MCWP Courses
- Course Schedule
- MCWP Summer
- MCWP 50
- MCWP 125
All students with more than 90 cumulative units will receive notification from the Muir Writing office before enrolling in MCWP courses.
MCWP 50 TOPICS SUBJECT TO CHANGE
Please purchase it from the bookstore, as we have a version that is specific for the Muir College Writing Program.
The acronym BIPOC, which stands for “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color,” is increasingly deployed by activists, journalists, and scholars in broader conversations about systemic racism, social justice, and structural inequality. While many use this term to highlight shared connections, some critics argue that it is a term with the ability to obscure, rather than elevate, the unique experiences of these groups within the United States, as well as their differences. In this course, we will read a variety of texts by scholars that focus on issues central to Indigenous peoples and communities in the 21st century. Our class will examine the arguments of these scholars, and others in our class discussions, to increase our knowledge of how such arguments are created. The course culminates with your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
138709 |
001 |
TTh 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2305A |
David Quijada |
138784 |
012 |
MW 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 2305A |
Kelly Silva |
138795 |
013 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2305A |
Kelly Silva |
138803 |
018 |
TTh 8:00-9:20 |
MANDE B-146 |
Pamela Redela |
138804 |
019 |
TTh 9:30-10:50 |
MANDE B-146 |
Pamela Redela |
138850 |
028 |
TTh 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2305A |
David Quijada |
In response to the high rates of mental health needs, this course will encourage students to engage in and critically examine new medical, psychological, sociology, technology, and education research to provide equitable, accessible, and culturally sensitive mental health treatment. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, our class will examine the arguments of scholars and others in our class discussions to increase our knowledge of how such arguments are created. The course culminates with your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
138713 |
002 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2346A |
Andrea Carter |
138718 |
003 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2346A |
Andrea Carter |
138775 |
010 |
TTh 11:00-12:20 |
MANDE B-146 |
Kathleen Bryan |
With movements such as #OscarsSoWhite, Popular Culture institutions like Hollywood are increasingly critiqued for their nefarious lack of diversity, inclusion, and equity. This course questions the historical legacies, and contemporary violences, of ideological and economic practices that have often marginalized and exploited people of color, LGBTQIA+ communities, and people with disabilities. Focusing on media that blend narratives with visuals--film, television, commercials, public speeches, concerts, and music videos--students in this course will interrogate how Popular Culture has been, or can be, leveraged in the building or dismantling of systemic oppressions. Our class will examine the arguments and performances of scholars and public figures in our investigation of how Popular Culture renews, revises, and resists institutional and individual investments in white, wealthy, patriarchal, heteronormative, able-bodied privileges. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, we will work to understand the arguments’ structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to this course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
138725 |
004 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 2305A |
Haydee Smith |
138727 |
005 |
MW 5:00-6:20 |
HSS 2305A |
Haydee Smith |
138730 |
006 |
TTh 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 2305A |
Jarret Krone |
138732 |
007 |
TTh 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 2305A |
Jarret Krone |
Through time and across cultures, humanity has invented monsters as a way of conceptualizing, understanding, and even “exorcising” that which it fears. The difference of the Other is certainly a fear all societies have had, and continue to have. Fear of the queer, fear of the immigrant, fear of the disabled, fear of the woman—each of these (and more) have been made monstrous in the arts and in public discourse since time immemorial. Through an engagement with texts engaging with Monster Theory, we can gain unique and urgent insight into how marginalized peoples are relegated to the margins in the first place.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
138769 |
008 |
TTh 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 2305B |
Jennifer Carter |
138770 |
009 |
TTh 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2305B |
Jennifer Carter |
How do stories increase empathy ultimately help spark change in an increasingly divided society? In response to increasing racial, gender, and ideological divides, this course encourages students to explore the role of empathy and narrative in making social change. Through a variety of media and diverse voices, we will investigate how stories, specifically the creation of empathy through narrative, catalyze social movements. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, our class will examine arguments of scholars, thinkers, storytellers and changemakers. Class discussions and individual research will help students craft a strong research-based argument about the role of empathy and narrative in a relevant social issue.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
138783 |
011 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2305A |
Michele Bigley |
In this course, we will read, discuss, and write about the academic research surrounding the communication from scientists and technologists to specific audiences, such as lawmakers, technology users, consumers, and patients. The course culminates with your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
138796 |
014 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2305B |
Michael Morshed |
138800 |
015 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2305B |
Michael Morshed |
The human propensity to both collect and display things has been present in visual culture throughout history, including cabinets of curiosity, museum exhibitions, hobby collectors, and the movement to divest institutional interests. Conceptions of collections and display effect on the way we view things, what fine “art” is, and audience participation. This topic explores issues from the late nineteenth-century museum complex, object ownership, contemporary critique, and curatorial discourses within a global context.
How did we start accumulating all this stuff? What does it reveal about the collector and the viewer? Who are some of the groups denied access to these cultural activities?
Research projects will address how students can explore a topic around some of these debates and arguments. Possible research topics include emerging Indigenous inclusion and representation in institutions, the complex and interwoven histories of Black museum communities, or inquiries into outsider objects from folk communities.
Students will then propose a joint writing and research proposal to argue for their project viability, amass an annotated bibliography of sources, and create an academic research-based argument.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
138801 |
016 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2305A |
Vincent Pham |
138802 |
017 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2305B |
Vincent Pham |
Journalism in the United States today struggles through a variety of crises — economic, epistemic, and technological. Digital networks have upended traditional models of funding, distributing, and practicing journalism. In addition, cultural shifts have wrested journalism’s previous centrality to national discourse, even challenging the institution in what’s often called an era of “post-truth.”
In this theme, students will quickly survey a history of American media ¬— from the initially partisan function of colonial newspapers, through the professionalization of the practice of news gathering, to the commodification of news content. Students then will develop their own arguments about the role and future of contemporary journalism within this particular democracy.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
138843 |
026 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2305A |
Thomas Conner |
Feeding America’s recent report, Map the Meal Gap 2022, finds that “children’s food insecurity rates are higher than 40%” in some states’ counties. Moreover, Black and Latino individuals’ food insecurity rates are higher than those of white individuals in “almost 99%” of US counties. The racial inequities and escalating food prices that contribute to food insecurity are challenging our society to acknowledge and reverse food insecurity. Medical, scientific, and economic researchers have investigated different aspects of these inequities and base their arguments and recommendations on their research. Our class will examine the arguments of these researchers and others in our class discussions to increase our knowledge of how authors develop their arguments. The course culminates with your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
104232 |
001 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2346A |
Carrie Wastal |
In this course, we will read, discuss, and write about the academic research surrounding the communication from scientists and technologists to specific audiences, such as lawmakers, technology users, consumers, and patients. The course culminates with your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
104236 |
005 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2305B |
Michael Morshed |
104238 |
007 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
McGill 2315 |
Michael Morshed |
104239 |
008 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
McGill 2315 |
Michael Morshed |
In response to the high rates of mental health needs, this course will encourage students to engage in and critically examine new medical, psychological, sociology, technology, and education research to provide equitable, accessible, and culturally sensitive mental health treatment. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, our class will examine the arguments of scholars and others in our class discussions to increase our knowledge of how such arguments are created. The course culminates with your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
104237 |
006 |
TTh 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2305B |
Kathleen Bryan |
104240 |
009 |
TTh 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 1106A |
Andrea Carter |
104241 |
010 |
TTh 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 1106A |
Andrea Carter |
104242 |
011 |
TTh 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 2305B |
Andrea Carter |
The acronym BIPOC, which stands for “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color,” is increasingly deployed by activists, journalists, and scholars in broader conversations about systemic racism, social justice, and structural inequality. While many use this term to highlight shared connections, some critics argue that it is a term with the ability to obscure, rather than elevate, the unique experiences of these groups within the United States, as well as their differences. In this course, we will read a variety of texts by scholars that focus on issues central to Indigenous peoples and communities in the 21st century. Our class will examine the arguments of these scholars, and others in our class discussions, to increase our knowledge of how such arguments are created. The course culminates with your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
104243 |
012 |
TTh 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 1106A |
Michele Bigley |
104250 |
019 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
Mandeville B-146 |
Kelly Silva |
104251 |
020 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
Mandeville B-146 |
Kelly Silva |
104252 |
021 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
Mandeville B-146 |
Kelly Silva |
The human propensity to both collect and display things has been present in visual culture throughout history, including cabinets of curiosity, museum exhibitions, hobby collectors, and the movement to divest institutional interests. Conceptions of collections and display effect on the way we view things, what fine “art” is, and audience participation. This topic explores issues from the late nineteenth-century museum complex, object ownership, contemporary critique, and curatorial discourses within a global context.
How did we start accumulating all this stuff? What does it reveal about the collector and the viewer? Who are some of the groups denied access to these cultural activities?
Research projects will address how students can explore a topic around some of these debates and arguments. Possible research topics include emerging Indigenous inclusion and representation in institutions, the complex and interwoven histories of Black museum communities, or inquiries into outsider objects from folk communities.
Students will then propose a joint writing and research proposal to argue for their project viability, amass an annotated bibliography of sources, and create an academic research-based argument.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
104244 |
013 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2152 |
Vincent Pham |
104245 |
014 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
McGill 2315 |
Vincent Pham |
104246 |
015 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
McGill 2315 |
Vincent Pham |
Through time and across cultures, humanity has invented monsters as a way of conceptualizing, understanding, and even “exorcising” that which it fears. The difference of the Other is certainly a fear all societies have had, and continue to have. Fear of the queer, fear of the immigrant, fear of the disabled, fear of the woman—each of these (and more) have been made monstrous in the arts and in public discourse since time immemorial. Through an engagement with texts engaging with Monster Theory, we can gain unique and urgent insight into how marginalized peoples are relegated to the margins in the first place.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
104247 |
016 |
TTh 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 2305A |
Jennifer Carter |
104248 |
017 |
TTh 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 1106B |
Jennifer Carter |
104249 |
018 |
MW 5:00-6:20 |
HSS 2305B |
Jennifer Carter |
With movements such as #OscarsSoWhite, Popular Culture institutions like Hollywood are increasingly critiqued for their nefarious lack of diversity, inclusion, and equity. This course questions the historical legacies, and contemporary violences, of ideological and economic practices that have often marginalized and exploited people of color, LGBTQIA+ communities, and people with disabilities. Focusing on media that blend narratives with visuals--film, television, commercials, public speeches, concerts, and music videos--students in this course will interrogate how Popular Culture has been, or can be, leveraged in the building or dismantling of systemic oppressions. Our class will examine the arguments and performances of scholars and public figures in our investigation of how Popular Culture renews, revises, and resists institutional and individual investments in white, wealthy, patriarchal, heteronormative, able-bodied privileges. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, we will work to understand the arguments’ structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to this course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
104253 |
022 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2315 |
Haydee Smith |
104254 |
023 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2315 |
Haydee Smith |
104255 |
024 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2315 |
Haydee Smith |
117939 |
025 |
TTh 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2305A |
Jarret Krone |
117940 |
026 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2305A |
Jarret Krone |
117944 |
027 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 2305B |
Jarret Krone |
The political sphere includes and regulates many things that have a direct effect on our livelihoods and communities: minimum wage, access to healthcare, immigration, infrastructure, the regulation of our bodies, whom we can marry, and so much more. This topic explores art in politics and politics in art, ranging from antiwar arts activism in the 1960s, the social politics of representing BIPOC histories and individuals, boycott and divestment, and various case studies of both artists and notorious controversies that highlight the tensions between artists/makers, artworks, audiences, local communities, and the museum as mediating institution. Assigned readings draw on art history and museum studies, but the subject matter of the course will also touch on various social histories. How do the arts intersect with and/or represent political issues, movements, themes, and identities? What roles does politics play in the arts, and vice versa? What are some of the past and recent controversies in the arts, and what kinds of art have been considered transgressive? Possible research topics include (but are not limited to) the connections between the arts and politics pertaining to climate change, social justice movements, activism, globalization, labor practices, funding structures, war, museums and/or stakeholders, and more. Students will identify a scholarly debate, or research conversation (in relation to the course topic), propose a project that will participate in that conversation, engage with and analyze sources from the research process in the form of an annotated bibliography, and construct an academic research-based argument.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
094067 |
F00 |
TTH 11:00-1:50 |
REMOTE |
Elizabeth Miller |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will look at the way disability intersects with issues of race, gender, sexuality, and the environment to better understand the ways disability is constructed (and reconstructed) through social practices and spaces. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
085464 |
B00 |
MW 11:00-1:50 |
REMOTE |
Jennifer Marchisotto |
Through time and across cultures, humanity has invented monsters as a way of conceptualizing, understanding, and even “exorcising” that which it fears. The difference of the Other is certainly a fear all societies have had, and continue to have. Fear of the queer, fear of the immigrant, fear of the disabled, fear of the woman—each of these (and more) have been made monstrous in the arts and in public discourse since time immemorial. Through an engagement with texts engaging with Monster Theory, we can gain unique and urgent insight into how marginalized peoples are relegated to the margins in the first place.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
085463 |
A00 |
TTH 8:00-10:50 |
REMOTE |
Jennifer Carter |
085467 |
E00 |
TTH 11:00-1:50 |
REMOTE |
Erik Homenick |
Mental health conditions have increased along with the pandemic but very little about this crisis has made its way into everyday conversation. The CDC has reported that among those experiencing more mental health problems are racial and ethnic minorities and young people. It is important to acknowledge the mental health impacts brought about by the stress, grief, and loss of the pandemic. There is also the work of finding help to deal with mental health conditions and their impacts. The pandemic has brought to light the deep need for connection and community while recent discoveries in neuroscience have brought new therapeutic possibilities. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, in this course students will propose, research and write their own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to this important course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
TBD |
TBD |
TBD |
REMOTE |
Andrea Carter |
There are universal elements that stories share no matter the culture they come from. Experts see this as evidence of how embedded stories are in the human experience. Stories have the power to persuade us, reinforce social norms, entertain us, pass knowledge, even influence our biology. In the course, students will research and write about the practice of storytelling while using the LMS Canvas (available to enrolled students) and its tools, including Zoom, Video, Peer Review, Chat, Assignments, Quizzes or Worksheets, and Turnitin.com.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
085465 |
C00 |
MW 2:00-4:50 |
REMOTE |
Vince Pham |
085466 |
D00 |
MW 5:00-7:50 |
REMOTE |
Mike Morshed |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
074899 |
035 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 1138 |
Laurie Nies |
074906 |
042 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 1106A |
Trung Le |
074907 |
043 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 1106A |
Trung Le |
Through time and across cultures, humanity has invented monsters as a way of conceptualizing, understanding, and even “exorcising” that which it fears. The difference of the Other is certainly a fear all societies have had, and continue to have. Fear of the queer, fear of the immigrant, fear of the disabled, fear of the woman—each of these (and more) have been made monstrous in the arts and in public discourse since time immemorial. Through an engagement with texts engaging with Monster Theory, we can gain unique and urgent insight into how marginalized peoples are relegated to the margins in the first place.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
074865 |
001 |
MW 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 2333A |
Jennifer Carter |
074866 |
002 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Erik Homenick |
074867 |
003 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2333A |
Erik Homenick |
074879 |
015 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2333A |
Jennifer Carter |
074885 |
021 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 2333A |
Jennifer Carter |
074886 |
022 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2333A |
Jennifer Carter |
074888 |
024 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Grant Leuning |
074900 |
036 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2333B |
Grant Leuning |
With movements such as #OscarsSoWhite, Popular Culture institutions like Hollywood are increasingly critiqued for their nefarious lack of diversity, inclusion, and equity. This course questions the historical legacies, and contemporary violences, of ideological and economic practices that have often marginalized and exploited people of color, LGBTQIA+ communities, and people with disabilities. Focusing on media that blend narratives with visuals--film, television, commercials, public speeches, concerts, and music videos--students in this course will interrogate how Popular Culture has been, or can be, leveraged in the building or dismantling of systemic oppressions. Our class will examine the arguments and performances of scholars and public figures in our investigation of how Popular Culture renews, revises, and resists institutional and individual investments in white, wealthy, patriarchal, heteronormative, able-bodied privileges. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, we will work to understand the arguments’ structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to this course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
074868 |
004 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 1128B |
Jenni Marchisotto |
074869 |
005 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 1128B |
Vince Pham |
074870 |
006 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 1128B |
Vince Pham |
074878 |
014 |
MW 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 1128B |
Jenni Marchisotto |
Mental health conditions have increased along with the pandemic but very little about this crisis has made its way into everyday conversation. The CDC has reported that among those experiencing more mental health problems are racial and ethnic minorities and young people. It is important to acknowledge the mental health impacts brought about by the stress, grief, and loss of the pandemic. There is also the work of finding help to deal with mental health conditions and their impacts. The pandemic has brought to light the deep need for connection and community while recent discoveries in neuroscience have brought new therapeutic possibilities. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, in this course students will propose, research and write their own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to this important course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
074871 |
007 |
MW 5:00-6:20 |
HSS 2333B |
Andrea Carter |
074880 |
016 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2333B |
Andrea Carter |
074881 |
017 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Andrea Carter |
074883 |
019 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Andrea Carter |
074892 |
028 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 1128B |
Kathy Bryan |
074893 |
029 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 1128B |
Kathy Bryan |
There are universal elements that stories share no matter the culture they come from. Experts see this as evidence of how embedded stories are in the human experience. Stories have the power to persuade us, reinforce social norms, entertain us, pass knowledge, even influence our biology. In the course, students will research a story or aspect of storytelling and write an original argument on how the story or aspect makes humans take action or change their perspective on an issue.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
074889 |
025 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 2333A |
Mike Morshed |
074890 |
026 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 2333A |
Mike Morshed |
074894 |
030 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2333A |
Mike Morshed |
074895 |
031 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 2333A |
Mike Morshed |
As increasing aridity and growing water scarcity continue to redefine the American West, debates and conversations over water rights and access have grown in significance. As pressing as these matters may be, they are recurring themes in the region's history and development. In this course we will explore the economic, cultural, social, and increasingly racialized contours of the debates over water in the American West, as well as the responses of states, municipalities, and local communities to these challenges with innovative and creative solutions. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, our class will examine the arguments of these scholars and others in our class discussions to increase our knowledge of how such arguments are created. The course culminates with your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
074874 |
010 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2333A |
Kelly Silva |
074875 |
011 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 1128B |
Kelly Silva |
074905 |
041 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Kelly Silva |
The interdisciplinary field of bioethics grapples with conflicts that arise in medical practice, such as patients’ refusal of life-saving treatment or how to allocate scarce resources such as organs. It also considers dilemmas that emerge in response to new biotechnologies, such as stem-cell research, human genetic engineering, and prenatal diagnostics. In this course, we will explore some of the ethical and legal questions that arise in healthcare, medical research, and the use of biotechnology and bioengineering. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
069253 |
001 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
CENTR 208 |
Sophie Staschus |
069262 |
010 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
CENTR 208 |
Sophie Staschus |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
069254 |
002 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 2305A |
Laurie Nies |
069255 |
003 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2305A |
Laurie Nies |
069258 |
006 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2333B |
Trung Le |
069259 |
007 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Trung Le |
The acronym BIPOC, which stands for “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color,” is increasingly deployed by activists, journalists, and scholars in broader conversations about systemic racism, social justice, and structural inequality. While many use this term to highlight shared connections between the experiences of Black and Indigenous peoples, some critics argue that it is a term with the ability to obscure, rather than elevate, the unique experiences of these groups within the United States, as well as their differences. In this course, we will explore issues central to Indigenous peoples and communities in the 21st century. We will explore debates about land, culture, health care, resource management, economic development, tribal sovereignty, and the ongoing legacies of America’s colonial past. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments by scholars and others in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing an original, research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
069236 |
025 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 1138 |
Kelly Silva |
069237 |
026 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 1138 |
Kelly Silva |
069238 |
027 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 1138 |
Kelly Silva |
Racial inequities in healthcare and the environmental dangers caused by climate change are challenging our society to acknowledge and repair the systemic inequities in our healthcare, communities, and the health dangers caused by the changing environment. Medical, scientific, and environmental researchers have investigated different aspects of these inequities and based their arguments and recommendations on their research. In this era of uncertainty of who or what to believe, our class will examine the arguments of these scholars and others in our class discussions to increase our knowledge of how such arguments are created. The course culminates with your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
069241 |
030 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2346A |
Carrie Wastal |
Through time and across cultures, humanity has invented monsters as a way of conceptualizing, understanding, and even “exorcising” that which it fears. The difference of the Other is certainly a fear all societies have had, and continue to have. Fear of the queer, fear of the immigrant, fear of the disabled, fear of the woman—each of these (and more) have been made monstrous in the arts and in public discourse since time immemorial. Through an engagement with texts engaging with Monster Theory, we can gain unique and urgent insight into how marginalized peoples are relegated to the margins in the first place.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
069256 |
004 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 2333B |
Jennifer Carter |
069257 |
005 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Jennifer Carter |
069263 |
011 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 2346A |
Erik Homenick |
069264 |
012 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2305A |
Erik Homenick |
069230 |
019 |
MW 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 2333A |
Jennifer Carter |
069231 |
020 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2333A |
Jennifer Carter |
With movements such as #OscarsSoWhite, Popular Culture institutions like Hollywood are increasingly critiqued for their nefarious lack of diversity, inclusion, and equity. This course questions the historical legacies, and contemporary violences, of ideological and economic practices that have often marginalized and exploited people of color, LGBTQIA+ communities, and people with disabilities. Focusing on media that blend narratives with visuals--film, television, commercials, public speeches, concerts, and music videos--students in this course will interrogate how Popular Culture has been, or can be, leveraged in the building or dismantling of systemic oppressions. Our class will examine the arguments and performances of scholars and public figures in our investigation of how Popular Culture renews, revises, and resists institutional and individual investments in white, wealthy, patriarchal, heteronormative, able-bodied privileges. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, we will work to understand the arguments’ structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to this course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
069269 |
017 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 1128B |
Jenni Marchisotto |
069232 |
021 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2333A |
Vince Pham |
069233 |
022 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
HSS2333A |
Vince Pham |
069242 |
031 |
MW 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 2346A |
Jenni Marchisotto |
There are universal elements that stories share no matter the culture they come from. Experts see this as evidence of how embedded stories are in the human experience. Stories have the power to persuade us, reinforce social norms, entertain us, pass knowledge, even influence our biology. In the course, students will research a story or aspect of storytelling and write an original argument on how the story or aspect makes humans take action or change their perspective on an issue.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
069260 |
008 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 2333B |
Mike Morshed |
069261 |
009 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Mike Morshed |
069266 |
014 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2333A |
Mike Morshed |
069268 |
016 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 1128B |
Mike Morshed |
Everyone says we need to stop crime, but crime seems to happen whether we want it to or not. Some even make a living from it. How we treat those who have broken rules has changed over time as our morals and definitions of crimes have evolved.
In this course, we will consider how modern society identifies and reacts to criminals and how punishment is determined by examining a variety of scholarly arguments that cross crime with subjects such as the US Justice System, terrorism, revenge, class, gender, and pop culture.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
051206 |
003 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 1128B |
Mike Morshed |
051207 |
004 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 1128B |
Mike Morshed |
051213 |
010 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 1138 |
Mike Morshed |
051214 |
011 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 1138 |
Mike Morshed |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
051211 |
008 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 1138 |
Trung Le |
051212 |
009 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 1138 |
Trung Le |
051204 |
001 |
MW 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 2305A |
Laurie Nies |
Racial inequities in healthcare and the environmental dangers caused by climate change are challenging our society to acknowledge and repair the systemic inequities in our healthcare, communities, and the health dangers caused by the changing environment. Medical, scientific, and environmental researchers have investigated different aspects of these inequities and based their arguments and recommendations on their research. In this era of uncertainty of who or what to believe, our class will examine the arguments of these scholars and others in our class discussions to increase our knowledge of how such arguments are created. The course culminates with your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
051215 | 012 | TTH 9:30-10:50 | HSS 2346A | Carrie Wastal |
With movements such as #OscarsSoWhite, Popular Culture institutions like Hollywood are increasingly critiqued for their nefarious lack of diversity, inclusion, and equity. This course questions the historical legacies, and contemporary violences, of ideological and economic practices that have often marginalized and exploited people of color, LGBTQIA+ communities, and people with disabilities. Focusing on media that blend narratives with visuals--film, television, commercials, public speeches, concerts, and music videos--students in this course will interrogate how Popular Culture has been, or can be, leveraged in the building or dismantling of systemic oppressions. Our class will examine the arguments and performances of scholars and public figures in our investigation of how Popular Culture renews, revises, and resists institutional and individual investments in white, wealthy, patriarchal, heteronormative, able-bodied privileges. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, we will work to understand the arguments’ structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to this course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
051218 |
015 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
REMOTE |
Haydee Smith |
051219 |
016 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
REMOTE |
Haydee Smith |
Photography is often conceived as simply a mode for (re)presenting the “real.” However, in this course, we will approach the phenomenon of photography as a means to question the act of documentation itself. This topic explores the discourses surrounding photography in contexts ranging from ethnography to social documentation, policing, medical imaging, portraiture, and the visual arts. We will ask such questions as: in what ways does photography intersect culture? How might photography reinforce or undermine social and historical dynamics? In this course, students will be given the opportunity to research and analyze the histories that lay dormant beneath the surface of images. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, students will examine a variety of arguments related to the course topic in an effort to understand their contents and structure. Students will be asked to introduce and support their own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course themes.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
051208 | 005 | MW 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 1128B |
Vincent Pham |
051209 | 006 | MW 5:00-6:20 |
HSS 1128B |
Vincent Pham |
What issues arise when the United States’ government gives citizens 90 days to marry their foreign fiancé and what does this tell us about immigration law, gendered expectations, and cultural stereotypes? Since 2014, TLC’s 90 Day Fiancé has enthralled viewers with their take on the challenges faced by international couples. Taking into account the politicized, familial, cultural, and financial barriers faced by these couples, this course examines issues such as: the private and public role and romanticization of marriage; uses of technology in markets of desirability; implicit biases in the US immigration system; reality television and documentary storytelling; and racialized and gendered stereotypes. While the 90 Day Fiancé offers a useful framework, students may create their own research projects along any of the aforementioned categories. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, we will work to understand academic arguments’ structures while introducing and supporting your own research-based argument about an issue relevant to this course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
045652 |
015 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
RCLAS R240 |
Nur Duru |
045653 |
016 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
RCLAS R190 |
Nur Duru |
045658 |
021 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
RCLAS R260 |
Nur Duru |
045659 |
022 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
RCLAS R217 |
Nur Duru |
045676 |
038 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
RCLAS R224 |
Haydee Smith |
045675 |
039 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
RCLAS R198 |
Haydee Smith |
The interdisciplinary field of bioethics grapples with conflicts that arise in medical practice, such as patients’ refusal of life-saving treatment or how to allocate scarce resources such as organs. It also considers dilemmas that emerge in response to new biotechnologies, such as stem-cell research, human genetic engineering, and prenatal diagnostics. In this course, we will explore some of the ethical and legal questions that arise in healthcare, medical research, and the use of biotechnology and bioengineering. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
045646 |
009 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
PETER 104 |
Kathy Bryan |
045647 |
010 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
PETER 104 |
Kathy Bryan |
045656 |
019 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
RCLAS R262 |
Sophie Staschus |
045657 |
020 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
RCLAS R189 |
Sophie Staschus |
045679 |
042 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
RCLAS R239 |
Andrea Carter |
045681 |
044 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
RCLAS R199 |
Andrea Carter |
045682 |
045 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
RCLAS R162 |
Andrea Carter |
Everyone says we need to stop crime, but crime seems to happen whether we want it to or not. Some even make a living from it. How we treat those who have broken rules has changed over time as our morals and definitions of crimes have evolved.
