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This course is an introduction to security issues facing computer professionals today. Students will acquire the knowledge and skills on how to maintain the integrity, authenticity, availability and privacy of data. It covers computer viruses, authentication models, certificates, group policy, cryptography, and access control. It also introduces the fundamental security issues of programming, database and web server. Other topics include how to monitor the system for suspicious activity and fend off attacks, to keep spies and Spam out of the e-mail, to take control of security by encrypting data, to design Active directory, blocking ports, and locking down the registry.

This course is an introduction to security issues facing computer professionals today. Students will acquire the knowledge and skills on how to maintain the integrity, authenticity, availability and privacy of data. It covers computer viruses, authentication models, certificates, group policy, cryptography, and access control. It also introduces the fundamental security issues of programming, database and web server. Other topics include how to monitor the system for suspicious activity and fend off attacks, to keep spies and Spam out of the e-mail, to take control of security by encrypting data, to design Active directory, blocking ports, and locking down the registry.

This is an advanced course in communication skills, including the expository essay and the research essay. This course further develops students’ reading and writing skills through literary and expository readings. In this class students will write analytical essays in a variety of rhetorical modes to cultivate interpretive skills. Using close reading, discussion, and various writing techniques, you will consider language, details and style to develop your analytical and academic writing skills. This is a communications intensive course; you will be expected to participate actively in class discussions and presentations, write informal and formal essays, and respond to your classmates’ writing.

This is an advanced course in communication skills, including the expository essay and the research essay. This course further develops students’ reading and writing skills through literary and expository readings. In this class students will write analytical essays in a variety of rhetorical modes to cultivate interpretive skills. Using close reading, discussion, and various writing techniques, you will consider language, details and style to develop your analytical and academic writing skills. This is a communications intensive course; you will be expected to participate actively in class discussions and presentations, write informal and formal essays, and respond to your classmates’ writing.

Feminist philosopher Judith Butler famously theorized over a quarter century ago that a person’s gender is an ongoing performance: “there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; […] identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (Gender Trouble 25). Rather than being determined in some divine or legal sense, then gender is socially constructed: it is what it is because of how individual people behave and impose (or refuse to impose) limits on others. In this class, we take ideas like Butler’s as part of a deep investigation into gender and gender-bending in music (as well as other performative spaces like movies, drag, and stand-up comedy) from the 1950s to today. We’ll consider questions like: What is gender, and how have different creative and cultural artists, academics, activists, and thinkers subverted and even upended gendered expectations? How is gender expression expected of people? Why do we believe there is a gender binary, and what does white supremacy have to do with it? How do the ways society enforces gender impact your life and what can you do to shift it? This course is an adventure in collaborative and student-centered learning (often called student-centered pedagogy). That means that we all share responsibility for the quality of discussion and kinds of learning that we do (and it also means that you will invest in your learning in this course in ways that might be new or unfamiliar to you). Part of my job is to help you learn to express ideas cogently, reasonably, and effectively, and part of your job is to enter into that learning enthusiastically and whole-heartedly (which doesn’t mean you have to love it, just that you should engage as best you can). Part of learning to write on the college level is taking these kinds of responsibility, by diving in, by asking questions, and by sharing your knowledge as you work with each other (and me) to learn. (IMAGE: Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe at a Hollywood nightclub, November 19, 1954.)

Feminist philosopher Judith Butler famously theorized over a quarter century ago that a person’s gender is an ongoing performance: “there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; […] identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (Gender Trouble 25). Rather than being determined in some divine or legal sense, then gender is socially constructed: it is what it is because of how individual people behave and impose (or refuse to impose) limits on others. In this class, we take ideas like Butler’s as part of a deep investigation into gender and gender-bending in music (as well as other performative spaces like movies, drag, and stand-up comedy) from the 1950s to today. We’ll consider questions like: What is gender, and how have different creative and cultural artists, academics, activists, and thinkers subverted and even upended gendered expectations? How is gender expression expected of people? Why do we believe there is a gender binary, and what does white supremacy have to do with it? How do the ways society enforces gender impact your life and what can you do to shift it? This course is an adventure in collaborative and student-centered learning (often called student-centered pedagogy). That means that we all share responsibility for the quality of discussion and kinds of learning that we do (and it also means that you will invest in your learning in this course in ways that might be new or unfamiliar to you). Part of my job is to help you learn to express ideas cogently, reasonably, and effectively, and part of your job is to enter into that learning enthusiastically and whole-heartedly (which doesn’t mean you have to love it, just that you should engage as best you can). Part of learning to write on the college level is taking these kinds of responsibility, by diving in, by asking questions, and by sharing your knowledge as you work with each other (and me) to learn. (IMAGE: Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe at a Hollywood nightclub, November 19, 1954.)