Annual 2024-2025 Class Schedule
Course # | Course Title | Fall | Winter | Spring |
---|---|---|---|---|
HUM 220-0-20 | Health, Biomedicine, Culture, and Society | Santiago Molina TTh 11:00 am - 12:20 pm | ||
HUM 220-0-20 Health, Biomedicine, Culture, and SocietyCo-listed with SOCIOL 220-0-20 We are told constantly, “take care of yourself!” and we do our best to eat well, sleep well, and stay healthy. Our bodies are important to us. They are also important to the institutions we are a part of, including our families, our schools, our jobs, and our country. They are all invested in keeping our bodies healthy and productive. However, the array of institutions interested in the value of our bodies often have additional incentives—our health is surrounded by a hoard of controversies: Why do some people get better medical care than others? How should the healthcare system be organized? How do we balance the risks of new medical treatments with the benefits? What makes the stigma associated with disease and disability so enduring? What happens when no diagnosis can be made? This course offers conceptual tools and perspectives for answering these controversies. To do so it surveys a variety of topics related to the intersections of health, biomedicine, culture, and society. We will analyze the cultural meanings associated with health and illness; the political debates surrounding health care, medical knowledge production, and medical decision-making; and the structure of the social institutions that comprise the health care industry. We will examine many problems with the current state of health and healthcare in the United States and also consider potential solutions. | ||||
HUM 260-0-20 | Waterlogs: Global Cinema of the Aquatic | Kylie Walters MW 10:00 - 11:50 am | ||
HUM 260-0-20 Waterlogs: Global Cinema of the AquaticCo-listed with RTVF 298-0-20 This course dives into the vast world of water in film. Drawing on readings across cultural theory and the environmental humanities, we'll examine the ways visual media of oceans, lakes, and rivers narrate histories of technology, industry, nature, and social difference. Course topics include Jacques Cousteau’s deep-sea filmmaking, cinematic narratives of dams and hydropower, and the representation of fictional underwater creatures, both fearsome and friendly. We’ll ask: How does water relate to theories of cinematic landscape? How has water inspired new forms of vision? What different purposes can these aquatic films serve in our era of ecological concern? Students will engage with a range of narrative, documentary, and experimental films to develop a broad understanding of water’s history as a vital resource, a geography of exploration and exploitation, and a source of aesthetic pleasure and symbolic meaning. | ||||
HUM 260-0-20 | The Matter and Metaphor of Energy | Govind Ponnuchamy MW 2:00 - 3:20 pm | ||
HUM 260-0-20 The Matter and Metaphor of EnergyCo-listed with ENGLISH 200-0-20 What are the politics of driving a car? What social choices do we make when we charge our phones? Are there philosophical and historical undertones to productivity vlogs on youtube? Even as these day-to-day acts of consumption might seem unrelated to each other, they are all connected by one critical concept: Energy. This course explores the social, political, and literary valences of energy to unearth the term’s numerous and vastly divergent meanings. Over the quarter, we’ll read texts ranging from Victorian novels to present day science fiction, tracking different understandings of energy that blur the line between scientific and imaginative ways of thinking. In our class discussions we’ll enquire how literary authors use energy as a metaphor to name a variety of social dynamics like race, gender, class, empire, nature, and god. Reading literary texts alongside a social history of science, we’ll use short writing tasks and class presentations to ask: how does the science of energy make its way through literature into our imaginations about the world? We will spend time with literary artefacts and study them with the premise that energy is both a force materially vital to life on earth and a vast imaginative resource for the worlds and societies we seek to build. Through a grading contract that rewards your labor and treats your energies as inherently valuable, we will focus on writing process, time management, and improvement over the course of the quarter. | ||||
HUM 260-0-22 | Red Power: Indigenous Resistance in the U.S. and Canada | Doug Kiel MW 2:00 - 3:20 pm | ||
