COVID-19 Seminars

In March 2020, UCLA and the entire global community entered unprecedented territory with the COVID-19 pandemic. As the campus quickly transitioned to remote learning, UCLA faculty moved to call up the Fiat Lux Seminar Program as one way of responding to the needs of the Bruin community. The Fiat Lux Freshman Seminars (originally named the 9/11 Freshman Seminars), created in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provided our students and faculty an opportunity to have formative conversations during a moment of national crisis. While the moment and circumstances were quite different with COVID-19, the challenge of fostering a sense of community and understanding remain the same.

In the week before the start of Spring 2020, the Fiat Lux Seminar Program sent out a special call to faculty to offer a remote seminar focused on the social, political, cultural, and scientific nature of disaster preparation, response, and recovery. Thirty faculty members answered the call and offered 25 seminars for Spring 2020 were offered. These spring COVID-19 seminars were in addition to already scheduled Fiat Lux seminars that also transitioned to remote learning.

The Division of Undergraduate Education continued this special call for COVID-19 seminars until Spring 2021.

Read these News articles about the COVID-19 seminars.

Faculty get creative to teach perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic (UCLA Newsroom, June 9, 2020)
Made Under Constraint (PRIME Daily Bruin, 2020)

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Spring 2020 Fall 2020 Winter 2021 Spring 2021

Centennial Initiative: Philanthropy and Students in the Time of the Coronavirus

Instructor: Pat Turner

Subject Area: African American Studies

Course Description: This course was originally designed to examine the role that philanthropy–donation of money and services–plays in the life of UCLA undergraduates, and in the life of the university itself. While that will still be the focus of the course, we will be viewing philanthropy through the lens of the coronavirus outbreak. Virtually all of the campus’s philanthropy professionals have had to pivot their work since the outbreak and they will share how they have done this. Donors to the university have also had to revisit their philanthropy plans. Students who raise money and perform service are developing alternative agendas. As circumstances and schedules permit, we will hear from representatives of all of these groups. Circumstances permitting, students will have the opportunity to make investments themselves related to offering relief in these troubling times.

COVID-19: Epidemics in Social Worlds

Instructor: Linda Garro

Subject Area: Anthropology

Course Description: This course examines situated responses to epidemic infectious illness in specific cultural and socio-political contexts. Through readings and video available for UCLA students to stream, we will examine how disease is never only biological. Epidemics are at once biological realities and deeply entwined with and embedded in human sociocultural realities. Illnesses to be discussed include HIV, ebola, tuberculosis, influenza, smallpox and kuru. The social uptake of biomedical efforts, such as vaccinations and therapies, will also be explored.

COVID-19: The Arts in Times of Contagion

Instructor: Charlene Villaseñor Black; Co-taught with Genevieve Carpio, Michelle Carriger, Chis Hanscom, and Tara Prescott

Subject Area: Education

Course Description: This course will focus on artistic and literary responses to pandemics of disease, both historically and today. Topics to be considered include histories of pandemics around the world; artworks created in response to communicable disease; zombie movies and fears of contagion; artistic responses to the plague in Europe in the 14th and 17th centuries; Indigenous artistic responses to contagion during colonization in the Americas, 16th-18th centuries; literary responses to disease; performance art and theater in the face of contagion; and contemporary responses on the part of artists, writers, museums, and other arts institutions in the current moment. We examine these topics through a variety of analytical lenses, drawn from the arts, humanities, and social sciences, in order to understand the power of the arts to express human anxiety about our own mortality, fear of others, compassion, altruism, and hope for the future. The special role of the arts for those in quarantine, historically and today, will also be explored.

COVID-19: Coronavirus and Societal Issues

Subject Area: Education

Instructor: Jessica Harris; Co taught with Jennifer Silvers, Michael Rodriguez, Robert Teranishi and Suzanne Seplow

Course Description: For five weeks, students in this course will discuss the influences of COVID-19 on society and vice versa- the influences of society on COVID-19. Topics covered include the psychological, educational and social effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and families, the xenophobic and racist rhetoric surrounding COVID-19, the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lessons learned outside the US, references of COVID-19 as the “Asian virus” and the historical context of this discourse and its impact on the Asian American community.

COVID-19: Formation of an Imagined COVID-19 Community through the Digital Media

Subject Area: English

Instructor: King-Kok Cheung

Course Description: The course will discuss the power of words and digital media in exposing the lack of transparency during the initial outbreak of the coronavirus (i.e. the disaster caused by ignoring and even punishing the “whistleblowers”), the power of literature (as exemplified by Fang Fang’s diary and even the posthumous blog of Dr. Li Wenliang) to mobilize the public, and the xenophobia and hate crimes incited by racist slurs, as exemplified by Trump calling coronavirus the “Chinese virus.”

COVID-19: Albert Camus’s "The Plague": Physical Disease & Disease as Social Metaphor

Subject Area: English

Instructor: Robert Maniquis

Couse Description: Our current Corona virus pandemic has caused many to think immediately of such important literary works as Boccaccio’s “The Decameron,” Daniel Defoe’s “Journal of the Plague Year,” and Camus’s “The Plague.” References to these and other literary works about disease are now themselves viral on the Internet. This course gives us an opportunity to actually read Camus’s book and to discuss what it actually says and does, allowing us, with some real knowledge, to relate it to the world’s present moment.

COVID-19: Viral Media during a Viral Pandemic: Social Media, Music and COVID-19

Subject Area: English

Instructor: Caroline Streeter

Course Description: As social distancing has become one of the most important tools in slowing the spread of COVID-19, social media has emerged as the critical lifeline upon which many rely for human contact. This Fiat Lux Seminar will look at the ways music has become a crucial device for governments, artists and individuals using social media to empower and mobilize populations. The notion of music (and dance) as a kind of universal language is compelling in examples from Vietnam’s pop ditty “Ghen Co Vy” (“Washing Hands”)- which inspired a Tik Tok dance challenge – to Uganda’s reggae-tinged “Coronavirus Alert” (featuring Bobi Wine and Nubian Li).
Whereas these examples are joyful, music has been used powerfully to more somber effect: a recent example is performer Andrew David singing Leonard Cohen’s mournful anthem “Hallelujah” to eerily empty streets in downtown Chicago. We will read selected media coverage of how music is circulating on social media during the pandemic, and we will explore the various cultural differences evident in musical expression.

COVID-19: From the Perspective of a Public Health Medical Epidemiologist

Subject Area: Epidemiology

Instructor: Robert Kim-Farley

Course Description: This Fiat Lux Seminar will focus on the week-to-week evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of a Public Health Medical Epidemiologist who has worked as the Director of Communicable Disease Control for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the World Health Organization (WHO). The seminar will provide a highly interactive opportunity for students to learn about the epidemiology of COVID-19 (e.g., routes of transmission, incubation, and period of infectivity), the current methods of control (e.g., surveillance, isolation, quarantine, and cordan sanitaire), future methods of control (e.g., vaccines, anti-viral medications, convalescent plasma, and monoclonal antibodies), and possible scenarios for the pandemic at the global level.

COVID-19: Teaching and Learning Remotely During Disaster

Subject Area: Gender Studies

Instructor: Sharon Traweek

Course Description: Universities worldwide are suddenly shifting to online courses during a global health disaster. This is a radical experiment in both teaching and maintaining civil society infrastructures. In this seminar we will learn some ways to make sense of all this. In this seminar, we will explore the following questions:

How is this alarming and amazing experiment in remote learning and civil society shaped by doing it during this slowly evolving disaster?
How do we learn in the midst of disaster? What is the civil infrastructure we are building during disaster? Which of our teaching and learning practices have persisted from last quarter?
What pedagogic practice are embedded in CCLE and Zoom? What can we do and not do?
How do we choose among the options within the platforms and algorithms we must use?
How does using phones, pads, or laptops matter differently?
How do we access wifi and use the internet differently during disaster?
How do we document our experience with this radical experiment in remote learning?
How will we decide what worked in this experiment, what didn’t, and why we did it?

COVID-19: Global Experiences and Perspectives on COVID-19Toggle Title

Instructor: Michael Shin

Subject Area: Geography

Course Description: The COVID-19 pandemic is a global-scale outbreak that is experienced differently depending upon where you live. How is the Hong Kong experience different from that in Los Angeles? What is it like to be sequestered in northern Italy? Why are some countries better at ‘flattening the curve’ than others? Lead and participate in a series of ‘Question & Answer’ sessions with people from around the world about their knowledge and local experiences during the COVID-19 outbreak. Have your COVID-19 questions answered by: a UCLA medical doctor who specializes in infectious disease; a UCLA graduate student with family and friends in Wuhan, China; a graduating UCLA senior under a ‘stay-at-home’ notice in Singapore; a professor from the University of Milan restricted to his house in Italy; and a Hong Kong University professor under mandatory quarantine. Additional guests from other locations may be arranged during the quarter. This virtual seminar will meet via Zoom at varied times to accommodate time zone differences with guests.

