PHI300.1 Robot Ethics: Machines, Automation, and Values (Fall, Spring)

This course deals with the new and challenging questions surrounding robot ethics, AI, and automation, linked to philosophy of technology. As technology continues to develop at high speed, questions such as machine autonomy, ethical rules, and job losses will become increasingly central to any future that we will build. Our future will be significantly shaped by how we design and use our machines.

Robot ethics is a new and dynamic field, with implications for a wide range of disciplines and practices. Thinking clearly about the ethical implications of the machines of our own creation is both a fascinating exercise in its own right, and a requirement for attempting to strike a balance between various technological and social forces, such as innovation, social ethics, and our general conception of technology. In a world in which, according to many estimates, at least half of our current jobs will be partially or fully automated, we had best consider the full ethical and philosophical implications of the world that we have already entered. Will robots be our controlling masters, or will they help us to build a brave new world of leisure and self-development?

This course may also be registered under IST 300.1.

HST300.5 Black London (Fall, Spring) Not offered Fall 2026

This history course covers some of the core issues that have both propelled people of African origin into Britain and determined their experiences once in London. The course examines the history of the African Diaspora in London over approximately the last 300 years, paying particular attention to changes in the demographic background to this Diaspora and the ensuing debates around the various notions of Blackness.

The context to the course is the growth of London as the hub of an imperial system underscored by notions of race, and the subsequent changes to the metropolis in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. A theoretical underpinning of the course is that London is one of the centres of a Black Atlantic, as understood through the works of Paul Gilroy. The course will open up social relations at the heart of Black London’s history, including class, gender, and sexuality. London has a long history of ideological movements driven by the conditions of the Black Atlantic, such as Abolitionism, anti-colonialism, Pan Africanism, and anti-racist struggles within Britain. All of these will be within the parameters of the course.

Finally, the cultural impact of the Black Atlantic on London will be looked at in all its diversity, including literature, religion, music, fashion, language, and cuisine.

This course may also be registered as AAS 300.5.

Matriculated Syracuse History majors/minors: This course may count toward the European or Modern concentrations.

PSY375 Cross-Cultural Psychology (Fall, Spring)

Comparative analysis of psychological research conducted among non-Western and Euro-American peoples. Influence of cultural variables on emotional and cognitive development, perception, socialization, and group behavior. Throughout the semester, we will draw on relevant examples you encounter while living abroad.

Pre-req: PSY 205 or 209 or equivalent introductory psychology course.

Limited enrollment: Psychology majors may take more than one Psychology (PSY) course, all others limited to one PSY course during the semester.

PSY376 Why Good People Do Terrible Things (Fall, Spring)

Become familiar with core conceptual approaches to understanding how people who appear to be decent human beings could engage in moral transgressions and play a role in the victimization of others.

Prereq: PSY 205 or PSY 209 or intro to psychology course

Limited enrollment: Psychology majors may take more than one Psychology (PSY) course, all others limited to one PSY course during the semester.

CAS200.1 Mapping Strasbourg: Living in a European Capital (Fall, Spring)

Required for undergraduate students. An introduction to the study abroad experience in Strasbourg, which aims to develop students’ intercultural awareness as well as their understanding of the layers that compose the city’s complex identity within Alsace, France and Europe. You will explore the diversity of Strasbourg through lectures, projects, and visits to the European institutions.

CAS200.1 Mapping Italy (Fall, Spring)

Required. An introduction to your semester abroad in Florence, aimed at developing intercultural awareness and cross-cultural competencies in a study abroad context. “Mapping Italy” invites you to orient yourself as a foreigner in Italy, treating Florence as your classroom. You will experience Italy through a series of topics to create a multi-layered map of your Italian experience. Prepare to reflect on how you have developed through experiential learning opportunities during your semester abroad, and how you have been impacted by local cultures. This class begins online pre-arrival. You will attend a seminar during orientation at the Syracuse Florence campus and the course will continue asynchronously throughout the semester abroad.

CRS325 Presentational Speaking (Fall, Spring)

This course teaches the value of public speaking and trains students in the practical skills of speech writing, various speech methods, and the presentational skills needed to be an effective communicator and a participant in public discourse, as well as in the professional world.

