Search Results
Your search for courses · during 2023-24 · tagged with AMST Democracy Activism · returned 39 results
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AMST 100 Walt Whitman’s New York City 6 credits
“O City / Behold me! Incarnate me as I have incarnated you!” An investigation of the burgeoning metropolitan city where the young Walter Whitman became a poet in the 1850s. Combining historical inquiry into the lives of nineteenth-century citizens of Brooklyn and Manhattan with analysis of Whitman’s varied journalistic writings and utterly original poetry, we will reconstruct how Whitman found his muse and his distinctively modern subject in the geography, demographics, markets, politics, and erotics of New York.
Held for new first year students
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AMST 142 U.S. Latinx Identity and Representation: Cultures of Belonging 6 credits
Popular culture and mass media serve as key sites of identity formation. In this course we will examine U.S. Latinx identity formation by focusing on three case studies: Selena Quintanilla, the singer; telenovelas; and the Disney films Coco and Encanto. These case studies will help us explore how transnationalism, intergenerational knowledge and trauma, and civic and cultural belonging contribute to the shaping of U.S. Latinx collective identities. We will attend to the particular processes of production and reception as we study how audiences engage with cultural producers both in private and in public (notably on social media).
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AMST 142.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty:Adriana Estill 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WWeitz Center 132 11:10am-12:20pm
- FWeitz Center 132 12:00pm-1:00pm
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AMST 231 Contemporary Indigenous Activism 6 credits
Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island and the Pacific Islands are fighting to revitalize Indigenous languages, uphold tribal sovereignty, and combat violence against Indigenous women, among many other struggles. This course shines a light on contemporary Indigenous activism and investigates social justice through the lens of Indian Country, asking questions like: What tools are movements using to promote Indigenous resurgence? And what are the educational, gendered, environmental, linguistic, and religious struggles to which these movements respond? Students will acquire an understanding of contemporary Indigenous movements, the issues they address, and the responsibilities of non-Native people living on Indigenous lands.
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AMST 231.00 Fall 2023
- Faculty:Meredith McCoy 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 236 10:10am-11:55am
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ARTH 247 Architecture Since 1950 6 credits
This course begins by considering the international triumph of architecture’s Modern Movement as seen in key works by Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and their followers. Soon after modernism’s rise, however, architects began to question the movement’s tenets and the role that architecture as a discipline plays in the fashioning of society. This course will examine the central actors in this backlash from Britain, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and elsewhere before exploring the architectural debates surrounding definitions of postmodernism. The course will conclude by considering the impact of both modernism and postmodernism on contemporary architectural practice.
- Fall 2023
- Literary/Artistic Analysis
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ARTH 247.00 Fall 2023
- Faculty:Ross Elfline 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THBoliou 161 10:10am-11:55am
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CAMS 225 Film Noir: The Dark Side of the American Dream 6 credits
After Americans grasped the enormity of the Depression and World War II, the glossy fantasies of 1930s cinema seemed hollow indeed. During the 1940s, the movies, our true national pastime, took a nosedive into pessimism. The result? A collection of exceptional films populated with tough guys and dangerous women lurking in the shadows of nasty urban landscapes. This course focuses on classic American noir as well as neo-noir from a variety of perspectives, including mode and genre, visual style and narrative structure, postwar culture and politics, and race, gender, and sexuality. Requirements include two screenings per week and several short papers.
Extra Time required. Evening Screenings.
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CAMS 225.00 Spring 2024
- Faculty:Carol Donelan 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WWeitz Center 132 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FWeitz Center 132 2:20pm-3:20pm
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CAMS 270 Nonfiction 6 credits
This course addresses nonfiction media as both art form and historical practice by exploring the expressive, rhetorical, and political possibilities of nonfiction production. A focus on relationships between form and content and between makers, subjects, and viewers will inform our approach. Throughout the course we will pay special attention to the ethical concerns that arise from making media about others’ lives. We will engage with diverse modes of nonfiction production including essayistic, experimental, and participatory forms and create community videos in partnership with Carleton’s Center for Community and Civic Engagement and local organizations. The class culminates in the production of a significant independent nonfiction media project.
Extra Time
- Fall 2023
- Arts Practice Intercultural Domestic Studies
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Cinema and Media Studies 111 or instructor consent
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CAMS 270.00 Fall 2023
- Faculty:Laska Jimsen 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- T, THWeitz Center 133 10:10am-11:55am
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ECON 270 Economics of the Public Sector 6 credits
This course provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the government’s role in the U.S. economy. Emphasis is placed on policy analysis using the criteria of efficiency and equity. Topics include rationales for government intervention; analysis of alternative public expenditure programs from a partial and/or general equilibrium framework; the incidence of various types of taxes; models of collective choice; cost-benefit analysis; intergovernmental fiscal relations.
