AMER0012 - Race in America

In 1903, the famous African American scholar and activist W.E.B. DuBois said, "The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line." Many people today believe that race will continue to be "the" issue of the 21st century. In this course, we will examine the meanings of race in modern America, analyze the root causes and consequences of racist ideologies, and discuss current and future activist approaches to the issues raised by racist theories and practices. Our study will be multicultural in focus, with attention being given to Asian American, Native American, African American, European American, and Latino/a perspectives. Questions we will ask will include: How is race defined in the USA? Who defines it? How is it experienced? Who experiences it? What is its role in our lives as individuals, members of groups and of society at large? The course will be interdisciplinary, emphasizing in particular social science and arts/humanities approaches; and active student participation will be an important component.

AMER0081 - Constructions of Whiteness

This course is designed to examine the implicit foundations of national whiteness in the US. Particular attention will be given to the theoretical, philosophical, and ideological studies of the 'non-minority'. Through an in-depth examination of literary, scientific, and visual texts, students will explore the disbursement of the 'minority' and the 'non-minority' figure within the socio-political framework of the U.S. We will investigate the meanings of an American histology of race by examining late 19th century and early 20th century definitions of 'whiteness' and 'otherness'.

AMER0088 - America & the National Pastime

From the end of the American Civil War to the present, the emergence of baseball in the US reflected the evolution of urbanization, immigration, race, the labor movement, entrepreneurial capitalism, crime, and legal precedents that reached the Supreme Court. Baseball has been a mirror of the times; that reflection continued through the 2oth century in the Progressive Age, World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, World War II, the coming of Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente, the shifting and expansion of franchises. In 1953, exactly fifty years afer the formation of Organized Baseball into two leagues with eight teams in each, the geographic and demographic revolution began that took major league baseball from coast to coast. Eventually, this led to the elimination of the Reserve Clause, the beginning of free agency, and the thirty professional teams today that represent "The National Pastime." We will examine baseball both inside and outside the lines: how it was played, who played it, and the place of this children's game in the American psyche. Finally, we will also survey the 160-year history of the US as the background for the forces that created this quintessential American game.

AMER0101 - Native American Fine Art

In most Native American languages there is no word for “art” and yet native people from across Indian America have, from earliest times to the present, created objects of great beauty, for specific uses within their indigenous communities. In this course, we will, when not violating native privacy or sacred beliefs, examine the contextual meanings of objects that non-natives refer to as fine art, focusing on their deep cultural significance as well as their creation process, styles and intrinsic beauty. Presentations and discussion will be divided into a study of selected tribes and their work, and include the Ancient Southwest (Annasazi, Hohokam, Mimbres); the Pueblos, the Dine (Navajo), the Ancient Midwest, the Atlantic Coast (Penobscot, Passamaquoddy), the Lakota, and the Kwakiutl. The study of each nation will include pre-contact fine art; the so-called “traditional” arts; the so-called 19th century “souvenir” arts; and modern art. The development of Pan Indian contemporary art, including painting, sculpture and photography will also be studied.

Many works of Native American fine art created for use within a specific cultural context have been removed from their original communities and re-interpreted by outsiders. As part of this course, we will also evaluate the roles that native and non-native collectors, anthropologists, art historians and museum professionals have and continue to play in the collection, exhibition and interpretation of Native American fine art.

Classes will include slide lectures and the study of actual objects; videos of native artists; the discussion of issues; one or more guest speakers; and field trips to local museums and collections.

AMER0131 - Active Citizenship

This course is designed for students interested in exploring active citizenship in a Boston urban community setting and who wish to deepen their involvement with the community through public service and community advocacy. Each student will intern in a community organization throughout the academic year. Course materials will focus on: 1) the history and contemporary issues of the community, e.g., new immigrant experiences and rights, sustainable development, etc.; 2) the role of the “outsider with something to offer a community;” and 3) improving skills for building coalition within a community. Speakers from the community and the university will discuss how they create vision and sustain commitment to community work. Boston’s Chinatown is the site for participation. 2 credits upon of completion of this year-long course, including all meetings, classes, and service commitments.

AMER0141 - Innovative Non-Profits

In this course you will learn how to apply business skills to the solution of public problems. You will learn how to: find new solutions; communicate effectively with clients and funders; build a strong organization; turn idealism into action; and develop a business plan to address a public problem of your choosing. The course will feature case studies and meetings with prominent social entrepreneurs who will offer their perspectives on how to create revolutionary change.

AMER0143 - Latina/o Body in Visual Culture

This course analyzes representations of the Latin American and Latino body in art and popular media in the U.S. In the midst of debates about immigration and national security, the Latina/o body persists as a fetish in the U.S. imagination, in films, advertisements, and in the commodification of artists like Frida Kahlo, Shakira, J. Lo, Juanes, and Daddy Yankee. We will undertake a critical examination of the embodiment of the Latina/o body as different, considering how difference (racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation), though seeming natural, is linked to power relations and inequalities. Alternately, we will also consider self-expression and radical articulations of difference as a form of political dissent. Historical examples will be considered, but emphasis will be on the twentieth century, situating the phenomena in cultural and political context.

PHIL0048 - Feminist Philosophy

Current developments in medical, genetic, and reproductive sciences, as well as changes in global politics and ongoing legal debates, seem simultaneously to ground and destabilize the answer to the question: "what is the human body?" Responding to this double-movement, this course is motivated by the following questions: Are current technologies advancing our understandings of the human body and, if so, to what uses are these understandings being put? Is information about the body neutral or, following philosopher Michel Foucault, might we consider knowledge of the human body as not merely descriptive but also normative, i.e., as providing us with notions of what bodies should (and shouldn't) be or how we should (and shouldn't) act towards the bodies of others as well as towards our own? In other words, as we will ask throughout the semester, how might our conceptions of and knowledges about the body inform concepts of morality and ethics, and political structures and their enforcement?

In this course we will trace the ways in which "the body" has figured in the discipline of philosophy and will examine how feminist philosophy in particular offers tools for critiquing and advancing discussions of the body. The aim of the course thus is multi-pronged: while we explore philosophical analyses of the body including its role in epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy, we will also be reviewing various developments in feminist philosophy. Using the body as our theme, we will review how feminist philosophers have challenged central tenets within the traditional canon of philosophy and have opened up the discipline to new modes of inquiry and new objects of analysis. Lastly, using as our philosophical test cases several pertinent topics in applied ethics such as surrogacy, cloning, and genetic identity, we will examine whether and how feminist philosophical approaches to the body might provide new critical normative resources.

ANTH0149-06 - Growing Up Latino

What is it like to grow up Latino/a in the United States around the turn of the millennium, a time when Latino/as are the nation's largest and fastest growing `minority'? What are the consequences of speaking two languages and of living at the intersection between multiple cultures and their institutions? How have U.S. concepts of race, class, and gender influenced the formation of Latino/a identities and life trajectories? What does it mean to be Latino/a in a 'multi-cultural', 'globalizing', 'English-only', 'first- world' country anyway? Drawing on contemporary ethnographic, popular culture (films, art & music), demographic and public policy texts, we begin this course by exploring contemporary theories of Latino/a diversity and family studies, trends in transnational migration, and the macro and microeconomic factors which are influencing community resource bases and social networks, linking families here with those abroad. We then look at the experiences of young girls and boys as they acquire multiple languages and cultural repertoires, and of young women and men as they enter adolescence and begin to develop separate youth cultures and a distinct sense of their own sexuality. These deeply personal experiences merge with competing societal norms and the often startling reality of daily survival/economics, setting the stage for the drama of family life which includes issues related to motherhood, fatherhood, intergenerational differences, the household economy, domestic cohesion and division, building families and identities through multigenerational kin networks and multilingual & interracial households. The icons and representations that emerge from these daily dramas are rapidly changing as individuals, families and communities confront, adapt and resist the pressures of an ever-shifting landscape of formal and informal institutions. The course concludes with six session overview of how Latinos/as are interfacing with U.S. institutions, inserting themselves into the labor market, labor organizations, religious institutions, politics and political parties, the educational system, immigration, health, welfare, the military and correctional institutions, community organizations, sports and gangs ­ all an effort to gain `rights' and find the right balance between `rebellion' and `re-integration'.

AMER0088/ANTH0183 - Urban Borderlands

This course integrates academic learning and experiential learning in a community-based research project documenting the history of Somerville and Cambridge's immigrant communities. Because there are few if any written sources on the history of these communities, students' research entails conducting in- depth interviews with community leaders and residents, active within local formal and informal institutions. In this way, students will familiarize themselves in a personal, experiential way with the individuals and institutions, which are gradually reconfiguring the urban landscapes of Greater Boston. The voices that emerge from these populations and the goals and structures of their organizations & networks will offer students entirely new data sources and points of reference as they, over the course of the semester, become active participants in some of the most heated debates of our decade: international migration, globalization, and the maintenance of a democratic multicultural society. This involves deconstructing competing narratives/rhetoric regarding immigration, nativism, the `impact' of immigration on U.S. cities, and experiences of immigrants as they `adapt' to life in urban areas. In this seminar, students will learn methodological techniques for documenting and interpreting community history ­ how to prepare for, conduct and transcribe in-depth interviews, and how to analyze, interpret and contextualize these materials. They will also explore complementary research strategies such as using photographs and archival materials to enhance materials collected in the in-depth interviews, and how to prepare the materials (tapes, transcripts, photographs and other materials) for deposit in Tufts' Archives. Their final reports, based on the memories and employing the voices of those whose life stories actually constitute the history of immigrants in Cambridge, are presented to the community at the end of the semester and distributed to relevant organizations and individuals. These reports make a valuable contribution to Cambridge's immigrant communities, because a marginalized community that knows its history can better develop a strong sense of place; and a sense of belonging and contributing to that place empowers a community to secure its rights in the present as well as to meet future challenges. This course is designed primarily for juniors and seniors; preference will be given to Anthropology and American Studies majors. Students must contact Professor Jennifer Burtner Rangel for permission to take the course (Jennifer.Burtner@tufts.edu). Students must be willing to travel regularly to field sites in Somerville and/or Cambridge to conduct research. While proficiency in the community/target language is preferred, it is not required.

CD0062 - Childhood Across Cultures

Intermediate-level study of child development, with emphasis on cultural perspectives integrating psychological and anthropological theory. Children's development examined across cultures and in the context of the various social institutions and settings within which they live.

CD0155 - Development of Language

Human language is examined as a form of communication and compared with animal signal systems. Other topics are phonological, syntactic, and semantic development; language, culture, and thought; language and social class; and language and bilingualism. Fall.

CD0177 - Bilingual Studies in US

Relationship of culture and language, including macro-level focus on issues related to linguistic and cultural integration of immigrant children and families, such as language and ethnic identity, language and nationalism. Topics will also include theoretical perspectives on second-language learning, bilingualism, and bilingual education. These topics will be examined using case studies from multilingual nations. Spring.

CD0182 - Social Policy for Children & Families

Intersection of child development and social policy. Case studies of processes through which social problems are defined, policies formulated and implemented. Models for analyzing existing and proposed policies and for interpreting program evaluation results. Topics may include child abuse and neglect, family leave, maternal and child public-health policy, child care, early-childhood education. Special attention to policies affecting disadvantaged and minority populations. Prerequisites: Child Development 1 or Psychology 1, and senior or graduate standing. Fall.

SOC0010 - American Society

This course is about social differences and inequalities in contemporary U.S. society. Some of these differences are relatively fixed (age, gender, ethnicity), some changeable (e.g. education, occupation, class, religion, region), while others can be fleeting (e.g. tastes, attitudes). We'll explore which differences `make a difference' for Americans' outlooks, experiences, and life chances. Such differences form a patterned system, i.e. a social structure. That structure has a lot to do with `social problems' as well. I aim to have you think sociologically about American Society. This first involves understanding your own position(s) in American social structure, i.e. where you stand in the groups, and on the issues that matter. We'll explore how where you stand affects what you see and feel and choose. Grasping this pattern of social influencechallenges you to think about the constraints on your choices, and your relative freedom within those constraints. Which Americans have a wider range of choice, or a narrower one? Why? Thinking sociologically necessarily involves making systematic comparisons. It requires transcending one's individual, personal outlook, by comparing how different groups shape and influence their members. To do so, you need systematic and detailed information, and that's what this course offers. It differs from others you may have taken in being exploratory and data-based. The data come from a number of nationally representative surveys. The exploration involves our formulating questions in conversation, and using the data to answer them. Having done this exploring, you'll be better able to understand patterns of change in the U.S., your place in them, the problems we face, and what can be done about them. Although you will be using high quality, empirical data, this is not a methods course, and I presume no previous experience with statistics or computers.

SOC0030 - Sex and Gender in Society

Gender defines who we are. For sociologists, gender is also an organizational principle which structures all of society's institutions. It shapes the division of labor, distribution of resources, and relations of power. Families, labor markets, sexual intimacies, politics, religion, popular culture, etc. are all socially organized according to gender. Gender intersects with race and class and cannot be understood except in relation to race and class. The major aim of this course is to understand (in sociological terms) how and why gendered social arrangements take the form they do. How is gender socially constructed? How and why does gender change over time? How do people in everyday life both create and challenge gender? What have feminist theorists had to say about these questions? The course also aims to empower students to think and act more knowledgeably for self and society around gender issues. The course looks at both women and men and how gender shapes lives and experiences. Classes are conducted as part-lecture, part-discussion. There will be a take-home midterm and final exam; and two short writing assignments in reaction to readings.

SOC0110 - Racial and Ethnic Minorities

Nativism, Inferior Races, Racism, Prejudice, Ethnicity, Minorities, Reparations, and Affirmative Action can be fighting words in a racialized society. Is there not only one kind of human being ­ homo sapiens? Are the terms race and ethnicity synonymous? This course will examine how concepts of race and ethnicity influence the methods used in the United States to structure socio-economic inequalities. Popular social change and reactionary movements in the United States organized to perpetuate or ameliorate racial and ethnic divisions will be compared with strategies being used by other countries to deal with racial and ethnic issues.

SOC0187 - Children of Immigrants and Immigrant Children

Millions of children have accompanied parents and relatives into exile and settlement in host countries throughout the world. Researchers are just beginning to examine the issues of parenting, childhood, transnationalism, and identity that immigrant children face. The course will focus on refugee and immigrant communities in the United States and East Africa to highlight the unique parenting patterns that are evident cross culturally, and issues of childhood and adolescence that affect children who arrive as part of immigrant families or rejoin immigrant parents through family reunification policies. Attitudes of citizens in receiving countries, institutional processes that help or hinder assimilation, and policies that encourage or discourage settlement of immigrant children in host countries will be studied.

MUS0011 - African American Music

Emphasis on the development of Black “Art” and Church music (including Spirituals and Gospel) as well as popular idioms such as ragtime and jazz. No prerequisite

MUS0126 - Women in Music

Popular music and art music around the world from the perspective of women. The roles of women as creators, performers, sponsors, and consumers. The representation of women in music and how it reflects the culture of the past and present.

WS0190 - Doing Feminist Research

Practices and methods of feminist, interdisciplinary research in a cross-cultural framework. How feminist inquiry rethinks disciplinary assumptions and categories; what counts as knowledge; relation among subjects and objects of study; international issues in feminist analysis. To be taken in preparation for the sr. project. With approval of the instructor, open to non-majors and non-minors (including grad. students) engaged in extensive research on women and/or gender in other programs or departments.

WS0191 Introduction to Queer Studies

This course will introduce students to queer studies through an examination of key theoretical texts and exemplary practices. We will be interested in a diverse set of attempts to upset, oppose, or subvert ideas and practices of normality and to displace the opposition between “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality” as the main axis on which human sexuality is mapped. First we will examine several sources of what became queer theory, including writing by Michel Foucault and Gayle Rubin. We will then examine work by some of queer theory's foundational writers, including Eve Sedgwick and Judith Butler. Next we will see how queer theory is put into practice as it intersects with other fields such as literature, critical race theory, ethnic studies, anthropology, history, and economics. Finally, we will consider recent ideas about “gay globalization” in relation to postcolonialism and international human rights.

Course requirements include participation in class discussion, weekly Blackboard reading responses, one group presentation, a midterm examination on key theoretical concepts, and a final paper or project.

HIST0001-07 - The Changing American Nation: Central Themes of Social History

Exploration of the central questions of the social history of the United States and its origins from Amerindian societies to post-industrial society. Examines agrarian, industrial, and postindustrial economies and their impact on capitalism, migration, poverty, class formation, the family, immigrant assimilation, consumer culture, and suburbanization.

ENG0023 - Continuity of American Literature

This course surveys literature of the United States and the Americas through to the middle of the nineteenth century, exploring ways in which contemporary issues of race and gender, ambition and class, exclusion and enfranchisement, individuality and the common weal have been prominent in and since the earliest indigenous and European narratives. We will question the traditional view that American literary history is a sequential progression of key texts-a canonized narrative of literary and cultural development, a continuity- by studying an array of voices that have constituted that history. We will consider how, rather than a continuous single narrative of development, our literary heritage is shaped by multiple narratives that are by turns conflicting, complementary, esoteric, eccentric. Observing the way binary figures of light/dark, civilized/savage, godly/heathen (among others) pervade our literature and much traditional thought about it, we will analyze the naturalization, modification, evolution and dispute of such binaries in texts from the early period to the middle of the nineteenth century. We will contextualize the literature in its historical and cultural moment, and topics will include questions of conformity and difference, notions of individualism, and paradigms for dissent and its suppression.

Readings begin with Shakespeare's The Tempest, European contact narratives, and Native American expressions, followed by selections from Puritan writings and other texts through to Benjamin Franklin and Phillis Wheatley. We will then concentrate on early to middle nineteenth century literature, including short fiction by Poe and Melville; works of Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs; and Walden, The Scarlet Letter, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Our Nig. Requirements include two papers and a final exam. It would be helpful to have read Uncle Tom's Cabin, an especially long novel, before the semester begins.

Please come to the first class having read Shakespeare's The Tempest; it will be part of the lecture and discussion of the first meeting.

ENG0154 - American Indian Writers

Many people can name only one or two American Indian writers - or none. Some are even surprised to find they exist. What does this erasure mean? What dominant culture systems create and maintain it today? How do indigenous writers in the United States refuse and resist this racism? We will begin with three late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century authors, Sarah Winnemucca, Luther Standing Bear, and Zitkala Ša, and then concentrate on six contemporary texts: N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn; Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace; Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead; Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings; Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues; and Wendy Rose, Bone Dance. Throughout the course we will view and discuss films that focus on important issues for Native people today. Also we will study historical and political contexts. Major topics include: the politics of representation/self-representation; Indian resistance to white colonialism, exploitation, and theft; indigenous people's self-definitions and demand for sovereignty; the relationship between art and political struggle; and our own subject positions and responsibilities in relation to the material in the course. We will attend the Native American Speakers Series lecture at Tufts and participate in a colloquium with the speaker, and the issue of activism will be an overt part of our work together. The course is a seminar, so active student participation will be an important element. Majors and nonmajors are welcome.

ENG0155 - American Women Writers

The texts in this course will emphasize the heterogeneity of American literature. We will read a variety of texts that trace and retrace the contours and concerns of race, nation, belonging, and representation from the end of the nineteenth-century to the present. In addition to reading novels we may also see a number of films and view other visual arts as we think through "American women writing" and the practice and politics of representation. This is a seminar. Class will be run on a discussion basis and active student participation is required. Texts may include but are not limited to:

Gertrude Stein, Three Lives; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Helen Maria Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus; Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha; Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar; Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice From the South, among others.

DR0043 - Gay and Lesbian Theatre & Film

Stage and media treatment of homosexuality throughout history, beginning with the classical Greek and Elizabethan stage, dealing with the Chinese and Japanese traditional drama, and proceeding to present time. Subjects include stage transvestism, stereotypes of the effete dandy and predatory lesbian, underground vs. commercial film representations, the concept of camps, AIDS drama, and contemporary queer theory and performance. Film screenings.

ED0162 - Class, Race, Gender in U.S. Education

History of education in the United States as a struggle over access and control. Relation to class reproduction, social mobility, the maintenance of and resistance to racial boundaries, and gender issues, emphasizing the struggles of disempowered groups to gain access to schooling in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.