In this course, we will consider how modern society identifies and reacts to criminals and how punishment is determined by examining a variety of scholarly arguments that cross crime with subjects such as the US Justice System, terrorism, revenge, class, gender, and pop culture.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
045639 |
003 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
TM 102 -1 |
Mike Morshed |
045642 |
005 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
WLH 2115 |
Mike Morshed |
045643 |
006 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
WLH 2115 |
Mike Morshed |
045684 |
047 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
RCLAS R233 |
Melinda Guillen |
045685 |
048 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
RCLAS R234 |
Melinda Guillen |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
045650 |
013 |
MW 8:00-9:30 |
RCLAS R161 |
Trung Le |
045651 |
014 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
RCLAS R223 |
Trung Le |
045665 |
028 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
RCLAS R218 |
Ayden LeRoux |
045666 |
029 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
RCLAS R119 |
Ayden LeRoux |
045671 |
034 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
RCLAS R67 |
Laurie Nies |
045672 |
035 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
RCLAS R235 |
Laurie Nies |
|
|
TTH 11:00 - 12:20 |
|
Ayden LeRoux |
The acronym BIPOC, which stands for “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color,” is increasingly deployed by activists, journalists, and scholars in broader conversations about systemic racism, social justice, and structural inequality. While many use this term to highlight shared connections between the experiences of Black and Indigenous peoples, some critics argue that it is a term with the ability to obscure, rather than elevate, the unique experiences of these groups within the United States, as well as their differences. In this course, we will explore issues central to Indigenous peoples and communities in the 21st century. We will explore debates about land, culture, health care, resource management, economic development, tribal sovereignty, and the ongoing legacies of America’s colonial past. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments by scholars and others in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing an original, research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
045637 |
001 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
RCLAS R70 |
Kelly Silva |
045638 |
002 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
RCLAS R234 |
Kelly Silva |
045664 |
027 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
RCLAS R262 |
Kelly Silva |
With movements such as #OscarsSoWhite, Popular Culture institutions like Hollywood are increasingly critiqued for their nefarious lack of diversity, inclusion, and equity. This course questions the historical legacies, and contemporary violences, of ideological and economic practices that have often marginalized and exploited people of color, LGBTQIA+ communities, and people with disabilities. Focusing on media that blend narratives with visuals--film, television, commercials, public speeches, concerts, and music videos--students in this course will interrogate how Popular Culture has been, or can be, leveraged in the building or dismantling of systemic oppressions. Our class will examine the arguments and performances of scholars and public figures in our investigation of how Popular Culture renews, revises, and resists institutional and individual investments in white, wealthy, patriarchal, heteronormative, able-bodied privileges. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, we will work to understand the arguments’ structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to this course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
045667 |
030 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
RCLAS R167 |
Jennifer Carter |
045668 |
031 |
MW 5:00-6:20 |
RCLAS R142 |
Jennifer Carter |
045669 |
032 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
RCLAS R259 |
Erik Homenick |
045670 |
033 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
RCLAS R214 |
Erik Homenick |
045688 |
051 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
RCLAS R201 |
Jennifer Carter |
According to the CDC, Black individuals are approximately five times more likely to be hospitalized by—and twice as likely to die—from COVID-19 than their white counterparts. While these statistics are the most pressing to our current moment, similar ratios exist throughout the healthcare system, showing Black Americans to be dying from treatable illnesses at disproportionate rates. Access to healthcare in America is an economic privilege. As a result, BIPOC are far less likely to receive quality care. Moreover, healthcare professionals consistently dismiss or discredit complaints by marginalized communities, a habit intricately tied to the anti-Black, misogynist, and xenophobic roots of the American Medical Industrial Complex (MIC). In this course, we will examine how race, gender, and sexuality affect access to care in the MIC. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider both the historical foundation for and contemporary perpetuation of these disparities. Students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—with the objective of making and defending an original focused argument about Anti-Blackness in the MIC in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
045644 |
007 |
MW 8:00-9:20 |
RCLAS R160 |
Michael Berman |
045645 |
008 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
RCLAS R225 |
Michael Berman |
045660 |
023 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
RCLAS R223 |
Jenni Marchisotto |
045661 |
024 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
RCLAS R196 |
Jenni Marchisotto |
Photography is often conceived as simply a mode for (re)presenting the “real.” However, in this course, we will approach the phenomenon of photography as a means to question the act of documentation itself. This topic explores the discourses surrounding photography in contexts ranging from ethnography to social documentation, policing, medical imaging, portraiture, and the visual arts. We will ask such questions as: in what ways does photography intersect culture? How might photography reinforce or undermine social and historical dynamics? In this course, students will be given the opportunity to research and analyze the histories that lay dormant beneath the surface of images. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, students will examine a variety of arguments related to the course topic in an effort to understand their contents and structure. Students will be asked to introduce and support their own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course themes.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
045654 |
017 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
RCLAS R201 |
Michael Witte |
045655 |
018 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
RCLAS R165 |
Michael Witte |
045686 |
049 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
RCLAS R216 |
Vincent Pham |
045687 |
050 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
RCLAS R221 |
Vincent Pham |
Movies, music, TV, books, visual art — how do you decide which of it is any good? Importantly, where do those debates actually occur, how do various media shape these discourses, and why should it matter? Students in this course will read texts from media studies and the humanities about the social maintenance of standards for art and culture, particularly the sanctioned role of the arts critic and ways that online media have helped decentralize that gatekeeping role with varying impacts on culture’s creators, consumers, and capitalists. According to the mission of MCWP 50, these arguments will be examined in order to understand their structure and synthesize their claims before students craft their own informed, research-based argument about the roles of arts criticism in society.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
45673 |
036 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
RCLAS R222 |
Thomas Conner |
45674 |
037 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
RCLAS R126 |
Thomas Conner |
How do sensationalized tales, and false dichotomies, of heroes and villains shape our understandings of majority and minority communities? Taking interlocking systemic oppressions— racism, sexism, heteronormativity, classism, xenophobia, ableism—into account, students in this class will unpack the overlapping layers of popular culture, ideology, representation, oppression, and privilege. In this course students will analyze arguments about how stories function to replicate, resist, and rewrite the dominant narratives that shape our educational, legal, medical, and social institutions while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
034597 |
016 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
RCLAS |
Nur Duru |
034598 |
017 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
RCLAS |
Nur Duru |
034536 |
020 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
RCLAS R140 |
Nur Duru |
034537 |
021 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
RCLAS R234 |
Nur Duru |
Everyone says we need to stop crime, but crime seems to happen whether we want it to or not. Some even make a living from it. How we treat those who have broken rules has changed over time as our morals and definitions of crimes have evolved.
In this course, we will consider how modern society identifies and reacts to criminals and how punishment is determined by examining a variety of scholarly arguments that cross crime with subjects such as the US Justice System, terrorism, revenge, class, gender, and pop culture.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
034585 |
005 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
RCLAS |
Melinda Guillen |
034589 |
008 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
RCLAS |
Melinda Guillen |
034590 |
009 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
RCLAS |
Melinda Guillen |
034591 |
010 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
CENTR 214 |
Mike Morshed |
034593 |
012 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
PETER 102 |
Mike Morshed |
034594 |
013 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
PETER 102 |
Mike Morshed |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
034581 |
001 |
MW 8:00-9:30 |
RCLAS |
Trung Le |
034582 |
002 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
RCLAS |
Trung Le |
034542 |
026 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
RCLAS R44 |
Laurie Nies |
034543 |
027 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
RCLAS R231 |
Laurie Nies |
034544 |
028 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
RCLAS R224 |
Ayden LeRoux |
034545 |
029 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
RCLAS R202 |
Ayden LeRoux |
The acronym BIPOC, which stands for “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color,” is increasingly deployed by activists, journalists, and scholars in broader conversations about systemic racism, social justice, and structural inequality. While many use this term to highlight shared connections between the experiences of Black and Indigenous peoples, some critics argue that it is a term with the ability to obscure, rather than elevate, the unique experiences of these groups within the United States, as well as their differences. In this course, we will explore issues central to Indigenous peoples and communities in the 21st century. We will explore debates about land, culture, health care, resource management, economic development, tribal sovereignty, and the ongoing legacies of America’s colonial past. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments by scholars and others in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing an original, research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
034592 |
011 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
RCLAS |
Kelly Silva |
034595 |
014 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
RCLAS |
Kelly Silva |
034596 |
015 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
RCLAS |
Kelly Silva |
Every day, many of us are steeped in digital media engagements — communicating via social media, consuming digital video, and now even conducting our education via teleconferencing platforms. But when we look at the screens, what do we actually see? How is it that we “forget” the laptop in front of us in order to engage with the absent people at the other end of the media system? Students in this course will read texts from cultural studies and media studies that consider these issues from a possibly surprising perspective: discussing everyday media encounters as metaphors of spiritual events, and positing that media allow interaction with both the living and the dead. According to the mission of MCWP 50, these arguments will be examined in order to understand their structure and synthesize their claims before students craft their own informed, research-based argument about a related topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
044934 |
033 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
RCLAS |
Thomas Conner |
044945 |
034 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
RCLAS |
Thomas Conner |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
034599 |
018 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
RCLAS |
Haydee Smith |
034600 |
019 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
RCLAS |
Haydee Smith |
According to the CDC, Black individuals are approximately five times more likely to be hospitalized by—and twice as likely to die—from COVID-19 than their white counterparts. While these statistics are the most pressing to our current moment, similar ratios exist throughout the healthcare system, showing Black Americans to be dying from treatable illnesses at disproportionate rates. Access to healthcare in America is an economic privilege. As a result, BIPOC are far less likely to receive quality care. Moreover, healthcare professionals consistently dismiss or discredit complaints by marginalized communities, a habit intricately tied to the anti-Black, misogynist, and xenophobic roots of the American Medical Industrial Complex (MIC). In this course, we will examine how race, gender, and sexuality affect access to care in the MIC. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider both the historical foundation for and contemporary perpetuation of these disparities. Students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—with the objective of making and defending an original focused argument about Anti-Blackness in the MIC in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
034546 |
030 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
RCLAS R151 |
Jenni Marchisotto |
034547 |
031 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
RCLAS R90 |
Jenni Marchisotto |
034583 |
003 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
RCLAS |
Matthew Howland |
034584 |
004 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
RCLAS |
Matthew Howland |
Photography is often conceived as simply a mode for (re)presenting the “real.” However, in this course, we will approach the phenomenon of photography as a means to question the act of documentation itself. This topic explores the discourses surrounding photography in contexts ranging from ethnography to social documentation, policing, medical imaging, portraiture, and the visual arts. We will ask such questions as: in what ways does photography intersect culture? How might photography reinforce or undermine social and historical dynamics? In this course, students will be given the opportunity to research and analyze the histories that lay dormant beneath the surface of images. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, students will examine a variety of arguments related to the course topic in an effort to understand their contents and structure. Students will be asked to introduce and support their own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course themes.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
034540 |
024 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
RCLAS R187 |
Michael Witte |
034541 |
025 |
MW 5:00-6:20 |
RCLAS R133 |
Michael Witte |
034538 |
022 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
RCLAS R175 |
Vincent Pham |
034539 |
023 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
RCLAS R203 |
Vincent Pham |
Part of the myth of the wild west is one of intrepid white settlers, cowboys, and lawmen setting out to forge new lives of freedom and opportunity in the wilderness. However, the myth is only partially true given the experiences and contributions of black people in settling the wild west. Many historical documents (including John Muir’s essays) reflect the attitudes of the day by focusing on white men and ignoring the black men and women who also shaped life in open spaces of the west. What can we learn from this history that we can apply to today’s continual, yet mutable, exclusion of black participants in the wilderness?
In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, we will work to understand the arguments’ structures. The course culminates with your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
037057 |
032 |
TTH 9:30 -10:50 |
RCLAS |
Carrie Wastal |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
014974 |
001 |
MW 8:00-9:20 | RCLAS |
Laurie Nies |
014975 |
002 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
RCLAS |
Laurie Nies |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are experience some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment. Yet despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped—and thus further marginalized—in popular culture as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is portrayed as a difficult existence. We will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
014977 | 004 | MW 2:00-3:20 | RCLAS | Vince Pham |
014979 | 006 | MW 5:00-6:20 | RCLAS | Vince Pham |
025054 | 015 | MW 3:30-4:50 | RCLAS | Michael Witte |
034108 | 017 | MW 5:00-6:20 | RCLAS | Michael Witte |
Photography is often conceived as simply a mode for representing the “real.” However, in this course, we will approach the phenomenon of photography as a means to question the act of documentation itself. This topic explores the discourses surrounding photography in contexts ranging from ethnography to social documentation, policing, medical imaging, portraiture, and the visual arts. We will ask such questions as: in what ways does photography intersect culture? How might photography reinforce or undermine social and historical dynamics? In this course, students will be given the opportunity to research and analyze the histories that lay dormant beneath the surface of images. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, students will examine a variety of arguments related to the course topic in an effort to understand their contents and structure. Students will be asked to introduce and support their own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course themes.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
014981 | 008 | TTH 11:00-12:20 | RCLAS | Sophie Staschus |
014982 | 009 | TTH 12:30-1:50 | RCLAS | Sophie Staschus |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
014983 | 010 | TTH 2:00-3:20 | RCLAS | Thomas Conner |
014984 | 011 | TTH 3:30-4:50 | RCLAS | Thomas Conner |
In the modern media age, death is not so final— from dead singers on radio and dead actors on TV, to Facebook feeds that transition into memorial sites and “hologram” concerts featuring pop stars in posthumous performances. How do these encounters with technology negotiate everyday relationships between the living and the dead? Students in this course will read texts from cultural studies and media studies that consider these issues from ideological, sociological, material, and spiritual perspectives. According to the mission of MCWP 50, these arguments will be examined in order to understand their structure and synthesize their claims before students craft their own informed, research-based argument about a related topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
014986 | 013 | TTH 2:00-3:20 | RCLAS | Jonathan Walton |
014987 | 014 | TTH 3:30-4:50 | RCLAS | Jonathan Walton |
In contemporary times, we are surrounded by newness: new media, new technologies, and new ways of being. Innovations in science, computing, and communication continually threaten to upend established norms of human societies. But the promises and perils of new media and innovation stretch back in time to the Scientific Revolution. How can we put the newness of contemporary technological developments in context and critically analyze the social changes that accompany them? Students will conduct a research project on a new development in science, technology, or media, resulting in a substantial research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
014985 | 012 | TTH 9:30-10:50 | RCLAS | Carrie Wastal |
Part of the myth of the wild west is one of intrepid white settlers, cowboys, and lawmen setting out to forge new lives of freedom and opportunity in the wilderness. However, the myth is only partially true given the experiences and contributions of black people in settling the western wilderness. Most historical documents and images reflect the attitudes of the day by focusing on white men and ignoring the experiences of the black men and women who also shaped life in open spaces of the west. What can we learn from this history that we can apply to today’s continual, yet changeable, exclusion of black participants in the wilderness?
Our class will examine the arguments of these scholars and others in our examination of the contributions of black settlers unacknowledged in the mythic western wilderness. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, we will work to understand the arguments’ structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
033572 | 016 | TTH 3:30-4:50 | RCLAS | Jenni Marchisotto |
According to the CDC, Black individuals are approximately five times more likely to be hospitalized by—and twice as likely to die—from COVID-19 than their white counterparts. While these statistics are the most pressing to our current moment, similar ratios exist throughout the healthcare system, showing Black Americans to be dying from treatable illnesses at disproportionate rates. Access to healthcare in America is an economic privilege. As a result, BIPOC are far less likely to receive quality care. Moreover, healthcare professionals consistently dismiss or discredit complaints by marginalized communities, a habit intricately tied to the anti-Black, misogynist, and xenophobic roots of the American Medical Industrial Complex (MIC). In this course, we will examine how race, gender, and sexuality affect access to care in the MIC. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider both the historical foundation for and contemporary perpetuation of these disparities. Students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—with the objective of making and defending an original focused argument about Anti-Blackness in the MIC in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
019667 |
D00 |
TTH 8:00-10:50 |
HSS 2346A |
Sophie Staschus |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
019666 |
C00 |
MW 2:00-4:50 |
HSS 2346A |
Melinda Guillen |
Everyone says we need to stop crime, but crime seems to happen whether we want it to or not. Some even make a living from it. How we treat those who have broken rules has changed over time as our morals and definitions of crimes have evolved.
In this course, we will consider how modern society identifies and reacts to criminals and how punishment is determined by examining a variety of scholarly arguments that cross crime with subjects such as the US Justice System, terrorism, revenge, class, gender, and pop culture.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
019664 |
B00 |
MW 8:00-10:50 |
HSS 2346A |
Laurie Nies |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
019663 |
A00 |
MW 11:00-1:50 |
HSS 2346A |
Nur Duru |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
000783 |
001 |
MW 8:00-9:20 | HSS 2333A |
Kelly Silva |
000784 |
002 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2333A |
Kelly Silva |
000786 | 004 | MW 12:30-1:50 | HSS 1128B | Kelly Silva |
In 2016, Native American peoples from across the country, along with environmentalists and activists, came together to protest the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. With the hashtag #NoDAPL, these protests made visible to a wider American audience longstanding political, cultural, and economic concerns facing Native American peoples and tribal communities and pushed the conversation beyond public debates over sports mascots. In this course, we will explore issues central to Native American peoples and communities in the 21st century. This includes, but is not limited to, ongoing debates over land, resources, representation, memory, health care, sovereignty, and the ongoing legacies of America’s colonial past. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
000807 |
025 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 1128B |
Sophie Staschus |
000831 |
049 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 1106A |
Sophie Staschus |
010464 |
047 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 2333A |
Shelton Lo |
010465 | 048 | TTH 3:30-4:50 | HSS 2333A | Shelton Lo |
The interdisciplinary field of bioethics grapples with conflicts that arise in medical practice, such as patients’ refusal of life-saving treatment or how to allocate scarce resources such as organs. It also considers dilemmas that emerge in response to new biotechnologies, such as stem-cell research, human genetic engineering, and prenatal diagnostics. In this course, we will explore some of the ethical and legal questions that arise in healthcare, medical research, and the use of biotechnology and bioengineering. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
000805 |
023 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 | HSS 1128B |
Mike Morshed |
000806 |
024 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 1128B |
Mike Morshed |
000808 | 026 | TTH 3:30-4:50 | HSS 1128B | Mike Morshed |
000809 | 027 | MW 8:00-9:20 | HSS 1128B | Melinda Guillen |
000810 | 028 | MW 9:30-10:50 | HSS 1128B | Melinda Guillen |
000825 | 043 | MW 12:30-1:50 | HSS 1138 | Melinda Guillen |
000826 | 044 | MW 2:00-3:20 | HSS 1138 | Melinda Guillen |
Everyone says we need to stop crime, but crime seems to happen whether we want it to or not. Some even make a living from it. How we treat those who have broken rules has changed over time as our morals and definitions of crimes have evolved.
In this course, we will consider how modern society identifies and reacts to criminals and how punishment is determined by examining a variety of scholarly arguments that cross crime with subjects such as the US Justice System, terrorism, revenge, class, gender, and pop culture.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
000794 |
012 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 2333B |
Thomas Conner |
000795 |
013 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Thomas Conner |
000820 |
038 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 1138 |
Johnathan Walton |
000821 |
039 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 1138 |
Johnathan Walton |
The relationships between humans and nonhumans are under increasing pressure. In the current era of both technological innovation and environmental crisis, humanity’s future is directly intertwined with other living organisms, nonliving machines, and organic-machine hybrids. Consequently, many interdisciplinary scholars are actively working to bridge or blend the natural and social/humanistic sciences, exploring how humans operate alongside our nonhuman "cousins." Linked together in interdependent networks, how can we survive and thrive? Following the guidelines for MCWP 50, students will conduct independent research towards a final paper on a topic of their choice.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
000799 |
017 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Ayden LeRoux |
000800 |
018 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 2333B |
Ayden LeRoux |
000803 |
021 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 1128B |
Laurie Nies |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
000792 |
010 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2333B |
Vince Pham |
000793 |
011 |
TTh 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Vince Pham |
000814 |
032 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 1128B |
Michael Witte |
000815 |
033 |
MW 5:00-6:20 |
HSS 1128B |
Michael Witte |
In what ways has Latin America influenced U.S. discourses in fine arts, architecture and cinema, and how does this testify to the vital role of Latin America in U.S. cultural production? This course will examine the ways that Latin American subject matter is replicated, represented and repurposed in U.S. contexts. Influences range from ancient archaeological sites like Machu Picchu to modern architectural works like Luis Barragán’s Jardines del Pedregal, to the works of Rio de Janeiro’s Grupo Frente, among many other examples. In doing so we will consider the relationship between American cultural production and the racial and cultural hierarchies that in many ways define U.S. national identity. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
000785 |
003 |
MW 11:00-12:20 | HSS 1128B |
Andrea Carter |
000787 |
005 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 2333A |
Andrea Carter |
000788 | 006 | MW 3:30-4:50 | HSS 2333A | Andrea Carter |
000797 | 015 | MW 9:30-10:50 | HSS 2333B | Kathy Bryan |
000798 | 016 | MW 11:00-12:20 | HSS 2333B | Kathy Bryan |
Mind-and body-altering substances and prescription medications have a contested history in the U.S. Lysergic acid, alcohol, marijuana, opioids, and amphetamines are a few examples of the substances that are a part of that history. Of particular interest to this class are the shifting attitudes and policies that make such drugs taboo or acceptable, legal or illegal, and sometimes, legal again.
Our class will look at aspects of past and current debates that reflect the changing attitudes of society, including its institutions, toward body- and mind-altering substances. Our readings will look evolving political climates as well as the social and medical contexts for the uses and abuses of mind-altering substances. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
000811 |
029 |
MW 11:00-12:20 | HSS 2333A |
Nur Duru |
000812 |
030 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2333A |
Nur Duru |
000818 | 036 | TTH 11:00-12:20 | HSS 1138 | Nur Duru |
000819 | 037 | TTH 12:30-1:50 | HSS 1138 | Nur Duru |
000822 | 040 | MW 8:00-9:20 | HSS 1138 | Jennifer Carter |
000823 | 041 | MW 9:30-10:50 | HSS 1138 | Jennifer Carter |
000824 | 042 | MW 11:00-12:20 | HSS 1138 | Jennifer Carter |
How do sensationalized tales of pop stars, superheroes, princesses, and villains shape our understandings of majority and minority communities? Just as Ariana Grande “breaks free” from “7 rings” of systemic oppression—sex, gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, dis/ability—students in this class will unpack the overlapping layers of popular culture, ideology, representation, oppression, and privilege. In this course students will analyze arguments about how stories function to replicate, resist, and rewrite the dominant narratives that shape our educational, legal, medical, and social institutions while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
991407 |
002 |
MW 9:30-10:50 | HSS 1106B |
Melinda Guillen |
991408 |
003 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 1106B |
Melinda Guillen |
991410 | 005 | MW 2:00-3:20 | HSS 1106B | Melinda Guillen |
991415 | 010 | TTH 11:00-12:20 | HSS 1106B | Mike Morshed |
991417 | 012 | TTH 2:00-3:20 | HSS 1106B | Mike Morshed |
991418 | 013 | TTH 3:30-4:50 | HSS 1106B | Mike Morshed |
991435 | 030 | MW 3:30-4:50 | HSS 2333A | Melinda Guillen |
Everyone says we need to stop crime, but crime seems to happen whether we want it to or not. Some even make a living from it. How we treat those who have broken rules has changed over time as our morals and definitions of crimes have evolved.
In this course, we will consider how modern society identifies and reacts to criminals and how punishment is determined by examining a variety of scholarly arguments that cross crime with subjects such as the US Justice System, terrorism, revenge, class, gender, and pop culture.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
991413 |
008 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 1106B |
Kelly Silva |
991414 |
009 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 1106B |
Kelly Silva |
991416 |
011 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 1106B |
Kelly Silva |
In 2016, Native American peoples from across the country, along with environmentalists and activists, came together to protest the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. With the hashtag #NoDAPL, these protests made visible to a wider American audience longstanding political, cultural, and economic concerns facing Native American peoples and tribal communities and pushed the conversation beyond public debates over sports mascots. In this course, we will explore issues central to Native American peoples and communities in the 21st century. This includes, but is not limited to, ongoing debates over land, resources, representation, memory, health care, sovereignty, and the ongoing legacies of America’s colonial past. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
991421 |
016 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 2333B |
Nur Duru |
991422 |
017 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Nur Duru |
991426 |
021 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2305B |
Nur Duru |
991428 |
023 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2305B |
Nur Duru |
How do sensationalized tales of pop stars, superheroes, princesses, and villains shape our understandings of majority and minority communities? Just as Ariana Grande “breaks free” from “7 rings” of systemic oppression—sex, gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, dis/ability—students in this class will unpack the overlapping layers of popular culture, ideology, representation, oppression, and privilege. In this course students will analyze arguments about how stories function to replicate, resist, and rewrite the dominant narratives that shape our educational, legal, medical, and social institutions while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
991431 |
026 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2346A |
Carrie Wastal |
You are likely familiar with the extinction of the East Asian woolly mammoth, the early Holocene Epoch likely due to radical climate change and possibly through human actions. Now, some researchers argue that the planet is approaching the Anthropocene Epoch, in which another species—homo sapiens—will face extinction. The driving concern of our class is whether or not humans will go the way of extinct non-sentient animals.
In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
000164 |
039 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 | HSS 2333B |
Kathy Bryan |
000165 |
040 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 2333B |
Kathy Bryan |
991427 | 022 | TTH 11:00-12:20 | HSS 2305B | Andrea Carter |
991429 | 024 | TTH 2:00-3:20 | HSS 2305B | Andrea Carter |
991430 | 025 | TTH 3:30-4:50 | HSS 2305B | Andrea Carter |
Mind-and body-altering substances and prescription medications have a contested history in the U.S. Lysergic acid, alcohol, marijuana, opioids, and amphetamines are a few examples of the substances that are a part of that history. Of particular interest to this class are the shifting attitudes and policies that make such drugs taboo or acceptable, legal or illegal, and sometimes, legal again.
Our class will look at aspects of past and current debates that reflect the changing attitudes of society, including its institutions, toward body- and mind-altering substances. Our readings will look evolving political climates as well as the social and medical contexts for the uses and abuses of mind-altering substances. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
991438 |
033 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 1106A |
Sophie Staschus |
991439 |
034 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 1106A |
Sophie Staschus |
Will brain imaging become the ultimate lie detector? Can a brain scan tell you if you are hungry, depressed, or a criminal? Do “mirror neurons” explain empathy? Neuroscientific claims pervade contemporary culture, shaping our understanding of ourselves and influencing many areas of social life, including law, education, clinical practice, and social policy. This course will examine scholarship on the scope and limits of neurobiological explanations, and how neuroscience both influences and is influenced by culture, by focusing on social and historical studies of how neuroscientific knowledge is made and circulated. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about a scientific concept, practice, technology, or representation issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
991409 |
004 |
MW 12:30-1:50 | HSS 1106B |
Ayden LeRoux |
991423 |
018 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 2333B |
Ayden LeRoux |
991440 | 035 | TTH 12:30-1:50 | HSS 2305A | Laurie Nies |
991442 | 037 | TTH 3:30-4:50 | HSS 2305A | Haydee Smith |
000163 | 038 | TTH 12:30-1:50 | HSS 2346A | Haydee Smith |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
977678 |
006 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
HSS 1128B |
Laurie Nies |
977679 |
007 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 1128B |
Laurie Nies |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are experience some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment. Yet despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped—and thus further marginalized—in popular culture as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is portrayed as a difficult existence. We will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
977680 |
008 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 | HSS 1128B |
Kelly Silva |
977681 |
009 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 1128B |
Kelly Silva |
977684 | 012 | TTH 9:30-10:50 | HSS 2346A | Carrie Wastal |
The Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator will certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” According to the architects of the Declaration, happiness is not guaranteed; however, citizens have the right to pursue it. How will we know when we find or achieve happiness? What is happiness dependent on? In our own exploration of happiness, the class will look at published arguments that examine the ways that society, economics, health, and public policies measure happiness and how they contribute to or otherwise impact human happiness.
In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
977677 |
005 |
MW 5:00-6:20 | HSS 1138 |
Michael Witte |
977682 |
010 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 1128B |
Vince Pham |
977683 | 011 | TTH 3:30-4:50 | HSS 1128B | Vince Pham |
986704 | 017 | MW 5:00-6:20 | HSS 1138 | Michael Witte |
In what ways has Latin America influenced U.S. discourses in fine arts, architecture and cinema, and how does this testify to the vital role of Latin America in U.S. cultural production? This course will examine the ways that Latin American subject matter is replicated, represented and repurposed in U.S. contexts. Influences range from ancient archaeological sites like Machu Picchu to modern architectural works like Luis Barragán’s Jardines del Pedregal, to the works of Rio de Janeiro’s Grupo Frente, among many other examples. In doing so we will consider the relationship between American cultural production and the racial and cultural hierarchies that in many ways define U.S. national identity. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
977685 |
013 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
HSS 1106B |
Melinda Guillen |
977686 |
014 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 1106B |
Melinda Guillen |
977687 |
015 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 1106B |
Melinda Guillen |
977688 |
016 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
HSS 1106B |
Melinda Guillen |
As fast food workers join the Fight for $15 campaign seeking a living wage, the profitability of the food industry as a whole, along with the wealth of celebrity chefs and restaurant entrepreneurs, has soared. We see countries of wealth secure food in excess while poorer countries suffer famines. How can we make sense of these divergent trends? In this course, we will explore issues of justice in the production, preparation, and consumption of food in the 21st century. We will consider how class differences, health concerns, and technological developments impact the food that we eat and the way the current food industry operates. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
973038 |
003 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
APM 2301 |
Jennifer Carter |
973039 |
004 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
APM 2301 |
Jennifer Carter |
973061 | 026 | T/TH 12:30-1:50 | 1138 | Jennifer Carter |
973064 |
029 |
MW 8:00-9:20 |
2333A |
Alison Ogunmokun |
973065 |
030 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
2333A |
Alison Ogunmokun |
The entrepreneurial spirit is much celebrated in contemporary American culture. From our latest presidential election to media mogul icons such as Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, Oprah and Jay-Z, the iconicity and perceived authority of business savvy permeates cultural understandings of how power, politics, and popular media interact with and inflect each other. Considering the processes of gendering, commodification, celebrity formations, and the intersections of power and ideology, students in this course will examine primary sources drawn from popular culture alongside academic arguments situated within political economies, gender and sexuality studies, critical feminisms, film and media studies, and literary analysis. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
973043 |
008 |
T/TH 8:00-9:20 |
2333A |
Sophie Staschus |
973044 |
009 |
T/TH 9:30-10:50 |
2333A |
Sophie Staschus |
Will brain imaging become the ultimate lie detector? Can a brain scan tell you if you are hungry, depressed, or a criminal? Do “mirror neurons” explain empathy? Neuroscientific claims pervade contemporary culture, shaping our understanding of ourselves and influencing many areas of social life, including law, education, clinical practice, and social policy. This course will examine scholarship on the scope and limits of neurobiological explanations, and how neuroscience both influences and is influenced by culture, by focusing on social and historical studies of how neuroscientific knowledge is made and circulated. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
973076 |
041 |
T/TH 8:00-9:20 |
1128B |
Andrea Carter |
973077 |
042 |
T/TH 9:30-10:50 |
1128B |
Andrea Carter |
973079 | 044 | T/TH 12:30-1:50 | 1128B | Andrea Carter |
973036 |
001 |
MW 8:00-9:20 |
CENTR 224C |
Kelly Silva |
973037 |
002 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
CENTR 224C |
Kelly Silva |
974976 |
049 |
T/TH 9:30-10:50 |
CENTR 224B |
Shelton Lo |
974977 | 050 | T/TH 3:30-4:50 | CENTR 224B | Shelton Lo |
Mind- and body-altering substances and prescription medications have a contested history in the U.S. Lysergic acid, alcohol, marijuana, opioids, and amphetamines are a few examples of the substances that are a part of that history. Of particular interest to this class are the shifting attitudes and policies that make such drugs taboo or acceptable, legal or illegal, and sometimes, legal again. Our class will look at aspects of past and current debates that reflect the changing attitudes of society toward these substances. Our readings will look evolving political climates as well as the social and medical contexts for their uses and abuses. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
973058 |
023 |
T/TH 8:00-9:20 |
1138 |
Laurie Nies |
973059 |
024 |
T/TH 9:30-10:50 |
1138 |
Laurie Nies |
973054 | 019 | T/TH 11:00-12:20 | 2333B | Suzy Woltmann |
973055 |
020 |
T/TH 12:30-1:50 |
2333B |
Suzy Woltmann |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are experience some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment. Yet despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped—and thus further marginalized—in popular culture as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is portrayed as a difficult existence. We will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
973045 |
010 |
T/TH 11:00-12:20 |
2333A | Elizabeth Miller |
973046 |
011 |
T/TH 12:30-1:50 |
2333A |
Elizabeth Miller |
973048 | 013 | T/TH 3:30-4:50 | 2333A | Elizabeth Miller |
973041 |
006 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
CENTR 224C |
Kelly Hutton |
973042 |
007 |
MW 5:00-6:20 |
CENTR 224C |
Kelly Hutton |
973047 |
012 |
T/TH 2:00-3:20 |
CENTR 224B |
Vince Pham |
973073 | 038 | T/TH 12:30-1:50 | CENTR 224B | Vince Pham |
973050 | 015 | MW 3:30-4:50 | 1138 | Michael Witte |
973051 | 016 | 5:00-6:20 | 1138 | Michael Witte |
In what ways has Latin America influenced U.S. discourses in fine arts, architecture and cinema, and how does this testify to the vital role of Latin America in U.S. cultural production? This course will examine the ways that Latin American subject matter is replicated, represented and repurposed in U.S. contexts. Influences range from ancient archaeological sites like Machu Picchu to modern architectural works like Luis Barragán’s Jardines del Pedregal, to the works of Rio de Janeiro’s Grupo Frente, among many other examples. In doing so we will consider the relationship between American cultural production and the racial and cultural hierarchies that in many ways define U.S. national identity. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
973067 |
032 |
MW 5:00-6:20 |
CENTR 224A | Ted Falk |
973068 |
033 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
CENTR 224A |
Ted Falk |
973069 | 034 | MW 3:30-4:50 | CENTR 224A | Ted Falk |
What is a nation? Does it come from a map, a language, a race or a religion? The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been periods of intense change, as Middle Eastern nations have emerged and states have been broken down by internal and external forces. We will explore the racial, religious, and political beliefs that bring people together and break them apart both in the Middle East as well as worldwide. Reading historical nationalist works alongside critical theory will allow us to reconsider ideas of communal identity from the nineteenth century through the present day. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
974970 |
048 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
CENTR 224C |
Stephanie Fairchild |
973052 |
017 |
T/TH 8:00-9:20 |
2333B |
Melinda Guillen |
973053 | 018 | T/TH 9:30-10:50 | 2333B | Melinda Guillen |
973060 |
025 |
T/TH 11:00-12:20 |
1138 |
Mike Morshed |
973062 |
027 |
T/TH 2:00-3:20 |
1138 |
Mike Morshed |
973063 |
028 |
T/TH 3:30-4:50 |
1138 |
Mike Morshed |
As fast food workers join the Fight for $15 campaign seeking a living wage, the profitability of the food industry as a whole, along with the wealth of celebrity chefs and restaurant entrepreneurs, has soared. We see countries of wealth secure food in excess while poorer countries suffer famines. How can we make sense of these divergent trends? In this course, we will explore issues of justice in the production, preparation, and consumption of food in the 21st century. We will consider how class differences, health concerns, and technological developments impact the food that we eat and the way the current food industry operates. In keeping with the goals of MCWP 50, students will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
973078 |
043 |
T/TH11:00-12:20 |
1128B | Nur Duru |
973080 |
045 |
T/TH 2:00-3:20 |
1128B |
Nur Duru |
973081 | 046 | T/TH 3:30-4:50 | 1128B | Nur Duru |
973056 |
021 |
T/TH 2:00-3:20 |
2333B |
Haydee Smith |
973057 |
022 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
2333B |
Haydee Smith |
How do sensationalized tales of pop stars, superheroes, princesses, and villains shape our understandings of majority and minority communities? Just as Ariana Grande “breaks free” from “7 rings” of systemic oppression—sex, gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, dis/ability—students in this class will unpack the overlapping layers of popular culture, ideology, representation, oppression, and privilege. In this course students will analyze arguments about how stories function to replicate, resist, and rewrite the dominant narratives that shape our educational, legal, medical, and social institutions while researching and writing a research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
973040 |
005 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
CENTR 224C |
Jonathan Walton |
974969 |
047 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
CENTR 224C |
Jonathan Walton |
The relationships between humans and nonhumans are under increasing pressure. In the current era of both technological innovation and environmental crisis, humanity’s future is directly intertwined with other living organisms, nonliving machines, and organic-machine hybrids. Consequently, many interdisciplinary scholars are actively working to bridge or blend the natural and social/humanistic sciences, exploring how humans operate alongside our nonhuman "cousins." Linked together in interdependent networks, how can we survive and thrive? Following the guidelines for MCWP 50, students will conduct independent research towards a final paper on a topic of their choice.
Section ID |
Section # |
Topic |
954363 |
001 |
|
954364 |
002 |
|
954365 |
003 |
|
954366 |
004 |
|
954367 |
005 |
|
954368 |
006 |
|
954369 |
007 |
|
954370 |
008 |
|
954371 |
009 |
|
954372 |
010 |
|
954373 |
011 |
|
954374 |
012 |
|
954375 |
013 |
|
954376 |
014 |
|
954377 |
015 |
|
954384 |
022 |
|
954385 |
023 |
|
954386 |
024 |
|
954387 |
025 |
|
954388 |
026 |
|
954389 |
027 |
|
954390 |
028 |
|
954391 |
029 |
|
954392 |
030 |
|
954393 |
031 |
|
954394 |
032 |
|
954395 |
033 |
|
954396 |
034 |
|
954397 |
035 |
|
954398 |
036 |
|
954399 |
037 |
|
954402 |
040 |
|
954403 |
041 |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
935477 |
003 |
T/TH 11:00-12:20 |
2346A |
Jennifer Carter |
935478 |
004 |
T/TH 12:30-1:50 |
2346A |
Jennifer Carter |
935493 | 019 | MW 9:30-10:50 | 2333B | Jennifer Carter |
935494 |
020 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
2333B |
Jennifer Carter |
935481 |
007 |
MW 8:00-9:20 |
2346A |
Laurie Nies |
935482 |
008 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
2346A |
Laurie Nies |
The entrepreneurial spirit is much celebrated in contemporary American culture. From our latest presidential election to media mogul icons such as Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, Oprah and Jay-Z, the iconicity and perceived authority of business savvy permeates cultural understandings of how power, politics, and popular media interact with and inflect each other. Considering the processes of gendering, commodification, celebrity formations, and the intersections of power and ideology, students in this course will examine primary sources drawn from popular culture alongside academic arguments situated within political economies, gender and sexuality studies, critical feminisms, film and media studies, and literary analysis. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
935475 |
001 |
T/TH 8:00-9:20 |
2346A |
Stephanie Fairchild |
935476 |
002 |
T/TH 9:30-10:50 |
2333A |
Stephanie Fairchild |
935491 | 017 | T/TH 2:00-3:20 | 2333B | Michael Morshed |
935492 |
018 |
T/TH 3:30-4:50 |
2333B |
Michael Morshed |
935499 |
025 |
T/TH 8:00-9:20 |
1128B |
Melinda Guillen |
935500 |
026 |
T/TH 9:30-10:50 |
1128B |
Melinda Guillen |
935501 |
027 |
T/TH 11:00-12:20 |
1138 |
Michael Morshed |
Deserts are used frequently as signifiers in film, television, art, and literature of everything from prehistory to post-apocalyptic fantasy, all the while, maintaining complicated ties to grand narratives of “The American West.” Desert landscapes are also where militarized weapons testing and nuclear waste depositories are set, despite forever changing the ecological vitality of the land, its natural resources, and all those that call the desert home. We will explore key texts by cultural critics, urban theorists, historians, and artists in the development of original research projects examining how spatial hierarchies and the extended fantasies of Frontierism continue to mark the American Southwest in various and complex ways. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
935496 |
022 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
2333B |
Sarah Klein |
935505 |
031 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
1138 |
Sarah Klein |
935506 |
032 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
1138 |
Sarah Klein |
935502 | 028 | T/TH 12:30-1:50 | 1138 | Jonathan Walton |
935514 |
040 |
T/TH 2:00-3:20 |
1138 |
Jonathan Walton |
Will brain imaging become the ultimate lie detector? Can a brain scan tell you if you are hungry, depressed, or a criminal? Do “mirror neurons” explain empathy? Neuroscientific claims pervade contemporary culture, shaping our understanding of ourselves and influencing many areas of social life, including law, education, clinical practice, and social policy. This course will examine scholarship on the scope and limits of neurobiological explanations, and how neuroscience both influences and is influenced by culture, by focusing on social and historical studies of how neuroscientific knowledge is made and circulated. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about a scientific concept, practice, technology, or representation issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
935479 |
005 |
T/TH 2:00-3:20 |
2346A |
Mallory Pickett |
935480 |
006 |
T/TH 3:30-4:50 |
2346A |
Mallory Pickett |
935487 | 013 | T/TH 8:00-9:20 | 2333B | Michael Berman |
935488 |
014 |
T/TH 9:30-10:50 |
2333B |
Michael Berman |
935507 |
033 |
T/TH 12:30-1:50 |
2333A |
Kelly Silva |
935513 |
039 |
T/TH 11:00-12:20 |
2333A |
Kelly Silva |
Mind-and body-altering substances and prescription medications have a contested history in the U.S. Lysergic acid, alcohol, marijuana, opioids, and amphetamines are a few examples of the substances that are a part of that history. Of particular interest to this class are the shifting attitudes and policies that make such drugs taboo or acceptable, legal or illegal, and sometimes, legal again. Our class will look at aspects of past and current debates that reflect the changing attitudes of society, including its institutions, toward body- and mind-altering substances. Our readings will look evolving political climates as well as the social and medical contexts for the uses and abuses of mind-altering substances. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
935483 |
009 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
2333A |
Vince Pham |
935484 |
010 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
2333A |
Vince Pham |
935485 | 011 | MW 2:00-3:20 | 2333A | Alex Kershaw |
935486 |
012 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
2333A |
Alex Kershaw |
There’s no doubt that photographing is a predatory act. Scholars often liken the camera with the gun to characterize the power imbalances of ideologically charged images. Conversely, how might photography redress forms of social inequality by demanding justice? As a tool of surveillance, how does photography intervene in our lives in ways that are coercive? This course explores the ways photography represents, enacts, and counteract forms of oppression in contexts ranging from photojournalism, ethnography, war, the visual arts, and policing. Students will develop skills in visual analysis, by analyzing the rhetorical tropes and charged histories that lay dormant beneath the glossy surface of images. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
935515 |
041 |
T/TH 3:30-4:50 |
1106A | Jenni Marchisotto |
935503 |
029 |
T/TH 2:00-3:20 |
1128B |
Haydee Smith |
935504 |
030 |
T/TH 3:30-4:50 | 1128B | Haydee Smith |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
935508 |
034 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
1138 |
Nur Duru |
935509 |
035 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
1138 |
Nur Duru |
943664 | 042 | T/TH 2:00-3:20 | 1138 | Nur Duru |
943665 |
043 |
T/TH 3:30-4:50 |
1138 |
Nur Duru |
What is a nation? Does it come from a map, a language, a race or a religion? The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been periods of intense change, as Middle Eastern nations have emerged and states have been broken down by internal and external forces. In this writing and research seminar, we will explore the racial, religious, and political beliefs that bring people together and break them apart both in the Middle East as well as worldwide. Reading historical nationalist works alongside critical theory will allow us to reconsider ideas of communal identity from the nineteenth century through the present day. From these topics, students will develop a research topic and write their own primary source research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
935495 | 021 | MW 12:30-1:50 | 2333B | Elizabeth Miller |
935497 | 023 | MW 3:30-4:50 | 2333B | Elizabeth Miller |
935498 |
024 |
MW 5:00-6:20 |
2333B |
Elizabeth Miller |
935511 |
037 |
T/TH 8:00-9:20 |
1138 |
Crystal Perez |
935512 |
038 |
T/TH 9:30-10:50 |
1138 |
Crystal Perez |
By the 1940s, New York City had overtaken Paris as the “center” of the art world, but American discourses meanwhile neglected many other influences on U.S. cultural production. Since the conclusion of the Spanish-American War in 1898 (and arguably long before Spain’s evacuation of the Americas), Latin America has had a tremendous impact on U.S. cultural production. This course uses the vantage point of fine arts, architecture and cinema to examine the ways that Latin American subject matter is replicated, represented and repurposed in U.S. contexts. Influences range from ancient archaeological sites like Machu Picchu and Teotihuacán, to modern architectural works like Luis Barragán’s Jardines del Pedregal, to the works of Rio de Janeiro’s Grupo Frente or the Mexican Muralists, among many other examples. The broader aim of this course is to foster a more complex understanding of the unusual and occasionally overlooked relationship between American cultural production and the racial and cultural hierarchies that in many ways define U.S. national identity. How have representations and transpositions of Latin American subject matter in the U.S. reflected changing political relationships in the Americas? In what ways has Latin America influenced U.S. discourses in fine arts, architecture and cinema, and how does this testify to the vital role of Latin America in U.S. cultural production?
