University Bulletin (2022-2023)

As part of the global engagement requirement, difference and justice in the world courses will allow students to focus on the social, cultural, political, environmental and economic diversity of human experience within the global/transnational context. Looking beyond singular or dominant understandings of the world, students will engage in the study of peoples outside the U.S., their histories, arts, cultures, politics, economies, environments, and religions.

For students entering Brandeis beginning fall 2019, students will complete one semester course that satisfies the difference and justice in the world requirement. Courses that satisfy the requirement in a particular semester are designated "djw" in the Schedule of Classes for that semester.

There is no difference and justice in the world requirement for students entering Brandeis prior to fall 2019.

AAAS/ENG 80a Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography
[ deis-us djw hum wi ]

Formerly offered as ENG 80a.

Explores photography and Africans, African-Americans and Caribbean people, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This course will examine fiction that refers to the photograph; various photographic archives; and theorists on photography and looking. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

ANTH 1a Introduction to the Comparative Study of Human Societies
[ djw nw ss ]

Examines the ways human beings construct their lives in a variety of societies. Includes the study of the concept of culture, kinship, and social organization, political economy, gender and sexuality, religion and ritual, symbols and language, social inequalities and social change, and globalization. Consideration of anthropological research methods and approaches to cross-cultural analysis. Usually offered every semester.
Jonathan Anjaria, Elizabeth Ferry, Sarah Lamb, or Janet McIntosh

COML/ENG 70b Environmental Film, Environmental Justice
[ djw hum ]

Examines films that address nature, environmental crisis, and green activism. Asks how world cinema can best advance the goals of social and environmental justice. Includes films by major directors and festival award winners. Usually offered every third year.
Caren Irr

ECON 23a Latin American Economic Development
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

Introductory survey of the economic, financial, and institutional forces that drive Latin American economic development. The course combines economic theory, empirical evidence, and a historical approach to develop students' ability to analyze these forces. Topics include poverty and inequality, human capital, geographical determinants, institutions, debt crises and the macroeconomy. Usually offered every second year.
Oriana Montti

ENG 20a Bollywood: Popular Film, Genre, and Society
[ djw hum nw ]

An introduction to popular Hindi cinema through a survey of the most important Bollywood films from the 1950s until today. Topics include melodrama, song and dance, love and sex, stardom, nationalism, religion, diasporic migration, and globalization. Usually offered every third year.
Ulka Anjaria

ENG 32a 21st-Century Global Fiction: A Basic Course
[ djw hum nw oc ]

Offers an introduction to 21st-century global fiction in English. What is fiction and how does it illuminate contemporary issues such as migration, terrorism, and climate change? Authors include Zadie Smith, Amitav Ghosh, Chimamanda Adichie, Mohsin Hamid, J.M. Coetzee and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ulka Anjaria

ENG 42a Blackness and Horror
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Examines the tense and transformative place that blackness has within the horror tradition, beginning with the late nineteenth century and moving into the present. In addition to documentaries and critical texts, we will analyze literature, films, and various aspects of material culture that explore the relationship between blackness and horror. Usually offered every third year.
Brandon Callender

ENG 62b Contemporary African Literature, Global Perspectives
[ djw dl hum nw oc ]

What is "African" in African literature when the majority of writers are somehow removed from the African societies they portray? How do expatriate writers represent African subjectivities and cultures at the intersection of Diaspora and globalization? Who reads the works produced by these writers? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 66b Contemporary Global Dystopias
[ djw hum wi ]

Explores the sources, moods, and effects of dystopian fiction from around the world. Usually offered every third year.
Caren Irr

ENG 68b Race, Colonialism, and Modernism
[ djw hum wi ]

A critical introduction to the ever-expanding field of modernist studies. We will read canonical modernists along with writers from Black America, the Caribbean, and Africa to explore the convergence of race, colonialism, and modernism. We will examine what has been silenced and left behind in the modernist compulsion to 'make it new' and highlight the contributions of writers across the black diaspora to the ongoing debates about modernism and modernity. The aim is to rethink the canon of modernism critically and explore different implications of the modern from a global perspective. Special one-time offering, spring 2021.
Chih-Chien Hsieh

ENVS 49a Conservation Politics
[ djw nw ss ]

Examines theories and practices of nature conservation from interdisciplinary social science and humanistic perspectives. Surveys a range of moral, political, cultural and economic dilemmas facing conservationists. Explores ways to balance competing ethical imperatives to protect biodiversity and respect human rights. Usually offered every year.
Richard Schroeder

HISP 85a Introduction to U.S. Latinx Literatures and Cultures
[ deis-us djw dl hum ]

Introduces students to U.S. Latinx cultural productions and to the interdisciplinary questions that concern U.S. Latinx communities. Latinxs have played a vital role in the history, politics, and cultures of the United States. U.S. Latinx literary works, in particular, have established important socio-historical and aesthetic networks that highlight Latinx expression and lived experiences, engaging with issues including biculturalism, language, citizenship, systems of value, and intersectional identity. Though the Latinx literary tradition spans more than 400 years, this course will focus on 20th and 21st century texts that decolonize nationalist approaches to Latinidad(es) and therefore challenge existing Latinx literary 'canons.' Taught in English. Usually offered every year.
María J. Durán

HIST 56b Rethinking World History (to 1960)
[ djw nw ss ]

An introductory survey of world history, from the dawn of "civilization" to c.1960. Topics include the establishment and rivalry of political communities, the development of material life, and the historical formation of cultural identities. Usually offered every year.
Govind Sreenivasan

HIST 66a History of South Asia (2500 BCE - 1971)
[ djw nw ss ]

Introduces South Asian history from the earliest civilizations to the independence of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Surveys the formation of religious traditions, the establishment of kingdoms and empires, colonialism and its consequences, and post-independence political and economic development. Usually offered every second year.
Govind Sreenivasan

HIST 71a Latin American and Caribbean History I: Colonialism, Slavery, Freedom
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Studies colonialism in Latin America and Caribbean, focusing on coerced labor and struggles for freedom as defining features of the period: conquest; Indigenous, African, and Asian labor; colonial institutions and economics; Independence and revolutionary movements. Usually offered every year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 71b Latin American and Caribbean History II: Modernity, Medicine, Sexuality
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Studies the idea of "modernity" in Latin America and Caribbean, centered on roles of health and human reproduction in definitions of the "modern" citizen: post-slavery labor, race and national identity; modern politics and economics; transnational relations. Usually offered every year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 80a Introduction to East Asian Civilization
[ djw dl hum nw ss ]

A selective introduction to the development of forms of thought, social and political institutions, and distinctive cultural contributions of China and Japan from early times to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Usually offered every year.
Staff

HUM 7a Challenges of Power and the Self: Visual Arts and Literature
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Enrollment limited to Humanities Fellows.
 

Uses visual art and literature to consider how ideas of the "self" and the "other" are reformulated during decolonization, the cold war, and the world order that followed.  Using the breakdown of the British Empire and the consolidation of American reach from World War II onward, the course will examine gender, race, identity, colonization, postcoloniality, and sexuality in/as representation and narrative.  This course will examine the text and image as separate, parallel, and yet conjoined and overlapping threads of cultural production.  How does literature and art create and reflect the image, the moment, the individual or history?  How is art narrative and how does the novel or the poem evoke an image, a scene, or a sequence of events? Usually offered every second year.

Peter Kalb and Harleen Singh

IGS 10a Introduction to International and Global Studies
[ djw dl ss ]

"Globalization" touches us more every day. Introduces the challenges of globalization to national and international governance, economic success, individual and group identities, cultural diversity, the environment, and inequalities within and between nations, regions of the globe, gender, and race. Usually offered every year.
Kerry Chase or Chandler Rosenberger

MUS 6b Survey of West African Music: Dance-Drumming from Senegal to Nigeria
[ ca djw nw ]

Explores the dance-drumming of West Africa--a global music style with profound impact on contemporary world cultures. Through engaged listening, critical analysis of ethnomusicological readings, and experiential learning on African percussion instruments, we examine the cultural context and musical systems of West African dance-drumming music. Special one-time offering, spring 2020.
Benjamin Paulding

NEJS 85a Defining Status in the Modern State: Citizens, Nationals and Refugees
[ djw hum ]

Examines terms like 'citizen,' 'national,' 'refugee,' 'stateless,' and 'indigenous' using theory, law, and historic case studies to understand the different relationships between states and people. From voting, to travel, to social security, our basic rights are determined by how a state views our legal status. In the current era of border control, refugee crises, and resurgent nationalism, a critical study of citizenship is more relevant than ever. This course will help students understand the legal terms used to categorize humanity and appreciate the complexities and limitations of those definitions in practice. Special one-time offering, spring 2021.
Maham Ayaz

WGS 6b Sexuality and Queer Studies
[ djw dl hum ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took SQS 6b in prior years.

Examines cross-cultural and historical perspectives on sexual meanings, experiences, representations, and activist movements within a framework forged by contemporary critical theories of gender and sexuality. Usually offered every year.
V Varun Chaudhry

AAAS 104a Colorism in Paradise
[ djw dl oc ss ]

Introduces the concept of colorism, its relationship to racism, and consider the prevalence of color over race as a preferred identity and socio-political category across Latin America and the Caribbean. The course requires students to read interdisciplinary academic texts and utilize critical race and social praxeology theory to interrogate specific, national contexts within the Latin American and Caribbean region. Special one-time offering, Fall 2021.
Rachel Cantave

AAAS 111a Afrophobia and Africana Religions
[ djw ss ]

Africana or African-derived religions and their devotees have been historically persecuted and vilified. This course examines afrophobia as an aspect of anti-Black racism that has sought to eradicate and stifle African spiritual worldviews in the Black Atlantic. We will explore the roots of afrophobia as well as its connections to transnational structures of racism. The course focuses on the relationship between anti-Black racism and religious intolerance, and  the social and political treatment of non-Abrahamic, indigenous, African-derived religions, rather than the theological components of Africana religions. Special one-time offering, fall 2021.
Rachel Cantave

AAAS 115a Introduction to African History
[ djw nw ss ]

Explores the history of African societies from their earliest beginnings to the present era. Topics include African participation in antiquity as well as early Christianity and preindustrial political, economic, and cultural developments. Usually offered every year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 120a African History in Real Time
[ djw nw oc ss ]

This information literacy-driven course equips students with the skills to place current events in Africa in their historical context. Collectively the class builds 5-6 distinct course modules which entail sourcing and evaluating current news stories from a range of media outlets, selecting those that merit in-depth historical analysis, and developing a syllabus for each one. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 127a African Refugees
[ djw ss ]

An in-depth study of African refugees in dynamic contexts, and their centrality to the understanding and analysis of key issues in the politics, history, and international relations of African States. Usually offered every year.

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

AAAS 135a Race, Sex, and Colonialism
[ djw oc ss ]

Explores the histories of interracial sexual relations as they have unfolded in a range of colonial contexts and examines the relationships between race and sex, on one hand, and the exercise of colonial power, on the other. Usually offered every year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 145b The Transformative Life and Politics of Malcolm X
[ deis-us djw ss ]

How did the world shape Malcolm X and his radical political philosophy? In asking this question, we will study how Malcolm X's transformation from a hustler to a prisoner to a Black Muslim significantly shaped his revolutionary vision for liberation. His life experience gave him an understanding that Black liberation in the United States is entangled with Third World. For Malcolm, Islam became the link between Africa and Asia, and between those subjected to racial violence domestically and globally. As a class, we will situate Malcolm X within this complex history of anticolonialism and Civil Rights to learn how Malcolm X transformed himself to transform the world. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel

AAAS 146b African Icons
[ djw nw oc ss wi ]

From Walatta Petros, a seventeenth century Ethiopian nun turned anticolonial agitator to Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, this course introduces a broad range of iconic figures in Africa's history to students who also acquire the investigative and analytical skills associated with sound historical research and writing. Usually offered every year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 151b Africa: A Reggae Anthology
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Draws on the genre of reggae music as a course of understanding how Africa, its people, its history, and its contemporary circumstances are imagined, understood, represented, and engaged by African descended people in Jamaica and in the broader African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 162a Assassination: A History of 20th Century Africa
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Examines the assassinations of a range of different political, cultural, and activist figures, such as Patric Lumumba, Steve Biko, and Ken Saro-Wiwa, and assesses the social, political, economic, and cultural implications and legacies this particular form of murder has had on twentieth-century Africa. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS/WGS 122a Carceral Studies
[ deis-us djw ss ]

With more than 10 million people imprisoned around the world in jails, detention centers, refuge camps, for-profit prisons, the effects of a carceral state are evident in many ways. Modern democratic societies often rely upon practices of incarceration, detention, and surveillance to demonstrate the power of a rule of law. This course will be an introductory study covering the social costs of the practice of incarceration across geographies and global communities. Special one-time offering, fall 2021.
Anya Wallace

AAPI 142a The War in Vietnam in Literature and Film
[ djw hum ]

What we have come to call the Vietnam War fundamentally changed the histories of Vietnam and the U.S. through the Cold War to the present day. Taking a transnational approach, this course will examine various understandings of the war through major U.S., Vietnamese, and Vietnamese American literary texts and films from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. All course materials are in English; no Vietnamese language knowledge is required. Special one-time offering, fall 2021.
Howie Tam

AAPI/ENG 102a Transpacific Science Fiction
[ djw hum ]

Through critically acclaimed examples of science fiction set in the vast, multitudinous site of the Pacific and its continental edges, this course explores the intersection of technology and the humanities through a range of topics including scientific colonialism, techno-orientalism and dystopia, racial formation in the post-apocalypse, artificial intelligence, and environmental destruction. Some of the course materials include films (Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell), novels (Chang-Rae Lee, Ruth Ozeki), and a graphic novel. Special one-time offering, fall 2022.

Howie Tam

AAPI/HIS 171a The United States in the Pacific World
[ deis-us djw ss ]

How have U.S. imperial ventures'cultural, military, political, and economic'reconfigured local societies and geographies? What are the afterlives of those ventures and how have they reverberated between American society and the Pacific World? To answer these questions, this course explores the history of American incursion into places such as China, Hawai'i, the Philippines, Guam, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Samoa from the nineteenth century to present. We explore issues such as orientalism, empires and militarism, labor and commerce, race and inequality, intimacy and sex, as well as migration, culture, family formation, and identity both in and across the Pacific Ocean. In focusing on the lasting legacies and human consequences of this contact, this course deepens our understanding of the multiracial history and character of the United States and also provides an opportunity to place the American experience within a larger global context. Usually offered every second year.
Yuri Doolan

AAPI/HIS 186b Legacies of the Korean War
[ deis-us djw ss ]

Explores the lasting legacies and human consequences of the Korean War in a transnational context. Course culminates in a final digital oral history project. Usually offered every second year.
Yuri Doolan

AAS/AAPI 129b The Spirit of Bandung: Afro-Asian Insurgency and Solidarity
[ deis-us djw ss ]

Examines the racial conflicts between Black and Asian American communities and develops an understanding of how the Afro-Asia political project is an insurgent coalitional project. To do this, we will explore the historical and contemporary struggles, insurgencies, and solidarities of Black and Asian peoples. We will learn together how Afro-Asia serves as an insurgent site of critique, resistance, and revolutionary aesthetics that connects distant geographies, diasporas, and Black and Asian peoples to a global anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial political imaginary. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel

AMST/LGL 141b Juvenile Justice: From Cradle to Custody
[ deis-us djw ss ]

After an overview of the basics of juvenile justice in the United States, this course examines the realities and remedies for the school-to-prison pipeline analyzing this pattern from the perspectives of law, society, and economics, tracing the child's experience along that path, and exploring creative public solutions. Usually offered every second year.
Rosalind Kabrhel

ANTH 107a Wealth, Value, and Power in a World without Money
[ djw nw ss ]

Examines the relationships of value, wealth, power, and authority in the Aztec Empire, Inka Empire and Classic period Maya kingdoms of the Prehispanic Americas. In so doing it raises questions about the origins of these relationships in modern states. Usually offered every third year.
Charles Golden

