One Course: All of biology in food and sex
For the past decade Professor of Biology Marty Condon has taught an introductory course that covers what she considers to be the majority of biology: food, sex, and evolution.
“All forms of life eat or consume and process energy,” Condon says. “In contrast, sex is not universal. Some forms of life reproduce without sex. Why be sexual? Sex is risky and complicated, but most humans, and many other forms of life, invest a lot in courtship and mating.”
Diversity: Evolutionary Perspective, also known as Food and Sex, answers some big and interesting questions. Like, why do bugs or people or plants eat what they do?
“Plants eat air and sunlight and water. It’s pretty amazing to me to think all of earth is based on sunlight, air, and water,” she says. “Food is how energy is harnessed and converted. And then you add the spices, and the spices are pretty much what plants make that deter animals and fungi. Most things that are spicy are also toxic.”
Condon has found so many good books by evolutionary biologists for the public that, rather than assigning a few, she offers six and allows the students to choose two—one from the food and one from the sex category. Every other day there’s a discussion session where students who read the same books discuss and summarize that book, then the groups share their summaries with the class.
See a full list of the textbooks
Among the books are “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human” by Richard Wrangham (2009) and “Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation” by Olivia Judson (2002). In recent years, at student requests, she added several books that veer from a traditional binary view of biology, including “Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People” by Joan Roughgarden (2004).
Chemistry and biochemistry and molecular biology major Ravi Parekh ’22 said he learned a lot about how food and sex evolved and how it’s been optimized for our bodies. He also benefited from the group discussion format.
“This class helped me develop an effective way to study and participate in discussions,” he says, adding, “Any class with Marty is rewarding because she invests all of her time for the students to succeed.”
Why would someone want to take this class? Well, as Condon says, “Who isn’t interested in either food or sex?”
