MDS4620 Mediating the Wild
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsWilderness is disappearing faster than ever due to humans' radical transformation of the earth. Yet, consumer cultures have developed an ever so strong desire for the wild. In the industries that sell "Wildness", media have played a large role in telling it, showing it, measuring it, and manufacturing it. This course focuses on the ideologies, discourses, and technologies that mediate between contemporary consumers and the disappearing Wildness. We will explore a variety of cultural phenomena including the usage of smart phones, selfie sticks, and Go Pros in ecotourism, backpacking cultures, and outdoor adventure sports industries, the appropriation of drones and GPS-tracking devices by environmentalists, wildlife poachers, and virtual/augmented reality game designers, the trending of the "wild food" diet and the NGO campaigns protesting it, as well as the adoption of sound recordings of wild landscapes as new age music therapies. This course incorporates a multicultural and "multinatural" view to look at technology's role in representing, mediating, and recreating nature. We also address difficult ethical questions such as: How to maintain a proper distance with the Wild? Should we tame it, save it and thereby annihilating it? Or should we leave it on its own terms, and thereby letting it live or die?

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

HSS2034 Modern European History: Wars, Nationalities, Identities and Human Rights
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course features The French Revolution, The Russian Revolution, World War I, World War II and contemporary ethnic conflicts to examine the processes and consequences of modernization and nationalism in Europe and Russia. At the end of the 18th Century, the individual and the nation state were constructed as sources of meaning and identity and were legitimated naturally and politically. At the beginning of the 21st Century, these legitimations are still uncertain and under construction. We will focus on the concepts of human, civic, political and natural rights to study this problematic history.

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

ANT4606 Modern Israel: Conflicts in Context
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

The goal of this seminar is to provide a broad, anthropological context for Israeli culture, politics, and history on a global scale. Through a combination of scholarly texts, films, artwork, and other works of fiction and non-fiction from both Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, we will consider the conception, founding, and current conflicts surrounding the state of Israel, its occupied territories, and the Palestinian people. Our topics will cover the diasporic history of the Jewish people, the international optics of Israeli self-determination, the internal ethnic and cultural conflicts of modern Israeli society, as well as the history of Palestinian resistance and the current state of suspension in Gaza and the West Bank. Students will be expected to emerge with a nuanced understanding of the past and current political realities of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and an appreciation for the complexities, ambiguities, and possible futures of Israeli/Palestinian society.

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

HSS2038 Modern Middle East
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course studies Middle Eastern politics, culture, and society from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. To do this, we will focus on a wide variety of historical developments in different areas of the Middle East, starting with the late Ottoman period and moving into the Mandates of the interwar period, moments of decolonization, and eventually focusing on the post-independent states that emerge in the second half of the 20th century. Additionally, the course provides historical contexts to events, actors, and conflicts that have come to shape the present-day Middle East as well as the world, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the politics of oil, the rise of Islamism, and the US-Middle East relations. In order to understand these complex issues, we will engage with works of scholarly analysis, primary documents, memoirs, fiction, and film.

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

CSP2055 Peoples and Cultures of the Americas

(Formerly CVA2055)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts Credits

This course looks at the Peoples and Cultures and Cultures of Latin America from within. The course covers topics such as resistance movements against dictatorships, feminist movements, Indigenous and environmental movements, racial and social justice movements. These issues are presented from the perspective of those on the ground, actively engaged with pushing for social movements that shape these countries.

What do we need to pay attention to when we are trying to understand Latin America? What are the forces that shape the region? These very complex questions should not be reduced to simple answers. However, the dynamics in Latin American countries (as well as elsewhere) are in large part a result of contentious processes between those that are trying to control the state and those trying to change it. The mainstream narrative about the history and politics of Latin America explains the region from the perspective of those who have access to the means of power, and have more leverage on how national states are governed. This is, though, only part of what we need to keep in mind. It is crucial to inquire into the movements that push against these dominant forces and narratives. This course invites students to investigate the social processes carried out by those who are often forgotten. Although frequently ignored, the consequences of these dynamics are constitutive of Latin America. This is an intermediate course designed to provide business students with the necessary tools to understand and engage with peoples and cultures of the region.

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

CSP2035 Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East

(Formerly CVA2035)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsWhile the Middle East continues to dominate Western foreign policy concerns and is a focus of Western media, understanding of this region is often based on stereotypes that do not consider the everyday lives of Middle Eastern people, and that do not attempt to differentiate between peoples of this region. This course will introduce several groups and cultures of the Middle East in detail, while focusing on thematic topics that are of particular interest to current world events. A brief survey of the history and geography of the region will be followed by more in-depth study of topics such as political Islam, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, the war in Afghanistan, gender and sexuality, and human rights issues. The course will be highly interactive, and will make frequent use of documentaries, movies, literature, and current news events as well as anthropological and ethnographic material.

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

CPS2015 Political Thought

(Formerly CVA2015)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course addresses the meaning and practice of politics through close readings of a range of political theory approaches, such as anarchist political theory, classic liberalism, civic republicanism, Black Nationalism, queer theory, settler colonial/Indigenous studies, conservatism, and feminist theory. The course will pursue such topics as the politics of confrontation, transformation and change, the role and meaning of citizenship, political community, government, inequality, political resistance, violence, and any other pertinent issues we discern from the work assigned. This is a reading intensive course, and it will also explore political themes that can be drawn out of popular culture, such as films and television shows.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Spring

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

HIS4620 Race and Ethnicity in Latin America
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

What did it mean to be _Black_ or _Indian_ or _White_ in Latin America? What is mestizaje and indigenismo? What did it mean to be of mixed descent? What does these mean today? Is _race_ a means to political empowerment, or the source of discrimination? This seminar explores these issues and ideas in the context of colonial and postcolonial Latin American history. In answering these questions, we will look at a variety of theoretical and disciplinary approaches to _race._ Armed with the history of these changing ideas, we will then consider a variety of case studies from throughout Latin America.

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

CSP2033 Radical Politics: Thought, Action, and Culture

(Formerly CVA2033)

4 Credits

This Intermediate Liberal Arts course examines the theory, actions, claims, and artistic and cultural representations of radical political movements historically and in our time. Radical political movements seek major transformations in the way we live together. Radical movements tend to work outside and even at odds with the mainstream political process that involves political parties and elections. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this course will look at the history and contemporary forms of radical politics, read theoretical and historical works that help us understand different ways to conceptualize a "radical" approach, and assess the radical potential of artistic work. In past courses, we have examined the Alt-Right and Antifa, the Movement for Black Lives, and such Indigenous political struggles as the Standing Rock/#NoDAPL movement in the US context and the #IdleNoMore movement in the Canadian context. Movements such as these - and others such as the 2022 uprising in Iran - will likely be part of the course in Fall 2022, and I adapt course materials to allow us to analyze forms of radical politics that may well be emerging just prior to and during our semester. Other possible movements we might examine include those concerning the environment/climate change, queer struggles, radical feminism, those for and against human migration, and neo-nazi formations. Students will be encouraged to work on projects that examine historical or contemporary radical movements that are in their interest, and in the forms through which they best communicate (written, visual, audio etc). The course will focus on the North American context, but student projects and our discussions do not need to be limited to that context. The materials for this class will include historical and political scholarly analyses, journalism, documentaries, film, literature, music, podcasts, public commentary, and the narratives of activists themselves.

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

HSS2058 The Modern American City (HIS)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsIn this intermediate course, students will analyze how urban centers such as Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles have served as catalysts for major developments in nineteenth and twentieth-century American history. The course will consider how these cities have spurred the nation's economy, politics, and culture, and have shaped American identity by welcoming millions of immigrants, artists, intellectuals, and bohemians. Selected subjects include Boston's institutions of culture, Chicago's factory system, the popular amusements of Coney Island, the architecture and music of _Jazz Age_ New York, the development of public housing, the counterculture in San Francisco, and the urban crisis in Los Angeles.

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