Ethnicity, Race, & Migration (ER&M)
* ER&M 0581a / MUSI 0081a / SOCY 0074a, Race and Place in British New Wave, K-Pop, and Beyond Grace Kao
This seminar introduces you to several popular musical genres and explores how they are tied to racial, regional, and national identities. We examine how music is exported via migrants, return migrants, industry professionals, and the nation-state (in the case of Korean Popular Music, or K-Pop). Readings and discussions focus primarily on the British New Wave (from about 1979 to 1985) and K-Pop (1992-present), but we also discuss first-wave reggae, ska, rocksteady from the 1960s-70s, British and American punk rock music (1970s-1980s), the precursors of modern K-Pop, and have a brief discussion of Japanese City Pop. The class focuses mainly on the British New Wave and K-Pop because these two genres of popular music have strong ties to particular geographic areas, but they became or have become extremely popular in other parts of the world. We also investigate the importance of music videos in the development of these genres. Enrollment limited to first year students. SO
MW 4pm-5:15pm
* ER&M 1539a / AMST 0039a / ENGL 0839a, Latinx Literature Aside the Law Joseph Miranda
How has Latinx identity emerged through and against the law? From the suspension of Puerto Rican sovereignty to the contemporary proliferation of ethnic studies bans, the state has used the law to delimit Latinx to transparent or static categories of irregular “citizen,” “refugee,” and “migrant.” If conventional thinking assumes that art only responds to the law in protest or affirmation of the status quo, this seminar introduces students to the ways Latinx literature engages, resists, and disidentifies with the law as it delineates national belonging. We ask how do Latinx creative expressions expand the notions of citizenship, nation, and family beyond their raced, classed, and gendered origins to imagine new futures. Through attention to contemporary tv, film, novels, and poetry, we examine how Latinx artists build alternative forms of thriving collective life in forms of mutual aid, queer kinship, party, and protest. Works up for discussion include those by Justin Torres, Raquel Salas Rivera, and the television show Vida. Drawing inspiration from these texts, students collaborate on podcasts, write analytical essays, and complete other critical and creative projects. Enrollment limited to first-year students. WR, HU
MW 11:35am-12:50pm
* ER&M 1638b / ARCH 3109b / WGSS 3334b, Making the Inclusive Museum: Race, Gender, Disability and the Politics of Display Joel Sanders
BLM and COVID-19 have underscored the imperative for public institutions like art museums to reckon with a longstanding dilemma: museum architecture, working in relationship with the art it displays, perpetuation of white supremacy, heteronormativity, and ableism. This seminar uses the resources of the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art to situate this contemporary challenge in a cultural and historical context by tracing the intertwined histories of art and gallery architecture from the 16th century to today. Looking back allows us to imagine alternative futures: we consider the work of contemporary scholars, artists, designers, and public health experts who are developing strategies for making 21st-century museums inclusive environments that promote multi-sensory experiences among people of different races, genders, and abilities. Instructor permission is required based on the submission of an Expression of Interest with the following info: Name, Class year, Major/Concentration, Email and a paragraph describing relevant experiences that would allow you to make a meaningful contribution to the class. HU RP
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 1670a / LING 1070a, Language Endangerment and Revitalization Edwin Ko
Introduction to language endangerment and language revitalization. This course explores a range of theories and practices that provide the basis by which linguists and language activists aim to revitalize endangered languages in communities around the world. Beginning with surveying the various ways in which the world’s linguistic diversity and language ecologies can be assessed and discussing the serious threats to that diversity, why this might be a matter of concern, and the principle of linguistic human rights, the course will narrow toward individual student projects to investigate a minority language in some depth and report on its status with respect to the range of issues discussed in class. WR, SO
TTh 1pm-2:15pm
ER&M 1678a / LAST 2228a / SPAN 2145a, Borders & Globalization in Hispanophone Cultures Luna Najera
The borders that constitute the geographical divisions of the world are contingent, but they can have enormous ordering power in the lives of people and other beings. Human-made borders can both allow and disallow the flow of people and resources (including goods, knowledge, information, technologies, etc.). Like geographical borders, social borders such as race, caste, class, and gender can form and perpetuate privileged categories of humans that constrain the access of excluded persons to resources, education, security, and social mobility. Thus, bordering can differentially value human lives. Working with the premise that borders are sites of power, in this course we study bordering and debordering practices in the Hispanic cultures of Iberia, Latin America, and North America, from the 1490s to the present. Through analyses of a wide range of