Offered as AMS 243 and SWG 243. This course considers such questions as: What does one know and how does one know it? What knowledges count as science? How is knowledge culturally situated? How has science been central to colonialism and capitalism, and what would it mean to decolonize science(s)? Is feminist science possible?

This course places the “Culture Wars” – U.S. political battles waged over issues such as race, gender, sexuality, the family, abortion, education, guns, climate change and even the “non-partisan” COVID-19 pandemic – into the context of recent U.S. history. The goal of the course is to invite students to think critically about the workings of the Culture Wars within America’s democratic political system and about the impact of the Culture Wars on the broader sweep of life in the U.S.

This course offers an analytical history of American popular culture since 1865. It starts from the premise that popular culture, far from being merely a frivolous or debased alternative to high culture, is an important site of popular expression, social instruction, and cultural conflict. The course examines theoretical texts that help to read popular culture and it studies specific artifacts from a variety of pop culture sources, from television shows to Hollywood movies, the pornography industry to spectator sports, and popular music to theme parks.

It is often noted in mainstream news media that Indigenous peoples are “on the front lines” of the climate crisis, while providing little explanation as to why this is. Narratives of inherent Indigenous vulnerability obscure the ways in which Indigenous communities have mobilized to navigate environmental change, not only in the face of contemporary global warming, but historically, as settler colonial incursions radically transformed landscapes and constrained Indigenous knowledge practices that have provided tools for adaptation for thousands of years.

This course introduces some of the exciting and innovative approaches to cultural analysis that have emerged over the last three decades. Students apply these methods to a variety of texts and practices (stories, movies, television shows, music, advertisements, clothes, buildings, laws, markets, bodies) in an effort to acquire the tools to become skillful readers of American culture, and to become more critical and aware as scholars and citizens. AMS 201 is recommended but not required.

This course examines the mores, rules, and regulations that presently exists in African societies with regards to sex, sexual activity, and sexualities. Using an intersectional, decolonial, African, feminist perspective, it examines the social justification behind the establishment of such rules. Are these rules and norms instituted to safeguard vulnerable populations or are they based on the subjugation of entire classes of persons? Enrollment limited to 18. (E)

What is the nature of the Black radical imagination? This course on the Black Radical Tradition draws on the thought and marronage emblematic of the Black experience of New World coloniality, through speech acts, poetry, essays, historical studies and cultural criticism, students immerse themselves in an intensive examination of the meaning of Blackness at the beginning of the third decade of an unsettled century. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required.

How does gender matter in a black context? That is the question this course asks and attempts to answer through an examination of works by such authors as Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Nella Larsen, Zora Hurston, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange and Alice Walker.