 3010 or 3110, and STAT 2120 or equivalent

Course Description: This course aims to clarify basic facts and explore competing explanations for the origins and unfolding of the Holocaust--the encounter between the Third Reich and Europe's Jews between 1933 and 1945 that resulted in the deaths of almost six million Jews. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at: http://www.virginia.edu/german/Undergraduate/Courses.

Course Description: This course aims to clarify basic facts and explore competing explanations for the origins and unfolding of the Holocaust (the encounter between the Third Reich and Europe's Jews between 1933 and 1945) that resulted in the deaths of almost six million Jews.

Course Description: This course will explore the intellectual and social history of Vedanta, one of the most influential schools of Indian philosophy. We will trace its rise to prominence from the early classical period, when it was one of several competing schools, to the colonial period, when it came to be identified by many as the essence of Hinduism.

Course Description: What is the good life, and what is a good life? Saints seem to live perfectly good lives, but stories about them often grapple with this question, encouraging audiences to think deeply about their own lives in ways that go beyond any one ethical system. Looking at old and new stories of parent-child struggles, spectacular sinning and redemption, gender transformation, and daily moral predicaments, we will explore what it means to live well.

Course Description: This course focuses on how relatively simple model systems provide the clues as to how certain synaptic connections form and lead to specific behaviors. This will be followed by discussion of how this knowledge can be applied to the understanding and treatment of human neural disorders. 25% of the course is standard lectures and the rest, student-led discussion of primary literature. Prereqs: BIOL 3000 & BIOL 3010; BIOL 3050 or PSYC 2200 or 3200

Course Description: This course is devoted to an in-depth examination of Japan's most renowned work of literature and the world's first novel. Topics covered will include: material culture (architecture, clothing, gardens); political and social history; gender and class; marriage customs; poetry and poetics; the arts (music, perfume, painting, etc.); and religious beliefs (in particular spirit possession) among others.

Course Description: A seminar devoted to an in-depth examination in English translation of Japan's most renowned work of literature, often called the world's first novel. Satisfies the Non-Western and Second Writing requirements.

Course Description: This course provides an overview of the historical bases and contemporary developments in feminist theorizing and analyzes a range of theories on gender, including liberal, Marxist, radical, difference, and postmodernist ideas. We explore how feminist theories apply to contemporary debates on the body, sexuality, colonialism, globalization, transnationalism incorporating analyses of race, class, national difference and cross-cultural perspectives.

Course Description: Feminist Theory offers a focused exploration of ways that late 20th Century and early 21st Century feminist theorists challenge, alter and deploy central concerns and paradigms of Western cultural assumption. Although Feminist Theory as a category incorporates interdisciplinary and global perspectives, the slant of this course is a focus on Western culture and Feminist Social Theory.

Course Description: An introduction to American feminist theory its major concerns, historical development, array of methodologies, and formative debates. Divergent theoretical and critical texts on gender/sexuality are juxtaposed with primary materials ranging from early novels to contemporary movies. Likely topics include queer theory, transnational feminism, feminist cultural studies, the gendering of race, and feminist approaches to film. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

Course Description: Analyzes readings in the English Bible. Designed to familiarize or re-familiarize the literary student with the shape, argument, rhetoric, and purposes of the canon; with the persons, events, and perspectives of the major narratives; and with the conventions, techniques, resources, and peculiarities of the texts. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

Course Description: Studies the major lyrical forms and traditions in Western literature, with particularly close reading of poems written in English. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.