Network Collaborative Classes meet in person, with periodic online engagement with sections of the class being taught on other OSUN campuses

 

 

Course:

ECON 227  The Right to Employment

Professor:

Pavlina Tcherneva  

CRN:

15588

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     10:10 AM – 11:30 AM Campus Center WEIS

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 20

Crosslists: Africana Studies; American Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Human Rights; Sociology

In 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned, “People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” Today, the COVID-19 crisis and mass unemployment have once again exposed the pervasive pathologies in the economy, such as inequality, poverty, and discrimination that reproduce systemic racial, gender and environmental injustice. Roosevelt responded to the economic calamity of his time—the Great Depression—with far-reaching economic policies and an appeal for what he called a Second (Economic) Bill of Rights that led with the right to decent and remunerative employment. “Jobs for All” was a signature demand during the Civil Rights era, when Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King insisted that unemployment is a key force for racial subjugation. Today, the Job Guarantee has been called perhaps the most crucial component of the Green New Deal Resolution, a program that ensures a just transition for all workers and an antidote to systemic racial and gender discrimination that emerges from labor markets.  This interdisciplinary course traces the history of the struggle to secure the right to employment for  all. It will focus on the economic, legal, and policy developments in the United States, and will introduce students to some international policy initiatives and innovative programs. A key question for discussion is whether these proposals and concrete policies have advanced the goal of equity and economic justice. Students will read legislative documents, economic analyses, policy proposals, and program reviews.  This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond. This is an OSUN Network Collaborative Course.

 

Course:

EUS 327  Leading Change in Organizations Practicum

Professor:

Aurora Winslade

CRN:

15962

Schedule/Location:

  Tue  Thurs   10:00 AM – 11:30 PM Henderson Computer Annex 106

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 16

This is a collaborative, cross-institution course in leading change in organizations where student teams develop and advance proposals for organizational innovation within the university. Examples might include carbon footprint analysis, expansion of local food offerings, improved daycare or transportation for students and workers, or improved recycling system. Bard students will work with classes from Palestine, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh and Lithuania through a mixture of synchronous on-line learning, and in-person labs. The course will culminate in a “shark tank for sustainability” between teams from the different universities. Topics include understanding why change fails more often than it succeeds, the key factors that drive successful organizational change, the role of the change facilitator, and tools for designing and facilitating processes that bring forth the group intelligence. This is an OSUN class and is open to Bard students as well as students from multiple OSUN partner institutions.

 

Course:

HR/LIT 218  Free Speech

Professor:

Ziad Aub-Rish

CRN:

15963

Schedule/Location:

 TBA

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 22

Crosslists: Literature

(Human Rights Core Course) An introduction to debates about freedom of expression. What is 'freedom of speech'? Is there a right to say anything? Why? We will investigate who has had this right, where it has come from, and what it has had to do in particular with literature and the arts. What powers does speech have, who has the power to speak, and for what? Debates about censorship, hate speech, the First Amendment and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be obvious starting points, but we will also explore some less obvious questions: about faith and the secular, confession and torture, surveillance, the emergence of political agency. In asking about the status of the speaking human subject, we will look at the ways in which the subject of rights, and indeed the thought of human rights itself, derives from a 'literary' experience. These questions will be examined, if not answered, across a variety of literary, philosophical, legal and political texts, with a heavy dose of case studies (many of them happening right now) and readings in contemporary critical and legal theory.  This is an OSUN Network Collaborative Course.

 

Course:

HR 263  A Lexicon of Migration

Professor:

Peter Rosenblum  

CRN:

15799

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Olin 101

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 20

Crosslists: Anthropology; Global & International Studies

Human Rights core course: Migration is one of the most important and contested features of today’s interconnected world. In one way or another, it has transformed most if not all contemporary nation-states into “pluralist,” “post-migrant,” and/or “super-diverse” polities. And it affects everyone—regardless of their own migratory status. This course examines migration from local, national, and global perspectives, with particular emphasis on the developments that are shaping the perception of crisis in the US and Europe. The course also traces the emergence of new modes of border regulation and migration governance as well as novel forms of migrant cultural production and representation. Above all, it aims to provide students with the tools to engage critically with many of the concepts and buzzwords—among them “asylum,” “border,” “belonging,” “citizenship,” and “illegality—”that define contemporary public debates. A Lexicon of Migration is a Bard/HESP (Higher Education Support Program) network course that will collaborate with similar courses at OSUN Network colleges, in addition to courses in the Migration Consortium at Vassar, Sarah Lawrence and Bennington.