COVID-19: Mapping Coronavirus: Spatial Epidemiology in Action

Instructor: Nicholas Burkhart

Subject Area: Geography

Course Description: Exploration of the social, economic, and public health dynamics of the COVID-19 crisis through the lens of mapping (cartography) and spatial epidemiology. Students learn about the closely interrelated histories of mapping, spatial science, and epidemiology, and learn how cartographic representation theory relates to the communication of information about COVID-19 as well as other natural and anthropogenic disasters and crises. Examples of data visualizations and cartographic representations of COVID-19’s spread will be presented, evaluated, and critiqued, and students will learn how maps and graphics can be used to both inform and mislead in times of crisis. Fundamental principles of spatial analysis and spatial epidemiology will be introduced through examination of the geographic diffusion of COVID-19.

COVID-19: Tracking the Coronavirus in Africa

Instructor: Ghislaine Lydon

Subject Area: Global Health

Course Description: Africa is often portrayed in the Western media as a disease-infested continent. Whether it is HIV-AIDS, Malaria or Ebola, the continent of Africa is invariably associated with desolation and illness. Though to date it is the continent least affected by the Coronavirus (COVID 19) pandemic, the media in the United States is pointing to Africa as a potential future source of the disease after the spread of the virus recedes in Western countries. This Fiat Lux Zoominar is designed as a discussion forum to think about the place of Africa in the history of world epidemics and to examine the ongoing spread of the disease across the continent. In addition to reading about the representation of Africa in the media, and topical new articles, we will discuss the situation with three scholars in Africa over Zoom. We will also watch and discuss recent news clips. Students will work in groups to assess the COVID-19 situation in a particular country of their choice. In our last meeting, we will take stock and reflect on the long-term implications of global pandemics.

COVID-19: Social Distancing, Loneliness, & the Other: COVID-19 & Pandemics in History

Instructor: Vinay Lal

Subject Area: History

Course Description: The seminar will explore the background of the current COVID-19 pandemic and how the crisis is impacting UCLA. We will engage experts to better understand the virus and how different regions of the world have responded. We will discuss with university leaders the decision-making in response to the threat. We will look at UCLA’s response to other disruptive challenges in the past, including the financial downturn in 2009 as well as UC Berkeley’s response to the 1919 Influenza pandemic. Finally, we will explore the emergence of racism and bigotry associated with world-wide epidemics and other disruptive events. The goal is to understand the current societal disruption along many dimensions and then place the pandemic in context with other major crises.

COVID-19: Mindful Awareness and Transformative Power of Attention

Instructor: Sara Melzer

Subject Area: Honors Collegium

Course Description: Mindful Awareness helps cope with the standard stresses of life and promotes well-being. While that is important in ordinary times, it is now more vital than ever. Mindfulness focuses on the surprisingly transformative power of one of our most undervalued of resources-our ATTENTION. By cultivating the skills of our attention, we can change our experience and perceptions of the world. Scientific research shows how this practice improves concentration, reduces stress, boosts the immune system, reduces depression and emotional reactivity, and promotes a general sense of health. By cultivating calm and stability, this practice helps promote greater intellectual and emotional clarity of thinking and creativity.

COVID-19: A Curious Halo: Close Encounters with Catastrophe

Instructor: Cecile Guedon

Subject Area: Honors Collegium

Course Description: Is the end in sight? This seminar proposes an investigation of the various modalities of literary discourse around natural disasters across centuries, in connection with the development of the natural sciences, news report, and information technology. The scope of “Curious Halo” is to examine the various scales of disasters, with their ever increasingly global ripples, together with the expanding and contracting temporalities of apocalypse.

COVID-19: Propaganda, Fear, Facts and Fictions Regarding COVID-19

Instructor: Frances Olsen

Subject Area: Law, Undergraduate

Course Description: After 9/11 and the anthrax attacks against Democratic Congressional leaders, Congress passed the PATRIOT Act which, supposedly to save the American people from terrorism, curtailed freedoms and enabled extensive government surveillance that remains in place to this day. Will the emergency police-state measures allegedly justified to fight the spread of COVID-19 also last long beyond the virus, or even serve darker agendas? This seminar addresses these fears and critically examines disputed theories about the origin of the new virus and reasons for the extensive delay and limits on testing in the United States. Why did China persecute the first doctor to raise the alarm; why has the West silenced Didier Raoult, the renowned French physician and professor of infectious diseases who created the first treatment protocol proven successful when initiated soon after the first sign of COVID-19 symptoms?
False or mistaken assertions come from both official and alternative sources. How can we know whom to trust? This course encourages independent, critical judgment.

COVID-19: Responding to Coronavirus through Song

Instructor: Frank Heuser

Subject Area: Music

Course Description: Songwriters use their art to explore issues of social concern, create solidarity, and move people towards positive social action. Just as music enhanced civic awareness during the struggles for civil rights in the United States, musicians throughout the world are creating songs to encourage their fellow citizens to adopt behaviors that might diminish the rapid spread of the Coronavirus. Although the spread of Covid-19 can be mitigated through community interventions such as canceling mass gatherings and social distancing can mitigate the spread of Covid-19, health experts suggest that modifying individual behaviors is equally as important.
We will examine how songwriters are using music to evoke feelings of concern and awareness regarding the Coronavirus pandemic. We will study the lyrics and determine how the emotions that encourage social awareness and responsibility are depicted in the songs. By working collaboratively through class and group discussions, students should become increasingly aware of the power music possesses to nurture social cohesion.

COVID-19: Surviving Uncertainty through Sound Collaboration, from the Cold War to COVID-19

Instructor: Jessica Schwartz

Subject Area: Musicology

Course Description: How do you know how and when to listen in an emergency? To whom do you listen? Who listens to you? This course focuses on listening, sound-based media, and communications technologies in U.S. American realities, imaginaries, and rehearsals of survival. It helps you explore how you listen to the COVID-19 health crisis and how your listening is shaped by histories of crisis mediation and mitigation. We discuss governmental sound design, emotional management, and musical programming from ear training in Cold War civil defense preparedness to COVID-19 playlists on various social media networks. We consider the historical relation between militarized technologies of continuous listening, mobile alert systems, and hyper-vigilance alongside the rise in mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression. Students draw from sound-based coping strategies for dealing with diseases on personal and political registers and collaborate on a final sound-based project to navigate social distancing and survive uncertainty through composing social connection.

COVID-19: Inspirational Songs from Musicals in a Time of Crisis

Instructor: Ray Knapp

Subject Area: Musicology

Course Description: This course considers how songs from musicals can inspire through evocations of community and incitements to personal heroism, often coupled with a sense of history. In the first part of the course, we will look at individual songs, such as “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (Carousel), “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” (The Sound of Music), “Do You Hear the People Sing” (Les Misérables), “No One Is Alone” (Into the Woods), “Defying Gravity” (Wicked), “The Impossible Dream” (Man of La Mancha), “Tomorrow” (Annie), “Make Them Hear You” (Ragtime), and “Into the Fire” (The Scarlet Pimpernel). Toward the end of the course, we will consider two fairly recent musicals that are thematically concerned with catastrophe on a large scale: Moana (film, 2016) and Come from Away (Broadway, 2017).

COVID-19: The Ethics of Pandemics

Instructor: Susanne Lohmann

Subject Area: Political Science

Course Description: Normative ethics include: lifeboat ethics (who shall live and who shall die); trade-offs and the implicit value of a life (sacrificing Grandma to revive the economy); justice-fairness considerations (disability, inequality); generational conflict (old vs. young; living vs. unborn); comparative ethics of pandemics and other global catastrophes such as climate change and the refugee crisis; implications of scientific and moral uncertainty for public policy prescriptions.

Empirical ethics include: evolutionary psychology of risk; the worm at the core, or the role of death in life; moral disagreements about existential risk; cultural theory; religious differences; party-political disagreement; scientific prescriptions vs. political imperatives; democracy and complexity; collective action failures; institutional breakdown; comparative responses to pandemics and other global catastrophes; comparisons over the centuries, across countries, and across types of countries (developed, developing; democratic, authoritarian).

COVID-19: Health Equity in the Era of COVID-19: Prevention and Promotion in Health and Mental Health

Instructor: Ian Holloway

Subject Area: Public Affairs

Course Description: Former Vice President, Hubert Humphrey said: “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” This Fiat Lux seminar will explore the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic may disproportionately impact society’s most vulnerable groups: people experiencing homelessness, people who use substances, people living with HIV and other chronic health conditions, older adults, etc. We will draw from popular media and classic health promotion texts to discuss the ways in which current strategies from public health and public policy may be leveraged to formulate programs and policies that aim to promote health equity during a pandemic.

