History

The history curriculum covers the globe. Most courses focus on particular regions or nations, but offerings also include courses that transcend geographical boundaries to examine subjects such as African diasporas, Islamic radicalism, or European influences on US intellectual history. Some courses are surveys—of colonial Latin America, for example, or Europe since World War II. Others zero in on more specific topics, such as medieval Christianity, the Cuban Revolution, urban poverty and public policy in the United States, or feminist movements and theories. While history seminars center on reading and discussion, many also train students in aspects of the historian’s craft, including archival research, historiographic analysis, and oral history.

History 2023-2024 Courses

First-Year Studies: Inventing America: Cultural Encounters and American Identity, 1607–1913

FYS—Year | 10 credits

“The past is a foreign country,” T. H. Hartley once declared, and perhaps the past of one’s own country is doubly so. The present, after all, always seems inevitable. Surely, the United States of 2023 is but the flowering of the seeds planted so many centuries ago. This course seeks to challenge this assumption, as we consider not only how Americans in the period from 1607 to 1913 differed from us but also how much they differed from one another. Indeed, neither the Native Americans who lived in North America, nor the Europeans who colonized that region, nor the Africans whom the colonists imported as slaves had any intention of establishing a new nation. Consequently, in examining American history from the early 17th century to the Civil War, the question should not be why did the United States divide during the Civil War but, rather, why were Americans able to unify as a nation at all? In our consideration of this question, we will focus on two interrelated themes: how these different cultures interacted with and affected one another and how Americans defined their identity. Who was considered American, and what did it mean to be an American? What was the relationship between American identity and other forms of social identity, such as gender, class, race, and culture? The course is not meant to be a comprehensive survey but, instead, will explore these questions through select case studies that illuminate major political, social, and cultural developments in American history from the colonial period to the early 20th century. Among the techniques we will use are role-play simulations of events such as the American Revolution and the Constitutional Convention—based on the Reacting to the Past pedagogy, developed by Mark Carnes at Barnard College—during which students will reenact the debates and conflicts surrounding those events. Students should be aware that, because these are reenactments, the process of playing the historical roles and immersing themselves in an earlier time can be emotionally intense and even uncomfortable. To enter the world of colonial and 19th-century America—one where people of European descent considered themselves more civilized than others, where women were viewed as subordinate to men, and where the elites saw themselves as superior to ordinary people—students should be prepared to engage in and express views that are alien and at times, indeed, aversive to them. The course thus aims to cultivate a sense of historical empathy by trying to understand the foreignness of the past on its own terms. Students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences during the first half of the fall semester and then biweekly thereafter.

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First-Year Studies: Ideas of Africa: Africa Writes Back

FYS—Year | 10 credits

The continent of Africa has variously been described as the birthplace of humanity, the Motherland, a country, a continent, Mother Africa, and a “heart of darkness.” All of these descriptions reflect representations of Africa, but how accurately do they reflect reality? The goal of this course is to study the intellectual history of what we know—or think we know—about modern Africa. Why is it that some of the most prominent images of Africa today are either negative (e.g., Africa as a diseased, hungry, war-ravaged continent) or romanticized (e.g., Africa as a mother figure, birthplace of civilization, or lush nature preserve)? A central theme of our discussions will be that ideas have a history that is as powerful as radioactive isotopes. In other words, ideas maintain a shelf life, even when their origins have long become obscured. Unfortunately, this has profound implications for Africa’s place in a modern, media-driven, globalized world where image can be as important as reality. Through the use of historical documents, political manifestos, philosophical treatises, travel narratives, autobiographies, and current news sources, we will study how the image of Africa has changed over time. We will trace the “heart of darkness” narrative and analyze why it has become such an enduring trope of modern Africa. Near the end of the semester, we will direct a significant proportion of our class discussions toward analyzing a contemporary event occurring on the African continent (preferably as a group project). Ultimately, our purpose will be to interrogate various descriptions of Africa over time and analyze where they originated from, why they exist, whether or not they are accurate, and what they mean for the future of African peoples in a globalized, interconnected, and increasingly hot world. The structure of the course will be FYS innovative: 13 students, with biweekly conferences alternating with some kind of small-group activity, at least for the first semester. This alternating small-group activity will either be a workshopping session or an on-going group project.

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First-Year Studies: The Urban Century: How Cities Shaped and Were Shaped by Modern European History

FYS—Year | 10 credits

In the middle of the 20th century, only 16 percent of Europeans lived in cities. On the eve of the World War I, that number had roughly doubled. In Western Europe, already half of the population was urban. Though many of those cities were small, with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, the European metropoles grew, too. By 1910 in Germany, for example, 21 percent lived in cities over the size of 100,000 inhabitants—up from only five percent in 1871. Berlin, Paris, London, St Petersburg, and Vienna all had several million citizens. This urbanization shaped, and was shaped by, European history. Industrialization and advances in agriculture, sanitation, and transportation played a vital role in this process. Wars and Europe’s changing borders shaped cities’ fate. Imperialism imposed European models of urban development on colonized societies and, in turn, brought imperial subjects to the metropole. Much of what we today think of as modern originated in cities. They often set political and cultural trends. The “Roaring Twenties” and the student movements of 1968 were fundamentally urban phenomena. Yet, precisely for this reason, cities also inspired vitriol and opposition—from nationalist back-to-nature advocates afraid of the negative consequences of their “cosmopolitan nature” to health care professionals worried by their detrimental effects on their inhabitants’ health. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s chief propagandist, railed against “Jewish Berlin.” To this day, conservative French politicians extol “la France profonde,” the true France to be found in its provincial towns rather than in Paris, Lyon, or Marseille. Through the lens of the city, this course investigates major developments in modern European history—from the birth of mass politics and the effects imperialism, to World War I and II, to the emergence of modernist art and environmentalism. Students will not only be introduced to European history but also to the historian’s craft. They will work with a variety of primary sources—from government documents to literature, from movies to propaganda speeches, from city maps to diary entries. In addition, they will learn to read secondary sources and analyze historiographical arguments. During the fall semester, students will have an individual conference with their don every other week and a group conference on alternating weeks. In the group conferences, we will discuss the nature of academic work in general and practice research, reading, writing, and editing skill; we will also, on occasion, use the time for movie screenings related to the course. In the spring semester, students will have individual conferences every other week.

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First-Year Studies: “We Carry It Within Us”: Culture and Politics in US History, 1776–1980

FYS—Year | 10 credits

“History is not merely something to read,” James Baldwin wrote in August 1965. “And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all we do.” This course is focused not only on history— what we consciously and unconsciously carry within us—but also on the acquisition of skills that will help you both as a college student and in life. Using the voices of the actors themselves, we will study the political and cultural work of Americans in order to read better, think better, write better, and articulate our ideas better. Rather than a representative survey of cultural history (which is, in this wonderfully diverse country, impossible), this course takes up the popular and the obscure, looking into the corners of American life for ideas, thoughts, and experiences of all kinds. Our focus will be on the themes of gender, race, and class but also will ponder sexuality, region, religion, immigration, and migration, among other themes. The course will be based on a spine of political history. The expectation is that you will come with some knowledge and will be attentive to what you do not know and then find out about it! Class will revolve around close readings of stories, cultural criticism, speeches, novels, memoir—mostly, but not exclusively, published sources—where authors work to change the minds of their readers. Those primary sources will be buttressed by articles and chapters from history textbooks. It will be challenging! This course will ask you to read more substantial work more carefully than perhaps you have before. We will discuss this work in seminar in both small groups and large; and at the end of each semester, there will be an oral exhibition pulling together the themes of the course in a meaningful way. This intellectual practice will ready you for your college career to come. In the fall, we will cover the period from the late-18th century to the late-19th; in the spring, we will move from the turn into the 20th century to near its end. Texts will include short stories, poetry, memoir, letters, and (in the spring) film. Examples in the first semester include Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the seduction novel Charlotte Temple by Suzanna Rowson, poetry by Phillis Wheatley, an unpublished novel on gender fluidity titled The Hermaphrodite by Julia Ward Howe, short stories by Herman Melville, Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott, and Ragged Dick, by Horatio Alger. The spring book list will reflect the interests of the students. Writing will be ample and consistent—thought pieces, along with short essays—with regular feedback so that you grow as a reader and writer. The subject of conference work can range widely within US cultural and political history: in the fall, to 1890; in the spring, all the way to the present. Along the way, we will try to make sense of the way we carry history, the way that it is present in all that we do. Conferences will be weekly until October Study Days, with the option of being biweekly thereafter.

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First-Year Studies: Romantic Europe

FYS—Year | 10 credits

Between the 1790s and the middle of the 19th century, European culture was powerfully shaped by the broad current of thought and feeling that we know as “Romanticism.” This course will examine the rise of the Romantic sensibility in the decades between the 1760s and 1800 and survey diverse manifestations of Romanticism in thought, literature, and art during the subsequent half-century. We will pay particular attention to the complex relations between Romanticism and two of the most portentous historical developments of its era: the French Revolution and the rise of national consciousness among Germans, Italians, and other European peoples. Readings will include prose fiction by Goethe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Sir Walter Scott, and Edgar Allen Poe; poetry by Wordsworth, Shelley, Hölderlin, and Mickiewicz; works on religion, ethics, and the philosophy of history; and political writings by the pioneers of modern conservativism, liberalism, and socialism. We will also look at Romantic painting and other forms of visual art. Students will meet individually with me every week during the fall term and every other week during the spring term. I will advise you about the conference project that you will be undertaking each semester and will offer you what help I can in navigating life at Sarah Lawrence College.

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First-Year Studies: In the Tradition: Introduction to African American History

FYS—Year | 10 credits

African American history is an important window into the history of the United States and the rise of the modern world. This course explores classic narratives and examines major developments. The classic slave narratives are stories of self-emancipation and self-determination. The major developments range from the Atlantic Slave Trade to the Black Renaissance. On the one hand, students examine the dynamics of modern racism; on the other, students explore the contours of African American social, cultural, and intellectual history. In this course, there will be weekly conferences for the first six weeks and biweekly conferences thereafter.

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Who Owns History? Urban and Ethnic History in America

Open, Large Lecture—Year | 10 credits

Who owns history? Did Black lives ever matter? Who is visible in our textbooks? Tragically, white supremacy is the master narrative that dominates the US history textbooks, insisting that white men were center stage in building America. The new historians have challenged that master narrative, directing the spotlight to the folks who built America. This lecture includes readings, discussions, and film screenings that shed new light on the role of Black workers who wrote self-emancipation narratives under the lash; on African American women writers, directors, actors, dancers, and artists in the Black Chicago Renaissance and the Harlem Renaissance, who shaped urban culture during the Popular Front and the Great Depression; on the rise of African American Muslims, who built communities and resisted racism; and on the historical voices of Rosa Parks and Maya Angelou, who retold the epic of the Black Revolt and reclaimed the role of women in the making of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. The screenings shed light on the many people who together made America, including the tremendous obstacles they overcame from the Dred Scott decision and the Chinese Exclusion Act to political barriers against Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans. Alongside Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, and Fannie Lou Hamer, the women in the Young Lords, the IWK (I Wor Kuen), and the Black Panthers insist that their voices matter.

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Making Latin America

Open, Small Lecture—Fall | 5 credits

This course examines Latin America in the making. From the time of Andean ayllus to the contemporary battles between the populist left and the populist right, this lecture course offers a survey of the more than five centuries of the history of the region that we know as Latin America. Although the region’s history is deeply embedded in global processes of capitalist expansion, imperial domination, and circulation of Western ideas, this course attempts to look at Latin America from the inside out. The course examines the ways in which landowners and campesinos, intellectuals and workers, military blacks, whites, and mestizos understood and shaped the history of this region and the world. The course will examine the rise and fall of the Aztec and Inca empires, the colonial order that emerged in its stead, independence from Iberian rule, and the division of the empire into a myriad of independent republics or states searching for a “nation.” In the second part of the course, by focusing on specific national trajectories, we will ask how the American and Iberian civilizations shaped the new national experiences and how those who made claims on the “nation” defined and transformed the colonial legacies. In the third and final portion of the course, we will study the long 20th century and the multiple experiences of, and interplay between, anti-Americanism, revolution, populism, and authoritarianism. We will ask how different national pacts and projects attempted to solve the problem of political inclusion and social integration that emerged after the consolidation of the 19th-century liberal state. Using primary and secondary sources, both fiction and film, the course will provide students with an understanding of historical phenomena such as mestizaje, caudillismo, populism, reformism, corruption, and informality, among other concepts key to the debates in contemporary Latin America. The course meets for one weekly lecture and one weekly group conference. Aside from mandatory attendance and participation, the requirements for the course include an individual exam, a collaborative research project, and a primary source analysis.

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The Jewish Century: European Jewish History From Emancipation to Destruction

Open, Small Lecture—Fall | 5 credits

Europe during the 19th century witnessed the legal and social emancipation of Jews. But it also witnessed the emergence of modern racial antisemitism, which eventually underpinned the ideology leading to European Jewry’s near destruction during the Holocaust. Neither of those two developments was preordained. Moreover, European Jews were active in shaping their own history as advocates for their own rights, as makers of European and Jewish culture, and as resistors to their persecution and murder. In this course, we will try to make sense of this European story of Jewish emancipation and near destruction. In the lecture part, we will go over the broad developments and events in European Jewish history from the beginning of the 19th century to 1945. The focus will be on the years between 1848 and 1933. While we will also cover the Holocaust, this is not primarily a course about the murder of European Jews but rather about the lives of European Jews. In the weekly group conferences—with help from secondary and primary sources such as diaries, letters, photo albums, short stories, and movies—we will dive deeper into these lives. For example, we will discuss the experience of middle-class Jewish women in Germany, the Jewish working class in Poland, the emergence of distinctly Jewish politics between Zionism and non-Zionist Bundism, or Jews’ presence among their countries’ nationalists. During the semester, students will also engage in two group research projects exploring Jewish lives in the 1880s and the 1930s.

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Racial Soundscapes

Open, Small Lecture—Fall | 5 credits

Close your eyes and listen. The human experience is highly sonic. Along with touch, hearing is among the most personal of our bodily senses. Now, you may hear the sound of passing cars, a lawnmower outside, or the murmur of voices from the hallway. But does race have a sound? What does Jim Crow sound like? Are there sonic dimensions to Black Power? Can popular music propel social movements, or can we hear social change? This lecture guides students through a survey of color and sound. We will explore historical case studies where concepts of race and recorded music collide. Through a careful analysis of a variety of cultural texts—including memoirs from specific artists and critical reviews of albums—and through a consideration of contextual historical events and phenomena, students will consider the ways in which popular culture and music have shaped concepts of race and ethnicity over the course of the 20th century.

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International Law

Open, Lecture—Fall | 5 credits

In a global landscape pocked by genocide, wars of choice, piracy, and international terrorism, what good is international law? Can it mean anything without a global police force and a universal judiciary? Is “might makes right” the only law that works? Or is it true that “most states comply with most of their obligations most of the time”? These essential questions frame the contemporary practice of law across borders. This lecture provides an overview of international law—its doctrine, theory, and practice. The course addresses a wide range of issues, including the bases and norms of international law, the law of war, human-rights claims, domestic implementation of international norms, treaty interpretation, and state formation/succession.

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Screening the City

Open, Small Lecture—Spring | 5 credits

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge,” according to F. Scott Fitzgerald, “is always the city seen for the first time, in its first promise of all the mystery and the beauty of the world.” While poetic, this romantic rendering, however, eludes the social struggle that pervades the city’s history. Conversely, the city seen on the silver screen can bring its contradictions into sharp focus. From this perspective, New York City appears as a complicated metropolis, replete with power dynamics along lines of race, gender, and sexuality. In this lecture, students will explore ways in which cinematic representations of New York City map onto distinct permutations and arcs in the city’s history. Each week, we will locate a specific film within a web of historical meaning. This is not a film-studies class, per se; rather, using cinema as a point of departure, we will explore the rich cultural history surrounding specific films. We will think about the connections between films and public policy, poetry, journalism, fine art, popular music, and more. Students will learn to derive historical insights through the analysis of film. Movies like Dog Day Afternoon (1975), for example, signal the rise of mass incarceration and the militarization of NYPD units; but the film also gives expression to the emerging LGBTQ movement and transgender subjectivity. Similarly, lesser-known gems, such as Baby Face (1933), can help illustrate the complex social and cultural terrain through which some women achieved power and independence in Depression era New York.

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Human Rights

Open, Lecture—Spring | 5 credits

History is replete with rabid pogroms, merciless religious wars, tragic show trials, and even genocide. For as long as people have congregated, they have defined themselves, in part, as against an other—and have persecuted that other. But history has also yielded systems of constraints. So how can we hope to achieve a meaningful understanding of the human experience without examining both the wrongs and the rights? Should the human story be left to so-called realists, who claim that power wins out over ideals every time? Or is there a logic of mutual respect that offers better solutions? This lecture examines the history of international human rights and focuses on the claims that individuals and groups make against states in which they live.

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The Disreputable 16th Century

Open, Seminar—Year | 10 credits

Sixteenth-century Europeans shared a variety of fundamental beliefs about the world that a secular-minded Westerner of today is likely to find “disreputable”—intellectually preposterous, morally outrageous, or both. Almost all well-educated people believed that the Earth was the unmoving center of the universe, around which the heavenly bodies revolved; that human destinies were dictated, at least to some extent, by the influence of the planets and stars; that the welfare of their communities was threatened by the maleficent activities of witches; and that rulers had a moral duty to compel their subjects to practice a particular religion. In this course, we will examine 16th-century ideas on these and other topics and see how those beliefs fit together to form a coherent picture of the world. We will also look at the writings of pioneer thinkers—Machiavelli, Montaigne, Galileo—who began the process of dismantling this world-conception and replacing it with a new one closer to our own. It is not only ideas, however, that render the 16th century “disreputable” to modern eyes. Some of history’s most notorious kings and queens ruled European states in this period—Henry VIII of England with his six wives; Mary Queen of Scots with her three husbands; Philip II of Spain, patron of the Inquisition. In the spring semester, therefore, we will look at the theory and practice of politics in 16th-century Europe. Since most European states were monarchies, we will start by examining 16th-century ideas about princes and their courts. How should princes be educated for their role? How, and to what ends, should they exercise their power? What were the qualifications of the ideal courtier? We will go on to consider the actual lives and policies of a number of European princes: the Tudor kings and queens of England; the monarchs who ruled France during the religious wars that convulsed that kingdom between 1562 and 1629. Later in the semester, we will consider what to us may appear to be the most exotic of 16th-century European states. This was not a monarchy at all but a republic: the splendid and idiosyncratic Most Serene Republic of Venice. We will examine, along with its institutions, the revolutionary developments in painting that unfolded there. Students will have great freedom in the choice of conference paper topics. Depending on their interests, they can pursue research in political or religious history, literature, philosophy, or art.

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Gender and History in China: Beyond Eunuchs and Concubines

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Year | 10 credits

This seminar is a sustained historical exploration of gender in the Chinese context, which is not only significant in its own right but also serves to complicate some of the common Euro-American assumptions about family dynamics, emotional life, and gender hierarchies. We will treat female and male as historically constructed categories, examining how both have been tied to modes of power (familial, social, economic, and political); in other words, how men and women have been imagined and portrayed, made and mobilized, at different times. We will confront, head on, stereotypes about the passive Chinese woman and the Confucian family, asking where do we find, and how do we understand, women’s agency within the permutations of the Chinese family historically? We will interrogate imperial-era family conflicts and the practice of footbinding to highlight female agency within, and complicity with, the gender hierarchy. The appearance of feminism in the early 20th century and its subsequent fate will provide a window on how gender shaped revolution and how gender was, in turn, shaped by it. And rather than leave masculinity as an assumed constant, we will examine historical and cultural constructions of what it meant to be a man in China; located between the poles of the scholar and the warrior, Chinese manliness exhibits unfamiliar contours and traits. The course also covers same-sex desire in both traditional and modern China. For example, in the late imperial era, we will look at homoeroticism among fashionable elite men and at female “marriage resisters,” who dared to form all-women communities in a society where marriage was virtually universal. Class readings will consist primarily of historical scholarship; however, (translated) primary sources pepper the course and include ritual prescriptions, (auto)biographies, essays, drama, and fiction that ground our inquiries in the authenticity of Chinese voices.

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The American Revolution

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

It may be comforting to know that historians agree that an American Revolution did, indeed, occur. Less comforting but more intriguing may be the realization that historians do not agree on when it commenced and when it ended, much less on the full meaning of what exactly took place beyond the mere facts of the Revolution. Certainly, the question was profound enough to move John Adams to ask, “What do we mean by the Revolution?” The course will look at the many different answers that revolutionary Americans gave to Adams’s question by examining the political, intellectual, social, and cultural dimensions of this event. Was the Revolution simply a struggle for political independence, or was it also a social conflict over who would “rule at home”? Was the American Revolution a transformation in the “hearts and minds” of the people, as Adams believed; or was the War for Independence integral to the meaning and character of the Revolution? Did the Revolution end with the close of the war; or was the war, to use Benjamin Rush’s words, “but the first act of the great drama”? What was the relationship between the Constitution and the Revolution? Was the Constitution a conservative reaction against the radicalism of the Revolution, or did the Constitution extend and solidify what the Revolution had achieved? While the emphasis of the course will be on what the Revolution meant for those who participated in it, we also look more broadly at the long-term legacy and memory of the Revolution. Through this examination, the course ultimately seeks to address the question: What was the basis for and nature of American national identity?

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Decolonization and the End of Empire

Open, Large seminar—Fall | 5 credits

Among the most salient features of the new international order that was ushered in by the end of World War II and the creation of the United Nations in 1945 was the emergence of an unprecedented global wave of decolonization that would last for roughly three decades. As many leaders of the international community consigned the “age of empire” to the dustbin of history, the world witnessed, in rapid succession, the dissolution of European overseas imperial configurations and the consequent formation of myriad new nation-states across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. This seminar provides an in-depth historical inquiry into the global phenomenon of decolonization in the post-World War II era. The course will adopt a comparative and transnational lens, exploring—through a wide range of both secondary and primary sources—the complex historical processes that attended decolonization in the British, French, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese imperial domains. Particular attention will be paid to the following questions: Why did European imperialism end when it did, and how did the politics of anticolonial nationalism vary across the different empires? How did nationalist movements and local elites negotiate the end of imperial rule, and what challenges did they face in their attempts to build postcolonial societies? What role did international organizations such as the United Nations play in constructing the new decolonized world order? How did the Cold War impact decolonization? How did decolonization work within nascent frameworks in post-World War II international law, particularly concerning the legal status of postcolonial national citizens as well as migrants? And finally, to what extent has decolonization led to a truly “decolonized” world order? Or to what extent have older imperial discourses, ideologies, and cultural prejudices persisted into the era of postcolonial independence and self-determination?

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Documenting Asian America

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

This course will introduce students to the major themes and methods of Asian American cultural studies. Each week, we will revisit a key “site” of Asian American history—the sugarcane plantation, the shoreline, the railroad, the internment camp, and the protest—and explore how Asians in America have differently documented themselves in relation to these spaces through art and literature. We will ask questions, including: How might a poem, photograph, or film differently represent the experience of migration? What common images emerge in the literature and art surrounding a particular historical event? What power or authority does the “documentary” hold in relaying the lived experiences of Asians in America? In answering these questions, course discussions will center on themes of memory, testimony, identity, and the power of representation. The course will also include field trips to area collections in documentary photography and filmmaking. Other assignments will include visual and literary analysis essays and creative-writing responses, as well as a curatorial project where students will have the opportunity to research Asian American documentarians and pitch artworks for exhibition at the Hudson River Museum.

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The Middle East and the Politics of Collective Memory: Between Trauma and Nostalgia

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

In recent decades, historians have become increasingly interested in the unique role and power of memory in public life and have sought to understand the innumerable ways that collective memory has been constructed, experienced, used, abused, debated, and reshaped. This course will focus on the rich literature on historical memory within the field of modern Middle Eastern history in order to explore a number of key questions: What is the relationship between history and memory? How are historical events interpreted and rendered socially meaningful? How is public knowledge about the past shaped and propagated? How and why—and in what contexts—do particular ways of seeing and remembering the past become attached to various political projects? Particular attention will be paid to the following topics: the role of memory in the Palestine-Israel “conflict”; postcolonial state-building and “official memory”; debates over national remembering, forgetting, and reconstruction following the Lebanese Civil War; Middle Eastern diaspora formation and exilic identity; the myth of a “golden age” of Arab nationalism; Turkish nostalgia for the Ottoman imperial past; and the role of museums, holidays, and other commemorative practices in the construction of the national past across the region. Throughout the course, we will attend to the complex interplay between individual and collective memory (and “counter-memory”), particularly as this has played out in several formulations of Middle Eastern nationalism.

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History of White Supremacy

Sophomore and Above, Small seminar—Fall | 5 credits

The ideas of John Locke were deeply influential to the development of American government and society. But while Locke may have helped popularize the concept of representative democracy, serving as a North Star for the framers of the US Constitution, he also authored white-supremacist texts that reaffirmed a body of knowledge known today as “race science,” as well as a series of colonial laws that solidified African American slavery in the New World. Such “slave laws” retained their power well after the American Revolution. This lecture traces key currents of race ideology and the belief in white superiority and Black inferiority within the bedrock of the American political landscape. Through a study of primary source documents, guided by an interdisciplinary array of scholarly readings, students will be exposed to the ways in which white-supremacist thought has provided an intellectual foundation supporting a system of white wealth, power, and privilege. Students will explore how racist ideas have shaped crucial concepts related to American democracy.

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Wealth and Poverty: A History of Capitalism (and Its Critics)

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

Prerequisite: History or Social Science course

Markets, profits, and exploitation seem to define capitalism; but exchanges, markets, and exploitation of the powerful over the powerless have existed long before the word “capitalism” even entered the English language. So, what defines capitalism? How has that meaning change over time? Does capitalism change across time and space? What changes has capitalism brought to economic life? What aspects of economic life transcend capitalism? Who are the advocates of capitalism? Who are its critics, and why? This seminar seeks to address these questions through a study of the transformations in economic life before, during, and after capitalism. The course examines the historicity of concepts such as markets, prices, wages, and profits—and the debates around the origins of capitalism. It traces the economic, social, political, and cultural transformations generated through the expansion and resistance to capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. The course will be organized chronologically but also thematically. Some of the topics covered include gender, race and slavery, nationalism and war, socialism, anarchism, Cold War politics, Third Worldism, and neoliberalism. Aside from mandatory attendance and active participation, the requirements for the course include an individual exam, a collaborative resarch conference project, weekly responses, and oral presentations.

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Fighting Over the Founders: The Legacy of the American Revolution and American Politics

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

From the establishment of the nation to the present, the Founding Fathers have served as a touchstone for American identity. But can we speak of an American identity, or would it be more accurate to speak of American identities? After all, what were the common visions of such diverse figures as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin—and to what extent have their differences created multiple and perhaps irreconcilable American identities? Indeed, the very term “Founding Fathers” may be an evasion of the conflicts that have run through our entire history. Is the notion of the Founding Fathers our nation’s counterpart to the harmony of a Garden of Eden? But did the authors of Genesis have it wrong? Harmony is not incompatible with conflict; instead, one requires the other so that the denial of one is, in effect, the denial of the other. This course will explore how and why Americans have put such a premium on the Founding Fathers as a source of political legitimacy—first, by examining the political vision of the Founding Fathers themselves and putting into serious question commonly-held views about the ideals that they embraced. Were the founders proponents of liberal individualism and democracy, as so many Americans assume? Or were they backward-looking reactionaries, seeking to hold onto a communal ideal modeled on the ancient republics of Greece and Rome? The course will then analyze the political legacy of the founders during the early 19th century to the Civil War, ending with the question of how both the Union and the Confederacy could view themselves as the true inheritors of that legacy when they seemed to represent such opposed causes.

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The Power of Place: Museums, Monuments, and Public History in Yonkers

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

This course introduces students to the fascinating history of Yonkers through the fields of public history and museum studies. The fact that Yonkers is situated in close proximity to New York City provides unique opportunities for Yonkers residents. At the same time, this sometimes means that the treasures of Yonkers are obscured by its better-known neighbor. In this class, students will develop a deeper understanding of the history, culture, and people of Yonkers by focusing on the meaning of place. We will begin the class by closely collaborating with staff at the Hudson River Museum, a major arts and cultural institution in Yonkers that is recognized nationwide. Students will study how the museum developed and the place that the museum occupies in the city’s cultural landscape. In addition to touring historic sites like Philipse Manor Hall, Sherwood House, and Untermeyer Gardens, students will study the history of places that are important to Yonkers residents, including the Dunwoodie Golf Course, the Old Croton Aqueduct, Greystone Bakery, and McClean Avenue. We will tour and analyze the city’s burgeoning public art scene in addition to learning more about some of Yonkers’ unique neighborhoods. Our ultimate goal will be to use multimedia approaches to create a “Museum in the Streets,” highlighting the people and places that make Yonkers a unique and dynamic city.

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Women and Gender in the Middle East

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

Debates over the status of Middle Eastern women have been at the center of political struggles for centuries—as well as at the heart of prevailing Western media narratives about the region—and continue to be flashpoints for controversy in the present day. This course will explore the origins and evolution of these debates, taking a historical and thematic approach to the lived experience of women in various Middle Eastern societies at key moments in the region’s history. Topics to be covered include: the status of women in the Qur’an and Islamic law; the Ottoman imperial harem; patriarchy and neopatriarchy; the rise of the women’s press in the Middle East; women, nationalism, and citizenship; the emergence of various forms of women’s activism and political participation; the changing nature of the Middle Eastern family; the politics of veiling; Orientalist discourse and the gendered politics of colonialism and postcolonialism; women’s performance and female celebrity; archetypes of femininity and masculinity; and women’s autobiography and fiction in the Middle East. Throughout, we will interrogate the politics of gender, the political and social forces that circumscribe Middle Eastern women’s lives, and the individuals who claim authority to speak for women. The course will also briefly examine gender and sexuality as categories for historical analysis in the modern Middle East.

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Imperialism and Servitude: Slave Rebellions in Greek and Roman History

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

The ancient historians of Greece and Rome have related many examples of slave rebellions to posterity. These stories tend to appear in the context of struggles to control newly acquired wealth and power from successful conquest and imperialist policies. In this course, we will focus on slave rebellions in two historical epochs. First, we will examine historical evidence on slavery in Athens and Sparta, famous Greek city-states in the period inclusive of the Persian and the Peloponnesian Wars. The second era is the Roman Republic in the final two centuries BCE when, as powerful factions struggled for power over Rome’s newly conquered wealth and territory, major slave rebellions spread from Sicily to other Roman spheres of influence—and, finally, to Italy itself in the famous Spartacus rebellion. In this course, we will read selections of the surviving historiography, in English translation, by authors such as Thucydides, Plutarch, Sallust, and Diodorus Siculus, among others. We will also read secondary scholarship discussing some of the many controversies on these topics, such as the theoretical constructs of slavery, ideologies of rebel slaves, the perspectives of historians ancient and modern, conditions favorable to revolt, and the reception of stories of rebellion in later centuries, to name a few. Assignments will include regular low-stakes writing practice, as well as a class presentation and a major conference project. Conference work may take the form of traditional papers or a digital humanities project.

