From daily communications to magisterial announcements, from classrooms to war zones, from health records to national legislation, from labor to entertainment, and from dating, marriage, to everything in-between, how do certain institutions, spaces, subjects, and normalized practices reflect and reproduce hierarchies of race, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, and ability using electronically mediated technologies? How have glowing screens, code, and algorithms become so dominant? Perhaps even necessary? To our lives, and how does this impact Asian American identities, communities, movements, and experiences? In this class, we will explore the multiscalar formations of Asian American digital cultures in the following ways: social media platforms, video games, advertising, viral videos and memes, "hook-up" apps, surveillance, privacy, "the right to not exist," anti-fans, and sex work.
In the movies, lemurs dance, capuchins slap people in the face, and apes take over the world. We have a fascination with non-human primates due the many similarities we share. Beyond being constantly faced with images of our closest living relatives, however, our lives are substantially influenced by our similarities with other primates and how they are interpreted. Whether or not we think of humans as 'just another primate' or as completely unique among the primates can shape our conception of ourselves and our societies. It can also shape our attitudes toward primate research, conservation, and beyond. In this course we will explore perspectives on human-primate similarities and how they influence our understanding of human aggression, xenophobia, gender roles, sexual behavior, and more. Using writing and discussion, we will also explore how unique humans really are compared to other primates. At the end of this course you will have an appreciation for primate diversity and the complex history of primate research. You will be able to describe how different humans really are from other primates, and you will be able to pinpoint how primate research and perspectives on primates influence your daily life. Most importantly, you will be able to explain how science has broad social ramifications.
Science is a process by which people make sense of the world. Scientists examine evidence from the past, work to understand the present, and make predictions about the future. Integral to this process are the methods they use to collect and analyze data, as well as the ways in which scientists work together as a community to interpret evidence and draw conclusions. In this class, we will take a multidisciplinary approach to examining biological thought and action and their social ramifications. We will seek to understand science as a social pursuit: the work of human beings with individual, disciplinary, and cultural differences, and requiring tremendous investments in training and equipment. Does it matter that participation in science is more accessible to some than to others? How do biases, assumptions, uncertainty, and error manifest in scientific work? What is the history of scientific values such as objectivity and reproducibility? The course will conclude by investigating current topics of public debate
Anthro 101-6-23 Fantastic Archaeology - Science and Pseudoscience
Did astronauts from another planet establish ancient civilizations on Earth? Were the Americas discovered by Columbus, a Ming dynasty fleet or by Vikings much earlier? Did the Maya Aztec build their pyramids to resemble those of dynastic Egypt? Television is replete with stories of ancient aliens and archaeological mysteries. The impact of such alternative realities on society and history cannot be discounted. They have been used to support nationalistic agendas, racial biases, and religious movements, all of which can have considerable influence on contemporary society. In this course, we will study "fantastic" stories, puzzles, hoaxes, imaginative worlds and alternative theories. We will learn when, how and what kinds of evidence these alternative theories have used to fascinate the public and illustrate their hoaxes. We will question such theories by using critical thinking and analytical tools to diagnose what is fact and fiction. We will utilize the surviving evidence that archaeologists find to understand cultural contact and interactions.
This course is an introduction to the anthropological subfield of archaeology, its theories and methods, and the political and social issues that arise when we study human pasts. In this course, we look at the history of the discipline and its theoretical underpinnings, as well as methodological topics including how archaeologists create research designs, discover and excavate sites, and analyze artifacts and features. We will also explore how archaeology confronts and deals with contemporary issues critical to the archaeological project and the communities that archaeologists engage with: e.g. heritage preservation and Indigenous/community rights, Black lives and Black histories, environmental degradation and sustainability, feminist archaeology and gender equality. Throughout the course, students will learn about archaeological case studies from around the globe and from a variety of historical periods.
This course is an introduction to three of the leading theories about the nature and meaning of myth: psychoanalytic, functionalist, and structuralist. Each of these three approaches will be considered primarily through the writings of their respective founders: Sigmund Freud, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Claude Levi-Strauss. Lectures will be primarily concerned with explaining these three theories. Examples of how these theories can be applied to the analysis of specific myths will largely be drawn from the Old Testament Book of Genesis.
A survey of cultural and ethnographic approaches to money and finance. Topics of investigation include “primitive money,” the uses of money in religious and ritual practices, social and cultural meanings of numbers, mobile money, crypto-currency and other alternative currency systems, and the politics of central banking. Prerequisite: None
How do Anthropologists understand and investigate the social and cultural contexts of health and illness? This course will examine the diverse ways in which humans use cultural resources to cope with pain, illness, suffering and healing in diverse cultural contexts. In addition, we will analyze various kinds of medical practices as cultural systems, examining how disease, health, body, and mind are socially constructed, how these constructions articulate with human biology, and vice versa. The course will provide an introduction to the major theoretical frameworks that guide anthropological approaches to studying human health-related behavior. Theory will be combined with case studies from a number of societies, from India, Japan, Brazil, and Haiti to the U.S. and Canada, enabling students to identify similarities across seemingly disparate cultural systems, while at the same time demonstrating the ways in which American health behaviors and practices are socially embedded and culturally specific. The course will emphasize the overall social, political, and economic contexts in which health behavior and health systems are shaped, and within which they must be understood.
Anthro 327-0-20 Archaeology of Ethnicity in Americas
Historical Archaeology is a field archaeology that focuses on the past 500 years and addresses a myriad of questions including, identity, European colonialism, resistance, capitalism, and power. This course will explore the history of different peoples in the Americas through the study of the material remains they left behind: architecture, burials, food remains, clothing and jewelry, etc. Attention will be focused on the presentation and/or exclusion of groups in depictions of history and in the creation new identities (ethnogenesis) in different parts of the Americas. It will also consider the ways in which power and economy intersect with other forms of identity, such as class, gender, and sexuality. The course will survey a variety of communities, concentrating on Indigenous Peoples, as well as people of European, African and Asian descent in American contexts. While there will be course material which touch on French and Iberian colonial contexts, class projects will primarily draw on study of artifacts and communities in the Eastern United States and the Anglophone Caribbean.
Discussion-based analysis of cutting edge research on the microbes associated with the human body and their impacts on health. Consideration of historical, social, and political influences on observed patterns.
Anthro 370-0-20 Anthropology in Historical Perspective
Rather than attempting the impossible, an overview of the whole history of the discipline of anthropology, this course will focus on one particular problem, the relationship between theory and ethnographic description in cultural Anthropology. The course will attempt to survey the development of certain schools of thought in the discipline since the mid-nineteenth century: evolutionism; historical particularism; structural-functionalism; culture and personality; cultural materialism; interpretive anthropology. In order to examine the ways in which each of these theoretical approaches affects the ways in which anthropologists choose to describe what they observe, the class will read a series of ethnographies (or excerpts from larger works) written at different times from different points of view.
Anthropology has had a long, storied relationship with questions of nature and culture, society and environment, during which time a variety of theoretical approaches have been developed. This class will review these intellectual developments and recent trends with the aim of giving students toolkits for analyzing present-day environmental concerns.
Anthro 390-0-21 Biocultural Perspectives on Water Insecurity
The first objective of this course is to introduce students to the many ways that water impacts our world. We will discuss what the international recommendations for safely managed water are and the health and social consequences of water insecurity. The second objective is explore why there is such variety in water insecurity worldwide. These discussions will be guided by the socio-ecological framework, in which dimensions ranging from the individual to the geopolitical are considered. Influences on access to water will be broadly considered; we will draw on literature in global health, ethnography, the life sciences, and public policy. The third objective is to develop critical thinking and writing abilities to reflect on the multi-dimensional causes and consequences of water insecurity and the appropriateness of potential solutions.
Anthro 390-023 Archaeology of Sustainability and Collapse
This course is a seminar that uses archaeological case studies from the past to interrogate human-environment relationships across time and space, including the present and the future. The emphasis here will not be on learning environmental archaeology methods. Instead, we will be focusing on how archaeologists think about key environmental concepts, including climate change, sustainability, and resilience. We will discuss examples of "failure" and "success" in the long history of human-environment interactions, and see if there's room for nuance along the way. We will also use this course as an opportunity to consider how archaeology can contribute to environmental sustainability and environmental justice efforts. Prior coursework in archaeology is not required to appreciate this class or do well, but would be helpful.
This class is an introduction to Political Ecology, a multidisciplinary body of theory and research that analyzes the environmental articulations of political, economic, and social difference and inequality. The key concepts, debates, and approaches in this field address two main questions: (1) How do humans' interactions with the environment shape power and politics? (2) How do power and politics shape humans' interactions with the environment? These questions are critical to understanding and addressing the current issues of climate change, the Anthropocene, and environmental justice. Topics discussed in this class will include environmental scarcity and degradation, sustainability and conservation, and environmental justice. Readings will come from the disciplines of geography, anthropology and archaeology. Case studies will range from the historical to the present-day. No prior background in the environmental sciences is needed to appreciate and engage in this course.
This seminar will apply a linguistic anthropological approach to understanding how social facts are determined by historical trajectories and, in parallel, how events in the past are narrated into history via a set of specific discursive and social processes. We will identify historical ideologies embedded in understandings of colonization in the Caribbean, the struggle for Indigenous rights in the Andes, and radical political thought in the US, and find points of intersection between them. We will consider their impact in subject formation by attending to their social, political, and economic effects. Because a monopoly over truth (and especially historical truth) has been central to the forms of power and authority that undergird ongoing systems of neocolonialism, we will consider the actors and institutions that develop, codify, and transmit notions that individuals—as members of different social collectivities—believe to be true. What can we learn about how "truth" settles, and thus unlearn some of the exclusionary practices embedded within the production of knowledge? The course will seek to develop a methodology that pairs linguistic and discursive analyses with basic ethnographic approaches. Focus topics will include colonization, social media, and governance.
Art History 395-0-3 Museums: Collecting the World in Early Mod Europe
What do the ostrich egg cup, agate pomander, coral, and other objects laid out on the table in this painting have to do with one another? Their luster, rarity, and highly worked surfaces and combinations of material signal their appeal as unusual things, attractive to early modern European collectors of cabinets of curiosities, also called Kunst- and Wunderkammern. Assembled across Europe from the mid-16th century through to the early 18th century, collections encompassed such varied items as natural specimens, art works, foreign goods, and sometimes musical and scientific instruments. The wide-ranging variety of objects in van Roerstraeten's, Still Life with Ostrich Cup and the Whitfield Heirlooms may seem random to our eyes today but allude to a culture of collecting in which a microcosmic scope was the ideal.
This seminar will offer an opportunity to explore the types of objects, practices, and motivations that shaped early modern collections, primarily in northern Europe, through a series of case studies anchored in objects at the Art Institute and will meet primarily at the museum. We will address the roots of early modern Kunst- and Wunderkammer collecting practices, and examine several of the best-preserved records, including treatises, catalogues, and inventories (in modern editions). Objects at the Art Institute will afford first-hand observation and inquiry into the structure and aesthetics of early modern collections in addition to investigation into material and display. We will also examine representations of collections and of the sorts of objects they encompassed as well as the legacy of early modern collections in the origins of public museums. Through discussion and individual research, we will consider how cabinets, the objects and images of the type that would have been collected for cabinets, and their materials were enmeshed in a variety of social and political contexts including networks of collectors, diplomacy, and colonial projects.
Asian Am St - 303-0-20 Race, Mental Health and Healing Justice
Race, Mental Health, and Healing Justice explores how constructions of race, class, gender, and sexuality are intimately connected to issues of mental health and chronic illness in a range of institutional and societal settings. Readings for the coursework include Frantz Fanon, Esme Weijun Wang, Aurora Levins Morales, Mariame Kaba, DSM-V, and Alternatives to Calling Police During Mental Health Crisis. Drawing from postcolonial, black feminist theory, women of color theory, critical refugee studies, and disability justice, this course focuses on how healing justice as a theoretical and methodological framework offers openings to address issues of state violence and cultural disease to imagine and manifest healthier sustainable futures.
Techno-Orientalism names a variant of Orientalism that associates Asians with a technological future. This seminar will explore how Techno-Orientalist tropes are used by, played with, and rewritten by Asian American authors. We will study how twentieth-century and contemporary issues of technology, globalization, and financial speculation collide with a history of yellow peril and Asian Invasion discourse, as well as how these tensions manifest in figures and tropes such as robots, aliens, and pandemics. Texts include poetry, novels, short stories, comics, and film.
Asian Lang 240-0-20 The End of the World: South Korean Fictions, Films
What does one talk about when one talks about disasters? Whose world ends in "end of the world" narratives? This course invites students to read and watch South Korean and diasporic narratives centered around disasters, both real and fictional, to engage questions of politics, representation, and inequalities that shape disaster narratives. Ranging from disasters of the past to more contemporary ones such as pandemics and Sewol ferry, the disasters examined in this course have sparked complex conversations surrounding a more just society and the doomed end of the "normal." Engaging scholarship on disasters, speculative fictions, critical race theory, and gender studies, the course introduces students to the varied academic and cultural responses to disasters and the underlying stakes that drive these responses. Students will be assigned a variety of texts to analyze, such as film, novels, webtoons, and news, as well as choosing a disaster narrative of their own interest to examine. No prior knowledge of Korean culture or language are required to take this course. Students are expected to actively participate in class and work in groups on collaborative projects. Assignments will consist of short essays and a creative final project.
Asian Lang 300-0-20 Religion and the Body in China
This seminar explores the place of the body in Chinese religion, from the ancient period to the present day. In the course of this exploration, we seek to challenge our presuppositions about a seemingly simple question: what is "the body," and how do we know? We open by considering themes of dying and the afterlife, food and drink, health and medicine, gender and family. We then turn to Daoist traditions of visual culture that envision the human body as intimately connected with the cosmos and picture the body's interior as a miniature landscape populated by a pantheon of gods. We read ghost stories and analyze the complex history of footbinding. Finally, we conclude with two case studies of religion and the body in contemporary China, one situated on the southwestern periphery, the other in the capital city of Beijing. Throughout the quarter, we investigate how the body has mediated relationships between Buddhist, Daoist, and popular religious traditions. By the course's end, students will gain key resources for understanding historical and contemporary Chinese culture, and new perspectives on what it means to be religious and embodied.
At the molecular level, life is a chemical engine so complex that it makes everything humans have invented and built look like child play. Through a mix of lectures, workshops and writing assignments, the seminar will explore some of the wonders that are at the core of biological systems. The goal is to inspire you, and to illustrate how studying biology yields insights that are mirrored in seemingly unrelated things like social media, architecture, airline route design, computer sciences, or sociology to name but a few. Materials needed: laptop, iPad, or smartphone with internet capability.
Bio Sci 101-6-1 Promises and Perils: The Social Reality of Biology
The word biology describes both the characteristics and processes of life and living organism, as well as the discipline that studies these. Like all the natural sciences, the study of biology is a data-driven endeavor, concerned with describing, predicting and understanding natural phenomena based on evidence from observation and experimentation. But like all human activities, it does not exist in objective isolation, but rather within a societal context. And biological phenomena, such as infection and disease, interact with non-biological elements of human society. This course aims to contextualize the study of biology towards a better understanding of how social and cultural histories and dynamics have had a profound effect on both biological research as well as biological phenomena, and how social, political and economic parameters influence the impact of scientific breakthroughs and the outcomes of biological events such as epidemics. The topics we will cover, among others: the cultural, political and societal barriers to reaping the benefits of biological research; the damaging legacies of racism, sexism and colonialism on the biological research enterprise; the role of communications in the field of biology; and select biological topics in evolution, genetics and disease. Students will learn from press articles, academic literature and non-fiction books (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot; Pandemic, by Sonia Shah).
Bio Sci 339-0-20 Critical Topics in Ecology and Conservation
This course will provide students with the conceptual and theoretical framework within the field of plant ecology (especially plant biology) and conservation. This seminar-style class is based on reading and discussion of historical and contemporary primary literature. It will provide you with the opportunity to think critically and discuss your thoughts within a structured yet informal setting and will provide them with a basic background in reading and writing scientific papers.
Environmental (justice) events continuously pepper the headlines - including these from the past week: "Chemical Giant Escaped Paying for Its Pollution", "Dozens Drown in India and Nepal as Monsoon Season Fails to End" and "As Drought Conditions Worsen, California Expands State of Emergency." These occurrences and others - including local ones - will be foregrounded in class readings, discussions, field trips, and assignments. What sustainable solutions are available to mitigate such disasters? What actions can we take to prevent future ones? How can the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry and Engineering be utilized to create a more sustainable future for all? Students will examine behaviors of individuals and institutions, analyzing how those actions contribute to the success or failure of a sustainable and environmentally just future. Students will use various forms of media to communicate their findings to the Northwestern community and beyond, culminating in student-directed projects and presentations.
Biased interpretations of scientific results have been used to justify racial and gender oppression for centuries. It was often argued that people of different races and different genders were fundamentally different, and as such their roles in society should differ as well. Today, many people reject the claim that race and gender have substantial effect on a person's abilities or capacity, but how did we get here? More importantly, how did science help facilitate these claims in the first place?
In this course, we will explore the role of science in historical oppression based on race and gender. We will identify key scientific studies and their subsequent legacy to reveal the precarious nature of scientific interpretation in the hands of biased individuals. We will discuss how power structures can infiltrate scientific integrity and propose safeguards to prevent this kind of infiltration in the future.
Chem 105-6-02 Science and the Scientist: How We Communicate
Science and the Scientist: How we communicate complex ideas, from comic books to journal articles: exploring effective scientific communication through graphic novels: Clear and concise communication is highly valued in many STEM fields. Whether conveying the technical details of an experiment for a colleague or translating the impact of a study for the public, scientists need to discuss complex ideas with different audiences. This course analyzes the goals of scientific writing by examining texts that represent different levels of communication, including how to use the visual language of comic books for conveying complex scientific ideas.
In this course, students will gain a solid understanding of the science, economics, and more importantly the environmental impact associated with various technologies, including, but not limited to natural gas, nuclear, wind, etc. Climate change and the potential impact and mitigation will be considered throughout the course.
Chicago Field St 387-0-1 Field Studies in Environment, Science and Sustainability
With Chicago as the field, FSESS will focus in particular on questions of science and sustainability within urban landscapes and beyond. We will explore how conflicting political, economic, and social interests and values contend for influence and exert power in the realm of environmental governance. We will look at how the local, regional, national, and international institutions, non-governmental organizations, experts, interest groups, and the public interact in defining environmental problems, and formulating and implementing solutions. Drawing on students' internship experiences, we will also discuss how concepts such the environment, sustainability, and green technology are defined and constructed in practice. Field Studies in Environment, Science, and Sustainability should be especially appealing to anyone interested in exploring the big issues facing the environment, understanding the environmental policy process, and doing something about the planet's changing environments.
Current problems in public and environmental health, such as the worldwide burden of major infectious diseases, emergence of new pathogens, and environmental reservoirs of infectious organisms.
Civil Env Eng 303-0-20 Environmental Law and Policy
An introduction to important aspects of environmental law and policy. A wide range of environmental topics are covered, with a focus on national environmental policy as implemented through major federal environmental statutes.
People who understand communication are uniquely positioned to solve health related problems, and their services are increasingly in demand. As such, this course is designed to familiarize you with the theory and research on communication in health and illness contexts, focusing on how messages from interpersonal, organizational, cultural, and media sources affect health beliefs and behaviors. We will explore communication in health care delivery, health care organizations, as well as health promotion and disease prevention. By taking this course, you will become a more mindful, educated, and effective health communicator.
Study in seminar format of a topic in communication. Assignments emphasize expository writing. Please download a free copy of the One Book One Northwestern selection for this year at this link. https://nuinfo-proto12.northwestern.edu/onebook2021/student-engagement/download-ebook/index.html
Comm St. 383-0-20 Media, Communication and Environment
This course focuses on exploring, understanding and researching questions and issues related to the environment and climate through the study of media and communication. Topics include electronic waste and outer space debris, environmental security, the digitalization of the wilderness, outdoor and recreational activities in conjunction with media technologies and electronic information networks, ways of representing and communicating environmental and climatological issues through such examples as climate change communication, weather forecasting, documentaries and feature length fictional film, television and similar media, examples of environmental and climatological-themed government media and communication, and media-communication-environment in everyday life and pop culture.
This course examines the use of visual and media arts for public advocacy regarding environmental concerns. Primary attention is given to photography, as that work is used in many other media, but we also can consider video, film, exhibitions, installations, performances, interactive media, and other arts, platforms, or projects. Environmental issues can include global warming, pollution, animal protection, water preservation, public health, and environmental justice, among others. Students will work individually and together on representative or innovative projects in environmental advocacy.
Comm St 295-0-20 Black Feminist Health Science Studies
Black feminist health science studies is a critical intervention into a number of intersecting arenas of scholarship and activism, including feminist health studies, contemporary medical curriculum reform conversations and feminist technoscience studies. We argue towards a theory of Black feminist health science studies that builds on social justice science, which has as its focus the health and well-being of marginalized groups. Students will engage feminist science theories that range from explorations of the linguistic metaphors of the immune system, the medicalization of race, to critiques of the sexual binary. We will use contemporary as well as historical moments to investigate the evolution of "scientific truth" and its impact on the U.S. cultural landscape.
We are surrounded by technologies that support our everyday interactions. Facebook and Twitter provide persistent services for exchanging personal information, Snaps can be compiled into stories that provide insight about your last 24 hours, ubiquitous and tangible computing environments allow objects to adapt to our everyday experiences, and new collaboration technologies enable people to work together on projects when they are thousands of miles apart. The design of such systems, however, is not simply a technical question. In order to successfully create these systems, we need to understand how people work, play, and communicate with one another in a wide variety of situations. This course illustrates the practice of understanding human interactions that take place both with and through technology; and it explores the design, creation and evaluation of technologies to support such interactions. Course topics include: design processes, prototype construction and technology evaluation techniques. Specialized topics may include social software and collaborative systems, value-sensitive design, and agent-based technologies. No programming experience is necessary. There will be occasional labs to explain technical content. Course requirements include short hands-on exercises, two exams, and a group project.
Comm St 394-0-20 Media Messages, Ideology and Formation of Popular Culture
We live in an increasingly mediated world. From the ways we socialize with friends and family, to the way we engage in work and leisure, to the way we procure food— media and technology play a key role in structuring our everyday lives and activities. In turn these media objects, and the messages which they communicate, play a key role in shaping our understanding of the social, political, and economic systems around us. But how, in what ways, and to what extent does media structure our social realities? And further, what role do we as individuals and as audiences play in both getting meaning from and giving meaning to the media messages? Throughout this course, we will attempt to answer these questions as we examine the way mass media messages get constructed, circulated, and repurposed throughout popular culture; as well as the way these media messages help structure popular understandings of ideology within society. Beginning with early theorization on the relationship between media and society and the concept of media effects and medium theory, we will trace the way theories about the relationship between mass media and the audience have evolved within the field of communications studies, from a one-sided theory of media effects, to a cultural exchange between the needs and wants of audiences as specifically-socially located agents. Throughout this course, we will also interrogate how media messages become ‘popular' and what characteristics of media messages lend themselves to popular, pleasurable, and negotiated readings. In line with the goals of this Communications Studies 394 writing seminar, throughout the course students will also be learning how to go about conceiving, developing, and crafting their own original research papers. Students will engage in in-class peer review workshops and short writing assignments that will help guide them in the research and writing process. In addition, students will learn skills that they will be able to apply in their future academic work and writing.
Whether we are working, communicating with friends, seeking romance, reading the news, or simply amusing ourselves, we now often rely on computational tools to support our everyday lives. This reliance will only grow deeper with the expansion of artificial intelligence and other new technologies. But what happens when computers fail us? This course explores the hazards of computing, particularly with respect to exacerbating broader societal issues such as discrimination, inequity, public health, and the climate crisis. Each week will explore a different type of hazard through historical and contemporary examples. Students will write a final research paper analyzing the role of computers in a hazard or disaster of their choice, from any time (past, present, or future) and at any scale (personal, communal, or societal).
Comp Lit 202-0-24 Race, Mental Health and Healing Justice
Race, Mental Health, and Healing Justice explores how constructions of race, class, gender, and sexuality are intimately connected to issues of mental health and chronic illness in a range of institutional and societal settings. Readings for the coursework include Frantz Fanon, Esme Weijun Wang, Aurora Levins Morales, Mariame Kaba, DSM-V, and Alternatives to Calling Police During Mental Health Crisis. Drawing from postcolonial, black feminist theory, women of color theory, critical refugee studies, and disability justice, this course focuses on how healing justice as a theoretical and methodological framework offers openings to address issues of state violence and cultural disease to imagine and manifest healthier sustainable futures.
Earth 342-0-01 Contemporary Energy and Climate Change
The increasing worldwide demand for energy presents a number of complex interdisciplinary challenges, from resource depletion to climate change. This class will challenge students to answer the question, How shall we power the world in the 21st century? We will examine the history and geography of energy use; links between energy and climate change; inequities in climate impacts; challenge of sustainability; and the fundamental science of climate change.
Earth Sciences - 102-6-02 Earth is Out to Kill You
In this seminar, we will learn about some of the most devastating natural disasters in Earth's recorded history. We will explore the science and the human toll of earthquakes and volcanoes - frequent reminders from our dynamic planet that it has little respect for human life. We will cover current events, as exemplified by recent destructions in Haiti and Spain, as well as historical events such as the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 which kicked off the Age of Enlightenment, and the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 which led to the Year Without a Summer, and which gave us Dracula and Frankenstein. There will be several writing assignments on science-related topics. In the words of Voltaire, bemoaning the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: "Come, ye philosophers, who cry, "All's well," And contemplate this ruin of a world."
Earth Sciences 114-0-01 Evolution and the Scientific Method
The scientific method is explored through the role it has played in the development of evolutionary thought. The course tracks the history of evolutionary theory from its earliest origins to the modern consensus, and in so doing, provides examples of scientific method as practiced in biology, geology, physics, and chemistry. It is the story of one of the greatest paradigm shifts in the history of human thought, and is designed to serve the needs of a broad spectrum of non-science majors seeking to satisfy the Area I distribution requirement.
Limbrock T, Th, F T, Th - 12:30-1:50pm, F - 1:00-1:50pm
Econ 307-0-20 Economics of Medical Care
This class will help students understand the key economic forces that have shaped the US health care and health insurance industry. What role do the particularities of health care and health insurance as economic goods play in explaining the size and growth rate of the health care sector? What's the effect of private incentives, adverse selection, moral hazard, and regulation? What's the effect of different organizational structures of health care provision? What can we learn from comparing the US health care / health insurance system to other countries' systems? Students will learn that these issues are important in the current public policy discussion.
This class will help students understand the key economic forces that have shaped the US health care and health insurance industry. What role do the particularities of health care and health insurance as economic goods play in explaining the size and growth rate of the health care sector? What's the effect of private incentives, adverse selection, moral hazard, and regulation? What's the effect of different organizational structures of health care provision? What can we learn from comparing the US health care / health insurance system to other countries' systems? Students will learn that these issues are important in the current public policy discussion.
Econ 323-2-20 Economic History of the US 1865-Present
The course examines the economic development of the United States since the Civil War to the present. It focuses on both long-term economic trends (like technological advance and industrialization) and the economic causes and consequences of particular events (like the Great Depression).
This course examines economic development over the long-run, with a focus on the transition to modern economic growth in the Western world. Topics include Malthusian stagnation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the demographic transition, and globalization and the great divergence. Along the way, we will discuss long-run changes in inequality, technology, and labor force participation, as well as the role of institutions in economic development, and the interaction between economic conditions and political power. Much of the class will be focused around analyzing recent research on these topics. The class will also involve a writing component aimed at improving students' ability to write critically and concisely about economic topics.
Econ 326-0-20 The Economics of Developing Countries
This course examines the causes of global poverty and low levels of economic development, as well as some policy solutions to these problems. The emphasis will be on microeconomic issues. We will ask such questions as "Do the poor under-invest in education and health?" and "What types of public policies can be used to improve the well-being of people living in developing countries?" Other topics include microfinance, informal insurance, corruption, and the productivity of firms in developing countries. An important objective is to learn how to use both the theoretical and empirical tools of economics to investigate the questions above. Therefore, econometric techniques and theoretical models will feature prominently in the course.
Economic change in sub-Saharan Africa, emphasizing current issues and policies in their historical contexts. Agriculture and rural development, industrialization, and international economic relations. Prerequisites: ECON 281-0, ECON 310-1, ECON 310-2, ECON 326-0.
In this course, we will look into the many different facets of the economics of gender. We will study economic decisions that individuals and households face from a unique gender perspective. The topics we will cover include, among others: the status of women around the world, education, marriage, fertility, labor supply, household decision-making, and discrimination. The class will put an emphasis on applied microeconomic theory and empirical analysis. A combination of econometric techniques and theoretical models will feature prominently in the course. For each topic, we will study concrete examples emanating from all over the world, and make an intensive use of statistics and econometrics. We are also very much interested in understanding the relationship between research and public policy. By the end of the quarter you hopefully will have a solid microeconomic framework within which to analyze important issues in economics from a gender perspective. There will be a series of empirical papers to read for this course.
While examining the metaphor of the ecosystem in scholarship (holistic analysis, wholeness, interdependence, diversity, intersecting contexts etc.), the seminar will use texts from different parts of the planet to read and write about the representations of the natural world, especially as affected by human activities. What are the benefits of studying a literary text against the background of its production and in conversation with others with which it resonates? How can we be specific about our singular object of analysis without missing the bigger picture? How are energy flows, cycles, and sustainability represented in literary texts? How can we engage with literary texts about the environment beyond the classroom setting? How do we integrate environmental activist work in academic scholarship while remaining rigorous and objective? As we grapple with these questions, we will use different methods of reading literary and theoretical texts from an ecological perspective. We will also experiment with various methods of academic presentation.
Ill women are scattered across the pages of literature, from swooning ladies in sentimental novels to cancer patients in popular fiction. Illness acts as narrative momentum, as a metaphor for social "ills," and as a signifier of tragic virtue in an individual character. Focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries, this class will examine how the tropes of illness in popular literature pertains to our broader cultural assumptions about illness, health, and gender. How do traits associated with femininity resemble literary representations of illness, and vice-versa? How might we locate or analyze femininity in representations of ill men? How do these tropes change over time? What happens if health, rather than illness, becomes a primary marker of virtue? And what does all of this mean for us today? How has the construction of ill femininity been bound up in whiteness, and how has this contributed to systemic and medical racism? What is the relationship between the representation of ill femininity and contemporary "wellness culture"—or even contemporary feminism?
Northwestern's campus and Chicagoland sit on the edge of one of the planet's most important sources of fresh water. In this course, we will study the culture, environment, and urban history of Chicagoland from the standpoint of Lake Michigan. Our attentions will range from the witnesses to the end of the last Ice Age to our own view of how climate change effects the Great Lakes. However, we'll focus especially on the history and culture of Chicago as it was shaped by proximity to the Lake, and how human decisions have shaped the lake in turn. Although this course is offered in the English department, it is a highly interdisciplinary course which includes readings drawn from literature, geography, history, architecture, journalism, and environmental studies. First-year students will gain a research-oriented introduction to study and life at Northwestern through the situation of its local cultural history and environment. Weather permitting, we will frequently hold class outdoors at the lakeside, and we may take excursions to notable coastal sites.
English 101-6-24 Bioinsecurities: Race, Empire and Postcolonial
This reading-intensive first year seminar will consider how colonialism and contagion together produce racialization in science fiction. In the year of the pandemic, European nations voted for strict vaccine export control measures, effectively slowing down access to medications for the Global South. Phrases like "vaccine nationalism" as well as "vaccine passports" have become commonplace. This twilight zone of deepening crises, and the imperial paranoid imaginary of what Neel Ahuja calls "bioinsecurities," have long been represented by science fiction authors. Keeping a firm eye on epidemiology, race, and imperialism, this course charts a path along genre-bending, speculative fictions that imagine contagion and infection from the late-nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. Contagion emerges not just as a moral panic or embodied paranoia about infection, but as a method of relationality that draws tightly controlled, governmentalized worlds around raced and differentiated bodies. We will think about how these fictional netherworlds produce new subjectivities of life, death, and living death. Alongside science fictional as well as speculative novels, spanning postcolonial as well as US writing, we will also watch films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, District 9, Arrival, World War Z, and Contagion.
English 338-0-21 Early Modern Sexuality: Studies in Renaissance Literature
This course explores the history of sex and sexualities -- in all their variety -- in English Renaissance literature and culture. Before the homo/hetero divide, before what Michel Foucault calls as "the implantation of the perverse," before genders in their modern forms, what were the routes, locations, effects, and politics of sex and desire? To what extent can we discuss "sexuality" in relation to "identity" in the pre-modern era? To address these complex questions, and to begin to ask new ones, we will concentrate on a range of exemplary literary and historical texts from around 1600 in England. We will be interested to explore both the multiple forms and functions of desire, eroticism, sex, asexuality, gender, gender-identification, etc. in this culture, as well as the terms, methods, and theories we now use to read the sexual past. We will gain fluency in the seemingly familiar but simultaneously foreign languages of early modern identities and desires: sodomy, tribadism, friendship, marriage; bodies, their parts, and their pleasures. We will interrogate sex/gender's intersections with such categories as race, religion, social class, and nation, and we will think through some new scholarship on trans* identities in early modern culture.
English 357-0-20 British Children's Fantasy - 19th Century British Fiction
It is said that the Victorians invented the idea of childhood: an idyllic state of wonder, play, imagination, and innocence. The orphans, adventurers, tricksters, and runaways in Victorian children's novels befriend animals, outsmart pirates, soar through the London sky, and fall down rabbit holes. What made these stories so popular in the nineteenth century, and why do they continue to enchant readers today? This course will explore key works of the Victorian literature canon to consider how these various narratives reflect rapidly transforming conceptions of childhood during the nineteenth century. From Lewis Carroll's playfully puzzling Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Rudyard Kipling's novel of colonial espionage, Kim, Victorian children's novels offer a unique perspective on a world in the grip of profound political, economic, and religious change. As we read, we will also reflect on the categories of the human and the animal, the nature of child sexuality, the distinctions drawn between innocence and maturity, as well as differences in gender, race, class, and disability. How does the constructed representation of "the child" speak to the desires, ambitions, and anxieties of a given historical moment? And what does the very category of children's literature suggest about literature's purpose and value?
English 369-0-20 Animal, Animism, Animality -Studies in African Literature
This course focuses on the representations of animals, animism, and animality in select African texts to examine the major developments in African literatures. While discussing various theoretical statements, we will assess the place of the non-human in the African thought. We will discuss work by well-known authors (e.g., Wole Soyinka, Bessie Head, J.M. Coetzee, Abulrazak Gurnah, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o), fiction and poetry by important but neglected authors (e.g., Saida Hagi-Dirie Herzi and Henry ole Kulet), and works by emergent writers who deploy animality as a trope to explore the relationship between the human and the non-human. Subtopics will include ecology, biopolitics, slavery, race, diaspora, intra-African immigration, science fiction, queerness, and ubuntu. Theoretical texts include works by Wangari Maathai, Achille Mbembe, Rosi Braidotti, Harry Garuba, Kyle White, Frantz Fanon, and Cajetan Iheka.
English 375-0-20 Techno-Orientalism, Topics in Asian Am. Lit
Techno-Orientalism names a variant of Orientalism that associates Asians with a technological future. This seminar will explore how Techno-Orientalist tropes are used by, played with, and rewritten by Asian American authors. We will study how twentieth-century and contemporary issues of technology, globalization, and financial speculation collide with a history of yellow peril and Asian Invasion discourse, as well as how these tensions manifest in figures and tropes such as robots, aliens, and pandemics. Texts include poetry, novels, short stories, comics, and film.
English 381-0-20 Intro to Disabilty Studies - Literature and Medicine
The field of disability studies grew out of the rights-based activism that led, in the United States, to the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Yet, as disability theorists have observed, "western" literature has long been obsessed with disability as metaphor, character trait, and plot device. This course will serve as an introduction to the application of disability studies in literature. We will explore a range of questions: how do we approach the representation of disability in texts by non-disabled authors? How do we differentiate (or should we?) between disability and chronic illness, or between physical and mental disabilities? Can literary representation operate as activism? How do we parse the gap between disability as metaphor and lived experience? What does literature offer disability studies, and why should disability studies be a core method for studying literature? This is a methods class, and readings will be divided between theoretical texts and primary sources. Students will learn to grapple with complex sociocultural and literary analysis, as well as to make space for their own primary source readings.
English 381-0-20 Illness and Feminity: Fictions and Facts
Ill women are scattered across the pages of literature, from swooning ladies in sentimental novels to cancer patients in popular fiction. Illness acts as narrative momentum, as a metaphor for social "ills," and as a signifier of tragic virtue in an individual character. From the 19th century to the present, this class will examine how the tropes of illness in popular literature pertains to our broader cultural assumptions about illness and gender. How do traits associated with femininity resemble literary representations of illness, and vice-versa? How have these associations changed over time? How has the construction of ill femininity been bound up in whiteness, and how has this contributed to systemic and medical racism? What is the relationship between the representation of ill femininity and contemporary "wellness culture"? How might we locate or analyze femininity in representations of ill men? What about mental illness? Our readings will be split between popular representations of illness in novels and writings by ill authors, and we will consider how literary tropes are or are not reappropriated by the latter.
English 385-0-20 Science and Representation: Topics in Combined Studies
When you write up a lab report, you probably don't approach it as a literary exercise. Today we take science writing as an objective, transparent transcription of experimental data. However, during the Scientific Revolution in Europe and Britain, literary form was vital to the transmission and popularization of new experimental methods. Indeed, literary representation was necessary to help people conceive new sensory worlds at microscopic, sub-microscopic, or planetary scale. In HUM 370/ ENG 385, we will explore the centrality of literary representation to pivotal new technologies in the early modern emergence of experimental science: the microscope, the air-pump, the telescope, and the distillation apparatus. These technologies did not only challenge fervently held convictions about the natural world endorsed by the Bible, Aristotle, and Ptolemy, among other authorities. They also demanded new representational modes able to communicate concepts and vivify experiences inassimilable to old ways of understanding. How can the pervasive agency of atmospheric pressure be figured in language? What words make the magnified body of a flea familiar, even beautiful? Why poeticize the chemical reactions involved in refining a new global commodity, sugar? What political viewpoints accompany Copernican visions of possible planetary worlds?
We will explore how literary technology was as integral to the New Science as experimental technology. Throughout, we will approach western science not as universal knowledge but as highly situated practice, whose multifarious economic, extractive, and imperial investments are woven into the fabric of its literary representation. We will dedicate significant time to satires of the new science, whose critical counter-representations of the frivolity, futility, or cruelty of experimental method illuminate the deep and ongoing stakes of science's relation to literature,
English 385-0-21 Literary Animals from Noah's Ark to Shakespeare
Before the nineteenth-century ideas of extinction and evolution, writers considered the earth's number of species to be unchanging. How were relations across this fixed set of creaturely kinds understood, and how was the diversity of these life-forms explained? What claims did these creatures have on humans, and what might earlier understandings of their entitlements reveal about assumptions concerning "us" and "them" now? Focusing on English Renaissance literature, this course will explore the teeming possibilities for thinking across species - before a starker "the human/animal divide" took shape. We'll map different approaches to natural history, ranging from re-readings of Genesis, to lawsuits filed against insects, to complaint poetry written in animal voices, to the night-rule of cats on the rooftops of London, to Shakespeare's animals (in their natural habitats of forest, field, and fantasy too), and then to the explicit pursuit of "human empire" over creatures with rise of seventeenth-century science. Finally, to consider what animals might say about all this, we'll end by analyzing a 2014 production called King Lear with Sheep (a staging of King Lear ... yes, with real sheep).
Environmental problems have become part and parcel of popular consciousness: resources are being depleted at a record pace, human population levels may soon cross the eight billion threshold, extreme poverty defines the majority of people's daily lives, toxic contaminants affect all ecosystems, increasing numbers of species face extinction, consumerism and the commodification of nature show no signs of abating, climate changes are wreaking havoc in different places every year, and weapons and energy systems continue to proliferate that risk the planet's viability. This introductory lecture course is designed to help students understand the relatively recent origins of many of these problems, focusing especially on the last one hundred and fifty years. Students will have an opportunity to learn about the environmental effects of urbanization, industrialization, population growth, market economies, empire-building, intercontinental warfare, energy extraction, and new technologies. They will also explore different environmental philosophies and analytic frameworks that help us make sense of historical change, including political ecology, environmental history, science studies, and world history. Finally, the course will examine a range of transnational organizations, social movements, and state policies that have attempted to address and resolve environmental problems. Co-Listed with History 376-0-20.
This course will survey American history from the colonial era to the present with two premises in mind: that the natural world is not simply a passive background to human history but rather an active participant, and that human attitudes toward nature are both shaped by and in turn shape social, political, and economic behavior. The course will cover formal schools of thought about the natural world - from transcendentalism to the conservation and environmental movements - but also discuss the many informal intersections of human activity and natural systems, from European colonialism to property regimes, migration and transportation, industry, consumer practices, war, technological innovation, political ideology, and food production.
Environmental anthropology is a more recent outgrowth of ecological anthropology, which emerged in the 1960s and 70s as an empirically-based focus on systemic human-environment relationships, especially as they pertain to patterns of social change and adaptation. Environmental anthropology became more prominent in the 1980s, and is typically characterized by research on communities' engagements with contemporary environmental issues. Environmental anthropology has greater commitments to advocacy, critique, and application than ecological anthropology, but as we'll see in this course, the proliferation of "new ecologies" (as opposed to "new environmentalisms") denotes the continued synergy between ecological and environmental anthropologies.
This course is divided into two parts. Part I will provide an historical overview of the development of environmental anthropology. We will cover some of the most influential research trends in the field: environmental determinism, cultural ecology, systems ecology, ethnoecology, historical ecology, political ecology, and post-humanist ecology. Part II will then pivot to the application of environmental anthropology knowledge to some of the most pressing environmental issues facing the contemporary world: population pressure, capitalist consumption patterns, biodiversity conservation, sustainable agriculture, climate change, and environmental justice.
This class is an introduction to Political Ecology, a multidisciplinary body of theory and research that analyzes the environmental articulations of political, economic, and social difference and inequality. The key concepts, debates, and approaches in this field address two main questions: (1) How do humans' interactions with the environment shape power and politics? (2) How do power and politics shape humans' interactions with the environment? These questions are critical to understanding and addressing the current issues of climate change, the Anthropocene, and environmental justice. Topics discussed in this class will include environmental scarcity and degradation, sustainability and conservation. Readings will come from the disciplines of geography, anthropology and archaeology. Case studies will range from the ancient, to the historical and the present-day. No prior background in the environmental sciences is needed to appreciate and engage in this course. Co-Listed with Anthro 390-0-23
The world's oceans are essential to life on earth, yet ever-more increasingly imperiled by an array of anthropogenic stressors, including pollution, overexploitation of resources and climate change. This class will focus on both the threats posed to ocean and coastal ecosystems, as well as the impacts on marine living resources. The course will also examine the role of national (with a focus on the United States) and international law in addressing threats to the world's oceans.
Env Pol 390-0-21 Intro to Ethnobiology Theory and Practice
This class is an introduction to the growing field of Ethnobiology which is the scientific study of dynamic relationships among peoples, biota, and environments. As a multidisciplinary field, ethnobiology integrates anthropology, geography, systematics, population biology, ecology, mathematical biology, pharmacology, conservation, and sustainable development. This class will cover the origins and evolution of ethnobiology theory and practice ranging from folk science, polymaths, taxonomic and colonial practices, the rise of Indigenous science methods, and the contemporary focus on creating networks among researchers of various disciplines to face the challenges of rapid ecological change and shifting political economies.
This course examines the potential role of the law in confronting climate change from an institutional and policy perspective, examining the role of treaties, national legislation (in the United States), sub-national responses and judicial and quasi-judicial fora. Among the topics that will be addressed include the science associated with climate change, the role of key international climate treaty regimes, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, national and state and local responses to climate change in the United States, the role of litigation in confronting major emitters, and the potential role of climate geoengineering approaches. It will also seek to help students develop critical skills of analysis of treaty provisions, legislative language, and court decisions, public speaking and cogent writing.
Native American Environmental Issues and the Media introduces students to indigenous issues, such as treaty-based hunting, fishing, and gathering rights; air and water quality issues; mining; land-to-trust issues; and sacred sites. These issues have contributed to tension between Native and non-Native communities and have become the subject of news reports, in both mainstream and tribal media. We will focus on how the media cover these issues and how that coverage contributes to the formation of public opinion and public policy. Students will read and analyze newspaper and on-line news reports and view and critique broadcast news stories and documentaries about Native environmental topics. Co-listed with Journalism 367-0-20
As the earth's climate changes, maple trees and the maple syrup industry in the U.S. and Canada are being affected, in both good and bad ways. The class will cover these effects, their impact on Native American and non-Native communities, the maple syrup industry, and maple species themselves through articles and readings. We will also cover other aspects of Native American food sovereignty happening across the United States and Canada. Students will work in groups, to collect data from three maple species on campus and examine sugar ratios, sap flow rates, and ambient temperature and precipitation: along with a focus on species differentiation, soil nutrients, and campus micro-climates. The final product for the class would be a group data report. A copy of the report will go to facilities management to be added to their campus tree inventory.
Env Pol 390-0-23 International Wildlife Law and Policy
Many scientists and policymakers believe that we are on the cusp of the world's sixth great extinction spasm, driven almost entirely by anthropogenic factors, including habitat destruction, unsustainable trade, the introduction of invasive species, and the looming specter of climate change. This course explores the role of international law in addressing the biodiversity crisis and efforts to protect wildlife species. An ancillary objective is to provide students with a foundation in international law, including skills in analyzing treaty provisions.
Env Pol 390-0-24 Science and Knowledge in Global Climate Governance
Despite decades of climate science research, current climate action remains limited in its ability to effectively mitigate the impacts of climate change. Efforts to reduce emissions are well-intentioned attempts to avoid the most severe effects of climate change, but have yet to spur the magnitude of action required. In this course we will explore the intersections of climate science, traditional ecological knowledge, and climate justice to unpack how different knowledge systems inform and impact effective climate governance and policy. Often unrecognized in science and policy arenas, traditional ecological knowledge generates insights for strengthening efforts to effectively address climate change. In this course, we ask: to what extent and how do different knowledge systems gain and lose traction in different climate policy arenas? How, why, and with what effects are the science and policy of climate change far removed from the people most vulnerable to its impacts? Is the exclusivity of science—marginalization of knowledge systems and extricating climate science from climate change experiences—the greatest threat to effective climate action? And, how might policy arenas facilitate the introduction, deliberation, and circulation of plural worldviews and knowledge systems?
Env Pol 390-0-24 Media, Earth and Making a Difference
The central question of this course is: What Makes a Difference? Analyzing a variety of works of media addressing environmental themes, including works drawn from advertising and marketing, we will consider different types of environmental messaging and attempts to mobilize public moral engagement. Specifically, we will be looking at strategies for implementing media interventions as moral interventions. Discussion taken up in this class will include evaluating the comparative value of media messaging that emphasizes individual action and personal responsibility, versus messaging that promotes collective action, policy, and structural changes. Students will consider and debate what constitutes authentic "green" messaging versus mere corporate "greenwashing." Throughout, we will ask what kind of media we need in what has been called the "Anthropocene" (a time when humans are now a major geologic force affecting the future of the planet). When motivating public moral engagement in climate crisis, are the solutions being offered those that the planet will actually "register" or "notice" on a global scale? If not, what kinds of "media interventions" do we need to be making and how? Course content will include discussion of media interventions as moral interventions, media activism for social change, eco-media responses by religious communities and organizations, participatory digital culture, and the challenges of addressing environmental crisis in the distraction economy and what has been called the "post-truth era." Students will have the opportunity to learn by doing, proposing and crafting their own environmental media interventions as the course's final project. This course is about taking action and making a true difference.
Climate change is the keystone environmental issue of this generation, and most likely for many generations to come. While the world community and individual countries have formulated policies to address climate change, these policies are almost universally recognized as being wholly inadequate to effectuate the objective of the Paris Agreement to hold global temperatures to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels, and pursue efforts to limit increases to 1.5ºC. This has led to increasing calls for research and development, and potential deployment, of so-called "climate geoengineering" options, defined as "deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth's natural systems to counteract climate change." This includes "solar radiation management" (SRM) approaches that seek to cool the Earth by deflecting income solar radiation back to space by approaches such as dispersing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere and brightening clouds, as well as carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches that seek to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it, or utilize it for production of products or energy. These options include nature-based solutions, e.g. tree planting or enhancing soil uptake of carbon, direct air capture through the use of filtration systems, and ocean-based approaches.
Env Pol 390-0-25 Water in Arid Lands: Israel and the Middle East
This seminar will explore how the availability of water has shaped the development of civilizations and driven innovation in water technologies. The course will investigate historical dimensions of water in Israel and the Middle East, focusing on ancient civilizations and the water infrastructures that are essential tools in aiding the development of water-poor societies. We will use this historical context as a stepping-stone to transition into a more recent history of the Middle East, focusing on the challenges that the nascent state of Israel faced following the influx of millions of immigrants. We will then examine efforts to develop the necessary water resources needed to support the burgeoning population as well as the irrigation projects designed to convert barren desert land into cultivated agriculture. This more recent history will help to set the stage for discussions regarding geopolitical conflicts over land and water that continue to this day. We will evaluate regional climate and water in the context of current and future geopolitical conflicts, reviewing recent advances in water technologies spurred by these limitations as well as the potential development of combined social and technological solutions for long-term water sustainability in Israel and the Middle East. We will end the course with discussions regarding opportunities for global translation of innovative water technologies and water-management solutions developed in Israel to other water-poor regions. In addition, the course will host a one-day conference featuring international experts. It will explore how water access and control contributes to trans-boundary politics and how recent advances in Israeli water technologies may serve as a model for sustainable water development in other water-poor regions of the world.
This course focuses on exploring, understanding, and researching questions and issues related to the environment and climate through the study of media and communication. Topics include electronic waste and outer space debris; environmental security; the digitization of the wilderness; outdoor and recreational activities in conjunction with media technologies and electronic information networks; ways of representing and communicating environmental and climatological issues through such examples as climate change communication, weather forecasting, documentaries, and feature-length fictional film, television and similar media; examples of environmental and climatological-themed government media and communication; and media-communication-environment in everyday life and pop culture. Student classwork includes lecture material, readings and audiovisual screenings, discussions, providing relevant discussion materials, and producing a research paper-project relevant to the topics and themes of the course.Assignments emphasize expository writing. Co-Listed with Comm St. 294-0-22. Please download a free copy of the One Book One Northwestern selection for this year at this link. https://nuinfo-proto12.northwestern.edu/onebook2021/student-engagement/download-ebook/index.html
Env Pol 390-0-26 Archaeologies of Sustainability and Collapse
This course is a seminar that uses archaeological case studies from the past to interrogate human-environment relationships across time and space, including the present and the future. The emphasis here will not be on learning environmental archaeology methods. Instead, we will be focusing on how archaeologists think about key environmental concepts, including climate change, sustainability, and resilience. We will discuss examples of "failure" and "success" in the long history of human-environment interactions, and see if there's room for nuance along the way. We will also use this course as an opportunity to consider how archaeology can contribute to environmental sustainability and environmental justice efforts. Prior coursework in archaeology is not required to appreciate this class or do well, but would be helpful.
Env Pol 390-0-26 Environmental Justice in Black and Indigenous Women's Literature
While ecocriticism has not always considered the lived experience of women of color, literary texts by African American and Native American women have found ways of theorizing their own versions of environmental and spatial justice. Reading leading theorists like Rob Nixon and Edward Soja side by side with Jesmyn Ward's post-Katrina novel Salvage the Bones (2011), Toni Jensen's stories about oil and fracking on Indigenous lands, and poetry by Nikky Finney and Heid E. Erdrich, this class interrogates how literature can inform our understanding of environmental injustice and different types of violence. It grounds the discussion in a longer history of colonial extraction and Indigenous dispossession, racism, structural neglect, and ongoing residential segregation by discussing Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 hurricane novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and looking at Zitkala-Ša's influential 1924 report on the settler defrauding of Osage Indians for their oil-rich lands.
Env Pol 390-0-27 Red Power - Indigenous Resistance in the US and Canada
In 2016, thousands of Indigenous water protectors and their non-Native allies camped at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in an effort to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. That movement is part of a long history of Native activism. In this course, we will examine the individual and collective ways in which Indigenous people have resisted colonial domination in the U.S. and Canada since 1887. In addition to focusing on North America, we will also turn our attention to Hawai?i. This course will highlight religious movements, inter-tribal organizations, key intellectual figures, student movements, armed standoffs, non-violent protest, and a variety of visions for Indigenous community self-determination. This course will emphasize environmental justice.
Env Pol 390-0-27 Parks and Pipelines: Indigenous Environmental Justice
This seminar explores how the relationship between the United States and Indigenous people has shaped the environments, ecosystems, and physical landscapes we live in today. Through engagement with a variety of digital resources including maps and digital media, we will learn how the environment of what is now the United States was managed by Indigenous people before and throughout colonization, how Indigenous people have been impacted by the environmental policies of the United States, and how Indigenous resistance and activism have shaped both the environmental movement in the U.S. as well as contemporary Indigenous political thought. In discussion, we will break down the politics, economics, and ethics of this history, challenging ourselves to think critically about the land we live on and its future. In lieu of a final paper, this course will include a digital, public-facing final assignment.
Env Pol 390-0-28 Animal, Animism, Animality in African Literature
This course focuses on the representations of animals, animism, and animality in select African texts to examine the major developments in African literatures. While discussing various theoretical statements, we will assess the place of the non-human in the African thought. We will discuss work by well-known authors (e.g., Wole Soyinka, Bessie Head, J.M. Coetzee, Abulrazak Gurnah, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o), fiction and poetry by important but neglected authors (e.g., Saida Hagi-Dirie Herzi and Henry ole Kulet), and works by emergent writers who deploy animality as a trope to explore the relationship between the human and the non-human. Subtopics will include ecology, biopolitics, slavery, race, diaspora, intra-African immigration, science fiction, queerness, and ubuntu. Theoretical texts include works by Wangari Maathai, Achille Mbembe, Rosi Braidotti, Harry Garuba, Kyle White, Frantz Fanon, and Cajetan Iheka.
This course examines how socioeconomic and environmental factors work together to cause hazards and disasters in human society. In this course we learn the main concepts about disaster such as preparedness, vulnerability, resilience, response, mitigation, etc. We learn that a disaster does not have the same effect on everyone (all groups of people), and factors of social inequality such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, make people more vulnerable to impacts of disasters. Also, this course, with an interdisciplinary perspective, analyzes disasters in the global North and South. This is a discussion-intensive course for advanced undergrad students. The classes are the student-centered with an emphasis on collaborative learning. The class meetings will consist of lecture, discussion, presentations, teamwork, activities, video/audio materials and projects.
Env Pol 390-0-30 The Natural and Supernatural in Southeast Asia
This course examines the ways in which different Southeast Asian peoples have conceived of what we might think of as the natural world - the environment; and the supernatural world - various religious traditions and cosmologies; and the continuous interplay between the two. Together we will explore the Kahiringan tradition of the Ngaju Dayak people from Central Kalimantan in Indonesia; representations of nature in the textual traditions and temple paintings of the Vessantera jataka in Myanmar and Thailand; Ilongot headhunting and historical reckoning; and the hydraulic landscape of Bali's water temples. Our goal will be to understand the kinds of conceptual and practical resources Southeast Asians have brought to understanding and controlling the world in which they have lived.
Energy is both ubiquitous and invisible: ubiquitous because little that modern Americans do every day does not involve some use of energy, and invisible because this constant flow of energy allows people to take it for granted. This class will look at different energy systems in American history, focusing on their social, cultural, political, and environmental consequences. Although the course will begin well before the fossil fuel era it will focus primarily on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—the age of coal and oil.
Env Pol 390-0-32 The End of the World: South Korean Fictions, Films
What does one talk about when one talks about disasters? Whose world ends in "end of the world" narratives? This course invites students to read and watch South Korean and diasporic narratives centered around disasters, both real and fictional, to engage questions of politics, representation, and inequalities that shape disaster narratives. Ranging from disasters of the past to more contemporary ones such as pandemics and Sewol ferry, the disasters examined in this course have sparked complex conversations surrounding a more just society and the doomed end of the "normal." Engaging scholarship on disasters, speculative fictions, critical race theory, and gender studies, the course introduces students to the varied academic and cultural responses to disasters and the underlying stakes that drive these responses. Students will be assigned a variety of texts to analyze, such as film, novels, webtoons, and news, as well as choosing a disaster narrative of their own interest to examine. No prior knowledge of Korean culture or language are required to take this course. Students are expected to actively participate in class and work in groups on collaborative projects. Assignments will consist of short essays and a creative final project.
Gbl Hlth 301-0-20 Intro to International Public Health
This course introduces students to pressing disease and health care problems worldwide and examines efforts currently underway to address them. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the course identifies the main actors, institutions, practices and forms of knowledge production characteristic of what we call "global health" today, and explores the environmental, social, political and economic factors that shape patterns and experiences of illness and healthcare across societies. We will scrutinize the value systems that underpin specific paradigms in the policy and science of global health and place present-day developments in historical perspective. Key topics will include: policies and approaches to global health governance and interventions, global economies and their impacts on public health, medical humanitarianism, global mental health, maternal and child health, pandemics (HIV/AIDS, Ebola, H1N1, Swine Flu), malaria, food insecurity, health and human rights, and global health ethics.
Locke and Leonard T, Th and M T, Th 11:00-12:20pm, M 6:15-9:00pm
Gbl Hlth 301-0-20, 21 Intro to International Public Health
This course introduces students to pressing disease and health care problems worldwide and examines efforts currently underway to address them. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the course identifies the main actors, institutions, practices and forms of knowledge production characteristic of what we call "global health" today, and explores the environmental, social, political and economic factors that shape patterns and experiences of illness and healthcare across societies. We will scrutinize the value systems that underpin specific paradigms in the policy and science of global health and place present-day developments in historical perspective. Key topics will include: policies and approaches to global health governance and interventions, global economies and their impacts on public health, medical humanitarianism, global mental health, maternal and child health, pandemics (HIV/AIDS, Ebola, H1N1, Swine Flu), malaria, food insecurity, health and human rights, and global health ethics.
Global health is a popular field of work and study for Americans, with an increasing number of medical trainees and practitioners, as well as people without medical training, going abroad to volunteer in areas where there are few health care practitioners or resources. In addition, college undergraduates, as well as medical trainees and practitioners, are going abroad in increasing numbers to conduct research in areas with few healthcare resources. But all of these endeavors, though often entered into with the best of intentions, are beset with ethical questions, concerns, and dilemmas, and can have unintended consequences. In this course, students will explore and consider these ethical challenges. In so doing, students will examine core global bioethical concerns - such as structural violence - and core global bioethical codes, guidelines, and principals - such as beneficence and solidarity - so they will be able to ethically assess global health practices in a way that places an emphasis on the central goal of global health, reducing health inequities and disparities. With an emphasis on the ethical responsibility to reduce disparities, we consider some of the most pressing global bioethical issues of our time: equity, fairness, and climate change. Particular attention is given to the ethics of research during a pandemic and access to vaccines and therapies for Covid-19.
Rodriguez, Reyes T, Th 12:30-1:50pm M, W 2:00-3:20pm
Gbl Hlth 302-0-20, 21 Global Bioethics
Global health is a popular field of work and study for Americans, with an increasing number of medical trainees and practitioners, as well as people without medical training, going abroad to volunteer in areas where there are few health care practitioners or resources. In addition, college undergraduates, as well as medical trainees and practitioners, are going abroad in increasing numbers to conduct research in areas with few healthcare resources. But all of these endeavors, though often entered into with the best of intentions, are beset with ethical questions, concerns, and dilemmas, and can have unintended consequences. In this course, students will explore and consider these ethical challenges. In so doing, students will examine core global bioethical concerns - such as structural violence - and core global bioethical codes, guidelines, and principals - such as beneficence and solidarity - so they will be able to ethically assess global health practices in a way that places an emphasis on the central goal of global health: reducing health inequities and disparities. With an emphasis on the ethical responsibility to reduce disparities, we consider some of the most pressing global bioethical issues of our time: equity, fairness, and climate change. Particular attention is given to the ethics of research during a pandemic and access to vaccines and therapies for Covid-19.
Gbl Hlth 322-0-1 The Social Determinants of Health
This upper-level seminar in medical anthropology examines the role of social markers of difference including race, class, nationality, gender, sexuality, age and religion in current debates and challenges in the theory and practice of global health. We will explore contemporary illness experiences and therapeutic interventions in sociocultural and historical context through case studies from the US, Brazil, and South Africa. Students will be introduced to key concepts such as embodiment, medicalization, structural violence, the social determinants of health, and biopolitics. Central questions of the seminar include: How do social categories of difference determine disease and health in individuals and collectivities? How is medical science influenced by economic and political institutions and by patient mobilization? How does social and economic inclusion/exclusion govern access to treatment as well as care of the self and others? The course will provide advanced instruction in anthropological and related social scientific research methods as they apply to questions of social inequality and public health policy in both the United States and in emerging economic powers. The course draws from historical accounts, contemporary ethnographies, public health literature, media reports, and films.
Gbl Hlth 322-0-20 The Social Determinants of Health
This upper-level seminar in medical anthropology examines the role of social markers of difference including race, class, nationality, gender, sexuality, age and religion in current debates and challenges in the theory and practice of global health. We will explore contemporary illness experiences and therapeutic interventions in sociocultural and historical context through case studies from the US, Brazil, and South Africa. Students will be introduced to key concepts such as embodiment, medicalization, structural violence, the social determinants of health, and biopolitics. Central questions of the seminar include: How do social categories of difference determine disease and health in individuals and collectivities? How is medical science influenced by economic and political institutions and by patient mobilization? How does social and economic inclusion/exclusion govern access to treatment as well as care of the self and others? The course will provide advanced instruction in anthropological and related social scientific research methods as they apply to questions of social inequality and public health policy in both the United States and in emerging economic powers. The course draws from historical accounts, contemporary ethnographies, public health literature, media reports, and films.
Gbl Hlth 324-0-1 Volunteerism and the Ethics of Help
Since the early 2000s, there has been an exponential increase in the number of foreigners volunteering in low-income communities, within orphanages, clinics, schools, and communities. This expansion has been echoed by locals, who are also providing voluntary labor in a variety of locales throughout their communities. This class explores the discourses and practices that make up volunteering and voluntourism, from the perspectives of volunteers, hosts, and a range of professional practitioners both promoting and critiquing this apparent rise in "the need to help". What boons and burdens occur with the boom of volunteer fervor world-wide? Why do people feel the need to volunteer, and what consequences do these voluntary exchanges have on the volunteers, and on those communities and institutions that are subject to their good intentions? What are the ethics and values that make up "making a difference" amongst differently-situated players who are involved in volunteering? Given that volunteers often act upon best intentions, what are the logics that justify philanthropy and the differential standards by which volunteers are judged based on where they go and how they engage in volunteering? This class seeks out some answers to these questions, and highlights why the increased concern for strangers that undergirds volunteering should also be, in itself, cause for our concern.
The history of reproduction is a large subject, and during this course we will touch on many, but by no means all, of what can be considered as part of this history. Our focus will be on human reproduction, considering the vantage points of both healthcare practitioners and lay women and men. We will look at ideas concerning fertility, conception, pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, birth control, abortion, and assisted reproduction. Because, at a fundamental level, reproduction is about power - as historian Amy Kaler (but by no means only Kaler), pointed out, "[c]ontrol over human reproduction is eternally contested, in zones ranging from the comparative privacy of the conjugal bedroom to the political platform and programs of national polities" - we will pay attention to power in reproductive health. And, since the distribution of power in matters of reproduction has often been uneven and unequal - between men and women, between colonizing and Indigenous populations, between clinicians and lay people, between those in upper socioeconomic classes and those in lower socioeconomic classes - we will pay particular attention during this class to struggles over matters of reproduction as we explore historical changes and continuities in reproduction globally since 1900.
Gbl Hlth 390-0-21 Community Based Participatory Research
Oftentimes we hear of research done on communities. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a research paradigm that challenge researchers to conducted research with communities. In this reading intense discussion-based course, we will learn the historical and theoretical foundations, and the key principles of CBPR. Students will be introduced to methodological approaches to building community partnerships, research planning, and data sharing. Real-world applications of CBPR in health will be studied to illustrate the benefits and challenges. Further, this course will address culturally appropriate interventions, working with diverse communities, and ethical considerations in CBPR.
Gbl Hlth 390-0-22 Methods in Anthropology and Global Health
This class will provide rigorous guidance on how one moves through the scientific process, from articulating scientific questions to answering and presenting them in a way that your audience can really relate to. We will do this using data a large dataset. Specific skills to be developed include human subjects training, formal literature review, hypothesis generation, development of analytic plans, data cleaning, performing descriptive statistics, creation of figures and tables, writing up results, scientific poster creation, and oral presentation of results. This course will be a terrific foundation for writing scientific manuscripts, theses, and dissertations.
Gbl Hlth 390-0-22 Native Nations, Healthcare Systems and US Policy
Healthcare for Native populations, in what is currently the U.S., is an entanglement of settler colonial domination and the active determination of Native nations to uphold their Indigenous sovereignty. This reading-intensive, discussion-based seminar will provide students with a complex and in-depth understanding of the historical and contemporary policies and systems created for and by Native nations. We will focus on the legal foundations of the trust responsibility and fiduciary obligation of the federal government outlined in the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court decisions. To gain a nuanced perspective, students will study notable federal policies including the Snyder Act, the Special Diabetes Programs for Indians, Violence Against Women Act, and Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Additionally, state policy topics will include Medicaid expansion and tobacco cessation and prevention.
Gbl Hlth 390-0-22 Biocultural Perspectives on Water Insecurity
The first objective of this course is to introduce students to the many ways that water impacts humans around the world. We will discuss what the international recommendations for safely managed water are and the health and social consequences of water insecurity.
The second objective is to explore why there is such variety in water insecurity worldwide. Influences on access to water will be broadly considered; we will draw on literature in global health, ethnography, the life sciences, and public policy. These discussions will be guided by the socio-ecological framework, in which dimensions ranging from the individual to the geopolitical are considered.
The third objective is to develop critical thinking and writing abilities to reflect on the multi-dimensional causes and consequences of water insecurity and the appropriateness of potential solutions. This will be accomplished through carefully reading the articles and book chapters we have lovingly selected, writing weekly reflection pieces, preparing a short in-class presentation on recent events in the media, and contributing to discussions and case studies of water insecurity.
Gbl Hlth 390-023 Silent But Loud: Negotiating Health
To be "healthy" is a complex obstacle course that many individuals living in certain bodies have to navigate. Black bodies, for example, are often the tied to (un)health because they are stereotyped as in need to be controlled, managed, and "guided" into healthfulness. In the U.S., these narrow stereotypes are just a few of the ways Black bodies get defined. In this course, we will move beyond those restrictive stereotypes, guided by questions such as, "How does culture define health?", "How does the food pipeline affect the health of certain bodies?" and "What does it mean to live in an obesogenic environment?" In this course, we examine the connection between health, culture, food, and environment with a focus on what is silenced and what is loud when generating "fixes" for "diseased" bodies. Silence refers to the disregard and dismissiveness of the narratives and experiences around the oppressions attached to the health of certain bodies. Yet, this silence echoes as Loud when connected to their culture, food, and environment when discussing diseases highlighted in Black bodies such as obesity, hypertension, and diabetes.
House. Grey's Anatomy. The Constant Gardener. Frankenstein's Monster. Paul Farmer. Josef Mengele. The Tuskegee Trials. Healthcare workers, and physicians and nurses in particular, have long held sway in the popular imagination as heroes, villains, and even complicated anti-heroes. What can we learn about the societal values we place on medicine, and medical personnel, by exploring the ways that medical heroes and villains are depicted to wide public audiences, or the ways they write about themselves? What do these fictional and non-fictional accounts have to tell us about societal celebrations, anxieties and ambiguities relating to medicine? How might we contemplate the ways societal norms relating to race, gender, sexuality, place of origin, ability, and other identifiers become mapped onto the stories the public consumes relating to medicine? What can these stories tell us about anxieties regarding life and death, technology, science, and culture? Who is portrayed as hero, who as villain, who as victim, and who as backdrop to the narrative? What perspectives are often silenced or left in the backdrop in these popularly-consumed narratives about medicine? In this course, we will read and view fictional, dramatized, and non-fiction narratives aimed at wide public audiences. In so doing, we will use medicine as a lens on a wide array of societal ambiguities, potentialities, inequalities and silences. NOTE: Students will be exposed to some stories and cases they may find disturbing. Co-listed with Humanities 370-3-20
Gbl Hlth 390-0-23 Health Care Under Socialism and Postsocialism
This course introduces students to ideas and concepts of health care and social protection during socialism and post-socialism in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. The course will explore systems based on the principle of "health for all" and their transformation during the so-called post-socialist transition from state-planned to market-oriented economies. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we will examine the complex relationship between socialist heritage and the influence of neoliberal policies on health care systems in former socialist states, with a special emphasis on the former Yugoslavia. Key course topics include: socialist governance and health care policy; the politics of post-socialist "transition"; the neoliberalization of health care and social protection policies; patients and their rights in the new order; informal economies and clientelism; and challenges in access to healthcare for marginalized social groups. Additionally, we will discuss the complex relationship between socialist legacy and neoliberal transformation regarding the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the former socialist states. Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to think critically about the political, economic, ethical, and cultural complexities of health care under socialism and the neoliberal transition.
Gbl Hlth 390-0-24 Native American Health Research and Prevention
Native nations in what is currently the United States, are continuously seeking to understanding and undertake the best approaches to research and prevention with their communities. This course introduces students to the benefits and barriers to various approaches to addressing negative health outcomes and harnessing positive social determinants of health influencing broader health status. Important concepts to guide our understanding of these issues will include settler colonialism, colonialism, sovereignty, social determinants of health, asset-based perspectives, and decolonizing research. Students will engage in a reading-intensive, discussion-based seminar, drawing upon research and scholarship from a variety of disciplines including public health, Native American and Indigenous Studies, sociology, history, and medicine. This course does not focus on nor teach traditional Native medicine or philosophies as those are not appropriate in this predominately non-Native environment.
This course examines how socioeconomic and environmental factors work together to cause hazards and disasters in human society. In this course we learn the main concepts about disaster such as preparedness, vulnerability, resilience, response, mitigation, etc. We learn that a disaster does not have the same effect on everyone (all groups of people), and factors of social inequality such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, make people more vulnerable to impacts of disasters. Also, this course, with an interdisciplinary perspective, analyzes disasters in the global North and South. This is a discussion-intensive course for advanced undergrad students. The classes are the student-centered with an emphasis on collaborative learning. The class meetings will consist of lecture, discussion, presentations, teamwork, activities, video/audio materials and projects.
This course examines how socioeconomic and environmental factors work together to cause hazards and disasters in human society. In this course we learn the main concepts about disaster such as preparedness, vulnerability, resilience, response, mitigation, etc. We learn that a disaster does not have the same effect on all groups of peoples, and factors of social inequality such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, make people more vulnerable to impacts of disasters. Also, this course, with an interdisciplinary perspective, analyzes disasters in the global North and South. This is a discussion-intensive course for advanced undergrad students that is student-centered with an emphasis on collaborative learning.
This course examines how environmental problems reflect and exacerbate social inequality. In this course, we learn the definition of environmental (in)justice; the history of environmental justice; and also examples of environmental justice will be discussed. We will learn about environmental movements. This course has a critical perspective on health disparities in national and international levels. How environmental injustice impacts certain groups more than others and the social and political economic reasons for these injustices will be discussed in this course.
This course examines how socioeconomic and environmental factors work together to cause hazards and disasters in human society. In this course we learn the main concepts about disaster such as preparedness, vulnerability, resilience, response, mitigation, etc. We learn that a disaster does not have the same effect on everyone (all groups of people), and factors of social inequality such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, make people more vulnerable to impacts of disasters. Also, this course, with an interdisciplinary perspective, analyzes disasters in the global North and South. This is a discussion-intensive course for advanced undergrad students. The classes are the student-centered with an emphasis on collaborative learning. The class meetings will consist of lecture, discussion, presentations, teamwork, activities, video/audio materials and projects.
German 232-0-1 The Theme of Faust Through the Ages
"To sell one's soul," "to strike a bargain with the devil," or even "to beat the devil at his own game"? these expressions and similar ones continue to enjoy undiminished popularity. For more than five-hundred years the legend of Faust has served as means to express the daring and danger of pursuing an aspiration even if it comes at the cost of one's "soul." The specter of a "Faustian bargain" often appears when narratives identify individuals whose inordinate achievements are both destructive and self-destructive. The theme of Faust provides a perspective in which one must thus reflect on the highest and lowest values. Dr. Faustus has undergone many mutations since he first appeared in central Europe around the early sixteenth century. This class will begin with a question at the foundation of the Faust legend: what is a "soul," and what is worth? While examining these and kindred questions about the nature of the self, the class will continually reflect on what we are doing when we evaluate a work of art in relation to the culture of its "time" or "period." In addition to listening to some musical compositions and reading some shorter texts, we will examine the earliest versions of Faust, which derives from the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation and then proceed to read Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's great drama of cosmic knowledge and sexual seduction, Faust I, followed by selections from its strange sequel Faust II, in which Faust invents paper money and then becomes a real-estate developer or social-engineer who wants to reorganize the very nature of our planet. We will ask what Goethe, near the end of his life, gave to "world literature" (a term of his own invention) when he presented his final version of Faust as a man committed to a total terrestrial transformation that inadvertently destroys innocent lives. As a conclusion to our analysis of Goethe's Faust, we will read two very different kinds of poetic responses, Paul Celan's "Death Fugue" and Carol Ann Duffy's "Mrs. Faust." And in the final two weeks of the class we will view three versions of the Faust legend for our times, beginning with the story of the bluesman Robert Johnson, as represented in Peter Meyer's Can't You Hear the Wind Howl?, followed by Sophie Barthes' Cold Souls and concluding with Danny Boyle's Yesterday.
This class will take a look at the life and work of the groundbreaking Viennese psychologist Sigmund Freud from a comparative and interdisciplinary angle. Almost 80 years after his death, Freud's legacy continues to be controversial: some claim that his theories are no longer relevant in the light of new research, whereas others defend his theories and/or expand upon the implications and influence of his ideas, in the realm not only of psychology, medicine, and neuroscience, but also in the fields of sociology, cultural studies, philosophy, literary studies, criminal justice, queer and gender studies, communications, and many more. What is certain, however, is that, one way or another, Freud's theories and ideas have marked the world for all time. This class will read fundamental texts from Freud's body of work in dialogue with texts by Freud's near and distant predecessors and followers, both to situate Freud in his historical and cultural context, and to think through the many different kinds of questions that Freud's work addresses.
Germany is often regarded as being at the forefront of European developments concerning issues such as climate change and recycling, transport and renewable energy sources. This class will trace the scientific, political, philosophical, and aesthetic history of Germany as a ‘green nation` from the 18th century until today. What are the roots of the ideology of environmentalism as it is represented in concepts like environment, ecology, or sustainability, which were all invented or popularized by German scientists (von Uexküll, Haeckel, von Carlowitz)?
Gndr St. 220-0-20 Sexual Subjects: Into to Sexuality Studies
This course is an introduction to the kinds of questions and hypotheses around which the interdisciplinary field of sexuality studies has coalesced over the past thirty or so. Topics include the history of sexuality as a social category, the ways sexuality intersects with other important social categories such as race and class, the ways individuals from different social groups understand and experience their sexuality, and the ways different social movements have organized around or in response to demands for sexual liberation or exploration.
Gndr St. 332-0-20 Health Activism, Gender, Sexuality and Health
Issues of health and disease have been inextricably entangled with politics this last year. Scientific recommendations, public health mandates, and the role of institutions from the CDC and the FDA to the WHO have been subject to heated debate and partisan politics. Meanwhile, the pandemic has made newly visible and further exacerbated ongoing health disparities within the U.S. and globally. Simultaneously, demands for "healing justice" (Black Lives Matter), the "freedom to thrive" (BYP 100) and the "right to live" (Poor People's Campaign) articulate a politics that reconceptualize "health" and "healing" as urgent liberation projects, building on a tradition of radical health activism in the U.S. since the 1960s. To make sense of this moment, we examine this tradition of radical health activism, which often targeted these same institutions in their efforts to transform healthcare in the U.S., to eliminate ongoing health disparities, and to challenge the contemporaneous ideological assumptions about gender, sexuality, race, and class that inform (and are often used to justify) these disparities. We begin with AIDS activist Sarah Shulman's recent political history of ACT UP, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 (2021), which also functions as a primer for how to build a health activist social movement able to respond to pandemic conditions, and pair this with Shulman's ACT UP Oral History Project and online collections of archival materials from ACT UP actions. Importantly, both Shulman and the AIDS activists she interviews attribute the success of ACT UP to members' use of tactics and strategies they learned as participants in earlier forms of health activism--in establishing community health centers and free clinics during the Civil Rights Movement, in Black Panther Party "survival programs," in setting up underground abortion services pre-Roe v Wade and in the broader feminist health and reproductive rights movements, and in defense campaigns to secure the rights of those incarcerated in prisons and mental health institutions. In our second unit, we explore each of these earlier movements, beginning with participants' accounts collected in the ACT UP Oral History Project, and then through recent histories of each movement and related online archival collections and collections of activist ephemera from each housed in Northwestern's Special Collections. In our third unit, we make use of this history of radical health activism to explore the politics of the present and to examine current movements that build on and carry forward these legacies.
Gndr St. 332-0-20 Disability Justice: Feminism and Social Change
Why should we consider disability justice as a central principle of contemporary feminist thought? As disability studies increasingly ground feminist work, new depths of understanding around embodiment, freedom, and human dignity develop from and return to social justice action globally, nationally, and here in the Chicago region. Students in this course will study disability justice as feminist practice in conversation with Chicago-based thinkers and organizers.
What is the scientific status of our ideas about race? How are medical and legal ideas invoked in determinations about people's gender identities? Overall, how do developments in the life sciences affect our understandings of who we are, how we differ, and how social inequalities are created, perpetuated, and challenged? This seminar explores how scientific claims and technological developments help transform cultural understandings of race, gender, and sexuality. Conversely, we will consider how cultural beliefs about race, gender, and sexuality influence scientific knowledge and medical practice. We will take up a series of controversies from the recent past and present to explore the dynamic interplay between expert findings, social identities, and political arguments.
Gndr St. 341-0-20 Trans-Related Medical Surgeries in Thailand
This course is situated at the intersection of theoretical, cultural, medical, and commercial online discourses concerning the burgeoning Gender Affirmation-related surgeries presented online and conducted in Thailand. Using Gender, Queer, Trans, Asian American, and Digital Humanities Theories, we will discuss the cross-cultural intersections, dialogues, refusals, and adaptions when thinking about medical travel to Thailand for gender/sex related surgeries. We will examine Thai cultural/historical conceptions of sex and gender, debates concerning bodies and diagnoses, and changes in presentations of sex/gender related surgeries offered online. We will also explore how digital archives are created and managed. Investigating transcripts of live interviews, medical discourses, and an archive of web images offering GAS surgeries produced by Thais for non-Thais will serve as axes for investigating this topic.
Gndr St. 350-3-1 Reproductive Health, Politics and Justice
How do conceptions of "health" relate to ideological assumptions about gender, sexuality, and race? In this course we will explore these questions through a close examination of historic and current activist movements that have attempted to challenge contemporaneous conceptions of health and models of disease. Case studies will include the 1970s-era Women's Health Movement(s), including an examination of its relationship to the 19th century Birth Control Movement and its transformation with the emergence of a Reproductive Justice Movement in the 1990s; AIDS activism from beginning of the AIDS crisis and the formation of ACT UP to present activist campaigns that contest both the inequitable distribution of medical knowledge and resources and the (bio)medicalization of "sexual health"; the several strands of breast cancer activism that emerged in the 1990s and the increasing overlap between breast cancer activism and current environmental activism; mental health activism and its evolution in response to the rise of psychopharmacology; and current trans activism which critiques both the diagnostic categories and medical protocols that institutionalize the gender binary and the production of what Dean Spade refers to as "an inequitable distribution of life chances." In each case, we will consider how activists frame the problem, the tactics they use to mobilize a diverse group of social actors around the problem, and their success in creating a social movement that challenges contemporary medical models and the ideological assumptions that inform them. The course also introduces students to recent interdisciplinary scholarship on social movements.
Gndr St. 352-0-20 Intro to Foucalt, Gender, Sexuality and Political Theory
This course offers an overview of the work of one of the most influential late-twentieth-century French philosophers, Michel Foucault. Focusing on his studies of madness, sex, the medical gaze, prisons and other disciplinary institutions, the search for truth, knowledge, and liberation, students will gain an understanding of Foucault's most important concepts - concepts that over the last four decades have become central categories of inquiry and critique in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. These include archaeology, discipline, biopolitics, power-knowledge, resistance, governmentality, and genealogy. The course is reading intensive. In addition to weekly excerpts, you should plan to read two of Foucault's major texts throughout the quarter.
This seminar course examines the ways that gender and race repeatedly inform the design, marketing, and use of new media and technology in an Anglo American (US and Canada) context. Although we often think of new media as synonymous with the internet and digital technology, this course will navigate the emergence of various new media from the late 19th century through our current era with an emphasis on gender and race. Working chronologically, this course will highlight key technological innovations including the rise of early cinema, television, and computers. From Black owned ‘picture palaces' in the 1910s to Indigenous women creating VR in the 2010s, this course centers an understanding of women, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC as consistent designers and users of emerging technology.
Each week will center around scholarly and primary source materials that illuminate perspectives on how gender and race informed the dynamic relationship between users and technology. This approach will attune students to the lengthy history of new media and technology and the unique and recurrent debates that emerge. It will also offer students the opportunity to study and apply critical gender and racial theory approaches in a media studies context. Class assessment will draw from current approaches in digital humanities. Students will gain practice navigating web based archives for their research and using web based platforms including Slack, Medium, Canva, Soundcloud, and video sharing platforms to present their ideas and research.
Christian theorists were convinced that human sexuality underwent an irreversible debasement as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve. Their negative assessment has remained with us until the present day. This course will grapple with the both the origins of this negative bequest as well as some of the anomalies of the medieval tradition. For example, despite the insistence that heterosexuality was ordained by God, the disparagement of physicality and women led to the institutionalization of clerical celibacy in the West. This, in turn, fostered a gay subculture. Likewise, despite the theoretical insistence on a separation between the sexes that was even present in the afterlife, these same theorists not only praised "virile women," but occasionally celebrated cross-dressing in female saints! This course will examine the institutions and ideas that dominated the construction of gender in the Middle Ages. It will also lend insight into not one, but many "sexualities."
Gndr St 332-0-20 Black Feminist Health Science Studies
Black feminist health science studies is a critical intervention into a number of intersecting arenas of scholarship and activism, including feminist health studies, contemporary medical curriculum reform conversations and feminist technoscience studies. We argue towards a theory of Black feminist health science studies that builds on social justice science, which has as its focus the health and well-being of marginalized groups. Students will engage feminist science theories that range from explorations of the linguistic metaphors of the immune system, the medicalization of race, to critiques of the sexual binary. We will use contemporary as well as historical moments to investigate the evolution of "scientific truth" and its impact on the U.S. cultural landscape.
Gndr St 361-0-21 Illness and Feminity: Fictions and Facts
Ill women are scattered across the pages of literature, from swooning ladies in sentimental novels to cancer patients in popular fiction. Illness acts as narrative momentum, as a metaphor for social "ills," and as a signifier of tragic virtue in an individual character. From the 19th century to the present, this class will examine how the tropes of illness in popular literature pertains to our broader cultural assumptions about illness and gender. How do traits associated with femininity resemble literary representations of illness, and vice-versa? How have these associations changed over time? How has the construction of ill femininity been bound up in whiteness, and how has this contributed to systemic and medical racism? What is the relationship between the representation of ill femininity and contemporary "wellness culture"? How might we locate or analyze femininity in representations of ill men? What about mental illness? Our readings will be split between popular representations of illness in novels and writings by ill authors, and we will consider how literary tropes are or are not reappropriated by the latter. -- Readings Include: Anonymous, The Woman of Colour (1808); Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813); Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939); Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993); David Chariandy, Soucouyant (2007). We will also read personal essays, poetry, portions of memoirs, or short stories by authors including Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Eula Biss, Anne Anlin Cheng, Suleika Jaouad, Audre Lorde, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Michelle Zauner.
Much recent fiction, film and theory are concerned with representing the internet and the World Wide Web. Sometimes cyberspace is depicted as a continuation of previous media such as television, cinema or telephone, but often it is envisioned as a new frontier. This course will examine the ways in which virtual media appears in cultural discourses. We consider how technological objects and tools participate in shaping elements of our culture that may appear natural, logical, or timeless. Our guiding questions will include the following: In what ways are these narratives shaping collective perceptions of the internet? How have virtual technologies challenged experiences of language, gender, community and identity? We will focus on social networking, gaming, artificial intelligence, and literary and filmic representations of these. Following a Cultural Studies model for inquiry, this course will be project-based and experiential. Your attendance and participation are mandatory. No experience needed, only a willingness to take risks and share work.
The Inquisition is one of the most infamous and misunderstood institutions in the early modern world. This seminar examines some of the myths and debates surrounding the working of its tribunals and their impact on society, with special emphasis on the practices, experiences, and worldviews of ordinary subjects. How have the records of the Inquisition been used to reconstruct the histories of Jews, African healers, bigamists, homosexuals, and "witches," among others? Participants will pursue their own answers and even construct an alternate archive by which to tell the stories of persecuted figures. Topics include religious tolerance and intolerance; healing and love magic in the Americas; the policing and politics of gender and sexuality; and the lives of Jewish conversos.
Hist 376-0-20 Global Enviroments and World History
Environmental problems have become part and parcel of popular consciousness: resources are being depleted at a record pace, human population levels may soon cross the eight billion threshold, extreme poverty defines the majority of people's daily lives, toxic contaminants affect all ecosystems, increasing numbers of species face extinction, consumerism and the commodification of nature show no signs of abating, climate changes are wreaking havoc in different places every year, and weapons and energy systems continue to proliferate that risk the planet's viability. This introductory lecture course is designed to help students understand the relatively recent origins of many of these problems, focusing especially on the last one hundred and fifty years. Students will have an opportunity to learn about the environmental effects of urbanization, industrialization, population growth, market economies, empire-building, intercontinental warfare, energy extraction, and new technologies. They will also explore different environmental philosophies and analytic frameworks that help us make sense of historical change, including political ecology, environmental history, science studies, and world history. Finally, the course will examine a range of transnational organizations, social movements, and state policies that have attempted to address and resolve environmental problems. Co-List with Env Pol 340-0-1
The past and present are shaped in large part by our beliefs about what the future holds. In this seminar, we will investigate human attempts to anticipate events yet to come, from antiquity until the present (but with an emphasis on the period since 1800). How have people in different times and places gone about anticipating the future? What phenomena have gripped their attention: weather, economy, human society, or individual fates? Have their imaginations been utopian, dystopian, or even apocalyptic, and what does that tell us about the historical moment in which they lived? And crucially, what happened when predictions failed?as so often happened? Using a global range of primary and secondary sources, from revealed prophecies and science fiction to genetic codes and financial speculations, we will examine why and how our historical subjects believed the future might be foreseeable. This course fits today's concerns about the future of the environment (notably climate change) and humanity into a long history of decision-making in the face of uncertainty.
This first-year seminar will consider the history of the internet from the mid-twentieth century to the present. This will not be a technical history of the computer science or actual infrastructure that constitute the internet, but rather a history of the social and political ideas contributing to a worldwide system of networked computers and protocols. In particular, the course will discuss the culture surrounding the internet - the ways that the Cold War, the counterculture, libertarianism, and environmentalism all fostered a set of beliefs that helped define Silicon Valley and continue to shape companies that call for revolution one day and place their trust in the market the next.
From the changing seasons, to frigid ice ages, to violent cyclones, to global warming, the phenomena of weather and climate have been crucial sites of interaction between humans and our environments. In this first-year seminar, we will ask: how have climatic changes across space and time shaped human societies, politics, and histories? And how have our ways of explaining and predicting the weather reflected changing approaches to nature's uncertainties? Moving from antiquity to the present, we will study the evolution of meteorological science from the study of ‘meteors' to variable ‘weather,' alongside the conceptual shift from a globe of many ‘climates' to a singular, global ‘climate.' Using a range of case studies from the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia, and sources including almanacs and weather proverbs, we will explore how in different ways across geographies and cultures, climate functioned both as a force of history and as an object of scientific fascination. By the end of the course, students will be able to situate the current climate crisis—in an age many scholars call the Anthropocene—within a centuries-long history of adaptations and negotiations with our planet's atmosphere, and with one another.
Carson Tu, Th 12:30-1:50pm Notes: SHC Core Course - List A
History 275-2-20 History of Modern Science and Medicine
Science has profoundly shaped the world we live in: it impacts the food we eat, our interactions with one another, the ways in which we relate to our bodies, the manner of our travel and communication, and our personal views of humanity's place in the universe. Over the course of the modern period, science has earned widespread authority as 'objective' knowledge about the natural world. Yet as most scientists today will freely admit, decisions about which research questions earn attention (and funding) and how research is carried out are influenced by powerful institutions, political considerations, business interests, technological changes, imperialism, and societal expectations. Science is, after all, a human activity. With this lesson in mind, our course surveys the history of science from the Enlightenment until the Cold War, in a series of units examining medicine, physics, biology, and earth sciences. We will be guided by questions including: What counted as science in different times and places? How did scientific researchers earn a living, and which institutions supported them, or didn't? Above all, what changing values has science reflected over the course of the modern period?
Energy is both ubiquitous and invisible: ubiquitous because little that modern Americans do every day does not involve some use of energy, and invisible because this constant flow of energy allows people to take it for granted. This class will look at different energy systems in American history, focusing on their social, cultural, political, and environmental consequences. Although the course will begin well before the fossil fuel era it will focus primarily on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—the age of coal and oil.
Lanzarotta Tu, Th 9:30-10:50am Notes: SHC Core Course - List A
History 300-0-20 History of American Medicine
Why does American medicine look the way it does? The United States spends more on health care than any other country in the world, but is almost singular in its lack of universal health care. American medicine is at once distinguished by its capacity for research and innovation and by its inability to resolve the profound health inequalities that shape this country. Which historical processes produced this unique set of circumstances? When and how have activists, patients, and politicians agitated for change? What alternate futures might we imagine? This course traces the history of American medicine from the nation's founding to the present day. We will learn about the formation of the medical profession, track changing understandings of health and disease, discuss the development of drugs and medical technologies, and investigate the role of professional organizations in combatting efforts to nationalize healthcare. At the same time, we will hear about efforts to reform American medicine in the name of anti-racism, gender equality, decolonization, disability rights, and social justice. By studying these complex histories, we will ask questions about the relationship between health, power, bodies, and knowledge and consider what it has meant to provide care and pursue health throughout American history.
This course will survey American history from the Colonial Era to the present with two premises in mind: that the natural world is not simply a passive background to human history but rather an active participant in historical change, and that human attitudes toward nature are both shaped by and in turn shape social, political, and economic behavior. The course will cover formal schools of thought about the natural world—from Transcendentalism to the conservation and environmental movements—but also discuss the many informal intersections of human activity and natural systems, from European colonialism to property regimes, migration and transportation, industry, consumer practices, war, technological innovation, political ideology, and food production.
History 322-2-20 Development of the Modern Amercian City
This is the second half of a two-quarter course dealing with urbanization and urban communities in America. The second quarter deals with the period from 1870 onward. Topics include the role of cities in the formation of an industrial society, the influence of immigration and rural-urban migration, racial discrimination, political machines, professional planning, the automobile, electronic media, and the expansion of the federal role in city government. History 322-1 is NOT a prerequisite for 322-2.
Introductory seminar for history majors and others interested in understanding how history is thought about and written. Intensive exploration of a significant historical event, period, or topic.
History 393-0-26 The Natural and Supernatural in Southeast Asia
This course examines the ways in which different Southeast Asian peoples have conceived of what we might think of as the natural world - the environment; and the supernatural world - various religious traditions and cosmologies; and the continuous interplay between the two. Together we will explore the Kahiringan tradition of the Ngaju Dayak people from Central Kalimantan in Indonesia; representations of nature in the textual traditions and temple paintings of the Vessantera jataka in Myanmar and Thailand; Ilongot headhunting and historical reckoning; and the hydraulic landscape of Bali's water temples. Our goal will be to understand the kinds of conceptual and practical resources Southeast Asians have brought to understanding and controlling the world in which they have lived.
This course is co-taught by a professor of history, and a professor of literature, both fascinated by the shared ground between human histories and environmental change. Focused on a single region in the United States, Lower Louisiana, East Texas, and the giant body of water that connects them, our course asks what this distinctive landscape of land and water can tell us about our place on this planet, at this moment in history. The Gulf of Mexico is emblematic of stories we tell ourselves about racial and cultural difference, climate crisis and climate vulnerability, survival and the end of the world. Through the cause of climate justice, students in the course will examine how today's political thinking pits economic and ecological priorities against each other, and against human survival.
House. Grey's Anatomy. The Constant Gardener. Frankenstein's Monster. Paul Farmer. Josef Mengele. The Tuskeegee Trials. Healthcare workers, and physicians and nurses in particular, have long held sway in the popular imagination as both hero and villain. From biographies of real-life medical heroes and villains to fictional accounts in movies, novels, TV series, podcasts, and other media, medicine has long held sway in our popular imagination. What can we learn about the societal values we place on medicine, and medical personnel, by exploring the ways that medical heroes and villains are depicted to wide public audiences? What do these fictional and non-fictional accounts have to tell us about societal anxieties and ambiguities relating to medicine? How might we contemplate the ways societal norms relating to race, gender, place of origin, ability, and other identifiers become mapped onto the stories the public consumes relating to medicine? What can these stories tell us about anxieties regarding life and death, technology, science, and culture? Who is portrayed as hero, who as villain, who as victim and who as backdrop to the narrative? In this course, we will consume a wide array of popular media about medical heroes and villans, both fictional and non-fictional, in order to interrogate how medicine as a lens tells us about a wide array of societal ambiguities, potentialities, inequalities and silences.
Epstein T, Th 9:30-10:50am Notes: SHC Core Course - List B
Humanities 220-0-20 Health, Biomedicine, Culture and Society
Present-day medicine and health care are flashpoints for a wide array of controversies (many of them exacerbated by the global Covid-19 pandemic). Whose interests should the health care system serve and how should it be organized? How trustworthy is the medical knowledge we rely on when confronted with the threat of illness? How can the ethical character of biomedical research best be ensured? How do we manage health risks in an uncertain world? How can health care be made affordable? Is it possible for the benefits of good health to be shared equitably across lines of social class, race, gender, and nation? What are the proper roles of health professionals, scientists, patients, activists, corporations, and the state in establishing medical, political, economic, and ethical priorities? This course will provide a broad introduction to the domain of health and medicine to take up such controversies as a matter of concern to all.
Morson - Schapiro Tu, Th 12:30-1:50pm Notes: SHC Core Course - List B
Humanities 260-0-20 Economics and the Humanities
This course offers a cross-disciplinary approach to our understanding of alternatives, choice and dialogue. Is there really such a thing as chance or choice? On what basis do we choose? How well can we predict the future? And how might we foster meaningful dialogue across the disciplines and among individuals? Professor Gary Saul Morson, a specialist in literature, and Professor Morton Schapiro, President of Northwestern and a labor economist specializing in the economics of higher education, will offer alternative approaches to these questions based on the presuppositions of their respective disciplines. If you want to dig into topics and questions like uncertainty, prediction, modelling, and judgment, this class is the perfect complement.
Humanities 325-4-20 Parks and Pipelines: Indigenous Environmental Justice
This seminar explores how the relationship between the United States and Indigenous people has shaped the environments, ecosystems, and physical landscapes we live in today. Through engagement with a variety of digital resources including maps and digital media, we will learn how the environment of what is now the United States was managed by Indigenous people before and throughout colonization, how Indigenous people have been impacted by the environmental policies of the United States, and how Indigenous resistance and activism have shaped both the environmental movement in the U.S. as well as contemporary Indigenous political thought. In discussion, we will break down the politics, economics, and ethics of this history, challenging ourselves to think critically about the land we live on and its future. In lieu of a final paper, this course will include a digital, public-facing final assignment.
What is the scientific status of our ideas about race? How are medical and legal ideas invoked in determinations about people's gender identities? Overall, how do developments in the life sciences affect our understandings of who we are, how we differ, and how social inequalities are created, perpetuated, and challenged? This seminar explores how scientific claims and technological developments help transform cultural understandings of race, gender, and sexuality. Conversely, we will consider how cultural beliefs about race, gender, and sexuality influence scientific knowledge and medical practice. We will take up a series of controversies from the recent past and present to explore the dynamic interplay between expert findings, social identities, and political arguments.
When you write up a lab report, you probably don't approach it as a literary exercise. Today we take science writing as an objective, transparent transcription of experimental data. However, during the Scientific Revolution in Europe and Britain, literary form was vital to the transmission and popularization of new experimental methods. Indeed, literary representation was necessary to help people conceive new sensory worlds at microscopic, sub-microscopic, or planetary scale. We will explore the centrality of literary representation to pivotal new technologies in the early modern emergence of experimental science: the microscope, the air-pump, the telescope, and the distillation apparatus. We will explore how literary technology was as integral to the New Science as experimental technology. Throughout, we will approach western science not as universal knowledge but as highly situated practice, whose multifarious economic, extractive, and imperial investments are woven into the fabric of its literary representation. We will dedicate significant time to satires of the new science, whose critical counter-representations of the frivolity, futility, or cruelty of experimental method illuminate the deep and ongoing stakes of science's relation to literature.
ISEN 230-0-20 Climate Change and Sustainability - Ethical Dimensions
What are our ethical responsibilities in the face of anthropogenic climate change? The course begins with an exploration of how far reaching our ethical responsibilities are. After some introduction to philosophical ethics and the science of climate change, we will question which things matter morally, are future-human beings, non-human animals, and ecosystems morally important? How do they compare morally to humans alive today? In the second half of the course we will focus on how individually specific our ethical responsibilities are. We will focus on a range of common behaviors relevant to climate change and ask whether we can ethically justify our individual participation in these behaviors. We will conclude the course by asking whether there are any behaviors that we might have a moral responsibility to personally adopt in response to climate change.
Jewish Studies 390-0-1 Water in Arid Lands: Israel and the Middle East
This seminar will explore how the availability of water has shaped the development of civilizations and driven innovation in water technologies. The course will investigate historical dimensions of water in Israel and the Middle East, focusing on ancient civilizations and the water infrastructures that are essential tools in aiding the development of water-poor societies. We will use this historical context as a stepping-stone to transition into a more recent history of the Middle East, focusing on the challenges that the nascent state of Israel faced following the influx of millions of immigrants. We will then examine efforts to develop the necessary water resources needed to support the burgeoning population as well as the irrigation projects designed to convert barren desert land into cultivated agriculture. This more recent history will help to set the stage for discussions regarding geopolitical conflicts over land and water that continue to this day. We will evaluate regional climate and water in the context of current and future geopolitical conflicts, reviewing recent advances in water technologies spurred by these limitations as well as the potential development of combined social and technological solutions for long-term water sustainability in Israel and the Middle East. We will end the course with discussions regarding opportunities for global translation of innovative water technologies and water-management solutions developed in Israel to other water-poor regions. In addition, the course will host a symposium featuring international experts. It will explore how water access and control contributes to trans-boundary politics and how recent advances in Israeli water technologies may serve as a model for sustainable water development in other water-poor regions of the world.
Jour 367-0-20 Native American Env. Issues and the Media
Native American Environmental Issues and the Media introduces students to indigenous issues, such as treaty-based hunting, fishing, and gathering rights; air and water quality issues; mining; land-to-trust issues; and sacred sites. These issues have contributed to tension between Native and non-Native communities and have become the subject of news reports, in both mainstream and tribal media. We will focus on how the media cover these issues and how that coverage contributes to the formation of public opinion and public policy. Students will read and analyze newspaper and on-line news reports and view and critique broadcast news stories and documentaries about Native environmental topics.
This course will examine the complex issues involved in applying the science of psychology to the field of law. Among the topics we will cover are how psychological research can apply to policies and practices in the legal system, expert testimony, methods, uses, and limitations of forensic assessment, determination of legal competence, the insanity defense, battered women's syndrome and rape trauma syndrome in the legal arena, criminal profiling types, methods, and limitations, eyewitness testimony and other memory issues, interrogation and confessions, jury selection and decision making, prisons and death penalty.
Phil 109-6-20 Philosophy, Technology and Social Media
Social media has increasingly become the medium through which people engage in political activism, read the news, express themselves, and communicate. Our aim in this course will be to reflect critically on how social media and digital technology shape personal identity, political discourse, privacy, rationality, and democracy. Questions we will explore include: can technology ever be neutral? Does social media facilitate or hinder authenticity? How does social media structure personal identity? What value does privacy have, and how do surveillance and big data change our experience of privacy? Does social media make political discourse irrational? What impact does it have on social movements? What ethical questions do technologies like algorithms and virtual reality raise? Readings may include Heidegger, Arendt, Baudrillard, Zuboff, Turkle, and Carr.
Phil 210-3-20 History of Philosophy - Early Modern
The transition from the Medieval to the Modern era in philosophy began, roughly, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and ended, again roughly, in the late 18th century. New methods of acquiring knowledge, along with a radically different conception of the world, permanently transformed the philosophical enterprise and the broader culture. In this course we will examine the views of some of the most important modern philosophers—especially Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Bayle, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume—on the nature of God, causation, substance, mind, knowledge, and the material world. Additional readings will be drawn from Elizabeth, Galileo, Sor Juana, Masham, Boyle, Shepherd, Du Châtelet, and Cordova.
Classics of Pragmatist Thought Pragmatism is probably the first, but certainly the most important genuinely North American philosophical tradition. The classical writings of Peirce, James, Dewey set the stage for a completely new orientation in epistemology, moral and political theory, psychology and many other fields. Basic to all Pragmatist writers is the belief that the active and interactive human being in its natural and social environment has to stand at the center of reflection. They thus emphasize volitional, procedural, social, and evolutionary aspects of knowledge of any kind. Given this focus on practically involved intelligent agents, political pragmatists like Dewey, Addams, Locke explore the natural origins, revisability and legitimacy of moral and political norms. They develop the idea of a critical use of knowledge and its connection to non-violent democratic conduct. Neopragmatists (Rorty and Putnam) explore the philosophical and political implications of critical thinking.
This course provides a broad overview of philosophical discussions of race and racism in American culture. In this overview, we will focus on phenomenological issues concerning the experience of race (especially in the US), epistemological issues concerning racial distortions and racial ignorance, and ethical and political issues concerning racial oppression. Some of the central questions that we will address are: How should we understand the concept of race and the processes of racialization through which people come to see themselves as having a racial identity? What are the different kinds of racial injustice that we can identify, and the different kinds of exclusion, subordination, marginalization and stigmatization that can be part of racial oppression? How should racial oppression be resisted? How should racial violence be stopped? How should we build racial solidarity and fight for racial justice? We will also explore the connections between race and other identity categories such as gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, religion, and nationality.
Phil 254-0-20 Introduction to the Philosophy of Natural Science
The course will introduce students to deep philosophical issues raised by modern natural science of metaphysical and epistemological nature. From a reflection on methodological questions, it will approach the question of realism. We will be guided by nested "what does it take"-questions. For example: What does it take for a system of sentences to count as a good scientific theory? What does it take for a scientific theory to be testable by observational and experimental data (and, by the way: what does it take for certain series of experiences to count as data or observations?)? What does it take for a given theory to be better supported by the available evidence than its competitors? What does it take for a given theory to explain the known phenomena in an area of knowledge? What does it take for an explanatory scientific theory to be credited with reference to underlying structures of reality? We will begin with a brief overview of the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17 th century, and then turn to the treatment of certain problems in the contemporary literature, like the problem of induction, the problem of the underdetermination of theory choice by the available data, the problem of rationality and conceptual change, the problem of realism.
In this class we will investigate several philosophical questions that arise as we think about knowledge. To what extent should we think for ourselves, and when if at all should we rely on experts? What (if anything) is wrong with information bubbles? What is the responsible way to consume news? How do we determine when we ourselves or others are rational, and what can be done when we detect irrationality (in ourselves or others)? What should we do when we disagree? What is the nature of trust (and when should we trust)? Does morality or justice make any demands on what we believe?
Horne T, Th 2:00-3:20pm Notes: SHC Core Course - List B
Horne T, Th 11:00-12:20pm Notes: SHC Core Course - List B
Phil 269-0-20 Bioethics
This course is an analysis of ethical and political issues related to health and health care. Topics to be considered include human research, abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering, and public health ethics. We will devote special attention to ethical issues arising due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Horne T, Th 2:00-3:20pm Notes: SHC Core Course - List B
Phil 326 Philosophy of Medicine
An exploration of philosophical problems related to health and health care. Topics to be considered include the definition and moral significance of medical concepts like health, disease, and death. We will also consider how such concepts relate to moral and political debates around access to health care and the provision of public health measures.
In this seminar, we will read some of Kant's works concerning human history and human nature. We will be concerned to understand and investigate Kant's defense of teleological explanation in biology - organic nature should be understood as organized purposively, parts or aspects of beings as directed towards ends - as well as his various claims concerning the nature of human history. For example: does history have a purpose, and if so, which, and how could we know of it? What kind of description, knowledge, understanding is appropriate to history as an object (are there laws of history, for example)? We will also investigate the relationship among these doctrines: given Kant's use of biological terminology in his history writings, on his view is historical investigation strongly akin to biological explanation, or based upon biological premises? Or does human freedom or rationality disrupt biology, rendering history distinct from nature? All of these doctrines intersect with Kant's well-known racism: he develops his biological theory of race while working on his philosophy of biology, and his racist claims in that context are connected to historical views concerning human cultural and moral development. Thus, we will also investigate whether or Kant's concept of race is a teleological-biological or historical concept (or both), and to what degree or how this concept, and Kant's racist commitments, are integral to his thinking concerning biology and history.
The scientific enterprise, over the centuries, has often interacted with human spirituality and religion. This interaction has at times been synergistic and at times antagonistic. This course will focus on recent developments. We will look at relevant writings of influential scientists, including mystics, believers, agnostics, and atheists. We will also look at research probing the physiology of spiritual experience. In-class discussion will at all times be respectful, to allow productive dialogue on these deeply personal topics.
This course explores the economic and social changes that have constituted "development," and that have radically transformed human society. The course focuses on both the historical experience of Europe and the contemporary experience of countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In the historical discussion, we explore the birth of the "nation state" as the basic organizing unit of the international system; the transition from agrarian to industrial economic systems; and the expansion of European colonialism across the globe. In our discussion of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, we consider the legacies of colonialism for development; the ways in which countries have attempted to promote economic development and industrialization; and issues of inequality and human welfare in an increasingly globally connected world.
Pol Sci 395-0-24 Science and Knowledge in Global Climate Governance
Despite decades of climate science research, current climate action remains limited in its ability to effectively mitigate the impacts of climate change. Efforts to reduce emissions are well-intentioned attempts to avoid the most severe effects of climate change, but have yet to spur the magnitude of action required. In this course we will explore the intersections of climate science, traditional ecological knowledge, and climate justice to unpack how different knowledge systems inform and impact effective climate governance and policy. Often unrecognized in science and policy arenas, traditional ecological knowledge generates insights for strengthening efforts to effectively address climate change. In this course, we ask: to what extent and how do different knowledge systems gain and lose traction in different climate policy arenas? How, why, and with what effects are the science and policy of climate change far removed from the people most vulnerable to its impacts? Is the exclusivity of science—marginalization of knowledge systems and extricating climate science from climate change experiences—the greatest threat to effective climate action? And, how might policy arenas facilitate the introduction, deliberation, and circulation of plural worldviews and knowledge systems?
Lots of people have beliefs that other people think are just plain weird. Why do people have these beliefs? We will look at "weird" beliefs within our culture and maybe some cross-cultural examples to understand what leads to development and maintenance of beliefs. We'll also consider how to evaluate rationality of beliefs. Among the specific topics we may cover are: science denial, superstition, parapsychology, conspiracy theories, ghosts, near-death and out-of-body experiences, witchcraft, alien abduction, repressed memories of abuse, and creationism/intelligent design. Students will use a wide variety of academic and popular media resources (including empirical research articles, ethnographic descriptions, philosophical arguments, popular press books, and documentary films) to explore the bases for these beliefs and practices.
Buddhism is most often considered a religion, but it is also very much a psychological system. The course also provides a concise introduction to key concepts in Buddhism (with minimal discussion of the evolution of different Buddhist schools and sects) and how these ideas relate to topics from main-stream Psychology. As students work through the material, we will examine how the critical Buddhist observation of interdependence, especially of all living beings and their environment, leads to an ethical system based on the view that harming others is also harming oneself. Implications of these foundational concepts will be investigated in relation to class materials.
This seminar explores the place of the body in Chinese religion, from the ancient period to the present day. In the course of this exploration, we seek to challenge our presuppositions about a seemingly simple question: what is "the body," and how do we know? We open by considering themes of dying and the afterlife, food and drink, health and medicine, gender and family. We then turn to Daoist traditions of visual culture that envision the human body as intimately connected with the cosmos and picture the body's interior as a miniature landscape populated by a pantheon of gods. We read ghost stories and analyze the complex history of footbinding. Finally, we conclude with two case studies of religion and the body in contemporary China, one situated on the southwestern periphery, the other in the capital city of Beijing. Throughout the quarter, we investigate how the body has mediated relationships between Buddhist, Daoist, and popular religious traditions. By the course's end, students will gain key resources for understanding historical and contemporary Chinese culture, and new perspectives on what it means to be religious and embodied.
Rel 318-0-26 The Natural and Supernatural in Southeast Asia
This course examines the ways in which different Southeast Asian peoples have conceived of what we might think of as the natural world - the environment; and the supernatural world - various religious traditions and cosmologies; and the continuous interplay between the two. Together we will explore the Kahiringan tradition of the Ngaju Dayak people from Central Kalimantan in Indonesia; representations of nature in the textual traditions and temple paintings of the Vessantera jataka in Myanmar and Thailand; Ilongot headhunting and historical reckoning; and the hydraulic landscape of Bali's water temples. Our goal will be to understand the kinds of conceptual and practical resources Southeast Asians have brought to understanding and controlling the world in which they have lived.
The central question of this course is: What Makes a Difference? Analyzing a variety of works of media addressing environmental themes, including works drawn from advertising and marketing, we will consider different types of environmental messaging and attempts to mobilize public moral engagement. Specifically, we will be looking at strategies for implementing media interventions as moral interventions. Discussion taken up in this class will include evaluating the comparative value of media messaging that emphasizes individual action and personal responsibility, versus messaging that promotes collective action, policy, and structural changes. Students will consider and debate what constitutes authentic "green" messaging versus mere corporate "greenwashing." Throughout, we will ask what kind of media we need in what has been called the "Anthropocene" (a time when humans are now a major geologic force affecting the future of the planet). When motivating public moral engagement in climate crisis, are the solutions being offered those that the planet will actually "register" or "notice" on a global scale? If not, what kinds of "media interventions" do we need to be making and how? Course content will include discussion of media interventions as moral interventions, media activism for social change, eco-media responses by religious communities and organizations, participatory digital culture, and the challenges of addressing environmental crisis in the distraction economy and what has been called the "post-truth era." Students will have the opportunity to learn by doing, proposing and crafting their own environmental media interventions as the course's final project. This course is about taking action and making a true difference. Format: lecture/seminar/discussion hybrid combination.
What happens when religion goes digital? In this course we examine how religions are adapting to an increasingly digital world and how digital environments are shaping old and new religious practices. Through a series of case studies, we will consider how religious practitioners and the “spiritual but not religious” are using digital media to challenge established religious authority, create community, innovate devotional practices, and theorize their experiences. We will examine, for example, collage and hip hop, virtual pujas, mindfulness apps, user-generated gods, emoji spells, tulpamancy, transhumanism, and Slender Man. Through these case studies we will explore how digital natives and adopters are reimagining religious presence, mediation, community, ethics, and ontology. This class centers BIPOC, queer, and feminist voices, digital arts, memetics, lived religion, and social justice. Students will practice skills for digital humanities research, engage in ethical reflection, and apply course learning to creating their own digital artifacts.
Rel St. 379-0-20 Science Fiction and Social Justice
This course will examine major utopian and dystopian texts in relation to social justice issues in the twentieth and twenty-first century, while following the stories of artists, organizers, and communities that have used speculative world-building to imagine livable, sustainable futures. We will focus on how feminist, anarchist, LGBTQ, and Afrofuturist art and activism have contributed to a substantial critical discourse on the intersections of science, technology, ecology, war, race, gender, sexuality, health, and ability. We will further examine how artists and activists have understood religion as both impediment and partner to social justice work, while alternatively embracing, subverting, and defying religious authority. We will attend to how religious myths and imagery are sampled and remixed by science fiction authors to plot an alternative course for world history.
Epstein T, Th 9:30-10:50am Notes: SHC Core Course - List B
Soc 220-0 Health, Biomedicine, Culture and Society
Present-day medicine and health care are flashpoints for a bewildering array of controversies--about whose interests the health care system should serve and how it should be organized; about the trustworthiness of the medical knowledge we rely on when we are confronted with the threat of illness; about the politics and ethics of biomedical research; about whether health care can be made affordable; about how the benefits of good health can be shared equitably across lines of social class, race, and gender; and about the proper roles of health professionals, scientists, patients, activists, and the state in establishing medical, political, and ethical priorities. By providing a broad introduction to the domain of health and biomedicine, this course will take up such controversies as matters of concern to all. We will analyze the cultural meanings associated with health and illness; the political controversies surrounding health care, medical knowledge production, and medical decision-making; and the structure of the social institutions that comprise the health care industry. We will examine many problems with the current state of health and health care in the United States, and we will also consider potential solutions.
This course approaches the study of sociological institutions--often referred to as "the rules of the game"--from a design perspective using in-class exercises and applications. We'll work to understand how these institutions emerge and address existing societal problems, ultimately analyzing the potential of different institutional configurations to encourage or discourage desired outcomes. We focus on both coordination-type dilemmas (e.g. how to parent, which side of the street to drive on, who provides health care) and collective-action dilemmas (e.g. how to police fishermen going over quota, funding of public radio). We end with a study of how institutions persist--possibly beyond their useful lifespan--such as the persistence of the intentionally inefficient 'QWERTY' keyboard, and a conversation about why it's difficult to enact policy change. The course has two overarching goals. This first is to develop a new way of approaching and analyzing social institutions. The second is to build skills in critical analysis though case studies and applications with a local Evanston institution.
This course examines some of the guiding themes of sociological analysis as they were originally formulated by four influential “classical” social thinkers: Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), Karl Marx (1818-1883), Max Weber (1864-1920), and W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963). Drawing on some of these theorists’ major writings, the purpose of the course is to unpack each thinker’s major concepts and consider how he fused them in order to craft a distinctive lens through which to view the social world at his own time and today. onfigure power relations to create more ethical social structures.
The main emphasis in this course is on how sociological theory informs social research. We will read selections of classical social theory and then look at how various scholars have used that theory to help them analyze some aspect of society. We will keep moving between theoretical statements and applications or refinements of that theory. The course will be a mix of lectures and discussion.
Heimer T, Th 2:00-3:20pm Notes: SHC Core Course - List B
Soc 355 Medical Sociology
This course introduces some of the main topics of medical sociology: the social construction of health and illness; inequalities in the distribution of illness and health care; the globalization of health care; and the organization of health care work, the medical professions, and the health care system. Students will learn about variations in who gets sick and why, how the health professions evolved in the United States and how the health care "turf" has been divided among professions, whether and when patients and their families participate in medical decision making, why physicians have more authority and receive higher incomes in the U.S. than elsewhere, what doctors do when interns and residents make mistakes, what the relationship is between hospitals and other health care organizations and how that relationship has changed over time, how the American healthcare system compares to other healthcare systems, how expenditures on preventive medicine compare with expenditures on high-tech cutting- edge medicine, and why the U.S. invests so much in high-tech medicine.
Technology is an integral part of society: from the wheel, to the cotton gin, to the modern computer. Technology is everywhere and humans have always used technology to shape society and vice versa. How do people relate to technology? How has our culture been affected by technology? How has technology itself been shaped by societal norms, and values? This course gives an overview of the growing and important field of the Sociology of Technology. In this course we will explore the different ways that technology has affected our society through a sociological lens. We will examine how physical material combines with culture to create the distinct aspects of our society. Students may not receive credit for this course and for Sociology 392 'Technology, Work, Love, and Life in 2020.
What is the scientific status of our ideas about race? How are medical and legal ideas invoked in determinations about people's gender identities? Overall, how do developments in the life sciences affect our understandings of who we are, how we differ, and how social inequalities are created, perpetuated, and challenged? This seminar explores how scientific claims and technological developments help transform cultural understandings of race, gender, and sexuality. Conversely, we will consider how cultural beliefs about race, gender, and sexuality influence scientific knowledge and medical practice. We will take up a series of controversies from the recent past and present to explore the dynamic interplay between expert findings, social identities, and political arguments.
Technology is ubiquitous. This course covers central tenets in the sociology of technology by pairing an empirical focus on a different technology each week with a theoretical paradigm. A total of eight technologies will serve as the exemplars through which the question(s) concerning technology will be explored: bicycles, cars, computers, facial recognition, genetic sequencing, soap, shipping containers and virtual reality. Each of these technologies is approached as a window into the social, political, racial, and economic determinants of technological innovation. The central goal of the course is to equip students with the tools for unpacking the technologies societies take for granted and critically engaging with new technologies that may reproduce social inequities. While much of the scholarship we will consider is broadly sociological, some of it is drawn from other fields, and part of the goal of the course is to show what is gained when we think about technology from an interdisciplinary perspective. Students from other disciplines are welcome.
Molina M, W 11:00-12:20pm Notes: SHC Core Course - List B
Soc 376-0-3 Sociology of Illness: The Normal and Pathological
This course surveys a variety of topics in the sociology of illness and social studies of science and threads them together with a common goal: to unpack the entanglements of society with the science of human genetics and biomedical research. Through the readings, students will engage with themes that are central to sociological thought: identity, knowledge, power, categorization, race, politics, etc. albeit in the context of science and illness. By the end of the course students will be able to sharply interrogate how social and political conditions shape the production of claims about the genetic basis of illness and difference. While much of the scholarship we will consider is broadly sociological, some of it is drawn from other fields, and part of the goal of the course is to show what is gained when we think about health, disability, and illness from an interdisciplinary perspective. Students from other disciplines are welcome.
Many of the most significant social and cultural changes in modern history have been achieved through sustained collective action—through groups of people coming together around a common set of problems and fighting to change the status quo in ways that alleviate or at least mitigate those problems. These collectives—which we refer to as social movements—are fundamentally communicative in nature. Movements are formed through communication and it is through communication that they achieve much of their strategic objectives. Moreover, movements are inextricably linked to communications channels. As media and communication technologies have transformed, so too have the structures and the practices of social movements. This course explores the complex relationships between communication and social movements, bringing together theories from communication studies, sociology, and political science, as well as tracing historically how social movements have developed new practices of achieving social change.
This course will survey social movements including "citizen scientists," HIV/AIDS activists, "biohackers," and others that contest, mediate, or mistrust expert authority. These cases disrupt the notion that society and science are separate. Instead, students will engage with science as a social and historical process. As part of this process, various publics participate in the processes of knowledge and technology production alongside experts. Students will gain intellectual tools from the field of science and technology studies (STS) to make sense of issues of truth, expertise, and trust that play out in current events like the covid-19 pandemic.
