Politics

Over the last 50 years, the reputation of the political system that we refer to as (modern representative) democracy has been on a roller-coaster ride from immense popularity to internal revolt and decay. One way to understand this deep ambivalence about “the worst form of government (except for all the others)” is that the values it enshrines—freedom, equality, autonomy, reciprocity, popular sovereignty, the rule of law, deliberation, tolerance—retain an unrivaled appeal; but the practice of democracy so seldom resembles those values that its failures generate anger, resentment, and an appetite for an alternative or, barring that, an urge to punish those who give lip service to those values while governing in ways that look, in turn, inept and self-serving. In this class, we will develop this understanding by exploring: (1) the normative foundations of modern democratic theory in 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century philosophical texts that inspired the revolutions and institutions that continue to structure the political life of many today; (2) the multifaceted failures of the institutions, politics, and policies of self-proclaimed democracy in the 21st century (with a special, though not exclusive, focus on the United States and the discipline of political science); and (3) proposals for repairing 21st-century democracy so that it more fully realizes its potential. In the process, we will also examine some of the 21st-century social forces that challenge earlier formulations of democratic theory and practice, including new attention paid to long-buried axes of difference and domination like gender, race, class and sexual orientation, the transformation of the public sphere and communication by new media and technology, and the globalization of the economy and the new kinds of power and inequality that this has generated. This yearlong first-year studies class is designed to be accessible to all levels of students and to introduce them to college-level work, including sustained independent research (conference work) and participation in focused classroom dialogue in seminar. In addition to regular conference meetings, we will meet individually every other week for conference to discuss independent research projects and in a group conference every other week to discuss various aspects of adjusting to college work and life. No prior experience is required, but a willingness to tackle long reading assignments with care and to work together to unpack texts dense in argument and analysis certainly is.

How can social order be explained in modern societies that are too large, fluid, and complex to rely on tradition or self-conscious political regulation alone? Social theory is a distinctly modern tradition of discourse centered on answering this question and focused on a series of theorists and texts whose works gave rise to the modern social sciences; overlap with some of the most influential modern philosophy; and provide powerful tools for critical understanding of contemporary social life. The theorists whose works form the backbone of this course explore the sources of social order in structures, many of which work “behind the backs” of the awareness and intentions of those whose interaction they integrate and regulate. The market economy, the legal and administrative state, the firm and the professions, highly differentiated political and civil cultures, racial and gender order, a variety of disciplinary techniques inscribed in diverse mundane practices—one by one, these theorists labored to unmask the often hidden sources of social order in the modern world. Moreover, this understanding of social order has evolved side-by-side with evaluations that run the gambit from those that view Western modernity as achieving the apex of human freedom and individuality to those that see it as insinuating a uniquely thorough and invidious system of domination. This class will introduce many of the foundational texts and authors in social theory, the social sciences, and social philosophy, including Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. In this way, it will also cover various schools of social explanation, including: Marxism, structuralism, poststructuralism, and (in group conferences) critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and feminism. The thread connecting these disparate authors and approaches will be the issue of the worth or legitimacy of Western modernity, the historical process that produced capitalism, representative democracy, religious pluralism, the modern sciences, ethical individualism, secularism, fascism, communism, new forms of racism and sexism, and many “new social movements.” Which of the institutions and practices that structured the process of modernization are worth defending or reforming? Which should be rejected outright? Or should we reject them all and embrace a new, postmodern social epoch? In addressing these questions, we will grapple both with classical texts and with the contemporary implications of different approaches to social analysis.

War made the state, and the state made war. —Charles Tilly

This course will take a critical approach to the study of international relations. First, we will study the main theories (e.g., realism, liberalism, constructivism, and Marxism); concepts (e.g., the state, anarchy, sovereignty, balance of power, dependency, hegemony, and world order); and levels of analysis (systemic, state, organizational, and individual) in the field. Then, we will apply those various theoretical approaches and levels of analysis to current international conflicts and crises in order to better understand the many ongoing debates about war and peace, humanitarian interventions, international institutions, and international political economy. Some of the questions that we will explore include: Why do states go to war? Why do some humanitarian interventions succeed while others fail or simply never materialize? Why are some regions and states rich while others are poor, and how do those inequalities shape international relations? How do international organizations help to reinforce or moderate existing interstate political and economic inequalities?

Despite frequent pleas from President Biden and even Speaker McCarthy for national social and political unity and the rise of groups like Bridge USA, Third Way, and No Labels, the seemingly never-ending sociopolitical polarization appears to be the new norm in American political life—and it may not have reached its violent peak in January 2021. To many politicians, pundits, and others alike, the social and political scene in the United States in the 21st century appears to be one of turmoil, disagreement, division, and instability. We regularly hear about a polarized and deadlocked political class; we read about increasing class and religious differences—from the alleged divides between Wall Street and Main Street to those who are secular and those who are religious; and we often see disturbing, dangerous, and violent images and actions from various politically-oriented groups. This seminar will explore the puzzle of how to move on from this divided state. While the course will briefly examine the veracity of these recent impressions of the American sociopolitical scene, we will center our course on the question: Is policymaking forever deadlocked, or can real political progress be made? Moreover, what are the social and policy implications of polarization? How does President Biden govern in this Trumpian political epoch, and are the political parties representing the will of the people? What about the impact of the 2022 elections? What are we to make of the frequent calls for change and for healing America’s divisions? This seminar seeks to examine these questions and deeper aspects of American political culture today. After reviewing some basics of the political economy, we will study American political cultures from a variety of vantage points—and a number of different stories will emerge. We will cover a lot of ground—from America’s founding to today. We will look at numerous aspects of American social and political life—from examining the masses, political elites, Congress, and policymaking communities to social movements, the media, and America’s position in a global community—all with a focus on policy and moving the country forward. This course will be driven by data, not dogma. We will use modern political economy approaches based in logic and evidence to find answers to contemporary public-policy problems and questions of polarization. We will treat this material as social scientists—not as ideologues.

During the New York Civil War draft protests, the publisher of The New York Times, a founding member of Lincoln’s Republican Party, put Gatling guns in his office windows on Printing House Square and announced that any protester who approached his building would be shot. This seminar will explore what the American media have done since then in covering and analyzing civil unrest. Hyperbolic? Not really. We will start with a discussion about what exactly constitutes civil unrest in the first place and then look at how the media have defined civil unrest over the decades and presented it to their readers, listeners, and viewers. We will explore, among other things, antiracism protests; antiwar protests; protests on behalf of women’s rights and gay, lesbian and transgender rights; and, on the flip side, public protests against alcohol consumption, against abortion rights, against gun regulation, for segregation, and finally, the attempted coup on January 6, 2021. We will look at what is covered, who is covered, what language is used, who is quoted, and who is not quoted to explore the impact of news coverage on protest movements and the impact of those movements on the news coverage. We’ll read newspapers and magazines; watch television reports and documentaries, movies, and TV shows; and explore the role of social media and its corporate owners. You’ll need research skills; we will be looking at original media sources that may be more than 100 years old or 10 seconds old. Students will be required to read, watch, or listen to at least two news sources a day and will be responsible, on a rotating basis, for sharing their findings with the class. There will be two 1,500-word essays, as well as your conference paper. Most readings will be in the media, but there also will be some reading from scholars who have studied the subject and framed it for our purposes. This should be challenging and a lot of fun.

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

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

The cry that “All politics is local!,” popularized in the 1990s, pointed out that voters were often motivated by matters of daily life rather than abstract national issues. Candidates could get more votes by creating jobs at the local factory, it claimed, than by ending a long-running war. In the present political environment, the phrase’s meaning has changed. Major national issues of the day—as wide-ranging as book bans, policing, and environmental protection—are themselves matters of local life and community survival. The questions they raise about morality and democracy no longer seem abstract but urgent. In this context, local political organizing has gained special importance as the site where moral struggles are playing out, often in quiet, long-running projects away from the news cameras. The seminar will take students inside the Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC) to study local politics and learn directly from organizers. How do local communities draw on larger national debates to build power and achieve change? How do organizers narrate local issues in terms of “abstract” values—like shared responsibility to each other, the planet, and the future—to campaign for policies that seek to change the way we live? Students will tailor much of this course to their interests, pursuing a conference project on one local issue area either working with WESPAC or independently. (Likely possibilities include racial justice, decarceration, police accountability, Indian Point, worker cooperatives, public banking, Middle East policy, and social-forum organizing.) If students choose, they may do some classwork on-site with WESPAC organizers.

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

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

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

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

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; but marriage across a 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 seminar, then, examines the makings and meanings of kinship connections of parent and spouse at multiple levels, from small communities to global movements. Our topics will include the adoption and fostering of children, both locally and transnationally, in Peru, Chile, Spain, Italy, Ghana, the United States, 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 in India. We will look at the ways 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.

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

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

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

Environmental pollution and climate change disproportionately impact people who are economically and politically powerless. Evidence shows that low-income and minority communities and people in the Global South tend to face higher levels of environmental pollution, have less protection from environmental and natural hazards, and suffer more losses caused by climate change. In this FYS, we will focus on the what, why, how, and what to do. What are the facts of environmental and climate injustice in developing countries, developed countries, and between developing and developed countries? Why is environmental and climate injustice happening? Why is focusing on climate and environmental justice important? How do the climate and environmental justice paradigms challenge the social, political, economic, and cultural structures of capitalism; for instance, corporate and elite environmentalism? How have corporations and governments responded to environmental and climate justice quests? Has the energy transition been fulfilling its promises? What remains to be done to make environmental and climate justice real? Along with discussing these pressing questions, the course will attempt to help you get familiar with and improve your skills that are essential for conducting independent research, analytical thinking and writing, and critical inquiry. This FYS will entail biweekly conference meetings, alternating with in-class, evidence-based group activities focusing on research and critical thinking.

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

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

What factors determine the status of women in different societies and communities? What role is played by women’s labor both inside and outside the home? By cultural norms regarding sexuality and reproduction? By religious traditions? After a brief theoretical grounding, this course will address these questions by examining the economic, political, social, and cultural histories of women in the various racial/ethnic and class groupings that make up the United States. Topics to be explored include: the role of women in Iroquois Confederation before white colonization and the factors that gave Iroquois women significant political and social power in their communities; the status of white colonist women in Puritan Massachusetts and the economic, religious, and other factors that led to the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692; the position of African American women under slavery, including the gendered and racialized divisions of labor and reproduction; the growth of competitive capitalism in the North and the development of the “cult of true womanhood” in the rising middle class; the economic and political changes that accompanied the Civil War and Reconstruction and the complex relationships between African American and white women in the abolitionist and women’s rights movements; the creation of a landless agricultural labor force and the attempts to assimilate Chicana women into the dominant culture via “Americanization” programs; the conditions that encouraged Asian women’s immigration and their economic and social positions once here; the American labor movement and the complicated role that organized labor has played in the lives of women of various racial/ethnic groups and classes; the impact of US colonial policies on Puerto Rican migration and Puerto Rican women’s economic and political status on both the island and the mainland; the economic/political convulsions of the 20th century—from the trusts of the early 1900s to World War II—and their impact on women’s paid and unpaid labor; the impact of changes in gendered economic roles on LGBT communities; the economic and political upheavals of the 1960s that led to the so-called “second wave” of the women’s movement; and the current position of women in the US economy and polity and the possibilities for more inclusive public policies concerning gender and family issues. In addition to class participation and the conference project, requirements include regular essays that synthesize class materials with the written texts.

