华体会

Courses in this cluster will use literature, film, interviews, and data sets to explore how disciplines make sense of systems of power in the U.S., how research-based inquiry can solve problems of inequities, and how literary and cultural theories can imagine and build more equitable worlds.

Associated Course Pairings:

Course Descriptions

CC101: Black and Brown Muslims in White America

Instructor: Peter Wright
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Analysis & Interpretation of Meaning
CRN# 18287
Block: 1

CC120: The Partition of India

Instructor: Purvi Mehta
CRN# 18325
Block: 3

In May 1947, the British colonial power announced that it would ‘quit’ India in August 1947, ten months sooner than had been initially declared. With just three months to figure out the transfer of power, Indian and colonial leaders decided to partition the region into two nation-states – India and Pakistan, which was to be a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims. Approximately 1 million people died over the next few months as over 14 million people left their homes and moved across newly created borders in one of the largest and most rapid mass migrations in human history. This course takes the moment of decolonization in India to explore the history of colonialism and its legacies as well as historiographical issues such as the relationship between memory and history and the representation of violence in history. We begin the course by examining the political events, social developments, and economic crises that led to Partition. We then turn to different aspects of the history of Partition and issues in the writing of Partition history. This course will also explore the limitations of traditional historiographical approaches to an event like Partition and examines representations of Partition in literature and film.

Two afternoon film screenings in week 3.

CC106: Feminist Texts, Feminist Subjects

Instructor: Nadia Guessous
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Societies & Human Behaviors
CRN# 18247
Block: 1

CC120: Musical Embodiment and Ethnography

Instructor: Liliana Carrizo
CRN# 18295
Block: 2

Building on the idea of music, performance, and culinary practice as forms of “living history,” this course is dedicated to understanding and uncovering cultural belonging from the perspective of the embodiment and the senses. We will attempt to answer: what does the story of your life look like, if told from the perspective of music and song? In this course, we will draw from and fine-tune the craft of ethnography – utilizing sensory, culinary, and music-based modes of inquiry in order to explore the human condition – including the world, its peoples, and the transnational movement of people over time. Our investigation will culminate in a larger research-based, written ethnographic project and presentation that creatively represents lived experiences of musical embodiment, culinary belonging, and socio-cultural meaning.

Students should plan for 1-2 local field trips and 1-2 evening events.

CC106: Histories of Race and Film

Instructor: Jamal Ratchford
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Societies and Human Behavior
CRN# 18202
Block: 1

This course explores exclusive knowledge production systems, the rise of Ethnic Studies, historical representations of people of difference, and race relations in the United States. At times, content is transnational and international in scope with coverage on the borderlands and latinidad, global indigeneities, Asia and the Pacific Islands, and Africana peoples throughout the world. A range of topics will be explored including hegemonic and essentialist depictions of Black and Brown peoples, challenges to conventional stereotypes, constructions of and ways we do race, identity formations, interracial relationships, historical and cultural contexts that inform representations of race, the complicated politics of integration, and intersections of race with gender and social classes. As an Ethnic Studies course, we engage content with conceptual lenses rooted in being descriptive, prescriptive/proscriptive, and corrective in ways grounded in academic excellence, cultural grounding, and social responsibility. This course examines race relations from Ethnic Studies, historical, and other interdisciplinary perspectives, and utilizes conceptual and theoretical insights from literature across academic disciplines. In this course, motion pictures will be critically examined as one mechanism that influences public exposure to difference as exclusive knowledge production.

CC120: Fairy Tales

Instructor: Chet Lisiecki
CRN# 18329
Block: 3

This class will focus primarily on the fairy tale (“Märchen” in German), a category of folklore containing elements of the supernatural, miraculous, and wondrous. In Germany, the fairy tale is most closely associated with the Brothers Grimm, who collected and transcribed these tales in the early nineteenth century. In 1812, they published the first edition of Children’s and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), which they continued to edit and update throughout their lives. This collection contains many fairy tales that are familiar to us today, including “Hansel and Gretel,” “Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Snow White,” and “Sleeping Beauty.” Our class will engage with fairy tales and fairy tale scholarship in a variety of ways. We will study the social and political history of fairy tales and analyze their formal structure. We will critically examine how fairy tales represent different aspects of human identity—including gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and age—as well as how they represent animals, plants, and the natural world. We will also compare different versions of the same tale, including queer, Black, and feminist adaptations and retellings.

CC106: Inconvenient Facts: The Sociological Imagination

Instructor: Gail Murphy-Geiss
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Societies and Human Behavior
CRN# 18273
Block: 1

An introduction to sociological thinking through the recognition and analysis of social patterns, focusing on the development of institutions and cultural values, the social construction of identity, the unequal distribution of resources and power, and strategies for social change.

Class time and court schedules permitting, one morning and/or afternoon in the third week may be spent in court to observe real-life applications of the analysis we are doing in class. No one will be away from campus beyond 3pm.

CC120: Math, Democracy, and Making a Difference

Instructor: Beth Malmskog
CRN# 18313
Block: 2

How do we make decisions as a group in a way that is most fair? What does fairness even mean? Surprisingly, mathematics can be a great tool in understanding fairness in democracy and beyond. However, mathematics is only as powerful as our ability to communicate our mathematical insights to the community. This course will begin with an introduction to the mathematics of voting and democracy. We will learn how mathematicians approach the concept of fairness in this context, and practice writing as mathematicians write to convince one another. While continuing to expand our mathematical knowledge, we will then practice writing about mathematics in a way that can persuade a non-mathematical audience to understand and care about mathematical ideas. Finally, we will consider how an understanding of mathematics is important in creating and interpreting laws, with a focus on recent and draft voting legislation in Colorado. The emphasis is on writing (and otherwise communicating) to make a difference—in our reader’s understanding, and in the larger world. No mathematical background is assumed.

There will be an afternoon session, likely on the final Tuesday of the course, when students hold a public information session on their final project work. There will likely be a class lunch, scheduled based on student availability.

CC106: Language, Power and White Supremacy

Instructor: Christina Leza
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Societies and Human Behavior
CRN# 18246
Block: 1

This course addresses the role of language in shaping and maintaining unequal relationships of power in societies, with an emphasis on the ongoing impacts of colonialism and white supremacy. Drawing from multiple disciplines including linguistics, anthropology, Indigenous studies, race and ethnic studies, and cognitive studies, the course introduces students to various epistemological and methodological approaches to the study of power in society. While introducing students to disciplinary-specific ways of producing knowledge, the course will also critically explore the relationship between Western scientific paradigms and colonialism. Comparing Indigenous and decolonizing approaches to knowledge production within Western scientific and philosophical traditions, the course allows students to critically think across and toward the expansion of disciplinary paradigms.

One or two evening community events likely in week 2 as well as a full-day field trip in week 2.

CC120: History of Medicine, 1500-present

Instructor: Jane Murphy
CRN# 18294
Block: 3

In this writing course, we will use the history of medicine to practice and reflect on the role of reading, thinking, drafting, revision—that is to say, all the elements of writing—in (1) developing our own thinking and understanding and also (2) effectively communicating an interpretation, argument, or question to an audience. Your engagement and reflection on this process is a vital component of the course. Beginning with conceptions of the body, health and medicine from the sixteenth century Mediterranean world, this course explores changing medical practices in historical contexts. What constituted medicine and who had medical authority? What role did exploration and colonization play in the economic and intellectual development of medical practices? How might we think about our own moment in conjunction with the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic? We’ll share our findings and collectively work to develop research questions and techniques for future study in this field. In so doing, we will critically engage ethical dimensions of the study and uses of medicine and history.

Local field trips that happen during class hours. Manitou field trip and lunch that returns to campus by 1:30 pm in Week 3.