7SOCIAL STUDIES

CRN

13624

Distribution

C

Course No.

SST 126

Title

Introduction to Modern Britain II, 1763 to the present

Professor

Peter Linebaugh

Schedule

Tu Th 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN 306
A continuation of Modern Britain I, the course takes the students through a number of historical themes from the mid-18th century to the present, including the Parliamentary acts of enclosures of the land, the conquest of India, the mechanization of production and reactions to it from Captain Ludd and Captain Swing, the development of the tea-break and the postponement of dinner, the abolitionist movement, the extension of the franchise and the Reform Bill of 1832, the industrial cities and railways, the trade union movement and the quarreling socialists, imperial wars of Afghanistan, conquest of Africa, music-hall and Bloomsbury, Irish independence, the suffragists, the Great War and World War Two, the General Strike, the welfare state and nationalization, decolonization from Mau Mau to Malayan 'emergency,' the Mersey beat, the New Left and swinging London, and the triumphalism of Prime Minister Thatcher. Thus, the goal is both to introduce political, social, economic, and cultural themes of British history and to provide essential background to Anglophone expression in the wider world. We shall employ a text book, and several other kinds of primary readings.

CRN

13519    

Course No.

SST 137

Title

Introduction to Linguistics

Professor

Sven Anderson

Schedule

Tu 10:00 am - 11:20 am HEG 300

2 credits. Introduction to Linguistics provides an introduction to

aspects of the scientific study of human language. This course will focus on major problems and theories in phonetics, phonology, and syntax. Students will examine collections of sounds, words, and sentences drawn from diverse languages. Analysis of these data will be used to motivate and support theoretical explanations of the observed patterns.

CRN

13526

Distribution

B/C

Course No.

SST 140 / LAIS

Title

Latinos in the USA: Film, Memoir, Fiction

Professor

Aureliano DeSoto

Schedule

Tu screening 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm WEIS

Th 2:00 pm - 4:20 pm OLIN 305

Cross-listed: American Studies, LAIS, MES

This course introduces students broadly to the history and experience of Latinos in the USA through memoir, film, and history. As Latinos have become an important demographic category in the United States, they have begun to enunciate their condition through a variety of media, the most prominent of which have been film, memoir and autobiographical fiction. We will read a number of diverse Latina/o writers, representing Dominican, Mexican American, Cuban, Salvadoran, and Puerto Rican voices, as well as view contemporary filmic representations of Latino life and culture, to establish a sophisticated understanding of the issues facing US-based Latinos: assimilation and Americanization, language and bilingualism, immigration, racism, issues of gender and sexuality, and gaining and expanding cultural citizenship in the United States.

CRN

13657

Distribution

C

Course No.

SST 214

Title

Black Thought: Beyond Boundary

Professor

Tabetha Ewing

Schedule

Tu Th 4:30 pm - 5:50 pm OLIN 202

Cross-listed: AADS, MES

Titled after the famous C.L.R. James essay, this course reviews ideas that push the boundaries of nation, race, and identity held by influential 20th-century writers who considered themselves to be subjects of the African diaspora. Their works, including those of James, Franz Fanon, Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, and Maryse Condé, have shaped whole schools of political and social thought in the later 20th century. As the debates around the politics of race, identity, gender, and empire shift, do these once- canonical figures still have relevance today? We will read scholars and polemicists commenting on the complexion of the new world order to assist us in drawing conclusions to this question.

CRN

13520

Distribution

C

Course No.

SST 228

Title

The Representations of War and Peace

Professor

Joel Kovel

Schedule

Mon Wed 10:00 am - 11:20 OLIN 205
This course will address the urgent need to confront the problem of militarism in all its forms, and especially in relation to the current furor about war. Our subject matter will be the narratives through which consent or resistance to war is developed. We will study the representation of war by the state and the media (press, television, Hollywood--which will necessitate exploring the structural connections between these), and also in literature and mythology. There will be a counterpoint throughout between narratives of war and those of non-violence and anti-militarism. Considerations of heroism, patriotism and the relation to gender will be introduced. Readings from Tolstoy, Babel, Simone Weil, Gandhi, Virilio, others. Cinema to include Dr Strangelove, Apocalypse Now,

Rambo, etc.

CRN

13527

Distribution

C

Course No.

SST 234

Title

Topics in Sexual Identity

Professor

Aureliano DeSoto

Schedule

Wed Fr 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 310

Cross-listed: American Studies, Gender Studies, MES

This course focuses on the emergence and development of lesbian and gay identities in the USA from World War Two to the present. Reading a variety of textual genres (history, sociology, memoir, literature) as well as documentary visual media, the course will examine the consolidation of lesbian and gay identities in the years before 1969 (Stonewall), the effect of the Stonewall Rebellion, the divergence of lesbian and gay male subcultures in the 1970s (with their different utopian variations: separatism and hedonism), the AIDS crisis and racialized lesbian feminisms of the 1980s, and the new queer activism and subsequent commercialization of gay identity in the 1990s.

CRN

13595

Distribution

C

Course No.

SST 238

Title

Justice After Dictatorship

Professor

Ian Buruma

Schedule

Mon Wed 11:30 am - 12:50 pm HEG 201
This course will examine the various ways of cleaning up the mess after dictatorships have fallen. These include war crimes tribunals, truth commissions, and the political use of personal files. We will look at the effect tribunals have had on democratic transitions, especially in Germany and Japan after World War II. Other problems to be explored are the use of international laws in sovereign states; the questions of truth-telling and retribution, of individual and collective guilt, and the use of human rights and international justice as the latest assertion of a universalist faith. Readings include: Lawrence Wechsler's A Miracle, a Universe; Richard Minear's Victor's Justice; Telford Taylor's Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials; Ian Buruma's The Wages of Guilt and John Dower's Embracing Defeat.

CRN

13625

Distribution

C

Course No.

SST 319

Title

The Commons: Past, Present, and Future

Professor

Peter Linebaugh

Schedule

Mon 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm LC 208
Political and social discussion has been conducted in terms of the domain of the State or the domain of the Market. Thus, the school of neo-liberalism, and its opposite, socialism, both considered production and distribution in relation to government and the commodity. Historically, however, a third domain, the Commons, provided the basis of subsistence of the poor, 'subaltern' populations, and those living 'below' the beneficiaries of state-sponsored enclosure and privatization. The occlusion of the domain of the commons was accomplished by the stadialist interpretation of human progress, as described by Adam Smith for instance, which tended to subsume the Commons as Savagery or Barbarism. Meanwhile the actual Commons was criminalized. Since the protests in Seattle (1999) against the WTO, the reclaiming of the commons has provided a rich rhetorical means of outlining alternative worlds to that of the privatizing globalizers. If the roots of the commons are firmly implanted in the past, its contemporary branches are many and various, and include, common pool resources, ecological preservation, government owned property, the common user movement in software, and the perspective of re-distribution of wealth raised in the reparations debate. Readings include, R.H. Tawney, J.M. Neeson, Henry Morgan, Frederick Engels, and Garrett Hardin.

CRN

13596

Distribution

C

Course No.

SST 340

Title

Occidentalism: The West through Hostile Eyes

Professor

Ian Buruma

Schedule

Mon 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN 310
We will explore what its enemies mean by 'the West'. This obviously overlaps to some extent with more friendly views of the West. We will concentrate on a post-Enlightenment liberal-democratic idea of the Occident, which has become a nightmare vision to religious extremists, and anti-liberal nativists in East and West. Anti-Americanism, anti-semitism, and European continental ideas of Britain will be analysed, as well as Asian perspectives of the West. A thesis to be critically pursued is that many anti-Western ideas in the non-Western world actually were imported from the West itself. We will also be much concerned with the tensions between universalist and nativist claims. These tensions have had direct consequences for the ways in which journalists cover the world. The New Information Order was introduced expressly to counter what was seen as the dominance of Western/human rights-driven perspectives. One important matter to be looked at is whether the Internet, in this respect, has made a difference. Readings include: War Against the West, Aurel Kolnai; Germans and Jews, George Mosse; The Japanese Discovery of Europe, Donald Keene; Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan, Bob Wakabayashi; The Muslim Discovery of Europe, Bernard Lewis; and Milestones, Syed Qut'b.