COVID-19: University Leadership During Pandemics

Instructor: Gene Block

Subject Area: Public Health

COVID-19: The Politics of the Pandemic

Instructor: Rogers Bruibaker

Subject Area: Sociology

Course Description: This seminar will explore political, economic, and social aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Potential topics include intensified digital surveillance; the strengthening of big tech platforms; the politics of expertise; states of emergency; the social construction of natural disasters; the politics of inequality; rationing in a time of crisis; the politics of blame; generational politics; and de-globalization.

COVID-19: Art and Performance in the Time of Coronavirus

Instructor: Michelle Carriger,

Subject Area: Theater

Course Description: The ongoing ‘COVID-19’ crisis has presented a largely unprecedented challenge to many of the quotidian operations of everyday life and culture, especially live performance and other forms of communal gathering. Although many are saying that the global actions taken to prevent or lessen a global pandemic are devastating to art, performance, and community, these unsettled and unsettling times have simultaneously triggered a sudden great outpouring of alternative modes of art, performance, and community engagement. In this seminar, we will exercise a variety of modes to take stock of our unprecedented present moment, both through reception and creation of new, old, and hybrid forms of art, representation, and performance, taking the time to process and create when great confusion may be pushing us to feel passive in a storm of ‘information.’ My hope for this class, and this crisis at large, is that we can use this time of upheaval to analyze what has been the status quo, identifying what is truly valuable, and which aspects we might wish to permanently change.

COVID-19: Food and Culture in the Post-Pandemic Era

Instructor: Monica Smith

Subject Area: Anthropology

Course Description: In this course, we’ll examine the social understanding of food, the richness of global cuisine, and the politics of agriculture to understand the role of food in creating and maintaining culture. Social factors are particularly stark in the current moment of the global pandemic: we are cooking and baking more at home, resulting in shortages of staple items such as flour, but we are also faced with the realization that some food choices, such as eating meat, have a disproportionate effect on the low-wage workers who work in meat-packing plants where they risk higher rates of COVID-19 disease transmission. Many of our patterns of eating together have also changed dramatically with the shift away from restaurant dining to take-out and delivery services. Through weekly readings and discussion, this course will examine how food systems are created, how cultural ideas of food vary from one group to the next, and how people use food to proclaim ethnic and cultural identities at times of crisis.

COVID-19: Epidemics in Social Worlds

Instructor: Linda Garro

Subject Area: Anthropology

Course Description: This course examines situated responses to epidemic infectious illness in specific cultural and socio-political contexts. Through readings and video available for UCLA students to stream, we will examine how disease is never only biological. Epidemics are at once biological realities and deeply entwined with and embedded in human sociocultural realities. Illness to be discussed include: COVID 19, HIV/AIDS, ebola, tuberculosis, kuru, and others. The social uptake and social dynamics of biomedical efforts, such as vaccinations and therapies, will also be explored.

COVID-19: MakerSpace, Making A Difference

Instructor: Genevieve Carpio

Subject Area: Chicana/o and Central American Studies

Course Description: In collaboration with the UCLA MakerSpace, this Fiat Lux is designed to investigate how art and technology can be used to address critical social issues, specifically during the current COVID-19 crisis. Together, we will pair readings about how diverse types of “Makers” have worked to address preparation, response, and recovery to the 2020 pandemic. Through a combination of hands-on exercises using readily available at-home-materials and virtual tutorials with the UCLA MakerSpace on the UCLA Hill, we will investigate how new and old tools have been applied towards advocacy efforts, such as 3D printing of face visor masks for the medical community and hand-making of fabric masks by sewing circles.

COVID-19: Mindfulness and Social Change

Instructor: Maylei Blackwell

Subject Area: Chicana/o and Central American Studies

Course Description: In the context of a global health crisis and the political unrest that has erupted around racial violence, we use mindfulness practices to both look deeply at the roots of suffering as well as how to build organizations, movements, and communities for social change. We will centralize ideas of loving kindness to heal and foreground ideas of interbeing within structures of oppression so our practice does not ignore or perpetuate through silence social, economic, political, gender and racial hierarchies.

COVID-19: Economics of Sports

Instructor: Lee Ohanian

Subject Area: Economics

Course Description: Why do today’s sports superstars, such as LeBron James and others, earn as much as 100 times more than superstars of generation ago? Study of topics such as whether NCAA student-athletes should receive salaries; how much Los Angeles Lakers franchise is worth; why Major League Baseball is exempt from antitrust prosecution; why NFL left offensive tackle earns more than right offensive tackle; and COVID and the sports world. World of sports offers some most interesting applications of economic analysis. Introduction to principles of economics, and how to apply them to understand business of sports.

COVID-19: Recognizing and Serving Asian American and Pacific Islanders in the era of COVID

Instructor: Robert Teranishi

Subject Area: Education

Course Description: Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students are too often misunderstood, misrepresented, and overlooked in research, policy debates, and in the development of institutional programs. A key factor that contributes to the exclusion and misrepresentation of AAPI students is the perception of the population as a model minority. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, the AAPI community has faced additional challenges associated with discrimination, violence, and other forms of harassment. In this course, we will discuss: 1) contemporary challenges facing AAPIs in the era of COVID-19, 2) how this issue is being addressed through community movements and among college students, and 3) how AAPI students are coping on an individual level through constructive and creative efforts.

COVID-19: The Ethic of Care and Covid-19

Instructor: King-Kok Cheung

Subject Area: English

Course Description: The course explores how the ethic of care can be fostered in virtual and actual communities to combat Covid-19 and its fallout vis-à-vis international and interpersonal tensions. This ethic, which encompasses neighbor love, compassion, and empathy, has been inculcated in multiple religions and philosophies including Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, classics (Marcus Aurelius), and existentialism (Arendt, Camus, Frankl). Conducive to what the UN calls “kindness contagion” (see “UN call to creatives to respond”), It is more critical now than ever as a mandate for the animal kingdom that transcends species, gender, race, class, and age. The class will meet every other week for two hours.

COVID-19: The Black Death in Literature

Instructor: Matthew Fisher

Subject Area: English

Course Description: The Black Death swept into England in 1348, and killed 40-60% of the population. Such devastation is unimaginable, yet amidst COVID-19, it has become a little more legible. We will read selections of medieval poetry and prose written in the aftermath of the plague, and consider some of the ways literature and other art forms did (and did not) respond to the Black Death.

COVID-19: Beat the Pandemic using Artificial Intelligence

Instructor: Achuta Kadambi

Subject Area: Engineering

Course Description: In this seminar, students will be exposed to a broad survey of cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that are being deployed to beat the pandemic. Topics range from purely computational methods for disease prediction, to sensors being deployed in hospitals for continuous monitoring. The course will be self-contained and – whenever possible – will prioritize the social implications of technologies, in contrast to finer technical details. Students will also be given suggestions for further projects and research, but this will not be part of course evaluation.

COVID-19: Singing What Can’t Be Said: Jewish Music Responses to Trauma

Instructor: Mark Kligman

Subject Area: Ethnomusicology

Course Description: Music is an often-sought refuge during times of trauma, duress, and struggle. From the Eastern European pogroms of the late 19th Century to COVID-19, the Jewish world has documented and responded to large-scale traumatic events through music. This course will explore how artists from Leonard Cohen to Arnold Schoenberg used music as the medium to pay tribute to major traumatic events as well as tell their personal stories. Students will use music as primary documentation to learn about composers and the stories they tell through their music, often learning from the music what we cannot learn strictly from history. We will learn how diversity in Judaism and Jewish music has bolstered the incredible range of musical responses to trauma from the Jewish community by exploring music from various genres such as western art music, Broadway, folk, bluegrass, and rock. Join us as we explore how music can communicate what words alone cannot.

Pre-Health Professional 101 in COVID-19 Era

Instructor: Michael Rodriguez

Subject Area: Global Health

Course Description: Designed to help students interested in becoming health professionals (in medicine, dentistry, nursing, and public health) navigate world of health profession school applications. Study addresses issues related to field of medicine, including global health and ethics, through COVID-19 lens.

