ENROLL

Sarah A Kennedy

What do antebellum plantations, Spanish missions, British colonies in Australia, mining camps in Latin America, and Roman estates all have in common? All are examples of unfair/unfree and forced labor in colonial and imperial settings. This class will review archaeological, archival, and ethnographic cases of past coerced and exploitative labor, and compare them with modern cases such as human trafficking, child slavery, bonded labor, and forced marriage. Case studies include the Andes under Inka and Spanish rule, North American and Caribbean plantations, British colonial Australia, and Dutch colonial Asia.

Brendan P LaRocque

This course will examine concepts and practices regarding socio-economic development in India, with a special focus on the role of tourism as part of the process of globalization. We will study the scholarly writings and debates around the varied agendas and ideologies concerning development, and analyze the different approaches to economic growth that have historically been dominant in India. As part of our learning process, we will visit numerous sites wherein economic development is being undertaken, including urban and rural locales as well as tourist and pilgrimage sites. This course will include scholarly readings, instructor and guest lectures, and require student presentations of their work.

OCS India Program

Jenny Bourne

Prerequisite: Economics 110 and 111

Colleen M Carpenter

Rebecca J Brueckmann

This course focuses on the representation of African American history in popular US-American movies. It will introduce students to the field of visual history, using cinema as a primary source. Through films from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the seminar will analyze African American history, (pop-)cultural depictions, and memory culture. We will discuss subjects, narrative arcs, stylistic choices, production design, performative and film industry practices, and historical receptions of movies. The topics include slavery, racial segregation and white supremacy, the Black Freedom Movement, controversies and conflicts in Black communities, Black LGBTQIA+ history, ghettoization and police brutality, Black feminism, and Afrofuturism.

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.

Hope C Sample

Does life have a meaning? To answer this, we will first inquire into more basic questions about agency that provide a foundation for our topic: Is everything fated? Is fate compatible with free will? Can we always do the right thing without moral remainder, or are there genuine moral dilemmas? Are there grey zones of compromised responsibility due to structures of oppression, or other factors? How do we know what lives are meaningful for us? Is there any objective truth about the meaning of life? After developing your ideas on the answers to those questions, we will turn to various approaches to meaning in life, both those that affirm meaning and deny it. We will cover, for example, approaches to the meaning of life grounded in narrative, divinity, creativity, and more.

Juan Diego Prieto

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: POSC 120.WL0 (Synonym 65111)

Huan Gao

This course explores theories about spaces/places and investigates the impact of our physical environment on a broad range of social and political issues. We will look at how parks, monuments, residential communities, and other features of our cities and towns are made, who makes them, and in turn, their effects on our daily lives. Students will engage with important contemporary issues such as residential segregation, public space management, protest policing, etc. Most of the course will focus on urban politics, with a brief foray into rural issues. The goal of this course is to encourage students to think about everyday environmental features in a more systematic and theoretic manner and design social scientific inquiries into spatial issues.

Lori K Pearson

How have religious thinkers understood the demands of justice, the work of love, and the relation of both to power and politics? Is resistance or compromise the most appropriate way to bring justice to human relations? How should the ideals of faith inform questions about political authority, struggles for equality, and engagement with difference? This course draws on Christian theology, African American religious thought, and Jewish thought to explore a range of questions about ethics and social change. Along the way, we encounter diverse models of human selfhood, moral obligation, and the role of religion in public life.

Wes D Markofski

This course focuses on special topics in the public sociology of religion.  We will look at the intersection of race, religion, and politics in the U.S.; the intersection of science and religion in Indigenous-led environmental movements; and varieties of public religion around the world—including Islamic feminism and democracy in Egypt and Indonesia, Coptic Christianity and the Muslim Brotherhood, orthodox Jewish movements in Israel, American evangelicals in the U.S., and Black church mobilization in the U.S. civil rights movement.  As we do so, we will examine core theoretical perspectives and empirical developments in the contemporary sociology of religion.     

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

Annette M Nierobisz

Since the 1980s, the United States criminal justice system has embarked on a social experiment we now call, “mass incarceration.” The outcome – unprecedented rates of imprisonment, particularly in BIPOC communities – has had devastating consequences for individuals, families, neighborhoods, and American society. This course explores the causes and consequences of mass incarceration. Potential topics include: race, class, gender, and age in the prison system; the impacts of incarceration on children and intimate partners who get left behind; punishment strategies such as solitary confinement and the death penalty; the lucrative business of the prison industrial complex; and the promise of prison abolition.

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