Global Arc

This course will explore the historical roots of the Greek nation-state, the homogenization of its linguistic landscape, and the consolidation of an ethnic majoritarian understanding of citizenship and belonging, focusing on the role literature and culture play in these processes. Students will study literary, historical, anthropological, legal, and other materials, and will meet writers, scholars, politicians, and activists living in Greece and actively engaged in rethinking what Greece has been, is now, and could become in the future. Based in Athens, the course will also visit Corfu, Epirus and Thessaloniki.

A small island off the coast of China, Taiwan occupies an outsized role in global geopolitics. Whether seen as David to China's Goliath or a flashpoint in the South China Sea, Taiwan is frequently in the news but remains poorly understood. This seminar takes students beyond the headlines to explore Taiwan's history, society and culture. The course will examine the island's colonial past, economic rise, the transition to democracy, and social movements such as feminism, LGBTQ and indigenous rights, and environmental activism. Using interdisciplinary methods, students will reflect on Taiwan's complex history and vibrant culture and society.

We will examine African languages in digital technology when education & communication is becoming dependent on AI as well as the impact of language technology on daily life & how integrating African languages into digital technology promotes inclusivity, allowing languages to thrive in digital orality & mainstream spaces. Topics range from typology of African languages, structure of Bantu languages, Swahili as a lingua franca of Eastern Africa, & NLP concepts & applications i.e. search engines, speech processing, text classification, machine translation, information extraction & recommendation systems.

This course will be held in Cluj and Sibiu, Romania, with a focus on history and contemporary politics in Eastern Europe. The course begins with historical background, followed by an exploration of post-communist political dynamics. It covers the transition from one-party rule, debates about EU and NATO membership, energy security, and the threat of Russian aggression. Discussions will be complemented by meetings with local policy experts and guest academics. Students will also receive language instruction twice a week. The course includes excursions to the Romanian capital, Bucharest, and a trip to the Danube Delta.

This seminar explores Ireland's journey towards reproductive justice & its global implications. Through the lenses of sociology, anthropology, political science, & history, students consider the past, present & future of reproduction in Ireland. Key themes include the impact of cultural norms, beliefs and values on abortion access, the intersection of state, church & medicine, the relationship between law & practice, the role of activism and art in social change, and the weight of the past in the present. Excursions will focus on the history of reproduction in Ireland, experiences of Irish women, & reproductive justice activism in Ireland.

This course examines how Paris is made of an amalgam of spaces of memory - places, monuments, museums - which have shaped its history and the way it is experienced by residents and visitors. Students will discover the constitutive elements of the city and recognize the traces of memories that have formed the image of Paris in the collective imagination. We will see how diverse communities (African, Asian, Maghrebi and Jewish as well as African-American expatriates) changed Paris, in the aftermath of colonialism and immigration. We will gauge how a city coalesces into a mix of multiple identities and shared, personal experiences.

This seminar explores North African histories of migration across the Mediterranean through language, literature, art, and ethnography. The course is organized around key themes in migrant narratives. Through lectures, discussions, readings, visits, and conversations with guests, students will examine how narratives of migration are constructed, contested, and harnessed, how they inform discourses of mobility and immobility, and how they shape communal, national, and transnational identities. As part of the course, students will learn the basics of Maghrebi Arabic (Derja), the North African dialect of Arabic spoken widely in Tunis and Paris.

American social movements in the 1960s and 1970s highlighted deep structural inequalities faced by a variety of marginalized groups. These groups¿ growing consciousness and social impact spurred a strong conservative reactionary movement. The nascent Christian Right was at the forefront of this backlash, countering feminist and racial equality initiatives with calls to traditional gender roles and rejections of the reality of systemic racism. This course explores the rise of the Christian Right in the United States through the lens of its relationship to gender, race, and sexuality from the beginning of the 20th century through the present.

This seminar offers an intensive introduction to working with cultural documents emerging within and from LGBTQ+ communities in the United States during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Students will work individually and collaboratively as they engage a broad array of cultural texts and primary documents from the later 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Students will rehearse how to interpret, analyze, and contextualize such documents of the recent queer past as they also explore how to apply these skills within historical, literary/cultural, and dramaturgical analysis.

What does RuPaul's Drag Race teach us about our everyday gendered performances? How does The Bachelor shed light on contemporary courtship rituals? Reality television shows may seem like frivolous fun (and they are!), but they are also illuminating cultural artifacts that reflect contemporary American norms and values. In this course, we will analyze these forms of entertainment through a social scientific lens, investigating what they reveal about our collective understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality.