ENROLL

Ahmed Ibrahim

Central to diasporic identity formation and imagination is the simultaneous belonging to a multiplicity of places. For black diasporic subjects, struggles against oppression and for new political futures inspire transgression against normative political boundaries. This class explores the role of place and politics in the making of the black diaspora in Europe and the Americas. It emphasizes the intellectual and political connections and the sense of shared identity and destiny. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this course will offer a global history of race, identity, and politics through the lens of the black diaspora.

Zaki Haidar

Prerequisite: Arabic 206 or equivalent

Ross Elfline, Jessica Keating

Jay Beck

This course is designed to introduce students to recent film history, 1970-present, and the multiple permutations of cinema around the globe. The course charts the development of national cinemas since the 1970s while considering the effects of media consolidation and digital convergence. Moreover, the course examines how global cinemas have reacted to and dealt with the formal influence and economic domination of Hollywood on international audiences. Class lectures, screenings, and discussions will consider how cinema has changed from a primarily national phenomenon to a transnational form in the twenty-first century.

Extra Time required. Evening Screenings.

Cecilia Cornejo

This course explores the relevance and influence of documentary films by closely examining the aesthetic concerns and ethical implications inherent in these productions. We study these works both as artistic undertakings and as documents produced within a specific time, culture, and ideology. Central to our understanding of the form are issues of technology, methodology, and ethics, which are examined thematically as well as chronologically. The course offers an overview of the major historical movements in documentary film along more recent works; it combines screenings, readings, and discussions with the goal of preparing students to both understand and analyze documentary films.

Extra Time Required, weekly evening in-person screenings Tuesdays

Mihaela Czobor-Lupp

Have you just returned from Asia, Africa, Europe, or South America? This course is an excellent way to keep in touch with the culture (and, when appropriate, the language) you left behind. Relying on magazines and newspapers around the world, students will discuss common topics and themes representing a wide array of regions. You may choose to read the press in the local language, or read English-language media about your region, meeting once each week for conversational exchange. (Language of conversation is English.)

Prerequisite: Students must have participated in an off-campus study program (Carleton or non-Carleton) or instructor permission

Eva Posfay

Scott Carpenter

The work of Cross-Cultural Studies traverses many disciplines, often engaging with experiences that are difficult to capture in traditional formats. In this course students will create an ePortfolio that reflects, deepens, and narrates the various forms of cross-cultural experience they have had at Carleton, drawing on coursework and off-campus study, as well as such extra-curricular activities as talks, service learning, internships and fellowships. Guided by readings and prompts, students will write a reflective essay articulating the coherence of the parts, describing both the process and the results of their pathway through the minor. Considered a capstone for CCST, but for anyone looking to thread together their experiences across culture. Course is taught as a workshop. 

Shaohua Guo

This course invites students to critically examine digital media technologies in relation to social change, cultural innovation, and popular entertainment. Drawing on literature from media, literary, and cultural studies, the course engages in topics such as new media institutions, Internet businesses, global activism, gender and sexuality, and mobile applications. Special attention is paid to the implications that digital media bring forth within particular social and historical contexts, as well as the ways in which the Internet serves as the site for the negotiation of various political, economic, and cultural forces. In translation.

In translation

Alex Knodell

This course explores the archaeology and art of the Ancient Greek world. Beginning with prehistory, we will track the development of the material culture of Ancient Greece through the Classical and Hellenistic periods, and conclude by discussing aspects of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires that followed. We will focus throughout on aspects of archaeological practice, material culture and text, art and society, long-term social change, and the role of the past in the present.

Jake Morton

This class will investigate how Rome rose from a humble village of outcasts and refugees to become the preeminent power in the entire Mediterranean. We will trace Rome's political evolution from kings to the Republic, alongside their gradual takeover of the Italian peninsula. We will study how Rome then swiftly overpowered what had been the most powerful kingdoms in the Mediterranean and established themselves as dominant. Who were these Romans and what were their political, military, religious, and social systems that enabled them to accomplish so much? What critical events shaped their development and ultimately led to total political control of the Mediterranean world? Students who previously took Classics 228 cannot take Classics 240.

Eduard Storm

The course provides an historical perspective on financial bubbles and crashes and critically examines theories of financial crises. The course will look at the long history of financial crises to highlight recurring themes and to try to determine, among other things, what went wrong, what elements precede most crises, and which responses were effective.

