Courses Related to Diversity and Racial Justice

ARCHITECTURE 370 – Junior Year Writing

Sec 02-This section will examine the theme of architecture and race within the context of the Americas and the Caribbean from the colonial era to the contemporary moment. The close examination of pertinent literature, history, and theory will help us to flesh out the ways that architecture narrates race, and vice versa.

ARCHITECTURE 230/530 – Design Engagement

This seminar course provides several frameworks to explore critical architectural/spatial dialogues between a broad range of political, cultural and social contexts.

ARCHITECTURE 211 – The City

This lecture course investigates the history of global cities, with an emphasis on the twentieth and twenty first centuries

ARTHIST 118 – History of Architecture and the Built Environment

Mon, Wed, Fri, 10:10-11:00am

ARTHIST 116 – Art and Visual Culture of East Asia

Mon, Wed, Fri, 12:20-1:05pm

This course surveys the visual culture and art of China, Korea, and Japan. It fulfills general education requirements in arts (AT) and global diversity (G) by equipping you with 1) the language for describing and analyzing our visual world, or how to look at and talk about art and 2) historical and cultural contexts for the major movements, concepts, and ideas in East Asian ARTHISTory, or how works of art express ideas. Taking art and architecture as our primary documents, as well as related textual sources, we build visual literacy and analyze the historical factors that formed the interconnected visual histories of East Asian art. The goal is to not merely identify and name monuments of art and architecture throughout Asia, but to offer reasons for their construction and explanations of their form and significance. Lectures, exams, short papers, and assigned readings are designed to build visual and cultural literacy, as well as sensitivity to the diverse range of perspectives.

ARTHIST 327-01 – Contemporary Art

Tues, Thurs, 2:30-3:45pm

Addresses the history of contemporary art since 1980 from a western perspective, but in a global context. Introduces students to major issues in contemporary art and criticism such as conceptualism, new media, earth art, postmodernism, neo-expressionism, institutional critique, identity politics, political interventions, installation art, ecology, globalization, relational aesthetics, and the role of consumerism and the art market.Includes a new emphasis on community engagement and social practice art: students will work with the UMCA education curator to coordinate group visits of area high school students to the museum, in person or virtually, for critical discussions on the culture of museums and the way they relate to diverse and racialized communities.

ARTHIST 334 – Decorative Arts

Tues, Thurs, 10:00-11:15am

ARTHIST 797D – Drawing in Contemporary Art

Wed, 2:30-5:15pm

This course addresses how drawing, once a preparatory medium for painting, is now a major medium in its own right. However, drawing is resistant to modernist medium specificity and thus can be seen as an "anti-medium" whose contemporary definition is not based on internal properties, such as line or the use of paper, but rather its ability to connect disparate practices, such as hand-making and digital expression; genres, such as art and design; and communities, such as art and science audiences. The course will develop around the hands-on study and research of objects in Five College collections, and will culminate in a series of web projects based around the objects researched by individual students and/or virtual exhibitions designed by student teams. Spring 2022 course will emphasize figural drawing and its links to intersectional identities and decolonial histories in contemporary art practices.

ARTHIST 391G – African Art

Tues, Thurs, 11:30am-12:45pm

ENGLISH 115 – American Experience (ALDU)

Tues, Thurs, 11:30am-12:45pm

Introduction to the interdisciplinary study of American culture, with a wide historical scope and attention to diverse cultural experiences in the U.S.

ENGLISH 115 – American Experience (ALDU)

Mon, Wed, Fri, 10:10-11:00am

This course deals with the diverse experiences of people from various backgrounds in the United States. To explore the diversity in experience throughout the country’s history, this course will examine the struggles, revolutions, and perspectives of marginalized groups in U.S. history, such as Native Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans. This course will also examine some prominent literary works, both fictional and non-fictional supplemented by painting, photography, film, and material culture, to reflect on how the ideals of liberty, equality, and human rights have taken multiple and contradictory shapes within the social, political, cultural, and economic contexts of various eras. As we explore these aspects, our objectives will be to understand how significant forces and events, such as race, ethnicity, slavery, colonialism, anti-colonial and anti-slavery rebellions, that shaped American civilization from the eighteenth century to the present impact global issues. Authors might include John de Crevecoueur, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fredrick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Toni Morrison, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ocean Vuong, and Joy Harjo.

ENGLISH 117 – Ethnic American Literature (ALDU)

Mon, Wed, Fri, 10:10-11:00am

American literature written by and about ethnic minorities, from the earliest immigrants through the cultural representations in modern American writing.

