IP
Multicultural, Identity, Pluralism, and Tolerance (IP) courses examine the social construction of collective identities, the emergence of representative voices from varying social and cultural standpoints, and the effects of prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination. The purpose of courses in this category is to analyze the general principles underlying tolerance, or the lack of it.
27047
This course is a survey of writings by African American authors of the 19th and 20th centuries. Studying fiction, essays, and poetry, we’ll close read representative texts to identify formal and thematic elements that characterize the African American literary tradition. We will consider how... (read more)
27135
Aliens, monsters, killer robots, mutants.... Such metaphors may express cultural fears of the “other” that underlie social prejudice, intolerance, and... (read more)
27692
Reading important writers of Asian American descent, this class is concerned with the following: 1. Where is Asian America? 2. What is an Asian American? Is it... (read more)
12497
An introduction to contemporary folklore studies, with emphasis on the meanings of stories, rituals, festivals, body art, subcultures, the supernatural, street art, Internet folklore, and other forms of vernacular expression as these relate to a diversity of social identities and cultural... (read more)
16455
In 1968, Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for American literature. Momaday's award signaled for many the “arrival” of Native authors to the American literary scene, and ushered in an unprecedented era of Native literary production widely... (read more)
16458
In the decades leading up to the Civil War, it was illegal for slaves to learn how to read or write. It was illegal for them to testify in court, except against each other or to confess a crime. In the North, free African Americans often did not fare much better: there they were susceptible to... (read more)
16950
As an introductory survey, this course emphasizes the formal, thematic, and cultural diversity of Latinx literature. We will read novels, poetry, short stories, and comics, among other media, by authors from a range of identities—including Mexican American, Central American, Cuban American, and... (read more)
42073
Introduces students to the theories and methods used in the study of folklore and popular culture; examines a diversity of approaches to the description and analysis of “common culture,” including popular narratives, legends, rituals, ethnic and gender stereotypes, carnivalesque events, fan... (read more)
42252
This class explores how black women writers of the twentieth century have taken up the themes of time, memory, and identity. These writers often conceived of literature as a project of memory and recovery, a place, as Ntzoake Shange puts it in Sassafrass, Cypress, & Indigo, for... (read more)
42419
Focusing primarily on American/Hollywood filmmaking from the late 1960s through today, this course looks closely at the representation and function of African-Americans and women in film. Using both mainstream and independent films as our primary texts, we will explore how African-Americans and... (read more)
42420
Aliens, monsters, killer androids, mutants.... Such metaphors may express cultural fears of the “other” that underlie social prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination. But viewers and fans may also read against the grain of normative cinematic images, finding identity and affirmation in the... (read more)
42454
In 1968, Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for American literature. Momaday's award signaled for many the “arrival” of Native authors to the American literary scene, and ushered in an unprecedented era of Native literary production widely... (read more)
32013
This course is a survey of writings by African American authors. Studying fiction, essays, and poetry, we will read representative texts to consider whether there are specific formal and thematic elements that characterize an African American literary tradition. We will consider how these texts... (read more)
32030
This course introduces students to the manner in which South Africans have been represented through fiction, documentary, and experimental films from the pre-apartheid to the post-apartheid eras. We will focus specifically on representations of blackness in South Africa in order to understand... (read more)
32031
This course introduces students to critical thinking about the historical and economic factors influencing film, media, and cultural production in Hollywood and in response to Hollywood. Unconventional textual and contextual dynamics, understood as queer history, are the focus of the course,... (read more)
35962
In 1968, Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for American literature. Momaday’s award signaled for many the “arrival” of Native authors to the American literary scene, and ushered in an unprecedented era of Native literary production widely... (read more)
35969
This course will examine Native women’s fiction, paying particular attention to the ways its form and content uphold and contest terms like “feminism,” “fiction,” and “native.” The central concern of this course is Native women’s textual representations of their bodies and voices, both physical... (read more)
35970
African American Authors of the Harlem Renaissance
This course will examine the work of three major African American authors: Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes. These three did much to set the tone of the flourishing of black literary culture after World World One known... (read more)
22743
Cherokee/Choctaw scholar Louis Owens declared that all Native novels are centrally occupied with recovering and (re)articulating an Indigenous sense of identity from within the discursive and linguistic contexts of colonialism. For Owens, this inherently dialogic process draws heavily on... (read more)
22746
Study of film and media as aesthetic objects that engage with communities identified by class, gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality.
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26826
What story does your body tell? Beyond the assumptions others may make based on physical appearance, or what you might convey through adornment, what narrative does your body perpetuate? The Proto Polynesian word “tatau” (tattoo) is both a noun, the physical mark inscribed on the body, and a... (read more)
26827
This class is a sampling of American writing by its ethnic and racial minority writers. Generically speaking, we shall devote ourselves to prose fiction and non-fiction.
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26841
Latinx Literary Environmentalisms
Latinx literature and culture sit at the cutting edge of contemporary environmental thought. This class examines the intertwining of social and environmental justice in contemporary Latinx literature and cultural production, including fiction, film, and... (read more)
27212
The complex cultural history of Great Britain and Ireland is the focus of this course. We study folk and popular traditions that are current or have been collected in this region, particularly noting how these influence art, literature, history, and socio-political institutions as well as... (read more)
