At the height of the 2013-2016 West African Ebola pandemic, it was often said that the fears of the disease globalized more quickly than the disease itself. Similar claims were made about Covid-19 in the months leading to global spread of this still evolving viral disease. These kinds of statements - and the proliferation of official efforts to both define and control epidemics - show the significance of cultural, social, political and economic dimensions of mass disease events. This seminar privileges a critical medical anthropology perspective on the dynamics of epidemics and pandemics: from defining and naming an event a pandemic, to the ongoing dynamics of disease transmission to prevention and control. Together, we will investigate these pathologies of power: how complex interactions among social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental factors influence the natural history of infectious disease and public health efforts to understand and address them. The seminar focuses on contemporary issues with the explicit purpose of addressing questions of equity and justice.
Anthro 101-6-22 DNA and Society: Posibilities and Pitfalls
Recent advances in genetic analysis have opened up new opportunities to examine how genes influence our health and our potential, and to investigate our family roots. Although these are revolutionary advances, the scientific implications of genetic research are not always as straightforward as press releases and media coverage imply; and in some domains genetic research raises thorny new ethical and other societal questions. In this discussion-based seminar, we will critically read several recent books that tackle various dimensions of the social lives of our DNA, augmented by additional scientific, popular and journalistic readings. We will address questions that sit at the interface of genetics and society, such as: How do our genes really influence our health? What are the problems with the concept of genetic race, and why do scientists who study race describe race as a social construct? How do new genetic approaches help us dig deeper into our ancestries, and what are the societal and ethical implications of those approaches? Readings for this class will not require specialist knowledge of biology or genetics, but will benefit from a curiosity about science and a willingness to engage in critical analysis and discussion.
In this first-year seminar you will develop and refine your critical thinking and writing skills. You will do so by reading and writing about a quintessential human space: the city. Today, more than half of the world's population lives in urban areas. The growth of modern cities suggests that humans thrive in urban environments. Cities, however, are a relatively recent phenomenon in history. Further, cities are not essential for human survival. Then, why do cities dominate the modern world? Drawing broadly on scholarship in anthropology and other disciplines, we will read about the characteristics of urban life in human history, from the first experiments with urbanization 6,000 years ago to contemporary global cities. This course is not intended to be an introduction to anthropology or to urban studies. This seminar will be a workshop in which you will be introduced to college-level modes of thinking, writing, and arguing through reading and writing about cities.
Anthro 290-0-21 American Suburbs: Race, Class & Placemaking
This course will explore U.S. suburbia through an anthropological lens. In addition to the study of the history of suburban development and sprawl, this course examines ethnographies, film, and popular media to explore major themes related to suburban landscapes: the construction of the American suburb in the national imaginary; the relationship between the city and the suburb; race and racial formation; class and mobility; gender and generation; and shifting demographics, politics, and labor in contemporary suburbs.
This course introduces students to everyday life in North Africa through feature and documentary film, with an emphasis on North African filmmakers. The southern Mediterranean region is often considered an appendage of the Muslim Middle East, but it merits study on its own, given its French colonial past and its connections to both sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Readings draw from anthropology, literature, biography, popular culture, and film studies. Thematic foci include ethnic minorities and majorities, migration, gender, law, human rights, and religion. Students develop analytical skills, especially in regards to perspective and bias in both image production and audience reception. One class meeting per week is devoted to lecture and discussion of readings, and the other class meeting to discussion of the week's film. Films will be available streaming on Canvas and watched outside of class.
This course introduces students to everyday life in North Africa through feature and documentary film, with an emphasis on North African filmmakers. The southern Mediterranean region is often considered an appendage of the Muslim Middle East, but it merits study on its own, given its French colonial past and its connections to both sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Readings draw from anthropology, literature, biography, popular culture, and film studies. Thematic foci include ethnic minorities and majorities, migration, gender, law, human rights, and religion. Students develop analytical skills, especially in regards to perspective and bias in both image production and audience reception. One class meeting per week is devoted to lecture and discussion of readings, and the other class meeting to discussion of the week's film. Films will be available streaming on Canvas and watched outside of class.
Anthro 390-0-27 Archaeologies of Africa for the 21st Century
In this class, we will consider how information gleaned from archaeology in Africa can be used to address some of the main challenges of the 21st century, including decolonization, climate change, food security, and poverty. Rather than approaching Africa's past in terms of chronological developments, we will critique the lenses through which the past has been viewed, as well as how historical inequalities have shaped the practice of archaeology in the continent. We will consider case studies from around the continent that examine ancient responses to climate change and poverty, and how they might inform present day challenges. We will also consider how movements to decolonize the study of Africa's past chart a different future both within the continent and across the globe.
Anthro 390-0-30 Nationalism & Archaeology in the Americas
What role has archaeology played in the emergence and consolidation of modern nation-states in the Americas? Across the world, states use monuments and archaeological artifacts to present national narratives in museums, ancient sites, and online platforms. In the Americas, nation-states have controlled who has access to the material remains from the past while transforming buildings, historic places, monuments, and artifacts into national patrimony. In the process of creating national patrimony, nation-states often estrange Indigenous communities from their landscapes and their cultural heritage. In this course, we will examine the role of archaeology in the creation and preservation of national identities in the Americas from the 18th century to the present. In weekly readings and discussions, we will learn about the institutionalization of archaeology as a state-sponsored discipline, the development of archaeological sites as national monuments and tourist destinations, the display and interpretation of artifacts in museums and heritage sites, and the monopolization of tangible cultural heritage by the state. Ultimately, we will evaluate the intersections of identity and politics throughout the history of the Americas.
What is modernism? Why did artists in Western Europe in the late nineteenth century stop making realistic images of the world and instead start experimenting with form to the point that they invented abstract art? How did artists from other parts of the world reject or transform it? Modernist art arose in the historical period we call modernity, defined by colonialism and imperial expansion; industrialization; urbanization; revolution and mass war; the rise of mass commodity culture, spectacle and technology; and the emergence of the art market as we know it today. From the late 19th C to the mid-20th C, we will examine the key modernist "isms": Impressionism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Suprematism, Purism, Constructivism, Socialist Realism, and Abstract Expressionism, as well as how they were reworked in the art of some of the non-European cultures to which they were often indebted.
Art History 389-0-1 Ottoman & Qajar Photography in the Age of Oriental
From the first announcement of its invention in 1839, photography was linked with the Middle East, where it immediately became a tool of European imperialism in the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran. In the nineteenth century, photography served Europe's pictorial transformation of the Ottoman and Qajar worlds into the imaginary "Orient," characterized by backwards spirituality, perverse sexuality, and violent tyranny (hence ripe for European intervention). At the same time, photography was also taken up by a wide array Ottoman and Qajar subjects—from sultans and shahs to artists, scholars, and the Muslim middle classes—who adapted photography's powers to their own ends.
This course traces the impacts of Ottoman and Qajar culture, politics, and social history on photography's development as a technology of representation in the nineteenth century. By focusing on photography's entangled history with European colonialism in the Middle East and North Africa, this course highlights Orientalism as both a source of inspiration and a site of contestation for Ottoman and Qajar photographers (and their subjects). The course examines a wide range of photographic genres, including royal portraiture, studio photography, ethnographic photography, and archaeological photography, as well as the many fascinating processes and materials of nineteenth-century photography, from the daguerreotype to photolithography.
In a time of growing awareness of severe environmental crisis, how do artists (and how do we) make change while avoiding despair? This class focuses on ways artists and activists who are motivated by ecological concerns, but also by optimism about the difference they can make, have adapted artistic strategies to address environmental issues over the course of recent decades. Blurring the boundary between art and activism, or art and environmental remediation, they have taken up themes of sustainability and materiality, "collaborated" with natural processes, and addressed crises from industrial toxins to global warming. In this course we address key themes in environmental art, considering art, ecology, and politics in relation to issues that include gender, race, poverty, territory, and indigeneity. The course will unfold in conjunction with a performance and class visit by a Kaplan artist in residence and will also involve one or more field trips. Along with class participation and periodic short writing assignments, work will include group and individual final projects.
Art History 460-0-3 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Art
How do media impact our sense of such fundamental concepts as personhood, time and space, and social life? How do new technologies transform sensory experience at different moments in history? This course provides an introduction to the field of theoretical writings within the humanities addressing the nature of media and the role of technology in twentieth- and twenty-first century western cultures. The course will be divided roughly into two halves: one portion devoted to foundational texts (Benjamin, McLuhan, Haraway) and to key terms (media, mediation, cyborg, digital, networks, etc.); and a second portion attentive to more contemporary work. Throughout our task will be to grasp these texts on their own terms, to put them into conversation with other texts and contexts, and to trace their relation to other texts in media theory and beyond. Requirements will include a short presentation, a short paper, and a longer paper.
Sustainability Meets Environmental Justice: "Climate Change Comes for the Freezers - A Key Tool for Alaska Natives." This headline, from earlier this month, highlights the increasing severity and frequency of environmental events that are also evolving into environmental in-justice crises. Occurrences like this - 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.
Classics 330-0-1 The Roman Economy as a Historical Perspective
It is perhaps unsurprising that our own time - obsessed as it is with GDP growth, the ups and downs of the stock market, inflation rates, the trade deficit - produces scholarship that studies the ancient Roman economy. This scholarship has made us increasingly aware of how different Rome was from the modern world. This course will focus on what that difference means for the realities of everyday life, both past and present. Questions to be addressed are: What did economic growth mean for the economy of the Romans? Can we even measure it? What role did energy consumption play in economic performance? What was the role of social class in business? What was the influence on the economy of a demographic regime in which life expectancy was low? How was trade conducted over long distances without fast means of communication and transportation? What was the role of technology and technological progress in the economy?
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, healthcare organizations, as well as health promotion and disease prevention. By taking this course, you will become a more mindful, educated, and effective health communicator.
Comm St. 295-0-20 Black Feminists Health Science Studies
Black feminist health science studies is an emergent subfield and critical intervention into a number of intersecting arenas of scholarship and activism. Students in this course will examine important issues in healthcare and science by analyzing some of the foundational assumptions in the field of medicine. 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. Students will engage theories that range from explorations of the linguistic metaphors of the immune system, the medicalization of race, to critiques of the sexual binary, all in an effort to uncover some of the beliefs that have become central to science. Students will work to make their learning accessible to people outside the institution by creating podcast episodes that address current issues in this area.