texts that may include treatises, maps, travel literature, visual culture, material culture (e.g., currency), law, music, and performance art, students investigate the multiple ways in which social, cultural, and spatial borders are initiated, expressed, materialized, and contested. More broadly, we explore, describe, and trace the entanglements of bordering, globalizations, and knowledge production in Hispanophone cultures. Some of the questions that will guide our conversations are: What are (social) borders and what are the processes through which they persist? How do the effects of practices that transcend borders (e.g., environmental pollution, deforestation) change our understanding of borders? What can we learn from indigenous peoples’ responses to bordering process and globalization? Prerequisite: SPAN 140 or 145, or in accordance with placement results. The course is conducted entirely in Spanish. Readings are available electronically through Canvas and the University Library. To be conducted in Spanish. L5, HU
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm
* ER&M 1681a / WGSS 2205a, Bodies and Pleasures, Sex and Genders Eda Pepi
This seminar explores questions of embodiment -- its pleasures, perplexities, and pains - to interrogate sex, sexuality, and gender as analytical categories. Its aim is to evaluate formative concepts, theories, and debates within feminist, gender, and queer studies, critical race studies, and history. We will consider how terms like “women” and “men,” “femininity” and “masculinity,” “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality,” and “gender” and “transgender” have structured people’s experiences and perceptions of bodies – their own and others’. We will interrogate the dynamic and often contested relationship between “gender” and sexuality,” and their constitution through other axes of power and difference, including race, class, and (dis)ability. SO
F 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 1692b / AFAM 2339b / AMST 4461b / EDST 2209b / WGSS 2202b, Identity, Diversity, and Policy in U.S. Education Craig Canfield
Introduction to critical theory (feminism, queer theory, critical race theory, disability studies, trans studies, Indigenous studies) as a fundamental tool for understanding and critiquing identity, diversity, and policy in U.S. education. Exploration of identity politics and theory, as they figure in education policy. Methods for applying theory and interventions to interrogate issues in education. Application of theory and interventions to policy creation and reform. EDST 1110 recommended. WR, HU
M 3:30pm-5:20pm
ER&M 2000a, Introduction to Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Staff
Historical roots of contemporary ethnic and racial formations and competing theories of ethnicity, race, and migration. Cultural constructions and social practices of race, ethnicity, and migration in the United States and around the world. HU, SO 0 Course cr
HTBA
* ER&M 2400a, Antifascist Traditions Staff
This course is a study of antifascist movements globally from the WWI period to the present. As fascism first arose as a movement in the WWI period, antifascist resistance likewise emerged as a transnational challenge to fascist power. Because fascists vilified and targeted for expulsion or extermination supposed "outsiders" and "undesirables" based on categories such as race, ethnicity, citizenship status, nationality, religion, sexuality, etc., people united along these lines to defend themselves from repression and to fight for freedom. In this course students will explore histories of various antifascist traditions globally. HU 0 Course cr
MW 11:35am-12:50pm
ER&M 2511a / EDST 1144a / EDST 144 / EVST 1144a / EVST 144 / SOCY 1700a, Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration Staff
Exploration of sociological studies and theoretical and empirical analyses of race, ethnicity, and immigration, with focus on race relations and racial and ethnic differences in outcomes in contemporary U.S. society (post-1960s). Study of the patterns of educational and labor market outcomes, incarceration, and family formation of whites, blacks (African Americans), Hispanics, and Asian Americans in the United States, as well as immigration patterns and how they affect race and ethnic relations. SO 0 Course cr
HTBA
ER&M 2519a / HIST 1219a / JDST 200 / JDST 2000a / MMES 1149a / RLST 1480a, Jews and the World: From the Bible through Early Modern Times Ivan Marcus
A broad introduction to the history of the Jews from biblical beginnings until the European Reformation and the Ottoman Empire. Focus on the formative period of classical rabbinic Judaism and on the symbiotic relationships among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Jewish society and culture in its biblical, rabbinic, and medieval settings. Counts toward either European or non-Western distributional credit within the History major, upon application to the director of undergraduate studies. HU RP 0 Course cr
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm
ER&M 2534a / AFAM 2150a / HIST 1131a / HSHM 2520a, History of Anti-Black Racism and Medicine Staff
The course traces how anti-Black racism shaped the development of western medicine in the Americas. It examines how ideas of anti-Blackness shaped the work of health practitioners and the experiences of patients. It engages the emergence of racial science and scientific racism, and how they contributed to the production of medical knowledge. More importantly, it centers the voices and experiences of Black people, and the various ways challenged racism through knowledge production and activism. It also addresses the enduring legacies of anti-Black racism in medical practice, and its impact on health inequality. HU 0 Course cr
