HUM4603 Future Worlds: Revolutions of the Humans and Post-Humans

4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

This course provides radical exposure to the most astonishing trends of the next age as students interface with leading futuristic thinkers from around the world. Students will have the rare occasion to engage with fifteen renowned professors, reading their writings closely a, as we move across multiple intellectual surfaces to ask the most provocative questions facing our time and beyond. Each scholarly figure will present a series of speculative theories and visionary examples from the fields of sociology, architecture, economy, design, political science, cultural studies, media studies, literature, philosophy, film, medical science, virtual reality, visual art, artificial intelligence, and environmental studies. Moreover, students themselves will not only directly encounter this network of vital futurist scholars in their weekly sessions but will also have the occasion to undertake strikingly original research that tracks obscure, secretive, post-human, and unfathomable innovations transpiring in every arena of human experience. In this way, the seminar will trace a sequence of worlds not yet arrived, interpreting horizons of global and even extra-planetary scope as they test out riddles for the coming centuries.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

ENV4602 Gender and Environment
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

The objective of this course is to understand, explore, and analyze the linkages between gender and the environment. Using multiple case studies (fashion, food, waste, illegal wildlife trade, climate change etc.), the course will focus on three core themes: 1) foundational concepts and theories of gender as they relate to the environment 2) the inequities and power dynamics associated with environmental challenges 3) knowledge and tools to mainstream gender and create effective change. By thinking critically about these concepts, we will challenge our current understanding about complex, global environmental challenges, the meaning of gender, and why it matters today and in the future.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

CSP2010 Gender Studies

(Formerly CVA2010)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to gender studies. Designed as an intermediate course, Introduction to Gender Studies aims to identify and critically examine the interactive relationships among gender, cultural/social institutions, and individuals in contemporary American society. This implies two foci of attention. First, through readings and discussion, we will explore gender roles and resulting power inequities in contexts such as families, the music industry, conceptions of both race and sexuality, and novels. Equally important, we will analyze how the behaviors of individuals reflect, sustain and sometimes alter social conceptions of gender. In concert, these two emphases serve to underline the relationships among gender, culture, and individuals.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Spring, Summer or Fall

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

STR 3501: BRAIN RUSH: GENERATIVE AI FOR BUSINESS GROWTH AND STRATEGY

4 advanced management credits

Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, much of the world's attention has shifted to generative AI - a form of artificial intelligence that responds to natural language prompts with cogent-sounding responses.
Generative AI has prompted leading analysts to forecast trillions of dollars in new market opportunities while propelling the shares of a handful of publicly traded companies satisfying the corporate demand for the technology required to capture AI chatbots' opportunities and risks.
The attention focused on generative AI raises many questions for business leaders, investors, and policymakers:
- Does generative AI hype anticipate real potential for the technology's ability to create social and economic value?
- What should policymakers do to maximize generative AI's opportunities and mitigate its risks?
- How can business leaders capture the opportunity and minimize the risks of generative AI?
- Which generative AI applications will create the most sustainable value for society?
- How can employees, managers, and executives use generative AI to perform their work more effectively and efficiently?
- How can investors pinpoint the companies with the most wealth creation potential and shun the rest?
Brain Rush provides students with core concepts and skills they will need to answer these questions as the technology evolves. As described below in Appendix AI: Brain Rush Core Concepts, the course presents and gives students the opportunity to apply concepts such as:
- New technology opportunity/threat matrix - framework for assessing the business and societal opportunities and threats of new technologies - such as the internet, nanotechnology, the blockchain, generative AI, and quantum computing.
- Value pyramid - a framework for assessing the potential value of generative AI applications;
- Generative AI CEO change agenda - a process to enable business leaders to create new growth trajectories by brainstorming, building, and deploying the right generative AI applications
- Generative AI ecosystem map - a map of the chain of industries - from semiconductors to consulting services -- aiming to deploy generative AI to improve the lives of consumers and organizations.
- Cognitive hunger assessment framework - a model for evaluating potential investments in generative AI startups based on analysis of what distinguishes the 0.4% of founders who take their startup public and run it three years or more thereafter from their peers.

