INTRO TO COMP ETHNIC STUDIES
Introduction to the field of comparative ethnic studies.
- TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
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Instructor:
Bahia Munem
Info - 4 points
INTRO-COMP ETHIC STUDIES-DISC
- R 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
- R 5:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Bahia Munem
Info - 0 points
CRIT APPRO-STUDY OF ETH & RACE
This course provides an introduction to central approaches and concepts animating the investigation of race and ethnicity. We will not treat either of these categories of difference as a given, nor as separable from other axes of social difference. Rather, we will apply an interdisciplinary and intersectional framework to illuminate how these concepts have come to emerge and cohere within a number of familiar and less familiar socio-cultural and historical contexts. We will consider how racial and ethnic differentiation as fraught but powerful processes have bolstered global labor regimes and imperial expansion projects; parsed, managed, and regulated populations; governed sexed and gendered logics of subject and social formation; and finally, opened and constrained axes of self-understanding, political organization, and social belonging. Special attention will be given to broadening students understanding of racial and ethnic differentiation beyond examinations of identity. Taken together, theoretical and empirical readings, discussions, and outside film screenings will prepare students for further coursework in race and ethnic studies, as well as fields such as literary studies, women’s studies, history, sociology, and anthropology.
- M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jennifer Lee
CULPA: 2 Wikipedia Info - 3 points
INTRODUCTION TO LATINO STUDIES
This course provides an introductory, interdisciplinary discussion of the major issues surrounding this nations Latino population. The focus is on social scientific perspectives utilized by scholars in the field of Latino Studies. Major demographic, social, economic, and political trends are discussed. Key topics covered in the course include: the evolution of Latino identity and ethnicity; the main Latino sub-populations in the United States; the formation of Latino communities in the United States; Latino immigration; issues of race and ethnicity within the Latino population; socioeconomic status and labor force participation of Latinos; Latino social movements; and the participation of Latinos in U.S. civil society.
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Carlos G Zuniga-Nieto
Info - 3 points
POST 9/11 IMMIGRATION POLICIES
Since September 11, 2001, there has been an avalanche of immigration enforcement policies and initiatives proposed or implemented under the guise of national security. This course will analyze the domino effect of the Patriot Act, the Absconder Initiative, Special Registration, the Real I.D. Act, border security including the building of the 700-mile fence along the U.S./Mexico border, Secured Communities Act-that requires the cooperation of state and local authorities in immigration enforcement, the challenge to birthright citizenship, and now the congressional hearings on Islamic radicalization. Have these policies been effective in combating the war on terrorism and promoting national security? Who stands to benefit from these enforcement strategies? Do immigrant communities feel safer in the U.S.? How have states joined the federal bandwagon of immigration enforcement or created solutions to an inflexible, broken immigration system?
- R 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Elizabeth Ouyang
CULPA: 8
Info
- 4 points
CULTURES OF THE US MEXICO BORDERLANDS
In recent years, the US has built a multi-billion-dollar wall along the Mexican border. While the wall may appear to be an anomaly, it rests on longstanding legacies of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. In this seminar, we will look at these legacies through the eyes of Natives, Latinxs, whites, and others who have lived in the US–Mexico borderlands. Within the confines of literature, we will read novelists like Willa Cather, playwrights like Cherríe Moraga, and poets like Simon Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo). Meanwhile, across the more capacious category of culture, we will engage with promoters who encouraged whites to claim homesteads, periodistas who emboldened Latinxs to protect pueblos, and leaders who helped Natives fight for sovereignty. By blending literary studies and ethnic studies, we will gain a thorough grasp of the territories that have taken shape since the US–Mexico War (1846–48), especially the ones that we currently call Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. From these concrete contexts, we will ask and answer more abstract questions: What are borders—are they physical boundaries, or are they psychosocial conditions? Similarly, what are nations—are they stable and homogeneous groups, or are they flexible and diverse communities? Ultimately, what are human beings—can they be branded as illegal aliens, or do they have inalienable rights? During the semester, we will work through these questions both collectively and individually: to enrich our in-class discussions, each student will complete a four- to five-page close-reading essay, a fourteen- or fifteen-page research essay, and a multimedia borderlands map.
- R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Carlos Nugent
Info - 4 points
Memory and Monuments in the U.S. West
Memory and Monuments US W
This class explores the relationships among memory, monuments, place, and political power in
the United States West. The course begins with an introduction to the theory of collective
memory and then delves into case studies in New Mexico, California, and Texas. We will
expand our perspective at the end of the course to compare what we have learned with the
recent debates over monuments to the Confederacy. We will consider both physical
manifestations of collective memory such as monuments and architecture as well as intangible
expressions like performance, oral history and folklore.