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Nationalism

Sophomore and Above, Large seminar—Spring | 5 credits

This course provides a broad historical and theoretical inquiry into the phenomenon of nationalism—one of the most enduring ideological constructs of modern society. Indeed, the organization of the globe into a world of bordered territorial nation-states—each encapsulating a unique social identity—is such a taken-for-granted feature of contemporary geopolitics that it is easy to forget that nations did not exist for most of human history and that nationalism dates back only to the mid-to-late 1700s. And yet, despite many predictions of its imminent demise at different moments in history—Albert Einstein quipped, famously, that nationalism was an “infantile disease” that humanity would eventually outgrow—nationalism remains, perhaps, as powerful an ideological force as ever in the United States as elsewhere. This course will examine a range of foundational questions about the emergence of nations and nationalism in world history: What is a nation, and how has national identity been cultivated, defined, and debated in different contexts? Why did nationalism emerge when it did? Who does nationalism benefit, and how do different social groups compete for control over national identity and ideology? How and why did nationalism become such a vital feature of anticolonial political movements beginning in the late-19th century? Is nationalism fundamentally a negative force—violent and exclusionary—or is it necessary for forging cohesive social bonds among diverse and far-flung populations? The course will begin with the emergence of nations and nationalism in Western Europe but will then move on to explore its evolution and spread to all parts of the globe, exploring a number of case studies along the way. The course will conclude with a brief survey of the state of nationalist politics today, with a particular emphasis on Brexit and white nationalism in the United States.

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Urban Humanities

Sophomore and Above, Small seminar—Spring | 5 credits

“Hello from the gutters of N.Y.C., which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine, and blood,” David Berkowitz penned from his Yonkers apartment in summer 1977. “Hello from the sewers of N.Y.C., which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks. Hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of N.Y.C. and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed on the dried blood of the dead that has settled in to [sic] the cracks.” Following a series of New York City municipal budget cuts that laid off thousands of city employees and significantly hindered the reach of the NYPD, Berkowitz went on a killing spree that left at least eight dead and millions ensconced in a climate of fear. Using New York City as a point of departure, this seminar explores various methods of humanist inquiry that scholars have used to derive historical meaning about American urban centers. What can comic books, popular cinema, disco music, or even letters penned by an infamous serial killer tell us about the history of cities like New York? Students will learn to identify the impact of municipal policies, from urban renewal to state-sponsored gentrification initiatives. Each week, this seminar will employ a cultural-studies approach to explore a key historical text and examine how the grittiness and substance of this evidence can suggest valuable insights about the past, present, and future of American urban centers.

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Public Humanities in Practice: The Yonkers Public Library

Intermediate/Advanced, Small seminar—Spring | 3 credits

Prerequisite: one or more of the following: previous participation in community organizing, Feminist and Queer Waves (fall 2023), permission of the instructor

In this small workshop meeting at the Yonkers Public Library (YPL), we’ll plan a series of writing workshops for Yonkers-area community members and a final event celebrating SLC’s yearlong collaboration with the YPL. We’ll work directly with Yonkers-area community members and YPL staff to develop workshops themed around topics like oral history, autobiographic performance, family heirlooms, and grassroots archives. The final live event will share work from these writing workshops and the fall 2023 class, Feminist and Queer Waves. You’ll develop a theme, co-author a curatorial statement, develop a small exhibit of archival materials from YPL and SLC, and invite members of our overlapping communities. This small class welcomes former students from Feminist and Queer Waves, as well as those who are invested in publicly- engaged pedagogy, community organizing, and museum and archival curation.

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Making the World Go Round: Children in the Machinery of Empire

Open, Lecture—Fall

In the 1920s, a Miss Wilson presented a paper at a London conference, addressing “The Education of European Children in Contact With Primitive Races.” In her talk, she described the life of rural white settler children in Kenya growing up with African playmates and expressed her concerns about the “morally deleterious” effects of such play on these future imperial leaders. This particular case illustrates discourse about the role of privileged white children in imperial regimes; but children of diverse social classes, races, and nationalities across the globe were all implicated in processes of imperial expansion and European settler colonization over (at least) the past three centuries. What was believed about children, done to children, and required of children was central to the political and economic success of empire. In this lecture, we will examine a series of cases in order to understand the diverse roles, both intentional and unintentional, of children in colonial processes. In addition to the white sons and daughters of European settler colonists in Africa and Southeast Asia, we will look at the contrary things that were said and done about mixed-race children (and their mothers) at different historical and political moments of empire. We will learn, too, about the deployment of “orphans” in the service of empire. In the metropole, particularly British cities, orphan boys were funneled into the military and merchant navy, while children of both sexes were shipped across the globe to boost white settler populations, provide free labor, and relieve English poorhouses of the responsibility of taking care of them. The ancestors of many contemporary citizens of Canada, Australia, and South Africa were exported as children from metropolitan orphanages. We will deploy approaches from sex-gender studies, postcolonial studies, and critical race theory. Questions that we will explore include: Why did settler authorities in Australia kidnap mixed-race Indigenous children and put them in boarding schools, when such children in other colonies were expected to stay with their local mothers out of sight of the settlers? How did European ideas about climate and race frame the ways in which settler children were nursed in the Dutch East Indies? How did concepts of childhood and parental rights over children vary historically, socioeconomically, and geographically? How did metropolitan discourses about race, class, and evolution frame the treatment of indigent children at home and abroad? The sources for this class include literature, scholarly articles, ethnographic accounts, historical documents, and film. Students will attend the lecture once a week and group conference once a week.

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Faking Families: How We Make Kinship

Open, Seminar—Year

In her study of transnational adoptees, Eleana Kim noted the profound differences between discourses about the immigration of Chinese brides to the United States and those describing the arrival of adopted Chinese baby girls: the former with suspicion and the latter with joy. Two ways that families form are by bringing in spouses and by having children. We tend to assume that family building involves deeply personal, intimate, and even “natural” acts; but, in actual practice, the pragmatics of forming (and disbanding) families are much more complex. There are many instances where biological pregnancy is not possible or not chosen, and there are biological parents who are unable to rear their offspring. Social rules govern the acceptance or rejection of children in particular social groups, depending on factors such as the marital status of their parents or the enactment of appropriate rituals. Western notions of marriage prioritize compatibility between two individuals who choose each other based on love; but, in many parts of the world, selecting a suitable spouse and contracting a marriage is the business of entire kin networks. There is great variability, too, in what constitutes “suitable.” To marry a close relative or someone of the same gender may be deemed unnaturally close in some societies; but marriage across a great difference—such as age, race, nation, culture or class—can also be problematic. And beyond the intimacies of couples and the interests of extended kin are the interests of the nation-state. This seminar, then, examines the makings and meanings of kinship connections of parent and spouse at multiple levels, from small communities to global movements. Our topics will include the adoption and fostering of children, both locally and transnationally, in Peru, Chile, Spain, Italy, Ghana, the United States, China, and Korea. We will look at technologies of biological reproduction, including the global movement of genetic material in the business of transnational gestational surrogacy in India. We will look at the ways marriages are contracted in a variety of social and cultural settings, including China and Korea, and the ways they are configured by race, gender, and citizenship. Our questions will include: Who are “real” kin? Who can a person marry? Which children are “legitimate”? Why do we hear so little about birth mothers? What is the experience of families with transgender parents or children? What is the compulsion to find genetically connected “kin”? How many mothers can a person have? How is marriage connected to labor migration? Why are the people who care for children in foster care called “parents”? The materials for this class include literature, scholarly articles, ethnographic accounts, historical documents, and film.

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Black England: From Tudors to Two-Tone

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring

In 1596, Elizabeth Tudor wrote to lord mayors of major English cities that there were “of late divers blackamoores brought into this realm, of which kind of people there are already here to manie…those kinde of people should be sente forth of the land.” A common myth about England is that it was a homogeneously white nation until Jamaicans and South Asians emigrated to Britain after World War II. Another myth is that there were no slaves held in England. As the above quotation indicates, free Black people were already settled there in the 16th century; and they were already the object of scapegoating for increasing poverty in the land at that time. The 17th century brought African slaves to England and, by the 19th century, the great ports of London, Bristol, and Liverpool were populated by West Africans (free and unfree); Lascars (Muslim sailors from east of the Cape of Good Hope); and seamen from Shanghai and Guangzhou, who created the first European China Town in the London Docks. In this class, we will investigate the multiracial nature of England from the Tudor era to the late 20th century. We will consider temporal moves between free and unfree lives and the role of free Africans in the abolition movement. Articulations of race, gender, and sexuality will be central, particularly as they play out in family formations and economic activities. We will wrestle with the absence of people of color in discourses about the English past and with contemporary constructions of racist stereotypes, such as the 19th-century trope of the Chinese opium den. Finally, we will engage with cultural explosions in music (reggae, ska, two-tone), film (Young Soul Rebels, Bend it Like Beckham, The Stuart Hall Project), and literature (Fathima Zahra, Aizaz Hussain, Paul Gilroy) created by second- and third-generation children of Commonwealth immigrants, particularly as they articulate with antiracism movements. Our hands-on class materials will be multidisciplinary (anthropology, history, literature) and multimedia, with a particular focus on visual images, audio, maps, and archival documents.

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The Paths of the World: Italian Renaissance Art and the Beginning of Globalization (15th and 16th Centuries)

Open, Lecture—Fall

The Renaissance was possibly the first true global movement of ideas resonating across different continents, with exciting new paths traveled by both men and objects. At a time of new geographical discoveries and new trade routes, artistic and cultural exchanges between distant cultures were becoming increasingly frequent. This course is an exploration of Renaissance art in Italy through a selection of places (Florence, Venice, and Rome but also other minor centers) and objects analyzed in the context of the so-called “early-modern globalization.” Focusing primarily on painting and sculpture—but with occasional forays into architecture, printmaking, and collecting—this course emphasizes episodes of exchange, encounter, and cross-cultural influences and looks at art objects as symptoms of cultural “cross-fertilization” that embody influences from both near and far.

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Monuments and Memory

Open, Lecture—Spring

This course looks at the shifting role of monuments in Western culture, from a public representation of the values of dominant culture to one that challenges what Kara Walker calls the “monumental misrememberings” attendant to most historical monuments. We will investigate the role that monuments play in forming—and disrupting—the stories that we tell ourselves about history. Attending to narratives of both domination and minoritization and foregrounding work by Black, Indigenous, and queer artists, this course reaches across continents and back centuries and will involve a field trip to experience monumental forms in and around the City of New York.

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Theatrum Mundi: Baroque Art and the Wonders of the World

Open, Lecture—Spring

This course analyzes the artistic and architectural production from the Baroque period (c. 1590-1700) through a global perspective. At the end of the 16th century, the consolidation of international power through trade and early colonialism—along with the expansion of the Catholic missionary movement—accelerated the process of globalization already started in the previous century and with important cultural and artistic consequences. Style and content of artworks underwent important changes, as artists grappled with new ideas, forms, and meanings. This course emphasizes cross-cultural interconnections in this era, looking at dynamics of transmission and exchanges between different places—Europe, Asia, and the Americas—while still examining critical monuments and artists long considered canonical. In addition to art and architecture, we will examine natural and artificial objects that, brought to Europe from distant lands, painted an exciting picture of a world filled with countless wonders.

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Romanesque and Gothic Art: Castle and Cathedral at the Birth of Europe

Open, Lecture—Spring

This course explores the powerful architecture, sculpture, and painting styles that lie at the heart of the creation of Europe and the idea of the West. We will use a number of strategies to explore how expressive narrative painting and sculpture and new monumental architectural styles were engaged in the formation of a common European identity and uncover, as well, the artistic vestiges of diverse groups and cultures that challenge that uniform vision. These are arts that chronicle deep social struggles between classes, intense devotion through pilgrimage, the rise of cities and universities, and movements that could both advocate genocide and nurture enormous creativity—in styles both flamboyant and austere—growing from places as diverse as castles and rural monasteries to Gothic cathedrals. The course will explore those aspects of expressive visual language that link works of art to social history, the history of ideas, and political ideology.

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Art and History

Open, Seminar—Year

The visual arts and architecture constitute a central part of human expression and experience, and both grow from and influence our lives in profound ways that we might not consciously acknowledge. In this course, we will explore intersections between the visual arts and cultural, political, and social history. The goal is to teach students to deal critically with works of art, using the methods and some of the theories of the discipline of art history. This course is not a survey but, rather, will have as its subject a limited number of artists and works of art and architecture that students will learn about in depth through formal analysis, readings, discussion, research, and debate. We will endeavor to understand each work from the point of view of its creators and patrons and by following the work's changing reception by audiences throughout time. To accomplish this, we will need to be able to understand some of the languages of art. The course, then, is also a course in visual literacy—the craft of reading and interpreting visual images on their own terms. We will also discuss a number of issues of contemporary concern; for instance, the destruction of art, free speech and respect of religion, the art market, and the museum. Students will be asked to schedule time on weekends to travel to Manhattan on their own or in the College van to do assignments at various museums in New York. You will need to leave several hours for each of these visits and will keep a notebook of comments and drawings of works of art.

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Archaeology and the Bible

Open, Seminar—Fall

With the advent of early archaeological excavation in the Near East, biblical studies entered upon a new modern phase in which the criticism of scriptural revelation was no longer simply a matter of faith or theology. With the new discoveries at Nimrud just before the middle of the 19th century, the Assyrians and the other great powers of ancient Mesopotamia mentioned in Old Testament narratives suddenly became a visible reality, demonstrating that biblical narratives could now be evaluated or corroborated empirically against hard, material evidence. In due course, pioneering archaeologists also turned their attention to the Holy Land to pursue this new agenda. Since then, the convergence of archaeology and modern professional criticism of the Old Testament has increasingly enabled us to reconstruct the reality behind the biblical narratives. The course will explore this process, focusing primarily on the material culture of the ancient Levant—beginning in the Bronze Age with the Canaanites, the emergence and subsequent development of the Iron Age Israelite kingdom, its destruction, the Babylonian Captivity, the eventual return of the Jews under Persian rule, and the re-emergence from Hellenistic Greek domination of a Judaean kingdom under the Hasmoneans. Although focused largely on archaeological or material remains, the course will also make ample use of biblical and historical texts or sources to investigate the intersection of archaeology, culture, and religion.

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The Age of Arthur

Open, Seminar—Fall

The fate of the western Roman provinces during and after the collapse of the imperial center in the fifth century remains a major concern for historians of Late Antiquity, yet no single former Roman province has proven to be as obscure and resistant to serious historical study as Britain. Through much of the 20th century, a substantial body of historical research was devoted toward developing the figure of Arthur, a post-Roman ruler or warlord who strove to preserve something of Roman imperial order and culture while stemming Germanic or Anglo-Saxon settlement. More recently, however, the tide of scholarship has turned against a historical Arthur. The fact remains that Arthur is unattested in any historical sources of the late antiquity or early medieval periods. Nor is there much evidence that Anglo-Saxon settlement was effectively shaped or contained by native Romano-British resistance. Consequently, the course will examine the origins of Arthur as a figure of legend rather than of history, and we will examine the factors that led to Arthur being accorded historical status—first in the early medieval period and then in modern scholarship. At the same time, we will attempt to establish the basis for a genuine dynastic and political history of Britain from the fifth to the seventh centuries.

