Ethnicity and Race Studies
The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race:
Department Website: Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
Office location: 420 Hamilton Hall
Office contact: 212-854-0510, 212-854-0507
Director of Undergraduate Studies: Dr. Bahia Munem; bmm2194@columbia.edu; 212-854-2058
Assistant Director:
Program Coordinator:
Ethnicity and Race Studies
Founded in 1999, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) is an interdisciplinary intellectual space whose mission is to advance the most innovative teaching, research, and public discussion about race and ethnicity. To promote its mission, the Center organizes conferences, seminars, exhibits, film screenings, and lectures that bring together faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students with diverse interests and backgrounds. Moreover, CSER partners with departments, centers, and institutes at Columbia, as well as with colleagues and organizations on and off campus, in order to reach new audiences and facilitate an exchange of knowledge.
Student Advising
Consulting Advisers
Information to be added
Enrolling in Classes
Information to be added
Preparing for Graduate Study
Information to be added
Coursework Taken Outside of Columbia
Barnard College Courses
To ensure that Barnard College courses complement the major and integrate effectively with the major’s requirements, students are encouraged to consult with CSER’s undergraduate adviser as early in their academic program as possible. The director of undergraduate studies can advise students in what may be relevant programs for their areas.
Transfer Courses
To ensure that transfer courses complement the major and integrate effectively with the major’s requirements, students are encouraged to consult with CSER’s undergraduate adviser as early in their academic program as possible. The director of undergraduate studies can advise students in what may be relevant programs for their areas.
Study Abroad Courses
Students are highly encouraged to participate in study-abroad programs through the Center for Undergraduate Global Engagement, as they represent an exciting opportunity to learn new languages and live in countries that are germane to their areas of study. In addition, travel abroad can enrich every student’s intellectual experience by providing an opportunity to learn about other perspectives on ethnicity and race.
In the past, students have participated in study-abroad programs in many parts of the world, including Australia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and South Africa. To ensure that study abroad complements the major and integrates effectively with the major’s requirements, students are encouraged to consult with CSER’s undergraduate adviser as early in their academic program as possible. The director of undergraduate studies can advise students in what may be relevant programs for their areas.
Summer Courses
To ensure that summer courses complement the major and integrate effectively with the major’s requirements, students are encouraged to consult with CSER’s undergraduate adviser as early in their academic program as possible. The director of undergraduate studies can advise students in what may be relevant programs for their areas.
Core Curriculum Connections
Information to be added
Undergraduate Research and Senior Thesis
Senior Thesis Coursework and Requirements
Majors who elect to follow the Honors track must complete at least four CSER elective courses within their area of specialization, and maintain a 3.6 GPA in the major. In lieu of a fifth elective, Honors majors are required to enroll in the following course in the spring semester of their senior year, during which they are required to write a thesis:
CSER UN3990 Senior Project Seminar (4 points)
Honors majors are required to present their senior essays at the annual undergraduate symposium in April. Students may fulfill this option in one of the following two ways:
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By matriculating in the Senior Thesis course and writing the thesis under the supervision of the course faculty.
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By taking an additional 4-point seminar where a major paper is required and further developing the paper into a thesis length work (minimum of 30 pages) under the supervision of a CSER faculty member.
Department Honors and Prizes
Department Honors
CSER majors may choose to write and/or produce an honors project. The senior thesis gives undergraduate majors the opportunity to engage in rigorous, independent, and original research on a specific topic of their choosing. If a monograph, the honors thesis is expected to be 35-50 pages in length. Honors projects can also take other forms, such as video or websites. These projects also require a written component, but of a shorter length than the traditional thesis. During their senior year, honors students perform research as part of CSER UN3990 Senior Project Seminar. Senior projects are due in early April. The Honors Thesis is an excellent option for any student interested in pursuing a Master’s degree or Ph.D. Students should consult with their director of undergraduate studies no later than the beginning of the first term of their senior year if they wish to be considered for departmental honors. Students who are awarded departmental honors are notified by their department in mid-May.
In order to qualify for departmental honors, students must satisfy all the requirements for the major, maintain a GPA of at least 3.6 in the major, and complete a high quality honors project. In addition, each student is expected to meet periodically with his or her supervising project adviser and preceptor. Although the senior thesis is a prerequisite for consideration for departmental honors, all Ethnicity and Race studies majors are strongly encouraged to consider undertaking thesis work even if they do not wish to be considered for departmental honors.
Academic Prizes
In addition to departmental honors, CSER also confers the following awards to two graduating seniors:
CSER Award for Outstanding Thesis
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A CSER faculty committee will review all senior projects and will select one for the Outstanding Thesis award.
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As part of its deliberation process, the committee reviews recommendations made by CSER faculty, the Modes of Inquiry course instructor and the CSER preceptor. In order to receive this award, the student must keep a GPA of 3.6 or above in the major courses.
CSER Award for Academic Excellence
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CSER confers this award to a student who has consistently demonstrated her/his intellectual capacity in and outside the classroom. In order to receive this award, the student must keep a GPA of 3.6 or above in the major courses.
Core Faculty and Executive Committee
- Sayantani DasGupta (CSER, Professional Studies)
- Jennifer Lee (Sociology)
- Catherine Fennel (Anthropology)
- Karl Jacoby (History)
- Claudio Lomnitz (Anthropology)
- Frances Negrón-Muntaner (English and Comparative Literature)
- Mae Ngai CSER (History)
- Carlos Alonso Nugent (Department of English and Comparative Literature)
- Deborah Paredez (CSER and Professional Practice)
- Audra Simpson (Anthropology)
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Mariana Souto-Manning (TC Professor of Education)
- Kevin Fellezs (Ethnomusicology and IRAAS)
Affiliated Faculty
Rachel Adams
Associate Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature
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Carlos Alonso
Morris A. & Alma Schapiro Professor in the Humanities, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
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Vanessa Agard-Jones
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
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Christina Duffy-Ponsa
Associate Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
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Nadia Abu El-Haj
Professor of Anthropology
Kevin Fellezs
Assistant Professor, Music Department/Institute for Research in African American Studies
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Kaiama L. Glover
Associate Professor, French Department /African Studies Program, Barnard College
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Steven Gregory
Associate Professor of Anthropology and African-American Studies, Department of Anthropology and Institute for Research in African-American Studies
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Frank Guridy
Associate Professor of History
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Kim Hall
Professor, Department of English, Barnard College
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Jill Hill
Assistant Professor of Psychology and Education, Department of Counseling & Clinical Psychology, Teachers College
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Marianne Hirsch
Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature
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Jean Howard
George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities, Department of English and Comparative Literature
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Theodore Hughes
Professor of Korean Studies
Elizabeth Hutchinson
Associate Professor of Art History, Barnard
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George Lewis
Edwin H. Case Professor of Music, Department of Music
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Natasha Lightfoot
Associate Professor of History
Celia Naylor
Associate Professor, Department of History and Africana Studies, Barnard College
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Pablo Piccato
Professor, Department of History; Director, Institute of Latin American Studies
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Caterina Pizzigoni
Assistant Professor, Department of History
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Elizabeth A. Povinelli
Professor, Department of Anthropology
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Samuel Roberts
Associate Professor, Department of History
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Joseph Slaughter
Associate Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature
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Gray Tuttle
Leila Hadley Luce Associate Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies
Christopher Washburne
Associate Professor, Department of Ethnomusicology
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Guidance for Undergraduate Students in the Department
Program Planning for all Students
Information to be added
Course Numbering Structure
Information to be added
Guidance for First-Year Students
Information to be added
Guidance for Transfer Students
Information to be added
Undergraduate Programs of Study
The Ethnicity and Race Studies major and concentration encompass a variety of fields and interdisciplinary approaches to the critical study of ethnicity and race.
Faculty and students find this field exciting because it opens up new ways of thinking about two fundamental aspects of human social existence: race and ethnicity. Although various traditional disciplines such as history, sociology, anthropology, and literature offer valuable knowledge on the subject, ethnicity and race studies provides a flexible interdisciplinary and comparative space to bring the insights of various conceptual frameworks and disciplines together in critical dialogue.
Overall, the major introduces students to the study of ethnicity and race and the deep implications of the subject matter for thinking about human bodies, power, identity, culture, social hierarchy, and the formation of political communities. The major encourages students to consider the repercussions of racial and ethnic identifications to local and global politics, and how race and ethnicity relates to gender, sexuality, and social class, among other forms of hierarchical difference.
Students majoring in ethnicity and race studies may focus their work on specific groups, including Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, and/or concentrate on the comparative study of how race and ethnic categories are formed and how they transform. Students also have the option of designing an individualized course of study. Individualized courses of study may encompass a wide variety of themes. Among the most studied are those involving the relationship between race, ethnicity and law; health; human rights; urban spaces; cultural production; visual culture; and the environment.
Due to its rigorous curriculum, which trains students in theory, history, and a wide range of modes of inquiry, the major enables a student to follow multiple directions after graduation. According to our internal surveys, nearly half of CSER students continue to graduate programs in history, anthropology, and ethnic studies, among other areas. A second group of students pursues a variety of professions, most notably related to law, medicine, media, social work, government, and human rights.
Major in Ethnicity and Race Studies
The requirements for this program were modified on March 2022. Students who declared this program before this date should contact the director of undergraduate studies for the department in order to confirm their correct course of study.
The major in ethnicity and race studies consists of a minimum of 27 points. All majors are required to take three core courses as listed below:
Code | Title | Points |
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Points | ||
Core Courses | ||
1. | ||
CSER UN1010 | INTRO TO COMP ETHNIC STUDIES (or) | 4.00 |
2. | ||
CSER UN3928 | COLONIZATION/DECOLONIZATION | 4.00 |
OR | ||
CSER UN3942 | RACE AND RACISMS | 4.00 |
3. | ||
CSER UN3919 | MODES OF INQUIRY | 4.00 |
Specialization | ||
All majors will select one of the areas of specialization listed below from which to complete their remaining coursework: | ||
Asian American studies | ||
Comparative ethnic studies | ||
Latino/a studies | ||
Native American/Indigenous studies | ||
Individualized courses of study | ||
Majors who elect NOT to follow the Honors track must complete at least five CSER elective courses, in consultation with their major adviser, within their area of specialization. At least one of these electives must be a writing-intensive seminar (3000 or above level courses must be chosen within the department). Majors who elect to follow the Honors track must complete at least four CSER elective courses, in consultation with their major adviser, within their area of specialization. | ||
Honors | ||
In lieu of a fifth elective, Honors majors are required to enroll in the following course in the spring semester of their senior year, during which they are required to write a thesis: | ||
CSER UN3990 | SENIOR PROJECT SEMINAR | 4 |
Honors majors are required to present their senior essays at the annual undergraduate symposium in April. Students may fulfill this option in one of the following two ways: | ||
1. By matriculating in the Senior Thesis course and writing the thesis under the supervision of the course faculty. | ||
2. By taking an additional 4-point seminar where a major paper is required and further developing the paper into a thesis length work (minimum of 30 pages) under the supervision of a CSER faculty member. | ||
Language Courses | ||
- One of the following is highly recommended, although not required for the major: | ||
- One course beyond the intermediate-level in language pertinent to the student's focus | ||
- An introductory course in a language other than that used to fulfill the degree requirements, but that is pertinent to the student's focus | ||
- A linguistics or other course that critically engages language | ||
- An outside language and study abroad programs that include an emphasis on language acquisition |
For students who entered Columbia in or before the 2023-24 academic year
Concentration in Ethnicity and Race Studies
The requirements for this program were modified on March 2022. Students who declared this program before this date should contact the director of undergraduate studies for the department in order to confirm their correct course of study.
The concentration in ethnicity and race studies requires a minimum of 19 points. Students take two core courses (may choose between CSER UN1010 and CSER UN1040) and four elective courses, one of which must be a seminar:
Code | Title | Points |
---|---|---|
Points | ||
Core Courses | ||
The concentration in ethnicity and race studies requires a minimum of 19 points. All students who choose a concentration are required to take two core course as listed below: | ||
1. | ||
CSER UN1010 | INTRO TO COMP ETHNIC STUDIES (or) | 4 |
2. | ||
CSER UN3928 | COLONIZATION/DECOLONIZATION | 4 |
OR | ||
CSER UN3942 | RACE AND RACISMS | 4 |
Specialization | ||
Students must complete at least four courses, in consultation with their major adviser, in one of the following areas of specialization. At least one of the elective courses must be a seminar. | ||
Asian American studies | ||
Comparative ethnic studies | ||
Latino/a studies | ||
Native American/Indigenous studies | ||
Individualized courses of study |
Fall 2024
Ethnicity and Race Studies
CSER UN1010 INTRO TO COMP ETHNIC STUDIES. 4.00 points.
CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement
Students MUST register for a Discussion Section.
Introduction to the field of comparative ethnic studies
Fall 2024: CSER UN1010
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 1010 | 001/13925 | M W 1:10pm - 2:25pm 717 Hamilton Hall |
Shana Redmond | 4.00 | 59/60 |
HIST UN3030 IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP IN AMER HIST. 4.00 points.
This course explores the meaning of American citizenship in connection with the country’s immigration history. Topics include historic pathways to citizenship for migrants; barriers to citizenship including wealth, race, gender, beliefs and documentation; and critical issues such as colonialism, statelessness, dual nationality, and birthright citizenship. We will ask how have people become citizens and under what authority has that citizenship been granted? What are the historic barriers to citizenship and how have they shifted over time? What major questions remain unanswered by Congress and the Supreme Court regarding the rights of migrants to attain and retain American citizenship?
Fall 2024: HIST UN3030
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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HIST 3030 | 001/14140 | Th 12:10pm - 2:00pm 311 Fayerweather |
Jessica Lee | 4.00 | 13/15 |
CSER UN3490 POST 9/11 IMMIGRATION POLICIES. 4.00 points.
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?
Fall 2024: CSER UN3490
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3490 | 001/13928 | Th 10:10am - 12:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Elizabeth OuYang | 4.00 | 19/22 |
CSER UN3523 INTRODUCTION TO LATINX STUDIES. 4.00 points.
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
Fall 2024: CSER UN3523
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3523 | 001/14274 | Th 4:10pm - 6:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Carlos Nugent | 4.00 | 17/22 |
CSER UN3702 Memory and Monuments in the U.S. West. 4.00 points.
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
Fall 2024: CSER UN3702
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3702 | 001/13929 | T 2:10pm - 4:00pm 253 International Affairs Bldg |
Brian Luna Lucero | 4.00 | 11/22 |
CSER UN3919 MODES OF INQUIRY. 4.00 points.
Corequisites: CSER UN3921
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
Fall 2024: CSER UN3919
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3919 | 001/13930 | Th 12:10pm - 2:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Sayantani DasGupta | 4.00 | 21/25 |
CSER UN3922 RACE&REPRESENTATION IN ASIAN AMER CINEMA. 4.00 points.
Enrollment limited to 22.
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
Fall 2024: CSER UN3922
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3922 | 001/13931 | Th 4:10pm - 6:00pm 707 Hamilton Hall |
Eric Gamalinda | 4.00 | 24/22 |
CSER UN3926 LATIN MUSIC AND IDENTITY. 4.00 points.
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
Fall 2024: CSER UN3926
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3926 | 001/13933 | T 2:10pm - 4:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Edward Morales | 4.00 | 25/22 |
CSER UN3928 COLONIZATION/DECOLONIZATION. 4.00 points.
CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement
Enrollment limited to 22.
Prerequisites: Open to CSER majors/concentrators only. Others may be allowed to register with the instructor's permission.
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
Spring 2024: CSER UN3928
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3928 | 001/13107 | W 10:10am - 12:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Karl Jacoby | 4.00 | 20/22 |
Fall 2024: CSER UN3928
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
CSER 3928 | 001/13934 | M 10:10am - 12:00pm 507 Philosophy Hall |
Manan Ahmed | 4.00 | 24/20 |
CSER UN3935 Historical Anthropology of the US-Mexico Border. 4 points.
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.
Fall 2024: CSER UN3935
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3935 | 001/13935 | M 10:10am - 12:00pm 963 Ext Schermerhorn Hall |
Claudio Lomnitz | 4 | 12/20 |
CSER UN3942 RACE AND RACISMS. 4.00 points.
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
Fall 2024: CSER UN3942
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3942 | 001/13936 | W 2:10pm - 4:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Bahia Munem | 4.00 | 13/15 |
SOCI UN3968 IMMIGRATION, RACE, AND ASIAN AMERICANS. 4.00 points.
Drawing from evidenced-based social science research, this course will equip students to understand how the laws and policies of America’s past continue to affect the experiences, trajectories, and perceptions of Asian Americans today. Tracing the racial mobility of Asian Americans from “unassimilable to exceptional”, we begin by studying legacies of exclusion and then examine Asian Americans’ experiences in education, affirmative action, the workplace, and the surge of anti-Asian violence during the Covid-19 pandemic
Fall 2024: SOCI UN3968
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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SOCI 3968 | 001/13849 | M 2:10pm - 4:00pm 509 Knox Hall |
Jennifer Lee | 4.00 | 15/22 |
CSER GU4360 AMER DIVA:RACE,GDNDR&PERFMNC. 4.00 points.
What makes a diva a diva? How have divas shaped and challenged our ideas about American culture, performance, race, space, and capital during the last century? This seminar explores the central role of the diva—the celebrated, iconic, and supremely skilled female performer—in the fashioning and re-imagining of racial, gendered, sexual, national, temporal, and aesthetic categories in American culture. Students in this course will theorize the cultural function and constitutive aspects of the diva and will analyze particular performances of a range of American divas from the 20th and 21st centuries and their respective roles in (re)defining American popular culture
Fall 2024: CSER GU4360
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 4360 | 001/13937 | W 10:10am - 12:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Deborah Paredez | 4.00 | 16/15 |
CSER GR5000 INTRO TO AMERICAN STUDIES. 3.00 points.
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?
Spring 2024
Ethnicity and Race Studies
CSER UN3303 Whiteness, Sentiment and Political Belonging. 4.00 points.
Scholars of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and race have long been preoccupied with the terms, categories, and processes through which the United States has excluded or qualified the citizenship of particular groups, including women, immigrants, indigenous nations, and descendants of enslaved Africans. Yet it has spent less time interrogating the unqualified content of Americanness, and the work that the imagination of a "default" American identity does in contemporary political life. This seminar introduces students to this problem through an unspoken racial dimension of American political belonging -- the presumed whiteness of ideal American citizens. Readings drawn from several disciplinary traditions, including anthropology, linguistics, sociology, history, and journalism, will ground students in the course's key concepts, including racial markedness, the history of racialization, and public sentiment. Students will mobilize these tools to analyze several cases that rendered white sentiment explicit in politically efficacious ways, including the "panic" incited by the destabilization of race-based residential segregation, the "paranoia" of conspiracy theorists, the "sympathy" associated with natural disasters, and the "resentment" or "rage" associated with the loss of racial privileges
Spring 2024: CSER UN3303
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3303 | 001/13126 | Th 10:10am - 12:00pm 467 Ext Schermerhorn Hall |
Catherine Fennell | 4.00 | 15/15 |
CSER UN3522 War, Gender & Migration. 4.00 points.
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
Spring 2024: CSER UN3522
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3522 | 001/17041 | W 2:10pm - 4:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Bahia Munem | 4.00 | 16/15 |
CSER UN3701 LATINX RACIAL IDENTITY & CULTURAL PRODUCTION. 4.00 points.
Enrollment limited to 22.
The course will investigate the impact of racial identity among Latinx in the U.S. on cultural production of Latinos in literature, media, politics and film. The seminar will consider the impact of bilingualism, shifting racial identification, and the viability of monolithic terms like Latinx. We will see how the construction of Latinx racial identity affects acculturation in the U.S., with particular attention to hybrid identities and the centering of black and indigenous cultures. Examples will be drawn from different Latinx ethnicities from the Caribbean, Mexico and the rest of Latin America
Spring 2024: CSER UN3701
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3701 | 001/13111 | |
Edward Morales | 4.00 | 15/22 |
CSER UN3821 Archives of Possibility. 4.00 points.
In part due to the rise of social and political movements challenging and reshaping colonial narratives about the past, the emergence of digital technologies, and unprecedented access to information, attention to archives has increased over the last decades. This course aims to familiarize students with theories, histories, and practices of archival-building as a mode of knowledge production and to explore questions regarding the relationship between archives and power. The course also examines how and under what conditions archives open up new possibilities by producing and circulating marginalized knowledge, narratives, and perspectives; promotes archival research, and familiarizes students with the basics of preservation in collaboration with the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. As part of the course, students will research Columbia's archives and build their own as part of this process
Spring 2024: CSER UN3821
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3821 | 001/17756 | W 4:10pm - 6:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Frances Negron-Muntaner | 4.00 | 16/12 |
CSER UN3905 ASIAN AMERICAN & PSYCH OF RACE. 4.00 points.
This seminar provides an introduction to mental health issues for Asian Americans. In particular, it focuses on the psychology of Asian Americans as racial/ethnic minorities in the United States by exploring a number of key concepts: immigration, racialization, prejudice, family, identity, pathology, and loss. We will examine the development of identity in relation to self, family, college, and society. Quantitative investigation, qualitative research, psychology theories of multiculturalism, and Asian American literature will also be integrated into the course
Spring 2024: CSER UN3905
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3905 | 001/13123 | T 10:10am - 12:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Motoni Katayama | 4.00 | 13/15 |
CSER UN3928 COLONIZATION/DECOLONIZATION. 4.00 points.
CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement
Enrollment limited to 22.
Prerequisites: Open to CSER majors/concentrators only. Others may be allowed to register with the instructor's permission.
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
Spring 2024: CSER UN3928
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3928 | 001/13107 | W 10:10am - 12:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Karl Jacoby | 4.00 | 20/22 |
Fall 2024: CSER UN3928
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
CSER 3928 | 001/13934 | M 10:10am - 12:00pm 507 Philosophy Hall |
Manan Ahmed | 4.00 | 24/20 |
CSER UN3940 COMP STUDY OF CONSTITUTNL CHAL. 4.00 points.
This course will examine how the American legal system decided constitutional challenges affecting the empowerment of African, Latino, and Asian American communities from the 19th century to the present. Focus will be on the role that race, citizenship, capitalism/labor, property, and ownership played in the court decision in the context of the historical, social, and political conditions existing at the time. Topics include the denial of citizenship and naturalization to slaves and immigrants, government sanctioned segregation, the struggle for reparations for descendants of slavery, and Japanese Americans during World War II
Spring 2024: CSER UN3940
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3940 | 001/13117 | Th 10:10am - 12:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Elizabeth OuYang | 4.00 | 17/22 |
CSER UN3990 SENIOR PROJECT SEMINAR. 4.00 points.
The Senior Project Seminar will focus primarily on developing students’ ideas for their research projects while charting their research goals. The course is designed to develop and hone the skills necessary to complete a senior thesis paper or creative project. An important component of the seminar is the completion of original and independent student research. The seminar provides students a forum in which to discuss their work with both the instructor and their peers. The professor, who facilitates the colloquium, will also provide students with additional academic support through seminar presentations, one-on-one meetings, and classroom exercises; supplementary to the feedback they receive from their individual faculty advisors. The course is divided into three main parts: 1.) researching and producing a senior project thesis; 2.) the submission of coursework throughout the spring semester that help lead to a successful completed project; 3.) and an oral presentation showcasing one’s research to those in and beyond the CSER community at the end of the academic year. This course is reserved for seniors who are completing a CSER senior project and who have successfully completed Modes of Inquiry in either their junior or senior year
Spring 2024: CSER UN3990
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 3990 | 001/13109 | W 12:10pm - 2:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Darius Echeverria | 4.00 | 9/10 |
CSER GU4004 Data, Race, Power and Justice. 4.00 points.
For more than a century, scientists, policy makers, law enforcement, and government agencies have collected, curated and analyzed data about people in order to make impactful decisions. This practice has exploded along with the computational power available to these agents. Those who design and deploy data collection, predictive analytics, and autonomous and intelligent decision-making systems claim that these technologies will remove problematic biases from consequential decisions. They aim to put a rational and objective foundation based on numbers and observations made by non-human sensors in the management of public life and to equip experts with insights that, they believe, will translate into better outcomes (health, economic, educational, judicial) for all. But these dreams and their pursuit through technology are as problematic as they are enticing. Throughout American history, data has often been used to oppress minoritized communities, manage populations, and institutionalize, rationalize, and naturalize systems of racial violence. The impersonality of data, the same quality that makes it useful, can silence voices and displace entire ways of knowing the world
Spring 2024: CSER GU4004
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 4004 | 001/13135 | F 10:10am - 12:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Brian Luna Lucero | 4.00 | 14/22 |
CSER GU4005 Abolition: Theory and Practice. 4.00 points.
This course will follow the idea of abolition as expressed first through the eighteenthand nineteenth-century struggle to end chattel slavery in the Americas, and then as it has come to define the struggle against over-policing and mass-incarceration in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the first half of the class, we will consider abolition in England and its colonies, Haiti, Cuba, and the U.S. In so doing we will examine both primary sources from abolitionist print culture (narratives by fugitives from slavery, speeches, poems, and polemical tracts), as well as secondary sources by historians, literary critics, and political theorists. In the second half, we will likewise read writing by activists (some incarcerated or formerly incarcerated, and some not) alongside journalism and scholarship from the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of carceral studies. Across both periods, Black writers will take up the bulk of our attention
Spring 2024: CSER GU4005
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 4005 | 001/13125 | M 4:10pm - 6:00pm 420 Hamilton Hall |
Matthew Sandler | 4.00 | 12/18 |
CSER GU4350 CINEMA OF SUBVERSION. 4.00 points.
Russian filmmaker Andre Tarkovsky said that “the artist has no right to an idea in which he is not socially committed.” Argentine filmmaker Fernando Solanas and Spanish-born Octavio Getino postulated an alternative cinema that would spur spectators to political action. In this course we will ask the question: How do authoritarian governments influence the arts, and how do artists respond? We will study how socially committed filmmakers have subverted and redefined cinema aesthetics to challenge authoritarianism and repression. In addition, we will look at how some filmmakers respond to institutional oppression, such as poverty and corruption, even within so-called “free” societies. The focus is on contemporary filmmakers but will also include earlier classics of world cinema to provide historical perspective. The course will discuss these topics, among others: What is authoritarianism, what is totalitarianism, and what are the tools of repression within authoritarian/totalitarian societies? What is Third Cinema, and how does it represent and challenge authoritarianism? How does film navigate the opposition of censorship, propaganda and truth? How do filmmakers respond to repressive laws concerning gender and sexual orientation? How do they deal with violence and trauma? How are memories of repressive regimes reflected in the psyche of modern cinema? And finally, what do we learn about authority, artistic vision, and about ourselves when we watch these films?
Spring 2024: CSER GU4350
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CSER 4350 | 001/13114 | Th 4:10pm - 6:00pm 315 Hamilton Hall |
Eric Gamalinda | 4.00 | 14/22 |
CSER GR5001 METHODS IN AMERICAN STUDIES. 4.00 points.
Conceived in the 1920’s and 1930’s, American Studies sought to make a synoptic account of the “national character.” Since the 1960’s, the field has turned towards a focus on various forms of inequality as the dark side of American exceptionalism. This course surveys the development of the field’s current preoccupations, covering a range of periods, regions, groups, and cultural practices that present productive problems for generalizations about U.S. identity. We begin with the first academic movement in American Studies, the myth and symbol school—and think through its growth in the context of post-WWII funding for higher education. We then move on to a series of debates centered at intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. We’ll close by examining the historical background of protest movements built around the identitarian concerns about rape culture and mass incarceration
HIST UN1512 The Battle for North America: An Indigenous History of the Seven Years War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812. 4.00 points.
This course will explore the struggle to control the continent of North America from an Indigenous perspective. After a century of European colonization Native peoples east of the Mississippi River Valley formed a political confederation aimed at preserving Native sovereignty. This Native confederacy emerged as a dominant force during the Seven Years War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812. At times Native political interests aligned with the French and British Empires, but remained in opposition to the expansion of Anglo-American colonial settlements into Indian country. This course is designed to engage literature and epistemology surrounding these New World conflicts as a means of the colonial and post-colonial past in North America. We will explore the emergence of intersecting indigenous and European national identities tied to the social construction of space and race. In this course I will ask you to re-think American history by situating North America as a Native space, a place that was occupied and controlled by indigenous peoples. You will be asked to imagine a North America that was indigenous and adaptive, and not necessarily destined to be absorbed by European settler colonies. Accordingly, this course we will explore the intersections of European colonial settlement and Euro-American national expansion, alongside of the emergence of indigenous social formations that dominated the western interior until the middle of the 19th century. This course is intended to be a broad history of Indigenous North America during a tumultuous period, but close attention will be given to use and analysis of primary source evidence. Similarly, we will explore the necessity of using multiple genres of textual evidence – archival documents, oral history, material artifacts, etc., -- when studying indigenous history
Spring 2024: HIST UN1512
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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HIST 1512 | 001/11676 | T Th 1:10pm - 2:25pm 303 Hamilton Hall |
Michael Witgen | 4.00 | 17/35 |
HIST UN3501 Indians and Empires in North America. 4.00 points.
In this course you will be asked to re-think American history. That is, we will approach the history of America as a continental history. This will require that we think of North America as a New World space, a place that was inhabited and occupied by indigenous peoples, and then remade by the arrival and settlement of Europeans. You will be asked to imagine a North America that was indigenous and adaptive, as well as colonial and Euro-American. This approach to the study of North American history is designed to challenge the epistemology and literature of the history of colonization and American expansion, which displaces Native peoples from the central narrative of American history by placing them at the physical margins of colonial and national development. Instead we will explore the intersection and integration of indigenous and Euro-American national identity and national space in North America and trace their co-evolution from first contact through the early nineteenth century
Spring 2024: HIST UN3501
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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HIST 3501 | 001/14731 | W 4:10pm - 6:00pm 402 International Affairs Bldg |
Michael Witgen | 4.00 | 10/15 |
CPLS GU4325 Abolition Medicine: Medical Racisms and Anti-Racisms. 3.00 points.
In 1935, WEB Dubois wrote about abolition democracy: an idea based not only on breaking down unjust systems, but on building up new, antiracist social structures. Scholar activists like Angela Davis, Ruth Gilmore and Mariame Kaba have long contended that the abolition of slavery was but one first step in ongoing abolitionist practices dismantling racialized systems of policing, surveillance and incarceration. The possibilities of prison and police abolition have recently come into the mainstream national consciousness during the 2020 resurgence of nationwide Black Lives Matters (BLM) protests. As we collectively imagine what nonpunitive and supportive community reinvestment in employment, education, childcare, mental health, and housing might look like, medicine must be a part of these conversations. Indeed, if racist violence is a public health emergency, and we are trying to bring forth a “public health approach to public safety” – what are medicine’s responsibilities to these social and institutional reinventions? Medicine has a long and fraught history of racial violence. It was, after all, medicine and pseudoscientific inquiry that helped establish what we know as the racial categorizations of today: ways of separating human beings based on things like skin color and hair texture that were used (and often continue to be used) to justify the enslavement, exclusion, or genocide of one group of people by another. Additionally, the history of the professionalization of U.S. medicine, through the formation of medical schools and professional organizations as well as and the certification of trained physicians, is a history of exclusion, with a solidification of the identity of “physician” around upper middle class white masculinity. Indeed, the 1910 Flexner Report, whose aim was to make consistent training across the country’s medical schools, was explicit in its racism. From practices of eugenic sterilization, to histories of experimentation upon bodies of color, medicine is unfortunately built upon racist, sexist and able-ist practices. This course is built on the premise that a socially just practice of medicine is a bioethical imperative. Such a practice cannot be achieved, however, without examining medicine’s histories of racism, as well as learning from and building upon histories of anti-racist health practice. The first half of the semester will be dedicated to learning about histories of medical racism: from eugenics and racist experimentation to public health xenophobic fear mongering. The second half of the semester will be dedicated to examining medical and grassroots anti-racist practices: from the free health clinics and hospital takeovers of the Black Panther and Young Lords Parties, to environmental activism in Flint and the Sioux Rock Reservation to antiracist AIDS and COVID activism
Spring 2024: CPLS GU4325
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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CPLS 4325 | 001/10663 | Th 12:10pm - 2:00pm 317 Hamilton Hall |
Sayantani DasGupta | 3.00 | 20/20 |
SOCI GR6068 Reckoning with Asian America. 4.00 points.
It took the mass murder of six Asian women in Atlanta on March 16, 2021 to draw national attention to what Asian Americans have been warning about since the wake of Covid-19: a surge in anti-Asian violence and hate. Since the onset of the coronavirus, 1 in 8 Asian American adults experienced a hate incident, and 1 in 7 Asian American women worry all the time about being victimized, reflecting an under-recognized legacy of anti-Asian violence, bigotry, misogyny, and discrimination in the United States that dates back more than 150 years. Drawing on research and readings from the social sciences, this course links the past to the present in order to understand this legacy, and how it continues to affect Asian Americans today
Spring 2024: SOCI GR6068
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Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
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SOCI 6068 | 001/12636 | M 2:10pm - 4:00pm 509 Knox Hall |
Jennifer Lee | 4.00 | 13/15 |
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