In 2015 the Pew Research Center identified mixed-race Americans as “the cutting edge of social and demographic change in the US.” Prior to that, revisions to the United States Census in 2000 enabled the checking of multiple identity boxes, increasing the visibility of mixed-race people. Despite this recent recognition, the fact of mixed-race peoples in the Americas is nothing new. Since the Colonial period, laws governing citizenship, marriage and rights prohibited or punished miscegenation; yet, mixed-race people proliferated.

In 2015 the Pew Research Center identified mixed-race Americans as “the cutting edge of social and demographic change in the US.” Prior to that, revisions to the United States Census in 2000 enabled the checking of multiple identity boxes, increasing the visibility of mixed-race people. Despite this recent recognition, the fact of mixed-race peoples in the Americas is nothing new. Since the Colonial period, laws governing citizenship, marriage and rights prohibited or punished miscegenation; yet, mixed-race people proliferated.

(Offered as AMST 216 and BLST 240 [CLA/US]) Who is an “Afro-Latino”? Are they Latinos or are they Black? Afro-Latinos are African-descended peoples from Latin America and the Caribbean who reside in the United States. In this course, a focus on Afro-Latinos allows us to study the history of racial ideologies and racial formation in the Americas.

(Offered as ARHA 180 and AMST 211) This course will examine works of art created by Native American artists, including painting, sculpture, photography, and performance and installation art, from the late nineteenth century to today.  Students will study important movements and consider individual artists who worked primarily as painters, including the Iroquois realists of the late nineteenth century; the Studio School of Southwestern artists, printmakers, and illustrators; the Kiowa Six and their important role in creating modern Native American murals; abstract expressionists like Ka

(Offered as AMST 203 and SOCI 203) What do we understand about schools, teachers, and students through our engagement with popular culture? How do we interrogate youth clothing as a site of cultural expression and school-based control? How do race, class, and gender shape how youth make sense of and navigate cultural events such as the prom? Contemporary educational debates often position schools and popular culture as oppositional and as vying for youth's allegiance. Yet schools and popular culture overlap as educational sites in the lives of youth.

(Offered as THDA 352, ARHA 252, FAMS 342 and MUSI 352) This course is designed for students in dance, theater, film/video, art, music and creative writing who want to explore the challenges and potentials in creating performances and events outside of traditional "frames" or venues (e.g., the theater, the gallery, the concert halls, the lecture hall, the page). In the first part of the semester we will experiment with different techniques for working together and for developing responses to different spaces.