International Studies

First-Year Studies—Year

At the close of the 1920s, 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 Kenyan settler children 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 said about children, done to children, and required of children was central to the success of imperial projects. In this seminar, we will explore materials from across the globe to understand the diverse roles, both intentional and unintentional, of children in imperial processes. In addition to the white sons and daughters of European settler colonists in Africa and Southeast Asia, we will also look at the contrary things that were said about and done to Indigenous children and children of mixed parentage at different historical and political moments of empire. We will learn 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 around the world 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. Conceptually, we will use approaches from child development, sex-gender studies, postcolonial studies, and critical race theory. Questions 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? Materials for this course will include fiction, memoirs, scholarly texts, ethnographic accounts, historical documents, visual images, and map making. Course work will include weekly writing, seminar discussion, group research projects, and use of digital platforms. Biweekly in fall, students will have individual conferences with the instructor to review submitted assignments, discuss course materials, and receive necessary support for adjustment to college. In alternate weeks, students will meet for collaborative group conference projects. Biweekly in spring, students will meet with the instructor for individual conferences.

Faculty

• Mary A. Porter

Open, Seminar—Fall

In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will explore child and adolescent development through a cross-cultural lens. Focusing on case studies from diverse communities around the world, we will look at the influence of cultural processes on how children learn, play, and grow. Our core readings will analyze psychological processes related to attachment and parenting, cognition and perception, social and emotional development, language acquisition, and moral development. We will ask questions like the following: Why are children in Sri Lanka fed by hand by their mothers until middle childhood, and how does this shape their relations to others through the course of life? How does an Inuit toddler come to learn moral lessons through scripted play with adults, and how does such learning prepare them to navigate a challenging social and geographic environment? Is it true that Maya children do not do pretend play at all? How does a unique family role influence the formation of identity for Latinx youth in the United States? How are unequal childhoods shaped by social exclusion and discrimination on the basis of race, class, gender, and immigration status? Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, our course material will draw from developmental psychology, human development, cultural psychology, and psychological anthropology and will include peer-reviewed journal articles and books, as well as films that address core issues in a range of geographic and sociocultural contexts. Students will conduct conference projects related to the central topics of our course. Fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center is optional.

Faculty

• Deanna Barenboim

Open, Seminar—Fall

“The future belongs to the ghosts,” remarked the philosopher Jacques Derrida in 1996, as his interlocutor, Bernard Stiegler, phrases the main idea behind that statement: “Modern technology, contrary to appearances, increases tenfold the power of ghosts.” With the advent of the internet, various forms of social media, and the ubiquity of filmic images in our lives, Derrida’s observations have proven to be quite prophetic, such that they call for a new field of study—one that requires less an ontology of being and the real and more a “hauntology” (to invoke Derrida’s punish term) of the spectral, the virtual, the phantasmic, the imaginary, and the recurrent revenant. In this seminar, we consider ways in which the past and present are haunted by ghosts and vexed by spectrality. Topics to be covered include: specters and hauntings, figures and apparitions, history and memory, trauma and political crisis, fantasy and imagination, digital interfaces, haunted data and archives, and visual and acoustical images. We will consider a range of films and video, photography, literary texts, acoustic reverberations, internet and social media, and everyday discourses and imaginings. Through these inquiries, we will be able to further our understanding of the nature of specters and apparitions in the contemporary world in their many forms and dimensions. Students will be invited to undertake their own hauntologies and thus craft studies of the phenomenal force of specters, hauntings, and the apparitional in particular social or cultural contexts.

Faculty

• Robert R. Desjarlais

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

In her study of transnational adoptees, Eleana Kim noted the profound differences between discourses about the immigration of Chinese brides to the United States and those describing the arrival of adopted Chinese baby girls: the former with suspicion and the latter with joy. Two ways that families form are by bringing in spouses and by having children. We tend to assume that family building involves deeply personal, intimate, and even “natural” acts; but, in actual practice, the pragmatics of forming (and disbanding) families are much more complex. There are many instances where biological pregnancy is not possible or not chosen, and there are biological parents who are unable to rear their offspring. Social rules govern the acceptance or rejection of children in particular social groups, depending on factors such as the marital status of their parents or the enactment of appropriate rituals. Western notions of marriage prioritize compatibility between two individuals who choose each other based on love; but, in many parts of the world, selecting a suitable spouse and contracting a marriage is the business of entire kin networks. There is great variability, too, in what constitutes “suitable.” To marry a close relative or someone of the same gender may be deemed unnaturally close in some societies; marriage across great difference—such as age, race, nation, culture, or class—can also be problematic. And beyond the intimacies of couples and the interests of extended kin are the interests of the nation state. This lecture will examine the makings and meanings of kinship connections at multiple levels, from small communities to global movements. Topics will include the adoption and fostering of children, both locally and transnationally, in Peru, Chile, Spain, Italy, Ghana, the USA, China, and Korea. We will look at technologies of biological reproduction, including the global movement of genetic material in the business of transnational gestational surrogacy. We will look at the ways in which marriages are contracted in a variety of social and cultural settings, including China and Korea, and the ways they are configured by race, gender, and citizenship. Our questions will include: Who are “real” kin? Who can a person marry? Which children are “legitimate”? Why do we hear so little about birth mothers? What is the experience of families with transgender parents or children? What is the compulsion to find genetically connected “kin”? How many mothers can a person have? How is marriage connected to labor migration? Why are the people who care for children in foster care called “parents”? The materials for this class include literature, scholarly articles, ethnographic accounts, historical documents, and film.

Faculty

• Mary A. Porter

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall

What does it mean for a society to deem certain people “illegal” immigrants? How do the politics and policies of contemporary deportation regimes affect migrants’ lives? In what ways does discourse about borders and belonging, citizenship and criminality, shape migrants’ everyday experience in places like Ghana, Nicaragua, Italy, and the United States? In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will explore how social categories, language, law, and public policy shape processes of immigration and migrant lives across the globe. Drawing upon recent work in cultural anthropology, sociology, linguistics, public policy, and critical ethnic and Indigenous studies, we will examine the ramifications of immigration policies and public discourses that demarcate citizenship, membership, and belonging in diverse contexts. We will analyze how the experience of unauthorized migration is affected by the particular intersections of racial, ethnic, class, gender, generational, and legal boundaries that migrants cross. In so doing, we will pose a range of questions. For example, how do undocumented youth navigate the constraints imposed by “illegalized” identities, and how do they come to construct new self-perceptions as emerging adults? How do families navigate transnational migration, separation, and the threat of arrest, detention, and deportation in various social contexts? What forms do resistance and protest take, and how do migrants participate in social movements and social change? These questions will allow us to analyze 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. These questions will also lead us to ask how the categories of legal status or citizenship help us to understand the sociocultural, economic, and political structures that shape all of our lives. In tandem with our readings, we will welcome scholar-activist guest speakers, who will present their current work in the field. Students will conduct conference projects related to the central themes of the course.

Faculty

• Deanna Barenboim

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Year

Javanese shadow theatre, Bedouin love poems, and American community life are but a few of the sociocultural worlds 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 research is generally considered one of the best ways to form a nuanced and contextually rich understanding of a particular social world. To gain an informed sense of the methods, challenges, and benefits of such an approach, students will try their hands at ethnographic research and writing. In fall, each student will be asked to undertake an ethnographic research project in order to investigate the features of a specific social world—such as a homeless shelter, a religious festival, or a neighborhood in Brooklyn. In spring, students will craft a fully realized piece of ethnographic writing that conveys something of the features and dynamics of that 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 ethnographic projects, such as interviewing others, the use of field notes, the interlacing of theory and data, the role of dialogue and 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.