COVID-19: Globalization, Nationalism, and the State in the Wake of Covid-19

Instructor: Vinay Lal

Subject Area: History

Course Description: COVID-19’s relentless conquest of the world has created a situation unknown in living memory and recorded history alike. The “Spanish Influenza” of 1918-20 may have killed between 50-100 million people, but even at the height of the most pressing worldwide catastrophes the world was not shuttered. In most countries, the state has assumed greater powers and used Covid-19 to stifle political dissent; “emergency” legislation, judging from the past, will persist long after the emergency has passed. Countries have fenced off neighbors and even imposed borders within their own states: ethnonationalism, which already had been on the rise in the last few years around the globe, is already becoming more pronounced. What is the future of democracies? Who will be designated as the new enemies? Does Covid-19 suggest the end of globalization, and how can those who advocate for international cooperation advocate for a new and more just world order? This course proposes to look carefully at politics, globalization, nationalism, and the state in the wake of Covid-19.

COVID-19: Anything But Zoom (Creativity & Connection)

Instructor: Tara Prescott-Johnson

Subject Area: Honors Collegium

Course Description: In 2020, UCLA shifted to remote instruction in response to COVID-19 pandemic. For many faculty and students, this meant adjusting to classes in Zoom and resulting Zoom fatigue. But it has also been opportunity to rethink ways that classes are delivered, and what higher education could look like in post-COVID-19 future. Exploration of ways that students can talk, share, laugh, and create art outside traditional face-to-face or Zoom instruction. Readings focus on how students are learning and adapting in age of coronavirus. Students spend one asynchronous hour connecting with instructor and classmates, using different form of communication each week. Snail mail, Slack, TikTok, Spotify, Discord, phone calls, messages in bottles, time capsules–experiment with them all. Students complete weekly journals and multimedia assignments, culminating in final class project that can be shared with larger Bruin community.

COVID-19: Zombie Apocalypse: the Limits of Human Sociality in Times of Pandemic

Instructor: Chris Hanscom

Subject Area: Honors Collegium

Course Description: What can an analysis of popular representations of zombies, and in particular the zombie apocalypse genre, tell us about what it means to be human in a time of pandemic? What do we believe all humans share? What are the limits of human sociality? How can a humanities approach to popular cultural products shed light on our own understanding of what it means to be human, and on the fears and anxieties that help to structure our understanding of contemporary community? We will explore the formation and deformation of the human being and human sociality by looking to the figures of the zombie in film.

COVID-19: Developing a Mindful Compassion to Cope with Our Current Challenges

Instructor: Sara Melzer

Subject Area: Honors Collegium

Course Description: Mindful awareness and compassion help us cope with the standard stresses of life and promote well-being. In our current crisis, both practices are now more vital than ever. Mindfulness focuses on the surprisingly transformative power of one of our most undervalued of resources– our ATTENTION. By cultivating the skills of our attention, we can change our experience and perceptions of the world. But our attention needs to come out of a spirit of kindness and compassion. This course emphasizes an experiential learning of mindfulness coupled with compassion practices, directed towards self and others. Students should commit to developing a daily practice, both on a meditative cushion and in everyday life. Scientific research shows how mindfulness and compassionate caring improve concentration, reduces stress, boosts the immune system, reduces depression and emotional reactivity, and promotes a general sense of health. By cultivating calm and connectedness, both practices promote greater emotional and intellectual well-being, clarity of thought and creativity.

COVID-19: Imagining the Post-Pandemic Economy

Instructor: Tobias Higbie

Subject Area: Labor Studies

Course Description: The Covid-19 pandemic turned life-as-we-knew it upside-down. It has killed nearly 200,000 Americans and generated the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although the virus was new to us back in the winter of 2020 it revealed long-standing fault lines in American society, especially racial disparities in health care, employment, access to social services, and public safety. In this Fiat Lux seminar we explore aspects of our current crisis, how they reflect long-term challenges, and the future we need on the other side of this pandemic.

COVID-19: What Does Your Gut Tell You about Coronavirus

Instructor: Rana Khankan

Subject Area: Life Sciences

Course Description: Exploration of the role of microbiota in health and disease with emphasis on COVID-19. Comparison of infections that are associated with a change in the composition of the gut microbiota. Focus on the consequences of pathogens as selective pressures in human biology and behavior. Students will review current literature on COVID-19 research and discuss how humans adapt to changing social behaviors aimed at slowing and stopping disease spread during a pandemic. Students will consider the impact of the pandemic on lifestyle, mental health, and communication.

COVID-19: Patterns and Predictions in Art and Nature

Instructor: Mike Hill

Subject Area: Mathematics

Course Description: Patterns and symmetry are ubiquitous, and finding ways to describe and understand this is the heart of modern mathematics. This seminar will focus on ways math provides a language to describe phenomena in art, nature, and music. During the quarter, we will discuss: puzzles and games like Rubik’s cubes and sudoku; wallpaper, crystal, and textile patterns; leaf, petal, and seed arrangements in a wide variety of plants; and new approaches to classical problems via origami; and repetition and change in modern and classical music. This Fall, we will also see how math can be used to describe social connections and relationships and how this can be used to help understand disease spread. Using cutting-edge resources from mathematicians at UCLA, we will describe how to understand some of the mathematical modeling tools used in the ongoing study of COVID-19. By the end of the quarter, we will see that math is a useful language for describing and structuring the world, letting us simplify problems and getting a better understanding of why things work the way they do.

COVID-19: Think Like Engineering Scientists - Applications to Modeling the Pandemic (OG Title: Thinking Like Engineering Scientists: Applications to Modeling COVID-19 Pandemic)

Instructor: Sungtaek Ju

Subject Area: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Course Description: This is a hands-on seminar course where students learn how to think like engineering scientists by using computer programming as a vehicle. We will learn the basic process involved in scientific/mathematical modeling of complex phenomena and the use of computers to solve problems. In particular, we will focus on modeling of the COVID-19 pandemic as a concrete example of real-world problems. This seminar course is intended for non-CS majors. In class interactive tutorials will be used to introduce a modern programming language. The students are expected to have basic knowledge of ordinary differential equations (at the level of AP Calculus) and have access to computers where they can install programming tools.

COVID-19: Music in Our Town and Our Time

Instructor: Eileen Strempel

Subject Area: Music Industry

Course Description: Join in a provocative set of conversations with music industry professionals and special guests representing the rich diversity of the Los Angeles music ecosystem in order to learn their perspectives on the COVID-era music business. Moderated by the Inaugural Dean, this dialog will particularly engage around the healing role of music in pandemic times, the entrepreneurial music creativity and response fostered by necessity and isolation, and the inexorable humanistic connective pull of music in a time when both order and community have been undermined by a global epidemic. Far from being an expendable luxury in the time of uncertainty, communities around the world have found music to be a balm in a world suddenly suffused with “social distancing” and seclusion. From Zoom panels, streamed house parties, YouTube parodies, balcony serenades and virtual performances, this is an era distinctively marked with bravery, intuition, and with absence and communal denial ultimately revealing compelling alternative possibilities, creativity, interpersonal synchrony and hope.

COVID-19: Navigating Difficult Times through an Online Music Making Community

Instructor: Frank Heuser

Subject Area: Music

Course Description: Coming together, meeting new people, and creating supportive learning communities is one of the central benefits of a university education. Students and faculty alike crave the missing communities that form when people meet together in classes. Creating and making music in groups allows individuals to feel more empathetic and connected to other people. Discussing music with peers allows university students to confront and address anxieties that arise from online learning environments. Such discussions and interactions make individuals more emotionally attuned and emphatic each other.
Students analyze different songs expressing empathy and use an online digital audio workstation (DAW) collaboratively to create songs and explore issues of social unrest and isolation. The DAW allows individuals with limited musical training to create and record songs almost effortlessly by combining musical loops digitally. By working collaboratively to express mutual concerns and emotions, students experience shared intentionality and build an online community of supportive peers.

COVID-19: Biology of Stem Cells and its Application in Regenerative Medicine

Instructor: Gregorio Chazenbalk

Subject Area: Obstetrics and Gynecology

Course Description: Students learn about the history and biology of stem cells, and how UCLA scientists have contributed to the field. Stem cells have dominated scientific conversation and resources, without contest. Alongside the discovery of their capacity for self-renewal, the ability of cells to differentiate into various types soon led to classifying them and their ability to give rise to adult tissues of three embryonic germ cell lineages. Unipotent stem cell differentiates into one cell type; oligopotent differentiates into few, but not all, cell types within specific tissue; multipotent stem cells differentiate into all cell types from specific germ layer, pluripotent, able to differentiate into cells of mesodermal, endodermal, and ectodermal germ cell layers; and totipotent–commonly known as zygote–capable of differentiation into embryonic and extra-embryonic cell types, and gives rise to entire organisms, use of stem cells for tissue regeneration and cell therapy, use of stem cells as an alternative treatment for COVID-19.

COVID-19: Pitirim Sorokin and COVID-19

Instructor: David Wilkinson

Subject Area: Political Science

Course Description: In 1942, Pitirim Sorokin published “Man and Society in Calamity.” The “Calamities” were famine, pestilence, war and revolution.

Sorokin, a quantitative sociologist, politically-activist socialist-revolutionary, and Tolstoyan idealis, gave an extremely brief overview of the psychological, behavioral, sociological, economic, political, cultural, religious, ethical, scientific, technological, artistic and ideological consequences of calamities, a view of their causes, remedies and future.

COVID-19 is of course the calamity “pestilence” and threatens famine.

In this course, students will all read through Sorokin’s book and discuss whether his assertions of nearly 80 years past do or do not fit COVID-19.

COVID-19: Coping and Resilience in 2020

Instructor: Jennifer Silvers

Subject Area: Psychology

Course Description: Stress and adversity are a part of life. This is particularly true at present, as we collectively grapple with the health, economic and political anxieties associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. During a pandemic, stress emerges in the context of the strain of isolation, navigating new threats, experiencing the amplification of race and class disparities, balancing strong social and cultural messages, integrating the rapid-paced media, managing moral decision-making, and developing and preserving identity. From reconciling dissonance, to creating positive rituals, to working on reducing anxious thoughts, the course will share concrete, applicable and healthy habits for students interested in how to harness their resilience and conquer stress related to the Coronavirus pandemic. Because we believe in learning by doing, students will be encouraged to implement the strategies they learn in their everyday lives. In doing so, students will stockpile their “resilience toolkits”, which can be used long after the course concludes.

COVID-19: Current Mood - #Adulting

Instructor: Ted Robles

Subject Area: Psychology

Course Description: Congratulations, you’re an adult. Now what? Students in this seminar will develop practical skills and learn about UCLA resources related to several developmental “adulting” tasks: personal finance, health and well-being, communication and relationships, and career exploration. Students will also learn and apply foundational social and psychological theories related to stress and well-being, social identity development, and behavior change. Each session features small-group discussions with guest speakers from select campus offices (i.e. Financial Wellness Program, Student Health Education and Promotion Office, Career Center), self-assessments, and opportunities to practice interpersonal skills. Furthermore, the course integrates a peer-to-peer learning approach to help normalize and validate students’ experiences as well as explore how COVID-19 intersects with their personal “adulting” dimensions.

COVID-19: Communication, Kindness and Social Well-Being during COVID-19

Instructor: Lené Levy-Storms,

Subject Area: Public Affairs

Course Description: Although it is a biological pathogen, COVID-19 affects everyone’s social and mental well-being, even if people have not contracted it. This seminar will explore how COVID-19 affects social aspects of our well-being, especially our ability to be kind, in the context of its physical and mental health aspects. Topics will be organized around the following five areas: 1) defining social well-being and kindness during COVID-19; 2) communication and social well-being and kindness during COVID-19; 3) COVID-19 research on social well-being & kindness; 4) current events related to social well-being & kindness during COVID-19; 5) communication strategies for improving and/or maintaining social well-being during COVID-19.

COVID-19: Happiness in the Era of COVID-19: What Is It and How Should We Pursue It?

Instructor: Robert Kim-Farley

Subject Area: Public Health

Course Description: The discipline of public health is focused on human wellbeing. This is the first public health course entirely devoted to the topic of Happiness offered at UCLA. It is designed to be an exhilarating and interactive exploration of the concept of happiness: What is it? Why is it important? How has the concept of happiness evolved in a philosophical context? What are the sources of happiness (i.e., how to find and/or achieve it)? How do we measure happiness in the person and in the population? Is it subjective or objective? What is the difference between happiness and wellness? How should we pursue it to increase happiness in our lives and the lives of those around us (e.g., what kinds of practices and programs can improve happiness)? Readings and presentations offer insights into a framework for happiness and introduce the concepts of happiness as a universal human currency and how one’s study and work can be sources of happiness.

COVID-19: Infernal Cities -- Heat, Bodies, and the Built Environment

Instructor: Bharat Venkat

Subject Area: Society & Genetics

Course Description: Our cities are getting hotter. As concrete traps solar radiation, water sources dry out & skyscrapers block air flow, urban spaces are becoming “heat islands.” In this course, we’ll examine responses to the changing urban climate, both in terms of everyday adjustments & cataclysmic sea shifts. Such responses might be massive & infrastructural or intimate & embodied. Focusing on 5 cities (LA, Chicago, Paris, Masdar City & New Delhi), we’ll explore key concepts (like social infrastructure) & methods (like thermal mapping) for understanding how heat impacts our bodies, communities & environments. We’ll consider heat as a mediating factor for disease (including COVID & flu) & how extreme heat disproportionately affects marginalized groups (especially Black communities in the US). We’ll learn how old cities are being remade & how new cities are being built from the ground up. And we’ll consider the role of a range of disciplines, from climatology & architecture to anthropology & biology, in understanding & transforming our infernal cities so that they remain livable.

COVID-19: Protest, Pandemic, Performance 2020 (Skoll Center)

Instructor: Michelle Carriger

Subject Area: Theater

Course Description: 2020 so far has brought unprecedented upheaval to the art and performance establishment along with the rest of the planet. In this Fiat Lux, we will examine artworks and performances made during and in response to this time of difficulty and unrest, as well as resonant performances and works from before 2020 that help us to situate today and inspire solutions for our current challenges, especially the place of performance during pandemic lockdown and how representation and performance influence and are influenced by political upheaval.

COVID-19: Meditation in the Age of Coronavirus

Instructor: David Shorter

Subject Area: World Arts & Cultures

Course Description: For years, Dr. Shorter has been teaching introduction to meditation, meditation for college students, and meditation for activists. In this REMOTE course, we will meet once a week to explore how meditation can help us lower our blood pressure, heart rate, and stress levels through meditation practice. Classes will be via Zoom and will require you to find a space to be still and quiet during class times.

COVID-19: The Archaeology of Diseases and Pathogens: Understanding Pandemics

Instructor: Stephen Acabado

Subject Area: Anthropology

Course Description: As the world faces the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, a new “normal” is being defined for socialization, transportation, supply chain, among other things. However, the archaeological and historical records have documented multiple pandemics, such as the 1918 Spanish Flu, the Bubonic Plague in the 1th century, and the Justinian Plague in the 6th century. These global infections have affected human populations but has also given us a glimpse of how humanity respond to such pressures. In this seminar, we survey some of the pandemics to understand how human behavior contributes to the spread of diseases. We also look at how humans take care of the sick and how these diseases changed the way we live. Students are expected to actively participate in and lead discussions.

COVID-19: Who Did What Wrong? Moral Attributions about the COVID-19 Pandemic

Instructor: Alan Fiske

Subject Area: Anthropology

Course Description: When bad things happen, people often feel that someone must have committed a moral transgression. That is, people tend to attribute suffering and misfortune to wrong-doing. How does this human proclivity manifest itself in the current pandemic? Beyond critiques of governments and public health policies, do people feel that the pandemic itself — the disease — has a moral meaning? If so, what do people think about whose fault the pandemic is? Do people think that not only the pandemic as a whole, but the illnesses of specific persons, reflect moral transgressions of some sort?

COVID-19: Language and Linguistics in Time of Coronavirus

Instructor: Hongyin Tao

Subject Area: Asian

Course Description: The Coronavirus pandemic has brought about fundamental changes in languages of the world: from the politics of the term for the virus itself, controversial slogans such as “social distancing” (as opposed to “physical distancing”), the surge of terms such as PPE, to “lockdown” being selected as Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2020. This seminar explores the role language plays in politics, social life, public health, international relations, among others, during the ongoing pandemic. Analyses of linguistic phenomena from a range of Asian and other language will be grounded from sociolinguistic and critical discourse analytic perspectives for a deeper understanding of the way language is deployed and reflects social changes in times of crisis. At the same time, practical issues such as how to effectively mobilize community responses with language for public health at large societal scales and the impact of the pandemic on the industry of language education, etc., will also be explored.

COVID-19: Kindness in Science: Diversity, Health Disparities, and Greater Advancements

Instructor: Jorge Torres

Subject Area: Chemistry and Biochemistry

Course Description: Exploration of kindness in science and the impact of kindness on improving diversity of the scientific workforce, on addressing health disparities and making greater scientific advancements. We will discuss how lack of kindness can lead to failure to recruit underrepresented students and train them for biomedical careers; how lack of a diverse biomedical workforce has contributed to health care disparities, with focus on racial Covid-19 health disparities; how kindness can address long-standing inequalities that are exacerbated by Covid-19; and how kindness can help improve communication and collaboration across disciplines and groups around the world to spur innovation and discoveries related to the pandemic. An aim of this course is to gain appreciation for the impact kindness can have on personal lives/careers, the lives/careers of others they come in contact with throughout their scientific/medical training, the lives that their science/medical training and research careers will touch, and how kindness can help build a more just and humane world.

COVID-19 and Its Aftermath: Implications for Gender Dynamics and Sexuality -- Sex and Gender in the Aftermath of COVID-19

Instructor: Martie Hasleton

Subject Area: Communication

Course Description: COVID-19 radically changed the way we socially interact and the challenges we face. This class will focus on how the pandemic has affected gender dynamics, including implications for sexuality. One issue has become clear: women, in particular, are shifting toward greater attention to family and a reduction of time spent working. As women become more financially dependent on partners, who are typically male, gender norms begin to shift toward more “conservative” family structures, with women doing work in the home and men as breadwinners. We will explore the implications of this shift and others related to COVID-19 for gender equality, changes in moral norms, and a looming “baby bust.”

COVID-19: Missing Women -- Facts and Controversies

Instructor: Adriana Lleras-Muney

Subject Area: Economics

Course Description: In highly-cited piece, economics Nobel prizewinner Amartya Sen documented that in certain countries mortality rate of women is abnormally high, resulting in deficit of about 100 million women around world. Discussion of various theories on why differences in survival by gender exist; and extent to which these differences are driven by biology, socioeconomic conditions, and discrimination. Students think about possible role of government interventions aimed at lowering gender health disparities. Seminar will also consider the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19: Economics of Sports

Instructor: Lee Ohanian

Subject Area: Economics

Course Description: Why do today’s sports superstars, such as LeBron James and others, earn as much as 100 times more than superstars of generation ago? Study of topics such as whether NCAA student-athletes should receive salaries; how much Los Angeles Lakers franchise is worth; why Major League Baseball is exempt from antitrust prosecution; why NFL left offensive tackle earns more than right offensive tackle; and COVID-19 and sports world. World of sports offers some most interesting applications of economic analysis. Introduction to principles of economics, and how to apply them to understand business of sports.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Virus Evolution from the Origin of Life to COVID

Instructor: Philip Nonacs

Subject Area: Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Course Description: Viruses probably evolved alongside the first cells on Earth, and have been affecting biological evolution ever since. Viruses can be credited with being the first predators, the possible inventors of DNA, facilitators of sex, gene movers, and builders of species’ genomes. Viruses are evolutionary magicians in ways that make them difficult to control or eliminate as diseases, but also can make them useful as potentially powerful allies in fighting pathogens through phage therapy. This course will examine the evolutionary history of viruses through to their place in present-day ecosystems. We will explore why there may never be a vaccine for HIV: how vaccination strategies may tame, but not eliminate flu and corona viruses; and exciting new developments in evolutionary medicine that looks to use virus ecology to cure and prevent disease.

COVID-19: The Ethic of Care and Covid-19

Instructor: King-Kok Cheung

Subject Area: English

Course Description: The course explores how the ethic of care can be fostered in virtual and actual communities to combat Covid-19 and its fallout vis-à-vis international and interpersonal tensions. This ethic, which encompasses neighbor love, compassion, and empathy, has been inculcated in multiple religions and philosophies including Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, classics (Marcus Aurelius), and existentialism (Arendt, Camus, Frankl). Course will supplement this ethic with the notion of self-care, which is imperative in braving covid 19. The readings of the course focus on literary and journalistic pieces written in the wake of a pandemic (real or imagined), natural disaster, or a family member’s terminal illness: Haruki Murakami’s “Honey-Pie,” Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “I’d Love You to Want Me,” Sigrid Nunez’s Salvation City, and Chang-rae Lee’s “Coming Home Again.”

COVID-19: Plagues and Pandemics - Cultural Effects and Symbolism of Disease

Instructor: Robert Maniquis

Subject Area: English

Course Description: This Fiat Lux seminar is concerned with how plagues and pandemics have played a transformative role in human affairs – historically, socially, psychologically, politically, and religiously. All human beings have always wanted and will always want to survive plagues. But often some have turned plagues into historical moments of human progression. This demands more than finding out magically or scientifically how to defeat a plague. Sometimes this involves a culture turning religiously sacrificial ideas into purely political and economic imperatives. This seminar will explore the idea that surviving a plague may mean, indeed, embracing it as a gift. Discussion will be designed to uncover mechanisms that various societies, ancient and modern, “primitive” and “developed” have used to conceptualize vast onsets of disease. Often these mechanisms turn destructive disease into ideologies, not only of survival, but also of creation. Students will read brief selections from writers such as Camus, DeFoe, John Kelly, W.McNeill, and T.Bollyky.

COVID-19: Screenplay Writing Workshop - Writing the Pandemic

Instructor: Brian Kim Stefans

Subject Area: English

Course Description: This scene study course asks: Is it possible to write for film and television in the time of the pandemic? Can real drama be written for the Zoom screen? How dramatic can life be if we are all living inside? How have pandemics been used in film previously? Short weekly assignments help students learn how to write a dramatic scene, a dramatic monologue, an action scene, and a comedy sketch. Focus will be placed on character creation, richness of dialogue, distinctive language usage, and, most importantly, what a “beat” is and how it gives shape to a scene and feature film. As a final project, after an exercise in show pitches, students collaborate on an episodic web series. Students start by looking at basic but specific rules for formatting the screenplay page and are expected to become proficient in using screenwriting software of their choice (instructor will provide options). The emphasis is on learning some general rules of writing for film, television and the web, but also on creativity and having fun writing and performing scenes in class.

COVID-19: Eat or be Eaten in Quarantine

Instructor: Victoria Vesna

Subject Area: Food Studies

Course Description: Hox Zodiac is a long term collaborative project between Professor Victoria Vesna (artist) and Siddharth Ramakrishnan (neuroscientist, Professor at Puget Sound University). The center of the project is meant to engage the audience in the diversity of the animal kingdom that includes us humans through the hox gene. Utilizing the Chinese animal zodiac as a framework, they developed a participatory dinner project that was presented all around the world, with guests bringing to the table offerings of food based on the suggested ingredients informed by extensive research in Chinese, Ayurveda and contemporary medicine that includes genetic engineering. Everyone attending shares stories about animals as pets, lab experiments, food and myths. In this playful way, many cultural and social issues are addressed as the interpretations vary depending on the environment, habits and nationalities. The project was recently redesigned in quarantine and addresses issues around food and isolation in these extraordinary times. We will recreate this participatory project within the seminar.

COVID-19: Social Justice, Health Equity and Immigrants in the time of COVID-19

Instructor: Michael Rodriquez

Subject Area: Global Health

Course Description: Global health places priority on improving health and achieving health equity for all people. This seminar will focus on immigrants to understand the role of social justice in promoting the right of everyone to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, as established in World Heath Constitution of 1948. Discussion of social inequities experienced by immigrants and others, incorporating concepts such as reproductive justice, effects of racism on health, and redlining as social determinant of health. Discussions will include topics such as contraception, nutrition, mental and physical health in the context of COVID-19. Students will gain perspective on how policies and their environment can shape individual health choices. This seminar will also highlight accomplishments of current and past UCLA faculty related to research, teaching, and/or service, that have been made to promote social justice and health.

COVID-19: Developing a Mindful Compassion to Cope with Our Current Challenges

Instructor: Sara Melzer

Subject Area: Honors Collegium

COVID-19: Anything But Zoom (Kindness & Connection)

Instructor: Tara Prescott-Johnson,

Subject Area: Honors Collegium

Course Description: This seminar will explore ways that we can talk, share, laugh, vent, and promote kindness despite the challenges of social distancing and Zoom fatigue. This class will strive to spread kindness in as many creative ways as possible, informed by readings about the psychology of wellness, healthy practices in difficult times, and the benefits of creativity.
Students would have the opportunity to become penpals through a community partnership and will experiment each week with a different “random act of kindness.”

We will not meet in person or in Zoom. Instead, students will spend an asynchronous hour each week connecting with Dr. Prescott-Johnson and Dr. Letamendi and their classmates, using a different form of communication each week. Snail mail, Slack, Spotify, Discord, phone calls, messages in bottles, online games–we will experiment with them all! Students will complete multimedia assignments with the goal of improving the wellbeing of other people in our community.

COVID-19: What Does Your Gut Tell You about Coronavirus

Instructor: Rana Khankan

Subject Area: Life Science

Course Description: Focus on consequences of pathogens as selective pressures in human biology and behavior. Exploration of the connections between life sciences and social sciences through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic. Review of gut microbiome diversity in relation to immune function and health. Comparison of infections that are associated with change in composition of gut microbiota. Exploration of role of microbiota in health and disease with emphasis on Sars-CoV-2. Students consider impact of pandemic on lifestyle, social behaviors, health communication.