Prerequisite: Economics 110 and 111

Pierre Hecker

1st 5 weeks

Pierre Hecker

Shakespeare’s plays have been reimagined and repurposed all over the world, performed on seven continents, and translated into over 100 languages. The course explores how issues of globalization, nationalism, translation (both cultural and linguistic), and (de)colonization inform our understanding of these wonderfully varied adaptations and appropriations. We will examine the social, political, and aesthetic implications of a range of international stage, film, and literary versions as we consider how other cultures respond to the hegemonic original. No prior experience with Shakespeare is necessary.

2nd 5 weeks

Kofi Owusu

Our focus will be on contemporary writers who tend to localize the global and/or globalize the local in their decidedly textured fiction and nonfiction published since 2001. Selected writers include Zinzi Clemmons, Ta-Nehisi Coates, J.M. Coetzee, Junot Diaz, Esi Edugyan, Nuruddin Farah, Yaa Gyasi, Dinaw Mengestu, Chigozie Obioma, and Zadie Smith.

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

Paul Petzschmann

This course explores the role of the nation and nationalism within modern Europe and the ways in which ideas and myths about the nation have complemented and competed with conceptions of Europe as a geographic, cultural and political unity. We will explore the intellectual roots of nationalism in different countries as well as their artistic, literary and musical expressions. In addition to examining nationalism from a variety of disciplinary perspectives--sociology, anthropology, history, political science--we will explore some of the watershed, moments of European nationalism such as the French Revolution, the two world wars, and the Maastricht treaty.

Sandra Rousseau

Through texts, images and films coming from different continents, this class will present Francophone cultures and discuss the connections and tensions that have emerged between France and other French speaking countries. Focused on oral and written expression this class aims to strengthen students’ linguistic skills while introducing them to the academic discipline of French and Francophone studies. The theme will be school and education in the Francophone world.

Prerequisite: French 204 or equivalent

Cherif Keita

Keep up your French while learning about current issues in France, as well as world issues from a French perspective. Class meets once a week for an hour. Requirements include reading specific sections of leading French newspapers, (Le Monde, Libération, etc.) on the internet, and then meeting once a week to exchange ideas over coffee with a small group of students.

Prerequisite: French 204 or instructor approval

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: FREN 210.WL0 (Synonym 59272)

Cherif Keita

Born as a response to the colonial gaze (ethnographic films, in particular) and ideological discourse, African cinema has been a determined effort to capture and affirm an African personality and consciousness. Focusing on film production from Francophone Africa and its diaspora over the past few decades, this course will address themes such as slavery, colonialism, and national identity, as well as the immigrant experience in France and in Quebec. It will provide an introduction to African symbolisms, world-views, and narrative techniques.

Prerequisite: French 204 or equivalent

Sandra Rousseau

Persepolis, Syngue Sabour, Le rocher de Tanios—three prize-winning texts written in French by authors whose native tongue was not French but Arabic or Farsi. In this class we will direct our attention to the close—albeit problematic—relations between France and the Middle East (broadly considered) through an analysis of cultural and literary objects. What has this “French connection” meant for the Middle-Eastern and for French culture?

Prerequisite: One French course beyond French 204 or instructor permission

Juliane Schicker

In this course, we survey significant developments in German-language culture, broadly defined, from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century. Students of all disciplines and majors are invited to receive an overview of the music and culture of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, starting in the 1750s and tracing its impact into the present time. The course includes literature, film, music, language, history, habits, news, etc., and surveys major figures, movements, and their influence on the world’s civilization. The course encourages critical engagement with the material at hand and provides the opportunity to compare it with the students’ own cultural background. Taught in English.

In Translation

Seth Peabody

Over the past few years, Germany has been touted as the new leader of Europe, or even of the “free world,” and at the same time has seen a surge of bitter political division within its borders. The Berlin Wall fell thirty years ago, yet tensions between East and West remain stark. Chancellor Angela Merkel implemented an open-arms policy toward refugees, yet the extremist AfD party has orchestrated a troubling rise to power based on xenophobic sentiments. And while Germany has emerged as a global environmental leader, it has simultaneously faced passionate protest from its own youth regarding failure to meet the challenges of climate change. In this class, we examine the complexities behind these seeming contradictions in contemporary Germany by analyzing diverse texts ranging from political speeches to poetry slams. Taught in German; advanced grammar review supports analytical tasks.

Prerequisite: German 204 or equivalent

Meera Sehgal

In this course we will examine whether there are feminist and/or queer ways of knowing, the criteria by which knowledge is classified as feminist and the various methods used by feminist and queer scholars to produce this knowledge. Some questions that will occupy us are: How do we know what we know? Who does research? Does it matter who the researcher is? How does the social location (race, class, gender, sexuality) of the researcher affect research? Who is the research for? What is the relationship between knowledge, power and social justice? While answering these questions, we will consider how different feminist and queer studies researchers have dealt with them.

William North

In Late Antiquity (200-800 CE), certain men and women around the Mediterranean and beyond came to occupy a special place in the minds and lives of their contemporaries: they were known as holy men and women or saints. What led people to perceive someone as holy? What were the consequences of holiness for the persons themselves and the surrounding societies? When they intervene in their worlds, what are their sources of authority and power?  How did these holy figures relate to the established institutions--secular and religious--that surrounded them?  Working with a rich array of evidence, we will explore themes such as asceticism, embodied and verbal pedagogy, wealth and poverty, work, marginality, cultural difference, and protest/resistance. We will journey from the lands of Gaul, Italy, and Spain to North Africa and Egypt and the Holy Land, to Armenia and the Fertile Crescent.

Extra Time Required

Seungjoo Yoon

This course tackles an evolving meaning of democracy and sovereignty in postwar Japan shaped by the transformative power of its social movements. We will place the anti-nuclear movement and anti-base struggles of the 1950s, the protest movements against revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of the 1960s, and environmentalist movements against the U.S. Cold War projects in Asia to see how they intersect with the worldwide “New Left” movements of the 1960s. Topics include student activism, labor unionism, Marxist movements, and gangsterism (yakuza). Students will engage with political art, photographs, manga, films, reportage, memoirs, autobiographies, interview records, novels, and detective stories.

Seungjoo Yoon

How are rumors generated and transmitted in a period of high anxiety like disaster? Do rumors and anxiety reciprocate? How do rumors enhance existing stereotypes and prejudices of people? Why do rumors arise in a society that suffers from inadequate information or the complete cutoff in communication? This course classifies the types and nature of rumors at the time of making modern East Asia. Thematically, it examines the interplay between wartime science, environmental conditions, and societal capacities in modern Japan, Korea, and China. Topics include rumor panics generated by epidemic, water pollution, atomic bomb, famine politics, industrial toxins, and lab leaks. 

Jennifer L Schaefer

This course analyzes constructions of gender and sexuality in Latin America from the pre-colonial and colonial periods through nation building in the nineteenth century and globalization in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Drawing on sources including testimonies, legal documents, memoirs, and art, it considers how social, political, and economic structures created unequal power relations as well as how individuals moved within these frameworks, at times even challenging them. In particular, it explores how the racial and ethnic inequalities created through conquest, colonialism, and slavery both shaped and were shaped by gender and sexuality, as well as how these inequalities persisted.

David Tompkins

Brendan LaRocque

While Islam in popular thought is often associated solely with the Arab world, in reality eighty percent of the world’s Muslim population is not of Arab ethnicity.  The countries of South Asia--particularly India, Pakistan and Bangladesh--are collectively home to the largest number of Muslims. After examining the early background of the appearance and growth of Islamic societies and governments, we will explore the rich history of the expansion of Islam into the Indian subcontinent. We will take account of the role of trade and conquest in the early centuries of Islamic expansion and study the development of specifically Indian forms of Islam. The nature and impact of the Indo-Islamic empires will receive our attention, as will the interaction of Muslims with non-Muslim communities in medieval and early modern India. This will be followed by a look at the period of colonial rule, and an analysis of the specific historical contexts that gave rise to specific religious nationalist movements. We will then trace out how, once established, these movements developed according to their changing relationships to national liberation movements, secularism, state administrative systems, global economic shifts, and changing social demands. 

Adeeb Khalid

Through readings in primary sources in translation, we will discuss the major intellectual and cultural movements that have influenced Muslim thinkers from the nineteenth century on. Topics include modernism, nationalism, socialism, and fundamentalism.

Prerequisite: At least one prior course in the history of the Middle East or Central Asia or Islam

Not open to first year students. First year students should register in HIST 267.

Clara Hardy, Timothy Raylor

We will meet once a week to read and discuss Books 3-5 of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War in Thomas Hobbes’s famed translation of 1628 (subsequent books will be discussed in the course offered in the Spring term). We will attend to the literary art and to the political and social contexts of the original Greek, as well as to Hobbes’s recontextualization of it to the England of the 1620s. This bifocal approach may provoke insights into our current predicament. 

Kevin P Mulholland

What is a book?  The answer—from a nineteenth century Japanese perspective—may surprise you. This course looks at how the Japanese woodblock-printed book is the site of colliding worlds of creative, political, social, and technological challenges. The course materials will be both in translation and physical access to real historical examples. As a hands-on approach, the class will design and publish its own woodblock-printed book.  No Japanese language is required.

In translation

Kevin P Mulholland

How have the Japanese responded to COVID-19?  By looking at newspaper articles, news videos, blogs, poems, manga, and other visual and verbal media sources, we will understand how the Japanese peoples are understanding and coping with the dramatic shifts in society caused by the pandemic. Students are encouraged to use their own localized experiences as a starting point for discussing and researching the Japanese responses. 

Prerequisite: Japanese 206 or equivalent

Jake Morton

Julius Caesar spent ten years campaigning in Gaul before being called back to Rome to face a splintered Republic and protracted Civil War. Caesar wrote fascinating accounts of both these wars, going beyond tactics to include ethnography, allegories of the Roman Republic in foreign societies, and analysis of why and how the civil war erupted and who was responsible. We will read significant portions of Caesar's Gallic War and Civil War, as well as writings about Caesar by contemporaneous authors. Caesar's elegant and clear prose belies a complex explanation and justification of the collapse of the Republic.

Prerequisite: Latin 204 or equivalent

Seth Peabody

This class introduces students to the various theoretical frameworks and the many approaches scholars can use when analyzing a text (whether this text is a film, an image, a literary piece or a performance). What do words like ‘structuralism,’ ‘ecocriticism,’ 'cultural studies,' and ‘postcolonial studies’ refer to? Most importantly, how do they help us understand the world around us? This class will be organized around interdisciplinary theoretical readings and exercises in cultural analysis.

Prerequisite: At least one 200- or 300-level course in Literary/Artistic Analysis (in any language) or instructor permission

Gao Hong

The ensemble will use indigenous instruments and a Chinese approach to musical training in order to learn and perform music from China. In addition to the Wednesday meeting time, there will be one sectional rehearsal each week.

Prerequisite: Previous experience in a music ensemble, Chinese Musical instruments or instructor permission

Jay Johnson

Prerequisite: Music 199 and/or instructor permission

Allison Murphy

Are human beings radically individual and atomic by nature, political animals, or something else? However we answer that question, what difference does it make for our understanding of the ways in which larger political communities come into existence and are maintained? In this course we will explore these and related questions while reading two of the most foundational works in political theory, Plato’s Republic and Hobbes’s Leviathan, as well as several contemporary pieces influenced by these thinkers.

Douglas Marshall

This course offers an introduction to major aspects of European theories of being and knowledge during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Key topics to be examined include:  the distinction between the mind and the body; the existence and nature of God; the relationship between cause and effect; the scope and nature of human knowledge. We will place a special emphasis on understanding the philosophical thought of René Descartes, Anne Conway, G. W. Leibniz, and David Hume. Two themes will recur throughout the course: first, the evolving relationships between philosophy and the sciences of the period; second, the philosophical contributions of women in the early modern era.

Kent Freeze

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: POSC 120.WL0 (Synonym 58831)

Tun Myint

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

Summer Forester

In the aftermath of 9/11, the U.S. launched the Global War on Terror to purportedly find, stop,and defeat every terrorist group with a global reach. Without question, the Global War on Terror has radically shaped everything from U.S. foreign policies and domestic institutions to civil liberties and pop culture. In this course, we will examine the events of 9/11 and then critically assess the immediate and long-term ramifications of the endless Global War on Terror on different states and communities around the world. While we will certainly spend time interrogating U.S. policies from the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, we will also examine reactions to those policies across both the global north and the global south.

Greg Marfleet

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to comparative and international public policy. It examines major theories and approaches to public policy design and implementation in several major areas: international policy economy (including the study of international trade and monetary policy, financial regulation, and comparative welfare policy), global public health and comparative healthcare policy, institutional development (including democratic governance, accountability systems, and judicial reform), and environmental public policy.

Prerequisite: Statistics 120 (formerly Mathematics 215) strongly recommended, or instructor permission

Dev Gupta

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.

Caleb S Hendrickson

Anna Dotlibova

In this course students use authentic materials to learn about selected aspects of Russian culture in global context, while continuing to develop their speaking, listening, writing, and reading skills. For students who have completed the language requirement in Russian.  

Prerequisite: Russian 204 or instructor consent

Diane Nemec Ignashev

In weekly meetings we will discuss in Russian current events taking place in Russia and around the world as reported by the Russophone online media. Emphasis will be on reading, listening, and conversation. Vocabulary building by topics; grammar as needed.

Prerequisite: Completion of or concurrent registration in Russian 205 or instructor consent

Ahmed Ibrahim

Sophomore Priority.

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: SOAN 110.WL0 (Synonym 59031)

Colin McLaughlin-Alcock

Gentrification, a process of neighborhood-level class displacement, whereby devalued urban areas are redeveloped into trendy hubs, is one of the predominant modes of urban change in the twenty-first century. In this class, we will first develop a general understanding of how gentrification works. Then we will direct ethnographic attention to explore how gentrification takes place in specific contexts around the globe. We will examine how social boundaries, power relationships, and identities are reorganized through gentrification; how class and racial disparity are produced and enforced; how the social meaning of place impacts neighborhood change; and how communities have resisted gentrification.

Prerequisite: The department strongly recommends that Sociology/Anthropology 110 or 111 be taken prior to enrolling in courses numbered 200 or above

Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg

We all lead gendered lives, in our felt identities as well as through how we are perceived, advantaged, and disadvantaged by others. This course examines gender and gender relations from an anthropological perspective, centering and contextualizing the global human diversity of gendered experiences. Key concepts such as gender, voice/mutedness, status, public and private spheres, and the gendered division of labor—and their intellectual history—let us explore intriguing questions such as how many genders there are, and whether gender is mutable. The course focuses on two areas: 1) the role of sex, sexuality, and procreation in creating cultural notions of gender, and 2) the impacts of colonialism, globalization, and economic underdevelopment on gender relations.

Prerequisite: The department strongly recommends that 110 or 111 be taken prior to enrolling in courses numbered 200 or above.

Wes Markofski

From the discipline’s earliest days, sociologists have considered religion a fascinating and perplexing object of study. Classical sociologists devoted enormous attention to the topic of religion, famously linking it to the development of capitalism and Western modernity (Weber), to social solidarity and symbolic classification systems (Durkheim), to political passivity and social conservatism (Marx), and to the varying forms of social, economic, and political life found in the world’s great civilizations. This course focuses on special topics in the contemporary sociology of religion, with a particular emphasis on religion in public and political life in American and global civil society.

Prerequisite: The department strongly recommends that Sociology/Anthropology 110 or 111 be taken prior to enrolling in courses number 200 or above

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Food is the way to a person's heart but perhaps even more interesting, the window into a society's soul. Simply speaking understating a society's foodways is the best way to comprehend the complexity between people, culture and nature. This course explores how anthropologists use food to understand different aspects of human behavior, from food procurement and consumption practices to the politics of nutrition and diets. In doing so we hope to elucidate how food is more than mere sustenance and that often the act of eating is a manifestation of power, resistance, identity, and community. Class fees apply.

Sophomore Priority, Class Fees Apply

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: SOAN 233.WL0 (Synonym 59695)

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Prerequisite: Sociology/Anthropology 110 or 111 or instructor permission

Humberto Huergo

Prerequisite: Spanish 204 or equivalent

Palmar Alvarez-Blanco

Are you interested in talking about current news while practicing your oral skills in Spanish? Have you ever considered participating in a radio program? This course is an excellent way to keep in touch with your Spanish while collaborating with “El Super Barrio Latino” a radio program conducted by the Latinx community of Northfield. In each program we will explore international and domestic news and we will interview people in our community. Relying on international newspapers, students will discuss common topics and themes representing a wide array of regions. (Language of conversation is Spanish)

Prerequisite: Spanish 204 or equivalent

Silvia Lopez

Prerequisite: Spanish 204 or proficiency

Not open to seniors

Yansi Perez

Prerequisite: Spanish 204 or equivalent

Walther Maradiegue

This course will examine representations of Indigenous peoples in Latin America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with special attention to constructions of race and gender. We will explore topics such as the racial and gendered associations used to construct indigeneity, the exclusion of alternative indigenous gender subjectivities, and the double subordination indigenous women have historically experienced. Some questions we will explore are: How has indigeneity been understood in nineteenth and twentieth-century Latin America? How have nineteenth-century Latin American nations imagined and disciplined female indigeneity? What new forms of indigenous gender identities became visible during the twentieth century? The course includes materials related to Central America (Mexico, Guatemala), the Andes, and the Amazon.

Prerequisite: Spanish 205 or above