ENGLISH 131 – Society & Literature (ALDG)

Mon, Wed, Fri, 11:15am-12:05pm

This course explores the relationship between literature and labor in the United States. We will look to how literature has depicted laborers and the working class across a variety of periods and genres as well as think about how class operates as a barrier to access, particularly when class intersects with race, sexuality, gender presentation, citizenship status, and abled-bodiedness. Some questions this class will consider: How are laborers depicted and how do these depictions affect how the U.S. public is meant to interpret labor? What work is deemed valuable? What aspects of American life are impacted by working conditions? How do texts depict issues of unionization, capitalism, citizenship, blue/white collar work, and the disparities of working in the United States? How might we think of various forms of inequality (racial, gendered, etc.) as intrinsically tied to class and labor (rather than separate from it? How can literature serve as a useful tool for activating social change or organization? Ultimately, students will read from a variety of diverse authors in order to more critically engage with U.S. labor history, capitalism, worker exploitation, and so on in order to more thoroughly engage with our current political and economic moment as well as with their own individual relationships to class and work.

ENGLISH 131 – Society & Literature (ALDG)

Mon, Wed, Fri, 10:10-11:00am

Literature and Human Rights. This course explores the relationship between literature and human rights in American and Global South contexts. In what ways do writers use specific genres to articulate and humanize what may seem to be otherwise abstract concepts such as human rights and social justice? How do literary modes of representation both reclaim and problematize discourses of human rights? We will discuss how aesthetics and ethics combine to produce alternative and innovative ways of imagining a ‘just’ society. Students will consider how novels, short stories, and films become a creative platform to educate and raise awareness on compromised or denied social, cultural, and economic rights in systems of war, colonization, slavery, race, and caste. We will also consider instances where writers and artists have successfully agitated society into action and have in turn found their own rights compromised and their voices and works censored or destroyed. This course will include the works of Toni Morrison, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nadine Gordimer, and Bong Joon-ho among others.

ENGLISH 132 – Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture (ALDG)

Mon, Wed, Fri, 11:15pm-12:05pm

In this course we will examine a diverse cluster of texts, ranging from short stories, to essays, to films, in order to explore how gender and sexuality are constructed and critiqued in literary and cultural works.We’ll also aim to understand the ways in which gender and sexuality function in different contexts, and how race, ethnicity, religion, and caste often contour the categories of sex and gender. The selected texts will draw our attention to gender and sexuality as complex constructs that operate alongside other social, political, and economic processes.

ENGLISH 132 – Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture (ALDG)

Tues, Thurs, 11:30am-12:45pm

Reading Feelings. This course will primarily focus on the relationship between individual feelings and desires such as shame, envy, repression, and love, and sociopolitical and historical occurrences to study the potential of literature to capture sexual and gender experiences. We will read the works of Toni Morrison, J.M. Coetzee, Arundhati Roy, and others to decolonize sexualities, femininities, and masculinities. This course draws on perspectives from affect studies, critical race studies, gender and sexuality studies, and literary theory.

ENGLISH 205 – Intro to Post-Colonial Studies

Tues, Thurs, 1:00-2:15pm

This course surveys literatures written in English from South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. In doing so it asks what unites the diverse literatures gathered under the rubric "postcolonial". Is postcolonial simply a descriptive category, or does it suggest an oppositional or troubled stance towards colonialism and modernity? To consider this question we will take up major issues and debates within postcolonial studies, namely: nationalism and nativism, subalternity, feminism, development, and globalization. Throughout we will be concerned with questions of identity formation, representation, and literary form.

ENGLISH 254 – Writing and Reading Imaginative Literature

Tues, Thurs, 4:00-5:15pm

By closely reading a diverse group of skillful living writers whose works artfully exemplify narrative and lyric, we’ll determine what qualifies these works as lyrical, and which techniques are used to strengthen the narratives within them. Through literary exploration and creative writing, we’ll cultivate our own practices to teach us to master narrative and lyricism within our own writing. Writers we can expect to read in this course include Ken Liu, Natalie Diaz, Layli Long Soldier, and Safia Elhillo.

ENGLISH 268 – American Literature and Culture before 1865

Tues, Thurs, 10:00-11:15am

“America” is often mythologized in stories about promised land and perfect union. Underneath the mythology, however, are histories of conquest, slavery, skepticism, and inequality, as well as narratives of protest, experimentation, and struggle. In this course on American literature and culture from about 1650 to 1865, we will study how canonical and “minor” authors alike — working in a range of genres across fiction, poetry, travel writing, natural history, ethnology, art, and oratory — engaged with the social, political, and historical problems of the period. To practice literary and cultural history, students will participate in a semester-long collaborative project on a keyword in American studies, such as “abolition,” “democracy,” “gender,” “marriage,” “race,” “science,” or “slavery.”

