Home /
Diversity Equity... /
Courses Related...
Courses Related to Diversity and Racial Justice
(Undergraduate and Graduate, Listed Alphabetically by Departments and Programs)
Responding to calls from our students and the larger campus community to strengthen and expand anti-racist and social justice curriculum and pedagogy, the College of Humanities and Fine Arts seeks to highlight the following courses. These courses are one part of our ongoing efforts and heightened commitment to teaching and scholarship that recognizes the crucial and often neglected contributions, experiences and struggles of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and the historical and contemporary legacies of systemic racism and its intersections with other forms of inequality and injustice. Courses and programs being offered in the coming spring aim to integrate diverse content, critical thinking skills and classroom spaces that foster deep and transformative engagement with these concerns.
Spring 2023
(Updated: November 9, 2022)
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 101 – Introduction to Black Studies
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 2:30-3:45 p.m. (taught remotely)
Course Description:
Interdisciplinary introduction to the basic concepts and literature in the disciplines covered by Black Studies. Includes history, the social sciences, and humanities as well as conceptual frameworks for investigation and analysis of Black history and culture.
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 118 – Survey of AfroAm Literature II
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 11:15-12:05 + F 11:15 or 12:20 discussions
Course Description:
Introductory level survey of Afro-American literature from the Harlem Renaissance to the present, including DuBois, Hughes, Hurston, Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, Walker, Morrison, Baraka and Lorde. (AL,DU)
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 133 – Afro-American History, Civil War to 1954
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 2:30-3:20 + F 1:25 or 2:15 discussions
Course Description:
Major issues and actions from the beginning of the Civil War to the 1954 Supreme Court decision. Focus on political and social history: transition from slavery to emancipation and Reconstruction; the Age of Booker T. Washington; urban migrations, rise of the ghettoes; the ideologies and movements from integrationism to black nationalism. (HS,DU)
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 151 – Literature and Culture
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 10:10-11:00 + F 10:10 or 11:15 discussions
Course Description:
This course explores relevant forms of Black cultural expression that have contributed to the shape and character of contemporary Blackness. Topics to be discussed will include West African cultural patterns and the Black past; the transition-slavery; the culture of survival; cultural patterns evident in literature; and Black perceptions versus white perceptions. (AL,DU)
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 156 – Revolutionary Concepts in African American Music I
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 10:00-11:15
Course Description:
This course will examine the development of African-American music during the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century with a particular focus on links to the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, the Post Civil Rights era, and the Black Lives Matter Movement. In particular, the class will survey the varied styles, productions, and receptions of artists including Bessie Smith, Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, Ma Rainey, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Leadbelly, Lightnin’ Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Mary Lou Williams, Charlie “Bird” Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Archie Shepp, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Booker T. & the MGs, Sun Ra, The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, N.W.A., Public Enemy, Blackstar, The Roots, Lauryn Hill, India Arie, Kendrick Lamar, Janelle Monae, Chance the Rapper, J Cole, among others. (AT,DU)
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 170 – The Grassroots Experience in American Life and Culture I
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 11:30-12:45
Course Description:
This course combines instruction in research techniques in a variety of Humanistic and Social Science disciplines, and hands-on experience with those techniques, with substantive materials focusing on the long struggle of minority populations for full participation in American cultural and public life. (HS,DU)
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 234 – Literature of the Harlem Renaissance
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 10:10-11:15
Course Description:
Exploration of the cultural explosion also termed the New Negro movement, from W.E.B. Du Bois through the early work of Richard Wright. Essays, poetry, and fiction, and the blues, jazz, and folklore of the time examined in terms of how Harlem Renaissance artists explored their spiritual and cultural roots, dealt with gender issues, sought artistic aesthetic and style adequate to reflect such concerns. Readings supplemented by contemporary recordings, visual art, and videos. (AL,DU)
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 238 – Arts and Cultural Identity
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 4:00-5:15
Course Description:
Explores the arts as they are used to express cultural identity. It will examine various genres of art by artists of color and their application of cultural and social issues to their work. Using the exhibits and performances presented in the Augusta Savage Art Gallery, the curator will draw on those presentations for discussions and critiques of the arts as reflective of culture and as historical record. The course will include readings by and about artists, video viewings, the creation of arts projects, and discussions about the relationship of creativity to cultural expression.
