Class Schedules

This course introduces students to the intellectual roots and contemporary applications of cultural studies, including critical media studies, focusing on the theoretical bases for analyses of power and meaning in production, texts, and reception. It includes primary readings in anti-racist, feminist, modern, postmodern, and queer cultural and social theory, and compares them to traditional approaches to the humanities. Designed as preparation for intermediate and advanced work grounded in cultural studies, the course is writing intensive, with special emphasis on developing skills in critical thinking and scholarly argumentation and documentation. Completion of or enrollment in MCST 110 is the prerequisite for majoring in media and cultural studies.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The Far Right in the United States has appropriated working class identities to produce an identity among the white working class. Donald Trump, for instance, intentionally portrays a large gap in highbrow and lowbrow to take jabs at privileged liberals (such as when he tweeted the "Hamberder" photo). This course observes what can be called the Far Right "theater of politics" in order to understand how liberals have left working class culture behind in ways that allowed the far right to fill the void by finding persuasive techniques in culture (country music, religion, church...) to articulate a political voice that some working class folks, especially whites, may find appealing. Some of the major questions of the course include: (1) How do political and economic elites produce class, gender, and racial divides and segmentations by aligning themselves with the cultural practices often associated with working class folks? (2) Can the left create a political culture that cultivates respect for organic cultural expressions that include religious expressions and pop-cultural themes like country music and sports (yes, even football!) into their fold  Reducing everything to class and asking all others to submit to its political logic is a limited vision. Instead, the course investigates whether it is possible to envision a political project that rather than privileging the concerns of upper-middle class whites produces a culture of resistance that can articulate working class subjects - straight, queer, white, black, binary, non-binary - into a populist left movement? One of the truly powerful features of the Left is that it is much more diverse than the Far Right. Is it possible to extend that diversity even further so that it can show a "little respect" for organic cultural producers to feel comfortable producing and living in multiple class, racial, gender, and sexual habitus?