- Spring 2024
- Quantitative Reasoning Encounter Social Inquiry Writing Requirement
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Economics 110 and 111
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ECON 270.00 Spring 2024
- Faculty:Jenny Bourne 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THWillis 203 10:10am-11:55am
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ECON 271 Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment 6 credits
This course focuses on environmental economics, energy economics, and the relationship between them. Economic incentives for pollution abatement, the industrial organization of energy production, optimal depletion rates of energy sources, and the environmental and economic consequences of alternate energy sources are analyzed.
- Fall 2023
- Quantitative Reasoning Encounter Social Inquiry
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Economics 111
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ECON 271.00 Fall 2023
- Faculty:Aaron Swoboda 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WWillis 211 11:10am-12:20pm
- FWillis 211 12:00pm-1:00pm
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ECON 273 Water and Western Economic Development 6 credits
This course examines scarce water resources as a legal/political/economic factor in the economic development of the western United States, using and combining insights from environmental economics, law and economics, institutional economics, and economic history. Topics include the economic growth of the western economy, surface- and groundwater management, water markets, western water law, Indian water rights, surface- and groundwater pollution, and instream flow protection.
- Winter 2024
- Quantitative Reasoning Encounter Social Inquiry
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Economics 111
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ECON 273.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty:Mark Kanazawa 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THWillis 211 1:15pm-3:00pm
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EDUC 245 School Reform: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow 6 credits
This course explores major issues in the history of school reform in the United States, with an emphasis on the twentieth century. Readings and discussions examine the role of education in American society, the various and often competing goals of school reformers, and the dynamics of educational change. With particular focus on the American high school, this course looks at why so much reform has produced so little change.
- Winter 2024
- Intercultural Domestic Studies Social Inquiry
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EDUC 245.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty:Ryan Oto 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THWillis 114 1:15pm-3:00pm
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EDUC 250 Fixing Schools: Politics and Policy in American Education 6 credits
How can we fix American public schools? What is “broken” about our schools? How should they be repaired? And who should lead the fix? This course will examine the two leading contemporary educational reform movements: accountability and school choice. With an emphasis on the nature of the teaching profession and the work of foundations, this course will analyze the policy agendas of different reform groups, exploring the dynamic interactions among the many different stakeholders responsible for shaping American education.
- Fall 2023
- Intercultural Domestic Studies Social Inquiry
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EDUC 250.00 Fall 2023
- Faculty:Ryan Oto 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WWillis 114 9:50am-11:00am
- FWillis 114 9:40am-10:40am
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ENGL 228 Banned. Censored. Reviled. 6 credits
What makes a work of art dangerous? While present-day attacks on books, libraries, and schools feel unprecedented, writers and artists have always had to fight efforts to suppress their work, often at great personal and societal cost. We will study literature, films, graphic novels, images, music, and other materials that have been challenged and attacked as offensive, taboo, or transgressive, and also explore strategies of resistance to censorship.
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ENGL 230 Studies in African American Literature: From the 1950s to the Present 6 credits
We will explore developments in African American literature since the 1950s with a focus on literary expression in the Civil Rights Era; on the Black Arts Movement; on the new wave of feminist/womanist writing; and on the experimental and futuristic fictions of the twenty-first century. Authors to be read include Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Malcolm X, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, August Wilson, Charles Johnson, Ntozake Shange, Gloria Naylor, Suzan-Lori Parks, Kevin Young, and Tracy Smith.
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ENTS 210 Environmental Justice 6 credits
The environmental justice movement seeks greater participation by marginalized communities in environmental policy, and equity in the distribution of environmental harms and benefits. This course will examine the meaning of “environmental justice,” the history of the movement, the empirical foundation for the movement’s claims, and specific policy questions. Our focus is the United States, but students will have the opportunity to research environmental justice in other countries.
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ENTS 210.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty: Staff
- Size:25
- M, WWillis 204 11:10am-12:20pm
- FWillis 204 12:00pm-1:00pm
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ENTS 307 Wilderness Field Studies: Grand Canyon 6 credits
This course is the second half of a two-course sequence focused on the study of wilderness in American society and culture. The course will begin with an Off-Campus Studies program at Grand Canyon National Park, where we will learn about the natural and human history of the Grand Canyon region, examine contemporary issues facing the park, meet with officials from the National Park Service and other local experts, conduct research, and experience the park through hiking and camping. The course will culminate in spring term with the completion and presentation of a major research project.