ANTH 111a Aging in Cross-Cultural Perspective
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Examines the meanings and social arrangements given to aging in a diversity of societies, including the U.S., India, Japan and China. Key themes include: the diverse ways people envision and organize the life course, scholarly and popular models of successful aging, the medicalization of aging in the U.S., cultural perspectives on dementia, and the ways national aging policies and laws are profoundly influenced by particular cultural models. Usually offered every second year.
Sarah Lamb

ANTH 119a Conquests, Resistance, and Cultural Transformation in Mexico and Central America
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Examines the continuing negotiation of identity and power that were at the heart of tragedy and triumph for indigenous peoples in colonial Mexico and Central America, and which continue in the modern states of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. Usually offered every second year.
Charles Golden

ANTH 123b Lost Voices: The Historical Archaeology of Oppression and Exploitation
[ djw ss wi ]

Historical archaeology utilizes written records and oral traditions to contextualize places, things (cultural material), and issues from the past or present. This course introduces the main tools and techniques of historical archaeology to analyze past history and material culture through a social lens. Students will gain knowledge of themes such as colonialism, globalization and race relations. Usually offered every year.
Charlotte Goudge

ANTH 127a Medicine, Body, and Culture
[ djw nw ss ]

Examines main areas of inquiry in medical anthropology, including medicine as a sociocultural construct, political and economic dimensions of suffering and health, patients and healers in comparative medical systems. Usually offered every year.
Sarah Lamb or Anita Hannig

ANTH 130a Filming Culture: Ethnographic and Documentary Filmmaking
[ djw dl nw ss ]

Introduces the history, theory and production of ethnographic and documentary filmmaking. This course traces how ethnographic and culturally-inflected filmmakers have sought to depict cultural difference, social organization, and lived experiences. Students will learn the basics of non-fiction film production. Usually offered every second year.
Patricia Alvarez Astacio

ANTH 140a Human Rights in Global Perspective
[ djw ss ]

Explores a range of debates about human rights as a concept as well as the practice of human rights work. The human rights movement seeks the recognition of universal norms that transcend political and cultural difference while anthropology seeks to explore and analyze the great diversity of human life. To what extent can these two goals--advocating for universal norms and respecting cultural difference--be reconciled? The course examines cases from various parts of the world concerning: indigenous peoples, environment, health, gender, genocide/violence/nation-states and globalization. Usually offered every third year.
Elizabeth Ferry and Elanah Uretsky

ANTH 140b Critical Perspectives in Global Health
[ deis-us djw nw ss ]

What value systems and other sociocultural factors underlie global public health policy? How can anthropology shed light on debates about the best ways to improve health outcomes? This course examines issues from malaria to HIV/AIDS, from tobacco cessation to immunization. Usually offered every third year.
Elanah Uretsky

ANTH 144a The Anthropology of Gender
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Anthropology majors have priority for enrollment.

Explores gender, sexuality, and cultural systems from a comparative perspective. Topics may include rituals of masculinity and femininity, the vexing question of the universality of women's subordination, culturally-specific classifications of sexual orientation and gender identity, transnational feminisms, sex work, migrant labor, reproductive rights, and much more. Usually offered every year.
Anita Hannig, Sarah Lamb, or Keridwen Luis

ANTH 147b Mesoamerican Civilizations and Their Legacies
[ djw nw ss ]

Traces the development of social complexity in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, from initial colonization in the Late Pleistocene to the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. Reviews major societal transformations like food production, the role of competitive generosity and warfare in promoting social inequalities, and the rise of urban societies. It also examines indigenous social movements against Spanish colonialism, and considers the legacies and role of indigenous peoples in the contemporary nations of Middle America. Usually offered every third year.
Javier Urcid

ANTH 163a Work and Labor in Global Context
[ djw nw ss ]

Takes an ethnographic approach to the study of work and labor in the context of the global economy. By looking at various industries and work cultures, we will explore the changing nature of labor and unpack how global processes affect workers in different economic sectors and regions of the world. Usually offered every second year.
Patricia Alvarez Astacio

ANTH 163b Economies and Culture
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisite: ANTH 1a, ECON 2a, ECON 10a, or permission of the instructor.

We read in newspapers and books and hear in everyday discussion about "the economy," an identifiably separate sphere of human life with its own rules and principles and its own scholarly discipline (economics). The class starts with the premise that this "common sense" idea of the economy is only one among a number of possible perspectives on the ways people use resources to meet their basic and not-so-basic human needs. In the course, we draw on cross-cultural examples, and take a look at the cultural aspects of finance, corporations, and markets. Usually offered every second year.
Elizabeth Ferry

ANTH 164a Medicine and Religion
[ djw nw ss ]

Considers the convergence of two cultural spheres that are normally treated as separate: medicine and religion. The course will examine their overlap, such as in healing and dying, as well as points of contention through historical and contemporary global ethnographies. Usually offered every second year.
Anita Hannig

ANTH 164b Cancer and Community
[ djw oc ss ]

Addresses the biophysical and sociocultural dimensions of cancer: how can this dreaded disease be both alienating and associated with new forms of solidarity and social connection? We also consider how vulnerability to cancer is mediated by structures of social inequality. Usually offered every second year.
Ellen Schattschneider

ANTH 165b Anthropology of Death and Dying
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Explores how different societies, including our own, conceptualize death and dying. Topics include the cultural construction of death, the effects of death on the social fabric, mourning and bereavement, and medical issues relating to the end of life. Usually offered every second year.
Anita Hannig

ANTH 166b Queer Anthropology: Sexualities and Genders in Cross-Cultural Perspective
[ djw ss ]

Explores ethnographic approaches to the study of sexuality and gender in diverse cultural contexts, such as the US, Brazil, India, Indonesia and Mexico. Examines how sexuality intersects with other cultural forms, including gender, race, ethnicity, labor, religion, colonialism and globalization. Explores also how the discipline of anthropology has been shaped by engagements with questions of sexuality and the field of queer studies. Usually offered every second year.
Brian Horton, Sarah Lamb, or Keridwen Luis

ANTH/HIS 143b Sugar: Cultivation, Circulation, Power
[ deis-us djw ss wi ]

As a key element of global trade since the fifteenth century, sugar has been a lucrative and much desired stimulant with widespread political, economic, cultural, environmental and health effects. At the same time, the movement of millions of African slaves and Asian laborers to American sugar plantations transformed and continues to transform the cultural makeup and social foundation of empires and nations across the world. Through sugar, we will study a range of critical issues and topics: labor (including slavery and other forms of unfreedom) racial capitalism, colonialism, global health, monoculture, consumption, rites of passage, art, and music. Special one-time offering, spring 2022.

ANTH/WGS 176a Queer/Trans Theories from Elsewhere
[ deis-us djw ss ]

Centers the notion of 'elsewhere' in relationship to studies of gender, sexuality, power, and desire. 'Elsewhere' refers not only to place, but also to body and method. While terms like 'queer' and 'transgender' have become useful analytics for exploring gender, sexuality, feeling, space, place, relationality, and time, the academic theories that focus on these categories have remained mostly within white, US- and European academic spaces. We invite students to trouble these analytics - that is, the categories themselves, the bodies that these analytics center, and the methods deployed in relation to these analytics - by reading diverse approaches to gender and sexuality. The semester's engagement with 'elsewhere' is divided into three units: body, place, and method. Our objective is to teach students to cultivate new ways of seeing and ultimately new theories of gender and sexuality through engaging with non-canonical perspectives. Usually offered every third year.
Brian A. Horton and V Varun Chaudhry

CAST 110b Dance and Migration
[ ca deis-us djw nw ]

Highlights the aesthetic, political, social, and spiritual potency of dance forms and practices as they travel, transform, and are accorded meaning both domestically and transnationally, especially in situations (or in the aftermath) of extreme violence and cultural dislocation. Usually offered every third year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

CAST 125a Confronting Gender-Based Violence
[ ca deis-us djw ]

Engaging with multiple forms of creative expression and several different social change frameworks as they address and counter various aspects of gender-based violence in discrete cultural and historical contexts, this course explores gender-based violence as a grave violation of human rights, and the creative, innovative and meaningful methods through which particular communities and individuals counter such violation, including as it intersects with race and socioeconomic status. These methods might range from art installations in galleries or public spaces to formal theatrical productions, from the choreography of street protests to graffiti, films, pop-up concerts and podcasts, many involving survivors of gender-based violence in the creative process. We'll focus in particular on the experiences of those who identify as women, have been assigned to or perceived of as members of that category, or who identity and present as femme. Usually offered every third year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

CAST 126b Dignity in Motion
[ ca deis-us djw ]

Explores ways in which humanity affirms its dignity through creative expression rooted in the body, in particular, dance, pageantry/puppetry, and ritual, as it addresses and counters various aspects of global and local experiences of oppression and violence – authoritarianism, legacies of settler-colonialism and enslavement, stifling social norms, and war and migration. The Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that … recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. This course explores how the body, in collective and individual movement, can affirm human dignity, thereby contributing to the subversion or dismantling of oppressions and rights violations, including the rise of authoritarianism, racism, gender violence, and civil and international conflict. Usually offered every third year.

CAST 180a Creative Approaches to Conflict Transformation and Sustainable Development
[ ca djw ]

Explores creative approaches to contemporary complex challenges, focusing on conflict transformation and sustainable development. The course introduces theories of complexity, and considers how modes of understanding and engaging through arts and culture cultivate the capacities required to constructively address complex challenges. Through the course, students will consider key concepts, review and assess case studies, collaboratively design and advocate for initiatives. Students will engage with members of a global community of inquiry making the case for arts- and culture-based approaches to complex contemporary challenges. Usually offered every year.
Cynthia E. Cohen

CLAS 117b Unmasking Cleopatra: Gender, Power, and A Legacy
[ djw hum ]

CLAS 140a Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Greek and Roman Art and Text
[ ca djw hum wi ]

An exploration of women, gender, and sexuality in ancient Greece and Rome as the ideological bases of Western attitudes toward sex and gender. Includes, in some fashion, Greek and Roman myth, literature, art, architecture, and archaeological artifacts. Usually offered every third year.
Ann O. Koloski-Ostrow

CLAS 144b Archaeological Ethics, Law and Cultural Heritage
[ djw hum ]

The material culture of the past is imbued with multitude of meanings and values for different groups, often at odds with each other. This class explores the ethical and legal context of heritage as well as the conservation, protection, or stewardship of our shared human experience. Usually offered every second year.
Alexandra Ratzlaff or Staff

CLAS 160a Race and Ethnicity in the Ancient World
[ djw hum ]

Introduces students to ancient attitudes toward race and ethnicity. Students will be challenged to consider how these categories are presented in literature and artistic works of Greece and Rome, and how ancient thinking remains current and influential today. Usually offered every second year.
Caitlin Gillespie

CLAS/ENG 153b Race Before Race: Premodern Critical Race Studies
[ deis-us djw dl hum wi ]

Provides an introduction to ancient and medieval attitudes towards race and ethnicity through the theoretical lens of premodern critical race studies. Special one-time offering, fall 2020.
Caitlin Gillespie and Dorothy Kim

COML 105a World Culture and Marxism
[ djw hum ]

Exploring the linkage between Marxism and global modernity, this course emphasizes the deep entanglement of Marxism with twentieth-century literature and culture in both the so-called 'advanced West' and the vast world of 'underdevelopment' (such as China, Africa, and Latin America). In this course, students will see how Marxism has evolved as a revolutionary praxis in the crisis-fraught capitalist world system, and how it has inspired international literary movements and cultural debates aimed to subvert that system. With case studies drawn from across the world and readings selected from Marx's century all the way to our own, we will study the development of the international cultural left. We will also try to decenter (deprovincialize or de-Westernize) Marxism and understand it as an integral part of the translingual/transnational search for a different world'a world of common good and cultural equality. Usually offered every second year.
Pu Wang

COML/ENG 191a Environmental Aesthetics
[ djw hum oc ]

Explores major schools of thought about nature, ecology, and art. Usually offered every third year.
Caren Irr

ECON 176a Health, Hunger, and the Household in Developing Countries
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 184b or permission of the instructor.

Examines aspects of poverty and nutrition that are confronted by households in low-income countries. Examines these issues primarily from a microeconomic perspective, although some macroeconomic angles are explored as well. Usually offered every second year.
Nidhiya Menon

ENG 102a Ghosts of Race
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Examines ghost stories and films from across the African Diasporic. Our discussions will consider a range of phenomena, from ancestral visitations and paranormal ethnography to haunted plantation tours. We will do so in order to highlight a variety of pressing themes within Black film and literatures, including trauma, memory, and xenophobia. Usually offered every third year.
Brandon Callender

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ djw hum wi ]

Introduces students to key concepts in postcolonial theory. Traces the consequences of European colonialism for politics, culture and literature around the world, situates these within ongoing contemporary debates, and considers the usefulness of postcolonial theory for understanding the world today. Usually offered every third year.
Joshua Williams

ENG 127a The Novel in India
[ djw hum nw ]

Survey of the novel and short story of the Indian subcontinent, their formal experiments in context of nationalism and postcolonial history. Authors may include Tagore, Anand, Manto, Desani, Narayan, Desai, Devi, Rushdie, Roy, Mistry, and Chaudhuri. Usually offered every second year.
Ulka Anjaria

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ djw hum nw ]

Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

ENG 131b Decolonial Pedagogy
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Familiarizes students in the humanities, social sciences and public policy with an important strain of pedagogical theory, what Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire called 'education as the practice of freedom.' Topics will include diversity, equity and inclusion; embodied teaching and learning; authority, or the lack thereof; grading and assessment; and teaching reading and writing. Special one-time offering, fall 2020.
Joshua Williams

ENG 137b Women and War
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Examines how African women writers and filmmakers use testimony to bear witness to mass violence. How do these writers resist political and sociocultural silencing systems that reduce traumatic experience to silence, denial, and terror? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 142b Black Queer Literatures
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Examines various works by black queer critics and cultural producers, beginning in the early twentieth century and continuing into the present. While we largely focus upon the attempt to create the shared sense of a world and a tradition in common, we also attend to important divisions brought about by various forms and feelings of difference (including race, gender, class, nation, age and ability). Usually offered every third year.
Brandon Callender

ENG 143b Chaucer's "Global and Refugee Canterbury Tales"
[ deis-us djw dl hum ]

Focuses on situating Chaucer, and particularly the Canterbury Tales, as a global
work. We will examine black feminist writers, playwrights, and poets of the African diaspora who have revised, adapted, extrapolated, and voiced the Canterbury Tales in Jamaican patois, Nigerian pidgin, and the S. London dialects of Brixton. Usually offered every second year.
Dorothy Kim

ENG 144a Medieval Travel Writing
[ djw dl hum ]

Examining medieval travel literature from the Old English period to the early accounts of sixteenth-century explorers in the New World, this class will consider how the area of medieval travel writing exposes how race is framed in relation to gender, disability, multifaith encounters, critical animal studies, and thick mapping. Usually offered every third year.
Dorothy Kim

ENG 152a Indian Love Stories
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Introduces students to writings on love, desire and sexuality from ancient India to the present. Topics include ancient eroticism, love in Urdu poetry, Gandhi's sexual asceticism, colonial regulation of sexuality, Bollywood, queer fiction and more. Usually offered every third year.
Ulka Anjaria

ENG 168b Plotting Inheritance
[ djw dl hum ]

Examines novels published in the last two decades set during slavery and indenture in the British Caribbean, alongside (and as) theorizations of accumulation, inheritance, and freedom. How does fiction account for and plot material, moral and emotional worth? Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

ENG 171b African Feminism(s)
[ djw hum nw ]

Examines African Feminism(s) as a literary and activist movement that underlines the need for centering African women's experiences in the study of African cultures, societies, and histories. Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 186a The Literature of Objects
[ djw hum ]

Foregrounds material objects in world literature from John Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' (1819) onwards. What do things do and mean in novels, short stories, plays, poems and films? And how might attention to the materiality and even agency of things square with the historical legacy of dehumanization that has produced the putatively less-than-human figures of the enslaved, the dispossessed, the othered and the 'freak?' Usually offered every fourth year.
Joshua Williams

ENVS 111a Environmental and Climate Justice
[ deis-us djw ss ]

The consequences of climate change are distributed unequally across different world regions, countries, and different social groups within countries. This course will introduce you to the major concepts and debates related to the unequal effects of climate change, including those of the ongoing efforts to combat climate change. We also explore several proposed programs and reforms meant to contribute to the goals of environmental and climate justice, including the social activists and movements working toward addressing social, economic, and political inequalities within ongoing efforts to address climate change. Usually offered every year.

Prakash Kaswhan

FA 164a The Re-Invention of Art
[ ca djw ]

By the 1960s, the United States was the art-world capital. Radical art, however, appeared everywhere. Examines US art of the 1960's-1970s in light of artistic production in, among other places, Germany, England, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Senegal, and Japan. Usually offered every year.
Peter Kalb

FA 166b Representing Globalism
[ ca djw nw ]

For several decades, artists have been investigating the character and consequences of life under global capitalism. Through examination of writings by artists, theorists, and historians in the context of art since the turn of the millennium, this course seeks to uncover stories of the global present and possible futures. Usually offered every year.
Peter Kalb

FREN 161a The Enigma of Being Oneself: From Du Bellay to Laferrière
[ djw fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Explores the relationship of identity formation and modern individualism in texts by writers working in France, Francophone Africa and Canada. Authors range from modern and contemporary writers Sarah Kofman, Dany Laferrière, Achille Mbembe, Alain Mabanckou, and Edouard Glissant to early-modern writers like Joachim Du Bellay and Michel de Montaigne. Usually offered every year.
Michael Randall

GECS 188b Human/Nature: European Perspectives on Climate Change
[ djw hum oc wi ]

Open to all students.

Introduces European attitudes towards climate change as reflected in policy, literature, film, and art, with a focus on workable future-oriented alternatives to fossil-fueled capitalism. Usually offered every second year.
Sabine von Mering

HBRW 144a Hebrew through Plays and Drama
[ ca djw fl hum oc wi ]

Prerequisite: Any 30-level Hebrew course or permission of the instructor.

Focuses on improving Hebrew language skills at the advanced-intermediate level through critical reading and analysis of authentic and contemporary Israeli short plays and studying the comparison between plays in Israel and those in the U.S. The course will examine theories in aspects of drama and implement drama techniques including improvisation, movement, and creative expression. The course readings cover topics such as social diversity and justice as well as human rights and awareness of world identities. The course culminates in the writing of an original scene or one-act play in Hebrew. Usually offered every second year.
Sara Hascal

HBRW 146a The Voices of Jerusalem
[ djw fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: Any 30-level Hebrew course or permission of the instructor.

For advanced-intermediate students who wish to enhance their language proficiency and work toward improving fluency and communication through analysis of selected materials covering literature, poetry, history, politics, and art that depict the unique tradition and culture of Jerusalem. Usually offered every fall.
Sara Hascal

HBRW 164b Israeli Theater
[ ca djw fl hum oc wi ]

Prerequisite: Any 30-level Hebrew course or permission of the instructor.

An advanced-intermediate course that promotes language skills through the reading and analysis of plays. The student's creativity is developed through participation in acting and creative writing assignments. Usually offered every second year.
Sara Hascal

HISP 111b Introduction to Latin American Literature and Culture
[ djw fl hum nw ]

Prerequisite: HISP 106b, or HISP 108a, or permission of the instructor.

Examines key Latin American texts of different genres (poems, short stories and excerpts from novels, chronicles, comics, screenplays, cyberfiction) and from different time periods from the conquest to modernity. This class places emphasis on problems of cultural definition and identity construction as they are elaborated in literary discourse. Identifying major themes (coloniality and emancipation, modernismo and modernity, indigenismo, hybridity and mestizaje, nationalisms, Pan-Americanism, etc.) we will trace continuities and ruptures throughout Latin American intellectual history. Usually offered every semester.
Lucía Reyes de Deu or Fernando Rosenberg

HISP 122b Made in las Americas: Stories about Growing up Latinx
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Examines what it means to grow up Latinx in a multicultural United States through a focus on Latinx young adult literature and Latinx youth culture. Surveying a range of literary works that address the development of Latinx children and adolescents, we will pay special attention to coming-of-age stories that explore how Latinx negotiate ethno-racial identity, find and assert their own voice, and gain a greater understanding about their cultural differences. We will explore what intimate knowledge Latinx youth share and how they make meaning of critical, even ostensibly trivial, life moments to construct their ever-evolving sense of self and their relationship to both Latinx and non-Latinx communities. Usually offered every second year.

HISP 158a Latina Feminisms
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Taught in English.

Explores the theoretical frameworks and literary productions of feminisms developed by Latina/xs. It introduces students to a diversity of backgrounds and experiences (Chicana, Dominican American, Cuban American, Salvadoran American, and Puerto Rican authors) as well as a variety of genres (i.e. novel, poetry, short stories, drama). Using intersectionality as a theoretical tool for analyzing oppressions, students will explore the complex politics of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and race in the lives of Latina/xs. They will also explore Latina/x feminists' theoretical and/or practical attempts to transcend socially-constructed categories of identity, while acknowledging existing material inequalities. Usually offered every third year.
María J. Durán

HISP 160a Culture/Media and Social Change in Latin America
[ djw fl hum nw wi ]

Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.

The central topic of this class is the role of the creative arts (creative writing, visual arts, music, film, performance) in their role as fostering political change in Latin America. We will examine key eras of 20th and 21st century cultural production in relation with shifting mass-media landscapes, from the revolutionary impetus of the early 20th century avant-gardes in literature and visual arts, popular music in the 1940s, documentary film during and the 1960s guerrillas, artistic resistance to the dictatorship, to the street art accompanying human rights and grass roots identity movements of the 2000s. Usually offered every second year.
Fernando Rosenberg

HISP 163b Narratives of the Borderlands and Border Crossers
[ deis-us djw fl hum ]

Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor. Taught in Spanish.

Explores the U.S.-Mexico border and the many ways in which it has intimately shaped the experiences of people living in the borderlands and/or moving across the border. It will examine literary works that survey the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in terms of their figurative and material realities, with specific attention to how the borderlands are represented in today's society and how the U.S.-Mexico border might be reimagined. This course will also probe the experiences of migrants and border-crosses through the lens of testimonios. Usually offered every second year.
María J. Durán

HISP 165b The Storyteller: Short Fiction in Latin America
[ djw fl hum nw ]

Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.

Through a study of Latin American short stories, some of them by consecrated writers, some of them by less well-known, we will reflect on the power of storytelling and narrative to shape subjectivity and community. We will examine topics that traverse Latin American cultures and are expressed in these stories, such tensions between literacy and oral traditions, hegemonic and minority voices, cultural diversity, ethnicity, class, migration, as well as contemporary concerns around issues of gender and sexuality, and in relation to the natural world. This class has an optional creative writing component, as students will have the chance, if so inclined, to write fiction applying concepts and themes studied in class (instead of critical/analytical assignments). Usually offered every third year.
Fernando Rosenberg

HISP 178b Latinx Futurisms
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Examines critical theory about and cultural productions of Latinx futurisms. Engaging with Latinx speculative and science fiction aesthetics, it will explore questions of race, ethnicity, citizenship, immigration, gender, and sexuality, among other sociopolitical issues. Special one-time offering, spring 2020.
Maria Duran

HIST 102a Gender and Law in the Japanese Empire
[ djw ss ]

Examines how the Japanese Empire mobilized its legal frameworks and institutions to transform family relations, gender norms, and sexual behaviors in the societies that it engulfed. We explore these processes through which contradictory ideas and practices collided and intersected. In the first half of the semester, we study Japanese family law as a malleable instrument for imperial governance and an interactive space of negotiation and contestation. The second half is devoted to probing Japanese efforts to criminalize abortion, regulate reproduction, “cure” disabilities, and fashion the body. In each session, we analyze the category of gender as integral to our discussions of empire, nation, ethnicity, race, culture, and war. The course does not require any prior knowledge of East Asian history. Special one-time offering, fall 2021.
Jooyeon Hahm