ENGLISH 269 – American Literature and Culture after 1865

Tues, Thurs, 1:00-2:15pm

This course explores literary texts in the United States from the Civil War to the present. We will examine a variety of issues arising from the historical and cultural contexts of the 19th and 20th centuries, with a special focus on literature that engages with popular movements for liberation. Through the study of texts drawn from feminist, queer, Black and anti-capitalist traditions, among others, we will consider a number of questions, including: How do our texts register, respond to, and contest the formation of racial and gendered identities in the United States? What is the relationship between our texts and the political cultures of the emerging 20th Century? How do literary forms adapt to speak to the rise of new forms of social resistance? How do our texts register the relationship between national and international struggles for freedom, and how do they confront the structures of American imperialism? What experimental strategies do our texts deploy to document and foster social solidarities and movements for independence and self-determination?

ENGLISH 279 – Intro to American Studies

Tues, Thurs, 2:30-3:45pm

Interdisciplinary approach to the study of American culture. Focus on issues of race, class, gender, and ethnicity.

ENGLISH 300 – Jr-year Writing — Topic: Trans Fiction and Theory

Tues, Thurs, 1:00-2:15pm

In this course, our focus will be on gaining a basic understanding of the aesthetic forms, literatures, and political questions surrounding the articulation of transgender subjectivity in the 20th and 21st centuries within a U.S. context. Readings will introduce students to the central discussions and debates within the emergent field of transgender studies, ranging from defining what "trans" has meant in different historical and institutional contexts, to looking at the intersections of transgender concerns with the politics of health care, discourses of disability and embodiment, colonialism and neocolonialism, racial oppression and the imperial state.

ENGLISH 300 – Jr-Year Writing— Topic: Putting the Black in the Union Jack: Black British Literature

Mon, Wed, 4:00-5:15pm

In 1963, Jamaican-born dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson moved to London, as part of a long wave of post-war immigrants encouraged to go to England to help revitalize the economy. What he found, as expressed in his most famous recording, was that “Inglan is a bitch/dere’s no escaping it.” However, black people have lived in Britain since the sixteenth century, and publishing books there since the eighteenth century. In this course you will study the lives and works of black people in Britain over three centuries. We will read modern prize-winning authors such as Sam Selvon, Caryl Phillips, Andrea Levy, Bernardine Evaristo, Paul Gilroy, and Zadie Smith, as well works by black eighteenth-century authors such as Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho. We will also view several feature films and documentaries about the black British experience over many years. The course's main topics are immigration and outsiders; the long-established black communities; crafting a literary voice; the concept of “home”; modern, multicultural Britain; interracial marriage; and the formation of a Black British identity. How do these British experiences differ from American experiences?

ENGLISH 302 – Studies in Textuality and New Media

Wed, 4:00-6:30pm

The Social Life of Data. In this class, we will study the social life of data associated with popular topics in digital culture. From globalized polling tools that project measurements of happiness to surveillance practices that alternatively draw public scrutiny and provide a means of resistance, we will use interdisciplinary approaches to investigate data’s socio-political influence across contexts: as sites of contestation, as symbols of technological advancement and as platforms for social change. Students will explore a variety of public data sets related to fiery debates raised in readings on surveillance, cults, poverty, sports entertainment, crowd-sourced fundraising, and collective protest.

ENGLISH 354 – Creative Writing: Intro to Fiction

Mon, Wed, Fri, 11:15am-12:05pm

Invented Worlds: Magical Realism, AfroSurrealism & Other Fantastic Fictions. In this writing course, we will focus on storytelling that has an undercurrent of magic. From magical realism, AfroSurrealism, horror, weird fiction, fabulism, fantasy, science fiction, to Afrofuturism, we will read & write fiction where strange things happen: people fly, time collapses, the dead rise, & nature eschews the laws of physics. We will examine how speculative fiction writers invent new and exciting worlds and create some of our own. We will practice worldbuilding, creating magic systems, and other craft techniques in our own stories. A portion of the class will be dedicated to reading fantastic fiction by writers of color such as Lesley Nneka Arimah, Carmen Maria Machado, and others. From exploring a retelling of Franz Kafak’s The Metamorphosis in which a Black man wakes up as a white man to sojourning through a frightening smalltown in America where guns grow on trees, the works we will read will interrogate how much invented worlds reflect the very world in which we live in.

ENGLISH 363 – Modern British Drama

Tues, Thurs, 4:00-5:15pm

Politics and Form in Modern and Contemporary English and Irish Drama. Intensive study of major British and Irish dramatists from the 1890s to the present, with particular attention to political themes, experimentation in form, and representations of identity (national, political, professional, class, racial, gendered).

ENGLISH 378 – American Women Writers

Mon, Wed, 2:30-3:45pm

“What Moves at the Margin”: Reading Contemporary American Women Writers. “The proper stuff of fiction does not exist,” wrote Virginia Woolf in 1925, “everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss.” The contemporary writers we will be reading in this course – a rather open-ended exploration of American women writers from the mid-1970s to the present – would agree with Woolf. Exploring the richly diverse, original, and, at times, radically experimental narratives that evolve– sometimes quietly, other times filled with rage, almost always with longing, and, at moments, with deep love -- we will consider the writers’ attempts to respond to the social, economic, and political events that shaped their lives.

ENGLISH 391ML – Multilingualism and Literacy

Tues, Thurs, 1:00-2:15pm

This course is a unique opportunity to participate in a community-university collaboration on literacy and language learning. The class explores what “literacy” and “multilingualism” mean in our current moment by 1) reading, critiquing, and writing about academic understandings of multilingual literacy and 2) partnering with a community organization to support the multilingual activities of local literacy learners. The course aims to understand the impact of literacy in a linguistically diverse society: How is literacy in English the same or different as literacy in multiple languages? How do people come to be praised or condemned for their literacy practices? How does a diversifying society define literacy as effective, creative, or failing? We will read across the fields of writing studies, TESOL, and community-engaged literacy.

ENGLISH 391NM – Narrative Medicine: How Writing Can Heal

Thurs 4:00-6:30pm

This interdisciplinary writing course investigates the cognitive and emotional benefits of writing for diverse populations including trauma survivors, patients, caregivers, teachers or those who hope to teach—anyone who is interested in the power of personal writing to effect change.

ENGLISH 491RV – Resistance & Revolution in 20th and 21st Century American Poetry

Tues, Thurs, 2:30-3:45pm

How do poets engage with the riot, the strike, the boycott, the occupation, the commune, the sit-in, the picket, and the mass demonstration? We will explore (mostly American) poetry written during the three most recent periods of capitalist economic crisis and corresponding social rebellion: the 1930s the 1970s, and post-2008. Our guiding questions will be: How does poetry offer ways for its readers to grasp the contours of capitalism as a system? What strategies of resistance do American poets embrace and elaborate in their popular and experimental forms? What is the relationship between politics that take place in the streets and politics that take place on the page? What rich tensions arise between the poet as militant and the poet as artist? How do class, race, gender, and sexuality inform struggles for post-capitalist futures? Our texts from the 1930s will include poetry by Sol Funaroff, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Muriel Rukeyser. From the 1970s, we'll examine the work of Amiri Baraka, John Wieners, Gwendolyn Brooks, Larry Eigner, and Diane DiPrima. In our turn to the current moment, we will explore how American poets metabolize the rise of neoliberalism, and in turn, give voice to popular resistance against austerity and state violence. Contemporary poets will include Keston Sutherland, M. NourbeSe Philip, Rob Halpern, Uyen Hua, Anne Boyer, Fred Moten, and Julianna Spahr. Throughout the course, we will place poetry in conversation with individual and collective theories, experiences, and manifestos of resistance and liberation: Marx, Lenin, Mao, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Sylvia Federici, The Black Panther Party, and Chicago Gay Liberation.

ENGLISH 491SA – Amandla! S. African Literature & Politics, Apartheid and Post-apartheid

Mon, Wed, 2:30-3:45pm

“Amandla!” means “Power”, and it was a prominent political slogan in the anti-apartheid struggle. Over the last hundred years, South Africa has seen transitions of a momentous nature: from a colonial past to a postcolonial present; from the oppressions of apartheid to Nelson Mandela’s first democratically elected government in 1994 and the postapartheid period beyond. In this setting South African literature has kept the pulse of its society, registering its lived experience and telling its inner history. In this context we’ll read works by key writers both black and white, male and female. We’ll draw on fiction, drama and poetry, and dip into music, documentaries and video to widen our sense of cultural and political engagement in and through a tumultuous history. We’ll work to understand the relationship between politics and art, and we’ll also gain a sense of the extraordinary cultural and social range of South African literature—of its voices, views and perspectives, the possibilities, complexities and problems of a new society in the making. Authors will range from the most noted and famous, such as Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee (both Nobel Prizewinners), to lesser-known but nonetheless extraordinary writers, among them Njabulo Ndebele, Zoë Wicomb, K. Sello Duiker, and Phaswane Mpe.

