Contacts | Program of Study | Program Requirements | BA Thesis/Capstone Project | Summary of Requirements | Honors | Minor in Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity | Grading | Courses

Program of Study

Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity is a revision to the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES)
program. Students in the classes of 2024 and 2025 have the option to pursue either RDI or
CRES. The CRES program of study and course requirements can be found on the
archived
catalog page
.

Coursework in our department enables students to rigorously study race, diaspora and
indigeneity categories that constitute human identity through claims of particularity, origins
and continuity, and mobility and dispersal, in order to enact power within the modern world.
These meanings can be seen in how unequal status, exploited and extracted condition, and
disproportionate violence and harm inform the histories of peoples comprising these
categories. Yet they are also evident in the ingenious, intersecting identities and affinities
enacted by those same peoples -- ones that imbue art, cultures, politics and collectives with
transformational and emancipating power. Through teaching, mentorship and collaborations
of various kinds, we explore with students how to think through these multifaceted and
contradictory experiences, equitably and empathically.

This study and practice will provide our students with a rigorous critical lens that will serve
them well in diverse fields. Whether our graduates are interested in media or policy, medicine
or social work, organizing or entrepreneurship, or graduate study in a variety of disciplines,
they will benefit from their ability to understand the social formations that shape our world
and navigate complex and sometimes contradictory concepts that others may find challenging
or uncomfortable, through historic and analytic lenses.

Ours is a broad curriculum generated within a thoroughly multidisciplinary department.
Students work with acclaimed experts in literature, creative writing, anthropology, political
science, sociology, social work, linguistics, visual arts, history, urban studies and cinema and
media studies, among other fields. Several core approaches tie together the range of interests
across our community. These sustain rigorous inquiry that incorporates knowledge created
beyond the boundaries of academia, while also cautioning that those who claim to advance
knowledge must account for the benefits and costs that result from ideas’ impact upon the
world. Among our core approaches are intersectionality and critical theory, and its recognition
of both identities and power structures originating through complex co-creation; dedication to
utilizing multiple methodologies within the humanities and social sciences; and a willingness to
take seriously and value ideas beyond the classroom and campus.

Program Requirements

The major will require 13 courses: three introductory critical concepts courses, four courses distributed across the foundational categories, four RDIN electives, and two courses related to the thesis/capstone project. Students opting to not complete a BA thesis or capstone project must replace the two courses related to the thesis/capstone project with two RDIN electives.

Students will have the option of combining RDI with any major or minor in any division or school of the University.

Critical Concepts

These introductory courses are meant to introduce students to the central texts and key debates that inform the study of the Department’s three core concepts. Courses on each term will be offered annually by a rotating group of faculty in the Department. After taking these courses, students will be able to identify the intellectual genealogies in which these concepts are situated and have a basic understanding of the central axes of debate.

  • RDIN 12100 Racial Formations: The course introduces students to the idea of race as a concept and racialization as a process. Students will be introduced to the diversity of meanings the concept of “race” has held, the uses to which it has been put, and how it has been both contested and mobilized by those who have been racialized. The “Racial Formations” course will, furthermore, include discussion of the history and relation of the terms race, caste, and ethnicity. The goal of the course is, in other words, to oblige students to question their everyday understandings of the term and acquire the tools needed to identify and analyze racial formations.
  • RDIN 12200 Diaspora(s): This course will introduce students to the concept of diaspora understood simultaneously as global processes of migration and dispersal, and as political and cultural practices of meaning-making. Students will think through the distinctive and overlapping experiences of various diasporic communities—organized around race (i.e. African diaspora), regions (i.e. Asian diaspora), religion (i.e. Jewish diaspora), etc. From an exploration of these histories, students will explore diasporas as an alternative deterritorialized and transnational frames of political imagination (in contradistinction to, say, the nation-state).
  • RDIN 12300 Formations of Indigeneity: In this course, students will consider Indigenous conceptions of peoplehood and the processes of settler colonialism as well as other forms of social formation. Taking a comparative and transnational approach, students will examine the triad of indigeneity, land, and sovereignty as they are refracted through specific political and cultural settings. Students will also consider contexts where the idea of indigeneity has been fraught and failed to translate, as well as its tense incorporation within the legal framework of multiculturalism or liberal democracy.

Foundational Courses

The Foundational courses are designed to expand students’ knowledge in the field of RDI and its diverse methodologies. Rather than set ones, these courses will be offered regularly by faculty, which will be designated to fulfill these requirements. Approved courses for each category can be found on the RDIN Foundational Courses List.

  • Theories: These courses will elaborate the training offered in the Critical Concepts course by highlighting specific intellectual traditions (such as Black Feminist Thought or Caribbean Studies) or taking up more specific conceptual anchors (such as intersectionality or decolonization).
  • Practices: These courses will cover European imperial expansions, including settler and exploitation colonies; slavery and its aftermath; intellectual histories of key terms and the social science disciplines that created or furthered them; diasporas and other migrations; postcolonial societies; Civil Rights & Black Power Movements; Abolition; Anti-imperialism; Intersectional movements.
  • Structures: These courses will focus on institutions and practices of domination. Topics to be covered include racial capitalism; race and space; comparative colonialisms; legal constructs and social dynamics of segregation; apartheid; science & technology; media.
  • Aesthetics & Expressive Cultures: This will include courses on literary, visual, sonic, and other modes of expressive cultures, and highlight how cultural productions reshape and resignify our central conceptual anchors. Students will also develop analyses attuned to form, genre, circulation, and reception of aesthetic materials.

Electives

Electives may be any RDIN or CRES course. In exceptional circumstances, students can petition the Director of Undergraduate Studies to count no more than two non-CRES/RDIN courses towards the major electives. If students did not take the Colonizations sequence to fulfill their Civilizations requirement, they will be allowed to count it among their electives. Students may petition to count other potentially relevant Civilizations sequences (i.e., African, Latin American, Asian) for major credit (again, only if they did not take those sequences to fulfill their Civilizations requirement).