 

Course:

LIT 2461  Global Modernism

Professor:

Alys Moody  

CRN:

15710

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    3:30 PM - 4:50 PM Olin Languages Center 115

Distributional Area:

LA Literary Analysis in English  

Credits: 4

Crosslists: Global and International Studies

 

Class cap: 22

Modernist literature and the other arts represented a revolution in aesthetic form, keyed to the disasters, possibilities, and disorientations of modernity. While it has traditionally been seen as a movement limited to Europe and the US in the early twentieth century, recent scholarship has revealed that modernism—like modernity itself—was a global phenomenon. In this course, we explore the implications of this new understanding of “global modernism.” We will ask: what happens to modernism when we read it as a movement that operated at the scale of the world? What can a study of global modernism reveal about the nature of modernity, including its interactions with colonialism and decolonization, global capitalism and industrialization, and the associated changes in how we see and experience the world itself? And what are the literary consequences of this dynic, cross-cultural, and highly contested aesthetic movement? Readings will include work from all over the world, in English and in translation, and may include works by Oswald de Andrade, Aimé Césaire, Mulk Raj Anand, Lu Xun, Chika Sagawa, Ahmed Hid Tanpinar, Adonis, Wole Soyinka, T. S. Eliot, Mina Loy, and others, as well as little magazines and digital archives. This is an OSUN Network Collaborative Course taught in cooperation with courses on global modernism offered at the American University of Beirut (Lebanon), Bard College (USA), Bard College Berlin (Germany), BRAC University (Bangladesh), and the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). Common sessions, lectures, readings, and/or assignments will offer opportunities for connections across the network, but the core teaching of the course will be conducted fully in-person on Bard’s Annandale campus. This course is part of the World Literature Course offering.

 

Course:

LIT 3356  Modernism and Fascism: Cultural Heritage and Memory

Professor:

Franco Baldasso  

CRN:

15724

Schedule/Location:

 Tue      3:10 PM - 5:30 PM Olin 303

Distributional Area:

LA Literary Analysis in English D+J Difference and Justice

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 15

Crosslists: Human Rights; Italian Studies

Is it possible to think of modernity without taking into account fascism? Why were so many modernists, from Ezra Pound to F.T. Marinetti and Gertrude Stein fascinated by fascist dystopia and actively contributed to its propaganda? This course approaches the rise of fascism in Italy as an expression of political and social palingenesis, and focuses on the transnational reach of its memory and cultural heritage. Through the literary works of Anna Banti, Curzio Malaparte, Ennio Flaiano and Maaza Mengiste, and films by Federico Fellini, Lina Wertmüller and Liliana Cavani we will analyze how the memory of fascism and modernism has been shaped according to the needs of the political present and successively contested, reframed, and reused. Still today, fascist heritage haunts the cityscapes of Italy and the countries it occupied in East Africa and the Mediterranean through monuments, modernist architecture, and the isolation of Roman ruins. The course finally examines how visual artists, activists and writers take cues from this difficult heritage, in order to challenge collective memories and the culture of empire. This is an OSUN Network Collaborative Course taught in cooperation with courses on global modernism offered at the American University of Beirut (Lebanon), Bard College (USA), Bard College Berlin (Germany), BRAC University (Bangladesh), and the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). Common sessions, lectures, readings, and/or assignments will offer opportunities for connections across the network, but the core teaching of the course will be fully in person. It is also an elective course in the OSUN MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts.

 

Course:

PS 209  Civic Engagement

Professor:

Jonathan Becker  + Erin Cannan

CRN:

15750

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     10:10 AM – 11:30 AM Barringer 104

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 22

Crosslists: Human Rights

What does it mean to be engaged with your community? What can students in Annandale learn from students participating in civic engagement projects in universities in places like Haiti, Ghana and Bangladesh? This course will examine historical, philosophical and practical elements of civic engagement while exploring the underlying question of what it means to be civically engaged in the early 21st century. Together, students will explore issues related to political participation, civil society, associational life, social justice, and personal responsibility, as well as how issues like race and socio-economic status impact civic participation. The class reflects a balance between study and practice of engagement which includes interrogating theoretical notions of civic life while also empowering students to be active participants in the communities in which they are situated.  The culminating project asks students to propose a civic engagement project in their home or local community. This course will feature workshops, lectures and seminar discussions.  Special class visits will incorporate experiences of civic leaders, local officials, global not-for-profit leaders, and volunteers from communities proximate to participating OSUN campuses. The course is an OSUN Network Collaborative Course and an OSUN course, meaning that students will be enrolled from Al-Quds, Bard in Palestine and Ashesi University in Ghana, and will be paired with classes from the American University of Central Asia, Bard College Berlin, Brac University of Bangladesh, Central European University (Vienna), European Humanities University (Vilnius), University of Quisquaya in Haiti, and OSUN Refugee Leaning Hubs in Kenya, Jordan and Bangladesh.