ENGLISH 491Z – Poetry of the Political Imagination

Tues 1:00-3:30pm

Poetry of the political imagination is a matter of both vision and language. Any progressive social change must be imagined first; any oppressive social condition, before it can change, must be named in words that persuade. Poets of the political imagination go beyond protest to define an artistry of resistance. This course explores how best to combine poetry and politics, craft and commitment. Students read classic works ranging from the epigrams of Ernesto Cardenal, written against the dictator of Nicaragua, to Allen Ginsberg's Howl, the book that sparked an obscenity trial. They also read the farmworker poems of Diana García, born in a migrant labor camp; the emergency room sonnets of Dr. Rafael Campo; the prison poetry of political dissident Nazim Hikmet; and the feminist satire of Marge Piercy, among others.

ENGLISH 492N – Nature, Climate Change and Literature

Tues, Thurs, 11:30am-12:45pm

The Guardian describes climate change as “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” It is not surprising that the newspaper should cast the unfolding threat of climate change through the lens of a “story.” Climate change has been cast as an environmental problem with economic, political and scientific solutions. However, as the geographer Mike Hulme pointed out: “Science may be solving the mysteries of climate, but it is not helping us discover the meaning of climate change.” In this seminar we will read groundbreaking novels, short stories, critical essays, and creative non-fiction that engage with the big questions of environment, weather and climate. The aim of the seminar is to show the importance of literary study in this period of interminable catastrophes, and also to demonstrate the crucial ways in which culture, capital and climate are imbricated within each other. Students will also have the opportunity to watch short documentaries and analyze climate change-related artworks. Climate Change is a multi-issue problem with multi-generational effects; stories are as crucial as ice core data to prepare for a habitable future.

ENGLISH 494RI – Race and Contemporary Arts (Integrative Experience)

Tues, Thurs, 11:30am-12:45pm

This Integrative Experience class looks at the relationship between art and politics -- specifically, the question of race in contemporary art. It is an interdisciplinary course that draws from a range of different art forms (literature, theater, film, the visual arts, dance, and music), as well as history and social science. In order to understand the complex ways in which race appears in the arts today, we will look at some of the historical origins of race and art in the United States, as well as in a comparative framework.

ENGLISH 497T – Teaching Writing in the 21st Century

Tues, Thurs, 1:00-2:30pm

Why do we privilege some kinds of writing over others? What uses and functions does writing serve in society? How is writing changing as a result of social media and other technologies? An introduction to writing studies designed for people who may want to teach K-16, this course will inquire into the changing nature of writing in the 21st century. Specifically, we will investigate why and how writing matters within social hierarchies; what conceptual frames we have for understanding writing production; how cultural contexts affect a writer's choices; how textual features reflect different writers and ways of knowing; and most importantly, how people learn to write. To do so, we will look into research and scholarship on diverse literacies, writing processes, the nature of academic writing, and how writers from diverse populations may approach writing tasks differently. We will focus not only on how we might teach writing but also on how writing is changing in response to multiple Englishes, digital platforms, and the information economy.

HISTORY 111 - World History since 1500

Mon, Wed, 9:05-9:55am + discussion

This course examines world history from the late fifteenth century to the very recent past. To provide coherence to this vast range of peoples, places, and events, we will focus on two related themes: first, the formation and transformation of Eurasian and global empires; and second, the “Columbian exchange” of peoples, raw materials, manufactured goods, and biological organisms that has characterized the history of the world since 1493. Over the course of the semester, we will explore aspects of these themes, including the enslavement and forced migration of millions of human beings; the radical transformation of the landscapes of eastern North America, western China, and elsewhere; the formation of world economies; and other subjects.

HISTORY 112 - Introduction to World Religions

Mon, Wed, 12:20-1:10pm + discussion

What is religion, and why do people care so much about it? This course will examine the origins and development of some of the world's major religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We will read sacred texts and travel to sites of worship. We will also consider how religion continues to shape current affairs. Students will prepare analytic essays, participate in group discussions, and attend off-campus field trips. The course will demonstrate that understanding religion is critical to participating in a global community and will neither advocate or denigrate religious participation.