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
920530 |
001 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
2333B |
Jennifer Carter |
920531 |
002 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
2333B |
Jennifer Carter |
920538 | 009 | T/TH 11:00-12:20 | 2333B | Jennifer Carter |
920539 |
010 |
T/TH 12:30-1:50 |
2333B |
Jennifer Carter |
920540 |
011 |
T/TH 2:00-3:20 |
2333B |
Haydee Smith |
920541 |
012 |
T/TH 3:30-4:50 |
2333B |
Haydee Smith |
The entrepreneurial spirit is much celebrated in contemporary American culture. From our latest presidential election to media mogul icons such as Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, Oprah and Jay-Z, the iconicity and perceived authority of business savvy permeates cultural understandings of how power, politics, and popular media interact with and inflect each other. Considering the processes of gendering, commodification, celebrity formations, and the intersections of power and ideology, students in this course will examine primary sources drawn from popular culture alongside academic arguments situated within political economies, gender and sexuality studies, critical feminisms, film and media studies, and literary analysis. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
920532 |
003 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
2333B |
Vince Pham |
920533 |
004 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
2333B |
Vince Pham |
920534 |
005 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
2333B |
Alex Kershaw |
920535 |
006 |
MW 5:00-6:20 |
2333B |
Alex Kershaw |
There’s no doubt that photographing is a predatory act. Scholars often liken the camera with the gun to characterize the power imbalances of ideologically charged images. Conversely, how might photography redress forms of social inequality by demanding justice? As a tool of surveillance, how does photography intervene in our lives in ways that are coercive? This course explores the ways photography represents, enacts, and counteract forms of oppression in contexts ranging from photojournalism, ethnography, war, the visual arts, and policing. Students will develop skills in visual analysis, by analyzing the rhetorical tropes and charged histories that lay dormant beneath the glossy surface of images. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
920536 |
007 |
T/TH 8:00-9:20 |
2333B |
Stephanie Fairchild |
920537 | 008 | T/TH 9:30-10:50 | 2333B | Stephanie Fairchild |
920546 |
017 |
T/TH 8:00-9:20 |
2333A |
Melinda Guillen |
920547 |
018 |
T/TH 9:30-10:50 |
2333A |
Melinda Guillen |
920548 |
019 |
T/TH 11:00-12:20 |
2333A |
Michael Morshed |
920550 | 021 | T/TH 2:010-3:20 | 2333A | Michael Morshed |
920551 |
022 |
T/TH 3:30-4:50 |
2333A |
Michael Morshed |
920552 |
023 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
1128B |
Kelly Silva |
920553 |
024 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
1128B |
Kelly Silva |
Deserts are used frequently as signifiers in film, television, art, and literature of everything from prehistory to post-apocalyptic fantasy, all the while, maintaining complicated ties to grand narratives of “The American West.” Desert landscapes are also where militarized weapons testing and nuclear waste depositories are set, despite forever changing the ecological vitality of the land, its natural resources, and all those that call the desert home. We will explore key texts by cultural critics, urban theorists, historians, and artists in the development of original research projects examining how spatial hierarchies and the extended fantasies of Frontierism continue to mark the American Southwest in various and complex ways. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
920543 |
014 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
2333A |
Sarah Klein |
920554 |
025 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
2305B |
Sarah Klein |
920555 |
026 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
2333A |
Sarah Klein |
Will brain imaging become the ultimate lie detector? Can a brain scan tell you if you are hungry, depressed, or a criminal? Do “mirror neurons” explain empathy? Neuroscientific claims pervade contemporary culture, shaping our understanding of ourselves and influencing many areas of social life, including law, education, clinical practice, and social policy. This course will examine scholarship on the scope and limits of neurobiological explanations, and how neuroscience both influences and is influenced by culture, by focusing on social and historical studies of how neuroscientific knowledge is made and circulated. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about a scientific concept, practice, technology, or representation issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
920557 |
028 |
T/TH 9:30-10:50 |
2346A |
Carrie Wastal |
920560 |
031 |
T/TH 2:00-3:20 |
1138 |
Mallory Pickett |
920561 |
032 |
T/TH 3:30-4:50 |
1138 |
Mallory Pickett |
Mind-and body-altering substances and prescription medications have a contested history in the U.S. Lysergic acid, alcohol, marijuana, opioids, and amphetamines are a few examples of the substances that are a part of that history. Of particular interest to this class are the shifting attitudes and policies that make such drugs taboo or acceptable, legal or illegal, and sometimes, legal again.
Our class will look at aspects of past and current debates that reflect the changing attitudes of society, including its institutions, toward body- and mind-altering substances. Our readings will look evolving political climates as well as the social and medical contexts for the uses and abuses of mind-altering substances. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SEC. ID |
SEC. |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
906893 |
003 |
T/TH 11:00-12:20 |
2305A |
Sara Solaimani |
906894 |
004 |
T/TH 12:30-1:50 |
2305A |
Sara Solaimani |
Description |
---|
In the past three decades in particular, there has been incredible growth and change in art’s response to the political tensions and growing border security infrastructure on the Mexico-U.S. border. The local art histories of different border regions such as Tijuana-San Diego have each made unique contributions to enriching the history of the border and borderlands. There many potential connections between these practices that have yet to be analyzed and understood, especially by residents north of the border. In this MCWP 50 course, we will develop research projects investigating the many different contexts, practices, and artworks by transborder artists in the region, considering in particular the representations of the struggle for social justice for people whom the border marginalizes, or denies entry. |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
906895 |
005 |
T/TH 2:00-3:20 |
2305A |
Suzy Woltmann |
906896 |
006 |
T/TH 3:30-4:50 |
2305A |
Suzy Woltmann |
906905 |
015 |
T/TH 11:00-12:20 |
1138 |
Haydee Smith |
906906 |
016 |
T/TH 12:30-1:50 |
1138 |
Haydee Smith |
Description |
---|
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper. |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
906897 |
007 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
1106A |
Matthew Sitek |
906898 |
008 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
1106A |
Matthew Sitek |
906900 |
010 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
1106A |
Matthew Sitek |
Description |
---|
This course will utilize the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of complexity science to frame our discussion of the academic research process. We will investigate how researchers from vastly different disciplines use different scales of analysis to identify the interacting networks of agents from which complex systems emerge to form some of life’s most important phenomena. We will explore how the study of one complex system can teach about us the dynamics in other complex systems – what can beehives teach us about people’s decisions in voting booths? Through the lens of complexity we will reframe classic scientific models, such as biological evolution. We will consider how complexity frameworks can inform us about the origins of sociopolitical complexity in the ancient past and socioeconomic inequality in our society today. In this MCWP 50 section students will use course readings and independent research to develop their own academic argument about one of these systems in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts. |
SEC. ID |
SEC. |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
906899 |
009 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
1106A |
Elizabeth Miller |
906901 |
011 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
1106A |
Elizabeth Miller |
906902 |
012 |
MW 5:00-6:20 |
1106A |
Elizabeth Miller |
Description |
---|
By the 1940s, New York City had overtaken Paris as the “center” of the art world, but American discourses meanwhile neglected many other influences on U.S. cultural production. Since the conclusion of the Spanish-American War in 1898 (and arguably long before Spain’s evacuation of the Americas), Latin America has had a tremendous impact on U.S. cultural production. This course uses the vantage point of fine arts, architecture and cinema to examine the ways that Latin American subject matter is replicated, represented and repurposed in U.S. contexts. Influences range from ancient archaeological sites like Machu Picchu and Teotihuacán, to modern architectural works like Luis Barragán’s Jardines del Pedregal, to the works of Rio de Janeiro’s Grupo Frente or the Mexican Muralists, among many other examples. The broader aim of this course is to foster a more complex understanding of the unusual and occasionally overlooked relationship between American cultural production and the racial and cultural hierarchies that in many ways define U.S. national identity. How have representations and transpositions of Latin American subject matter in the U.S. reflected changing political relationships in the Americas? In what ways has Latin America influenced U.S. discourses in fine arts, architecture and cinema, and how does this testify to the vital role of Latin America in U.S. cultural production? |
SEC. ID |
SEC. |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
906892 |
002 |
T/TH 9:30-10:50 |
2346A |
Carrie Wastal |
Description |
---|
Mind-and body-altering substances and prescription medications have a contested history in the U.S. Lysergic acid, alcohol, marijuana, opioids, and amphetamines are a few examples of the substances that are a part of that history. Of particular interest to this class are the shifting attitudes and policies that make such drugs taboo or acceptable, legal or illegal, and sometimes, legal again. Our class will look at aspects of past and current debates that reflect the changing attitudes of society, including its institutions, toward body- and mind-altering substances. Our readings will look evolving political climates as well as the social and medical contexts for the uses and abuses of mind-altering substances. In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their structures while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic. |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
896045 |
001 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
2333B |
Amy Forrest |
896046 |
002 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
2333B |
Amy Forrest |
896061 |
017 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
2333A |
Amy Forrest |
896062 |
018 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
2333A |
Amy Forrest |
From Shakespeare's fools to Key and Peele, from Mark Twain to Mindy Kaling: humor is inextricably connected to culture. When we miss a joke, surely it's not because we lack a sense of humor, but because we lack the cultural assumptions that enable us to understand the punch line. In this course, we will analyze arguments in a variety of comedic texts, critical essays, and scholarly journal articles, examining both how they are made, what they teach us about comedy, and the ways in which comedy engages critically with social, cultural and political issues. Additionally, we will explore comedy's ability to reveal the pettiness and pathos at the heart of the human condition, and how comedians use race, class, gender, language, sexuality, and identity to challenge our assumptions about ourselves and the society in which we live. In Funny Business, you will choose a comedic text (visual, video, or written) and will create an extended academic argument about it with the support of theoretical concepts that we will work with in class and other texts from your own research.
SEC. ID |
SEC. |
DAYS |
TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
896047 |
003 |
MW |
12:30-1:50 |
2333B |
Alex Kershaw |
896048 |
004 |
MW |
2:00-3:20 |
2333B |
Alex Kershaw |
896065 |
021 |
TTH |
2:00-3:20 |
2333A |
Haydee Smith |
896066 |
022 |
TTH |
3:30-4:50 |
2333A |
Haydee Smith |
SEC. ID |
SEC. |
DAYS |
TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
896049 |
005 |
MW |
3:30-4:50 |
2333B |
Matthew Sitek |
896050 |
006 |
MW |
5:00-6:20 |
2346A |
Matthew Sitek |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
896053 |
009 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
2333B |
Yi Hong Sim |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
896054 |
010 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
2333B |
Nur Duru |
896055 |
011 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
2333B |
Nur Duru |
What is a nation? Does it come from a map, a language, a race or a religion? The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been periods of intense change, as Middle Eastern nations have emerged and states have been broken down by internal and external forces. In this writing and research seminar, we will explore the racial, religious, and political beliefs that bring people together and break them apart both in the Middle East as well as worldwide. Reading historical nationalist works alongside critical theory will allow us to reconsider ideas of communal identity from the nineteenth century through the present day. From these topics, students will develop a research topic and write their own primary source research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
896056 |
012 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
2333B |
Elizabeth Miller |
896071 |
027 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
1138 |
Melinda Guillen |
896072 |
028 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
1138 |
Melinda Guillen |
896073 |
029 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
1138 |
Elizabeth Miller |
896074 |
030 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
1338 |
Elizabeth Miller |
SPACE: the final frontier? . . . not quite. The idea of space has been widely contested over the centuries, particularly with regard to the built environment and cultural production. This course explores some of the key thinkers and cultural producers implicated in the discourses about public space during the latter half of the 20th century. This topic spans the fields of urban studies, geography, art history, architecture and cultural theory, and the course will engage texts by figures as diverse as urban theorist Mike Davis, Marxist sociologist Henri Lefebvre and artists Robert Smithson and Suzanne Lacy, among others. We will consider: How do notions of public vs. private mediate our experiences of art and architecture? How do different geographies of the mid- to late 20th century--the modern city, the desert and the ‘burbs--influence our conception of space? What are the political systems that define and control space? And how have artists, architects, urban theorists, and other cultural producers expanded our understanding of space and its tenuous political history?
SEC. ID |
SEC. |
DAYS |
TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
896063 |
019 |
TTH |
11:00-12:20 |
2333A |
Jenni Marchisotto |
896064 |
020 |
TTH |
12:30-1:50 |
2333A |
Jenni Marchisotto |
896051 |
007 |
TTH |
8:00-9:20 |
2346A |
Megan Haugh |
896052 |
008 |
TTH |
9:30-10:50 |
2333B |
Megan Haugh |
896057 |
013 |
MW |
8:00-9:20 |
2346A |
Megan Haugh |
896058 |
014 |
MW |
9:30-10:50 |
1106A |
Megan Haugh |
What makes someone or something monstrous? Can you tell just by looking at them? Not all monsters have fangs, and they are not always fictional. We will look at vampires, werewolves, and ogres, but also think about how we as a culture apply their characteristics to certain communities. How do figures from myths and fairy tales inform our understandings of people different than us? What makes certain monsters more sympathetic than others? Why do types of monsters, zombies for example, become popular at certain moments in history? Why do news outlets and political figures consistently use language that implies monstrous behavior to describe both individuals and groups, labeling them as deviant? We will read scholarship from different perspectives analyzing the way society marks certain bodies as monstrous, and how those markings delineate social power dynamics. Drawing support from course readings as well as individual research, students will apply their knowledge to a primary text and construct an academic argument that engages the tension between monstrous facts and monstrous fictions.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
896067 |
023 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
2305B |
Luis Sanchez Lopez |
896068 |
024 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
2305B |
Luis Sanchez Lopez |
896069 |
025 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
2152 |
Ulices Pina |
896070 |
026 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
2152 |
Ulices Pina |
We live a stone’s throw away from the most frequently crossed international border in the world. How does this border—and the countless reasons why it is crossed every day—contribute to our idea of home? In this course we will examine theories about displacement, migration and diaspora, and how these theories challenge or support cultural constructions of home. In addition we will explore the ways in which home becomes mythologized for refugees, those in exile and economic migrants and consider how personal, social, national, ethnic or feminist identity is formed during journeys that take us far away from home or return us there.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
896075 |
031 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
1138 |
Suzy Woltmann |
896076 |
032 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
1138 |
Suzy Woltmann |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
896077 |
033 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
2346A |
Sara Solaimani |
896078 |
034 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
2346A |
Sara Solaimani |
In the past three decades in particular, there has been incredible growth and change in art’s response to the political tensions and growing border security infrastructure on the Tijuana-San Diego border. This local art history has many interesting potential connections yet to be analyzed and understood, especially by residents north of the border. In this MCWP 50 course, we will develop research projects investigating the many different contexts, practices, and artworks by transborder artists in the region, considering in particular the representations of the struggle for social justice for people whom the border marginalizes, or denies entry.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
896079 |
035 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
2305B |
Jennifer Huerta |
896080 |
036 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
2305B |
Jennifer Huerta |
Everyday we are inundated and interact with visual images and media from sharing Grumpy Cat memes to viewing time-lapse videos of Earth from NASA to swiping Tinder profile pictures. We also freely distort, reflect, and refract visual sources depending on our own needs and interests. Yet, how do our interactions with seemingly innocuous products such as videos, television shows, photographs, and paintings, among many other visual mediums, shape deeply ingrained individual, regional, and even national identities? This class looks at global processes of identity construction through the lens of visual culture. Readings will serve as a primer to understand the transmission and communication of visual culture across borders and oceans as well as how its interpretation varies according to the historical context in which it is articulated. The significance attached to such interpretations not only depends on the producer’s intentions, but also by how people consume and manipulate visual sources to make sense of the world around them or facilitate social change. The course will culminate in a final research project in which students will research a specific visual source or trend, providing subsequent analysis from what we have learned in the readings throughout the quarter.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
896081 |
037 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
2305B |
Camielyn West |
896082 |
038 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
2305B |
Camielyn West |
What makes Scandal so scandalous? Is Modern Family really modern? These are the types of questions scholars ask when studying the relationship between entertainment television and changing social mores, and how we understand the world around us through media. In this class, we will read television as a text to not only analyze the content itself but also examine the historical contexts in which a program’s politics are (explicitly or implicitly) situated. We will explore the ways in which sitcoms and dramas offer a useful point of convergence for discussions of race, class, gender, and sexuality during the historical moment that such programs aired. Through reading critical essays, scholarly journal articles, and watching TV shows you are expected to contribute to the academic discussions on television’s powerful reach. Students will apply this scholarship—in addition to selected readings from the course reader—to their own research on a television text with the objective of writing a research paper based on their own argument about representations of social change in prime-time TV.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
897948 |
002 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
2333B |
Amy Forrest |
887612 |
005 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
2333B |
Amy Forrest |
887613 |
006 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
2333B |
Amy Forrest |
From Shakespeare’s fools to Key and Peele, from Mark Twain to Mindy Kaling: humor is inextricably connected to culture. When we miss a joke, surely it’s not because we lack a sense of humor, but because we lack the cultural assumptions that enable us to understand the punch line. In this course, we will analyze arguments in a variety of comedic texts, critical essays, and scholarly journal articles, examining both how they are made, what they teach us about comedy, and the ways in which comedy engages critically with social, cultural and political issues. Additionally, we will explore comedy’s ability to reveal the pettiness and pathos at the heart of the human condition, and how comedians use race, class, gender, language, sexuality, and identity to challenge our assumptions about ourselves and the society in which we live. In Funny Business, you will choose a comedic text (visual, video, or written) and will create an extended academic argument about it with the support of theoretical concepts that we will work with in class and other texts from your own research.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
887610 |
003 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
2333A |
Kate Flach |
887611 |
004 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
2333A |
Kate Flach |
887636 |
029 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
1138 |
Camielyn West |
887637 |
030 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
1138 |
Camielyn West |
What makes Scandal so scandalous? Is Modern Family really modern? These are the types of questions scholars ask when studying the relationship between entertainment television and changing social mores, and how we understand the world around us through media. In this class, we will read television as a text to not only analyze the content itself but also examine the historical contexts in which a program’s politics are (explicitly or implicitly) situated. We will explore the ways in which sitcoms and dramas offer a useful point of convergence for discussions of race, class, gender, and sexuality during the historical moment that such programs aired. Through reading critical essays, scholarly journal articles, and watching TV shows you are expected to contribute to the academic discussions on television’s powerful reach. Students will apply this scholarship—in addition to selected readings from the course reader—to their own research on a television text with the objective of writing a research paper based on their own argument about representations of social change in prime-time TV.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
887615 |
008 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
2333A |
Jenni Marchisotto |
887616 |
009 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
2333A |
Jenni Marchisotto |
887632 |
025 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
1128B |
Haydee Smith |
887633 |
026 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
1128B |
Haydee Smith |
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess, a valiant knight and an evil queen….Fairy tales often begin in much the same way, but they transform with every re-telling over time, reflecting and critiquing shifting cultural ideals. From The Ballad of Mulan to Disney’s Mulan, from the Brothers Grimm to NBC’s Grimm, story tellers offer new versions of old stories in response to contemporary social norms. In their reimagining these stories reflect and question ideas about everything from gender, to race, to disability. In this class we will analyze a variety of academic texts that investigate the different cultural aspects of fairy tales and their adaptations. We will explore the different ways in which values are inscribed through the repetition of themes across different fairy tales, but also how adaptations work to shift those values. Drawing support from course readings as well as individual research, students will choose an adaptation of a fairy tale and construct an academic argument concerning its cultural function.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
887617 |
010 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
2333A |
Yi Hong Sim |
887618 |
011 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
2333A |
Yi Hong Sim |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
887619 |
012 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
2333A |
Elizabeth Miller |
887620 |
013 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
2333A |
Elizabeth Miller |
SPACE: the final frontier? . . . not quite. The idea of space has been widely contested over the centuries, particularly with regard to the built environment and cultural production. This course explores some of the key thinkers and cultural producers implicated in the discourses about public space during the latter half of the 20th century. This topic spans the fields of urban studies, geography, art history, architecture and cultural theory, and the course will engage texts by figures as diverse as urban theorist Mike Davis, Marxist sociologist Henri Lefebvre and artists Robert Smithson and Suzanne Lacy, among others. We will consider: How do notions of public vs. private mediate our experiences of art and architecture? How do different geographies of the mid- to late 20th century--the modern city, the desert and the ‘burbs--influence our conception of space? What are the political systems that define and control space? And how have artists, architects, urban theorists, and other cultural producers expanded our understanding of space and its tenuous political history?
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
887622 |
015 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
1128B |
Luis Sanchez Lopez |
887623 |
016 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
1128B |
Luis Sanchez Lopez |
887634 |
027 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
1138 |
Matthew Sitek |
887635 |
028 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
1138 |
Matthew Sitek |
We live a stone’s throw away from the most frequently crossed international border in the world. How does this border—and the countless reasons why it is crossed every day—contribute to our idea of home? In this course we will examine theories about displacement, migration and diaspora, and how these theories challenge or support cultural constructions of home. In addition we will explore the ways in which home becomes mythologized for refugees, those in exile and economic migrants and consider how personal, social, national, ethnic or feminist identity is formed during journeys that take us far away from home or return us there.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
887624 |
017 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
1128B |
Suzy Woltmann |
887625 |
018 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
1128B |
Suzy Woltmann |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
887628 |
021 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
1128B |
Jennifer Huerta |
887629 |
022 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
1128B |
Jennifer Huerta |
Everyday we are inundated and interact with visual images and media from sharing Grumpy Cat memes to viewing time-lapse videos of Earth from NASA to swiping Tinder profile pictures. We also freely distort, reflect, and refract visual sources depending on our own needs and interests. Yet, how do our interactions with seemingly innocuous products such as videos, television shows, photographs, and paintings, among many other visual mediums, shape deeply ingrained individual, regional, and even national identities? This class looks at global processes of identity construction through the lens of visual culture. Readings will serve as a primer to understand the transmission and communication of visual culture across borders and oceans as well as how its interpretation varies according to the historical context in which it is articulated. The significance attached to such interpretations not only depends on the producer’s intentions, but also by how people consume and manipulate visual sources to make sense of the world around them or facilitate social change. The course will culminate in a final research project in which students will research a specific visual source or trend, providing subsequent analysis from what we have learned in the readings throughout the quarter.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
887630 |
023 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
1128B |
Sara Solaimani |
887631 |
024 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
1128B |
Sara Solaimani |
In the past three decades in particular, there has been incredible growth and change in art’s response to the political tensions and growing border security infrastructure on the Tijuana-San Diego border. This local art history has many interesting potential connections yet to be analyzed and understood, especially by residents north of the border. In this MCWP 50 course, we will develop research projects investigating the many different contexts, practices, and artworks by transborder artists in the region, considering in particular the representations of the struggle for social justice for people whom the border marginalizes, or denies entry.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
887638 |
031 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
1138 |
Nur Duru |
887639 |
032 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
1138 |
Nur Duru |
What is a nation? Does it come from a map, a language, a race or a religion? The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been periods of intense change, as Middle Eastern nations have emerged and states have been broken down by internal and external forces. In this writing and research seminar, we will explore the racial, religious, and political beliefs that bring people together and break them apart both in the Middle East as well as worldwide. Reading historical nationalist works alongside critical theory will allow us to reconsider ideas of communal identity from the nineteenth century through the present day. From these topics, students will develop a research topic and write their own primary source research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
875679 |
005 |
TR 2:00-3:20 | HSS 2333A | Miller, Elizabeth |
875680 |
006 |
TR 3:30-4:50 |
HSS 2333A |
Miller, Elizabeth |
875682 |
010 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
CNTR 204 |
Miller, Elizabeth |
SPACE: the final frontier? . . . not quite. The idea of space has been widely contested over the centuries, particularly with regard to the built environment and cultural production. This course explores some of the key thinkers and cultural producers implicated in the discourses about public space during the latter half of the 20th century. This topic spans the fields of urban studies, geography, art history, architecture and cultural theory, and the course will engage texts by figures as diverse as urban theorist Mike Davis, Marxist sociologist Henri Lefebvre and artists Robert Smithson and Suzanne Lacy, among others. We will consider: How do notions of public vs. private mediate our experiences of art and architecture? How do different geographies of the mid- to late 20th century--the modern city, the desert and the ‘burbs--influence our conception of space? What are the political systems that define and control space? And how have artists, architects, urban theorists, and other cultural producers expanded our understanding of space and its tenuous political history?
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
875683 |
011 |
MW 11:00-12:20 | CENTR 204 | Flach, Kathryn |
875684 |
012 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
CENTR 204 |
Flach, Kathryn |
What makes Scandal so scandalous? Is Modern Family really modern? These are the types of questions scholars ask when studying the relationship between entertainment television and changing social mores, and how we understand the world around us through media. In this class, we will read television as a text to not only analyze the content itself but also examine the historical contexts in which a program's politics are (explicitly or implicitly) situated. We will explore the ways in which sitcoms and dramas offer a useful point of convergence for discussions of race, class, gender, and sexuality during the historical moment that such programs aired. Through reading critical essays, scholarly journal articles, and watching TV shows you are expected to contribute to the academic discussions on television's powerful reach. Students will apply this scholarship - in addition to selected readings from the course reader - to their own research on a television text with objective of writing a research paper based on their own argument about representations of social change in prime-time TV.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
875677 |
003 |
TR 11:00-12:20 | HSS 2333A | Huerta, Jennifer |
875678 |
004 |
TR 12:30-1:50 |
HSS 2333A |
Huerta, Jennifer |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
875675 |
001 |
TR 8:00-9:20 | HSS 2333A |
Marchisotto, Jenni |
875676 |
002 |
TR 9:30-10:50 |
HSS 2333A |
Marchisotto, Jenni |
875681 |
009 |
MW 8:00-9:20 |
CNTR 204 |
Marchisotto, Jenni |
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess, a valiant knight and an evil queen….Fairy tales often begin in much the same way, but they transform with every re-telling over time, reflecting and critiquing shifting cultural ideals. From The Ballad of Mulan to Disney’s Mulan, from the Brothers Grimm to NBC’s Grimm, story tellers offer new versions of old stories in response to contemporary social norms. In their reimagining these stories reflect and question ideas about everything from gender, to race, to disability. In this class we will analyze a variety of academic texts that investigate the different cultural aspects of fairy tales and their adaptations. We will explore the different ways in which values are inscribed through the repetition of themes across different fairy tales, but also how adaptations work to shift those values. Drawing support from course readings as well as individual research, students will choose an adaptation of a fairy tale and construct an academic argument concerning its cultural function.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
875685 |
013 |
TR 9:30-10:50 | HSS 2346A | Wastal, Carrie |
The majority of scientists and researchers agree that climate change is one of society’s imminent problems. This is tied to the idea that climate change is due in some part to human activity. However, there are still “deniers” who claim that human activity and climate change are not related. We often conceive of the planet and its oceans as able to absorb whatever humans throw at them whether it is emissions like carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas, which scientists say corresponds to the change in our climate that is global warming, and leads to ocean acidification, coastal flooding, decreased biodiversity, and thermal expansion.
This course will explore society’s view of the need for sustainable energy prompted by climate change. We will look at the different aspects of the current debate surrounding climate change. We will explore the following questions: Do humans have an ethical or moral responsibility to future generations? Does that responsibility extend to other forms of life like animals and plants? How widespread are the effects of climate change? What are the links between politics, climate change, and public policy? And can we develop viable energy alternatives? In keeping with the goals and requirements of MCWP 50, you will examine arguments about this topic in an effort to understand their content and structure while introducing and supporting your own informed research-based argument about an issue relevant to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
870262 |
003 |
MW 11:00-12:20 | 2333A | Alex Kershaw |
870263 |
004 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
2333A |
Alex Kershaw |
870289 |
029 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
1138 |
Elizabeth Miller |
870290 |
030 |
MW 3:30-4:50 | 1138 | Elizabeth Miller |
870297 |
037 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
2305A |
Melinda Guillen |
870298 |
038 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 | 2305A | Melinda Guillen |
SPACE: the final frontier? . . . not quite. The idea of space has been widely contested over the centuries, particularly with regard to the built environment and cultural production. This course explores some of the key thinkers and cultural producers implicated in the discourses about public space during the latter half of the 20th century. This topic spans the fields of urban studies, geography, art history, architecture and cultural theory, and the course will engage texts by figures as diverse as urban theorist Mike Davis, Marxist sociologist Henri Lefebvre and artists Robert Smithson and Suzanne Lacy, among others. We will consider: How do notions of public vs. private mediate our experiences of art and architecture? How do different geographies of the mid- to late 20th century--the modern city, the desert and the ‘burbs--influence our conception of space? What are the political systems that define and control space? And how have artists, architects, urban theorists, and other cultural producers expanded our understanding of space and its tenuous political history?
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
870268 |
009 | TTH 11:00-12:20 | 2333A | Haydee Smith |
870270 |
011 | TTH 2:00-3:20 | 2333A | Haydee Smith |
870272 |
013 | MW 9:30-10:50 | 2333B | Yi Hong Sim |
870273 |
014 | MW 11:00-12:20 | 2333B | Yi Hong Sim |
870274 |
015 | MW 12:30-1:50 | 2333B | Kate Flach |
870275 |
016 | MW 2:00-3:20 | 2333B | Kate Flach |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
870279 |
020 | TTH 9:30-10:50 | 2333B | Luis Sanchez-Lopez |
870281 |
021 | TTH 11:00-12:20 | 2333B | Luis Sanchez-Lopez |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
870264 |
005 | MW 2:00-3:20 | 2333A | Nur Duru |
870265 |
006 | MW 3:30-4:50 | 2333A | Nur Duru |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
870282 |
022 | TTH 12:30-1:50 | 2333B | Matthew Piper |
870283 |
023 | TTH 2:00-3:20 | 2333B | Matthew Piper |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
870260 | 001 | MW 8:00-9:20 | 2346A | Suzy Woltmann |
870261 | 002 | MW 9:30-10:50 | 2346A | Suzy Woltmann |
870291 | 031 | TTH 8:00-9:20 | 1138 | Jennifer Marchisotto |
870292 | 032 | TTH 9:30-10:50 | 1138 | Jennifer Marchisotto |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
870293 |
033 | TTH 11:00 -12:20 | 1138 | Amy Forrest |
870294 |
034 | TTH 12:30-1:50 | 1138 | Amy Forrest |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
870295 |
035 | TTH 2:00-3:20 | 1138 | William Given |
870296 |
036 | TTH 3:30-4:50 | 1138 | William Given |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
870269 |
010 | TTH 12:30-1:50 | 2333A | Ulices Pina |
870271 |
012 | TTH 3:30-4:50 | 2333A | Ulices Pina |
During the twentieth-century Latin America experienced a cycle of revolutionary upheavals and insurgencies—from the Mexican, Cuban, and Nicaraguan revolutions to guerrilla movements, such as the ‘Shining Path’ in Peru, the FARC in Colombia, and the Zapatistas in Mexico. In this course, we will examine the relationship between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary developments in Latin America and explore how they unfolded within the context of struggles for democracy, industrialization, and the United States’ hemispheric and global domination. Students will apply this scholarship—in addition to selected theoretical and substantive readings from the course reader—to their own research on a social movement and/or revolution in the region with the objective of writing a research paper based on primary and secondary sources.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
870287 |
027 | MW 11:00-12:20 | 1138 | Jennifer Huerta |
870288 |
028 | MW 12:30-1:50 | 1138 | Jennifer Huerta |
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
870266 |
007 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
2346A |
Norell Martinez |
870267 |
008 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
2346A |
Norell Martinez |
870284 |
024 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
2333B |
Sara Solaimani |
In the past three decades in particular, there has been incredible growth and change in art’s response to the political tensions and growing border security infrastructure on the Tijuana-San Diego border. This local art history has many interesting potential connections yet to be analyzed and understood, especially by residents north of the border. In this MCWP 50 course, we will develop research projects investigating the many different contexts, practices, and artworks by transborder artists in the region, considering in particular the representations of the struggle for social justice for people whom the border marginalizes, or denies entry.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
853386 |
003 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
2333B |
Kate Flach |
853387 |
004 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
2333B |
Kate Flach |
What makes Scandal so scandalous? Is Modern Family really modern? These are the types of questions scholars ask when studying the relationship between entertainment television and changing social mores, and how we understand the world around us through media. In this class, we will read television as a text to not only analyze the content itself but also examine the historical contexts in which a program's politics are (explicitly or implicitly) situated. We will explore the ways in which sitcoms and dramas offer a useful point of convergence for discussions of race, class, gender, and sexuality during the historical moment that such programs aired. Through reading critical essays, scholarly journal articles, and watching TV shows you are expected to contribute to the academic discussions on television’s powerful reach. Students will apply this scholarship - in addition to selected readings from the course reader - to their own research on a television text with objective of writing a research paper based on their own argument about representations of social change in prime-time TV.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
853388 |
005 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
2333B |
Elizabeth Miller |
853389 |
006 |
MW 5:00-6:20 |
2333B |
Elizabeth Miller |
The “uncanny” describes a number of phenomena, from the surreal and eerily familiar to the bizarre and supernatural. In this course, we will examine uncanny architecture in history, including not only domestic spaces and archetypal haunted houses, but also places of entertainment like haunted theatres and institutional architectures like penitentiaries and asylums. Haunted spaces predate the modern era by hundreds of years. However, this course will focus on the ways that uncanny architecture has taken on new life since major historical developments like the scientific revolution, the rise of capitalism, and the advent of secularism. How have modern intellectualism and literature—typified by the writings of figures such as Sigmund Freud or Edgar Allan Poe—dealt with uncanny architecture? Students will be free to approach this and other questions from a variety of perspectives. Using selected articles from the course reader and a combination of primary and secondary sources, students will write a research paper on a subject related to the course topic.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
853392 |
009 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
2333B |
Matthew Piper |
853393 |
010 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
2333B |
Matthew Piper |
What is the single greatest scientific mystery? Dark matter? String Theory? Many scientists and philosophers actually have an infinitely more intimate mystery in mind: consciousness. How can your brain – just a collection of neurons – create your mind? How can electrical events in your head create the flavor of chocolate, the feeling of pleasure, or free will? The difficulty in answering this question – how to naturally explain, in full, your experience reading this now, for example – has motivated many to think that the mystery of consciousness is beyond human understanding. This MCWP 50 course examines various aspects of this mystery, from both scientific and philosophical perspectives. Designed to help students do research on the nature of their own conscious experiences, this course provides students with multiple lenses to consider the very phenomenon that allows them to do research – or be aware of anything at all – in the first place!
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
853394 |
011 |
MW 8:00-9:20 |
1138 |
Suzy Woltmann |
853395 |
012 |
MW 9:30-10:50 |
1138 |
Suzy Woltmann |
853402 |
019 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
2305A |
Haydee Smith |
853403 |
020 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
2305A |
Haydee Smith |
853414 |
031 |
TTH 8:00-9:20 |
1138 |
Jenni Marchisotto |
853415 |
032 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
1138 |
Jenni Marchisotto |
Upwards of 43 million Americans are currently experiencing some kind of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment, and that number is on the rise. And yet despite the pervasiveness of these kinds of disabilities among the U.S. population, and despite the fact that disabled people comprise one of the largest U.S. minority groups, disabled figures are often stereotyped in movies, comic books, commercials, novels, and on television shows, as being deserving of the viewer’s pity, or as being excessively courageous because of their ability to overcome what is often portrayed as a troubled or difficult existence. These stereotypes mark disabled people as ‘other’, thus marginalizing an already marginalized population. In this course, we will examine popular representations of disability to uncover assumptions about the normal or ideal body. We will read scholarship from a variety of perspectives that consider impairments in relation to history, nationality, race, gender, and sexuality. In the process, students will apply this scholarship—and their own independent research—to a popular cultural form with the objective of making and defending an argument about disability in a research paper.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
853396 |
013 |
MW 11:00-12:20 |
1138 |
Jennifer Huerta |
853397 |
014 |
MW 12:30-1:50 |
1138 |
Jennifer Huerta |
Everyday we are inundated and interact with visual images and media from sharing Grumpy Cat memes to viewing time-lapse videos of Earth from NASA to swiping Tinder profile pictures. We also freely distort, reflect, and refract visual sources depending on our own needs and interests. Yet, how do our interactions with seemingly innocuous products such as videos, television shows, photographs, and paintings, among many other visual mediums, shape deeply ingrained individual, regional, and even national identities? This class looks at global processes of identity construction through the lens of visual culture. Readings will serve as a primer to understand the transmission and communication of visual culture across borders and oceans as well as how its interpretation varies according to the historical context in which it is articulated. The significance attached to such interpretations not only depends on the producer’s intentions, but also by how people consume and manipulate visual sources to make sense of the world around them or facilitate social change. The course will culminate in a final research project in which students will research a specific visual source or trend, providing subsequent analysis from what we have learned in the readings throughout the quarter.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
853398 |
015 |
MW 2:00-3:20 |
1138 |
Samara Kaplan |
853399 |
016 |
MW 3:30-4:50 |
1138 |
Samara Kaplan |
Should computer avatars be held to ethical standards? Are flash mobs a form of art? What is performance in today’s mediated society? The past century has seen a rapid development of technologies, from the Machine Age to the Age of Information. Looking specifically at how humans perform through these innovations, this course will focus on technology as a platform for cultural production. While the course will pick up in the 1960s with early conceptions of the effects of media on society, students will have the opportunity to conduct scholarly research on any of the conversations surrounding performance and technology in the 20th and 21st centuries, including photography, video games, and social media.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
853401 |
018 |
TTH 9:30-10:50 |
2305A |
Luis Sanchez-Lopez |
853410 |
027 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
2305B |
Nur Duru |
853411 |
028 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
2305B |
Nur Duru |
853416 |
033 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
1138 |
Luis Sanchez-Lopez |
853417 |
034 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
1138 |
Sara Solaimani |
We live a stone’s throw away from the most frequently crossed international border in the world. How does this border—and the countless reasons why it is crossed every day—contribute to our idea of home? In this course we will examine theories about displacement, migration and diaspora, and how these theories challenge or support cultural constructions of home. In addition we will explore the ways in which home becomes mythologized for refugees, those in exile and economic migrants and consider how personal, social, national, ethnic or feminist identity is formed during journeys that take us far away from home or return us there.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
853404 |
021 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
2305A |
William Given |
853405 |
022 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
2305A |
William Given |
Cinema allows us the possibility to escape every day life for a couple of hours by immersing ourselves in the world of our heroes. What happens though when the lines between fantasy and reality begin to blur? What happens when we want so much to be part of the fiction that we start allowing it to shape our own identity? In our class, we will engage with debates over how identity is being performed, and in some instances manipulated, in the hyper mediatized 21st century. Using popular science fiction films such as Star Wars and the practice of cosplay at comic conventions, we will engage with issues such as the dangers of groupthink and questions of who ultimately has control over the representation of the self in order to develop an argumentative research paper that will ultimately shape the academic discourse on the performance of identity.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
853408 |
025 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
2305B |
Melinda Guillen |
853409 |
026 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
2305B |
Melinda Guillen |
How can photos be utilized to not only construct an individual’s identity, but to also create a following of fans who worship that person based on his or her image alone? How can a single image become iconic? In this class, we will examine the role photography has played in creating celebrity, both famously, in the examples of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, as well as with the more infamous figures ranging from Bettie Page to Charles Manson. Our work will lead to the development of a research paper that can approach this subject through many different lenses. Whether it is arguing why particular photos should or should not be labeled as controversial, why gallery exhibitions by artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe have generated outrage in certain communities, or why groups have attempted to ban books by photographers like Helmut Newton or Steven Meisel, you will be free to explore these issues from various perspectives and ultimately contribute to the academic discourse on the power dynamics involved with issues of identity construction as shown through photography.
SECTION ID |
SECTION |
DAY/TIME |
ROOM |
INSTRUCTOR |
853390 |
007 |
TTH 11:00-12:20 |
2333B |
Amy Forrest |
853391 |
008 |
TTH 12:30-1:50 |
2333B |
Amy Forrest |
853412 |
029 |
TTH 2:00-3:20 |
1138 |
Alan Ward |
853413 |
030 |
TTH 3:30-4:50 |
1138 |
Alan Ward |
Every day we face a bombardment of propaganda. It ranges from political campaign ads to the constant affirmation of consumerism within U.S. society and it comes in a variety of mediums including advertisements on television, the radio and print media. In this class we will explore various theories of argumentation and apply them to different pieces of propaganda. Instead of focusing simply on whether or not the specific piece of propaganda convinces us, the goal of this class is to explore the different ways that various forms of propaganda make their arguments. It is important to contextualize each of these arguments and as a class we will investigate different types of propaganda and interrogate how each one utilizes social norms, including constructions of femininity/masculinity, “family values” and patriotism to persuade, entertain or inform the audience. Each student will choose a specific type of propaganda as the basis of their analysis and illustrate the different ways that it uses different argumentative tools to construct an argument.
Section ID | Section | Day/Time | Room | Instructor |
842584 | 001 | MW 8:00 - 9:20 | HSS 1106A | William Given |
842585 | 002 | MW 9:30 - 10:50 | HSS 1106A | William Given |
Section ID | Section | Day/Time | Room | Instructor |
842587 | 004 | MW 12:30 - 1:50 | HSS 1106A | Melinda Guillen |
842588 | 005 | MW 2:00 - 3:20 | HSS 1106A | Melinda Guillen |
Section ID | Section | Day/Time | Room | Instructor |
842590 | 007 | TTH 8:00 - 9:20 | HSS 2305B | Jenni Marchisotto |
842591 | 008 | TTH 9:30 - 10:50 | HSS 2305B | Jenni Marchisotto |
Section ID | Section | Day/Time | Room | Instructor |
842592 | 009 | MW 9:30 - 10:50 | HSS 2333A | Sara Solaimani |
842593 | 010 | MW 11:00 - 12:20 | HSS 2333A | Sara Solaimani |
Section ID | Section | Day/Time | Room | Instructor |
842594 | 011 | TTH 2:00 - 3:20 | HSS 2305B | Matthew Piper |
842595 | 012 | TTH 3:30 - 4:50 | HSS 2305B | Matthew Piper |
Section ID | Section | Day/Time | Room | Instructor |
842596 | 013 | TTH 11:00 - 12:20 | HSS 1106A | Stacey Trujillo |
842597 | 014 | TTH 12:30 - 1:50 | HSS 1106A | Stacey Trujillo |
Section ID | Section | Day/Time | Room | Instructor |
842598 | 015 | TTH 2:00 - 3:20 | HSS 1106A | Liz Miller |
842599 | 016 | TTH 3:30 - 4:50 | HSS 1106A | Liz Miller |