By examining textile production (both hand weaving and industrial) and fashion (both streetwear and haute couture), this class investigates questions around cultural exchange, industrialization, and globalization. Students will gain knowledge about the flexibility of taxonomies of art, and they will learn basic analyses of textiles, dress, and fashion as they relate to African and African Diasporic cultures. Among the topics we study: Kente cloth and nationalism; waxprint cloth and globalization; Hip hop music and global fashion; and African fashion and haute couture.

Indian popular cinema, known as Bollywood, is commonly criticized for meandering storylines, overblown spectacles, and distracting dance numbers. But we will take popular cinema seriously, and explore it as both, a vibrant cultural form in India as well as intelligent filmmaking that entertains and challenges us. We will analyze a selection of films as what scholar Lalitha Gopalan calls a constellation of interruptions.

Many ancient images tell completely different versions of myth from those in Greek and Roman literary sources. By juxtaposing distinctive modes of communication in the ancient world, students will analyze the rhetorical uses of myth, both then and now. Myths appear in a range of media (sculpture, mosaic, fresco, lamps, and gems) and contexts (domestic, sacred, political). Which stories were represented? and what do we know about their reception among ancient viewers? Original objects in the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum offer case studies.

An introduction to painting, sculpture, and architecture in Europe and America from the Renaissance to the present. Classes are organized around five focused topics: Renaissance Florence; the artist in the seventeenth century; art, revolution and nationhood; nineteenth-century realism; and abstraction and empathy. Lectures will be complemented by class discussion, short films, and assignments in the art museum.

This studio course will be a design investigation of a particular theme in or approach to architecture and the built environment. Students will develop and apply traditional and contemporary architectural skills (sketches, plans, elevations, models, computer diagramming, and various modes of digital representation) to interdisciplinary and socially pertinent design problems. Creative and indexical study and analysis will be used to generate and foster a broad range of concepts and language to solve architectural issues involving site, construction, inhabitation, function, form, and space.

This course explores the study of ancient foodways with a focus on how and why humans across the globe began to domesticate plant and animal resources approximately 10,000 years ago. The first half of the course presents the types of archaeological data and analytical methods used to study the agricultural revolution in a variety of regions.

This course explores anthropological approaches to human rights--a key theme of transnational politics and international law. Anthropologists have contributed to discussions on human rights since the UN Declaration and the field has provided a vibrant platform to analyze ideologies, politics, and practices surrounding human rights. We will survey an array of anthropological studies that approach human rights from the perspective of cultural relativism, contextualization, advocacy, and practice.

Jean Paul Sartre tells us words are like loaded pistols. They have the power to transform worlds and inspire revolutions. Focusing on the power of language and the ideas they carry, we will look at writers as agents of social and political change. How do governments and society react to their work (censors, the media, readers?) We have two goals: to examine the interaction between aesthetics and politics, and the relationship between writers and governments. We will include some of the greats such as Rousseau, Swift, Orwell, Sartre, Andrei Platonov, Solzhenitsyn, Rushdie and Chinua Achebe.

This seminar is about what it means to live a philosophy. The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates--(in)famous for living and dying according to his beliefs--will provide our central case study. Through a close reading of various historical texts, we will critically examine how Socrates' philosophical views directed his life. We will engage with the philosophical questions raised in these texts, including questions about the demands of political participation, the place of friendship in an examined life, and the proper attitude toward death.

What social processes and institutions are necessary to bring an end to war? Do the efforts of citizens make a difference? What is the role of beliefs regarding identity? What about access to resources? What is the role of visible forms of restorative or retributive justice? This first-year seminar focuses primarily on small, regional conflicts in Africa to explore the social processes and institutions which facilitate the resolution of conflict. We will begin in the lat 19th century, but concentrate on more recent events.