HISTORY 112H - Introduction to World Religions (Honors)

Tues, Thurs, 4:00-5:15pm

What is religion, and why do people care so much about it? This course will examine the origins and development of some of the world's major religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We will read sacred texts and travel to sites of worship. We will also consider how religion continues to shape current affairs. Students will prepare analytic essays, participate in group discussions, and attend off-campus field trips. The course will demonstrate that understanding religion is critical to participating in a global community and will neither advocate or denigrate religious participation.

HISTORY 154 - Social Change in the 1960s

Mon, Wed, 9:05-9:55am + discussion

Few periods in United States. history experienced as much change and turmoil as the "Long Sixties" (1954-1975), when powerful social movements overhauled American gender norms, restructured the Democratic and Republican parties, and abolished the South's racist "Jim Crow" regime. This course examines the movements that defined this era. We will explore the civil rights and Black Power movements; the student New Left and the antiwar movement; the women's and gay liberation movements; struggles for Asian American, Chicano/a, Native American, and Puerto Rican freedom; as well as the rise of conservatism. Throughout the semester, we will assess Sixties social movements' ideals, strategies, and achievements, and their ongoing influence upon U.S. politics, society, and culture.

HISTORY 155 - Empires to Nations: The Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800

Mon, Wed, 12:20-1:10pm + discussion

The transformation of the Atlantic World from a world of empires into one of nation-states through examining the interactions between Africans, American Natives, and Europeans from the fifteenth through the end of the eighteenth century.

HISTORY 170 - Indigenous Peoples of North America

Tues, Thurs, 4:00-4:50pm + discussion

The diverse histories of indigenous peoples in North America from their origins to the present. Focus on indigenous perspectives, examining social, economic, and political issues experienced by indigenous peoples. Emphasis on diversity, continuity, change, and self-determination.

HISTORY 247 - Empire, Race, and the Philippines

Tues, Thurs, 1:00-2:15pm

This course compares the colonial legacies of Spain, Japan, and the United States in the Philippines while examining local reception, resistance, and negotiation of colonialism.

HISTORY 265 - US LGBT and Queer History

Tues, Thurs, 11:30am-12:45pm

This course explores how queer individuals and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities have influenced the social, cultural, economic, and political landscape in United States history. With a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the course covers topics such as the criminalization of same-sex acts, cross-dressing, industrialization and urbanization, feminism, the construction of the homo/heterosexual binary, transsexuality and the "lavender scare" during the Cold War, the homophile, gay liberation, and gay rights movements, HIV/AIDS, and (im)migration. We will often look to examples from the present to better explore change over time and the modes and influences that shape both current and past understandings of gender and sexual difference.

HISTORY 297DN - Diasporic Nationalism

Tues, Thurs, 10:00-11:15am

Over the past two centuries, nation-states have regulated the global geography to units of belonging and have been commonly accepted as significant definers of collective identities. Today, the status of the nation-state is overwhelmingly strong to the degree that it is difficult to imagine alternative political structures or competing mechanisms in the shaping of identities. In this course, we will examine the reasons for the rise of the nation- state and the significance of national territory in shaping social bonds and symbolic orders. We will learn about historical attempts to present compelling alternatives to the nation-state of trans-national networks of solidary and non-territorial national movements. We will examine how diasporic societies—like Jewish communities in Eastern Europe and Armenian communities in Latin America—created cultural enclaves with a degree of political autonomy and how these autonomies—like communities of Kurdish returnees—have induced social change in the national territory. We will then question if models of diasporic cultural autonomies can offer a viable alternative to the nation-state in the 21st century.

HISTORY 382 - City In Modern U.S.

Mon, Wed, Fri, 1:25-2:15pm

This course will examine the development of the modern American city from 1876 to the present day. In particular, this course will situate the role of a diverse constellation of actors in shaping the urban built environment and resultant struggles over power and equity. In doing so, this course will examine how the emergence of the "modern" city reshaped and remade ideologies of race, sex, gender, nationality, and citizenship. Students will explore common themes in U.S. urban history, including racial segregation and apartheid, suburbanization, the growth of mass incarceration, the "urban crisis," and the contemporary neoliberal cityscape. Additionally, this course will remain attentive to cities as places of transnational migration and movement, as spaces shaped by state and federal policy, and as sites of intensely local struggles for belonging and redistributive justice.

HISTORY 387 - The Holocaust

Tues, Thurs, 2:30-3:20pm + discussion

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.

HISTORY 397AR - American Reconstruction & Reunion

Tues, Thurs, 11:30am-12:45pm

This course examines the social, political, economic, and cultural history of the era of Reconstruction and Reunion. We will investigate the forces that drove Reconstruction in the North, South, West, and abroad during and after the U.S. Civil War and the destruction of slavery. We will attend to conflicts over the meanings of freedom and the government's role in securing freedom for its citizens among freed people, white and black northerners, suffragists, white southerners, western farmers, and Native Americans in the postbellum period. The course concludes with the North's withdrawal from the South, the rise of legal segregation, legal disfranchisement, lynching, and white sectional reunion during the wars of 1898. At various points during the semester, we will reflect critically upon the ways in which Reconstruction and Reunion have been remembered and represented in history and popular culture.

HISTORY 397CD - Seminar- Creativity and Diversity in mid-20th Century NYC

Mon, 2:30-5:00pm

Students will learn research and writing skills through original research that culminates in an exhibit with public presentations. As historians, they will explore the diversity of mid-20th century New York City as a place of artistic and intellectual ferment that connects to broader changes happening in the U.S. and the world.

HISTORY 397JL - Special Topics- Social Justice Lawyering

Tues, 2:30-5:00pm

From fighting Jim Crow segregation to challenging the recent Muslim travel ban, judicial review has historically been used as a strategy to reign-in executive and legislative over-reach and protect Constitutional rights. This course will examine how lawyers, social movements, and everyday people have used litigation to advocate for social justice in the United States. Through reading in-depth studies of important civil and criminal cases, we will explore such questions as: What is the history of social justice lawyering in the United States and how, why and when have social movements turned to litigation to advance their causes? What are the pros and cons of using litigation to achieve social justice, versus other tools like direct action, lobbying for political change, and community organizing? How effective is litigation in achieving the goals originally envisioned by lawyers, activists, and litigants? How have lawyers constrained or expanded the vision of social justice movements? What dilemmas do lawyers?who are ethically bound to zealously advocate for the interests of individual clients?face when they are additionally interested in advancing "a cause"? Cases explored may include issues such as civil rights, women's rights, free speech, LGBT/Queer rights, disability rights, environmental justice, criminal justice, poverty and people's lawyering, immigration rights, and the rise of conservative social movement lawyering. Prior law-related coursework helpful, but not required.

HISTORY 397LM - Special Topics- History of Shi'i Islam

Tues, Thurs, 4:00-5:15pm

What do we know about Shi'i Islam? Who are the Shi'is and how are they different from other Islamic groups, and how did that come to be? What do we know about Shi'i societies in the past or present or about their beliefs and practices? Where are these societies located and how did they develop? From its inception to various steps of transformation and in its many manifestations in history and in the modern world, the many misrepresentations and misinformation have created a sense of mystery about this topic. This course does not aim at providing a final and definitive answer to the above questions or similar ones. Instead, we will together approach this topic methodically and critically and discuss various issues in light of the available information and in connection with the current discourse. This course offers a historical introduction to the development of Shi'i Islam, its doctrines and the societies that adhered to it, as well as how it developed through various periods.

HISTORY 397WG - Special Topics- Women and Gender in Latin America

Tues, Thurs, 10:00-11:15am

This course uses gender as an analytical lens to understand key themes and periods of Latin American history, from the conquest of the Americas to the present-day neoliberal era. The course will illuminate how gender has shaped social relationships, institutions, identities, and discourses in the region. It will prioritize the role of women and how their individual and collective actions have shaped and transformed Latin America. Special attention will be paid to women's participation in social movements.

HISTORY 411 - History of Science Activism

Thurs, 2:30-5:00pm

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.

HISTORY 493M - Seminar- Policing in Modern America

Tues, Thurs, 1:00-2:15pm

In this course we will investigate and analyze major trends in the history of policing, broadly conceived, in the 20th century United States. This course is not meant as a chronological survey of U.S. history; instead, we will take a thematic approach, each week studying an issue or set of issues through a historical perspective. We will begin with an introduction to general theoretical approaches to the study of policing and the state, then turn to study the development of several different kinds of police forces in their historical contexts; private police in labor conflicts; the Bureau of Prohibition; and the Border Patrol. The course will also explore how evolving ideologies of race, class, gender, and sexuality have shaped understandings of what qualifies as criminal behavior in need of policing.

