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 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)
This course introduces students to critical thinking about the aesthetic, historical and economic factors influencing film, media, and cultural production. The... (read more)
This course analyzes situation comedy as a form that women writers use in and beyond television. Reading sitcom scripts, stand-up transcripts, and situation-... (read more)
In recent years Jewish fiction and non-fiction writers have turned to the archive quest narrative to explore family secrets, confusing histories, and lost or... (read more)
One could say that most comics are about the human body, in all its variations, exaggerations, erotics, poses, powers, and vulnerabilities. ... (read more)
"This is who we are, Mama. Real women." This declaration made by America Ferrera's character, Ana, in the 2002 film Real Women Have... (read more)
This class will explore the intersections between race, literature, and film. We will study poetry, fiction, essays, and comics that... (read more)
This course is a survey of literature by African American authors from the 19th century into the present. We will read texts... (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, and comics, among other media, by authors from a range of identities—including Mexican American, Guatemalan American, Cuban American,... (read more)
This course surveys African American literature from its origins to the present. We will read a wide variety of authors and genres, including fiction, essays,... (read more)
This course introduces students to some of the major works, authors, and themes of Asian American literature, a diverse body of writing broadly defined as... (read more)
As an introductory survey, this course emphasizes the formal, thematic, and cultural diversity of Native American literatures. Recognizing that Native textual... (read more)
Time, Memory, and Identity
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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)
Aliens, monsters, killer robots, mutants.... Such metaphors may express cultural fears of the “other” that underlie social prejudice, intolerance, and... (read more)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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 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)
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)
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)
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 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)
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)
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)
Study of film and media as aesthetic objects that engage with communities identified by class, gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality.
(read more)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)
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.
(read more)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)
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)