HUM 260-0-22 Red Power: Indigenous Resistance in the U.S. and CanadaCo-listed with HISTORY 200-0-22 In 2016, thousands of Indigenous water protectors and their non-Native allies camped at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in an effort to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. That movement is part of a long history of Native activism. In this course, we will examine the individual and collective ways in which Indigenous people have resisted colonial domination in the U.S. and Canada since 1887. In addition to focusing on North America, we will also turn our attention to Hawai‘i. This course will emphasize environmental justice, and highlights religious movements, inter-tribal organizations, key intellectual figures, student movements, armed standoffs, non-violent protest, and a variety of visions for Indigenous community self-determination. | ||||
HUM 260-0-23 | Minds and Machines: Philosophical Issues in Generative AI | Megan Hyska TTh 12:30 - 1:50 pm | ||
HUM 260-0-23 Minds and Machines: Philosophical Issues in Generative AICo-listed with PHIL 225-0-20 This course will take up a number of philosophical questions about generative artificial intelligence. Are generative AI models agents? Do they pose unique existential risks to humans? What does the surge in AI-generated content mean for art, social media, and politics? We will explore these questions through readings from philosophers, computer scientists, and others in the cognitive and social sciences. | ||||
HUM 260-0-24 | Speculative Fictions of Race and Empire | Mariana Gutierrez-Loew TTh 3:30 - 4:50 pm | ||
HUM 260-0-24 Speculative Fictions of Race and EmpireCo-listed with ENGLISH 215-0-2 TV shows like Andor, Game of Thrones, and The Last of Us have sought to portray great empires: the Galactic Empire, The Seven Kingdoms, and FEDRA. All-powerful, authoritarian kingdoms and state and/or corporate powers abound in the many genres of speculative fiction—from sci-fi to fantasy, from dystopian to horror. But how do they relate to our contemporary moment and history? This class examines how empires are conceived and constructed and what roles race and gender play in their creation. Linking the history of U.S. empire building across the hemisphere with contemporary popular media and the works of Latinx and Indigenous authors and filmmakers, we’ll ask: how are empires built? What purposes do they serve? How do they construct (and deconstruct) the meanings of race and gender? And finally, how does speculative fiction envision alternative futures? Texts and media may include selections from Helena María Viramontes’ The Moths, Vanessa Angélica Villareal’s Magical/ Realism, Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves, Andor, Game of Thrones, and The Last of Us. | ||||
HUM 325-4-20 | Refugees/Migration/Exile: A Workshop in Digital Storytelling | J. Michelle Molina T 2:00 - 4:30pm | ||
HUM 325-4-20 Refugees/Migration/Exile: A Workshop in Digital StorytellingCo-listed with INTL_ST 390-0-1 and LATIN_AM 391-0-1 In this course, students will research a case study from among the many refugee and migration crises that have dominated the news cycle in recent years. The final project is a short video about your case study. To develop your research projects, the class foregrounds different methodological approaches: 1) To move beyond journalism, we will conduct primary and secondary historical research to understand the complex historical roots of each case study. 2) We will analyze and practice forms of ethnographic writing to better situate and describe the lived experiences of migration and exile, both past and present. 3) We will pay attention to various forms of media, whether print culture, sound, or visual media, to interrogate but also experiment with contemporary modes of narrating and conveying human experience in the digital age. Our work in class will be collaborative, thus a key prerequisite is that you are mature and self-motivated. You do not need to have prior research experience, but you need to demonstrate a desire to dig into your topic and hone your ability to write deeply informed, rigorous, and nuanced arguments and to think about creative ways to bring rigorous historical and ethnographic detail to visual storytelling. | ||||
HUM 325-6-21 | Ancient Rome in Chicago | Francesca Tataranni MW 12:30 - 1:50 pm | ||
HUM 325-6-21 Ancient Rome in ChicagoCo-listed with CLASSICS 380-0-1 Ancient Rome is visible in Chicago—walk the city and learn to “read” the streets, buildings, and monuments that showcase Chicago’s engagement with the classical past! You’ll gain digital mapping and video editing skills as you collaborate on a virtual walking tour mapping Chicago’s ongoing dialogue with antiquity. With a combination of experiential learning and rigorous research methodologies, you’ll explore architecture, history, visual arts, and urban topography in this quintessential modern American city. | ||||
HUM 370-3-20 | The Politics of Racial Knowledge | katrina quisumbing king TTh 2:00 - 3:20 pm | ||
HUM 370-3-20 The Politics of Racial KnowledgeCo-listed with SOCIOL 304-0-20 On a daily basis we consume—often without notice or concern—a substantial amount of racial knowledge. We routinely ingest, for example, infographics about demographic trends, media coverage on crime and undocumented immigration, and advertisements for ancestry tests. In complex and contextually specific ways, this diet shapes our personal and collective identities, social interactions and relationships, and political aspirations and anxieties. In this course, we endeavor to study the politics of racial knowledge—the ways in which categories, measurements, and other techniques of knowledge production have helped to constitute “race” as a seemingly objective, natural demarcation among human populations and institute forms of racial domination and inequality. Historically, racial knowledge has stipulated and legitimated what we might describe as a kind of racial ontology, a set of assumptions, claims, and prescriptions about race and racial superiority/inferiority—e.g. the notion that “whites” or “the West” represent the apex of human civilization. Drawing on diverse texts, this course explores the emergence, evolution, and effects of racial knowledge. This exploration will begin by discussing the historical relationship between the modern concept of race and European colonialism and slavery. Subsequently, we will track several major developments in the history of racial knowledge, from Enlightenment naturalists to censuses to contemporary genomics research. | ||||
HUM 370-4-22 | Indigenous Peoples and U.S. Law | Doug Kiel TTh 2:00 - 3:20 pm | ||
HUM 370-4-22 Indigenous Peoples and U.S. LawCo-listed with HISTORY 300-0-22 This course highlights the intricate relationship between Native nations and the U.S. legal system, with an emphasis on their status as sovereign nations, rather than simply racial or ethnic minorities. We will examine the historical development of tribal governments, U.S. laws and policies governing Indigenous affairs, Indigenous legal traditions, the European doctrine of discovery, diplomatic relations, treaty-making, and the constitutional foundations of federal Indian law. In addition, we will analyze key U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the growth of federal bureaucracy in Indian Country, the expansion of tribal authority in the 20th century, and municipal interactions with Native nations. The course will address contemporary relationships between Indigenous nations, federal and state governments, and the role of federal Indian law as both a colonial tool and a mechanism for Indigenous communities to protect their interests. Throughout the course, we will explore the legal and political challenges facing American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Indigenous peoples in U.S. Territories. | ||||
HUM 370-4-22 | Race and the American Midwest | Doug Kiel TTh 3:30 - 4:50 pm | ||
HUM 370-4-22 Race and the American MidwestCo-listed with HISTORY 393-0-22 This seminar explores the role of race and Indigeneity in histories of the American Midwest. Despite popular narratives of the Midwest as purely a heartland of white homogeneity and normativity, racialized communities of color have long shaped politics, culture, and society in the region. This course emphasizes the fluid nature of ideas about race, and their interplay with the construction of place in a settler colonial society. The course materials cover a wide range of topics that are crucial for understanding both Midwestern and U.S. history writ large. From the multi-ethnic world of the fur trade, to contemporary housing inequalities, this course highlights the making of a U.S. region, and confronts mythologies of the Midwest in the American imagination. | ||||
HUM 370-5-20 | Integrity and the Politics of Corruption | Shmuel Nili MW 11:00 am - 12:20 pm | ||
HUM 370-5-20 Integrity and the Politics of CorruptionCo-listed with POLI_SCI 390-0-22 Fulfills FD-EET / Distro 5, Ethical and Evaluative Thinking If all seasoned politicians in a fragile democracy are implicated in wide-scale corruption, but if the country is facing an acute economic crisis requiring experience at the helm, what should be done about the corrupt, and who should decide? What compromises, if any, are appropriate when considering kleptocrats who are effectively holding their people hostage - for instance, rulers who systematically abuse loans from foreign creditors, but who rely on the fact that their vulnerable population will suffer if loans are cut off entirely? What compromises, if any, are morally appropriate when dealing with dictators who threaten to unleash violence unless they are guaranteed an amnesty by the democratic forces trying to replace them? This upper-level seminar delves into such fraught political problems, revolving around different kinds of corruption and abuse of political power. In order to grapple with these problems, we examine in detail two ideas related to "the people." The first is the idea of the sovereign people as the owner of public property, often stolen by corrupt politicians. The second is the idea of the people as an agent with its own moral integrity - an integrity that might bear on intricate policy dilemmas surrounding the proper response to corruption. In the process of examining both of these ideas, students will acquire familiarity with prominent philosophical treatments of integrity, property, and - more generally - public policy. | ||||
HUM 370-5-30 | Being Human in a More Than Human World | Sarah Jacoby MW 12:30 - 1:50pm | ||
HUM 370-5-30 Being Human in a More Than Human WorldCo-listed with RELIGION 319-0-24 A binding principle of interrelationship weaves through domains as divergent as ecology, Buddhism, and critical theory, among others. This course takes an expansive look at various permutations of interdependence as imagined across terrains ranging from millennia-old Buddhist texts to modern explorations into Buddhist environmentalism (ecodharma), political ecology, and critical theory. In this process, the elements that comprise our environment—earth, water, air, minerals, trash & treasures—will transform from scenery to agentic forces with whom living beings act. As we move through this pilgrimage across disciplines, we will ask ourselves: What are the consequences of understanding ourselves as individual agents, acting alone in the universe? In what ways is individualism a sought-after virtue according to some, and part and parcel of humans' earth destroying tendencies according to others? What alternative ways of being and knowing can we imagine that present human agency in relational terms, co-constituted not just by other organisms, but also by a web of environmental conditions that make life possible? How can we re-envision humans' interdependent relationship with the more-than-human world in ways that can mitigate climate grief and apathy and support sustainable living practices? | ||||
HUM 370-6-20 | Black Mindfulness Literature | Nicole Spigner TTh 12:30 - 1:50pm | ||
HUM 370-6-20 Black Mindfulness LiteratureCo-listed with ENGLISH 366-0-20 In his book of essays, Turning the Wheel, novelist and professor Charles Johnson says that Jean Toomer’s long poem, “The Blue Meridian” (1932): “offers us a bridge between the black experience and the profound reflections on selfhood long a part of Vedic literature.” Johnson identifies Toomer’s work as a key text within a longer tradition of Black letters that intersect with Vedic and Buddhist philosophies and practices. Considering the buzz word “mindfulness,” this undergraduate course explores the extended tradition of spiritual, contemplative, and ancient practices influencing Black letters since the 19th century. Alluding clear and consistent definition, “mindfulness” is an umbrella term that includes contemplative practices, embodiment, transcendentalism, and many other lines of spiritual and secular strategies for survival and more. This course will consider how stillness, concentration, and focus on interiority provide alternative and complementary strategies for Black survival and thriving. We will read works by Johnson and Toomer, Paschal Beverly Randolph, Paule Marshall, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Zora Neale Hurston. Additionally, we will consider the theory and criticism of Howard Thurman, Kevin Quashie, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others along with Buddhist, Vedic, and West African religious texts and studies to consider the many sides of a Black mindfulness literary tradition. We will contemplate the theory and praxis of meditation, transcendence, tantra, Dharma, ritual, and possession. Additionally, we will create and execute our own mindfulness exercises and consider how they may or may not support various politics of Blackness in our current moment. This course will require active and enthusiastic participation by everyone in the class. There will be four response papers/discussion board writing assignments, group presentations, and ongoing experimentation with mindfulness, and a final project that will engage writing as well as other media. Journaling is highly recommended for this course, as well. | ||||
HUM 370-6-21 | Queer Cinema | Lakshmi Padmanabhan Th 10:00 -11:50 am, screening + 12:00 - 1:20 pm, discussion - 4:50 pm | ||
HUM 370-6-21 Queer CinemaFulfills FD-LA / Distro 6, Literature and Arts How does cinema allow us to theorize queer forms of belonging? What constitutes queer aesthetics today? What are the political possibilities for reimagining the boundaries of queerness in the present? And what are the ongoing tensions and fault lines around identity and desire that remain unaddressed through queer theory's political interventions? These are some of the questions we will grapple with in this course. Screenings will include early gay and lesbian cinema, and “queer” film avant la lettre, the New Queer Cinema movement in the United States and Europe, as well as contemporary queer and trans film and video from around the world. We will pay particular attention to the aesthetic strategies of independent filmmakers and video artists, drawing out the connections between experimental aesthetic forms and politically engaged critique. Each week, we will develop a shared language of film analysis to address the intersections of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality through close readings of the visual texts. | ||||
HUM 370-6-22 | The Crime Centered Documentary | Debra Tolchinsky M 9:00 - 11:50 am | ||
HUM 370-6-22 The Crime Centered DocumentaryFulfills FD-LA / Distro 6, Literature and Arts In this course, we will view non-fiction and hybrid films that revolve around crime, criminal justice, and criminal court cases. Our emphasis will be on cases that are either mired in controversy or emblematic of wider social concerns. Readings will augment viewings as we weigh legal, philosophical, or scientific perspectives: What is accurately depicted? What is omitted? What is misrepresented? Concurrently, we will investigate the films aesthetically: How is the film structured and why? What choices are being made by the filmmaker regarding camera, sound, and editing, and how do these choices affect viewers? Throughout the course, we will consider the ethics of depicting real people and traumatic events. We will also look at specific films in regard to their legal or societal impact. Assignments will include a series of short response papers and a substantial final project, which can take the form of either (up to the student) a ten to twelve-page paper or a six to twelve-minute film/podcast/media project. Projects should center upon a legal topic. Ideas include, but are not limited to, a paper that compares two films depicting the same criminal case or a polished/edited film interview with an individual connected to a crime or involved with the legal system (a defendant, a lawyer, a judge, a policeperson, etc.). Additional topics could center around mitigation films, viral crime videos, local courts, legal advocacy centers, or hybrid crime films. | ||||
HUM 370-6-23 | Your Faves are Problematic(?): Racial and Gender Imbrication in Contemporary Pop Media | Mustafa Siddiqui TTh 9:30 -10:50 am | ||
HUM 370-6-23 Your Faves are Problematic(?): Racial and Gender Imbrication in Contemporary Pop MediaCo-listed with BLK_ST 380-0-23 How does pop music illuminate the structural violences of race, gender, and sexuality that we navigate on a daily basis? In mining the “problematic” in pop culture, as well as the resistive work of marginalized artists, this course will explore the lyrical, sonic, and visual worldmaking enacted by contemporary pop musicians in order to make sense of the myriad roles that pop culture and media play in the production, reproduction, and maintenance of power and social operations. Students can expect to engage the work of artists such as Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Frank Ocean, SZA, and Charli XCX (amongst others) alongside texts from a diverse range of fields including Black studies, performance studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Evaluation methods include discussion posts, a short written midterm assignment, and a final creative playlisting project. | ||||
HUM 370-6-25 | The Crime Centered Documentary | Marcela Fuentes W 2:00 - 5:00 pm | ||
HUM 370-6-25 The Crime Centered DocumentaryFulfills FD-LA / Distro 6, Literature and Arts In this course, we will view non-fiction and hybrid films that revolve around crime, criminal justice, and criminal court cases. Our emphasis will be on cases that are either mired in controversy or emblematic of wider social concerns. Readings will augment viewings as we weigh legal, philosophical, or scientific perspectives: What is accurately depicted? What is omitted? What is misrepresented? Concurrently, we will investigate the films aesthetically: How is the film structured and why? What choices are being made by the filmmaker regarding camera, sound, and editing, and how do these choices affect viewers? Throughout the course, we will consider the ethics of depicting real people and traumatic events. We will also look at specific films in regard to their legal or societal impact. Assignments will include a series of short response papers and a substantial final project, which can take the form of either (up to the student) a ten to twelve-page paper or a six to twelve-minute film/podcast/media project. Projects should center upon a legal topic. Ideas include, but are not limited to, a paper that compares two films depicting the same criminal case or a polished/edited film interview with an individual connected to a crime or involved with the legal system (a defendant, a lawyer, a judge, a policeperson, etc.). Additional topics could center around mitigation films, viral crime videos, local courts, legal advocacy centers, or hybrid crime films. |