All Courses
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GS100 Bridge Scholar Programs: Public Enemy Number One: The War on Drugs Blacks & Latinos
In June 1971, President Richard Nixon officially declared a “War on Drugs,” claiming drug abuse was “public enemy number one.” Subsequently, he created the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), increased federal funding for these agencies, and introduced mandatory prison sentencing for drug-related crimes. Today, the agency maintains 222 field offices and 92 offices in 70 countries outside the U.S., a budget exceeding $3 billion, and 10,169 employees. Less than a decade later, President Ronald Reagan reinforced and expanded many of Nixon’s policies, such as First Lady Nancy Reagan’s 1984 “Just Say No” campaign, which claimed to educate children about the dangerous implications of drug use, and the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum prison sentences for some drug offenses. These efforts have been heavily criticized along the lines of racism, because, as Steven W. Thrasher notes, “Drugs have long been used to scapegoat Black and Latino people, even as study after study finds that white youth use drugs more than their non-white peers and white people are the more likely to have contraband on them when stopped by police.” Despite this, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions expressed a desire to “bring back” the “war on drugs” in 2017. Through various interdisciplinary frameworks—such as Black Feminist Studies, Anthropology, Borderlands Studies, and Critical Media Studies—this course examines debates regarding drug trafficking and abuse in the U.S. and Mexico, especially concerning race, class, gender, and other social, cultural, and political markers and particularly considering the escalation of the drug war in the post 9/11 climate of national securitization.
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FG240 Hip Hop and Feminism
Feminist intellectuals have long-studied hip hop’s theories and politics, especially regarding race, gender, sexuality, class, and other social, cultural, and political markers. Beyond simply locating oppression within hip hop culture—music, art, fashion, dance, film, and other elements—these intellectuals have examined the impetuses for and implications of these problematics. Additionally, they recognize hip hop’s resistive and generative qualities, especially how it has challenged the denigration of marginalized communities for over 40 years. This course examines this contention and contradiction, especially considering how these problems have been revised, resisted, rejected and reproduced within and outside of hip hop culture.
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AH210 Islamic Art
This course is a general survey of the art and architecture of the classical Islamic lands, the Mediterranean and Near East, from 650 to 1700, although we will discuss later and contemporary art from Islamic lands as well. We will pay particular attention to the formation of Islamic art--how typical "Islamic" forms developed from the artistic vocabulary of the late antique Mediterranean and Persia. Architecture and manuscript painting will be emphasized, although metalwork, pottery and textiles, so important in the Islamic tradition, will be considered as well. Throughout the course, we will compare Islamic achievements in architecture and painting to the contemporary traditions of western Europe. There is no prerequisite. The course has a Global designation. Although it is an art history course, students with a background in Arabic language, Islamic history and/or religion are strongly encouraged to take the class.
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FG212 Critical Media Studies
Teaches the competencies necessary for analyzing media codes and conventions and interpreting the myriad meanings and ideologies generated by media texts. Explores how gender, race, sexuality, class, citizenship, and other social, cultural, and political markers are constructed in media, including counter-hegemonic media texts. Examines the ways audiences resist and reproduce dominant media narratives.
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FG200 Feminist Theory
Surveys and historicizes feminist theories, including, but not limited to, Black feminism, Transnational feminism, Xicanisma, Marxist feminism, Transfeminism, and Ecofeminism. This course encourages students to understand feminist theory as a multivocal intellectual project grounded in shifting geopolitical conjunctures.
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FG110 Introduction to Feminist and Gender Studies
Introduces the theories and methodologies constitutive of Feminist & Gender Studies, an interdisciplinary field that examines the historical, contemporary, and always changing relationships between power and markers of identity, such as gender, sexuality, race, class, nation, dis/ability, and citizenship. Informed by the legacies of the civil rights, student, labor, LGBTQ, and women’s movements, this course encourages reflection on student participation in institutions of power and privilege, as well as their role in affecting change.