Class Schedules

This course has been developed as an entry-level exploration of the impact of race on contemporary U.S. public discourse. The course has two principle objectives: to create a forum that encourages individuals to articulate well-informed opinions and attitudes about race; and to locate those ideas in an analytic framework that promotes a shared understanding of race and racial inequality in the contemporary context.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In this introductory course, we will study African American literature from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will study major genres, such as slave narratives and poetry, and movements, including the Harlem Renaissance and Afrofuturism. We will learn to use the tools and vocabulary of literary analysis to read closely, critically, and appreciatively. Themes of national critique, solidarity, and joy will organize and focus our study. Authors will include: Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, and Ross Gay, among others. Requirements include: brief written responses to the readings, two essays of about 5 pages (one of which must be revised), and a final project. This course will fulfill either the foundation course in literature requirement or the literature by U.S. writers of color requirement for the English major. It also fulfills the college’s WA and USID general education requirements.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The readings and assignments in this course are designed to help students understand how social policies and programs contribute to Americans' lived experiences.  We will examine various theoretical justifications for the policies that constitute the American welfare state, then confront and dissect major strands of the American social safety net to better understand how political institutions and policy mechanisms contribute to both diversity and inequality in individuals' social, economic and political outcomes (based in race, class, gender, dis/ability, region, political jurisdiction, etc.).

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This survey course will explore history, policy, and pedagogy as they relate to race, ethnicity, and culture as education. K-12 public education will be the primary focus with topics including desegregation, standardized testing, multi-cultural and ethnocentric pedagogy, the teacher's role and experience, and significant historical events in education. The course will culminate by analyzing current trends and future expectations in education.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

After a brief but essential global history of drugs, this course will focus primarily on the 20th century to the present. We will examine histories of substance use and abuse, temperance and prohibition, the "War on Drugs," the shifting concept of addiction as a moral failing to addiction as a treatable disease, as well as study the history of the recovery movement and harm reduction. This course is not intended to be an exhaustive, comprehensive history of the subject-but it will provide you with a solid base from which to explore other aspects of this fascinating and contentious aspect of human history.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course we will be examining texts by Black playwrights, directors, designers as well as performing artists in response to the Black experience in American 20th and current 21st centuries. Plays will be read alongside political and historical writings in order to understand what conditions created the current climate of social and civic engaged experiences. Critical examination of scripts, articles and performances will be a part of the learning alongside community engagement. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

Amidst the COVID19 quarantine and in the aftermath of the brutal murder of George Floyd, we are living in a pivotal and confusing world-historical moment. Now more than ever, Critical Prison Studies rings a bell. Through a lens informed by anti-racist and abolitionist movements and legacies, we will light the way for discussions of systemic racism, carceralization, and social death. Scholarly texts, videos and film, podcasts, music, poetry, and art will organize and direct our focus on the key public policies and core cultural narratives of freedom, containment, criminality, and good citizenship in the contemporary United States. Many of these narratives have become stock morality tales that we need to examine closely—so we can reconsider their merit and value in our lives. This course is required for majors in American Studies; during Fall 2020 non-majors are also invited to enroll. Previous coursework in American Studies is helpful but not required. Internships and small-group projects will be optional and encouraged.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course will introduce students to interdisciplinary research approaches to the study of race, ethnicity, and other categories of difference. Students will learn to conceptualize and design research projects, and will obtain hands-on experience in executing different methods. The course will also consider the critiques of systems of knowledge production and research approaches that have been informed by scholars from fields such as African American history, gender studies, and critical race studies, as well as from the disciplines. The goal is to develop an understanding of the assumptions embedded in many fields of inquiry, and to learn to apply critical approaches to important research questions. Prerequisite(s): AMST 101, AMST 103, or AMST 110.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The history of American Indians is wonderfully complex, but this history is simultaneously fraught with misconceptions and misinterpretations. European (and, later, Euro-Americans) alternated among fascination, fear, and frustration toward American Indians, while American Indians sought to maintain tribal sovereignty and control over their lands, cultures, religions, politics, and lifestyles amidst continuing encroachment and settlement. This course examines American Indian history to 1871 - the year that Congress stopped making treaties with Native nations - by considering the complicated and multifaceted history of the nation's indigenous people. By looking at American Indian interactions with Spanish, French, British, and American explorers, settlers, missionaries, militaries, and government officials, this courses argues that the history of American Indians is essential to understanding past as well as present issues. Furthermore, this course looks to move beyond the notion that American Indian history is one of inevitable decline by creating a more nuanced understanding of the American Indian experience from pre-contact toward the twentieth century.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores cross-cultural encounters in the Americas that characterized the meetings of Europeans, Africans, and Americans in the early modern world between 1492 and 1763.  During this period, the Atlantic Ocean and its adjacent land masses became critical locations for economic, biological, and cultural exchanges.  This course focuses on the Americas as sites for discovery, mutual incomprehension, and exploitation.  The course explores the ways that conquest, resistance, and strategic cooperation shaped peoples' "new worlds" on both sides of the Atlantic. It also considers how colonialism framed and was framed by scientific inquiry, religious beliefs, economic thought, and artistic expression.  Students interrogate primary sources-written, visual and aural--that emerged from these encounters and the secondary literatures that have sought to make sense of them.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Poor and minority populations have historically borne the brunt of environmental inequalities in the United States, suffering disproportionately from the effects of pollution, resource depletion, dangerous jobs, limited access to common resources, and exposure to environmental hazards. Paying particular attention to the ways that race, ethnicity, class, and gender have shaped the political and economic dimensions of environmental injustices, this course draws on the work of scholars and activists to examine the long history of environmental inequities in the United States, along with more recent political movements-national and local-that seek to rectify environmental injustices.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Comparative study of Latinx political struggles in U.S. cities.  How did Chicana feminists transform student social movements on college campuses?  In San Antonio, Denver, and Los Angeles, how did multiracial coalitions elect pioneering Latino mayors?  And in Chicago, who fought for immigrant rights and who stood in their way? We will explore the themes of subordination and empowerment through study of anti-immigrant ballot initiatives in California, Cuban dominance in Miami politics, multiracial violence in Los Angeles, and battles over labor conditions, affirmative action, bilingual education, and racial profiling.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

After a brief but essential global history of drugs, this course will focus primarily on the 20th century to the present. We will examine histories of substance use and abuse, temperance and prohibition, the "War on Drugs," the shifting concept of addiction as a moral failing to addiction as a treatable disease, as well as study the history of the recovery movement and harm reduction. This course is not intended to be an exhaustive, comprehensive history of the subject-but it will provide you with a solid base from which to explore other aspects of this fascinating and contentious aspect of human history.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What is Black Art? In this class we will ask this question and look at the ways artists, curators, and activists have responded to it over time and place. This is a survey course, both chronological and cultural, that covers 19th and early 20th century Black artists, specifically those working as painters, sculptors, photographers, performers, and moving image artists. The course examines that ways that art chronicles major socio-political events. The artists in this course include 19th and 20th century artists like Henry Osawa Tanner and sculptor Edmonia Lewis as well as more contemporary artists like Ayana Evans who push against the boundaries of discipline. We will look how these artists and their work speak to the shifting role that race has played in the US from the period of Reconstruction to now. They also illustrate the ways that art and artists respond to urgent political crisis from the AIDS crisis to climate change. We will also examine the questions of economy and circulation of Black Art and its connection to the visual, social, and cultural history of the United States.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Much about mainstream narratives of queerness and gender transgression are determined by powerful, cis-dominated institutions, still even to this day: the media, schools, police, the law, doctors and psychiatrists. These are institutions structured by a racialized, heteronormative gender binary, and for whom trans people pose a problem to be managed. Oral history offers possibility for queer and trans people to tell their own stories, and, in doing so, give more nuanced, complex analysis of identity, activism, and of the intersectional operations of systems of power. Oral history also makes room for the complex interplay of joy, playfulness, grief, anxiety, and connection that makes queer and trans life so valuable. In this course, students will have hands on experience building an archive of queer and trans oral histories in the context of the pandemic and uprisings for racial justice. Working closely with the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota, we will learn about oral history methodology, interview techniques, and then have the opportunity to conduct oral history interviews and contribute to an online archive of queer and trans oral history.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course explores James Baldwin’s life and work as a writer and activist. Baldwin was a black gay man in an antiblack and heteronormative world. His queer imagination and spirituality are part of the same cloth. Deeply scared by the black church, Baldwin’s spirituality and art were, nevertheless, profoundly shaped by the spirit and language of black church religiosity. Through a heterogenous body of writing and the life he lived, Baldwin explored the souls of black folks (including queer blackness) and the nature ofAmerican identity. We will cover material that will deepen our understanding of racial formations in the US context. Racial formations refers to the history of laws, institutions (corporate, educational, religious, etc.), and social practices that create race. James Baldwin and the Black Religious Imagination carries a General Education US Identity and Difference (USID) marker.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course provides an interdisciplinary discussion of the Latino experience in the United States with a focus on Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban- Americans. Using fiction, poetry, films and critical essays, we will examine issues of race and ethnicity, language, identity, gender and sexuality, politics, and immigration. This course satisfies the Area 2 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 305 .

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The Senior Capstone is required of all majors. Majors who meet college criteria are encouraged to conduct an honors project in conjunction with their Senior Capstone.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

The readings and assignments in this course are designed to help students understand how social policies and programs contribute to Americans' lived experiences.  We will examine various theoretical justifications for the policies that constitute the American welfare state, then confront and dissect major strands of the American social safety net to better understand how political institutions and policy mechanisms contribute to both diversity and inequality in individuals' social, economic and political outcomes (based in race, class, gender, dis/ability, region, political jurisdiction, etc.).

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course examines Native American history since 1871. We begin with an introduction to indigenous history before 1871, characterized by centuries of Euro-American attempts to colonize and Christianize, to assimilate Native bodies and allot Native lands. We will then analyze the ways in which Native Americans have continualy fought to sustain their cultures, languages, and religions, as well as their political and socio-economic structures, throughout the 20th and into the 21st centuries. Focusing on themes such as Native resistance to the development of U.S. federal policies and the proliferation of Native culture, we will also consider the shifting nature of Native American sovereignty and the importance of indigenous identity in regards to the experiences of Native Americans.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The Critical Hmong Studies course will engage students in a critical analysis of the changing nature of Hmong culture and Hmong identity worldwide. The course traces Hmong origin from China, and historical events to current time, including Hmong involvement in the Vietnam War, Hmong migration throughout the world, and Hmong life in host societies. Students will explore debates surrounding cultural identity, intergenerational conflict, changing traditions and cultural practices in host societies. In addition, students will examine gender issues, acculturation, the portrayal of Hmong in media, Hmong in education, and racism among others.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course situates Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X within the larger context of the black freedom struggle. While focusing on them as individuals, the bulk of the course addresses historical contexts, organizations, events, and individuals which are obscured by King's and X's celebrity. The black freedom struggle has always been national in scope with international implications. In addition to the "southern theater," we explore of the black freedom struggle in the Western, Midwestern, and Northern regions of the country. We also explore the relation between historical expressions of the black freedom struggle such as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s and contemporary movements such as Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name. A major theme of the course is the role of religion and the larger category of spirituality as a kind of connective tissue among the various dimensions of the black freedom struggle.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course will explore whether or not the election of the nation’s first Black president changed the face of African- American leadership and activism since the height of the civil rights and Black power movements. We will study African Americans in the political system from a historical context. The running themes of the course are crafted to consider the following questions: What are the historical dynamics that have shaped and continue to shape the relationship between African Americans and the American political system? Under what conditions have Black people been able to exert influence in the political system? What exactly are Black political interests? Finally, we will analyze the strategies of electoral politics versus social activism, and analyze the way in which Barack Obama fits into the larger picture of Black politics in the United States.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The great African American writer Langston Hughes (1902-1967) is best known as the poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance. But his career was vaster still. He was a Soviet screenwriter, Spanish Civil War journalist, African literary anthologist, humorist, playwright, translator, social critic, writer of over 10,000 letters, and much more. This course engages Hughes's full career, bridging race and global issues, politics and art, and makes use of little-known archival materials. This course fulfills the U.S. writers of color requirement for the English major.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The American West is central to the construction of America's identity and popular culture.  The mythology of the American West, built on a narrow foundation of Euro-American settlement and conquest, is critical to understanding the role of the West in the national narrative of American history. Using a variety of materials, including films, art and photography, literature, and historical sources, this course will examine how writers, artists, actors, settlers, and government officials, among others, shaped the creation of the mythic West.  This course will investigate what - and who - is and is not considered part of this mythology, as well as the ways in which these constructs attempted to make sense of the diverse populations converging in the West.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This discussion-based course is entirely focused on Bruce Lee, the actor and leading martial arts icon of the 20th century. Using American Studies and Critical Race Studies frames to examine the construction of racialized and gendered bodies, we will discuss Bruce Lee in terms of his biography, identities, politics, philosophy, and filmography. We will take time to appreciate the entertainment value and athleticism that Bruce Lee brought to his work, but we will also learn to distinguish the commercialized, commodified Bruce Lee (from t-shirts to posters to action figures) from the serious historical figure who symbolized the spirit of cultural independence and political sovereignty around the world. Among the required books and movies: The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, and "Way of the Dragon" (1972).

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Beginning with the 19th Amendment and ending with the emergence of Covid-19, this social history course will apply four essential themes--fear, anxiety, safety, and security--to examine the history of social resistance to structural racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia that has defined much of the past century. A survey in the broadest sense of the word, we will investigate these themes as they relate to major historical events and chart the impact these events had not only on communities across the country, but on the national psyche of the United States. A bonus will be the participation of Aisling Quigley, Digital Liberal Arts Postdoctoral Fellow, who will teach and oversee the integration of digital humanities methods and tools that have developed in response to, or parallel with, the four themes we address. The class will culminate with students creating digital humanities projects on relevant historical themes of their choosing.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course is designed to introduce students to the histories of Mexican-descent people prior to the Spanish colonization of the Americas to the present century. Specifically, this course will provide an overview of culture, religion, education, economics, immigration and civil rights through a Chicana feminist framework. We will begin with a general presentation of terminology and identification categories. Then move towards a general reading on the pre-colonial histories of the Olmecas, Aztecas, and Tolteca cultures and politics. We will follow with a study of Chicana women’s labor struggles in the U.S. along with the emergence of labor movements. In addition, students will explore how and why the field of Chicana/o Studies emerges at the height of the Civil Rights and the Chicana/o movement of the 1960s and 1970s. We will delve into U.S. constructions of immigration, citizenship and nation to understand contemporary debates on issues affecting the Chicana/o-Mexicana/o- Latinx communities. This includes topics like DACA, U.S. deportation laws, the child migration crisis and much more. By the end of the semester, students will be able to articulate the experiences of Chicanas/os at the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, among other considerations.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course provides an interdisciplinary discussion of the Latino experience in the United States with a focus on Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban- Americans. Using fiction, poetry, films and critical essays, we will examine issues of race and ethnicity, language, identity, gender and sexuality, politics, and immigration. This course satisfies the Area 2 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 305 .

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course connects students with urban social geography, which studies the social and spatial dimensions of city life. In this course, we will explore some of the ways in which urban society is organized geographically. We will also consider how the spatial patterns of urban life influence public policy issues in a North American context. Topics covered in this course include causes of racial segregation, debates about gentrification, sustainable suburban development, the transition to shared governance in cities, and the delivery of urban services that affect the welfare of urban populations. Students will learn current research, engage debates about critical urban issues, and learn techniques useful for analyzing spatial patterns in the urban landscape. Prerequisite(s): GEOG 241 or GEOG 261 or GEOG 262 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides an introduction to the diversity of twentieth century visual culture of the United States, within the historical, social, and cultural contexts in which it is created. It will analyze the intersection and the social dynamics of race and ethnicity, along with gender and class, and how these shaped the experience of American artists and their audiences at various historical moments during the last century. Studying the work of Native American, African-American, Asian-American, and Latino-American artists in response to the mainstream US art and culture, will provide students with broad and complex understanding of concepts of race, ethnicity, class, and gender as reflected in artistic production of this marginalized artists and art groups. Prerequisite(s): At least one course in Art History, WGSS or AMST or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials