ENROLL

Christine E Castro

How have social categories (i.e., race, class, gender, sexuality) been constructed according to labor? How have people lived their identities through their labor? This course will focus on manual labor, with special attention to agricultural work, and will span from the Antebellum South to the present. We will examine how manual labor has functioned as a symbol of belonging in the nation. Throughout the course, we will emphasize lived experience--or, how people responded to cultural shifts, and made social or political change through their work--using oral histories, community archives, cultural productions and social customs in the workplace.

Extra Time Required

Anita P Chikkatur

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

Extra Time Required

Sun Yung Shin

Social justice is fairness as it manifests in society, but who gets to determine what fairness looks, sounds, feels like? The self-described Black Canadian poet Dionne Brand says that she doesn’t write toward justice because that doesn’t exist, but that she writes against tyranny. If we use that framework, how does that change our own writing and our own notions of justice in our or any time? What is the role of literary writing, especially fiction, the essay, and poetry in the collective and individual quest to understand and build conditions that could yield increased potential for social justice? In this course, students will read, analyze, discuss, and write about various texts that might be considered to be against myriad tyrannies, if not necessarily toward social justice. Authors may include Octavia Butler, Phillip Metres, Toni Morrison, Myung Mi Kim, and M. NourbeSe Philipe.

Zenzele Isoke

This is an interdisciplinary course that explores how pleasure, intimacy, and violence are shaped by historic and ongoing processes of inequality in the United States. We will explore how our understandings of sexuality are influenced by discourses and practices of race and race-making in the U.S. by focusing on the relationship between micro-level (interpersonal) and macro-level (societal) violence. The topics of rape, family violence, and intimate partner violence will be examined from a structural vantage point, emphasizing the mutually constituting roles of gender, race, class, and nationality. The concepts of “pleasure” and “enjoyment” are foregrounded throughout the course.

Annette R Igra

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.

Brian F Harrison

Christina E Farhart

How do social and political groups interact? How do we understand these interactions in relation to power? This course will introduce the basic approaches and debates in the study of prejudice, racial attitudes, and intergroup relations. We will focus on three main questions. First, how do we understand and study prejudice and racism as they relate to U.S. politics? Second, how do group identities, stereotyping, and other factors help us understand the legitimation of discrimination, group hierarchy, and social domination? Third, what are the political and social challenges associated with reducing prejudice?

Brian F Harrison

The advancement of LGBTQ rights in the United States has experienced unprecedented success over the last twenty years, shifting public attitudes and legal protections for LGBTQ Americans. This course provides a discussion of LGBTQ history and in-depth analysis of how LGBTQ policy victories were achieved, including background on the strategies and tactics used to generate results. We will take a critical look at such milestones and examine what they mean for the entire LGBTQ population, including queer people of color, transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals, the disabled, and the economically disadvantaged.

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri

This course examines the history of Islam in America from the colonial period to the present. It contextualizes American Islam at the cross section of American religious history and modern Islamic history. While primarily focused on the politics of race and religion in America, the course also explores the influence of comparative theology and religious studies on conceptions of religious diversity; the relationship between race, religion and ideas of progress; the role of Islam in the civil rights movement and in nationalist movements in Muslim-majority societies; and the rise of militant Islam as a matter of global concern.

Liz Y Raleigh

What makes a family? How has the conception of kinship and the 'normal' family changed over the generations? In this introductory class, we examine these questions, drawing on a variety of course materials ranging from classic works in sociology to contemporary blogs on family life. The class focuses on diversity in family life, paying particular attention to the intersection between the family, race and ethnicity, and social class. We'll examine these issues at the micro and macro level, incorporating texts that focus on individuals' stories as well as demographics of the family.

Annette M Nierobisz

The American employment landscape continues to shift rapidly. In this course, we explore how social statuses such as gender, race, social class, age, and disability impact different types of workers who find themselves also challenged by work overload, new technologies, downsizing, and an unstable economy that mandates a reconsideration of retirement goals. Both ethnographic and statistical accounts inform our study of the academic field called, “Sociology of Work, Occupations, and Organizations.” While reviewing course material you will concurrently investigate a career of personal interest, learning what your “dream job” encompasses and how it functions in the contemporary world.