What does performance teach us about subjectivity? How do bodies' cultural inscriptions shape meaning in dance? How does choreography complicate the performance of gender? This course poses an inquiry into euro-american contemporary dance performance through the lenses of queer and feminist thought. Students will study the body as a site of knowledge production and investigate how movement and performance can highlight the intersection of theory and lived experience.

This course is designed for intermediate and advanced street style dancers interested in performing a premiere work for the Fall Faculty Dance concert.

This course focuses on analyzing the "Empire of Cotton," as it was labeled by Pulitzer Prize nominee Sven Beckert. This course explores the nexus between war capitalism as epitomized by British subjugation of peoples around the world, notably in India (the jewel in the crown) and China; the massive seizure of advanced textile manufacturing machines and raw materials (notably raw cotton), and the industrial revolution. The course also examines the history of globalization in this period of knowledge transfer, mass human trafficking, and slave economies of the USA, Caribbean, and South America.

What is the relationship between truth and politics? Does democracy require truth or pervert it? Can truth thrive in any type of government? What's really at stake here? In this course, we will explore a variety of classic texts, ranging from such authors as Plato to Karl Marx to Hannah Arendt to Martin Luther King, Jr. to contemporary feminist theorists. We will focus on developing the ability to reflect on your own beliefs, analyze authors' arguments, and to articulate and defend your own perspective.

This course will offer an overview of select methodologies and methods from Community-based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR), Participatory Action Research (PAR), collaborative ethnography and other social justice research interventions such as radical oral history, grassroots research collectives, experimental digital archives, research and data justice networks and organizations. We will center on questions of "accountability"; that is, to whom, for whom, and to what end do processes of accountability serve those already in power?

This capstone course brings seniors together to think through relationships among empirical research, theory, activism, and practice in gender studies and critical social thought. Majors with diverse interests, perspectives, and expertise will have the opportunity to reflect on, and share with each other, the significance of their major education in relation to their current and past work, their capstone or senior projects, their academic studies as a whole, and their engagements outside of academia.

In a culturally and socially diverse society, discussion about issues of difference, conflict and community are needed to facilitate understanding between social/cultural groups. In this intergroup dialogue, students will actively participate in two days (16 hours) of semi-structured, face-to-face meetings with students from other social identity groups. Students will learn from each others' perspectives, read and discuss relevant reading material, and explore their own and other groups' experiences in various social and institutional contexts.

Intergroup Dialogue engages individuals and groups in facilitated small group processes to explore difficult issues to develop shared meaning across lines of difference, and generate opportunities for collaborative action. This course is designed to give students both a theoretical and practical foundation in the awareness, knowledge and skills needed to effectively plan, facilitate and evaluate Intergroup Dialogues.

For roughly 1000 years Ashkenazi Jewish culture has existed in exile. Since these stateless people were living in diaspora, without a sovereign territory, the Yiddish language itself became a symbolic homeland. This course will explore how some Yiddish-speaking Jews embraced their stateless existence not as a historic tragedy but as a revolutionary form of identity called diaspora nationalism. We will explore Yiddish cultural identity through literature, music, film, and politics.

This course focuses on dance improvisation. The class studies structured improvisation through the use of scores, tasks, imagery, and other methods for generating and crafting movement. Students will sharpen their awareness of attention and intention in instant decision-making practices as individuals and in group settings. This is a movement class intended for students with a regular dance practice in any form.