This one-credit, eight-week course will ask the question of what it means to study Africa. As the world’s second largest and most linguistically and culturally diverse continent, Africa is also one of the world’s least understood historically, politically, socially, and culturally. This course thus aims to challenge conventional representations of the continent. In doing so, it also aims to introduce students to the broader interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary study of the continent.

The course introduces students to the main theoretical interpretations of culture in the Caribbean, and gives an overview of Caribbean cultural history. Students will be expected to analyze the impact of colonialism, race, class, gender and sexuality in the formation of Caribbean cultural practices, and to interpret cultural expression in its broadest political sense. Key theoretical terms that are central to any understanding of Caribbean cultural thought – the plantation, diaspora, creolization – will be addressed in detail in the course.

This interdisciplinary course explores over two decades of work produced by and about Black Queer Diasporic communities throughout the circum-Atlantic world. While providing an introduction to various artists and intellectuals of the Black Queer Diaspora, this course examines the viability of Black Queer Diaspora world-making praxis as a form of theorizing. We will interrogate the transnational and transcultural mobility of specific Black Queer Diasporic forms of peacemaking, erotic knowledge productions, as well as the concept of “aesthetics” more broadly.

Designed to introduce students to the methods of inquiry used for research in Africana Studies. Through intensive study of a single topic (past examples: Toni Morrison's Beloved, the American South, The Black Seventies) students will consider the formation of the field, engage canonical texts, attend lectures and learn from scholars whose work is based in a variety of disciplines. Focus will be on the challenges and opportunities made possible by doing multi- and interdisciplinary research: how and why scholars ask and approach research questions and have conversations with each other.

An introduction to some of the major perspectives, themes, and issues in the field of Afro-American studies. Our focus is on the economic, social and political aspects of cultural production, and how these inform what it means to read, write about, view and listen to Black culture.

As a result of cognitive psychology and education research, we have excellent understanding of human learning, its social and cultural nature, and the varied approaches to teaching, testing and assessment that lead to success. There is strong evidence that implementing these ideas would improve learning for all, including those who are under- resourced. In this seminar we will work to understand the findings by reading, discussing, and evaluating a selection of theoretical works and primary research from cognitive psychology and examine their practical applications to education.

In this course, you will become familiar with key figures and arguments in contemporary social-political philosophy. We will focus on the tradition of liberal social contract theory, which first emerged in the 17th century and continues to inform political thought. We begin with an introduction to the major theoretical and cultural origins of contract theory: Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and John Locke's Two Treatises of Government.

This course is designed to introduce students to the shared histories as well as the cultural and This This course will introduce students to the shared histories and cultural and geographic diversity of the region we call Latin America.