KNOW courses are offered by the faculty of the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge at both the graduate and the advanced undergraduate levels.
For graduate students, we offer a number of cross-listed seminars as well as an annual core sequence in topics in the formation of knowledge (KNOW 401, 402, 403). These seminars are team-taught by faculty from different departments or schools and are open to all graduate students regardless of field of study. Graduate students who enroll in two quarters of this sequence are eligible to apply for the Dissertation Research Fellowships.
For undergraduate students, we offer courses cross-listed in departments and schools across the University, as well as unique courses taught by the Institute's Postdoctoral Scholars. To browse courses, search by department, quarter, academic year, or type in a keyword that interests you. In addition, the Institute launched the Experimental Capstone (XCAP) in 2018-19, team-taught courses for fourth-year undergraduate students interested in building upon their UChicago educational experience by adding practice, impact, and influence as important dimensions of their undergraduate work.
"The IFK was not something I discovered until my fourth year in the College, and I still wish I had engaged with it sooner. The IFK granted me the opportunity to explore social-scientific questions on how new technology impacts what we know, how we know, and the limitations to access to knowledge. The course I took at the IFK gave me the freedom to explore these questions in more depth than has been allowed in other courses I have taken during my undergraduate experience. The courses of study provided by the IFK are unable to be found in any single other major, and brings together students from across disciplines and programs to engage in unique discussion."
-- Undergraduate student, History and Sociology double major, Fourth Year
"Explorations of Mars provided me the rare opportunity to engage with students of different majors and with Mars-related pieces published across a wide range of disciplines. In our seminars and assignments, Professor Bimm challenged us to think through complex societal questions whose answers benefitted from each student's unique perspective. We were also empowered to equally utilize critical thinking, creativity, and imagination as analytical tools and to steer the discussion towards our own emerging concerns. Overall, this class provided an intellectual environment I've encountered nowhere else at UChicago: one that valued each student's voice, that immersed us in contemporary space issues, and that thrived on the multidisciplinary approaches central to IFK's mission."
MENTORING: "I have brought undergraduate and graduate students into my research projects. They learn about sociological research methods and have the opportunity to contribute to ongoing studies that investigate the politics of biomedical knowledge production. In the College Summer Institute (2023) I trained three undergraduate students in sociological methods, and they contributed to data collection and analysis for two projects. All three of these students stayed on to work as Quad Scholars in the 23-24 year." Dr. Melanie Jeske, 2022-24 IFK Postdoctoral Researcher at the Rank of Instructor
Colonizations 1
This course is the first part of a three-quarter core sequence that explores the centrality of
colonialism to the making of the modern world. Rather than treating contemporary geohistorical
units such as e.g. Europe, Africa, Asia or the Americas as having separate “histories” that have
only recently come to converge through so-called processes of “globalization”, this course places
specific emphasis on a long-time perspective on cross-cultural/societal connections. Readings
and discussions consider the changing dynamics of conquest, enslavement, and colonialism and
their reciprocal relationships to resistance, freedom, and political independence. The first quarter
(Colonization I) takes slavery, colonization, and the making of the Atlantic world as its central
thematic. The second quarter (Colonization II) emphasizes colonization in Asia and the Pacific,
giving special attention to the pre-modern Arab and Chinese empires, European and Japanese
colonialism, and decolonization in Asia. The third quarter (Colonizations III) focuses on
processes of decolonization and the emergence of the so-called Third World.
Narratives of American Religious History
How do we tell the story of religion in America? Is it a story of Protestant dominance? Of religious diversity? Of transnational connections? Of secularization? This course examines how historians have grappled with such questions. We will read the work of scholars who have offered narratives explaining American religious history, including figures like Sydney Ahlstrom, Albert Raboteau, Mark Noll, Ann Braude, Catherine Albanese, and Thomas Tweed. This course will introduce students to key historiographical questions in the study of American religion, as well as to classic texts which have shaped the field’s development.
Judaism, Medicine, and the Body
For centuries the “Jewish doctor” has existed as an archetype, but is there such a thing as Jewish medicine? Does Judaism teach a distinct approach to the body, illness, and healing? And more significantly, why should religion have anything to do with one’s health today? In this course we will grapple with our assumptions regarding modern Western medicine by discussing topics in Jewish medical thought and ethics. We will study how Judaism – its texts, history, laws, and traditions – intersect with issues of science, medicine, and the body. In particular we will think about how a Jewish approach to medicine, and more broadly a religious approach, might complicate contemporary assumptions about the body and healing. We will also consider how Jewish bodies have been imagined and stereotyped, and think about how that might affect Jewish approaches to disease and medical ethics. This course will thus offer students a way to think about alternatives to assumptions about medicine, the body, and ethics in the secular West, which will be explored both in class materials and in personal projects. No prior work in Jewish studies, medical ethics, or religious studies necessary.
