* Important *

This page will be updated each quarter around the time that the Schedule of Classes comes out.  Please check back regularly for updates/ corrections.  Please NOTE that a course which has been accepted in the past may not be in the future. For any questions relating to this minor, please either contact us or visit the Humanities Undergraduate Counseling Office in HIB 143.

Courses Prior to Fall 07 (and Summer courses prior to Summer 08) are shown in a different format and can be accessed by clicking HERE.

Approved Courses

Course Term (Y=Summer Session 1, Z=Session 2):  

Fall Quarter (F18)

Dept/Description Course No., Title  Instructor
GEN&SEX (F18)189  CHC/LATINAS IN U.S.FLORES, G.

This course examines the heterogeneity of the Chicana/Latina experience in the United States. A major focus of this course is understanding the obstacles Latinas face and how these obstacles might be overcome. Topics to be discussed include: immigration, gendered expectations and rearrangements, sexualities, dating preferences, work dynamics, and representations in the media to name a few. Throughout the course, we will consider the various ways that intersecting social locations of
race/ethnicity, gender, immigrant status, citizenship, class, and sexuality affect Chicanas/Latinas access to opportunity and equality. We will learn various feminist theories and create knew knowledge through the art of testimonios—which allows for various forms of expression. Students are encouraged to create new knowledge through class discussions and participation, critical thinking and analysis. Class lectures, discussions, and assignments are geared towards helping students develop a critical understanding of the primary issues related to the experiences of Chicanas/Latinas living in the U.S.

This course primarily focuses on Chicana/Latinas currently living in the U.S. that were either born here or migrated from another country. Our readings and discussion will allow us to make comparisons by nationality, generation, and citizenship across and within Latinas/os in the U.S. including those of Mexican, Central American, South American and Caribbean origins.
Days: TU TH  09:30-10:50 AM

GEN&SEX (F18)100A  FEMINSM & SOCL CHNGSCHEPER, J.

We are in a new era of public protest marked by the increased global visibility of protests organized around raced and gendered violence and social inequalities. From viral social media hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, and #SayHerName to the recent Women’s Marches, feminists are deploying a variety of tactics in the public sphere to bring about social change. Using the memoir of South African anti-Apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (1936-2018), 491 DAYS: Prisoner Number 1323/69 and Beth Curran’s 2017 book, Marching Dykes, Liberated Sluts, and Concerned Mothers: Women Transforming Public Space, and other selected readings, students will place recent events in a larger historical context. Cases range from 19th century suffrage parades, peace movements, and anti-lynching campaigns to queer direct action in the 1990s in the face of the HIV/AIDS; to more recent examples such as Women in Black; Dyke Marches, and the Million Mom March. This course gives students an opportunity to ask: When feminists take on social, political, cultural critique and change, how is that knowledge produced and disseminated? What are the expert knowledges and everyday ways of knowing that shape feminist engagement and social change? The texts and public engagements considered explore key questions of history, memory, power, and the gendered uses of public space. Students will examine a diverse repertoire of tactics for engaging in social critique and protest in the public sphere from the politics of militancy to the uses of humor, shame, and silence.  Students will take up Black feminist critiques that emphasize the necessity of intersectionality to feminist thought and action, and over the course of the quarter, students will produce their own “toolkits” and “blueprints” for producing, storing, and transmitting feminist knowledge while thinking critically about race, gender, sexuality, nation, class, and disability in social, economic, and legal justice issues.
Days: TU TH  12:30-01:50 PM

PHILOS (F18)101  INTR TO METAPHYSICSFIOCCO, M.

A study of one or more of the problems of "first philosophy," e.g., substance, free will, causation, abstract entities, identity.
Days: TU TH  02:00-03:20 PM

LIT JRN (F18)103  LITERATURE OF LAWWEINSTEIN, H.

THE LITERATURE OF LAW: A Study of Dramatic Civil Cases

The students in this course will read, discuss, analyze and write about four books, "Make No Law," by Anthony Lewis, "History on Trial," by Deborah Lipstadt, "The Buffalo Creek Disaster," by Gerald Stern and "A Civil Action," by Jonathan Harr.

Each of the books presents a strong narrative, laced with history and social context.

Lewis’ book is considered by many to a brilliant account of the most important First Amendment decision of the 20th Century—New York Times v. Sullivan. That 1963 ruling set the standards for libel litigation in the United States. Lewis, the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes as a New York Times reporter and the author of 'Gideon’s Trumpet,' not only dissects all the key facets of the case; he presents a brilliant history of First Amendment law in the U.S.

Lipstadt’s book presents a stark contrast to Lewis' in at least one major respect. In 1993, the Emory University History professor published an acclaimed book, 'Denying the Holocaust,' in which she called historian David Irving, who once said that more people died in Ted Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, 'one of the most dangerous spokesperson for Holocaust denial.' Irving sued Lipstadt for libel in London and the American historian was forced to defend herself in England, where the defendant, not the plaintiff, has the burden of proof in a libel case. These two books will present a striking glimpse of the difference between the U.S. and British legal systems.

The third book is 'The Buffalo Creek Disaster', a tale of how the survivors of one of the worst disasters in coal mining history brought a suit against a major coal company and won. The author is attorney Gerald M. Stern, who represented the victims. Besides being a fascinating yarn about people caught in a disaster and how a lawyer represents low-income people against a powerful adversary, the book affords us the opportunity to discuss how Stern, a lawyer, writes about his own work compared to how Lipstadt, the professor, writes about herself as a litigant.

The fourth book, "A Civil Action," is also about an epic courtroom showdown. In this instance, a group of bereaved parents sued two giant corporations who they believe are responsible for the deaths of their children. This book, brilliantly written by Jonathan Harr, is a classic tale of a legal system gone awry. It takes you inside the operation of two law firms, dissects legal strategy and presents a close-up view of how lawyers inter-act with their clients. "A Civil Action" won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, a tribute to its literary merit. (In addition, the book was considered important for lawyers that a leading legal book company published a documentary companion to the book, used in law schools.) "A Civil Action," was also made into a movie starring John Travolta, John Lithgow, Robert Duvall and Lindsay Crouse, among others.
Days: Tu Th  09:30-10:50 AM

PHILOS (F18)131C  MEDICAL ETHICSSTAFF

Analysis of moral issues concerning health care. Topics may include: just allocation of scarce medical resources, the doctor/patient relationship, genetic engineering, surrogate motherhood, abortion, euthanasia, or social policy concerning AIDS.

Days: TU TH  03:30-04:50 PM

GEN&SEX (F18)120C  PRCTCE OF EMBODIMNTTHUMA, E.

Explores how science, medicine, and law have shaped the understanding of differentiated bodies; examines shifting norms and ideals about producing, shaping, adorning, and dressing gendered bodies across diverse historical, cultural, social, economic, and spatial contexts.
Days: T TH  05:00-06:20 AM

PHILOS (F18)144  PRIVACYWALSH, S.

Visit the Logic and Philosophy of Science website for more information.
Days: TU TH  11:00-12:20 PM

GEN&SEX (F18)157B  QUEER LIVES KNOWLEDSCHEPER, J.

How does the queer past shape the queer present and future? What are the historical links between slavery, Jim Crow segregation, colonialism, and the regulation of gender, sexuality, and desire? This course begins by examining the production of 19th century normative sexual and gender identities, bodies, practices, and communities through the surveillance of and cultural debates around those bodies that came to be designated as non-normative. In a historical epoch marked by changing discourses that linked sexual pathologization to scientific racism, slavery, and colonial spectacles of the body, new pseudo-scientific knowledge about non-normative gender and sexuality emerged. By the 20th century, mass media, popular culture, militarization of culture, and—by the turn to the new millennium—HIV/AIDS, played increasingly significant roles in shaping public discourses about transsexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism. Students will explore how different ways of knowing, seeing, regulating, and inhabiting bodies and identities shape current debates. Focusing on “queer of color critique” and “black queer studies,” students will examine: 1) the uses of performance, film, and visual culture activism in producing queer politics from the era of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 90s to the present; 2) gay gentrification and tourism (and their global iterations as homonationalism, pinkwashing, and Islamophobia); 3) contemporary contestations including the undocuqueer movement, queer disability activism, the banning of the film Inxeba (2018) and Jordache A. Ellapen’s Queering the Archive: Brown Bodies in Ecstasy (2018). Students will explore how "queer" and "trans" histories inform contemporary queer politics, art, culture, and activism by developing their own creative strategies for “queering the archive.”
Days: TU TH  12:30-01:50 PM

ASIANAM (F18)151F  SOUTH ASAM STUDIESSHROFF, B.

The class brings together diverse perspectives on the experiences of South Asians in America. South Asian countries include India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh among others. From the historical presence of South Asians in America in the 1920s, to the experience of pop culture like bhangra remix, and the lives of working class taxi drivers in New York City, after 9/11. We examine the experience of South Asians in America as one of multiple belongings, and hybrid identities that are complicated connections between the culture of the U.S. and the homeland. Selected materials include stories by Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, sociological readings on domestic violence, and citizenship dilemmas after 9/11 and selected films like Turbans, Junky Punky Girlz and Knowing Her Place.
Days: MO WE  12:30-01:50 PM

PHILOS (F18)130  TPC IN MORAL PHILOSGILBERT, M.

Selected topics in ethics.

Repeatability: Unlimited as topics vary.
Days: MO WE  03:30-04:50 PM

E ASIAN (F18)190  TRNS JST &PRECARIUSCHOI, C.

As modern Koreans have experienced series of historical trauma as they had undergone colonialism, war, national division, and military dictatorship, numerous state-initiated human rights violations have taken place.  This course examines the ways in which Koreans are trying to grapple with the issues of justice, forgiveness, healing the historical trauma, and rebuilding community.  In order to do so, we will consider representative works of the truth and reconciliation commissions both in Korea and elsewhere as well as exploring the ways in which literature and films may contribute to healing the trauma victims and restore broken communities.  Films such as I Can Speak and Jiseul as well as Choe Yun’s novella, There Silently a Petal Falls will be some of the texts we will examine.
Days: WE  02:00-04:50 PM

HISTORY (F18)144G  US MEDIA&ELECTIONSPERLMAN, A.

This course will trace the shifting relationships between media history, political communication, journalistic practices, election campaigning in the US across the 20th century. We will examine the impact of communication technologies (telephone, radio, motion pictures, television, social media) on political elections broadly. As this course will take place during the 2018 midterm elections, we also will be attentive to continuities and changes in how media matters to political campaigns.
Days: TU TH  11:00-12:20 PM