What is freedom? What makes freedom political? How has political freedom been understood over time? What are the obstacles on the way to freedom? Is freedom something we even desire? This course will introduce students to the concept of political freedom through diverse readings that include Greek tragedy, modern political thought, the Book of Exodus, Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquistor, and social science research.

This course will examine the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the afterlife of Hitchcock in contemporary U.S. culture. We will interpret Hitchcock films in a variety of theoretical frames, including feminist and queer theories, and in shifting historical contexts, including the Cold War. We will also devote substantial attention to the legacy of Hitchcock in remakes, imitations, and parodies.

This course offers an interrogation of overt and embedded narratives of migrants and the migration process in popular and documentary film, paying specific attention to cinematic representations of non-citizen bodies confronting migration, deportation, labor, acculturation, and anti-immigrant hysteria. Film screenings and class discussions comprise the interpretative lens through which students will examine the aesthetic, cultural, economic, gendered, historical, political, racial, and sexual dimensions of cultural texts.

The medium of cinema has shown persistent concern with war and memory, and has constituted a heated battleground for rememberance and erasure of the past. Through cinema, in other words, we most clearly see both memories of war and subsequent wars among competing memories. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the repressive military regime of Francisco Franco (1939-1975), and recent attempts to "recuperate" memory all dramatize these dynamics and raise a number of larger questions. How do destruction and devastation register through the visual?

(Component Course in Film Studies)This course examines contemporary Asian American film and visual culture through the lens of cultural recovery, self-invention, and experimentation. Focusing primarily on film and photography, we will explore issues of race and visuality, Hollywood orientalism, memory and postmemory, and racial impersonation and parody. Students will engage with a variety of theoretical and critical approaches. Artists may include Nikki S. Lee, Margaret Cho, Tseng Kwong Chi, Jin-me Yoon, Justin Lin, Binh Dahn, Richard Fung, Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta, and Alice Wu.

A study of ten to twelve plays and their film adaptations. Plays are drawn from a range of periods and genres, and films are chosen to show the scope of adaptive approaches from filmed play to radical re-imagining. The course will include readings on the theory and history of theatre-to-film adaptations. Playwrights will likely include Christopher Marlowe, Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, Lorraine Hansberry, Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, David Mamet, and David Henry Hwang.

Some of the best feature-length films of the past century have commanded our attention and imagination because of their compelling artistry and the imaginative ways they tell stories visually and verbally. This course closely studies narrative films from around the world, from the silent era to the present, and in the process it introduces students to the basic elements of film form, style, and narration.

Course focuses on Critical Race Theory, its history and application in the field of Education. Through course readings and assignments, students will explore and discuss key issues such as race/racism, class/classism, gender/sexism among other "isms" and how they impact the teaching and learning experiences of students of color. This course is specifically designed to challenge students and make them think critically about their multiple identities, privileges and challenges as students and future leaders.

In this course, students will explore educational policy including why policy-making and policies matter, what makes compelling evidence to various stakeholders, ways to identify levers for change, and the negotiation processes. We will consider local, state, federal policy, and international comparative cases. Students will analyze the ways in which policy, practice, and theory intersect or diverge, and why. Beyond course materials, students will choose a topic, draft and revise a written policy brief, as well as practice pitching policy through spoken word.

This two-credit independent study course, which is the culminating experience of the educational studies minor, requires analysis and synthesis of key ideas that emerged during focused study in the minor. Students will work with a faculty advisor of the Educational Studies Program Committee as they plan, write, and present a capstone paper.