Comm St. 351-0-20 Technology and Human Interaction
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.
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.
Comp. Lit. St. 207-0-20 Introduction to Critical Theory
In this class, we will focus on the foundations of critical theory in the works of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber, paying particular attention to the methods they deploy in the treatment of moral and religious phenomena. We will conclude with a section on Charles Mills and contemporary Critical Race Theory. Lectures will primarily involve a close analysis and discussion of the readings.
Participants will acquire a foundational competency in the concepts and central texts of Michel Foucault, the Participants will acquire a foundational competency in the main concepts and texts of Michel Foucault, the most broadly influential late-twentieth-century French philosopher. We will foreground the aspects of Foucault's approach that have most impacted inquiry and critique in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, giving special attention to the fields of gender and sexualities studies, and Black studies. Thematically, the course will focus on Foucault's writings on sexuality, madness, health, prisons, delinquency, families, power, biopolitics, surveillance, selfhood and individuality, knowledge, and truth. Conceptually, we'll debate and apply core Foucauldian concepts such as: archaeology and genealogy; discipline and biopower, the productivity and plurality of power; the social importance of "abnormality;" the conditions under which freedom is also a form of "subjection"; the conditions of social resistance and transformation; the historical a priori; and epistemic rupture. We'll critically assess the contribution of Foucault's major works (including History of Madness, Discipline and Punish, The Order of Things, History of Sexuality). In addition to weekly excerpts, students will read their own choice of one of these works as the basis of their final paper. Students should expect to post weekly contributions to class debate. most influential late-twentieth-century French philosopher.
Comp. Lit. St. 411-0-20 Cinema at the end of Film: Theories, Histories, Media
What is cinema in the 21st century? What can it still do? This course will explore the afterlives of cinema in the digital age by turning to theorists and practitioners who have addressed the ques-tion of technology in terms of both aesthetics and politics. We will read texts from a variety of fields, including film and media theory, feminist/queer theory, critical race theory, and post-autonomist Marxism. At the same time, we will consider the way filmmakers such as John Akomfrah, Harun Farocki, Jean-Luc Godard, and Hito Steyerl have negotiated cinema's role and envisioned its po-tential in a global image economy.
Earth and Planetary Sci. - 102-6-01 Sustainability and Social Justice
Sustainability and Social Justice: The challenge of sustainability to "meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" has evolved over the past few decades. This course will introduce fundamental concepts of sustainability, consider the application of these concepts in diverse societal, economic, and cultural settings, and explore the potential of climate science and sustainable development to act as forces for environmental and social justice.
Earth and Planetary Sci. - 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. Review of evolutionary theory and its scientific, philosophical, social and religious impacts. Pre-lecture quizzes (CANVAS) and two exams.
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 course will examine the central issues of development economics with a geographical focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. Our methodological approach will be to use primary data and rigorous empirical methods to examine patterns of economic activity and to evaluate the effectiveness of development policies and programs. The class will be organized around weekly presentations of student research on 8 key questions of development in Africa. This year, the focus of our work will be on Nigeria.
English 105-6-23 Eco-Fiction and Human Metamorphosis
We are all familiar with public discourse about environmental concerns: Descriptions of a future where familiar landscapes have been transformed into alien vistas, newly dangerous and hostile to human life. Recent eco-fiction, however, challenges that familiar narrative, proposing ways that we humans may find ourselves transfigured along with the world around us. In this class we will engage with accounts of such human metamorphosis, considering the horror narratives of HP Lovecraft, the hyper-empathy of Octavia Butler, the "new weird" landscapes of Jeff Vandermeer's Area X and other texts. Film viewings will include Pixar's 2008 Wall-E and James Cameron's 2009 Avatar and/or Netflix's 2021 Don't Look Up. Course readings/viewing will include brief readings from literary criticism, selections from Hope Jahren's, "The Story of More," as well as popular films. We will also consider practical topics such as how University library resources and experts can help students locate and evaluate key sources and develop authoritative arguments.
English 300-0-20 Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Alien Life
The idea of the extraterrestrial emerged around the same time that humankind began to turn its thoughts seriously to space exploration. What might happen in an encounter between the human and the utterly alien inspired a proliferation of works across literature and film particularly interested in dramatizing this moment of contact, and how it might transform the lives of those involved. Such encounters might entail a painstaking struggle towards peaceful communication, or inspire utopian prospects for community-making. Other narratives, however, portray the event of humanity's exposure to life beyond Earth as potentially cataclysmic. Considering these possibilities, we will investigate how the categories of human and alien in fiction fall along familiar racialized and gendered lines, as well as how these all-too human categories are magnified and refracted by the figure of the extraterrestrial, or non-human. In turn, we will ask how the alien exposes alternative categories for reflecting on our humanity. As we read, we will reflect on what it means to consider science fiction as less artistically sophisticated, less serious than literary fiction, when it has always been invested in reimagining the stories we tell about ourselves. What space did first contact stories in particular afford these writers to reimagine erotics, environmental thought, utopian politics, and social care? We will moreover investigate the popularity of the extraterrestrial as a trope in 20th- and 21st-century pop culture, and what this figure reveals about our political anxieties on a global scale, our concerns surrounding seemingly exponential leaps in technological advancement, and our ambivalence about the human capacity for destruction and creation.
