Tag Archive: Shopping Period

  1. Shopping Period Dispatch: Finding love in developing countries

    Leave a Comment

    Good looks, good humor, the ability to do multivariable calculus — these are all things Yalies look for in potential boyfriends or girlfriends. But Rakesh Mohan ’71, former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and a Jackson Institute fellow, had different priorities when he began dating his wife, he told students in his course called “Economic Performance and Challenges in India.”

    Rakesh explained that before India’s economy began making major strides, the small number of phone companies in the country forced people to wait many years before receiving phones, so he decided to pursue another option.

    “I found someone who had a phone,” he said, “and I married her.”

    He added that his wife only married him because he owned a gas cylinder, which were also in low supply. Together, the couple could both communicate with their friends and cook in the kitchen.

    The course meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:30 AM in Luce Hall, room 101.

  2. Shopping Period Dispatch: A new lineup for Gateway to Global Affairs

    Leave a Comment

    The lineup of guest lecturers for “Gateway to Global Affairs,” a survey lecture course open to all students, will feature military leaders from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and an expert on the HIV/AIDS crisis worldwide.

    The course, now in its second year of being offered, will again be taught in separate modules led by the guest lecturers, Jackson Institute Director Jim Levinsohn told the News earlier this week. But with three of the four lecturers new to the course this year, Levinsohn added that the course’s content will be “totally different.”

    The course will begin with a six-week module on the Middle East and Iraq, co-taught by ret. General Stanley McChrystal and Graeme Lamb, the retired British Army lieutenant-general who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    “[Lamb] and McChrystal are going to do six weeks on essentially what a Yale College undergrad should know about the Middle East or Iraq,” Levinsohn said. “I think this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for our students to hear about Iraq and Afghanistan from the guys that ran the war.”

    In the second, three-week module, journalist and business executive Sheryl WuDunn will discuss “Soft Power Diplomacy” by primarily focusing on the relationship between the United States and China. Some of her readings are based on the book on the global oppression of women that she co-wrote with husband, journalist Nicholas Kristof, Levinsohn said.

    The final module will feature the only returning lecturer from last year, Nicoli Nattrass, who will deliver three weeks of lectures on responses to the AIDS epidemic. The decision to bring Nattrass back for the course was based on positive evaluations and interviews with students, Levinsohn said.

    “It ought to be pretty amazing,” Levinsohn said of the course.

  3. Shopping Period Dispatch: Great big number of students turn out for Great Big Ideas

    Leave a Comment

    Students interested in taking the Great Big Ideas seminar were disappointed when 300 people showed up for the 18 person seminar. The class, originally intended to be held in the Timothy Dwight D23 classroom, was hastily moved to the TD dining hall. As the tables, balcony, and common room filled with people, Provost Peter Salovey was seen laughing incredulously with co-teacher Adam Glick ’82.

    Great Big Ideas is an experimental seminar from the Floating University designed by Glick to be “radical” and interdisciplinary in nature. Students will watch hour-long, previously filmed lectures from big name professors, then discuss the “great big ideas” brought forth by the lecturers during the seminar.

    Salovey and Glick indicated that preferential selection will occur, with sophomores and freshmen in either Morse or TD being the most likely to gain entrance to the class. Seniors and juniors left the class in a group of around 100 people once this was announced.

    The application forms were handed out in class and asked for basic information, why students were interested in taking the course, and of seven things (i.e., things normally grouped in sevens dwarves, days, seas) which was their favorite and why.

    Great Big Ideas meets in TD D23 on Wednesdays from 3:30 p.m. to 5:15 p.m..

  4. Shopping Period Dispatch: Bloom’s busy Bard class

    Leave a Comment

    Prospects for getting into iconic literary critic Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare course look grim, as nearly 60 people showed up today to compete for only 12 slots. Bloom said he was sorry to have to turn away eager shoppers, but at age 81 — his 56th year teaching! — feels a smaller class is best.

    “I always feel wretched about this every year,” he said of narrowing down applicants.

    For those lucky dozen who get to show up to his class next week, class discussions will revolve around Shakespeare’s late masterworks, including “King Lear,” “Macbeth,” “A Winter’s Tale” and “The Tempest.” The class will also investigate one of Shakespeare’s last pieces of writing in “The Two Noble Kinsman,” Acts I and V, which Bloom described as Shakespeare’s “most savage.” The last class is customarily held at Bloom’s house.

    Applicants will be notified of their status this evening by around 6 p.m., before Bloom sits down to dine with his wife. Those turned down need not despair — there’s always his poetry class.

  5. Shopping period is here

    Leave a Comment

    Fall 2011 term classes began this morning at 8:20 a.m. (early, right?), which means we’re officially in shopping period. These coming days will be about overcrowded seminars and online section enrollment. Though they might be hectic, we want to encourage you to keep in touch with us as you run around campus. Did a professor say something particularly hilarious or controversial? Was one lecture just so packed you couldn’t even get in the door? We can’t be everywhere at once, but we want to be, so email when you notice something you think might interest us. And keep checking Cross Campus.