Most Popular Elective Classes this Year
By the time students reach Fifth Form, their options for elective classes expand to include some wildly divergent options. Here were the most requested electives this year by course requests.
SC574
Research in Molecular Genetics
Run in conjunction with the Seung Kim Laboratory at the Stanford School of Medicine, this course enables students to use transposon biology to create transgenic fruit flies.
IN562
Food Studies
Students query the significance and value of food to humans. Humans have elevated this basic biological requirement to a symbol of cultural significance and value.
IN513
Poverty
A two-trimester course that examines the historic, economic, and cultural roots as well as the impact of poverty in the developing world and in the U.S.
VA412
Ceramics I
Exploring design solutions in clay. Students are introduced to throwing on the wheel, glazing, surface design, and the art of raku firing.
RP409
Judaism
Encompasses the history and origins of various denominations of Judaism. Students study Jewish holy days, traditions, and customs pertaining to the life-cycle of a Jewish person.
IN512
Heuristics
Each week is a separate unit organized around a concept which becomes our heuristic — our path to discovery.
EN565
War Stories
Like marriage, war is not something to be “entered into unadvisedly or lightly,” either for a soldier or for a society; hence the importance of gaining critical perspective through literature.
EN547
Screwball Comedy: From Shakespeare to Hollywood and Beyond
Looks closely at the genre that has come to be called “screwball comedy,” which sees a romance through mischance and difficulty before ending in “felicity,” as Jane Austen might say.
EN520
From Freud to the Void
Students ground themselves carefully in the rudiments of Freud’s scandalous psychoanalytic theory and see how it surfaces in the American Dream of the early 1950s.