English 324-0-20 Blood and Bloodshed in the Middle Ages
Whether it causes fear or fascination, blood holds a mysterious sway on the modern imagination. From those who faint at the sight of it, to those who love vampire movies and gory thrillers, to those who study and analyze it in labs, this strange substance serves as a constant source of conflict, anxiety, and ideology. Representations of blood in medieval literature were just as fraught. Medieval people saw the substance as alternately miraculous and polluting, life-giving and death-bringing, a marker of difference and a symbol of unity. Blood had the capacity to reveal whether a person was sick or healthy, whether they were sexually active, what god they worshipped, and even whether they were guilty of murder. If it was shed on a battlefield it was considered valiant; if it was shed from the bodies of virgins or martyrs it was considered holy; if it was shed during childbirth or menstruation it was considered polluting; and if it was shed in pursuit of love it was considered romantic. In this class, we will explore these complex and often contradictory representations of blood and bloodshed in medieval literature. By approaching this topic from a range of genres and sources (chivalric romance, crusade chronicles, medical compendia, and vampire movies) and theoretical perspectives (queer theory, disability theory, race theory), we will use blood as a starting point for exploring broader questions about gender, religion, culture, and individuality. Moreover, we will consider how medieval assessments of blood value, purity, and pollution continue to shape constructions of identity today.
English 357-0-20 Madwomen in the Attic: Insanity, Gender and Authority
The climax of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre hinges on a shocking revelation that other writers have been rereading and even rewriting ever since. Brontë's iconic Gothic tale of "madness," and that concept's inflection by gender, race, and nationality, has become central to our ideas about difference and power. Tracing the afterlives of Brontë's confined madwoman through twentieth-century reimaginations of the trope, including Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, and recent films such as Hereditary, this course will examine how "insanity" has been seen as a category useful for regaining (and sometimes blocking) political and literary agency. Putting these texts and films in dialogue with critical responses by Michel Foucault, Gayatri Spivak, and others, we will explore the knotty question of how madness shapes our culture's narratives about gender and authority.
English 381-0-20 Introduction to Disability Studies in 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? 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 386-0-21 Modern Monsters: 20th and 21st Century Horror
Monstrosity is ubiquitous in contemporary popular culture. The ghosts, zombies, vampires, poltergeists, and extra-terrestrials that populate this course's syllabus register that modern fascination. From classic horror by H. P. Lovecraft, probing at the margins of civilization, through Angela Carter's monstrous fables, to recent novels and movie adaptations such as Let the Right One In and Coraline, this course grapples with the taboo forms of subjectivity, filiation, and national identity that monsters embody. Analyzing fiction by Shirley Jackson and Neil Gaiman, blockbuster films such as The Shining and Alien, as well as parodies like What We Do in the Shadows, students will explore what representations of monstrosity reveal about our understandings of self, family, and nation. In addition to classic and contemporary examples of cinematic and literary horror, we will explore the genre through multiple scholarly frameworks, including psychoanalysis and disability studies.
Env Policy and Culture 212-0-20 Environment and Society
Our climate is rapidly changing. Rising sea levels and increasing ocean acidity, higher temperatures, more droughts, melting glaciers, wilder weather patterns, and mounting environmental disasters mean that climate change is increasingly visible in our daily lives. What role does human society play in these changes, and what consequences does society suffer as these changes occur? This course is an introduction to environmental sociology during which we will employ an intersectional, sociological perspective to look beyond the scientific basis for environmental problems to understand the social roots of environmental issues. We will cover a variety of topics in environmental sociology, including new directions in sustainable development and how actors such as corporations, the media, and social movements impact public opinion and environmental issues. Further, we will critically examine the gendered, racial, and socioeconomic production of disparate environmental risks.
Envr Policy and Culture 340-0-20 Global Environments and World History
Environmental problems are today part and parcel of popular consciousness: resources are being depleted at a record pace, human population levels have crossed the seven 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, 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 global 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.
Envr Policy and Culture 390-0-29 Hazards, Disasters and Society
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.
Envr Policy and Culture 390-0-30 Art, Ecology and Politics
In a time of growing awareness of severe environmental crisis, how do artists (and how do we) make change while avoiding despair? This class focuses on ways artists and activists who are motivated by ecological concerns, but also by optimism about the difference they can make, have adapted artistic strategies to address environmental issues over the course of recent decades. Blurring the boundary between art and activism, or art and environmental remediation, they have taken up themes of sustainability and materiality, "collaborated" with natural processes, and addressed crises from industrial toxins to global warming. In this course we address key themes in environmental art, considering art, ecology, and politics in relation to issues that include gender, race, poverty, territory, and indigeneity. The course will unfold in conjunction with a performance and class visit by a Kaplan artist in residence and will also involve one or more field trips. Along with class participation and periodic short writing assignments, work will include group and individual final projects.
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?
Gender St. 321-0-21 US Women's History 1865-Present
This course explores the history of women in the United States from 1865 to the present. Adopting an intersectional approach, we will examine women's changing roles as wage earners, mothers, and activists. We will also explore how prevailing ideas about race, gender, work, and the family shaped women's lives, in both the public and private arenas.
Gender St. 331-0-20 Sociology of Gender and Sexuality
This course is an opportunity for students to critically examine what is often a taken-for-granted aspect of social life: gender. This course will involve learning about gender as well as applying gender theory. We will study a variety of theoretical approaches to the study of gender, with particular focus on ethnomethodological, post-structural, macro-institutional, and intersectional approaches to the topic. By the end of the term, students will be able to 1) describe and compare theoretical anchors for the study of gender and 2) in writing, demonstrate mastery of two theoretical approaches to gender and apply one theory to a topic of their choosing. Prior course experience in gender/sexuality studies (by way of taking Gender & Society or other course work) is strongly advised.
Gender St. 351-0-20 Gender, Sexuality and the Carceral State
This course explores the rise of the carceral state in the United States with particular attention to ethnographic, sociolegal, feminist, queer, and transgender theoretical approaches to the study of prisons. The course centers on girls, women, and LGBT people's experiences with systems of punishment, surveillance, and control. In addition, students will learn how feminist and queer activists have responded to institutions of policing and mass incarceration; investigate how they have understood prison reform, prison abolition, and transformative justice; and consider the political, ethical, and methodological concerns that policing, and mass incarceration raise.
Gender St. 361-0-22 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.
Gender St. 382-0-21 Mothers and Reproductive Justice
The role of the mother appears as a "universal" and given category. But who is allowed to be a mother? This course highlights discourses of motherhood that emerge out of women of color feminisms and literary works from the 1980s to the present. I challenge students to read motherhood as a heterogeneous, generative, and at times contradictory relational subject position that allows women of color to challenge white feminism and reclaim their children, both biological and non-biological, from the State that seeks to rupture their relationship. Students will ponder the following questions: how do women of color feminisms complicate and challenge white feminism's concepts of motherhood and its intersection with race, gender, and sexuality? How do labor and care shape the position of the mother? How do literary writers extend and interrogate motherhood as a productive locus to care for others? Each week, the students will read a canonical literary text paired with a theoretical text. For their final assignment, students have the choice to produce a critical or creative work that engages with either or both the literary and theoretical works we have read.
Gender St. 390-0-20 Queering Cartology: Reimagining the Map
What do you imagine when you picture a map of the world? Usually this brings to mind a two-dimensional image depicting landmasses, water, and borders, perhaps with labels of continents or countries. This is not the only possible way to represent the world around us, and our traditional map-making conventions have their own logics, based in social norms and assumptions. This class begins by examining the history of cartography, or map-making, and key feminist and queer critiques of the traditional map as static and androcentric. We will discuss the rapidly expanding queer geography and queer cartographies literature, incorporating discussions from Black feminist geography, phenomenology, and queer and feminist critiques of science and objectivity. We will examine naming/labeling conventions, the politics of representation, and approaches to visual and non-visual representation of spaces. Bringing in materials on queer migration, we will discuss bodies and movement as immersed in landscape. Throughout the course, we will examine queer mapping projects from scholars, artists, and activists that re-envision what a map can depict. What are the ways we can re-imagine how we represent spaces and places in the world around us? What does it mean to "queer the map"? How do technology and digital tools allow for new approaches? Students will read literatures from disciplines including geography, anthropology, gender and sexuality studies, and more, and have opportunities to create creative works that re-imagine what a map can look like and represent.
Global Health 201-0-20 Introduction to Global 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 underpinning specific paradigms in the policy and science of global health practice, and place present-day developments in historical perspective. As an introductory course on global health, the class delves into comparative health systems, including comparative health systems in high- and low-income countries. Key topics will include: policies and approaches to global health, key actors in global health, comparative health systems, structural violence, gender and reproductive health, chronic and communicable diseases, politics of global health research and evidence, and the ethics of global health equity.
Global Health 222-0-20 The Social Determinants of Health
This lecture-based survey in public health and medical anthropology explores how political, economic, historical, and sociocultural forces impact health inequalities at home and around the world. We will explore contemporary illness experiences and therapeutic interventions in 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. he course draws from historical accounts, contemporary ethnographies, public health literature, media reports, and films.
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.
Global Health 307-0-1 International Perspectives on Mental Health
This course will explore issues of mental health in cross-cultural, perspective and examine the impact of psychological illness on the global burden of disease. Students explore the following questions: how do cultural systems of meaning and behavior affect the vulnerability of individuals within the population to mental illness and the mental illnesses to which they are vulnerable? How does culture influence the way that mental illness is expressed and experienced and how does this affect our ability to measure psychological illness cross-culturally? How do cultural factors affect the way that mental illnesses are diagnosed and labeled, and the degree to which they are stigmatized? And how do such factors affect our ability to create effective global health interventions? Finally, how do healing practices and the efficacy of particular treatments vary across cultures? We will examine these and related questions in the context of specific forms of psychological distress, including depression, trauma, dissociation and psychosis, using case studies from a range of cultural contexts including Brazil, Japan, India, China and the U.S.
This course draws on perspectives from anthropology and related social scientific fields to provide a comparative overview of the impact of armed conflict on public health and health care systems worldwide. Drawing primarily on examples from recent history, including conflicts in the Balkans, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East, we will explore warfare as a crucial sociopolitical determinant of global health disparities and consider organized efforts to respond to the health impacts of mass violence. Key topics that we will consider include variations in the relationship between warfare and public health across eras and cultures; the health and mental health impacts of forced displacement, military violence, and gender-based violence; and the roles of medical humanitarianism and humanitarian psychiatry in postwar recovery processes. Through close readings of classic and contemporary social theory, ethnographic accounts, and diverse research on war, health, and postwar humanitarian interventions, this course will encourage you to build your own critical perspective on war and public health anchored in history and the complexities of real-world situations.
