Course Catalog

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Course Catalog

WRITING THE SOCIAL WORLD (PY2120)

This class is uniquely tailored to the interdisciplinary focus of students majoring in Psychology and/or Gender, Sexuality, and Society. Juxtaposing different forms of writing, evidence, and rhetorical practices in psychology, the social sciences, and the humanities, students will reflect on methods and writing practices in order to develop an authentic disciplinary voice. Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, EN 1010, and PY 1000 or GS 2006

TOPICS IN PSYCHOLOGY (PY2910)

Topics vary by semester

TOPICS IN PSYCHOLOGY (PY2910)

TOPICS VARY BY SEMESTER

PSYCHOLOGY OF SENSATION (PY3025)

Provides a comprehensive overview of the fundamental operations by which every human being acquires knowledge about the external world. This course provides a scientific understanding of how and why the human senses affect the way people perceive the world around them, including how perceptions can be distorted by both physical and experiential factors.

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS (PY3035)

Studies the psychological processes involved in the acquisition, understanding and use of language. Provides an overview of the following research areas: speech perception, word recognition, sentence and discourse processing, speech production, first-, second-, and third-language acquisition, bilingual and multilingual acquisition, and language processing in the brain. PY 1000 is recommended as a prerequisite.

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY (PY3040)

Psychology and philosophy have a long history in common. The course addresses philosophical dimensions and implications of psychology – concerning our understanding of cognition, action, emotion, imagination, mind, body, and brain. It also deals with central issues in philosophy that reflect and elaborate our understanding of human psychology and the way it is scientifically investigated: consciousness, thought and language, identity, and other forms of human subjectivity and its social, cultural, and historical fabric.

PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING & MEMORY (PY3065)

Students discover the classic and modern theories on classical and operant conditioning and the application of these in such phenomena as drug addiction, marketing and the formation and treatment of phobias. The second part of the course explores the concept of memory and the application of theory and research in understanding everyday memory phenomena, such as autobiographical memory, childhood amnesia, flashbulb memory, false memories and eyewitness testimony. The course also focuses on memory loss and memory training.

LIFE STORIES (PY3066)

This course will introduce students to the basic tenets, methods of study and controversies of narrative psychology. Particular attention will be paid to narrative analysis, identity and the influence of social interactions and culture on how we talk about the past. Students will apply narrative research and theory to the interpretation of life stories.

SOCIAL MEMORY (PY3067)

This course inquires into the nature and dynamics of how groups (families, institutions, countries, etc.) reconstruct and represent the past together. The problem of social memory is approached from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Students will have the opportunity to explore various places of memory in Paris and examine how these historical events are constructed in the present.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PROCESS (PY3068)

This course explores autobiographical remembering as an issue of neuroscientific, cultural, and narrative psychology, while also considering it as a subject of other memory studies. It draws particular attention to how scientific, psychological, social, technological, artistic, and conceptual changes in various cultural fields have transformed the traditional idea of memory as an archive of the past.