GGIS 594 The Poststructuralist City
Prof: David Wilson
Meets: Wednesdays 1:00-3:50 pm
This seminar explores the complexity of cities and urbanization across the globe as evolving and turbulent landscapes. We will engage a multiplicity of cities in our readings and discussion, e.g., Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Cape Town, Mumbai, St. Louis, Detroit, Berlin, Mexico City, and Jakarta. We examine the swath of current economic, political, cultural, and social forces that are constituting and reverberating across cities in current global and neoliberal times. Topical issues addressed include the city as a globalizing entity, rights to the city, the racialized urban economy, the new local state, settler colonialist realities, contemporary urban governance, nature in the city, and the new gentrification. Readings for the course reflect a mix of classic pieces, theoretical-conceptual expositions, and contemporary empirical applications of ideas and theories.
AIS 501 Oddkin: Rethinking Relations in Indigenous Literary and Visual Texts
Professor: Deena Rymhs
Meets: Mondays 1:00-2:50 pm
In “How Do We Behave as Good Relatives?” Daniel Heath Justice writes about “making kin as oddkin […] where the range of relatives to whom we are responsible extends far beyond our biological relatives and, indeed, the category of the human itself.” This practice of “making oddkin” serves as centerpiece of this seminar, which turns to literary and visual texts by Indigenous artists whose work sees the human as thoroughly imbricated in more-than-human worlds—and indeed, challenges the coherence of such categories altogether. The various kinscapes invoked by these works show humans in intimate relation not only with “nature” but with the strange, abject, and seemingly non-living. Their embrace of the unwanted and, at times, the “monstrous” is a radical recuperation of the negative that models ways of making others into familiars while ultimately shifting who or what is seen as worthy of relation. This seminar will have a hybrid online/in-person meeting.
ANTH 515 Politics, Knowledge & Evidence
Professor: Virginia R. Dominguez
Meets: Thursdays 12:30-3:20 pm
In this course we will explore Political ideas and ideologies of evidence; Evidence and the politics of knowledge; Claims as evidence and evidence as knowledge; Knowledge and privilege; and Jurisprudential debates.
SOC 596 Law and Society
Professor: Jose Atiles
Meets: Wednesdays 1:00-3:50 pm
This course discusses major issues and debates in the fields of law and society and socio-legal studies. This course covers the theory and practice of legal and political institutions in performing several major functions at the local, national, and transnational levels, such as: allocating authority, enabling social control, defining relationships, resolving conflict, adapting to social change, and fostering social solidarity. In examining these functions, the course will assess the nature and limits of law, consider alternative perspectives on law, and discuss various ways to structure legal processes.
FR 578 Marcel Proust
Professor: Francois Proulx
Meets: Tuesdays 3:00pm - 4:50pm