This course combines West African dance classes with discussion-based classes on the cultural and social history of Guinea. Musicians will provide live drumming for each class. Students will explore West African aesthetics that shape the music and dance traditions of Guinea. In most classes, students will dance to traditional rhythms of Guinea. In discussion classes, we will explore footage of historic performances, and read recent scholarship on the role that national dance companies, such as Les Ballets Africains,, played in the anticolonial, evolutionary nationalist politics of Guinea.

World War II defined an era and transformed the lives of all who endured it. In doing so, the war has become a growing source of stories, and these tellings will be the subject of the discussions, writings, and projects in this course. Stories, above all, provide clues to the meanings we have attached to the politics and experience of the war, and the resulting social transformations within the United States, particularly with regard to matters of race, gender, and class.

Many people have learned and are accustomed to thinking of history as an authoritative account of the past, based on indisputable facts. Scholars of history, by contrast, understand history as a matter of contested and evolving interpretation: debate. And they argue not just over the interpretation of facts, but even over what constitutes a relevant fact. This course will use some representative debates to show how dynamic the historical field is. Topics may include: Did women have a Renaissance? How did people in early modern France understand identity?

In this course, we will examine the politics of space and the built environment. Space, broadly conceived, is not merely a physical manifestation of social processes that are embedded within it; rather, all social relations are fundamentally spatial. Accordingly this course looks at the social, political, and economic relations that produce space, focusing on urbanization and the spatial production of cities of the Global South and the Global North.

Tumultuous and robust, American cities have certainly enjoyed a rich history. As this course is primarily a writing seminar, we're particularly interested in how Americans have given voice to their urban experience, beginning with the literary realism of the late 19th century and culminating in the various expressions of the hip-hop culture of today. Are there universals in the urban story? How and why do shifting populations tell different stories?

Our educational present is partially defined by the rise of hip hop-based education (HHBE) as a theory, method, and practice for re-engaging young people with school-based learning and shaping the next generation of activists and intellectuals, especially in urban schools with Black and Latino youth. However, there is clear lack of consensus on the purposes and efficacy of HHBE.

One of the most enigmatic political leaders of the modern period, M.K. Gandhi remains a controversial figure. On one hand, he is celebrated as the father of the Indian nation and an apostle of non-violence, and on the other hand viewed as a wily politician and a patriarch with problematic views of gender and sexuality. In his lifetime, thousands saw him as a saint, while others (mainly Hindu nationalists) reviled him as a traitor to Indian nationalism and blamed him for the partition of India.

This class will focus on urban Black communities during the 20th century, including their establishment, and economic, social, and cultural development. The political struggles that erupted during several different historical eras, and the anti-Black violence that has been an enduring feature of Black life in America's cities will be a major point of emphasis.

The human species has quite recently become a predominantly urban one. In this course, we will analyze and practice ethical engagement with the city. We begin by investigating philosophy's relationship to the city, stretching back to the development of dialogical thinking in the polis of Athens. How is philosophical reflection affected by the space in which it takes place (whether wilderness, country, suburbs, or city)? That is, what does the place of the thinker have to do with the thoughts they can think?

This course introduces students to medical anthropology, an interdisciplinary approach exploring how humans differently define and experience life, death, illness, wellness, health, sex, and pain throughout the world and over time. We begin with classic texts in medical anthropology and ethnomedicine and shift to more contemporary work in critical medical anthropology. There will be a special focus in the course on global inequalities in health and medicine, on cross-cultural perspectives on pain and suffering, and on understanding biomedicine as a cultural system.