General Education
Requirements
Identity/US Cultures Studies
Mexican Americans are the second largest ethnic minority group in the United States. As a group they face problems of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination. At the same time, Mexican Americans are culturally, economically and politically diverse. How these differences help us understand the dynamics of race, class, and ethnicity in American society will be the central focus of this class.
Drawing on AAC&U's work with colleges and universities across the country who are creating new general education requirements to better prepare students for their multicultural, interdependent world, this session focused on some of the most promising curricular approaches. It also featureed research on student learning in such courses and helped participants think through the aims of the courses, define learning goals, and design engaged pedagogies.
Taught by Linda Swanson, this course
explores communication, culture, and
intercultural communication. Interdisciplinary
in nature, this course focuses on the
need to develop self-understanding as
a first step to intercultural understanding
and begins the process of building competencies
which may facilitate effective communications
in all types of cross-cultural settings.
This course, taught by Stephen Sumida,
fulfills the requirement for the study
of race and ethnicity in the College
of Literature, Science, and Arts. Offered
for credit in both English and in American
Culture, this course is a study of how
Asian American literary traditions have
developed and how they are related to
other traditions of American literature
within historical, social, political,
and cultural contexts. Students study
major works and authors of fiction,
drama, and poetry from the late-1800s
to the mid-1980s.
Taught by Dr. Bernardo Ferdman, this
course looks at the nature of both unity
and diversity among the Hispanic peoples
of the U.S. Considering the variety
of experiences among Latinos in the
U.S., it focuses in particular on Mexican
Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans.
Students are expected to explore the
factors that led both to differences
and similarities in the relationship
of these groups to the broader society.
Part of SUNY's General Education program,
this course counts towards both the
World Cultures and the Human Diversity
Requirement.
Developed and taught by Masato Aoki,
Doug Perry, and others, "Culture
Matters" aims to enable each student
to analyze how her cultural influences
shape her personal identities and to
demonstrate the multicultural aspects
of modern policy making and scholarly
debates. This course is designed to
meet a general education requirement.
This upper-division course taught
at by Anita Silvers, was designed to
fit into a sequence of philosophy courses
on law and social philosophy. It brings
together students with somewhat different
interests in disability: students with
disabilities, students whose family
members are disabled or aging noticeably,
students who have family histories pre-disposing
them to disability, students who are
majoring in fields concerned with disability,
students headed for law school, and
others.
This course makes clear connections
between democratic aspirations and our
nation's history with diversity.
Created by Gail Nomura this course,
offered through the Program in American
Culture, provides an introductory study
of the experience of Asian immigrants
and their citizen descendants in the
United States from the mid-nineteenth
century to the present. The groups covered
include Chinese, Filipino, Japanese,
Korean, Pacific Islander, South Asian,
and Southeast Asian Americans. Students
discuss international/domestic relations,
immigration policy, ethnic adaptive
strategies, ethnic community building,
constitutional issues, majority/minority
relations, and literary expressions.
This first
year seminar, taught in Fall 1996
by Gail Nomura, uses Ronald Takaki's
Strangers from a Different Shore
and additional readings to rethink and
re-envision the multicultural nature
of American history through the study
of one of the varied ethnic cultures
that form "American" culture,
the Asian American experience in U.S.
history.
Pluralism and Social Justice
The DPD Program works to create a
more inclusive curriculum that addresses
issues of race, class, gender, sexual
orientation, and other institutionalized
systems of inequality. The program provides
faculty and staff with the training
and resources needed to develop or modify
comparative diversity courses.
Dimensions
of Culture 2: Justice, Thurgood
Marshall College at the University of
California, San Diego
"Justice" was designed to
introduce students to basic features
of American politics, law, and society.
Readings are drawn from American history,
with a strong emphasis on original sources
and especially on Supreme Court opinions.
Dimensions of Culture 1 introduced academic
and public arguments pertaining to race,
class, gender, ethnicity, and sex. Taught
by Michael Belknap, Department of History
and Michael Schudson, Department of
Communication, Dimensions of Culture
2 examines the political and constitutional
history of these and other publicly
significant social differences.
World Cultural Studies
Service Learning and Field
Placement
Taught by Jose Calderon, this course
examines the nature, causes and consequences
of inequalities in the U.S. educational
system. By involving Pitzer students
in an ethnographic study of three district
high schools with predominantly Asian
and Latino student populations, the
class examines the challenges that parents,
students, teachers, and administrators
face in the Alhambra School District.
In this program Evergreen State College
has taken an unprecedented, temporary
leap from its usual home on the thousand-acre
wooded campus near Olympia to an urban
neighborhood in Tacoma, to prepare teachers
of color for the diverse classrooms
in which they will teach. Holding the
teaching program courses in Tacoma has
been a successful endeavor in training
and retaining teachers of color and
in fulfilling Evergreen's commitment
to urban education.
