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.
This introductory course explores the forms, cultural resonances, aesthetics, and political exigency of Latinx literatures in the United States. From the Chicano Civil Rights Movement to current debates on citizenship, this course examines how Latinx literature from the 20th and 21st centuries... (read more)
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)
This class explores the histories of women writers creating culture around vinyl records. With a focus on the 1950s-1970s and labels like Rosetta Records, we study essays printed on LP packaging – on the cardboard sleeves that contain, transport, and protect the recorded sound of an album –... (read more)
Working from the 19th century to the present, this course will consider African American and Afro-Caribbean literature that troubles our notions of the “natural” and the “real.” Exploring narratives of hallucination, prophecy, and divination, we will study the ways that Black writers have... (read more)
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)
Travel, or the journey, is often conceptualized in relation to home as the point of departure and return: in Homer’s Odyssey, the hero wanders as his wife waits faithfully in Ithaca. These gendered roles—man as traveler, woman as homebody—reflect age-old assumptions about travel. But... (read more)
D’Arcy McNickle and Louise Erdrich were both born into métis or mixed-blood families on the northern plains, and wrote novels about the life of indigenous and immigrant peoples in and around a fictionalized version of a reservation, the Flathead Reservation in Montana and the Turtle Mountain... (read more)
This course will examine feminist film criticism from multiple theoretical perspectives and diverse geo-political contexts. We will study how feminists have not only critiqued media and its representations of gender but also how the institution of cinema and media itself is gendered in terms of... (read more)
Instructor: Lowthorp, L.
(read more)This course is a survey of writings by African American authors from the 18th century through the Harlem Renaissance. 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... (read more)
The Black Fantastic
In 2020, against the backdrop of a pandemic, wildfires, anti-Black violence, a global wave of protests and social unrest, and political upheaval, Octavia Butler’s 1993 Afrofuturist novel, Parable of the Sower, reached the New York Times bestseller... (read more)
Explores the role of folklore in people's religious lives with particular emphasis on narrative, beliefs, rituals, celebrations, otherworldly encounters, pilgrimage, and ecstatic states.
(read more)This course is an introductory survey where we will identify and define the field of Chicanx and Latinx literatures and cultural studies through a critical engagement. In addition to considering how history, politics, and literary periods shape these robust fields, we will also examine the ways... (read more)
ENG 240 introduces students to central concepts and essential texts in disability studies and applies them to literary and cultural texts, with a focus on racial diversity and learning directly from writers and scholars who experience a wide spectrum of body/mind variabilities. The texts in this... (read more)
This course considers how women writers acknowledge, resist, and re-imagine their relationship to law. We will read literary works that directly engage law, as well as scholarship from legal studies to explore questions including: What is the relationship between law and literature? How do women... (read more)
La Malinche. Pocahontas. Sacagawea. These are likely the only Indigenous women with whom many are familiar. Though real historical figures, these Indigenous women are often depicted in popular literature along a rigid spectrum as race traitors or colonial sympathizers, virtuous princesses or... (read more)
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)
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This course studies works of film and media as representational objects that engage with communities identified ... (read more)
“This is who we are, Mama. Real women.” This declaration made by America Ferrera’s character Ana in the 2002 coming-of-age film Real Women Have Curves marks a powerful turning point for Ana as she stands up for all women who have been made to feel ashamed for their bodies, their choices, their... (read more)
This course studies works of film and media as representational objects that engage with communities identified by intersectional categories including sex, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nation, class, and ability. It considers historical and contemporary effects of prejudice, intolerance,... (read more)
This course studies works of film and media as representational objects that engage with communities identified by intersectional categories including sex, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nation, class, and ability. It considers historical and contemporary effects of prejudice, intolerance,... (read more)
ENG 240 introduces students to central concepts and essential texts in disability studies and applies them to literary and cultural texts, with a... (read more)
This course is a survey of writings by African American authors. We will study fiction, essays, and poetry in their historical, political, and... (read more)
In 1968, Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for American literature. Momaday's award signaled... (read more)
This course introduces students to critical thinking about the aesthetic, historical and economic factors influencing film, media, and cultural... (read more)
Latinxs have lived, worked, and thrived in what is now considered the United States for a long time. This course is an introductory survey of U.S. Latinx literature that will give students a glimpse of the wide range of formal, thematic, and cultural diversity of... (read more)
Latinx Comics and Graphic Narratives
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This course explores sexuality and self-expression by studying transgender comedy, including in poetry, novels, and digital performance. We will... (read more)
This course surveys African American literature from its origins to the present. We will read a wide... (read more)
Travel, or the journey, is often conceptualized in relation to home as the point of departure and return: in Homer’s Odyssey,... (read more)
This course introduces students to critical thinking about the aesthetic, historical and economic factors influencing film, media, and... (read more)
An introduction to contemporary folklore studies, with emphasis on the meanings of stories, rituals, festivals, body art, subcultures,... (read more)
This course introduces students to some of the major works, authors, and themes of Asian American literature, a diverse body of writing... (read more)
The prolific White Earth Ojibwe writer Gerald Vizenor conceptualizes the cultural work of Indigenous literatures as “survivance,”... (read more)
Hallucinations, Prophecies, and the Supernatural. Working from the 19th century to the present, this course will consider African... (read more)
One could say that most comics are about the human body, in all its variations, exaggerations, erotics, poses, powers, and... (read more)
This course is a survey of literature by African American authors from the 19th century into the present. We will read texts from a range of genres... (read more)
As an introductory survey, this course emphasizes the formal, thematic, and cultural diversity of Latinx literature. We will read novels, poetry, short stories... (read more)
In 1968, Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for American literature. The award signaled for many the “... (read more)