Senior Seminar Health Studies

Catalog description

Required culminating seminar, which integrates the three tracks of the Health Studies minor. Students share and critically assess their own and fellow students' ongoing work to communicate across disciplines and understand the value and interconnectedness of different disciplinary approaches. Students present and defend their semester-long collaborative projects at the end of the course. Current topic description: For decades, the concepts of 'self' and 'nonself' have played a central role immunology. The self-nonself framework defines the biological individual as having an immune system that evolved to target and eliminate pathogens (e.g. viruses and bacteria). However, it is now clear that the immune system performs many important functions in addition to defense. Recent discoveries reveal vital roles for the immune system in development, organismal homeostasis, and tissue repair. In addition, the discovery of a robust and actively tolerated microbiome reveals that the immune system does not target all nonself cells for destruction. This seminar will provide a forum for critical discussion of pressing challenges that confront the field, with an emphasis on how conceptual theories hold potential to advance or stifle progress in the field of immunology. We will begin the semester with a broad introduction to the origins of modern immunology. Subsequent topics will include: mechanisms and conceptions of self-nonself discrimination; how the immune system helps build and maintain the central nervous system; the gut microbiota and concepts of self-nonself; CRISPR/Cas-gene editing and the concept of a "new human"; the immune self and immunotherapy; autoimmunity and natural modes of immunosuppression. One three-hour seminar meeting per week. Fulfills the capstone requirement for the Health Studies minor.