Do you ever walk out fo a movie thinking how cool it'd be to be Batman's best friend? Or with a strong desire to be Hermione Granger? Has a character ever made you think of yourself differently? Online "which-character-are-you" quizzes are loads of fun, but what do they really reveal about who you are, if anything? This course aims to explore how we think of ourselves in the context of popular culture and then take a step into the beyond by trying to investigate what it all means. The class will be interactive and participation heavy--and a lot of fun!

Using modern government executive departments (EU, US, others) as a starting point, each class will collaborate to develop a utopian society. Students will be assigned roles as the "Minister of __" and determine ideal states for their department by working first individually and then with the other ministers. In this class you will gain practical experience with negotiation and policy making. The overall goal is to gain a better understanding of the role of citizens and government in society.

This discussion based course will open with a brief introduction to policy analysis. Topics will include modern frameworks for identifying and addressing market failures and knowledge assessment issues in policy considerations. The class will then use these frameworks to propose and discuss policies in sports and gender. Positions of major theorists will be introduced according to the flow of discussion. Possible discussion topics include: Should the pay gap between male and female athletes be regulated? How do national sports organizations decide which events to advertise? Could advertising policy be used to redistribute viewership? Does Title IX encourage schools to set up “cheap” sports for women’s teams? How are sex and gender defined scientifically versus socially and on which definition should policy rest? Is there a fundamental failure in sports policy by using binary standards to divide competition? Are there any limitations in our ability to scientifically inform decisions on how competitive sports divisions should be established? How can rational minds differ? How can we reconcile those differences?