Courses Related to Diversity and Racial Justice (Spring 2025)

ENGLISH 200 – Introduction Literary Studies (Environmental Justice, Race, Indigeneity, and Literature)
MW 4-5:15
This class will introduce students to the practice of critical reading of literary texts. It will focus on themes of nature, ecology, ecological imperialism, and the role of global capital in these areas. Students will read a range of exciting texts from around the world and develop a firm understanding of literary genres. Introduction to multiple theoretical schools, including feminist, race, and postcolonial studies, and the environmental studies will be through deliberations on the conjoined aspects of empire and ecology. The ultimate aim of this course is to introduce methodologies of close reading and foster critical writing skills. 

ENGLISH 205 – Intro to Post-Colonial Studies 
T-Th 11:30-12:45
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. 

ENGLISH 273 – American Realism
T-Th 10-11:15
The American slave narrative tradition is substantiated by former slaves who documented their journey from bondage to freedom in memoirs and autobiographies. From Mary Prince’s 1831 lament, that, “[s]ick or well, it was work—work—work!” to the “shocking tales of slaveholding cruelty” that appear in the 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, this course focuses on styles of narration connected to African Americans’ life writing about enslavement. Our program of study will be divided into sections on terminology, print technologies and historical representations that were produced for mass consumption. We will study the term “slave” and its legal, political and economic functions as part of the American institution of slavery with attention to differences between systems of indentured servitude and slavery in the American North and South and the nature of hemispheric relations between West Indian and American slavery. Students will also interrogate literary terms to establish a relationship between fictional and nonfictional accounts of slavery that are evident in readings by major authors and lesser-known authors.

ENGLISH 300 – Junior Year Writing - Intro to Latinx Literature
MW 2:30-3:45
This course offers an introduction to Latinx Literature which encompasses poetry, fiction, and nonfiction produced by members of the Latin American diaspora within the United States. We will survey works from the late nineteenth century through our contemporary moment to examine how Latinx Literature pertains to, influences, and underwrites blurry-bordered “American Literature.” With a special emphasis on the historical entanglements of evolving concepts of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class, our discussions and writing projects will consider themes of migration, dispossession, multilingualism, assimilation, and cultural preservation. Texts will include works by Jose Martí, Arthur Schomburg, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Julia de Burgos, Gloria Anzaldúa, Achy Obejas, Karla Cornjeo Villavicencio, and more. While we will consider some Spanish language texts—at times beside and English-language counterpart—Spanish is not necessary to participate in this course.

ENGLISH 362 – Modern Novel - Of Immigrants and Migration
MW 2:30-3:45
People from countries previously colonized by Great Britain find their way to British shores; people from countries affected by U.S. interventions find their way to the U.S. Some arrive as immigrants and some as migrants (we will consider the implications of these two terms). Both groups, however, endure forms of jingoism, racism, xenophobia, and violence at the social, cultural, economic, and political levels. Among other things, immigrants and migrants find that they are perceived as traitors, terrorists, criminals, and job snatchers. In relating the experiences of immigrants and migrants, our selected works employ a range of literary techniques. We will engage the relationship between aesthetics and politics in these textual interventions and consider the effect of this relationship on the representations and receptions of immigrants and migrants. This course examines works dealing with movement from South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Northern Ireland to Britain, and from East Asia, the Arab countries, and Mexico to the U.S. The course includes works by Ana Castillo, Omar El Akkad, John Okada, Caryl Phillips, and Zadie Smith. We will also watch and discuss two films. Critical essays and some theory will guide our readings and film viewings.

