Courses

Thomas Edge l Online

For more than half a century, academic units in both Ethnic Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) have advanced our critical knowledge of the impact our identities have on our place in the world. In spite of their increasing relevance over time, both of these areas of study face persistent questions over their applicability to everyday life, especially in the contemporary workforce. This course will examine some of the practical applications of Ethnic Studies and WGSS, through academic works applying their lessons to different types of work and first-hand accounts from graduates in these fields. Taken together, they will help reveal why these frames of analysis matter in the modern workplace and how they can benefit professionals across different vocations.

Tim Messer-Kruse M 6-9:00pm
This course provides an advanced introduction to classical theories of race and ethnicity, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, critical race theory, and the politics of multiculturalism. It focuses on questions of racial and ethnic systems of social organization and signification.

Michaela Walsh – Tuesday 2:30-5:20 pm
Since their inception, colleges and universities in the U.S. have been a locus of activism and social movements for students fighting for intersecting issues of disability, economic, environmental, gender, racial, reproductive, and sexual justice. This course maps transnational protest movements during the 20^th and 21^st centuries (e.g., The Mexican Student Movement, Chicano and Civil Rights Movements, Ethnic Studies, Black Lives Matter, Tianamen Square Protests, Palestinian Student Movement, Spain’s 15-M movement, among others) to consider uses of space, time, and the use of traditional and digital media in shaping issue-narratives.  The course also focuses on embodied forms of resistance, including virtual sit-ins, flash mobs, and the use of art and performance to challenge hegemonic power.  The format of this seminar is interdisciplinary in nature and will encompass a variety of “texts,” including critical and cultural theory, performance and spoken word, photography, poetry, literature, new media, and music.   

Radhika Gajjala | Th 6:00-9:00pm | 

This course focuses Social Media and Activism/Advocacy/Allyship and Influencers. This course will investigate topics related to social media and its use in activism and advocacy, whether by individuals, non-profits, political parties or social justice movements. Since the internet became publicly available beyond scientific and intelligence communities in the 1990s, we have seen a trend where people from various social and cultural worldwide locations have used the tools available to raise awareness for causes. As early as 1994, the Zapatistas used the internet for activism. Over the last decade we have seen an increase in this use by groups all across the globe. In looking at Activism/Advocacy/Allyship and Influencers the assumption is not that digital activists and influencers are ideologically progressive. The movements we look at and the tactics and strategies we examine will shed light on both conservative and liberal progressive movements across a spectrum of race, gender, class, caste, religion, nationalisms and fascisms. Thus we look at activist strategies in relation political misinformation, spread of hate groups as well as at human rights, antiracist or feminist movements. This manner of engaging what is happening though social media publics allows us to examine issues of race, gender and geography and how different historically oppressed/marginalized communities are impacted by what has come to be known as “digital activism.” Readings and exercises in class will focus on examining both the algorithmic/machinic infrastructural biases and the more discursively visible social, cultural, political and economic biases that shape practices of “digital activism.” 

Radhika Gajjala | M 6:00-9:00pm | 

Remy Attig | Online 

An emphasis on “speaking correctly” and “grammar policing” has been a tool to silence resistance and reaffirm the superiority of the elite for centuries. This is particularly true where it relates to colonial and nationalist projects. While many of us have internalized these ideas of linguistic purity through our education and societal beliefs, the truth is that for a great many people these prescriptivist ideas of language don’t reflect our actual speech. 

Despite the gravitas of institutions such as the Real Academia Española, the Oxford Dictionary, and the standardization of the editorial process, many are using their language in non-standardized ways to voice their resistance on their own terms. 

This course will use translinguistics and queer theories to consider how some traditionally underrepresented communities use language in innovative or unconventional ways to tell their own stories. We’ll look at TV, zines, and literature from across US Latinx communities and on the Hispanic-Brazilian border to see how queer, feminist, Latinx, and other communities are taking control of their own representation. 

**This class is conducted in Spanish. Readings will be in English and Spanish** 

Kristen Rudisill | M 6:00-9:00PM

This course covers the broad topics of Identity, Nationalism, Modernity, Post-Colonialism, Subaltern Studies, Diaspora, Transnationalism, Globalization, Localization, Tourism, and New Media through a wide variety of readings. By the end of the course you should have seen excellent examples and be prepared to complete your own conference-length research project that grounds popular culture in a specific political, historical, and geographic context. You should also be able to engage with larger ideas about how your object of study participates in the world of global culture, influencing and being influenced by cultural practices of production and consumption around the globe. In this course you are encouraged to consider the ways that popular culture shapes, challenges, and expands ideas of identity amongst its creators and users in national, international, and transnational contexts. You are required to write reviews of two scholarly books of your choice and should have procured the tools to thoughtfully evaluate the work of other scholars in the form of a short review. 

Nicole Jackson -- T/Th 4:00-5:15 pm
As he traveled around the Americas, Marcus Garvey solicited support for his Black Star Line and Back to Africa movement from Black communities in cities like New York, U.S.A, Kingston, Jamaica, and Limon, Costa Rica. Garvey asked his potential supporters to dream of a place where they would be free of racial discrimination and violent racism. He asked them to invest their hard-earned money in moving to a place where they could find the belonging so often denied them in countries built on their labor, enslaved and free. Even though Garvey’s movement failed in repatriating Black people in the Americas to the African continent, his ideas tapped into a long yearning for a place few people remembered, but to which their imagination often wondered. This course will look at the history of the Black Diaspora from various methodological viewpoints, considering such themes as slavery, freedom, “return,” music/art, social movements, race, and gender. 

Sandra Faulkner -- T/Th 4:00-5:15PM --  Online
How do we define, measure, and communicate race? How do racial discrimination and racism negatively affect the health of individuals and their communities? How can we use communication to reduce racial prejudice and discrimination? What is the role of communication in reducing racial inequities and transforming racial media (mis)representations? How do individuals, dyads, groups, and organizations use communication to challenge and reconstruct racial identities? 
In this course, we will explore the construction and communication of race in interpersonal, organizational, and cultural contexts. From the construction of racial categories and media representations to discourses of resistance and social activism, we will critically investigate the complex relationship between communication and race. Focusing on the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and language, we will also explore how individuals have defined, negotiated, and voiced their own racial identities.  

Spring 2023 Courses

ETHN 6500/WS 6800- Sexuality, Race, and Nation (Peña)
ETHN 6730/ACS 5001- Concepts in CRT: Myth and Reality (Messer-Kruse)

Fall 2023 Courses

ETHN 6200- Theories of Race, Ethnicity, and Multiculturalism (Messer-Kruse)
ETHN 6800/ WS 6800- Global Student Activism (Walsh)