In this yearlong seminar course, we will explore the history of the US labor movement from its beginnings in 1600s colonial society to the “globalized” cities of the 2020s. Beginning with the involuntary labor arrangements that structured the continent's economy from the 1600s to the Civil War, we will focus on the international workers' movement against slavery: abolitionism. The abolitionist struggle will take us from the first rebellions of involuntary workers to the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. From there, we will consider the strikes, uprisings, and organizations of the late 19th- and 20th-century industrial labor movement, beginning with the Great Upheaval of 1877 and ending with the postindustrial urban uprisings of 1967. We will consider the peak of “big labor” during the mid-20th century, alongside the peak in Cold War era US imperialism that structured the economy during that time. We will begin the spring semester by thoroughly considering the major structural shifts in the US economy that began in the 1970s, generally referred to as a combination of “globalization” and “neoliberalism.” These shifts degraded job quality and worker power, relegating the working class to service positions in the “global city” structure. In responding to these shifts, we will consider numerous autonomous unions and “worker centers” that have sprung up to address the new issues of this new economy in the past 20 years. We will also focus on broader 21st-century people's struggles—like the Anti-Globalization Movement, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter—and how these movements relate to the ongoing workers' movement. Requirements for the course include discussion posts, short papers, and a group presentation. For the course’s major project, students will have two options. The first is writing two connected final essays, one for each semester. The second is engaging in a yearlong research project, which can be focused on service learning and in-the-field placements with local worker centers and unions, if students wish. Students will meet with the instructor every other week for individual conferences, depending on the student's needs and the progress of their conference projects. Required texts may include: Strike! by Jeremy Brecher, The Many-Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, An African-American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz, The Global City by Saskia Sassen, New Labor in New York by Ruth Milkman and Ed Ott, and Labor Law for the Rank and Filer by Staughton Lynd and Daniel Gross.

Evidence-based empirical research is an essential tool for an economist’s toolbox, allowing economists to better understand people’s behaviors; to discover underlying mechanisms of some major economic events or phenomena; and, most importantly, to critically examine many foundational economic theories. For instance: Standard economic theories tell us that raising the minimum wage will increase unemployment, but more and more empirical research has been showing us that such an effect is not supported by empirical evidence. Economic theories also tell us that tightening a country’s environmental policies will motivate the country’s businesses to outsource and relocate abroad and cause job loss, yet empirical research had failed to find clear evidence for that. This course will introduce you to the basics of conducting empirical economic research. Empirical research also has been used to support the making of public policies in areas such as health, education, urban and rural development, environment and climate change, food, etc. We will learn about formulating a research question; finding and critically evaluating relevant economics literature; developing a research proposal; finding and processing relevant economic data; analyzing data using appropriate quantitative techniques; clearly and meaningfully presenting, summarizing, and explaining the findings; writing a paper; and preparing a presentation. You will organize and complete a conference research project in stages.

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

This class explores how music videos, musical short films, and TikTok videos can be understood as a popular cultural object reflecting a multitude of political, social, and cultural trends from the 1930s through today. While many people think of music videos as being associated only with MTV, this class takes a more wholistic perspective by also considering musical short films—some examples include Len Lye (A Colour Box, 1935), Mary Ellen Bute (Synchromy No. 2, 1936), Normal McLaren (Five for Four, 1942), a multitude of Soundies starring African American performers from the 1940s, and Nam June Paik (Global Groove, 1973)—as a way to expand our understanding of the long historical impact that these shorts have had on global culture. Unlike the majority of music-video syllabi, this class prioritizes a cultural analysis approach to the medium, which allows students to utilize their textual analysis skills and apply them to pressing cultural issues. Some of the theory discussed in the class includes how to read closeups utilizing the work of theorist Béla Balázs; utilize the work of Richard Dyer to understand the role that disco music played in the gay rights movement in the 1970s; contextualize the postmodern aesthetic of MTV as a way to understand Ronald Reagan’s presidency; analyze the role that music/videos play in revolutionary politics—from the Carnation Revolution in Portugal to the fascist attack on Chilean democracy in 1973 to the role that music videos played in critiquing the politics of globalization in the 1990s; and the role that TikTok plays in the new Cold War between China and the United States. We also wrestle with issues of Black respectability politics within rap culture, as well as consider the Frankfurt School’s concept of the “cultural industry” within the framework of South Korean K-pop. Considering that there are far more music videos being made today—by both amateurs and professionals—than in MTV’s heyday, it becomes essential to consider how this media form reflects how musical images can be both a form of utopic escape from political conflict and a primary way in which our culture engages in political conflict.

