Ethnicity, Race, & Migration (ER&M)

* ER&M 081a / MUSI 081a / SOCY 081a, Race and Place in British New Wave, K-Pop, and BeyondGrace 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. Pre-registration required: see under First Year Seminar Program.  SO
MW 4pm-5:15pm

ER&M 127a / EVST 127a / SOCY 127a / WGSS 127a, Health and Illness in Social ContextStaff

Present-day medicine and health care provide solutions to an ever-increasing array of human problems. Yet the achievement of health can be elusive. This course provides a broad introduction to the domains of health and illness in the U.S., with some coverage of international trends and topics. Students analyze how our personal health and public health are shaped by social structures, political struggles, expert knowledge, and medical markets. Topics include the cultural and social meanings associated with health and illness; inequalities in health and health care access and provision; controversies surrounding healthcare, medical knowledge production, and medical decision-making; and the social institutions of the health care industry. None  SO0 Course cr
HTBA

* ER&M 150a, Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and the U.S. EmpireXimena Lopez Carrillo

This course examines the history of Mexicans and Mexican Americans at the U.S.-Mexico border and their important contributions to U.S. politics and culture, from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to the present. By looking at specific historical case studies, students learn about the impact of U.S. imperial and migratory policies on border life, the tensions and solidarity bonds between Mexicans and Mexican Americans, the formation of a hybrid Mexican American culture, and the long history of popular resistance and activism. As students learn about this history, they reflect on the politics behind our historical memory surrounding Mexicans and Mexican Americans, and the newest methodological proposals to recover their history.  HU, SO
TTh 9am-10:15am

ER&M 187b / AMST 133b / HIST 107b, Introduction to American Indian HistoryNed Blackhawk

Survey of American Indian history, beginning with creation traditions and migration theories and continuing to the present day. Focus on American Indian nations whose homelands are located within the contemporary United States. Complexity and change within American Indian societies, with emphasis on creative adaptations to changing historical circumstances.  HU0 Course cr
TTh 10:30am-11:20am

ER&M 200a, Introduction to Ethnicity, Race, and MigrationStaff

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, SO0 Course cr
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

* ER&M 207a / LING 107a, Linguistic Diversity & EndangermentClaire Bowern

“How many languages are there in the world?”—what does this question even mean? What would a satisfying answer look like? This class comprises a geographical and historical survey of the world’s languages and attends to how languages can differ from one another. According to UNESCO, more than half of world languages (virtually all of which are spoken by indigenous communities) will have gone extinct by the end of the century. We interrogate notions like language endangerment, shift and death, and we consider the threats that these pose to global linguistic diversity. There is a striking correlation between the geographic distribution of linguistic and biological diversity, although proportionally, far more languages are endangered than biological species; the question of how (and why? and whether?) to respond to that situation is a matter of serious import for the 21st Century. This course surveys the various ways in which the world’s linguistic diversity and language ecologies can be assessed—and discusses the serious threats to that diversity, why this might be a matter of concern, and the principle of linguistic human rights. Students have the opportunity to investigate a minority language in some depth and report on its status with respect to the range of issues discussed in class.  SO
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

ER&M 211a / EDST 144a / EVST 144a / SOCY 144a, Race, Ethnicity, and ImmigrationStaff

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.  SO0 Course cr
HTBA

ER&M 219a / HIST 219a / JDST 200a / MMES 149a / RLST 148a, Jews and the World: From the Bible through Early Modern TimesIvan 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.  HURP0 Course cr
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* ER&M 224a / AMST 368a, Marxism and Social Movements in the Nineteenth CenturyMichael Denning

The history and theory of the socialist and Marxist traditions from their beginnings in the early nineteenth century to the world upheavals of 1917–19. Relations to labor, feminist, abolitionist, and anticolonial movements.
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

ER&M 231b / HIST 232b, Hitler, Stalin, and UsTimothy Snyder

This course presents the study of the Stalinist and Nazi regimes, reviews the mass atrocities of the mid-twentieth century, and considers the legacies of these regimes in contemporary memory and politics.  HU
TTh 2:30pm-3:20pm

ER&M 238a / AFAM 192a / AFST 238a / AMST 238a, Third World StudiesStaff

Introduction to the historical and contemporary theories and articulations of Third World studies (comparative ethnic studies) as an academic field and practice. Consideration of subject matters; methodologies and theories; literatures; and practitioners and institutional arrangements.  SO0 Course cr
HTBA

ER&M 243b / AMST 234b / HIST 188b / RLST 342b, Spiritual But Not ReligiousStaff

Study of the historical and contemporary “unchurching” trends in American religious life in a comparative perspective and across different scales of analysis in order to think about the relationship between spirituality, formal religion, secular psychology and the self-help industry.  HU, SO0 Course cr
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* ER&M 257a / WGSS 206a, Transnational Approaches to Gender & SexualityEvren Savci

Examination of transnational debates about gender and sexuality as they unfold in specific contexts. Gender as a category that can or cannot travel; feminist critiques of liberal rights paradigms; globalization of particular models of gender/queer advocacy; the role of NGOs in global debates about gender and sexuality.  WR
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 258a / AMST 258a / EVST 258a, Wilderness in the North American Imagination: Landscapes of the US Nuclear-Industrial ComplexCharlotte Hecht

Since the mid-twentieth century, the drive for nuclear power—in the form of weapons and energy—has irreversibly shaped the landscapes of the North American continent, and the world. The activities of the nuclear fuel cycle (uranium mining and milling, weapons testing and production, and radioactive waste dumping) have reached every state in the country, often in devastating and uneven ways. Today, debates about nuclear weapons and the benefits of nuclear power are at the forefront of contemporary discourse. This course contextualizes these impacts and debates in the long history of post-war industrialization and militarization, a history that begins with 19th century settler-colonial conceptions of “wilderness.” Throughout the course, we investigate how cultural imaginaries of wilderness (and ideas about nature, landscape, space, and environment) are deeply related to the uneven geographies of the nuclear industrial complex, and the intersections of US imperialism, militarism, extractive capitalism, and environmental racism. Alongside this, we consider how artists, activists, and scholars are working to theorize, reframe, and reimagine the legacies of the nuclear industry.   HU
Th 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 277a / AFST 277a / ANTH 235a, Introduction to Critical Border StudiesLeslie Gross-Wyrtzen

This course serves as an introduction into the major themes and approaches to the study of border enforcement and the management of human mobility. We draw upon a diverse range of scholarship across the social sciences as well as history, architecture, and philosophy to better understand how we find ourselves in this present “age of walls” (Tim Marshall 2019). In addition, we take a comparative approach to the study of borders—examining specific contemporary and historical cases across the world in order to gain a comprehensive view of what borders are and how their meaning and function has changed over time. And because there is “critical” in the title, we explicitly evaluate the political consequences of borders, examine the sorts of resistances mobilized against them, and ask what alternative social and political worlds might be possible.  SO
Th 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 278a / LAST 228a / SPAN 228a, Borders & Globalization in Hispanophone CulturesLuna 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. Like geographical borders, social borders such as race, caste, class, and gender can form and perpetuate privileged categories of humans that restrict access of excluded persons to natural 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 students will investigate the multiple ways in which social, cultural, and spatial borders are initiated, expressed, materialized, and contested. Some of the questions that will guide our conversations are: What are social borders and what are the processes through which they perdure? How do the effects of local practices that transcend borders (e.g., environmental pollution, deforestation) change our understanding of borders? How does globalization change discourse about borders? (To be conducted in Spanish.) Prerequisite: SPAN 140 or 145, or in accordance with placement results. A maximum of one course in the 200-230 range may count as an elective toward the Spanish major.   L5
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

ER&M 282a / AMST 272a / HIST 183a / WGSS 272a, Asian American History, 1800 to the PresentStaff

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.  HU0 Course cr
HTBA

* ER&M 285a / LAST 305a / SOCY 305a, Latin American Immigration to the United States: Past, Present, and FutureAngel Escamilla Garcia

Immigration from Latin America is the one of the most important and controversial issues in the United States today. The family separation crisis, the infamous border wall, and the Dream Act dominate political debate. Latinos—numbering more than 60 million in the U.S.—are a large, heterogeneous, and growing group with a unique social, political, and cultural history. This course explores key current issues in immigration, as well as the history of Latin American migration to the U.S., with the aim of providing students the tools necessary to thoughtfully participate in current debates.  SO
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

* ER&M 286a / AMST 233a / WGSS 232a, Porvida: Latinx Queer Trans LifeDeb Vargas

This course provides an introduction to Latinx queer trans* studies. We approach the field of Latinx queer trans* studies as an ongoing political project that emerges from social justice activism, gay/lesbian/queer/trans studies, critical race feminism, cultural practitioners, among other work. We pay particular attention to the keywords “trans,” “queer,” “Chicanx,” and “Latinx” by placing them in productive tension with each other through varied critical genealogies.    HU, SO
T 9:25am-11:15am

ER&M 287a / EVST 229a / LAST 226a / SPAN 230a, Reading Environments: Nature, Culture, and AgencyLuna Najera

Extreme weather, proliferation of species extinctions, climate migration, and the outbreak of pandemics can all be understood as instances of koyaanisqatsi, the Hopi word for life out of balance. They may also be viewed as indications that we are living in the age of the Anthropocene, a term in the natural and social sciences that acknowledges that human activities have had a radical geological impact on the planet since the onset of the Industrial revolution. In this course we study relations between humans and other-than-humans to understand how we arrived at a life out of balance. We inquire into how binary distinctions between nature and culture are made, sustained, or questioned through a diversity of meaning-making practices in Spanish, Latin American, and indigenous literature, visual culture, and material culture. The indigenous artifacts studied include Popol Vuh, poetry, petroglyphs, and documentaries by indigenous people of the Amazon, which provide opportunities for asking pressing questions: To what extent does the nature and culture binary foreclose alternative possibilities for imagining ourselves and our relation to the world? Are there ways of perceiving our world and ourselves that bypass such binaries and if so, what are they? In the final weeks of the course, we draw from our insights to investigate where the nature/culture binary figures in present discussions of environmental catastrophes and rights of nature movements in Latin America. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisite: SPAN 140 or 145, or in accordance with placement results.   L5
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

* ER&M 289a / AFAM 205a / AMST 225a, Writing American Studies: Food as Story & Critical LensAlison Kibbe

This writing seminar examines food as an entry to the interdisciplinary approaches of American Studies. We explore how food can help us think critically about our world, as well as how we can write critically about food. Food serves as a useful entry point to interdisciplinary American and Ethnic Studies because centering food requires that we think across history, cultural studies, anthropology, science, ecology, aesthetics, embodiment, and more. Through food studies we gain a unique understanding of the peoples, cultures, plants, animals, mobilities, and flavors that shape societies, communities, and individuals. With a focus on Caribbean, Black, Latinx, and indigenous perspectives, we use critical food studies to examine questions about place, history, racial formations, migration, and above all, different approaches to writing, drafting, editing, and re-writing.  WR
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

* ER&M 291a / AFAM 352a / AMST 438a / LITR 295a / WGSS 343a, Caribbean Diasporic LiteratureFadila Habchi

An examination of contemporary literature written by Caribbean writers who have migrated to, or who journey between, different countries around the Atlantic rim. Focus on literature written in English in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, both fiction and nonfiction. Writers include Caryl Phillips, Nalo Hopkinson, and Jamaica Kincaid.  HU
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ER&M 292a / AFAM 239a / AMST 461a / EDST 209a / WGSS 202a, Identity, Diversity, and Policy in U.S. EducationCraig 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.  WR, HU
M 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ER&M 295b / AMST 365b / EP&E 399b / FILM 268b, Platforms and Cultural ProductionJulian 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.  Students previously enrolled in AMST 268 may not enroll in this course.  HU, SO
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ER&M 298b / AMST 307b / HIST 117b / LITR 375b / MGRK 306b, The Greek Diaspora in the United StatesMaria Kaliambou