COVID-19: The Spread and Impact of COVID-19 at Different Scales

Instructor: Andrea Bertozzi

Subject Area: Mathematics

Course Description: This course will combine basic mathematical models with news articles about the spread and impact of COVID-19. Students will learn how to analyze exponential growth and to work with simple epidemic models using nothing more than an excel spreadsheet. They will learn how to critically read reports on epidemic models and to critically look at data, including reports generated for the pandemic in LA County and historical data from the 1918 pandemic. There will be class discussion about the ongoing pandemic and the impact of the disease on society as well as the impact of distancing measures.

COVID-19: Patterns and Predictions in Art and Nature

Instructor: Mike Hill

Subject Area: Mathematics

This term, we will also see how math can be used to describe social connections and relationships and how this can be used to help understand disease spread. Using cutting-edge resources from mathematicians at UCLA, we will describe how to understand some of the mathematical modeling tools used in the ongoing study of COVID-19.

By the end of the quarter, we will see that math is a useful language for describing and structuring the world, letting us simplify problems and getting a better understanding of why things work the way they do.

COVID-19: Self-Documenting Life - Writing Through the Senses During Quarantine

Instructor: Nina Eidsheim

Subject Area: Musicology

Course Description: In a time where we lack interpersonal jolts to the sensorium, this Fiat Lux seeks to consider and celebrate the smell, taste, sound, and texture of our homes and internal lives. In each meeting, we will together carry out experiments using everyday tools, such as the computer, paper/writing implements, scissors, elastics, and food items. Each class will include written reflections on the activities and about life in quarantine through a series of exercises that engage the senses in experimental and unexpected ways.

COVID-19: Biology of Stem Cells and its Application in Regenerative Medicine

Instructor: Gregorio Chazenbalk

Subject Area: Obstetrics and Gynecology

COVID-19: Pandemic! The collision of science, politics, and ethics

Instructor: Susanne Lohmann

Subject Area: Political Science

Course Description: This course explores the ethics of pandemics, with a focus on the clash of science and politics. Exploration of normative and empirical ethics using surveys and online games. Normative ethics includes empathy (good thing or bad thing for public policy?); who shall live and who shall die (ventilator triage); the implicit value of a human life (COVID-19 vs. the economy); justice-fairness concerns (disability, race, essential workers, the elderly); scientific uncertainty and disagreement (Great Barrington vs. John Snow declarations); the regulation of risk (vaccine trials). Empirical ethics includes empathy (instinctual or cultivated?); evolutionary psychology of risk; terror management theory; the social construction of nature; cross-cultural differences; party-political disagreement; the politicization of science and the scientization of politics; pandemic denialism and conspiracy theories; institutional failures (the nursing home hellscape); what went wrong?! (the Johns Hopkins Global Health Index Oct 2019 ranked the US number one in pandemic preparedness).

COVID-19: Communication, Kindness and Social Well-Being during COVID-19

Instructor: Lené Levy-Storms

Subject Area: Public Affairs

Course Description: Although it is a biological pathogen, COVID-19 affects everyone’s social and mental well-being, even if people have not contracted it. This seminar will explore how COVID-19 affects social aspects of our well-being, especially our ability to be kind, in the context of its physical and mental health aspects. Topics will be organized around the following five areas: 1) defining social well-being and kindness during COVID-19; 2) communication and social well-being and kindness during COVID-19; 3) COVID-19 research on social well-being & kindness; 4) current events related to social well-being & kindness during COVID-19; 5) strategies for improving and/or maintaining social well-being during COVID-19.

COVID-19: Physician-Patient Interaction in the Medical Visit

Instructor: Tanya Stivers

Subject Area: Sociology

Course Description: This course involves a look at how physicians and patients negotiate treatment with regard to 5 key public health problems in the US (and globally): upper respiratory problems (including COVID-19); overuse of opioids; non-adherence to chronic health care medication; obesity; and anti-vaccination. Each of these needs to be addressed through basic research, and each represents a major challenge to primary care physicians (internists, family practitioners and pediatricians). In this class, we will read articles, watch videos, or listen to pod casts each week regarding these problems and then spend class talking about these, guided by your discussion points.

Death and Mourning during COVID-19

Instructor: Stefan Timmermans

Subject Area: Sociology

Course Description: We will discuss how the current pandemic changed our understanding of a “good” and “bad” death and how at a time of social distancing people died and adapted funeral customs. We will examine some historical instances where pandemics and wars changed how Americans die and mourn.

COVID-19: Meditation in the Age of Coronavirus

Instructor: David Shorter

Subject Area: World Arts & Cultures

Course Description: Being socially isolating and quarantined provides an unique opportunity to reflect on our processes for handling adversity and solitude. This course addresses the reality of COVID’s effects on us as a society and as individuals. For years, Dr. Shorter has been teaching introduction to meditation, meditation for college students, and meditation for activists. In this REMOTE course, we will meet once a week to explore how meditation can help us.

COVID-19: Short Works of Franz Kafka, or How The Modern World Works

Instructor: Kathy Komar

Subject Area: Comparative Literature

Course Description: We will examine several of Kafka’s short stories and parables to see how Kafka describes the world of the early 20th Century. We will also ask whether this openness to the absurdity of the world gives us insight into our own 21st Century life in an age of pandemic. When we all wake up to find our worlds totally changed and ourselves transformed and confined, what can we learn from Gregor Samsa in “The Metamorphosis”?

COVID-19: Reading Albert Camus’s "The Plague" in the Era of COVID-19

Instructor: Maarten van Delden

Subject Area: Comparative Literature

Course Description: In August 2020, the Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud appeared in a cartoon in the French newsmagazine “Le Point” wearing a face mask in the form of a copy of Albert Camus’s 1947 novel “The Plague.” The point of this humorous illustration was not to suggest that Camus’s novel might provide literal protection against the coronavirus. Rather, it drew attention to the renewed interest in “The Plague” as a work that might help us think through the impact and implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this seminar, we will devote the first two weeks to a close reading of Camus’s classic novel, after which we will spend another two weeks examining a few of the numerous articles that came out in 2020 exploring the relevance of the novel for our own moment in time. In the final week of class, students will give a brief presentation addressing their experience of the pandemic and what they have learned from reading Camus and familiarizing themselves with the current debate surrounding his work.

COVID-19 Politics & Strategic Communication

Instructor: Georgia Kernell

Subject Area: Communication

Course Description: This course will examine how political parties, politicians, scientists, and the general public communicate about COVID-19. We will follow the news and discuss varying strategies to provide health information (and disinformation), increase vaccine awareness, and politicize health. We will focus on how varying media outlets provide different accounts of up-to-date COVID news, and we will examine how different groups in society benefit differentially from public health campaigns and vaccine availability.

Nursing Homes and COVID-19 -- An International Study of Long Term Care

Instructor: Kathleen McGarry

Subject Area: Economics

Course Description: The pandemic obviously had a devastating effect on the nursing home population in the United States. What did the situation look like globally? How are the elderly faring and what will happen with caregiving going forward? Will more resources be directed towards improving conditions in nursing homes? Or will adult children sacrifice their own time and careers to replace the formal sector previously employed to provide long-term care?

In this course the students will work with the instructor to select a handful of countries to examine the effect of Covid-19 on the frail elderly population, the general structure of long-term care, and the spill-over effects that caring for parents may have on outcomes for their adult children.

COVID-19 and Youth Sports in Japan and the US

Instructor: Sharon Traweek

Subject Area: Gender Studies

Course Description: Extracurricular school sports are important for millions of students in the US and Japan; many find there are physical, psychological, intellectual, and emotional benefits for the student athletes. The pandemic has disrupted youth sports since March 2020 in both countries. In fall 2020 schools reopened and scholastic sports resumed in Japan but only unevenly in the US. This Fiat Lux course examines school sports in the US and Japan during the pandemic and explores how the pandemic is reshaping the future of youth sports in each country. The academic approaches include Japan Studies, Gender Studies, Sports Studies, Disability Studies, Coaching Studies, and Education Studies. The expert perspectives include those of high school athletic directors, coaches, and teachers, as well as state-wide and national sports organizations’ policy making, journalism, plus youth athlete advocates. Students will meet with researchers, journalists, and coaches based in both places.

COVID-19: Developing a Mindful Compassion to Cope with Our Current Challenges

Instructor: Sara Melzer

Subject Area: Honors Collegium

COVID-19: Anything But Zoom (Kindness & Connection)

Instructor: Tara Prescott-Johnson

Subject Area: Honors Collegium

Course Description: Exploration of ways that students can talk, share, laugh, vent, and promote kindness despite challenges of social distancing and Zoom fatigue. Study strives to spread kindness in as many creative ways as possible, informed by readings about psychology of wellness, healthy practices in difficult times, and benefits of creativity. Students have opportunity to become pen pals through community partnership, and experiment each week with different so-called random act of kindness. Class does not meet in person or on Zoom. Instead, students spend asynchronous hour connecting with instructors and classmates, using different form of communication each week. Snail mail, Slack, Spotify, Discord, phone calls, messages in bottles, online games–students experiment with them all. Students complete multimedia assignments with goal of improving well-being of other people in community.