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

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

Why this course and speaker series/community conversations now? The rise of the New Right is a critically important phenomenon of our time, shaping politics, policies, practices, and daily life for everyone. The insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, is only one egregious expression of long-term ideas and actions by a newly emboldened collective of right-wing ideologues. The violent challenges to the realities of a racially and ethnically diverse America is not a surprise. Nor is the normalization of White Power politics and ideas within mainstream politics and parties. The varied nature of the New Right’s participants—their ideologies, grievances, and goals—requires deep analysis of their historical roots, as well as their contemporary manifestations. The wide range of platforms and spaces for communicating hate, lies, and calls for violence against perceived enemies require their own responses, including the creation of platforms and spaces that offer analysis and alternatives. Seriously engaging the New Right, attempting to offer explanations for its rise, is key to challenging the authoritarian drift in our current political moment and its uncertain evolution and future. To do so requires our attention. It also requires a transdisciplinary approach, something inherent to our College and to geography as a discipline, be it political, economic, cultural, social, urban, historical, or environmental geography. The goal of this seminar, one that is accompanied by a planned facilitated speaker series and community conversations, is to build on work in geography and beyond and engage a wide array of thinkers from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, institutions, and organizations. In addition to teaching the course itself, my hope is that it can be a vehicle to engage our broader communities—at the College and in our region, as well as by reaching out to our widely dispersed, multigenerational alumni. Pairing the course with a subset of facilitated/moderated speaker series, live-streamed in collaboration with our Alumni office, offers the chance to bring these classroom conversations and contemporary and pressing course topics, grounded in diverse readings and student engagement, to a much wider audience and multiple communities. In this class, we will seek to understand the origins and rise of the New Right in the United States and elsewhere, as it has taken shape in the latter half of the 20th century to the present. We will seek to identify the origins of the New Right and what defines it; explore the varied geographies of the movement and its numerous strands; and identify the constituents of the contemporary right coalition. In addition, we will explore the actors and institutions that have played a role in the expansion of the New Right (e.g., courts, state and local governments, Tea Party, conservative think tanks, lawyers, media platforms, evangelical Christians, militias) and the issues that motivate the movement (e.g., anticommunism, immigration, environment, white supremacy/nationalism, voter suppression, neoliberal economic policies, antiglobalization, free speech). This is a reading-intensive, discussion-oriented, open, large seminar in which we will survey a broad sweep of the recent literature on the New Right. While the class focuses most specifically on the US context, conference papers based on international/comparative case studies are welcome. Students will be required to attend all associated talk and film viewings; write weekly essays and engage colleagues in conversation online the night before seminar; and write two short research papers that link the themes of the class with their own interests, creative products, research agenda, and/or political engagement. You will also do two associated creative projects/expressions. Transdisciplinary collaborative activities across the College and community are encouraged. Film, performance, written commentary, podcasts, workshops, and other forms of action can provide additional outlets for student creative projects and engagement.

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

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

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

Among the most salient features of the new international order that was ushered in by the end of World War II and the creation of the United Nations in 1945 was the emergence of an unprecedented global wave of decolonization that would last for roughly three decades. As many leaders of the international community consigned the “age of empire” to the dustbin of history, the world witnessed, in rapid succession, the dissolution of European overseas imperial configurations and the consequent formation of myriad new nation-states across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. This seminar provides an in-depth historical inquiry into the global phenomenon of decolonization in the post-World War II era. The course will adopt a comparative and transnational lens, exploring—through a wide range of both secondary and primary sources—the complex historical processes that attended decolonization in the British, French, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese imperial domains. Particular attention will be paid to the following questions: Why did European imperialism end when it did, and how did the politics of anticolonial nationalism vary across the different empires? How did nationalist movements and local elites negotiate the end of imperial rule, and what challenges did they face in their attempts to build postcolonial societies? What role did international organizations such as the United Nations play in constructing the new decolonized world order? How did the Cold War impact decolonization? How did decolonization work within nascent frameworks in post-World War II international law, particularly concerning the legal status of postcolonial national citizens as well as migrants? And finally, to what extent has decolonization led to a truly “decolonized” world order? Or to what extent have older imperial discourses, ideologies, and cultural prejudices persisted into the era of postcolonial independence and self-determination?

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

In Waves, we’ll move backward through feminist and queer time, as we revisit “classic” pieces within their original historical contexts. We will locate theory in place and time, naming how they respond to specific political, intellectual, and social exigencies. Our goal is to read these texts with close attention and care, asking how they reflect the urgent desires and needs of multiple overlapping communities. The texts represent a large breadth of topics, disciplines, and values of feminist and queer thought and are far from exhaustive history of any of these conversations. Likewise, our authors—folks such as Joshua Chambers-Letson, Saidiya Hartman, Martin Manalansan, Jennifer Nash, Claudia Rankine, Gayle Rubin, Eve Sedgwick, and Barbara Smith—each write from the specifics of their own experience, offering frequently contradictory arguments about the way the world does—and should—work. Together, we’ll build narratives about queer and feminist theoretical history that honor these complexities. We’ll build a co-authored public website that will house a timeline, theory cloud, and a digital exhibit of images from your archival research. You’ll be responsible for curating discussion for one class period. For your final conference work, you’ll conduct an independent project at either the Yonkers Public Library or the Sarah Lawrence College Archives, with an optional opportunity to help curate a final community event in spring 2024. As an interdisciplinary theory course, expect to draw on theory from gender and sexuality studies; LGBT studies; and Africana studies.

Variance, correlation coefficient, regression analysis, statistical significance, margin of error...you’ve heard these terms and other statistical phrases bantered about before, and you’ve seen them 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 lecture course focuses 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; 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 (spreadsheet) software will be introduced and used extensively in this course, but no prior experience with the technology is assumed. Group conferences, conducted in workshop mode, will serve to reinforce student understanding of the course material. This lecture is recommended for anybody 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. Enrolled students are expected to have an understanding of basic high-school algebra and plane coordinate geometry.

Warfare, elections, auctions, labor-management negotiations, inheritance disputes, even divorce—these and many other conflicts can be successfully understood and studied as games. A game—in the parlance of social scientists, natural scientists and mathematicians—is any situation involving two or more participants (players) capable of rationally choosing among a set of possible actions (strategies) that lead to some final result (outcome) of typically unequal value (payoff or utility) to the players. Game theory is the interdisciplinary study of conflict, whose primary goal is the answer to the single, simply-stated, but surprisingly complex question: What is the best way to “play” or behave? Although the principles of game theory have been widely applied throughout the social and natural sciences, the greatest impact has been felt in the fields of economics, political science, psychology, and biology. This course represents a survey of the basic techniques and principles in the field. Of primary interest will be the applications of the theory to real-world conflicts of historical or current interest. Enrolled students are expected to have an understanding of basic high-school algebra and plane coordinate geometry.

This course will examine punk rock as a musical style and as a vehicle for cultural opposition. We will investigate the musical, cultural, and political conditions that gave birth to the genre in the 1970s and trace its continuing evolution through the early 2000s—in dialogue with and opposition to other musical genres, such as progressive rock, heavy metal, ska, and reggae. We will begin with the influence of minimalism on “proto-punk” artists like the Velvet Underground and Patti Smith, which will provide a foundation for seeing how minimalism—as well as modernism, atonality, and electronic music—continue to resonate in punk and rock music. We will examine the intellectual background of early UK punk, with readings by Guy Debord and the Situationist International, and look at the theories of Gramsci and Foucault on the question of institutional power structures and the possibility of resistance to them. To deepen our understanding of punk style and the culture of opposition, there will also be readings by Theodor Adorno, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Julia Kristeva, and others. We will trace the splintering of punk into various sub-genres and the challenges of negotiating the music industry while remaining “authentic” in a commercialized culture. Another major focus will be the Riot Grrrl bands of the 1990s as a catalyst for third-wave feminism. Given the DIY aesthetic at the heart of punk and in addition to listening to, analyzing, and reading about the music, students who want to incorporate creative work will be given the opportunity to work with musicians and write some punk songs. In light of the abundant documentary film footage relating to punk culture, the course will include a film viewing every other week.

Where does the modern world come from? In large part, it is the product of philosophy that took on a political role it had never had before: the role of founding a new social order organized around science and technology and which, it was hoped, would tame the religious conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries. We will begin by reading Francis Bacon’s Preface and Proemium to the Grand Instauration, as well as parts of his Advancement of Learning, in which he sets out the plan for the new science and technology and seeks to make it politically and religiously acceptable, and his New Atlantis, a sketch of the new scientific-technological order. Then, we shall go on to read Descartes’ Discourse on Method, in which he combines the plan for a new physics and a new technological order with a new metaphysics of God and the soul and a new ethics of self-determination—different from the ethics of the ancient Stoics and Skeptics on which it draws, as well as from the ethics of Aristotle, Plato, and Epicurus and from Christian conceptions of virtue and vice. We shall then study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise, which is at once a scientific study of religion and a proposal for a new social order, in which religion will serve simply to support morality and obedience to the law while not interfering with science and philosophy. In group conference, we will study the ancient philosophy from which the moderns take their departure: selections from Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, and Seneca. In the spring semester, we will turn to modern reactions to the earlier modern attempts to remake the world. We will begin with Shaftesbury, who seeks to save Plato’s defense of moral teleology from both Christian rejection of the world and the attacks of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza by appealing to comedy and the sense of the beautiful. We will then turn to Hume, who seeks to invent a new common sense based on custom and feeling. Finally, we will consider Rousseau’s attack on the arts and sciences and his attempt to reconstruct the doctrine of political right without appealing to the natural order. In group conference, we will continue reading the ancients, especially Plato and Lucretius, to consider how those authors draw on them and react against them.

How can social order be explained in modern societies that are too large, fluid, and complex to rely on tradition or self-conscious political regulation alone? Social theory is a distinctly modern tradition of discourse centered on answering this question and focused on a series of theorists and texts whose works gave rise to the modern social sciences, overlap with some of the most influential modern philosophy, and provide powerful tools for critical understanding of contemporary social life. The theorists whose works form the backbone of this course explore the sources of social order in structures, many of which work “behind the backs” of the awareness and intentions of those whose interaction they integrate and regulate. The market economy, the legal and administrative state, the firm and the professions, highly differentiated political and civil cultures, racial and gender order, a variety of disciplinary techniques inscribed in diverse mundane practices—one by one, these theorists labored to unmask the often hidden sources of social order in the modern world. Moreover, this understanding of social order has evolved side-by-side with evaluations that run the gambit from those that view Western modernity as achieving the apex of human freedom and individuality to those that see it as insinuating a uniquely thorough and invidious system of domination. This class will introduce many of the foundational texts and authors in social theory, the social sciences, and social philosophy, including Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. In this way, it will also cover various schools of social explanation, including: Marxism, structuralism, poststructuralism, and (in group conferences) critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and feminism. The thread connecting these disparate authors and approaches will be the issue of the worth or legitimacy of Western modernity, the historical process that produced capitalism, representative democracy, religious pluralism, the modern sciences, ethical individualism, secularism, fascism, communism, new forms of racism and sexism, and many “new social movements.” Which of the institutions and practices that structured the process of modernization are worth defending or reforming? Which should be rejected outright? Or should we reject them all and embrace a new, postmodern social epoch? In addressing these questions, we will grapple both with classical texts and with the contemporary implications of different approaches to social analysis.

This reading seminar will consist of a close study of one book, A Thousand Plateaus, which was coauthored in 1980 by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari.A Thousand Plateaus, the second volume of their magnum opus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia—the founding text of a movement of thought called “poststructuralism”—is among the most influential books of 20th-century philosophy. As its name suggests, the book presents a vision, or visions, of the world and of history as multilayered and multiplex rather than homogenous and linear. The book teaches us to look and to think of things and of ourselves from a variety of new and shifting angles, with the aim of providing means of resistance, empowerment, and sometimes escape against capitalism, fascism, and forces of normalization. To do this, Deleuze and Guattari draw on a broad range of philosophical, literary, and artistic texts and on modalities of experience that have traditionally been associated with madness. Their writing style is bold and dazzling, full to the brim with new terminologies (many of which have since become common tropes in the humanities and the social sciences); it is also challenging and dense. Engaging their work fruitfully requires a mind that is, like theirs, open and adventurous, willing to take risks and follow unpredictable turns. We will proceed in workshop fashion, reading 30-40 pages a week in advance of each class, writing short analyses throughout the semester, and coming to class prepared and eager to work together toward increased understanding. In addition to the prerequisite, students enrolling in this class should, more importantly, have a philosophical passion and commitment, a diligent work ethic, and a spirit of camaraderie, collaboration, and generosity.

Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone is a book about religion, but it is also a book about Enlightenment—or how to build a rational society; for this purpose, religion, in Kant’s view, is indispensable. We shall study how Kant seeks to reform Christianity to make it compatible with a rational society and what the limits are on this enterprise. The topic is of interest nowadays, when the attempt of Kant and others to make religion compatible with Enlightenment is under challenge, and religion has once again come into some tension with science and the hope for progress founded on collective rationality.