HIST 106b The Modern British Empire
[ djw ss ]

Surveys British imperial history from the Seven Years' War through the period after decolonization. Explores economic, political, and social forces propelling expansion; ideologies and contradictions of empire; relationships between colonizer and colonized; and the role of collaboration and resistance. Usually offered every second year.
Hannah Muller

HIST 109b A Global History of Sport: Politics, Economy, Race and Culture
[ deis-us djw oc ss ]

Examines soccer, boxing, baseball, cricket and other sports to reflect on culture, politics, race, and globalization. With a focus on empire, gender, ethnicity, this course considers sport as the battleground for ideological and group contests. Usually offered every second year.
Avinash Singh

HIST 111a History of the Modern Middle East
[ djw nw ss ]

An examination of the history of the Middle East from the nineteenth century to contemporary times. Focuses on political events and intellectual trends, such as imperialism, modernity, nationalism, and revolution, that have shaped the region in the modern era. Usually offered every second year.
Naghmeh Sohrabi

HIST 111b The Iranian Revolution in Global Context
[ djw dl nw ss ]

An examination of the roots of the Iranian revolution of 1979, the formation of the Islamic Republic, and its evolution over the past 30 years. Usually offered every second year.
Naghmeh Sohrabi

HIST 112a Nationalism in the Middle East
[ djw nw ss ]

Seminar examining the history of nationalism in the modern Middle East. Covers divergent theories and practices of nationalism in the region, and explores the roles of gender, memory, historiography, and art in the formation and articulation of Middle East nationalisms. Usually offered every second year.
Naghmeh Sohrabi

HIST 121a Breaking the Rules: Deviance and Nonconformity in Premodern Europe
[ djw ss wi ]

Explores the ways in which "deviant" behavior was defined and punished by some, but also justified and even celebrated by others in premodern Europe. Topics include vagrancy, popular uprisings, witchcraft, religious heresy, and the status of women. Usually offered every second year.
Govind Sreenivasan

HIST 135b Get Up, Stand Up: A Century of Revolutions in the Middle East
[ djw nw ss ]

An examination of the various revolutions that have shaped the modern Middle East since the late 19th century. The course focuses on four different revolutionary moments: The constitutional revolutions of the turn of the century, the anti-colonial revolutions of mid-century, the radical revolutions of the 1970's, and most recently, the Arab Spring revolutions that have affected the region since 2011. Usually offered every second year.
Naghmeh Sohrabi

HIST 136b Global War and Revolutions in the Eighteenth Century
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Surveys global conflicts and revolutions and examines exchanges of idea, peoples, and goods in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Explores the legacies of inter-imperial rivalry and the intellectual borrowings and innovations of the American, French, and Haitian revolutions in comparative perspective. Usually offered every second year.
Hannah Muller

HIST 140b Charity and Poverty in Islamic Societies
[ djw nw ss ]

Charity and poverty are universal aspects of human societies, culturally specific and historically contingent. This course studies charitable giving as a fundamental aspect of Muslim belief and practice, reflecting change over time and space, offering comparisons with non-Muslim societies. Usually offered every second year.
Amy Singer

HIST 147a Russian Empire: Gender, Minorities, and Globalization
[ djw dl oc ss ]

Examines the processes and problems of modernization--state development, economic growth, social change, cultural achievements, and emergence of revolutionary and terrorist movements. Usually offered every year.
Gregory Freeze

HIST 162a Writing on the Wall: Histories of Graffiti in the Americas
[ djw dl ss ]

Focuses on the history of graffiti in the U.S. from 1960s forward. Includes the historical role of Caribbean migration, the impact of criminology and economic recession of the 1970s on graffiti culture, and the relationship between private property, public space, and graffiti. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 165a Starting from Food: New Perspectives on the Middle East and Islam
[ djw ss ]

Studying food - consumption, production, distribution, regulation, representation - illuminates every aspect of human history. This course explores texts, images, objects, local supermarkets and your experience to consider questions of power, identity, faith, taste, and more in Middle Eastern and Islamic history. Usually offered every second year.
Amy Singer

HIST 166a History of Crises: Europe's Twentieth Century
[ djw ss ]

Systematically tackles the main turning points of Western and Eastern Europe’s modern history and their global impact. The focus is on the first half of the twentieth century, and the histories of the First and Second World Wars that still shape contemporary world politics today. We will also touch on the histories of colonialism, totalitarianism, the Ukrainian famine under Stalin, the Holocaust, and "moral panics" around changing gender roles. Analyzes both primary sources and the most recent scholarly debates. Requirements include a book review and a short research paper. Usually offered every year.

Mate Rigo

HIST 172b Historicizing the Black Radical Tradition
[ djw ss ]

Introduces students to the many ways that people and scholars of African descent have historically struggled against racial oppression by formulating theories, philosophies, and practices of liberation rooted in their experiences and understandings of labor, capitalism, and modernity. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 175b Resistance and Revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Focuses on questions of race, gender and modernity in resistence movements and revolutions in Latin American and Caribbean history. The Haitian Revolution, Tupac Amaru Rebellion, and Vaccination Riots in Brazil are some topics that will be covered. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 176a Haiti and the Modern Caribbean
[ djw ss ]

Studies how Haitian political thought traveled throughout and the Caribbean in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some of the themes we will thus encounter include: race and the formation of nation-states in the 19th century Caribbean; the place of Haiti in the world economy; Haiti-US diplomatic relations; and interactions, antagonisms, and entwined histories of Haiti with other Caribbean societies. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 178a The Middle East and the West: Historical Encounters
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Examines Middle Eastern and Western encounters from nineteenth century to the present. Topics include: travel, Orientalism, modernity, spectacles and world fairs, gender and sexuality, notions of sovereignty, and the immigrant experience. Usually offered every second year.
Naghmeh Sohrabi

HIST 178b Britain and India: Connected Histories
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Surveys the history of Britain and India from the rise of the East India Company to the present. Explores cultural and economic exchanges; shifts in power and phases of imperial rule; resistance and collaboration; nationalism; decolonization and partition; and postcolonial legacies. Usually offered every second year.
Hannah Muller

HIST 180b Modern India: From Partition to the Present
[ djw nw ss ]

Examines the history, culture, and economy of modern India (1947-2019) with a focus on key concerns, such as the environment, urbanization, gender/sexual relations, and the transformations of democratic politics. Usually offered every second year.

Avinash Singh

HIST 182b Modern China
[ djw nw ss ]

Surveys Chinese history from the Ming to Mao, with an emphasis on political, social, cultural, and literary trends; and attention toward ethnic minorities and overseas communities and diaspora. Usually offered every year.
Xing Hang

HIST 183a Empire at the Margins: Borderlands in Late Imperial China
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Explores Ming and Qing China's frontiers with Japan, Korea, Inner Asia, Vietnam, and the ocean from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, examining the role of borderlands in forging the present-day multiethnic Chinese state and East Asian national identities. Usually offered every third year.
Xing Hang

HIST 184a Silk, Silver, and Slaves: China and the Industrial Revolution
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Examines why industrial capitalism, which underpins the current world order, first developed in Western Europe rather than China. Comparative treatment of commercialization, material culture, cities, political economies, and contingencies on both ends of Eurasia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Usually offered every second year.
Xing Hang

HIST 185a The China Outside China: Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Diaspora in the Making of Modern China
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Studies the history of Chinese outside Mainland China, from Hong Kong and Taiwan to Siberia and Africa, from fifteenth century to present day. Ambivalence to ancestral and adopted homelands made these communities valuable agents of transnational exchange and embodiments of Chinese modernity. Usually offered every third year.
Xing Hang

HIST 185b Turkey: From Ataturk to Erdogan
[ djw ss ]

Examines the history of the Turkish Republic, from its founding in the wake of World War I until the beginning of the 21st century. Through discussions of politics, economics, society and culture, the course studies the forces that shaped and reshaped Turkey. Like the Ottoman Empire from which it emerged, Turkey has attracted the attention of admirers and detractors alike. Meanwhile, it has played key roles and continues to be an important economic, political and cultural hub in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and the world. Usually offered every second year.
Amy Singer

HIST 187b Unequal Histories: Caste, Religion, and Dissent in India
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Examines the religious, political, and social dimensions of discrimination in India. In order to study caste, power, and representation, we will look at religious texts, historical debates, film, and literature from the Vedic Age to contemporary India. Usually offered every second year.

Avinash Singh

HIST/SOC 170b Gender and Sexuality in South Asia
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or permission of the instructor.

Explores historical and contemporary debates about gender and sexuality in South Asia; revisits concepts of "woman," "sex," "femininity," "home," "family," "community," "nation," "reform," "protection," and "civilization" across the colonial and postcolonial periods. Usually offered every second year.
Hannah Muller and Gowri Vijayakumar

HSSP 136a Comparative Public Health Systems in Latin America
[ djw ss ]

Offered through the Brandeis in Mérida: Public Health in the Yucatán Peninsula study abroad program.

Through this course, students gain an introductory knowledge on how public health is addressed in Latin America; the system organization and the main indicators used to produce public policies. What are the social and economic determinants of health in the region? What are the principal issues in Latin American context? How do different systems across countries address them? The human rights approach in Latin America and North American approach to health challenges. Differences between Latin American and US systems. Social medicine and its contributions. Role of the State, private sector, NGOs and international organizations, and their interrelations. How features of Latin American systems can constitute an input to a global comprehension of public health. Usually offered every year.

Staff

IGS 106a Seminar in Global Health and Development
[ djw ss wi ]

Explores the fields of global health and development through the critical debates and theories that frame the field. We examine its discourses and critique its practices through critical engagement with specific areas of the field. Usually offered every year.

Elanah Uretsky

IGS 138a China in the World
[ djw ss wi ]

This course examines China's role on the world stage. Looking at the history of China's interaction with the world, both at home and abroad, we will examine how China has affected, and been affected by, other societies and cultures. Usually offered every second year.
Elanah Uretsky

IGS 165a Revolution, Religion, and Terror: Postcolonial Histories
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Examines religious conflict, revolutionary violence, and civil war in modern South Asia. It looks at Jihad, Maoist militancy, rising fundamentalism, and the recent refugee crisis. Usually offered every second year.
Avinash Singh

IGS 171a The Asian Wave: Global Pop Culture and its Histories
[ djw ss ]

Asia is not only remaking itself but also exporting images and ideas across the world. This course analyzes the impact of Asian pop culture on global modernity as Asian countries project their aspirations and belief-systems, via an increased connectivity, to a worldwide audience. Usually offered every second year.
Avinash Singh

IGS 173a Asian Gangsters: Contemporary Crime Cinema
[ djw ss ]

Studies contemporary crime films to examine modern Asian society and politics. Drawing upon film theory, cultural studies, historical and sociological research, this class considers the world's largest media market to understand the continent's rapidly changing socio-political milieu. Usually offered every second year.
Avinash Singh

IGS 175a Digital Asia: Democracy in the Internet Age
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Analyzes the transformative potential of the internet as an agent of development and as a mechanism for disrupting social and political orders in Asia, home to the world's largest democracy and also the world's largest authoritarian regime. Usually offered every second year.
Avinash Singh

IMES 106a Politics of Modern Middle Eastern Art
[ ca djw hum ]

Surveys the political underpinnings of Middle Eastern art in the 20th century and the socio-political conditions that shaped cultural production in the region. We will explore how art was used as a tool of soft power, and how artists challenged authority through subversive movements and practices. The class will address an often neglected dimension of the modern history of North Africa and West Asia. Special one-time offering, fall 2021.
Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi

JAPN 130a The Literature of Multicultural Japan
[ djw hum nw ]

"Multicultural" may not be an adjective that many associate with Japan, but as we will find in this class, Japan's modern literary and cinematic tradition is rich with works by and about resident Koreans, Ainu, Okinawans, outcasts, and sexual and other marginalized minorities. Why then does the image of a monocultural Japan remain so resilient? Usually offered every third year.
Matthew Fraleigh

JAPN 145a The World of Classical Japanese Literature
[ djw hum nw ]

A survey of some of the most important works of Japanese literature from its origins to the late sixteenth century, including a wide range of genres: fiction, essays, travelogues, poetry, and drama. All readings are in English. Usually offered every third year.
Matthew Fraleigh

LACLS 152a Race and Nation in the Caribbean
[ deis-us djw hum ]

The Caribbean is an emblematic site for understanding the origins of modern forms of capitalism, globalization, and trans-nationalism. In this course, we will explore how academics and people in the Caribbean deploy ideas about 'race' and 'nation' to make sense of these transformations and impacts in the region. In particular, we will discuss the founding moments of Caribbean history, including colonialism, the genocide of Native populations, the enslavement of African people, the rise of plantation economies, and the development of global networks of goods and peoples. We will also examine tourism and debt as the continuation of long- extractive colonial practices that continue to generate stark inequalities and racial hierarchies in the region. Special one-time offering, spring 2021.
Isar Godreau

LGLS 129a Transitional Justice: Global Justice and Societies in Transition
[ djw ss ]

Introduces transitional justice, a set of practices that arise following a period of conflict that aim directly at confronting past violations of human rights. This course will focus on criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, and the contributions of art and culture. Usually offered every second year.
Melissa Stimell

NEJS 136b Revenge, Justice, and Reconciliation: Mass Atrocity Trials in the Long Shadow of Nazi Crimes
[ djw hum ]

Can crimes of the magnitude of the World War II and the Holocaust be redressed by legal means? This course explores the complex history of prosecuting Nazi crimes and how the political contexts and the legal frameworks have changed over time. It also studies the extra-judicial implications of mass atrocity trials: the societal discourse they stir, the educational lessons they teach, and historical records they create. Moreover, the course analyzes how the history of prosecuting Nazi crimes has impacted the legal redress of other gross human rights violations in the more recent past and whether the lessons learned from prosecuting Nazi crimes can be applied to the quest for racial justice in America today. Usually offered every second year.
Laura Jockusch

NEJS 143a Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain
[ djw hum ]

Examines interactions among the three religious communities focusing on political and social development, intra-religious conflict, and intellectual and artistic production. We will investigate the degree to which Castilian culture can be described as "Christian" or as "Muslim-Christian-Jewish" in character. Usually offered every second year.
Jonathan Decter

NEJS 157b Arab-Jewish Modern Thought and Culture
[ djw hum ]

Against the backdrop of the partition of the 'Jew' from the 'Arab' in the modern national era, this course focuses on the Arab-Jewish borderland cultural world which simultaneously embodies Arab and Jewish histories, traditions, and identities. It traces different manifestations of Arab-Jewish culture from the early 20th century to today and explores the complex relationship between culture and politics in relation to questions of language, identity, nationality, borders, exile and memory. Usually offered every second year.
Yuval Evry

NEJS 160b Legal Controversies in Israeli History
[ djw hum nw ]

Investigates Israeli history, politics, and culture through the lens of major legal controversies including the tension between "Jewish" and "democratic," the Shoah in Israeli history, the Occupied Territories, legislation of family life and religious practice and more. Usually offered every second year.
Alexander Kaye

NEJS 173a Trauma and Violence in Israeli Literature and Film
[ deis-us djw fl hum ]

Taught in Hebrew.

Explores trauma and violence in Israeli Literature, film, and art. Focuses on man-made disasters, war and terrorism, sexual and family violence, and murder and suicide, and examines their relation to nationalism, Zionism, gender, and sexual identity. Usually offered every second year.
Ilana Szobel

NEJS 174a Minorities and Others in Israeli Literature and Culture
[ djw fl hum ]

Taught in Hebrew.

An exploration of poetics and identity in modern Hebrew literature. By offering a feminist and psychoanalytic reading of various Hebrew texts, this seminar explores questions of personal and national identity, otherness, visibility, and marginality in the Israeli context. Usually offered every second year.
Ilana Szobel

NEJS 174b Israeli Women Writers on War and Peace
[ deis-us djw fl hum oc ]

Taught in Hebrew.

An exploration of nationalism and gender in Modern Hebrew literature. By discussing various Hebrew texts and Israeli works of art and film, this course explores women's relationship to Zionism, war, peace, the state, politics, and processes of cultural production. Usually offered every second year.
Ilana Szobel

NEJS 178a Love, Sex, and Power in Israeli Culture
[ djw fl hum ]

Taught in Hebrew. May be repeated for credit.

Explores questions of romance, gender, marriage, and jealousy in the Israeli context by offering a feminist and psychoanalytic reading of Hebrew texts, works of art, and film. Usually offered every third year.
Ilana Szobel

NEJS 180b Israeli Film, Literature, and Culture
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Taught in English.

Surveys the development of Israeli literature and culture over the past 100 years and includes selections of poetry and prose from a wide range of writers. The course aims to illuminate what makes Hebrew literature distinct as well as investigate the themes, symbols, and subject matter that have come to constitute its central concerns since the early 20th century. Usually offered every second year.
Ilana Szobel

NEJS 184b Disability Cultures: Art, Film and Literature of People with Disabilities
[ deis-us djw hum oc ]

Explores cultural representations of disability in Israel, Europe, and the US. By focusing on literature, film, dance, and visual art, it explores physical, mental, and emotional disability experiences, and their relations to gender, sexuality, nationalism, and identity politics. Usually offered every second year.
Ilana Szobel

NEJS 186a Introduction to the Qur'an
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Traces the history of the Qur'an as text, its exegesis, and its role in inter-religious polemics, law, theology, and politics. Examines the role of the Qur'an in Islamic teachings and its global impact. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

NEJS 189b Formative Moments in the Disputed Land of Israel-Palestine
[ djw hum ]

Examines the history of Israel/Palestine during the 20th century by focusing on several formative moments that took place pre and post 1948. It reexamines key issues that emerged around each of those events and explores the implications they had on the formation of Israeli and Palestinian societies. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 196a Cultural Contact Zones in Israel-Palestine
[ djw hum ]

Explores the different ways in which boundaries have been constructed and imagined in the cultural scene in Israel/Palestine from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. It traces different cultural arenas that emerged during this period using examples from literature, cinema, music and visual arts – exploring the Hebrew-Arabic contact zones, religious and secular borderlands, the national divide between Jews and Arabs, and the fluid borderland across the gender divide. Usually offered every second year.

Yuval Evri

NEJS/WGS 110a Sexual Violence in Film and Culture
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Explores the effects of sexualized violence in society. While exploring representations of gender-based sexual violence in documentaries and features, stand-up comedy, memoirs, poetry, and visual art, this course will offer a critical discussion on Rape Culture in the 21st century, with particular attention to the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, class, and disability in the construction of sexual violence. Usually offered every second year.
Ilana Szobel

NPSY 180a Social Neuroscience and Culture
[ djw oc sn ss ]

Prerequisites: PSYC 10a, 51a, and 52a, or NBIO 140a, or permission of the instructor. May not be taken for credit by students who took PSYC 213a in prior years. Formerly offered as PSYC 180a.

Introduces empirical research on a breadth of social neuroscience topics-- including the self, stereotyping, and moral reasoning--with a more focused coverage of culture. Emphasis will be placed on literature comparing Eastern and Western cultures. Usually offered every second year.
Angela Gutchess

POL 134b The Global Migration Crisis
[ djw ss wi ]

Looks at immigration from the perspectives of policy-makers, migrants, and the groups affected by immigration in sender nations as well as destination countries. Introduces students to the history of migration policy, core concepts and facts about migration in the West, and to the theories and disagreements among immigrant scholars. Usually offered every second year.
Jytte Klausen

POL 141a Elections and Electoral Systems in Comparative Perspective
[ djw dl ss wi ]

Introduces students to the scientific study of elections and electoral systems from a comparative standpoint. Students will be exposed to social scientific literature on elections, analyze these processes from a comparative perspective, and learn how to use digital tools, such as ArcGIS and online mapping software (GIS) to analyze electoral processes. Usually offered every year.
Alejandro Trelles

POL 144a Latin American Politics
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Examines the development and deepening of democracy in Latin America, focusing on the role of political institutions, economic development, the military, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Usually offered every year.
Alejandro Trelles

POL 161b Good Neighbor or Imperial Power: The Contested Evolution of US-Latin American Relations
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Studies the ambivalent and complex relationship between the U.S. and Latin America, focusing on how the exploitative dimension of this relationship has shaped societies across the region, and on how Latin American development can be beneficial for the U.S. Usually offered every year.
Alejandro Trelles

POL 163a Seminar: The United Nations and the United States
[ djw dl ss wi ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Investigates the United Nations organization and charter, with an emphasis on the integral role of the United States in its founding and operation. Using archival documents and other digitized materials, explores topics such as UN enforcement actions, the Security Council veto, human rights, and the domestic politics of US commitments to the UN. Usually offered every second year.
Kerry Chase

POL 184a Seminar: Global Justice
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisites: One course in Political Theory or Moral, Social and Political Philosophy.

Explores the development of the topic of global justice and its contents. Issues to be covered include international distributive justice, duties owed to the global poor, humanitarian intervention, the ethics of climate change, and immigration. Usually offered every second year.
Jeffrey Lenowitz

RECS 135a Russian Short Fictions: Where is Justice in This World?
[ djw hum oc ]

Open to all students. Conducted in English. Students may choose to do readings either in English translation or in Russian.

Focuses on the great tradition of the short story as practiced by Russian writers and the connection and divisions among them. This genre invites extreme stylistic and narrative experimentation ranging from the comic to the tragic, as well as being a vehicle for striking expressions of complex social, philosophical, and religious themes. Usually offered every second year.
Robin Feuer Miller

RECS/THA 140a Russian Theater: Stanislavsky to Present
[ ca djw hum wi ]

Throughout its history, Russian theatre has tried to communicate truthfully in a mostly repressive society. This course introduces students to the achievements of theatre artists from Stanislavsky through Post-Modernism. We will examine the work of groundbreaking directors like Meyerhold, Vakhtangov, and Lyubimov. We will read and analyze representative works of major modern and contemporary playwrights. The course load consists of readings, discussions, papers and in-class projects. Usually offered every second year.
Dmitry Troyanovsky

SAS 100a India and Pakistan: Understanding South Asia
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Examines the making and unmaking of modern South Asia as a region, with particular focus on India and Pakistan as well as their connections to Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Using perspectives from history, politics, anthropology, literature, and film, the course introduces students to key themes in the study of South Asia, such as colonialism and anti-colonial struggles, legacies of empire, caste critique and Dalit thought, gender and sexuality, religion, and popular culture. Usually offered every year. Usually offered every year.
Jonathan Anjaria, Ulka Anjaria, or Harleen Singh

SAS 150b Love, Sex, and Country: Films from India
[ djw hum nw ]

A study of Hindi films made in India since 1947 with a few notable exceptions from regional film, as well as some recent films made in English. Students will read Hindi films as texts/narratives of the nation to probe the occurrence of cultural, religious, historical, political, and social themes. Usually offered every third year.
Harleen Singh

SOC 124a Gender, Sexuality, and Globalization
[ djw ss ]

Introduces theories of gender, sexuality, and transnational feminism. Uses sociological research to examine labor, social movements, politics, and culture in global perspective, emphasizing Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Usually offered every second year.
Gowri Vijayakumar

THA 126a Playing for Change - Community Building and Social Change on Stage
[ ca djw ]

Examines ways in which theatrical arts can create change in a variety of non-traditional situations. This course is grounded in the discussion/practice of theater activists such as Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. For both theater and non-theater students, this course focuses on how and why this collaborative, useful art form can be introduced into sociological, psychological, political, cultural, educational, medical, and historical paradigms. Students will generate work surrounding social issues of importance to them. Usually offered every second year.
Jennifer Cleary

THA 150a Global Theater: Voices from Asia, Africa, and the Americas
[ ca djw nw wi ]

Explores dramatic literature and performance traditions from across the globe. Examines the ways various artists have engaged theater to express, represent, and interrogate diversity and complexity of the human condition. Usually offered every second year.
Isaiah Wooden