The course explores the ideas that influence environmental thought, examines various environmental problems and suggested solutions, and critically evaluates the role that political institutions play in creating and enforcing environmental policy. Specific topics include environmental justice, environmental federalism, environmental health, and regulatory behavior.
This course examines the many ways in which race and ethnicity play a role in American politics, including how race and ethnicity affect personal identity, political preferences, political participation, candidates and campaigns, public officeholders, and policymaking. Topics considered include racial identity, descriptive and substantive representation, intersectionality (the interaction of race, gender, class and other social categories), and the effect of race and ethnicity on current public policy debates.
A survey of American religious history and an introduction to the critical interrogation of each of the course’s orienting terms--American, religion, and history. This course considers key concepts, central questions, and select archival material in the historical study of American religion through the examination of specific figures, signal moments, and significant movements from colonial encounter to the present, and it explores how the study of religion in American history intersects with other categories of human distinction and difference-making, including race, space, gender, sex, and class.
A survey of American religious history and an introduction to the critical interrogation of each of the course’s orienting terms--American, religion, and history. This course considers key concepts, central questions, and select archival material in the historical study of American religion through the examination of specific figures, signal moments, and significant movements from colonial encounter to the present, and it explores how the study of religion in American history intersects with other categories of human distinction and difference-making, including race, space, gender, sex, and class.
This course explores the discursive connections between business and religion by examining their shared histories. Structured around a series of case studies from American religious historiography (e.g. Quaker Oats, Ivory Soap, Wal-Mart, Oprah), it considers how religious and business discourses can be understood as historically entangled and interpretatively contested ways to name and navigate the vexed relations of human exchange and culture-making, ritual purchase and systems of value, modes of production, and forms of authority. The course considers how religious institutions have engaged corporate concerns and how businesses might be and have been understood as religious subjects themselves in American history.
History and criticism of American speeches and rhetorical texts. The course examines a broad range of historical and rhetorical factors that influenced the creation and reception of speeches from the colonial period through the end of the Civil War, focusing not only on the political, religious, legal, and social exigencies to which speeches responded but also on the place of those rhetorical texts in U.S. public controversies.
This course provides an introduction to contemporary analyses of women's economic, cultural, biological, environmental, and political conditions. We will explore commonalities and differences among women, both in the United States and in other nations. In so doing, we will engage the concept of gender as an historical and critical category relating to a woman's ethnicity, class, sexuality, and race. The course also will examine varieties of recent feminist thought, paying particular attention to the impact of this scholarship on traditional academic disciplines.
Anthropology
Introducing perspectives of Socio-Cultural Anthropology, the class explores how culture (the way of life shared by a group of people) creates varied realities and life experiences worldwide in relation to socially-generated understandings of gender, religion, ethnicity, class, race, and kinship. Focused on patterns of difference and similarity across cultures around the globe, this course teaches students the value of cross-cultural comparison and how to analyze their own cultural backgrounds through the anthropological lens.
Introducing perspectives of Socio-Cultural Anthropology, the class explores how culture (the way of life shared by a group of people) creates varied realities and life experiences worldwide in relation to socially-generated understandings of gender, religion, ethnicity, class, race, and kinship. Focused on patterns of difference and similarity across cultures around the globe, this course teaches students the value of cross-cultural comparison and how to analyze their own cultural backgrounds through the anthropological lens.
Introducing perspectives of Socio-Cultural Anthropology, the class explores how culture (the way of life shared by a group of people) creates varied realities and life experiences worldwide in relation to socially-generated understandings of gender, religion, ethnicity, class, race, and kinship. Focused on patterns of difference and similarity across cultures around the globe, this course teaches students the value of cross-cultural comparison and how to analyze their own cultural backgrounds through the anthropological lens.
Introducing perspectives of Socio-Cultural Anthropology, the class explores how culture (the way of life shared by a group of people) creates varied realities and life experiences worldwide in relation to socially-generated understandings of gender, religion, ethnicity, class, race, and kinship. Focused on patterns of difference and similarity across cultures around the globe, this course teaches students the value of cross-cultural comparison and how to analyze their own cultural backgrounds through the anthropological lens.
An introduction to the processes of human and cultural evolution. Physical anthropology will focus on human evolution and the human fossil record, genetic processes, primatology, and physiological characteristics of modern human populations. Archaeology will trace cultural evolution from the first hominins to the beginnings of complex societies The pertinent methods and theories are presented throughout.
An introduction to the processes of human and cultural evolution. Physical anthropology will focus on human evolution and the human fossil record, genetic processes, primatology, and physiological characteristics of modern human populations. Archaeology will trace cultural evolution from the first hominins to the beginnings of complex societies The pertinent methods and theories are presented throughout.
This course will examine human-environmental relationships from the anthropological perspective. Consideration of theoretical approaches and practical applications will be supplemented by archaeological, ethnographical, and ethnohistorical case studies. We will consider various ecosystems and landscapes as palimpsests that reveal cultural footprints to the archaeologist and human choices to the ethnographer. We will explore how an understanding of both can greatly inform ecological studies and further new thinking about environmental policy.
Art
An introduction to processes dependent on the lens as an imaging device, including wet-lab photography, digital photography, video editing and installation-based sequencing. The course incorporates the fundamental theoretical, technical and aesthetic principles of working with photography as an expressive medium. Assignments include darkroom laboratory work, studio projects, discussions, written analyses, and class presentations.
An introduction to two-dimensional media that explores mark making as the basis for visualization and ideation. The course incorporates the fundamental theoretical, technical and aesthetic principles of composition in two-dimensions. Students use wet and dry media to solve problems and investigate concepts of representation, abstraction and expression using traditional and non-traditional techniques.
This course involves study of the theories and processes of video and audio production as well as other techniques for making moving images. It examines a variety of aesthetic, formal, thematic, and technical approaches to composition and artistic expression through moving images and sound. The evaluation and analysis of assignments involves group discussions and individual critiques. Examples from a spectrum of artists and filmmakers provide a context for understanding the potential of moving images in a variety forms.
This course introduces students to thematic approaches in photography using film-based methods, digital printing, and multi-media. Class projects and discussions center around the cultural and socio-political impact of the medium, as well the deeply personal and expressive aspects of photographic art.
This course explores both new and traditional media for the study and production of sculptural form. A series of assignments involve additive and reductive processes, mold making and casting, static and temporal composition, and a range of materials. Examples ranging from ancient to current sculptural practices are discussed and reviewed to provide historical and theoretical context for the assignments. The evaluation and analysis of assignments involves group discussions and individual critiques.
This course explores use of observational painting techniques as a means for translating three-dimensional realities into two-dimensional painted images. By observing still lives, structures, landscapes, and live models, students gain heightened sensitivity to the world around them through attentiveness to the visual. In the process, they also become acquainted with various painting materials and surfaces. Through studio assignments, exercises, readings, discussions, and critiques, students learn to paint from both life and the imagination, all the while honing their observational skills and their facility with painting media.