Faculty

• Robert R. Desjarlais

Open, Seminar—Spring

Throughout history, settler colonial and industrial extractive projects have displaced Native American and Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and instigated the environmental crises that plague our current world and threaten future survival. 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 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 the necessary 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; land dispossession, displacement, and migration; ecological knowledge, practices, and biodiversity; 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 look to case studies covering topics such as the links between language and land in Arctic environmental education; regenerative food systems in New Zealand, Mexico, and Peru; the effects of oil drilling in Ecuador and uranium mining in Navajo country; and resistance movements like Standing Rock/NoDAPL. Our texts will include poetry, interviews, multimedia pieces, book chapters, and journal articles primarily authored by Indigenous scholars and artists. 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.

Faculty

• Deanna Barenboim

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring

This interdisciplinary course 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. The course will open by exploring questions of the classification of mental illness to address whether Western psychiatric categories apply across different local contexts. We will 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 readings of peer-reviewed articles and current research in cultural psychology, clinical psychology, psychological anthropology, psychiatric anthropology, and medical anthropology, students will 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 will explore how diagnostic processes and psychiatric care are, at times, differentially applied in the United States according to a client’s race, ethnicity, class, or gender. Finally, we will also explore the complexities of recovery or healing, addressing puzzles such as why certain mental disorders are considered to be lifelong, chronic, and severe in some parts of the world but 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 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.

Faculty

• Deanna Barenboim

Open, Lecture—Fall

This course will explore 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.

Faculty

• Jerrilynn Dodds

Open, Seminar—Year

The visual arts and architecture constitute a central part of human expression and experience, both growing from and influencing our lives in profound ways that we might not consciously acknowledge. We will explore intersections between the visual arts and cultural, political, and social history with the goal of using art-history methods and theories to deal critically with works of art. This course is not a survey; rather, it will include a limited number of artists and works of art and architecture, which 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 its changing reception by audiences throughout time, including the ways in which those changes evoke political and social meanings. To accomplish this, we will need 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.

Faculty

• Jerrilynn Dodds

Open, Seminar—Spring

This course will offer a three-part approach to the study of law in premodern China, focusing on legal theory, courts and the implementation of law, and the relationship between law and popular culture. The first part of the course will provide an overview of the philosophical basis of law, the state’s development of civil and penal law codes, and its creation of courts and judicial institutions. The second part will look more closely at the application of the law code to criminal cases in the medieval period. Here, we will study case books and judicial judgments, precedent texts, magistrates’ manuals, forensic guidelines, and journal accounts. Topics that we will examine include: the role and function of local judges, the processes by which penal cases were judged and punishments determined, and the rights and obligations of the various parties in a legal suit. The third part of the course will examine the ways in which the judicial system both influenced and was influenced by popular culture. Our readings will include religious tracts, folktales, and popular fiction. Topics will include the ways in which the court system shaped popular notions of justice, karma, and revenge; the contribution of the legal system to increasingly complicated notions of heaven and hell; and the rise of popular “detective” fiction centered on the courtroom and judges.

Faculty

• Ellen Neskar

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall

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 in the context of sustainable development, seeking 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 guiding topics include: how the relationship between economic growth, demographic change, and environmental pollution has evolved; how to approach and deal with climate change in the context of sustainable development; 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.

Faculty

• An Li

Open, Small Lecture—Year

This seminar, broadly speaking, will cover introductory microeconomics and macroeconomics from a wide range of theoretical perspectives, including neoclassical, post-Keynesian, Marxian, feminist, and institutional political economy perspectives. The course will enable students to understand the more “technical aspects” of economics (e.g., usage of supply/demand analysis within and outside neoclassical economics), as well as significant economic history and the history of economic thought. Theoretical issues will be applied to contemporary policy debates such as industrial policy, foreign trade, global warming, and inequality.

Faculty

• Jamee Moudud

Open, Small Lecture—Year

This course is designed for students interested in the social sciences who wish to understand the methodology and techniques involved in the estimation of structural relationships between variables (i.e., regression analysis). The course is intended for students who wish to be able to carry out empirical work in their particular field, both at Sarah Lawrence College and beyond, and critically engage with empirical work done by academic or professional social scientists. In fall, the course will cover the theoretical and applied statistical principles that underlie Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression techniques. The course will begin with a review of basic statistical and probability theory, as well as relevant mathematical techniques. We will then study the assumptions needed to obtain the Best Linear Unbiased Estimates (BLUE) conditions of a regression equation. Particular emphasis will be placed on the assumptions regarding the distribution of a model’s error term and other BLUE conditions. The course will cover hypothesis testing, sample selection, and the critical role of the t- and F-statistic in determining the statistical significance of an econometric model and its associated slope or “β” parameters. Further, we will address three main problems associated with the violation of a particular BLUE assumption: multicollinearity, serial correlation, and heteroscedasticity. We will learn how to identify, address, and remedy each of these problems. In addition, the course will take a similar approach to understanding and correcting model specification errors. In spring, the course will build on fall learning by introducing advanced econometrics topics. We will study difference-in-difference estimators, autoregressive dependent lag (ARDL) models, co-integration, and error correction models involving nonstationary time series. We will investigate simultaneous equations systems, vector error correction (VEC), and vector autoregressive (VAR) models. The final part of the course will involve the study of panel data, as well as logit and probit models. Students will receive ample exposure to concrete issues while also being encouraged to consider basic methodological questions, including the debates between John Maynard Keynes and Jan Tinbergen regarding the power and limitations of econometric analysis. Spring is particularly relevant to students who wish to pursue graduate studies in a social-science discipline but equally relevant for other types of graduate degrees that involve knowledge of intermediate-level quantitative analysis. The practical “hands-on” approach taken in this course will be useful to those students who wish to do future conference projects, internships, or enter the job market in the social (or natural) sciences with significant empirical content. The goal is for students to be able to analyze questions such as: What is the relationship between slavery and industrialization in the United States? What effects do race, gender, and educational attainment have in the determination of wages? How does the female literacy rate affect the child mortality rate? How can one model the effect of economic growth on carbon-dioxide emissions? What is the relationship among sociopolitical instability, inequality, and economic growth? How do geographic location and state spending affect average public-school teacher salaries? How does one study global inequalities in terms of access to COVID-19 vaccines?

Faculty

• Jamee Moudud

Open, Seminar—Spring

Throughout history, settler colonial and industrial extractive projects have displaced Native American and Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and instigated the environmental crises that plague our current world and threaten future survival. Indigenous peoples in the Americas and beyond have long been at the forefront of resistance movements against environmentally exploitative projects and engaged in an ongoing struggle that links Indigenous sovereignty with care for the natural world. In this interdisciplinary 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 the necessary 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; land dispossession, displacement, and migration; ecological knowledge, practices, and biodiversity; 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 look to case studies covering topics such as the links between language and land in Arctic environmental education; regenerative food systems in New Zealand, Mexico, and Peru; the effects of oil drilling in Ecuador and uranium mining in Navajo country; and resistance movements like Standing Rock/NoDAPL. Our texts will include poetry, interviews, multimedia pieces, book chapters, and journal articles primarily authored by Indigenous scholars and artists. 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.

Faculty

• Deanna Barenboim

Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Fall

This course will explore how French and francophone writers in the postwar era have used literature as a means of writing their identities, memories, and life narratives. We will study how writers made use of both traditional genres of life writing, such as autobiography, diaries, and memoirs, alongside more experimental and hybrid forms of narrative. We will see how authors constructed their identities on the page through the lens of gender, race, sexuality, class, or history. Theoretical readings on memory, trauma, and testimony will allow us to explore the fraught relationship between fact and fiction when writing the self. Topics will include the representation of childhood and the family, women’s autobiography, confessional narratives, witnessing and testimony, intellectual development, language and learning, authenticity and documentation, and the relationship between self and other. Students will read both excerpts from longer texts and several works in their entirety. Authors studied may include Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Georges Perec, Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Hervé Guibert, Assia Djebar, Maryse Condé, Annie Ernaux, Patrick Modiano, Nina Bouraoui, Emmanuel Carrère, Marie NDiaye, and Édouard Louis. Several autobiographical films might also be screened to help understand the relationship between memory and media. In conference, students may undertake a critical or creative autobiographical project of their own or study other aspects of modern and contemporary French and francophone literature and culture. Alongside the study of literary texts, we will review some key lessons in French grammar and composition.

Faculty

• Jason Earle

First-Year Studies—Year

This course will provide a broad introduction to the political, social, cultural, and intellectual history of the Middle East from the late 18th century to the present. After a brief conceptual overview, the course will draw upon a wide array of primary and secondary sources to illuminate the manifold transformations and processes that have contributed over time to shaping what has meant to be “modern” in this remarkably diverse and dynamic region. Particular attention will be paid to the following themes: the question of modernization and reform within the Ottoman and Qajar empires; the experience of different forms of European imperialism in the Middle East; the integration of the Middle East into the world economy; World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; state-building in both colonial and postcolonial contexts; transformations in religious thought; changing family norms and gender roles and the genesis of Middle Eastern women’s movements; nationalism; class politics, social movements, and revolution; Zionism and the Israel-Palestine conflict; post-World War II geopolitics and the Cold War in the Middle East; Nasserism and pan-Arabism; the role of US power in the Middle East; the origins and spread of political Islam; the political economy of oil; globalization and neoliberalism; and the impact of various new cultural forms and media on the formation of identities across the region. In fall, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences; in spring, individual conferences will be biweekly. 

Faculty

• Matthew Ellis

Open, Lecture—Fall

This course will examine the history of revolution and counterrevolution in Latin America from the late 18th century to the end of the Cold War. Beginning with the Haitian Revolution, the only successful slave revolt in modern history, students will examine how challenges to colonial domination, chattel slavery, racial hierarchies, economic deprivation, and political repression upended powerful governing regimes and provoked blowback from those regimes’ defenders. Over the semester, we will examine some of the most significant revolutionary movements in the Western Hemisphere, including the early 19th-century wars for independence in what was then Spanish America, the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Chile’s democratic-socialist project under Salvador Allende (1970–1973), and the 1979 Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. In each case, we will analyze the social and economic conditions that gave rise to these movements, the ideologies that inspired them, and the often-violent responses that they provoked from local and foreign powers. The course will also investigate the broader counterrevolutionary forces that have shaped modern Latin America’s political landscape, from military coups and dictatorships to US interventions and Cold War anticommunism. Through a combination of secondary literature and primary sources, students will become familiar with key historical concepts, including class conflict, nationalism, imperialism, political violence, and the possibilities and limits of revolutionary change.

Faculty

• Miriam Pensack

Open, Seminar—Fall

This course is designed to help us understand and critique the meaning of violence in the modern era. Drawing on theoreticians of violence and case studies of events, we will explore a variety of types of violence and their impact on politics and society, with a particular focus on Europe and its colonies. At the center of this course will be a number of questions: Is violence modern or archaic? What are the causes and uses of violence? What are the costs of violence on both its perpetrators and its victims? What is the legacy of different kinds of violence? What can comparing different times and places tell us about the use of violence in different contexts? Topics covered will include the establishment of state control over violence, terror, terrorism, total war, The Holocaust, and attempts to come to terms with mass violence, among others.

Faculty

• Brandon Schechter

Open, Lecture—Fall

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 will provide 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 and succession.

Faculty

• Mark R. Shulman

Open, Seminar—Year

This course will provide a broad introduction to the political, social, cultural, and intellectual history of the Middle East from the late 18th century to the present. After a brief conceptual overview, the course will draw upon a wide array of primary and secondary sources to illuminate the manifold transformations and processes that have contributed over time to shaping what has meant to be “modern” in this remarkably diverse and dynamic region. Particular attention will be paid to the following themes: the question of modernization and reform within the Ottoman and Qajar empires; the experience of different forms of European imperialism in the Middle East; the integration of the Middle East into the world economy; World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; state-building in both colonial and postcolonial contexts; transformations in religious thought; changing family norms and gender roles and the genesis of Middle Eastern women’s movements; nationalism; class politics, social movements, and revolution; Zionism and the Israel-Palestine conflict; post-World War II geopolitics and the Cold War in the Middle East; Nasserism and pan-Arabism; the role of US power in the Middle East; the origins and spread of political Islam; the political economy of oil; globalization and neoliberalism; and the impact of various new cultural forms and media on the formation of identities across the region. 

Faculty

• Matthew Ellis

Open, Seminar—Year

In the 16th century, Europe entered upon a religious crisis that was to permanently alter the character of Western Christianity. Between 1520 and 1580, the religious unity of Catholic Christendom was destroyed, as believers throughout Central and Northern Europe severed their ties with the papacy to form new “Protestant” communities. But the impact of the religious crisis was by no means confined to the emergence of the churches of the Reformation. Luther’s revolt against the Roman church ushered in an era of soaring religious creativity and savage religious conflict that lasted for nearly two centuries and revolutionized thought, art, music...and politics. The modern state is ultimately a product of the Reformation crisis, as is the system of international law that still governs the relations among sovereign states. Students in this course will examine multiple aspects of the religious, intellectual, and political history of Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. Readings will focus attention on the diversity of religious thinking and religious experience in this era. Besides tracing the rise of the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican churches and the complex history of the “Radical Reformation,” we will consider forms of belief independent of any church and new varieties of skepticism and doubt. We will also devote considerable attention to the reform movements that transformed Roman Catholicism during those two centuries and the upsurge of missionary energy and mystical spirituality that accompanied them. We will investigate the effects of the Reformation crisis on politics and the state and on the social order that Europe inherited from the Middle Ages. As part of this investigation, we will examine the most important political struggles waged in the name of religion between 1524 and 1689: the Peasants’ Revolt and Thirty Years’ War in Germany, the Dutch revolt against Spain, the French Wars of Religion, and the English Revolution. Texts will include works by Luther, Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Ávila, Queen Marguerite of Navarre, Rabelais, Montaigne, and Pascal. 

Faculty

• Philip Swoboda

Open, Seminar—Spring

How did nations in the Western Hemisphere come to wage a War on Drugs? In this course, we will study the political and social history of drug production, trade, prohibition, and deterrence in the Americas. We will examine the origins of the international narcotics trade, focusing of the cultivation, commodification, and consumption of marijuana, cocaine, and opiates—three drugs that have seen the greatest consumer use in the Americas. We will consider how Latin American countries, including Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, became sites of cultivation and export for these substances. Through a sustained examination of primary sources and secondary literature, we will trace the rise of narcotrafficking networks and their relationship to state policies of prohibition and deterrence, studying how criminalization and militarization have impacted communities in countries where these substances are cultivated, transported, and consumed. We will consider the many consequences of the War on Drugs, which include state violence, prison expansion, community displacement, and the erosion of democratic institutions, among others. We will analyze how Latin American governments and civil societies have both collaborated with and resisted US counternarcotics efforts and how the War on Drugs has intersected with issues of race, class, and national sovereignty. In the concluding sessions, students will explore concepts and policies such as decriminalization, harm reduction, and regional self-determination, prompting them to consider possible contemporary alternatives to the War on Drugs.