Chinese Thought and The Good Life
This course examines the ideas of thinkers with vastly different responses to the question: What is the life well lived? In our study, we will focus on early China (5th century to 221 BCE), a seminal and vibrant period in Chinese thought. Some thinkers (such as “Laozi”) argue the good life is the simple one, others (Xunzi) insist that it is the life of achieved great intellectual, aesthetic, or moral ambition. Yet others argue that central to the life well lived are rich, nuanced, and strong ties to family (Confucius), acting on one’s developed intuitions (Mengzi), or developing one’s capacity to play in the moment whatever the circumstances (Zhuangzi). Two thinkers we will study focus on the means for making the social world supportive of a life that is good. Hanfeizi argues for the importance of well-defined, objective, enforced laws. Sunzi illuminates the art of war. We will explore topics such as notions of the self, conceptions of the greater cosmos, the role of rituals, ideas about human nature, and the tension between tradition and self-expression. The course includes lectures, class discussions, self-designed spiritual exercises, creating a class “Commentary” on the Analects, essays of varied lengths, and writers’ circles.
Hope in Theological, Philosophical, and Political Perspective
What is hope? What role does it play in our lives? What role can it play in our politics? Is it a virtue—theological or otherwise? When is hope problematic? What happens when people lose hope? To address questions like these, this course will consider a wide range of recent work on the topic, from authors including Gabriel Marcel, Josef Pieper, Adrienne Martin, Cheshire Calhoun, Katie Stockdale, Kelly Brown Douglas, and Michael Lamb.
Good Hands: Research Ethics
Basic research is intended to explore and evaluate truth claims at the edge of our understanding of the natural and physical world, and it is this very quality that renders it useful as science. Yet, this often creates significant ethical questions for the research as well as for the social order in which all research takes place. Often, courses in research ethics focus on the establishment and enforcement of canonical rules of behavior, where the goal is to inform the investigator about how to follow these established rules. This course will turn to a different set of problems in research ethics. While we will begin with a foundation in the history of research ethics, reviewing the key cases that shaped the policies about which we have consensus, (human and animal subject protections; authorship, etc.) will consider the problems about which there is not yet a clear ethical course: what are the limits of human mastery? Why is research deception so prevalent? Are there experiments which are impermissible and why? What is the obligation of the researcher toward their community? How can we think clearly and ethically in situations of deep uncertainty? We will consider how moral philosophy as well as theological arguments have shaped research science and reflect on the nature, goal and meaning of basic and translational research in modernity. Course Note: Required course for new MS program in Biological Sciences.
Islam Beyond the Human: Spirits, Demons, Devils, and Ghosts
This seminar explores the diverse spiritual and sentient lifeforms within Islamic cosmology that exist beyond the human—from jinn, angels, and ghosts to demons and devils. We will focus on theological, scientific, philosophical, anthropological, and historical accounts of these creatures across a variety of texts, as well as their literary and filmic afterlives in contemporary cultural representations. In so doing, we consider the various religious, social, and cultural inflections that shape local cosmological imaginaries. We ask how reflecting on the nonhuman world puts the human itself in question, including such concerns as sexuality and sexual difference, the boundaries of the body, reason and madness, as well as the limits of knowledge. PQ: Enrollment by Consent Only (for both grads and undergrads). Students should send the instructors a paragraph explaining their interest and prior preparation or familiarity with the themes in the course.
Money and Morality
In this course we will study anthropological perspectives on economic behaviors and the moral ideas that guide them. We will ask how material conditions and specific cultural contexts shape religious and moral attitudes towards the exchange of various things (e.g., human body parts, heirlooms, and commodity goods). This course will be of benefit to students interested in bringing the theoretical tools of economic anthropology to bear on the study of religious practice and ideology, as well as those more broadly interested in critical perspectives on capitalism and social theories of gift and commodity exchange. Students are expected to be adept at reading and applying social theory. PQ: Enrollment by Consent Only. Students must email the professor one to two paragraphs explaining how their academic interests and research relate to the course, and their level of preparedness to read and apply anthropological theory. Course Note: Undergraduates must petition to enroll.
Darwinism & Literature
Scientific and Humanistic Contributions to Knowledge Formation
In this course, we will explore whether the sciences and the humanities can make complementary
contributions to the formation of knowledge, thus leading to the integration and unification of human
knowledge. In the first part of the course we will take a historical approach to the issue; we will discuss
how art and science were considered complementary for much of the 18th and 19th century (for example,
in the views and work of Wolfgang Goethe), how they became separate (‘the two cultures’) in the
middle of the 20th century with the compartmentalization of academic disciplines, and how some
attempts have recently been made at a reunification under the concept of ‘consilience’. In the second
part of the course, we will focus on conceptual issues such as the cognitive value of literature, the role of
ideas in knowledge formation in science and literature, the role of creativity in scientific and literary
production, and how scientific and philosophical ideas have been incorporated into literary fiction in the
genre known as ‘the novel of ideas’. As an example of the latter, we will read the novel ‘One, No One,
and 100,000’ (1926) by Luigi Pirandello and discuss how this author elaborated and articulated a view
of the human persona (including issues of identity and personality) from French philosophers and
psychologists such as Henri Bergson and Alfred Binet.