Fall 2007 Class Schedule - updated Apr 02, 2008

This course begins by exploring the political history of whiteness.

Our point of departure will be David R. Roediger's newest text (2005),

"Working Toward Whiteness, How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange

Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs." We will examine how "race" has been

at the core of civic assimilation. We will interrogate Roediger's question, "What

happens when we think of assimilation as Whitening as well as Americanizing" (pp 9-10).

In other words, to become American one must "fight to be White." The core of this course

will focus on post-1960 America and the Black, Brown, Red, and Yellow Power Movements.

We will use autobiography and prison writings to examine the Black Power Movement;

the American Indian Movement; Latino Militancy, and Asian American insurgency.

We will end the course with an analysis of conservative people of color and their

counterparts in the dominant culture,

This course introduces the fields of LGBT and queer studies by examining how sexuality, race, and nation relate in the lives of people in the United States, which we read in relation to histories of colonialism and globalization. Course materials foreground scholarship, testimony, activist art, and social movements by LGBT, two-spirited, queer people of color, and by white anti-racist LGBT and queer people. Their stories offer a template through which all students may examine how everyday life is shaped by sexuality, race, and nation - both as power relations, and as spaces for creating new identity and action. Every year. (4 credits)

The 1960s is often considered the pivotal era for social movements in the twentieth century as the post-World War II generation pushed for social, cultural, and political change. This course will take a broad view of this period - from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s - to consider the role of race as a catalyst and agent for activism. We will consider varying aspects of the Southern civil rights movement, including grassroots organizing and projects for self-defense. The course will then consider how civil rights morphed into black power and inspired Chicano, Native American, and Asian American activism, the women's movement, and gay liberation. In particular, we will look at how these social movements shaped American and global culture, and the intersections among them.

US Racial Formations and the Global Economy develops an understanding of race in the United States as a complex and contradictory social category that has been shaped and organized by the historical expansion and ongoing crisis of the global capitalist economy. As the global economy reshapes the world, racial formations in the United States transform, but they do not disappear. What freedoms are ensured in a global free market? How have the opportunities of the Global North been shaped by the hardships of the Global South? What are the alternatives to the globalization of poverty? Can globalization work under democratic and/or socialist regimes? The course may serve as one of the American Studies Department options for completion of the Certificate in Global Citizenship. No prerequisite.

This course deconstructs the discipline of military history in order to uncover the broad social and cultural implications of societies at war. Beginning with the military conquests of central America and the Southwest, students will analyze the ways in which economic and military pressures functioned to create boundaries of social belonging and structured new ethnic identities. Readings will be drawn from primary accounts of early American wars, scholarly articles, and historical monographs. The course will progress in a chronological order through the following conflicts: De Soto's Death March, the Pueblo Revolt, the Beaver Wars, Powhatan's Revolt, the Pequot War, King Phillip's War, the French and Indian War, and the American Revolution. In addition to major military conflicts, the course will also investigate the cultural impact of slave revolts and class-based rebellions (such as Bacon's Rebellion and Shay¿s Rebellion). By investigating the cult

How do U.S. racial categories become grounded in place and space? In this seminar, we will examine race at various levels of spatial scale: from the racialization of the U.S. nation-state to U.S. cities and suburbs; and from prisons, reservations, and ethnic enclaves to the human body. As a point of departure, we will look for and analyze race and related social categories in places around the Twin Cities. By putting familiar ideas about race and ethnicity in a sociospatial framework, we will develop a specialized vocabulary for explaining how race, place, and space are connected. This course requires prior exposure to at least one of the following areas: American Studies, human geography, sociology of race/ethnicity, or urban studies.

This course explores and evaluates theories and concepts related to contemporary US racial formations. We will ask three basic questions: 1) What is ¿race¿? 2) Where do racial differences and inequalities come from? 3) What is racial justice? Different frames will help us think about and understand race: ethnicity and assimilation; class and labor migration; gender/sexuality; and globalization/neoliberalism. Sessions will be lecture-based with active weekly discussion groups. Assignments will be writing and reading intensive. This course is designed with sophomores in mind. The introductory level AS course or its equivalent is a prerequisite.

This approaches the history of indigenous North America from the Age of Exploration through the nineteenth century. The chronology of the course brings students directly into a time of traumatic and dynamic political and cultural change among Native Americans. Combining close study of European and Native American source materials, students will be challenged not only to reconstruct the narrative of early American history with a view to the experience of Native American peoples, but also will confront important historiographical problems related to source reliability, interdisciplinarity and colonial and postcolonial theory. Rather than teach events of colonial American and United States history that also include American Indian experiences, this course attempts to approach the development of diverse North American cultures and societies from the perspective of the continent¿s indigenous peoples. Prior to the start of the course, students will be req

This studio art class focuses on representations of the human figure in contemporary painting. Students will learn how to paint the human figure by first drawing from the skeleton and models. Portrait painting as well as full figure painting will be taught. The class will situate figure painting as a studio practice within the context of art history and address problems of representation. Projects will focus on topics such as the psychological body, the political body and the abstracted body. Slide lectures, critiques and a gallery/museum visit will supplement studio work. Three two-hour periods per week. Next offered fall 2007. (4 credits)

An advanced study of the relationships of organisms to one another and to their environment in winter. Includes behavioral, morphological and physiological adaptations and strategies for coping with the rigors of the winter season. The course will include lectures, videos, discussions, readings from the primary literature, individual projects, and an occasional field trip. Students will gain experience writing NSF format ecological research proposals. Ecology (BIOL-180) is a prerequisite. Instructor signature or on-line authorization is required for registration.

This course is for students working on their honors thesis. The goal of this course is to facilitate and encourage progress on the honors thesis through lectures and discussion on research methods, finding data, writing, and publication. Guest speakers will supplement in-class discussion. Prereq: Permission of instructor required.

This course is for people who already love poetry and are ready to go further into it; for people who are curious about how it comes about; for people who have sidled up to it, wondering if it might be for them;

This course has for objective to introduce students to French and African Cinema through the prism of colonial and postcolonial cinema. The course has a historical dimension (from the first Lumière films on, the African continent was represented; we will study how, as well as the connections between cinema and various French colonial projects). We will study the context in which cinema emerged in francophone countries in Africa and establish connections between various well-known French and African filmmakers who were in dialogue. This will be done through the study of texts and films. French filmmakers include Jean Rouch, René Vautier, Jean-Luc Godard (Swiss), Chris Marker, Claire Denis, Alain Resnais. African filmmakers Ousmane Sembe, Djibril Diop Mambety, Safi Faye, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Med Hondo, and Trinh-Minh-Ha (Vietnamese/US). We will study in particular how French filmmakers of the New Wave responded to the em

How do U.S. racial categories become grounded in place and space? In this seminar, we will examine race at various levels of spatial scale: from the racialization of the U.S. nation-state to U.S. cities and suburbs; and from prisons, reservations, and ethnic enclaves to the human body. As a point of departure, we will look for and analyze race and related social categories in places around the Twin Cities. By putting familiar ideas about race and ethnicity in a sociospatial framework, we will develop a specialized vocabulary for explaining how race, place, and space are connected. This course requires prior exposure to at least one of the following areas: American Studies, human geography, sociology of race/ethnicity, or urban studies.

This course is intended to familiarize the student with the various topics, interests and debates within feminist geography. Over the course of the semester we will investigate how gender relations shape different spaces and places. We will also look at how we 'read' power relations by exploring the symbolic and material construction of spaces/places. Specifically the class will ask: how do gender, race, class, and sexual orientation intersect to produce differing experiences of particular places? We will approach these questions from a variety of scales, including the body, home, state, and environment. This class stresses the importance of these geographic questions to our everyday lives. The course begins by asking what feminism has to do with geography; we then discuss the tools used by feminist geographers before we explore a series of sites expanding out from the body from the local to the global.

A concern for the relationship between nature and society has been one of the pillars of geographic inquiry, and has also been an important bridge between other disciplines. By the 1960s, this area of inquiry was referred to variously as 'human ecology' or 'cultural ecology.' Over the last decade certain forms of inquiry within this tradition have increasingly referred to themselves as 'political ecology.' The purpose of this seminar is to review major works within the traditions of cultural and political ecology; examine several areas of interest within these fields (e.g., agricultural modernization, environmental narratives, conservation, ecotourism); and explore nature-society dynamics across a range of geographical contexts. Towards the end of the course students will explore how one might begin to think in practical terms about facilitating development in marginal environments. Prerequisite: Geography 232 or p

"Madness"is not just a fact of nature, but a social phenomenon that has a history, one that is reflected both in the scientific discourse on insanity (psychology and psychiatry) and in the "mad" characters and narrators who populate literature. This course will study both, reading literary texts in tandem with discursive treatments of madness from the Middle Ages to the present day. Literary readings from Hartmann von Aue's medieval epic Iwein (circa 1200) to "pop" author Rainald Goetz' debut novel Irre (1983). Requirements: three short papers; oral presentation; reading journal.

Reacting to Darwin's discovery of natural selection, Nietzsche and Freud both grappled with the question of what basis value judgments have in a world without God. The course explores their answers to this question, centering on the four domains of ethics, subjectivity, aesthetics, and theories of civilization. Topics of discussion will include: the genesis of moral values; "agency" and the loss of the subject ("there is no doer behind the deed" - Nietzsche); the split self; art and aesthetics as absolute values; art as sublimation; the deadening weight of history and civilization; the transience of culture; the death drive. Readings will include selections from the following: Darwin: The Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man; Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy, On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life, Daybreak, The Genealogy of Morals, The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarat

"How to Re-Appropriate Dead White Men: Intro to Critical Theory." This course is survey of major theoretical texts examined from the multiple perspective of both intellectual history and cultural studies, which foregrounds the ideological, social, and political function of concepts and other cultural artifacts. The focus will be on some of the central tenants of thought since the advent of modern secular capitalism in the seventeenth century, which continue to inform contemporary critical and political thought and discussions. The course will introduce students to (or further their existing knowledge in) central theories (ranging from philosophy, political theory, and linguistics to the various movements within twentieth-century critical theory, such as psychoanalysis, deconstruction, discourse theory, and theories of ideology) and methodologies involved in the analysis of theory itself, literature, film, society and politics, and

In this course on 17th century Hispanic literature from both Spain and Spanish America, we will read works of various genres, including prose, drama, poetry and historiography. Students will explore - and in some cases perform - texts from both sides of the Atlantic. Above all, we will examine how authors were pushing aesthetic and societal limits of gender, ethnicity and "national" identity in their writing. We will also read some pertinent critical perspectives that will enrich our readings of the literature. The 17th century may seem a long way off, but these authors were exploring issues that are relevant to our contemporary reality. Don't be daunted by history: we are going to get into the lives of these authors and their literary characters through performance and impersonation. And remember, as the not-so-famous author Justin Butler said, "If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it!" So come ready to enjoy!

Some of the texts we will be exploring includ

This is an interdisciplinary course focusing on the processes whereby Spanish-speaking nations have created and instituted their narratives of independence since the 1800s. By resorting to history, literature, film, and art, we will study the sociopolitical circumstances responsible for the emergence of such discourses from the nineteenth century to today. We will also analyze the use of certain textual strategies in order to legitimize a specific ideology. The course will be divided into three thematic units corresponding to seminal historical events:

1) Spain's fight against Napolean: the 'Guerra de la Independencia', or Peninsular War (1808-1814); 2) The independence of the American colonies (1808-1826); 3) The independence of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines: the Spanish-American War (1898).

An integral part of the course will be the incorporation of the study away experience. Whether students have completed their semester abroad or are ab

live in. This introductory survey will allow us to explore how our efforts

to understand the world (and our impact on the world) connect us to past

societies. Past and present peoples are connected by the fact that we live

in and react to the environments that surround us. Throughout time, human

societies have had to find ways to survive in the world and in the process

of developing advanced civilizations have learned how to control and

transform the natural world. As a part of this process, these societies

have also tried to explain and explore the world and the ways that people

relate to it and to each other. We will cover the themes of environment,

exploration, and the development of different historical world views in a

wide range of regions and time periods, including early Chinese empire

building, medieval world travelers, 19th-century imperialism, and modern

space exploration.

This course deconstructs the discipline of military history in order to uncover the broad social and cultural implications of societies at war. Beginning with the military conquests of central America and the Southwest, students will analyze the ways in which economic and military pressures functioned to create boundaries of social belonging and structured new ethnic identities. Readings will be drawn from primary accounts of early American wars, scholarly articles, and historical monographs. The course will progress in a chronological order through the following conflicts: De Soto's Death March, the Pueblo Revolt, the Beaver Wars, Powhatan's Revolt, the Pequot War, King Phillip's War, the French and Indian War, and the American Revolution. In addition to major military conflicts, the course will also investigate the cultural impact of slave revolts and class-based rebellions (such as Bacon's Rebellion and Shay¿s Rebellion). By investigating the cult

in its infinite variety. These rapid changes provide us today with glimpses into distinct worlds of thought a way that more gradual social change often masks. The techniques historians have used to unearth the past in societies defined by oral tradition reveals new ways of understanding politics in societies where the written word is usually our point of departure. Changing conceptions of gender, family, race, and religion all shape the conceptual realm where the quotidian struggle for power takes place. This course will explore political thought in Africa using both theoretical and historical analysis of the events both past and present.

nation-states that now define the region and its people. The course seeks to define long-standing understandings of politics and society rooted in land, the body, and the family and how these metaphors appear and shape history during different eras.

and many different historians, archaeologists, and medievalists have

studied them. In this class we will discuss castles themselves and explore

why they were important in the Middle Ages. We will also talk about how

different historians work with sources, theories, and material objects to

reconstruct the past. For example, a historian interested in military

history takes a very different approach to castles than someone interested

in gender history. Through a combination of readings about castles and

about historical methods, we will be able to understand more about the

medieval past and to analyze approaches to reconstructing, understanding,

and writing about the past. Because this course will address larger issues

about historical studies, it can be useful for people interested in many

different periods by providing background on how to design and prepare for

research projects.

integrated into the social, political, and economic fabric of society.

In this class, we will look at medieval saints in order to discuss the

character and nature of medieval society. Medieval people interacted

with saints (both living and dead) in fascinating and unique ways. We

will discuss the earliest desert saints who shaped ideas of Christian

holiness, crusading-era ideas about the power of saintly intervention in

worldly conflict, and medieval ideas about miracles, death, and

redemption. We will survey the full span of the Middle Ages, from the

waning of the Roman Empire to the beginnings of the Protestant

Reformation. We will read, discuss, and write about medieval biographies

of saints and also books and articles by historians who use those

biographies to understand medieval culture and society. This class can

be an introduction to medieval history for students who have not taken

medieval courses an

This approaches the history of indigenous North America from the Age of Exploration through the nineteenth century. The chronology of the course brings students directly into a time of traumatic and dynamic political and cultural change among Native Americans. Combining close study of European and Native American source materials, students will be challenged not only to reconstruct the narrative of early American history with a view to the experience of Native American peoples, but also will confront important historiographical problems related to source reliability, interdisciplinarity and colonial and postcolonial theory. Rather than teach events of colonial American and United States history that also include American Indian experiences, this course attempts to approach the development of diverse North American cultures and societies from the perspective of the continent¿s indigenous peoples. Prior to the start of the course, students will be req

"How to Re-Appropriate Dead White Men: Intro to Critical Theory." This course is survey of major theoretical texts examined from the multiple perspective of both intellectual history and cultural studies, which foregrounds the ideological, social, and political function of concepts and other cultural artifacts. The focus will be on some of the central tenants of thought since the advent of modern secular capitalism in the seventeenth century, which continue to inform contemporary critical and political thought and discussions. The course will introduce students to (or further their existing knowledge in) central theories (ranging from philosophy, political theory, and linguistics to the various movements within twentieth-century critical theory, such as psychoanalysis, deconstruction, discourse theory, and theories of ideology) and methodologies involved in the analysis of theory itself, literature, film, society and politics, and

Studying closely the texts as well as visual materials of the plays, and considering various issues surrounding them, we will ask: Who were the "everyday people" of Genroku Japan, during which literature and arts flourished to

This course examines Latin American politics and culture from a historical perspective. The major themes of the course are colonialism and its legacies, revolution in the 20th century, authoritarianism and violence, democratization, neoliberalism, and US-Latin America relations. The course will draw on theoretical discussions of these issues as well as specific case studies of Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Chile, El Salvador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, and Venezuela.

This courses focuses on the process of democratization and the challenges faced by new (or newly restored) democracies. This first part of the course examines the philosophical and theoretical foundations of democracy and democratization from the ancient Greeks to the 21st century. The second part of the course focuses on specific case studies to illustrate the possibilities and pitfalls faced by countries emerging from different types of authoritarian rule since the 1970s. We explore the cases of Spain, Chile, Russia, South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, and El Salvador.

This is an interdisciplinary course focusing on the processes whereby Spanish-speaking nations have created and instituted their narratives of independence since the 1800s. By resorting to history, literature, film, and art, we will study the sociopolitical circumstances responsible for the emergence of such discourses from the nineteenth century to today. We will also analyze the use of certain textual strategies in order to legitimize a specific ideology. The course will be divided into three thematic units corresponding to seminal historical events:

1) Spain's fight against Napolean: the 'Guerra de la Independencia', or Peninsular War (1808-1814); 2) The independence of the American colonies (1808-1826); 3) The independence of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines: the Spanish-American War (1898).

An integral part of the course will be the incorporation of the study away experience. Whether students have completed their semester abroad or are ab

Reacting to Darwin's discovery of natural selection, Nietzsche and Freud both grappled with the question of what basis value judgments have in a world without God. The course explores their answers to this question, centering on the four domains of ethics, subjectivity, aesthetics, and theories of civilization. Topics of discussion will include: the genesis of moral values; "agency" and the loss of the subject ("there is no doer behind the deed" - Nietzsche); the split self; art and aesthetics as absolute values; art as sublimation; the deadening weight of history and civilization; the transience of culture; the death drive. Readings will include selections from the following: Darwin: The Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man; Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy, On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life, Daybreak, The Genealogy of Morals, The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarat

The gravitational force plays an important role in the macroscopic world. It makes a cup of coffee fall to the ground when it is dropped, and it determines the trajectory of a basketball on its way to the hoop after it is released for a three point attempt, The same force also causes the Earth to orbit the Sun, and the Sun to move around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. In fact, gravity determines the evolution of the Universe as a whole. This course will be an introduction to gravity¿s many facets.

The first part of the course is an accelerated calculus-based discussion of traditional introductory mechanics topics such as kinematics, Newton¿s laws, motion in a homogeneous gravitational field, conservation laws (energy, momentum, angular momentum), Newton¿s law of gravitation, Kepler¿s laws, and orbital dynamics.

In the second part of the course this basic material will be applied to study more advanced gravity related phenomena such as the gravitation

This course examines Latin American politics and culture from a historical perspective. The major themes of the course are colonialism and its legacies, revolution in the 20th century, authoritarianism and violence, democratization, neoliberalism, and US-Latin America relations. The course will draw on theoretical discussions of these issues as well as specific case studies of Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Chile, El Salvador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, and Venezuela.

The purpose of the course is twofold:

1. to introduce and explore the related concepts of "global citizenship" and "cosmopolitanism";

2. to assess the utility of these concepts in terms of their ability to help us address:

(a) the fundamental issue of how we should live together as human beings under conditions of sometimes radical difference and always immanent conflict; and ,

(b) some of the key global challenges facing humanity today;

3. to provide an introduction to the curricular element of the proposed "Fellowship" program in global citizenship.

The course is organized around the following questions:

How should we, as members of a moral community comprising all of humanity, live together under conditions of sometimes radical difference (at the local, national and world scales) in an increasingly globalized world in which conflict is always immanent?

How should we think about the boundaries of community in such a world?

This courses focuses on the process of democratization and the challenges faced by new (or newly restored) democracies. This first part of the course examines the philosophical and theoretical foundations of democracy and democratization from the ancient Greeks to the 21st century. The second part of the course focuses on specific case studies to illustrate the possibilities and pitfalls faced by countries emerging from different types of authoritarian rule since the 1970s. We explore the cases of Spain, Chile, Russia, South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, and El Salvador.