Related Coursework

Spring 2021 Courses

Dissent and Protest in U.S. History

SHUM 3620, AMST 3621, ASRC 3626

This a seminar course, and active student participation and discussion is a requirement. Organized by a thematic structure, each week the course will consider a different group from the earliest to the most contemporary protests of Indigenous People, Abolitionists and anti-slavery tactics, Women’s and Environmental movements, etc. Our explorations will consider a variety of primary sources, including Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Washington University Special Collections’ Documenting Ferguson, to Indigenous People’s letters from the occupation of Alcatraz, and the foundational documents of the KKK and speeches of Alabama Governor George Wallace. We will consider dissent literature, such as John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, or Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s Yellow Wallpaper. Additionally, will look at the music of protest from Billie Holiday to Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, as well as examples from visual artists. These sources will be supplemented with film and aural materials as well as secondary scholarship from Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, to Robert Gioielli,  Environmental Activism and the Urban Crisis, and Mary Pardo “Mexican American Women Grassroots Community Activists: ‘Mothers of East Los Angeles,’” and many others. Part of the Rural Humanities initiative's focus on Rural Black Lives.

Rural Media

ENGL 1168 - Topic: FWS Rural Media

The rural United States, mainstream media outlets tell us, has never been more culturally and politically divided from urban spaces. But when we make totalizing claims about "the country" and "the heartland," who and what are we referring to, really? This course examines media representations of rural spaces, while also considering how technological media has reshaped the embodied experience of living in the country. Texts under consideration may include the following: literary works by authors such as Alison Bechdel; works of sociology and theory; Instagram accounts such as @QueerAppalachia; music by artists such as Lil Nas X; and rural horror films such as Deliverance. Writing assignments will include four shorter essays, ranging from literary analysis to autoethnographic writing, as well as one longer research paper.

Minors

Community Food Systems Minor

The Minor in Community Food Systems (CFS) is a university-wide program enabling undergraduate students to engage with critical contemporary issues relating to food security, food sovereignty, and food justice. In a context of diverse goals and approaches, the CFS Minor focuses on working with community partners to collaboratively understand and develop sustainable community food systems. Students are provided with opportunities to integrate learning across courses with social, ethical,ecological, and agricultural perspectives on local food systems and participate in an experiential practicum embedded in a real-world context. Learn more about CFS here.

Crime, Prisons, Education, and Justice Minor

Students in the Crime, Prisons, Education, and Justice minor will participate in one of the most pressing civil rights challenges of the 21stcentury: ending mass incarceration and the carceral state. The classroom component gives the students the opportunity for extended critical reflection on the complex phenomena of mass incarceration. As part of the minor, students will serve as Teaching Assistants for Cornell classes in the prisons. The University has a longstanding relationship with the Cornell Prison Education Program. For many years, Cornell faculty and graduate students have enjoyed the privilege of teaching some of the most eager, appreciative, and thoughtful students they will ever encounter: the men participating in the CPEP programs in New York prisons. Learn more about the minor here.