Global Health 325-0-01 History of Reproductive Health
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.
Global Health 390-0-23 Silent but Loud: Negotiating Health in Culture
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.
Global Health 390-0-24 Hazards, Disasters and Society
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.
Global Health 390-0-25 Re-mixing Qualitative Methods
This course explores traditional and alternative data collection methods in public health research. The course focuses on decolonizing ways that Black/African American individuals have used to reveal their truths and construct and reconstruct images of themselves. Students will explore how these decolonizing processes can be applied in public health data collection to make research inclusive and to validate methods and ways of knowing that have assisted underserved, underheard, and underrepresented communities in advocating for justice to survive. Course readings and videos will provide a critical lens on qualitative data collection methods, including studies on historical and traumatic violence underscoring how people living in Black bodies work to survive, and negotiating processes that Black individuals use to exercise agency and evaluate systemic oppressions that impede how they navigate life as articulated by authors such as Joy DeGruy, Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, and Jean Stefanci.
From modern pandemics such as Ebola and COVID-19, to ancient scourges such as leprosy and the plague, epidemics have shaped human history. In turn, the response of human societies to infectious disease threats have varied wildly in time and across cultures. We are currently living such an event, and experiencing in dramatic fashion how disease reshapes society. This course will cover several prominent global epidemic episodes, examining the biology of the disease, epidemic pathways, sociopolitical responses and public health measures, and the relationship between the scientific and the cultural consequences of these outbreaks.
History 303-2-20 American Women's History, Since 1965
This course explores the history of women in the United States from 1865 to the present. Adopting an intersectional approach, we will examine women's changing roles as wage earners, mothers, and activists. We will also investigate how prevailing ideas about race, gender, work, and the family have shaped women's lives.
History 376-0-20 Global Environments and World History
Environmental problems are today part and parcel of popular consciousness: resources are being depleted at a record pace, human population levels have crossed the seven 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, 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 global 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.
This seminar guides students as they research and write the social history of an artifact of their choice. How do our histories read if we organize them around changes in the material world? Do artifacts have politics, and if so, of what sort? In this course, students learn multiple approaches to the study of material culture. We will read exemplary accounts of objects which people have designed, made, sold, bought, gifted, and/or trashed. We will study how these objects came to mediate differences among people, like gender, race, age, nation, and of course, rich and poor. The course offers a well-tested template for conducting, organizing, and writing up your own research on a topic that interests you. Try out an idea for a senior thesis. Research an artifact you love or hate, or feel ambivalent about. Develop a case history of innovation (or obsolescence). The last time the course was offered, students wrote papers on such topics as: the wiretapping of ‘70s radicals, the late nineteenth-century obsession with photographing the dead, how knitting patterns went online, the rise of the labradoodle, the gender dynamics of ‘20s fashion, how changes in intellectual property transformed ‘90s biotech, and why Admiral Grace Hopper programmed COBOL the way she did…. The goal is to illuminate our changing world by telling the history of a material being.
Latin Amer. Carrib. St. 391-0-21 Nationalism and Archaeology in the Americas
What role has archaeology played in the emergence and consolidation of modern nation-states in the Americas? Across the world, states use monuments and archaeological artifacts to present national narratives in museums, ancient sites, and online platforms. In the Americas, nation-states have controlled who has access to the material remains from the past while transforming buildings, historic places, monuments, and artifacts into national patrimony. In the process of creating national patrimony, nation-states often estrange Indigenous communities from their landscapes and their cultural heritage. In this course, we will examine the role of archaeology in the creation and preservation of national identities in the Americas from the 18th century to the present. In weekly readings and discussions, we will learn about the institutionalization of archaeology as a state-sponsored discipline, the development of archaeological sites as national monuments and tourist destinations, the display and interpretation of artifacts in museums and heritage sites, and the monopolization of tangible cultural heritage by the state. Ultimately, we will evaluate the intersections of identity and politics throughout the history of the Americas.
McCormick - Segal 395-0-64 Leonardo, Geometry and the Art of Manufacturing
In Walter Isaacson's recent biography of Leonardo da Vinci, the topic of geometry is referenced over 80 times. The only drawings by Leonardo that were published during his lifetime were illustrations for a textbook on geometry. The artist's final journal entry, written only days before his death, included attempts at a geometric proof. A friend of the artist once lamented in a letter, "He devotes much of his time to geometry, and has no fondness at all for the paintbrush." What compelled Leonardo's fascination with this subject? In this interdisciplinary class, we will explore Leonardo's geometric studies, using them as a vehicle for our own studies of artistic and industrial processes. Students will collaborate with artists, manufacturers, and technologists to produce sculptural objects in a range of materials. The course will culminate in a public iron pour in which we will attempt to translate several of Leonardo's sketches into cast-iron 3D pieces using a historical furnace in honor of the artist's work.
Medill - Journalism 490-0-27 Energy, Climate Change and Global Security
This seminar will introduce students to the interconnected beats of energy, climate change and global security. Russia's war in Ukraine (or the aftermath of it) will provide the framework for the class. However, students also will learn about energy and climate change in current and past bilateral and multilateral relations between the United States and its allies and foes, including China, the Middle East, Canada and Latin American. Student will also have guest lectures, including from experts in international climate change negotiations, particularly the United Nations climate change meetings, known as the Conferences of the Parties (COP).
The centerpiece of the course will be a week-long trip to Germany as part of the Medill Explores program. Students will report on the energy and refugee crises in Europe caused by the war in Ukraine. Students will visit a fossil fuel project, an LNG terminal under construction to receive natural gas imports and help Europe wean off Russian fuel, and a renewable energy project, probably a wind farm. They'll investigate how Europe's plans to wean off fossil fuels and fight climate change have been altered by the Kremlin's military aggression. In Germany, students will interview average people about how their lives are harmed by these crises
Philosophy 254-0-20 Intro to Philosophy of the Natural Sciences
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.
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.
Philosophy 310-0-20 Plato's Metaphysics and Epistemology Studies in Ancient Philosophy
In this course we will study Plato's metaphysics and epistemology. Likely topics include Plato's theory of Forms, collection and division, being and not being, space and time, teleology, causation, Plato's accounts of knowledge (esp. in the Theaetetus), the proper object(s) of knowledge, whether Platonic epistēmē is knowledge, the value of knowledge, and the Socratic elenchus. Texts to be studied include (parts of) the Euthyphro, Meno, Republic, Theaetetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedo, Parmenides, and Philebus.
Philosophy 326-0-20 Topics in Philosophy of Medicine
This course is a study of the political philosophy of health and health care. In the first part of the course, we will study prominent accounts of justice in health care. Is there a right to health care, and if so, what does that right encompass? In the second part of the course, we will consider several recent theories of health care rationing. In the third and final part of the course, we turn to the growing field of public health ethics, public health being concerned with the promotion of health at the population level rather than with the provision of personal health care services. We will look at prominent recent accounts of the moral foundations and limits of public health.
Political Science 390-0-20 Ethical AI and the Politics of Tech
This course address the political context, characteristics, and consequences of artificial intelligence and technological innovation. AI's growth and rapid evolution both reflects social and political norms and cleavages, and also stands to directly influence and shape them. The course will highlight several domains of significant AI development, including computer vision and natural language processing, to assess their political foundations and implications. We will explore the promise of algorithmic interventions as well as their dangers. We will also discuss the political and legal landscape for AI and technological innovation, as well as the regulatory challenges and opportunities facing the tech sector. This course does not require any technical knowledge or expertise surrounding machine learning or AI systems (although engineering backgrounds are welcome).
Psychology 420-0-1 History, Ethics, Diversity and Consultation in Clinical Psychology
This course has multiple goals that will be covered in separate modules that we will also weave together to look for bigger themes and connections. We will begin with a focus on ethics in psychology. This is a critical piece of what clinical psychologists do, whether in practice, in research, or in consultation. We will review the code of ethics and will have conversations about the many gray areas and the sometimes complex interplay between our ethical and our legal obligations. Will then move into consultation, covering the various roles one can take on as a clinical psychologist and the factors to consider. Our third topic will be the history of psychology, where our goal will be to understand and contextualize the history of our field. That means taking a full look at historical figures for their accomplishments and their shortcomings and the context in which their work took place that may have shaped their thinking. It also means delving further into some of the "hidden figures" in the field whose accomplishments may not be as well known because of the way that some voices have been amplified over others. Finally, we will discuss issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion both as it relates to ourselves and the people we work with (clients, colleagues, mentors, students).
Religion 379-0-23 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.
Law is everywhere. Law permits, prohibits, enables, legitimates, protects, and prosecutes. Law shapes our day-to-day lives in countless ways. This course examines the connections and relationships of law and society using an interdisciplinary social science approach. As one of the founders of the Law and Society movement observed, "law is too important to leave to lawyers." Accordingly, this course will borrow from several theoretical, disciplinary, and interdisciplinary perspectives (such as sociology, history, anthropology, political science, critical studies, and psychology) in order to explore the sociology of law and law\'s role primarily in the American context (but with some attention to international law and global human rights efforts). The thematic topics to be discussed include law and social control; law\'s role in social change; and law\'s capacity to reach into complex social relations and intervene in existing normative institutions and organizational structures.
Overview of the interactions between societies and the natural environment. Examines both key environmental problems, like climate change and oil spills, and possible solutions, and the roles played by different social structures and groups in shaping both issues. Co-listed as Envr Pol 212-0-1
The course will be a critical examination of how "childhood" and "adolescence" have been defined in the U.S. We will consider how modern and historical conceptions of childhood and adolescence have evolved and how these definitions have been shaped by societal forces and institutions such as the economy, religion, culture, media/entertainment, and politics. We will also look at the lives of children themselves and how individuals experience being children, kids, teens, and so forth in a particular time and place. In particular, we will examine how the experience of being a young person has varied by historical period, but also by social status, including race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status and generation. As a class, we will also be very critical of cultural and media portrayals of children and teenagers and ask how these representations have reflected and shaped how society views youth. We will also look at how childhood itself has been connected to various social problems and social concerns both historically and today. The final topic for the course will be how adolescents make the transition to adulthood socially, emotionally, and economically, and how this transition has changed over time - particularly over the last several decades.
