HUM4602 Future Studies: Theories of the World to Come
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits
This course provides a captivating looking glass into the most fascinating debates surrounding the future. We will trace those radical transformations and cutting-edge paradigms that are emerging to forever alter our experience of time and space, body and mind, objects and images, reality and illusion, human and machine. To achieve this task, our course will follow an interdisciplinary, multicultural, and multimedia approach that explores provocative new dimensions in the areas of literature, philosophy, society, culture, politics, media, architecture, design, biogenetics, ecology, film, art, and technology. Together, these speculative fragments will come together to offer crucial insight into our era's experiments with speed, virtuality, artificiality, and utopia, allowing us to test the outer boundaries of the unknown worlds to come.
Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Arts and Humanities
- Level: Advanced Liberal Arts 4600 Requirement (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: HUM4602
- Number of Credits: 4
EPS3504 Future Trends and Entrepreneurial Ventures
4 General CreditsThis course is designed to provide a strategic decision-making, future-oriented perspective in Entrepreneurship for undergraduate students interested in Entrepreneurial Thought & Action methods used by start-up, early-stage ventures, and corporations that practice innovation. We explore Entrepreneurial Thought & Action techniques for looking at the future including scenario planning, key-trend impact analysis, systems thinking, and experiencing the gestalt of the future. Students will develop an understanding of the future that applies to her/his own entrepreneurial leadership vision, identify Key Future Factors (KFF) that allow entrepreneurial leaders to address customer needs currently unmet, identify trends and systems key to developing opportunities scalable into large markets, and develop an action approach to scale an opportunity with an assessment of future trends and markets.
Prerequisites: None
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Entrepreneurship
- Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
- Course Number: EPS3504
- Number of Credits: 4
EPS7539 Future Trends in Entrepreneurial Ventures
3 CreditsChanging industry and market forces create scalable, emergent markets for new ventures. Entrepreneurs and Corporate Innovators who can grasp future trends have a distinct advantage in being able to focus their efforts where opportunities and markets converge. In this course, we will scan the future in Three Areas (Business and Economic, Technology, and Organization) that are further expanded into twelve dimensions. The goal of this course is to create an understanding of how to develop entrepreneurial and innovative vision and action in order to scan, identify, and test future customer needs; design products and services to meet those needs; and build support from the entrepreneurial eco-system including investors and business partners. Students will develop an understanding of the future that applies to her/his own innovation leadership vision; identify Key Future Factors that allow innovative leaders to address customer needs currently unmet; and develop an action approach to scale an opportunity with an assessment of future trends and markets.
- Program: Graduate
- Division: Entrepreneurship
- Level: Graduate Elective (Grad)
- Course Number: EPS7539
- Number of Credits: 3
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)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Arts and Humanities
- Level: Advanced Liberal Arts 4600 Requirement (UGrad),Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: HUM4603
- Number of Credits: 4
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)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: History and Society
- Level: Advanced Liberal Arts 4600 Requirement (UGrad),Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: ENV4602
- Number of Credits: 4
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)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: History and Society
- Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: CSP2010
- Number of Credits: 4
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
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Management
- Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
- Course Number: STR3501
- Number of Credits: 4
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)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: History and Society
- Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: HSS2042
- Number of Credits: 4
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)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Arts and Humanities
- Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: LTA2035
- Number of Credits: 4
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)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Arts and Humanities
- Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: LTA2013
- Number of Credits: 4