New Degree Requirements in Power, Inequity, and Justice

From an economics course on discrimination and inequality to the Spanish course “Afro-Diasporic Latin America,” Bryn Mawr students had a number of options to choose from to meet the college’s new Power, Inequity, and Justice degree requirement, which was instituted in Fall 2023.

For Associate Professor of Anthropology Susanna Fioratta, the requirement provided the perfect opportunity to revisit a course she hadn’t offered for several years, Culture, Power, and Politics.

Readings for the course included Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland by Begoña Aretxaga and Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship by Aimee Meredith Cox.

“The new requirement is an opportunity to purposefully engage with students in thinking about power anthropologically,” says Fioratta. “That is, we’re interested both in understanding what power looks like in everyday life, and in how our daily practices are linked to powerful traditions and institutions in the world beyond us.”