HTBA
ER&M 2541b / ANTH 1840b / SOCY 1840b, The Corporation Douglas Rogers
Survey of the rise, diversity, and power of the capitalist corporation in global contexts, with a focus on the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics include: the corporation as legal entity and the social and cultural consequences of this status; corporations in the colonial era; relationships among corporations, states, and non-governmental organizations in Western and non-Western contexts; anti-corporate critique and response; corporate social responsibility; and race, gender, and indigeneity. HU, SO 0 Course cr
MW 10:30am-11:20am
ER&M 2568a / AFST 2170a / LAST 1170a / PORT 2170a, A Luta Continua: African, Asian, and Indigenous Responses to Coloniality in the Lusophone World Kevin Ennis
What did it mean to be anticolonial in the era of revolution against the Portuguese Empire, and what does it mean today in the twenty-first century across the Portuguese-speaking world? In this course we examine the reverberations of anticolonial movements in Portuguese-speaking African and Asian territories, as well as in Indigenous movements in Brazil. Focusing on political, social, and cultural dimensions of emancipation, we ask: How have African, Asian, and Indigenous writers and artists imagined emancipatory endeavors for their peoples, their countries, and their worlds? What is the role of cultural expression in world-sharing and world-building in response to centuries of colonialism and its legacies? This course also aims to further develop communicative proficiency in Portuguese and enhance knowledge of the diverse cultures of the Portuguese-speaking world. Prerequisite: PORT 140, or equivalent in placement. L5, HU
TTh 9am-10:15am
ER&M 2682a / AMST 2272a / HIST 1183a / WGSS 2272a, Asian American History, 1800 to the Present Staff
An introduction to the history of East, South, and Southeast Asian migrations and settlement to the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present. Major themes include labor migration, community formation, U.S. imperialism, legal exclusion, racial segregation, gender and sexuality, cultural representations, and political resistance. HU 0 Course cr
HTBA
* ER&M 3000a / AMST 2262a, Comparative Ethnic Studies Ximena Lopez Carrillo
Introduction to the methods and practice of comparative ethnic studies. Examination of racial formation in the United States within a transnational framework. Legacies of colonialism, slavery, and racial exclusion; racial formation in schools, prisons, and citizenship law; cultural politics of music and performance; social movements; and postcolonial critique. SO
W 3:30pm-5:20pm
* ER&M 3012a / AMST 3302a / HSHM 4930a / WGSS 3312a, Technology, Race and Gender Kalindi Vora
In this course, we discuss technology and the politics of difference through a survey of topics including artificial intelligence, digital labor (crowdsourcing), and robotics and computer science. Materials for study include humanistic and social scientific critique, ethnographies of technology, technical writing and scientific papers, as well as speculative art practices including design, visual art and fiction. What assumptions and politics of imagination govern the design and development of new technologies? What alternative imaginaries, politics, or even speculations, can be identified with a feminist analytic lens? The seminar also includes a practicum component where we practice the politics of speculation through writing and design projects. To do this we study everything from active STEM projects at Yale to speculative fiction and film to think about how structures of race, gender, sexuality, ability, nation, and religious difference inform how we "speculate" or imagine the future through the ways we design and build technological worlds in practice and in fiction. HU, SO
T 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 3013a / PSYC 3712a, Native American Mental Health Mark Beitel and Christopher Cutter
Issues of health policy, research, and service delivery in Native American communities, with a focus on historical antecedents that shape health outcomes and social policy for indigenous communities. Urgent problems in health and wellness, with special attention to Native American mental health. The roles of the Indian Health Service, state and local agencies, and tribal health centers; comparison of Native American and European American conceptions of health and illness. SO
W 9:25am-11:15am
* ER&M 3016a, Indigenous Food Sovereignty Hi'ilei Hobart
What does it mean to be food sovereign? Are contemporary American diets colonial? This course takes a comparative approach to understanding how and why food is a central component of contemporary sovereignty discourse. More than just a question of eating, Indigenous foodways offer important critiques of, and interventions to, the settler state: food connects environment, community, public health, colonial histories, and economics. Students theorize these connections by reading key works from across the fields of critical indigenous studies, food studies, philosophy, history, and anthropology. In doing so, we question the potentialities of enacting food sovereignty within the settler state, whether dietary decolonization is possible in the so-called age of the Anthropocene, and the limits of working within and against today’s legacies of the colonial food system. Students previously enrolled in ER&M 040 are not eligible to enroll in this course. HU, SO
