Space and place, particularly in relation to nature and home, are frequently taken for granted as objective realities or otherwise sublimated into our daily existence. However, they are terms that are also general enough to be debatable in everything from philosophical discourse to political theory, literature, anthropology, history, arts and culture, cinema and television, and more. Conflicting notions of place and home can fuel international conflicts and war. The history of conceptions around nature and wilderness as well as the human impact on the natural world have changed our health and our environment. In the arts, one can witness a history of human thinking in changing depictions of nature, or consider the different approaches to space and place in sculpture and architecture.

Assigned readings/screenings draw upon philosophy and geography as well as cultural and visual theory and architectural history. Students will read about the creator of Central Park, Frederick Law Olmstead, but they will also learn from Las Vegas and consider the Center for Land Use Interpretation's (CLUI) digital archive. How have the concepts of "nature" and "wilderness" shifted over time? What are the key works of culture or philosophical developments pertaining to our changing spatial experience and understanding of the world? How have the internet, car culture, and global travel changed our experience of space? How are the ideologies of late capitalism communicated by the modern city? 

Students will develop a focused topic and research question in relation to the course topic; identify a scholarly debate, or research conversation; propose a project that will participate in that conversation; engage with sources from the research process in the form of an annotated and evaluative bibliography, and construct an academic research-based argument.

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.

Most of the world’s population lives within 200 miles of the seacoast, and yet only the few (historically overrepresented by race, power, and gender), have had jurisdiction over the oceans’ vast resources. As rising sea levels, commercial exploitation, and pollution of our oceans threaten global health, the need for more diverse voices in the conversation, especially women and those representing the BIPOC community, are necessary to ensure justice for those who are likely to suffer coastal climate change consequences first.

We will be reading, researching, and constructing arguments about caring for coastal wetlands, maintaining biodiversity, mapping (and undoubtedly mining) the seabed, along with possibilities for regenerative farming, geoengineering, and the United Nations’ recommendations on evolving international marine laws to better protect the high seas, our coastal homes, and the ocean habitat on which the world has always depended for food, medicine, climate stability, and recreation. Will the voices and activism of the many sustain the Final Frontier of our planet?

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.

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.

Oceans function as borders and as transnational space. They are the subject of scientific inquiry, of adventure, and of war. We use them to assert power, dispose of things, and construct cultural identity. We mythologize them in the arts and we scan them for signs of geopolitical and environmental doom. The relationship between humans and the sea reflects an essential paradox: despite our significant reliance upon the Earth's ocean resources, we compromise our existence by continuing to commodify, exploit, and degrade these resources.

This course will focus on the humanities and social sciences as we seek to (re)define and (possibly) resolve this complex and paradoxical relationship. These branches of study provide analytical frameworks for the historical, cultural, social, political, and economic contexts within which the human-sea relationship has evolved. Course readings will examine these frameworks via mermaid lore in South Korean popular culture, racialized Southern California water culture in documentary film, plastic activism and material arts, tourism and conservation, seawater as a "theory machine", the ocean as a cultural archive, and more. Students will create an academic argument about a topic of their choosing within this scholarly context by writing a research proposal, an annotated bibliography, and an extended research paper. Some possible topics for inquiry might include the new UN High Seas Treaty, the triangular trade, bycatch trawling, rebounding whale populations, coral die-off, coastal real estate, the cruise industry, conservation organizations like Sea Shepherd or Greenpeace, conflict in the South China Sea, Arctic exploration, and pirates. Successful projects have also begun with close analysis of a primary source from an artist, musician, or filmmaker whose work falls into this research area.

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.