HSS2019 A History of Food and Election Campaigns

4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsTreating voters to food and drink in exchange for their vote on Election Day has a long history. This course focuses on campaigning for public office from 1876 to the present. We look at how political meetings and campaign stops provides the opportunity for a candidate to identify with voters and thereby gain their vote. As an HSS, this course cultivates ethical structures for interrogating the world, understanding choices, and making decisions. It focuses on frameworks for critically understanding the cultural constructions of meanings and identities and the simultaneous and reciprocal construction of cultural and political context by human beings as ethical agents.

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

ANT4600 Accessing Health? Design, Inequality and the Politics of Place

4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

Health outcomes vary widely across the globe: there is a gap of more than 30 years in the life expectancies of the longest-lived and shortest-lived countries. Yet decades' and in some cases centuries' worth of projects to improve health outcomes have faltered. Why, amidst a plethora of potential solutions, do poor health and health inequality persist?

This course investigates the relationship between human health, the places where we live, and the management of health through design and planning. Illness is both a justification for the exercise of power and a consequence of the inequalities that power leaves in its wake. This creates an apparent paradox where expert technologies of biomedicine and planning seem to offer the promise of better lives but also re-inscribe illness in already unhealthy populations. We will examine the fragmented conceptions of the body, community, health, and place that both make these efforts possible and make them unlikely to succeed in achieving health equality.

The course explores the interaction between public health and planning norms and the everyday lives of people on the margin of these projects. We will pay particular attention to questions regarding how race, gender, and disability shape both health and experiences of place in the global South and North. After an overview of the humanistic social sciences' approaches to the relationship between health and place in weeks 1-2, the readings in the first half of the course are organized around top-down projects to create healthier populations and the everyday strategies of resistance that people who find themselves caught up in these projects employ. The readings in the second half of the course explore people's bottom-up efforts to forge a different relationship between place and health, with particular attention to the politics of design.

In this course, students will complete a two-part research project that explores how differently situated social groups seek to change places and their people in pursuit of health. In part one, you will draw on theories explored in this course to examine a "top-down" approach to the production of health. For instance, you might look at a particular city's urban planning policies, the work of a transnational NGO, the management of a forest, or an anti-Zika campaign. In part two, you will explore a "bottom-up" approach to health by documenting people's every day and grassroots practices for keeping or making themselves healthy. This could include but is not limited to guerrilla urbanism, disability activism, techniques of visibility/invisibility as everyday resistance, Black place-making, or food justice. You are not required to locate both parts of the project in the same place, nor are you required to organize both parts of the project around the same health problem. This project is an opportunity for you to explore a topic in which you are genuinely interested-so please let me know if you are feeling like you need some encouragement to choose the "riskier" option.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 intermediate liberal arts (HSS, CSP, LTA)

PRF1200: Acting Workshop

2 free elective credits

This course will introduce the methods and tools required for stage performance. Through various exercises, games, improvisation, and assignments you will create characters, gain an understanding of theatre terminology, and attempt to find not only meaning but also the performance potential of dramatic literature. Most importantly, you will develop the confidence to approach the craft of acting with the discipline and rigor required for compelling performance.

The art of acting not only requires you to call upon knowledge in history, languages, and literature but also to understand your capabilities physically and vocally. The lessons you will learn this semester in active listening, characterization, vocal capabilities (resonance, range, enunciation, and delivery), collaboration, and bodily awareness are some that you can use in any career and in any field.

Prerequisites: none

CSP2002 African American History and Foodways (HIS)

(Formerly CVA2002)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThe course covers the major periods, movements, and events that have shaped African American history and foodways. These include: the African slave trade; antebellum period; the civil war and reconstruction; World War I and the great migration; Harlem Renaissance and Garveyism; Great Depression; Spanish Civil War and World War II; Civil Rights and Black Power movements; industrialization, the growth of the prison industrial complex, and the _war on drugs_. The course will also include content on African American foodways from the African slave trade to the Black Power movement. Classes discuss the assigned reading with lively student participation. Out-of-class work includes readings, online exams, attending lectures, artistic presentations, and films, as well as independent research.

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

POL4601 Africa Rising?
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsThis interdisciplinary course on contemporary Africa examines political, economic and social developments in the context of the now common mantra "Africa Rising." It takes a historical look at Africa's relations with global development actors and how these have impacted individual states and the entire continent. It includes a comparative analysis of Africa's partnership(s) with the different regions of the world (broadly categorized into East and West, Global South and Global North) and time spans (broadly grouped into colonial and post-colonial). It also examines processes, actors, events and partnerships within independent Africa and how they have contributed to the present state of the continent, which observers have described as rising. The course interrogates this observation. How truly is "Africa rising"? What is the cost of the rise? What does it mean for individuals, states and the entire continent? Why/how does it matter? The course focuses on these (and other important) questions, considering examples from various sectors, events, countries, bilateral and multilateral arrangements with African states and in relation to the rest of the world. It uses a variety of materials including texts, news and journal articles, as well as electronic and internet-based resources.

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

LTA2010 African American Literature
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course will introduce students to the African American literary tradition starting with the slave narrative and concluding with contemporary literary production. Along the way, we will consider the move from oral to written literatures, the aesthetic forms created and adapted by African American writers, and the role of African American letters in chronicling and shaping the experience of African American people. Our study will be informed by major historical moments -slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration from south to north, the Civil Rights and post-Civil rights eras-and we will read work by writers such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison.

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

HSS2032 African American History and Foodways
4 Intermediate Liberal ArtsAfrican History and Foodways will cover the major subjects, movements, and events that have shaped Africa since the 1400s. These include African crops and animals, African political institutions and wars, gender, the spread of Islam, slavery, European colonization, and African independence movements. One learns how to publish a blog and create podcast episodes with show notes. Deliverables, regular contributions to class discussions, public speaking, research, and group work are essential course components. Cooking is a part of live classes.

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

LIT4661 American Autobiography
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsAutobiography, always popular, has reached new heights of acclaim in recent years - especially in the United States. Why do readers find it so attractive? Sensationalist, exhibitionist, self-serving, revelatory, probing: while it can be all of this and more, autobiography as a literary genre has its roots in a person's desire for expression and meaning. As its writers explain themselves to the world, they explain the world to themselves, imposing on it their views and causes. Autobiography can demonstrate how history is made in words, not found; how people make sense of their own lives. Reading a cross-section of such works written by authors living in what is now the United States compels us to question simplistic notions of what _America_ stands for, and to rediscover its promises and its meanings in its variety and conflict.

This is an upper-level liberal arts course. Readings range from Benjamin Franklin to the present.

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

LIT4608 American Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsThis course is a deep dive into literary works representing three major movements in American literature: Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism. Romanticism is thematically concerned with nature and the common man, the frontier and immigration. Our study may include Thoreau, Whitman, and Morrison, as well as the genres of the gothic story and the slave narrative. Realism and Naturalism are often understood as reactions to Romanticism and are thematically concerned with man-made reality, objectivity and Darwinian ideas. Our study may include Wharton, Dreiser, and contemporary U.S. fiction.

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

POL 4606: Ancient Athens and the Birth of Political Thought

4 advance liberal arts credits

Pericles famously called Athens the "school of Hellas," emphasizing the city's role as a leader in the Greek world and a hub of art, knowledge, and innovation. This study abroad class in Athens (and beyond) will explore the political thought of ancient Greece through an examination of key texts, archaeological sites, historical monuments, and theatrical performances. Students will engage with the ideas of Athenian philosophers and political leaders, including Plato, Aristotle, and Pericles, and will learn about the development of democracy and empire in Athens. The class will also take day trips to other sites within Greece, including Delphi, Epidaurus, Olympia, as well as the mines at Laurion, Mycenae, and Olympia. We will attend a theatrical performance in ancient Greek (with supertitles in English) at the ancient theater of Epidaurus and take a day trip to Aegina, an island known for its ancient sites - and beautiful beaches! Through a combination of guided tours, lectures, and discussions, students will gain an understanding of the ancient Greek political system and the philosophers who shaped it. Readings, discussions, and writing assignments will be assigned to provide context and background for the sites visited and to help students to develop critical thinking skills and an understanding of the historical, cultural, and political themes that are explored during the tour.​​​​​​​