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm
* ER&M 3024a / WGSS 325, Asian Diasporas since 1800 Quan Tran
Examination of the diverse historical and contemporary experiences of people from East, South, and Southeast Asian ancestry living in the Americas, Australia, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. Organized thematically and comparative in scope, topics include labor migrations, community formations, chain migrations, transnational connections, intergenerational dynamics, interracial and ethnic relations, popular cultures, and return migrations. HU, SO
T 9:25am-11:15am
* ER&M 3025a, Refugeturisms Quan Tran
This interdisciplinary course turns to refugees not only as remnants and survivors of past and present violence, destruction, and displacement, but as figures of many possible futures. The neologism combines “refugee” and “futurisms” to underscore both the limitations of existing frameworks about refugees and gestures toward emerging formulations and formations. Temporally, geographically, planetarily expansive and fluid, this course is inspired by the growing field of critical refugee studies and the rich traditions of Afro-futurism, Indigenous futurism, Asian futurism, and Latinx futurism. It draws on language, history, philosophy, theology, literature, art, and film to explore what it means to be human amid and in anticipation of different kinds of refuge-seeking futures. HU
Th 9:25am-11:15am
* ER&M 3030a / RLST 3130a, Islam in Africa Gana Ndiaye
Islam is the dominant religion in many African nations. Countries such as Libya, Comoros, and Western Sahara have Muslim populations exceeding 99%. In Senegal, over 95% of the population adheres to Islam, while more than 79% of Egyptians identify as Muslim. Nigeria has the largest Muslim population on the continent, with over 100 million Muslims. This course focuses on the histories, politics, and cultures of Muslim Africa. We examine the spread of Islam across the continent from the 7th century through trade, education, and jihad. Drawing primarily from anthropology, we explore the impact of faith on governance and social structures, as well as its interactions with other religious traditions on the continent. By the end of the course, students will: a) learn about key issues in the study of Islam in Africa, including Islam noir, Africanization of Islam, Ajami, and lived Islam, b) develop tools for studying how Africans on the continent and the diaspora practice Islam in various contexts and time periods, and c) acquire research skills for studying Islam ethnographically. HU, SO
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm
* ER&M 3044a / SOCY 3044a / URBN 3305a, Informal Cities Leigh-Anna Hidalgo
The informal sector is an integral and growing part of major global cities. With a special focus on the context of U.S. cities, students examine where a burgeoning informality is visible in the region’s everyday life. How planners and policymakers address informality is an important social justice challenge. But what is the informal sector, or urban informality, or the informal city? This class addresses such questions through a rigorous examination of the growing body of literature from Sociology, Latinx Studies, Urban Planning, and Geography. We reflect on the debates and theories in the study of informality in the U.S. and beyond and gain an understanding of the prevalence, characteristics, rationale, advantages and disadvantages, and socio-spatial implications of informal cities. More specifically, we examine urban informality in work—examining street vendors, sex workers, and waste pickers—as well as housing, and the built environment. SO
T 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 3046a / ENGL 2846a, Critical Reading Methods in Indigenous Literatures Tarren Andrews
This course focuses on developing critical readings skills grounded in the embodied and place-based reading practices encouraged by Indigenous literatures. Students are expected to think critically about their reading practices and environments to consciously cultivate place-based reading strategies across a variety of genres including: fiction and non-fiction, sci-fi, poetry, comic books, criticism, theory, film, and other new media. Students are required to keep a reading journal and regularly present critical reflections on their reading process, as well as engage in group annotations of primary and secondary reading materials. This course is offered during the fall and spring term and may be taken both terms for credit. During the fall term the focus is on Indigenous literatures and new media from North America produced primarily in the 21st century. Critical readings include some historical context, both pre- and post-contact, as well as Indigenous literary theory. During the spring term, the focus becomes Indigenous literatures and games in a global context with emphasis on Indigenous land relations and ecocriticism across the 20th and 21st centuries. WR, HU
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm
* ER&M 3083a / SOCY 3843a, Central Americans in the U.S. Leigh-Anna Hidalgo and Katy Maldonado Dominguez
