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At long last, Ph.D. candidates at the Graduate Center can pursue
an Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) Concentration in Africana Studies.
The IDS Core Course, Introduction to Africana Studies, developed
through the efforts of IRADAC and the Graduate Center’s student-run
Africana
Studies Group (ASG), is being offered.
IRADAC is pleased to sponsor and support the an
interdisciplinary concentration in African Studies at the Graduate
Center. The primary goal of a concentration in Africana Studies
at GC is to produce scholars who are fully cognizant of the diverse
field of Black Studies. This concentration will provide them with
the analytic and research tools to navigate and articulate the black
experience, furthering the ongoing dialogue on race and identity.
New York City is a locus for primary sources. Its
convergence of music, literature, art, politics, and history--along
with its myriad ethnic tapestry - offers scholars the opportunity
to analyze black culture in a uniquely fertile context. The 1741
"Great Negro Plot" by slaves to burn down city, the establishment
in 1838 Weeksville, the towering achievement of the Harlem Renaissance,
and contemporary cases with national implications (for example,
policies on police brutality and immigration) are a few examples
of the wealth of opportunities to be further studied. A concentration
in Africana Studies reflects and enhances the diversity of both
subject matter and community found in CUNY at large.
For an application click here:
AFRICANA
STUDIES APPLICATION
The first required course will be: >Introduction
to Africana Studies. The course will begin with a consideration
of the impact that slavery and the black (American) presence has
had on the development of the modern nations of the New World (James,
DuBois, Gilroy)). We will continue with an examination of the ways
in which intellectual cross-fertilization (American, European, and
African) helped shape the intellectual landscape of some of the
most insightful intellectual of the twentieth century (DuCille,
Mulvey, Wright, Fabre, Irek, Weiss, Fanon, Snead). We will then
turn to the Black American response to this cross evinced in the
Black Arts and Black Power Movements (Cruse, Jackson). We will finally
end with consideration of the question of black subjectivity in
the post-modern context (Gilroy, Appiah, Diawara).
Introduction to Africana Studies
Week I: Introduction
Week II: C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint
L'Ouverture and the San Domingo
Week III: W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction
in American, 1860-1880
Week IV: Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity
and Double Consciousness
Week V: Ann DuCille, "Postcolonialism
and Afrocentricity: Discourse and Dat Course"; Christopher Mulvey,
"The Fugitive Self and the New World of the North: William Wells
Brown's Discovery of American" (both in Black Colunbiad: Defining
Moments in African American Literature and Culture, Werner Sollars
and Maria Diedrich, eds.)
Week VI: Richard Wright, White
Man Listen! Week VII: Michel Fabre, "Paris as Moment in African
American Consciousness"; Malgorzata Irek, "From Berlin to Harlem:
Felix von Luschan, Alain Locke, and the New Negro"; M. Lynn Weiss,
"Para Usted: Richard Wright's Pagan Spain" (all in Black
Columbiad: Defining Moments in African American Literature and Culture,
Werner Sollors and Maria Diedrich, eds.); James Snead "European
Pedigrees/African Contagions: Nationality, Narrative, and Communality
in Tutuola, Achebe and Reed" (Nation and Narration, Homi
K. Bhaba, ed.)
Week VIII: Frantz Fanon, Black
Skin/White Masks Week IX: Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro
Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership
(selections)
Week X: George Jackson, Soledad
Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson Week XI: Paul Gilroy,
There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics
of Race and NationWeek XII: Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father's
House: Africa in the Philopsophy of Culture
Weeks XIII: Manthia Diawara,
In Search of Africa Week XIV: Paul Gilroy, Against Race:
Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line
Additional Courses: Concentration in Africana Studies
Below is a list of courses that can be applied
to the concentration in Africana Studies (all courses are at The
Graduate Center unless noted). Please spread the word; low
enrollment signals low-to-no interest. This is a sampling;
if the course you are interested in taking is not listed, please
let us know. The required course for the concentration, “Introduction
to Africana Studies,” was taught in fall 2003 by Robert Reid-Pharr;
we expect that the course will be offered again in fall 2004.
This course, along with four other Africana Studies-related courses,
will ensure Graduate Center students a concentration in the field.
Please remember that graduate-level black studies courses taken
at Columbia and New York University can be used towards the concentration
at The Graduate Center.
