ENROLL

Melinda Russell

This overview of the "interdisciplinary discipline" of American Studies will focus on the ways American Studies engages with and departs from other scholarly fields of inquiry. We will study the stories of those who have been marginalized in the social, political, cultural, and economic life of the United States due to their class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, citizenship, and level of ability. We will explore contemporary American Studies concerns like racial and class formation, the production of space and place, the consumption and circulation of culture, and transnational histories.

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: AMST 115.WL0 (Synonym 59463)

Adriana Estill

Ross Elfline

What does it mean to say that a work of art is “democratic?" For whom is art made? And who can lay claim to the title “artist?" These questions animate contemporary art production as artists grapple with the problems of broadening access to their works and making them more socially relevant. In this course we will consider the challenges involved in making art for a sometimes ill-defined “public.” Topics to be discussed include: activist performance art, feminism, public sculpture, the Culture Wars, queer visual culture, and the recent rise of social practice art.

Prerequisite: Any two Art History courses, or instructor permission

Extra Time Required

Jay Beck

This course is designed to explore the intersection between rock music and cinema. Taking a historical view of the evolution of the "rock film," this class examines the impact of rock music on the structural and formal aspects of narrative, documentary, and experimental films and videos. The scope of the class will run from the earliest rock films of the mid-1950s through contemporary examples in ten weekly subunits.

Held for new first year students, Extra Time Required, evening screens

Carol Donelan

After Americans grasped the enormity of the Depression and World War II, the glossy fantasies of 1930s cinema seemed hollow indeed. During the 1940s, the movies, our true national pastime, took a nosedive into pessimism. The result? A collection of exceptional films populated with tough guys and dangerous women lurking in the shadows of nasty urban landscapes. This course focuses on classic American noir as well as neo-noir from a variety of perspectives, including mode and genre, visual style and narrative structure, postwar culture and politics, and race, gender, and sexuality. Requirements include two screenings per week and several short papers.

Extra Time required. Evening Screenings.

Jeff Snyder

Held for new first year students

Anita Chikkatur

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: EDUC 110.WL0 (Synonym 58714)

Anita Chikkatur

This course will examine the intersection of immigration and education at all levels in rural communities in the U.S. with a site-specific focus on Faribault, MN. Through readings, primary document analyses, discussions, written assignments, and virtual dialogues with community collaborators, students will understand the challenges and opportunities in Faribault for people with refugee and immigrant backgrounds and for educators and community members working with those communities to create supportive contexts (including educational, social, economic, political) that meet the needs and aspirations of those communities.

Prerequisite: 100 or 200 level Educational Studies course or instructor consent

Kofi Owusu

We will explore developments in African American literature since the 1950s with a focus on literary expression in the Civil Rights Era; on the Black Arts Movement; on the new wave of feminist/womanist writing; and on the experimental and futuristic fictions of the twenty-first century. Authors to be read include Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Malcolm X, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, August Wilson, Charles Johnson, Ntozake Shange, Gloria Naylor, Suzan-Lori Parks, Kevin Young, and Tracy Smith.

Adriana Estill

The last few years have placed Latinx communities under siege and in the spotlight. The demands of the census and new policies around immigration mean that who counts as Latinx and why it matters has public visibility and meaning. Simultaneously, the last few years have seen an incredible growth of new literary voices and genres in the world of Latinx letters. From fictional and creative nonfiction accounts of detention camps, border crossings, and asylum court proceedings to lyrical wanderings in bilingualism to demands for greater attention to Afrolatinidad and the particular experiences of Black Latinxs--Latinx voices are rising. We will engage with current literary discussions in print, on twitter, and in literary journals as we chart the shifting, developing terrain of Latinx literatures. 

Kofi Owusu

Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one other 6 credit English course or instructor permission

Candace Moore

This course introduces students to foundational interdisciplinary works in sexuality and gender studies, while focusing on the construction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identities in the United States. In exploring sexual and gender diversity throughout the term, this seminar highlights the complexity and variability of experiences of desire, identification, embodiment, self-definition, and community-building across different historical periods, and in relation to intersections of race, class, ethnicity, and other identities.

Candace Moore

This capstone seminar reads representations of racial, gender, and sexual minorities in popular culture through the lenses of feminist, critical race, queer, and trans theories. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in the late 1980s to describe an approach to oppression that considered how structures of power act multiply on individuals based upon their interlocking racial, class, gender, sexual, and other identities. This seminar takes up the charge of intersectional analysis—rejecting essentialist theories of difference while exploring pluralities—to interpret diversity (or lack thereof) in forms of art and entertainment, focusing on film, TV, and digital media.

Prerequisite: Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies 110 or 212 or Cinema and Media Studies 110 or Women's and Gender Studies 110 or 112 or instructor consent

Meredith McCoy

Many Americans grow up with a fictionalized view of Indigenous people (sometimes also called Native Americans/American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians within the U.S. context). Understanding Indigenous peoples’ histories, presents, and possible futures requires moving beyond these stereotypes and listening to Indigenous perspectives. In this class, we will begin to learn about Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island and the Pacific through tribal histories, legislation, Supreme Court cases, and personal narratives. The course will focus on the period from 1887 to 2018 with major themes including (among others) agency, resistance, resilience, settler colonialism, discrimination, and structural racism.

Mike E Jirik

This course is a survey of early African American history. It will introduce students to major themes and events while also covering historical interpretations and debates in the field. Core themes of the course include migration, conflict, and culture. Beginning with autonomous African polities, the course traces the development of the United States through the experiences of enslaved and free African American women and men to the Civil War. The main aim of the course is for students to become familiar with key issues and developments in African American history and their centrality to understanding U.S. history.

Antony Adler

A two-credit course in which students work with faculty oversight to complete a variety of public history projects with community partners. Students will work on a research project requiring them to identify and analyze primary sources, draw conclusions from the primary source research, and share their research with the appropriate audience in an appropriate form. We meet once a week at Carleton to ensure students maintain professional standards and strong relationships in their work. Potential projects include educational programming, historical society archival work, and a variety of local history opportunities. 

Extra Time Required

George Vrtis

Annette Igra

Annette Igra

Was the Progressive Era progressive? It was a period of social reform, labor activism, and woman suffrage, but also of Jim Crow, corporate capitalism, and U.S. imperialism. These are among the topics that can be explored in research papers on this contradictory era. We will begin by reading a brief text that surveys the major subject areas and relevant historiography of the period. The course will center on the writing of a 25-30 page based on primary research, which will be read and critiqued by members of the seminar. 

Sharon Akimoto

This course prepares students to facilitate peer-led conversations about diversity in the Critical Conversations Program. Students learn about categories and theories related to social identity, power, and inequality, and explore how race, gender, class, and sexual orientation affect individual experience and communal structures. Students engage in experiential exercises that invite them to reflect on their own social identities and their reactions to difference, diversity, and conflict. Students are required to keep a weekly journal and to participate in class leadership. Participants in this class may apply to facilitate sections of IDSC 103, a 2-credit student-led course in winter term.

Application required, Only students with instructors consent allowed to register, Instructor Permission Required

Debby Walser-Kuntz

Prerequisite: Interdisciplinary Studies 236 required winter term

OCS Winter Break Public Health Program, Instructor Permission Required

Daniel Groll

This course examines a variety of topics in medical ethics. We begin with a unit on pandemic ethics: Who should get ventilators when there aren't enough for everyone? Do medical providers have a duty to treat during a pandemic? We then turn to the question "When is someone dead?" and consider how different answers to that question affect arguments over organ procurement. Our third unit is on the place of race, and racial judgments, in medicine. Is there a place for racial judgments in medicine? Finally, we turn to the question of how to think about decision making in a clinical context: what values are at play? And how should we think about disagreements between clinicians and patients? What about disagreements between patient's past wishes and their current wishes?

Kristin K. Lunz Trujillo

Barbara Allen

Our analysis of media influences on politics will draw from three fields of study: political psychology, political behavior and participation, and public opinion. Students will conduct a study of the effects of campaign ads and news using our multi-year data set of content analyzed election ads and news. We study a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods to learn how political communication affects U.S. elections. Taking this course in conjunction with Political Science 223 is highly recommended to learn methods such as focus group and depth interview methods and experiment design for conducting original research on elections.

Cross-listed with POSC 304.00

Barbara Allen

This lab is designed as a supplement research module for current or past students in Political Science 204, 205 and 305. Students previously enrolled in Professor Allen's Political Science 100 are also encouraged to enroll. We learn to conduct focus groups, depth interviews, content analysis, and experimental analysis using election news, ads, speeches, and debates (in the U.S. or other democracies) as our cases for analysis.

second 5 weeks

Tun Myint

What are the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic on global politics and public policy? How do state responses to COVID-19 as well as historical cases such as the Black Death in Europe, the SARS outbreak in East Asia and Middle East, and the Ebola outbreak in Africa help us understand the scientific, political, and economic challenges of pandemics on countries and communities around the world? We will apply theories and concepts from IR, political economy, and natural sciences to explore these questions and consider what we can learn from those responses to address other global challenges like climate change.

Extra Time Required

Barbara Allen

Our analysis of media influences on politics will draw from three fields of study: political psychology, political behavior and participation, and public opinion. Students will conduct a study of the effects of campaign ads and news using our multi-year data set of content analyzed election ads and news. We study a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods to learn how political communication affects U.S. elections. Students enrolled in the POSC 304 version will conduct more extensive analysis of data for their seminar papers. Taking POSC 304 in conjunction with Political Science 223 is highly recommended to learn methods such as focus group, depth interview methods, and experiment design for conducting original research on elections.

Cross-listed with POSC 204

Melanie Freeze

How have political parties shaped the distribution of power and political landscape in the United States? This course explores theories of political party development, third-party dynamics in a two-party system, and the rise of ideological and party polarization in the United States. We will engage with scholarly debates that grapple with the extent and implications of polarization in the American case at all levels of government, in the electorate, and in interpersonal interactions.

Caleb S Hendrickson

How can we best understand the role of religion in the world today, and how should we interpret the meaning of religious traditions -- their texts and practices -- in history and culture? This class takes an exciting tour through selected themes and puzzles related to the fascinating and diverse expressions of religion throughout the world. From politics and pop culture, to religious philosophies and spiritual practices, to rituals, scriptures, gender, religious authority, and more, students will explore how these issues emerge in a variety of religions, places, and historical moments in the U.S. and across the globe.

Michael McNally

Liz Raleigh

Are Asian Americans forever foreigners or honorary whites? This class introduces you to the sociological research on Asian Americans. We begin by a brief introduction of U.S. immigration history and sociological theories about assimilation and racial stratification. Paying particular attention to how scholars ask questions and evaluate evidence, we will cover research on racial and ethnic identity, educational stratification, mass media images, interracial marriage, multiracials, transracial adoption, and the viability of an Asian American panethnic identity. The course will examine the similarities and differences among Asian Americans relative to other minority groups when applicable.

Held for new first year students

Ahmed S Ibrahim

The state of Minnesota, like the rest of the U.S., has been formed by the migration and settlement of peoples from across the world at different historical moments. Though often hidden from public view, the state is home to peoples with diverse cultural and religious practices, making Minnesota a microcosm of the global. This course will provide an anthropology of Minnesota by examining the different migration histories and experiences of Minnesota’s varied population groups. Through a study of the making of Minnesota and its population groups, the course will examine borders and movement from a global and historical perspective, as well as explore the presence of different cultural and religious groups in Minnesota and the social relations they form. This course will help students see Minnesota and the people that call it home in new ways.

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: SOAN 151.WL0 (Synonym 59005)