HIST 306 required previous winter term, Extra Time
- Spring 2024
- Humanistic Inquiry Intercultural Domestic Studies Writing Requirement
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History 306 and Acceptance in Wilderness Studies at the Grand Canyon OCS program
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ENTS 307.00 Spring 2024
- Faculty:George Vrtis 🏫 👤
- Size:12
- T, THLibrary 344 10:10am-11:55am
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GWSS 212 Foundations of LGBTQ Studies 6 credits
This course introduces students to foundational interdisciplinary works in sexuality and gender studies, while focusing on the construction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identities in the United States. In exploring sexual and gender diversity throughout the term, this seminar highlights the complexity and variability of experiences of desire, identification, embodiment, self-definition, and community-building across different historical periods, and in relation to intersections of race, class, ethnicity, and other identities.
- Spring 2024
- Humanistic Inquiry Intercultural Domestic Studies
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GWSS 212.00 Spring 2024
- Faculty:Candace Moore 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 236 1:15pm-3:00pm
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GWSS 334 Feminist Theory 6 credits
This seminar explores key feminist theoretical perspectives and debates, using a historical framework to situate these ideas in relationship to philosophical and political discourses produced during specific cultural moments. This seminar ultimately aims to interrogate the positionality of the theorists we study, considering the cultural privileges as well as vectors of marginalization that influence those viewpoints. We follow feminist thinkers as they propose, challenge, critique, subvert, and revise theoretical traditions of liberalism, Marxism, Socialism, radicalism, separatism, utopianism, multiculturalism, postmodernism, queerness, and post-colonialism. We ask: What gets counted as feminist theory? What gets left out?
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GWSS 334.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty: Staff
- Size:15
- T, THCMC 319 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 123 U.S. Women’s History Since 1877 6 credits
In the twentieth century women participated in the redefinition of politics and the state, sexuality and family life, and work and leisure as the United States became a modern, largely urban society. We will explore how the dimensions of race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality shaped diverse women’s experiences of these historical changes. Topics will include: immigration, the expansion of the welfare system and the consumer economy, labor force segmentation and the world wars, and women’s activism in civil rights, labor, peace and feminist movements.
- Winter 2024
- Humanistic Inquiry Intercultural Domestic Studies
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HIST 123.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty:Annette Igra 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- T, THLeighton 330 1:15pm-3:00pm
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HIST 126 African American History II 6 credits
This course analyzes Black Freedom activism, its goals, and protagonists from Reconstruction until today. Topics include the evolution of racial segregation and its legal and de facto expressions in the South and across the nation, the Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance, Black activism in the New Deal era, the effects of World War II and the Cold War, mass activism in the 1950s and 1960s, white supremacist resistance against Black rights, Black Power activism and Black Internationalism, the “War on Drugs,” racialized welfare state reforms, and police brutality, the election of Barack Obama, and the path to #BlackLivesMatter today.
- Winter 2024
- Humanistic Inquiry Intercultural Domestic Studies
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HIST 126.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty:Rebecca Brueckmann 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- T, THLeighton 330 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 202 Oral History Research Methods: Theory, Ethics, and Practice 6 credits
This course introduces oral history methods in historical research. Students will examine power and authority, personal and collective memory, trust, representation, and community benefit in oral history projects. This iteration of the course will emphasize scholarship from Indigenous Studies and Indigenous scholars whose work employs oral histories. Students will deepen and apply their learning through an Academic Civic Engagement partnership with a local Indigenous organization; please note that this course requires some travel to Minneapolis, which will be organized by the professor. While prior coursework in history, Indigenous Studies, or American Studies would be useful, it is not mandatory.
Extra time, 1-2 field trips to the Twin Cities to conduct interviews
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HIST 202.00 Fall 2023
- Faculty:Meredith McCoy 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 402 1:15pm-3:00pm
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HIST 205 American Environmental History 6 credits
Environmental concerns, conflicts, and change mark the course of American history, from the distant colonial past to our own day. This course will consider the nature of these eco-cultural developments, focusing on the complicated ways that human thought and perception, culture and society, and natural processes and biota have all combined to forge Americans’ changing relationship with the natural world. Topics will include Native American subsistence strategies, Euroamerican settlement, industrialization, urbanization, consumption, and the environmental movement. As we explore these issues, one of our overarching goals will be to develop an historical context for thinking deeply about contemporary environmental dilemmas.
- Winter 2024, Spring 2024
- Humanistic Inquiry Intercultural Domestic Studies
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HIST 205.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty:George Vrtis 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 236 1:15pm-3:00pm
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HIST 205.00 Spring 2024
- Faculty:George Vrtis 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 426 1:15pm-3:00pm
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HIST 220 From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Black History and/in Film 6 credits
This course focuses on the representation of African American history in popular US-American movies. It will introduce students to the field of visual history, using cinema as a primary source. Through films from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the seminar will analyze African American history, (pop-)cultural depictions, and memory culture. We will discuss subjects, narrative arcs, stylistic choices, production design, performative and film industry practices, and historical receptions of movies. The topics include slavery, racial segregation and white supremacy, the Black Freedom Movement, controversies and conflicts in Black communities, Black LGBTQIA+ history, ghettoization and police brutality, Black feminism, and Afrofuturism.
- Spring 2024
- Humanistic Inquiry Intercultural Domestic Studies
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HIST 220.00 Spring 2024
- Faculty:Rebecca Brueckmann 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 426 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 226 U.S. Consumer Culture 6 credits
In the period after 1880, the growth of a mass consumer society recast issues of identity, gender, race, class, family, and political life. We will explore the development of consumer culture through such topics as advertising and mass media, the body and sexuality, consumerist politics in the labor movement, and the response to the Americanization of consumption abroad. We will read contemporary critics such as Thorstein Veblen, as well as historians engaged in weighing the possibilities of abundance against the growth of corporate power.
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HIST 226.00 Fall 2023
- Faculty:Annette Igra 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 202 3:10pm-4:55pm
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HIST 301 Indigenous Histories at Carleton 6 credits
Carleton’s new campus land acknowledgement affirms that this is Dakota land, but how did Carleton come to be here? What are the histories of Indigenous faculty, students, and staff at Carleton? In this course, students will investigate Indigenous histories on our campus by conducting original research about how Carleton acquired its landbase, its historic relationships to Dakota and Anishinaabeg people, histories of on-campus activism, the shifting demographics of Native students on campus, and the histories of Indigenous faculty and staff, among others. Students will situate these histories within the broader context of federal Indian policies and Indigenous resistance.
- Spring 2024
- Intercultural Domestic Studies Writing Requirement
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HIST 301.00 Spring 2024
- Faculty:Meredith McCoy 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- T, THLeighton 330 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 306 American Wilderness 6 credits
To many Americans, wild lands are among the nation’s most treasured places. Yellowstone, Yosemite, Mount Rainier, Joshua Tree, Grand Canyon – the names alone stir the heart, the mind, and the imagination. But where do those thoughts and feelings come from, and how have they both reflected and shaped American culture, society, and nature over the last three centuries? These are the central issues and questions that we will pursue in this seminar and in its companion course, ENTS 307 Wilderness Field Studies: Grand Canyon (which includes an Off-Campus Studies program at Grand Canyon National Park).
Spring Break OCS Program Course. ENTS 307 required for Spring Term registration.
- Winter 2024
- Humanistic Inquiry Intercultural Domestic Studies Writing Requirement
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Acceptance in Wilderness Studies at the Grand Canyon OCS program. History 205 is recommended but not required.
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HIST 306.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty:George Vrtis 🏫 👤
- Size:12
- T, THLibrary 344 10:10am-11:55am
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MUSC 126 America’s Music 6 credits
A survey of American music with particular attention to the interaction of the folk, popular, and classical realms. No musical experience required.
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MUSC 126.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty: Staff
- Size:25
- M, WWeitz Center 230 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FWeitz Center 230 1:10pm-2:10pm
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POSC 122 Politics in America: Liberty and Equality 6 credits
An introduction to American government and politics. Focus on the Congress, Presidency, political parties and interest groups, the courts and the Constitution. Particular attention will be given to the public policy debates that divide liberals and conservatives and how these divisions are rooted in American political culture.
- Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024
- Intercultural Domestic Studies Quantitative Reasoning Encounter Social Inquiry Writing Requirement
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POSC 122.00 Fall 2023
- Faculty:Ryan Dawkins 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WHasenstab 105 11:10am-12:20pm
- FHasenstab 105 12:00pm-1:00pm
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POSC 122.01 Winter 2024
- Faculty: Staff
- Size:30
- M, WWeitz Center 230 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FWeitz Center 230 2:20pm-3:20pm
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POSC 122.00 Spring 2024
- Faculty: Staff
- Size:30
- M, WWeitz Center 230 9:50am-11:00am
- FWeitz Center 230 9:40am-10:40am
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POSC 205 Congress and The Presidency 6 credits
The Constitution of the United States designed Congress to be the most powerful branch of government because the framers intended our national politics to revolve around the legislative branch. However, since the late nineteenth century, the political center of gravity in Washington has shifted to the executive branch, which has reshaped American democracy around the presidency. Why did this happen? What does it mean for the balance of power between our elected branches of government? This course will explore the patterns of conflict and cooperation between Congress and the Presidency from the framing of the Constitution to the present.
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POSC 205.00 Spring 2024
- Faculty:Ryan Dawkins 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WHasenstab 105 8:30am-9:40am
- FHasenstab 105 8:30am-9:30am
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POSC 210 Misinformation, Political Rumors, and Conspiracy Theories 6 credits
Why do people believe in conspiracy theories, hold on to misinformed beliefs even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, and/or spread political and social rumors that may have little basis in fact? Who is most vulnerable to these various forms of misinformation? What are the normative and political consequences of misperceptions (if any)? This course explores the psychological, political, and philosophical approaches to the study of the causes, consequences, and tenacity of conspiracy beliefs, misinformation, and political rumors, as well as possible approaches that journalists could employ to combat misperceptions.
- Spring 2024
- Intercultural Domestic Studies Social Inquiry
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POSC 272 Constitutional Law II 6 credits
This course will explore the United States Constitution and the legal doctrines that have emerged from it, using them as lenses through which to understand the history—and shape the future—of this country. Using prominent Supreme Court opinions as teaching tools and loci of debate (including cases on the Court’s recent and current docket), this course will explore the different kind of theoretical approaches with which to make Constitutional arguments and interpret the Constitution. It is one of two paired courses (the other being POSC 271) that complement each other. Both courses will address the structure and functioning of the United States government, and will explore in greater depth the historic Constitutional “trends” towards greater equality and more liberty (albeit slowly, haltingly, and with steps both forward and backward). This course will focus in particular on how gender equality is very much unfinished Constitutional work on our way towards a “more perfect union.” This topic will include an examination of the Court’s recent controversial decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In exploring matters of personal liberty, this course will focus in particular on First Amendment freedom of speech and other fundamental rights protected under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Finally, in examining governmental structures, this course will emphasize the separation of powers across the branches of the federal government. The course will require close reading of judicial opinions and other texts, and learning how to construct arguments using logic and precedent. POSC 271 is not a prerequisite for POSC 272. The two courses can be taken independently, although having taking POSC 271 will provide students with a broader and more nuanced foundation for exploring the themes covered of this course
- Winter 2024
- Social Inquiry
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POSC 272.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty:Steven Poskanzer 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WHasenstab 105 9:50am-11:00am
- FHasenstab 105 9:40am-10:40am
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POSC 273 Race and Politics in the U.S. 6 credits
This course addresses race and ethnicity in U.S. politics. Following an introduction to historical, sociological, and psychological approaches to the study of race and ethnicity, we apply these approaches to understanding the ways in which racial attitudes have been structured along a number of political and policy dimensions, e.g., welfare, education, criminal justice. Students will gain an increased understanding of the multiple contexts that shape contemporary racial and ethnic politics and policies in the U.S., and will consider the role of institutional design, policy development, representation, and racial attitudes among the general U.S. public and political environment.
- Winter 2024
- Intercultural Domestic Studies Social Inquiry
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POSC 273.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty:Christina Farhart 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WHasenstab 105 11:10am-12:20pm
- FHasenstab 105 12:00pm-1:00pm
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POSC 275 Black Political Thought 6 credits
Western political thought has developed numerous ways to think about freedom, citizenship, the relationship between state and citizens, and more. This course turns to the tradition of Black political thought to consider how thinkers within this tradition developed new and alternative ways to conceptualize freedom and citizenship from racial domination through slavery, apartheid, and colonialism. We center thinkers of Black political thought in the modern Atlantic world from the Antebellum era through the era of mass incarceration and neoliberalism to provide a historical and theoretical analysis of freedom.
- Winter 2024
- Social Inquiry
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POSC 275.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty: Staff
- Size:25
- M, WHasenstab 109 11:10am-12:20pm
- FHasenstab 109 12:00pm-1:00pm
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POSC 302 Subordinated Politics and Intergroup Relations 6 credits
How do social and political groups interact? How do we understand these interactions in relation to power? This course will introduce the basic approaches and debates in the study of prejudice, racial attitudes, and intergroup relations. We will focus on three main questions. First, how do we understand and study prejudice and racism as they relate to U.S. politics? Second, how do group identities, stereotyping, and other factors help us understand the legitimation of discrimination, group hierarchy, and social domination? Third, what are the political and social challenges associated with reducing prejudice?
- Spring 2024
- Intercultural Domestic Studies Social Inquiry
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POSC 302.00 Spring 2024
- Faculty:Christina Farhart 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- T, THHasenstab 109 1:15pm-3:00pm
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POSC 315 Polarization and Democratic Decline in the United States 6 credits
The United States is more politically polarized today than at any time since the late nineteenth century, leaving lawmakers, journalists, and experts increasingly concerned that the toxicity in our politics is making the country vulnerable to political instability, violence, and democratic decline. Moreover, citizens are increasingly willing to call into question the legitimacy of this country’s core electoral and governing institutions. How did the U.S. get to this point? What can be done about it? This course will examine political polarization as a central feature of American politics and the consequences for American democracy.
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RELG 140 Religion and American Culture 6 credits
This course explores the colorful, contested history of religion in American culture. While surveying the main contours of religion in the United States from the colonial era to the present, the course concentrates on a series of historical moments that reveal tensions between a quest for a (Protestant) American consensus and an abiding religious and cultural pluralism.
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RELG 140.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty:Michael McNally 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 402 1:15pm-3:00pm
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RELG 212 Black Religious Thought 6 credits
Although Black thinkers are well-known for discussing religion, the relationship between Blackness and religious thought is ambiguous. Much like religion can be understood in numerous ways, so does “Black” carry several meanings. In this course, we will investigate this ambiguity by unpacking how Black thinkers have expanded upon, reimagined, and rejected various forms of religious practices, beliefs, and institutions. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which these engagements are shaped by thinkers’ identification with, definition of, and politics surrounding Blackness and the African diaspora. The syllabus may include Baldwin, Hurston, Malcolm X, and Cone.
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RELG 212.00 Fall 2023
- Faculty: Staff
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 304 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 304 1:10pm-2:10pm
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RELG 236 Black Love: Religious, Political, and Cultural Discussions 6 credits
In 2021, the passing of Black feminist bell hooks led the scholarly journal Women’s Studies Quarterly (WSQ) to publish a special issue on Black love: hooks’ expertise. As is often the case in discussions of Blackness and love, the issue included many allusions to the divine and suggested some ties between race, love, and religion. Drawing inspiration from WSQ, this class will investigate the role religion, spirituality, and belief play in conversations about Blackness, love, and their intersection. The syllabus will include an array of academic essays, personal reflections, and creative works, including those by Lorde, Hartman, and Wonder.
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RELG 236.00 Winter 2024
- Faculty: Staff
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 303 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 303 2:20pm-3:20pm
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SOAN 225 Social Movements 6 credits
How is it that in specific historical moments ordinary people come together and undertake collective struggles for justice in social movements such as Black Lives Matter, Me Too, Standing Rock, immigrant, and LGBTQ rights? How have these movements theorized oppression, and what has been their vision for liberation? What collective change strategies have they proposed and what obstacles have they faced? We will explore specific case studies and use major sociological perspectives theorizing the emergence of movements, repertoires of protest, collective identity formation, frame alignment, and resource mobilization. We will foreground the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, race, and class in these movements.
- Spring 2024
- Intercultural Domestic Studies Social Inquiry
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SOAN 225.00 Spring 2024
- Faculty:Meera Sehgal 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 426 3:10pm-4:55pm
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THEA 227 Theatre for Social Change 6 credits
This class is an examination of significant artists who use theatre as a tool for envisioning and enacting social change. We will study the justice-making strategies of a variety of artists, including Augusto Boal, Cherríe Moraga, Anna Deavere Smith, among many other contemporary artists whose work continues to shape American society. We will also examine influential methods of using theatre for social change, including documentary theatre, Theatre of the Oppressed, theatre for young audiences, and theatre in prisons. The class will include a number of guest artist visits from people making work in the field. The final project will be an original theatrical creation that uses the strategies studied in class to address a contemporary social issue.
Extra Time
- Spring 2024
- Arts Practice
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THEA 227.00 Spring 2024
- Faculty:Jeanne Willcoxon 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WWeitz Center 172 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FWeitz Center 172 2:20pm-3:20pm