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 293C – Race, Sexuality, and the Law
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 10:00-11:15
Course Description:
What is race? What is sexuality? And how did early American history shape the legal structures that would come to define racial and sexual identities and possibilities? In this course, students will examine how African, European, and Native American ideas about race and sexuality influenced the development of colonial, early Republican, and antebellum America, with a special focus on the evolution of American legal frameworks undergirding racial and sexual hierarchies. Topics covered include initial encounters between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans; the birth and evolution o
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 293G – From Environmental Racism to Climate Justice
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 11:15-12:30
Course Description:
This course explores the emergence of the modern environmental justice movement in the United States during the 1980s and 90s, with a key focus on its impact on the more recent emergence of a worldwide struggle for climate justice. It will note how the EJ movement coined the term “environmental racism” and made calls for unique approaches to knowledge production, participatory democracy, and environmental sustainability. More specifically, this course focuses on the emergence of a broad network of grassroots organizations – “a movement of movements” – that reoriented what the environment and what justice are understood to mean amongst Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities over the past four decades.
Course Number and Name:
–
Meeting Days/Time:
continued description:
Course Description:
This course will also pay particular attention to the ways in which these ideas around the environment and justice continue to shape the development of climate activism, both in the United States and around the world, with a key focus on how those involved in this activism have also come to understand themselves as part of a broad network of grassroots struggles highlighting the local impacts of climate change. From here, this course will examine key facets of today’s climate movement, including the fight pipelines, the struggle against disaster capitalism, the conceptualization of the Anthropocene, and how growing debates around militarism, decolonization, ecosocialism, and industrial sabotage.
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 293J – Black Women, Representation, and Power in Africa and the African Diaspora
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 9:05-10:20
Course Description:
This course explores histories, cultures, and contemporary socio-political issues of relevance to women of African descent across the geographical spectrum of the Pan-African world: Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, and North America. What representations and stereotypes do others have of Black women? And how do Black women challenge misrepresentations and define themselves? The course begins by exploring ideas of feminism, black feminism, and womanism/Africana womanism as relevant ideologies for women of African descent. The course then uses novels, ethnographies, journal articles, and videos from Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, the United States and other countries to examine issues of identity, cultural representation, and self-definition for Black women. Topics covered include colonialism, sex tourism, skin-bleaching and colorism, intersectionality and the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, stereotypes of Black women, reproductive justice and Black maternal mortality, Black girl’s games, and women in Hip-Hop, etc.
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 297A – Black Springfield: Revisited
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 1:00-2:15
Course Description:
African American urban studies is a vibrant area of intellectual inquiry. This course will acquaint you with a variety of disciplinary tools for studying African American life in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts, our urban neighbor just 25 miles away. We will start with a broad survey of the city's history that began when William Pynchon and a company of Puritan men from Roxbury, founded Springfield in 1636 at the confluence of three rivers. Pynchon established a trading and fur-collecting post and enslaved Africans became a vital part of its labor force. Springfield officially became a city in May of 1852, but by then slavery had ended and the city had developed a reputation as a Underground Railroad depot thanks to antislavery freedom fighters like Thomas Thomas, Eli Baptist, and John Brown. Springfield's location at the crossroads of New England is the most significant reason for its economic progress as an industrial city. In 2010, Springfield was a city of 156,060 that was 22.3% Black or African American, and 4.7% from Two or More Races (1.5% White and Black or African American). Latin@s of any race made up 38.8% of the population (33.2% Puerto Rican). It is a multicultural community, and is the regional center for banking, finance, and courts. Field trips to important sites, interviews with Ms. LaJuana Hood, founder of Springfield's Pan African Historical Museum USA, as well as other important culture bearers, will be special facets of the course. Community engaged research will be emphasized.
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 297D – The African American Image in Film
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 11:30-12:45
Course Description:
This course focuses on the cinematic representations of African Americans in film from the 1890s to the present day. What were the dominant racial and gender images of African Americans that emerged during the slavery era? Why did such images achieve such popularity in film? How did black filmmakers engage with and refute dominant cultural and Hollywood images of African Americans while creating a cinematic language specific to African American experiences? What transformations have occurred in the images of African Americans in film since World War II, and especially since the 1960s?
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 326 – Black Women in U.S. History
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 2:30-3:45
Course Description:
Using historical texts, film, television, and music, this course examines the history of African American women from slavery to the present. It will pay special attention to the convergence of race, gender, and class in shaping the black female experience; African American women’s activism against racial, gender, and economic injustices; and sex and sexuality.
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 331 – The Life of W.E.B. Du Bois
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 1:00-2:15
Course Description:
An examination of the life and thought of arguably America’s greatest intellectual activist and one of Massachusetts’ native sons is the focus of this course. Students will conduct microfilm research in the W.E.B. Du Bois Special Collections and University Archives.
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 345 – Southern Literature
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 2:30-3:45
Course Description:
This course offers an introduction to Southern Black Literature through a sampling of classic texts and more recent prose and poetry. In addition to surveying a rich canon of literature that has its origins in the antebellum slave narrative tradition, we will also study: (1) networks, alliances, and patterns of migration connecting the U.S. South and the Global South (especially the Caribbean); (2) black queer and trans life in the South; (3) recent film and television set in the Deep South; (4) structures and experiences of dispossession and poverty. We will also look at media coverage and scholarship to explore struggles happening in the South right now, especially movements around armed self-defense/community policing; cooperative farming and economic self-determination; disaster capitalism and environmental dispossession in places like the Gulf Coast and in Puerto Rico; the toppling/removal of Confederate statues and fight against white supremacist organizations and activities.
Course Number and Name:
AFROAM 591G – Black Ecologies
Meeting Days/Time:
Wednesdays 12:00-2:30 p.m.
Course Description:
This seminar roots ecological catastrophe in the history of the Atlantic slave trade. We will read a number of works that illuminate the specific relationship between environmental degradation and the world that slavery made. We will be also interested in tracing how race, gender, and poverty are being mobilized as weapons of dispossession and extraction on the frontiers of capitalist exploitation today. Other topics will include: ecological thought in black critical theory; alternative models of sustainability and stewardship; black eco-poetics and climate fiction; environmental justice movements; new solidarities in climate activism. Readings will draw from a range of fields, including black critical theory; feminist, queer, and trans studies; disability studies; literary studies; and diaspora studies. (Undergraduate/Graduate)
Course Number and Name:
ARCH 597M-01 – Drawing the City
Meeting Days/Time:
Tue-Thur 2:30 to 5:15
Course Description:
This seminar/workshop focuses on the city as a model and subject for representation, composition and research. Studio work emphasizes hybrid drawing methods (analog /digital), as well as observational drawing, architectural collage, and graphic illustration.
Course Number and Name:
ARCH 211-01; ARCH HI211-01 – The City
Meeting Days/Time:
MWF 9:00AM - 9:55AM
Course Description:
“The City” is an introductory lecture course that focuses on central themes concerning the development of major American and international cities, such as Cahokia, Tenochtitlan/Mexico City, Cap Français (Saint Domingue), Washington, DC, Paris, and London. The examination of the City will cover the sixteenth century to the twentieth century and flow chronologically and thematically. We will consider (for example) the built environment, race, the emerging public, social conflicts, and cultural phenomena. By the end of this course, we will be able to describe and examine several important themes that have shaped the colonial, early modern, and modern city.
Course Number and Name:
ARCH 597D-01 – History and Theory of Preservation
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 2:30PM - 3:45PM
Course Description:
This course serves as an introduction to the history and theory of Historic Preservation. Though focused primarily on the development of the discipline within the United States, the course draws on important links to international conservation movements, laws, and theories. We will approach the overview of the discipline through three frames. First, we begin by examining the theoretical basis for preservation practice that concerns memory and the debates between architects and aesthetes. Second, we will consider the writing of the histories of the built environment, and the subsequent calls for a more inclusive history of preservation. Third, we turn to practice and will discuss some topics that are relevant to the discipline, which include ethical preservation practice and the status of architectural design.
Course Number and Name:
ART 221 – Painting 2: Contemporary Miniature Painting - New Narratives
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 9:05-11:50
Course Description:
This course will allow students to experience a rich traditional genre of painting that dominated Persia and India for many centuries. This hands-on course is designed to enrich each student's vision and enable them to appreciate and develop an aesthetic sensibility to enjoy the beauty of story-telling using this particular form of art-making that is inexpensive and non-toxic. We will closely study the historical tradition of Miniature painting from the past to present; learn to make our own brush from squirrel tail hair; learn to tea stain the paper; make gouache paints and finally make paintings using three distinct traditional techniques (Siyah Qalam, Neem Rang and Gadh Rang).
