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Crossroads in the Study of the Americas |
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CISA-Related Courses, Spring 2001 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 BLKST 11. Amherst College Prof. Rhonda Cobham-Sander T: 02:00 - 04:30. An interdisciplinary introduction to Black Studies. Topics will include the Frazier-Herskovitz debate, the sociology of the black underclass, the literary criticism of black literature, contemporary discussions of Eurocentrism and Afrocentrism, and the conceptual framework of black history.Second semester. Professors Cobham-Sander and Wills. WOST 394H University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Deschamps T: 02:30 - 05:00 Introduces the theoretical contributions of African American and African Diasporan feminists working in a variety of disciplinary fields. Black women viewed as producers of knowledge and as transforming agents. Identifies the major issues addressed by black feminists and the various forms of resistance to social structures. Asian-American Studies ENG 278 Smith College Prof. Cheung MW: 01:10 - 02:30 The body of literature written by Asian American women over the past one hundred years has been recognized as forming a coherent tradition. What conditions enabled its emergence? How have the qualities and concerns of this tradition been defined? What makes a text central or marginal to the tradition? Writers to be studied include Amy Tan, Sui Sin Far, Joy Kogawa, Chitra Divakaruni, Marilyn Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Jessica Hagedorn. ENGL 891/ANTH 891 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Maira T 1.00-3.45 Course description not available. Latin-American and Central-American Studies: SOC 314 (also LAS 301) Smith College Prof. Candelario T: 01:00 - 02:50 This seminar will explore theories of race and ethnicity, and the manner in which those theories have been confronted, challenged and/or assimulated by Latina/os in the United States. Special attention will be paid to the relationship of Latina/os to the white/black dichotomy. A particular concern throughout the course will be the theoretical and empirical relationship between Latina/o racial, national, class, gender and sexual identities. Students will be expected to engage in extensive and intensive critical reading and discussion of course texts. SPN 261 Smith College Prof. Kaplan TTH 03:00 - 04:30 A study of the development of genres and periods in Latin American literature. Special attention will be given to the relationship between the evolution of literary forms and social context. Some topics to be explored include literary periods and movements as ideological constructs, and the Latin American adaptation of European models. SPN 373 Smith College Prof. Kaplan TTH 01:00 - 02:30 Topic: Literature Then and Now in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Note: Argentine poet Diana Bellessi, SPP and LAS Visiting Scholar for 2000-01, will co-teach this course during her one-month stay here. Her weeks will be devoted to poetry from the three countries, including some of her own works. In broad terms, the course will develop a conceptual framework by reading works of Jorge Luis Borges and Pable Neruda, two of the greatest writers of mid-century Latin America. Borges’ stories are ironic, while Neruda’s poetry celebrates or denunciates. Borges questions the solidity of the world and, more dangerously, of the self, while Neruda appeals to our sense of justice and beauty. Irony, justice, beauty are traceable but also decentered in the textual practices of contemporary women. We will study Alfonsina Storni and Gabriela Mistral and follow their construction of an alternate poetic domain. Finally, more recent works by Eduardo Galeano, Ricardo Piglia, and present-day poets will continue to engage us with issues of justice, uncertain foundations, and with m The Brazilian Body: Representing Women in Brazil’s Literature and Culture." POR 221 Smith College Prof. Harrison MWF: 01:10 - 02:30 Topic: The Brazilian Body: Representing Women in Brazil’s Literature and Culture. This course raises questions about gender, race, class and stereotype through narratives and images of women’s bodies in 19th and 20th century Brazil. Works by writers such as Jorge Amado, Clarice Lispector, Ana Miranda and Marilene Felinto, and artists Tarsila do Amaral, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, Lygia Clark, and Rosana Paulino, among others, will be studied with the aim of addressing traditional cultural biases about beauty, sexuality, and Brazilian national identity. Readings and discussions will be in Portuguese and English, with one class meeting a week for the entire group and a second based on students’ language ability. Knowledge of Portuguese is not necessary, but students who are competent in it will have a separate discussion section. JUDAIC 390D (also SPAN 397A) University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Ben-Ur TTh: 11:15 - 12:30 This course will explore the literatures and cultures of Judeo-Spanish peoples from "Golden Age" Spain to contemporary America. For the purpose of this course, "Sephardic" is defined as all Jewish or secret-Jewish communities who either dwelled in the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal) or who self-consciously trace(d) their origins to that peninsula. All readings will be in English or in English-translation from the Hebrew, Spanish, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish,) Portuguese and Yiddish (Judeo-German) with an option to read texts in the original languages. We will also be viewing five videos depicting Judeo-Spanish culture, history and language. Among the issues to be explored are: what may we consider literature?; what is culture?; is there such thing as Sephardic literature?; what is the relation of Sephardic literature to Sephardic history?; what, if any, relation does Mizrahi (non-Sephardic Levantine) literature have to the body of Judeo-Spanish literature?; how have non-Jewish Hispan LAT AM 393A (also SOCIOL 393A) University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Lao-Montes TTh: 02:30 - 03:45 This course is an introduction to U.S. Latino Studies. Latinidad has a relatively long history (at least back to the nineteenth century) and U.S. Latino identities are a diverse ensemble of national, ethnic/racial, class, gender/sexual, generational and ideological differences. Latin American and Caribbean peoples were forged and continue to live at the crossroads of modern historical developments and power struggles, such as the “invention of the Americas” after 1492, the rise of the U.S. empire (along with the 1848 Mexican-American War and the 1898 Spanish-American War), the new radical movements of the 1960s, and the new waves of mass migrations since the 1980s. This makes U.S. Latinos a uniquely diverse social category and therefore a particularly complex subject of sociological analysis. Hence, even though the focus of this class is on U.S. Latinos, it will begin by framing the study of U.S. Latino culture and politics in relationship to the creation of Latin American identities in the nin SPAN 597A University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Marentes TH 04:00 - 06:30 Course description not available. EDUC 588 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Neito M 04:00 - 18:30 Introduces teachers, prospective teachers, and other professionals to Puerto Rican history, culture, and experiences in the U.S., and to strategies for implementing this understanding in the curriculum. ANTH 337 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Pi-Sunyer TTh: 01:00 - 02:15 The prehispanic Mesoamerican culture process. The origins, growth, development, and partial colonial reconstruction of these unique native American societies. The intellectual history of Mesoamerican archaeology. Native-American Studies Legal 460 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. d'Errico W: 02:30 - 05:30 Native people in American history. Law as mechanism of cultural oppression, land expropriation. Native culture, social structure through contemporary accounts, recent books, film, etc. Prerequisite: a legal studies course beyond LEGAL 250; exceptions for students with experience or other study relating to native people. HIST 397C University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Nash TTh: 11:15 - 12:30 Course description not available. ENGL 116 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Welburn TTh: 08:30 - 10:45 Course description not available. Contested Spaces AM ST 68. Amherst College Prof. Dizard TTH 02:00 - 03:20 Along with a number of positive features that constitute the case for American Exceptionalism, the United States is also exceptional in the degree of violence that has marked our nation's history. Indeed, the historian Richard Slotkin has made a painstaking case for the proposition that violence is the master narrative of our national life. Civil rights militant H. Rap Brown was more succinct when he observed Violence is as American as cherry pie. How is it that one of the most open and democratic societies could also be one of the most violent? We shall examine the role the resort to violence has played in American history, from the violence of the colonists' relations with Indians to the violence in contemporary inner cities. Our objective will be not to prove Slotkin right or wrong so much as to understand the ways violence is connected to the very things of which we are most proud: individualism, self-reliance, freedom, and distrust of authority. We shall consider historical, sociological, and crimin ENGL 06. Amherst College Prof. Sanchez-Eppler MW: 12:30 - 01:50; TH: 01:00 - 02:00 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, etc. Readings for the course will include works by Sylvia Ashton-Warner, James Baldwin, Judith Ortiz Cofer, John Dewey, Jonathan Kozol, Herbert Kohl, Sarah Lightfoot, John Stuart Mills, Abraham Rodriguez, Esmeralda Santiago, and Patricia Williams. 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. SOC 42 Amherst College Prof. Weyland TTh: 02:00 - 3:20 Through the different uses and meanings of photographic and videotaped images, we will explore how individuals and social groups reveal and frame their culturally diverse experiences. We will also examine how social scientists address these issues when conducting empirical research by looking at the power relations behind ethnographic work and the collaborative uses of the camera. In this course we will question dominant visual discourses and existing power relations in different societies and at different historical moments with an emphasis on race, ethnicity, class, and gender. Ideas pertaining to identity politics, the body politic, visual representation, and ethnocentric views of the other will be considered as they emerge in the works of the sociologists, anthropologists, documentary photographers, and filmmakers that we study. Students will have access to a darkroom and will work collaboratively with members of the Holyoke community in building a photographic archive of projects leading to social c SS 134. Hampshire College Prof. Risech-Ozeguera MW: 01:00 - 02:20 This course examines the law and legal institutions as sites of production, definition and mediation of social difference. Using landmark court decisions and laws such as Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Bowers V. Hardwick, students will develop skills of critical analysis of legal questions bearing on race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. The primary objective of the course is to develop fluency in reading and interpreting judicial opinions and statutes. Additionally, students will be expected to learn basic legal argumentation methods. SS 253 Hampshire College Prof. Risech-Ozeguera TTH: 02:00 - 03:20 This course will examine the development and the dynamics of the contemporary discourse of international human rights, using a broadly comparative approach that examines: 1) The development of contemporary international human rights institutions and jurisprudence from European legal and philosophical traditions; 2) The globalization after World War II of this "western" discourse of human rights; and 3) The ways in which this new global human rights discourse has been reproduced, challenged and transformed in parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa in response to local, regional and transnational cultural, ideological and political conditions. A central focus in our examination of these cases will be the tension between a normative, universalist ideology of human rights and claims of cultural particularity. We will also address problems of implementing human rights norms, enforcement, and retribution. Prerequisite: Successful completion of at least one legal studies or human rights related cours Legal 397P University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. d'Errico TTh: 09:30 - 10:45 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.... WOST 187H University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Deschamps TTh: 09:30 - 10:45 Basic concepts and perspectives in Women's Studies, with women's experiences at the center of interpretation. Critical reading and thinking about gender and its interaction with race and class. Focus on women's history and contemporary issues for women. COMM 791T University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Geddes W: 18:30 - 21:30 Course description not available. SOC 340 Universit of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Lao-Montes “Race” is a signifier, which has the peculiarity of being at once extremely familiar and excessively elusive. Indeed, students of “race” and “racism”, from W.E. B. DuBois to current trends in critical race studies, argued that as a scheme for social classification and inequality, “race” have always had different meanings in time and space. Hence, this course will study the relationship between “race” and power in modern societies. A key premise will be that racialist discourses and racial identities are modern creations, which only exist in relationship to modern regimes of domination (i.e. capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism), as well as of other modes of social and cultural identification (class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality). In light of this, we will always analyze racial processes in their connections to converging power dynamics and in relationship to other forms of social differentiation such as class, gender, and sexuality. Also, as a HIST 400 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Laurie TTh: 09:30 - 10:45 Course description not available. ENGL 491G University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Maira. TuTh 11.15-12.30 Course description not available. FREN 584 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Schwartzwald W: 04:00 - 19:00 A survey from the beginnings of New France to the present with emphasis on the modern period. Themes include: building a national literature, relation between the status of French and literature in Quebec, literature and Quebec nationalism, literature of "decolonization" and "l'ecriture au feminin." . The Americas as Crossroads: ENGL 75.2. Amherst College. Profs. Cobham Sander and Peterson. W: 02:00 - 04:30 A critical examination of the artistic and cultural values inscribed in certain texts which have attained prominence as representations of nationhood or nationality. The course explores both ancient and modern examples of so-called foundational narratives from Africa, Europe, and the New World. We shall include in our reading national epics that emerge from traditional oral cultures (The Sundiata of Old Mali; Serbian heroic ballads and Song of the Battle of Kossovo) and modern reworkings of epic narrative styles (Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Andric's The Bridge on the Drina). We shall pay particular attention to the invention of origins in state-sponsored narratives of nationhood like Virgil's Aeneid and the Dominican historical romance, Enriquillo. The course concludes with a close literary and cultural reading of two major unofficial New World epics that have become canonized by educated elites-Melville's Moby Dick and Walcott's Omeros. In our discussions we shall seek to clarify the artistic and ide SOC 36 Amherst College Prof. Weyland TTh: 11:30 - 12:50 In this course we will look at the global economy from an interdisciplinary perspective, paying particular attention to the causes and consequences of globalization in Latin America. We will examine the effects that global corporations, and U.S. businesses in particular, have had on this region in terms of the formation of Free Trade Export Zones, the rising of revolutions and social movements, NAFTA agreements, and the Global Shopping Mall. In this enlarging corporate context, we will explore transnational communities' dynamics and border theory culture; the changing definitions of race, gender, and ethnicity in the United States and abroad and the various discourses of modernity informing hegemonic power and transnationalism. We will also study the social configuration of different migrant communities in the United States and the ties between these communities and their home countries. These cultural, political, and economic ties have given new meaning to the concept of national identity, multicultural SOC 213 Smith College Prof. Candelario MW: 02:40 - 04:00 The sociology of a multiracial and ethnically diverse society. Comparative examinations of several American groups and subcultures. AMS 201 Smith College Prof. Cheung TTh: 10:30 - 11:50 An introduction to the methods and concerns of American Studies through the examination of a critical period of cultural transformation: the 1890s. We will draw on literature, painting, architecture, landscape design, social and cultural criticism, and popular culture to explore such topics as responses to economic change, ideas of nature and culture, America's relation to Europe, the question of race, the roles of women, family structure, social class, and urban experience. Open to all first and second year students, as well as to junior and senior majors. ENGL 270. University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Prof. Knoper WF: 11:15 - 12:30 An introduction to American literature from the beginnings to the present and an exploration of the ways literature has registered and helped define the identities of Americans. We will consider issues of nationality and ethnicity (through writings by Puritan settlers, Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, escaped slaves, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Thomas Pynchon, and recent writings by Puerto Rican, Chicano, Asian American and Native American authors); class and status (in stories by Tillie Olsen and John Guare's "Six Degrees of Separation"); and masculinities and femininities (in fiction by Edgar Allen Poe, Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Tim O'Brien, Raymond Carver, Ann Petry and Maxine Hong Kingston). ENGL 491G University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prof. Maira TTh: 11:15 - 12:30 Course description not available. COMLIT 692A. University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Prof. Miller W: 04:00 - 18:30 Course description not available. EDUC 377 University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Prof. Nieto T: 0:00 - 03:30 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. EDUC 559 University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Prof. Nieto T: 04:00 - 18:30 Curriculum theory, design, and resources for multicultural education. For term projects students develop multicultural curriculum units that can be taught in elementary and secondary schools. ANTH 234 University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Prof. Pi-Sunyer W: 19:00 - 22:00 Cross-cultural and comparative perspectives on visual arts. Art in different cultures in relation to economic, social, and religious contexts, and as a universal human manifestation. | |
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