HISTORY 497CI - Collective Memory and Cultural Myths in Contemporary Israel

Thurs, 2:30-5:00pm

This class examines key issues in the society in Israel by inspecting the way in which the past is remembered and commemorated. Collective memory—the ways in which a society uses and talks about the past—always reflects the needs and developments of that society in the present. In Israel, collective memory plays a leading role in the construction of national and group identities. This class will include an in-depth introduction to theories in collective memory as well as an examination of the ways in which these theories are exemplified in the Israeli case study. What is the role of memory of the Holocaust in the school curriculum? Why is Yitzhak Rabin so strongly commemorated in Tel Aviv, and so forgotten in Jerusalem? What are the differences and similarities between Israeli and Palestinian commemoration of the 1948 war? How did historical religious sites in Jerusalem develop into tourist attractions? And what is the role of archaeology in the shaping of ideology? We will read freshly published studies on Israeli memory and address these issues also through films and literature, where we will visit the living side of memory and experience the way the past is taking shape in the present today.

COMPLIT 330 – Translation, Cross-Cultural Communication, Media

Tues, Thurs, 1:00-2:15pm

This course introduces students to a wide range of relevant research in the inter-disciplinary area of translation studies. Through critical analysis of global media in translation they gain knowledge of localized perspective and the potential difficulties of translating these across languages and cultures. In the process, they become better equipped to examine some of their own previously held assumptions, and to reflect on how these might have influenced their interpretations of a particular text or cultural perspective. Gen Ed AL DG

GERMAN 365 – Berlin: Global City

Tues, Thurs, 1:00-2:15pm

This course examines representations of Berlin in contemporary literature, film, music and art projects in a historical and socio-cultural context with a focus on minorities, migrants, and exiles. Conducted in English. (Gen. Ed. AL, DG)

CHINESE 394WI – Women in Chinese Culture

Tues, Thurs, 10:00-11:15am

This course focuses on the representation of women and the constitution of gender in Chinese culture as seen through literature and mass media. It focuses on literary and visual representations of women to examine important issues such as the relationship between gender and power, self and society, and tradition and modernity.

ITALIAN 229 – Culture of Italian Comics

Mon, Wed, Fri, 12:20-1:10pm

Course taught in English. This course will explore the history of Italian comics and graphic novels (in English) beginning with comics journals of the early 1900s and ending with contemporary comic books, strips and graphic novels. (Gen. Ed. AT, DG)

SPANISH 465 – Business Spanish

Tues, Thurs, 4:00-5:15pm

A course taught in Spanish that reviews the basics of macroeconomics, microeconomics and development economics with a particular focus on what we mean by being "rich" and "poor" from a comparative nationhood standpoint, and from a comparative individual standpoint across regional contexts. This course analyzes the history of economic development in the US and Spanish-speaking countries, especially after World War II, and contextualizes the institutional systems, goals and realities of the current international system of "development aid".

FRENCH 284 – Undead Souths : The Southern Gothic and Francophone Mythologies on Film

Tues, Thurs, 10:00-11:15am

his course will explore themes of the Southern Gothic in works of Cinema and  popular Televisual narratives.

FRENCH 353 – African Film

Tues, 4:00-6:45 pm

This course offers an introduction to African film as an aesthetic and cultural practice.

JAPANESE 491 M – Queer Japan in Literature and Culture

SPANISH 314 – Spanish for Heritage Speakers

Mon, Wed, Fri, 10:10-11:00am

ITALIAN 497/597 – Pasolini at 100

Wed, 4:00-6:30pm

The course examines the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini, alongside with some of his poems and essays on film, to understand the contemporary relevance, 100 years after his birth, of his critique of capitalist society and cultural homologation, pivoting on the radicalization of his sexual and ideological diversity and of an idea of cinema as recovering the experience of 'poetry.'

CHINESE 150 – Peoples and Languages of China

Tues, Thurs, 11:30am-12:45pm

This course introduces social and cultural diversity through the lens of language. Three main foci: classification of the minorities and their languages, language contact and the formation of Chinese dialects, and the role of language in identifying ethnic groups and in maintaining distinct cultures.

SPANISH 497LT/697LT – Latin America and Translation

Mon, 4:00–6:30pm

How can we recover, through translations, the cultural and ideological heritages of Latin America? This course explores the fundamental role of translation and translators in the construction of cultures and identities in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Latin America.

PORTUGUESE 397 – Portuguese Translation Workshop

Mon, Wed, 2:30-3:45pm

This workshop starts from the assumption that the intense and creative act of translation is a unique way to make language-learning as relevant and inclusive as possible. In this workshop we will be translating a range of literary texts from Portuguese into English and from English into Portuguese. Moreover by providing regular practice in researching, analyzing and translating texts, this workshop will equip students with a high degree of intercultural competence.