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ANTH 70200 [62095] / “Core Course in Cultural Anthropology:
Contemporary Issues and Debates II” / Leith Mullings
and Jeff Maskovsky / Wednesdays, 2:00pm-4:00pm / Permission
of the instructors is required.
This
course, like 70100 in the fall, is designed to introduce students
to the current issues, debates, and controversies in cultural
anthropology. This semester we consider anthropological perspectives
on such sites of inequality and difference as class, race,
gender, and sexuality. Next we reflect on the ways in which
contemporary anthropological topics have been reworked in
the context of contemporary conditions. What has happened
to kinship? What is the status of ethnographic writing? What
are the new approaches to understanding development? Finally,
we examine applied, advocacy, and collaborative anthropology,
exploring the intersection between the research process and
social problems. |
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ANTH
72500 [62099] / “Anthropology for the Public”
/ Leith Mullings / Thursdays, 2:00pm-4:00pm
Anthropology
has a great deal to contribute to formulating critical questions
and proposing solutions to the central issues of our time.
This seminar explores the role of anthropological knowledge
in shaping public debate and social policy through research,
practice, and advocacy. After interrogating the domains
of theoretical, applied, and advocacy anthropology we will
consider successful examples of the use of anthropology
in reframing and influencing public discussion, policy,
and advocacy. Based on the interests of the seminar participants,
these may range from global processes such as structural
adjustment, war and militarization, and the environment
to more local issues such as urban displacement, the prison-industrial
complex, education, public health, and social welfare policies.
The seminar will also consider writing styles and other
communication techniques appropriate for reaching non-academic
audiences; uses of media and other forms of information
dissemination; and community collaboration in research.
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ANTH 73800 [62101] / “Globalization of Caribbean
Thought” / Kevin Birth / Fridays, 11:45am-1:45pm /
In Shakespeare's The Tempest, the enslaved Caliban
(a synonym for "cannibal" and "Caribbean") says to his master,
Prospero, "You taught me language, and my profit on 't is
I know how to curse." The Caribbean continues to curse colonialism
and neocolonialism, and Caliban's poetic power and critical
tone continue to serve as a leitmotiv in thinking about
colonialism and its consequences. In this literature Caribbean
thinkers—among them Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James, Marcus
Garvey, W. Arthur Lewis, José Martí, Walter Rodney, George
Beckford, Fernando Ortiz, Édouard Glissant, M.G. Smith,
Stuart Hall, and Aimé Césaire—have made contributions
extending far beyond their native lands. Many also played
important roles in revolts against colonialism and in nation-building
after independence. The complex associations of the Caribbean
with globalization, and the global significance of these
thinkers makes exploring their ideas in the context of both
their Caribbean heritages and their experiences outside
the Caribbean a rewarding and fruitful means for grappling
with relationships of globalization, power, and subjectivity.
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ANTH
74100 [62102], [Cross-listed with MALS 73100] / “Culture
and Class, Race and Citizenship in the Southern U.S.”
/ Gerald Sider / Tuesdays, 4:15pm-6:15pm
This
course centers on the anthropology of three historical moments:
the simultaneous production of Native American tribes on
one side of the southern colonial frontier and of races
on the other; impunity and the production of state, region,
and gender in the early to mid-twentieth century; and the
intensifications both of poverty and of dignity following
the institutionalization of "civil rights" and the subsequent
collapse of the southern textile industry. The complex ways
in which the recent and massive influx of undocumented Hispanic
workers into the rural south has both called into question
and reinforced prior constructions of inequality will also
be addressed. At stake in this course are the possibilities
and the problems of constructing an anthropology of—and
against—the continuing histories of local inequality.
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ART 70400 [62106] / “Topics In Non-Western Art: Introduction
to African Art” / George Corbin / Thursdays, 9:30-11:30am
/ Room 3421
The lecture course will cover about thirty-one of the major
art styles and traditions in Sub-Sahara West and Central
Africa. Emphasis will be on an art historical understanding
of these art forms within their cultural context. Styles
and traditions to be covered include (alphabetically): Afro-Portuguese
ivories (Bini-Portuguese, Kongo-Portuguese, Sapi-Portuguese),
Akan terra cottas, Asante, Baga, Bamana, Bamum, Baule, Benin,
Bwa, Chokwe, Dan, Djenne, Dogon, Fang, Ife, Igbo, Igbo-Ukwu,
Ijaw, Kongo, Kota, Kuba, Lower Niger R. Bronzes, Luba, Mambila,
Mende, Mossi, Nok, Senufo, and Yoruba. Course requirements:
Each student will be required to present a short in-class
review of a selected text (article, catalog, or book) on
a seminal work of African art history published in the past
ten years. There will be a comprehensive Final Exam during
Finals Week in May. In addition, each student will submit
an end-term research paper- ca. 10 pages of double-spaced
text with footnotes, bibliography, and illustrations - focusing
on a specific work of West or Central African art
on view in New York museums and/or collections. No auditors
permitted.
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ENGL
75400 / "The Contemporary American Multicultural Novel"
/ Neal Tolchin / Thursdays, 2:00pm-4:00pm (Cross Listed
as ASCP 81500)
From
N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize winning novel House
Made of Dawn (1968) to Toni Morrison's Beloved
(1988) and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies
(1999), both of which also won the Pulitzer, the neglected
fields of Native American, African American, Asian American,
and Hispanic/Latino American literature have gradually drawn
the attention of scholars and are now often taught together
under the rubric Multicultural American Literature. In contemporary
Native American fiction, Leslie Silko's Ceremony
and Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine are regarded as
key texts. In Hispanic/Latino American fiction, Rudolfo
Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima is seen as a foundational
text for Mexican American fiction; and Oscar Hijuelos's
Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is similarly viewed
as a breakthrough novel for Cuban American writing. Maxine
Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior put Asian American
literature on the map as an academic area of study; more
recently Fay Ng's Bone and Chang-Rae Lee's Native
Speaker have attracted the interest of scholars in this
field, as has a text appropriated by Americanists from Canadian
writing, Joy Kogawa's Obasan. African American literature
is further along in its development as a field of study
and possible readings include Edward P. Jones' recently
published The Known World. This course will be run
as a seminar, with oral reports and a research paper required.
A good historical introduction to this field is Ronald Takaki's
A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America.
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ENGL 75600 / "Ralph Ellison, Modernism and the Blues" /
Michelle Wallace / Mondays, 6:30pm-8:30pm (Cross Listed
as WSCP 81000)
The
centerpiece of Ellison's oeuvre remains his fascinating
yet ultimately inscrutable first novel Invisible Man.
Join me in this class in pondering its mysteries-- for instance,
how the novel attempts to respond to the emerging modernist
canon in Western literature at the same time that it doffs
its cap to various cultural landmarks in African-American
music and culture, in particular jazz and the blues. Ellison's
Invisible Man is not your typical first novel but
rather the product of a sophisticated connoisseur of the
art and politics of the thirties and forties, a mid-career
writer whose goal was to write a historically important
work that would transcend and avoid the sociological limits
that so heavily weighed upon the reputations of his contemporaries
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright and
James Baldwin. In an endeavor to recreate his own fascination
with the interpretive thickness of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland,
Ellison's Invisible Man is deliberately encyclopedic
in its references and allusions, and there are a variety
of texts available today that can help us in delving into
this matter, including the wonderful new comprehensive and
exhaustive biography by Howard University literary historian
Lawrence Jackson, as well as the recently published volume
of letters between Ellison and Albert Murray, and a range
of new critical approaches in particular to his incorporation
of his extensive musical background into his writings. Ellison
had first wanted to be a musician since growing up in Oklahoma
City, Oklahoma and went to Tuskeegee as a music major. Consequently,
his experience of the music scene and the emergence of jazz,
the blues and gospel in the South in the 20s, 30s and 40s
was ultimately folded into his novelistic voice. While
Ellison was quite shy about publishing fiction subsequent
to Invisible Man, he did publish a series of the
most influential essays in Afro-American cultural critique
probably ever written in Shadow and Act and Goin
To The Territory. We will also look at his closest literary
and artistic kin—Albert Murray, Romare Bearden, Norman
Lewis and Duke Ellington, and Stanley Crouch, among others.
We will take on the posthumously published final novel as
well. This will ultimately be a research seminar in which
we will be endeavoring to find new and creatively inclusive
ways (feminist, queer, materialist, etc.) of reading Ellison
and his peers.
