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CISA-Related Courses, Fall 2000

(Note: Courses from MHC were not available at time of publication.) The following courses are taught by faculty who have been closely involved with CISA since its inception. While the list is not exhaustive, these courses share CISA's concerns with exploring relational aspects of identity in the Americas within a comparatist and transdisciplinary framework. African-American, Black and Caribbean Studies "Childhood in Afro-Carribean Literature." ENGL 55. (Also Black Studies 29) Amherst College Prof. Rhonda Cobham-Sander TTH 11:00+. The course explores the process of self-definition in literary works from Africa and the Caribbean that are built around child protagonists. We will examine the authors’ various methods of ordering experience through the choice of literary form and narrative technique, as well as the child/author’s perception of his or her society. French texts will be read in translation. Open to first-year students with consent of the instructor. First semester. Omitted 1999-00. Professor Cobham-Sander. Asian-American Studies The Asian American Experience. ENGL 391A. UMass Amherst. Prof. Sunaina Maira W 2.30-5.15 Introduction to the history, politics, and cultural production of Asian-American communities, and also to Asian-American studies as an interdisciplinary field that is evolving and expanding. Latin-American and Central-American Studies: "Hispanics in the United States." SOC 35 Amherst College Prof. Karin Weyland TTH 02:00 - 03:20 - This course will explore the experiences of the many Latino groups (Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Salvadoran, etc.) in the United States and their impact on the politics, popular culture, literature and the arts of the United States. Through the study of ethnographic accounts, visual documentaries, novels and short stories, we will explore such themes as identity formation, community structures, assimilation and hybridity. "Latinos in the United States." SS 153. Hampshire College. Prof. Flavio Risech and Prof. Ozeguera. TTH 10:30-11:50 FPH 102 This course examines aspects of the distinct and shared experiences of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and other Latinos in the U.S. Though all Latinos are transformed by negotiating the real and imagined borders between their cultures of origin and that of the U.S., the manner and extent to which this occurs, and the politics that emerge from these transformations, differ markedly across Latino nationality-based groups. The roles of U.S. social institutions like courts, legislatures and schools in structuring the interactions between Latino communities and other Americans (Anglo, African and Asian) are explored, examining issues such as civil rights, immigration, education, and language. Texts include a variety of social science and legal literature, fiction, autobiography and film. "Perspectives on Latin America." LAS 200. Smith College. Prof. Ginetta Candelario MW 01:10-02:30 An interdisciplinary introduction to some critical themes and issues in Latin American culture and history. Lectures and discussions will focus on such topics as: perceptions of conquest; women in colonial times; nation building in the 19th century; 20th-century revolutions and the international context. Recommended for first- and second-year students. "Topics in Latin American Literature." SPN 245. Smith College. Prof. Marina Kaplan TTh 03:00-04:50 No course description Contested Spaces "The Family." Soc 21. Amherst College Prof. Jan Dizard TTH 10:00 - 11:20 The intent of this course is to assess the sources and implication of changes in family structure. We shall focus largely on contemporary family relationships in America, but we will necessarily have to examine family forms different from ours, particularly those that are our historical antecedents. From an historical/cross-cultural vantage point, we will be better able to understand shifting attitudes toward the family as well as the ways the family broadly shapes character and becomes an important aspect of social dynamics. First semester. Professor Dizard. "Domestic Violence." WAGS 53 (also Political Science 53). Amherst College. Prof. Bumiller and Prof. Karen Sanchez-Eppler MW 12:30 - 01:50 This course is concerned with literary, political and legal representations of domestic violence and the relations between them. We question how domestic violence challenges the normative cultural definitions of home as safe or love as enabling. This course will consider how these representations of domestic violence disrupt the boundaries between private and public, love and cruelty, victim and oppressor. In order to better understand the gaps and links between representation and experience, theory and praxis, students as part of the work for this course will hold internships (three hours per week) at a variety of area agencies and organizations that respond to situations of domestic violence. Limited to 25 students. First semester. "The City: New York." AM ST 11 Amherst College Prof. Karin Weyland MWF 11:00 - 11:50 - This course will explore the conflicted meanings and possibilities of urban life in the United States through a detailed study of the country's first metropolis: New York. The frontispiece of one nineteenth-century book on the city, Sunshine and Shadow in New York, juxtaposed a Fifth Avenue mansion with a Five Points tenement. Claude McKay's poem "The Tropics in New York" tells of weeping at the sight of "bananas ripe and green, and gingeroot, Cocoa in pods and alligator pears" set in a Harlem window. This sense of colliding extremes, of an enormous cultural and economic diversity commingling on the streets continues to reflect the vitality and the difficulty of the city and to suggest why New York occupies such a powerful place in the national imagination. Drawing on a wide range of materials we will trace the development of New York from the legend of the purchase of Manhattan Island for to contemporary ethnographic studies of how immigrant communities have claimed and transfo "The Car." SS 243. Hampshire College. Prof. R. Goodman. TTH 12:30-1:50 ASH 222 This course is a broad examination of the cultural, political, and environmental impacts of the automobile. It will examine the car's representation in film, art, and literature, its influence on the nature of city life and city design, its relationship to race, gender, and cultural identity, and its impact on the national and global political economy. Arguably, no single invention of the 20th Century has so transformed the world as the car - perhaps not even the Internet is likely to have a greater impact on most people's lives. What the automobile is, and what it might become (whether, for example, its use expands or declines) will play an important role in determining the future for many generation to come. The course will be in seminar format and will include lectures, class discussions, extensive readings, a good deal of analysis, and some film viewing. Class will meet twice a week for one hour and 20 minutes. Enrollment is 25. "Race in the United States." SS 270. Hampshire College. Prof. Flavio Risech and Prof. Ozeguera. MW 2:30-3:50 FPH 106 Using U.S. Supreme Court decisions as primary materials for study, this course seeks to develop critical perspectives on the ways in which shifting notions of race have influenced and have been shaped by normative law and juridical interpretation in the context of U.S. history. The course will examine legislative and judicial responses to the challenges presented by Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos to the Euroamerican-dominated social order since the beginning of the 17th century. These have involved claims for equal treatment before the law, and claims for specific rights stemming from the experience of collective, race-based oppression. Can the U.S. legal order reconcile its guarantees of fundamental rights to individuals with its long history of legal differentiation of various groups of people defined as "races"? Is the ideal of "color-blind" justice attainable, or even desirable? Specific topics will include colonial domination, legal regulation of "Legal Fiction." LEGAL 397P. Umass Amherst. Prof. Peter D'Errico. TUTH 11.15-12.30 Law assumes facts, creates entities, and conceals aspects of its operation in order to extend or limit the power of courts to decide cases. These actions may be regarded as proper or improper, depending on one’s point of view.... "Indigenous People Global Issues." LEGAL 470. Umass Amherst. Prof. Peter D'Errico. M 2.30-5.00 Historical and theoretical framework of international law and politics affecting indigenous peoples, in the context of contemporary issues. The Americas as Crossroads: "Reading/Writing/Teaching." ENGL 06. Amherst College. Prof. Barry O'Connell,. WF 12:30 - 01:50, TH 01:00 - 01:50 Students, as part of the work of the course, each week will tutor or lead discussions among a small group of students at Holyoke High School. The readings for the course will be essays, poems, autobiographies, and stories in which education and teaching figure centrally. Among these will be materials that focus directly on Holyoke and on one or another of the ethnic groups which have shaped its history. Students will write weekly and variously: critical essays, journal entries, ethnographies created jointly with the students they are meeting with in Holyoke, etc. Among the texts for the course: John Stuart Mill, Autobiography; Sylvia Ashton-Warner, Spearpoint; Tracy Kidder, Among Schoolchildren; Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities; Nicholasa Mohr, El Bronx Remembered; Eudora Welty, Losing Battles; and Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Line of the Sun. Two class meetings per week plus an additional workshop hour and a weekly morning teaching assistantship to be scheduled in Holyoke. Limited to 20 students. First semester. Professors Cobham-Sander and Sánchez-Eppler. "Southwest Seminar." NS 193f (also SS 193f.) Hampshire College. Prof. Debra Martin and Prof. Yngvesson W 2:30-5:20 CSC 333 This course explores a number of important problems that differentially affect the quality of life for ethnic groups living in the American Southwest. After an intensive overview of the Greater Southwest during Orientation Week, students will work in groups to formulate research questions drawing on anthropological method and theory. The course also examines the historical imposition and construction of "Indian" and other ethnic identities in the Southwest, and focuses on the emergence and consolidation of distinctions between Anglo, Indian and Hispanic groups. Student research topics will focus on one of three problem areas that differentially effect ethnic groups: health, environment, and representation. In addition to formulating an approach to better understand the dynamics that underpin these potential problems, students will examine how racism impacts practices and policies shaping these areas. During October Break, we will travel as a group for a week to New Mexico where students will co "Cold War Culture." HACU 242. Hampshire College. Prof. Eric Schocket TTH 12:30-1:50/W 6:00-8:00 pm FPH 103 Between the violence of World War II and Vietnam lies the relative calm of the 1950's. Typically derided for its focus on isolationism, individualism and consumerism or lauded for its sense of family values and economic growth, this period is usually examined in simplistic terms, viewed through the tinted lens of "Leave It to Beaver" reruns. Using novels, poetry, films and nonfiction, this course will try to complicate this picture, attending to the ways in which mid-century culture was shaped by and resisted such forces as cold war ideology, post-Fordist consumerism and the burgeoning civil rights movement. Through the eyes of Sylvia Plath, Norman Mailer, J.D. Salinger, James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac, James Dean and others, we will try to understand how the Beav' went bad, and how we might understand the incipient forces of unrest that led to the explosive culture of the 1960's. "Sociology of Hispanic Caribbean Communities in the United States." SOC. 214. Smith College Prof. Ginetta Candelario MW 02:40-04:00 This course surveys social science research, literary texts and film media on Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican communities in the United States. Historic and contemporary causes and contexts of (im)migration, settlement patterns, labor market experiences, demographic profiles, identity formations, and cultural expressions will be considered. Special attention will be paid to both inter- and intra-group diversity, particularly along the lines of race, gender, sexuality and class. "Colloquia in Literature: Writing American Lives" ENG 120. Smith College Prof. Floyd Cheung MWF10:00-10:50 - Each colloquium is conducted by means of directed discussion, with emphasis on close reading and the writing of short analytical essays. Priority will be given to incoming students in the fall-semester sections of the colloquia. Other students should consult the course director about possible openings. A study of autobiographical writings that explore the possibilities and limitation involved in being and becoming American. Authors include Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Zitkala-Sa, James Weldon Johnson, Mitsuye Yamada, Richard Rodriguez, Sara Vowell, Monique Thuy-Dung Truong, Geeta Kothari and others. "Pre-Columbian Arts." ARH 204. Smith College Prof. Dana Leibsohn TTh 09:00-10:20 An examination of images and architectural works created in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize before the arrival of the Europeans. This class focuses on the ways in which public spaces and sacred buildings, sculpture, ceramic vessels, and book paintings were invested with meaning before 1550 C.E. Specifically, pre-Hispanic objects and spaces are considered in light of current debates in Aztec, Maya, Teotihuacan, and Olmec art history and archaeology. No prerequisite. "Critical Race Feminist Theory." WOST 792A. Umass Amherst. Prof. Alex Deschamps. W: 4:00-18:30 No course description "Music, Culture, Communication." COMM 497O. UMass Amherst. Prof. Henry Geddes TUTH 2.30-3.45 No course description "South Africa and the American South." HIST 693.. UMass Amherst. Prof. John Higginson TH 9.30-12.30 Herter 640 No course description "Introduction to Multicultural Education. " EDUC 377. UMass Amherst. Prof. Sonia Nieto. T U 1.00-3.30 FURC 22 Introduction to the socio-historical, philosphical and pedagogical foundations of cultural pluralism and multicultural education. Topics include expiences of racial minorities, white ethnic groups, and women; intergroup relations in Amerian society; sociocultural influences and biases in schools; and philosophies of cultural pluralism. "Contemporary Playwrights of Color." THEATR 130. UMass Amherst. Prof. Roberta Uno TU 2.30-4.25 Introduces the distinct yet related theater movements of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans, which historically have existed at the margins of American theater and media. "American Identities." ENGL 270. UMass Amherst. Prof. Ron Welburn WF 11.15-12.30 This course explores the ways literature participates in the definition of national identity. Readings focus on ways American issues of creed, class, status, gender, self and communcation, possession and dispossesion, nationhood and ethnicity, and language have contributed to American identities. Prerequisite: ENGLWP 112 or equivalent.