ENGLISH 378 - American Women Writers
TuTh 11:30AM - 12:45PM

Representations of American Womanhood. In this class, we will review American writers' concepts of womanhood with women's advocacy literature as a point of orientation. Primarily drawing from nineteenth-century literature, we will draw from a rich selection of genres including novels, poetry, supplicant appeals, and autobiographical narratives that relate to perceptions of women's societal successes and shortcomings. This class is especially suited for students who are interested in tracing a history of reformers' and missionaries' contributions to women's access to educational and religious institutions and to charitable industries. The primary goal of the course is for students to study representations in historical literature about women's place in society including in domestic, work-related, political and avant-garde spheres of identify formation. A secondary goal is for students to identify the ways writing and activism provided pathways for women's artistic expression, visibility and empowerment. Primary readings in association with the fundamentals of literary analysis will uncover major junctures in evolving notions of woman-centered and feminist thought in American culture. Students will pay special attention to writers Margaret Fuller, Frances E. W. Harper, Pauline Hopkins and Zitkala-sa, among others. 

ENGLISH 494JI – Going to Jail: Incarceration in US literature and culture 
T-Th 1-2:15
Why do we put people in cages? In what ways does the caging of humans impact those outside as well as inside? Writers have long used the prison as a space from which to ask questions about the nature and meaning of criminality and the rule of law, about human minds, bodies, and behavior, about economics, politics, race, and social class, and about how language makes and unmakes us as human beings. In this class, we will study US fiction, poetry, film, and nonfiction prose (print and digital) by prisoners, journalists, scholars, lawyers, and activists in order to consider these issues for ourselves. We will draw on the knowledge and critical skills you have gained from your gen ed coursework throughout. Assignments will include five short papers and two drafts of a longer final paper. Authors may include: Michelle Alexander, Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Martin Luther King, CeCe McDonald, David Oshinsky, Danielle Sered, Bryan Stevenson, Jerome Washington, and Malcolm X. Open only to senior English majors.

ENGLISH 591 – Topics in Indigenous Literature
M 10:45-1:15
What attributes mark Indigenous women’s poetry today? How do contemporary Indigenous women poets engage in trends shared across feminist poetics as well as topics of specific concern to an Indigenous experience, both historical and contemporary? How do these concerns differ and shape the work at the level of subject and craft? As the population statistically most likely to experience violence, how do contemporary Indigenous women poets write under and against such violence. This seminar will focus on contemporary female poets from shared and various Indigenous nations, such for example Joan Naviyuk Kane, dg nanouk okpik, m.s. redcherries, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Selina Boan, No’u Revilla, and Layli Long Soldier, in the context of these and other questions posed together throughout the semester.

ART-HIST 327/627 – Contemporary Art
T-Th 10-11:15
Intro to major artists and movements ca. 1980-present, with extensive focus on diversity and marginalization. Includes a Service Learning Component where students work with local high school teachers and create activities both in the HS classroom and in the UMCA to invite students from Springfield, Holyoke, and Amherst high schools to visit the contemporary art museum.

ART-HIST 306/606 – Vexed Antiquities
MW 4-5:15
Seminar style class that explores recent controversies related to ancient cultural heritage, modern politics, museums and related issues of equity and justice.

ART-HIST 314 – Sexuality, Drama and Invention: The Baroque Artist in Italy
T/TH 10:00-11:15
This course focuses on the lives, careers, and works of five famous Italian Baroque artists and architects: Michelangelo da Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Guido Reni, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and Francesco Borromini. Special attention is given to the role of sexuality and gender in the artists’ lives and works as well as in seventeenth-century culture more broadly, and to the concepts of drama and invention in the theory and practice of Baroque art and architecture.

MUS 100-02 – Music Appreciation
T-Th 2:30-3:45
MUS 100 seeks to help students to understand themselves as humans capable of aesthetic appreciation of music–and by extension of the arts more broadly. We will make every effort to convince you that music matters to you and to society, that your lives, and those of others, will be better with music than without. The basic orientation of the course is cultural, and thus one of its aims is to provide a framework for understanding the several musical works and traditions in their stylistic, biographical, social and historical aspects. Because musical works are not only historical objects or documents we study, our relationship with them is much more intimate. Intangible thing though it is, music nevertheless succeeds in holding our attention, often moving us in ways that are notoriously difficult to describe, much less explain. The continued performance, interpretation, and criticism of musical works sustain the dynamic quality of our interaction with them. All of this begins with engaged listening, with attending to what is sounding around us. A second principal aim of this course, therefore, is to foster the kind of attentive listening this music merits. Includes class meetings dedicated to music and protest, peace, race and ethnicity, and gender. In this General Education Curriculum course, which satisfies the AT designation, we will consider a variety of issues, including the musical styles and aesthetic priorities of particular periods and specific composers and performers; the various ways in which words and music have been effectively and meaningfully combined; the different contexts (social, political, religious) within which music was composed, performed and heard; the varieties of meaning ascribed to music and its power in the past and today. Focused attention is given to techniques of musical listening and to exploring the role of music in one's own life and surroundings. No knowledge of musical notation is required.

MUS 150 – The Lively Arts
M 5:30 / various times Wednesday
intro art appreciation gen-ed that examines art/music made by a diverse array of people from different historical and cultural contexts; political interventions from artists from marginalized identities or groups are foregrounded / social justice is a primary theme of the class (units on art and mass incarceration, artistic interventions into racist institutions, feminist performance art from the 1960s, music made under conditions of censorship, history of jazz and Black music with respect to resisting co-optation and racism, etc.)

DANCE 171 – DANCE HISTORY IN THE 20TH CENTURY: Delving into Embodied Dance History 
MW 12:20pm - 2pm
In this course, we will delve into the distinct dance history lineage representing American dancers and choreographers whose work and artistic vision created the foundation of modern concert dance. Many of these artists influenced and informed the evolution and emergence of modern concert dance and were pioneers and agents for social change who expressed their unique philosophical beliefs through their choreography, performance, and pursuit of their artistic dreams. We will examine these dance artists through multiple contexts to gain an in-depth and multilayered understanding of who these artists were and to understand the multiple social, cultural and historical factors that helped shape their work. As we study the lineage of numerous American dance artists of the 20th century, we will identify intersections between these artists and examine how their legacies has been continued by their many protégés who continue to interpret and transform their work today.

MUS – Jazz Vocal Ensemble
M/W/F 10:10-12:05
The semester will be totally based on Songs of social Justice in order to help empower our students. Description to follow.

MUS 102 – Afro-American Music
T-Th. 8:00-9:15am
While we will study the connected lineage of Isadora Duncan, Ted Shawn, Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, José Limón, Katherine Dunham, Alvin Ailey and other pioneers of modern dance, we will also examine artists who have been omitted and underrepresented from the history books of American modern dance such as Edna Guy, Asadata Dafora, Pearl Primus, Michio Ito, Yuriko, Blondell Cummings, Eleo Pomare, Talley Beaty and others. Through our collective research we will expand, revise and reimagine the canon of American modern dance history in a more inclusive way. In small groups and individually, we will research, present, and write about past and present dancers, choreographies, dance companies, and dance movements, that have and continue to be foundational to the evolution of the American modern dance tradition. In addition, we will experience embodied dance history and explore processes of reimagining and reconstructing dances from history within collaborative dance making assignments with our peers.

Note from Instructor: Race and discrimination towards African Americans are issues covered repeatedly in this course.

MUS 690S – The Concept of Late Style in Music
T-Th 9:30-10:45
“Late style” is an expression regularly used in music history to distinguish the work of composers as they enter their last phase of composition—often, but not only, in old age. Framed by the writings of Said, Adorno, Straus, Spitzer, Solomon, and others, this seminar is an exploration of the concept of “late style” in music, with a focus on case studies of individual composers, including Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Debussy, Stravinsky, Duke Ellington, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Ligeti, and Elliott Carter. This course looks closely at the musical and biographical contexts in which late-age music was composed, and seeks both to question the assumptions surrounding late style, mortality, and aging studies, and to prompt a more critical understanding of the late/last works of composers and musicians and the racialized and gendered experiences of aging. The course will focus primarily on eighteenth-, nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century examples, but students may choose for their final papers composers from any century for whom the theoretical concept of a “late style” seems applicable. Consideration of “late style” will include discussion of philosophical, psychological, religious, and aesthetic contexts of composition, performance, and interpretation. Students might consider this course if they have an interest in the late works of composers or a more general interest in the relationship between creativity and the course of life.

All WGSS courses: see our website for details