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ENGL 75700 / "Samuel Delany and His Times" / Robert Reid-Pharr
/ Wednesdays, 2:00pm-4:00pm
In
this course we will treat much of the most prominent work
that has been produced by novelist and essayist, Samuel
Delany. In particular, we will look at his early novels,
Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection, and
then turn to those novels that helped establish him in the
mid-seventies as one of the most significant speculative
fiction writers of his generation, especially Dhalgren
and Triton. We will then read the whole of Delany's
Neveryon series and then continue with his later works,
especially Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
and his memoirs, The Heavenly Breakfast and The
Motion of Light in Water. We will end the course with
Delany's controversial late novel, The Mad Man. All
the while we will pay particular attention to Delany's own
methods of critique and self-critique. One of the most significant
questions before us will be how one might place Delany within
debates surrounding Semiotics, Deconstruction, Black American
Literary and Cultural Theory and Queer Theory. And we will
be especially concerned to understand what the example of
Delany can tell us about the interdependency of presumably
distinct theoretical and artistic traditions.
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ENGL 78100 / "The History of Black Sexuality" / Robert Reid-Pharr
/ Thursdays, 2:00pm-4:00pm (Cross Listed as WSCP 81000)
Two questions animate this course. Is there a history of
black sexuality that is distinct from the now well defined
field known simply as The History of Sexuality? Further,
how does sexuality operate in the production and reproduction
of black identity? Or to state the matter from a different
vantage point, is it possible to suggest that "race" is
lived precisely as sexuality? In answering these questions,
students will be asked to wade through large amounts of
primary and secondary materials that address both matters
of history as well as literary and cultural theory. With
particular emphasis on the black community in the United
States, the readings will include work from Anne McClintock,
Martha Hodes, Siobhan Somerville, Paul Hoch, James Baldwin,
Calvin Hernton, Eldridge Cleaver, Charles Johnson, Berverly
Guy-Sheftall, Hortense Spillers, Anne du Cille, Evelyn Hammonds,
Cornel West, Philip Brian Harper, Charles Nero, Marlon Ross,
Jose Munoz, Robert Reid-Pharr, Essex Hemphill, Huey Newton,
and Samuel Delany.
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ENGL 85500 / "Creole Poetics in Caribbean Fiction and Poetry"
/ Barbara Webb / Thursdays, 4:15pm-6:15pm (Cross Listed
as WSCP 81000)
This course will trace the evolution of the idea of a Creole
poetics in Caribbean writing. Although the primary focus
of the course will be the fiction and poetry of the English-speaking
Caribbean, we will also read texts by writers from other
areas of the region as well as the diasporic communities
of North America, such as Patrick Chamoiseau and Edwidge
Danticat. Contemporary writing of the Caribbean has no fixed
national or geographic boundaries. The writers themselves
often reside elsewhere but their fiction and poetry continually
invoke Caribbean history and culture. The process of creolization,
that difficult transformation of indigenous, African, Asian
and European cultures in the Americas is the cultural model
that informs the poetics of the texts we will be reading.
Beginning with the origins of Caribbean modernism in the
1920s and 1930s, we with discuss Claude Mc Kay's Banana
Bottom (1933) as an early exploration of the problematics
of colonialism, migration and cultural self-definition that
foreshadows many of the literary concerns in the post-1960s
period of decolonization. It is during this later period
that Caribbean writers increasingly turn toward the region
itself in search of distinctive forms of creative expression.
We will discuss their ongoing investigation of the history
of the region and the relationship between orality and writing
in their experiments vernacular forms-from folktales and
myths to popular music and carnival. Primary texts: Claude
Mc Kay, Banana Bottom; Kamau Brathwaite, The Arrivants;
Lorna Goodison, Selected Poems; Derek Walcott, Omeros;
Earl Lovelace, Brief Conversion and Other stories;
Erna Brodber, Myal; Michelle Cliff, No Telephone
to Heaven; Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco; Edwidge
Danticat, Krik? Krak! We will also read selected
cultural criticism and theoretical writings by Brathwaite,
Glissant, Harris and Brodber. Requirements: An oral presentation
and a term paper (15-20 pages). The course will be conducted
as a seminar with class discussions of assigned readings
and oral presentations each week.