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.
Sociology 376-0-23 Transnational Gender and Sexuality
Since the 1980s, third wave feminists have critiqued fundamental assumptions of second-wave feminism and worked to incorporate perspectives and voices outside the "West." In more recent decades, a similar movement has happened among queer and trans theorists. In this course, we will engage this work, much of which has been published in the past decade and a half. Course readings, which will survey scholarship on gender/sexuality in many regions of the world, will draw our attention to the ways in which gender/sexuality are implicated in capitalist, imperial and post-colonial projects as well as how gender and sexuality operate outside the "West," both in practice and identity. Finally, we will consider the possibilities and limitations for studying gender/sexuality beyond our own societies. Critical approaches to gender and sexuality challenge conventional "born this way" narratives about gender and sexual identities as innate. This course will raise questions that will make us uncomfortable and, hopefully, transform our understandings of our own gendered and sexual identities and practices.
Why do some people distrust covid-19 vaccines? How did HIV/AIDS activists transform FDA rules that continue to impact patients and research subjects? This course will begin by unpacking the tools that experts use to assert their authority and produce a binding perception of reality. Then, we will consider the way that social movements—including "citizen scientists," HIV/AIDS activists, and "biohackers"—contest, mistrust, or reaffirm experts' authority. Finally, we will study how these disputes are shaped by regulatory bureaucracies and the legal system. Throughout the course, students will apply concepts from the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies (STS) to current events like the covid-19 pandemic.
This course is a general introduction to the sociology of law intended for graduate students in all disciplines. The sociology of law treats law as a social institution that is highly intertwined with other aspects of society, including social structure, social behavior, ideology, politics, culture, and the economy. This seminar will cover classic and contemporary works on central topics in the sociology of law, including: the interplay between law and social inequalities; the relation of law, rights, and social movements; the negotiated nature of regulation and enforcement; the relation of law and organizations; the role of litigants, lawyers, and judges as social actors; and legal culture and legal consciousness. The course takes a critical empirical approach to the relationship between law and society.
Globalization entails greater interdependence and less national autonomy. It occurs as international flows of capital, goods, services, and people increase. Transactions, interactions and relationships that formerly occurred within national boundaries now occur across them. As part of globalization, legal forms and institutions are also spreading throughout the world. Transactions involving capital, goods, services and people are not self-sustaining; rather, they are supported and regulated by an institutional foundation that typically centers on the legal system. Because the frameworks that support these transactions exist primarily at the level of the nation-state, a governance mismatch has emerged. Globalization means that more is going on between national jurisdictions than within them, and tensions arise between competing institutional models. The substantive focus of this seminar is this intersection between globalizing markets and (predominately, but not exclusively) national legal forms and institutions. We will read work by sociologists, political scientists, economists, and lawyers addressing a range of issues related to the interaction between markets and legal systems, and with a particular focus on financial markets.
Globalization entails greater interdependence and less national autonomy. It occurs as international flows of capital, goods, services, and people increase. Transactions, interactions and relationships that formerly occurred within national boundaries now occur across them. As part of globalization, legal forms and institutions are also spreading throughout the world. Transactions involving capital, goods, services and people are not self-sustaining; rather, they are supported and regulated by an institutional foundation that typically centers on the legal system. Because the frameworks that support these transactions exist primarily at the level of the nation-state, a governance mismatch has emerged. Globalization means that more is going on between national jurisdictions than within them, and tensions arise between competing institutional models. The substantive focus of this seminar is this intersection between globalizing markets and (predominately, but not exclusively) national legal forms and institutions. We will read work by sociologists, political scientists, economists, and lawyers addressing a range of issues related to the interaction between markets and legal systems, and with a particular focus on financial markets.
Spanish and Portuguese 455-0-1 The Right to Look: Photography, Racial and Gender
This seminar engages as a point of departure with Derrida's reflections on photography in Droit de regards 1985 (Right of Inspection) and his engagement with Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes — two key philosophers of the image in the 20th century— to interrogate photography, photographic practices and photographic archives in their role as constitutive forms of contemporary regimes of visibility. We will explore photography and representation — its singular capacity to relate to the real and instituting truth claims—; photography and memory, material trace and the politics of archives; photography and inscription, death and practices of mourning; photography and techné, repetition and dissemination, and the ways in which photography works to open itself to alterity and non-self-identity. Working through conceptual account as well as closely reading photographic images, we reflect on this medium as conditioning our access to contemporary aesthetic experience and its ethicopolitical futurity. A fundamental question we explore throughout: If Aesthetics has historically been the realm of thought where universalizing claims of political and self-determined subjecthood posed the threshold of the human subject in and of their representation, how have unfreedom, subjection, and social injustice have administered visibility and recognition? What conceptual instrument contemporary thinking of photography and photographic practices provide us to de-naturalized the way these regimes have taught us to see. Readings will include, with those mentioned above: Allan Sekula, Harun Farochi, Vilem Flusser, Deborah Willis, Kaja Silverman, Eduardo Cadava, Shawn Michelle Smith and the photographic corpus will encompass historical and contemporary, Latin America and American photography with special focus on Latinx photographers.
