Looking for a good UK Core Course? Check out the upcoming list for Spring 14. And if you want something taught in one of the 10 languages we offer, check out the course catalogue on MyUK.

MCL UK CORE COURSES - SPRING 2014

All MCL UK Core Courses Taught in English

GER 105 GERMAN FILM TODAY

Instructor: Jeff Rogers MW 9:00-9:50 + 1 hr.online lab UK Core Inquiry Humanities

What is a German film? And what makes it German? From Run Lola, Run to Inglorious Basterds, we'll watch and discuss some of

the most exciting international films of the past 15 years.

CLA 135 GREEK & ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

Instructor: Caldesi-Valeri MW 11:00-11:50 + 1 on-line hour a week UK Core Inquiry Humanities

The Greek myths studied both from the standpoint of their meaning to the Greeks and Romans and from the standpoint of their use

in later literature and in everyday life.

While going through Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" I noticed in Act 3, Scene2  this little speech from Robin Goodfellow:

My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,

For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,

And yonder shine's Aurora's harbinger,

At whose approach, ghosts wand'ring here and there

Troop home to churchyards. Damned spirits all,

That in crossways and floods have burial.

The play is supposed to be set in ancient Athens, but, of course, it's not. It's interesting that Shakespeare has knowledge of the practice of burying suicides in crossroads. Crossroads as liminal areas, places betwixt and between, places of filth and dirt, have a long, long history.

Images courtesy of Martin Liebermann: 

www.martin-liebermann.de".

The revelations this past weekend concerning the extent of the NSA's abilities have been disturbing to say the least (ProPublica, The Guardian, NY Times). On top of its ability to record massive amounts of internet traffic for its own review, new reports indicate the government has, for at least the past decade, paid companies covertly for privileged "backdoor access" into their systems and encryption standards. In practice, this means secure communications with banks, email, and other websites are all likely easily readable by the NSA, and many or all commercial encryption products do not protect against government eyes. While this possibility has been known for some time and asserted by many conspiracy theorists, these reports present credible evidence that the NSA actually engages in this behavior.

Over the past two decades, information technology has revolutionized our world and our work, as small, fast, cheap and interconnected digital devices make previously unimagined innovations possible.

Jessica (Jess) Meyer is double-majoring in Communications and Environmental & Sustainability Studies and will be taking several interesting courses at an institution in New Zealand!

As every summer starts approaching I always wonder to myself, should I take an online class? The answer to that this summer is YES! In fact I will be taking two summer courses, both of which will be online.  This year A&S has made it really easy to see all the courses that are being offered over the summer and they have even color coded them to help make your search easier.  You can filter the courses by sessions, a selected list of courses such as A&S humanities or you can just browse the entire catalogue to find something that you might be interested in taking.  This year A&S has made it really easy to find all the courses being offered and I would encourage you to check it out and take a class (or two)!

Over the break, I had taken an online winter intercession Course (STA 210), this course was designed to be a semester long course but was jam-packed into 9 days.  Since I am still on USP I needed this class to fulfill my requirements and graduate but it was not one that I wanted to spend an entire semester doing.

While I was thinking I was doing the smart thing by cramming it all into just over a week long course, it was difficult to do.  First because I was out of town for the first week of the class and it was difficult to stay motivated to complete all the assignments every day but second because there was so much information being thrown at you at once it was easy to rush through the assignments to get them done.  This was my approach to the class and while I felt great that I had completed all my assignments and did well in the course, at the end I felt as though I had not learned much from the course.