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FSCP 81000 / “Magical Realism & Film in Global
Perspective” / Jerry Carlson / Wednesdays, 6:30pm-9:30pm
Closely associated with authors such as Alejo Carpentier,
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ben Okri, and Salman Rushdie, magical
realism is recognized as one of the most important modes
of prose fiction of the past fifty years. Less well
understood is its importance to global filmmaking.This course
will investigate magical realism as a cultural and historical
phenomenon of global storytelling. Why has magical
realism gained such importance and prominence in recent
years? How is it related to globalization and to postmodernism?
How do its aims change in relation to its places and times
of origin in particular cultures? What are its shared formal
characteristics? What are the specifically cinematic configurations
of those characteristics? How does magical realism differ
from but retain family resemblances to the supernatural
and the fantastic? Indeed, how useful is the designation
magical realism? A selection of films from around the world
will be analyzed in light of these questions.
Films may include A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
(Cuba), The Exterminating Angel (Mexico), Daughters
of the Dust (USA), and Time of the Gypsies (Yugoslavia).
Readings will include comparative examples of prose fiction
and theoretical writings by Alejo Carpentier, Tvsetan Todorov,
Frederic Jameson, and others.
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HIST. 75000 [62067] / “race, Reform and Resistance
in the Early American Republic” / Jonathan Sassi /
Tuesdays, 4:15pm-6:15pm
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HIST. 76900 [62080] / “History of Brazil: From the
Colonial Period to the Present” / Laird Bergad / Tuesdays,
4:15pm-6:15pm
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HIST. 80200 [62070] / “The Literature of United States
History II, Reconstruction to the Present” / Judith
Stein / Wednesdays, 4:15pm--6:15pm
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MUS 86900 [62670] / “Seminar in Music History: History/Theory/Criticism
of Hip-Hop” / Ellie Hisama / Thursdays, 10am-1pm,
Room 3389
This seminar will explore hip-hop culture, including MCing,
DJing, breakdancing, and graffiti, from its beginnings to
the present by using historical, analytical, and critical
perspectives. We will examine hip-hop's complex relationships
to race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation as manifested
in recordings, performances, music videos, films,
fashion, and popular culture. Readings by Juan Flores,
Robin D. G. Kelley, Sunaina Marr Maira, Cheryl Keyes, Tricia
Rose, and others. Enrollment is limited to 15 students.
Non-Graduate Center students need permission of instructor
to enroll. Non-music students contact Instructor about the
seminar (tel. 718-951-5655 or ehisama@brooklyn.cuny.edu.
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P SC 72907 [62836] / “Social Movements in America”
/ Francis Fox Piven / Wednesdays, 4:15pm-6:15pm / Cross-listed
with ASCP 82000, SOC 84600, & WSCP 81000)
This course has two main parts. We will begin with an examination
of the major theories that purport to explain the origins
of movements, the forms they take, and their consequences.
We will give particular attention to the understandings
of power implicit or explicit in different perspectives
on movements and their impact. I will use this occasion
to discuss what I think is a distinctive perspective on
power and movements that I am developing in connection with
my own work. The second part of the course is empirical.
We will look at a series of twentieth century American protest
movements which, in complex ways, altered the patterns of
American politics, and may have also changed American political
institutions. In particular, we will focus on labor protests,
black protests, some of the "new social movements" (including
the movements that focus on sexual behaviors and gender
identities), and the new anti-corporate protests spreading
in the U.S. and elsewhere.
The requirements for this course include regular participation
in discussion, which means timely completion of reading
assignments. Your grade will be based on your participation
in class, and a take-home examination or a research paper,
designed in consultation with me.
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P SC 77903 [62415] / “Environmental Politics: Comparative
and Global Perspectives” / Sherrie Baver / Thursdays,
6:30pm-8:30pm
Controversies
over the environment are becoming ever more common in both
the domestic and international policy arenas. The course
begins by examining the rise of environmental consciousness
and the key issues, stakeholders, and institutions in environmental
politics and policymaking on the domestic level. While the
course has a broad, comparative sweep, our first case is the
United States. Next, we examine a number of environmental
concerns in specific developed, modernizing, and post-communist
nations. The final part of the course examines environmental
politics and policymaking at the global level. In particular,
we focus on how the international community is addressing
issues such as: global warming, ozone depletion, biodiversity
conservation, and deforestation through regime formation as
well as the links between environmental protection and trade. |
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P SC 86105 [62402] / “Comparative Foreign Policy:
North-South Perspectives”/ Jacqueline Braveboy-Wagner
/ Tuesdays, 6:30pm-8:30pm / 4 credits
Foreign policy analysis favors agency (units/state/sub-state
actors) over structure (system). It assumes that without
a complete understanding of how individual level, state
level, and system level factors impact a country's decisions
and policy, it is difficult to explain what is going on
in world politics. This course introduces students to the
expansive literature on foreign policy at these three levels
of analysis, to realist, liberal, and constructivist interpretations
of foreign policy, and to both northern (U.S./Europe) case
studies and southern (African-Asian-Latin American) perspectives
on foreign policy, regional integration, and multilateral
initiatives. There will normally be a mid-term book review,
a research paper, and a final exam that will hopefully help
students brave the first exam.
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P SC 87304 [62413] “Africa in World Politics; Crises
of State, Conflict, Poverty & Democracy” / John
Harbeson / Thursdays, 4:15pm-6:15pm / 4 credits
Sub-Saharan Africa presents some of the starkest, most dramatic
manifestations of almost all the most fundamental problems
of the human condition and, therefore, some of the most
profound political challenges to be found on the planet.
As the persistent marginalization of the continent has added
to the burdens borne by its peoples, its parallel continued
marginalization in the academy has diminished the study
of comparative politics. For the political problems and
political challenges confronting the continent pose existentially
all the most fundamental theoretical questions that define
the parameters of political science as a discipline. The
course will, therefore, consider not only the evolving contours
of African political and socioeconomic developmental crises
but a sample of the implications of those crises for the
study of comparative politics, international relations,
and political theory. After an initial overview, the
course will outline the principal features of the contemporary
African political landscape as they have evolved during
the colonial and post-colonial eras. It will then focus
on the interrelated sub-Saharan African crises of state
formation, conflict management, poverty reduction, and democratization
along with currently practiced and alternative strategies
for addressing them. The course will conclude with notes
on the implications of the foregoing for the refinement
of selected prevalent theoretical paradigms.
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PSYC 80101 [62569] / “Research Seminar: Identity”
/ William Cross / Tuesdays, 4:15pm-6:15pm
This seminar provides a forum for people interested in research
and theory on social identity and related issues. Agenda
is determined by the seminar participants and includes discussion
of proposed, in-process, and completed research projects.
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PSYC 80103 [62566] / “Black Achievement Motivation,
Black Identity and Black Education” / William Cross
/ Mondays, 6:30pm-8:30pm
This course will contest a number of myths surrounding the
discourse on black achievement motivation, at both the collective
[black community] and individual [“divergent personal
styles” of achievement motivation] levels. Our analysis
will trace the evolution of collective and individual black
achievement attitudes, for the period covering slavery [the
legacy of slavery on achievement motivation] to modern times
[debates on black oppositional identity and acting white].
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PSYC 80103 [62567] / “Psychology, Gender and Law”
/ Kay Deaux & O’Connor / Tuesdays, 11:45am-1:45pm
In this course we will analyze the intersection of psychology,
gender and the law from a number of vantage points. We will
consider how psychological theory and research influence
(or fail to influence) the formulation of law, including
its inclusion in expert testimony and amicus briefs. We
will examine the impact of the law on gendered practices,
such as those affecting education, family structure, and
relevant topics in civil and criminal law, such as gender
discrimination, sexual harassment, affirmative action, pregnancy
and parental leave, pension and social security policies,
family and child custody, divorce law, domestic violence,
and single-sex institutions.
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PSYC 80103 [62568] / “Sketching Lives in Health and
Illness, Oppression and Freedom” / Suzanne Ouellette
/ Tuesdays, 2:00pm-4:00pm
People write their own lives and those of others against
and within the background of all sorts of life circumstances.
In this class, we will focus on lives written in specific
settings, i.e., those defined by health and illness phenomena
and those marked by the social injustices associated with
racism and heterosexism. We will read autobiographies and
memoirs and biographies and other forms of life studies.