This course is an interdisciplinary survey of the social, historical, political, economic, educational, and cultural experiences of Central American immigrants and their children in the United States. The primary objective of the course is to introduce students to several contemporary experiences and issues in the U.S. Central American community. Focusing mostly on Guatemalan, Honduran, and Salvadoran immigrants—the three largest groups in the United States—we explore the social structures that constrain individuals as well as the strategies and behaviors immigrants and their communities have taken to establish their presence and make a home in U.S. society and stay connected to their countries of origin. Students gain a critical understanding of Central American identities, particularly as these have been constructed through the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and legal status. SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 3304a / AMST 3304a / ANTH 3304a / HUMS 3304a / SOCY 3104a, Ethnography & Journalism Madiha Tahir
While each is loathed to admit it, journalism and ethnography are cousins in some respects interested in (albeit distinct) modes of storytelling, translation, and interpretation. This methods course considers these shared grounds to launch a cross-comparative examination. What can the practies of each field and method—journalism and ethnography—tell us about the other? How do journalists and ethnographers engage ideas about the truth? What can they learn from each other? Students spend the first four weeks studying journalistic methods and debates before shifting to ethnographic discussions, and finally, comparative approaches to writing; data and evidence; experience and positionality. HU, SO
Th 9:25am-11:15am
* ER&M 3511a / AMST 4481a / ENGL 4811a, The Native American Novel Lloyd Kevin Sy
This course explores the evolution of the Native American novel, tracing its development from The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (1854) to contemporary works. We will examine how Indigenous writers have used the novel to engage with themes such as sovereignty, memory, land, identity, assimilation, and storytelling as resistance. Readings may include works by John Rollin Ridge, Zitkála-Šá, D'Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, and Tommy Orange. Through close reading and critical analysis, we will consider how Native novelists navigate history, genre, and literary form to challenge dominant narratives. None WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 3530a / AMST 3303a / EP&E 247 / FILM 2980a / SAST 2620a, Digital War Madiha Tahir
From drones and autonomous robots to algorithmic warfare, virtual war gaming, and data mining, digital war has become a key pressing issue of our times and an emerging field of study. This course provides a critical overview of digital war, understood as the relationship between war and digital technologies. Modern warfare has been shaped by digital technologies, but the latter have also been conditioned through modern conflict: DARPA (the research arm of the US Department of Defense), for instance, has innovated aspects of everything from GPS, to stealth technology, personal computing, and the Internet. Shifting beyond a sole focus on technology and its makers, this class situates the historical antecedents and present of digital war within colonialism and imperialism. We will investigate the entanglements between technology, empire, and war, and examine how digital war—also sometimes understood as virtual or remote war—has both shaped the lives of the targeted and been conditioned by imperial ventures. We will consider visual media, fiction, art, and other works alongside scholarly texts to develop a multidiscpinary perspective on the past, present, and future of digital war. none HU, SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 3535a / FREN 4160a / WGSS 4416a, Social Mobility and Migration Morgane Cadieu
The seminar examines the representation of upward mobility, social demotion, and interclass encounters in contemporary French literature and cinema, with an emphasis on the interaction between social class and literary style. Topics include emancipation and determinism; inequality, precarity, and class struggle; social mobility and migration; the intersectionality of class, race, gender, and sexuality; labor and the workplace; homecomings; mixed couples; and adoption. Works by Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux and her peers (Éribon, Gay, Harchi, Linhart, Louis, NDiaye, Taïa). Films by Cantet, Chou, and Diop. Theoretical excerpts by Berlant, Bourdieu, and Rancière. Students will have the option to put the French corpus in dialogue with the literature of other countries. Conducted in French. HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 3536a / AMST 2233a / HIST 2196a / WGSS 2235a, Another “Other” – Introducing Critical Theories and Histories of Disability Jiya Pandya
What is disability? How has its definition changed over time? How do people “become” disabled and how does one inhabit a disabled body? In what ways has the disabled body become a site for enacting imperial, national, and resistant politics? Where and how are alternate, radical visions of health being developed? This introductory course in Disability Studies poses answers to these and other related questions through an overview of key texts and debates in the growing field of disability studies. Students will learn about the transnational history of disability and disability rights, think about the intersections of disability, race, sexuality, gender, and citizenship, and engage with questions of accessibility and activism that already exist in spaces around you. This course, composed of three modules on “disability,” “disidentifications” with disability, and “disability justice” and “health liberation,” is meant to be both an academic overview of a field and a toolkit for advocacy. As we reckon with the longer impacts of COVID-19 and process what it means to live life during and after a global pandemic, it makes most sense for us to turn to those who have reckoned with what it means to live in “crisis,” to inhabit a body that is almost-always at “risk,” and to build creative forms of care and community. We will spend significant time with disabled writers, artists, and scholars who offer insight and memory about interactions with and between medicine, war, design, technology, sexuality, race, and imperialism. none
MW 11:35am-12:50pm
* ER&M 3556a / AMST 3325a / WGSS 1135a, Latina.x.e Feminist Archives Deb Vargas
The course introduces students to Latina/x/e feminist archives. We focus on historical and contemporary writings by and about Chicana, Puerto Rican, Central American, and other Latina/x/e feminist writers and activists. The course draws from interdisciplinary scholarship addressing the intellectual landscape of Latina/x/e and critical race feminist theories and social movement activist organizing. While this course approaches Latina/x/e feminist theories and activism as often having emerged in relation to U.S. nation-making projects we will consider this work with the understanding that projects of Latina/x/e feminism should be understood as cross-border, transnational, and multi-scaler critiques of nation-state violence. HU
M 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 3561a / AMST 3361a, Comparative Colonialisms Lisa Lowe
Settler colonialism, slavery, racialized immigration, and imperial war have been integral to the emergence of the U.S. nation, state, and economy, and the consequences of these histories continue today. In this interdisciplinary undergraduate seminar, we examine the relevance of these historical and ongoing formations to the founding and development of the United States, giving attention to the independence of each, as well as to their differences, convergences, and contestations. We consider the strengths and limits of different analytic frames for understanding these histories of colonialism, enslavement, capitalism, and empire. We approach the study through readings in history, anthropology, political economy, literature, arts, and other materials. HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 3567b / AMST 4447b / EDST 2270b, Contemporary Native American K-12 and Postsecondary Educational Policy Matthew Makomenaw
This course explores Native American educational policy issues, programming, funding, and success. Native American representation in policy conversations is often incomplete, complicated, or relegated to an asterisk resulting in a lack of resources, awareness, and visibility in educational policy. This course examines the challenges and issues related to Native education; however, the impetus of this course centers on the resiliency, strength, and imagination of Native American students and communities to redefine and achieve success in a complex and often unfamiliar educational environment. EDST 1110 recommended. SO
W 9:25am-11:15am
* ER&M 3570a / AMST 4441a / HIST 3130a, Indians and the Spanish Borderlands Ned Blackhawk
The experiences of Native Americans during centuries of relations with North America's first imperial power, Spain. The history and long-term legacies of Spanish colonialism from Florida to California. WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 3574a / AFAM 3675a / AMST 3355a / FREN 3675a / LAST 2675a, Haiti Writes I Marlene Daut and Kaiama Glover
From nineteenth-century antislavery pamphleteering to accounts of ecological catastrophe in 21st-century fiction, Haitian literature has resounded across the globe since the nation's revolutionaries declared independence in 1804. Starting with pre-revolutionary writing, including the emergence of Haitian Creole letters, moving through a long, largely francophone nineteenth century, to present-day Haitian writing in the English language, this two-semester exploration of Haitian literature presents the political, cultural, and historical frameworks necessary to comprehend Haiti's vast literary output. Whether writing in Haiti or its wide-ranging diasporas, Haitian authors have boldly contributed to pressing conversations in global letters while reflecting Haiti's unique cultural and historical experiences. Considering an expansive array of poets, playwrights, and novelists - such as Baron de Vastey, Juste Chanlatte, Demesvar Delorme, Edwidge Danticat, René Depestre, Kettly Mars, Dany Laferrière, and Évelyne Trouillot – this course engages students in a fresh examination of Haiti’s richly polyglot and transnational literary tradition that spans more than two centuries.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 3592a / HSAR 4492a / SPAN 4600a, Visual Encounters in the Early Modern Atlantic Catalina Ospina and Lisa Voigt
This course examines the visual, material, and human flows that connected Africa, Europe, and the Americas between 1450 and 1850 and gave its contours to the early modern Atlantic World. Students explore the role of the visual in key institutions and phenomena that emerged in the circum-Atlantic and continue to cast their long shadow over the contemporary world. Topics include: colonialism, the slave trade, blackness and indigeneity, scientific exploration, religious encounters, and revolt. HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 3594a / ANTH 4809 / EVST 4422a / F&ES 422 / GLBL 4394a, Climate and Society: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities Michael Dove