The seminar explores the history and culture of the Greek diasporic community in the United States from the end of the 19th century to the present. The Greek American experience is embedded in the larger discussion of ethnic histories that construct modern America. The seminar examines important facets of immigration history, such as community formation, institutions and associations, professional occupations, and civic engagement. It pays attention to the everyday lives of the Greek Americans as demonstrated in religious, educational, and family cultural practices. It concludes by exploring the artistic expressions of Greek immigrants as manifested in literature, music, and film production. The instructor provides a variety of primary sources (archival records, business catalogs, community albums, personal narratives, letters, audiovisual material, etc.). All primary and secondary sources are in English; however, students are encouraged to read available material in the original language.  WR, HU
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 300a, Comparative Ethnic StudiesHi'ilei Hobart

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
Th 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 308a / AMST 398a / HIST 158, American Indian Law and PolicyNed Blackhawk

Survey of the origins, history, and legacies of federal Indian law and policy during two hundred years of United States history. The evolution of U.S. constitutional law and political achievements of American Indian communities over the past four decades.  WR, HU
T 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 309a, Traditional Medicine, Science, and the Politics of Healing in the AmericasXimena Lopez Carrillo

This course examines the history of traditional medicines, the popular attitudes toward them, and the politics of healing after the emergence of modern medicine in the Americas. By reading historical accounts of different healing traditions, students observe how different healing traditions propose different ways to understand the world and learn to situate the history of traditional and complementary medicine within larger fields of inquiry such as the history of science in the Americas, medical anthropology, migration, and cultural history. Additionally, students read about contemporary issues and debates surrounding traditional medicine such as health autonomy, health disparities, medical pluralism, globalization, and proposals for the decolonization of American healthcare. The class readings include topics such as indigenous medicine, curanderismo, yoga, acupuncture, and santería.  HU, SO
TTh 4pm-5:15pm

* ER&M 316a, Indigenous Food SovereigntyHi'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 319a / AMST 350a / SAST 475a / THST 350a, Drama in Diaspora: South Asian American Theater and PerformanceShilarna Stokes

South Asian Americans have appeared on U.S. stages since the late nineteenth century, yet only in the last quarter century have plays and performances by South Asian Americans begun to dismantle dominant cultural representations of South Asian and South Asian American communities and to imagine new ways of belonging. This seminar introduces you to contemporary works of performance (plays, stand-up sets, multimedia events) written and created by U.S.-based artists of South Asian descent as well as artists of the South Asian diaspora whose works have had an impact on U.S. audiences. With awareness that the South Asian American diaspora comprises multiple, contested, and contingent identities, we investigate how artists have worked to manifest complex representations of South Asian Americans onstage, challenge institutional and professional norms, and navigate the perils and pleasures of becoming visible. No prior experience with or study of theater/performance required. Students in all years and majors welcome.  HU
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ER&M 322a / AMST 361a, Comparative ColonialismsLisa Lowe

In this interdisciplinary seminar, students examine several historical and ongoing modes of colonialism—settler colonialism, slavery, and overseas empire, as well as their various contestations—approaching the study through readings in history, anthropology, political economy, literature, arts, and other materials. We discuss questions such as: In what ways are settler colonialism, slavery, and empire independent, and in what ways do they articulate with one another? How have colonialisms been integral to the emergence of the modern U.S. nation-state and economy? How does one read the national archive and engage the epistemology of evidence? What are the roles of cultural practices, narrative, and visual arts in countering colonial power?  HU, SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 323b, Documenting Refugees in New HavenQuan Tran

This hands-on mixed methods seminar explores the historical and contemporary experiences of refugees in New Haven. The course examines the historical contexts that have led to the resettlements of different refugee populations in New Haven as well as contemporary issues concerning these communities. Through workshops, students gain qualitative research skills by exploring oral history, archival research, and ethnographic participant observation as complementary methods to document and study refugee communities in New Haven. The course also attends to questions of representation, ethics, power dynamics, and knowledge production in documenting and studying underrepresented and vulnerable communities.  HU, SO
HTBA

