International Studies

In the 1920s, a Miss Wilson presented a paper at a London conference, addressing “The Education of European Children in Contact With Primitive Races.” In her talk, she described the life of rural white settler children in Kenya growing up with African playmates and expressed her concerns about the “morally deleterious” effects of such play on these future imperial leaders. This particular case illustrates discourse about the role of privileged white children in imperial regimes; but children of diverse social classes, races, and nationalities across the globe were all implicated in processes of imperial expansion and European settler colonization over (at least) the past three centuries. What was believed about children, done to children, and required of children was central to the political and economic success of empire. In this lecture, we will examine a series of cases in order to understand the diverse roles, both intentional and unintentional, of children in colonial processes. In addition to the white sons and daughters of European settler colonists in Africa and Southeast Asia, we will look at the contrary things that were said and done about mixed-race children (and their mothers) at different historical and political moments of empire. We will learn, too, about the deployment of “orphans” in the service of empire. In the metropole, particularly British cities, orphan boys were funneled into the military and merchant navy, while children of both sexes were shipped across the globe to boost white settler populations, provide free labor, and relieve English poorhouses of the responsibility of taking care of them. The ancestors of many contemporary citizens of Canada, Australia, and South Africa were exported as children from metropolitan orphanages. We will deploy approaches from sex-gender studies, postcolonial studies, and critical race theory. Questions that we will explore include: Why did settler authorities in Australia kidnap mixed-race Indigenous children and put them in boarding schools, when such children in other colonies were expected to stay with their local mothers out of sight of the settlers? How did European ideas about climate and race frame the ways in which settler children were nursed in the Dutch East Indies? How did concepts of childhood and parental rights over children vary historically, socioeconomically, and geographically? How did metropolitan discourses about race, class, and evolution frame the treatment of indigent children at home and abroad? The sources for this class include literature, scholarly articles, ethnographic accounts, historical documents, and film. Students will attend the lecture once a week and group conference once a week.

This interdisciplinary psychology and anthropology seminar will address mental health in diverse cultural contexts, drawing upon a range of case studies to illuminate the causes, symptoms, diagnosis, course, and treatment of mental illness across the globe. We open the course by exploring questions of the classification of mental illness in order to address whether Western psychiatric categories apply across different local contexts. We explore the globalization of American understandings of the psyche, the exportation of Western mental disorders, and the impact of psychiatric imperialism in places like Sri Lanka, Zanzibar, Oaxaca, and Japan. Through our readings of peer-reviewed articles and current research in cultural psychology, clinical psychology, and psychological, psychiatric, and medical anthropology, we explore conditions such as depression and anxiety, schizophrenia, autism, susto, and mal de ojo to understand the entanglements of psychological experience, culture, morality, sociality, and care. We explore how diagnostic processes and psychiatric care are, at times, differentially applied in the United States according to the client’s race/ethnicity, class, and gender. Finally, we explore the complexities of recovery or healing, addressing puzzles such as why certain mental disorders considered to be lifelong, chronic, and severe in some parts of the world are interpreted as temporary, fleeting, and manageable elsewhere—and how such expectations influence people’s ability to experience wellness or (re-)integration into family, work, and society. Several of our key authors will join us as invited guest speakers to talk about their current work. Students will conduct conference projects related to the central topics of our course.

Images wavered in the sunlit trim of appliances, something always moving, a brightness flying, so much to know in the world.—Don Delillo, Libra

A few cartoons lead to cataclysmic events in Europe. A photograph printed in a newspaper moves a solitary reader. A snapshot posted on the internet leads to dreams of fanciful places. Memories of a past year haunt us like ghosts. What each of these occurrences has in common is that they all entail the force of images in our lives, whether these images are visual or acoustic in nature, made by hand or machine, circulated by word of mouth, or simply imagined. In this seminar, we will consider the role that images play in the lives of people in various settings throughout the world. In delving into terrains at once actual and virtual, we will develop an understanding of how people throughout the world create, use, circulate, and perceive images and how such efforts tie into ideas and practices of sensory perception, time, memory, affect, imagination, sociality, history, politics, and personal and collective imaginings. Through these engagements, we will reflect on the fundamental human need for images, the complicated politics and ethics of images, aesthetic and cultural sensibilities, dynamics of time and memory, the intricate play between the actual and the imagined, and the circulation of digital images in an age of globalization. Readings will include a number of writings in anthropology, art history, philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, and critical theory. Images will be drawn from photographs, paintings, sculptures, drawings, films, videos, graffiti, religion, rituals, tattoos, inscriptions, novels, poems, road signs, advertisements, dreams, fantasies, phantasms, and any number of fabulations in the worlds in which we live and imagine.

Transnational migration, human-animal relations, and American community life are but a few of the cultural realities that anthropologists have effectively studied and written about. This is no easy task, given the substantial difficulties involved in understanding and portraying the concerns, activities, and lifeworlds other than one’s own. Despite these challenges, ethnographic writing is generally considered one of the best ways to convey a nuanced and contextually rich understanding of people’s experiences in life. To gain an informed sense of the methods, challenges, and benefits of ethnographic writing, students in this course will try their hands at a concerted work of ethnographic writing. Along with undertaking a series of ethnographic writing exercises, students will be encouraged to craft a fully-realized piece of ethnographic writing that conveys something of the features and dynamics of a particular world in lively, accurate, and comprehensive terms. Along the way, and with the help of anthropological writings that are either exceptional or experimental in nature, we will collectively think through some of the most important features of the craft of ethnographic writing from the use of field notes and interviews, the interlacing of theory and data, the author’s voice in ethnographic prose, and the ethical and political responsibilities that come with any attempt to understand and portray the lives of others. This seminar will work best for students who already have a rich body of ethnographic research materials to work with, such that they can quickly delve into the intricacies of writing about their chosen subject.

This interdisciplinary seminar in environmental studies and anthropology focuses on the interconnected social problems of migration and environmental crisis. Experts project that, in the coming decades, climate crisis will increasingly propel people to migrate, as they flee extreme weather events and areas with depleted natural resources. As migrants in the Global South and in regions disproportionately affected by industrial extraction and environmental disaster face exceedingly untenable living conditions, both internal and international migration will continue to rise. While this prediction is often posed as a problem of the near future, displacement and forced migration are not new phenomena. Indeed, the close connections between industrial extractive economic projects, land dispossession, forced migration, and environmental crisis are evident in both past and present times. Through our course readings across environmental studies, anthropology, migration studies, and other relevant disciplines, we will focus on contemporary problems and their historical legacies to ask questions like: What is at stake for people impacted by climate change? How should we understand the relationship between environmental concerns and human mobility, both historically and now? What are the links between environmental racism, land rights, and migration? How might we analyze sociolegal processes, economic projects, and both local and international politics in relation to the natural world and the movement of people, problems, and ideas across borders? How does climate crisis affect particular groups, such as immigrants, Indigenous peoples, and other historically marginalized or disenfranchised communities? How might resistance movements focused on immigrant rights inform efforts toward climate justice, and vice versa? Our readings will address a wide variety of ethnographic contexts and geographic landscapes, taking us from the fishing villages of Ghana to the urban construction sites of Italy, from the highlands of Peru to the plains of Wyoming, from rural Yucatán to downtown San Francisco, and from Puerto Rico to New York, among other places. Students may opt to conduct original fieldwork or work with local organizations as part of their conference work for this course.

Native American and Indigenous peoples today protect 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity; and Indigenous ways of living in relation to the natural environment, in keeping with Indigenous ecological knowledge and practices, have sustained ecosystems for centuries. Yet, throughout history, settler colonial and industrial extractive projects have displaced native peoples and instigated the environmental crises that plague our current world and threaten our future survival. In response to these destructive incursions on their ancestral lands, Indigenous peoples in the Americas and beyond have long been at the forefront of resistance movements against environmentally exploitative projects, engaged in an ongoing struggle that links Indigenous sovereignty with care for the natural world. In this interdisciplinary environmental studies and anthropology seminar, we will explore the humanistic concerns and ethics at stake regarding people’s role in ecosystems, our collective responsibility to protect the natural world, and our work toward environmental and climate justice as intimately linked to Indigenous ecological knowledge, governance, and rights. This course will include readings on Native American and Indigenous oral history and literature; land dispossession, displacement, and migration; ecological knowledge and practices; decolonizing food systems, agriculture, and sustainability; health, medicine, and healing; resistance movements and social alliances; and the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty, climate change, and environmental justice. We will explore Indigenous knowledge and decolonizing approaches as we re-envision an ethical path to a sustainable future that integrates environmental protection with social justice. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects.

This seminar asks how contemporary immigration shapes individual and collective identity across the life course. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that bridges cross-cultural psychology, human development, and psychological anthropology, we will ask how people’s movement across borders and boundaries transforms their sense of self, as well as their interpersonal relations and connections to community. We will analyze how the experience of immigration is affected by the particular intersections of racial, ethnic, class, gender, generational, and other boundaries that immigrants cross. For example, how do undocumented youth navigate the constraints imposed by “illegalized” identities, and how do they come to construct new self-perceptions? How might immigrants acculturate or adapt to new environments, and how does the process of moving from home or living “in between” two or more places impact mental health? Through our close readings and seminar discussions on this topic, we seek to understand how different forms of power—implemented across realms, including state-sponsored surveillance and immigration enforcement, language and educational policy, health and social services—shape and constrain immigrants’ understanding of their place in the world and their experience of exclusion and belonging. In our exploration of identity, we will attend to the ways in which immigrants are left out of national narratives, as well as the ways in which people who move across borders draw on cultural resources to create spaces and practices of connection, protection, and continuity despite the disruptive effects of immigration. In tandem with our readings, we will welcome scholar-activist guest speakers, who will present their current work in the field.

This course explores the powerful architecture, sculpture, and painting styles that lie at the heart of the creation of Europe and the idea of the West. We will use a number of strategies to explore how expressive narrative painting and sculpture and new monumental architectural styles were engaged in the formation of a common European identity and uncover, as well, the artistic vestiges of diverse groups and cultures that challenge that uniform vision. These are arts that chronicle deep social struggles between classes, intense devotion through pilgrimage, the rise of cities and universities, and movements that could both advocate genocide and nurture enormous creativity—in styles both flamboyant and austere—growing from places as diverse as castles and rural monasteries to Gothic cathedrals. The course will explore those aspects of expressive visual language that link works of art to social history, the history of ideas, and political ideology.

The visual arts and architecture constitute a central part of human expression and experience, and both grow from and influence our lives in profound ways that we might not consciously acknowledge. In this course, we will explore intersections between the visual arts and cultural, political, and social history. The goal is to teach students to deal critically with works of art, using the methods and some of the theories of the discipline of art history. This course is not a survey but, rather, will have as its subject a limited number of artists and works of art and architecture that students will learn about in depth through formal analysis, readings, discussion, research, and debate. We will endeavor to understand each work from the point of view of its creators and patrons and by following the work's changing reception by audiences throughout time. To accomplish this, we will need to be able to understand some of the languages of art. The course, then, is also a course in visual literacy—the craft of reading and interpreting visual images on their own terms. We will also discuss a number of issues of contemporary concern; for instance, the destruction of art, free speech and respect of religion, the art market, and the museum. Students will be asked to schedule time on weekends to travel to Manhattan on their own or in the College van to do assignments at various museums in New York. You will need to leave several hours for each of these visits and will keep a notebook of comments and drawings of works of art.

In this course, we will trace the history of Paris from its foundation until World War I, working from the visual arts that both defined and emanated from this remarkable city. We will explore works of art, architecture, and urban design as documents of history, of social and cultural values, and of the history of ideas. Our readings and discussions will lead us to interactions between the arts and the history, fashion, religion, science, and literature of Paris. Student projects will chart these relationships graphically and construct, in both individual and group projects, a cultural history of Paris from Roman Lutetia to the City of Lights.

This course explores China’s place as both an initiator and a subject of globalization between the second century (Han dynasty) and the 15th century (the Mongol, Yuan dynasty). To do so, we will follow the rise and development of the Silk Roads with the goal of uncovering the variety of cross-cultural influences among China and its closest neighbors (the Uighurs, Tibet, Central Asia, and the Russian steppe), as well as distant lands (including India, Europe, and South East Asia). More specifically, topics covered will include the following: political and state-sanctioned relations, including diplomacy and interregional wars; economic exchange and trade; the spread of religions (including Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity); and, finally, the exchange of technology, art, and material culture (including food, ceramics, and items of daily use). This is a hybrid lecture course, including weekly lectures and seminars. The lectures will be based on scholarly research and provide the broader historical and cultural context for a study of primary documents. In the seminar portion, we will undertake a closer reading and discussion of those primary documents.

The 2024 presidential election result will have far-reaching implications for economic, social, and environmental policies. It will also be significant in terms of the future of American democracy and the power of the Far Right. In this course, we will situate current economic and political challenges in a theoretical and historical context by drawing on insights from different schools of thought in economics, as well as from other disciplines such as law, politics, sociology, and history. Some of the key questions to be addressed are as follows: How can the central debates in political economy help us understand some of the unprecedented challenges that we face, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; the climate crisis; and inequalities that intersect across class, race, and gender lines? Why is the study of history a central methodological concern for many economists, and why not so for others? Why do people distinguish between “regulation” and laissez-faire, and is this a false dichotomy? What is the history of industrial and social policy in the United States and other countries? How do we understand the role of political and corporate power and the “rule of law” in regard to market outcomes? These and others will be some of the questions that we will be tackling throughout the course of the year, thereby ensuring that students develop a solid understanding of the fundamental debates in economic theory and policy and see the key role of methodology in the study of political economy. Finally, the goal is to ensure that students develop the ability to critically engage scholarly work in economics. There will be weekly conferences for the first six weeks and biweekly conferences thereafter (at the discretion of the instructor).

The study of law is integral to the study of political economy. This fundamental premise is the point of departure for this course. While their politics were radically different, the British political economist Jeremy Bentham and historian E. P. Thompson both emphasized the centrality of law in society. Bentham stated: “Property and law are born together and die together. Before laws were made, there was no property; take away laws, and property ceases” (Bentham 1840, p. 139. Cited from Singer 2015, p. 15). On the basis of his historical work, Thompson concluded: “For I found that law did not keep politely to a ‘level’ but was at every bloody level; it was imbricated within the mode of production and productive relations themselves (as property rights, definitions of agrarian practice)…” (Thompson 1978, p. 96). Using the study of the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007/2008 as its point of departure, this course will discuss the relationship between law and money (which is, after all, a form of property), along with the nature and legal underpinnings of finance and financial crises. The course will deal with banking, central banking, the nature of public (sovereign) debt, and international money. As a course in the subdisciplines of law and economics, this class will introduce students to mainstream and critical approaches to both law and economics in regard to money, finance, markets, and globalization and will contrast the law and political economy framework with the conventional (or neoclassical) treatment of money and finance. It will be demonstrated throughout this course that core issues in law, such as those pertaining to property and contracts, are deeply embedded in all economic phenomena—including monetary ones.

This course focuses on the intersection of economic development and environmental and natural-resource management. We will focus on the unique environmental and natural-resource challenges faced by developing countries and seek to understand how economic-development goals can be achieved without sacrificing the economic and environmental well-being of future generations. We will bring together relevant theoretical and empirical insights obtained from environmental economics, ecological economics, political economy, and development studies. A sample of questions to be addressed in the course includes how the relationship between economic growth, demographic change and environmental pollution has evolved; how globalization distributes and redistributes environmental benefits and costs between the Global South and Global North; whether a Global Green New Deal can address both environmental sustainability and economic development; why developing countries suffer from the natural-resource curse; what local communities in developing countries can teach us about sustainable resource management; what property-right regimes work for sustainable development; and what renewable energy policies work for developing countries; etc.

This interdisciplinary seminar in environmental studies and anthropology focuses on the interconnected social problems of migration and environmental crisis. Experts project that, in the coming decades, climate crisis will increasingly propel people to migrate as they flee extreme weather events and areas with depleted natural resources. As migrants in the Global South and in regions disproportionately affected by industrial extraction and environmental disaster face exceedingly untenable living conditions, both internal and international migration will continue to rise. While this prediction is often posed as a problem of the near future, displacement and forced migration are not new phenomena. Indeed, the close connections between industrial extractive economic projects, land dispossession, forced migration, and environmental crisis are evident in both past and present times. Through our course readings across environmental studies, anthropology, migration studies, and other relevant disciplines, we will focus on contemporary problems and their historical legacies to ask questions like: What is at stake for people impacted by climate change? How should we understand the relationship between environmental concerns and human mobility, both historically and now? What are the links between environmental racism, land rights, and migration? How might we analyze sociolegal processes, economic projects, and both local and international politics in relation to the natural world and the movement of people, problems, and ideas across borders? How does climate crisis affect particular groups, such as immigrants, Indigenous peoples, and other historically marginalized or disenfranchised communities? How might resistance movements focused on immigrant rights inform efforts toward climate justice, and vice versa? Our readings will address a wide variety of ethnographic contexts and geographic landscapes, taking us from the fishing villages of Ghana to the urban construction sites of Italy, from the highlands of Peru to the plains of Wyoming, from rural Yucatán to downtown San Francisco, and from Puerto Rico to New York, among other places. Students may opt to conduct original fieldwork or work with local organizations as part of their conference work for this course.

Native American and Indigenous peoples today protect 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity; and Indigenous ways of living in relation to the natural environment, in keeping with Indigenous ecological knowledge and practices, have sustained ecosystems for centuries. Yet, throughout history, settler colonial and industrial extractive projects have displaced native peoples and instigated the environmental crises that plague our current world and threaten our future survival. In response to these destructive incursions on their ancestral lands, Indigenous peoples in the Americas and beyond have long been at the forefront of resistance movements against environmentally exploitative projects and have engaged in an ongoing struggle that links Indigenous sovereignty with care for the natural world. In this interdisciplinary environmental studies and anthropology seminar, we will explore the humanistic concerns and ethics at stake regarding people’s role in ecosystems; our collective responsibility to protect the natural world; and our work toward environmental and climate justice as intimately linked to Indigenous ecological knowledge, governance, and rights. This course will include readings on Native American and Indigenous oral history and literature; land dispossession, displacement, and migration; ecological knowledge and practices; decolonizing food systems, agriculture, and sustainability; health, medicine, and healing; resistance movements and social alliances; and the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty, climate change, and environmental justice. We will explore Indigenous knowledge and decolonizing approaches, as we re-envision an ethical path to a sustainable future that integrates environmental protection with social justice. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects.

This course will offer a systematic review of French grammar and is designed to strengthen and deepen students’ mastery of grammatical structures and vocabulary. Students will also learn to begin to use linguistic concepts as tools for developing their analytic writing. Over the course of the year, we will study a series of scenes from French and francophone literature from its origins to today. From the 11th-century Chanson de Roland and 12th-century “lais” and fables of Marie de France to 20th-century works by Aimé Césaire, Aminata Sow-Fall and Annie Ernaux, we will look at scenes specific to literature. What is it about literary scenes that differs from those created in other media? And what happens when we encounter them as part of a class rather than on our own? Where possible, our discussion will include points of comparison with scenes in visual media such as theatre and photography. Readings will include excerpts from Marie de Rabutin-Chantal (Madame de Sévigné), Madame de La Fayette, Gustave Flaubert, or Léon-Gontran Damas. At regular intervals, we will also study the headlines of Libération, a major Parisian daily. In this part of the course, we will consider the way climate change, food, or secularism are discussed, as well as aesthetic and ethical choices in presenting the news. In addition to conferences, a weekly conversation session with a French language assistant(e) is required. Attendance at the weekly French lunch table and French film screenings are both highly encouraged. The Intermediate I and II courses in French are specially designed to help prepare students for studying in Paris with Sarah Lawrence College during their junior year.

This class is designed primarily for students who haven’t had any exposure to French and will allow them to develop, over the course of the year, an active command of the fundamentals of spoken and written French. We will use grammar lessons to learn how to speak, read, and write in French. In-class dialogue will center on the study of theatre, cinema, and short texts, including poems, newspaper articles, and short stories from French and francophone cultures. During the spring semester, students will be able to conduct a small-scale project in French on a topic of their choice. There are no individual conference meetings for this level. The class meets three times a week, and a weekly conversation session with a French language tutor is required. Attendance at the weekly French lunch table and French film screenings are both highly encouraged. Students who successfully complete a beginning and an intermediate-level French course are eligible to study in Paris with Sarah Lawrence College during their junior year.

This course will analyze the relationship between France and its former colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa. We will look at works written by thinkers of the time that analyzed questions of value and morality regarding the colonial project. Students will have the chance to get familiar with the different eras of colonialism, including the moment of decolonization and the postcolonial era. How can we view the colonizers all these years later? In what ways does the legacy of colonialism continue to affect Sub-Saharan Africa? Theoretical texts, film, and literary texts will be used to further the students’ knowledge of this topic through written and oral assignments.

Where does the food we eat come from? Why do some people have enough food to eat and others do not? Are there too many people for the world to feed? Who controls the world’s food? Will global food prices continue their recent rapid rise; and, if so, what will be the consequences? What are the environmental impacts of our food production systems? How do answers to these questions differ by place or by the person asking the question? How have they changed over time? This course will explore the following fundamental issue: the relationship between development and the environment—focusing, in particular, on agriculture and the production and consumption of food. The questions above often hinge on the contentious debate concerning population, natural resources, and the environment. Thus, we will begin by critically assessing the fundamental ideological positions and philosophical paradigms of “modernization,” as well as critical counterpoints that lie at the heart of this debate. Within this context of competing sets of philosophical assumptions concerning the population-resource debate, we will investigate the concept of “poverty” and the making of the Third World, access to food, hunger, grain production and food aid, agricultural productivity (the Green and Gene revolutions), biofuels, the role of transnational corporations (TNCs), the international division of labor, migration, globalization and global commodity chains, and the different strategies adopted by nation-states to “‘develop” natural resources and agricultural production. Through a historical investigation of environmental change and the biogeography of plant domestication and dispersal, we will look at the creation of indigenous, subsistence, peasant, plantation, collective, and commercial forms of agriculture. We will analyze the physical environment and ecology that help shape but rarely determine the organization of resource use and agriculture. Rather, through the dialectical rise of various political-economic systems such as feudalism, slavery, mercantilism, colonialism, capitalism, and socialism, we will study how humans have transformed the world’s environments. We will follow with studies of specific issues: technological change in food production; commercialization and industrialization of agriculture and the decline of the family farm; food and public health, culture, and family; land grabbing and food security; the role of markets and transnational corporations in transforming the environment; and the global environmental changes stemming from modern agriculture, dams, deforestation, grassland destruction, desertification, biodiversity loss, and the interrelationship with climate change. Case studies of particular regions and issues will be drawn from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the United States. The final part of the course examines the restructuring of the global economy and its relation to emergent international laws and institutions regulating trade, the environment, agriculture, resource extraction treaties, the changing role of the state, and competing conceptualizations of territoriality and control. We will end with discussions of emergent local, regional, and transnational coalitions for food self-reliance and food sovereignty, alternative and community-supported agriculture, community-based resource-management systems, sustainable development, and grassroots movements for social and environmental justice. Films, multimedia materials, and distinguished guest lectures will be interspersed throughout the course. One farm/factory field trip is possible if funding/timing permits. The lecture participants may also take a leading role in a campus-wide event on “the climate crisis, food, and hunger,” tentatively planned for spring. Please mark your calendars when the dates are announced, as attendance for all of the above is required. Attendance and participation are also required at special guest lectures and film viewings in the Social Science Colloquium Series approximately once per month. The Web Board is an important part of the course. Regular required postings of short essays will be made here, as well as follow-up commentaries with your colleagues. There will be occasional short, in-class essays during the semester and a final exam at the end. Group conferences will focus on in-depth analysis of certain course topics and will include short prepared papers for debates, the debates themselves, and small-group discussions. You will prepare a poster project on a topic of your choice, related to the course, which will be presented at the end of the semester in group conference, as well as in a potential public session.

Despite widespread daily reporting on China’s rise to superpower status and both its challenge to and necessary partnership with the United States, what do we really know about the country? In this seminar, we will explore China’s evolving place in the world through political-economic integration and globalization processes. Throughout the seminar, we will compare China with other areas of the world within the context of the broader theoretical and thematic questions mentioned in detail below. We will consistently focus our efforts on reframing debates, both academic and in mass media, to enable new insights and analyses not only concerning China but also in terms of the major global questions—in theory, policy, and practice—of this particular historical moment. We will begin with an overview of contemporary China, discussing the unique aspects of China’s modern history and the changes and continuities from one era to the next. We will explore Revolutionary China and the subsequent socialist period to ground the seminar’s primary focus: post-1978 reform and transformation to the present day. Rooted in the questions of agrarian change and rural development, we will also study seismic shifts in urban and industrial form and China’s emergence as a global superpower on its way to becoming the world’s largest economy. We will analyze the complex intertwining of the environmental, political-economic, and sociocultural aspects of these processes as we interpret the geography of contemporary China. Using a variety of theoretical perspectives, we will analyze a series of contemporary global debates: Is there a fundamental conflict between the environment and rapid development? What is the role of the peasantry in the modern world? What is the impact of different forms of state power and practice? How does globalization shape China’s regional transformation? And, on the other hand, how does China’s global integration impact development in every other country and region of the world? Modern China provides immense opportunities for exploring key theoretical and substantive questions of our time. A product first and foremost of its own complex history, other nation-states and international actors and institutions—such as the World Bank, transnational corporations and civil society—have also heavily influenced China. The “China model” of rapid growth is widely debated in terms of its efficacy as a development pathway, yet it defies simple understandings and labels. Termed everything from neoliberalism, to market socialism, to authoritarian Keynesian capitalism, China is a model full of paradoxes and contradictions. Not least of these is China’s impact on global climate change. Other challenges include changing gender relations, rapid urbanization, and massive internal migration. In China today, contentious debates continue on land reform, the pros and cons of global market integration, the role of popular culture and the arts in society, how to define ethical behavior, the roots of China’s social movements—from Tian’anmen to contemporary widespread social unrest and discontent among workers, peasants, students, and intellectuals—and the meaning and potential resolution of minority conflicts in China’s hinterlands. Land and resource grabs in China and abroad are central to China’s rapid growth and role as an industrial platform for the world. But resulting social inequality and environmental degradation challenge the legitimacy of China’s leadership like never before—as recent protests in Hong Kong and elsewhere attest. The COVID pandemic and the state’s response has revealed new challenges to state legitimacy. As China borders many of the most volatile places in the contemporary world—and increasingly projects its power to the far corners of the planet and beyond—we will conclude our seminar with a discussion of global security issues, geopolitics, and potential scenarios for China’s future. Weekly selected readings, films, mass media, and books will be used to inform debate and discussion. A structured conference project will integrate closely with one of the diverse topics of the seminar. Some experience in the social sciences is desired but not required.

Between the 1790s and the middle of the 19th century, European culture was powerfully shaped by the broad current of thought and feeling that we know as “Romanticism.” This course will examine the rise of the Romantic sensibility in the decades between the 1760s and 1800 and survey diverse manifestations of Romanticism in thought, literature, and art during the subsequent half-century. We will pay particular attention to the complex relations between Romanticism and two of the most portentous historical developments of its era: the French Revolution and the rise of national consciousness among Germans, Italians, and other European peoples. Readings will include prose fiction by Goethe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Sir Walter Scott, and Edgar Allen Poe; poetry by Wordsworth, Shelley, Hölderlin, and Mickiewicz; works on religion, ethics, and the philosophy of history; and political writings by the pioneers of modern conservativism, liberalism, and socialism. We will also look at Romantic painting and other forms of visual art. Students will meet individually with me every week during the fall term and every other week during the spring term. I will advise you about the conference project that you will be undertaking each semester and will offer you what help I can in navigating life at Sarah Lawrence College.

This course examines Latin America in the making. From the time of Andean ayllus to the contemporary battles between the populist left and the populist right, this lecture course offers a survey of the more than five centuries of the history of the region that we know as Latin America. Although the region’s history is deeply embedded in global processes of capitalist expansion, imperial domination, and circulation of Western ideas, this course attempts to look at Latin America from the inside out. The course examines the ways in which landowners and campesinos, intellectuals and workers, military blacks, whites, and mestizos understood and shaped the history of this region and the world. The course will examine the rise and fall of the Aztec and Inca empires, the colonial order that emerged in its stead, independence from Iberian rule, and the division of the empire into a myriad of independent republics or states searching for a “nation.” In the second part of the course, by focusing on specific national trajectories, we will ask how the American and Iberian civilizations shaped the new national experiences and how those who made claims on the “nation” defined and transformed the colonial legacies. In the third and final portion of the course, we will study the long 20th century and the multiple experiences of, and interplay between, anti-Americanism, revolution, populism, and authoritarianism. We will ask how different national pacts and projects attempted to solve the problem of political inclusion and social integration that emerged after the consolidation of the 19th-century liberal state. Using primary and secondary sources, both fiction and film, the course will provide students with an understanding of historical phenomena such as mestizaje, caudillismo, populism, reformism, corruption, and informality, among other concepts key to the debates in contemporary Latin America. The course meets for one weekly lecture and one weekly group conference. Aside from mandatory attendance and participation, the requirements for the course include an individual exam, a collaborative research project, and a primary source analysis.

In a global landscape pocked by genocide, wars of choice, piracy, and international terrorism, what good is international law? Can it mean anything without a global police force and a universal judiciary? Is “might makes right” the only law that works? Or is it true that “most states comply with most of their obligations most of the time”? These essential questions frame the contemporary practice of law across borders. This lecture provides an overview of international law—its doctrine, theory, and practice. The course addresses a wide range of issues, including the bases and norms of international law, the law of war, human-rights claims, domestic implementation of international norms, treaty interpretation, and state formation/succession.

History is replete with rabid pogroms, merciless religious wars, tragic show trials, and even genocide. For as long as people have congregated, they have defined themselves, in part, as against an other—and have persecuted that other. But history has also yielded systems of constraints. So how can we hope to achieve a meaningful understanding of the human experience without examining both the wrongs and the rights? Should the human story be left to so-called realists, who claim that power wins out over ideals every time? Or is there a logic of mutual respect that offers better solutions? This lecture examines the history of international human rights and focuses on the claims that individuals and groups make against states in which they live.

Sixteenth-century Europeans shared a variety of fundamental beliefs about the world that a secular-minded Westerner of today is likely to find “disreputable”—intellectually preposterous, morally outrageous, or both. Almost all well-educated people believed that the Earth was the unmoving center of the universe, around which the heavenly bodies revolved; that human destinies were dictated, at least to some extent, by the influence of the planets and stars; that the welfare of their communities was threatened by the maleficent activities of witches; and that rulers had a moral duty to compel their subjects to practice a particular religion. In this course, we will examine 16th-century ideas on these and other topics and see how those beliefs fit together to form a coherent picture of the world. We will also look at the writings of pioneer thinkers—Machiavelli, Montaigne, Galileo—who began the process of dismantling this world-conception and replacing it with a new one closer to our own. It is not only ideas, however, that render the 16th century “disreputable” to modern eyes. Some of history’s most notorious kings and queens ruled European states in this period—Henry VIII of England with his six wives; Mary Queen of Scots with her three husbands; Philip II of Spain, patron of the Inquisition. In the spring semester, therefore, we will look at the theory and practice of politics in 16th-century Europe. Since most European states were monarchies, we will start by examining 16th-century ideas about princes and their courts. How should princes be educated for their role? How, and to what ends, should they exercise their power? What were the qualifications of the ideal courtier? We will go on to consider the actual lives and policies of a number of European princes: the Tudor kings and queens of England; the monarchs who ruled France during the religious wars that convulsed that kingdom between 1562 and 1629. Later in the semester, we will consider what to us may appear to be the most exotic of 16th-century European states. This was not a monarchy at all but a republic: the splendid and idiosyncratic Most Serene Republic of Venice. We will examine, along with its institutions, the revolutionary developments in painting that unfolded there. Students will have great freedom in the choice of conference paper topics. Depending on their interests, they can pursue research in political or religious history, literature, philosophy, or art.

In recent decades, historians have become increasingly interested in the unique role and power of memory in public life and have sought to understand the innumerable ways that collective memory has been constructed, experienced, used, abused, debated, and reshaped. This course will focus on the rich literature on historical memory within the field of modern Middle Eastern history in order to explore a number of key questions: What is the relationship between history and memory? How are historical events interpreted and rendered socially meaningful? How is public knowledge about the past shaped and propagated? How and why—and in what contexts—do particular ways of seeing and remembering the past become attached to various political projects? Particular attention will be paid to the following topics: the role of memory in the Palestine-Israel “conflict”; postcolonial state-building and “official memory”; debates over national remembering, forgetting, and reconstruction following the Lebanese Civil War; Middle Eastern diaspora formation and exilic identity; the myth of a “golden age” of Arab nationalism; Turkish nostalgia for the Ottoman imperial past; and the role of museums, holidays, and other commemorative practices in the construction of the national past across the region. Throughout the course, we will attend to the complex interplay between individual and collective memory (and “counter-memory”), particularly as this has played out in several formulations of Middle Eastern nationalism.

Markets, profits, and exploitation seem to define capitalism; but exchanges, markets, and exploitation of the powerful over the powerless have existed long before the word “capitalism” even entered the English language. So, what defines capitalism? How has that meaning change over time? Does capitalism change across time and space? What changes has capitalism brought to economic life? What aspects of economic life transcend capitalism? Who are the advocates of capitalism? Who are its critics, and why? This seminar seeks to address these questions through a study of the transformations in economic life before, during, and after capitalism. The course examines the historicity of concepts such as markets, prices, wages, and profits—and the debates around the origins of capitalism. It traces the economic, social, political, and cultural transformations generated through the expansion and resistance to capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. The course will be organized chronologically but also thematically. Some of the topics covered include gender, race and slavery, nationalism and war, socialism, anarchism, Cold War politics, Third Worldism, and neoliberalism. Aside from mandatory attendance and active participation, the requirements for the course include an individual exam, a collaborative resarch conference project, weekly responses, and oral presentations.

This course provides a broad historical and theoretical inquiry into the phenomenon of nationalism—one of the most enduring ideological constructs of modern society. Indeed, the organization of the globe into a world of bordered territorial nation-states—each encapsulating a unique social identity—is such a taken-for-granted feature of contemporary geopolitics that it is easy to forget that nations did not exist for most of human history and that nationalism dates back only to the mid-to-late 1700s. And yet, despite many predictions of its imminent demise at different moments in history—Albert Einstein quipped, famously, that nationalism was an “infantile disease” that humanity would eventually outgrow—nationalism remains, perhaps, as powerful an ideological force as ever in the United States as elsewhere. This course will examine a range of foundational questions about the emergence of nations and nationalism in world history: What is a nation, and how has national identity been cultivated, defined, and debated in different contexts? Why did nationalism emerge when it did? Who does nationalism benefit, and how do different social groups compete for control over national identity and ideology? How and why did nationalism become such a vital feature of anticolonial political movements beginning in the late-19th century? Is nationalism fundamentally a negative force—violent and exclusionary—or is it necessary for forging cohesive social bonds among diverse and far-flung populations? The course will begin with the emergence of nations and nationalism in Western Europe but will then move on to explore its evolution and spread to all parts of the globe, exploring a number of case studies along the way. The course will conclude with a brief survey of the state of nationalist politics today, with a particular emphasis on Brexit and white nationalism in the United States.

This course, for students with no previous knowledge of Italian, aims at giving the student a complete foundation in the Italian language with particular attention to oral and written communication and all aspects of Italian culture. The course will be conducted in Italian after the first month and will involve the study of all basic structures of the language—phonological, grammatical, and syntactical—with practice in conversation, reading, composition, and translation. In addition to material covering basic Italian grammar, students will be exposed to fiction, poetry, songs, articles, recipe books, and films. Group conferences (held once a week) aim at enriching the students’ knowledge of Italian culture and developing their ability to communicate. This will be achieved by readings that deal with current events and topics relative to today’s Italian culture. Activities in pairs or groups, along with short written assignments, will be part of the group conference. In addition to class and the group conferences, the course has a conversation component in regular workshops with the language assistant. Conversation classes are held twice a week (in small groups) and will center on the concept of viaggio in Italia: a journey through the regions of Italy through cuisine, cinema, art, opera, and dialects. The Italian program organizes trips to the Metropolitan Opera and relevant exhibits in New York City, as well as the possibility of experiencing Italian cuisine firsthand as a group. The course is for a full year, by the end of which students will attain a basic competence in all aspects of the language.

This course aims at improving and perfecting the students’ speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills, as well as their knowledge of Italy’s contemporary culture and literature. In order to acquire the necessary knowledge of Italian grammar, idiomatic expressions, and vocabulary, a review of all grammar will be carried out throughout the year. As an introduction to modern Italian culture and literature, students will be introduced to a selection of short stories, poems, and passages from novels, as well as specific newspaper articles, music, and films in the original language. Some of the literary works will include selections from Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg, Gianni Rodari, Marcello D’Orta, Clara Sereni, Dino Buzzati, Stefano Benni, Antonio Tabucchi, Alberto Moravia, Achille Campanile, and Elena Ferrante. In order to address the students’ writing skills, written compositions will be required as an integral part of the course. All material is accessible on MySLC. Conferences are held on a biweekly basis; topics might include the study of a particular author, literary text, film, or any other aspect of Italian society and culture that might be of interest to the student. Conversation classes (in small groups) will be held twice a week with the language assistant, during which students will have the opportunity to reinforce what they have learned in class and hone their ability to communicate in Italian. When appropriate, students will be directed to specific internship opportunities, in the New York City area, centered on Italian language and culture.

In this course, we will examine fictional works from all over the Spanish-speaking world, as well as a small number of representative Luso-Brazilian texts originally written in Portuguese. We will begin our exploration by reading pioneering works by Fernando Pessoa (Portugal) and Emilia Pardo-Bazán (Spain). We will then proceed to study the legacy of foundational authors of the Latin American canon, including Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), Juan Rulfo (Mexico), and María Luisa Bombal (Chile). As we read, we will analyze the sociopolitical and aesthetic implications of a number of concepts associated with the literatures of the Spanish-speaking Americas—such as the notion of “magical realism,” a term that needs careful deconstruction since it has profound connections with forms of fantasy practiced globally in different literary traditions. We will pay careful attention to the African and indigenous roots of the Latin American imagination as it blended with the legacy of European literature. Fiction written by women authors will constitute one of our main lines of investigation. In this context, we will study fictions by Clarice Lispector (Brazil), Rosario Ferré (Puerto Rico), and Rosario Castellanos (México), among others. The essential goal of this course is to acquire and develop critical reading and writing skills. Active participation in class debates on the different literary texts under study will be an essential factor of the course work. Throughout the semester, you will be required to keep a handwritten journal in which you will record your trajectory in the class. Periodically, you will write short, formal reflections and analytical commentaries discussing aspects of the books read (frequency to be determined). We will meet in individual conferences on a weekly basis in the fall and biweekly in the spring. Each term, you will work on a specific project whose nature and scope will be discussed with me at the beginning of each term. At the end, you will produce a paper in the form of an essay (length to be determined). After a thorough examination of canonical texts in the fall, the spring semester will center on the study of recent Latin American literary works and their connections with fiction produced in other parts of the world.

Sometime in 1345, so the story goes, Francesco Petrarca found something he wasn’t even looking for. In the cathedral library in Verona, Petrarch (as he’s commonly called) stumbled upon a manuscript copy of Roman politician, orator, and philosopher Cicero’s Letters. Long thought to be lost, Petrarch’s discovery of Cicero’s Letters inaugurated a period of unmatched literary and artistic flourishing called the Renaissance, as artists and writers engaged with a newly rediscovered classical legacy. This year, we’ll follow the spread of Renaissance humanism and the literature it inspired outward from Italy into France, Germany, the Low Countries, Spain, and eventually England and beyond. Reading in English translation from the 14th century through the dawn of the 18th, this seminar aims to understand the Renaissance as a multinational cultural phenomenon—a scope that will allow us to address the question that this course takes as its title: What is the Renaissance? In addition to Petrarch, texts will include Machiavelli’s The Prince, Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, selections from Martin Luther, John Donne’s Meditations, the Essays of Montaigne and Bacon, and Pascal’s Pensées. We will attend to the literature of discovery, reading More’s Utopia, Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s complicated History of the Conquest of New Spain, Shakespeare’s Tempest, and Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko. We’ll read tales from Bocaccio’s Decameron and Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron, selections from Rabelais’ satiric Gargantua and Pantagruel and the whole of Cervantes’ masterpiece Don Quixote. Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna and Punishment Without Revenge will round out a year of considerable variety. Our own backyard is positively brimming with Renaissance treasures; should funding permit, we will make two trips into New York City to study Renaissance material culture firsthand. If our time in seminar privileges breadth, conference work will allow students to focus on narrower interests. Students will be expected to produce one research paper per term (i.e., two over the year) on any aspect of the course.

How do we listen to unfamiliar music? What ideas, principles, and ideologies influence how we hear? What do the sounds of music tell us about society? This course explores the practice of music theory and the search for musical meaning, with examples from around the world. We will describe unfamiliar music and then understand it by using various approaches to translate its meaning. Course themes include musical and cultural differences, the relativism of musical perception, structuralist approaches to music theory, the politics of representation, decolonizing music history, and others. Course units will draw from varied ethnographic case studies from ethnomusicology and anthropology and may include examples from India, Indonesia, China, East Africa, West Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. Participation in the Balinese Gamelan music ensemble is strongly encouraged. No prior experience in music is necessary.

How do human voices express our basic, most fundamental needs and desires? How do our voices also provoke immediate feelings and responses? And how do voices become ideologies—such as having or silencing a voice—that then shape the meanings of our voices? In this seminar, we will use these questions to forge a productive path toward better understanding the role of the human voice in climate justice. We will begin the course with canonical sources that link music with social justice. Then, we will engage recent research from sound studies, voice studies, media studies, vocal anthropology, ecomusicology, and ethnomusicology that reorients the voice and its sonic elements as a dynamically agentive and transformative force intertwined with history and culture. And then, we will apply our new understanding of the voice to better describe, analyze, and interpret vocal art that enables us to hear a new relationship with our environment. Throughout the semester, we will index a range of approaches, themes, and persuasive strategies of these activist, vocal interventions addressing climate change in order to articulate and clarify the role of music and sound in climate justice. Class topics and themes may include the speech-song continuum, phonetic variation and prosody, Bollywood playback singing, indigeneity and vocality, vocal mimesis, Tuvan throat singing, multivocality, vocal constructions of place and the environment, and others. No prior experience in music is necessary. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects.

This class combines Sarah Lawrence students and students from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility; all class sessions will take place at Bedford. Consequently, all students must be at least 21 years of age.

The course provides a unique opportunity for SLC students to investigate key questions of international humanitarian intervention and justice while also considering US support for human rights at home. The class will consider: What are the appropriate responses to widespread human-rights violations in another country as they are occurring? Are there cases in which military humanitarian intervention is warranted? If so, who should intervene? What else can be done short of military intervention? Once the violence has subsided, what actions should the international community take to support peace and justice? This course will explore critical ethical, legal, and political questions. We will consider key cases of intervention and nonintervention since the end of the Cold War, from Somalia to Kosovo and Libya. The class will employ lessons from those cases to consider the challenges to addressing humanitarian crises in Syria and Ukraine. Finally, we will evaluate different pathways to pursuing truth, justice, and reconciliation in the aftermath of gross violations of human rights. Cases include the International Criminal Tribunal and domestic courts established in postgenocide Rwanda, South Africa’s pioneering Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the ongoing work of the International Criminal Court. This class will conclude with a UN Security Council simulation in which each student will represent a country currently on the Council to debate possible actions in a simulated humanitarian crisis.

Writing about the democratic transitions and ethnic conflicts that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel pessimistically declared in his 2002 novel, The Judges, that “the malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom so recently won?” One would be hard-pressed to find a quote that more accurately illuminates both the sense of severity associated with ethnic conflict, broadly defined, and the absolute lack of understanding of its causes. Despite an explosion in the number of electoral democracies since the late 1980s, expected to bring about peace and stability, the frequency and intensity of bloody and brutal scenes of ethnic violence seemed to belie all expectations. The proliferation of such violence over the last 30 years has thus caused many scholars and policy makers to more critically examine their assumptions about the sources and potential solutions to the problem of ethnic conflict as an international problem. Despite significant evidence to the contrary, commentators like Wiesel and many politicians still frequently attribute the sources of such strife to the existence of “morally degenerate people,” ethnic or racial diversity, or the history of animosity between various ethnic or racial communities. Looking at the problem from a more holistic perspective—which engages with the socioeconomic and political motivations underlying ethnic conflict—this course will challenge these commonly-held assumptions about the cause of ethnic violence and explore some possible solutions for preventing further conflicts or resolving existing ones. Some of the questions this course will address include: What are race and ethnicity? How and for what purposes are race and ethnicity constructed? What are the main sources behind conflicts deemed “ethnic”? What is the role of the international community in managing ethnic conflicts? What is the effect of democratization on ethnic conflict? What constitutional designs, state structures, and electoral systems are most compatible with ethnically divided societies?

What are the appropriate responses to widespread human-rights violations in another country as they are occurring? Are there cases in which military humanitarian intervention is warranted? If so, who should intervene? What else can be done short of military intervention? Once the violence has subsided, what actions should the international community take to support peace and justice? This course will explore critical ethical, legal, and political questions. We will consider key cases of intervention and nonintervention since the end of the Cold War, from Somalia to Kosovo and Libya. The class will employ lessons from those cases to consider the challenges to addressing humanitarian crises in Syria and Ukraine. Finally, we will evaluate different pathways to pursuing truth, justice, and reconciliation in the aftermath of gross violations of human rights. Cases include the International Criminal Tribunal and domestic courts established in post-genocide Rwanda, South Africa’s pioneering Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the ongoing work of the International Criminal Court. This class will conclude with a UN Security Council simulation, in which each student will represent a country currently on the Council to debate possible actions in a simulated humanitarian crisis.

The events of September 11, 2001, unleashed a bitter and contentious debate regarding not just how states and societies might best respond to the threat of violence but also, fundamentally, what qualifies as terrorism. Just nine days later, and without resolving any of these difficult issues, the United States announced its response: The Global War on Terrorism. Over two decades later, we are no closer to consensus concerning these politically and emotionally charged debates. Americans are belatedly beginning to realize that the greatest threat of terror attacks in the United States originates from domestic rather than foreign actors, often from white nationalists. This course will investigate the use of violence by state and nonstate actors to assert their authority and to inspire fear. The modern state, as it was formed in Western Europe, was born of war per Charles Tilly’s often-quoted phrase: “War makes states, and states make war.” The ability to control violence within a territory has long been the key part of the definition of a functioning state. This class will discuss the evolution of the terminology of terror and terrorism from the French Revolution to the present and consider frameworks to distinguish forms of violence and different types of violent actors. We will explore acts of state terror and their consequences and consider the use of the term ”terrorism” in the popular press, in political rhetoric, and in policymaking by states and international organizations. We will consider a range of nonstate actors that have employed violence—including South Africa’s ANC, Sri Lanka’s LTTE, and white nationalists in the United States—and explore the impact that the use of violence has had for their popular support, for local and transnational communities, and for their ability to achieve their goals. Finally, we will consider new means of terror from drone warfare to cyber warfare. As part of our discussion of US foreign policy, the class will conduct a model diplomacy simulation in which students will assume the roles of members of the US National Security Council.

This interdisciplinary psychology and anthropology seminar will address mental health in diverse cultural contexts, drawing upon a range of case studies to illuminate the causes, symptoms, diagnosis, course, and treatment of mental illness across the globe. We open the course by exploring questions of the classification of mental illness to address whether Western psychiatric categories apply across different local contexts. We explore the globalization of American understandings of the psyche, the exportation of Western mental disorders, and the impact of psychiatric imperialism in places like Sri Lanka, Zanzibar, Oaxaca, and Japan. Through our readings of peer-reviewed articles and current research in cultural psychology, clinical psychology, and psychological, psychiatric, and medical anthropology, we explore conditions such as depression and anxiety, schizophrenia, autism, susto, and mal de ojo in order to understand the entanglements of psychological experience, culture, morality, sociality, and care. We explore how diagnostic processes and psychiatric care are, at times, differentially applied in the United States according to clients’ race/ethnicity, class, and gender. Finally, we explore the complexities of recovery or healing, addressing puzzles such as why certain mental disorders considered to be lifelong, chronic, and severe in some parts of the world are interpreted as temporary, fleeting, and manageable elsewhere—and how such expectations influence people’s ability to experience wellness or (re-)integration into family, work, and society. Several of our key authors will join us as invited guest speakers to talk about their current work. Students will conduct conference projects related to the central topics of our course.

This seminar asks how contemporary immigration shapes individual and collective identity across the life course. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that bridges cross-cultural psychology, human development, and psychological anthropology, we will ask how people’s movement across borders and boundaries transforms their sense of self, as well as their interpersonal relations and connections to community. We will analyze how the experience of immigration is affected by the particular intersections of racial, ethnic, class, gender, generational, and other boundaries that immigrants cross. For example, how do undocumented youth navigate the constraints imposed by “illegalized” identities, and how do they come to construct new self-perceptions? How might immigrants acculturate or adapt to new environments, and how does the process of moving from home or living “in-between” two or more places impact mental health? Through our close readings and seminar discussions on this topic, we will seek to understand how different forms of power—implemented across realms, including state-sponsored surveillance and immigration enforcement, language and educational policy, health and social services—shape and constrain immigrants’ understanding of their place in the world and their experience of exclusion and belonging. In our exploration of identity, we will attend to the ways in which immigrants are left out of national narratives, as well as the ways in which people who move across borders draw on cultural resources to create spaces and practices of connection, protection, and continuity despite the disruptive effects of immigration. In tandem with our readings, we will welcome scholar-activist guest speakers, who will present their current work in the field.

At a time of great crisis in Russia and in Ukraine, the study of Russian remains essential to the understanding of Russian politics, history, and culture. It is also an easy move from Russian to the study of other Slavic languages, including not just Ukrainian but also Belarusian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, etc. To learn a new language is to open yourself to another worldview, both as you gain entry into another culture and as your own sense of self is transformed. In another language, you are still you, but the tools that you use to create and express that identity change. As English speakers find themselves in Russian, they first need to come to terms with an often complicated grammar. We will tackle that aspect of our work through a degree of analytical thought, a great deal of memorization, and the timely completion of our often lengthy biweekly homework assignments. Even as I encourage students to reflect on the very different means of expression that Russian offers, I also ask that they engage in basic but fully functional conversational Russian at every point along the way. Our four hours of class each week will be devoted to actively using what we know in both pair and group activities, role play, dialogues, skits, songs, etc. As a final project at the end of each semester, students will create their own video skits. Note that students are required to meet with the Russian assistant weekly in addition to class; attendance at our weekly Russian table is strongly encouraged.

At the end of this course, students should feel that they have a fairly sophisticated grasp of Russian and the ability to communicate in Russian in any situation. After the first year of studying the language, students will have learned the bulk of Russian grammar; this course will emphasize grammar review, vocabulary accumulation, and regular oral practice. Class time will center on the spoken language, and students will be expected to participate actively in discussions based on new vocabulary. Regular written homework will be required, along with weekly conversation classes with the Russian assistant; attendance at Russian Table is strongly encouraged. While students are welcome to include films and/or music in their conference work, my hope is that we will use that time to focus on the written language. Whatever their individual focus, students will be asked to read short texts, including song lyrics and/or screen plays as well as short stories, with the aim of appreciating a very different culture and/or literature while also learning to read independently, accurately, and with as little recourse to the dictionary as possible.

By covering both “classical” and “contemporary” sociological theories, this course is designed to provide students with a well-rounded understanding of sociological thought and its evolution. The main objective of the course is to introduce theoretical perspectives within sociology and how those theories have shaped the boundaries of the discipline. We will begin by exploring the concept of “sociological imagination.” Building upon that preliminary understanding, we will examine certain core sociological concepts such as class, race, gender, culture, power, institutions, and identity. While recognizing the lasting impact of sociology’s pioneering theorists—Durkheim, Weber, and Marx—we will also explore approaches that critically engage and problematize aspects of the “canon.” Our examination extends to encompass contemporary perspectives, including feminist theory, postcolonial theory, and race critical theories. Incorporating these contemporary sociological approaches, we will gain multifaceted insights into the complex interplay between sociological constructs and broader societal contexts. As the course draws to a close, students are expected to leave with a deeper appreciation of the complexity of society and the expanded array of theories through which it can be examined. Group conferences will be centered on research on related topics of students’ interest, as well as engaging in creative group projects.

The focus of this lecture will be to introduce students to the processes and methods of conducting sociological research projects using a transnational and/or comparative lens. We will be taking as our starting point a set of global themes—loosely categorized as human rights, culture, migration, health, climate, and development— through which we will try to build our understanding of inequality in various forms in different contexts. The approach we take here in designing research would be one that aims to move beyond the national or the nation-state as a bounded “container” of society and social issues; rather, we will aim at a better understanding of how different trends, processes, transformations, structures, and actors emerge and operate in globally and transnationally interconnected ways. For example, we can look at migration not simply through the lens of emigration/immigration to and from countries but also through the lens of flows and pathways that are structured via transnational relationships and circuits of remittances, exchanges, and dependencies. As part of group conferences, students will be asked to identify one of the key global themes through which they will examine issues of inequality, using a range of methods for data collection and analysis—datasets from international organizations, surveys, questionnaires, historical records, reports, and ethnographic accounts—that they will then compile into research portfolios produced as a group.

The focus of the seminar will be on questions of diversity, difference, and cosmopolitanism as it pertains to urban life in a contemporary American city such as Yonkers or New York City, as well as in urban societies around the world. We will take a sociological look at how urban communities experience, navigate, and transform social structures, relationships, and institutions in their everyday lives, as they deal with problems such as inequality, hate, and exclusion while coexisting with different and diverse populations. We will read books and essays by Arlie Hochschild, Asef Bayat, Yuval Noah Harari, Dina Neyeri, Robert Putnam, and others, as we explore ways in which cities embody histories as central while marginalizing others—and how communities and people in their everyday lives resist, alter, and decenter those histories and hierarchies. Through engaged field research, we will try to learn and understand how diverse communities of people work and live together; build and provide for the wider community; and rely on informal and formal opportunities, resources, and networks to make life in the city possible. This course aims to train students on the basics of fieldwork research and ethnography in urban settings, using a wide variety of transnationally oriented theoretical and methodological approaches. Our key thematic questions will revolve around issues of difference, diversity, and cosmopolitanism as understood through sociological lenses. By using in-depth, grounded, and deeply engaged approaches to fieldwork in the city of Yonkers and other urban areas where students live, work, or visit, we will seek to understand how communities of hyperdiversity and intense differences manage to cohabit and live together in cities and how communities deal with hate, prejudice, and structural marginalization in their everyday lives. Through grounded fieldwork, we will be able to gain a better picture of how local communities improvise and use informal means to make their everyday lives work in these spaces.

This is a course for creative writers who are interested in exploring nonfiction as an art form. We will focus on reading and interpreting outside work—essays, articles, and journalism by some of our best writers—in order to understand what good nonfiction is and how it is created. During the first part of the semester, writing will be comprised mostly of exercises and short pieces aimed at putting into practice what is being illuminated in the readings; in the second half of the semester, students will create longer, formal essays to be presented in workshop.

There is nothing like a zuihitsu, and its definition slips through our fingers. It is a classical Japanese genre that allows a series of styles, and everything can be constantly reshuffled and reordered in every conceivable way. —Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Following Millenium

The name zuihitsu is derived from two Kanji: “at will” and “pen.” In this class, we’ll explore the Japanese poetic form of the zuihitsu via six required texts—The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon; Kenko’s Essays in Idleness; Chomei’s The Ten-Foot-Square Hut; two versions of Narrow Road to the Interior, one by Bashō and one by Kimiko Hahn; and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee—and, as writers, using the materials of haiku, lists, interviews, dialogues, travelogues, monologues, letters, maps, orts, scraps, fragments, and poems of all varieties. Participants will be required to make an individual zuihitsu and to contribute to the making of a collective one. The only prerequisites are a desire to be challenged, a thirst for reading that equals your thirst for writing, the courage to give up spectatorhood for active participation, a willingness to do in-class writing exercises, a willingness to work with a partner, and a willingness to undertake whatever labors might be necessary to read and write better on our last day of class than on our first.