UCLA Cluster Program

As the world’s human population surpasses 7 billion — with 1 billion people starving and approximately 1.5 billion over-weight — feeding the global population in a healthy, sustainable way in the face of climate change is perhaps the most urgent challenge of our time. Students in the Food cluster explore the complex connections between food and the environment, focusing on scientific, economic, cultural and social factors. The ubiquitous nature of food makes it a remarkable catalyst for interdisciplinary analysis.

Human beings have burned fossil fuels for over two centuries, modernizing industry and expanding a global economy. These activities have radically impacted the planet’s environmental dynamics and given shape to the physical spaces that we inhabit. This cluster explores the root causes of climate change through social, historical, scientific, and technological analyses, centering the built environment as a critical site for observing its most dramatic effects. Looking to our immediate future, it also offers students a tool-kit for engaging with the consequent world of risks and instabilities.

Data-based computation (i.e., algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, predictive modeling, social media) increasingly plays a dominant role in shaping our everyday lives. Data shapes social relations, public policy, law, and market logics, yet it is also embedded in complex power relations. The “Data, Justice, and Society” Cluster begins by asking: what is data, why does it matter, and how are our lives being ordered (or foreclosed) by technologies that govern our lives via their use of data? We, then, proceed to think philosophically, historically, politically, culturally, and practically about its influence on social life. Over three quarters, students will learn how to critically examine data’s influence on all segments of society but also how techniques of gathering statistics, analyzing datasets, mapping, and mobilizing data-based visualizations can work towards social justice.

How can a nation as racially diverse as the United States and a state as ethnically varied as California nurture a sense of unity and community? Looking at social and cultural themes that shape contemporary American life, students explore questions such as, “What is the role of race in society today?” and “How are racial stereotypes produced and sometimes challenged in popular culture?” The cluster engages students in active dialogue and debate to teach them to be culturally fluent in the new multiethnic complexities that have displaced the outdated black-white paradigm of U.S. race relations.

Islam, the second largest world religion, has played an enormous role in the development of human culture for well over a millennium. Though Islam and Muslims are often in the news, it is one of the least-understood religious traditions among Americans. This cluster draws on the social sciences and humanities to guide students in the interdisciplinary study of global Muslim communities. Students will also learn how about how to analyze global religions through the diverse lenses of anthropology, history, language, and sociology and will learn how to critically engage with representations of Islam and Muslims in public discourse.

The ‘60s. Hippies and tie-dye, afros and Motown, free love and psychedelic drugs—this era is commonly reduced to a montage of cliché images and phrases. This Cluster goes beyond the familiar, and looks at the major social revolutions of that era that transformed America’s cultural character and political environment forever. Students will better understand this period by exploring the 60’s counter-culture, the turbulent political arena and revolutionary youth movements. And as students analyze movies and music, the Civil Rights movement and campus takeovers, and Vietnam and Cold Wars they will make connections to society today.

How to put the universe in a nutshell? The Evolution cluster explores the emergence of the universe and its contents — from the Big Bang to the formation of our solar system, and then the development of life on Earth. The emphasis is on the scientific process, answering the question “How do we know that?” and applying this to the astronomical, geological and biological processes that have shaped the evolution of our world from its beginning to the very recent arrival of humans. Experiential learning through labs and field trips allows students to see firsthand the forces that drive evolution, the evidence for the Earth’s past, and the techniques used to explore that past and the universe.

In the early days of genetic engineering, few people would have predicted the creation of three-person embryos or CRISPR-based gene therapy. Biology and biotechnology have changed the way we interact with and understand the world around us. The Biotechnology and Society Cluster explores contemporary issues in science from multiple perspectives, including biology, sociology, gender studies, ethics, literature, and more. In this Cluster you will not only learn key discipline-specific ways of thinking about and doing science, but will apply these in concert with other perspectives to address complex, often controversial issues at the intersections of biology and society. Key questions we will address include: Who benefits from scientific advancements, and who is left out? Who makes decisions about how these benefits are allocated? How do scientists, regulators, and the public make decisions in the face of scientific uncertainty and risk? Who gets to participate in science, and what are the ethical boundaries of scientific practice? We’ll address these questions and more with case studies that may include: the Covid-19 pandemic, genetically modified organisms, reproductive technologies, and more.

Whereas our biological sex is determined by various physical factors such as our chromosomes, hormones, and genitalia, gender pertains to psychological and social features of our experience and position, including not only our self-concept and identity but also institutional patterns shaping gender relations. Sex and gender both influence our development, aspects of our behavior, and how others perceive us. Because sex and gender are complexly intertwined, identifying the distinctive effects of each can be challenging. This course draws on several disciplines – from biology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy and literature – to develop a layered understanding of the interplay between sex and gender and the way our understanding and experience of each affects our understanding and experience of the other.

We are living in an age of rapid growth in the field of neuroscience – with new insights promising to explain how our brains make us who we are. But while the brain is indispensable to all our mental functions, it is also a dynamic organ, interacting not only with our bodies but also with the diverse worlds we inhabit. This course seeks to engage and expand your ideas about the brain and mental health and their relation to experiences of being human. We draw on several disciplines – from neurobiology and psychology to literary and film analysis, as well as philosophy and disability studies – to explore how we relate our increasingly sophisticated knowledge of the brain to our understanding and experience of subjectivity, mental health, and disability.

This cluster explores the biology of the brain and the neurobiology and psychology of essential mental functions like learning and memory. We investigate conditions such as dementia, autism, depression, trauma, and schizophrenia not only to understand the neurobiological bases of these conditions but also to see what they can tell us about the norms and expectations that inform our judgments about what (and who) count (and don’t count) as healthy, sane, or normal selves, minds, and behaviors. We examine how disability and chronic illnesses impact the lives and bodyminds (a term we discuss) of people in our communities and explore how various social realities – from racism and poverty to Instagram and Facebook – affect our mental wellbeing and ability to thrive.