How is ritualized shaving practiced in religions as diverse as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity? What can our natural hair tell us about our ancestors, and what climates and environments they encountered? How can we better understand the election of Donald Trump and the defeat of Hillary Rodham Clinton by looking at their hair? This discussion-based seminar focuses on hair as our object of inquiry. Moving through such disciplines as art history, literature, genetics, religion, social psychology and popular culture studies, we will examine how hair is simultaneously so powerful that it can serve as a beacon to other people from a sub-culture, so representative that we must wrestle with our identity while we straighten, tease, perm, curl, cut and style it, and so basic that we can all relate to “bad hair days.”