无码专区

This course explores how films illustrate fundamental philosophical themes about the nature of reality, knowledge, and human existence. Students will study films from a range of periods and genres, including:

• 鈥凌补蝉丑辞尘辞苍鈥�
• 鈥�2001: A Space Odyssey鈥�
• 鈥淔ight Club鈥�
• 鈥淭he Matrix鈥�
• 鈥淲丑颈辫濒补蝉丑鈥�

These films raise questions such as:

• What is ultimately real, and why is understanding it so elusive?
• What is the nature of knowledge, and why are we so prone to ignorance?
• What explains personal identity across time?
• How do subconscious psychological drives manifest in our moral lives?
• Can machines be conscious, and do we have moral obligations to them?

Alongside analyzing these films, students will read philosophical texts to help develop and defend their own answers with clarity and logical rigor. The course also encourages reflection on how the aesthetic and narrative aspects of film can enrich artistic interpretation and moral reflection.

A permit is required to register;

This seminar鈥搒tudio hybrid offers dynamic, trans-institutional and transdisciplinary engagements with contemporary topics in healthy humanities through imaginative and practice-based inquiry. Through in-person and immersive virtual initiatives, students will examine critical concepts such as health, care, wellbeing, ableism and disability, shame, 鈥榤adness,鈥� embodiment and healthy environments. The course emphasizes dialogue across disciplines and cultures, fostering deep engagement with students and faculty from partner institutions including Duke University, the University of Exeter, the University of North Carolina, and the University of British Columbia. Students will have the opportunity to create and submit artworks to the Tampa campus 鈥�Off the Wall鈥� showcase to share visual or performance art as it pertains to the curatorial theme of embodiment or healthy humanities, either individually, or in partnership with local or international colleagues. 

Weekly sessions are divided into two components: on Tuesdays, students will meet in person at 无码专区P to explore how studio art practices can engage with topics like the human body, embodiment, and healthy environments, via visual art, performance art or creative writing depending on student preference. We will also focus on the theme of 鈥渉ealthy environments,鈥� investigating the design of clay 3D-printed memorial reefs as a way to reflect on identity through imaginative exercises and circular design. These sessions aim to build on the ideas introduced in the seminars by exploring them through hands-on, expressive methods. On Thursdays, all participating universities will gather virtually for collaborative seminars led by faculty across institutions, offering students a unique opportunity to share perspectives and practices across global academic communities. This course encourages experimental thinking, collaborative learning, and creative expression at the intersection of art, health, and society.

A permit is required to register;

This course explores two concepts that are often thought central to a good human life: happiness and meaning. Believing that one鈥檚 life has meaning seems integral to being happy, and many people maintain that 鈥渢o be happy鈥� is a good answer to the question 鈥淲hat is the meaning of life?鈥� But what, after all, is happiness, and does human life even have a meaning? If life does have a meaning, what does it consist in?

The purpose of this course is for students to formulate their own answers to these questions in a logically rigorous and methodical manner. Along the way, we will consider several subsidiary questions, such as:

• How does happiness relate to other import concepts, like well-being and morality?
• Can happiness be measured, should it be, and if so, how?
• How does the meaning of life relate to other import concepts, like freedom, creativity, absurdity, and mortality?
• Does the fact that each of us will die and that humanity will go extinct (by our own doing, by the death of the sun, or by some other cataclysmic event) mean that our lives are meaningless?

In probing these topics, we will read classical philosophical texts, such as those by Plato and Aristotle, as well as recent scholarship by philosophers, psychologists, and economists.

A permit is required to register;

鈥淭hink of our life in nature 鈥� daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it 鈥� rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?鈥� - Henry David Thoreau 

"The clearest way to the Universe is through a forest wilderness." - John Muir

The invention and endurance of the wilderness ideal is foundational to the identity narrative of the United States. Over the span of more than two hundred years, the idea of wilderness has emerged in the voices of key American writers from Henry David Thoreau to John Muir, Aldo Leopold to Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, and resonates in the work of contemporary, 21^st century nature writers such as Drew Lanham and Robin Wall Kimmerer.

In examining the construction of the wilderness ideal at key moments in American history, we pay attention to geography and the influence of specific landscapes on each writer鈥檚 wilderness imaginings. We will also apply Thoreau鈥檚 transcendentalist framework, which centers you 鈥� the student 鈥� at the heart of the intellectual journey.

Thoreau relentlessly asks us to examine our own moral beliefs and relation to the world around us by reminding us that 鈥淲e are constantly invited to be who we are.鈥� In each time and place 鈥� colonial and post-Revolutionary, abolitionist New England, the Progressive Era in the booming West, from the Great Plains to the High Sierra to the River of Grass 鈥� we will excavate the author鈥檚 environmental treatise in the context of both geography and history. Our central question in exploring these works will be 鈥渨hat am I asked to do, and who am I asked to be in relation to the living world?鈥�

Readings include the work of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, Drew Lanham, and others.

A permit is required to register;

This course examines the theory and practice of Buddhist meditation from its inception through modernity. We will pay particular attention to the historical origins and developments of various Buddhist meditative practices and their interpretations. We will also investigate the causes, implications, and possibilities of the popularization and proliferation of mindfulness meditation in mainstream U.S. culture.

Central questions to this examination will be:

• What have been the aims and functions of Buddhist meditative practices in their historical, social, and religious contexts?
• Is 鈥渟ecular鈥� meditation practice possible, and relatedly, can one be Buddhist 鈥渨ithout beliefs,鈥� as one author recently put it?
• Finally, what are the potential dangers and pitfalls associated with meditation?

Materials for our study include ancient meditation manuals and expository treatises, as well as contemporary writings by religious studies scholars, psychologists, and philosophers 鈥� all this alongside influential Buddhist artworks and recent films.

A permit is required to register;

Many of us might think of history 鈥� the academic discipline 鈥� as little more than a sequence of objective facts, a chronological list of important names, dates, and battles. In reality, history 鈥� as a lived experience 鈥� is much more personal and intimate. Events from the mundane to momentous are experienced and remembered by people, recorded by some, and passed along to future generations. This course will focus on how the recent hurricanes we experienced might shape our identity as residents of the Tampa Bay area, with an emphasis on the process by which history is made, and the role that we might play 鈥� as students, researchers, and practitioners 鈥� in making history ourselves.

In partnership with the St. Pete Beach Public Library and the Gulf Beaches Historical Museum, this course will provide students with hands-on experience in:

• Recording oral histories,
• Producing documentary photography,
• Taking 360 LIDAR scans to produce 3D architectural renderings,
• Digitizing visual and print artifacts,
• Cataloging and creating a historical archive, and
• Developing virtual exhibits highlighting our work.

This is a service learning course, meaning that we integrate community service with guided reflection in the curriculum to enhance and enrich student learning of course material.  

A permit is required to register;

A permit is required to register;