HUM4602 Future Studies: Theories of the World to Come

4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

This course provides a captivating looking glass into the most fascinating debates surrounding the future. We will trace those radical transformations and cutting-edge paradigms that are emerging to forever alter our experience of time and space, body and mind, objects and images, reality and illusion, human and machine. To achieve this task, our course will follow an interdisciplinary, multicultural, and multimedia approach that explores provocative new dimensions in the areas of literature, philosophy, society, culture, politics, media, architecture, design, biogenetics, ecology, film, art, and technology. Together, these speculative fragments will come together to offer crucial insight into our era's experiments with speed, virtuality, artificiality, and utopia, allowing us to test the outer boundaries of the unknown worlds to come.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

HUM4603 Future Worlds: Revolutions of the Humans and Post-Humans

4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

This course provides radical exposure to the most astonishing trends of the next age as students interface with leading futuristic thinkers from around the world. Students will have the rare occasion to engage with fifteen renowned professors, reading their writings closely a, as we move across multiple intellectual surfaces to ask the most provocative questions facing our time and beyond. Each scholarly figure will present a series of speculative theories and visionary examples from the fields of sociology, architecture, economy, design, political science, cultural studies, media studies, literature, philosophy, film, medical science, virtual reality, visual art, artificial intelligence, and environmental studies. Moreover, students themselves will not only directly encounter this network of vital futurist scholars in their weekly sessions but will also have the occasion to undertake strikingly original research that tracks obscure, secretive, post-human, and unfathomable innovations transpiring in every arena of human experience. In this way, the seminar will trace a sequence of worlds not yet arrived, interpreting horizons of global and even extra-planetary scope as they test out riddles for the coming centuries.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

ENV4602 Gender and Environment
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

The objective of this course is to understand, explore, and analyze the linkages between gender and the environment. Using multiple case studies (fashion, food, waste, illegal wildlife trade, climate change etc.), the course will focus on three core themes: 1) foundational concepts and theories of gender as they relate to the environment 2) the inequities and power dynamics associated with environmental challenges 3) knowledge and tools to mainstream gender and create effective change. By thinking critically about these concepts, we will challenge our current understanding about complex, global environmental challenges, the meaning of gender, and why it matters today and in the future.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

CSP2010 Gender Studies

(Formerly CVA2010)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to gender studies. Designed as an intermediate course, Introduction to Gender Studies aims to identify and critically examine the interactive relationships among gender, cultural/social institutions, and individuals in contemporary American society. This implies two foci of attention. First, through readings and discussion, we will explore gender roles and resulting power inequities in contexts such as families, the music industry, conceptions of both race and sexuality, and novels. Equally important, we will analyze how the behaviors of individuals reflect, sustain and sometimes alter social conceptions of gender. In concert, these two emphases serve to underline the relationships among gender, culture, and individuals.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Spring, Summer or Fall

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

HSS2042: Germans and Others: Germany in the 20th and 21st Centuries

4 intermediate liberal arts credits

**This course is for students in the Babson Leadership in a Global Context program in Berlin and is not open to students not enrolled in the program.**

What does it mean to be German in the 20th-21st centuries? Who decides who living within Germany is German and who is Other? Using this theme, you will be introduced to the political, social, economic, and cultural history of contemporary Germany within Europe and the world in the past 100 years. After a brief overview of German history, we will examine four moments: 1.The Holocaust
2. The Guest Worker (Gastarbeiter) Phenomenon
3. The Division and Reunification of East and West Germany
4. Refugees and Migrants in the 21st Century

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001 or RHT1001)

LTA2035 Ghost Stories and the Grotesque in Literature
Intermediate Liberal ArtsBecause a "ghost" is a haunting by political history, personal choices, and social expectations, they do exist. Therefore, this course will look at the genre of the ghost story (and esthetic considerations of the grotesque) in relation to both the eighteenth-century gothic (from which it emerged) and the horror story (from which it needs to differentiate itself). Class discussion will focus on how the ghost story explores ideas of identity, both national and personal. Mostly comprised of short stories and films, the narratives we will enjoy can teach us about what haunts us as humans and why. Authors included are Morrison, Poe, Kubrick, James, and the HBO series "LoveCraft Country", among others.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

LTA2013 Global Cinema

4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsGlobal Cinema provides an overview of the history and aesthetics of films from Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. Students will analyze films as cultural artifacts and will consider the interrelationship among various national film movements and aesthetic approaches. Weekly film viewings will be complemented by readings in the history and practice of several national cinemas and of post-colonial, transnational cinemas. Films are in their original language with English subtitles.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Fall

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

HIS4626 Global Cities
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsThis course explores global cities to understand the varied and discrepant historical experiences of urban modernity. Drawing on a wide variety of literature from different disciplines and regions, we will critically examine the shaping of cities across the world: Boston, London, Paris, Shanghai, Mumbai, Singapore, Dubai, Bangalore, and Brasilia among others. We will examine city-space at two levels: first, at the more formal level of the state and town planners; and, second, at an everyday level, where city dwellers contest and redraw town plans in their daily lives.

The course begins with an analysis of race, class, and gender that segregated the industrial metropolis. We will then discuss colonial cities using space as a lens to review empire and imperialism. Next, our focus will be on neoliberal governance; megacities; the conceptualization of 'community' in a neoliberal city; gentrification; privatization of urban space; urban informality; and the new language of urban inclusion/exclusion.

A specific focus of this course will be on the impact of globalization on South Asian city space: has globalization sharpened class, caste, and religious divides in these cities?

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

ENV4605 Global Environmental Activism
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits"It has never been more important to protect the environment, and it has never been more deadly. The battle for the environment is emerging as a new battleground for human rights." (Global Witness).

This course examines environmental activism around the world. The impact of anthropogenic activity on the environment has raised serious global concern and triggered several efforts to tackle the problem from the global to local level. Individuals and groups are using various tools to create awareness and help curb the growing environmental menace from different sources. Activists - especially local and indigenous ones - often face danger, including persecution by powerful actors like states and multilateral corporations, and the murder rate of environmental activists continues to rise globally. Environmental activism has thus become increasingly perilous. Nonetheless, advocacy for environmental responsibility remains vibrant around the world. This course uses various cases in different regions of the world to help understand the global environmental movement These cases include Shell in Nigeria's Niger Delta; Tahoe Resources in the Guatemalan town of Mataquescuintla; and Coca-Cola in India. The course will use these cases to examine: 1) the theoretical basis of environmental activism; 2) motivations of and challenges for activism; 3) the nature and composition of actors - activists, perpetrators and collaborators, policy communities, and governments; 4) nature and scope of issues and activism in the various regions of the world; and 5) relationships between environmental degradation, advocacy for its protection, and climate change.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

GDR4605 Global Gender Politics
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsThis course aims to help students develop a comprehensive understanding of gender in contemporary domestic and international politics. It covers a variety of themes, such as feminist theory, intersectionality, gender performance, comparative legal regimes, and the political economy of gender. Students will have an opportunity to explore various case studies on gender from around the globe, to deepen their understanding of core concepts.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)