Minoring

ETHS 345: Ethnic Studies Symposium Chair

TBD
K. Brodkin

Student chairs perform substantive analytic work related to this interdisciplinary field of study, conducting extensive research to explore speakers, develop panels, identify important issues, and develop the program of events. Working closely with each other, the planning committee, and the faculty director, chairs also develop leadership and professional responsibilities. Preference given to minors in ethnic studies, but students with relevant coursework or other experience will be considered.

ART 207: Pre-Columbian Art

T/TH 1:50 – 3:20
M. Johnston

Overview of the art of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca civilizations and other major early Central and South American cultures. Examination of architecture, sculpture, ceramics, painting; how the arts played a key role in developing a sense of continuity within these societies across time and distance.

FREN 340: French Literature and Society

M/W/F 10:20 – 11:20
I. Demarte

Around Slavery: Institutions, Knowledge, Belles-Lettres in France’s Old Regime. In-depth study of representative works of French poetry, short fiction, or drama from a particular historical period. Focus on a specific genre and/or theme. An examination of how literature provides aesthetic responses to political and sociocultural issues through innovative strategies of narration and interconnections
between literature and the arts. Class discussion, oral presentations, short response papers, research paper. May be repeated once for credit, with change of topic.

HIST 135: US Empire to Superpower

T/TH 1:50 – 3:20
R. Hillyer

The power of the United States in the world, from the Spanish-American War to Iraq. Central themes are freedom, the state, and empire. Overall, our topics include the rise of imperialism; the demise of Reconstruction and the development of industrial capitalism; Progressivism; the World Wars; urbanization; consumer culture; the Great Migration; the depression and New Deal; the Cold War; the rights revolutions of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s; Vietnam; and the rise of the Right.

HIST 141: Colonial Latin American History

T/TH 9:40 – 11:10
E. Young

History of Latin America from Native American contact cultures through the onset of independence movements in the early 19th century. Cultural confrontations, change, and Native American accommodation and strategies of evasion in dealing with the Hispanic colonial empire.

HIST 232: Indigenous Peoples of North America

M/W 3:00 – 4:30
N. Gallman

Introduction to the study of the histories of Indigenous peoples in North America. Through a combination of critical reading, writing, collaboration, and discussion, we will analyze primary and secondary sources to explore the many communities, places, experiences, events, and ideas that have shaped the lives of diverse Indigenous peoples and societies and their encounters with one another, Europeans, and people of African descent, from the precontact periods to the present day.

HIST 239: Constructing the American Landscape

T/TH 9:40 – 11:10
R. Hillyer

Political, social, economic, and aesthetic forces that have helped shape ordinary built environments: farms, fast-food restaurants, theme parks, sports stadiums, highways, prisons, public housing. Patterns of economic growth and decline, technological innovation, segregation, gentrification, capital migration and globalization, historic preservation, and changing ideologies about nature and the city.

HIST 347: Modern Mexico: Culture/Politics/Economic Crisis

T/TH 1:50 – 3:20
E. Young

Origins and development of the modern Mexican nation from independence to the contemporary economic and political crisis. 1811 to 1940: liberal-conservative battles, imperialism, the Pax Porfiriana, the Mexican Revolution, industrialization, and institutionalizing the revolution. 1940 to the present: urbanization, migration to the United States, the student movement, neoliberal economics and politics, disintegration of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), and the new social rebellions (Zapatistas, Popular Revolutionary Army, Civil Society). Constructing Mexicanidad in music, dance, film, and the cultural poetics of the street and the town plaza.

IA 296: Human Rights in International Relations

T/TH 1:50 – 3:20
S. Chaudhry

Tensions surrounding sovereignty, or nonintervention, in the face of increasingly severe human rights abuses. Overview of the philosophical underpinnings of human rights as well as prominent debates in the human rights literature. Critical examination of the doctrine of sovereignty in international relations theory and practice. Analysis of the international community’s ways of preventing human rights violations, including political and judicial enforcement of human rights norms.

PHIL 217: Critical Theory

M/W/F 12:40 – 1:40
E. Lichtenstein

Introduction to key methods and themes in critical theory. Examination of: methodological questions concerning the nature of critique and the relationship between theory and practice; thematic questions concerning the functioning of capitalism, penal systems, and colonialism; and political questions regarding the possibility of resistance and the meaning of emancipation. Survey of important texts in twentieth and twenty-first century critical theory, with particular emphasis on major works by Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, and Nancy Fraser.

PSY 390: Cross-Cultural Psychology

W 6:00 – 9:00
Y. Zhang

Relations between culture and human behavior. Examination of topics in psychology from a multicultural, multiethnic perspective, with special emphasis on cultural influence on research methods, self-concept, communication, emotion, social behavior, development, mental health. Cultural variation, how culture shapes human behavior, and psychological theories and practices in different cultures.

RHMS 313: Politics of Public Memory

M 3:00 – 4:30, TH 3:30 – 5:00
M. Reyes

Investigation of public memory as the public negotiation of the past for political purposes in the present. How different cultures have remembered and rhetorically constructed traumatic historical events such as the Holocaust and institutionalized slavery. Role of communication and persuasion in public acts of remembrance.

RHMS 321: Argument and Social Justice

T/TH 9:40 – 11:10
M. Reyes

Investigation of argumentation and social justice. Exploration and application of scholarship through the community-based Thank You for Arguing, a mentoring program run with local inner-city public schools. Theoretical and methodological frameworks for understanding the role of argumentation in fostering social justice explored through readings, class discussion, and writing assignments.

SOAN 225: Race and Ethnicity in Global Perspective

T/TH 1:50 – 3:20
S. Warren

Sociological and anthropological analysis of how the notions of racial and ethnic groups, nations and nationalities, indigenous and nonindigenous groups, and states and citizenships have evolved cross-culturally. How they might be reconfiguring in the present context of economic globalization, mass migrations, and diasporic formations. Causes and consequences of the recent resurgence of ethnicity and the content, scope, and proposals of ethnic movements.

SOAN 285: Culture and Power in the Middle East

M/W 3:00 – 4:30
O. Kosansky

Introduction to the anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa, with an emphasis on the relationship between global and local forms of social hierarchy and cultural power. Topics include tribalism, ethnicity, colonialism, nationalism, gender, religious practices, migration, the politics of identity.

SPAN 360: Latin America and Spain: Pre-Columbian to Baroque

M/W/F 11:30 – 12:30
M. Raillard

Introduction to major trends in Latin American and Spanish literature from their beginnings to the baroque period. Selected works from Latin America and Spain read in the context of cultural and historical events.

SPAN 375: Topics in Latin American Culture: Narrating Social Change

T/TH 11:30 – 1:00
M. Rabasa

¿Cómo se narra el cambio social en América Latina? ¿Qué formas de representación se han usado para contar las experiencias de diversos pueblos durante la larga y turbulenta historia de América Latina desde la colonización? Tomando una perspectiva transnacional, transhistórica, y transdisciplinaria, este curso examina diversos procesos de cambio social en América Latina a través del análisis de diferentes medios (literatura, arte visual, cine, música, cultura digital). El curso se enfocará en la representación de grupos marginados en la historia de América Latina, para pensar críticamente la relación entre poder y cultura.