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

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

What does it mean to theorize “the political”? How does one undertake such an inquiry? What is the relationship between the political, the economic, the social, and the cultural? This course is designed to help students answer these questions and introduce them to the field of Political Theory. We will explore the work of some the most influential thinkers in the history of political thought – namely, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, and Arendt. We will also engage contemporary scholarship in the discipline and try to understand where Political Theory is headed today. Significantly, this course will move beyond the scope of a traditional introductory survey and consider the ways in which Political Theory has historically ignored questions of racism, sexism, and colonialism. In an attempt to decolonize the canon, we will consider the ways in which these issues have been ignored despite the fact that they have lurked in the background of some of the most important texts in the history of political thought.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Germany is famous today as a worldwide leader in discussions about environmental sustainability, green politics, and renewable energy. The term "sustainability" is in fact the translation of the much older German word "Nachhaltigkeit." In this course, we will explore the development of ecological consciousness in the German-speaking world, with a focus on the relationship between environmental movements and broader cultural and intellectual traditions of thinking about nature. Through the study of visual art, literature, film, scientific texts, and philosophical writings, we will discuss topics such as: the political and theoretical underpinnings of eco-activism in Germany; the specter of disaster in the German environmental imaginary; influential scientific, literary, and philosophical attempts to challenge the division between the human and the nonhuman; and eco-architecture and related efforts to envision and create alternative modes of human-nonhuman coexistence. Taught in English. No previous knowledge required.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Germany is famous today as a worldwide leader in discussions about environmental sustainability, green politics, and renewable energy. The term "sustainability" is in fact the translation of the much older German word "Nachhaltigkeit." In this course, we will explore the development of ecological consciousness in the German-speaking world, with a focus on the relationship between environmental movements and broader cultural and intellectual traditions of thinking about nature. Through the study of visual art, literature, film, scientific texts, and philosophical writings, we will discuss topics such as: the political and theoretical underpinnings of eco-activism in Germany; the specter of disaster in the German environmental imaginary; influential scientific, literary, and philosophical attempts to challenge the division between the human and the nonhuman; and eco-architecture and related efforts to envision and create alternative modes of human-nonhuman coexistence. Taught in English. No previous knowledge required.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course is designed to engage students with the most sophisticated and useful schools of thought available in the social science disciplines. The course raises a number of questions: How can we best understand the complexities of self and society? Are these units of analysis useful in and of themselves? Are they contained in an essential body or polity that we can identify as some unitary entity called Jenny and John Doe, American, French, Arab/Jew, black/white, modern/primitive, developed/underdeveloped, Oriental/ Occidental, homo/heterosexual, male/female? Or are they socially produced units that have no essence in-of-themselves, produced and made real only through performance with the "Other"? Furthermore, is there something unique about modernity that has fundamentally transformed the notions of our selves, bodies, polities, races, and civilizations? If the answer to the last question is in the affirmative, how and why did this come to be the case, and what consequences does it hold for our understanding of the past and of the future? These are the kinds of questions that great figures in sociology have been asking since the nineteenth-century, including classic theorists like Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx, as well as more recent writers such as Ervin Goffman, Michel Foucault, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Edward Said.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Marx’s contribution to the theorization of the function of the imaginary in both the constitution of subjectivity and the mechanisms of politics and economy—usually referred to as ideology—cannot be overestimated. The first part of this course traces Marx’s gradual conceptualization of the imaginary throughout his work—as well as further Marxist theoreticians, such as Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Slavoj Žižek—while exploring how the imaginary enabled Marx’s discovery of three further crucial concepts: structure, the unconscious, and the symptom, all of which are central in the analysis of culture and ideology. In the second part of the course, we shall focus on the logic and mechanisms of power in contemporary neoliberalism, including the claim that today Marx’s theory is no longer relevant (readings will include Maurizio Lazzarato, Nancy Fraser, McKenzie Wark). All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Core course toward the Critical Theory concentration.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Marx’s contribution to the theorization of the function of the imaginary in both the constitution of subjectivity and the mechanisms of politics and economy—usually referred to as ideology—cannot be overestimated. The first part of this course traces Marx’s gradual conceptualization of the imaginary throughout his work—as well as further Marxist theoreticians, such as Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Slavoj Žižek—while exploring how the imaginary enabled Marx’s discovery of three further crucial concepts: structure, the unconscious, and the symptom, all of which are central in the analysis of culture and ideology. In the second part of the course, we shall focus on the logic and mechanisms of power in contemporary neoliberalism, including the claim that today Marx’s theory is no longer relevant (readings will include Maurizio Lazzarato, Nancy Fraser, McKenzie Wark). All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Core course toward the Critical Theory concentration.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Marx’s contribution to the theorization of the function of the imaginary in both the constitution of subjectivity and the mechanisms of politics and economy—usually referred to as ideology—cannot be overestimated. The first part of this course traces Marx’s gradual conceptualization of the imaginary throughout his work—as well as further Marxist theoreticians, such as Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Slavoj Žižek—while exploring how the imaginary enabled Marx’s discovery of three further crucial concepts: structure, the unconscious, and the symptom, all of which are central in the analysis of culture and ideology. In the second part of the course, we shall focus on the logic and mechanisms of power in contemporary neoliberalism, including the claim that today Marx’s theory is no longer relevant (readings will include Maurizio Lazzarato, Nancy Fraser, McKenzie Wark). All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Core course toward the Critical Theory concentration.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Marx’s contribution to the theorization of the function of the imaginary in both the constitution of subjectivity and the mechanisms of politics and economy—usually referred to as ideology—cannot be overestimated. The first part of this course traces Marx’s gradual conceptualization of the imaginary throughout his work—as well as further Marxist theoreticians, such as Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Slavoj Žižek—while exploring how the imaginary enabled Marx’s discovery of three further crucial concepts: structure, the unconscious, and the symptom, all of which are central in the analysis of culture and ideology. In the second part of the course, we shall focus on the logic and mechanisms of power in contemporary neoliberalism, including the claim that today Marx’s theory is no longer relevant (readings will include Maurizio Lazzarato, Nancy Fraser, McKenzie Wark). All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Core course toward the Critical Theory concentration.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course considers surveillance as a social formation, inseparable from the theory and exercise of power. On the one hand, it takes up the pressing questions surveillance raises, from the development of cutting-edge technologies to the complex work of international regulation. On the other hand, it situates surveillance historically as central to projects of imperial conquest, state formation, and colonial rule. Engaging with theoretical works, primary sources, empirical studies and artistic renderings, students will grapple with problems of surveillance and power across contexts while developing a multi-modal research project.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course considers surveillance as a social formation, inseparable from the theory and exercise of power. On the one hand, it takes up the pressing questions surveillance raises, from the development of cutting-edge technologies to the complex work of international regulation. On the other hand, it situates surveillance historically as central to projects of imperial conquest, state formation, and colonial rule. Engaging with theoretical works, primary sources, empirical studies and artistic renderings, students will grapple with problems of surveillance and power across contexts while developing a multi-modal research project.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the broad range of explanations for social and cultural phenomena used by anthropologists since the emergence of the discipline in the 19th century. The course focuses on the development of three broad theoretical approaches: The American school of cultural anthropology, British social anthropology, and the French school that emerged from the work of Durkheim and his followers. The course also examines theoretical approaches such as cultural materialism, and symbolic and interpretive approaches to the study of culture. Prerequisite(s): Junior or senior standing.  Students should have at least two courses in anthropology including ANTH 101 or ANTH 111, or the permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the intellectual roots and contemporary applications of cultural studies, including critical media studies, focusing on the theoretical bases for analyses of power and meaning in production, texts, and reception. It includes primary readings in anti-racist, feminist, modern, postmodern, and queer cultural and social theory, and compares them to traditional approaches to the humanities. Designed as preparation for intermediate and advanced work grounded in cultural studies, the course is writing intensive, with special emphasis on developing skills in critical thinking and scholarly argumentation and documentation. Completion of or enrollment in MCST 110 is the prerequisite for majoring in media and cultural studies.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The Far Right in the United States has appropriated working class identities to produce an identity among the white working class. Donald Trump, for instance, intentionally portrays a large gap in highbrow and lowbrow to take jabs at privileged liberals (such as when he tweeted the "Hamberder" photo). This course observes what can be called the Far Right "theater of politics" in order to understand how liberals have left working class culture behind in ways that allowed the far right to fill the void by finding persuasive techniques in culture (country music, religion, church...) to articulate a political voice that some working class folks, especially whites, may find appealing. Some of the major questions of the course include: (1) How do political and economic elites produce class, gender, and racial divides and segmentations by aligning themselves with the cultural practices often associated with working class folks? (2) Can the left create a political culture that cultivates respect for organic cultural expressions that include religious expressions and pop-cultural themes like country music and sports (yes, even football!) into their fold  Reducing everything to class and asking all others to submit to its political logic is a limited vision. Instead, the course investigates whether it is possible to envision a political project that rather than privileging the concerns of upper-middle class whites produces a culture of resistance that can articulate working class subjects - straight, queer, white, black, binary, non-binary - into a populist left movement? One of the truly powerful features of the Left is that it is much more diverse than the Far Right. Is it possible to extend that diversity even further so that it can show a "little respect" for organic cultural producers to feel comfortable producing and living in multiple class, racial, gender, and sexual habitus?

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

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The Far Right in the United States has appropriated working class identities to produce an identity among the white working class. Donald Trump, for instance, intentionally portrays a large gap in highbrow and lowbrow to take jabs at privileged liberals (such as when he tweeted the "Hamberder" photo). This course observes what can be called the Far Right "theater of politics" in order to understand how liberals have left working class culture behind in ways that allowed the far right to fill the void by finding persuasive techniques in culture (country music, religion, church...) to articulate a political voice that some working class folks, especially whites, may find appealing. Some of the major questions of the course include: (1) How do political and economic elites produce class, gender, and racial divides and segmentations by aligning themselves with the cultural practices often associated with working class folks? (2) Can the left create a political culture that cultivates respect for organic cultural expressions that include religious expressions and pop-cultural themes like country music and sports (yes, even football!) into their fold  Reducing everything to class and asking all others to submit to its political logic is a limited vision. Instead, the course investigates whether it is possible to envision a political project that rather than privileging the concerns of upper-middle class whites produces a culture of resistance that can articulate working class subjects - straight, queer, white, black, binary, non-binary - into a populist left movement? One of the truly powerful features of the Left is that it is much more diverse than the Far Right. Is it possible to extend that diversity even further so that it can show a "little respect" for organic cultural producers to feel comfortable producing and living in multiple class, racial, gender, and sexual habitus?

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

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

What does it mean to theorize “the political”? How does one undertake such an inquiry? What is the relationship between the political, the economic, the social, and the cultural? This course is designed to help students answer these questions and introduce them to the field of Political Theory. We will explore the work of some the most influential thinkers in the history of political thought – namely, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, and Arendt. We will also engage contemporary scholarship in the discipline and try to understand where Political Theory is headed today. Significantly, this course will move beyond the scope of a traditional introductory survey and consider the ways in which Political Theory has historically ignored questions of racism, sexism, and colonialism. In an attempt to decolonize the canon, we will consider the ways in which these issues have been ignored despite the fact that they have lurked in the background of some of the most important texts in the history of political thought.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

‘U-topia’ means ‘a place (topos) that doesn’t exist’ and ‘Eu-topia’ means ‘a good place.’ So, a good place that doesn’t exist? How do people of various gender identities envision a better state yet-to-be (utopia) as well as a fear of catastrophe or nightmare (dystopia)? This course investigates how women's literary writing from different parts of the world (Bangladeshi, British, African-American, Canadian, to name a few) produce visions of the present and the future, of the real and the imagined, beliefs about masculinity and femininity, socialist and capitalist philosophies, modernity, the environment (ecotopia), and various technologies including cybergenetics. Texts by Thomas More, Frantz Fanon, Silvia Federici, and Noam Chomsky, and music by The Eagles and A Tribe Called Red are included. We will explore how these texts provide some ways to think about our gendered, racialized, and classed roles, and how we can think about MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Charlottesville, and neoliberal nation-states, along with our own fantasies and realities of sociopolitical change.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The course is an introduction to some of the important theoretical and methodological work conducted by scholars in various disciplines who hope to better define and understand religious phenomena. This seminar begins with some of the early twentieth century texts that are often cited and discussed by contemporary scholars of religion (e.g., Durkheim, Weber, Freud) and then turns to a number of investigations stemming from engagement with earlier theorists or refracting new concerns. The course inquires into the problems of defining and analyzing religious cultures, and the researcher's position or positions in this analysis, as this has been approached from anthropological, sociological, and religious studies perspectives.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Analysis of contemporary feminist theories regarding gender identity, biological and socio-cultural influences on subjectivity and knowledge, and relations between the personal and the political.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Analysis of contemporary feminist theories regarding gender identity, biological and socio-cultural influences on subjectivity and knowledge, and relations between the personal and the political.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course focuses on Contemporary Art from 1945 to the present, with special attention to art in the United States but with inclusion of many other artistic developments that shaped contemporary art practices. We will begin with an overview of the post-World War II art and modernist theories, but move quickly to examine the crisis of modernism and the emergence of postmodern and decolonial artistic trends. Throughout the course we will consider various themes that are prevalent in contemporary art, such as Abstraction, Representation, Narrative, the Body, Time, Ecology, Technology, Spirituality, Identity, and Posthumanism. We will also explore the relation between contemporary art and critical theory by discussing key thinkers and ideas informing debates around contemporary art and aesthetics. We will visit various exhibitions of contemporary art at the Walker Art Center, the Mia, and local galleries.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. In this course we shall examine the relation of religion to both capital and the modern forms of political power (what Michel Foucault termed biopolitics or biopower), as well as the biopolitical formations of race and racism as means for sustaining power-while discovering the enduring pertinence of Marx's work in theorizing the above issues. Biopower emerges gradually in secular capitalist modernity as a form of power that legitimizes itself not through its right to "take life" (as in traditional forms of sovereignty) but through its obligation to protect and enhance life. Yet, albeit "secular," biopower is a form of "pastoral power" (Foucault). We shall explore: the interconnectedness of modern biopower and religion; Marx's critique of the dominant (Enlightenment) critique of religion and his thesis that the secular state presupposes religion; the colonial and racial constructions of religion; racial capitalism; the biopolitical constructions of race in its relation to social class and other forms of domination; and anti-racist criticisms of both Foucault and Marx.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. In this course we shall examine the relation of religion to both capital and the modern forms of political power (what Michel Foucault termed biopolitics or biopower), as well as the biopolitical formations of race and racism as means for sustaining power-while discovering the enduring pertinence of Marx's work in theorizing the above issues. Biopower emerges gradually in secular capitalist modernity as a form of power that legitimizes itself not through its right to "take life" (as in traditional forms of sovereignty) but through its obligation to protect and enhance life. Yet, albeit "secular," biopower is a form of "pastoral power" (Foucault). We shall explore: the interconnectedness of modern biopower and religion; Marx's critique of the dominant (Enlightenment) critique of religion and his thesis that the secular state presupposes religion; the colonial and racial constructions of religion; racial capitalism; the biopolitical constructions of race in its relation to social class and other forms of domination; and anti-racist criticisms of both Foucault and Marx.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. In this course we shall examine the relation of religion to both capital and the modern forms of political power (what Michel Foucault termed biopolitics or biopower), as well as the biopolitical formations of race and racism as means for sustaining power-while discovering the enduring pertinence of Marx's work in theorizing the above issues. Biopower emerges gradually in secular capitalist modernity as a form of power that legitimizes itself not through its right to "take life" (as in traditional forms of sovereignty) but through its obligation to protect and enhance life. Yet, albeit "secular," biopower is a form of "pastoral power" (Foucault). We shall explore: the interconnectedness of modern biopower and religion; Marx's critique of the dominant (Enlightenment) critique of religion and his thesis that the secular state presupposes religion; the colonial and racial constructions of religion; racial capitalism; the biopolitical constructions of race in its relation to social class and other forms of domination; and anti-racist criticisms of both Foucault and Marx.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. In this course we shall examine the relation of religion to both capital and the modern forms of political power (what Michel Foucault termed biopolitics or biopower), as well as the biopolitical formations of race and racism as means for sustaining power-while discovering the enduring pertinence of Marx's work in theorizing the above issues. Biopower emerges gradually in secular capitalist modernity as a form of power that legitimizes itself not through its right to "take life" (as in traditional forms of sovereignty) but through its obligation to protect and enhance life. Yet, albeit "secular," biopower is a form of "pastoral power" (Foucault). We shall explore: the interconnectedness of modern biopower and religion; Marx's critique of the dominant (Enlightenment) critique of religion and his thesis that the secular state presupposes religion; the colonial and racial constructions of religion; racial capitalism; the biopolitical constructions of race in its relation to social class and other forms of domination; and anti-racist criticisms of both Foucault and Marx.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

With the advent of anthropogenic climate change and widespread species extinction, ecology must become critical no less than theory must become ecological. Among other things, this implies a thorough reevaluation of the concepts of nature and the environment, which—as their fraught history suggests—are anything but natural. In this seminar, we will examine the complex development of ecological thinking, focusing on its intersection with the critical theoretical tradition and relevance for the contemporary situation. We will ask: How do present-day concerns challenge us to reevaluate traditional distinctions between history and nature, organism and environment, human and non-human? In what way do our received notions reflect and/or support relations of capital and dominion? What resources can critical theory offer for developing alternative paradigms of interconnection among living and non-living agents? Readings may include texts by Ursula Heise, Theodor W. Adorno, Jane Bennett, Amanda Jo Goldstein, Édouard Glissant, Christoph Menke, Georges Canguilhem, Jon Bellamy Foster, Alexander von Humboldt, Gregory Bateson, Donna Haraway, Arne Naess, Bruno Latour, and Andreas Malm. In addition to ecological and critical theory, we may engage with contemporary film and literature.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course, we will consider films that provoke horror, fear, disgust, shock, terror, panic, and revulsion and ask about their political, philosophical, and cultural effects and potentials. As a genre organized around visceral experiences, both on-screen (gore, violence, monstrosity, terror) and in the audience (jump scares, trembling, squirming, fright), horror reminds us of the embodied dimension of existence, our living, material, and creaturely side and its entanglement with other people and the non-human world. In this manner, horror films can be privileged sites for working out ideas about gender, race, and sexuality, in ways that often reproduce existing power dynamics, but can sometimes subvert them. We will also consider the horror film as a potential mode of theory itself, one attuned to the unthinkable dimensions of our existence. Based around detailed engagements with individual films, our work will be both historical and international, moving between canonical examples that may include F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla (1954), and Alfred Hitckock’s Psycho (1960) and more contemporary films that may include Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016), Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink (2022), and Remi Weekes’ His House (2020).

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

With the advent of anthropogenic climate change and widespread species extinction, ecology must become critical no less than theory must become ecological. Among other things, this implies a thorough reevaluation of the concepts of nature and the environment, which—as their fraught history suggests—are anything but natural. In this seminar, we will examine the complex development of ecological thinking, focusing on its intersection with the critical theoretical tradition and relevance for the contemporary situation. We will ask: How do present-day concerns challenge us to reevaluate traditional distinctions between history and nature, organism and environment, human and non-human? In what way do our received notions reflect and/or support relations of capital and dominion? What resources can critical theory offer for developing alternative paradigms of interconnection among living and non-living agents? Readings may include texts by Ursula Heise, Theodor W. Adorno, Jane Bennett, Amanda Jo Goldstein, Édouard Glissant, Christoph Menke, Georges Canguilhem, Jon Bellamy Foster, Alexander von Humboldt, Gregory Bateson, Donna Haraway, Arne Naess, Bruno Latour, and Andreas Malm. In addition to ecological and critical theory, we may engage with contemporary film and literature.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Are we living in revolutionary times? How do we know? Ok, we are living in revolutionary times. This course takes a journey through the last 50 years of some large upheavals across the world—in bio-regimes, language, politics, economics, culture, and media—to find some answers of how we are similar and different. It uncovers how and why the struggles, in theories and practices, for power and representation have created the conditions in which we exist today. We travel through all kinds of ‘post’ and ‘neo’—liberalism, humanism, feminism, nationalism, and colonialism—and how they intertwine in our own lived experiences. Some topics: protest against gender, sexual, race, economic, and linguistic bio-regimes, revolts of the colonized and marginalized, and resistant/ liberatory creations in the sciences, the arts, technology, and media. Authors include Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Michel Foucault, Theresa Cha, Silvia Federici, Noam Chomsky, Ta-Nehisi Coates, bell hooks, Chela Sandoval, and Gayatri Spivak, among others. At the end of the course, we will all know a little more about where we stand.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

From Italian Mafia dons to famous American philanthropists; from the knitting of "trauma teddies" in Helsinki to gift shopping in London; and from ceremonial exchange rings in Melanesia to the present day global refugee crisis: this course will investigate how generosity is understood and practiced in global perspective. We'll begin the semester by examining key debates surrounding reciprocity, gifts, and exchange, theories of altruism and generosity, and patron-client relations. We'll then explore the birth of the "humanitarian spirit," and the complicated ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention. We will compare diverse religious traditions' approaches to giving, including Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Jainism. And we'll explore contemporary debates surrounding volunteerism within sectarian and neoliberal political regimes.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

From Italian Mafia dons to famous American philanthropists; from the knitting of "trauma teddies" in Helsinki to gift shopping in London; and from ceremonial exchange rings in Melanesia to the present day global refugee crisis: this course will investigate how generosity is understood and practiced in global perspective. We'll begin the semester by examining key debates surrounding reciprocity, gifts, and exchange, theories of altruism and generosity, and patron-client relations. We'll then explore the birth of the "humanitarian spirit," and the complicated ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention. We will compare diverse religious traditions' approaches to giving, including Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Jainism. And we'll explore contemporary debates surrounding volunteerism within sectarian and neoliberal political regimes.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

While the most visible signs of cultural globalization involve mainstream corporate products like Disney films, fast food chains, and blue jeans, underground and alternative cultural phenomena are also marked by their entanglement with a globalized economy, international communications technologies, diasporic communities, and other forms of transnationalism. By directly examining the products and practices of cultures labeled as dissident, subversive, or otherwise “alternative,” from the Pachuco subculture in the 1940s to punk music and identity in the 1980s to hip hop culture in Japan and beyond, this course will ask critical questions about their transnational character. How do alternative identities express forms of both national and international belonging? What happens when alternative or oppositional identities are taken up outside of their “original” national contexts? Is this merely a miniature version of “cultural imperialism” or homogenization? How have international subcultures constructed unique networks of communication and exchange, both outside and within mainstream institutions or mediums? And, importantly, what are the political stakes of these transnational phenomena that are sometimes characterized as mere fashion trends or youth culture fads? How might we rethink terms like “subculture,” “counterculture,” and “fringe”? To explore these questions, we will draw on key theoretical texts, music, film, and other media, and a series of historical and contemporary case studies.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the broad range of explanations for social and cultural phenomena used by anthropologists since the emergence of the discipline in the 19th century. The course focuses on the development of three broad theoretical approaches: The American school of cultural anthropology, British social anthropology, and the French school that emerged from the work of Durkheim and his followers. The course also examines theoretical approaches such as cultural materialism, and symbolic and interpretive approaches to the study of culture. Prerequisite(s): Junior or senior standing.  Students should have at least two courses in anthropology including ANTH 101 or ANTH 111, or the permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials