Courses

INST B101 Introduction to International Studies

Not offered 2022-23

This course introduces students to International Studies, an interdisciplinary social scientific field. What is the contemporary "international" world order and how does one study it? How is the "International" similar or different to "Global," the "Planetary" or other ways of conceptualizing the "World"? The class seeks answers to these questions in a few parts. After a brief introduction, we will first conceptualize the planetary by theorizing the global environment, climate change, and biodiversity loss, the theory of the "Anthropocene," and social scientific critiques of this geologic theory. These critiques trace the roots of contemporary ecological crises to the history of colonialism, modernity and capitalism. Thus, in the second part of the course, we will investigate the historical origins of the present. We will situate the contemporary "international" world order within the longue durée: from early forms of "globalization," to colonialism, and imperialism; to revolutionary struggles for freedom, independence, and self-determination; and finally, the legacies of 20th-century histories of decolonization, modernization, development, and international relations theory. Through social scientific, ethnographic, and documentary case studies we'll explore the complex impacts of decolonization, development, postcolonialism and global inequality on local economies, ecologies, and cultures. Finally, we will conclude by examining globalization in the 21- century with case studies of global social movements for social, racial, and environmental justice that will challenge us to apply the insights we have gained across the course.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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INST B201 Themes in International Studies

Fall 2022

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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INST B217 Social Movements, Power, and Resistance

Spring 2023

This course will introduce students to the study of transnational social movements. Globalization has created unprecedented problems of inequality, exploitation, and environmental crisis however, its networks and logics by globalization have also created exciting opportunities for activists to organize across borders, tackle issues of global concern, and develop creative solutions. We will make use of ethnographic case studies, documentary film, and an interdisciplinary social science literature to examine transnational movements on a variety of themes such as: human rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, the environment, biodiversity conservation, climate justice, the alter-globalization movement, and the rights of nature. Students will learn about the historical context of transnationalism, theories of social movement and collective action, the study of networks of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the strategies mobilized by transnational actors to advocate on issues of social and environmental justice.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward International Studies

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INST B308 Human Rights in a Global Perspective

Spring 2023

In the 20th century, the global world order transformed from one organized around empires and imperial domination to one of nation-states, self-determination, and human rights. This course will examine contemporary struggles for human rights within the context of the history of colonization and decolonization, the legacy of anti-colonial struggles and the significance of these legacies to contemporary struggles over nationalism, migration, racial justice and citizenship.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward International Studies

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INST B315 Humans & Non-Humans

Spring 2023

Anthropology is the study of humans, but the idea of the "human" always implies the category of the "non-human." Humanity is defined in its relation to "non-humans": ranging from tools and technology, to domesticated (and undomesticated) animals, to agricultural crops, our local ecologies, and the global environment. What does it mean to be human? What is the agency of non-humans in human worlds? Do forests think? Do dogs dream? What is the agency of a mountain? What are the rights of a river? What is the cultural significance of DNA? This course will trace Anthropological debates over the "human" and "non-human" in contexts ranging from Amerindian cosmology, to political ecology, and science and technology studies.

Counts Toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

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INST B398 Senior Seminar

This non-thesis capstone course is a seminar in which students do research, presentations and a final essay. These delve into topics from relevant courses in previously-taken tracks and may incorporate experiences from Praxis, Summer, or Study Abroad.

Counts Toward International Studies

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INST B399 Senior Project in International Studies

This involves the writing of a thesis or the production of an extended document on platforms such as a DVD or a website with the guidance of a designated adviser in International Studies.

Counts Toward International Studies

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INST B403 Supervised Work

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INST B425 Praxis III - Independent Study

Counts Toward Praxis Program

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ANTH B102 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Spring 2023

This course will explore the basic principles and methods of sociocultural anthropology. Through field research, direct observation, and participation in a group's daily life, sociocultural anthropologists examine the many ways that people organize their social institutions and cultural systems, ranging from the dynamics of life in small-scale societies to the transnational circulation of people, commodities, technologies and ideas. Sociocultural anthropology examines how many of the categories we assume to be "natural," such as kinship, gender, or race, are culturally and socially constructed. It examines how people's perceptions, beliefs, values, and actions are shaped by broader historical, economic, and political contexts. It is also a vital tool for understanding and critiquing imbalances of power in our contemporary world. Through a range of topically and geographically diverse course readings and films, and opportunities to practice ethnographic methodology, students will gain new analytical and methodological tools for understanding cultural difference, social organization, and social change.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Counts toward Child and Family Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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ANTH B202 Africa in the World

Not offered 2022-23

In this course, we will approach Africa with an emphasis on the many interconnections that link the continent with the rest of the world, through both time and space. Much popular talk about Africa in the U.S. is overwhelmingly negative--focusing on poverty, violence, and failed states--and often portrays Africa as something "other," both different from and unrelated to the United States and the rest of the world. But such preconceptions blatantly overlook what we know about historical and contemporary movements of people, ideas, materials, and money around the globe. Rather than regarding Africa as separate or apart, in this course we will examine the centrality of African engagements with these global movements. Rather than attempting a survey of particular, bounded African "peoples" or "cultures," we will explore complex issues and processes through interconnected topics including colonial and postcolonial politics, urban life, gender and sexuality, economic networks, development, and transnational migration. We will use these themes as guides for exploring larger, interlinked questions of social life in Africa and around the world. This course fulfills the BMC Anthropology major/minor ethnographic area requirement. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Counts toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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ANTH B213 Anthropology of Food

Fall 2022

Food is part of the universal human experience. But everyday experiences of food also reveal much about human difference. What we eat is intimately connected with who we are, where we belong, and how we see the world. In this course, we will use a socio-cultural perspective to explore how food helps us form families, national and religious communities, and other groups. We will also consider how food may become a source of inequality, a political symbol, and a subject of social discord. Examining both practical and ideological meanings of food and taste, this course will address issues of identity, social difference, and cultural experience.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Counts toward Child and Family Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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ANTH B251 Identity, Borders, and Globalization in Southeast Asia