COVID-19: What Does Your Gut Tell You about Coronavirus

Instructor: Rana Khankan

Subject Area: Life Science

Course Description: Focus on consequences of pathogens as selective pressures in human biology and behavior. Exploration of connections between life sciences and social sciences through lens of COVID-19 pandemic. Review of gut microbiome diversity in relation to immune function and health. Comparison of infections that are associated with change in composition of gut microbiota. Exploration of role of microbiota in health and disease with emphasis on Sars-CoV-2. Students consider impact of pandemic on lifestyle, social behaviors, and health communication.

COVID-19: Cultivating Cultural Understanding through Music during the Pandemic

Instructor: Lily Chen-Hafteck

Subject Area: Music

Course Description: We are currently facing an unprecedented crisis. The pandemic has led to a rising racial discrimination and anti-Asian sentiment due to the origin of the virus in China. The Black Lives Matter movement has raised our attention to the inequalities that racial minorities of our nation have been facing for centuries. More than ever, we need to learn to understand and appreciate each other’s cultural backgrounds, and to be kind to each other despite our differences.
During the pandemic, we watched people singing from their balconies and families making music from videos. Music has provided a means of emotional expression and brought people in quarantine together. Research found that music has the capacity to promote empathy and cultural understanding. In this course, students will share their musical and cultural backgrounds to deepen understanding of each other. They will express their feelings on the current crisis through making music. They will come to realize how music can enhance awareness and understanding of people from diverse cultures.

COVID-19: Biology of Stem Cells and its Application in Regenerative Medicine

Instructor: Gregorio Chazenbalk

Subject Area: Obstetrics and Gynocology

COVID-19: Contemporary Issues in International Politics

Instructor: Leslie Johns

Subject Area: Political Science

Course Description: In this seminar, students will discuss contemporary issues in international politics, including the global coordination over the COVID-19 pandemic. As a common theme, we will focus on how interdependence between states can lead to coercive relationships. Each week will have a different topic, including the spread of internet and cell phone technologies, the international monetary and financial systems, energy interdependence, and foreign aid.

COVID-19 Politics & Strategic Communication

Instructor: Georgia Kernell

Subject Area: Political Science

COVID-19: The Ethics of Pandemics

Instructor: Susanne Lohmann

Subject Area: Political Science

Course Description: This course uses the pandemic to explore the clash of science, politics, and ethics (normative and empirical).

Normative ethics includes: empathy (counterproductive for public policy?); who shall live and who shall die (ventilator triage); the implicit value of a human life (COVID-19 vs. the economy); virtue ethics of health care workers vs. utilitarianism of public health officials; justice-fairness concerns (disability, race, essential workers, the elderly); scientific disagreement (Great Barrington vs. John Snow declarations); the regulation of risk (vaccine trials).

Empirical ethics includes: empathy (instinctual or cultivated?); evolutionary psychology of risk; terror management theory; moral disagreement about existential risk; social construction of nature; cross-cultural differences in reasoning about nature; party-political disagreement; politicization of science and scientization of politics; pandemic denialism and conspiracy theories; institutional failures (nursing home hellscape); what went wrong?! (Oct 2019 US ranked #1 in pandemic preparedness).

The Psychology of Successful Aging in Times of COVID

Instructor: Alan Castel

Subject Area: Psychology

Course Description: As we age, we accumulate knowledge and wisdom, but may be more forgetful. Most people think of aging in a negative way, and in terms of declines. COVID has presented challenges to older adults in a number of ways, and psychologically it can lead to increased levels of loneliness and anxiety, both for younger and older adults. However, there are many stereotypes about aging that are not true, and may be exacerbated during COVID. While some things may decline in old age, a better description of aging involves changes, and not simply decline. Our attitudes about aging can influence how well we age. People often report feeling younger than their chronological age, and there are many things we can do to stay sharp in older age. This seminar will cover topics such as happiness, memory, brain training, wisdom, humor, habits, retirement, and what constitutes successful aging during COVID. We will discuss cognitive, social, and emotional changes that happen with age, how people live and learn, and focus on what is important, especially during times of COVID.

Religion and Law in Contemporary America (COVID-19)

Instructor: Carol Bakhos

Subject Area: Study of Religion

Course Description: This course offers students an opportunity to probe the following questions: What is the relationship between religion, society, law and the individual? What does it mean to be religious in contemporary America? How has the secularization of society affected the role of religion in the life of the individual? To what extent is there a separation of Church and State? These complexly interrelated queries will afford us an opportunity to explore more fundamentally what it means to be religious, social and individual in 21st century America. | UPDATE: This course offers students an opportunity to probe the following questions: What is the relationship between religion, society, law and the individual? What does it mean to be religious in contemporary America? How has the secularization of society affected the role of religion in the life of the individual? To what extent is there a separation of Church and State? These complexly interrelated queries will afford us an opportunity to explore more fundamentally what it means to be religious, social and individual in 21st century America. The seminar will also focus on COVID and its impact on religion and law.

COVID-19: Kierkegaard and Fundamentals of Existentialism

Instructor: James Massengale

Subject Area: Scandinavian

Course Description: The difficult writings of the Danish philosopher and “kind of poet” Søren Kierkegaard constitute a singular labyrinth of pseudonyms and challenging points of view. Kierkegaard is often credited with being the “father of existentialism.” But as a convinced (not necessarily convincing) Christian author, his pseudonymic works create a path of “stages” leading toward – but not necessarily into Christian faith. Along the way, he challenges the reader to understand more deeply how to define his or her actions, and a comprehensive set of patterns emerges as a guide for existence. This is existentialism not as an abstract philosophical concept (although Kierkegaard is fully capable of such an abstraction) but as a completely practical matter: how am I to live my life? is the central idea behind all of Kierkegaard’s obfuscations and posturing. We will also explore if current issues – pandemic, January 6th Insurrection and Black Lives Matter movement are an “existential crisis,” as Kierkegaard defined it, and what we might do when faced with “existential” problems.

COVID-19: The Politics of the Pandemic

Instructor: Rogers Brubaker

Subject Area: Sociology

Course Description: This seminar will explore social and political aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Topics include the social shaping of the pandemic; changing forms of sociability; the politics of expertise; protests against Covid restrictions; pandemic-related inequalities; the culture and politics of masks; the politics of vaccines; and post-Covid futures.

COVID-19: The Promise and Perils of a Relational Society

Instructor: Rebecca Jean Emigh

Subject Area: Sociology

Course Description: Capitalism is in crisis, socialism holds few adaptable historical models, and no alternatives are in sight. What is the possibility of creating a relational society and economy, where human relations, fulfillment, and kindness are paramount? In this class, we explore some of the possibilities of implementing this sort of “relational” model. Sociological theory, in particular, advocates for a “relational view” that may provide useful models for multiple levels of analysis, including societal, organizational, and interpersonal. We consider, therefore, models of relationalism in sociology in the abstract, including theoretical models of society based on relationalism and models of human interaction based on kindness and compassion. Then, we turn to some concrete examples of phenomena that may have elements of these relational aspects. We try to evaluate whether or not these phenomena actually implement this relational model, including, for example, “sharing” economies, “calling in” (as an alternative to “calling out”), and “being nice.” We will also consider how to address our current health issues in a human, relational way./ Capitalism is in crisis, socialism holds few adaptable historical models, and no alternatives are in sight. What is the possibility of creating a relational society and economy, where human relations, fulfillment and kindness are paramount? In this seminar, we explore some of the possibilities of implementing this sort of “relational” model. Sociological theory advocates for a “relational view” that may be useful models for multiple levels of analysis, including societal, organizational, and interpersonal. We will consider models of relationalism in sociology in the abstract, including theoretical models of society based on relationalism and models of human interaction based on kindness and compassion. We then turn to some concrete examples of phenomena that may have elements of these relational aspects. We try to evaluate whether or not these phenomena actually implement this relational model, including, “sharing” economies, “calling in” (v.”calling out”) and “being nice.” We will also consider how to address our current health issues in a human, relational way.

COVID-19: The Politics of Vaccine Hesitancy and COVID-19

Instructor: Edward Walker

Subject Area: Sociology

Course Description: This Fiat Lux seminar builds from research in Sociology and Public Health to consider the politics of vaccine hesitancy and how such considerations may affect the uptake of any new vaccine(s) related to COVID-19.