Through discussion of these texts, we will develop conceptual
and methodological skills to be applied in our own attempts
at life writing. The metaphor of "sketches" (as opposed
to full fledged portraits) will be explored for what it
can do to advance our work and move psychology beyond the
ambivalence and reluctance it has too often displayed with
regard to the study of lives. The course is intended for
students seeking to make life studies a central part of
their work as well as those for whom the biographical is
only to supplement other approaches. The course is open
to students from all disciplines concerned with life study.
Given that biographical work is best done across disciplinary
lines, the course will seek to take advantage of what each
participant brings from her or his disciplinary "home" and
engage life study work at the intersections of literature,
social science, and the arts. Class meetings will take a
variety of forms. Some will involve discussion of published
life studies and formal statements on why and how one does
life study work. Other sessions will involve actual practice
of selected techniques for the observation and analysis
of evidence, and the writing of life studies.
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PSYC 80103 [62574] / “The Health of Gays, Lesbians
and Bisexuals” / Margaret Rosario / Wednesdays, 4:15pm-6:15pm
Gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) individuals are a neglected
segment of the population whose health has only recently
been investigated. The health of the GLB community requires
attention because of recent reports of mental and physical
health problems. This course will examine the mental and
physical health of GLB individuals. It will aim to understand
potential determinants of their poor as well as good health.
The interplay between mental and physical health among GLB
individuals also will be a focus. Sex, gender, age, socioeconomic
status, ethnic/racial background, and other sociodemographic
characteristics will be examined with respect to the social
or biological privilege they may confer on GLB individuals.
The role of time will be considered both developmentally
(i.e., age) and historically (i.e., cohorts). This course
should be of interest to anyone concerned with the health
of GLB individuals.
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PSYC 80130 / “Ethnicity and Mental Health” /
The objective of this course is to provide students with
awareness, knowledge, and skills in the interface between
mental health and ethnocultural factors related to psychological
well-being and disorders. This course offers a survey of
the multicultural literature and general psychological literature
representing theory, research, and application in areas
and issues relevant to understanding health and mental health
concerns of ethnic minority populations. The course is structured
around identified mental health concerns of ethnic minority
populations. This includes topics based on public policy
debate, such as cultural competence, diagnostic testing
and classification, distribution of mental disorders, as
well as issues evolving from theoretical and empirical efforts
to distinguish intrapsychic and behavioral patterns unique
to specific ethnic populations. A primary goal of the course
is to expand the possibilities and appropriateness of clinical
interpretations and understanding of the mental health of
various ethnic and cultural groups. Students do research
and develop their own family ethno-cultural genograms to
present in class tracing the intergenerational transmission
of family valves, world views, traditions and practices.
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SOC 70200 [62500] / “Contemporary Sociological Theory”
/ Stanley Aronowitz / Tuesdays, 4:15pm-6:15pm
This course discusses some of the major questions addressed
by contemporary sociological theorists. Among them are the
fundamental structures for the formation of the social self;
causes and consequences of social change and social stability
in advanced industrial societies; conflict and consensus
orientations in social action; the rise of consumer society
and its implications for social transformation; the changing
nature of class relations as manifested in major institutions
such as the workplace, schools and cultural institutions;
key social actors in contemporary communications and information
processes. We will examine the work of American and European
thinkers.
Some
Possible Readings (not a final list):
§
George Herbert - Mead Mind, Self and Society
§
Talcott Parsons- The Social System
§
Robert Merton- Social Theory and Social Structure
§
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno- Dialectic of the Enlightenment
§
Herbert Marcuse- One Dimensional Man
§
Norbert Elias- Power and Civility
§
Jurgen Habermas- Knowledge and Human Interests
§
Thomas Kuhn- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
§
Pierre Bourdieu - Reproduction in Education, Culture
and Society
§
Simone de Beauvoir- The Second Sex
§
Wendy Brown- States of Injury
§
Michael Omi and Howard Winant- Racial Formation
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SOC 80000 [62681], [Cross listed with WSCP 8100] / “Trauma,
Time and Social Theory” / Patricia Clough / Tuesdays,
6:30pm -8:30pm
This course will address both the personal experience and
the social phenomena of trauma. Our discussion of trauma
will focus on the relationship of time, memory and violence
in the contexts of world terrorism, war, racism and various
bodily abuses. We will engage the shifts in social theory
that are registering changes in the ontology of time, the
technologies of archiving, the speeds of economic circulation,
and the global reconfigurations of state power. There will
be readings from the field of psychoanalysis and social
theorists who have addressed the impact of late twentieth-century
violences on memory, time, technology, and the body. We
will also draw on visual media and literary texts.