Spring 2023

This course will explore the complexity and diversity of Southeast Asia and the ways political, economic, and environmental concerns bridge borders of countries in the region. We will examine belief systems, family systems, urbanization, economic change, politics and governance, health, and ecological change, among other topics. We will critically examine colonial, anti-colonial, nationalist, and internationalist meanings by looking at lived experiences that question what does it mean to be bound by regional designation and simultaneously participate in processes of one's own making that challenge and transcend locality. Through reading ethnographies of cultures in the region, we also will examine anthropologies and knowledge being produced outside of the Western academy in Southeast Asia, problematize area studies and the Western construction of a geopolitical region of nation-states called Southeast Asia, and examine the limits of such a designation, as well as benefits as countries in the region that engage in ASEAN contend with globalization. Prerequisite: Sophomore Standing and Above.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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ANTH B294 Culture, Power, and Politics

Not offered 2022-23

What do a country's national politics have to do with culture? Likewise, how are politics hidden below the surface of our everyday social lives? This course explores questions like these through anthropological approaches. Drawing on both classic and contemporary ethnographic studies from the U.S. and around the world, we will examine how social and cultural frameworks help us understand politics in new ways. We will investigate how people perceive the meanings and effects of the state; how nationalism and citizenship shape belonging on the one hand, and exclusion on the other; how understandings of gender, race, and difference converge with political action, ideology, and power; and how politics infuse everyday spaces including schools, businesses, homes, and even the dinner table. Prerequisite: ANTH B102, H103 or permission of the instructor.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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ANTH B327 Caste and Race: Analogies and Intersections

Spring 2023

With the global spread of the Black Lives Matter movement, and since the publication of American journalist Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, there has been a renewed interest in thinking comparatively about caste and race. This course will examine the intertwined histories and legacies of caste and race as imaginaries deployed both to create and enforce social inequality and hierarchy, and to describe and analyze it. In the first half of the course we will examine how analogies and comparisons between caste and race have been made at various moments over the long 20th century. In the second half of the course, we will explore how caste and race have intersected in lived experience, using historical sources, ethnography, and memoir. In tracking intersections of experience and the production of knowledge, our course will bring together history, anthropology, sociology, and related fields, as well as different world areas- India/South Asia and the U.S./Western hemisphere- that have traditionally been held apart in the modern academy. Prerequisite: One course in Anthropology or History or related Social Science or Humanities departments, or permission of the instructors.

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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ANTH B339 Migrants, Refugees, and Life Across Borders

Not offered 2022-23

Borders are often taken for granted as natural divisions in the world, but they are actually the products of political, historical, and social processes. Border crossing is often framed as an aberration or even a crisis, but people have moved for as long as humans have existed. This course approaches borders from an anthropological perspective by foregrounding the experiences of the people who move across them. We explore the interconnected categories of migrants and refugees to understand how people cross borders under different kinds of circumstances: some voluntary, others fleeing conflict or persecution, and still others that seem to fall between these ideal types. We will critically examine how migrants and refugees are qualitatively described and quantitatively defined, as these discursive constructions often determine legal status and reception in host countries, and also inform governmental and humanitarian responses. We will read a selection of ethnographies examining different kinds of migrant and refugee movements in Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Asia, culminating in an extended case study of Africans in China.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Counts toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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ANTH B354 Political Economy, Gender, Ethnicity and Transformation in Vietnam

Not offered 2022-23

Today, Vietnam is in the midst of dramatic social, economic and political changes brought about through a shift from a central economy to a market/capitalist economy since the late 1980s. These changes have resulted in urbanization, a rise in consumption, changes in land use, movement of people, environmental consequences of economic development, and shifts in social and economic relationships and cultural practices as the country has moved from low income to middle income status. This course examines culture and society in Vietnam focusing largely on contemporary Vietnam, but with a view to continuities and historical precedent in past centuries. In this course, we will draw on anthropological studies of Vietnam, as well as literature and historical studies. Relationships between the individual, family, gender, ethnicity, community, land, and state will pervade the topics addressed in the course, as will the importance of political economy, nation, and globalization. In addition to class seminar discussions, students will view documentary and fictional films about Vietnamese culture. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher or first years with ANTH 102.

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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ARCH B242 Colonies and Colonization in the Ancient Mediterranean

Fall 2022

This course focuses on the character and consequences of colonization, colonialism, and imperialism in the ancient Mediterranean. Using archaeological and textual evidence, we will examine the history, practice, and physical manifestations of colonization from the earliest Phoenician and Greek colonies through the imperial world of the Roman Empire. We will discuss a variety of approaches and frameworks used to explore the intersection of migration and mobility, colonization and colonialism, and imperial states and identities in the Classical world, and will explore the impact of these processes on the development of wider Mediterranean networks, identities, and histories.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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ARCH B244 Great Empires of the Ancient Near East

Fall 2022

A survey of the history, material culture, political and religious ideologies of, and interactions among, the five great empires of the ancient Near East of the second and first millennia B.C.E.: New Kingdom Egypt, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia, the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires in Mesopotamia, and the Persian Empire in Iran.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Middle Eastern/Central Asian/North African Studies

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CITY B229 Topics in Comparative Urbanism

Section 001 (Spring 2024): Colonial & Post Colonial Reflections
Section 001 (Spring 2023): Migration, Race, and Conflict

Spring 2023

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Current topic description: Probing the relations of colonial and post-colonial power that both structure and are structured by cities, this writing-intensive class employs a comparative case study approach to explore social, cultural and spatial realities of everyday life in these deeply divided cities. We will examine and compare history, form and processes of differentiation and reconstruction of urban and national life in Hong Kong, Belfast, the Magreb-Paris axis, and the Mexican-American border.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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CITY B240 Cities of the Global South