War made the state, and the state made war. —Charles Tilly

This course will take a critical approach to the study of international relations. First, we will study the main theories (e.g., realism, liberalism, constructivism, and Marxism); concepts (e.g., the state, anarchy, sovereignty, balance of power, dependency, hegemony, and world order); and levels of analysis (systemic, state, organizational, and individual) in the field. Then, we will apply those various theoretical approaches and levels of analysis to current international conflicts and crises in order to better understand the many ongoing debates about war and peace, humanitarian interventions, international institutions, and international political economy. Some of the questions that we will explore include: Why do states go to war? Why do some humanitarian interventions succeed while others fail or simply never materialize? Why are some regions and states rich while others are poor, and how do those inequalities shape international relations? How do international organizations help to reinforce or moderate existing interstate political and economic inequalities?

The cry that “All politics is local!,” popularized in the 1990s, pointed out that voters were often motivated by matters of daily life rather than abstract national issues. Candidates could get more votes by creating jobs at the local factory, it claimed, than by ending a long-running war. In the present political environment, the phrase’s meaning has changed. Major national issues of the day—as wide-ranging as book bans, policing, and environmental protection—are themselves matters of local life and community survival. The questions they raise about morality and democracy no longer seem abstract but urgent. In this context, local political organizing has gained special importance as the site where moral struggles are playing out, often in quiet, long-running projects away from the news cameras. The seminar will take students inside the Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC) to study local politics and learn directly from organizers. How do local communities draw on larger national debates to build power and achieve change? How do organizers narrate local issues in terms of “abstract” values—like shared responsibility to each other, the planet, and the future—to campaign for policies that seek to change the way we live? Students will tailor much of this course to their interests, pursuing a conference project on one local issue area either working with WESPAC or independently. (Likely possibilities include racial justice, decarceration, police accountability, Indian Point, worker cooperatives, public banking, Middle East policy, and social-forum organizing.) If students choose, they may do some classwork on-site with WESPAC organizers.

Care and caregiving are aspects of daily life that each of us depend upon at various times throughout our lives. Yet, care remains hidden and devalued in our current sociopolitical climate in which women continue to provide a majority of care. In this course, we will look at care, both as an orientation and as an activity provided by family and friends to people with disabilities and older adults. Utilizing Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory as a framework, we will explore the multilevel experiences of family caregivers. Specifically, we will focus on caregiving triads—for example, caregivers in all their diversity, as well as paid caregivers and care receivers living with a variety of chronic illnesses. This course will take an interdisciplinary approach and introduce students to the various literature on family caregiving. From psychology to public health, we will consider care as a reciprocal process that ebbs and flows throughout the life course. We will read from feminist theory, critical disabilities studies, psychology, and public health, as well as look at how care is portrayed in popular culture, film, and books. We will learn about multilevel interventions, such as individual and policy responses geared toward supporting family caregivers, as well as organizations and social movements that are dedicated to creating better conditions of care for all.

In April 2014, the residents of Flint, Michigan, noticed something was wrong with their water. Residents of the predominantly Black city reported discolored, putrid water that produced skin rashes and even hair loss. While city officials insisted that residents had nothing to be concerned about, further testing revealed high levels of lead and bacteria, the effects of which we will see for generations to come. Flint, Michigan, reignited a national conversation about the relationship of our physical environment, race, and social (dis)ability in the United States. These themes will be central to this yearlong lecture, which investigates several questions: What is the relationship between the physical environment and our bodies? How does environmental policy affect and produce social disabilities? How do built environments shape experiences of disabilities? We will discuss these questions using both historical and contemporary lenses. Our analysis begins with an exploration of the United States’ history of imperialism, segregation, and redlining to investigate how these endeavors have shaped its natural and built environment. We will then examine how the ghosts of these histories shape contemporary environmental policies and to what degree this legacy has produced different forms of social disability. Throughout these discussions, we will attend to several themes, including: how racial hierarchies shape environmental injustice, how our built environments both produce and shape experiences of marginalization, and how those experiences are addressed by communities of color and environmental justice movements. Throughout the year, group conferences will help students build and strengthen methodological skills. In the fall, students are expected to submit a research proposal, including: a topic related to an environmental issue of interest, corresponding research questions, and a review of relevant literature. In the spring, students will use their proposals to build a research portfolio that empirically and theoretically explores their topic. Portfolios should include an analysis of descriptive statistics, qualitative data of the student’s choosing, and an essay connecting findings to the lecture’s theoretical discussions.

Using US-based artist Sarah Sze’s remark, “Great protests are great art works,” as its inspiration, this seminar explores the relationship between art, collective ideas, and social change within the context of social movements. We begin by discussing the relationship between aesthetics and the social sciences, focusing on a sociological notion of art as a collective and inherently social process. Our study includes the work of social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Theodor Adorno, whose works not only illuminate how public culture communicates collective ideas but also how the latter is imbricated with existing power structures and social hierarchies. These critical frameworks will help us investigate the modern art world, exploring how artistic institutions and movements are sites that both perpetuate and resist authoritative ideologies. In the second half of the semester, students will use these frameworks to explore the role of culture and art within collective social movements. We will investigate several questions, including: What defines a social movement and what social conditions produce social movements? How are art and aesthetics used within social movements to communicate ideas and strengthen communities? In what ways do movements deploy art as a form of social resistance or authority? Our discussions will particularly attend to grassroots movements within historically marginalized communities. Throughout the semester, students will also learn about the benefits of visual methodologies and how social scholars use them to understand collective culture and social change. For conference, students will select a specific social movement, exploring how art is deployed within the movement for collective resistance or control. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) critical analysis of an artistic institution, comparative analysis of how different contexts of resistance deploy shared artistic mediums, or the use of art within a given movement over time. While class discussions will primarily focus on the United States, students are also invited to explore the relationship between art and social movements in other social locations.

In April 2014, the residents of Flint, Michigan, noticed that something was wrong with their water. Residents of the predominantly Black city reported discolored, putrid water that produced skin rashes and even hair loss. While city officials insisted that residents had nothing to be concerned about, further testing revealed high levels of lead and bacteria, the effects of which we will see for generations to come. Flint, Michigan, reignited a national conversation about the relationship between our physical environment, race, and social (dis)ability in the United States. These themes will be central to this yearlong lecture, which investigate several questions: What is the relationship between the physical environment and our bodies? How does environmental policy affect and produce social disabilities? How do built environments shape experiences of disabilities? We will discuss these questions using both historical and contemporary lenses. Our analysis begins with an exploration of the United States’ history of imperialism, segregation, and redlining to investigate how these endeavors have shaped its natural and built environment. We will then examine how the ghosts of these histories shape contemporary environmental policies and to what degree this legacy has produced different forms of social disability. Throughout these discussions, we will attend to several themes, including how racial hierarchies shape environmental injustice, how our built environments both produce and shape experiences of marginalization, and how those experiences are addressed by communities of color and environmental justice movements. Throughout the year, group conferences will help students build and strengthen methodological skills. In the fall, students are expected to submit a research proposal, including a topic related to an environmental issue of interest, corresponding research questions, and a review of relevant literature. In the spring, students will use their proposals to build a research portfolio that empirically and theoretically explores their topic. Portfolios should include an analysis of descriptive statistics, qualitative data of the student’s choosing, and an essay connecting findings to the lecture’s theoretical discussions.

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

How are bodies produced in the contemporary world? To what degree are our bodies truly our own? Using Michel Foucault’s term “biopower” and his related work as its point of departure, this course will address the above questions as well as others related to the body in order to analyze and better understand how modern social institutions and relations regulate and attempt to control our bodies. Our examination and analysis will include the various modalities through which power is enacted at the macro level—including, for example, state surveillance, violence, and policy formation. We will also explore the relation between such forces and micro-level, everyday experiences throughout, deploying the concept of “embodiment” to understand how social power not only acts upon us but also becomes internalized within our very beings. This framework will help us better understand how social power is carried through the body and shapes our physicality, as well as the ways in which we move through the social world and interact with each other. Our analysis will enable us to examine biopower more critically with respect to constructions and interpretations of sex/gender, race, class, and sexuality at multiple social scales. For conference, students are expected to select a social context of their preference through which to examine the relationship between biopolitical forces and the embodied experiences of the individual(s). Students might also explore strategies of resistance—both individual and collective—to establish bodily autonomy and resist domination. In addition to social scientific studies, students may deploy ethnographic research, media analysis, and/or turn to personal (auto)biographies as bases of their research and analysis.

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

Using US-based artist Sarah Sze’s remark, “Great protests are great art works,” as its inspiration, this seminar explores the relationship between art, collective ideas, and social change within the context of social movements. We begin by discussing the relationship between aesthetics and the social sciences, focusing on a sociological notion of art as a collective and inherently social process. Our study includes the work of social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Theodor Adorno, whose works not only illuminate how public culture communicates collective ideas but also how the latter is imbricated with existing power structures and social hierarchies. These critical frameworks will help us investigate the modern art world, exploring how artistic institutions and movements are sites that both perpetuate and resist authoritative ideologies. In the second half of the semester, students will use these frameworks to explore the role of culture and art within collective social movements. We will investigate several questions, including: What defines a social movement and what social conditions produce social movements? How are art and aesthetics used within social movements to communicate ideas and strengthen communities? In what ways do movements deploy art as a form of social resistance or authority? Our discussions will particularly attend to grassroots movements within historically marginalized communities. Throughout the semester, students will also learn about the benefits of visual methodologies and how social scholars use them to understand collective culture and social change. For conference, students will select a specific social movement, exploring how art is deployed within the movement for collective resistance or control. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) critical analysis of an artistic institution, comparative analysis of how different contexts of resistance deploy shared artistic mediums, or the use of art within a given movement over time. While class discussions will primarily focus on the United States, students are also invited to explore the relationship between art and social movements in other social locations.

The concept of space will serve as the point of departure for this course. Space can be viewed in relation to the (human) body, social relations and social structures, and the physical environment. In this seminar, we will examine the material (social, political, and economic) and metaphorical (symbolic and representational) dimensions of spatial configurations in urban settings. In our analysis, we will address the historical and shifting connotations of urban space and urban life. We will then turn our attention to spatial relations within urban space(s). Here, emphasis will be placed on practices and processes whereby social “space” is created, gendered, re-visioned. “Space” will no longer be seen simply as physical space but also in terms of the construction of meanings that impact our use of, and relations in, both physical and social settings. While economic factors will continue to be of significance to our analysis, we will emphasize extra-economic relations and constructs—including power, gender, and sexuality. The focus will also shift, as the semester proceeds, from macro-analyses to an examination of everyday life, including the significance of public-private distinctions. In the latter part of the seminar, particular attention will be paid to attempts by scholars and activists to open up space both theoretically and concretely. Although the analytical questions at the core of this seminar lend themselves to an analysis of any city, our focus in class will be largely, although not exclusively, on New York City. Students are encouraged to examine the relevance of our readings to other spaces, including places in which they have lived. In their conference work, too, students may elect to study space and place making in contexts and with respect to themes that are of particular interest to them.