Public speaking skills are key to professional development, but practice is often intimidating and infrequent, and for students it mostly takes place in a non-professional context. This class is specifically designed to strengthen students’ public speaking and presentation skills in organizational settings and to build their confidence. Students will be trained in speech researching and writing, delivery styles, establishing rapport with an audience, all while practicing and delivering different types of presentations in a supportive environment with professional feedback.

The course begins by asking students to research and write a factual speech on a topic of their choice. Once they have mastered effective information research and selection, and speech structuring and writing, we use the same research materials but switch our aim from information transmission to persuasion. This switch in focus not only means a change in content and delivery, but also demands an engagement with ethical considerations. Audience analysis will help speakers focus both their writing and delivery styles. Next, we shift from the abstract to the personal in the elevator pitch. This will extend presentation proficiencies and hone timekeeping. Finally, students will blend the research, writing and delivery skills they have studied to compose their final mediated speech.

To position students’ own speaking practices, we will critically analyse historic and contemporary examples of oration. Site visits outside the classroom may include Speakers’ Corner, the House of Commons, Conway Hall, or a ‘Salon for the City’ event, either in person or online.

The skills students develop during this course will prepare them for a variety of public speaking and organizational contexts that can include conferences, election campaigns, lecturing, management talks/board meetings, oral exams, as well as the fast-growing context of online, virtual events.

CAS200.1 Mapping London (Fall, Spring)

Required for London students. This 1-credit course is an introduction to the diverse politics, histories, and cultures of the United Kingdom and London in particular, aimed at developing intercultural awareness in a study abroad context.

Mapping London invites students to orient themselves as foreigners in the United Kingdom. The course launches a semester abroad at the Syracuse University London Center, where students will make use of Britain as a classroom.

A key learning goal in study abroad is gaining a wider perspective on the world and one’s place in it. This course is designed to help students prepare for an intensive experience reflecting on how they contribute to and are impacted by local cultures, geopolitics, and history. The course begins by examining ‘study abroad’ as a unique form of travel and international exchange. Students will consider their own objectives for the semester and be introduced to the historical and current presence of Americans in Britain.

Students will analyze the United Kingdom’s peoples, political histories, and contemporary realities through a series of thematic investigations on topics such as language, race, and media. They will become conversant on issues surrounding Brexit and current events, be comfortable navigating intercultural ‘lost in translation’ moments, and be able to respectfully but critically encounter new spaces and customs.

By the end of the course, students will have compiled their own multi-layered map of London centred around the flat they will be living in for the semester, creating a virtual introduction to their temporary home. The maps will form the basis for an extended seminar session at the Syracuse London campus shortly after arrival, marking the physical beginning of students’ semester abroad as foreigners in London.

Matriculated Syracuse students: This course counts as Arts and Sciences elective credit.

WRT422 Writing London: Studies in Creative Nonfiction (Spring)

This spring-only course helps students develop their creative and nonfiction writing through exploring the importance of the global city of London in a variety of genres: travel writing, cultural criticism, personal essay, fiction, correspondence, biography, and memoir. Themes common in urban writing including alienation, mental health, belonging and/or dislocation, the crowd vs. the individual, and immigrant experiences will also be a focus.

This is a practice-based course: students will read and analyse a range of writing about London (and elsewhere, for comparative purposes) and develop their craft as writers. Every class session will centre around writing exercises as well as workshopping one another’s writing. The course may therefore be of particular interest to students with a Creative Writing focus, or those who have, or who wish to develop, a personal writing practice outside of an academic context.

London has been a focus, setting, or inspiration for the work of countless writers across time. In what ways are the stories we tell a response to the different locales that we find ourselves in? How is the authorial voice, the ‘I’ of the writer-narrator, affected by different contexts, and how does it in turn affect the way that such places are understood and portrayed? How does a sense of place ground prose and bring it to life?

Prereq: WRT 205 or WRT 209 or ENL 213

PHI300.2 Philosophy of Catastrophe (Fall, Spring)

Through a series of readings ranging from the ancients to the present day, explore topics including philosophical responses to personal catastrophe, large-scale death and destruction by natural catastrophe, war, and the possibility of mass extinction via climate change. Implicitly involved are discussions of and reflections on free will and determinism, personal ethics, and the morality of good and evil. The overarching goal of this course is to demonstrate philosophy as a practical technology for responding to and dealing with adversity, catastrophe, and calamity.