No courses listed at this time. Please contact the department directly for more information.
No courses listed at this time. Please contact the department directly for more information.
Course Number and Name:
– Most English Department courses fit the requirement for diversity.
Course Description:
This introductory course in Native American literature asks students to read and study a variety of work by American Indian and First Nations authors. We will discuss what makes a text "Indian," how and why a major boom in American Indian writing occurred in the late 1960s, how oral tradition is incorporated into contemporary writing, and how geographic place and tribal affiliation influence this work.
Course Number and Name:
FILM 697FF – FILM-ST 697FF - Special Topics- Gender, Film, Theory and Practice
Meeting Days/Time:
We 4:00PM - 6:30PM
Course Number and Name:
HISTORY 111 – World History since 1500 (HS DG)
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 9:05-9:55 + discussion
Course Description:
The goal of the course is to understand the development of key aspects of world history from the late fifteenth to the late twentieth centuries. The course examines human interaction in specific situations developing through time, including the development of significant social, political, or economic institutions or ideologies. Students are exposed to historically important events, developments, or processes as a way of teaching them to understand the present and direct their futures as well as gain an awareness of and appreciation for an historical perspective. The readings of the course include a variety of primary and secondary sources in order to better analyze and understand the diversity of global norms and values and the way they change over time. The course work emphasizes the development of critical thinking and writing skills. Assignments may include exams, multiple written assignments and engagement with the course materials and topics. This course fulfills the non-western requirement for history majors and the historical studies and social and cultural diversity (HSDG) portion of the General Education program. Lecture and Discussion section, 4 credits.
Course Number and Name:
HISTORY 112 – Introduction to World Religions (I DG)
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 12:20-1:10 + discussion
Course Description:
Religions may have divine origins, but religious belief and practice, like everything else human, have their own histories. This course has three goals. First, we consider how the west came to understand and define religion. Second, we turn to the origins and development of some of the world’s major religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Finally, we will consider the new religions of the twentieth century, the confrontations and conversations between different religions, and the processes and effects of secularization. We will examine not only religious belief but also ritual practice and the place of religion in today’s society. Understanding why we think about religion in the ways that we do, the history of religions, and issues of importance to the practice of religion today is a vital part of being a citizen of a democracy in this global age.
Course Number and Name:
HISTORY 120 – Latin America: The Colonial Period (HS DG)
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 11:15-12:05 + discussion
Course Description:
General view of the cultural, economic, and political development of Latin America, 1492 to 1824. Topics include the Iberian and Indian backgrounds; Spanish and Portuguese imperial organization; role of Indians, Blacks, and Europeans in the New World; the coming of independence.
Course Number and Name:
HISTORY 131 – Middle East History II (HS DG)
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 10-10:50 + discussion
Course Description:
This course aims to give you the tools toenable you to think, read, and write critically about the modern Middle East. We will be dealing with the political, social,and cultural history of the region with an emphasis on its interconnections with the rest of the world, most notably Europe and America during the modern period. We begin with an overview of earlyIslamic history, and then turn to focus on the rise and functioning of the Safavid Empire in Iran and the Ottoman Empire in the Eastern Mediterraneanand Western Asia. We then look at theshifting balances of power within these empires which were caused by both internal and external forces. Next, we move into the era known as the “Modern” Middle East, exploring both the essential role of European imperialism in shaping this periodandtrans-regional reactionsto it. We continue on towardsour final destination, the present day, examining particular events and longer trends that have fundamentally shaped the region, including the First World Warand the politics that literally drew the map of the area, the founding of the state of Israel and the Palestinian struggle for nationhood, Nasserism and Pan-Arabism, the Lebanese civil war, the Iranian Revolution and the rise of Political Islam, and the politics of oil and the Gulf Wars. We end our course with a look at the unprecedented wave of revolutionary activity which engulfed the region during the Arab Uprisings,and reflect upon contemporary events.
Course Number and Name:
HISTORY 242H – American Family in Historical Perspectives (Honors) (HS DU)
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 4-5:15
Course Description:
Since the 1960s, Americans have experienced rapid and potentially disorienting changes in marriage and reproduction, in expectations of the family, and in the relationship between work life and home life. In this course we will take an historical and cross-cultural approach to studying these changes. Exploring the ways in which economic and political structures have affected the family since the period of European colonization, we will also examine the roles played by race, ethnic origin, immigration, and structural inequality in shaping familial differences. In the final weeks of the semester, we will employ this historical perspective as we examine questions about new definitions of family, the household division of labor, and the relationship between society and the family in the postindustrial and increasingly globalized environment of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Course Number and Name:
HISTORY 247 – Empire, Race, and the Philippines (HS DG)
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 1-2:15
Course Description:
What is an empire? Is the United States an empire? If so, what makes it and how did it become an empire? What is colonialism? How is it different from colonization? These are just some of the questions we are dealing with throughout the semester. We are going to learn about the concept of “empire” (and all its related themes and topics such as colonialism, globalization, race, etc.) through the lens of Philippine colonial history. This course therefore provides you with a chance to learn about not only the way empires are created and operate but also the culture and history of a non- U.S./non-Western country. Why the Philippines? Due to its long colonial past, the Philippines is in a unique position to give us an idea of how colonialism worked/works. The country was colonized three times (!), first by Spain (1565-1898), then the U.S. (1898-1946), and finally by Japan (1942-1945), with a brief interlude by the British from 1762-1764. Furthermore, although it was the U.S.’ largest overseas and formal colony, little has been taught about this history of U.S. colonization of the country, hence, creating a gap in our understanding of U.S. history.
Course Number and Name:
HISTORY 281 – The Global History of Soccer (HS DG)
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 2:30-3:45
Course Description:
Soccer is without question the world’s most popular sport. Its impact reaches beyond entertainment to influence and reflect cultural values and identities, economic interests and power relationships between peoples and nation states. The course takes a historical approach by surveying important developments within the game and how they impacted people at the local, national and international level. Select case studies examine in detail the particular ways the sport has promoted and/or challenged significant global phenomena such as the expansion and resistance to imperialism and authoritarianism, the development of racial and national identities and gender relationships. The course work emphasizes the development of critical thinking and writing skills and assignments include short essays, audio/video projects and active engagement. 4 credits, this course fulfills the Historical Studies (HS) and the Diversity Global (DG) General Education objectives.
Course Number and Name:
HISTORY 385 – Modern Boston (HS DU)
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 4-5:15
Course Description:
This course will survey the history of Boston from the nineteenth century to the present. The course will use Boston as a lens to analyze and understand how the United States in general and American cities in particular have changed over the past two hundred years. Topics include urbanization; industrialization and women and child labor; abolitionism and Boston’s role in the Civil War; Irish immigration and discrimination; class conflict and the Gilded Age; machine politics and political and moral reform in the Progressive Era; radicalism and protest; urban renewal; racism, civil rights activism, and school desegregation; immigration and migration in the twentieth century. Students will gain an understanding of Boston’s rich history and how cities can offer insight into larger historical changes.
Course Number and Name:
HISTORY 387 – The Holocaust (HS DG)
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 2:30-3:20 + discussion
Course Description:
This course explores the causes and consequences of what was arguably the most horrific event in all of history. Topics include both the long-term origins of the Holocaust in European racism and anti-Semitism and the more immediate origins in the dynamics of the Nazi state and the war against the Soviet Union. Particular attention will be given to the debates and controversies, including the motivations of German and non-German perpetrators, bystanders, and collaborations, the place of the Jew and non-Jews in Holocaust historiography, the continuities of racism and genocide and their comparability, and the consequences of the Holocaust for memory and world politics.
Course Number and Name:
HISTORY 411 – History of Science Activism (HS DG)
Meeting Days/Time:
Th 2:30-5
Course Description:
This course will examine the global history of social and political movements on issues related to science, technology, and medicine. Examples include movements for organic agriculture, against nuclear energy, promoting science literacy, opposing genetic determinism, for climate justice, and much more. We will adopt a historically grounded, interdisciplinary approach to explore the different forms science activism has taken from intellectual debates, to professional movements of practicing scientists, to state-directed campaigns, to grassroots community organizing?and the different historical contexts in which they have emerged. These explorations will help shed new light on the current political climate: we will ask what it means to "defend science" and to what extent scientists, scholars, and activists have succeeded in developing an analysis of the power relations involved in so-called "attacks" on science. Students will read a wide variety of secondary and primary sources, present regularly during class meetings, write two papers rooted in analysis of the assigned materials, and pursue a final project that examines the historical and global contexts of some aspect of science activism (specific topic and format to be freely chosen). Students may opt to incorporate a community engagement component into their final project if they desire.