This is a course about sports as practice. "Practice" is used here in a multiple sense. As an embodied activity, sporting practice is felt and experienced in and through the body, which is its primary but not sole “habitus”—a term the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu elaborated upon in his use of the term “cultural capital.” Taking the sporting body and Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (taste, habits, skills, dispositions) as our point of departure, we will examine sports and their habitation of worlds that reach far beyond the individual (body) in both time and space. We will examine sports along various axes: as a collective and/or individuated activity; as a source of leisure and recreation; as a source of profitable employment; as a site of identity, as urban and nation-building projects; and as a space that engenders transnational mobilities and interconnections as well as ruptures. In its commoditized contemporary form, sports are more often than not controlled by big money and/or the state and are part and parcel of what Debord refers to as the “society of the spectacle,” a site of production, consumption, and entertainment. The complex relationship between sports as experienced through the body and as a set of disciplinary practices will allow us to think through the relation between the individual, the collective, and institutionalized powe—linking those to questions of body politics. Taking the internal dynamics and meaning of sports seriously, we will engage sports as a contradictory field, as both a productive space and a space of consumption. Our readings will include scholarly works, sports journalism, films, documentaries, and other primary sources. Possible conference topics include sports and politics; analysis of particular sports events (e.g., the Olympics, women’s basketball, the World Cup); (auto)biographies and/or oral histories of athletes; sports and protest; “fitness,” health, and the body; gender, race, sexuality, (dis)ability and sports; nationalism(s), national “styles,” and sports; and the phenomenology of sports.

This drawing class creates works on paper in watercolor, ink, and collage using the human form while considering the ways in which the body has been depicted in art of the 21st century. Feminist artists and BIPOC artists have transformed the way we see and construct the world and how the figure is used in art. Borrowing a conceptual frame, in part from an exhibition curated by Apsara Di Quinzio at Berkeley Art Museum (2022), student assignments will include the following: returning the gaze, the body in pieces, absence and presence, gender alchemy, activism, domesticity and labor. In the first half of the class, students can draw directly with a model present in the classroom; the second half will introduce alternative substrates, including medical textbooks, fashion magazines, and collage. Artists will be introduced to the work of Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Luchita Hurtado, Sarah Lucas, Mary Minter, Kiki Smith, Lorna Simpson, Karen Finley, Kara Walker, Rona Pondick, Simone Leigh, Zanele Muholi, Wangechi Mutu, Mary Kelly, Janine Antoni, Carolee Schneeman, Kerry James Marshall, Lyle Ashton Harris, Bob Flanagan, and Féliz Gonzalez Torres.

In this experimental studio class, we will explore how to digest, appropriate, reconfigure, and rewrite popular media using mostly, but not limited to, painting, drawing, and collage and open to video, animation, sculpture, and performance. We will examine how artists operate as consumers, catalysts, motors, and destroyers of TV, film, music, social media, and advertisement. Slideshows, readings, and presentations will exemplify the tight relationship between art and popular media throughout history and contemporary art and will serve as inspiration for students to create their own works. Students will be encouraged to deconstruct their own spectacles of adoration and critique and celebrate images that are impactful to them. We will promote generative group conversations, studio time, experimentation, collaboration, creativity, and improvisation.

In this omnibus nonfiction writing class, we will encounter and examine over the course of a year a range of literary, artistic, social, and historical phenomena—from plays by Shakespeare and poems by Whitman, to selections from autobiographies of Gandhi and Malcolm X and Virginia Woolf, to films and memoirs of identity and gender liberation, to a classic documentary about the terminal ward of a great Northeastern-seaboard hospital, to an oral history of a poor neighborhood in Mexico City, to artwork in New York museums and current art exhibits in Chelsea, to sports events and contemporaneous political conflicts, to masterworks of modernist nonfiction experimentation. In response to this range and overflowing variety of material, students will be asked to write accurately and cogently, in the tradition of various nonfiction genres, designed to capture one aspect or another of these encounters with reality. We will write impersonal work—reportage, reviews, journalistic profiles, editorials; and we will write highly personal pieces involving the life experiences of each of us in relation to what we encounter—personal essays, memoir fragments, hybrid pieces that experiment with form, that create their own genre, that allow us to fully explore our subjectivity and our unique points of view. We will work out the rhetorical and investigative techniques, whereby the truth of experience is represented on the page. We will also look at the many ways in which language can be used to distort, obscure, and evade the truth. We will think practically and will think philosophically about representing reality. We will develop our voices and our control of words, sentences, paragraphs, and larger units. Our biases will tend toward clarity of thought and beauty of expression. In this course, there will be weekly conferences for the first six weeks and biweekly conferences thereafter.

Long-form investigative journalism has opened many doors, perhaps most literally in America’s penal system where journalists have regularly revealed—and freed—the wrongfully convicted. This class will set out to expose the innocence (or confirm the guilt) of a man or woman convicted of a controversial murder or other serious felony. Working collectively and using all of the tools and traditions of investigative journalism, the class will attempt to pull out all known and unknown threads of the story to reveal the truth. Was our subject wrongfully accused? Or are his or her claims of innocence an attempt to game the system? The class will interview police, prosecutors, and witnesses, as well as friends and family of the victim and of the accused. The case file will be examined in depth. A long-form investigative piece will be produced, complete with multimedia accompaniment.

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

Are you going to ask where I am? I'll tell you—giving only details useful to the State... —Pablo Naruda, Letter to Miguel Otero Silva, 1948.

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? How might a state inflect and influence the intimacy between a writer and what they may write? What might it mean for a writer to attempt to avoid being useful to a state? In this class, we’ll 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. You’ll be asking to read excerpts from four books: Joel Whitney’s Finks: How the CIA 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; Peter Dale Scott’s long poem, Coming to Jakarta; and Dionne Brand’s Inventory. This is not a history or literature class: Our lens will be that of a writer, using deep study and playful practice to figure out the dilemmas and best practices of the present. Although this is a lecture class, with a limit of 30 students, you’ll be asked to participate, improvise, and do some class reading and writing, work with a partner, as well as participate in one group conference a week often focused on in-class writing exercises. The only prerequisite is the courage to think out loud with other people; aka, the courage required to learn.