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This course introduces analysis techniques for complex structures and the role of material properties in structural design, failure, and longevity. Students will learn about the energy principles in structural analysis and their applications to statically-indeterminate structures and solid continua. Additionally, the course will examine mat

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What is the good life, and can you shop there? Would you want that life if you couldn't? Has shopping replaced working as the activity that gives the most meaning to our lives? The theme for this Expository Writing class is Consumer Culture. The class will explore what it means to belong to a consumer society—to think of ourselves, as Douglas Rushkoff puts it, less as citizens than as consumers. Readings will serve both as examples of effective writing techniques and as springboards for discussion. We’ll read essays that explore a variety of cultural meanings of shopping and that analyze the way advertising works. We will also read essays that critique consumer culture from several perspectives, including those of psychology, gender, art, environmentalism and ethics. Readings and essay assignments will invite you to reflect on personal, familial and cultural meanings of shopping; to analyze advertisements; and to join in conversation with critics of consumer culture and offer your own critiques.

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This course focuses on developing and refining the skills that will you need to express your voice more effectively as an academic writer. As a focus for our writing this semester, this course explores what it means to live in the age of mass media. We will debate the power of popular American media in shaping our ideas of self, family and community and in defining social issues. Throughout the semester, students will focus on writing as a process of drafting and revising to create essays that are lively, clear, engaging and meaningful to a wider audience.