Faculty

• Miriam Pensack

Open, Lecture—Spring

World War II led to destruction of such magnitude that the international order shifted fundamentally and new terms had to be coined to describe its violence. This course will examine the events that led to the war, the war itself, and its aftermath. It will begin with a chronological outline of the Great War, the interwar years, and the war itself and then shift to explore key themes such as The Holocaust, military life, women at war, the changing meaning of race and ethnicity, occupation, etc. This course will discuss battles and leaders, but its main focus will be on the impact of the war on culture, politics, and society. Students will be asked to think seriously about how these global events were experienced by what Stalin called “the little screws of history”—i.e., “ordinary people.” This course is really about them. Issues such as total war, genocide, occupation, the terrifying new technologies of the war, and soldier’s life in the different armies will be examined. We will also look at how, after the devastation of the war, people tried to make sense of what had happened. Politicians reacted by creating new laws and institutions, while artists painted, sculpted, and made films and authors turned to the page to understand what they had seen and done.

Faculty

• Brandon Schechter

Open, Lecture—Spring

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 will examine the history of international human rights and focus on the claims that individuals and groups make against states in which they live. 

Faculty

• Mark R. Shulman

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring

In recent decades, historians have become increasingly interested in the unique role and power of memory in public life. Historians 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 “countermemory”), particularly as this has played out in several formulations of Middle Eastern nationalism. 

Faculty

• Matthew Ellis

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring

This course will examine aspects of European culture in the last two decades of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century. This was the era of the Decadent and Symbolist movements; of Secessionist art and architecture; of the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, and William James; and of early psychoanalysis. Though in the eyes of some Europeans, looking back at the period nostalgically across the smoking battlefields of World War I, these decades were la belle époque—the “beautiful time” of peace and security—others remembered them as “the gay apocalypse,” a hectic burst of cultural experiment against a background of political paralysis which together heralded the end of the old Europe. While the primary focus of this course will be on creative figures active in Vienna and other parts of the Habsburg monarchy, we will also consider writers, artists, and thinkers from Russia, Scandinavia, Germany, France, and the English-speaking world. These figures will include August Strindberg, Arthur Schnitzler, Robert Musil, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan Zweig, Andrei Bely, Gustav Klimt, and Edvard Munch. We will also look at the Nietzsche cult, “life-philosophy,” and Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.

Faculty

• Philip Swoboda

Open, Seminar—Year

This course, for students with no previous knowledge of Italian, will aim to provide 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. Held once a week, group conferences will aim to enrich the students’ knowledge of Italian culture and develop their ability to communicate; this goal 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. In small groups, conversation classes will be held twice a week 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 will organize 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. By the end of this course, students will attain a basic competence in all aspects of the language. While there are no individual conferences with the instructor, regular individual meetings with an Italian language assistant, in addition to class sessions, will be required.

Faculty

• Tristana Rorandelli

Intermediate, Seminar—Year

This course will aim to improve and perfect 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 studied 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. Biweekly conference 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. In small groups, conversation classes will be held twice a week with the language assistant; 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. 

Faculty

• Tristana Rorandelli

Open, Seminar—Year

This introduction to Japanese language and culture is designed for students who have had little or no experience learning Japanese. The goal of the course is to develop four basic skills: listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing (hiragana, katakana, and some basic kanji) in modern Japanese, with an emphasis on grammatical accuracy and socially appropriate language use. Students will put these skills into practice through in-class conversation, role play and group work, and daily homework assignments. While there are no individual conferences with the instructor, weekly individual meetings with a Japanese language assistant, in addition to class sessions, will be required.

Faculty

• Julia Clark

First-Year Studies—Year

The American conception of Japan is largely based on the pop culture that it exports. This is not a politically neutral process. Many of the things that we think of when we hear “Japan”—like anime and manga, ramen and sushi, Pokémon and Zelda, mecha suits and Godzilla, and kawaii (cute) culture—are products consciously pushed abroad by the Japanese government since the 1980s as part of the “Cool Japan” initiative. Many of these modern-day markers of “Japanese-ness” were also shaped by the US occupation of Japan after World War II and other transnational encounters within the Japanese Empire and its aftermath. In this course—through close examination of a range of Japanese media objects, including but not limited to anime and manga, the modern serial novel, cinema, architecture, food, fashion, and video games—we will consider how pop culture forms and circulates around the globe. In the process, we will think through issues of genre and form in transnational media reception: Why are the samurai film and the Hollywood western the same, actually? What can J-Horror tell us about the concerns of postwar Japanese society? Why are cyberpunk stories always set in Japan, and what is the state of “techno-orientalism” today? Biweekly in fall, students will alternate between individual conferences with the instructor and small-group activities that will include transition to college, research sessions, literary and media analysis strategies, and academic writing/editing workshops. Biweekly in spring, students will meet with the instructor for individual conferences.

Faculty

• Julia Clark

Open, Seminar—Fall

Julian of Norwich is the earliest known woman to author a text in English. In 1373, at the age of “thirty and a half,” Julian fell severely ill. On the brink of death, she experienced a series of visions, which she recorded as her “short text” or Shewings. Sometime after her recovery, she chose a life of solitude as an anchorite; and for the next 40 years, Julian contemplated and elaborated on her visionary experiences. The result is her “long text,” A Revelation of Divine Love, which has been called “the most important work of Christian reflection in the English language.’ The journey of this course will begin with Julian’s Shewings and end with her Revelation—her writings serving as a lens to various traditions of medieval mysticism. Along the way, we will encounter the “intellectual” and “erotic” threads of mysticism woven throughout Jewish, Christian, and Islamic spirituality—from the philosophy of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Solomon ibn Gabirol (Avicebron), and Augustine of Hippo to the poetry of Ibn Arabi, Dante, and Jewish mystics. Next, we will examine how monks and mendicants such as Richard of St. Victor, William of St. Thierry, and Bonaventure understood the intersection of human and divine love, how the knowledge of self leads to the knowledge of God. We will then pause at the fraught waystation of mysticism and heresy to examine how Meister Eckhart’s and Marguerite Porete’s teachings of the soul’s total union with God were met with institutional hostility and violence. Finally, we will land once again in medieval England. After surveying Julian’s English contemporaries, we will embark on a sustained close reading of her Revelation of Divine Love—now with preparation to see how she understood the purpose of her visionary experiences: “Who showed it thee? Love. What showed he thee? Love. Wherfore showed he it thee? For love.”

Faculty

• Joseph Romano

Open, Lecture—Year

What if the roots of English literature were not wholly English? How were the origins of Italian literature pollinated with Arabic philosophy? This course will explore these questions and more through two foundational texts—Dante’s Divine Comedy and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Often read in isolation, we will instead study these works together—in historical, intellectual, and comparative context—charting how the high tide of Italian literary culture reached the shores of medieval England, how Dante’s vernacular epic of the afterlife helped shape Chaucer’s vernacular epic of earthly life. In fall, we will focus on Dante, treating his formation as a poet and thinker as a window into the formation of Italian literature itself. We will explore his engagement with the Occitan, Sicilian, and Tuscan lyric traditions; his reading of Aristotle through Arabic and Latin commentators; and his response to the burgeoning—and fraught—political and intellectual climate of medieval Florence. Having immersed ourselves in the life, times, and mind of Dante, we will then turn to the Comedy itself, reading all three canticles—the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—with special attention to Dante’s evolving understanding of love and desire. In spring, we will turn to Chaucer and his role in inaugurating vernacular English literature through a rich, self-conscious dialogue with Dante and the other “corone,” or crowns, of Italian literature—Boccaccio and Petrarch. Chaucer’s travels to Genoa and Florence in 1373 and Milan in 1378 were formative for him as a person and poet. At a time when hardly anyone in England had heard of Dante, Boccaccio, or Petrarch, Chaucer read them in the original and responded to them by creating new literary forms. In doing so, Chaucer fashioned a future English literary audience; in a real sense, he wrote for us. We will read Chaucer’s House of Fame (a direct response to the Comedy) and Canterbury Tales, pairing each tale with its Italian analogues and influences. Throughout the year, we will practice comparative reading and source study, mapping how ideas and literary forms travel across, cultures, languages, and borders. In the process, we will encounter the profoundly interconnected intellectual world of Dante’s and Chaucer’s Middle Ages.

Faculty

• Joseph Romano

Open, Seminar—Spring

While Dostoevsky is often praised for the universality of his themes, in his own day he was a working journalist deeply engaged with the issues facing his own contemporary Russia. This course will seek to contextualize a few of Dostoevsky’s major works by reading them as they were originally written: as part of an ongoing and often heated debate with his contemporaries. We will begin with the distinction between the 1840s and the 1860s that Dostoevsky made famous first in Notes from Underground (1864), then moving on to read Crime and Punishment (1866) and Demons (1872) in the context of the intense debates that drove the latter decade. Our particular focus will be Russian nihilism, above all as it was defined by Turgenev and Chernyshevsky, and also the “woman question,” especially as developed in the works of two women writers, Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya and Sofiia Kovalevskaya. We will finish with Nabokov’s extravagant send-up of Chernyshevsky and Russian nihilism in The Gift (1938).

Faculty

• Melissa Frazier

Open, Seminar—Spring

What is in a feeling, and what does it do? This course will explore how medieval writers understood the emotions—what they called the passions—as forces that move the soul, affect the mind, transform the body, and raise pressing questions about free will and moral responsibility. Because the passions operate at the threshold of the soul and body, virtually every domain of medieval thought had something to say about them—from poetry and medicine to philosophy and contemplative devotion. For instance, physicians like Peter of Spain diagnosed lovesickness and melancholia as genuine medical conditions. Philosophers like Aquinas compiled catalogues of the passions—from joy and sorrow to fear and courage to despair and hope—and offered phenomenological descriptions of how the passions arise through both embodied sensation and ensouled experience. Occitan troubadours like Arnaut Daniel and Italian lyric poets like Cavalcanti and Dante could write of love as the bondage of mind and will or the source of ethical nobility and spiritual freedom. (Dante did both.) Mystics like Walter Hilton and Julian of Norwich explored how emotional awareness could be refined into subtler modes of spiritual attention and how, at the same time, the inmost experience of divine love could be expressed as ecstatic, passionate feeling. In addition to the themes and writers above, this course will examine how the passions open onto questions of habitus and disposition—how repeated action shapes how we feel and how the way we repeatedly feel shapes our action. We will also consider how emotion is at the center of vice and virtue—how the quality of our feeling determines the quality of our inner life and our life with others. With the help of contemporary scholarship, we will approach the medieval passions with historical and phenomenological methods of analysis. Through these lenses, we will see how the passions in the Middle Ages serve as a unique site for comparative intellectual history, spanning disciplines and bridging ancient, medieval, and modern traditions. At the same time, studying the medieval passions offers something more personal: the chance to recover forms of feeling and attention from the past that might expand the borders of our own in the present.

Faculty

• Joseph Romano

Open, Lecture—Fall

Variance, correlation coefficient, regression analysis, statistical significance, and margin of error—these terms and other statistical phrases have been bantered about before and seen interspersed in news reports and research articles. But what do they mean? How are they used? And why are they so important? Serving as an introduction to the concepts, techniques, and reasoning central to the understanding of data, this course will focus on the fundamental methods of statistical analysis used to gain insight into diverse areas of human interest. The use, misuse, and abuse of statistics will be the central focus of the course; and specific topics of exploration will be drawn from experimental design theory, sampling theory, data analysis, and statistical inference. Applications will be considered in current events, business, psychology, politics, medicine, and many other areas of the natural and social sciences. Statistical software will be introduced and used extensively in this course, but no prior experience with spreadsheet technology is assumed. Group conferences, conducted in workshop mode, will serve to reinforce student understanding of the course material. This course is recommended for any student wishing to be a better-informed consumer of data, and strongly recommended for those planning to pursue advanced undergraduate or graduate research in the natural sciences or social sciences. 

Faculty

• Daniel King

Open, Seminar—Fall

How should societies commemorate and respond to past injustices that continue to impact community members? This course will investigate various approaches, including apology, repatriation, reparation, and remembrance. What is the best course of action in the aftermath of gross violations of human rights? Which responses are feasible in a particular context, and how might the possibilities shift over time? Where have repatriation efforts been successful? Why have reparations been won in some cases but not others? Our discussions will consider the needs of victims, as well as the interests of states and the possible contradictions between the two. We will focus on the role of power in the international system and international law, as well as the ways in which seemingly less powerful groups have engaged and challenged prominent domestic and international actors. Case studies will include, but are not limited to, Native American demands for the repatriation of remains, postcolonial states’ demands for the return of cultural artifacts, Jewish struggles for restitution in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Japanese American and African American campaigns for reparations, as well as debates over environmental reparations. We will also consider the role of art, narratives, and memorials in expanding discussion in each of these case studies.

Faculty

• Elke Zuern

Intermediate/Advanced, Online Seminar—Fall

At the end of the Cold War, many Western writers wrote triumphantly about the global victory of democracy and capitalism. In the last decade, we have been bombarded with news of autocrats, both at home and abroad, undermining democracy. Income and wealth inequality have been on the rise. At the same time, surveys in a number of high- and middle-income democracies show increasing dissatisfaction with democracy. This course will address both the promise and challenges of democracy. We will consider the connections between liberal democracy and market capitalism as they have reinforced and contradicted one another. We will explore the role of social movements, including on university campuses, in bringing about change and the alternative ideals that they have offered. In this moment of great significance for the future of American democracy, particular attention will be paid to the United States; but we will also consider a set of powerful states outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which have defined themselves as the BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. We will explore the increase in populist leaders and popular uprisings across these states, as well as the role of ethnic nationalism and inequality. As we learn from the past to evaluate the present, we will consider a range of popular responses to these challenges, as well as alternative frameworks for the future.

Faculty

• Elke Zuern

Open, Seminar—Spring

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, including Somalia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Sudan, and Libya. The course will employ lessons from these cases to consider the challenges to addressing humanitarian crises in Syria, Ukraine, and Gaza. Finally, we will evaluate different pathways in pursuing truth, justice, and reconciliation in the aftermath of gross violations of human rights. Cases include the domestic processes established by South Africa’s pioneering Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Rwanda’s Gacaca courts to the ongoing work of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. This course will conclude with a United Nations Security Council simulation, for which each student will represent a country currently on the Security Council to debate possible actions in a mock humanitarian crisis.

Faculty

• Elke Zuern

Intermediate, Seminar—Spring

This course will provide a unique opportunity to investigate key questions of democracy in a diverse group at a crucial moment in American history. We will begin by exploring theoretical arguments regarding the merits of various forms of democracy over other regime types. If democracy is presumed to be a better system than its alternatives, why might this be the case and how might we evaluate this? We will consider key historical moments in the rise and decline of democracy—from the ideals of early American democracy and its shortcomings, to the Nazi seizure of power and the end of democracy in 1930s Germany, to the triumph of nonracial democracy with the end of apartheid in South Africa. We will investigate whether and how democracies might outperform other regimes. The class will engage empirical research, comparing democratic, transitioning, and authoritarian regimes as far as economic growth and development, human development indicators, interstate and intrastate wars, human rights, and business innovation, including artificial intelligence. Students will consider the role of free speech and censorship by exploring the ways in which a free press and open social networks support basic principles of democracy, as well as how misinformation and disinformation can starkly undermine it. The course will employ theory, history, and empirical data to evaluate the state of democracy in the United States and the possible impact of recent changes to American institutions.

Faculty

• Elke Zuern

Open, Seminar—Fall

In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will explore child and adolescent development through a cross-cultural lens. Focusing on case studies from diverse communities around the world, we will look at the influence of cultural processes on how children learn, play, and grow. Our core readings will analyze psychological processes related to attachment and parenting, cognition and perception, social and emotional development, language acquisition, and moral development. We will ask questions like the following: Why are children in Sri Lanka fed by hand by their mothers until middle childhood, and how does this shape their relations to others through the course of life? How does an Inuit toddler come to learn moral lessons through scripted play with adults, and how does such learning prepare them to navigate a challenging social and geographic environment? Is it true that Maya children do not do pretend play at all? How does a unique family role influence the formation of identity for Latinx youth in the United States? How are unequal childhoods shaped by social exclusion and discrimination on the basis of race, class, gender, and immigration status? Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, our course material will draw from developmental psychology, human development, cultural psychology, and psychological anthropology and will include peer-reviewed journal articles and books, as well as films that address core issues in a range of geographic and sociocultural contexts. Students will conduct conference projects related to the central topics of our course.  Fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center is optional.

Faculty

• Deanna Barenboim

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring

This interdisciplinary course 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. The course will open by exploring questions of the classification of mental illness to address whether Western psychiatric categories apply across different local contexts. We will 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 readings of peer-reviewed articles and current research in cultural psychology, clinical psychology, psychological anthropology, psychiatric anthropology, and medical anthropology, we will 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 will explore how diagnostic processes and psychiatric care are, at times, differentially applied in the United States according to a client’s race, ethnicity, class, or gender. Finally, we will also explore the complexities of recovery or healing, addressing puzzles such as why certain mental disorders are considered to be lifelong, chronic, and severe in some parts of the world but 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 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.

Faculty

• Deanna Barenboim

Open, Seminar—Fall

It has been almost a quarter of a century since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. How have perceptions changed about the events that occurred that day? Shortly after the attacks, then-President George W. Bush insisted that Islam was not to blame and, instead, framed the battle ahead as “the war on terror.” But what about those who insisted that what had happened was an almost inevitable result of the “clash of civilizations”? How did Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda frame the narrative and their part in it? What kinds of arguments were presented to justify the attack and the US military interventions that followed? In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, what has been called the “Islamophobia industry” developed and flourished, taking full advantage of new forms of media. What role has mainstream and alternative media played in how Muslims have been portrayed and the discrimination that they have faced in the years since 9/11? Ten years after the attacks, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum opened in New York City. How have this site and other memorials shaped the collective memory of the events, as well as the curriculum being taught to a generation born after 2001? In addition to the architects of these memorials, artists, writers, and filmmakers have explored the many religious, political, and social dimensions of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. How have these works of imagination expanded the ways in which people have made sense of, and found meaning in, painful events? While this seminar is being offered through the religion discipline, the approach will be an interdisciplinary one, drawing upon readings and other materials from a variety of academic, artistic, and literary fields.

Faculty

• Kristin Zahra Sands

Open, Seminar—Spring

The question of how Judaism does and does not map onto contemporary racial categories has been, for centuries, a defining question of how Jews, as a small minority group, relate to their surrounding cultures. In many ways, the story of the historical construction of racial categories is itself a story indissolubly bound up with Jewish history—ranging from the development of the concept of blood purity during the Spanish Inquisition, which was then exported to the New World through Spanish colonialism, to late 19th-century racial theorists preoccupied with the question of how Jews do or do not relate to European peoples. As such, this course will consider the overarching question—Are Jews white?—from a historical and sociological perspective. In so doing, we will think about the historical development of the concept of whiteness itself and the relationship between the emergent concept of race and concepts of religion, ethnicity, nationhood, and nationality. We will look at how Jews were and are racially defined and categorized in different historical and cultural contexts in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and the United States—and how this question is bound up with broader questions about power relations, political structures, and minority and majority identities. We will look at how Zionism and other forms of Jewish nationalism have altered Jewish racialization; how Jews relate to broader discourses of postcolonialism and Orientalism; and the different racializations of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ethiopian Jews in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. The course will look at the ways in which Jews responded to the rise of Black nationalism in the United States and how racialized divisions between different ethnic Jewish communities shape politics in the modern state of Israel, with a particular focus on the rise of the Mizrahi Black Panthers. We will read sources from Jews of color and Jews who identify as white, from many diverse national backgrounds, as well as from many non-Jewish thinkers who find Jewish identity a fruitful way to think about the question of racial identity and its attendant political conflicts. We will explore how racial categories for Jews function both internally, within the Jewish community, and externally. In so doing, we will come to see how Jews and their relationship to whiteness is a defining question not just for Jewish identity but also how Jewishness can help shed light on the very concept of race itself.

Faculty

• Joel Swanson

First-Year Studies—Year

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 often lengthy, biweekly homework assignments. As students reflect on the very different means of expression that Russian offers, they will 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. Weekly individual meetings with a Russian language assistant, in addition to class sessions, will be required. Attendance at weekly Russian Table is strongly encouraged. In fall and spring, students will meet biweekly with the instructor for individual conferences. 

Faculty

• Melissa Frazier

Open, Seminar—Year

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 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. While there are no individual conferences with the instructor, weekly individual meetings with a Russian language assistant, in addition to class sessions, will be required. Attendance at weekly Russian Table is strongly encouraged. 

Faculty

• Melissa Frazier

Intermediate, Seminar—Year

Ahead of intermediate study, students already know the basics of Russian grammar; thus, this course will emphasize grammar review, ever more vocabulary, and more speaking of what is already known. We will turn to more reading, starting with a variety of texts with a strong oral orientation. Past studied texts have included: Daniil Kharms’ absurdist play, The Circus Shardam; the Soviet children’s classic, Mister Twister; and the famous Russian translation of Winnie the Pooh. At the end of this course, students should feel that they have a fairly sophisticated grasp of the language. Students will also participate in individual conference work with the instructor. While students may incorporate films and/or music into their conference projects, the hope of this one-on-one time is to prioritize additional reading, including song lyrics and/or screenplays, as well as poetry and short stories. As cultural opportunities in Russia remain limited, students will also be encouraged to use conference to explore the more broadly postcolonial but russophone world. As the crisis in Russia and Ukraine continues, that is where the interesting questions are being asked. Regular written homework will be required, along with weekly conversation sessions with the Russian assistant. Attendance at weekly Russian Table is strongly encouraged.

Faculty

• Melissa Frazier

Open, Lecture—Fall

In an era of unprecedented global connectivity, why do economic and social inequalities continue to deepen? This lecture will provide students with a critical introduction to the sociological study of global inequalities, moving beyond national boundaries to examine the transnational structures, institutions, and processes that produce and sustain disparities in wealth, power, and opportunity. We will explore key themes—such as human rights, migration, labor, health, climate justice, and development—analyzing how these intersect with racial, gendered, and class-based inequalities across different societies. Rather than treating nations as isolated “containers” of social issues, we will focus on the ways in which global forces—such as capitalism, colonial legacies, and international policy regimes—shape patterns of privilege and precarity. Students will engage with interdisciplinary sources, including sociological research, ethnographies, policy reports, and case studies from regions in the Global South and Global North. Topics will include the rise of transnational migration networks, the impact of neoliberal economic policies on developing economies, the persistence of racial hierarchies in global labor markets, and the consequences of climate change for displaced communities. As part of group conferences, students will identify a key global issue and develop a research portfolio using a variety of methods—statistical analysis, historical records, qualitative interviews, and ethnographic sources—to investigate how inequality is shaped and contested in different contexts. The course will encourage students to think critically about solutions, exploring social movements, policy interventions, and alternative models of economic and social justice. This course is open to all students interested in understanding the dynamics of inequality on a global scale. No prior course work in sociology is required, but students should be prepared for rigorous reading, discussion, and research.

Faculty

• Parthiban Muniandy

Advanced, Seminar—Fall

Much of our lives is spent dealing with organizations in one fashion or another; they are a staple of our everyday lives, whether directly or indirectly, and we rarely escape them. They include government and nongovernmental structures, ranging from government bureaucracies to schools, hospitals, religious spaces, and less formal entities such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Because of their ubiquitousness—and the assumption that bureaucracies exemplify “modernity” and “value-free” systems—the study of organizations has been a key subfield within sociology. This course will address the veracity of the claims made on behalf of bureaucracies, as well as critiques directed at organizational theory and behavior. Overarching objectives include examining the manner in which organizations have been conceptualized, as well as the processes and practices through which they operate and change and their implications for those who are “subjected” to them. Beginning with Max Weber, a seminal figure in the field, we will examine underlying assumptions regarding “objectivity” and “subjectivity,” the rule of law, bureaucratic activism and inertia, the relation between organizations and their larger political and economic milieu, as well as ongoing organizational struggles. In addition to Weber, we will read other classics, such as Sloan Wilson’s novel, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and William Whyte’s The Organization Man. These and more contemporary critiques of organizations—both written and visual—will enable us to go beyond simplistic and normative understandings of bureaucracies and classic sociological theories and texts to rethink historical and contemporary organizations in order to analyze the functioning of power at an everyday and structural level alongside its attendant outcomes. While applicable to sociology students and those studying social sciences, this course will also be of direct relevance to rethinking the workings of science and medicine, the law, education, the business world, the media, and/or the arts. For conference, working in small groups, students will undertake archival and/or ethnographic research on a specific aspect of organizational practice at Sarah Lawrence—historical and/or contemporary. Possible topics include an examination of space and design, changes in the student body and/or curricular design, processes of decision making, student governance and activism, and/or the relationship between the school and its environs.

Faculty

• Shahnaz Rouse

Open, Seminar—Year

Cities are shaped not only by official policies and infrastructures but also by the informal and everyday interactions that blur boundaries between legality and illegality, local and global, self and other. This seminar will explore informality as a defining feature of urban life and globalization, examining how people navigate unregulated economies; build informal networks of care and survival; and redefine cosmopolitanism through daily acts of negotiation, adaptation, and contamination. Using a transnational and ethnographic lens, we will look at how informal economies—street vending, unregistered housing, underground labor networks—shape cities from the margins. We will also examine cultural and social “contaminations,” where urban residents of different class, racial, ethnic, and migratory backgrounds encounter and transform each other’s ways of life—sometimes in conflict, sometimes in collaboration. Rather than viewing informality as a “problem” to be solved, we will investigate how it can be a form of survival, resistance, and even innovation. Key themes include the role of informal housing and precarious urbanism, as seen in slums, refugee camps, and do-it-yourself architecture, as well as the dynamics of street economies and alternative labor structures. We will explore how migrant communities shape transnational place making; the politics of food, music, and everyday cultural hybridity; and how public space is governed, contested, and informally negotiated in cities. These intersecting themes highlight the ways in which urban life is constantly being reshaped through both structural constraints and human agency. Readings will include works by Teresa Caldeira, Asef Bayat, AbdouMaliq Simone, Ananya Roy, and Saskia Sassen, alongside ethnographic case studies of cities in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and North America. Students will conduct ethnographic fieldwork—exploring the informal landscapes of urban spaces, neighborhoods, and/or digital communities around them—as part of conference work. These projects can culminate in ethnographic essays, photo essays, digital maps, or multimedia storytelling. This course is designed for students interested in urban studies, migration, globalization, and the sociology of everyday life. No previous background in sociology is required, but students should be ready to engage in active field observation, lots of field note-writing, discussion, and critical and creative thinking.

Faculty

• Parthiban Muniandy

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring

More often than not, sports and the arts are seen as two distinct fields with little in common. Those interested in international sports events rarely pay attention to international arts events and/or world expos, and vice versa. News organizations and mainstream media overall accentuate their differences. In this course, we will connect these frequently separated fields to parse out their identicality and differences. Through a close examination of international sports, expos, and biennales, we will tease out what they share, as well as how and where they depart from each other. We will start with Raymond William’s The Sociology of Culture, following it up with writings by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu on sports and the arts. We will build on these texts by reading specific accounts of historical and contemporary events, as well as interrogating visual materials. All three international events are normatively represented as sites of leisure and consumption. Going beyond these twin dimensions, an examination of their underlying practices of production will enable us to see the centrality of money, work, and labor in each of these activities/events. This examination will then allow us to interrogate the claim that art is “superior” to sports and, instead, see the relation of each to politics and market forces. In this vein, we will examine their relationship to gentrification, nationalism, tourism, and corporate power, as well as to their ability to serve as sites of resistance and as critique of local, national, and global inequities. In other words, we will see these events in terms of their multiplicity of meaning, complexity, and contradictions. Among possible conference topics, students could examine specific international events and their relationship to local sites, peoples, or politics; undertake analyses of media coverage; examine policy perspectives and justifications for location choices and/or the re-making of space; and/or examine these events, individually or collectively, in relation to issues of class, gender, race, and/or nation.

Faculty

• Shahnaz Rouse

Open, Seminar—Year

Through an array of authentic materials such as songs, short stories, short poems, and advertising campaigns, students will develop an appreciation of the Spanish-speaking world and its cultures. Throughout the year, we will use a communicative approach to further build on students’ knowledge and employment of Spanish grammar. This discussion-based seminar will follow a “flipped classroom” methodology, where students are first introduced to the materials at home and then come to class to delve deeper into these concepts. This course is intended for novice-level students with some prior exposure to the Spanish language. It is ideal for students who want a faster pace than Beginning Spanish (SPAN 3001) but have not yet acquired an intermediate-level grasp of the Spanish language. While there are no individual conferences with the instructor, weekly individual meetings with a Spanish language assistant, in addition to class sessions, will be required. 

Faculty

• Danielle Dorvil

Intermediate, Seminar—Year

This course will survey visual forms of expression across Latin America that record history and represent cultural memories, struggles, and identities. By approaching material sources, students will broaden their comprehension skills and activate discourse production to engage critically in oral and written discussions about historical and social challenges. Among other sources, we will address political violence and resistance through comics such as El Síndrome Guastavino and Violencia política en el Perú, films such as Nostalgia de la luz and La noche de los 12 años, and arpilleras textile art. As students are introduced to Mexican muralism in the 20th century, they will broaden their understanding by analyzing contemporary expressions of street art and graffiti in Brazil and Cuba. Students will also learn about the cholets, Andean architecture from El Alto, and floating houses across delta rivers and lakes. Alongside photography, we will explore the use of body art, from the funerary rituals of Indigenous Selk'nam to Afro-Caribbean masquerades, Mara gang tattoos, and feminist activism. In this seminar, students will examine material culture to deepen their understanding of discursive structures such as description, exposition, narration, comparison, and argumentation. Students will also enhance their Spanish language skills by expanding their vocabulary and effectively applying linguistic and grammatical resources. Throughout the course and biweekly conference meetings, students will develop written and oral communication skills in Spanish, as well as critical-thinking abilities. Students will further advance their research skills through multimedia projects that foster multiliteracy and public humanities competencies. The course also contemplates one field research trip to relevant local museum exhibits and artist conventions, such as the Museo de El Barrio, Institute for Latin American Art, Hispanic Society of America, and Bronx Museum of the Arts. In addition to class time, students will attend a weekly conversation session with a language tutor. All primary sources, class discussions, and assignments will be in Spanish.

Faculty

• Javiera Irribarren Ortiz

Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Fall

Hidden in plain sight, conveniently co-opted for political and ideological reasons, or erased from historical and national literary textbooks, Afro-Latin American and Caribbean women have long endured a battle against an imposing silence. As an undeniable trace of their existence and agency, their writings reveal a creative intellect employed to partake in the conversations that their compatriots insisted on having without them. Aware of this dynamic, these women turned to literature to circulate their ideas and, in so doing, granted us a hemispheric conversation that complicates our understanding of women’s epistemology and positionality in Latin America and the Caribbean. This discussion-based seminar will delve into that dialogue. Throughout the semester, we will read and analyze enriching narratives originally written in Spanish by Black women in Latin America and the Caribbean. Some of these writers will include Salomé Ureña Díaz, Virginia Brindis de Salas, Luz Argentina Chiriboga, María Teresa Ramírez, Mayra Santos-Febres, and Mariángel Gasca Posadas. Through these case studies, students will learn about “artivisim” and come up with adequate creative and scholarly responses. To advance their critical-thinking skills in this target language, students will further hone their communication and comprehension skills through advanced grammar review and weekly conversation sessions in small groups with the language assistant. This seminar will contain an individual conference project.

Faculty

• Danielle Dorvil

Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Spring

This course will examine films produced in Latin America and the Caribbean in the last 40 years that contributed to their nations’ collective memory, history, and cultural identity. Students will watch short and full-length feature films, ranging from melodrama to documentary and passing through thriller and romance. We will analyze how Luis Puenzo, Andrés Wood, and Mariano Barroso employed four areas of cinema to construct and visualize a collective memory after the atrocities resulting from the dictatorial regimes in Argentina, Chile, and the Dominican Republic, respectively. The course will also explore how cinema was utilized to recuperate and disseminate cultural identity and history in Peru, Honduras, and Puerto Rico. In this discussion-based seminar, students will learn a basic technical language to offer pointed criticism about films produced in Spanish in Latin America and the Caribbean. Students will also delve into the existing scholarship regarding memory, history, and nationalism to think critically about the narratives that they will encounter. Through advanced grammar review and weekly conversation sessions in small groups with the language assistant, students will further hone their communication skills in Spanish. This seminar will contain an individual conference project.

Faculty

• Danielle Dorvil

Advanced, Seminar—Fall

The growing recognition of Latin American comics as a subject of academic study in the 21st century has further diversified the medium in the region. This course will explore the representation of Indigenous identities and cultural narratives in contemporary Chilean comics, focusing on works published during the 2000s boom. This moment was driven by various factors, such as collaborative projects, the strengthening of distribution circuits, efforts by independent publishers, access to global comic industries, and state funding opportunities. Students will engage with frameworks from comics studies and critical theory to analyze how these graphic sources challenge hegemonic representations and contribute to broader discussions on Indigenous representation, cultural resistance, and transnational dialogues on race and ethnicity. Students will analyze comic genres ranging from historical fiction and fantasy to superheroes and horror. The course will examine how Indigenous cultures are represented within the framework of post-indigenism, as studied through Alemani’s research. Rather than merely recalling pre-Hispanic myths or questioning identity in response to colonial wounds, contemporary Chilean comics position Indigenous narratives within a globalized world through complex sequential narratives and hybrid aesthetics. Among other references, Chajnantor draws on Japanese manga to depict cultural aspects of the high plateau and the Atacama desert, while the Varua saga examines historical milestones and oral traditions to reconstruct Rapa Nui cultural memory. Adventure comics shape Mapuche superhero resistance in Guardianes del Sur, and manga-inspired robots depict a Selk’nam futurist society after settler colonialism in Mecha Selk’nam. The collaborative project Mitoverso creates a universe of superheroes inspired by folk stories, while Los fantasmas del viento articulates the intersection of Indigenous groups and European descendants in the Patagonian region. Throughout this course and biweekly conference meetings, students will develop communication skills in Spanish and critical-thinking abilities. Students will further advance their research skills through a semester-long multimedia project that enhances multiliteracy and public humanities competencies. The course also contemplates one field research visit to relevant local museum exhibits and artist conventions, such as the Society of Illustrators, Brooklyn Independent Comics Showcase, and The Drawing Center. All primary sources, class discussions, and assignments will be in Spanish.

Faculty

• Javiera Irribarren Ortiz

Advanced, Seminar—Spring

What role does speculation play in subverting the past, rethinking the present, and building different futures within the Americas? The field of speculative fiction uses multiple forms of arts and media to craft fictional imaginaries that have become a vehicle to narrate historical horror by studying Merla-Watson and Olguín and to criticize versions of modernity imposed across the Americas by studying Colanzi. While these speculative imaginaries use the codes of fiction—such as space-time travel, horror, robots, alternative realities, zombies, and genetics—they also expand upon them to address struggles of the Americas’ history of colonialism, dispossession, and mestizaje. In this advanced seminar, we will engage in a cross-cultural trajectory of contemporary speculative fiction in multiple forms, such as literature, comics, film, and performance within the US-Mexico border, the Caribbean, and the Southern Cone. Topics studied may range from Anzaldúa’s Borderlands to her theory on Queer Futurities and from critical race theory to movies such as La Llorona, Juan de los muertos, and Sleep Dealer. This trajectory will also range from mainstream franchises, such as Marvel and Star Wars, to superheroes depiction in El Alto and Tierra del Fuego. We will focus on transdisciplinary works by Rita Indiana and Luis Carlos Barragán and artwork by Marion Matínez, Amalia Ortiz, and Edgar Clement. We will also reflect on Futurisms made by mestizos, Indigenous, and Afro-Caribbeans while assessing the scopes of climate change and environmental crisis within these communities. Throughout this course and biweekly conference meetings, students will develop communication skills in Spanish and critical-thinking abilities. Students will further advance their research skills through a semester-long multimedia project that enhances multiliteracy and public humanities competencies. The course also contemplates one field research trip to relevant local museum exhibits and artist conventions, such as the Center for Fiction, Feria Internacional del Libro de la Ciudad de Nueva York, and Museum of the Moving Image. Sources will be in Spanish, English, and Spanglish, while class discussions and assignments will be conducted entirely in Spanish.

Faculty

• Javiera Irribarren Ortiz

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

What might it mean for a writer to be useful to a state? How have states used writers, witting and unwitting, in projects aimed at influence and hegemony? How might a state make use of language as a weapon? What might it mean for a writer to attempt to avoid being useful to a state? How might a state inflect and influence the intimacy between a writer and what we may write? In this course, we will discuss an array of choices that writers have made in relation to state power, focusing particularly on the United States from just after World War II until the present. Students will be asked to read excerpts from six texts: Joel Whitney’s Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers; Frances Stonor Saunders’ The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters; Eric Bennett’s Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War; Vivian Gornick’s The Romance of American Communism; and two long poems, Peter Dale Scott’s “Coming to Jakarta” and Dionne Brand's “Inventory.” Group conferences will function as writing workshops to offer students feedback on their letters in progress in addition to various writing exercises. The lens of this course will be that of a writer—using deep study and playful practice to figure out the dilemmas and best practices of the present. 

Faculty

• Suzanne Gardinier