Prerequisites: STR 3000

HSS2042: Germans and Others: Germany in the 20th and 21st Centuries

4 intermediate liberal arts credits

**This course is for students in the Babson Leadership in a Global Context program in Berlin and is not open to students not enrolled in the program.**

What does it mean to be German in the 20th-21st centuries? Who decides who living within Germany is German and who is Other? Using this theme, you will be introduced to the political, social, economic, and cultural history of contemporary Germany within Europe and the world in the past 100 years. After a brief overview of German history, we will examine four moments: 1.The Holocaust
2. The Guest Worker (Gastarbeiter) Phenomenon
3. The Division and Reunification of East and West Germany
4. Refugees and Migrants in the 21st Century

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001 or RHT1001)

LTA2035 Ghost Stories and the Grotesque in Literature
Intermediate Liberal ArtsBecause a "ghost" is a haunting by political history, personal choices, and social expectations, they do exist. Therefore, this course will look at the genre of the ghost story (and esthetic considerations of the grotesque) in relation to both the eighteenth-century gothic (from which it emerged) and the horror story (from which it needs to differentiate itself). Class discussion will focus on how the ghost story explores ideas of identity, both national and personal. Mostly comprised of short stories and films, the narratives we will enjoy can teach us about what haunts us as humans and why. Authors included are Morrison, Poe, Kubrick, James, and the HBO series "LoveCraft Country", among others.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

LTA2013 Global Cinema

4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsGlobal Cinema provides an overview of the history and aesthetics of films from Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. Students will analyze films as cultural artifacts and will consider the interrelationship among various national film movements and aesthetic approaches. Weekly film viewings will be complemented by readings in the history and practice of several national cinemas and of post-colonial, transnational cinemas. Films are in their original language with English subtitles.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Fall

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

HIS4626 Global Cities
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsThis course explores global cities to understand the varied and discrepant historical experiences of urban modernity. Drawing on a wide variety of literature from different disciplines and regions, we will critically examine the shaping of cities across the world: Boston, London, Paris, Shanghai, Mumbai, Singapore, Dubai, Bangalore, and Brasilia among others. We will examine city-space at two levels: first, at the more formal level of the state and town planners; and, second, at an everyday level, where city dwellers contest and redraw town plans in their daily lives.

The course begins with an analysis of race, class, and gender that segregated the industrial metropolis. We will then discuss colonial cities using space as a lens to review empire and imperialism. Next, our focus will be on neoliberal governance; megacities; the conceptualization of 'community' in a neoliberal city; gentrification; privatization of urban space; urban informality; and the new language of urban inclusion/exclusion.

A specific focus of this course will be on the impact of globalization on South Asian city space: has globalization sharpened class, caste, and religious divides in these cities?

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

FIN 3504: Global Context of Business: South Africa

4 advanced management credits

A core intention of this course is to present to participants the real-life workings of the business, finance and industry structure of an emerging country-economy, using South Africa as an engaging study, and contrasting these with the more familiar business environments and practices as encountered in advanced (western) country-economies. In using the country of South Africa as a case study, participants will see the entire Africa continent, with all its 54 countries, 1.2 billion people (17% of the world's population), $3trillion GDP, in context.

The course will look at South Africa and the continent through the lens of a business investor exploration. Using 52 developing countries of Africa as background, we will explore and analyze the major aspects of their finance and economic environments over a combined period of more than 15 years. In so doing, various mechanisms, concepts and theories will be introduced, explained and utilized at every step. This way, the student becomes acquainted with the intricacies of emerging country business, finance and economic environments in a practical and profound manner that involves real-life economic and business scenarios. Not only will the student learn and grasp international finance, economic and international business concepts and theories, they also will learn how these work and when to deploy them.

Participants will see how the business approaches and concepts they gather in their other Babson courses translate into and adapt to a totally different and unique socio-economic context. More specific details can be seen in the Course Content and Methodology section below, where the program's Taught Content (usually classroom) and Experienced Content (in-country corporate interactions, etc) are outlined.

Prerequisites: (FME 1000 and FME 1001) or (MOB 1010 and EPS 1000)

EPS3532 Global Entrepreneurship

(Formerly International Entrepreneurship)
4 General CreditsThis Global Entrepreneurship course will explore the many dimensions and challenges of global venture creation and growth. The course offers a framework for understanding the entrepreneurial process in global contexts and exposes students to key issues and problems specific to international ventures. As the world becomes increasingly global, this course hopes to (1) encourage students to consider exploring entrepreneurial activities outside the domestic setting, (2) prepare them to see through a different set of lenses in order to better and more accurately identify vast global opportunities, and (3) equip them with various skills to better meet and tackle complex global challenges.