The following information is subject to change.
For the most up-to-date and comprehensive course schedule, including meeting times, course additions, cancellations, and room assignments refer to the Banner Class Schedule on the Registrar’s website. For curriculum information, see the Undergraduate Full-Time Day Programs catalog.
Africana Studies Courses
Instructor: Caleb Gayle
CRN: 38802
Days, Time: T 11:45 – 1:25 PM; R 2:50 – 4:30 PM
Description:
Surveys U.S. and international Black popular culture from the mid-1950s to the present through music, movies, music videos, and other forms of multimedia, paying close attention to social commentary, political critique, economic inference, cultural formation, explications of religious and spiritual beliefs, and the like. Discusses and ponders issues of representation, identity, values, and aesthetics. Offers students an opportunity to rethink and reexamine the intent, impact, and circulation of Black popular culture as a method and means of expression and communication.
Instructor: Natalie Shibley
CRN: 34950
Days, Time: MWR 1:35 – 2:40 PM
Description:
Examines the basic tenets of “scientific objectivity” and foundational scientific ideas about race, sex, and gender and what these have meant for marginalized groups in society, particularly when they seek medical care. Introduces feminist science theories ranging from linguistic metaphors of the immune system, to the medicalization of race, to critiques of the sexual binary. Emphasizes contemporary as well as historical moments to trace the evolution of “scientific truth” and its impact on the U.S. cultural landscape. Offers students an opportunity to develop the skills to critically question what they “know” about science and the scientific process and revisit their disciplinary training as a site for critical analysis. Cross-listed with HIST 1225 and WMNS 1225.
Instructor: Matthew Lee
CRN: 34370
Days, Time: MWR 1:35 – 2:40 PM
Description:
Examines racism, racial identity, and theories of social change and racial empowerment primarily within the U.S. context. Highlights different ways in which racism and racial privilege have been experienced by different racial communities, more specifically at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. Offers students an opportunity to learn ways to promote racial empowerment and equity. Using theory from primarily psychology and sociology, the course investigates the impact of social systems and institutions on individual-level and group experiences of racism. Investigates students’ own racial identities, a deeper understanding of institutional inequalities and intersectionality, and practical skills in leadership and community building that can promote positive social change and racial equality. Cross-listed with SOCL and HUSV 2355.
Instructor: Carla Kaplan
CRN: 38803
Days, Time: MW 2:50 – 4:30 PM
Description:
Surveys the diversity of American women’s writing to ask what it means to describe writers as disparate as Phillis Wheatley, Edith Wharton, Toni Morrison, and Alison Bechdel as part of the same ‘tradition.’ With attention to all genres of American women’s writing, introduces issues of race, genre and gender; literary identification; canons; the politics of recuperation; silence and masquerade; gender and sexuality; intersectionality; sexual and literary politics, compulsory heterosexuality, and more. Cross-listed with ENGL 2455 and WMNS 2455.
Instructor: Kris Manjapra
CRN: 40737
Days, Time: TF 9:50 – 11:30 AM
Description:
Focuses on the culture and history of Caribbean societies in global perspective. Explores Caribbean creativity and resilience across English, French, and Spanish linguistic and political spheres with examples from literature, art, music, food, technology, and performance. Considers the global reach of Caribbean diasporas, highlighting the long local histories of Caribbean communities in Boston. Follows four key themes—indigeneity, blackness, diaspora, and creolization—to understand this unique point of entry for the study of race, gender, and sexuality in the Americas. Cross-listed with LACS 1261 and HIST 1261.
Instructor: AK Wright
CRN: 38804
Days, Time: MR 11:45 – 1:25 PM
Description:
Analyzes how Black people have resisted carcerality in social and political organizing from the 16th century to the present. Explores historical understandings of abolition as the end of slavery and the current abolition project of ending prisons, policing, and other institutions that are shaped by the legacy of slavery. Offers students an opportunity to critically analyze and engage contemporary social movements and political discourse in their everyday lives. Topics include the Haitian Revolution, maroon communities, 19th-century slavery abolitionists, anti-lynching organizing, chain gangs, Black political prisoners, contemporary carceral abolition, and abolitionist texts and films.
Instructor: Richard Wamai; John Olawepo; Tamara Jimah
CRN: 32251; 39850; 39851
Days, Time: TF 9:50 – 11:30 AM; T 11:45 AM – 1:25 PM, R 2:50 pm – 4:30 PM; WF 11:45 – 1:25 pm
Description:
Introduces global health in the context of an interdependent and globalized world focusing on four main areas of analysis: infrastructure of global health; diseases; populations; and terms, concepts, and theories. While the focus is on lower-income countries, the course examines issues in a broader global context, underscoring the interconnections between global health disparities and global health policy response. Applies case studies describing interventions to improve healthcare in resource-poor settings in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere to help illuminate the actors, diseases, populations, and principles and frameworks for the design of effective global health interventions. Cross-listed with PHTH 1270.
Instructor: Nicole Castor
CRN: 39442
Days, Time: MR 11:45 AM – 1:25 PM
Description:
Examines religious thought and rituals and the Diaspora in a comparative context. Topics include traditional religions, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in Africa, and the Diaspora. Emphasizes the transformation of religions practiced in Africa when African captives were forced into the three slave trades affecting the continent of Africa: trans-Saharan, Indian Ocean, and transatlantic. Cross-listed with PHIL 2410.
Asian Studies Courses
Crosslisted as HIST 1150
Instructor: Michael Thornton
CRN: 30327
Days, Time: MWR 4:35-5:40 PM
Description: Seeks to provide an understanding of the constituent characteristics that originally linked East Asia as a region and the nature of the transformations that have occurred in the region over the last two thousand years. Concentrates on China and Japan, and addresses Korea and Vietnam where possible. Also seeks to provide students with effective interdisciplinary analytical skills as well as historical, ethical, cultural diversity, and aesthetic perspectives.
Crosslisted as HIST 1246
Instructor: Michael Thornton
CRN:39365
Days, Time: MWR 10:30-11:35 AM
Description: Studies World War II, the most devastating war in history, which began in Asia and had a great long-term impact there. Using historical and literary texts, examines the causes, decisive battles, and lingering significance of the conflict on both sides of the Pacific.
Crosslisted as POLS 3485
Instructor: Dennis Kwok
CRN:39807
Days, Time: WF 11:45 AM – 1:25 PM
Description: Focuses on China’s political system and the major issues confronted: leadership recruitment and succession, economic policies and development, class and class struggle, political culture and socialization, human rights, civil society, the media, and both internal and external security concerns. Examines how ideology, development, culture, and the pursuit of China’s national interest affect governance.
Instructor: Sasha Sabherwal
CRN: 39684
Days, Time: MW 2:50 – 4:30 PM
Description: Seeks to provide an understanding of South Asians as one of the largest migrant communities globally, coming from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. Concentrates on the diaspora as a heterogeneous group comprising multiple nationalities, religions, castes, classes, languages, and genders. Examines the history, opportunities, and challenges of South Asian mobility and migration. Draws from texts in sociocultural anthropology, Asian American studies, history, and transnational feminist studies to trace the emergence of a new global regime on migration and citizenship through the unprecedented mobility of South Asians in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Culture Courses
Instructor: West-Duran, Alan
CRN: 30791
Days, Time: MWR 10:30am-11:35am
Description:
Examines the rich interconnections between literature and language and the culture that supports them. Discusses the relationship of language to literature and investigates how language and literatures are embedded in culture. Addresses several very broad and important questions, such as the relationship between language and culture; the relationship between language and thought; the definition of cultural relativism; and how ethical dilemmas are expressed in different cultures. Explores the relationship of esthetic and rhetorical traditions in given languages to the culture from which they sprang. In this context, examines the extremely interesting case of American Sign Language and how a gestural language sheds light on these issues.
Instructor: Perez-Arranz, Cristina
CRN: 33483; 40199
Days, Time: Online
Description:
Examines contemporary works of cinematography in Latin America, focusing on the culture and imagery of the Spanish-, French-, and Portuguese-speaking peoples of the Western hemisphere, including the United States. Critically engages—from a technical (cinematographic), genre, and sociohistorical perspective—topics of history, memory, and cultural resiliency; colonialism, racism, and patriarchy; dictatorship, revolution, and democratization; and nationalism, dependency, and globalization. Conducted in English; most films are in French, Portuguese, or Spanish with English subtitles.
Instructor: Cullen, Jennifer
CRN: 34951
Days, Time: TF 1:35pm-3:15pm
Description:
Provides an introduction to Japanese film through works by such great masters as Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu, as well as works by new directors from the 1980s and 1990s such as Tami, Morita, and Suo. Studies both form and content; relates major works to Japanese culture. Conducted in English.
Instructor: Thai, Philip
CRN: 34952
Days, Time:MWR 1:35 – 2:40 PM
Description:
Introduces modern Chinese history and culture through literary works, films, and historical texts. Examines political, social, and cultural changes in China since 1800: the decline of empire; the New Culture Movement of the 1920s; the rise of nationalism and rural revolution; the changing roles of women; the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s; and China’s cinematic, literary, and economic engagement with the world since 1978. Taught in English and open to all undergraduates. CLTR 1500 and HIST 1500 are cross-listed.
Instructor: Hancock, Austin
CRN: 32279
Days, Time: MR 11:45 AM – 1:25 PM
Description:
Explores contemporary France and French mentality through lectures, screenings, readings, and discussions. Topics covered include the modern vs. the traditional family, social reproduction, gender norms, culture and social distinction, the concept of “grandeur,” identity, and immigration. Offers students an opportunity to evaluate historical and sociological readings, films, documentaries, and TV commercials; to compare French and American systems; and to consider contemporary human and social behaviors in the face of globalization.
Instructor: Bailey, Meryl
CRN: 32280
Days, Time: MW 2:50-4:30pm
Description:
Explores the construction of an Italian national cultural identity through a historical and cross-disciplinary perspective from the Middle Ages; the Renaissance; and the modern, post–WWII period. Organized into modules that focus on the major issues related to the idea of unity and division such as north and south divide, regionalism, language pluralism, fascism and dissent, criminal organizations, and migration. Conducted in English.
Instructor: Noemi Voionmaa, Daniel
CRN: 32280
Days, Time: MWR 10:30 AM – 11:35 AM
Description:
Offers students an opportunity to learn about Latin American culture through the study of historical episodes such as colonization, independence, and dictatorships. Explores current issues including migration, globalization, and digital media. Examines writings by Latin American authors and selected films from Latin America. Conducted in English.
Instructor: Cullen, Jennifer
CRN: 30035
Days, Time: TF 9:50am-11:30am
Description:
Provides an introduction to Japanese popular culture through critical analysis of mass media such as film, television, comics, and animation. Investigates various social and cultural issues, such as gender, family, and education. Films and videos supplement readings. Conducted in English.