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Paris: A History Through Art, Architecture, and City Planning

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall

In this course, we will trace the history of Paris from its foundation until World War I, working from the visual arts that both defined and emanated from this remarkable city. We will explore works of art, architecture, and urban design as documents of history, of social and cultural values, and of the history of ideas. Our readings and discussions will lead us to interactions between the arts and the history, fashion, religion, science, and literature of Paris. Student projects will chart these relationships graphically and construct, in both individual and group projects, a cultural history of Paris from Roman Lutetia to the City of Lights.

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Becoming Roman? Art and Architecture of the Provinces and Frontiers of the Roman Empire

Open, Seminar—Spring

This course focuses on works of art, buildings, and monuments created and commissioned by people living in diverse areas of North Africa, West Asia, and Europe that either became part of the Roman Empire or were located along its vast frontier. We will explore and challenge traditional categories, such as “Roman” and “provincial” art/architecture. Key questions to consider include the following: How were individuals’/communities’ personal, civic, and religious identities expressed in art/architecture that was influenced by interaction with Roman culture broadly but also highly localized? The course will also include a component focused on the contemporary situation at sites including Palmyra in Syria, which has suffered extensive recent destruction, and related heritage preservation initiatives.

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East Meets West: China and the World in Medieval Times

Open, Lecture—Spring

This course explores China’s place as both an initiator and a subject of globalization between the second century (Han dynasty) and the 15th century (the Mongol, Yuan dynasty). To do so, we will follow the rise and development of the Silk Roads with the goal of uncovering the variety of cross-cultural influences among China and its closest neighbors (the Uighurs, Tibet, Central Asia, and the Russian steppe), as well as distant lands (including India, Europe, and South East Asia). More specifically, topics covered will include the following: political and state-sanctioned relations, including diplomacy and interregional wars; economic exchange and trade; the spread of religions (including Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity); and, finally, the exchange of technology, art, and material culture (including food, ceramics, and items of daily use). This is a hybrid lecture course, including weekly lectures and seminars. The lectures will be based on scholarly research and provide the broader historical and cultural context for a study of primary documents. In the seminar portion, we will undertake a closer reading and discussion of those primary documents.

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Gender and History in China: Beyond Eunuchs and Concubines

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Year

This seminar is a sustained historical exploration of gender in the Chinese context, which is not only significant in its own right but also serves to complicate some of the common Euro-American assumptions about family dynamics, emotional life, and gender hierarchies. We will treat female and male as historically-constructed categories, examining how both have been tied to modes of power (familial, social, economic, and political); in other words, how men and women have been imagined and portrayed, made and mobilized, at different times. We will confront head on stereotypes about the passive Chinese woman and the Confucian family, asking where do we find, and how do we understand, women’s agency within the permutations of the Chinese family historically? We will interrogate imperial-era family conflicts and the practice of footbinding to highlight female agency within, and complicity with, the gender hierarchy. The appearance of feminism in the early 20th century and its subsequent fate will provide a window on how gender shaped revolution and how gender was, in turn, shaped by it. And rather than leave masculinity as an assumed constant, we will examine historical and cultural constructions of what it meant to be a man in China; located between the poles of the scholar and the warrior, Chinese manliness exhibits unfamiliar contours and traits. The course also covers same-sex desire in both traditional and modern China; for example, in the late imperial era, we will look at homoeroticism among fashionable elite men and at female “marriage resisters,” who dared to form all-women communities in a society where marriage was virtually universal. Class readings consist primarily of historical scholarship; however, (translated) primary sources pepper the course and include ritual prescriptions, (auto)biographies, essays, drama, and fiction that ground our inquiries in the authenticity of Chinese voices.

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Virtue and the Good Life: Ethics in Classical Chinese Philosophy

Open, Seminar—Spring

This course centers on the close, detailed reading of a small number of foundational texts in classical Confucianism and Taoism. Our focus will be to explore how these texts might fit “virtue ethics,” which emphasizes moral character and the pursuit of a worthwhile life. Some attention will be paid to other forms of ethics, including those that stress either the adherence to duties and obligations or the social consequences of ethical action. Our primary goal, however, will be to examine the ways in which classical Chinese philosphers regarded personal virtues and “good character” as both a prerequisite to and an explanation of appropriate action and its consequences. Among the more specific topics that we will explore are: ideal traits of virtue, the links between moral values and different understandings of human nature, the pyschological structures of virtue, practices leading to the cultivation of virtue, the roles of family and friendship in developing moral values, and what constitutes a good life.

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Viruses and Pandemics

Open, Seminar—Spring

Ebola, smallpox, influenza, rabies...these and other viruses are the smallest lifeforms on Earth, yet they are some of the most powerful and devastating biological forces ever unleashed. Throughout human history, pandemics caused by viruses have periodically ravaged human populations, altering the social fabric, confounding political and medical responses, and revealing the fragility of the human species. Examples range from the Antonine Plague that killed five million people during the time of the Roman Empire, to the 15 million deaths during the Cocoliztli epidemic of the 1600s in Mexico and Central America, to the Spanish Flu pandemic of the early 20th century that claimed an estimated 50-100 million victims. The current COVID-19 pandemic has reminded the world of the dominance of viruses and exposed the challenges of confronting these microscopic pathogens on a global scale. This course will examine the biology and behavior of viruses, the role of such pathogens in inducing different pandemics throughout the course of history, and the means by which they can emerge and spread through a population. We will explore how viral outbreaks are traced through epidemiological means and modeling and how vaccines, quarantines, and other medical, social and political responses work to mitigate and eventually overcome such outbreaks. During the course, we will consider the representation of viruses and our response to pandemics through readings drawn from texts such as John Barry’s The Great Influenza, Laurie Garrett’s The Coming Plague, and Michael Lewis’s The Premonition.

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First-Year Studies: Political Economy of Environmental and Climate Justice

FYS—Year

Environmental pollution and climate change disproportionately impact people who are economically and politically powerless. Evidence shows that low-income and minority communities and people in the Global South tend to face higher levels of environmental pollution, have less protection from environmental and natural hazards, and suffer more losses caused by climate change. In this FYS, we will focus on the what, why, how, and what to do. What are the facts of environmental and climate injustice in developing countries, developed countries, and between developing and developed countries? Why is environmental and climate injustice happening? Why is focusing on climate and environmental justice important? How do the climate and environmental justice paradigms challenge the social, political, economic, and cultural structures of capitalism; for instance, corporate and elite environmentalism? How have corporations and governments responded to environmental and climate justice quests? Has the energy transition been fulfilling its promises? What remains to be done to make environmental and climate justice real? Along with discussing these pressing questions, the course will attempt to help you get familiar with and improve your skills that are essential for conducting independent research, analytical thinking and writing, and critical inquiry. This FYS will entail biweekly conference meetings, alternating with in-class, evidence-based group activities focusing on research and critical thinking.

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First-Year Studies: The 2024 Presidential Election in Context: Inequality, the Climate Crisis, and the Global Far Right

FYS—Year

The 2024 presidential election result will have far-reaching implications for economic, social, and environmental policies. It will also be significant in terms of the future of American democracy and the power of the Far Right. In this course, we will situate current economic and political challenges in a theoretical and historical context by drawing on insights from different schools of thought in economics, as well as from other disciplines such as law, politics, sociology, and history. Some of the key questions to be addressed are as follows: How can the central debates in political economy help us understand some of the unprecedented challenges that we face, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; the climate crisis; and inequalities that intersect across class, race, and gender lines? Why is the study of history a central methodological concern for many economists, and why not so for others? Why do people distinguish between “regulation” and laissez-faire, and is this a false dichotomy? What is the history of industrial and social policy in the United States and other countries? How do we understand the role of political and corporate power and the “rule of law” in regard to market outcomes? These and others will be some of the questions that we will be tackling throughout the course of the year, thereby ensuring that students develop a solid understanding of the fundamental debates in economic theory and policy and see the key role of methodology in the study of political economy. Finally, the goal is to ensure that students develop the ability to critically engage scholarly work in economics. There will be weekly conferences for the first six weeks and biweekly conferences thereafter (at the discretion of the instructor).

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Political Economy of Women

Open, Seminar—Year

What factors determine the status of women in different societies and communities? What role is played by women’s labor both inside and outside the home? By cultural norms regarding sexuality and reproduction? By religious traditions? After a brief theoretical grounding, this course will address these questions by examining the economic, political, social, and cultural histories of women in the various racial/ethnic and class groupings that make up the United States. Topics to be explored include: the role of women in Iroquois Confederation before white colonization and the factors that gave Iroquois women significant political and social power in their communities; the status of white colonist women in Puritan Massachusetts and the economic, religious, and other factors that led to the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692; the position of African American women under slavery, including the gendered and racialized divisions of labor and reproduction; the growth of competitive capitalism in the North and the development of the “cult of true womanhood” in the rising middle class; the economic and political changes that accompanied the Civil War and Reconstruction and the complex relationships between African American and white women in the abolitionist and women’s rights movements; the creation of a landless agricultural labor force and the attempts to assimilate Chicana women into the dominant culture via “Americanization” programs; the conditions that encouraged Asian women’s immigration and their economic and social positions once here; the American labor movement and the complicated role that organized labor has played in the lives of women of various racial/ethnic groups and classes; the impact of US colonial policies on Puerto Rican migration and Puerto Rican women’s economic and political status on both the island and the mainland; the economic/political convulsions of the 20th century—from the trusts of the early 1900s to World War II—and their impact on women’s paid and unpaid labor; the impact of changes in gendered economic roles on LGBT communities; the economic and political upheavals of the 1960s that led to the so-called “second wave” of the women’s movement; and the current position of women in the US economy and polity and the possibilities for more inclusive public policies concerning gender and family issues. In addition to class participation and the conference project, requirements include regular essays that synthesize class materials with the written texts.

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The US Workers’ Movement: From Colonial Slavery to Economic Globalization (Labor Economics)

Open, Seminar—Year

In this yearlong seminar course, we will explore the history of the US labor movement from its beginnings in 1600s colonial society to the “globalized” cities of the 2020s. Beginning with the involuntary labor arrangements that structured the continent's economy from the 1600s to the Civil War, we will focus on the international workers' movement against slavery: abolitionism. The abolitionist struggle will take us from the first rebellions of involuntary workers to the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. From there, we will consider the strikes, uprisings, and organizations of the late 19th- and 20th-century industrial labor movement, beginning with the Great Upheaval of 1877 and ending with the postindustrial urban uprisings of 1967. We will consider the peak of “big labor” during the mid-20th century, alongside the peak in Cold War era US imperialism that structured the economy during that time. We will begin the spring semester by thoroughly considering the major structural shifts in the US economy that began in the 1970s, generally referred to as a combination of “globalization” and “neoliberalism.” These shifts degraded job quality and worker power, relegating the working class to service positions in the “global city” structure. In responding to these shifts, we will consider numerous autonomous unions and “worker centers” that have sprung up to address the new issues of this new economy in the past 20 years. We will also focus on broader 21st-century people's struggles—like the Anti-Globalization Movement, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter—and how these movements relate to the ongoing workers' movement. Requirements for the course include discussion posts, short papers, and a group presentation. For the course’s major project, students will have two options. The first is writing two connected final essays, one for each semester. The second is engaging in a yearlong research project, which can be focused on service learning and in-the-field placements with local worker centers and unions, if students wish. Students will meet with the instructor every other week for individual conferences, depending on the student's needs and the progress of their conference projects. Required texts may include: Strike! by Jeremy Brecher, The Many-Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, An African-American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz, The Global City by Saskia Sassen, New Labor in New York by Ruth Milkman and Ed Ott, and Labor Law for the Rank and Filer by Staughton Lynd and Daniel Gross.

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The Movie Musical

Open, Lecture—Spring

Long dismissed as shallow mass entertainment, the movie musical remains an understudied genre despite its century-long popularity, global scope, and recurring role in film history. This lecture course offers a layered cultural history of the movie musical from the 1920s to the present, approaching it as a uniquely intermedial, transnational perspective from which to study film. Students will learn to read movie musicals through a mixture of formal analysis and material history. We will read canonical scholars, as well as more recent multidisciplinary work on the movie musical as a site for ideological contestation; performance politics; and aesthetic, narrative, and technological experimentation. In particular, we will highlight the genre’s power for hiding labor behind spectacles of seemingly spontaneous mass performance and rehearsing modern social conflicts through heterosexual couple-driven, dual-focus plots (Jets vs. Sharks, town vs. city, etc.). Other topics include: the roots of the movie musical in vaudeville, minstrelsy, opera, and ballet; the musical’s relationship to new cinematic technologies, labor forms, and industrial practices; the musical’s relationship to questions of gender, sexuality, and race; and the musical as a globally circulating and mutating “mass” cultural form. While much of our focus will be on classical Hollywood (1920s-1960s), we will also watch films from France, the Soviet Union, England, East Germany, Mexico, India, and Australia.

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Feminist Film History

Open, Seminar—Fall

What happened to women in the silent-film industry? Why are there so few female voiceovers and so many plucky secretaries in classical Hollywood films? Should dead starlets be revived as feminist icons? Can dominant aesthetic regimes be dismantled through “feminine” or feminist filmmaking techniques? How do you uncover invisible or suppressed histories? This seminar offers an overview of the main questions and methods of feminist film studies by retracing film history through the lens of female- and feminist-identifying filmmakers, workers, critics, and historians. While our focus will be on US and European films and scholarship from the Silent Era to the end of the 20th century, students are encouraged to pursue conference projects on feminist movements, films, and film theory from any era or any part of the world. Screenings will highlight a mixture of obscure and canonical films, and readings will cover a multidisciplinary range of feminist film scholarship—from psychoanalytic film theory to media archaeology and cyberfeminism. Topics to be discussed include women at the origins of film, women’s work onscreen and on the studio lot, the male gaze and spectacular female stars of classical cinema, fan culture and gendered genres, second-wave feminism and the French New Wave, race and Technicolor, lesbian representability, and feminist authorship as political practice.

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Food, Agriculture, Environment, and Development

Open, Lecture—Spring

Where does the food we eat come from? Why do some people have enough food to eat and others do not? Are there too many people for the world to feed? Who controls the world’s food? Will global food prices continue their recent rapid rise; and, if so, what will be the consequences? What are the environmental impacts of our food production systems? How do answers to these questions differ by place or by the person asking the question? How have they changed over time? This course will explore the following fundamental issue: the relationship between development and the environment—focusing, in particular, on agriculture and the production and consumption of food. The questions above often hinge on the contentious debate concerning population, natural resources, and the environment. Thus, we will begin by critically assessing the fundamental ideological positions and philosophical paradigms of “modernization,” as well as critical counterpoints that lie at the heart of this debate. Within this context of competing sets of philosophical assumptions concerning the population-resource debate, we will investigate the concept of “poverty” and the making of the Third World, access to food, hunger, grain production and food aid, agricultural productivity (the Green and Gene revolutions), biofuels, the role of transnational corporations (TNCs), the international division of labor, migration, globalization and global commodity chains, and the different strategies adopted by nation-states to “‘develop” natural resources and agricultural production. Through a historical investigation of environmental change and the biogeography of plant domestication and dispersal, we will look at the creation of indigenous, subsistence, peasant, plantation, collective, and commercial forms of agriculture. We will analyze the physical environment and ecology that help shape but rarely determine the organization of resource use and agriculture. Rather, through the dialectical rise of various political-economic systems such as feudalism, slavery, mercantilism, colonialism, capitalism, and socialism, we will study how humans have transformed the world’s environments. We will follow with studies of specific issues: technological change in food production; commercialization and industrialization of agriculture and the decline of the family farm; food and public health, culture, and family; land grabbing and food security; the role of markets and transnational corporations in transforming the environment; and the global environmental changes stemming from modern agriculture, dams, deforestation, grassland destruction, desertification, biodiversity loss, and the interrelationship with climate change. Case studies of particular regions and issues will be drawn from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the United States. The final part of the course examines the restructuring of the global economy and its relation to emergent international laws and institutions regulating trade, the environment, agriculture, resource extraction treaties, the changing role of the state, and competing conceptualizations of territoriality and control. We will end with discussions of emergent local, regional, and transnational coalitions for food self-reliance and food sovereignty, alternative and community-supported agriculture, community-based resource-management systems, sustainable development, and grassroots movements for social and environmental justice. Films, multimedia materials, and distinguished guest lectures will be interspersed throughout the course. One farm/factory field trip is possible if funding/timing permits. The lecture participants may also take a leading role in a campus-wide event on “the climate crisis, food, and hunger,” tentatively planned for spring. Please mark your calendars when the dates are announced, as attendance for all of the above is required. Attendance and participation are also required at special guest lectures and film viewings in the Social Science Colloquium Series approximately once per month. The Web Board is an important part of the course. Regular required postings of short essays will be made here, as well as follow-up commentaries with your colleagues. There will be occasional short, in-class essays during the semester and a final exam at the end. Group conferences will focus on in-depth analysis of certain course topics and will include short prepared papers for debates, the debates themselves, and small-group discussions. You will prepare a poster project on a topic of your choice, related to the course, which will be presented at the end of the semester in group conference, as well as in a potential public session.

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The Geography of Contemporary China: A Political Ecology of Reform, Global Integration, and Rise to Superpower

Open, Seminar—Fall

Despite widespread daily reporting on China’s rise to superpower status and both its challenge to and necessary partnership with the United States, what do we really know about the country? In this seminar, we will explore China’s evolving place in the world through political-economic integration and globalization processes. Throughout the seminar, we will compare China with other areas of the world within the context of the broader theoretical and thematic questions mentioned in detail below. We will consistently focus our efforts on reframing debates, both academic and in mass media, to enable new insights and analyses not only concerning China but also in terms of the major global questions—in theory, policy, and practice—of this particular historical moment. We will begin with an overview of contemporary China, discussing the unique aspects of China’s modern history and the changes and continuities from one era to the next. We will explore Revolutionary China and the subsequent socialist period to ground the seminar’s primary focus: post-1978 reform and transformation to the present day. Rooted in the questions of agrarian change and rural development, we will also study seismic shifts in urban and industrial form and China’s emergence as a global superpower on its way to becoming the world’s largest economy. We will analyze the complex intertwining of the environmental, political-economic, and sociocultural aspects of these processes as we interpret the geography of contemporary China. Using a variety of theoretical perspectives, we will analyze a series of contemporary global debates: Is there a fundamental conflict between the environment and rapid development? What is the role of the peasantry in the modern world? What is the impact of different forms of state power and practice? How does globalization shape China’s regional transformation? And, on the other hand, how does China’s global integration impact development in every other country and region of the world? Modern China provides immense opportunities for exploring key theoretical and substantive questions of our time. A product first and foremost of its own complex history, other nation-states and international actors and institutions—such as the World Bank, transnational corporations and civil society—have also heavily influenced China. The “China model” of rapid growth is widely debated in terms of its efficacy as a development pathway, yet it defies simple understandings and labels. Termed everything from neoliberalism, to market socialism, to authoritarian Keynesian capitalism, China is a model full of paradoxes and contradictions. Not least of these is China’s impact on global climate change. Other challenges include changing gender relations, rapid urbanization, and massive internal migration. In China today, contentious debates continue on land reform, the pros and cons of global market integration, the role of popular culture and the arts in society, how to define ethical behavior, the roots of China’s social movements—from Tian’anmen to contemporary widespread social unrest and discontent among workers, peasants, students, and intellectuals—and the meaning and potential resolution of minority conflicts in China’s hinterlands. Land and resource grabs in China and abroad are central to China’s rapid growth and role as an industrial platform for the world. But resulting social inequality and environmental degradation challenge the legitimacy of China’s leadership like never before—as recent protests in Hong Kong and elsewhere attest. The COVID pandemic and the state’s response has revealed new challenges to state legitimacy. As China borders many of the most volatile places in the contemporary world—and increasingly projects its power to the far corners of the planet and beyond—we will conclude our seminar with a discussion of global security issues, geopolitics, and potential scenarios for China’s future. Weekly selected readings, films, mass media, and books will be used to inform debate and discussion. A structured conference project will integrate closely with one of the diverse topics of the seminar. Some experience in the social sciences is desired but not required.

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The Rise of the New Right in the United States

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring

Why this course and speaker series/community conversations now? The rise of the New Right is a critically important phenomenon of our time, shaping politics, policies, practices, and daily life for everyone. The insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, is only one egregious expression of long-term ideas and actions by a newly emboldened collective of right-wing ideologues. The violent challenges to the realities of a racially and ethnically diverse America is not a surprise. Nor is the normalization of White Power politics and ideas within mainstream politics and parties. The varied nature of the New Right’s participants—their ideologies, grievances, and goals—requires deep analysis of their historical roots, as well as their contemporary manifestations. The wide range of platforms and spaces for communicating hate, lies, and calls for violence against perceived enemies require their own responses, including the creation of platforms and spaces that offer analysis and alternatives. Seriously engaging the New Right, attempting to offer explanations for its rise, is key to challenging the authoritarian drift in our current political moment and its uncertain evolution and future. To do so requires our attention. It also requires a transdisciplinary approach, something inherent to our College and to geography as a discipline, be it political, economic, cultural, social, urban, historical, or environmental geography. The goal of this seminar, one that is accompanied by a planned facilitated speaker series and community conversations, is to build on work in geography and beyond and engage a wide array of thinkers from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, institutions, and organizations. In addition to teaching the course itself, my hope is that it can be a vehicle to engage our broader communities—at the College and in our region, as well as by reaching out to our widely dispersed, multigenerational alumni. Pairing the course with a subset of facilitated/moderated speaker series, live-streamed in collaboration with our Alumni office, offers the chance to bring these classroom conversations and contemporary and pressing course topics, grounded in diverse readings and student engagement, to a much wider audience and multiple communities. In this class, we will seek to understand the origins and rise of the New Right in the United States and elsewhere, as it has taken shape in the latter half of the 20th century to the present. We will seek to identify the origins of the New Right and what defines it; explore the varied geographies of the movement and its numerous strands; and identify the constituents of the contemporary right coalition. In addition, we will explore the actors and institutions that have played a role in the expansion of the New Right (e.g., courts, state and local governments, Tea Party, conservative think tanks, lawyers, media platforms, evangelical Christians, militias) and the issues that motivate the movement (e.g., anticommunism, immigration, environment, white supremacy/nationalism, voter suppression, neoliberal economic policies, antiglobalization, free speech). This is a reading-intensive, discussion-oriented, open, large seminar in which we will survey a broad sweep of the recent literature on the New Right. While the class focuses most specifically on the US context, conference papers based on international/comparative case studies are welcome. Students will be required to attend all associated talk and film viewings; write weekly essays and engage colleagues in conversation online the night before seminar; and write two short research papers that link the themes of the class with their own interests, creative products, research agenda, and/or political engagement. You will also do two associated creative projects/expressions. Transdisciplinary collaborative activities across the College and community are encouraged. Film, performance, written commentary, podcasts, workshops, and other forms of action can provide additional outlets for student creative projects and engagement.

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Making Latin America

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

This course examines Latin America in the making. From the time of Andean ayllus to the contemporary battles between the populist left and the populist right, this lecture course offers a survey of the more than five centuries of the history of the region that we know as Latin America. Although the region’s history is deeply embedded in global processes of capitalist expansion, imperial domination, and circulation of Western ideas, this course attempts to look at Latin America from the inside out. The course examines the ways in which landowners and campesinos, intellectuals and workers, military blacks, whites, and mestizos understood and shaped the history of this region and the world. The course will examine the rise and fall of the Aztec and Inca empires, the colonial order that emerged in its stead, independence from Iberian rule, and the division of the empire into a myriad of independent republics or states searching for a “nation.” In the second part of the course, by focusing on specific national trajectories, we will ask how the American and Iberian civilizations shaped the new national experiences and how those who made claims on the “nation” defined and transformed the colonial legacies. In the third and final portion of the course, we will study the long 20th century and the multiple experiences of, and interplay between, anti-Americanism, revolution, populism, and authoritarianism. We will ask how different national pacts and projects attempted to solve the problem of political inclusion and social integration that emerged after the consolidation of the 19th-century liberal state. Using primary and secondary sources, both fiction and film, the course will provide students with an understanding of historical phenomena such as mestizaje, caudillismo, populism, reformism, corruption, and informality, among other concepts key to the debates in contemporary Latin America. The course meets for one weekly lecture and one weekly group conference. Aside from mandatory attendance and participation, the requirements for the course include an individual exam, a collaborative research project, and a primary source analysis.

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Imperialism and Servitude: Slave Rebellions in Greek and Roman History

Open, Seminar—Spring

The ancient historians of Greece and Rome have related many examples of slave rebellions to posterity. These stories tend to appear in the context of struggles to control newly acquired wealth and power from successful conquest and imperialist policies. In this course, we will focus on slave rebellions in two historical epochs. First, we will examine historical evidence on slavery in Athens and Sparta, famous Greek city-states in the period inclusive of the Persian and the Peloponnesian Wars. The second era is the Roman Republic in the final two centuries BCE when, as powerful factions struggled for power over Rome’s newly conquered wealth and territory, major slave rebellions spread from Sicily to other Roman spheres of influence—and, finally, to Italy itself in the famous Spartacus rebellion. In this course, we will read selections of the surviving historiography, in English translation, by authors such as Thucydides, Plutarch, Sallust, and Diodorus Siculus, among others. We will also read secondary scholarship discussing some of the many controversies on these topics, such as the theoretical constructs of slavery, ideologies of rebel slaves, the perspectives of historians ancient and modern, conditions favorable to revolt, and the reception of stories of rebellion in later centuries, to name a few. Assignments will include regular low-stakes writing practice, as well as a class presentation and a major conference project. Conference work may take the form of traditional papers or a digital humanities project.

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Beginning Italian: Viaggio in Italia

Open, Seminar—Year

This course, for students with no previous knowledge of Italian, aims at giving the student a complete foundation in the Italian language with particular attention to oral and written communication and all aspects of Italian culture. The course will be conducted in Italian after the first month and will involve the study of all basic structures of the language—phonological, grammatical, and syntactical—with practice in conversation, reading, composition, and translation. In addition to material covering basic Italian grammar, students will be exposed to fiction, poetry, songs, articles, recipe books, and films. Group conferences (held once a week) aim at enriching the students’ knowledge of Italian culture and developing their ability to communicate. This will be achieved by readings that deal with current events and topics relative to today’s Italian culture. Activities in pairs or groups, along with short written assignments, will be part of the group conference. In addition to class and the group conferences, the course has a conversation component in regular workshops with the language assistant. Conversation classes are held twice a week (in small groups) and will center on the concept of viaggio in Italia: a journey through the regions of Italy through cuisine, cinema, art, opera, and dialects. The Italian program organizes trips to the Metropolitan Opera and relevant exhibits in New York City, as well as the possibility of experiencing Italian cuisine firsthand as a group. The course is for a full year, by the end of which students will attain a basic competence in all aspects of the language.

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Intermediate Italian: Modern Italian Culture and Literature

Intermediate, Seminar—Year

This course aims at improving and perfecting the students’ speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills, as well as their knowledge of Italy’s contemporary culture and literature. In order to acquire the necessary knowledge of Italian grammar, idiomatic expressions, and vocabulary, a review of all grammar will be carried out throughout the year. As an introduction to modern Italian culture and literature, students will be introduced to a selection of short stories, poems, and passages from novels, as well as specific newspaper articles, music, and films in the original language. Some of the literary works will include selections from Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg, Gianni Rodari, Marcello D’Orta, Clara Sereni, Dino Buzzati, Stefano Benni, Antonio Tabucchi, Alberto Moravia, Achille Campanile, and Elena Ferrante. In order to address the students’ writing skills, written compositions will be required as an integral part of the course. All material is accessible on MySLC. Conferences are held on a biweekly basis; topics might include the study of a particular author, literary text, film, or any other aspect of Italian society and culture that might be of interest to the student. Conversation classes (in small groups) will be held twice a week with the language assistant, during which students will have the opportunity to reinforce what they have learned in class and hone their ability to communicate in Italian. When appropriate, students will be directed to specific internship opportunities, in the New York City area, centered on Italian language and culture.

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Feminist and Queer Waves: Reading Canon in Context

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall

In Waves, we’ll move backward through feminist and queer time, as we revisit “classic” pieces within their original historical contexts. We will locate theory in place and time, naming how they respond to specific political, intellectual, and social exigencies. Our goal is to read these texts with close attention and care, asking how they reflect the urgent desires and needs of multiple overlapping communities. The texts represent a large breadth of topics, disciplines, and values of feminist and queer thought and are far from exhaustive history of any of these conversations. Likewise, our authors—folks such as Joshua Chambers-Letson, Saidiya Hartman, Martin Manalansan, Jennifer Nash, Claudia Rankine, Gayle Rubin, Eve Sedgwick, and Barbara Smith—each write from the specifics of their own experience, offering frequently contradictory arguments about the way the world does—and should—work. Together, we’ll build narratives about queer and feminist theoretical history that honor these complexities. We’ll build a co-authored public website that will house a timeline, theory cloud, and a digital exhibit of images from your archival research. You’ll be responsible for curating discussion for one class period. For your final conference work, you’ll conduct an independent project at either the Yonkers Public Library or the Sarah Lawrence College Archives, with an optional opportunity to help curate a final community event in spring 2024. As an interdisciplinary theory course, expect to draw on theory from gender and sexuality studies; LGBT studies; and Africana studies.

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Perverts in Groups: Queer Social Lives

Open, Seminar—Spring

Contradictory assumptions about the relation of homosexuals to groups have dominated accounts of modern LGBT life. In Western Europe and the United States, from the late 19th century onward, queers have been presented as profoundly isolated persons—burdened by the conviction that they are the only ones ever to have had such feelings when they first realize their deviant desires and immediately separated by those desires from the families and cultures into which they were born. Yet, at the same time, these isolated individuals have been seen as inseparable from one another, part of a worldwide network always able to recognize their peers by means of mysterious signs decipherable only by other group members. Homosexuals were denounced as persons who did not contribute to society. Homosexuality was presented as the hedonistic choice of reckless, self-indulgent individualism over sober social good. Nevertheless, all homosexuals were implicated in a nefarious conspiracy, stealthily working through their web of connections to one another in order to take over the world or the political establishment of the United States; for example, its art world, theatre, or film industries. Such contradictions could still be seen in the battles that have raged since the 1970s, when queers began seeking public recognition of their lives within existing social institutions, from the military to marriage. LGBT persons were routinely attacked as threats (whether to unit cohesion or the family) intent on destroying the groups they were working to openly join. In this class, we will use these contradictions as a framework for studying the complex social roles that queers have occupied and some of the complex social worlds that they have created—at different times and places and shaped by different understandings of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and nationality—within the United States over the past century and a half. Our sources will include histories, sociological and anthropological studies, the writings of political activists, fiction, and film.

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First-Year Studies: An Introduction to German Literature and Film From the Late 18th Century to the Present

FYS—Year

In this course, students will learn about the major cultural and historical developments in Germany since the late 18th century through an in-depth analysis of masterpieces of German literature (novels, stories, plays) and film. In the fall semester, we will analyze some German “classics,” such as The Suffering of Young Werther; Romantic tales, along with a famous text by Sigmund Freud; and some modern prose by Hesse, Thomas Mann, Kafka, Rilke, and Irmgard Keun. We will also watch and discuss several Expressionist movies from the 1920s (among them, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Dracula, and Metropolis) and finish the term with a reading of Feuchtwanger’s novel, The Oppermans, to understand the main ideological tenets of National Socialism. In the spring semester, the seminar will focus entirely on postwar German literature and film after 1945 and, especially, the question of how writers and intellectuals have dealt with the Holocaust, National Socialism, the Communist dictatorship, and German reunification since 1990. Films such as The Murderers Are Among Us, The Marriage of Maria Braun, The Lives of the Others, Good Bye, Lenin, and Barbara will give students visual representations of the most important cultural and historical issues since 1945. Along with these stories, plays, novels, and movies, students will have to read some “historical” materials (essays and selected chapters from history books) to gain a fundamental understanding of German history. Since this is a First-Year Studies class, other important goals include helping students with the transition to college life, developing good study habits, and improving their critical writing skills. For this reason, biweekly individual conferences will alternate with biweekly group conferences, during which we will explore “student-life” issues and develop some group identity.

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High Romantic Poetry: Blake to Keats

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

This course focuses on the interpretation and appreciation of the most influential poems written in English in the tumultuous decades between the French Revolution and the Reform Act of 1832. Over the course of two generations, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats invented a new mode of autobiographical verse that largely internalized the myths they inherited from literary and religious traditions. The poet’s inward, subjective experience became the inescapable subject of the poem (a legacy that continues to this day). We will be exploring ways in which the English Romantic poets responded to the political and spiritual impasse of their historical moment and created poems out of their arguments with themselves, as well as their arguments with one another.

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Documenting Asian America

Open, Seminar—Fall

This course will introduce students to the major themes and methods of Asian American cultural studies. Each week, we will revisit a key “site” of Asian American history—the sugarcane plantation, the shoreline, the railroad, the internment camp, and the protest—and explore how Asians in America have differently documented themselves in relation to those spaces through art and literature. We will ask questions, including: How might a poem, photograph, or film differently represent the experience of migration? What common images emerge in the literature and art surrounding a particular historical event? What power or authority does the “documentary” hold in relaying the lived experiences of Asians in America? In answering these questions, course discussions will center on themes of memory, testimony, identity, and the power of representation. The course will also include field trips to area collections in documentary photography and filmmaking. Other assignments will include visual and literary analysis essays and creative-writing responses, as well as a curatorial project where students will have the opportunity to research Asian American documentarians and pitch artworks for exhibition at the Hudson River Museum.

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The Marriage Plot: Love and Romance in American and English Fiction

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall

“Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had,” Charlotte Brontë’s title character exclaims in the concluding chapter of Jane Eyre. Jane’s wedding may be quiet, but the steps leading up to her marriage with a man who once employed her as a governess are tumultuous. With the publication of Jane Eyre, we have moved beyond the marriage-plot novel, in which a series of comic misunderstandings pave the way for a happy wedding; but what remains is a rich, marriage-plot series of novels in which joy is mixed with sadness. This course will explore six marriage-plot novels: three of them American, three of them English. The three English novels are Jane Austen’s Emma, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and George Eliot’s Middlemarch. The three American novels are Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady, and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. We will begin our reading in the early 19th century and end at the start of the 20th century. The six novels make compelling reading on their own, but their link to the question of what makes a good marriage adds a crucial social and political element to the course. Nobody enters a marriage believing that it will end, and nobody leaves a marriage—which is, after all, a legal as well as a personal commitment—without being changed. As Dorothea Brooke, the heroine of Middlemarch, observes, “Marriage is so unlike everything else.”

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Emersonian Quartet: Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, and Stevens

Open, Seminar—Spring

In an 1842 lecture, Emerson lamented that no American poet had yet emerged who could answer the rich legacy of European literary tradition with an originality and genius commensurate to a new civilization. Whitman would later remark that he had been “simmering, simmering, simmering” until Emerson’s injunctions brought him “to a boil.” The outcome was his sublime, democratic, discontinuous, homoerotic national epic, “Song of Myself” (the “greatest piece of wit and wisdom yet produced by an American,” Emerson immediately judged it). In unique but related ways, Dickinson, Frost, and Stevens also set out to answer Emerson’s call. Like Whitman at the end of “Song of Myself,” their most inventive poems seem always out in front of us, waiting for us to arrive. We will do our best to catch up—to conceptualize and paraphrase their rhetorical tropes, while acknowledging the inevitable failure of merely discursive language to transmit a poem. Our central task will be to interpret and appreciate the poetry we encounter through close, imaginative reading,; informed speculation, and an understanding of historical contexts.

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The Music of What Happens: Alternate Histories and Counterfactuals

Open, Seminar—Spring

The alternate history, which imagines a different present or future originating in a point of divergence from our actual history—a branching point in the past—is both an increasingly popular form of genre fiction and a decreasingly disreputable form of analysis in history and the social sciences. While fictions of alternate history were, until very recently, only a subgenre of science fiction, celebrated “literary” novelists (Philip Roth, Michael Chabon, and Colson Whithead, among others) have, within the last decade and a half, written well-regarded novels of alternate history: The Plot Against America, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, and The Underground Railroad. Similarly, while counterfactual historical speculation is at least as old as Livy, academic historians have, until recently, scorned the practice as a vulgar parlor game; but this is beginning to change. In the early 1990s, Cambridge University Press and Princeton both published intellectually rigorous books on alternate history and counterfactual analysis in the social sciences. More recently, Cambridge published a volume analyzing alternate histories of World War II. And in 2006, the University of Michigan Press published an interesting collection of counterfactual analyses, titled Unmaking the West. This course will examine a number of fictions of alternate history, some reputable and some less reputable, and may also look at some of the academic work noted above. We shall attempt to understand what it might mean to think seriously about counterfactuals;, about why fictions of and academic works on alternate history have become significantly more widespread; and about what makes an alternate history aesthetically satisfying and intellectually suggestive rather than ham-fisted, flat, and profoundly unpersuasive.

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First-Person America: Two Centuries of Classic American Literature

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring

America’s writers have been at home writing in the first person since the early nineteenth century. The result is a body of literature that is both highly personal and diverse.  This course will begin with three nineteenth-century books: Frederick Douglass’s autobiographical Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Then we will then move into the early twentieth century and the rethinking of the American Dream in Willa Cather’s My Antonia, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. We will next look at the age of Roosevelt with two American odysseys, The Grapes of Wrath (a book in which Steinbeck makes his presence so heavily felt that he might as well be writing in the first person), and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.  We will conclude the term with two self-critical, coming-of-age novels that take place in post-World War II America—J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.  The aim of this course is to capture the full range of American literature and explore why so many unconventional narrators—from an ex-slave to a failed suicide, to cite two examples—play such an important role in American writing.

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Punk

Open, Large Lecture—Spring

This course will examine punk rock as a musical style and as a vehicle for cultural opposition. We will investigate the musical, cultural, and political conditions that gave birth to the genre in the 1970s and trace its continuing evolution through the early 2000s—in dialogue with and opposition to other musical genres, such as progressive rock, heavy metal, ska, and reggae. We will begin with the influence of minimalism on “proto-punk” artists like the Velvet Underground and Patti Smith, which will provide a foundation for seeing how minimalism—as well as modernism, atonality, and electronic music—continue to resonate in punk and rock music. We will examine the intellectual background of early UK punk, with readings by Guy Debord and the Situationist International, and look at the theories of Gramsci and Foucault on the question of institutional power structures and the possibility of resistance to them. To deepen our understanding of punk style and the culture of opposition, there will also be readings by Theodor Adorno, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Julia Kristeva, and others. We will trace the splintering of punk into various sub-genres and the challenges of negotiating the music industry while remaining “authentic” in a commercialized culture. Another major focus will be the Riot Grrrl bands of the 1990s as a catalyst for third-wave feminism. Given the DIY aesthetic at the heart of punk and in addition to listening to, analyzing, and reading about the music, students who want to incorporate creative work will be given the opportunity to work with musicians and write some punk songs. In light of the abundant documentary film footage relating to punk culture, the course will include a film viewing every other week.

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Philosophy and the Founding of the Modern World

Open, Small Lecture—Year

Where does the modern world come from? In large part, it is the product of philosophy that took on a political role it had never had before: the role of founding a new social order organized around science and technology and which, it was hoped, would tame the religious conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries. We will begin by reading Francis Bacon’s Preface and Proemium to the Grand Instauration, as well as parts of his Advancement of Learning, in which he sets out the plan for the new science and technology and seeks to make it politically and religiously acceptable, and his New Atlantis, a sketch of the new scientific-technological order. Then, we shall go on to read Descartes’ Discourse on Method, in which he combines the plan for a new physics and a new technological order with a new metaphysics of God and the soul and a new ethics of self-determination—different from the ethics of the ancient Stoics and Skeptics on which it draws, as well as from the ethics of Aristotle, Plato, and Epicurus and from Christian conceptions of virtue and vice. We shall then study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise, which is at once a scientific study of religion and a proposal for a new social order, in which religion will serve simply to support morality and obedience to the law while not interfering with science and philosophy. In group conference, we will study the ancient philosophy from which the moderns take their departure: selections from Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, and Seneca. In the spring semester, we will turn to modern reactions to the earlier modern attempts to remake the world. We will begin with Shaftesbury, who seeks to save Plato’s defense of moral teleology from both Christian rejection of the world and the attacks of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza by appealing to comedy and the sense of the beautiful. We will then turn to Hume, who seeks to invent a new common sense based on custom and feeling. Finally, we will consider Rousseau’s attack on the arts and sciences and his attempt to reconstruct the doctrine of political right without appealing to the natural order. In group conference, we will continue reading the ancients, especially Plato and Lucretius, to consider how those authors draw on them and react against them.

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Ancient Philosophies as Ways of Living in Truth

Open, Seminar—Fall

Philosophy is often studied as one discipline among other academic disciplines. For most of its long history, however, philosophy was nothing of the sort. It involved a way of living; of regulating desire, grief, rage, and fear of death; and theoretical contemplation, of course, especially on the nature of truth—but theory was always embedded within a practical concern for the best life humanly possible. We explore this alternative practice of philosophy by examining Ancient Greek and Roman philosophical traditions and interrogating how those philosophers exercised a mode of thinking that inculcates an entire way of living in truth. Ancient philosophers to be discussed include Parmenides, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Diogenes the Cynic, Aristotle, Epicurus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Sextus Empiricus. We also discuss recent historians of this tradition who try to revitalize this practice, such as Pierre Hadot, Jan Patočka, and Michel Foucault. Thus, we survey not only Ancient Greek and Roman theoretical practice but also interrogate whether this practice of doing philosophy is viable today or even worthy of revitalization and, if so, how to go about living a philosophical life in the present. 

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Descartes and Princess Elizabeth: From Metaphysics to Morals

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall

René Descartes can be seen as the founder of modern philosophy. He carried out much of his intellectual life through correspondence, and one of his most important correspondents was Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. A central topic of their correspondence is the “union of mind and body”; i.e., how thought is related to matter but also how the perspective of science is related to the passions and human life. This problem is posed by Descartes’ treatment of mind and body in his Meditations, which led Elizabeth to begin the correspondence. Their exchanges led Descartes to write his last book, The Passions of the Soul, on psychology, the passions, virtue, and vice. We will begin by reading the Meditations, then focus on the correspondence between Descartes and Elizabeth, and finally turn to the Passions.

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Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall

This reading seminar will consist of a close study of one book, A Thousand Plateaus, which was coauthored in 1980 by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari.A Thousand Plateaus, the second volume of their magnum opus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia—the founding text of a movement of thought called “poststructuralism”—is among the most influential books of 20th-century philosophy. As its name suggests, the book presents a vision, or visions, of the world and of history as multilayered and multiplex rather than homogenous and linear. The book teaches us to look and to think of things and of ourselves from a variety of new and shifting angles, with the aim of providing means of resistance, empowerment, and sometimes escape against capitalism, fascism, and forces of normalization. To do this, Deleuze and Guattari draw on a broad range of philosophical, literary, and artistic texts and on modalities of experience that have traditionally been associated with madness. Their writing style is bold and dazzling, full to the brim with new terminologies (many of which have since become common tropes in the humanities and the social sciences); it is also challenging and dense. Engaging their work fruitfully requires a mind that is, like theirs, open and adventurous, willing to take risks and follow unpredictable turns. We will proceed in workshop fashion, reading 30-40 pages a week in advance of each class, writing short analyses throughout the semester, and coming to class prepared and eager to work together toward increased understanding. In addition to the prerequisite, students enrolling in this class should, more importantly, have a philosophical passion and commitment, a diligent work ethic, and a spirit of camaraderie, collaboration, and generosity.

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Human/Nature: Philosophical Perspectives

Open, Seminar—Spring

What is humanity? What, if anything, makes us different from other modes of being, and what kind of responsibility do we have with respect to what is considered nonhuman? To broach these questions, this seminar will offer a critical survey of the history of Western philosophy with a focus on the development of humanism and subsequent critiques of it. Specifically, we will look at different ways in which the philosophical tradition defined the human being in contradistinction from, or relation to, nature. Texts will range from ancient philosophy (the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle), to modern philosophy (Descartes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche), to recent developments (New Materialism, Eco-Feminism, philosophy of technology). This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects

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Kant’s Political Philosophy

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring

Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone is a book about religion, but it is also a book about Enlightenment—or how to build a rational society; for this purpose, religion, in Kant’s view, is indispensable. We shall study how Kant seeks to reform Christianity to make it compatible with a rational society and what the limits are on this enterprise. The topic is of interest nowadays, when the attempt of Kant and others to make religion compatible with Enlightenment is under challenge, and religion has once again come into some tension with science and the hope for progress founded on collective rationality.

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Reflections From Damaged Life: Adorno and Critical Theory

Intermediate, Seminar—Spring

Surveying the post-Holocaust world of late capitalism, Theodor W. Adorno writes that “Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.” We find ourselves in a world replete with strife, burdened with a disconcerting future, and so the possibility of living a good life seems not just illusive but altogether impossible. And yet, from this dire prognosis, Adorno offers a critical assessment of modern life in all of its minutiae that hints at the possibility of redemption. His analysis is boundless, ranging from a vehement takedown of astrology to a psychoanalytic reading of fascist propaganda, from reflections on the fiction of Franz Kafka to questioning our capacity to shut a door quietly. Adorno suggests that describing the ills of modern life—what he variously identifies as capitalism, fascism, consumerism, or, more pervasively, the hallowing of meaningful experience that resolves itself in loneliness and alienation—might offer the possibility to transform those stifling conditions. The seminar will begin with his diagnosis of our social reality, proceed to theorize about the metaphysical underpinnings of this reality, and conclude by considering the capacity of art to redeem our physical existence. Underlying the entirety of our investigation of Adorno’s work will be the imperative to overcome what he calls the “barbarity” of our time. Readings will be drawn from Adorno’s main works, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Minima Moralia (1951), Negative Dialectics (1966), and Aesthetic Theory (1970), as well as various essays. Our ambition will be not only to understand Adorno’s assessment of the stultifying conditions of his time but also to consider how he supplies us with tools, methods, and arguments for addressing the challenges facing our own.

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Polarization

Open, Seminar—Fall

Despite frequent pleas from President Biden and even Speaker McCarthy for national social and political unity and the rise of groups like Bridge USA, Third Way, and No Labels, the seemingly never-ending sociopolitical polarization appears to be the new norm in American political life—and it may not have reached its violent peak in January 2021. To many politicians, pundits, and others alike, the social and political scene in the United States in the 21st century appears to be one of turmoil, disagreement, division, and instability. We regularly hear about a polarized and deadlocked political class; we read about increasing class and religious differences—from the alleged divides between Wall Street and Main Street to those who are secular and those who are religious; and we often see disturbing, dangerous, and violent images and actions from various politically-oriented groups. This seminar will explore the puzzle of how to move on from this divided state. While the course will briefly examine the veracity of these recent impressions of the American sociopolitical scene, we will center our course on the question: Is policymaking forever deadlocked, or can real political progress be made? Moreover, what are the social and policy implications of polarization? How does President Biden govern in this Trumpian political epoch, and are the political parties representing the will of the people? What about the impact of the 2022 elections? What are we to make of the frequent calls for change and for healing America’s divisions? This seminar seeks to examine these questions and deeper aspects of American political culture today. After reviewing some basics of the political economy, we will study American political cultures from a variety of vantage points—and a number of different stories will emerge. We will cover a lot of ground—from America’s founding to today. We will look at numerous aspects of American social and political life—from examining the masses, political elites, Congress, and policymaking communities to social movements, the media, and America’s position in a global community—all with a focus on policy and moving the country forward. This course will be driven by data, not dogma. We will use modern political economy approaches based in logic and evidence to find answers to contemporary public-policy problems and questions of polarization. We will treat this material as social scientists—not as ideologues.

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Civil Unrest and the American Media

Open, Seminar—Fall

During the New York Civil War draft protests, the publisher of The New York Times, a founding member of Lincoln’s Republican Party, put Gatling guns in his office windows on Printing House Square and announced that any protester who approached his building would be shot. This seminar will explore what the American media have done since then in covering and analyzing civil unrest. Hyperbolic? Not really. We will start with a discussion about what exactly constitutes civil unrest in the first place and then look at how the media have defined civil unrest over the decades and presented it to their readers, listeners, and viewers. We will explore, among other things, antiracism protests; antiwar protests; protests on behalf of women’s rights and gay, lesbian and transgender rights; and, on the flip side, public protests against alcohol consumption, against abortion rights, against gun regulation, for segregation, and finally, the attempted coup on January 6, 2021. We will look at what is covered, who is covered, what language is used, who is quoted, and who is not quoted to explore the impact of news coverage on protest movements and the impact of those movements on the news coverage. We’ll read newspapers and magazines; watch television reports and documentaries, movies, and TV shows; and explore the role of social media and its corporate owners. You’ll need research skills; we will be looking at original media sources that may be more than 100 years old or 10 seconds old. Students will be required to read, watch, or listen to at least two news sources a day and will be responsible, on a rotating basis, for sharing their findings with the class. There will be two 1,500-word essays, as well as your conference paper. Most readings will be in the media, but there also will be some reading from scholars who have studied the subject and framed it for our purposes. This should be challenging and a lot of fun.

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International Politics and Ethnic Conflict

Open, Seminar—Spring

Writing about the democratic transitions and ethnic conflicts that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel pessimistically declared in his 2002 novel, The Judges, that “the malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom so recently won?” One would be hard-pressed to find a quote that more accurately illuminates both the sense of severity associated with ethnic conflict, broadly defined, and the absolute lack of understanding of its causes. Despite an explosion in the number of electoral democracies since the late 1980s, expected to bring about peace and stability, the frequency and intensity of bloody and brutal scenes of ethnic violence seemed to belie all expectations. The proliferation of such violence over the last 30 years has thus caused many scholars and policy makers to more critically examine their assumptions about the sources and potential solutions to the problem of ethnic conflict as an international problem. Despite significant evidence to the contrary, commentators like Wiesel and many politicians still frequently attribute the sources of such strife to the existence of “morally degenerate people,” ethnic or racial diversity, or the history of animosity between various ethnic or racial communities. Looking at the problem from a more holistic perspective—which engages with the socioeconomic and political motivations underlying ethnic conflict—this course will challenge these commonly-held assumptions about the cause of ethnic violence and explore some possible solutions for preventing further conflicts or resolving existing ones. Some of the questions this course will address include: What are race and ethnicity? How and for what purposes are race and ethnicity constructed? What are the main sources behind conflicts deemed “ethnic”? What is the role of the international community in managing ethnic conflicts? What is the effect of democratization on ethnic conflict? What constitutional designs, state structures, and electoral systems are most compatible with ethnically divided societies?

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State Terror and Terrorism

Intermediate, Seminar—Spring

The events of September 11, 2001, unleashed a bitter and contentious debate regarding not just how states and societies might best respond to the threat of violence but also, fundamentally, what qualifies as terrorism. Just nine days later, and without resolving any of these difficult issues, the United States announced its response: The Global War on Terrorism. Over two decades later, we are no closer to consensus concerning these politically and emotionally charged debates. Americans are belatedly beginning to realize that the greatest threat of terror attacks in the United States originates from domestic rather than foreign actors, often from white nationalists. This course will investigate the use of violence by state and nonstate actors to assert their authority and to inspire fear. The modern state, as it was formed in Western Europe, was born of war per Charles Tilly’s often-quoted phrase: “War makes states, and states make war.” The ability to control violence within a territory has long been the key part of the definition of a functioning state. This class will discuss the evolution of the terminology of terror and terrorism from the French Revolution to the present and consider frameworks to distinguish forms of violence and different types of violent actors. We will explore acts of state terror and their consequences and consider the use of the term ”terrorism” in the popular press, in political rhetoric, and in policymaking by states and international organizations. We will consider a range of nonstate actors that have employed violence—including South Africa’s ANC, Sri Lanka’s LTTE, and white nationalists in the United States—and explore the impact that the use of violence has had for their popular support, for local and transnational communities, and for their ability to achieve their goals. Finally, we will consider new means of terror from drone warfare to cyber warfare. As part of our discussion of US foreign policy, the class will conduct a model diplomacy simulation in which students will assume the roles of members of the US National Security Council.

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Environmental Policy, Racism, and Social Justice

Open, Lecture—Year

In April 2014, the residents of Flint, Michigan, noticed something was wrong with their water. Residents of the predominantly Black city reported discolored, putrid water that produced skin rashes and even hair loss. While city officials insisted that residents had nothing to be concerned about, further testing revealed high levels of lead and bacteria, the effects of which we will see for generations to come. Flint, Michigan, reignited a national conversation about the relationship of our physical environment, race, and social (dis)ability in the United States. These themes will be central to this yearlong lecture, which investigates several questions: What is the relationship between the physical environment and our bodies? How does environmental policy affect and produce social disabilities? How do built environments shape experiences of disabilities? We will discuss these questions using both historical and contemporary lenses. Our analysis begins with an exploration of the United States’ history of imperialism, segregation, and redlining to investigate how these endeavors have shaped its natural and built environment. We will then examine how the ghosts of these histories shape contemporary environmental policies and to what degree this legacy has produced different forms of social disability. Throughout these discussions, we will attend to several themes, including: how racial hierarchies shape environmental injustice, how our built environments both produce and shape experiences of marginalization, and how those experiences are addressed by communities of color and environmental justice movements. Throughout the year, group conferences will help students build and strengthen methodological skills. In the fall, students are expected to submit a research proposal, including: a topic related to an environmental issue of interest, corresponding research questions, and a review of relevant literature. In the spring, students will use their proposals to build a research portfolio that empirically and theoretically explores their topic. Portfolios should include an analysis of descriptive statistics, qualitative data of the student’s choosing, and an essay connecting findings to the lecture’s theoretical discussions.

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Social Movements and Powerful Art: Aesthetics of Authority and Resistance

Open, Seminar—Spring

Using US-based artist Sarah Sze’s remark, “Great protests are great art works,” as its inspiration, this seminar explores the relationship between art, collective ideas, and social change within the context of social movements. We begin by discussing the relationship between aesthetics and the social sciences, focusing on a sociological notion of art as a collective and inherently social process. Our study includes the work of social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Theodor Adorno, whose works not only illuminate how public culture communicates collective ideas but also how the latter is imbricated with existing power structures and social hierarchies. These critical frameworks will help us investigate the modern art world, exploring how artistic institutions and movements are sites that both perpetuate and resist authoritative ideologies. In the second half of the semester, students will use these frameworks to explore the role of culture and art within collective social movements. We will investigate several questions, including: What defines a social movement and what social conditions produce social movements? How are art and aesthetics used within social movements to communicate ideas and strengthen communities? In what ways do movements deploy art as a form of social resistance or authority? Our discussions will particularly attend to grassroots movements within historically marginalized communities. Throughout the semester, students will also learn about the benefits of visual methodologies and how social scholars use them to understand collective culture and social change. For conference, students will select a specific social movement, exploring how art is deployed within the movement for collective resistance or control. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) critical analysis of an artistic institution, comparative analysis of how different contexts of resistance deploy shared artistic mediums, or the use of art within a given movement over time. While class discussions will primarily focus on the United States, students are also invited to explore the relationship between art and social movements in other social locations.

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Readings in Early Christianity: The Synoptic Gospels

Open, Seminar—Fall

There is perhaps no one who has not heard the name of a seemingly obscure carpenter’s son executed by the Romans around the year 33 CE. Why? His friends and followers preserved the memory of his life and teaching orally and then, after the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE, in written records that we have today in the Christian Bible’s New Testament. This class will focus on the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Why were they written, what do they have to say, and how were they intended to be read? To do this, we will immerse ourselves in the religion of the Holy Land; that is, the various forms of Judaism and the role of the dominant world empire of Rome. Our study will consist mainly of primary texts in the New Testament, but we will also have recourse to some Rabbinic materials, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

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Introduction to Ancient Greek Religion and Society

Open, Seminar—Fall

Few people dispute the enormous impact that the Ancient Greeks have had on Western culture—and even on the modern world in general. This seminar will introduce the interested student to this culture mainly through reading salient primary texts in English translation. Our interest will range broadly. Along with some background reading, we will be discussing mythology (Hesiod), epic hymns and poetry (Homer), history (Herodotus), politics, religion, and philosophy. By the end of the seminar, students should have a basic understanding of the cultural contribution of the Ancient Greeks, as well as a basic timeline of their history through the Hellenistic age.

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People of the Book: Jews and Literature

Open, Seminar—Fall

Across the ages, Jews have maintained an intimate relationship with the written word. From the destruction of the Second Temple through the chaos of modernity, reading and writing have grounded and animated Jewish life and practice. Together, we will embark on an examination of critical Jewish and human issues mediated through short stories, novels, and plays. By exploring the deep textual history embedded within Jewish culture, we will wrestle with topics as varied as romantic love and marriage, the encroachment of the secular world, cross-cultural conflict and exchange, and evolving concepts of gender and sexuality. Alongside our literary journey, we will engage with an array of artistic adaptations like music, film, and visual art. Accompanied by authors—including Yiddish luminaries Sholem Aleichem and Sholem Asch, American pioneers Philip Roth and Anzia Yezierska, and more recent visionaries Etgar Keret, Tony Kushner, and Dara Horn—we will interrogate the many ways that Jews both accommodated and broke convention.

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Documenting Jewish Lives: Past as Prologue

Open, Seminar—Fall

Time: a concept that has stymied many readers, authors, and thinkers alike. Measuring change over time, however, is central to Jewish thought and practice, as well as to the historian’s craft. From weeks to months, season to season, and across the stages of the lifecycle, Jews have historically engaged with time religiously, spiritually, philosophically, and practically. Human life, when mediated through the written word, leads to a rich portrayal of life's internal complexities and inconsistencies. In this class, we will attend to the poetics of time as it shapes human lives and to human lives as they shape the poetics of time. Specifically, we will explore Jewish lives, defined broadly, to examine the intricacies of everyday experience, innermost thoughts and feelings, and interactions with the Jewish and non-Jewish world. Beginning with Baruch Spinoza, the infamous Jewish maverick, and time-traveling forward through a selection of biographies, memoirs, and fiction to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the notorious Jewish jurist, we will pursue our quest to discern—and tell anew—what makes a Jewish life.

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Jews of New York

Open, Seminar—Spring

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” So wrote Sephardic New York Jew Emma Lazarus in 1883, putting her stamp on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty and forever intertwining Jewish history with the professed American ideals of freedom, equality, and inclusivity. Whether as insult, compliment, or casual observation, the conflation of Jews and New York has become permanently entrenched in the American imagination. But how did we get from 23 Jewish refugees landing in New Amsterdam in 1654 to the New York City of Streisand, Sondheim, and Seinfeld? This course will explore 370 years of Jewish history steeped in the urban environs of the Empire State that millions elected to call home. From Lyman Bloomingdale’s retail empire to Mount Sinai Hospital’s pioneering medical research and from the groundbreaking literature of Chaim Potok to the feminist and queer activism of “Battling Bella” Abzug, the Jewish footprints on the streets and avenues of the city remain readily apparent. We will examine socialist Jews who demanded a brighter future for all, working-class Jewish women who rioted over the exorbitant price of kosher meat, and Jewish radicals who broadened the parameters of religious observance. Recognizing New York as the crucible of United States citizenship and a major center of the Jewish world, we will interrogate how—from generation to generation—the Jews shaped New York and New York shaped the Jews.

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Jewish Mystics, Rabble-Rousers, and Heretics

Open, Seminar—Spring

Does God exist? How should one read the Bible? Who should read the Bible? How can humans connect with the Divine? How does Judaism relate to social justice? How do we reconcile the dichotomy of reason and revelation? What makes one Jewish? What does it mean to live Jewishly? These questions—and still others—represent but a smattering of those with which the Jews whom we will study have grappled, both philosophically and practically, throughout history. From the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria to the musical spirituality of Debbie Friedman and with a host of radical thinkers, rule-breakers, and religious innovators in between, this class will explore the myriad ways in which Jewish luminaries have broken with convention and disrupted the status quo. These individuals provide a lens into the humanity that undergirds the Jewish thought and ritual that, on the one hand, we take for granted and that, on the other, shocks or even appalls us. Drawing from an array of historical sources—including philosophical treatises, religious texts, and literary classics—we will explore how those Jewish pathbreakers have engaged with these questions across the ages and, in turn, offer our own responses.

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Environmental Policy, Racism, and Social Justice

Open, Lecture—Year

In April 2014, the residents of Flint, Michigan, noticed that something was wrong with their water. Residents of the predominantly Black city reported discolored, putrid water that produced skin rashes and even hair loss. While city officials insisted that residents had nothing to be concerned about, further testing revealed high levels of lead and bacteria, the effects of which we will see for generations to come. Flint, Michigan, reignited a national conversation about the relationship between our physical environment, race, and social (dis)ability in the United States. These themes will be central to this yearlong lecture, which investigate several questions: What is the relationship between the physical environment and our bodies? How does environmental policy affect and produce social disabilities? How do built environments shape experiences of disabilities? We will discuss these questions using both historical and contemporary lenses. Our analysis begins with an exploration of the United States’ history of imperialism, segregation, and redlining to investigate how these endeavors have shaped its natural and built environment. We will then examine how the ghosts of these histories shape contemporary environmental policies and to what degree this legacy has produced different forms of social disability. Throughout these discussions, we will attend to several themes, including how racial hierarchies shape environmental injustice, how our built environments both produce and shape experiences of marginalization, and how those experiences are addressed by communities of color and environmental justice movements. Throughout the year, group conferences will help students build and strengthen methodological skills. In the fall, students are expected to submit a research proposal, including a topic related to an environmental issue of interest, corresponding research questions, and a review of relevant literature. In the spring, students will use their proposals to build a research portfolio that empirically and theoretically explores their topic. Portfolios should include an analysis of descriptive statistics, qualitative data of the student’s choosing, and an essay connecting findings to the lecture’s theoretical discussions.

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Sociology of Global Inequalities

Open, Lecture—Spring

The focus of this lecture will be to introduce students to the processes and methods of conducting sociological research projects using a transnational and/or comparative lens. We will be taking as our starting point a set of global themes—loosely categorized as human rights, culture, migration, health, climate, and development— through which we will try to build our understanding of inequality in various forms in different contexts. The approach we take here in designing research would be one that aims to move beyond the national or the nation-state as a bounded “container” of society and social issues; rather, we will aim at a better understanding of how different trends, processes, transformations, structures, and actors emerge and operate in globally and transnationally interconnected ways. For example, we can look at migration not simply through the lens of emigration/immigration to and from countries but also through the lens of flows and pathways that are structured via transnational relationships and circuits of remittances, exchanges, and dependencies. As part of group conferences, students will be asked to identify one of the key global themes through which they will examine issues of inequality, using a range of methods for data collection and analysis—datasets from international organizations, surveys, questionnaires, historical records, reports, and ethnographic accounts—that they will then compile into research portfolios produced as a group.

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Race and Slavery in the Middle East and North Africa

Open, Seminar—Fall

How do we imagine slavery in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)? How do we make sense of the histories of slavery in understanding race in the larger region today and its interconnections beyond geographical boundaries? While contemporary critical scholarship on transatlantic slavery provides a necessary corrective to colonial narratives, this course proposes to go further by bringing in voices, histories, and experiences from predominantly the Middle East and North Africa region. Drawing on a long sociohistorical arc inclusive of a wide range of localities such as Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, and Iran, this course offers an enriched understanding of constructions and legacies of slavery, as well as our conceptions of race as they play out in the current moment. The course is divided into three parts: Part I begins by establishing the theoretical and epistemological foundations of racial formation theory, as well as historiography. It will set the stage for an in-depth discussion on how theory informs our analyses of race and slavery in MENA. In Part II, we will develop an overview of race and the history of slavery in the region by examining racialized and gendered experiences, practices, and textual formation. Finally, in Part III, we will focus on case studies dealing with historical legacies and present-day practices of race in modern nation-states. Through an elaboration of myriad contemporary connections, the course will open up possibilities of generating more complex and nuanced historiographies that go beyond current understanding of such a phenomenon. For conference, students can look at cases both within and outside the region. Other possibilities for conference work include certain thematic areas such as language, gender, media constructions, use of religion, and contemporary politics.

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Sociology of the Body

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall

How are bodies produced in the contemporary world? To what degree are our bodies truly our own? Using Michel Foucault’s term “biopower” and his related work as its point of departure, this course will address the above questions as well as others related to the body in order to analyze and better understand how modern social institutions and relations regulate and attempt to control our bodies. Our examination and analysis will include the various modalities through which power is enacted at the macro level—including, for example, state surveillance, violence, and policy formation. We will also explore the relation between such forces and micro-level, everyday experiences throughout, deploying the concept of “embodiment” to understand how social power not only acts upon us but also becomes internalized within our very beings. This framework will help us better understand how social power is carried through the body and shapes our physicality, as well as the ways in which we move through the social world and interact with each other. Our analysis will enable us to examine biopower more critically with respect to constructions and interpretations of sex/gender, race, class, and sexuality at multiple social scales. For conference, students are expected to select a social context of their preference through which to examine the relationship between biopolitical forces and the embodied experiences of the individual(s). Students might also explore strategies of resistance—both individual and collective—to establish bodily autonomy and resist domination. In addition to social scientific studies, students may deploy ethnographic research, media analysis, and/or turn to personal (auto)biographies as bases of their research and analysis.

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Race and Slavery in the Middle East and North Africa

Open, Seminar—Spring

How do we imagine slavery in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)? How do we make sense of the histories of slavery in understanding race in the larger region today and its interconnections beyond geographical boundaries? While contemporary critical scholarship on transatlantic slavery provides a necessary corrective to colonial narratives, this course proposes to go further by bringing in voices, histories, and experiences from predominantly the Middle East and North Africa region. Drawing on a long sociohistorical arc inclusive of a wide range of localities such as Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, and Iran, this course offers an enriched understanding of constructions and legacies of slavery, as well as our conceptions of race as they play out in the current moment. The course is divided into three parts: Part I begins by establishing the theoretical and epistemological foundations of racial formation theory, as well as historiography. It will set the stage for an in-depth discussion on how theory informs our analyses of race and slavery in MENA. In Part II, we will develop an overview of race and the history of slavery in the region by examining racialized and gendered experiences, practices, and textual formation. Finally, in Part III, we will focus on case studies dealing with historical legacies and present-day practices of race in modern nation-states. Through an elaboration of myriad contemporary connections, the course will open up possibilities of generating more complex and nuanced historiographies that go beyond current understanding of such a phenomenon. For conference, students can look at cases both within and outside the region. Other possibilities for conference work include certain thematic areas such as language, gender, media constructions, use of religion, and contemporary politics.

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Bad Neighbors: Sociology of Difference and Diversity in the City

Open, Seminar—Spring

The focus of the seminar will be on questions of diversity, difference, and cosmopolitanism as it pertains to urban life in a contemporary American city such as Yonkers or New York City, as well as in urban societies around the world. We will take a sociological look at how urban communities experience, navigate, and transform social structures, relationships, and institutions in their everyday lives, as they deal with problems such as inequality, hate, and exclusion while coexisting with different and diverse populations. We will read books and essays by Arlie Hochschild, Asef Bayat, Yuval Noah Harari, Dina Neyeri, Robert Putnam, and others, as we explore ways in which cities embody histories as central while marginalizing others—and how communities and people in their everyday lives resist, alter, and decenter those histories and hierarchies. Through engaged field research, we will try to learn and understand how diverse communities of people work and live together; build and provide for the wider community; and rely on informal and formal opportunities, resources, and networks to make life in the city possible. This course aims to train students on the basics of fieldwork research and ethnography in urban settings, using a wide variety of transnationally oriented theoretical and methodological approaches. Our key thematic questions will revolve around issues of difference, diversity, and cosmopolitanism as understood through sociological lenses. By using in-depth, grounded, and deeply engaged approaches to fieldwork in the city of Yonkers and other urban areas where students live, work, or visit, we will seek to understand how communities of hyperdiversity and intense differences manage to cohabit and live together in cities and how communities deal with hate, prejudice, and structural marginalization in their everyday lives. Through grounded fieldwork, we will be able to gain a better picture of how local communities improvise and use informal means to make their everyday lives work in these spaces.

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Social Movements and Powerful Art: Aesthetics of Authority and Resistance

Open, Seminar—Spring

Using US-based artist Sarah Sze’s remark, “Great protests are great art works,” as its inspiration, this seminar explores the relationship between art, collective ideas, and social change within the context of social movements. We begin by discussing the relationship between aesthetics and the social sciences, focusing on a sociological notion of art as a collective and inherently social process. Our study includes the work of social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Theodor Adorno, whose works not only illuminate how public culture communicates collective ideas but also how the latter is imbricated with existing power structures and social hierarchies. These critical frameworks will help us investigate the modern art world, exploring how artistic institutions and movements are sites that both perpetuate and resist authoritative ideologies. In the second half of the semester, students will use these frameworks to explore the role of culture and art within collective social movements. We will investigate several questions, including: What defines a social movement and what social conditions produce social movements? How are art and aesthetics used within social movements to communicate ideas and strengthen communities? In what ways do movements deploy art as a form of social resistance or authority? Our discussions will particularly attend to grassroots movements within historically marginalized communities. Throughout the semester, students will also learn about the benefits of visual methodologies and how social scholars use them to understand collective culture and social change. For conference, students will select a specific social movement, exploring how art is deployed within the movement for collective resistance or control. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) critical analysis of an artistic institution, comparative analysis of how different contexts of resistance deploy shared artistic mediums, or the use of art within a given movement over time. While class discussions will primarily focus on the United States, students are also invited to explore the relationship between art and social movements in other social locations.

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History and Theory: Anticolonial Thought in Contemporary Levant

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring

This course will explore a wide spectrum of social theories that have emerged both within and about the contemporary Levant, the Eastern Mediterranean. We will cover the history of the formation of anticolonial thought and will address the ongoing legacies and structures of coloniality in various domains in the region. Despite its regional focus, the course will also encompass a diverse array of social theories developed by scholars globally. We will be examining concepts such as settler colonialism (Wolfe), orientalism (Said) and biopower (Foucault), among others. Throughout the semester, students will not only delve into historical and theoretical texts but also engage with a diverse range of media, including podcasts, films, memoirs, and news pieces. By the end of the course, students will gain valuable insights into the development of anticolonial thought in the Levant and its connections with global theoretical paradigms. Students will be equipped with the analytical tools (such as discourse analysis, content analysis, and historical analysis) necessary to critically engage with contemporary challenges and contribute to ongoing discussions about colonial legacies, power structures, and social justice in the region and beyond. Each student will be expected to deliver a minimum of one in-class presentation, focusing on the weekly material, over the course of the semester. Conferences will be centered on research on related topics of students’ interest and writing research papers. Students will also be engaging in creative group projects throughout the semester.

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Painting Pop

Open, Concept—Fall

In this experimental studio class, we will explore how to digest, appropriate, reconfigure, and rewrite popular media using mostly, but not limited to, painting, drawing, and collage and open to video, animation, sculpture, and performance. We will examine how artists operate as consumers, catalysts, motors, and destroyers of TV, film, music, social media, and advertisement. Slideshows, readings, and presentations will exemplify the tight relationship between art and popular media throughout history and contemporary art and will serve as inspiration for students to create their own works. Students will be encouraged to deconstruct their own spectacles of adoration and critique and celebrate images that are impactful to them. We will promote generative group conversations, studio time, experimentation, collaboration, creativity, and improvisation.

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Activating Art in Public Places

Open, Seminar—Spring

The course will guide students in navigating the complexity of working in the public realm. The class explores methodologies and precedents for how artists translate their concepts, research, materials, processes, and scale into proposals for public works that respond to the needs of place and community. How can your work be in direct dialogue with its surroundings—physically, historically, and metaphorically—to activate the site? How can art mobilize the public into civic engagement, social change, and ecological repair? Through intentionality, projects engage audiences in participation, collaboration, or even disruption. Students will propose and develop a conference project with regular feedback, critique, and support from faculty and peers.

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Children’s Literature

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

Who doesn’t love Frog and Toad? Have you ever wanted to write something like it—or like Charlotte’s Web or A Snowy Day? Why do our favorites work so well and so (almost) universally? We will begin by reading books we know and books we missed and discuss what makes them so good. We will be looking at read-to books, early readers, instructional books for children, rude books, chapter books, books about friendship, and (possibly) young adult books. We may consider what good children’s history and biography might be like. We will talk about the place of the visual, the careful and conscious use of language, notions of appropriateness, and what works at various age levels. Invariably, we will talk about childhood, our own and as part of an ever-changing set of social theories. We will try our hand at writing picture books, early readers, friendship stories, collections of poems like Mother Goose. Conference work will involve making a children’s book of any kind, on any level. Classes will be in both lecture and conversational mode, and group conferences will involve looking at our writing.

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Episodes

Open, Seminar—Fall

The use of the episode is both ancient and modern and is central to storytelling in everything from The Arabian Nights to telenovelas, from The Canterbury Tales to Netflix, from comics to true-crime podcasts. Episodes differ from chapters in a novel and from short stories and can have many changing characters and plot lines. Episodes are disinclined toward resolution but love time, hunks of it, and do well depicting both the daily, including work, and the historical. We will be reading, looking at, discussing, and writing episodes in several forms and, for conference work, writing or rewriting six or so related episodes supported by small brainstorming conference groups as we go forward.

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Forms and Fictions

Open, Seminar—Spring

Whatever short form you are interested in— episode, story, reflection, memoir, essay, tale—you will find in this course, both for reading and writing. We will talk about how different forms open the door to different takes on experience and how content or change can become more or less accessible in different forms. We will write 100-word pieces each week to learn to edit ourselves and to search through our minds for what’s there. We will practice pacing, dialogue, scene, portraiture. We will discuss what our favored forms say about our lives and the people in them. We will be writing and reading short pieces all semester, then editing, redrafting, and arranging them for conference work.

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Words and Pictures

Open, Seminar—Spring

This is a course with writing at its center and other arts—mainly, but not exclusively, visual—around it. We will read all kinds of narratives, children’s books, folk tales, fairy tales, graphic novels...and try our hand at many of them. Class reading will include everything from ancient Egyptian love poems to contemporary Latin American literature. For conference work, students have created graphic novels, animations, quilts, a scientifically accurate fantasy involving bugs, rock operas, items of clothing with text attached, nonfiction narratives, and dystopian fictions with pictures. There will be weekly assignments that involve making something. This course is especially suited to students with an interest in another art or a body of knowledge that they’d like to make accessible to nonspecialists.

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Creative Nonfiction

Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Fall

This is a course for creative writers who are interested in exploring nonfiction as an art form. We will focus on reading and interpreting outside work—essays, articles, and journalism by some of our best writers—in order to understand what good nonfiction is and how it is created. During the first part of the semester, writing will be comprised mostly of exercises and short pieces aimed at putting into practice what is being illuminated in the readings; in the second half of the semester, students will create longer, formal essays to be presented in workshop.

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Details Useful to the State: Writers and the Shaping of US Empire

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

Are you going to ask where I am? I'll tell you—giving only details useful to the State... —Pablo Naruda, Letter to Miguel Otero Silva, 1948.

What might it mean for a writer to be useful to a state? How have states used writers, witting and unwitting, in projects aimed at influence and hegemony? How might a state make use of language as a weapon? How might a state inflect and influence the intimacy between a writer and what they may write? What might it mean for a writer to attempt to avoid being useful to a state? In this class, we’ll discuss an array of choices that writers have made in relation to state power, focusing particularly on the United States from just after World War II until the present. You’ll be asking to read excerpts from four books: Joel Whitney’s Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers; Frances Stonor Saunders’ The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters; Eric Bennett’s Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War; Peter Dale Scott’s long poem, Coming to Jakarta; and Dionne Brand’s Inventory. This is not a history or literature class: Our lens will be that of a writer, using deep study and playful practice to figure out the dilemmas and best practices of the present. Although this is a lecture class, with a limit of 30 students, you’ll be asked to participate, improvise, and do some class reading and writing, work with a partner, as well as participate in one group conference a week often focused on in-class writing exercises. The only prerequisite is the courage to think out loud with other people; aka, the courage required to learn.

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Yearlong Poetry Workshop: The Zuihitsu

Open, Seminar—Year

There is nothing like a zuihitsu, and its definition slips through our fingers. It is a classical Japanese genre that allows a series of styles, and everything can be constantly reshuffled and reordered in every conceivable way. —Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Following Millenium

The name zuihitsu is derived from two Kanji: “at will” and “pen.” In this class, we’ll explore the Japanese poetic form of the zuihitsu via six required texts—The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon; Kenko’s Essays in Idleness; Chomei’s The Ten-Foot-Square Hut; two versions of Narrow Road to the Interior, one by Bashō and one by Kimiko Hahn; and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee—and, as writers, using the materials of haiku, lists, interviews, dialogues, travelogues, monologues, letters, maps, orts, scraps, fragments, and poems of all varieties. Participants will be required to make an individual zuihitsu and to contribute to the making of a collective one. The only prerequisites are a desire to be challenged, a thirst for reading that equals your thirst for writing, the courage to give up spectatorhood for active participation, a willingness to do in-class writing exercises, a willingness to work with a partner, and a willingness to undertake whatever labors might be necessary to read and write better on our last day of class than on our first.

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