ALICE KAPLAN INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES

Co-listed with SOCIOL 220-0-20
Fulfills FD-SBS / Distro 3, Social and Behavioral Sciences

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.

Co-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.

Co-listed with ENGLISH 200-0-20
Fulfills FD-LA / Distro 6,  Literature and Arts

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.

Co-listed with HISTORY 200-0-22
Fulfills FD-HS / Distro 4, Historical Studies

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.

Co-listed with PHIL 225-0-20
Fulfills FD-SBS / Distro 3, Social and Behavioral Sciences

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.

Co-listed with ENGLISH 215-0-2
Fulfills FD-LA / Distro 6,  Literature and Arts

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. 

Co-listed with INTL_ST 390-0-1 and LATIN_AM 391-0-1
Fulfills FD-HS / Distro 4, Historical Studies

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.

Co-listed with CLASSICS 380-0-1
Fulfills FD-HS / Distro 4, Historical Studies and FD-LA / Distro 6, Literature and Fine Arts

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.

Co-listed with SOCIOL 304-0-20
Fulfills FD-SBS / Distro 3, Social and Behavioral Sciences

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.

Co-listed with HISTORY 300-0-22
Fulfills FD-HS / Distro 4, Historical Studies

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.

Co-listed with HISTORY 393-0-22
Fulfills FD-HS / Distro 4, Historical Studies

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.

Co-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.  

Co-listed with RELIGION 319-0-24
Fulfills FD-EET / Distro 5, Ethical and Evaluative Thinking
+ Fulfills FD-LA / Distro 6, Literature and Arts

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?

Co-listed with ENGLISH 366-0-20
Fulfills FD-LA / Distro 6, Literature and Arts

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.

Co-listed with BLK_ST 380-0-23
Fulfills FD-LA / Distro 6, Literature and Fine Arts

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.