Fall 2022

This course surveys the dynamic social and spatial processes that make (and constantly re-make) cities in the Global South. We examine what it means to be a city in the 'Global South' and study the commonalities that unite these spaces in a post-colonial, post-Bretton Woods world. That said, this is a course that centers diversity among cases in Latin America, the Middle East/North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia: the unique demands and interventions of people and community groups working for a better urban life, the experimental efforts of local political leaders and planners, and the ways in which particular local histories layer upon themselves to produce a world of singular urban experiences. Local film, memoir, activist non-fiction, and interviews with local planners and practitioners will supplement academic readings to provide a 'street-level' view of everyday life in global cities.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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EALC B131 Chinese Civilization

Spring 2023

A broad chronological survey of Chinese culture and society from the Bronze Age to the 1800s, with special reference to such topics as belief, family, language, the arts and sociopolitical organization. Readings include primary sources in English translation and secondary studies.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward East Asian Languages and Cultures

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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EALC B264 Human Rights in China

Spring 2023

This course will examine China's human rights issues from a historical perspective. The topics include diverse perspectives on human rights, historical background, civil rights, religious practice, justice system, education, as well as the problems concerning some social groups such as migrant laborers, women, ethnic minorities and peasants.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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EALC B325 Topics in Chinese History and Culture

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Legal Culture in Chinese History

Fall 2022

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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EALC B353 The Environment on China's Frontiers

Not offered 2022-23

This seminar explores environmental issues on China's frontiers from a historical perspective. It focuses on the particular relationship between the environment and the frontier, examining how these two variables have interacted. The course will deal with the issues such as the relationship between the environment and human ethnic and cultural traditions, social movements, economic growth, political and legal institutions and practices, and changing perceptions. The frontier regions under discussion include Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and the southwestern ethnic areas, which are all important in defining what China is and who the Chinese are.

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ECON B225 Economic Development

Spring 2023

Examination of the issues related to and the policies designed to promote economic development in the developing economies of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Focus is on why some developing economies grow faster than others and why some growth paths are more equitable, poverty reducing, and environmentally sustainable than others. Includes consideration of the impact of international trade and investment policy, macroeconomic policies (exchange rate, monetary and fiscal policy) and sector policies (industry, agriculture, education, population, and environment) on development outcomes in a wide range of political and institutional contexts. Prerequisite: ECON B105.

Counts Toward Counts toward Environmental Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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ECON B236 Introduction to International Economics

Fall 2022

An introduction to international economics through theory, policy issues, and problems. The course surveys international trade and finance, as well as topics in international economics. It investigates why and what a nation trades, the consequences of such trade, globalized production, the role of trade policy, the economics of immigration, the behavior and effects of exchange rates, and the macroeconomic implications of trade and capital flows.Prerequisites: ECON B105. The course is not open to students who have taken ECON B316 or B348.

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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ECON B316 International Macroeconomics

Fall 2022

Examines the theory of, and current issues in, international macroeconomics and international finance. Considers the role of international factors in macroeconomic performance; policy-making in an open economy; exchange rate systems and exchange rate behavior; international financial integration; and international financial crises. Writing Intensive.Prerequisite: ECON B202 and ECON 253 or 304.

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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ECON B317 The Economics of Agricultural and Rural Development

Fall 2022

Close to 900 million people living in extreme poverty live in rural regions and derive their income from agriculture. Many of them practice subsistence farming, consuming only what they grow. This class examines the economics of agricultural systems in poor countries, the challenges facing them, and why they account for such a large share of the world's poor. The class will do this from the perspectives of microeconomic theory, econometric research, development economics, environmental economics, and political economy. Writing Intensive. Prerequisite: ECON B200: Intermediate Microeconomics and either ECON B253: Introduction to Econometrics or ECON B304: Econometrics

Quantitative Readiness Required (QR)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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ECON B385 Democracy and Development

Not offered 2022-23

From 1974 to the late 1990's the number of democracies grew from 39 to 117. This "third wave," the collapse of communism and developmental successes in East Asia have led some to argue the triumph of democracy and markets. Since the late 1990's, democracy's third wave has stalled, and some fear a reverse wave and democratic breakdowns. We will question this phenomenon through the disciplines of economics, history, political science and sociology drawing from theoretical, case study and classical literature. Prerequisites: ECON 200; ECON 253 or 304; and one course in Political Science OR Junior or Senior Standing in Political Science OR Permission of the Instructor.

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Peace, Justice and Human Rights

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ENGL B237 Cultural Memory and State-Sanctioned Violence in Latinx Literature

Not offered 2022-23

This course examines how Latinx literature grapples with state-sanctioned violence, cultural memory, and struggles for justice in the Americas. Attending to the histories of dictatorship and civil war in Central and South America, we will focus on a range of genres--including novels, memoir, poetry, film, and murals--to explore how memory and the imagination can contest state-sanctioned violence, how torture and disappearances haunt the present, how hetereopatriarchal and white supremacist discourses are embedded in authoritarian regimes, and how U.S. imperialism has impacted undocumented migration. Throughout the course we will analyze the various creative techniques Latinx cultural producers use to resist violence and imagine justice.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

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GNST B245 Introduction to Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies

Not offered 2022-23

A broad, interdisciplinary survey of themes uniting and dividing societies from the Iberian Peninsula to the Americas. The class introduces the methods and interests of all departments in the concentration, posing problems of cultural continuity and change, globalization and struggles within dynamic histories, political economies, and creative expressions. Course is taught in English.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Counts toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HART B340 Topics in Material Culture

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Textiles of Asia
Section 001 (Spring 2024): Textiles of Asia

Spring 2023

This is a topics course. Course content varies. This course was formerly numbered HART B345; students who previously completed HART B345: Topics in Material Culture: Textiles of Asia may not repeat this course.

Current topic description: "The Textiles of Asia," explores the wide-ranging textile traditions of Asia, spanning from Chinese and Indonesian fabrics to the weavings of Iran and Turkey from 200 BCE to the present day. While recent scholarship on Asian textiles has emphasized the global dimensions of the luxury trade, this course will delve into more local questions including techniques of production, regional paths of circulation, and specific contexts of reception. We will consider the social, political and economic role of textiles, interdisciplinary approaches to textiles, and the way that textile history is intertwined with questions of class and gender. "The Textiles of Asia" will consider the historical divisions between the "fine" and "decorative" arts, and the treatment of textiles in exhibitions of art from across many regions of the world.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Counts toward Museum Studies

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HIST B101 The Historical Imagination

Spring 2023

Explores some of the ways people have thought about, represented, and used the past across time and space. Introduces students to modern historical practices and debates through examination and discussion of texts and archives that range from scholarly monographs and documents to monuments, oral traditions, and other media.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B200 The Atlantic World 1492-1800

Spring 2023

The aim of this course is to provide an understanding of the way in which peoples, goods, and ideas from Africa, Europe. and the Americas came together to form an interconnected Atlantic World system. The course is designed to chart the manner in which an integrated system was created in the Americas in the early modern period, rather than to treat the history of the Atlantic World as nothing more than an expanded version of North American, Caribbean, or Latin American history.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Peace, Justice and Human Rights

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HIST B212 Pirates, Travelers, and Natural Historians: 1492-1750

Not offered 2022-23

In the early modern period, conquistadors, missionaries, travelers, pirates, and natural historians wrote interesting texts in which they tried to integrate the New World into their existing frameworks of knowledge. This intellectual endeavor was an adjunct to the physical conquest of American space, and provides a framework though which we will explore the processes of imperial competition, state formation, and indigenous and African resistance to colonialism.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Environmental Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B234 An Introduction to Middle Eastern History

Fall 2022

This course serves as an introduction to the history of the modern Middle East. We will also explore the narratives and debates that have shaped the field of Middle East history. Topics include orientalism, colonialism, political reform, social, cultural, and intellectual movements, nationalism, and the Cold War. Readings will be drawn from the fields of history, anthropology, politics, and literature.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Middle Eastern/Central Asian/North African Studies

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HIST B236 African History since 1800

Section 001 (Fall 2023): Africa since 1800

Spring 2023

The course analyzes the history of Africa in the last two hundred years in the context of global political economy. We will examine the major themes in modern African history, including the 19th-century state formation, expansion, or restructuration; partition and resistance; colonial rule; economic, social, political, religious, and cultural developments; nationalism; post-independence politics, economics, and society, as well as conflicts and the burden of disease. The course will also introduce students to the sources and methods of African history.

Current topic description: The course deals with the continuities and transformations of African societies and cultures in the context of European colonial rule, capitalist exploitation, urbanization, and westernization. Special attention will be paid to the options available to the Africans and the choices they made in colonial situations and after independence. The course will also introduce students to the sources and methods in history as well as to various historical interpretations of African history.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B237 Themes in Modern African History

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Public History in Africa
Section 001 (Spring 2024): Public History in Africa

Spring 2023

This is a topics course. Course content varies

Current topic description: This course will explore the colonial and postcolonial practices in public history. It will address the following question: in an age of "fake news" and "history wars", how can we understand the relationship between the public and the place of the past? Topics will include exhibitions; museum practices and colonial outlooks; commemorations and identities; monuments; film, popular history and memory; heritage and regeneration; oral history and public engagement; and public policy. We will also discuss ongoing inter-sectional and interdisciplinary decolonizing approaches to breaking received hierarchies and narratives. The course will also introduce students to the methodological and theoretical issues in the practice of public history.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Museum Studies

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HIST B238 From Bordellos to Cybersex History of Sexuality in Modern Europe

Not offered 2022-23

This course is a detailed examination of the changing nature and definition of sexuality in Europe from the late nineteenth century to the present. Throughout the semester we critically examine how understandings of sexuality changed--from how it was discussed and how authorities tried to control it to how the practice of sexuality evolved. Focusing on both discourses and lived experiences, the class will explore sexuality in the context of the following themes; prostitution and sex trafficking, the rise of medicine with a particular attention to sexology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis; the birth of the homo/hetero/bisexual divide; the rise of the "New Woman"; abortion and contraception; the "sexual revolution" of the 60s; pornography and consumerism; LGBTQ activism; concluding with considering sexuality in the age of cyber as well as genetic technology. In examining these issues we will question the role and influence of different political systems and war on sexuality. By paying special attention to the rise of modern nation-states, forces of nationalism, and the impacts of imperialism we will interrogate the nature of regulation and experiences of sexuality in different locations in Europe from the late nineteenth century to the present.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B242 American Politics and Society: 1945 to the Present

Not offered 2022-23

How did we get here? This course looks at the stunning transformation of America after WWII. From a country devastated by economic crisis and wedded to isolationism prior to the war, America turned itself into an international powerhouse. Massive grass roots resistance forced the United States to abandon its system of racial apartheid, to open opportunities to women, and to reinvent its very definition as it incorporated immigrants from around the world. Simultaneously, American music and film broke free from their staid moorings and permanently altered international culture. Finally, through the "War on Terror", starting after 9/11, America initiated an aggressive new foreign policy that has shattered traditional rules of warfare and reoriented global politics. We will explore the political, social, and cultural factors that have driven modern American history. Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B253 Themes in Modern Europe: Europe in the Global Age

Not offered 2022-23

This course is a survey of Europe from the seventeenth century to the present. Throughout the semester we will look at the people, events, and major themes that shaped the history of modern Europe. We will cover a large number of topics, from social movements and political ideologies, to national identities and gender norms. We will examine what we mean when we speak of "Europe" and we will place Europe within the context of the wider, global world. Through the use of primary sources, students will also learn the skills and techniques necessary in the work of a historian. We will examine how historians write, interpret, and construct histories from a series of facts, and what place these histories have in our contemporary world.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B256 Disciplining Bodies in Motion: Migration & Colonial Modernity

Not offered 2022-23

Migration and borderlands dominate headlines as well as the everyday experiences of millions of people around the world, as vast numbers of human bodies move through spaces interrupted by variously-contested and regulated natural barriers (rivers, seas, mountains, deserts, etc.) and barricades (social, cultural and psychic as well as physical) constructed by not only States, but by a wide range of "non-State actors" as well. Notably, since 1984, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, the majority of migrants to this country have been women, a trend that is also evident elsewhere (within as well as across national borders). While migration arguably is a characteristic feature of humanity across time and space, this course will situate our current transnational conjuncture in the long duree of global migration engendered by developments at the turn of the 16th century, focusing on the migration of "labor" from the Indian subcontinent to the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the Persian Gulf, Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas, Britain, and Europe. Focusing on indentured and contract labor migration from British India, we will consider if and how the historically-contingent and sometime politically opportunistic and transactional tactics, regulations, protocols around these "labor" migrations contributed simultaneously to naturalizing and also obscuring gendered assumptions about work and (whether performed within, between or outside their spaces, still predicated on) households, (geographical) mobility, and the bodies (profoundly gendered, "raced," and hierarchized) that engage in all three. To what degree have techniques of governance (measuring, surveilling) practiced and routinized through the various colonial empires of the 19th and 20th centuries informed the production and circulation of knowledge (specifically academic disciplines like History) the naturalization of analytical and descriptive categories like labor, race and class -- and vice versa? .

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B257 British Empire I: Capitalism and Slavery

Not offered 2022-23

Focusing on the Atlantic slave trade and the slave plantation mode of production, this course explores English colonization, and the emergence and the decline of British Empire in the Americas and Caribbean from the 17th through the late 20th centuries. It tracks some of the intersecting and overlapping routes--and roots--connecting histories and politics within and between these "new" world locations. It also tracks the further and proliferating links between developments in these regions and the histories and politics of regions in the "old" world, from the north Atlantic to the South China sea.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B258 British Empire: Imagining Indias

Not offered 2022-23

This course considers ideas about and experiences of "modern" India, i.e., India during the colonial and post-Independence periods (roughly 1757-present). While "India" and "Indian history" along with "British empire" and "British history" will be the ostensible objects of our consideration and discussions, the course proposes that their imagination and meanings are continually mediated by a wide variety of institutions, agents, and analytical categories (nation, religion, class, race, gender, to name a few examples). The course uses primary sources, scholarly analyses, and cultural productions to explore the political economies of knowledge, representation, and power in the production of modernity.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B263 Impact of Empire: Britain 1858-1960

Not offered 2022-23

Is empire (on the British variant of which, in its heyday, the sun reportedly never set) securely superseded (as some have confidently asserted) or does it endure and, if so, in what forms and domains? Focusing on the expanding British colonial empire from the 17th century on, this course considers its impact through the dynamics of specific commodities' production, and consumption (sugar and tea, for example, but also labor and governance), their cultures (from plantations and factories to households to the state), and their disciplinary technologies (including domesticity, the nation, and discourses on history and modernity).

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HIST B264 Passages from India: 1800-Present

Not offered 2022-23

This course explores the histories and effects of migration from the Indian subcontinent to far-flung destinations across the globe. It starts with the circular migrations of traders, merchants, and pilgrims in the medieval period from the Indian subcontinent to points east (in southeast Asia) and west (eastern Africa). However, the focus of the course is on modern migrations from the subcontinent, from the indentured labor migrations of the British colonial period (to Africa, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific) to the post-Independence emigrations from the new nations of the subcontinent to Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B265 Colonial Encounters in the Americas

Fall 2022

The course explores the confrontations, conquests and accommodations that formed the "ground-level" experience of day-to-day colonialism throughout the Americas. The course is comparative in scope, examining events and structures in North, South and Central America, with particular attention paid to indigenous peoples and the nature of indigenous leadership in the colonial world of the 18th century.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B280 History of Witchcraft and Magic

Not offered 2022-23

This course examines the social, cultural, and legal history of witchcraft and magic throughout European history. We will examine the values and attitudes that have influenced beliefs about witchcraft and the supernatural, both historically and in the present day. This course will pay specific attention to the role of gender and sexuality in the history of witchcraft, as the vast majority of individuals charged in the witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were indeed women. We will also study accusations of witchcraft, breaking down the power dynamics and assumptions at play behind the witch trials, and the effects of these trials on gender relations in European society. This class will track the intersections of magic and science throughout the early modern period, and the reconciliation of belief systems during the Enlightenment. We will carry our analysis into the modern period, touching on Victorian spiritualism and mysticism, the emergence of Neo-Paganism, and the return to the figure of the goddess. Our final foray will be and examination of the political "witch-hunts" of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the enduring trope of the "witch" in modern political culture.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B292 Women in Britain since 1750

Not offered 2022-23

Focusing on contemporary and historical narratives, this course explores the ongoing production, circulation and refraction of discourses on gender and nation as well as race, empire and modernity since the mid-18th century. Texts will incorporate visual material as well as literary evidence and culture and consider the crystallization of the discipline of history itself.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B307 Topics in European and Britain Cultural History

Not offered 2022-23

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B319 Topics in Modern European History

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Growing Up in Communism

Fall 2022

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Current topic description: From Red Lights to Urban Gardens, History and Culture of Central European Cities. From the quaint bustling cafes of Vienna to the boulevards and bathhouses of Budapest this seminar will explore the social, cultural, and structural history of Central European cities from the late nineteenth century to the present. In cultural capitals like Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and Berlin we will examine how architecture, class formation, popular and high art, leisure, youth culture, (im)migration, gender, and sexuality created and built the urban (and suburban) landscape of Modern Europe.

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B337 Topics in African History

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Cities, Epidemics, Pandemics
Section 001 (Fall 2023): Cities, Epidemics, Pandemics
Section 001 (Spring 2023): Healing Traditions/W. Africa
Section 001 (Spring 2024): Hist of Global Health Africa

Fall 2022, Spring 2023

This is a topics course. Topics vary.

Current topic description:In the recent decades, the world has experienced an increasing threat for public health from the emerging infectious diseases that have provoked epidemics and pandemics. The course will focus on the impact of epidemics and pandemics on cities in Africa. We will discuss the issues of public health history, social and cultural history of disease as well as the issues of the history of medicine. We will examine the histories of global initiatives to control disease in Africa from an interdisciplinary perspective (history, and social and biomedical sciences), using case studies from across the continent. We will explore various themes, such as the anxiety and panic caused by the disease outbreaks; the state, medical, and popular responses; the politics of disease control; the conflicts of interests between the interests of commerce, public health, and civil liberties; and the health disparities within cities. We will focus on the colonial and postcolonial cities in Africa. We will also explore the questions regarding the sources of African history and their quality.

Current topic description: The course will focus on the issues of public health history, social and cultural history of disease as well as the issues of the history of medicine. We will examine the histories of global initiatives to control disease in Africa from an interdisciplinary perspective (history, and social and biomedical sciences), using case studies from across the continent. These initiatives involve the relationship between states, NGOs, universities, pharmaceutical companies, food industry, and other nonstate actors. We will explore various themes, such as the indigenous theories of disease and therapies; disease, imperialism and medicine; medical pluralism in contemporary Africa; the emerging diseases, medical education, women in medicine, and differential access to health care. We will also explore the questions regarding the sources of African history and their quality.

Counts Toward Counts toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Health Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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HIST B371 Topics in Atlantic History: The Early Modern Pirate in Fact and Fiction

Fall 2022

This course will explore piracy in the Americas in the period 1550-1750. We will investigate the historical reality of pirates and what they did, and the manner in which pirates have entered the popular imagination through fiction and films. Pirates have been depicted as lovable rogues, anti-establishment rebels, and enlightened multiculturalists who were skilled in dealing with the indigenous and African peoples of the Americas. The course will examine the facts and the fictions surrounding these important historical actors.

Counts Toward Counts toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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MEST B208 Introduction to the History of the Medieval Middle East

Not offered 2022-23

This course will provide an overview of the political and social history of the Middle East and North Africa from the sixth century C.E., in the Late Antique Period, with the tensions between the Byzantine and Sasanian empires and the rise of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula, to the fourteenth century C.E., with the Mongol invasions marking the end of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad. While students will be introduced to the political figures and frameworks of this period, there will also be a focus on social and cultural developments among the diverse populations that lived in the medieval Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa, their relationships with one another, and how they interacted with their neighbors. Issues of political and religious authority and legitimacy, the development of social and cultural institutions, the production of artistic and literary works will also be explored.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward Middle Eastern/Central Asian/North African Studies

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MEST B210 The Art and Architecture of Islamic Spirituality

Not offered 2022-23

This course examines how Muslim societies across time and space have used art and architecture in different ways to express and understand inner dimensions of spirituality and mysticism. Topics to be studied include: the calligraphical remnants of the early Islamic period; inscriptions found on buildings and gravestones; the majestic architecture of mosques, shrines, seminaries, and Sufi lodges; the brilliant arts of the book; the commemorative iconography and passion plays of Ashura devotion; the souvenir culture of modern shrine visitation; and the modern art of twenty-first century Sufism. Readings include works from history, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, and the history of art and architecture.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Counts toward Middle Eastern/Central Asian/North African Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Visual Studies

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MEST B305 Merchants, Pilgrims & Rogues: Travels through the Mid East

Not offered 2022-23

This course will critically approach the various ways that people have traveled to and within the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa in the medieval and modern periods. It will explore the many reasons that induced people to travel by looking at travelogues produced by these various travelers, the material culture of travel (e.g. pilgrimage scrolls, architecture and infrastructure that facilitated travel and lodging, movement of commodities, postcards, etc.), and scholarly work on travel, tourism, and migration more broadly. This course will include travels by merchants, pilgrims, adventurers, scholars, conquering armies, imperial powers, oil tycoons, and refugees.

Counts Toward Counts toward Middle Eastern/Central Asian/North African Studies

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PHIL B221 Ethics

Fall 2022

An introduction to ethics by way of an examination of moral theories and a discussion of important ancient, modern, and contemporary texts which established theories such as virtue ethics, deontology, utilitarianism, relativism, emotivism, care ethics. This course considers questions concerning freedom, responsibility, and obligation. How should we live our lives and interact with others? How should we think about ethics in a global context? Is ethics independent of culture? A variety of practical issues such as reproductive rights, euthanasia, animal rights and the environment will be considered.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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PHIL B225 Global Ethical Issues

Fall 2022

The need for a critical analysis of what justice is and requires has become urgent in a context of increasing globalization, the emergence of new forms of conflict and war, high rates of poverty within and across borders and the prospect of environmental devastation. This course examines prevailing theories and issues of justice as well as approaches and challenges by non-western, post-colonial, feminist, race, class, and disability theorists.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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PHIL B248 Markets and Morality

Spring 2023

Markets are everywhere today: if you want to find a job, if you want to buy some good, or if you want to sell some service, you will inevitably have to submit yourself to their norms. Yet, this omnipresence of markets raises fundamental ethical questions. Is it really good that we organize exchange and production largely through markets? How are societies and individuals impacted by centrally relying on them? Should we, much rather, prefer a planned economy? Or would such a planned economy unduly constrain people's freedom? And, if we opt for markets, what are their moral limits? Should human organs or access to lawmakers be distributed via a market? Should access to health-care be governed by market principles? This seminar explores these ethical and political questions through an unusually diverse set of texts. The syllabus brings together a broad set of perspectives from both the history of philosophy as well as from the contemporary Anglo-American debate. That way, we draw on a broad set of ideas in order to tackle the philosophical, moral and existential challenge that markets pose: and, while going along, familiarize ourselves with classic authors from both the European and Anglo-American traditions in social/political philosophy.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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POLS B131 Introduction to Comparative Politics

Spring 2023

This course is designed to provide an introduction to the discipline of comparative politics. We will explore the primary approaches and concepts scholars employ in order to systematically analyze the political world. In doing so, we will also examine the political structures, institutions, and behaviors of a number of countries around the world. Questions we will engage with include: What is power and how is it exercised? What are the differences between democratic and authoritarian regimes? How do different countries develop their economies? What factors shape the relationships between states and their societies? By the end of this course, students will be equipped to answer these questions and prepared for further study in political science.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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POLS B141 Introduction to International Politics

Fall 2022

An introduction to international relations, exploring its main subdivisions and theoretical approaches. Phenomena and problems in world politics examined include systems of power management, imperialism, globalization, war, bargaining, and peace. Problems and institutions of international economy and international law are also addressed. This course assumes a reasonable knowledge of modern world history.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Counts toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Peace, Justice and Human Rights

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POLS B224 Comparative Political Phil: China, Greece, and the "West"

Spring 2023

An introduction to the dialogic construction of comparative political philosophy, using texts from several cultures or worlds of thought: ancient and modern China, ancient Greece, and the modern West. The course will have three parts. First, a consideration of the synchronous emergence of philosophy in ancient (Axial Age) China and Greece; second, the 19th century invention of the modern "West" and Chinese responses to this development; and third, the current discussions and debates about globalization, democracy, and human rights now going on in China and the West. Prerequisite: At least one course in either Philosophy, Political Theory, or East Asian Studies, or consent of the instructor.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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POLS B228 Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ancient and Early Modern

Fall 2022

An introduction to the fundamental problems of political philosophy, especially the relationship between political life and the human good or goods.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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POLS B241 The Politics of International Law and Institutions

Not offered 2022-23

An introduction to international law, which assumes a working knowledge of modern world history and politics since World War II. The origins of modern international legal norms in philosophy and political necessity are explored, showing the schools of thought to which the understandings of these origins give rise. Significant cases are used to illustrate various principles and problems. Prerequisite: POLS B141

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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POLS B249 Politics of Economic Development

Fall 2022

How do we explain the variations of political and economic systems in the world? What is the relationship between the state and the market? To what extent does the timing of industrialization affect the viability of certain developmental strategies? This seminar introduces the intellectual history of comparative political economy and development studies with readings on both comparative political economy and international political economy. First, we will examine the debates on the dynamics of the state and the market in the development and globalization process. Second, we will explore specific case studies to discuss: 1) how the political and economic processes have changed in response to the interaction of the domestic and international arenas, 2) whether and how the late developers learned from the experiences of early developers, 3) how the international economy and international financial crisis shaped domestic development strategies. Lastly, we will analyze the developmental concerns at the sub-national level with financial liberalization. Prerequisite: Freshman can enroll after they have taken 100 level courses in social science and after getting instructor permission.

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POLS B283 Middle East Politics

Fall 2022

This course offers an overview on the contemporary politics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the relevant social (mostly political) science work on it. It brings together empirical knowledge on domestic and transnational politics in different countries of the region and how empirical political science around the big questions is conducted. Each module of the course revolves around a central question that has been keeping social and political scientists busy in the last decades: What triggers risky protest movements in authoritarian settings? Why has the MENA region remained authoritarian despite successive global waves of democratization? Under which conditions do transitions to democracies succeed? Do monarchies in the Middle East have an advantage in ensuring political stability, and if so, why? Is it impossible to ensure good governance and peace at the same time in divided societies? What motivates people to take up arms in the name of religion and sect? What are the reasons behind the economic underdevelopment of the MENA region? Students are also invited to think about these "big questions" and take MENA countries as their case studies, while at the same significantly enhancing their contextual knowledge about the region. No prerequisites, but either some prior familiarity with the Middle East or a prior political science course encouraged.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Middle Eastern/Central Asian/North African Studies

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POLS B367 China and the World: Implications of China's Rise

Fall 2022

In the 20th Century, China's rise has been one of the most distinctive political affairs changing the landscape of regional and world politics. Especially, China's breathtaking growth has challenged the foundations and limits of the market economy and political liberalization theoretically and empirically. This course examines the Chinese economic and political development and its implications for other Asian countries and the world. This course has three aims: 1) to facilitate an in-depth understanding of the Chinese Economic development model in comparison to other development models, 2) to conduct a comprehensive analysis of political and socio-economic exchanges of China and its relations with other major countries in East Asia, and 3) to construct a thorough understanding of challenges and opportunities for China from its extraordinary economic growth. This is a senior seminar, and a previous course in comparative politics, international relations or East Asian studies is required. This course meet writing intensive requirement. Prerequisite: Junior standing or higher.

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POLS B391 International Political Economy

Fall 2022

This seminar examines the growing importance of economic issues in world politics and traces the development of the modern world economy from its origins in colonialism and the industrial revolution, through to the globalization of recent decades. Major paradigms in political economy are critically examined. Aspects of and issues in international economic relations such as development, finance, trade, migration, and foreign investment are examined in the light of selected approaches. This course is open to all students who have the prerequisites. Prerequisite: One course in International Politics or Economics is required. Preference is given to seniors although juniors are accepted.

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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RUSS B220 Chornobyl

Not offered 2022-23

This course introduces students to the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, its consequences, and its representations across a range of cultures and media through a comparative lens and as a global phenomenon. Culture meets ecology, science, history, and politics. Students will contribute to a digital exhibition and physical installation. Taught in translation. No knowledge of Russian required.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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RUSS B232 Coal, Oil, Nuclear: Narrative Afterlives

Not offered 2022-23

Coal. Oil. Nuclear energy. These items give shape to our everyday lives in countless ways. They impact our health, our politics, and our very survival on earth.. Nevertheless, because these resources permeate nearly every aspect of our existence, the human mind can struggle to comprehend them in their totality. In this course, we'll explore texts that engage with our environment to help us bring humans' relationship to these materials into focus. Scientific, historical, and economic studies tend to focus on their scale and widespread impact. Reading stories, watching

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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RUSS B258 Soviet and Eastern European Cinema of the 1960s

Fall 2022

This course examines 1960s Soviet and Eastern European "New Wave" cinema, which won worldwide acclaim through its treatment of war, gender, and aesthetics. Films from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Yugoslavia will be viewed and analyzed, accompanied by readings on film history and theory. All films shown with subtitles; no knowledge of Russian or previous study of film required.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Counts toward Film Studies

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SOCL B102 Society, Culture, and the Individual

Fall 2022, Spring 2023

Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. It involves what C. Wright Mills called the "sociological imagination," a way of seeing the relationship between individuals and the larger forces of society and history. In this course, we will practice using our sociological imaginations to think about the world around us. We will examine how social norms and structures are created and maintained, and we will analyze how these structures shape people's behavior and choices, often without their realizing it. After learning to think sociologically, we will examine the centrality of inequality in society, focusing specifically on the intersecting dimensions of race and ethnicity, gender, and class, and the role of social structures and institutions (such as the family and education) in society. Overall, this course draws our attention toward our own presuppositions-the things we take for granted in our everyday lives-and provides us with a systematic framework within which we can analyze those presuppositions and identify their effects..

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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SOCL B317 Comparative Social Policy: Cuba, China, US, Scandinavia

Fall 2022

This course will examine different countries' policy choices to address different societal challenges. Four societal types - socialist (Cuba), post-socialist (China), capitalist (US), and social-democratic (Scandinavia) - will be studies to help us understand how these different kinds of societies conceive of social problems and propose and implement attempted solutions. We will examine particular problems/solutions in four domains: health/sports; education; environment; technological development. As we explore these domains, we will attend to methodological issues involved in making historical and institutional comparisons

Counts Toward Counts toward Education

Counts Toward Counts toward Health Studies

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SPAN B232 Encuentros culturales en América Latina

Spring 2023

This course introduces canonical Latin American texts through translation scenes represented in them. Arranged chronologically since the first encounters during the conquest until contemporary times, the readings trace different modulations of a constant linguistic and cultural preoccupation with translation in Latin America. Translation scenes are analyzed through close reading, and then considered as barometers for understanding the broader cultural climate. Special emphasis is placed on key notions for literary analysis and translation studies, as well as for linking the literary text with cultural, social, political, and historical processes. Prerequisite: SPAN B120 or another SPAN 200-level course.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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SPAN B307 Cervantes

Fall 2022

A study of themes, structure, and style of Cervantes' masterpiece Don Quijote and its impact on world literature. In addition to a close reading of the text and a consideration of narrative theory, the course examines the impact of Don Quijote on the visual arts, music, film, and popular culture. Counts toward the Latin American, Latino and Iberian Peoples and Cultures Concentration. Prerequisite: at least one SPAN 200-level course. Course fulfills pre-1700 requirement and HC's pre-1898 requirement

Counts Toward Counts toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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SPAN B312 Latin American and Latino Art and the Question of the Masses

Spring 2023

The course examines the ways in which Latin American and Latino texts (paintings, murals, sculptures, and some narratives) construct "minor," "featureless" and "anonymous" characters, thus demarcating how and which members of society can and cannot advance a plot, act independently and/or be agents of change. By focusing the attention on what is de-emphasized, we will explore how artistic works, through their form, are themselves political actors in the social life of Latin America, the US, and beyond. We will also consider the place of Latin American and Latino Art in the US imaginary and in institutions such as museums and galleries. Prerequisites: Course is taught in English and is open to all juniors or seniors who have taken at least one 200-level course in a literature department. Students seeking Spanish credit must have taken BMC Spanish 120 and at least one other Spanish course at a 200-level, or received permission from instructor. Course does not meet an Approach. Counts toward Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies. Counts toward Museum Studies.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Counts toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Museum Studies

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SPAN B326 Voces trasplantadas: teoría y práctica de la traducción

Fall 2022

Taught in Spanish. Translation has been argued to be both impossible and inevitable. Theoretically impossible, because no two languages are perfectly equivalent; practically inevitable, because cultures, and human beings, are constantly interpreting one another--and understanding themselves in the process. This course is an introduction to translation as a practice with linguistic, literary, and cultural implications. It is organized in three steps. We will begin by exploring the linguistic aspect of translation: the theories (and myths) about language difference and equivalence, and how they can be put into practice. Then we will focus on translating literary texts of different genres (from canonical epics to film, from poems to short stories and proverbs), and we will simultaneously examine how the various types of texts have spurred very different opinions about what is a good or bad translation, what is desirable, and what is not. Finally, we will trace the role of translation in cultural exchanges, as well as its defining presence in contemporary debates on "world literature." Prerequisite: At least one 200 level Spanish course.

Counts Toward Counts toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward Praxis Program

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SPAN B333 La invención de América: Escrituras europeas del Nuevo Mundo

Spring 2023

Beginning in 1492, Spanish explorers, soldiers, and friars visited, noted, and imagined what they initially would call the New World. According to Alfonso Reyes, America was for Europe, rather than a sudden and new reality, a complete poetic invention. The astonished -pleased, marveled, horrified- writings of newly arrived Spaniards drew not only the real components of a vast and very different world from the European one, but also the fictional components: everything obscure, remote, or misunderstood that experience or the senses could not grasp, and the powers of imagination would. This course seeks to explore some of the key texts of the "invention of America" (Reyes) in the first centuries of the Conquest and Colonization. Our goal is to analyze how "the imperial eye" (Pratt) looked at and noted the American lands -its men and women, its cultures and wealth- projecting on them its oldest fears, fantasies, ambitions, and hopes: America was also "a new Europe", says Ángel Rosenblat, with all the political, literary and epistemic weight that such an idea implies. We will work with fragments of stories, chronicles, and poems on the following thematic axes: the first contacts, a rich and abundant nature (pearls, gold, silver, fish, fruits, spices, wood), the great Mesoamerican cultures, the Andean "empire", the extreme south and the eternal horizon, the interior lands and their immense rivers and mountains, the "bestiary of the Indies", the American myths (El Dorado, the Amazons) and some of the great and tragic historical native American figures as they were perceived and written by the Spaniards. Prerequisite: At least one SPAN 200 level course

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Counts toward Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies

Counts Toward Counts toward International Studies

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