No courses listed at this time. Please contact the department directly for more information.
No courses listed at this time. Please contact the department directly for more information.
No courses listed at this time. Please contact the department directly for more information.
Course Number and Name:
LINGUIST 101 – People and Their Language (SB DU)
Meeting Days/Time:
MW 1:25-2:15 + discussion
Course Description:
Language is a uniquely human instinct. It is also our most important cultural artifact. This course examines language as an instinct and as a social construct that dynamically shapes and is shaped by history, class, status, ethnicity, gender, and institutions like the media and the law. (Gen.Ed. DU, SB)
Course Number and Name:
MUSIC 102 – African American Music & Jazz
Meeting Days/Time:
TuTh 8:00-9:15am
Course Description:
Listening to examples of and reading about the African-American musical tradition. Includes spirituals, blues, jazz, gospel, and classical music of African-Americans. (Gen.Ed. AT, DU)
Course Number and Name:
MUSIC 150 – The Lively Arts
Meeting Days/Time:
M 5:30-6:45pm + discussion
Course Description:
Weekly lectures by guest artists and faculty, group discussions in residence halls and Fine Arts Center classrooms, attendance at Fine Arts Center Performing Arts Series events, Department of Music and Dance events, and University Museum of Contemporary Art exhibitions. Presents an international perspective emphasizing cultural and social diversity. Topics include elements and styles of Western European "classical" music; artistic expression of African-American culture in jazz; styles, choreography and production of dance; theater; photography and visual art. Each topic is illustrated by an exhibition or performance to which the Fine Arts Center provides tickets. (Gen.Ed. AT, DG)
Course Number and Name:
PHIL 180 – Death and the Meaning of Life
Meeting Days/Time:
UWW Online
Course Description:
Death comes for us all. How does that fact impact the meaning or purpose of our lives? For example, in the vastness of the universe, our lives are brief and inconsequential. Does that make them pointless? Much of life is also consumed by suffering and myriad injustices. Does that make life meaningless—little more than a cruel joke?
In this course, we will grapple with these and related questions. We will investigate why it can seem like life has no meaning, by engaging with writers who have argued for that conclusion. But we will also explore views of those opposed, who offer accounts of what life's purpose is—including that death is what gives life its meaning. In this way, students will learn about several philosophical theories of what the point of life is: to maximize pleasure, to help others, to grow morally and intellectually, to realize one’s potential, among others. And we will examine the extent to which one's circumstances—their socioeconomic position, culture, mental and physical health, (dis)abilities, etc.—might affect the meaningfulness of their life.
Students will not just read philosophy, however; rather, they will do philosophy. That requires learning how to evaluate the philosophical positions and arguments presented in the course, beyond simply understanding and explaining them. In this way, students will hone the skills needed to develop and defend their own views about life's meaning in the face of death, views that should shape their priorities and choices going forward.
Course Number and Name:
TH 130 (3 SECTIONS) – TH130 CONTEMPORARY PLAYWRIGHTS OF COLOR
Meeting Days/Time:
(Sec. 01) MoWe 2:30PM-3:45PM, (02) TuTh 11:30AM-12:45PM, (03)TuTh 1:00PM-2:15PM
Course Number and Name:
WGSS 240 – Introduction to Transgender Studies
Meeting Days/Time:
Tu/Th 1-2:15
Course Description:
This survey of transgender studies will introduce students to the major concepts and current debates within the field. Drawing on a range of theoretical texts, historical case studies, and creative work, we will track the emergence of "transgender" as both an object of study and a way of knowing. In particular, we will ask: what does it mean to "study" "transgender"? This guiding question will lead us to consider the varied meanings of "trans" and how these meanings have been shaped by regimes of gender, racism, colonization, ableism, and medical and legal regulation; the tensions and intimacies between trans, disability, anti-racist, queer, and feminist theory/politics; and how `trans? might help us to imagine other, more just worlds.