- F 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Brian Luna Lucero
Info - 4 points
VIDEO AS INQUIRY
The goal of this course is to familiarize students with visual production, particularly video production, as a mode of inquiry to explore questions related to race, ethnicity, indigeneity, and other forms of social hierarchy and difference. The class will include readings in visual production as a mode of inquiry and on the basic craft of video production in various genres (fiction, documentary, and experimental). As part of the course, students will produce a video short and complete it by semester's end.
- W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Frances Negron-Muntaner
CULPA: 18
Wikipedia
Info
- 4 points
MODES OF INQUIRY
Corequisites: CSER UN3921 This class, a combination of a seminar and a workshop, will prepare students to conduct, write up, and present original research. It has several aims and goals. First, the course introduces students to a variety of ways of thinking about knowledge as well as to specific ways of knowing and making arguments key to humanistic and social science fields. Second, this seminar asks students to think critically about the approaches they employ in pursuing their research. The course will culminate in a semester project, not a fully executed research project, but rather an 8-10 page proposal for research that will articulate a question, provide basic background on the context that this question is situated in, sketch preliminary directions and plot out a detailed methodological plan for answering this question. Students will be strongly encouraged to think of this proposal as related to their thesis or senior project. Over the course of the semester, students will also produce several short exercises to experiment with research techniques and genres of writing.
- R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Sayantani T Dasgupta
CULPA: 2 Info - 4 points
RACE&REPRESENTATION IN ASIAN AMER CINEMA
This seminar focuses on the critical analysis of Asian representation and participation in Hollywood by taking a look at how mainstream American cinema continues to essentialize the Asian and how Asian American filmmakers have responded to Hollywood Orientalist stereotypes. We will analyze various issues confronting the Asian American, including yellowface, white patriarchy, male and female stereotypes, the “model minority” myth, depictions of “Chinatowns,” panethnicity, the changing political interpretations of the term Asian American throughout American history, gender and sexuality, and cultural hegemonies and privileging within the Asian community.
- R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Eric Gamalinda
CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info - 4 points
LATIN MUSIC AND IDENTITY
Latin music has had a historically strained relationship with mainstream music tastes, exploding in occasional boom periods, and receding into invisibility in others. What if this were true because it is a space for hybrid construction of identity that directly reflects a mixture of traditions across racial lines in Latin America? This course will investigate Latin musics transgression of binary views of race in Anglo-American society, even as it directly affects the development of pop music in America. From New Orleans jazz to Texas corridos, salsa, rock, and reggaeton, Latin music acts as both as a soundtrack and a structural blueprint for the 21st centurys multicultural experiment. There will be a strong focus on studying Latin musics political economy, and investigating the story it tells about migration and globalization.
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Edward Morales
Info - 4 points
COLONIZATION/DECOLONIZATION
Prerequisites: Open to CSER majors/concentrators only. Others may be allowed to register with the instructors permission. This course explores the centrality of colonialism in the making of the modern world, emphasizing cross-cultural and social contact, exchange, and relations of power; dynamics of conquest and resistance; and discourses of civilization, empire, freedom, nationalism, and human rights, from 1500 to 2000. Topics include pre-modern empires; European exploration, contact, and conquest in the new world; Atlantic-world slavery and emancipation; and European and Japanese colonialism in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The course ends with a section on decolonization and post-colonialism in the period after World War II. Intensive reading and discussion of primary documents.
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Manan Ahmed
CULPA: 6
Wikipedia
h-index: 6
Info
- 4 points
RACE AND RACISMS
In this class we will approach race and racism from a variety of disciplinary and intellectual perspectives, including: critical race theory/philosophy, anthropology, history and history of science and medicine. We will focus on the development and deployment of the race concept since the mid-19th century. Students will come to understand the many ways in which race has been conceptualized, substantiated, classified, managed and observed in the (social) sciences, medicine, and public health. We will also explore the practices and effects of race (and race-making) in familiar and less familiar social and political worlds. In addition to the courses intellectual content, students will gain critical practice in the seminar format -- that is, a collegial, discussion-driven exchange of ideas.
- R 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Catherine Fennell
Info - 4 points
MUSLIM ROOTS/ ROUTES IN THE AMERICAS
Muslims’ roots in the Americas are centuries old despite their presence being considered a recent phenomenon. This legacy emerges from migratory movements from the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia, which were precipitated by multiple and intersecting factors. This course will trace and examine the historical and contemporary waves of Muslim and Arab (forced) migrations into the Americas to explore how empire, globalization, and war have influenced the flow of people across borders and shaped policies and ideas of belonging in receiving nation-states. We will focus on Arab and Muslim identity in light of gendered, ethnoreligious, class, and national affiliations and investigate the racialization of Islam and the gendered-Orientalist constructions of Arabs and Muslims in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean (with particular emphasis on Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, and others). Through interdisciplinary texts and a comparative framework, we will trace how specific diasporic Muslim and Arab subjects have been imagined, received, incorporated or altogether rejected into host nation-states.
- T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Bahia Munem
Info - 4 points
History of Childhood in the Americas
The transition from the protected status of childhood into adulthood in the United States varies across class, age, socioeconomic, and legal status, but how does law intersect with rites of passage in coming of age experiences with youths in Latin America? How have societies in the Americas define the shifting notions of childhood and adolescence and how have youths experience coming of age? This course will familiarize students with how legal regimes in Latin America and the United States define the fluid parameters of childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Students will learn to recognize the role of law and the contradictions in how youths experience the emotional, legal, political, and cultural transition of coming of age.
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Carlos G Zuniga-Nieto
Info - 4 points
Latinx Environmental Justice: Research i
This course explores national case studies of environmental and racial injustice in Latinx communities and their connection to climate change. Students in the course will analyze, interpret, and evaluate cultural symbols and arguments from migrant farmworkers; Black Indigenous in cities; Afro-Latina women in rural, island contexts; and others who confront the most serious consequences of environmental degradation and climate disruption. It addresses theories and concepts of environmental racism and environmental justice, underscoring how Latinx groups have challenged, expanded, and contributed to the environmental justice discourse in struggles over public parks and beaches, clean air, clean water, pesticide exposure, lead poisoning, and high environmental risks since the 1960s. The course will examine distinct Latinx histories and geographies through the lens of essays, art and sound installations, short stories, documentaries, poetry, short films, and digital multimedia projects to understand better the environmental attitudes and issues that impact Latinx groups in the historical and increasingly urgent challenges of climate change and environmental injustice.
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Carlos G Zuniga-Nieto
Info - 4 points
Histories and Representations of the Bro
Histories & Rep of the Br
The history of the Bronx is a history of the struggles, political coalitions, and creative contributions of the dispossessed. To tell the story of the Bronx is to tell the story of how historically marginalized communities have survived and made a home in environments forsaken by the state. And yet, in the popular imagination, the Bronx often circulates simply as a symbol of urban abjection, as the necessary foil against which prosperous urban spaces define themselves. Many of these "Bronx tales" invariably relegate the borough both materially and imaginatively to the past—infused with either white ethnic nostalgia of a lost Bronx innocence or with battle-scar bravado won on its mean streets. This interdisciplinary course invites students to interrogate these long-standing narratives about the Bronx through a critical study of the borough’s rich history and enduring cultural, political, and artistic traditions during the past century. This course explores a variety of movements and artifacts that have been central to the making of the Bronx such as: efforts to establish affordable housing, public art-making, the literary tradition of Bronx coming-of-age stories, grassroots organizing for immigrant rights, struggles against gentrification and environmental racism, and the inter-ethnic collaborations that led to the emergence of hip hop. Students will have the opportunity to embark on field trips and will undertake a wide array of methods including oral histories, performance analysis, archival research, ethnography, mapping, as well as opportunities to engage in creative art-making. By the end of the semester, students will gain a nuanced understanding of the central role that Bronx communities have played in the making of modern New York City.
- T 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Deborah Paredez
CULPA: 3
Wikipedia
Info
- 4 points
INTRO TO AMERICAN STUDIES
This course explores the set of possibilities presented by American Studies as a comparative field of study. We begin with a brief overview of the history of the field, and then we’ll focus primarily on the range of modes in which its interdisciplinary work has been undertaken (literary, historical, legal, digital, etc.). The idea here is not to arrive a comprehensive picture of American Studies, but to think about the many ways people have produced knowledge under its aegis. We will also focus on work by Columbia faculty, and sessions of the course are built around visits by faculty in the field to Columbia’s University Seminar in American Studies. Our guiding questions include: How does one do research in a multimedia, “cultural” environment? How does one situate oneself as an “intellectual” or “critic” in relation to one’s object of study? How does one write about different media/genres? How does one incorporate different methodologies into one research project?
- M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Matthew Sandler
CULPA: 1 Info - 3 points