Upper School Intersession 2025

Prepare to practice the art of politics in the Civic Mirror® political role-playing game. You will inhabit a country modeled after the U.S. and will have an opportunity to manage a business, run for office, and serve on a jury. If someone sues you or charges you with a crime, you will be put on trial. You will need to find a way to keep the members of your family alive (provide them with food, shelter, medical care, etc.) while pursuing your "hidden agenda" (secret goals). You will work through the real-life challenges and trade-offs necessary to enact legislation in a country where people's goals are often in conflict.

The climate crisis does not affect all people equally. In this session, we will cover how climate emergencies and extremes magnify pre-existing vulnerabilities, increasing migration and expanding health disparities. We will define three types of climate migrants who are arriving in the United States and evaluate the health risks that they face before, during, and after their migrations.

American society has become so politically divided that some people talk seriously about the possibility of a second civil war. How did a once united country get to this crisis point? As a journalist and cartoonist, David Horsey has observed the evolution of politics in the United States since the election of Ronald Reagan. With his political cartoons as satiric guideposts, he will lay out the descending path Americans have taken into the political chasm -- essential knowledge for anyone who wants to understand contemporary political life in the United States.

Museums curate and display human remains in order to research the past and to educate the public. But it has come to light that many of the individuals on display might not have considered the museum to be their ideal final resting place. Adding in individual and indigenous voices problematises the concept of curation of human remains, but many archaeologists see us on a path we can’t retreat from without radically changing the field. Museum visitors also expect to see skeletons, and most find it part of their education - and often inspires them to go into research of medicine. Additionally, ancient cultures and modern society have radically different views of the afterlife, consent, and burial practices that are often at odds with each other. In this session we’ll learn about and debate these differing views.

Key questions: How can we as curators and archaeologists balance these different value systems? Do the dead have a voice, and what would they argue for? What are some of the arguments for and against keeping human remains on a case-by-case basis? How can we develop more complex arguments than "I wouldn't want that to happen to my body" when all of our ideas of our bodies are different?

Part of a series: “Ethical issues in archaeology." Students are invited to attend one or more sessions in this series by Stacy.

In this session, we will be viewing images of ancient human remains and will be discussing death.

The Global Justice Center is a feminist human rights organization started by the late reproductive rights advocate Janet Benshoof. GJC’s mandate is to leverage international law to advance gender equality. Toward that end, GJC focuses on two main areas: advancing reproductive autonomy as an international human right and ensuring justice for mass atrocities involving sexual and gender-based crimes. Learn how Global Justice Center conducts this crucial work, including through innovative legal analysis, advocacy with governments, and press work. Signature campaigns--including to achieve a global convention on crimes against humanity, pierce pervasive impunity for widespread sexual and gender based crimes in Myanmar, and for access to safe abortion is a fundamental right--will be discussed.