Class Schedules

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 Junior Seminar in civic engagement offers upper-level students an opportunity to study - through internships and reflection - and to actively engage with the problem of racialized mass-incarceration on a local, regional, and national scale. During any given semester, the seminar may focus on a specific aspect of the problem, such as: ex-felon disenfranchisement, families and juvenile justice, restorative justice, political prisoners, or prison art and literature. This course requires prior exposure to American Studies (preferably including a critical methods course). Note: The seminar will run concurrently with optional internships specifically created for this course, and a required reflection "lab" period. Placement in these internships is highly recommended. Students must obtain permission to enroll in these internships. Prerequisite(s): AMST 200

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Hate speech (cross burnings, cyberbullying of LBGTQs), but also revolutionary messages that can cause political or religious conversions (political speeches, the gospel) are uses, perhaps abuses of language with real effects -- ways of "doing things with words." In this course, we will explore how words have the power to effect real-world change, both for good and for ill. What uses of speech constitute forms of injury or of undue influence? What uses are transformative or emancipatory? How do we draw the line between these two valences of "forceful speech"? Readings and discussion topics will include theories of rhetoric, persuasion, and performativity (Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, John Austin, Derrida); instances and studies of transformative speech in religion and psychoanalysis (Luther, Freud); political speech from the language of emancipation (Declaration of Independence, Martin Luther King) to National Socialist propaganda (Goebbels); racist and sexist hate speech (Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, Critical Race Theory); the constitutionality of laws against hate speech in view of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech (U.S. Supreme Court rulings); the injurious and salutary effects of insults and invective (Randall Kennedy, Flannery O’Connor, comedy sketches of Chris Rock, the Hollywood movie "Lincoln"); depictions and uses of rhetoric and invective in literature (Homer, Thucydides, Shakespeare, Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist). Requirements: one short and two mid-length papers, weekly reading responses.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In the Plan of Union prepared during the 1754 "Albany Convention," Anglo-American colonists met to consider uniting as a loose confederation for their common defense and to ally with the Iroquois confederacy. That plan failed, but a later experiment in unity succeeded when the united colonies declared independence. Nevertheless, social, cultural, and ideological differences persisted, and the union formed in 1776 was tried and tested before finally fracturing with the secession of South Carolina, precipitating the Civil War. In the intervening years, Americans grappled with how they should govern themselves, who should be included in the polity, and how society should be organized. Reformers considered the controversial issues of women's rights, the role of Native Americans within the US, and the place of slavery in a nation founded on the precept that "All men are created equal." This course covers the periods of the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the early national and antebellum periods, before concluding with the Civil War. It also considers the global causes and consequences of the war and the rise of the new United States. We will also analyze the construction of the myth and historical memory of Alexander Hamilton, the founding father who has captured the imagination of people in the modern U.S.  Through a study of the recent biography of Hamilton along with the music and stage production of Hamilton, we will consider both the biographical and mythical Alexander Hamilton in order to understand his era and our own.

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

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In the Plan of Union prepared during the 1754 “Albany Convention,” Anglo-American colonists met to consider uniting as a loose confederation for their common defense and to ally with the Iroquois confederacy. That plan failed, but a later experiment in unity succeeded when the united colonies declared independence. Nevertheless, social, cultural, and ideological differences persisted, and the union formed in 1776 was tried and tested before finally fracturing with the secession of South Carolina, precipitating the Civil War. In the intervening years, Americans grappled with how they should govern themselves, who should be included in the polity, and how society should be organized. Reformers considered the controversial issues of women’s rights, the role of Native Americans within the US, and the place of slavery in a nation founded on the precept that “All men are created equal.” This course covers the periods of the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the early national and antebellum periods, before concluding with the Civil War. It also considers the global causes and consequences of the war and the rise of the new United States. We will also analyze the construction of the myth and historical memory of Alexander Hamilton, the founding father who has captured the imagination of people in the modern U.S. Through a study of the recent biography of Hamilton along with the music and stage production of Hamilton, we will consider both the biographical and mythical Alexander Hamilton in order to understand his era and our own.

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

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

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

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.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Hate speech (cross burnings, cyberbullying of LBGTQs), but also revolutionary messages that can cause political or religious conversions (political speeches, the gospel) are uses, perhaps abuses of language with real effects -- ways of "doing things with words." In this course, we will explore how words have the power to effect real-world change, both for good and for ill. What uses of speech constitute forms of injury or of undue influence? What uses are transformative or emancipatory? How do we draw the line between these two valences of "forceful speech"? Readings and discussion topics will include theories of rhetoric, persuasion, and performativity (Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, John Austin, Derrida); instances and studies of transformative speech in religion and psychoanalysis (Luther, Freud); political speech from the language of emancipation (Declaration of Independence, Martin Luther King) to National Socialist propaganda (Goebbels); racist and sexist hate speech (Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, Critical Race Theory); the constitutionality of laws against hate speech in view of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech (U.S. Supreme Court rulings); the injurious and salutary effects of insults and invective (Randall Kennedy, Flannery O’Connor, comedy sketches of Chris Rock, the Hollywood movie "Lincoln"); depictions and uses of rhetoric and invective in literature (Homer, Thucydides, Shakespeare, Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist). Requirements: one short and two mid-length papers, weekly reading responses.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Nearly everyone keeps a “to do” list, but not many people keep a “to be” list. If you did keep a “to be” list, though, chances are that “be happy” would be toward the top. But just what is happiness anyway? What is involved in the pursuit of a happy life? These perennial philosophical questions will be the focus of this highly discussion-based course. In general, this course aspires to do three things. One is to provide you with an opportunity to reflect on what philosophers and philosophically-minded thinkers have had to say about happiness, ethics, and the relationship between the two. Another is to give you some sense of the general dimensions of philosophy as an activity—or what it is to “do philosophy”-- beginning with the formation of a philosophical question and arriving at the structured presentation of philosophical ideas. The third is to give you the opportunity to do philosophy itself through bettering your skills at deep reading, imaginative and critical thinking, and argumentative writing. You’ll be expected to write one very short (3 pages) and two short papers (5 pages each) for this course; as well as do in-class reading reflections. Of course there are no guarantees that you will be happier as a result of taking this course, but there is a hope that you will pick up some useful insights about happiness along the way.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Centuries ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle identified happiness as the best and ultimate goal of human existence. But is that identification correct? What is the connection between happiness and well-being? What kind of relationship holds, if any, between happiness and ethical action, between being happy and being good? Is it possible to design one’s life so as to maximize one’s chances for being happy? Is happiness even attainable? And what do we mean when we talk about “happiness” anyway? At the center of our exploration of these questions will be three approaches to normative ethical theory that have played a key role in the development of ethics within the Western philosophical tradition: virtue-based ethics (as represented by Aristotle), consequentialism (as represented by Bentham and Mill), and deontological ethics (as represented by Kant). Complementing our exploration will be contemporary work on theories of happiness both by and influenced by philosophers, including work drawn from the interdisciplinary field of happiness studies.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An introductory philosophy course that concentrates on concepts and issues, such as the nature of value, duty, right and wrong, the good life, human rights, social justice, and applications to selected problems of personal and social behavior. Topics may include liberty and its limitations, civil disobedience, abortion, affirmative action, capital punishment, terrorism and the morality of war, animal rights and environmental ethics.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Bioethics deals with a variety of ethical issues arising in the context of medical care and biomedical research. These issues include informed consent, euthanasia, reproductive rights, confidentiality, and the distribution of health care resources. The course uses ethical theory to shed light on issues in medicine, and issues in medicine to illuminate ethical theory.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The use of imprisonment as a form of criminal punishment is only about as old as the United States. Currently, 2.1 million adults–more than one out of every 120 adults–in the United States are in prison or jail. If we include those under probation or parole, the total population under correctional supervision in the U.S. is 6.6 million, or one out of every 38 adults. How should we understand the growth of criminal punishment? How is it similar to other methods to react to and to attempt to control unwanted behavior? What are the social consequences of these formal institutions of social control? In this course, we examine these developments in the processes and organization of social control, paying particular attention to criminal behavior and formal, legal responses to crime. We study and evaluate sociological theories of criminal behavior to understand how social forces influence levels of crimes. We examine recent criminal justice policies in the United States and their connections to inequality, examining the processes that account for expanding criminalization. Finally, we compare the development of formal, bureaucratic systems of social control and informal methods of social control, paying attention to the social and political implications of these developments.

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

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The course examines the post-World War II Civil Rights Movement led by African Americans in the United States.  In the class, students will analyze key people, issues, events, and debates within movement history, including, but not limited to, gender and leadership; struggles for civil rights in the south, west, and urban north; the impact of the Cold War on race relations; student activism; movement strategies; and the emergence of Black Power.  Throughout the semester, students will read a wide variety of primary and secondary texts to illuminate the activities and life stories of individual participants as well as the broad historical forces that characterized this long era of insurgency.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

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:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course is an introduction to the interdiscipline of literature and human rights. We will read a series of beautiful and emotionally wrenching novels, treating them simultaneously as aesthetic artifacts and case studies in human rights. We will discuss the urgent political questions and philosophical paradoxes that define human rights, paying special attention to theories of trauma, race, empathy, evil, gender, disability, torture, genocide, and slavery. We will seek to better understand how spectators of suffering develop—or fail to develop—empathy for strangers by also examining how they can so palpably feel for the dreams, desires, and dignity of fictional persons. In The Defense of Poesy, Sir Philip Sidney describes the tyrant Alexander Pherӕus, “from whose eyes a tragedy well made and represented drew abundance of tears; who without all pity had murdered infinite numbers, and some of his own blood, so as he that was not ashamed to make matters for tragedies, yet could not resist the sweet violence of a tragedy.” What is the line that separates those who are merely moved from those who are moved to act? Authors will include Julia Alvarez, John Edgar Wideman, Chris Abani, Chang-rae Lee, Dave Eggers, Ted Chiang, Sophocles, Louise Erdrich, Thomas Glave, Colson Whitehead, Ursula Le Guin, Richard Powers, and Edwidge Danticat. This course fills the Framework requirement for the Concentration in Human Rights and Humanitarianism.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The course examines the post-World War II Civil Rights Movement led by African Americans in the United States.  In the class, students will analyze key people, issues, events, and debates within movement history, including, but not limited to, gender and leadership; struggles for civil rights in the south, west, and urban north; the impact of the Cold War on race relations; student activism; movement strategies; and the emergence of Black Power.  Throughout the semester, students will read a wide variety of primary and secondary texts to illuminate the activities and life stories of individual participants as well as the broad historical forces that characterized this long era of insurgency.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

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 continually 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:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course places developments in American Indian history into sustained dialogue with often-parallel developments in global approaches to indigeneity. It examines American Indian history in the context of indigenous sovereignty and resistance to colonialism while also addressing comparative and global phenomena, including the growth and diffusion of indigenous rights. This course is driven by four central themes and accompanying questions: How do we account for the development an encompassing American Indian identity, and does that process also foretell the development of a global indigenous identity? How do we account for the development of AIM and other American Indian movement organizations, and how do these movements connect to (and how were they affected by) global ideas of indigenous rights? In what ways do treaty rights (and related ideals) and international human rights relate to one another with respect to the issues facing American Indian movement organizations? Under what circumstances have American Indian leaders pursued international strategies to address issues and what have the consequences of these strategies been?

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Can we all live by one set of rules? This course investigates the broad field of global studies by addressing fresh and age-old issues in international law from the personal to the global, including borders, sources and enforcement of international law, law of the sea, immigration and asylum, post-national federation, colonization, world order, and global citizenship. Readings include case studies, memoirs, fiction, and other texts focusing on individuals, cultures, and states. Open to first- and second-year students, or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Can we all live by one set of rules? This course investigates the broad field of global studies by addressing fresh and age-old issues in international law from the personal to the global, including borders, sources and enforcement of international law, law of the sea, immigration and asylum, post-national federation, colonization, world order, and global citizenship. Readings include case studies, memoirs, fiction, and other texts focusing on individuals, cultures, and states. Open to first- and second-year students, or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

An introductory philosophy course that concentrates on concepts and issues, such as the nature of value, duty, right and wrong, the good life, human rights, social justice, and applications to selected problems of personal and social behavior. Topics may include liberty and its limitations, civil disobedience, abortion, affirmative action, capital punishment, terrorism and the morality of war, animal rights and environmental ethics.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An introductory philosophy course that concentrates on concepts and issues, such as the nature of value, duty, right and wrong, the good life, human rights, social justice, and applications to selected problems of personal and social behavior. Topics may include liberty and its limitations, civil disobedience, abortion, affirmative action, capital punishment, terrorism and the morality of war, animal rights and environmental ethics.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course will focus on some central topics in contemporary Anglo-American (or "analytic") social and political philosophy. Likely topics would include an examination of John Rawls's theory of justice and the work of critics of that theory, the value of equality, and issues about global justice. Prerequisite(s): A 100- or 200- level Philosophy course

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores the significance, possibilities and limits of litigation as a way of shaping public policy and society. Focusing mainly in the American context, the course connects two braod areas of interest: the rise of rights movements in the 20th century (from the NAACP to contemporary movements such as gay rights) and the use of class action lawsuits and tort law to compensate people for injuries or risk, especially in matters affecting public health (e.g. asbestos, tobacco). Related subjects discussed include the historical roots of litigation as an approach to social problems and government regulation as an alternative to litigation.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This seminar-style course explores vital questions in America's political development, focusing particularly on the moments with questions of law and the identity of people have been contested around economic issues. Topics vary but may include the evolution in property rights for women, the law of slavery, the legal status of Native Americans, and the evolution of welfare rights. The course employs tutorials, in which students tackle key questions through essays, which are then discussed in small groups in the instructor's office. Prerequisite(s): Sophomore-standing or permission of instructor.

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

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course places developments in American Indian history into sustained dialogue with often-parallel developments in global approaches to indigeneity. It examines American Indian history in the context of indigenous sovereignty and resistance to colonialism while also addressing comparative and global phenomena, including the growth and diffusion of indigenous rights. This course is driven by four central themes and accompanying questions: How do we account for the development an encompassing American Indian identity, and does that process also foretell the development of a global indigenous identity? How do we account for the development of AIM and other American Indian movement organizations, and how do these movements connect to (and how were they affected by) global ideas of indigenous rights? In what ways do treaty rights (and related ideals) and international human rights relate to one another with respect to the issues facing American Indian movement organizations? Under what circumstances have American Indian leaders pursued international strategies to address issues and what have the consequences of these strategies been?

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials