Abolitionist political philosopher Angela Davis once famously wrote that “in a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, one must be anti-racist.” But what precisely does it mean to be “anti-racist” in practice? In the wake of the George Floyd protests of 2020 and the rise of the U.S. movement for Black lives, antiracist nonfiction literature has become increasingly popular as its own literary subgenre (evidenced, for instance, by the success and influence of Ibram Kendi’s best selling text How to Be Antiracist). This course follows two tracks.

A double course.

Fall semester. The Department.

How to handle overenrollment: null

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Emphasis on independent research and writing.

(Offered as ARCH 238, ARHA 238, RUSS 238) This course investigates the complex relationship between Russia, its imperial subjects—in the Baltics, Caucasus, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Siberia—and global cultures of architecture and city-building. Case studies from across this vast territory (one-sixth of the Earth’s landmass) demonstrate that, far from being isolated on a “periphery” or behind an “Iron Curtain,” the region’s architects and planners actively participated in complex international design debates.