Amer St 310-0-1 The Chicago Way: Urban Spaces and American Values
Urbanologist Yi Fu Tuan writes, "What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place when we get to know it better and endow it with values." In The Untouchables, Sean Connery tells Kevin Costner, "You want to get Capone? Here's how you get Capone. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue. That's the Chicago way." In this class, we will examine "the Chicago way" from many different angles in order to interrogate the values with which various artists have endowed Chicago. We will read in a broad range of media: journalism, poetry, song, fiction, film, and sequential art to see how a sense of Chicago as a place works over time. We will pay close attention to depictions of the construction of American identity, and to the role of the artist and intellectual in the city.
From earthquakes to hurricanes, fires to floods, we tend to think of natural disasters as spontaneous occurrences. The word disaster originates in the idea of being born under an unlucky constellation or struck down by an uncaring universe. When homes are flooded or crops are destroyed, we see the natural world encroaching on lives and livelihoods in seemingly unpredictable and certainly unwanted ways. But are these disasters truly a product of nature? In this class, we will engage with the complex history of natural disasters: how people experience and rationalize these events, how communities respond to them, and how the causes of disaster are explained by various stakeholders, from victims to insurance companies. By the end of the quarter, students will have developed historical, cultural, and theoretical tools for understanding the nature of the natural disaster.
What is a more important predictor of how long you will live, the genes you inherit from your parents, or the zip code of where you grew up? This course aims to answer this question, as well as others, regarding the origins of social inequalities in health in the US. The course will also consider the broader global context, and ask why the US spends so much money on health care, but lags behind many nations in key indicators of population health. It will examine how social stratification by race/ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, education, and neighborhood quality shapes our biology and the health status of individuals, families, and populations; and, conversely, how health itself can be a fundamental determinant of key social outcomes such as educational achievement.
At the advent of "globalization" some scholars argued that the movements of capital, goods, people and ideas across nation-states have rendered their borders increasingly porous. The erosive effects of this porosity in the age of the multi-national corporations heralded the death of the nation-state. Yet, in the epoch of border walls and offshored refugee processing centers, this assumed porosity of borders begs a reexamination of broader geographies of power and tactics of movement. In this course, we ask: What is a border? Is it the physical line drawn between two states? When is a border artificial and when natural? Who gets to draw these lines? How does the border become an architecture of regulation that extends access to mobility to some and denies it to others? We will probe these questions by working towards rethinking borders as equally the products of mobile social actors, contraband commodities and fluctuating values as they are of state policies aimed at managing their movements. By the end of the course students will be exposed to diverse theories of space and formations of borders in the Americas, Europe, and South Asia. They will be able to articulate what an attention to space and the relations of power inscribed in border formations can contribute to our conceptions of space and power.
In what appears to be an age of unprecedented global distress, what is the role of media in shaping discourses, representations, and experiences of mental illness? Western psychiatric frameworks are increasingly defining mental health/illness around the world via multilateral health organizations that intervene across cultural contexts. These frameworks are also circulated via Western media narratives that shape the meanings people associate with mental health and illness. What other narratives of mental health might be told? What experiences of distress and resilience are obscured by these dominant frameworks? In this course, students will learn about the ways in which cultural meanings and social structures shape mental distress and how it is expressed and experienced by people across time and context. We will critically examine dominant U.S. models of mental health and illness and ask what underlying cultural assumptions and expectations about self, personhood, emotion, mind, body, well-being and success are embedded in these narratives. We will explore how representations in film and television serve to reflect, reinforce, or re-imagine such assumptions and analyze the political and social implications and power dynamics associated with certain ways of thinking about and depicting mental health. Through a combination of engagement with scholarship on culture and mental health, media studies, and our own critical analyses of media objects from film and television, we will explore these questions and work to generate creative and collaborative ideas about how to rewrite media narratives, in order to better reflect the broad spectrum of experience.
Anthro 290-0-24 Before Binary: Archaeologies of Sex, Gender, Sexualities
Since the latter half of the 20th century, Queer and Feminist scholars have shown how binary identity systems (male/female; man/woman; straight/gay; cis/trans) constrain and erase variability in the ways people experience and relate to themselves/others as gendered and sexed beings. But what possibilities exist outside this binary system, and how did people understand sex, gender, and sexuality before it was established? In this course, we will explore archaeological and anthropological case studies that investigate what genders, sexes, and sexualities have been made possible by cultural groups throughout human history. Students will learn about queer and feminist approaches to the study of identity and bodies through archaeological case studies. From Venus Figurines depicting voluptuous bodies in Neolithic Europe, sex acts depicted by the Moche Sex pots of Peru, to Ancient Maya rulers collecting blood from tongues and penises for ritual practices, this class will explore the vastly different ways issues of sex, gender, and sexuality have been understood by people around the globe. Beyond learning about the past, we will question and engage with the possibilities and problems that arise when identity categories defined by specific cultural and temporal contexts are utilized or appropriated to interpret bodies shaped by another. Here, students will learn how to analyze the contexts that make expressions of sex and gender meaningful and be asked to communicate these insights in written and oral formats.
Environmental anthropology is a more recent outgrowth of ecological anthropology, which emerged in the 1960s and 70s as a quantitative focus on systemic human-environment relationships, especially as they pertain to patterns of social change and adaptation. Environmental anthropology became more prominent in the 1980s, and is typically characterized by qualitative research on communities' engagements with contemporary environmental issues. Environmental anthropology has greater commitments to advocacy, critique, and application than ecological anthropology, but as we'll see in this course, the proliferation of "new ecologies" (as opposed to "new environmentalisms") denotes the continued synergy between ecological and environmental anthropologies. This course is divided into two parts. Part I will provide an historical overview of the development of environmental anthropology. We will cover some of the most influential research trends in the field: environmental determinism, cultural ecology, systems ecology, ethnoecology, historical ecology, political ecology, ecofeminisms, and interspecies studies. Part II will then pivot to the application of environmental anthropology knowledge to some of the most pressing environmental issues facing the contemporary world: population pressure, capitalist consumption, biodiversity conservation, sustainable land use, climate change, and environmental justice.
This course examines human relationships to intoxicants, medicines, and substances throughout time and across the globe. From studies of hallucinogens in early societies to the development of Western medicine, we will examine case studies around drug and medicine use in many contexts. We will study the history of psychedelics, opiates, and cannabis, in addition to substances such as coffee, tobacco, and alcohol. Looking at production and distribution from the colonial era through the present, we will examine the labor required to produce these substances for global distribution and the commodity networks surrounding each. How have such substances been used for healing, spirituality, and financial profit? What are the social relations around producing these substances? We will examine archaeological and anthropological literatures around addiction, exploitation, and health in relation to substance-use. Drawing together many case studies from around the world and from all eras, this course will examine and question enduring human uses of intoxicating and/or healing substances as a lens into questions around embodiment, social relationships, and healthcare.
In 2020, ICOM (International Council of Museums) ratified an updated definition of "museum", which states: A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets, and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible, and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally, and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection, and knowledge sharing. What constitutes a museum's responsibilities is a question that undergirds ICOM's definition. In this course we will consider the responsibility of museums, with art museums as our focus. Among the questions that will be raised and debated in the course are: what responsibilities do museums have for the care and stewardship of their collections? What do museums owe to individuals and communities with connections to the objects currently in their care? What obligations do museums have to donors, founders, and funders? What makes museums good neighbors in the communities where they are based? What responsibility do museums have to their histories and the history of museums generally? In the course we will address these questions through readings, dialogue with practitioners and knowledge sharers, class discussions, and short writing assignments. Several case studies will be highlighted. The course will be held at the Block Museum and will include interactions with Block staff and engagement with The Block's current exhibition, Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology.
