While scholarship on contemporary American society often emphasizes how distracted and disconnected we are, it can also be argued that we have developed new ways of connecting, generating intimacies that challenge, exceed, or swerve from traditional categorizations (e.g. sexual, familial). What are the queer and feminist resonances of these modes of intimacy? How has new media and technology helped to generate and proliferate new forms of intimacy?

Topics course In this seminar, we will look at the gay cultural aspects of the 1980s. In this regard, we will consider four particular things: the AIDS epidemic in the US and the activism that engages this crisis; the explosion of underground and mainstream art (visual art, music, literature, film, theater) that showcases an interest in thinking about sexuality, gender and gender normativity, sex and eroticism, intersectionality; the decade?s culture of conservatism, especially in relationship to the legacy of the 60s and the 70s; and the emergence of queer studies scholarship.

How do popular culture texts reinforce and/or challenge social norms? How do they both reflect and construct our sexual and gendered identities, the communities we identify with, what and who we find pleasurable? This course provides an opportunity to think critically about the media around us and what makes popular culture such a tremendous source of both pleasure and displeasure. The course examines a range of popular culture texts, including television, music, and new media.

This course will explore reproductive justice in the U.S. and the influence of U.S. policy globally, addressing issues of law, policy, theory and activism. Topics include historic and contemporary state control over women's reproduction, social movements to expand women's control over their reproductive lives, access to reproductive care, reproductive technologies, reproductive coercion and violence, religious fundamentalism's increasing influence over reproduction, and the discourses around women's bodies and pregnancy.

Topics Course

Topics course. This transdisciplinary course examines the intimate, complex, and longstanding relationship between Islam and the West in the context of the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle Ages until the present. Discussions will focus on religious, historical, philosophical, and political narratives about the place of Islam and Muslims in the West. Students will also be invited to think critically about ?convivencia,? ?clash of civilizations,? ?multiculturalism,? and other theories that seek to make sense of the relationship between Islam and the West. Course taught in Spanish.

Topics course. This course will examine representations of the Jewish-Latin American experience through the study of 20th Century poetry, short stories, essays, and films. We will explore how recent authors, artists, and filmmakers explore issues of a minority group?s identity and belonging. Special attention will be given to images of Jews and Jewish history as metaphors to express present social and political concerns. Prerequisites: SPN 220 or above. Enrollment limited to 19.

Topics course. This course will explore different manifestations of African cultural influences in theater in Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia and Uruguay. The course will address the historical development of the region as well as the presence of the slave trade in order to understand contemporary texts. The course will include ritual, religious and social themes, including discrimination, racial glorification, performances in festivities and funeral rites.

This 300-level seminar will provide an in-depth engagement with global migration. It will cover areas such as: theories of migration, the significance of global political economy and state policies across the world in shaping migration patterns and immigrant identities. Questions about imperialism, post-colonial conditions, nation-building/national borders, citizenship, and the gendered racialization of immigration will intersect as critical contexts for our discussions. Prerequisite: SOC 101, a course on global political economy, or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 12.

This course engages with the various dimensions of globalization through the lens of gender, race, and class relations. We will study how gender and race intersect in global manufacturing and supply chains as well as in the transnational politics of representation and access in global media, culture, consumption, fashion, food, water, war and dissenting voices Prerequisite: SOC 101. Enrollment limited to 35.