Discussion of the major currents of thought regarding climate and climate change; focusing on equity, collapse, folk knowledge, historic and contemporary visions, western and non-western perspectives, drawing on the social sciences and humanities. WR, SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm
* ER&M 3633a / HIST 3463a / SAST 3340a, Mobile South Asians and the Global Legal Order Rohit De
South Asians make up the largest population of overseas migrants in the world, close to 33 million in 2017 and a diaspora that is almost double that number. This course looks at the unprecedented mobility of South Asians from the mid-19th century until now as merchants, indentured labor, students, pilgrims, professionals, domestic workers, political exiles, refugees, and economic migrants, through the lens of state attempts to control movement and individual resistance, subversion, and adaptation to such controls. Focusing on the legal consciousness of South Asian migrants and the emergence of South Asian nations as political players on the global stage, this class traces how South Asian mobility led to the forging of a new global order, over migration, multiculturalism, Islamic law, civil liberties, labor law, and international law. WR, HU
T 9:25am-11:15am
* ER&M 3691b / AMST 4407b / HSHM 4550b, Eugenics and its Afterlives Daniel HoSang
This course examines the influence of Eugenics research, logics, and ideas across nearly every academic discipline in the 20th century, and the particular masks, tropes, and concepts that have been used to occlude attentions to these legacies today. Students make special use of the large collection of archives held within Yale Special Collections of key figures in the American Eugenics Society. Students work collaboratively to identify alternative research practices and approaches deployed in scholarly and creative works that make racial power visible and enable the production of knowledge unburdened by the legacies of Eugenics and racial science. HU 0 Course cr
T 9:25am-11:15am
* ER&M 3695a / AMST 3365a / EP&E 4399a / FILM 2680, Platforms and Cultural Production Julian Posada
Platforms—digital infrastructures that serve as intermediaries between end-users and complementors—have emerged in various cultural and economic settings, from social media (Instagram), and video streaming (YouTube), to digital labor (Uber), and e-commerce (Amazon). This seminar provides a multidisciplinary lens to study platforms as hybrids of firms and multi-sided markets with unique history, governance, and infrastructures. The thematic sessions of this course discuss how platforms have transformed cultural production and connectivity, labor, creativity, and democracy by focusing on comparative cases from the United States and abroad. The seminar provides a space for broader discussions on contemporary capitalism and cultural production around topics such as inequality, surveillance, decentralization, and ethics. Students are encouraged to bring examples and case studies from their personal experiences. HU, SO
M 3:30pm-5:20pm
* ER&M 3831a / AMST 3831a / ENGL 3831a / WGSS 3831a, Texxture Sunny Xiang
The term texxture was first used by queer studies scholars to describe a density of tactile information about an object’s provenance, composition, circulation, and use. This brilliant coinage offers an immanent theorization of texture as something like an x-factor—an excess and an essence, something magical yet practical, a strange intensity and the thing itself. Such ambiguities, however, also contribute to texture’s interpretive difficulties. For whether we have in mind a velvet armchair, a pair of distressed jeans, a handbound book, or a tablet computer, texture performs a dramatic revelation to the extent that it is also shadowed by deception and ambivalence. These paradoxes and cruxes inspire a range of inquiries for our class: What can the perception and creation of texture teach us about the sensorial and material politics of race, gender, empire, capitalism, and art? How might texture help us study the relation between desire and violence, especially at the interface of touch? What things, beings, events, places, emotions, and ideas appear to have a texture? What is texture’s route to intelligibility, and is there a scale or unit at which texture vanishes? WR, HU
TTh 9am-10:15am
* ER&M 4021a, Indigenous Women and the Law in the Anglophone Empire Tarren Andrews
This seminar examines the historical and ongoing entanglement of Indigenous women and Anglophone legal systems, moving from early medieval England to the Pacific and North America. We begin with Old English legal codes that governed women’s rights and social positions in early medieval English societies, questioning how these texts established gendered legal frameworks that later informed colonial legal structures. As we move geographically and temporally, we trace the ways British and American legal systems constructed Indigenous women as subjects of empire, shaping their legal status, kinship structures, and sovereignty. A central theme of the course is Indigenous women's resistance to settler legal impositions. Through case studies—including early colonial legal battles, the forced removals of women and children, and contemporary struggles for justice and land rights—we examine how Indigenous women have asserted legal and extralegal agency in the face of colonial authority. WR, HU
W 9:25am-11:15am
* ER&M 4050a / AMST 3339a, Bad Bunny: Musical Aesthetics and Politics Albert Laguna
This course examines the music of Bad Bunny as a point of departure for developing our skills as close listeners attentive to how cultural production creates interpretive avenues for understanding how aesthetics, history, and politics intersect. Topics include the history of Puerto Rico and its colonial past and present (tourism, debt crisis, hurricanes); the evolution of musical forms (bomba, plena, salsa, reggaeton) and their travels across the Americas; and the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York City. none HU
T 3:30pm-5:20pm
* ER&M 4067a / AFAM 4357a / AFST 4457a / AMST 4470 / FREN 481 / FREN 4810, Racial Republic: African Diasporic Literature and Culture in Postcolonial France Fadila Habchi
This is an interdisciplinary seminar on French cultural history from the 1930s to the present. We focus on issues concerning race and gender in the context of colonialism, postcolonialism, and migration. The course investigates how the silencing of colonial history has been made possible culturally and ideologically, and how this silencing has in turn been central to the reorganizing of French culture and society from the period of decolonization to the present. We ask how racial regimes and spaces have been constructed in French colonial discourses and how these constructions have evolved in postcolonial France. We examine postcolonial African diasporic literary writings, films, and other cultural productions that have explored the complex relations between race, colonialism, historical silences, republican universalism, and color-blindness. Topics include the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Black Paris, decolonization, universalism, the Trente Glorieuses, the Paris massacre of 1961, anti-racist movements, the "beur" author, memory, the 2005 riots, and contemporary afro-feminist and decolonial movements. HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm
ER&M 4091a, The Senior Colloquium: Theoretical and Methodological Issues Staff
A research seminar intended to move students toward the successful completion of their senior projects, combining discussions of methodological and theoretical issues with discussions of students' fields of research.
HTBA
* ER&M 4444a / RLST 2890a, Race, Religion, and Transnational Mobilities Gana Ndiaye
This course surveys how “migrants” and “desirable migrants” are produced through race and religion in the Americas and Europe. It also examines how racial identities and religious beliefs inform human mobilities and shape the experiences of such mobile persons as settlers, exiles, asylum seekers, temporary workers, and economic migrants. By the end of the course, participants will familiarize themselves with the crucial roles that religious beliefs and practices play in causing and responding to human mobilities. Students will also gain familiarity with the ways in which migrants' religious practices transform local cultures, politics, and societies as their own religious practices are reconfigured by and in the context of host nations. Topics to be covered include citizenship and cultural difference, religion and the public sphere, multiculturalism, Islam and democracy, Christian Pentecostal missions, liberation theology, and African diasporic religions. SO
M 3:30pm-5:20pm
* ER&M 4518b and ER&M 6606b / ANTH 4818b / SPAN 4618b / WGSS 4518b, Multi-Sited Ethnography: Trans-Atlantic Port Cities in Colombia and Spain Eda Pepi and Ana Ramos-Zayas
Critical to colonial, imperial, and capitalist expansion, the Atlantic offers a dynamic setting for adapting ethnographic practices to address questions around interconnected oppressions, revolts, and revolutions that are foundational to global modernity. Anchored in a Spanish and a Colombian port city, this course engages trans-Atlantic 'worlding' through a multi-sited and historically grounded ethnographic lens. Las Palmas—the earliest mid-Atlantic port and Europe's first settler colony in Africa—and Cartagena—once the principal gateway connecting Spain and its American empire—illuminate urgent contemporary issues such as climate, displacement, inter-regional subjectivities, and commerce. During a spring recess field experience (March 8–16, 2026), students immerse themselves for four nights each in Las Palmas and Cartagena, developing critical "tracking" skills that bridge ethnographic practice with cultural theory. Preparation for fieldwork includes an on-campus curriculum, organized around Cartagena and Las Palmas, and sessions with Yale Ethnography Hub faculty, covering different methodologies. As part of this broader programming, the curriculum delves into trans-Atlantic migrations from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa that have transformed port cities, labor and aesthetic practices, class-making racial formations, and global geopolitics. After recess, the course shifts toward independent work, as students synthesize field-collected data and insights into a collaborative multimodal group project and individual ethnographic papers. Interested students must apply by November 1st via the course website. Students may withdraw by the university deadlines in April. Prerequisite: Conversational and reading proficiency in Spanish. Readings are in English and Spanish, with assignments accepted in either language. HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm