A survey of the major changes in American women's lives since the end of the last century, including increased access to education, movement into the labor market, and changes in reproductive behavior and in their role within the family. Special consideration will be given to the movements for women's rights.
An exploration of Southern history through the lenses of biography, autobiography, and fiction. This seminar examines the careers of significant figures in the history and literature of the South from the antebellum era to the present.
This course examines the military, economic, political, and social upheaval of mid-nineteenth century America. We will consider the failure of antebellum political mechanisms, the growth of sectionalism, justifications for and against secession, the methods and implications of war, competing constitutional systems during the conflict, efforts to eradicate Southern separatism, and the lingering cultural implications of the nation's fratricidal dispute. Students will employ the America's Civil War web site, as well as other media, in preparing for discussions, tests, and research papers.
Students are introduced to foundational theories of public policy, gaining valuable insight into "who gets what, when, and how" in the political process. Through a series of case studies in environmental, social welfare, criminal justice, and health policy, students are asked to apply and critically evaluate policy problems and solutions, given existing public policy theories.
This course examines Supreme Court cases related to separation of powers and checks and balances by situating cases within varying theories of constitutional interpretation and by assessing the socio-political implications of those decisions. Cases studied include controversies about executive privilege, the Commerce Clause, the Tenth Amendment, and federalism. The course emphasizes, above all, the political role of the judiciary.
A study of the discursive and non-discursive aspects of protest from 1974-2024. Focus on the forms and functions of rhetorics and counter-rhetorics in U.S. controversies over civil rights, women’s rights, LBGTQIA+ rights, the environment, anti-war protests, and disability rights, among other social movements. Prerequisite: One course in rhetoric.
This introductory course explores the interlocking forms of oppression circumscribing Black women’s lives in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the ways in which their lived experiences and social realities are influenced by constructions of race, gender, class, sexuality, and other markers of difference. It contextualizes Black women’s struggles for social justice historically within the broader narratives of Black freedom struggles and the Women’s Rights Movement. It underscores the ways in which despite their marginalized status, Black women have used their agency within both the private and public realms to interrogate, challenge, and resist their subordination and subvert the status quo, particularly as it is reinforced in negative constructions of Black female identity.
Anthropology
Though content varies from semester to semester, this intermediate class focuses on a special topic in Anthropology not fully covered in existing courses. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic differs.
This course considers the ways in which ethnicity, race, religion, gender, class and culture shape differential access to natural resources and a healthy living environment. Drawing on anthropological studies of local ecological knowledge, political economies and city and regional planning, the class asks how disproportionate experiences of environmental benefits and burdens can be redressed in societies around the globe. Students consider culturally-informed routes to food and water security and socioecological resilience in the wake of climate change.
A place-based introduction to the Anthropology of Religion, the seminar engages students in thoughtful examination of the relationship between religious beliefs and practices and their environmental contexts. While including the major religious traditions, the course particularly considers indigenous, historic and prehistoric sacred sites around the globe. Examining religious syncretism due to historical conquest or latter 20th century globalization, the class focuses on sacred landscapes and waterscapes.
This is a dynamic course in plant-human interaction that bridges cultural anthropology and related disciplines like economic botany, archaeology, and environmental history to explore a selection of economic plants that have shaped human society. This course follows case studies of select taxa to explore their origins and past uses, impacts of colonial encounters, effects of climate change, and other contemporary social and political entanglements. Special attention will be given to issues of plant use and Indigenous resilience, sovereignty, and cultural revitalization, as well as potential contributions to sustainable futures and agrobiodiversity.
This course considers the role of water in shaping human societies. Beginning with an examination of how the search for fresh water resources influenced the global migration of Paleolithic humans, the seminar explores theories about the relationship between the control of water through irrigation, social complexity, the emergence of state level societies, and the place of water in world cosmologies and religious ritual. The course concludes by considering contemporary water insecurity and how understanding water cultures can foster policies for socioeconomic resilience.
A seminar on a topic related to anthropology. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic differs.
A seminar on a topic related to anthropology. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic differs.
Designed to train upper-division anthropology students to develop and carry out field research, the course first focuses on specific field methods used by anthropologists, ethnomethodology, network analysis, and statistical analysis. The second part of the course comprises a supervised field study where such methods can be tested. The last part of the course consists of data analysis and presentation.
The historical development of anthropological theory beginning with positivism and classical evolutionary thinking through that of the neo-evolutionists. Consideration of different historical approaches is followed by exploration of cultural materialism, structuralism, Marxism, symbolic interpretation, and practice theory. The course concludes with a survey of post-modernism and collaborative approaches.
This course introduces students to the diverse peoples, societies, and cultural practices associated with the Middle East North Africa (MENA). Course content is grounded in written and visual sources from anthropology but also draws on historical research, investigative journalism, documentary film, and popular media. Using these materials, the class explores several topics that have been of enduring interest to anthropologists of–and from–the region: religious practices and daily life, gender identities and sexualities, political power and resistance, and the formation of diasporic communities. Coverage of these topics also considers the conditions of knowledge production about the region and its political, social and cultural implications.
One of the defining features of life in the 21st century is the speed and intensity with which people, capital, commodities, ideas, and information mov—or flow—across the globe. These global flows however, impact people and communities in profoundly unequal ways. This course explores these uneven impacts from an anthropological perspective, by looking at how people in different parts of the world experience and live with “globalization.” Drawing primarily on ethnographic readings, this class asks: how do global flows shape our daily lives—not only economically and politically, but socially and culturally as well? How do they change both our sense of who we are and our experience of the world?
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 media involving spatial and temporal dimensions, including sculpture, video, sound, installation, computer-aided design, and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) fabrication. The course incorporates the fundamental theoretical, technical and aesthetic principles of composition in space and time. Assignments involve design of sound; video production; computer modeling; traditional and non-traditional sculpture techniques.