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?

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Elizabeth Ouyang
  CULPA: 8 Info
• 4 points

War, Gender & Migration

What are the lived experiences and historical contexts of war? How are war and peace gendered and racialized? How do war and conflict impact and complicate belonging and influence the movement of people across borders and boundaries? With these questions in mind, this course examines the dynamics of war and its aftermath through a complex intersectional lens of gender, race, sexuality, class, religion, and nation. We will also consider how war and conflict lead to forced migration. Most regions of the world are currently or have been, immersed in war and conflict. In order to better understand how and why wars are fomented and conflicts occur, we will examine U.S. wars as well as transnational conflicts and perspectives, while considering how the construction of “the enemy” is gendered and racialized. We will utilize readings from various fields of study to examine historical processes of war, conflict, and displacement. We will combine diverse texts and theoretical engagements, lectures, documentary films, discussions, and class-based activities to interrogate war and notions of subjectivity, alterity, and belonging across time, place, and space.

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Bahia Munem
  Info
• 4 points

INTRODUCTION TO LATINX STUDIES

In the US, Latinxs are often treated in quantitative terms—as checkmarks on census forms, or as
data points in demographic surveys. However, Latinxs have always been more than mere numbers:
while some have stayed rooted in traditional homelands, and while others have migrated through
far-flung diasporas, all have drawn on and developed distinctive ways of imagining and inhabiting
the Americas. In this course, we will explore a wide range of these Latinx lifeways. Through readings
in the humanities and social sciences, we will learn how Latinxs have survived amidst and against
settler colonialism and racial capitalism. Meanwhile, through the study of literature and art, we will
see how Latinxs have resisted and/or reinforced these social systems. With our interdisciplinary and
intersectional approach, we will determine why Latinidad has manifested differently in colonial
territories (especially Puerto Rico), regional communities (especially the US–Mexico borderlands),
and transnational diasporas (of Cubans, of Dominicans, and of a variety of Central Americans). At
the same time, we will understand how Latinxs have struggled with shared issues, such as (anti-)
Blackness and (anti-)Indigeneity, gender and sexuality, citizenship and (il)legality, and economic and
environmental (in)justice. During the semester, we will practice Latinx studies both collectively and

individually: to enrich our in-class discussions, each student will complete a reading journal, a five-
page paper, a creative project, and a digital timeline.

• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Darius V Echeverria
  CULPA: 1 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.

• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Brian Luna Lucero
  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.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Bahia Munem
  Info
• 4 points

RACE&REPRESENTATION IN ASIAN AMER CINEMA

RACE&REPRSNTATN IN ASAM 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.
• Instructor: Eric Gamalinda
  CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

LATIN MUSIC AND IDENTITY

LATIN MUSIC AND IDENITY

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.
• 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.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Karl Jacoby
  CULPA: 2 h-index: 8 Info
• 4 points

HIST OF THE US-MEXIC0 BORDER

Beginning in the 1980s, border crossing became an academic rage in the humanities and the social sciences. This was a consequence of globalization, an historical process that reconfigured the boundaries between economy, society, and culture; and it was also a primary theme of post-modernist aesthetics, which celebrated playful borrowing of multiple and diverse historical references. Within that frame, interest in the US-Mexican border shifted dramatically. Since that border is the longest and most intensively crossed boundary between a rich and a poor country, it became a paradigmatic point of reference. Places like Tijuana or El Paso, with their rather seedy reputation, had until then been of interest principally to local residents, but they now became exemplars of post-modern “hybridity,” and were meant to inspire the kind of transnational scholarship that is required in today’s world. Indeed, the border itself became a metaphor, a movable imaginary boundary that marks ethnic and racial distinction in American and Mexican cities. This course is an introduction to the historical formation of the US-Mexican border.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Claudio Lomnitz
  CULPA: 3 Wikipedia 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.

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• 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.
• Instructor: Matthew Sandler
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points