Asian Amer St 376-0-1 Memory and Identity in Asian Amer Literature
How can writers represent inaccessible stories, ones lost to the passage of history? This class explores how literature functions as repositories of minority histories and memories, as meditations on the process of assembling and collecting stories, and as imaginings of alternative histories and futures. Given the difficulty of assembling a coherent Asian American identity, our examinations will be defined as much by the absences, gaps, and contradictions of Asian America's collective memory as by what is found within it.
Asian/American gaming is a unique and timely phenomenon. How do games reflect US-Asian geopolitics, from where game hardware is produced and disposed of, and where much video game art and programming is outsourced, to the PR scandal of US-sponsored esports players supporting Hong Kong sovereignty? How does the association of Asians with video games interact with long-standing racial stereotypes of Asians as unplayful or robotic? Students will read and write about gaming, play (and possibly make) games, and hear from Asian/American game developers.
Asian Lang and Cultures 224-0-20 Japanese Cinema II
This course offers a history of Japanese cinema from the beginning of the New Wave movements in the mid-1950s to the present moment. We will consider how cinema has reflected historical moments and shaped cultural discourses in this period. Focusing on films that raise disciplinary questions related to both the cinematic medium and Japan, we will examine, among other topics: the relationship between cinema and the era of high economic growth, the decline of the studio system, postmodernism, and cinematic responses to the post-bubble economic recession. We will also study the shifting position of directors within the broader economic and institutional contexts of Japanese cinema and its global circulation. Students will learn how to critically analyze various films from multiple theoretical perspectives while gaining an understanding of the major figures and trends in the history of postwar Japanese cinema. Syllabus subject to change.
Asian Lang and Cultures 265-0-20 Kings, Courtesans and Khan Artists
India is home to the second largest population of Muslims on earth. It's also host to the world's largest film industry, best known as Bollywood. Little wonder, then, that Bollywood films regularly feature Muslim characters, social spaces, and cultural references that are readily marked or coded as "Islamic." But in spite of a large coterie of Muslims working within the industry - as actors, song writers, or producers - the representation of Muslims in Indian films has consistently raised complex issues around ideas of identity and belonging in a nation where they constitute a clear (and conspicuous) minority. We will read these films against the historical backdrop of the search for national identity and inclusivity in post-colonial India. Students will be given the opportunity not only to learn about Indian (particularly Bombay) cinema, but also to explore how cinematic representations intersect with issues of identity and belonging in the modern nation-state.
Biased interpretations of scientific results have been used to justify racial and gender oppression for centuries. It was often argued that people of different races and different genders were fundamentally different, and as such their roles in society should differ as well. Today, many people reject the claim that race and gender have substantial effect on a person\'s abilities or capacity, but how did we get here? More importantly, how did science help facilitate these claims in the first place? In this course, we will explore the role of science in historical oppression based on race and gender. We will identify key scientific studies and their subsequent legacy to reveal the precarious nature of scientific interpretation in the hands of biased individuals. We will discuss how power structures can infiltrate scientific integrity and propose safeguards to prevent this kind of infiltration in the future.
Chemistry 105-8-06 An Analysis of Color Across Science and Culture
This course explores the many facets of color. From the scientific underpinnings of what light is and how it behaves in the world, to the way that color is used in art and film. Requiring no previous science or art background, this course hopes to bridge the gap between these two worlds by exploring how color is vital to so many disciplines. Over the quarter we will focus on the guiding questions of: What is color? How do we perceive color? How do we capture color? How do we create color? and What does color mean to us? We will address these questions through guided readings, outside speakers from across disciplines, and interactive assignments.
This course will explore the history of European and Near Eastern astronomy from the 7th century BCE to the 6th century CE. Students will learn the fundamentals of the geocentric model, ancient methods of observation, and traditions of cosmology. We will study the history of time-reckoning and calendar-making, as well as portrayals of astronomy and celestial phenomena in myth and literature. In addition to reading ancient texts, students will also make their own observations using models of ancient instruments and the methods of ancient astronomers.
Comm St 395-0-21 Social Media, Technology and Mental Health
This course will examine the relationship between social media, technology, and mental health. Students will explore and critically analyze the advantages, challenges, and opportunities of using social networking sites and technology (e.g. apps, digital interventions, video games) to communicate about and seek support for mental health disorders. Conversely, students will scrutinize social media, technology, its impact on mental health and wellness, with special attention paid to topics such as social comparison and online self-presentation.
Comm St 395-0-24 Social History of Psychedelic Medicines
This course provides social history of psychedelic medicines (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, MDMA, ketamine, ayahuasca, nitrous oxide, etc.). It focuses primarily on the United States in the 20th century, however, we will also discuss important developments outside the US and prior to the 20th century where relevant. We will discuss the subjective, mind manifesting, and spiritual effects, the chemical structure, origins, legality, and neurobiology of each of the substances, as well as their clinical, and non-clinical uses and their effects on science, technology, arts, and culture. We will discuss their risks, benefits, and alternatives in a way that will support informed decision making about their use.
Comm St 395-0-25 Digital Propaganda and Repression
Digital media and technologies, often considered as liberation technology, have increasingly been employed by governments and non-political entities for political propaganda and repression. This course will examine the practices and implications of propaganda and repression within the digital media landscape. We will explore the role of digital media and technologies in authoritarian regimes, the common strategies and applications of digital propaganda and repression, and consider how various actors implement these tactics, along with their consequences and global impacts. Through course readings, in-class discussions, and student-led projects, students will develop a critical understanding of the interplay between digital media, politics, and civil society.
This writing-intensive course focuses on the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion by the director Hideaki Anno, generally considered as one of the most celebrated works in this art form. What are the dominating ideas in this series, and how do they evolve? How do discourses of religion, philosophy, and psychology manifest in this series, explicitly or implicitly? How does the saga of Neon Genesis Evangelion achieve its quasi-mythical status, and what influence has it exerted on anime as a form, culturally and economically? The main goal of the course is to introduce students to the conventions and rigors of evidence-based argumentation and analysis in humanistic forms, and we will accomplish this by surveying the original TV series of Neon Genesis Evangelion, its film sequels in the late 1990s, and its more recent Rebuild series with the previous questions in mind. By also reading theoretical works from Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Walter Benjamin, and select contemporary cultural critics, we probe into and reflect upon topics that profoundly inform Anno's series as well as our daily life: the nature of desire, the dynamics of interpersonal relationships, the formation of self-consciousness, among all others.
Comp Lit 303-0-20 Finance Fictions: The Japanese 'Economic Novel'
The economic novel is one of the most popular literary genres in postwar Japan. Since their inception in the late 1950s, economic novels have sold as well as, if not better, than mysteries and twice as well as the more high-brow form of "pure literature" (jun bungaku). Centering on the economic realities of life under capitalism, Japanese economic novels portray the workings of financial corruption, the mechanics of production and distribution, and the experience of laboring within one of the largest consumer economies in the world. This course traces this genre from its origins in 1957 to the contemporary moment. Reading works by early practitioners of the form to its more recent inflections in the literature of writers like Oyamada Hiroko (The Factory), Tsumuro Kikuko (There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job), and Murata Sayaka (Convenience Store Woman), we will examine the relationship between literature and the transformations in Japan's capitalist economy. We will consider, among other topics, how this genre depicts changes in the workplace and forms of labor, systemic modes of economic exploitation, the psychological and emotional experience of debt in a financialized economy, and the gendering of particular types of work. Guiding our inquiry will be an overarching question: what are the connections between literary and economic form. The syllabus is subject to change.
Comp Lit 305-0-22 Studies in Film, Media and Visual Culture
This course offers a history of Japanese cinema from the beginning of the New Wave movements in the mid-1950s to the present moment. We will consider how cinema has reflected historical moments and shaped cultural discourses in this period. Focusing on films that raise disciplinary questions related to both the cinematic medium and Japan, we will examine, among other topics: the relationship between cinema and the era of high economic growth, the decline of the studio system, postmodernism, and cinematic responses to the post-bubble economic recession. We will also study the shifting position of directors within the broader economic and institutional contexts of Japanese cinema and its global circulation. Students will learn how to critically analyze various films from multiple theoretical perspectives while gaining an understanding of the major figures and trends in the history of postwar Japanese cinema. Syllabus subject to change.
This class will help students understand the key economic forces that have shaped the US health care and health insurance industry. What role do the particularities of health care and health insurance as economic goods play in explaining the size and growth rate of the health care sector? What's the effect of private incentives, adverse selection, moral hazard, and regulation? What's the effect of different organizational structures of health care provision? What can we learn from comparing the US health care / health insurance system to other countries' systems? Students will learn that these issues are important in the current public policy discussion.
Economics 323-2-20 Economic History of the U.S. 1865-Present
The course examines the economic development of the United States from the Civil War to the present. It focuses both on long-term economic trends (like technological advances and industrialization) and the economic causes and consequences of particular events (like the Great Depression). A specific focus will be on the topics of migration, cities, and innovation, as well as on how economic historians source and use big data, and use econometrics to answer causal questions relevant to economists, economic historians, and the broader public.
This course examines economic development over the long-run, with a focus on the transition to modern economic growth in the Western world. Topics include Malthusian stagnation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the demographic transition, and globalization and the great divergence. Along the way, we will discuss long-run changes in inequality, technology, and labor force participation, as well as the role of institutions in economic development, and the interaction between economic conditions and political power. Much of the class will be focused around analyzing recent research on these topics. The class will also involve a writing component aimed at improving students' ability to write critically and concisely about economic topics.
English 305-0-20 Science, Medical and Health Writing
This writing course will explore various genres used in the health professions and examine these genres with a rhetorical lens; rhetorical study—essentially, the study of persuasion—is a good means of illuminating and recasting problems in health and medicine (Segal, 2005). The course is organized in 4 modules: 1)Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, 2) Science Writing, 3) Medical Writing 4) Health Humanities
The Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko wrote in 1977 that stories are "all we have to fight off illness and death." 40 years later, in 2017, Orion Magazine published a cluster of poems written by Native writers "for the Water Protectors at Standing Rock." How, this course asks, have stories and poems been part of Indigenous protest movements and decolonial resistance? How have Indigenous writers used novels, newspapers, and films to document, critique, and refuse what Nick Estes calls settler colonial common sense? This course examines the interrelated stories of Native American literatures & resistance movements from the Red Power activism of the 1960s-1970s to the water protectors at Standing Rock. We'll examine how writers like Louise Erdrich have used fiction to intervene in legal protections and policies for Indigenous women. We'll examine how speculative fiction and visual art imagine beyond a world shaped by colonialism and climate change. By pairing these literary texts with Indigenous Studies scholarship, we'll examine the different approaches Indigenous writers have taken to questions of sovereignty, environmental justice, legal jurisdiction, and political recognition.
English 375-0-20 Memory + Identity in Asian American Literature
How can writers represent inaccessible stories, ones lost to the passage of history? This class explores how literature functions as repositories of minority histories and memories, as meditations on the process of assembling and collecting stories, and as imaginings of alternative histories and futures. Given the difficulty of assembling a coherent Asian American identity, our examinations will be defined as much by the absences, gaps, and contradictions of Asian America's collective memory as by what is found within it.
English 378-0-22 The Chicago Way: Urban Spaces and American Values
Urbanologist Yi Fu Tuan writes, "What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place when we get to know it better and endow it with values." In The Untouchables, Sean Connery tells Kevin Costner, "You want to get Capone? Here's how you get Capone. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue. That's the Chicago way." In this class, we will examine "the Chicago way" from many different angles in order to interrogate the values with which various artists have endowed Chicago. We will read in a broad range of media: journalism, poetry, song, fiction, film, and sequential art to see how a sense of Chicago as a place works over time. We will pay close attention to depictions of the construction of American identity, and to the role of the artist and intellectual in the city.
We often think of the humanities and sciences as opposite pursuits. While the humanities seem to focus on subjectivity and feeling, we see the sciences as objective and fact-based. Yet, attending to the history of medicine demands a troubled acknowledgement that medical inquiry both shapes and is itself shaped by cultural assumptions about race and gender. Indeed, critics have pointed time and again to how the seeming impartiality of medical fact reveals biases about which kinds of bodies feel pain and who is prone to certain diseases, distinctions that have been assigned moral and social meaning. In this class, we will read literature about medical encounters in order to investigate how ideas about race and gender shape medical experiences. How do these individual accounts reflect larger structural injustices? What kinds of barriers and assumptions do women and people of color face when they attempt to receive treatment? What about people seeking gender affirming care? Beginning with the nineteenth century and moving towards the present day, we will examine the surprising history of how medical knowledge often depended on the exploitation of racialized bodies, grapple with the tangled enmeshment of femininity and illness, and explore how claims about medicalized bodies became a metric for citizenship.
Envr Policy and Culture 101-8-1 Chicago Environmental Justice
The concept of environmental justice in the United States emerged in the early 1980s as Black residents fought hazardous waste sites planned in and around their communities. Since then, the environmental justice perspective has been expanded to include the struggles of other minority groups disenfranchised on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, or class. In the first part of the course, students will learn about the history of the environmental justice movement in the US and its development. Next, the course will take a closer look at environmental justice in Chicago, both past and present. As a final project, students will be tasked with researching an environmental justice organization in the Chicago area.
Envr Policy and Culture 337-0-1 Hazard, Disaster and Society
This course examines how socioeconomic and environmental factors work together to cause hazards and disasters in human society. In this course we learn the main concepts about disaster such as preparedness, vulnerability, resilience, response, mitigation, etc. We learn that a disaster does not have the same effect on everyone (all groups of people), and factors of social inequality such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, make people more vulnerable to impacts of disasters. Also, this course, with an interdisciplinary perspective, analyzes disasters in the global North and South. This is a discussion-intensive course for advanced undergrad students. The classes are the student-centered with an emphasis on collaborative learning. The class meetings will consist of lecture, discussion, presentations, teamwork, activities, video/audio materials and projects.
Envr Policy and Culture 383-0-1 Environmental Anthropology
Environmental anthropology is a more recent outgrowth of ecological anthropology, which emerged in the 1960s and 70s as a quantitative focus on systemic human-environment relationships, especially as they pertain to patterns of social change and adaptation. Environmental anthropology became more prominent in the 1980s, and is typically characterized by qualitative research on communities' engagements with contemporary environmental issues. Environmental anthropology has greater commitments to advocacy, critique, and application than ecological anthropology, but as we'll see in this course, the proliferation of "new ecologies" (as opposed to "new environmentalisms") denotes the continued synergy between ecological and environmental anthropologies. This course is divided into two parts. Part I will provide an historical overview of the development of environmental anthropology. We will cover some of the most influential research trends in the field: environmental determinism, cultural ecology, systems ecology, ethnoecology, historical ecology, political ecology, ecofeminisms, and interspecies studies. Part II will then pivot to the application of environmental anthropology knowledge to some of the most pressing environmental issues facing the contemporary world: population pressure, capitalist consumption, biodiversity conservation, sustainable land use, climate change, and environmental justice.
Envr Policy and Culture 390-0-20 Human Rights and the Environment
This political research seminar is for advanced undergraduates interested in U.S. borders of all kinds. We will read widely in politics, history, religious and cultural studies, anthropology, and border studies, paying close attention to the history of U.S. borders, political and religious dissent on and around borders, Indigenous communities and borders, legal aspects of border sovereignty and border exceptionalism, the history of the passport, and environmental politics of the borderlands. We will evaluate border issues from multiple perspectives, including but going well beyond questions of surveillance and enforcement. Students will work with the professor to develop and complete a research paper on a topic of their choice involving border studies.
Envr Policy and Culture 390-0-21 Intro to Ethnobiology Theory and Practice
This class is an introduction to the growing field of Ethnobiology which is the scientific study of dynamic relationships among peoples, biota, and environments. As a multidisciplinary field, ethnobiology integrates anthropology, geography, systematics, population biology, ecology, mathematical biology, pharmacology, conservation, and sustainable development. This class will cover the origins and evolution of ethnobiology theory and practice ranging from folk science, polymaths, taxonomic and colonial practices, the rise of Indigenous science methods, and the contemporary focus on creating networks among researchers of various disciplines to face the challenges of rapid ecological change and shifting political economies.
Envr Policy and Culture 390-0-23 International Wildlife Law and Policy
Many scientists and policymakers believe that we are on the cusp of the world's sixth great extinction spasm, driven almost entirely by anthropogenic factors, including habitat destruction, unsustainable trade, the introduction of invasive species, and the looming specter of climate change. This course explores the role of international law in addressing the biodiversity crisis and efforts to protect wildlife species. An ancillary objective is to provide students with a foundation in international law, including skills in analyzing treaty provisions.
Envr Policy and Culture 390-0-24 Climate Geoengineering
Climate change is the keystone environmental issue of this generation, and most likely for many generations to come. While the world community and individual countries have formulated policies to address climate change, these policies are almost universally recognized as being wholly inadequate to effectuate the objective of the Paris Agreement to hold global temperatures to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit increases to 1.5ºC. Indeed, it has become increasingly obvious that achievement of Paris temperature objectives will require both aggressive emission reduction initiatives and large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal/negative emissions technologies and processes (CDR), sometimes also referred to as a major sub-category of climate geoengineering. Moreover, many believe that we will also need to deploy solar radiation management approaches, which seek to reduce the amount of incoming solar radiation, to buy us time as we decarbonize the world economy. This course will discuss the exigency of deploying SRM and CDR approaches at scale, including potential benefits and risks of these options. It also will discuss regulatory and governance considerations at both the national and international level, as well as strategies to incentivize large-scale adoption of these approaches.
Envr Policy and Culture 390-0-25 Environmental Justice in Modern South Asia
Environmental Justice in Modern South Asia is an undergraduate class on the unequal experiences and effects of environmental change in South Asia, drawing primarily on case studies from India. Since at least the early 1990s, rapid economic growth, massive infrastructural projects, democratic transformations and global threats of climate change, have characterized the South Asian region. Such political, economic, and ecological processes come together to worsen the lives and livelihoods of marginalized people typically. They tend to intensify their vulnerability to environmental degradation, with historical structures of inclusion and exclusion profoundly shaping how natural resources are accessed and distributed. While the regional focus is on South Asia, at the heart of this course is a broader concern that environmental questions are always questions of equality and social justice.
Envr Policy and Culture 390-0-26 Red Power: Indigenous Resistance in the U.S. and Canada
In 2016, thousands of Indigenous water protectors and their non-Native allies camped at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in an effort to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. That movement is part of a long history of Native activism. In this course, we will examine the individual and collective ways in which Indigenous people have resisted colonial domination in the U.S. and Canada since 1887. In addition to focusing on North America, we will also turn our attention to Hawai‘i. This course will emphasize environmental justice, and highlights religious movements, inter-tribal organizations, key intellectual figures, student movements, armed standoffs, non-violent protest, and a variety of visions for Indigenous community self-determination.
Envr Policy and Culture 390-0-27 Water in Arid Lands: Israel and the Middle East
This seminar will explore how water availability shapes the development of civilizations and drives innovation in water technologies. The course will investigate historical dimensions of water in drylands in the Middle East, starting from ancient civilizations and the water infrastructures that were essential to the development of societies in arid regions. We will use this historical context as a stepping-stone to understand the more recent history of the Middle East, focusing on challenges faced by states in the Jordan River Basin. We will then examine efforts to develop the water resources needed to support burgeoning populations, such as irrigation projects designed to convert barren desert into cultivated agriculture. This more recent history includes geopolitical conflicts over land and water that continue to this day. We will evaluate regional water resources in the context of current and future climate and geopolitical conflicts, review recent advances in water technologies spurred by these limitations, and explore potential social and technological solutions for long-term water sustainability in the Middle East. We will discuss how water access and control contributes to trans-boundary politics and tensions between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the west Bank and Gaza, along with collaborative solutions developed between Israel and Jordan. Finally, we will discuss opportunities for global translation of innovative water technologies and water-management solutions. Start-up culture and innovation in water technologies for local use, notably in Israel and more recently in other nations of the Middle East, serve as a model for improving water supply in other arid regions. The course will host a symposium on water innovation, featuring national and international experts on water technology, policy, and commercialization.
Gender St 101-8-2 Women's Health Movements 1970's - Present
The 1970s U.S. Women's Health Movement demanded everything from safe birth control on demand to an end to for-profit healthcare. Some participants formed research collectives and published D-I-Y guides to medical knowledge such as the Boston Women's Health Collective's "Women and Their Bodies" or Carol Downer's "A New View of a Woman's Body." Some movement members established battered women's shelters, underground abortion referral services, and feminist health clinics. Others formed local committees and national networks, such as the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA) and the National Women's Health Network (NWHN), with the goal of transforming contemporary medical protocols and scientific research agendas. Because many of these local and national groups are still in existence, original movement goals continue to define the parameters of a "women's health" agenda in the present moment. On the other hand, the Women's Health Movement was (and is) a heterogeneous movement. Then, as now, groups with competing ideas about the healthcare needs of women as a group identified as part of same movement. Thus, an examination of historical and current debates over "women's health" is also a means of assessing several distinct, often competing, paradigms of health and disease. Moreover, how we articulate a "women's health agenda" depends on our (often taken-for-granted) ideas about gender, sexuality, and embodiment itself.
Since the latter half of the 20th century, Queer and Feminist scholars have shown how binary identity systems (male/female; man/woman; straight/gay; cis/trans) constrain and erase variability in the ways people experience and relate to themselves/others as gendered and sexed beings. But what possibilities exist outside this binary system, and how did people understand sex, gender, and sexuality before it was established? In this course, we will explore archaeological and anthropological case studies that investigate what genders, sexes, and sexualities have been made possible by cultural groups throughout human history. Students will learn about queer and feminist approaches to the study of identity and bodies through archaeological case studies. From Venus Figurines depicting voluptuous bodies in Neolithic Europe, sex acts depicted by the Moche Sex pots of Peru, to Ancient Maya rulers collecting blood from tongues and penises for ritual practices, this class will explore the vastly different ways issues of sex, gender, and sexuality have been understood by people around the globe. Beyond learning about the past, we will question and engage with the possibilities and problems that arise when identity categories defined by specific cultural and temporal contexts are utilized or appropriated to interpret bodies shaped by another. Here, students will learn how to analyze the contexts that make expressions of sex and gender meaningful and be asked to communicate these insights in written and oral formats.
Gender studies have traditionally focused on women. Yet critical work on men and masculinities show us how people of all genders are constrained by gender expectations and assumptions. Furthermore, studies of masculinities shed light on practical questions like, why do men die earlier than women? And, why are men more likely to commit mass shootings? In recent years, the public spotlight has cast light on savory and unsavory aspects of masculinity; think about the rise of the term "toxic masculinity," the MeToo movement, the 2019 viral Gillette advertisement, and blogs commenting on the behavior of men on the reality show The Bachelorette. In this course, we will go beyond banal statements like "men are trash" to critically ask, What role does masculinity play in social life? How is masculinity produced, and are there different ways to be masculine? This course provides students with an intensive introduction to the foundational theory and research in the field of masculinities studies. We will use an intersectional lens to study the ways in which the concept and lived experience of masculinity are shaped by economic, social, cultural, and political forces. As we study the institutions that socialize people into gender, we will examine how the gendered social order influences the way people of all genders perform masculinity as well as the ways men perceive themselves, people of other genders, and social situations. Verbally and in writing, students will develop an argument about the way contemporary masculinity is constructed and performed.
This is an historical research seminar in which students will complete a 25-30 page research paper using primary (historical) and secondary sources. The course will begin with common readings about women and labor in US history, and then students will identify, research, and write about topics of their own choosing. In our readings, we will focus on issues of race, class, and sexuality in the history of women's labor, considering not only conventional paid work but also reproductive labor and unpaid housework.
This is an historical research seminar in which students will complete a 25-30 page research paper using primary (historical) and secondary sources. The course will begin with common readings about women and labor in US history, and then students will identify, research, and write about topics of their own choosing. In our readings, we will focus on issues of race, class, and sexuality in the history of women's labor, considering not only conventional paid work but also reproductive labor and unpaid housework.
Gender St 341-0-21 Transnational Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality
This course is situated at the intersection of theoretical, cultural, and medical discourses concerning trans* rights and bodies in several national contexts. Of particular interest will be the notion of universal trans rights, as recently articulated in UN Documents arguing that trans rights are human rights, against the backdrop of Gender Affirmation Surgery (GAS) as it is presented in medical literature, advertised on the world wide web, and practiced both domestically and via the international medical tourism industry. Using "Trans" theories: transgender, transnational, translation, spatio/temporal transitions, we will discuss the intersections, dialogues, refusals, and adoptions when thinking about the language of human rights and medical intervention. We will examine cultural/historical conceptions of sex and genders as well as debates concerning bodies and diagnosis that took place during the drafting of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) and International WPATH Standards of Care, among others. Comparative cultural studies, medical discourses, and an archive of web images offering Trans-related surgeries in both Western and, specifically, Thai contexts will serve as axes for investigating this topic.
Gender St 374-0-20 Gender, Sexuality and Digital Technologies
Much recent fiction, film and theory are concerned with representing the internet and the World Wide Web. Sometimes cyberspace is depicted as a continuation of previous media such as television, cinema or telephone, but often it is envisioned as a new frontier. This course will examine the ways in which virtual media appears in cultural discourses. We consider how technological objects and tools participate in shaping elements of our culture that may appear natural, logical, or timeless. We will look examine films predicting the internet, cyberpunk fiction predating the www, and early websites from many sources. In addition, this quarter we will consider various generative AI programs, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. Our guiding questions will include the following: In what ways are these narratives shaping collective perceptions of the internet? How have virtual technologies challenged experiences of language, gender, community and identity? Following a Cultural Studies model for inquiry, this course will be project-based and experiential. Your attendance and participation are mandatory. No experience needed, only a willingness to take risks and share work.
Global Hlth 201-0-20 Introduction to Global Health
This course introduces students to pressing disease and health care problems worldwide and examines efforts currently underway to address them. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the course identifies the main actors, institutions, practices and forms of knowledge production characteristic of what we call "global health" today, and explores the environmental, social, political and economic factors that shape patterns and experiences of illness and healthcare across societies. We will scrutinize the value systems underpinning specific paradigms in the policy and science of global health practice, and place present-day developments in historical perspective. As an introductory course on global health, the class delves into comparative health systems, including comparative health systems in high- and low-income countries. Key topics will include: policies and approaches to global health, key actors in global health, comparative health systems, structural violence, gender and reproductive health, chronic and communicable diseases, politics of global health research and evidence, and the ethics of global health equity.
Global Hlth 221-0-31 Beyond Porn: Sexuality, Health and Pleasure
Threesomes. Squirting. Vibrators. Butt plugs. Multiple orgasms. You may have seen them in pornography, but have you ever wanted to study and talk about sex, and specifically, how to have a satisfying sex life? Many people look to pornography not just for entertainment, but also for education about what satisfying sexual encounters look like. Unfortunately, much of what people learn from pornography doesn't lead them to healthy and satisfying sexual encounters and relationships. This lecture class isn't actually about pornography. It goes beyond many presumptions about sex and pleasure depicted in pornography and popular culture, in order to equip students with information that can lead to more satisfying and healthy sexual experiences across their lifespan, regardless of how they identify, or who or what they like. The course also familiarizes students with a wide spectrum of human identities, practices, and attitudes towards sex and sexuality. Topics covered include: physiological and biological sex; gender; sexual orientation; homophobia and heterosexism; navigating sexual risks in a sex-positive way; sexual health disparities; sexual desire, arousal, and response; solitary sex & sex with others; sex toys; unconventional sexual practices; intimacy and effective communication; sexuality & aging; sexuality, disability & intimacy; sexual problems and solutions; sexual pleasure as part of sexual health; sexual harassment and violence; selling sex; and yes, a brief unit on problematics and possibilities in pornography.
Global Hlth 222-0-2 The Social Determinants of Health
This seminar in medical anthropology examines the role of social markers of difference including race, class, nationality, gender, sexuality, age and religion in current debates and challenges in the theory and practice of global health. We will explore contemporary illness experiences and therapeutic interventions in sociocultural and historical context through case studies from the US, Brazil, and South Africa. Students will be introduced to key concepts such as embodiment, medicalization, structural violence, the social determinants of health, and biopolitics. Central questions of the seminar include: How do social categories of difference determine disease and health in individuals and collectivities? How is medical science influenced by economic and political institutions and by patient mobilization? How does social and economic inclusion/exclusion govern access to treatment as well as care of the self and others? The course will provide advanced instruction in anthropological and related social scientific research methods as they apply to questions of social inequality and public health policy in both the United States and in emerging economic powers. The course draws from historical accounts, contemporary ethnographies, public health literature, media reports, and films. Fulfills Area III (Social and Behavioral Sciences) distribution requirement.
Global Hlth 318-0-1 Community-based Participatory Research
Oftentimes we hear of research done on communities. What we hear less about is the power inequities, silences, and sometimes, violence, that many research paradigms (un)intentionally produce within their research. This course exposes prevalent assumptions underlying common research methodologies and demonstrates why they are problematic for many of the communities that researchers purport to want to assist. We then delve into community-based participatory research (CBPR), a research paradigm that challenges researchers to conduct research with communities. In this reading-intense discussion-based course, we will learn the historical and theoretical foundations, and the key principles of CBPR. Students will be introduced to methodological approaches to building community partnerships, research planning, and data sharing. Real-world applications of CBPR in health will be studied to illustrate benefits and challenges of this methodological approach to research. Further, this course will address culturally appropriate interventions, working with diverse communities, and ethical considerations in CBPR.
Global Hlth 320-0-20 Qualitative Research Methods in Global Health
This course provides an introduction to the qualitative methods and develops the practical skills necessary to conduct rigorous qualitative field research on global health topics. Through seminar-style discussions, small-group workshops, and out-of-class research exercises, students will become familiar with nature of qualitative research, and they will learn how qualitative methods are applied at each stage of the research process, including design, data collection, analysis, and write-up.
This course draws on perspectives from anthropology and related social scientific fields to provide a comparative overview of the impact of armed conflict on public health and health care systems worldwide. Drawing primarily on examples from recent history, including conflicts in the Balkans, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East, we will explore warfare as a crucial sociopolitical determinant of global health disparities and consider organized efforts to respond to the health impacts of mass violence. Key topics that we will consider include variations in the relationship between warfare and public health across eras and cultures; the health and mental health impacts of forced displacement, military violence, and gender-based violence; and the roles of medical humanitarianism and humanitarian psychiatry in postwar recovery processes. Through close readings of classic and contemporary social theory, ethnographic accounts, and diverse research on war, health, and postwar humanitarian interventions, this course will encourage you to build your own critical perspective on war and public health anchored in history and the complexities of real-world situations.
Global Hlth 325-0-1 History of Reproductive Health
The history of reproduction is a large subject, and during this course we will touch on many, but by no means all, of what can be considered as part of this history. Our focus will be on human reproduction, considering the vantage points of both healthcare practitioners and lay women and men. We will look at ideas concerning fertility, conception, pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, birth control, abortion, and assisted reproduction. Because, at a fundamental level, reproduction is about power - as historian Amy Kaler (but by no means only Kaler), pointed out, "[c]control over human reproduction is eternally contested, in zones ranging from the comparative privacy of the conjugal bedroom to the political platform and programs of national polities" - we will pay attention to power in reproductive health. And, since the distribution of power in matters of reproduction has often been uneven and unequal - between men and women, between colonizing and Indigenous populations, between clinicians and lay people, between those in upper socioeconomic classes and those in lower socioeconomic classes - we will pay particular attention during this class to struggles over matters of reproduction as we explore historical changes and continuities in reproduction globally since 1900. Fulfills Area IV (Historical Studies) distribution requirement.
This course examines how socioeconomic and environmental factors work together to cause hazards and disasters in human society. In this course we learn the main concepts about disaster such as preparedness, vulnerability, resilience, response, mitigation, etc. We learn that a disaster does not have the same effect on everyone (all groups of people), and factors of social inequality such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, make people more vulnerable to impacts of disasters. Also, this course, with an interdisciplinary perspective, analyzes disasters in the global North and South. This is a discussion-intensive course for advanced undergrad students. The classes are the student-centered with an emphasis on collaborative learning. The class meetings will consist of lecture, discussion, presentations, teamwork, activities, video/audio materials and projects.
Global Hlth 390-0-30 RECIPE - Returning Ethnic Culinary Importance
The characteristics of a good recipe are said to have a list of the ingredients, the amounts needed, and the directions for mixing the ingredients. However, outside of food-based ingredients, there are also social elements that contribute to a good recipe. Food is something that outside of the social constructs of race, phobias, and isms, that can bind us all together. This interdisciplinary course focuses on defining togetherness, belongingness, and the end goal of a recipe— eating. Through the lens of recipes, meal-making, social stigmas, nutrition, and health students will explore how cultural culinary practices have become evidence for illnesses, diseases, and death for certain bodies. Course readings, videos, dialogue, and recipe analyses will provide a critical lens for students to delve into the multifaceted dimensions of culinary practices, their impact on individuals and communities, and how some practices have been sifted through and out.
From modern pandemics such as Ebola and COVID-19, to ancient scourges such as leprosy and the plague, epidemics have shaped human history. In turn, the response of human societies to infectious disease threats have varied wildly in time and across cultures. We are currently living such an event, and experiencing in dramatic fashion how disease reshapes society. This course will cover several prominent global epidemic episodes, examining the biology of the disease, epidemic pathways, sociopolitical responses and public health measures, and the relationship between the scientific and the cultural consequences of these outbreaks.
Global Hlth 390-0-33 Literary Genres + Health: A TBR Reading
When I was an undergraduate student my "To Be Read" list was always really long and often forgotten. As I have re-established my love of reading for fun I see how literary genres influence and challenge our understanding of well-being/health. Fiction, non-fiction, poems, memoirs, novels, young adult fiction, science fiction, mysteries, fantasy, fairy tales, horror, magical realism, and so many other genres influence our definitions of health or wellbeing. They provide insight into how other folks imagine and understanding situations we may or may not find ourselves in. Our course will consider some of these and other genres noted above. The best text allow us to empathize with the characters or challenge what we thought we knew. We will read one book as a class. In addition, you'll be asked to individually select a book to read/listen to, a list of various text will also be provided if you need guidance in choosing a text. You will learn how these materials influence or challenge norms about health and well-being. Professor Reyes will help you access books that aren't easily available or affordable.
Global Hlth 390-0-34 Decolonisation, Knowledge, and Global Health
The field that is currently called "global health" is going through a reckoning with its history and its present. Much of that reckoning is about the colonial origins and underpinnings of the field, with a particular focus on "unfair knowledge practices" or epistemic injustice. In this seminar, we will examine the landscape of unfair knowledge practices in global health - i.e., the pervasive wrongs related to knowledge making, knowledge use, and knowledge sharing in global health - many of which are taken for granted. We will start with the unfairness inherent in how we often define global health itself, and what decolonisation means in relation to "global health". Using a range of conceptual tools, we will then examine various common practices especially in academic global health (e.g., authorship practices, research partnerships, academic writing, editorial practices, sensemaking/interpretive practices, and the choice of research audience, framing, topics, questions, and methods) and discuss when, how, and under what circumstances they may be deemed fair or unfair. We will use practical examples of each category of knowledge practice to think critically about what makes them fair or unfair. Using these examples, we will also examine what strategies might be required to promote fairness or epistemic justice, including the potential roles and responsibilities of the broad range of individual and institutional actors within the knowledge ecosystem of "global health".
History 201-1-20 Europe in the Medieval and Early Modern World
This course surveys the history of Europe from the High Middle Ages through the early modern period to the Age of Atlantic Revolutions. These centuries changed the course of European and world history. The Renaissance, the Reformations, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment unfolded at the same time as European empires spread first into the Mediterranean and then across the Atlantic, spurring the growth of global capitalism and the transatlantic slave trade. Political and religious freedoms emerged alongside new forms of persecution, control, and oppression. A divided Europe grew increasingly connected to the rest of the world as commercial goods, people, ideas, and diseases traveled across land and sea. Among the major themes we'll explore are a) how individuals who lived through these tumultuous centuries experienced their changing world and b) how changes in health, disease, and environment - including the Black Death, the Columbian Exchange, and the climactic cooling period known as the Little Ice Age - drove the religious, political, social, and economic upheavals of the late medieval and early modern periods.
History 275-2-20 History of Modern Science and Medicine
Science and scientific medicine have profoundly reshaped our world over the past 200 years, transforming our knowledge of nature and the human body, as well as the conditions under which billions of people live. But change has worked in the opposite direction as well: social, economic, and political priorities have also driven scientific innovation and medical practice. This class invites students in the sciences and the humanities to explore the dynamic relationship between science, medicine, and our broader society. One theme is the relationship between the natural sciences and our material world. How has scientific knowledge led to radical new technologies like global telecommunications and the atom bomb, and how has technological change shaped theories of the natural world, from thermodynamics to climate change? Another is the relationship between the bio-medical sciences and social values. From Darwin to genomics, biological knowledge has developed in conjunction with public mores, altering our approach to health, our understanding of race and sexual difference, and our hopes for the human species. The guiding premise of this course is that science is an intrinsically human activity, so that knowing its history is integral to understanding how the modern world came to be the way it is--and where we are headed.
History 300-0-20 Artifical Intelligence: A History
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is not new. Long before the term was coined in 1956, engineers and inventors sought to mechanize human thought and behavior. This course will address and contextualize the chronological arc of AI, from eighteenth-century automatons to today's large language models. Together, we will investigate how changing conceptions of human intelligence and creativity influenced the development and implementation of what we now call AI. In so doing, we will familiarize ourselves with changing strategies for creating "intelligent" machines and engage in lively debates over the problems and possibilities of machine sentience. Will this course secure you a six-figure salary working for OpenAI? Sadly, no. It will, however, enrich your knowledge of the historical trajectory and critical concepts of AI.
This course examines the history of cannabis in a global perspective to understand how and why a plant that has been crucial to most civilizations for millennium became one of the most consumed intoxicants in human history, and one of the most demonized, criminalized, controversial and profitable commodities of the modern world. We consider archeological evidence to explore the earliest uses and meanings of the plant in antiquity and how it spread from Central Asia to the rest of the planet. We also examine various types of historical works to comprehend what roles cannabis played in the rise of maritime empires and the formation of a global capitalist world. Then, we revisit some of the urban and rural cultures in various parts of the world that modernized the plant's uses and meanings in the 20th century; and study scientific, legal, and pop-culture materials to elucidate what was at stake in the most heated controversies and campaigns against and in favor of the plant at the time. We conclude analyzing the most recent debates and policies on decriminalization and legalization in North and South America in a comparative perspective and their socio-economic, political, and environmental implications. We address these topics reading history, anthropology, sociology, political science, and journalism; and watching and analyzing critically songs, advertisement, literature, feature films, and documentary movies.
History 300-0-30 Red Power: Indigenous Resistance in the U.S. and Canada
In 2016, thousands of Indigenous water protectors and their non-Native allies camped at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in an effort to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. That movement is part of a long history of Native activism. In this course, we will examine the individual and collective ways in which Indigenous people have resisted colonial domination in the U.S. and Canada since 1887. In addition to focusing on North America, we will also turn our attention to Hawai‘i. This course will emphasize environmental justice, and highlights religious movements, inter-tribal organizations, key intellectual figures, student movements, armed standoffs, non-violent protest, and a variety of visions for Indigenous community self-determination.
How have people understood the body across Asia? This course explores different conceptions of the body, illness, and therapeutics across several medical traditions in Asia, from the ancient and medieval periods up to the present day. We will study primary sources like medical diagrams, the biographies of physicians, and case notes about patients to understand the roles of medical practitioners in a range of contexts. We will explore traditions like Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Galenic medicine, and Tibetan medicine. These traditions were always dynamic, but they also changed dramatically in the modern period, as biomedicine became one of the many medical traditions of Asia.
Do the modern sciences have colonial tendencies? If so, what would it mean to decolonize them? This historiography seminar approaches these questions through historical case studies that explore how postcolonial states and professionals attempted to rid scientific practice of the vestiges of colonialism. There are scientists in nearly every country on earth, and scientific institutions in many of those countries date to the colonial era. Historians are increasingly interested in finding out what happened to colonial science after independence, and we will read exciting new scholarship that approaches this issue from the Americas, Africa, and East and South Asia, on topics ranging from medicine to botany to nuclear physics. We will use these case studies, along with short theoretical essays, to better understand contemporary proposals to decolonize science. As a historiography seminar, the course will also introduce students to the craft of history, exploring what it means to be an academic historian today.
Humanites 370-4-20 Red Power: Indigenous Resistance to U.S. Coloniali
In 2016, thousands of Indigenous water protectors and their non-Native allies camped at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in an effort to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. That movement is part of a long history of Native activism. In this course, we will examine the individual and collective ways in which Indigenous people have resisted colonial domination in the U.S. and Canada since 1887. In addition to focusing on North America, we will also turn our attention to Hawai‘i. This course will emphasize environmental justice, and highlights religious movements, inter-tribal organizations, key intellectual figures, student movements, armed standoffs, non-violent protest, and a variety of visions for Indigenous community self-determination.
Humanities 220-0-20 Health, Biomedicine, Culture and Society
We are told constantly, "take care of yourself!" and we do our best to eat well, sleep well, and stay healthy. Our bodies are important to us. They are also important to the institutions we are a part of, including our families, our schools, our jobs, and our country. They are all invested in keeping our bodies healthy and productive. However, the array of institutions interested in the value of our bodies often have additional incentives- our health is surrounded by a hoard of controversies: - Why do some people get better medical care than others? - How should the healthcare system be organized? - How do we balance the risks of new medical treatments with the benefits? -What makes the stigma associated with disease and disability so enduring? - What happens when no diagnosis can be made? This course offers conceptual tools and perspectives for answering these controversies. To do so it surveys a variety of topics related to the intersections of health, biomedicine, culture, and society. We will analyze the cultural meanings associated with health and illness; the political debates surrounding health care, medical knowledge production, and medical decision-making; and the structure of the social institutions that comprise the health care industry. We will examine many problems with the current state of health and healthcare in the United States and also consider potential solutions.
Humanities 370-3-21 Environmental Justice in Modern South Asia
Environmental Justice in Modern South Asia is an undergraduate class on the unequal experiences and effects of environmental change in South Asia, drawing primarily on case studies from India. Since at least the early 1990s, rapid economic growth, massive infrastructural projects, democratic transformations and global threats of climate change, have characterized the South Asian region. Such political, economic, and ecological processes come together to worsen the lives and livelihoods of marginalized people typically. They tend to intensify their vulnerability to environmental degradation, with historical structures of inclusion and exclusion profoundly shaping how natural resources are accessed and distributed. While the regional focus is on South Asia, at the heart of this course is a broader concern that environmental questions are always questions of equality and social justice. The class will examine how issues of justice and nature are framed within law and official policy debates, within social movements and right-based struggles, as well as within people's moral imaginations and everyday lives.
Legal St 376-0-21 Surveillance, Policing and the Law
How are surveillance technologies shaping daily life and society, especially in terms of shaping what we think, see, and do? Building on the interdisciplinary field of surveillance studies, this course explores the intersection of policing, surveillance, and the law and raises questions about (in)security, civil liberties, control, and privacy. Topics will include The Patriot Act, biometrics, algorithm and predictive policing, and citizen surveillance. Students will also engage with the political, ethical, and methodological concerns that increased surveillance raises.
Legal St 383-0-1 Gender, Sexuality and The Carceral State
This course explores the rise of the carceral state in the United with particular attention to ethnographic, sociolegal, feminist, queer, and transgender theoretical approaches to the study of prisons. The course centers on girls, women, and LGBT people's experiences with systems of punishment, surveillance, and control. In addition, students will learn how feminist and queer activists have responded to institutions of policing and mass incarceration; investigate how they have understood prison reform, prison abolition, and transformative justice; and consider the political, ethical, and methodological concerns that policing, and mass incarceration raise.
Philosophy 210-3-20 History of Philosophy - Early Modern
The transition from the Medieval to the Modern era in philosophy began, roughly, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and ended, again roughly, in the late 18th century. New methods of acquiring knowledge, along with a radically different conception of the world, permanently transformed the philosophical enterprise and the broader culture. In this course we will examine the views of some of the most important modern philosophers—especially Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, Bayle, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Du Châtelet—on the nature of God, causation, substance, mind, knowledge, and the material world. Additional readings will be drawn from Elizabeth, Galileo, Masham, Boyle, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Shepherd, and Cordova.
Philosophy 221-0-20 Gender, Politics and Philosophy
This course is an introduction to philosophical problems concerning gender and politics. What is gender and what is its relation to sex and sexuality? What is gender injustice and why is it wrong? What are the causes of gender injustice and how could we overcome it? And what is the relation of feminist theory to lived experience and to political action? We will read and critically discuss both historical and contemporary texts addressing these questions.
This course is a study of moral and political problems related to biomedicine and biotechnology. In the first part of the course, we will study the physician-patient relationship. We will consider what values ought to govern that relationship, how those values may conflict, and how such conflicts are best resolved. In the second part of the course, we will turn to some specific ethical challenges related to biotechnology, including abortion, genetic manipulation, and physician-assisted suicide. We will close the course by surveying the field of public health ethics, with particular attention to ethical issues related to global pandemic preparedness and response.
Philosophy 270-0-20 Climate Change and Sustainability: Ethical Dimensions
This course is an introduction to some central concepts and problems in philosophical environmental ethics, with an emphasis on issues related to anthropogenic climate change. In the first part of the course, we will explore the problem of "moral standing:" the problem of who or what is deserving of ultimate moral consideration. For example, do sentient non-human animals like pigs or polar bears have moral standing? What about non-sentient life, such as plants or fungus? Might whole ecosystems or even nature as such have standing? We will examine recent arguments on these questions and their implications for moral theory. In the second part of the course, we will turn directly to the issue of global climate change. We will explore the standard economic analysis of climate change as a collective action problem and the philosophical presuppositions of that analysis. We will consider the question of the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of climate mitigation globally, and we will discuss the ethics of geoengineering. We will close by considering the issue of "anthropocentrism" in ethics, asking whether and why anthropocentrism might be a problem for moral theory.
Political Science 395-0-30 Human Rights and the Environment
This political research seminar is for advanced undergraduates interested in U.S. borders of all kinds. We will read widely in politics, history, religious and cultural studies, anthropology, and border studies, paying close attention to the history of U.S. borders, political and religious dissent on and around borders, Indigenous communities and borders, legal aspects of border sovereignty and border exceptionalism, the history of the passport, and environmental politics of the borderlands. We will evaluate border issues from multiple perspectives, including but going well beyond questions of surveillance and enforcement. Students will work with the professor to develop and complete a research paper on a topic of their choice involving border studies.
Religious St 172-0-21 Intro to Religion, Media and Culture
This course offers undergraduates an introduction to studying the phenomena of religion in relationship to dynamics of media, society, and culture. The course content highlights a variety of themes, issues, figures, and narratives, while examining diverse religious practices, productions, communities, representations and identities. In this course, we dive into one of today's most exciting and rapidly growing areas of scholarship - the intriguing intersections and complex entanglements of religion and media in popular culture. Drawing from a diverse array of interdisciplinary sources, we will explore what media studies and communication theories have to offer the study of religion, and reciprocally how religious studies scholarship might enrich media studies. Our primary sources are drawn from such areas as religious television, film, and radio, digital gaming worlds, billboards, advertisements and media campaigns, popular music, comedy, streaming video, social media, memes, and even tattoos, body art, and graffiti. We will look at such areas as: how religion gets mediated; the religious dimensions of transmedia storytelling and media world-building; religion as communication; online group identity formation and religious identity construction; media representation of religions; the blurred boundaries between the so-called "sacred and the secular" in the study of religion and media; and controversies in overlapping religious worlds and media worlds vis-à-vis the authorized and unauthorized circulation of content. Of particular interest in this course will be the impact of digital culture on the media-religion interface. Students will be asked to research and analyze a primary source of their choice and then to make their own media to communicate their original analysis and research findings. This course will involve your own creative mediamaking. Please note format: This course is a mixture of lecture and in-class participatory discussion. The professor asks provocative questions throughout class to actively engage students in the material and to invite them into sharing their points of view.
When the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Kentucky was one of 13 states to begin enforcing a "trigger law" that effectively bans abortion. That October, three Jewish women brought a lawsuit arguing that Kentucky's ban violated their religious freedom, writing, "Jews have never believed that life begins at conception." In Missouri, an interfaith group of Christian and Jewish religious leaders filed a similar suit to block their state's abortion ban. And in Idaho and Indiana, the Satanic Temple did the same. These lawsuits illustrate how religious views on abortion are varied and complex. Moreover, religious people's ethical reflections and medical decisions may run against the grain of official doctrine. This course examines why some religious groups have opposed abortion rights, while others have actively campaigned for them. We will also discuss how some traditions have created space for people who have abortions to receive spiritual care or participate in special rituals, such as funerary rites for aborted fetuses in Japanese Buddhism or full-body immersion (mikveh) in some forms of Judaism. The legal challenges discussed above also highlight the fraught intersection between religious practice, medical ethics, and abortion law. This course focuses on four case studies to explore these issues: the United States, Ireland, Israel-Palestine, and Japan. Readings comprise historical and legal studies on abortion alongside anthropological, autobiographical, and artistic representations of the women, trans men, and nonbinary people who seek abortions. Student evaluation is based on participation, short writing assignments, and a final project. Required readings will be made available on Canvas or through links printed in the syllabus.
This class will investigate how gender shapes politics and policy, and how these in turn shape gender, with a focus on the United States, in comparative and global context. Gender is conceptualized as a set of relations, identifications and cultural schema, always constituted with other dimensions of power, difference and inequality (e.g., race, class, sexuality, religion, citizenship status). We will analyze the gendered character of citizenship, political participation and representation, social rights and economic rights. We aim to understand gendered politics and policy from both "top down" and "bottom up" perspectives. What do states do, via institutions of political participation and representation, citizenship rights and policies, to shape gender relations? How do gender relations influence the nature of policy and citizenship? How has feminism emerged as a radical challenge to the androcentrism and restricted character of the democratic public sphere? And how have anti-feminism and "anti-gender theory" come to be significant dimensions of politics? We expand on conventional conceptions of political participation and citizenship rights to include the grassroots democratic activism that gave birth to modern women's movements. We explore how women's political efforts have given rise to the creation of alternative visions of democracy, social provision and economic participation, as well as reshaping formal politics and policies. And, finally, we will take advantage of the fact that we are in the run up to a Presidential and congressional election to examine the gendered aspects of the political landscape in the contemporary United States.
Sociology 220-0-20 Health, Biomedicine, Culture and Society
We are told constantly, "take care of yourself!" and we do our best to eat well, sleep well, and stay healthy. Our bodies are important to us. They are also important to the institutions we are a part of, including our families, our schools, our jobs, and our country. They are all invested in keeping our bodies healthy and productive. However, the array of institutions interested in the value of our bodies often have additional incentives- our health is surrounded by a hoard of controversies:
- Why do some people get better medical care than others? - How should the healthcare system be organized? - How do we balance the risks of new medical treatments with the benefits? - What makes the stigma associated with disease and disability so enduring? - What happens when no diagnosis can be made?
This course offers conceptual tools and perspectives for answering these controversies. To do so it surveys a variety of topics related to the intersections of health, biomedicine, culture, and society. We will analyze the cultural meanings associated with health and illness; the political debates surrounding health care, medical knowledge production, and medical decision-making; and the structure of the social institutions that comprise the health care industry. We will examine many problems with the current state of health and health care in the United States and also consider potential solutions.
In this course, we will examine how the Western medical system and accompanying health practices impact people of different genders, as well as how healthcare as an institution and practice produces gender categories. Using interdisciplinary research with a focus on sociological studies, we will interrogate the social, institutional, and biological links between gender and health. We will discuss health inequalities between women, men, and trans* people from different race, ethnic, and class backgrounds, using sociological research to understand why these inequalities and forms of difference emerge and are sustained. We will explore how modern Western medicine views male and female bodies and defines their health and illnesses accordingly. Students will complete two short research projects over the term in which they use different data sources (interviews and media content) to examine gendered perceptions of health, health behaviors, help-seeking behaviors, and experiences with medical institutions.
Sociology 392-0-21 American Obsessions: Crime, Health and Social Control
Crime and violence are among the most defining and seemingly intractable problems of American society. There is scarcely a part of our public and private lives that is not in some way touched by the criminal justice apparatus, regardless of whether or not we personally experience victimization. Entrenched health epidemics around gun violence, addiction, and police brutality regularly vie for our focus. Likewise, myths and moral panics about crime, when taken to the extreme, extend punitive action deep into our social fabric in the name of protecting individual and public health. This course delves into these intricate connections linking crime, health, and social control. We will spend much of our time together examining three interrelated topics. At the center of this course is how different groups experience crime and health and the role social institutions play in abetting and reproducing these processes. We will also examine what behaviors become criminalized and why - from abortion to drug use and sexual behavior. Finally, we will explore which of the behaviors defined as criminal are punished and, just as importantly, how laws around criminal behavior are unevenly enforced. Taken together, these topics will help to shed light on the role that interlocking systems in our society play in shaping our gendered, racialized, and profoundly American experience.