Humanities These syllabi express two approaches taken with African American Literature. The first course focuses specifically on African American Women's Literature. This course, which is interdisciplinary in its orientation, examines the literary practices of eight contemporary women authors in relation to some broad intellectual issues and themes in African-American cultural study. The second course is an intermediate expository writing course which focuses on topics in African American literature, particularly narratives, novels and essays. Through discussion of these texts, students will investigate, among others, key issues such as personal racial/ethnic identity and public identification, literal and figurative "passing," and various sorts of transformations.
This English Composition course developed
by Leslie D. Harris was linked to a
composition class at George Washington
University. Making use of new technology
to connect rural and urban students
across racial, religious, and ethnic
differences, the course focuses on families
across cultures and also meets a standard
university writing requirement.
Taught by Judith Lockyer, this upper
division English seminar examines the
problem of black/white racial conflict
in the United States as it is addressed
in literature from the antebellum period
to mid-twentieth century.
Social Sciences
The purpose of this course is to provide the student with an introduction to the sociological study of racial and ethnic inequality in the United States. Specifically, the course emphasizes understanding the social, demographic, economic, political and historical forces that have resulted in the unique experiences of different groups of Americans. Further, the student will be provided with the opportunity to analyze and discuss the impact of public policy on issues that pertain to various racial and ethnic groups.
The purpose of this course is to provide the student with an in-depth introduction to the field of demography and population studies. Specifically, the course emphasizes the impact of population processes and events on human societies. Sociology, along with other social science disciplines, will be employed to facilitate the understanding of how social and demographic factors interact to create societal problems throughout the world.
This first year seminar will examine the speeches, sermons, and writings of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Students will study both activist's ideas as part of the larger discourse of civil rights, liberation, non-violence, and social justice. Our goal will be to draw out the complexities of these ideas to see how they challenge democratic political practice in the United States and, more generally, the tradition of liberal political theory on which much of that practice is based.
This course considers the origins of black politics, and examines liberal democratic approaches to reducing racial inequality and increasing black political inclusion. The successes and failures of recent black electoral participation are evaluated, as are alternative "black" political strategies.
In this course, students examine the major theories
that attempt to explain the roles of race and ethnicity
in U.S. politics. They examine the phenomenon of ethnicity
and race in the political development of the United
States. Finally, they look at the political attitudes
and behaviors of ethnic and racial populations in order
to measure their contemporary political influence. The
course's substantive focus is the politics and experiences
of specific groups: African Americans, Latinos, Native
Americans, and Asian Americans. This examination and
analysis will not only enhance understanding of these
groups' political roles, but will demonstrate that the
U.S. political system cannot be fully understood without
understanding the political dynamics of ethnicity and
race.
Required for all Spelman students,
this two-semester sequence of courses
takes an interdisciplinary and gender-informed
approach to studying the African diaspora
within the context of world developments
and over time. The courses "seek
to provide students with a formal introduction
to their own background and culture;
the connection of that background and
culture to those of other communities
of African descent; the relationship
between this comprehensive experience
and developments in the larger world;
and the fostering of a process whereby
students learn to reflect critically
upon methods and strategies of addressing
contemporary political, economic, and
social maladies." Syllabi
for both courses are posted as well
as the film series schedule on defining
diaspora.
Taught by Professor Beverly Daniel
Tatum, this course provides students
with an understanding of the psychological
impact of individual, cultural, and
institutional manifestations of racism
in the United States.
Team taught by Professor Craddock
and Dr. Stevens, this course attempts
to challenge commonly held perceptions
about the origins, causes, and social
constructions of AIDS; to examine the
reasons why people might not change
behaviors that put them at a health
risk; and to tackle the difficulties
of policy formation and community action.
Sciences
Are women's brains different from men's?
Is there a gay gene? Are we really ruled
by our hormones? Does testosterone make
men more aggressive? Are there racial
differences in intelligence? How much
is temperament inherited? Can women
get AIDS from "normal" sex? What about
lesbians? This Tier II course (which
fulfills the gender, race, ethnicity
requirement) looks at how meanings of
gender and race are influenced by popular
conceptions of biology and medicine.
It explores controversial topics such
as gender difference in brain anatomy,
genetic models of gayness and of intelligence,
reproductive technology, hormones, and
AIDS.
This course explores how science has
been used to establish or undermine
the authority of particular views about
various ethnic or racial groups in the
United States, the role of those groups
in formulating scientific discourse,
and the rhetorical strategies used to
transform social agendas into scientific
fact. |