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SOC. 85800 [62532] / “Immigration and Ethnicity”
/ Philip Kasinitz / Wednesdays, 2:00pm-4:00pm
This course will examine the movement of peoples within
and across nation state boundaries, and the dynamics of
multi-ethnic societies that result. Looking at both sending
and receiving societies, we will study the forces—economic,
political and cultural—that put people into motion
and shape and govern their movement, and we will ask how
these processes are now being transformed by an increasingly
global economy. We will then turn to the role that immigrants
and the children of immigrants play in the formation of
multi-ethnic societies, with specific attention to the concepts
of diaspora, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, ethnicity,
citizenship and assimilation. Most of the readings will
deal with the immigration to and ethnicity in the United
States, although we will spend some time examining these
issues in the European and Asian contexts as well.
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SSW 71100 [62682], [Cross listed with WSCP 81000] / “Social
Welfare Policy and Planning II” / Mimi Abramovitz
/ Tuesdays, 2:00pm-4:00pm at Hunter College /
Permission of the Instructor is required.
The course applies historical, ideological and theoretical
models (including feminism) to the study of social problems
and social welfare policies. In a seminar fashion, students
critique various definitions of social problems; examine
the impact of race, class, gender and heterosexist power
relationships on the definitional process; and explore the
implications of social problem definition for social welfare
policy analysis and application. Using the intellectual
frameworks developed in class students study and analyze
a social problem of their choosing in class presentations
and in a final paper.
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SSW 85400 [62495] / “Women and Social Welfare
Policy” / Mimi Abromowitz / Tuesdays, 9:00am-11:00am
at Hunter College / (Cross listed with WSCP 81000) /
Permission of the Instructor is required.
This course introduces students to US. social welfare policy
from the perspective of women. First we look at contemporary
attitudes towards women's rights, definitions of women's
oppression as articulated by different feminist perspectives
and the role and function of the welfare state in wider
society. Drawing on this foundation we explore how the ideology
of gender shapes the design of social welfare policy and
delivery of social services focusing on several contemporary
social policy issues (such as welfare reform). (Students
explore other issues in the written assignment) Finally,
the course examines role of women in the development of
the welfare state, as well as low-income women’s social
welfare activism. The course pays special attention to diversity
issues particularly the impact of social welfare policies
and programs on women of different races, classes, and sexual
orientations.
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WSCP 81600 [62659] / “Workshop in Women Studies: Critical
Methodologies/ Research” / Roopali Mukherjee &
Anthony O'Brien / Tuesdays, 4:15pm-6:15pm
Critiques of identity politics have for some time now addressed
how the "we" of feminism has tended to fix, exclude, and
normalize the bounds of feminist theory and praxis. Eschewing
these well-worn recriminations of harms and injuries, this
workshop engages the "becoming-feminist" of critical approaches
to culture and society in order to consider the abiding
potential of feminist approaches. Readings for the
semester are divided into several rough themes, each addressing
a site of feminist scholarly intervention. For instance,
we examine Judith Butler's Antigone's Claim as it
works through the Antigone commentaries of her main interlocutors,
Hegel, Lacan, and Irigaray. We consider filmmaker Haile
Gerima's Bush Mama through Michel Foucault's theory
of bio-power, and The Stone Virgins, a new Zimbabwean
novel by Yvonne Vera through Achille Mbembe's, On the
Postcolony. Malek Alloula's Colonial Harem and
Mahasweta Devi's Imaginary Maps offer methodological
insights into the relations between gender and the national.
We engage Third World feminist interventions into transnational
capital through the work of documentary filmmaker, Anand
Patwardhan's A Narmada Diary, and end by tracing
genealogies of post-feminism through the recent Hollywood
blockbuster, Charlie's Angels. Over the semester,
students will work up a piece of feminist writing through
two drafts into publishable form, whether as part of a dissertation,
an article, or a conference paper. Each student will also
be responsible for leading discussion during one class meeting
(to be assigned) over the semester.
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