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

Jenny Bourne

Prerequisite: Economics 110 and 111

Anita P Chikkatur

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

Extra Time Required

Jayne A Swift

How did sex get into public schools? How did sexual practice and desire become an object of scientific inquiry? Why has sex education been a site for repeated social conflicts, and what do those conflicts tell us about gender, racial, and economic inequality in the United States? This course is for everyone who has ever questioned the official and unofficial curriculum of sex education. The course provides a cultural and intellectual history of sex education and instruction within the geographic region of the United States. Throughout we will examine the complex relationship between sexual knowledge, pedagogy, and systems of power.

William L North

The Byzantine world (eighth-fifteenth centuries) was a zone of fascinating tensions, exchanges, and encounters. Through a wide variety of written and visual evidence, we will examine key features of its history and culture: the nature of government; piety and religious controversy; art and music; the evolving relations with the Latin West, Armenia, the Slavic North and West, and the Dar al-Islam (the Abbasids and Seljuk and Ottoman Turks); gender; economic life; and social relations. Extra time will be required for special events and a group project (ecumenical council).

Extra Time Required

Sarah N Lahasky

In the last fifty years, governments and transnational entities such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have increasingly called to safeguard cultural practices and historic buildings around the world. Through trial and error, social scientists and policymakers have realized that such cultural heritage preservation programs come with unforeseen consequences, especially regarding musical performance and the communities that practice such traditions. This course is divided into two sections. First, we will concentrate on case studies from around the world, considering the advantages, detriments, and best practices for recognizing and celebrating music as heritage. We will debate questions such as: What is heritage? How can something ephemeral such as music be ‘conserved’ for generations to come? What role does the West play in shaping musical practices around the world, and for who do we want to ‘save’ the music? Who makes decisions of what music should or should not be safeguarded, and what are the implications for local practitioners? Second, we will explore music festivals and other music heritage projects specifically in Minnesota. Learning from the mistakes of the past, the course will culminate with a collaborative class project that will contribute to a sensitive yet productive endeavor to document oral histories of musicians, or plan a festival/performance on campus that highlights musical life in and around Northfield.

Huan Gao

Tocqueville once remarked, “if men who live in democratic countries did not acquire the practice of associating with each other in ordinary life, civilization itself would be in peril.” Today, our lives are affected by a wide spectrum of these associations of ordinary life from the Catholic Church, to international NGOs like Greenpeace, to mundane neighborhood groups. This course investigates whether these organizations can help solve some of the most pressing global challenges like climate change, inequality, and epidemics. We will engage classic literature about civil society, study contemporary organizations and movements, and think critically about their political, social and economic impact.

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.

Mitchell R Campbell

Many of the most pressing issues facing our world today, including prejudice/discrimination, climate change, health, conflict, and polarization/radicalization, ultimately stem from human behavior. As a science centrally focused on human behavior, psychology is well-poised to contribute meaningfully to developing solutions to these and other issues. In this class, we will review the rapidly expanding literature on intervention science, which involves employing psychological concepts and principles to change real-world outcomes. We will also study relevant behavioral science and motivational theories, as well as examining how findings from the lab can be translated to real-world applications. Students will also complete a final project that will involve conducting their own intervention experiment in the field. Students will leave the class equipped to use their knowledge of behavioral science to effect change in the real world to address the issues they care about. 

Prerequisite: Psychology 110 or instructor consent