ENROLL

Meredith L McCoy

Indigenous Studies is both a body of content knowledge and a research methodology. This course provides an overview of the history of exploitative research dynamics between universities and Indigenous peoples while exposing students to alternative methodologies that center Indigenous perspectives and research priorities. Students will discuss what it means to be an ethical research partner as they learn about decolonizing and Indigenous research strategies. This course brings together ideas from History, Anthropology, Law, Public Health, Education, Literature, Art, and Social Work to evaluate studies relating to Indigenous peoples for their methods, contributions, and ethics.

Jeff A Snyder

Prerequisite: 100 or 200-level Educational Studies course or instructor permission

Extra Time Required

Nancy J Cho

Nancy J Cho

This course examines work by U.S. playwrights of color from the 1950s to the present, focusing on questions of race, performance, and self-representation. We will consider opportunities and limitations of the commercial theater, Off-Off Broadway, ethnic theaters, and non-traditional performance spaces. Playwrights may include Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange, Luis Valdez, Cherrie Moraga, August Wilson, David Henry Hwang, Philip Gotanda, Maria Irene Fornes, Anna Deavere Smith, and Chay Yew. We will watch selected film adaptations and attend a live performance when possible. 

Serena R Zabin

Far from being a single entity, America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a world of vibrant, polyglot, globally linked, and violent societies. In this course we will learn how the enslavement of Africans and Native Americans created a state of war that bridged Europe, America, and Africa. We will examine how indigenous resistance to European settlement reshaped landscapes and cultures. We will focus throughout on the daily lives of the women and men who created and shaped the vast world of early America.

Andy A Flory

A survey of American music with particular attention to the interaction of the folk, popular, and classical realms. No musical experience required.

Deborah Appleman, Ronald Rodman, Melinda Russell

Music has a long, ugly history as a tool for the transmission of racism, and a vital one as a weapon against it. We will survey important instantiations at the intersections of music and racism in blackface minstrelsy, western classical music, Dalit music, Albinism, the U.S. national anthem, white nationalism, and the anti-apartheid movement, among others. Centering racism and antiracism, we will investigate the careers and musical output of five musicians: Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, Hazel Scott, Charity Bailey, and Janelle Monae. Students will complete an original guided research project on a topic of their choice. No musical experience required.

Eddie E O'Byrn

The struggle of freedom against forms of alienation is both a historical and contemporary characteristic of Black/African-American philosophy. In this course we will explore how a variety of Black/African-American philosophers theorize these concepts. The aim of the course is to both offer resources for familiarizing students with African-American philosophers and develop an appreciation for critical philosophical voices in the Black intellectual tradition. The course will range from slave narratives, reconstruction, and civil rights to contemporary prison abolitionism, intersectionality, and afro-pessimism. The texts of the course will include: Angela Davis’ Lectures on Liberation, Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells Southern Horrors, George Yancy’s African-American Philosophers 17 Conversations, and Afro-Pessimism: An Introduction. As well as select articles from historical and contemporary Black/African-American philosophers.

Kristin K Lunz Trujillo

Thomas R Hanson

In this section of three related five-week courses, we will study the role of diplomacy as a component of U.S. statecraft.  An active and informed diplomacy can help achieve international cooperation in the face of shared global threats, while helping to forestall conflict and forwarding U.S. national interests. Yet in recent decades, diplomacy has often been overshadowed by military intervention and economic sanctions as a tool of power. We will discuss the history of diplomacy, including the specific traditions of U.S. diplomatic practice. Using case studies taken from current issues, we will assess how diplomacy functions in practice and reflect on the future role of diplomats in a world of dramatic change. Course modalities will include focused readings, active class discussion, and short papers.

1st five week

Kimberly K Smith

Kristin K Lunz Trujillo

In recent years we have heard a lot about “identity politics.” This course aims to answer the question, why do people form group-based identities and how do they impact mass political attitudes and behavior? Using examples from American politics, we will examine the psychological underpinnings of identity and group-based affiliations as well as their political consequences. In doing so, we will explore how bias, prejudice, and social hierarchy are formed, maintained, and changed. Such evaluations will be based on discussions of various dominant and minority group identities including partisanship, race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and place. 

Barbara Allen

This course will look at the contemporary debate in multiculturalism in the context of a variety of liberal philosophical traditions, including contractarians, libertarians, and Utilitarians. These views of the relationship of individual to community will be compared to those of the communitarian and egalitarian traditions. Research papers may use a number of feminist theory frameworks and methods.

Sharon A Akimoto

Prerequisite: Psychology 110 or instructor permission. Psychology 256 or 258 recommended

Michael D McNally

The American landscape is rich in sacred places.  The religious imaginations, practices, and beliefs of its diverse inhabitants have shaped that landscape and been shaped by it. This course explores ways of imagining relationships between land, community, and the sacred, the mapping of religious traditions onto American land and cityscapes, and theories of sacred space and spatial practices. Topics include religious place-making practices of Indigenous, Latinx, and African Americans, as well as those of Euro-American communities from Puritans, Mormons, immigrant farmers.

Liz Y Raleigh

Prerequisite: Prior Sociology/Anthropology course or instructor permission