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This course of lectures looks at the Victorians not just in Britain but in Europe and the wider world. 'Victorian' has come to stand for a particular set of values, perceptions and experiences, many of which were shared by people in a variety of different countries, from Russia to America, Spain to Scandinavia and reflected in the literature and culture of the nineteenth century, up to the outbreak of the First World War. The focus of th...more
This course will enable students to think critically about, and engage in practical experiments in, the complex interactions between new media and perceptions and performances of embodiment, agency, citizenship, collective action, individual identity, time and spatiality. We will pay particular attention to the categories of personhood that make up the UC Berkeley American Cultures rubric (race and ethnicity), as well as to gender, nation,...more
This course is an introduction to game theory and strategic thinking. Ideas such as dominance, backward induction, Nash equilibrium, evolutionary stability, commitment, credibility, asymmetric information, adverse selection, and signaling are discussed and applied to games played in class and to examples drawn from economics, politics, the movies, and elsewhere.
In the first half of the lecture, we consider the chain-store paradox. We discuss how to build the idea of reputation into game theory; in particular, in setting like this where a threat or promise would otherwise not be credible. The key idea is that players may not be completely certain about other players' payoffs or even their rationality. In the second half of the lecture, we stage a duel, a game of pre-emption. The key strategic ques...more
Google Analytics' Group Product Marketing Manager Brett Crosby recalls how two brutal blows to his enterprise - losing a huge client in the 11th hour and the tragedy of 9/11 - forced him to reevaluate and streamline. Offices closed, jobs were cut, and salaries were strapped for maximum efficiency. Having the wind knocked out of them also simplified overblown contracts and software, and switched their strategy from making money to market ...more
In this lecture, Professor Kagan describes the events that lead up the Peloponnesian War. He argues that the rise of Athenian power and the concomitant challenge to Spartan dominance pointed to potential conflict. However, Professor Kagan also points out that there were many people who did not want war and that therefore war was not inevitable. The Thirty Years Peace was negotiated, and Professor Kagan finally argues that its clause for ar...more
This final lecture on Aristotle focuses on controlling conflict between factions. Polity as a mixture of the principles of oligarchy and democracy, is the regime that, according to Aristotle, can most successfully control factions and avoid dominance by either extreme. Professor Smith asserts that the idea of the polity anticipates Madison's call for a government in which powers are separated and kept in check and balance, avoiding therefo...more
One can look at biodiversity from several perspectives. An ecological point of view tries to determine how necessary diversity is for an ecosystem to function. An economic point of view tries to capture the value of the "services" nature provides for mankind. An evolutionary point of view shows how artificial the human "right" to dominance is. Finally, a personal point of view captures the emotional basis for the values that humans place o...more
Chimpanzee males compete for position in a dominance hierarchy; status often depends on support from other members, including females, of the group. High-ranking males have much greater sexual access to females in estrus. Males control females by physical violence and intimidation. Chimpanzees also engage in purposeful raids to kill members of other chimpanzee groups. This inter-group violence can help explain intra-group violence. To fend...more
Dihybrid crosses. Independent assortment. Incomplete dominance. Codominance and multiple alleles.