* ER&M 324a or b / WGSS 325a or b, Asian Diasporas since 1800Quan 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
HTBA

* ER&M 330b / AMST 305b / EP&E 247b / FILM 298b / SAST 262b, Digital WarMadiha 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
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 332b, Cultural and Racial History of Mental HealthXimena Lopez Carrillo

Since the 1960s, social scientists have analyzed how the scientific ideas about mental illness, mental health policies, institutions, healing practices, and popular discourses surrounding mental health have been influenced by the social and cultural contexts. This course introduces students to the debates and questions guiding the history of mental health since the Civil Rights and the Psychiatric Survivor Movements in the 1960s, especially those that relate to Critical Race Theory. Through primary sources and secondary literature, students learn about the intersections between mental illness, race, and ethnicity. The class materials include topics such as disability justice, psychopharmacology, the community mental health movement, and the history of asylums in a comparative perspective.  SO
TTh 9am-10:15am

* ER&M 335a / FREN 416a / WGSS 416a, Social Mobility and MigrationMorgane 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
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 342b / HIST 372Jb / LAST 372b, Revolutionary Change and Cold War in Latin AmericaGreg Grandin

Analysis of revolutionary movements in Latin America against the backdrop of the Cold War. Critical examination of popular images and orthodox interpretations. An interdisciplinary study of the process of revolutionary change and cold war at the grassroots level.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 344a / SOCY 344a / URBN 318a, Informal CitiesLeigh-Anna Hidalgo Newton

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
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 346a / ENGL 389a, Critical Reading Methods in Indigenous LiteraturesTarren 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 352a / ANTH 393a, Writing Creative Ethnographies: Exploring Movement, Poetics, and CollaborationJill Tan

Students in this seminar on creative ethnographic writing and experimental research design explore and represent anthropological insight beyond academic argumentation—through movement, art, poetics, and collaborative writing. Course readings and media focus on migration, colonialisms, and anti-blackness, situating anthropology’s disciplinary epistemologies, empirics, ethics in integral relation to an understanding its limits, collaborative potentialities, and multimodal methods. Students need not have a background in anthropology; they should however come with a curiosity about working with creative methods and ethnography—a set of practices to render and understand local forms of everyday life as imbricated with global forces.   WR, HU, SO
T 3:30pm-5:50pm

* ER&M 356a / WGSS 135a, Latina/x/e FeminismDeb Vargas

The course introduces students to Latina/x/e feminist theories. 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
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 357a / AMST 328a / HIST 112a / HUMS 418a, "None Dare Call It Conspiracy:" Paranoia and Conspiracy Theories in 20th and 21st C. AmericaStaff

In this course we examine the development and growth of conspiracy theories in American politics and culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. We look at texts from a variety of different analytical and political traditions to develop an understanding of how and why conspiracy theories develop, their structural dynamics, and how they function as a narrative. We examine a variety of different conspiracy theories and conspiratorial groups from across the political spectrum, but we pay particular attention to anti-Semitism as a foundational form of conspiracy theorizing, as well as the particular role of conspiracy theories in far-right politics, ranging from the John Birch Society in the 1960s to the Tea Party, QAnon, and beyond in the 21st century. We also look at how real conspiracies shape and reinforce conspiracy theorizing as a mode of thought, and formulate ethical answers on how to address conspiracy as a mode of politics.  HU
MW 9am-10:15am

* ER&M 359a / HIST 345Ja, Gender and the State in Latin America and the CaribbeanAnne Eller

This seminar offers an introduction to historical constructions of gender identity and gendered polities in Latin America and the Caribbean from pre-colonial native societies into the twentieth century. We begin with an analysis of gender in the Inca empire and several lowland societies, focusing on spirituality, agriculture, and land tenure particularly. The arrival of Spanish colonialism brings tremendous and complex transformations to the societies that we consider; we analyze discourses of honor, as well as how various subjects navigated the violence and the transforming colonial state. Our readings turn to Caribbean slavery, where studies of gendered experiences of enslavement and resistance have grown considerably in recent decades. Building on these insights, we analyze the gendered experiences of abolition and inclusion into contentious new Latin American and Caribbean nations of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, we consider some of the most salient analyses of the growth of state power, including dictatorships, in multiple sites. Throughout we maintain an eye for principle questions about representation, reproduction, inclusion, political consciousness, sexuality, migration, kinship, and revolutionary struggle through a gendered lens.  WR, HU
T 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 362a, Translation: Theory, Methods, and PracticeDavid Francis

This course explores the challenges, theories, and pitfalls of translation, focusing on the ways in which acts of translation cross, create, or redefine (socio-)linguistic, national, cultural, and political borders. Special attention is paid to questions of race, economics, gender, sexuality, nationality, post-nationality, multilingualism, citizenship, exile, and their various intersections at the site of literary translation. As part of their final projects, students select and translate a short literary or visual-literary work or critique and re-translate a previously translated literary and/or visual text. Proficiency in a second language is not required. This course meets the methods requirement for the ER&M major.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 364a / HIST 334Ja / LAST 334a, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Politics of Knowledge in Latin AmericaMarcela Echeverri Munoz

Examination of ethnicity and nationalism in Latin America through the political lens of social knowledge. Comparative analysis of the evolution of symbolic, economic, and political perspectives on indigenous peoples, peasants, and people of African descent from the nineteenth century to the present. Consideration of the links between making ethnic categories in the social sciences and in literature and the rise of political mechanisms of participation and representation that have characterized the emergence of cultural politics.  WR, HURP
T 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 376b / MGRK 304b / PLSC 376b / SOCY 307b, Extreme and Radical Right MovementsParis Aslanidis

Extreme and radical right movements and political parties are a recurrent phenomenon found in most parts of the world. Discussion of their foundational values and the causes of their continuous, even increasing, support among citizens and voters.    SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 378a / HSAR 463a, Material Histories of PhotographyJennifer Raab

While we often see photographs mediated through screens, they are singular objects with specific material histories. Through Yale’s collections, this course explores these histories from the nineteenth century to the present and how they intersect with constructions of class, race, gender, and the non-human world; the ongoing processes of settler-colonialism; and both modern environmental conservation and ecological crisis.  HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 379a, Indigenous Cultures in a Global ContextDiana Onco-Ingyadet

This course explores and examine the cultural production of Indigenous peoples from Australia, South America, Africa, and North America through examination of music, art, entrepreneurship, podcasts, and other forms of expression with attention to their Indigenous identities and the discourses around modernity. Indigenous studies is dominated by historical approaches. While histories of Indigenous peoples are important, the contemporary practices, narratives, and politics of Indigenous peoples also deserve our critical attention. In an effort to illuminate Indigenous peoples experiences and forms of expression and grappling with both tradition and modernity, students examine the ways in which Indigenous peoples around the world come at the same questions, challenges, and debates from their local, specific contexts.   SO
Th 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 380a / AFAM 397a / WGSS 381a, New Developments in Global African Diaspora StudiesFatima El-Tayeb

This course traces recent developments in African Diaspora Theory, among them Afropessimism, Queer of Color Critique, Black Trans Studies and Afropolitanism. We pay particular attention to interactions between theory, art, and activism. The scope is transnational with a focus on, but not restricted to, the Anglophone DiasporaTexts. Each session roughly follows this structure: One theoretical text representing a recent development in African diaspora studies, one earlier key text that the reading builds on, one theoretical text that does not necessarily fall under the category of diaspora studies but speaks to our topic and one text that relates to the topic but uses a non-theoretical format. Students are expected to develop their own thematically related project over the course of the semester. Preference give to juniors and seniors. Email instructor for more information.  HU, SO
T 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 383a / SOCY 383a, Central Americans in the U.S.Leigh-Anna Hidalgo Newton

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
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 391a / HSHM 455a, Eugenics and its AfterlivesDaniel 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.  Prerequisite: ER&M 200.  HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 392a / HIST 131Ja, Urban History in the United States, 1870 to the PresentJennifer Klein

The history of work, leisure, consumption, and housing in American cities. Topics include immigration, formation and re-formation of ethnic communities, the segregation of cities along the lines of class and race, labor organizing, the impact of federal policy, the growth of suburbs, the War on Poverty and Reaganism, and post-Katrina New Orleans.  WR, HU
M 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ER&M 394a / ANTH 409a / EVST 422a / F&ES 422a / GLBL 394a, Climate and Society: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and HumanitiesMichael 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 406b / EDST 211b, Latinx Communities and Education in the United StatesDiana Cordova-Cobo

This course is an interdisciplinary and comparative study of Latinx communities and their experiences with K-12 education in the United States. The Latinx population in the United States continues to grow, with the Census Bureau projecting that the Latinx population will comprise 27.5 percent of the nation’s population by 2060.[1] In fact, in 2018, more than a quarter of the nation’s newborns were Latinx.[2] Yet, even as the Latinx population continues to grow, the education field has a relatively broad understanding of Latinx communities in the United States–frequently treating them as a monolith when designing everything from curriculum to education reform policies. To understand why such an approach to education studies may yield limited insight on Latinx communities, the course draws on research about the broader histories and experiences of Latinx communities in the United States before returning to the topic of K-12 education. EDST 110 Foundations in Education Studies recommended.  SO
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 409a / AMST 345a / WGSS 408a, Latinx EthnographyAna Ramos-Zayas

Consideration of ethnography within the genealogy and intellectual traditions of Latinx Studies. Topics include: questions of knowledge production and epistemological traditions in Latin America and U.S. Latino communities; conceptions of migration, transnationalism, and space; perspectives on “(il)legality” and criminalization; labor, wealth, and class identities; contextual understandings of gender and sexuality; theorizations of affect and intimate lives; and the politics of race and inequality under white liberalism and conservatism in the United States.  SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 412a / PSYC 312a, Native American Mental HealthChristopher Cutter and Mark Beitel

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 420a, Indigenous Thought and Anticolonial TheoryTarren Andrews

This seminar provides a comprehensive overview of the theoretical landscape of Native American and Indigenous Studies. The readings approach NAIS from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. We explore the major debates, methodologies, and concerns that ground the field, and provide critical context for ethical engagement with Indigenous communities and knowledges. Students learn the disciplinary standards for the evaluation of scholarly sources based on criteria derived from the most outstanding recent scholarship in the field. Students are required to read, write, and think extensively and critically about a variety of issues that are of concern for global Indigenous communities. Mastery of these skills is honed through in-depth discussion and weekly writing assignments.    HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 432a / AMST 430a / ANTH 430a / HIST 123a, Muslims in the United StatesZareena Grewal

Since 9/11, cases of what has been termed “home-grown terrorism” have cemented the fear that “bad” Islam is not just something that exists far away, in distant lands. As a result, there has been an urgent interest to understand who American Muslims are by officials, experts, journalists, and the public. Although Muslims have been part of America’s story from its founding, Muslims have alternated from an invisible minority to the source of national moral panics, capturing national attention during political crises, as a cultural threat or even a potential fifth column. Today the stakes are high to understand what kinds of meanings and attachments connect Muslims in America to the Muslim world and to the US as a nation. Over the course of the semester, students grapple with how to define and apply the slippery concept of diaspora to different dispersed Muslim populations in the US, including racial and ethnic diasporas, trading diasporas, political diasporas, and others. By focusing on a range of communities-in-motion and a diverse set of cultural texts, students explore the ways mobility, loss, and communal identity are conceptualized by immigrants, expatriates, refugees, guest-workers, religious seekers, and exiles. To this end, we read histories, ethnographies, essays, policy papers, novels, poetry, memoirs; we watch documentary and fictional films; we listen to music, speeches, spoken word performances, and prayers. Our aim is to deepen our understanding of the multiple meanings and conceptual limits of homeland and diaspora for Muslims in America, particularly in the Age of Terror.  HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 435a / AMST 422a / HIST 151Ja, Writing Tribal HistoriesNed Blackhawk

Historical overview of American Indian tribal communities, particularly since the creation of the United States. Challenges of working with oral histories, government documents, and missionary records.  WR, HU
Th 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 438a / AFAM 455a / EDST 340a, Anti-Racist Curriculum and PedagogyDaniel HoSang

This seminar explores the pedagogical and conceptual tools, resources and frameworks used to teach about race and racism at the primary and secondary levels, across diverse disciplines and subject areas. Moving beyond the more limited paradigms of racial colorblindness and diversity, the seminar introduces curricular strategies for centering race and racism in ways that are accessible to students from a broad range of backgrounds, and that work to advance the overall goals of the curriculum.   SO
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ER&M 439a / AMST 439a, Fruits of EmpireGary Okihiro

Readings, discussions, and research on imperialism and "green gold" and their consequences for the imperial powers and their colonies and neo-colonies. Spatially conceived as a world-system that enmeshes the planet and as earth's latitudes that divide the temperate from the tropical zones, imperialism as discourse and material relations is this seminar's focus together with its implantations—an empire of plants. Vast plantations of sugar, cotton, tea, coffee, bananas, and pineapples occupy land cultivated by native and migrant workers, and their fruits move from the tropical to the temperate zones, impoverishing the periphery while profiting the core. Fruits of Empire, thus, implicates power and the social formation of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation.  HU, SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 452a / AMST 452a, Mobility, Race, and U.S. Settler ColonialismLaura Barraclough

This research seminar explores the significance of movement in the making of settler colonial nation-states, as well as contemporary public history projects that interpret those histories of mobility. To do so, it brings together the fields of settler colonial studies, critical Indigenous studies, ethnic studies, public history, and mobility studies. After acquainting ourselves with key debates within each of these fields, we examine case studies from various regions of the settler United States and diverse Indigenous nations. Our goal is to deepen awareness of the complex ways that movements–voluntary and forced, and by settlers, Natives, migrants, and people of color–are reproduced and remembered (or not) in public memory, and how these memories reproduce or destabilize settler colonialism’s social and cultural structures.  HU
Th 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 462b / AMST 462b / WGSS 463b, The Study of Privilege in the AmericasAna Ramos-Zayas

Examination of inequality, not only through experiences of the poor and marginal, but also through institutions, beliefs, social norms, and everyday practices of the privileged. Topics include: critical examination of key concepts like “studying up,” “elite,” and “privilege,” as well as variations in forms of capital; institutional sites of privilege (elite prep schools, Wall Street); living spaces and social networks (gated communities, private clubs); privilege in intersectional contexts (privilege and race, class, and gender); and everyday practices of intimacy and affect that characterize, solidify, and promote privilege.  SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 467a / AFAM 457a / AFST 457a / AMST 470a / FREN 481a, Racial Republic: African Diasporic Literature and Culture in Postcolonial FranceFadila 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 470b, Independent StudyStaff

For students who wish to pursue a close study in the subjects of ethnicity, race, and/or migration, not otherwise covered by departmental offerings. May be used for research, a special project, or a substantial research paper under faculty supervision. A term paper or its equivalent and regular meetings with the adviser are required. To apply for admission, a student should present a prospectus and a bibliography, signed by the adviser, to the director of undergraduate studies. Enrollment limited.
HTBA

* ER&M 472b, Individual Reading and Research for Juniors and SeniorsStaff

For students who wish to cover material not otherwise offered by the program. The course may be used for research or for directed reading. In either case a term paper or its equivalent is required. Students meet regularly with a faculty adviser. To apply for admission, students submit a prospectus signed by the faculty adviser to the director of undergraduate studies.
HTBA

* ER&M 491a, The Senior Colloquium: Theoretical and Methodological IssuesStaff

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. Not available
HTBA

* ER&M 492b, The Senior Essay or ProjectQuan Tran

Independent research on a one-term senior essay or project.
HTBA