Top of page
Skip to main content
Main content

Seminars & Course Atlas


MBC 501: Core Course in Mind, Brain, and Culture

(Cross-listed as ANT 585-4)

T / Th 1:00 - 2:15, PAIS 464

CLICK HERE FOR SYLLABUS

INSTRUCTOR
Dietrich Stout
dwstout@emory.edu

 

Course Description
The purpose of the course is to provide an in-depth exploration of scientific approaches to the evolution of human intelligence. This includes the nature of the available evidence, established methods of investigation, and challenges faced by researchers. The focus is on integrating evidence and approaches from biological and cultural anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology and neuroscience. The course is taught in a seminar format. 

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar in Mind, Brain, and Culture

Day/Time TBD
Office Hours by appointment
 

CLICK HERE FOR SYLLABUS

INSTRUCTORS
Dietrich StoutRobert Liu
dwstout@emory.edurobert.liu@emory.edu

Course Description

This course is designed provide a sense of community among certificate participants, a source of intellectual input and support, and an opportunity for additional insight into multidisciplinary approaches to the study of mind, brain, and culture. 

All participants will be students participating in the Certificate Program in Mind, Brain, and Culture who have completed the Core Course (MBC 501) requirement. 

Course Structure and Goals

The course content will be variable and determined collaboratively by the course participants each semester. We will meet four or five times over the course of the semester (including an initial organizational meeting). The goals are to provide multidisciplinary perspectives on topics of particular interest to those students enrolled and to address timely new research and topics of interest.  Students will be encouraged to nominate topics, issues, readings, and potential guest speakers.  The instructor will also propose topics that have received recent research attention or that particularly epitomize a multidisciplinary approach.

Evaluation

Students may enroll in the course on an S/U (Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory) basis only. Student performance will be evaluated based on attendance, participation, and taking responsibility for leading/facilitating discussion at least once during each of the two semesters they are required to enroll.

Readings

Participants should provide the CMBC Administrative Assistant, Tamara Beck, with copies of the readings in either MS Word or PDF format.  These materials should be in to Ms. Beck at least three weeks before the session is to occur (though, ideally, earlier even than that).  Please LIMIT your readings to 20-25 pages maximum, and pick clear, generally accessible readings that will give the participants a sense of your learning. Ms. Beck will disseminate the texts to all participants via email as promptly as her schedule allows.

MBC 501: Core Course in Mind, Brain, and Culture

M / W 11:30 - 12:45, PAIS 464

INSTRUCTOR
Dietrich Stout
dwstout@emory.edu

 

Course Description
The purpose of the course is to provide an in-depth exploration of scientific approaches to the evolution of human intelligence. This includes the nature of the available evidence, established methods of investigation, and challenges faced by researchers. The focus is on integrating evidence and approaches from biological and cultural anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology and neuroscience. The course is taught in a seminar format. 


MBC 600: Research Group Seminar in Mind, Brain, and Culture

Day/Time TBD
Office Hours by appointment
 

CLICK HERE FOR SYLLABUS

INSTRUCTORs
Dietrich StoutLynne Nygaard
dwstout@emory.edulnygaar@emory.edu

 

Course Description

This course is designed provide a sense of community among certificate participants, a source of intellectual input and support, and an opportunity for additional insight into multidisciplinary approaches to the study of mind, brain, and culture. 

 All participants will be students participating in the Certificate Program in Mind, Brain, and Culture who have completed the Core Course (MBC 501) requirement. 

Course Structure and Goals

The course content will be variable and determined collaboratively by the course participants each semester. We will meet four or five times over the course of the semester (including an initial organizational meeting). The goals are to provide multidisciplinary perspectives on topics of particular interest to those students enrolled and to address timely new research and topics of interest.  Students will be encouraged to nominate topics, issues, readings, and potential guest speakers.  The instructor will also propose topics that have received recent research attention or that particularly epitomize a multidisciplinary approach.

Evaluation

Students may enroll in the course on an S/U (Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory) basis only. Student performance will be evaluated based on attendance, participation, and taking responsibility for leading/facilitating discussion at least once during each of the two semesters they are required to enroll.

Readings

Participants should provide the CMBC Program Coordinator, Tamara Beck, with copies of the readings in either MS Word or PDF format.  These materials should be submitted to Ms. Beck at least three weeks before the session is to occur (though, ideally, earlier even than that).  Please LIMIT your readings to 20-25 pages maximum, and pick clear, generally accessible readings that will give the participants a sense of your learning. Ms. Beck will disseminate the texts to all participants via email as promptly as her schedule allows.


 

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar in Mind, Brain, and Culture

Day/Time TBD
Office Hours by appointment
 

CLICK HERE FOR SYLLABUS

INSTRUCTORS
Dietrich StoutLynne Nygaard
dwstout@emory.edulnygaar@emory.edu

Course Description

This course is designed provide a sense of community among certificate participants, a source of intellectual input and support, and an opportunity for additional insight into multidisciplinary approaches to the study of mind, brain, and culture. 

All participants will be students participating in the Certificate Program in Mind, Brain, and Culture who have completed the Core Course (MBC 501) requirement. 

Course Structure and Goals

The course content will be variable and determined collaboratively by the course participants each semester. We will meet four or five times over the course of the semester (including an initial organizational meeting). The goals are to provide multidisciplinary perspectives on topics of particular interest to those students enrolled and to address timely new research and topics of interest.  Students will be encouraged to nominate topics, issues, readings, and potential guest speakers.  The instructor will also propose topics that have received recent research attention or that particularly epitomize a multidisciplinary approach.

 

Evaluation

Students may enroll in the course on an S/U (Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory) basis only. Student performance will be evaluated based on attendance, participation, and taking responsibility for leading/facilitating discussion at least once during each of the two semesters they are required to enroll.

 

Readings

Participants should provide the CMBC Administrative Assistant, Tamara Beck, with copies of the readings in either MS Word or PDF format.  These materials should be in to Ms. Beck at least three weeks before the session is to occur (though, ideally, earlier even than that).  Please LIMIT your readings to 20-25 pages maximum, and pick clear, generally accessible readings that will give the participants a sense of your learning. Ms. Beck will disseminate the texts to all participants via email as promptly as her schedule allows.

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar in Mind, Brain, and Culture

Day/Time TBD
Office Hours by appointment
 

CLICK HERE FOR SYLLABUS

INSTRUCTORS
Dietrich StoutLynne Nygaard
dwstout@emory.edulnygaar@emory.edu

                

Course Description

This course is designed provide a sense of community among certificate participants, a source of intellectual input and support, and an opportunity for additional insight into multidisciplinary approaches to the study of mind, brain, and culture. 

All participants will be students participating in the Certificate Program in Mind, Brain, and Culture who have completed the Core Course (MBC 501) requirement. 

Course Structure and Goals

The course content will be variable and determined collaboratively by the course participants each semester. We will meet five times over the course of the semester (including an initial organizational meeting). The goals are to provide multidisciplinary perspectives on topics of particular interest to those students enrolled and to address timely new research and topics of interest.  Students will be encouraged to nominate topics, issues, readings, and potential guest speakers.  The instructor will also propose topics that have received recent research attention or that particularly epitomize a multidisciplinary approach.

Evaluation

Students may enroll in the course on an S/U (Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory) basis only. Student performance will be evaluated based on attendance, participation, and taking responsibility for leading/facilitating discussion at least once during each of the two semesters they are required to enroll.

 

Readings

Participants should provide the CMBC Administrative Assistant, Tamara Beck, with copies of the readings in either MS Word or PDF format.  These materials should be in to Ms. Beck at least three weeks before the session is to occur (though, ideally, earlier even than that).  Please LIMIT your readings to 20-25 pages maximum, and pick clear, generally accessible readings that will give the participants a sense of your learning. Ms. Beck will disseminate the texts to all participants via email as promptly as her schedule allows.

MBC 700: The Natural and Cultural Foundations of Civilizations

Wednesdays 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm 
ONLINE FORMAT


Robert N. McCauley, PhD
Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Content: 

This seminar will focus on a range of proposals about the natural and cultural foundations of civilizations taking inspiration from such fields as archaeology, anthropology, cognitive science, genetics, geography, natural history, and cultural evolution.  In the course of the semester, we will explore such questions as:

What are the biological relationships between the various human groups around the world and how did they come to be as they are? 
 Are we the only cultural species? 
Why after a quarter million years of its evolution did our species begin to produce vastly greater numbers of artifacts over roughly the last 50,000 years?

Why after nearly 300,000 years of its evolution did members of our species begin to live in large settlements over just the last 10,000 years or so? 

How did these new living arrangements change our species biologically and culturally (i.e., politically, militarily, economically, religiously, educationally, and more)?

Why did some human groups (e.g., in the Middle East) develop agriculture, while others (e.g., aboriginal Australians) did not?

Why were writing systems invented (when they were invented)? How do they evolve and what advantages do they contribute to human groups?

This interdisciplinary seminar is sweeping in its scope and will explore both the natural and the cultural roots of human civilizations.  The natural roots in question concern both the evolution of the kinds of minds we possess and the ecological and geographical circumstances in which various human groups are and have been situated.  The cultural roots concern the sorts of technological, behavioral, social, institutional, and intellectual innovations that human groups invent, retain, and transmit.  We shall examine the fundamental forces shaping human minds and, later, human societies across the entire history of our species from the divergence of our lineage from that of chimpanzees to the modern age. 

Major debates have swirled around these matters for centuries, and we shall largely (though not exclusively) focus on the new contributions of various sciences for understanding our species’ past and its accomplishments.  Virtually all the readings will come from the following six books:
 
  • Steven Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind:  The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion, and Science
  • Stephen Oppenheimer, Out of Eden:  The Peopling of the World
  • Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel:  The Fates of Human SocietiesJames Scott, Against the Grain:  A Deep History of the Earliest States
  • Michael Cook, A Brief History of the Human Race
  • Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success:  How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

Grading:  Grades will be based on a student’s term paper and on participation and presentations on readings in the seminar sessions. 



MBC 700/ANT 585: The Evolution of Childhood

Mondays 5:00 - 8:00p


Mel Konner, PhD
Department of Anthropology 

Content:  This course will cover the evolutionary and anatomical foundations of behavioral and psychological, especially social and emotional, development, as well as comparative socialization and cross-cultural varieties of enculturation. We will read the instructor’s 2010 book on the subject, plus more recent research articles. The course, like the book, has four major sections (evolution, maturation, socialization, enculturation) and a concluding section. Among the topics covered will be relevant parts of: life history theory, evolution of ontogeny, evolutionary developmental psychology, neural and neuroendocrine development from fetal life through puberty and parenthood, comparative socialization with an emphasis on primates and other mammals, early experience effects, stress responses in animal models and children, hunter-gatherer childhood as the human cultural baseline, cross-cultural comparisons of childhood and childrearing, theories of culture and personality, cultural evolution, human universals, and a proposed “culture acquisition device” common to all (normal) human brains and minds. Among the questions we will consider are: How did parent-offspring conflict figure in human evolution? What in social and emotional development depends as much or more on “postnatal neuroembryology” as on experience? How do socialization and enculturation differ? What are our legacies from mammalian, primate, ape, and earlier hominin development? Is “maternal sentiment” a human universal? Is culture unique to humans? How do genetic and cultural evolution interact? Are there commonalities of process at varied levels of analysis such as evolution, brain development, learning, socialization, and enculturation? And, finally, what are the unique features of human childhood?

Text: Konner, Melvin. The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind
(Harvard University Press, 2010)

Additional Weekly readings: Journal articles as indicated below; all will be uploaded to Canvas if they aren’t already. The text of the book was completed in 2009, and one key goal of the course will be to read newer papers bringing each topic up to date. My rule of thumb for undergraduate courses is two hours of reading for each hour of class time. That would be a minimum of six hours for
graduate students. I believe these weekly assignments can easily be read in six hours. Don’t expect to understand everything you read in these articles. I don’t. Do the best you can and get the most you can out of them.

Requirements: Class participation, oral presentations, and a final paper. Written
work should look critically at topics in the book and even argue with it.



MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

Date / Time:  TBD
PAIS  464


Dietrich Stout, PhD

Lynne Nygaard, PhD

Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus.


MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

Date / Time:  TBD
PAIS  464


Dietrich Stout, PhD
Lynne Nygaard, PhD

Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus.

MBC 501: Core Course in Multi-disciplinary Approaches to Mind, Brain, and Culture

Tuesdays 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm 
PAIS 464

Robert N. McCauley, PhD
Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Content: We are our own greatest mystery.  We, our brains, our minds, and our cultures remain the most complex things that we know of in the universe.  Scholars who study human brains, minds, and cultures have developed means for fathoming that complexity and for getting to the heart of questions about our identity. 

This seminar will examine two sorts of inquiries.  The first is a substantive inquiry -- to carry out a multi-disciplinary investigation of the species Homo sapiens and, this semester, an investigation of our penchant for religiosity and the resulting social systems that seem centered thereon.  The second is, basically, a philosophical inquiry -- to examine how readily the characteristic theories and research of different disciplines can (or cannot) be connected with one another in such multi-disciplinary inquiries.  This includes ascertaining conditions under which multi-disciplinary inquiries in science may evolve into inter-disciplinary inquiries. 

The substantive inquiry about Homo sapiens will approach our species generally and human religiosity, in particular, at a variety of levels, including the neural, the psychological, and the socio-cultural, and with a variety of methods, including, among others, the experimental, comparative, observational, and ethnographic.  Readings will look at being human through investigations of human brains, minds, and cultures either from a synchronic perspective or from diachronic perspectives or from both.  The seminar will include scrutiny of works from a variety of disciplines, such as neuroscience, anthropology (biological, psychological, and cultural), archaeology, psychology (cognitive, clinical, developmental, comparative, and evolutionary), and philosophy. 

The philosophical issue of how and why the relevant scientific disciplines hang together as complementary inquiries in the service of acquiring knowledge constitutes the seminar’s secondary project.  The readings, from the philosophy of science, will also provide analytical tools to guide reflection on the epistemological and metaphysical implications of the substantive readings in the seminar. 

Not even narrowly focused seminars presume to be comprehensive.  It goes without saying that a seminar, which undertakes as broad a set of inquiries as this one, does not involve such presumptions either.  The seminar is an introduction to multi-disciplinary inquiry about our species and to the underlying philosophical issues that such inquiries occasion.  Both the substantive and the philosophical readings are intended to be representative only. 


Particulars:  This course, offered every 3 or 4 semesters, is designed to (1) introduce students to the history and philosophy of science as it applies to the social, psychological, and brain sciences, (2) provide an overview of different types of disciplinary and methodological approaches to the study of mind, brain, and culture, and (3) highlight how exemplary research using approaches from different levels of analysis either converge or not but, in either case, provide  insights not readily gleaned from pursuing a single disciplinary perspective.  This semester’s focus will be on the multidisciplinary study of religiosity and religious systems.

This course is required for students seeking the Graduate Certificate in Mind, Brain, and Culture, however enrollment in the course is not confined to such students.   Other students are also welcome to enroll.  Certificate Program students are encouraged to complete this course prior to completion of electives when feasible.  All enrolled students will write a paper and take responsibility for facilitating the discussion of at least two readings. 

 


MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

Date / Time:  TBD
PAIS  464


Dietrich Stout, PhD

Lynne Nygaard, PhD

Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus.

 


MBC 700: Freud for the Liberal Arts

Tuesdays 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm 
PAIS 225

Robert A. Paul, PhD

Freud created the theory and technique of psychoanalysis on the basis of his clinical treatment of the so-called “transference neuroses”, that is, hysteria, phobia, and obsessional neurosis.  It was not long, however, before this highly educated and well-read man turned his psychoanalytic gaze onto a wide range of human phenomena besides the neuroses.  Among the topics to which he turned his attention were such fields as art, literature, religion, anthropology, social critique, biography, everyday life, jokes, humor, creativity, and many more.   Rather than dealing with Freud’s well-known writings on clinical topics, his case studies, or is essays on aspects of psychology more generally, this course will instead focus on reading (some of) the very extensive and varied corpus of Freud’s contributions to what used to be called “applied psychoanalysis” but which may more accurately be described as “psychoanalysis and the liberal arts”.

Cross-listed as PSP 789 1, CPLT 752R 1, ENG 789 6,  PHIL 789 2, and RLR 700 9)

 


MBC 797: Directed Reading and Research 

VARIES

Content: This is a variable-credit course that allows student pursuing the certificate in Mind, Brain, and Culture to engage in directed research and reading relevant to their course of study. 

Particulars: Permission is required for enrollment.

 

MBC 501 / ANTH 585 (2444) Evolution, Brain, and Mind

MW 11:30a-12:45p

Dietrich Stout, PhD

The purpose of the course is to provide an in-depth exploration of scientific approaches to the evolution of human intelligence. This includes the nature of the available evidence, established methods of investigation, and challenges faced by researchers. The focus is on integrating evidence and approaches from biological and cultural anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology and neuroscience. The course is taught in a seminar format.

 

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

Date / Time:  TBD

Dietrich Stout, PhD
Lynne Nygaard, PhD

Center for Mind, Brain, & Culture, PAIS  

Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus.

 

MBC 797: Directed Reading and Research 

VARIES

Content: This is a variable-credit course that allows student pursuing the certificate in Mind, Brain, and Culture to engage in directed research and reading relevant to their course of study. 

Particulars: Permission is required for enrollment.

 

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

Date / Time:  TBD

Dietrich Stout, PhD
Lynne Nygaard, PhD

Center for Mind, Brain, & Culture, PAIS  

Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus.


MBC 700: The Natural and Cultural Foundations of Civilizations

Thursdays, 1:00pm-4:00pm

Robert N. McCauley, PHD

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture - PAIS 464

Content: This interdisciplinary seminar is sweeping in its scope and will explore both the natural and the cultural roots of human civilizations. The natural roots in question concern both the evolution of the kinds of minds we possess and the ecological and geographical circumstances in which various human groups are and have been situated. The cultural roots concern the sorts of technological, behavioral, social, and intellectual innovations that human groups invent, retain, and transmit. We shall examine the fundamental forces shaping human minds and, later, human societies across the entire history of our species from the divergence of our lineage from that of chimpanzees to the modern age.

Major debates have surrounded these matters for centuries, and we shall largely (though not exclusively) focus on the new contributions of the sciences for understanding our species' past and its' accomplishments.  We shall read works by archaeologists, geneticists, geographers, anthropologists, historians, and cognitive and social scientists. Most of the reading will come from the following six books:

Steven Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion, and Science

Stephen Oppenheimer, Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

James Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Michael Cook, A Brief History of the Human Race

Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

Prerequisites: None.

Requirements: Grades will be based on a student's term paper and on participation and presentations on readings in the seminar sessions.


MBC 797: Directed Reading and Research 

VARIES

Content: This is a variable-credit course that allows student pursuing the certificate in Mind, Brain, and Culture to engage in directed research and reading relevant to their course of study. 

Particulars: Permission is required for enrollment.

 

MBC 700/ANT 585: The Evolution of Childhood

Thursdays 5:30 - 8:30 pm

Mel Konner, PHD

Department of Anthropology 

Content:   This course will cover the evolutionary and anatomical foundations of psychological, especially social and emotional, development, as well as comparative socialization and cross-cultural varieties of enculturation. We will read the instructor’s new book on the subject, which has four major sections (evolution, maturation, socialization, enculturation) and a concluding section. Among the topics covered will be relevant parts of: life history theory, evolution of ontogeny, evolutionary developmental psychology, neural and neuroendocrine development from fetal life through puberty and parenthood, comparative socialization with an emphasis on primates and other mammals, early experience effects, stress responses in animal models and children, hunter-gatherer childhood as the human cultural baseline, cross-cultural comparisons of childhood and childrearing, theories of culture and personality, cultural evolution, human universals, and a proposed “culture acquisition device” common to all (normal) human brains and minds. Among the questions we will consider are: How did parent-offspring conflict figure in human evolution? What in social and emotional development depends as much or more on “postnatal neuroembryology” as on experience? How do socialization and enculturation differ? What are our legacies from mammalian, primate, ape, and earlier hominin development? Is “maternal sentiment” a human universal? Is culture unique to humans? How do genetic and cultural evolution interact? Are there commonalities of process at varied levels of analysis such as evolution, brain development, learning, socialization, and enculturation? And, finally, what are the unique features of human childhood?

Prerequisites: None.

Text:   Konner, Melvin. The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind (Harvard University Press, 2010)

Additional Weekly readings: Journal articles to be determined. The text of the book was completed in 2009, and one key goal of the course will be to read studies and review papers bringing each topic up to date.

Requirements: Class participation, oral presentations, and a final paper. Written work should look critically at topics in the book and even argue with it.

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

TBD
PAIS 464

Dietrich Stout, PhD
Lynne Nygaard, PhD

Center for Mind, Brain, & Culture 

Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus.

MBC 797: Directed Reading and Research 

VARIES

Content: This is a variable-credit course that allows student pursuing the certificate in Mind, Brain, and Culture to engage in directed research and reading relevant to their course of study. 

Particulars: Permission is required for enrollment.

MBC 501: Core Course in Multi-disciplinary Approaches to Mind, Brain, and Culture

Tuesdays 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm 
PAIS 464

Robert N. McCauley, PhD

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Content: We are our own greatest mystery.  We, our brains, our minds, and our cultures remain the most complex things that we know of in the universe.  Scholars who study human brains, minds, and cultures have developed means for fathoming that complexity and for getting to the heart of questions about our identity. 

This seminar will examine two sorts of inquiries.  The first is a substantive inquiry -- to carry out a multi-disciplinary investigation of the species Homo sapiens and, this semester, an investigation of our penchant for religiosity and the resulting social systems that seem centered thereon.  The second is, basically, a philosophical inquiry -- to examine how readily the characteristic theories and research of different disciplines can (or cannot) be connected with one another in such multi-disciplinary inquiries.  This includes ascertaining conditions under which multi-disciplinary inquiries in science may evolve into inter-disciplinary inquiries. 

The substantive inquiry about Homo sapiens will approach our species generally and human religiosity, in particular, at a variety of levels, including the neural, the psychological, and the socio-cultural, and with a variety of methods, including, among others, the experimental, comparative, observational, and ethnographic.  Readings will look at being human through investigations of human brains, minds, and cultures either from a synchronic perspective or from diachronic perspectives or from both.  The seminar will include scrutiny of works from a variety of disciplines, such as neuroscience, anthropology (biological, psychological, and cultural), archaeology, psychology (cognitive, clinical, developmental, comparative, and evolutionary), and philosophy. 

The philosophical issue of how and why the relevant scientific disciplines hang together as complementary inquiries in the service of acquiring knowledge constitutes the seminar’s secondary project.  The readings, from the philosophy of science, will also provide analytical tools to guide reflection on the epistemological and metaphysical implications of the substantive readings in the seminar. 

Not even narrowly focused seminars presume to be comprehensive.  It goes without saying that a seminar, which undertakes as broad a set of inquiries as this one, does not involve such presumptions either.  The seminar is an introduction to multi-disciplinary inquiry about our species and to the underlying philosophical issues that such inquiries occasion.  Both the substantive and the philosophical readings are intended to be representative only. 


Particulars:  This course, offered every 3 or 4 semesters, is designed to (1) introduce students to the history and philosophy of science as it applies to the social, psychological, and brain sciences, (2) provide an overview of different types of disciplinary and methodological approaches to the study of mind, brain, and culture, and (3) highlight how exemplary research using approaches from different levels of analysis either converge or not but, in either case, provide  insights not readily gleaned from pursuing a single disciplinary perspective.  This semester’s focus will be on the multidisciplinary study of religiosity and religious systems.

This course is required for students seeking the Graduate Certificate in Mind, Brain, and Culture, however enrollment in the course is not confined to such students.   Other students are also welcome to enroll.  Certificate Program students are encouraged to complete this course prior to completion of electives when feasible.  All enrolled students will write a paper and take responsibility for facilitating the discussion of at least one reading. 

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

TBA
PAIS 464


Dietrich Stout, PhD 

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus in early January.

MBC 797: Directed Reading and Research 

VARIES

Content: This is a variable-credit course that allows student pursuing the certificate in Mind, Brain, and Culture to engage in directed research and reading relevant to their course of study. 

Particulars: Permission is required for enrollment.

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

Robert N. McCauley, PhD
Lynne C. Nygaard, PhD 

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus in mid-January.

MBC 700: Music, Mind, and Emotions

Richard Patterson, PhD 
Don Saliers, PhD

Content: Why is musical experience so valuable in human life—emotionally, socially, spiritually and even evolutionarily? Drawing on resources in psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and religion, this course identities and explores multiple factors that shape our experiences of music, with attention to neural and material underpinnings. Specific questions will include: What is emotion and are there"aesthetic" emotions? How does music arouse and/or express emotion? What role does music play in religious and spiritual desire and practice? How is music related to language and especially to poetry—rhythmic, prosodic and syntactic features of spoken language? Is music a cultural innovation or an evolutionary adaptation?

Texts: A. Patel, Language and the Brain; J. Robinson, Deeper than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music and Art; and significant essays and articles

Particulars: A distinctive feature of the course will be live sessions of musical performances (including Emory's Vega String Quartet), and special lectures by Aniruddh Patel and Jenefer Robinson.

Open to undergraduate and graduate students by permission of the instructor(s).

 

MBC 797: Directed Reading and Research 

VARIES

Content: This is a variable-credit course that allows student pursuing the certificate in Mind, Brain, and Culture to engage in directed research and reading relevant to their course of study. 

Particulars: Permission is required for enrollment.

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

TBA
PAIS 464


Robert N. McCauley, PhD
Lynne C. Nygaard, PhD 

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus in mid-January.

MBC 797: Directed Reading and Research 

VARIES

Content: This is a variable-credit course that allows student pursuing the certificate in Mind, Brain, and Culture to engage in directed research and reading relevant to their course of study. 

Particulars: Permission is required for enrollment.

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

TBA
PAIS 464


Robert N. McCauley, PhD
Lynne C. Nygaard, PhD 

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus in mid-January.

MBC 501: Core Course in Multi-disciplinary Approaches to Mind, Brain, and Culture

Tuesdays 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm 
PAIS 464

Robert N. McCauley, PhD
Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Content: This course, offered every other fall, is designed to (1) introduce students to the history and philosophy of science as it applies to the social, psychological, and brain sciences, (2) provide an overview of different types of disciplinary and methodological approaches to the study of mind, brain, and culture, and (3) highlight how exemplary research using approaches from different levels of analysis converge to provide synthesis and insights not readily gleaned from examining a single disciplinary perspective.

Particulars: Students planning to complete the Certificate Program are encouraged to enroll in this course prior to completion of electives when feasible.

 

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

TBA
PAIS 464


Robert N. McCauley, PhD
Lynne C. Nygaard, PhD 

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture
Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus in early September.

MBC 700: Mapping Memory: History, Culture, and the Brain

Cross-listed with CPLT 751 and ILA 790
Tuesdays 1:00 - 4:00 pm
422 Woodruff Library 

Angelika Bammer, PhD 
Hazel Gold, PhD

Content: This seminar explores the relationship between history (events that happened) and memory (how we remember those events) to explore the complex dynamics between past and present. How does the past shape how we live our present and how does the present, in turn, affect how we know the past? Why do we remember some aspects of the past and forget others? Is there an ethics to remembering and forgetting that we control? How are memories passed across generations and are they still memories when they become stories? We will explore questions like these through a range of diverse materials from the arts (film, literature, photography, music), humanities (history, cultural studies), social sciences (sociology, anthropology), and the biological and medical sciences (psychology, cognitive neuroscience). Through dialogue and collaboration across these different fields students will engage one another in discussions about methods, materials, rules of evidence that are normative in their fields, but don’t necessarily translate easily into the work of other disciplines. In this way, this course will function as a kind of virtual lab for the kind of interdisciplinary and collaborative work that the study of memory arguably calls for.

Texts: Daniel Schacter’s Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past will serve as a framework for our inquiry. All other materials will be made available online through Emory’s library reserve system. They will involve selections from among the following: (1) Memory and Trauma Studies (P. Connerton, C. Caruth, F. Yates, J. Young, R. Terdiman, M. Hirsch, N. Fresco, F. Nietzsche, J. Derrida, A. Margalit, P. Nora, M. Halbwachs); (2) Literature and the Arts(J.L. Borges, C. Friedman, P. Levi, D. DeLillo, J. Cercas, M. Mellibovsky, H. Kore-eda, G. del Toro, A. Folman, G. Kofman, S. Reich, J. Adams, D. McCullin, L. Saltzman, Sh. Attie, K. Walker, M. Lin, J. Gibbons, Z. Libera, D. Levinthal); (3) Psychology and Neuroscience (L. Barsalou, R. Fivush, S. Freud, D. Laub, R. Buckner & M. Wheeler, Ch. Menzel, S. Zola, L. Carver & P. Bauer).

Particulars:
A. Each week, students will submit a brief (c. 250 word) response to that week’s materials, identifying the primary issue at stake and focusing on one of the texts to define (a) the problem addressed; (b) the methods and materials used to address it; (3) the findings/outcome that result. The response will include the student’s assessment of the usefulness and/or success of the study in question.
B. Once during the semester, students will team up with others in the class to prepare a framework for that week’s discussion, drawing on the materials assigned for that week.
C. Over the course of the semester, students will work collaboratively to design an interdisciplinary research project that addresses a problem of memory pertinent to the framework of the class. Each team will identify the problem their project addresses (which should be of sufficient scope and/or complexity to sustain a team-based, collaborative inquiry), the methods and materials used to address it (including how and why this particular problem calls for, and stands to benefit from, an interdisciplinary approach), and the projected outcome (including a critical assessment of the range of methods and materials used). Each student will contribute to the project from the vantage point of her/his particular field of specialization and will be responsible for executing a discrete part of the project in line with their training and expertise. This contribution can take any number of forms, from a scientific experiment through a creative art work or podcast to a conventional research paper. The course will conclude with a public presentation of these research projects.

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

TBA
PAIS 464


Robert N. McCauley, PhD
Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Lynne C. Nygaard, PhD
Department of Psychology


Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus in early September.

MBC 700: Religion and Science: Cognitive Foundations

Thursdays, 10:00 am until 1:00 pm
PAIS 464


Robert N. McCauley, PhD

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Content: This interdisciplinary seminar will examine the relationship of religion and science from a somewhat unusual angle, since it will consider the cognitive (and cultural) foundations of these two human activities.  This is another way of asking perennial questions about human nature as we inquire about which of these two activities seems to be more deeply rooted in what look to be our natural cognitive dispositions, and, conversely, as we inquire about which of the two seems to depend on more elaborate and extensive cultural support.  Answers to those questions have interesting implications  (a) for some of the long-recognized conflicts between religion and science (at least since the time of Galileo) and  (b) for assessing which of the two poses the greater threat to the persistence of the other.  The seminar will include discussions of works by scholars from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, biology, philosophy, religion, and psychology (cognitive, clinical, developmental, social, comparative, and evolutionary), and I hope that the disciplinary backgrounds of the seminar's participants will prove just as diverse.  No one including me (most assuredly) is an expert in all of these areas.  Everyone will have opportunities to help all of the other participants fathom texts from disciplines with which they are unfamiliar.

Texts: Religion Explained, Pascal Boyer

Other readings will arise from the following books:
The Adapted Mind, Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby (editors)
Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not, Robert N. McCauley
Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not, Robert N. McCauley
The Prehistory of the Mind, Steven Mithen
Conjectures and Refutations, Karl Popper
Explaining Culture, Dan Sperber
The Unnatural Nature of Science, Lewis Wolpert

In addition, the seminar will include other required and supplementary readings that will be available electronically through Woodruff Library.  These will include works from such anthropologists as Robin Dunbar and Harvey Whitehouse, such cognitive psychologists as Michael McCloskey, Kevin Dunbar, Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Ryan Tweney, and Peter Wason, such comparative psychologists as Frans de Waal, such development psychologists as Alison Gopnik, Christine Legare, Andrew Meltzoff, such evolutionary psychologists as Denise Cummins and Merlin Donald, such social psychologists as Ara Norenzayan, such philosophers as Peter Carruthers, Jerry Fodor and Steven Stich, such scholars of religion as Walter Burkert, E. Thomas Lawson, Ilkka Pyysiäinen, and Uffe Schjoedt, and such polymaths as Robert Hinde.

Particulars: Of a piece with the interdisciplinary character of this seminar, all participants will be asked to take some responsibility for facilitating discussions of readings during the semester.  Graduate students taking the seminar for a grade will write a longer final paper.  Graduate students taking the seminar S/U can either write a longer final paper or write a shorter paper and take responsibility for facilitating discussions of at least two different reading assignments. 

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

TBA
PAIS 464


Robert N. McCauley, PhD
Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Lynne C. Nygaard, PhD
Department of Psychology


Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus in early September.

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

TBA
PAIS 464


Laura L. Namy, PhD
Department of Psychology

Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus in early January.

MBC 501: Core Course in Multi-disciplinary Approaches to Mind, Brain, and Culture

Tuesdays 10:00 am - 1:00 pm 
PAIS 464


Robert N. McCauley, PhD
Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Content: This course, offered every other fall, is designed to (1) introduce students to the history and philosophy of science as it applies to the social, psychological, and brain sciences, (2) provide an overview of different types of disciplinary and methodological approaches to the study of mind, brain, and culture, and (3) highlight how exemplary research using approaches from different levels of analysis converge to provide synthesis and insights not readily gleaned from examining a single disciplinary perspective.

Particulars: Students planning to complete the Certificate Program are encouraged to enroll in this course prior to completion of electives when feasible.

 

MBC 600: Research Group Seminar

TBA
PAIS 464


Robert N. McCauley, PhD
Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Content: This is a one-credit course that meets monthly to discuss research topics and readings from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students will have the opportunity to nominate topics and readings and/or guest speakers. Students are required to complete two semesters of MBC 600, and may enroll in any two semesters prior to graduation. 

Particulars: Day and time will be determined by consensus in early September.

MBC 700: Race, Brain, and Psychoanalysis

Cross-listed with ILA 790, IDS 385, PSP 789
Wednesdays 1:00 - 4:00 pm
Emerson Hall E101


Sander Gilman, PhD
Department of Psychiatry 


Content:The course will examine how neurology (brain science) was central in shaping psychoanalysis and psychiatry in the 19th and early 20th centuries and how it impacted its critical relationship to biological models of race.  The first half of the course will read Freud on race and mind; the second half will examine the impact of psychoanalytic theories and models of race in response to Nazi Germany (Reich and Adorno), South Africa (Sachs), France (Fanon), and the United States from ‘Brown vs. the Board of Education’ to the 1990s.

Texts:
William Cross, Shades of Black: Diversity in African American Identity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991) 
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967)
Sigmund Freud/ Wilhelm Fliess, The Complete Letters of  Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess:  1887-1904, ed. J.M. Masson(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986) 
Sander L. Gilman, Freud, Race, and Gender (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)
Joel Kovel, White Racism: A Psychohistory (Columbia University Press, 1984, paper)
Wulf Sachs, Black Hamlet (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, paper).
Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, The Anatomy of Prejudices (Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1996)