BA Thesis/Capstone Project

Students majoring in RDI may, if they wish, write a BA thesis or complete a capstone project. Students who choose to do so are eligible for departmental honors, though completing a thesis or project does not guarantee honors.  A recommendation of the faculty advisor is required for honors, and students should have a discussion in advance with their advisor to ensure a mutual understanding of expectations for what would constitute an honors-level project.

The BA thesis enables students to apply theoretical or empirical concepts gleaned from their coursework and conduct independent inquiry toward the development of original, critical research on a topic of their choice.

The capstone project offers a chance to apply ideas and skills developed in the major to a variety of settings and media, such as a conference or symposium, an internship, a performance, art installation, a podcast or film, among many options. This project can be carried out individually or in collaboration with other graduating students.

Students pursuing a thesis or capstone project must identify an RDI faculty member who can supervise their project or paper, with the option of securing a second reader outside of the Department. Students then submit a short proposal, which should reflect feedback from the faculty advisor, to the director of undergraduate studies by the end of Winter quarter of their third year. 

Students completing a thesis/project must enroll in RDIN 29800 BA Thesis/Capstone Seminar, a course led by the department’s preceptor(s) designed to introduce students to a range of research methods and to help determine which method(s) would fit a research thesis or capstone project focusing on topics related to race, diaspora, and/or indigeneity.

Class of 2024: Students will attend this seminar both in Autumn and Winter quarters of their fourth-year. In Autumn quarter the seminar meets weekly. In Winter quarter the seminar meets every other week.

Class of 2025 and beyond: Students will attend this seminar in Spring of their third-year and Autumn of their fourth-year. In Spring quarter, the seminar meets weekly. In Autumn quarter the seminar meets every other week.

Students completing a BA thesis/project must also register for RDIN 29900, a reading and research course under the supervision of their faculty advisor. The final grade on the thesis/project will be assigned to the RDIN 29900 registration.

The BA theses and capstone projects are due by Friday of the fifth week of the student's quarter of graduation. Students will present their work at a departmental symposium.

Summary of Requirements

Critical Concepts Courses300
Racial Formations
Diaspora(s)
Formations of Indigeneity
Foundational Courses - One course from each list400
Theories
Practices
Structures
Aesthetics & Expressive Cultures
RDIN Electives400
RDIN 29800BA Thesis/Capstone Seminar100
or RDIN elective
RDIN 29900: BA Essay/Capstone Project100
or RDIN elective
Total Units1300

Honors

To be eligible for honors, students must earn a 3.25 major GPA, complete a BA thesis or capstone project, and receive recommendation for honors from their faculty advisor.

Minor in Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity

The RDI minor will consist of five courses: 3 courses on Critical Concepts (Indigeneity, Diaspora, and Racial Formations); and 2 additional RDIN courses. These courses may not be (1) double-counted with the student’s major(s) or with other minors and (2) may not be counted toward general education requirements.

Critical Concepts Courses300
Racial Formations
Diaspora(s)
Formations of Indigeneity
RDIN Electives200
Total Units500

Grading

Students may take up to two courses in the major on a P/F basis. All courses in the minor must be taken for a quality grade.

Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity Courses

RDIN 10117. She'll never be human again!": Superheroes and Bodily Transformation. 100 Units.

This course looks at the mutated, rearranged, supplemented, and hyper-able bodies of superheroes and supervillains. Drawing on disabilities studies, critical race theory, gender studies, and trans and queer studies, we'll examine 20th- and 21st-century representations of super-anatomies and their place in American culture. Within superhero media-a genre full of spectacular bodily transformation, biological difference, and physical violence-where do ideologies around race, gender, sexuality, ability, and definitions of "human" get reproduced or destabilized? How can these biodivergent figures who stretch, incinerate, and bubble with muscle be resources for envisioning new possibilities for queer and racialized living, or for reading outside of traditional fantasies of white male power? What is the role of Western science and medicine, of accidents, experiments, and evolutions? Looking at film, graphic novels, and literary texts, we'll ask how materiality-what the body's made of-can (re)produce ideology. Finally, we'll consider these narratives in relation to how bodily transformation is policed today, from bans on gender-affirming care to non-consensual "mutations" caused by environmental racism. Students of all majors are welcome. (Fiction, 1830-1990, Theory)

Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 10117, GNSE 12126

RDIN 10600. Power and Resistance in the Black Atlantic. 100 Units.

Beginning with the arrival of European explorers on the West African coast in the fifteenth century and culminating with the stunning success of radical abolitionist movements across the Americas in the nineteenth century, the formation of the Black Atlantic irrevocably reshaped the modern world. This class will examine large-scale historical processes, including the transatlantic slave trade, the development of plantation economies, and the birth of liberal democracy. Next, we will explore the lives of individual Africans and their American descendants, the communities they built, and the cultures they created. We will consider the diversity of the Black Atlantic by examining the lives of a broad array of individuals, including black intellectuals, statesmen, soldiers, religious leaders, healers, and rebels. We will examine African diasporic subjects as creative rather than reactive historical agents and their unique contributions to Atlantic cultures, societies, and ideas. Within this geographically and temporally expansive history students will explore a key set of animating questions: What is the Black Atlantic? How can we understand both the commonalities and diversity of the experiences of Africans in the Diaspora? What kinds of communities, affinities, and identities did Africans create after being uprooted by the slave trade? What methods do scholars use to understand this history? And finally, what is the historical and political legacy of the Black Atlantic?

Equivalent Course(s): LACS 10600, HIST 10600

RDIN 12100. Racial Formations. 100 Units.

Race is arguably the most significant social category shaping the fabric and trajectory of American life-and yet, it is also one of the most poorly understood and eagerly avoided topics in our public consciousness. In this course, we will examine paradigms for understanding race in both academic and popular contexts. Using theoretical constructs, historical case studies, contemporary topics in politics and culture, and empirical research on racial attitudes and disparities, this course explores questions such as: what are the racial boundaries that shape our lives? Where did they come from, how have they changed over time, and how are they continuing to evolve? Whose interests do they serve? We will also draw on news and current events to observe and analyze the ways that racial boundaries and the social meaning of race impact public policy and public debate.

Instructor(s): Eve L. Ewing     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): None
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 12600

RDIN 12200. Diaspora(s) 100 Units.

This class will orient students to the practices, frameworks, and geographies of diasporic communities from the early modern period to the present. The term's initial origins in Jewish experiences of forced dispersal and migration underscores how its meaning is shaped by histories of collective displacement and loss, as well as invention and heritage. The discourse of diaspora remains foundational for several interdisciplinary fields, including Black studies, Asian American studies, Indigenous studies, Latinx studies, and more. Within these intellectual orientations, diasporic identities are notably expansive and unfixed. As observed by the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall, "diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference," bridging old and new traditions of worldmaking, resistance, and solidarities within and across distinct diasporic sensibilities." Students in this class will work with scholarly, literary, sonic, and visual materials demonstrating how use of diaspora alternately mobilizes and roots people, in ways that claim pasts and futures at once.

Instructor(s): Adam Green     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 22700, HIST 12706, CRES 12700

RDIN 12300. Formations of Indigeneity. 100 Units.

Whose land are we on? What does it mean to be Indigenous, for generations past and in the twenty-first century? From debates over claims of Indigenous ancestry by political actors to the struggles of sacred lands protection against natural resource extraction, understanding the stakes of these concerns for Indigenous peoples and nations is more relevant than ever. This seminar-part of the sequence for majors in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity-introduces students to core texts and concepts in the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS). Topics will include sovereignty and governance, settler colonialism, citizenship and nationhood, blood quantum and racialization, diasporas and urban indigeneity, and relationships to land and environment. Course activities may include engagement with Indigenous films, dialogues with visiting Indigenous scholars, and field trips to Chicago-area cultural institutions.

Instructor(s): Teresa Montoya and Matthew Kruer     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 17800, CHST 12300, CRES 12800, ANTH 12800

RDIN 13580. Introduction to Asian American Literatures. 100 Units.

This is a survey course that introduces students to the complex and uneven history of Asians in American from within a transnational context. As a class, we will look at Asian American texts and films while working together to create a lexicon of multilingual, immigrant realities. Through theoretical works that will help us define keywords in the field and a wide range of genres (novels, films, plays, and graphic novels), we will examine how Asia and Asians have been represented in the literatures and popular medias of America. Some of the assigned authors include, but are not limited to, Carlos Bulosan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa, Fae Myenne Ng, Nora Okja Keller, Cathy Park Hong, Ted Chiang, and Yoko Tawada.

Instructor(s): Mee-Ju Ro     Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 13580, ENGL 13580

RDIN 16100. Introduction to Latin American Civilization I. 100 Units.

Autumn Quarter examines the origins of civilizations in Latin America with a focus on the political, social, and cultural features of the major pre-Columbian civilizations of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec. The quarter concludes with an analysis of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest, and the construction of colonial societies in Latin America. The courses in this sequence may be taken in any order.

Instructor(s): Emilio Kourí     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 36101, ANTH 23101, LACS 34600, LACS 16100, SOSC 26100, CRES 16101, HIST 16101

RDIN 16200. Introduction to Latin American Civilization II. 100 Units.

Winter Quarter addresses the evolution of colonial societies, the wars of independence, and the emergence of Latin American nation-states in the changing international context of the nineteenth century.

Instructor(s): Mauricio Tenorio     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): SOSC 26200, PPHA 39770, HIST 36102, LACS 34700, CRES 16102, LACS 16200, HIST 16102, ANTH 23102

RDIN 16404. Criminal, Police, and Citizen in Latin America. 100 Units.

Crime and policing are intensely debated today around the world, but perhaps nowhere are these debates felt more sharply than in Latin America, the site of both high rates of crime and violence and widespread distrust of the police and criminal justice institutions. This course delves into the history of these issues in the region. In the process, it sheds light on broader themes of Latin American history from the late colonial period to the present day. As the course shows through topics ranging from crimes against honor, to the policing of street vending, to the drug war, crime and policing in Latin America have been crucial spaces for the construction and contestation of social and legal hierarchies, the voicing of political protest and social critique, and the making and unmaking of citizenship. Through the use of diverse readings, including primary sources such as court records, satirical poems, and blockbuster films, students will trace how ideas of crime, and of the role of the state in attempting to define it and respond to it, changed over time with broader social, economic, and political developments. In doing so, they will examine how crime and policing have intersected with class, race, and gender, and how debates over crime and the practices of policing have shaped the boundaries of citizenship.

Instructor(s): K. Boyar     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 16404, HIST 16404, LACS 16404

RDIN 17908. African-American History to 1865. 100 Units.

This introductory undergraduate lecture course examines histories of people of African descent in continental North America from the colonial period to the US Civil War. relationship between slavery and republicanism in the early United States. With an interdisciplinary approach and transnational perspective, it considers the contested role of chattel slavery in the creation of US political systems, market relations, social hierarchies, and cultural productions. We will use primary sources and secondary literature to consider the possibilities and limits of archival research; contingent histories of race-making; the relationship between slavery and capitalism; the workings of domination, agency, and resistance; and black "freedom dreams" in the antebellum United States.

Instructor(s): R. Johnson     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): DEMS 17908, HIST 17908

RDIN 18405. Histories of Native America. 100 Units.

Modern Americans often think of their history beginning with the European discovery of the "New World." But those Europeans did not "discover" anything. In the Americas, they encountered an Old World filled with diverse Indigenous peoples, cultures, and polities; a world alive with its own dynamic histories. This courses explores the world of Native North America from the evolution of complex city-states in the centuries before European invasion to the seismic changes that Indigenous peoples have navigated in the era of colonization (1492-present). Topics include Native struggles to create a shared world with settlers in the seventeenth century; movements to maintain independence from European empires and the new United States; nineteenth-century experiences of conquest, removal, confinement to reservations, and coercive assimilation; twentieth-century resurgence, battles in the courts, and "Red Power" activism; and twenty-first century struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and environmental justice. Students will engage with a variety of primary and secondary sources, focusing on texts produced by Native people and centering Native points of view.

Equivalent Course(s): HIST 18405

RDIN 18702. Race, Politics, and Sports in the United States. 100 Units.

This lecture-discussion course explores how racial identity has been experienced, represented, and contested throughout American history.  We will examine the major historical transformations that have shaped the development and understanding of racial identity, by engaging historical, legal, literary, and filmic texts.  A diverse set of primary sources will be read against historical works.  Moving along both chronological and thematic axes, themes of ambiguous, hidden, and hybrid identity will be critical to investigate the problems of racial mixture, mixed-race identity, racial passing, and racial performance across historical periods.  The interplay of the problems of class and gender in the construction of racial identity will also be explored.

Instructor(s): M. Briones     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): History in the World courses use history as a valuable tool to help students critically exam our society, culture, and politics. Preference given to 1st- and 2nd-yr students.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 18702

RDIN 20007. Africa in the Middle East and the Middle East in Africa. 100 Units.

From Mansa Musa's Hajj in 1324 to the contemporary Afrobeats scene in Dubai, African and Middle Eastern societies share long histories of interconnection. This course examines these interconnections from the early modern to the contemporary era through a series of case studies ranging from traditions of exchange on the Swahili Coast, to the Ottoman Scramble for Africa, to the creation of a long-standing Lebanese diaspora in West Africa and a more recent Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel. Students will examine debates that animate this field of scholarship including conversations about race; histories of slavery and its legacies; conceptions of indigeneity, nativism, and settler colonialism; religious encounters; gender and society; shared and divergent experiences of European colonialism and struggles for independence; and transnational collective-building projects such as Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism. In addition to scholarship based on textual analysis, students will develop skills to investigate cultural sources such as music, photography, film, fashion, literature, and sports. No prior coursework in Middle Eastern or African studies is required. However, a background in African Civ, Islamic History and Society Civ, or Islamic Thought and Literature Civ is recommended.

Instructor(s): K. Hickerson     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Assignments: Short papers; long paper; in-class presentation
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 20007, HIST 20007

RDIN 20100. Afrofuturism(s) 100 Units.

Despite its explosion in popularity as a term of art in the last ten years, "Afrofuturism" remains a contested term and set of concepts-from debates about its engagement with Black diasporic identities, to the question of how essential notions of the "future" are to Afrofuturism. This course will explore Afrofuturism as a set of ideas still in flux, with repercussions across politics, aesthetics, theory, and artistic interventions, using texts from a wide array of disciplines and media, including sociology, cinema, visual art, critical theory, and literature. This course will be an RDI Community Engaged Course, meaning half of the students will be University of Chicago undergraduates and half will be members of our broader community. To be considered for enrollment in the course, please fill out the form linked below and request instructor consent. https://bit.ly/afrofuturisms2024

Instructor(s): Eve L. Ewing     Terms Offered: Winter

RDIN 20140. Qualitative Field Methods. 100 Units.

This course introduces techniques of, and approaches to, ethnographic field research. We emphasize quality of attention and awareness of perspective as foundational aspects of the craft. Students conduct research at a site, compose and share field notes, and produce a final paper distilling sociological insight from the fieldwork.

Instructor(s): O. McRoberts     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 20140, SOCI 20140

RDIN 20200. Race and the Politics of Vulnerability. 100 Units.

This course will borrow from and build on the work of W.E.B Dubois, who asks in his canonical text, The Souls of Black Folk, what does it feel like to be a problem. Throughout the quarter, we will interrogate the question: what does it feel like to be a vulnerable subject in a vulnerable political and economic system. Moreover, how do we build solidarities of resistance under such conditions? Our engagement with DuBois reminds us that explorations of vulnerability cannot be divorced from engagements with the racial order, white supremacy, and racial capitalism. For many years vulnerability was thought to be the purview primarily of the self-help domain, understood largely at an individual level. However, feminist scholars remind that us a more radical imagining of political vulnerability ties us to others collectively, demands a shared accountability to and for others, focuses not only on the individual but also the structural, and under the best conditions necessitates that we imagine new ways of being and new worlds of possibility. Thus, centering vulnerability in our political analyses means using the lens of vulnerability not only as a means of critique, but also as a generative space of possibility. Throughout the quarter, we will explore how the idea and experience of vulnerability as it intersects with race and racial order relates to and shapes our politics today and how it facilitates or hinders a politics of solidarity moving forward.

Instructor(s): Cathy Cohen     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 30200, PLSC 30320, CRES 22302, PLSC 20200

RDIN 20233. Race in Contemporary American Society. 100 Units.

This survey course in the sociology of race offers a socio-historical investigation of race in American society. We will examine issues of race, ethnic and immigrant settlement in the United States. Also, we shall explore the classic and contemporary literature on race and inter-group dynamics. Our investigative tools will include an analysis of primary and secondary sources, multimedia materials, photographic images, and journaling. While our survey will be broad, we will treat Chicago and its environs as a case study to comprehend the racial, ethnic, and political challenges in the growth and development of a city.

Instructor(s): S. Hicks-Bartlett     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring. Autumn quarter offered at the Undergraduate level only and Spring offered at the Graduate level only
Equivalent Course(s): MAPS 30233, SOCI 30233, SOCI 20233

RDIN 20300. Living in Our Last Days: Blackness and Apocalypse. 100 Units.

What does it look like to survive the end of the world? Maxine Lavon Montgomery describes apocalypse as a "cataclysmic upheaval that portends the end of an old era and the beginning of an altogether new reality". This course explores what it would mean to consider slavery as an apocalyptic event that both shapes the world we currently inhabit and impacts present and future moments of disaster. What does an apocalypse look like in the afterlife of slavery? How do conditions of antiblackness shape the ways people experience both natural and manmade events of catastrophe such as hurricane, disease, and genocide? In addition to reading and discussing texts including Parable of the Sower, Salvage the Bones, and The Deep, this course will address these questions by engaging with the works of scholars such as Saidiya Hartman and Christina Sharpe.

Instructor(s): Danielle Jones     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 20300, ENGL 30300, RDIN 30300

RDIN 20400. Black Girlhood. 100 Units.

First popularized on social media in 2013, the phrase "Black Girl Magic" has expanded far beyond its initial use as a twitter hashtag. It can be seen on (a bunch of different objects and the cover of many children's books and poetry anthologies). However, the visibility of the phrase did not come without controversy. Some critics argued that rather than being an uplifting rallying cry for positive depictions of black girlhood, it instead reinforced dehumanizing stereotypes of the "strong black woman". This debate leads us to question: How do black girls tend to be depicted both popular media and in literature? How might these depictions differ depending on author, type of media, or social context? What do they say about the ways that black girls experience childhood, gender, and friendship? To engage with these questions, this course will explore literary works including The Bluest Eye, Betsey Brown, and Abeng, along with television shows such as Lovecraft Country to examine 20th and 21st century depictions of black girlhood. We will also think with theoretical works of black feminism and black girlhood studies.

Instructor(s): Danielle Jones     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 33167, GNSE 23167, RDIN 30400, ENGL 30422, ENGL 20422

RDIN 20408. Trans Genres. 100 Units.

This course explores genres of writing and cultural production concerned with transgender life and politics. Students will engage genre's relationship to gender, as they will read across memoir, fiction, poetry, and criticism. (Theory).

Instructor(s): C. Riley Snorton     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 22408, GNSE 20133

RDIN 20410. Ekspresyon ekri: Kreyòl lakay soti Ayiti rive nan dyaspora a. 100 Units.

This course will provide opportunities to promote deeper knowledge of the Haitian culture while emphasizing the development of writing skills in the Kreyòl language through the use of a variety of authentic texts and cultural experiences. Topics covered in the course will include the Haitian revolution, cuisine, and audio-visual and performing arts. Moreover, students will participate in different cultural exploration outings in the city of Chicago, which will provide additional opportunities to interpret cultural artifacts and reflect on the Haitian culture and its influence on the representation and daily lives of Haitians in the diaspora, particularly in Chicago. In this course, we will: 1) analyze different cultural artifacts in the Haitian cultures through primary and secondary texts, 2) examine the influences of these cultural phenomena on the representation of Haitians and the creation of Haitian identity in the diaspora, and 3) and reflect on the importance of cultural identity in a migration context. Those who will take the course for Kreyòl credits will also develop additional syntactic knowledge in the language through creation of diverse essays. This course will be conducted in two weekly sessions: a common lecture session in English and an additional weekly discussion session in English or Kreyòl.

Equivalent Course(s): KREY 20400, CHST 20400, LACS 20401

RDIN 20500. Race, Freedom, and the State. 100 Units.

The rise of popular abolitionist movements over the past two decades has brought renewed attention to the complicity of the state (broadly understood) in maintaining structures of racial domination. Since the early modern period, however, democratic, liberal, and republican political theorists have sought to reconcile state power with the idea of freedom-sometimes positing the formation of the state as freedom's precondition. While scholars and activists have advanced a wide array of arguments about the proper role of the state in dismantling racial domination, the discourse of abolition at times encourages suspicion toward using state power for the purpose of realizing racial justice. In this course we will engage contemporary dissatisfaction with the state by turning back to the development of the idea of the modern state and its relationship to racialized regimes of domination. We will ask, why did early modern and modern thinkers tie the ideal of freedom to the establishment of the state? In what ways were these theories of the state bound up with the practice of racial domination and hierarchy? Can we reimagine the state so that its institutions promulgate racial justice and equality? Or would movements for freedom and equality find more useful theoretical resources in anti-statist traditions? Authors that we will cover include Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Georg Hegel, W.E.B. Du Bois, Lucy Parsons, Cedric Robinson, Charles Mills, Angela Davis, and Saidiya Hartman

Instructor(s): Larry Svabek     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 20500, RDIN 30500, PLSC 30502

RDIN 20600. The Global Color Line and the New International Order. 100 Units.

In 1900, W. E. B. Du Bois prophesied that the "problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line," concomitantly laying the foundation of a new language of solidarity by enlisting, not only the "millions of black men in Africa [and] America" but also "the brown and yellow myriads" in Asia, as victims of White oppression. The color line, seen as a collaborative imperial instrument to keep European states atop a global hierarchy, thus represented both problem and solution for Du Bois. This course explores the provocative thesis of color line by examining two sites where its structural logic was most evident: the continent of Africa and the emerging international law, in the early 20th century. The first part of the course focuses on Africa as a crucible for various White imperialists and a diverse group of settlers belonging to "darker races"-drawn to the continent by its riches. We will explore the multiple forms of solidarity forged among people of color, while acknowledging how real-world animosities attenuated this aspiration. The second half examines the burgeoning int'l order by pivoting on the evolution of int'l law reliant on an "exclusion-inclusion model" that perpetuated the color line, along with a concomitant process of global solidarity that culminated in the Bandung Conference. Students will utilize archival and primary sources, complemented by cutting-edge contemporary scholarship.

Instructor(s): Taimur Reza     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 25328, HIST 27417, SALC 35328, RDIN 30600, CHDV 20600

RDIN 20700. Global Health, Environment, and Indigenous Futures. 100 Units.

The global coronavirus pandemic has made evident the significance of ecological (im)balances for the well-being of societies. The relationship between structural inequalities, changing environments and health, especially for historically and socio-economically marginalized communities, is now well established. At the same time, a growing body of literature links the material conditions of marginalized communities-for instance, spaces of dwelling and conditions of labor-to health status, globally. Based on a set of interdisciplinary literature arranged through anthropological theories, this course will critically engage with notions of health and well-being for indigenous communities, tracing injustices that stem histories of racial, caste- and ethnicity-based, and environmental exclusions. The readings are organized around one central question: What does it mean to be indigenous in a changing planet where social, political, and economic systems are marked by enduring legacies of systemic violence? This graduate and undergraduate level course will introduce contexts within which structural exclusions lead to ill-health and loss of well-being among indigenous communities across the globe. The aim is to develop critical thinking on the political economy and political ecologies of indigenous health as imbricated with issues of social, economic, and environmental justice.

Instructor(s): Sanghamitra Das
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 30700, SALC 32704, SALC 26501, RDIN 30700, CHDV 20700, ANTH 20700, ANTH 30700, CEGU 20700, CHDV 30750

RDIN 20800. Research, Writing, and Mass Incarceration. 100 Units.

In this mixed enrollment course, outside students from UChicago and inside students who are incarcerated at Stateville Prison will come together each week at Stateville Prison for a quarter of learning, dialogue and knowledge building across the prison wall. We will explore the possibilities, challenges and ethical considerations researchers should contemplate when pursuing research and writing within and about carceral constraints. We will also interrogate the different methods such as ethnography, interviews and even surveys used to amplify the voices of those inside. Finally, we will look to theories such as Black feminism and queer theory to think together about the construction of (subjugated) knowledge. Through weekly assignments and exercises including developing and conducting interviews and surveys, students will develop strategies and methods for the practice of research and writing about mass incarceration. Throughout the course, guest scholars, researchers and writers will be invited to share their relevant work with us. By the end of the quarter all students will be expected to produce a research proposal for a project on mass incarceration as well as contribute to a group research project. Due to the unique nature of this course, it will require availability all day (8am-3pm) on Thursdays during spring quarter Application required for enrollment: https://tinyurl.com/RDINStateville

Instructor(s): C. Cohen, A. Kim     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HMRT 20800, CHST 20800, PLSC 20802

RDIN 20900. Violence: Vigilantism, Community Defense, and Armed Resistance. 100 Units.

This course explores extralegal violence primarily in the US, from decolonial struggles to white mobs to self and community defense by marginalized peoples. How do we understand different forms of violence, defense, and resistance in relation to the violence of the state? What role does violence play in struggles for justice and freedom? This seminar surveys a range of social science approaches to these questions. In addition to reading the work of anthropologists, historians, and philosophers, we will also take up these themes as they appear in popular media and current events.

Equivalent Course(s): CRES 22900, RDIN 30900, ANTH 22547, ANTH 32547, HIST 27907

RDIN 21090. Reading Transnational Early Modern Race through Gender. 100 Units.

Is race an anachronistic expression in Renaissance Europe? What are the stakes for studies of race in premodern periods? How did early modern race operate differently from contemporary racialized epistemologies and in what ways are we continuously influenced by the premodern times? This course tackles these questions by foregrounding two vocabularies in the early modern racial paradigm: gender and transnational constructions. We will read primary texts set and produced both in Renaissance Europe and its colonies in Africa, Americas, and Asia, and ask: how did the structural relationship of race and gender work in tandem with, or against each other? What roles did transnational and transcultural exchanges such as Christian missions, colonization, commerce, and slave trade play in the ideations of race? We will pay close attention to fictionalized female characters and women writers, ranging from the desired white beauties in Shakespeare's Othello and Cervantes's The Bagnios of Algiers, to Nahua (Mexico) and Visayan (the Philippines) women in The Florentine Codex and The Boxer Codex, to the spiritual diaries of indigenous and black nuns in the Colonial Spanish America, to Aphra Behn's depiction of Oroonoko's execution in Surinam, and finally to the unwritten disposable lives of enslaved black women in the Atlantic slave trade.

Instructor(s): Yunning Zhang      Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 31090, GLST 21090, CMLT 21090, SPAN 22090, GNSE 23166

RDIN 21100. Transatlantic Crossings: Everyday Race and Racism in the 20th Century. 100 Units.

In this course we will explore the "work" race does on both sides of the Atlantic, focusing mainly on the period from the turn of the 20th century to the present. Topics covered will include: national variations in how "race" and racial identity have been defined and invoked, including policies on the naming, gathering and use of racial statistics; the fundamental rupture in ideas about race and transatlantic relations during and following the Great War and its impact on popular culture during the interwar period; the transatlantic resurgence and challenges to "scientific racism," focusing especially on how it was manifested in the politics and practices of biological reproduction and adoption; the social reproduction of racial ideas and identities manifested in children's books, toys, films, and sports; and how sports and the media shape and are shaped by racial ideologies. We will explore these topics as relatively autonomous developments within the nation-states composing the Atlantic world, while noting the transatlantic transfers, connections, and influences that both strengthened and challenged them. Our readings and discussions will focus heavily on the U.S. and France, but where pertinent comparative references will be made to Great Britain, Germany, and Brazil.

Instructor(s): Leora Auslander     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 27408, RDIN 31100, HIST 37408

RDIN 21150. Psychology of Race and Racism. 100 Units.

This upper-level seminar will focus on the psychology of race and racism. We will discuss both structural and individual level factors that create and maintain racism in the U.S. context. While this course will focus on social psychology, we will also draw from other areas of psychology. We will discuss social structures and institutions that perpetuate racism, policies that shape societal attitudes and behaviors, and psychological frameworks for understanding racism. We will begin the course with a discussion of the origins of race and racism. We will then transition to contemporary expressions of racism. The goals of this course are to analyze structural contexts influencing racist attitudes and behaviors, evaluate the impact of racism on racially minoritized groups, and to examine strategies and interventions to address racism.

Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 31150, PSYC 21150, PSYC 31150

RDIN 21315. Narratives of American Religious History. 100 Units.

How do we tell the story of religion in America? Is it a story of Protestant dominance? Of religious diversity? Of transnational connections? Of secularization? This course examines how historians have grappled with such questions. We will read the work of scholars who have offered narratives explaining American religious history, including figures like Sydney Ahlstrom, Albert Raboteau, Mark Noll, Ann Braude, Catherine Albanese, and Thomas Tweed. This course will introduce students to key historiographical questions in the study of American religion, as well as to classic texts which have shaped the field's development.

Instructor(s): William Schultz and Curtis Evans     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course meets the HS or SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 22315, KNOW 41315, RLST 21315, HCHR 41315, RDIN 41315, HIST 47304, AMER 41315, RAME 41315, HIST 27304, AMER 21315

RDIN 21677. Latinxs, Labor, and the Law in the U.S. 100 Units.

Latinidad" is an ethno-racial signifier meant to encompass people of Latin American descent living in the United States. Terms like "Latina," "Hispanic," and most recently, "Latinx/e" are meant to evoke a commonality that crosses nationalities to create political power & social recognition in the United States. Like every other identity term, "Latinidad" is an ever-contested construction with uncertain contours. The history of Latinidad in the U.S. has its origins in a myriad social efforts and forces: political campaigns, immigration policies, community organizing, migrant labor programs, union campaigns, marketing strategies, artistic expressions, & many more. Rather than simplify or ignore these tensions, the purpose of this class is to confront the agonistic aspects of Latinidad head-on. In this course, students will read widely across the social sciences & humanities, delving deep into the making and remaking of "Latinidad" in the U.S. We will be playing foremost attention to the roles that U.S. economic relations & government policies have had in shaping collective understandings of Latinidad, from the making of a "brown collar" labor sector sustaining the American economy to the development of census categories to describe Latinxs. Furthermore, we will look at U.S. Latinxs not merely as objects of policy, but also as subjects of politics, delving into the past and present of U.S. Latinx political life.

Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 22677

RDIN 22100. Disease, Health, and the Environment in Global Context. 100 Units.

Recent concerns about monkeypox, COVID-19, Zika virus, and Ebola have attracted renewed attention to previous disease outbreaks that have significantly shaped human political, social, economic, and environmental history. Such diseases include: smallpox during the 16th-century Columbian exchange; syphilis during the 18th-century exploration and settlement of the Pacific; bubonic plague in the late-19th-century colonization and urbanization of South and East Asia; and yellow fever during America's 20th-century imperial projects across the Caribbean. Through readings, discussions, library visits, and written assignments that culminate in a final project, students in this course will explore how natural and human-induced environmental changes have altered our past experiences with disease and future prospects for health. First, we will examine how early writers understood the relationship between geography, environment, hereditary constitution, race, gender, and human health. We will then analyze the symbiotic relationship among pathogens, human hosts, and their environments. Finally, we will explore how social factors (e.g. migration, gendered divisions of labor, poverty, and segregation) and human interventions (e.g. epidemiology, medical technology, and sanitary engineering) have influenced the distribution of infectious diseases and environmental risks.

Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 22100, HIST 25033, HIPS 22210, GLST 22101, CEGU 22100

RDIN 22112. African American Political Thought: Democracy's Reconstruction. 100 Units.

This course investigates the major themes, debates, and tensions that animate African American thought from the American war for independence through the present day. We will explore how enslaved Africans and free African Americans confronted the changing racial regimes in American history, resisted forms of racial domination, and reimagined the values at the heart of American democracy. Such a survey of African American thought raises critical questions about the possibility of articulating a unifying African American experience, the costs of forming political attachments to states and national identities as well as the prospects for establishing a multiracial democratic society in the U.S. We will approach these debates with an historical-comparative method, seeking to understand how the terms of political debate have shifted over the course of the past two centuries. Authors that we will cover include Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Martin Delaney, Ida B. Wells, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, and Clarence Thomas.

Instructor(s): Larry Svabek     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 22212, CRES 22112

RDIN 22150. Contemporary Black Politics. 100 Units.

This course explores the communities, issues, actions, and arguments that comprise the contemporary field of Black politics. Our specific task is to explore the question of how have Black people engaged in politics and political struggles in the United States since the Civil Rights Movement. Each week we will take up a contemporary issue/movement/action that has shaped Black politics as we know it, including mass incarceration, the election of the country's first Black president, Barack Obama, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter Movement, and intersectionality and the role of black feminism in shaping the radical freedom tradition in Black politics. Throughout the course we will attempt to situate Black politics in conversation with the literature that defines the area of study we label American politics. Is there such a thing as black politics?

Instructor(s): Cathy Cohen     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): LLSO 25902, CRES 22150, PLSC 22150

RDIN 22203. Caste, Reproduction, and Citizenship in India. 100 Units.

This undergraduate and graduate level seminar will center on caste and reproduction in understanding notions of citizenship in India. The course will systematically engage with ideas of belonging to the post-colonial nation-state, particularly as experienced from following standpoints-gender, caste, indigeneity, and class. Understanding how citizenship is constituted, performed and negotiated in India, especially in relation to the biological and political reproduction of "good citizens", reveals the scopes and limits of citizenship as governance. The course is premised on the centrality of reproduction to governance in the largest democracy of the world. Drawing on a set of interdisciplinary literature, the readings are organized around feminist theorizations of the State, governance, and citizenship to locate the body within the body politic. The aim is to develop critical thinking on how the politics of reproduction is deeply imbricated with the reproduction of democratic politics; a politics that is entangled with knowledge, expertise and constructed human difference. In so doing, the course brings together reproductive governance with articulations of social justice in India.

Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 22207, RDIN 32203, GNSE 32207, CHDV 32203, CHDV 22203, ANTH 32203, SALC 35704

RDIN 22311. Aspirations of Justice. 100 Units.

This class thinks through questions of what justice means, what justice promises, what justice betrays, and what possibilities for politics are opened by aspirations of justice at moments of radical rupture. It does so through a focus on critical conceptual terms that also become the frameworks for praxis and institutionalization after war/violence/trauma/revolution/colonialism/slavery/casteism: terms such as transition, transformation, restoration, reconstruction, and repair. The readings will be comparative but grounded out of South Africa's experience of transition from apartheid, a process that remains frictioned, fractured and far from finished. At the core of the class are two concerns. First: how does one think about non-retributive forms of justice, and what aporias of forgiveness lie at their core? Second, how do these imaginaries and forms of justice get constituted and instituted, out of different histories of foundational violence, different transitional processes, at different moments in time? How, in the process, do histories themselves get rewritten through a process of rewriting wrongs?

Instructor(s): Kaushik Sunder Rajan
Equivalent Course(s): AASR 36311, CRES 22311, HIPS 26311, CCCT 36311, ANTH 36311, CHSS 36311

RDIN 22350. Black Game Theory. 100 Units.

This course explores games created by, for, or about the Black diaspora, though with particular emphasis on the United States. We will analyze mainstream "AAA" games, successful independent and art games, and educational games. Beyond video games, we will take a comparative media studies perspective that juxtaposes video games with novels, films, card games, board games, and tabletop roleplaying games. Readings will be drawn from writing by Frantz Fanon, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Lindsay Grace, Saidiya Hartman, Sarah Juliet Lauro, Achille Mbembe, Fred Moten, Frank B. Wilderson, and others.

Equivalent Course(s): MAAD 12350, RDIN 32350, CDIN 32350, ENGL 32352, CMST 32350, ENGL 22352, CMST 22350

RDIN 22500. Staging Islam: Traps and Trappings of Representation. 100 Units.

From terrorists to "good Muslims," standards in the racial, cultural, and religious representations surrounding Islam have fluctuated across U.S. media. How do we conceptualize the nature of visual perception and reception? The history of colonialism, secular modernity, gender, patriarchy, and the blurred distinctions between religion and racialization have all contributed to a milieu of visual cultures that stage visions of and arguments about Islam. Hostility towards Muslims has not abated as we venture well into the 21st century, and many remain quick to blame an amorphous media for fomenting animosity towards the "real" Islam. We take these essentialist terms of engagement as the start of our inquiry: what is the promise of a meaningful image? What processes of secular translation are at work in its creation and consumption? Is there room for resistance, legibility, and representation in U.S. popular culture, and what does representation buy you in this age? We will pair theoretical methods for thinking about imagery, optics, perception, and perspective alongside case studies from film, stage, comedy, streaming content, and television shows, among others. Students will critically engage and analyze these theories in the contexts from which these works emerge and meld into a mobile and diasporic U.S.context. Together, we will reflect on the moral, political, and categorical commitments vested in different forms of media against historical trends of the 20th & 21st century.

Instructor(s): Samah Choudhury     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 27555, ENGL 32505, ENGL 22505, RDIN 32500, CRES 22500

RDIN 22561. Justice at the Margins: Religion, Race, and Resistance Ethics. 100 Units.

How does race shape what we think about what is right and wrong, just and unjust? How about religion? Is "justice" a universal idea that stretches across social groups, or do our experiences as members of a religious and/or racial group have fundamentally affect our understanding(s) of justice? We'll begin by examining works by Aristotle, King, Rawls, and Nussbaum, asking what each theorist thinks justice entails and why. Along the way, we'll ask how stated and suppressed understandings of both "race" and "religion" inform their theories, as well as complicate and challenge them. Then we'll set these theories of justice in conversation with works by Francisco de Vitoria, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Cornel West, Traci C. West, and the Movement for Black Lives, each of which offers a protest against injustice in which "race" and "religion" play a prominent role. No previous knowledge required.

Instructor(s): Derek Buyan     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course counts as an elective course for the "Inequality, Social Problems, and Change" minor and as an approved course for the Democracy Studies minor.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 25561, HMRT 25561, CRES 22561

RDIN 22900. Intro to Critical Race Theory. 100 Units.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has recently filled headlines as it has become a hotly debated topic in U.S. political, educational, and media discourse. However, the tenets and thinkers that shape CRT tend to be left out of the conversations that dominate the media. What is this theoretical framework? Who are the thinkers who shape and contribute to these theories of the construction of race? What does CRT say about the relationship between race and institutions, such as the United States' legal system or education? To address these questions, students in this course will read and engage with foundational texts of CRT by scholars including Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Cheryl Harris. In addition to learning the key tenets of this theoretical framework, students will also use it to think across disciplines, institutional structures, and forms of media.

Instructor(s): Danielle Jones     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 12900, ENGL 22930

RDIN 23001. Censorship in East Asia: The Case of Colonial Korea. 100 Units.

Looking into the intricate workings and profound impact of state publication control in the Japanese Empire during the first half of the twentieth century, this seminar examines how censorship influenced literary and other forms of publication within the Korean colony. Students analyze the manipulation of information and representation by engaging with a diverse array of primary sources, including literature, periodicals, police reports, censors' documents, posters, and postcards, among others. Not only do they seek a nuanced understanding of censorship and its impact on cultural production engaging themselves with the original materials from colonial Korea, but also do they gain a broad historical knowledge of modern Korea under Japanese rule and further East Asia under Japan's dominance and hegemony. Throughout the course, focus is placed upon manuscript ("pre-publication") censorship. [Consent Required; Proficiency in Korean or Japanese is not required.]

Instructor(s): K. Choi     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): MAAD 16001, EALC 23001, EALC 43000, CRES 23001

RDIN 23002. Schooling and Identity. 100 Units.

This course examines the dynamic relations between schooling and identity. We will explore how schools both enable and constrain the identities available to students and the consequences of this for academic achievement. We will examine these relations from multiple disciplinary perspectives, applying psychological, anthropological, sociological, and critical theories to understanding how students not only construct identities for themselves within schools, but also negotiate the identities imposed on them by others. Topics will include the role of peer culture, adult expectations, school practices and enduring social structures in shaping processes of identity formation in students and how these processes influence school engagement and achievement. We will consider how these processes unfold at all levels of schooling, from preschool through college, and for students who navigate a range of social identities, from marginalized to privileged.

Equivalent Course(s): EDSO 23002, EDSO 33002, CHDV 23003, SOCI 20530, SOCI 30530, RDIN 33002

RDIN 23202. Black Religious Protest in the U.S. 100 Units.

This course examines African American religious protest against the American nation for its actual history and its ideals in view of black oppression. The course begins with David Walker's Appeal (1829) and ends with debates around Jeremiah Wright's "God damn America" sermon. The course situates black religious protest amidst discussions of the American Jeremiad, a particular critique of the nation in relation to the divine, American exceptionalism, and racial injustice. We attempt to trace continuity and discontinuity, hope versus pessimism, and visions of a more perfect union in these public critiques of the nation.

Instructor(s): Curtis Evans     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 22202, HCHR 42202, AMER 22202, RAME 42202, HIST 47416, HIST 27416, AMER 42202

RDIN 23210. Urban Core in Paris. 100 Units.

This course is both an introduction to how historians think about cities and a history of cities from the Middle Ages through the Cold War. Most of the examples are drawn from Europe, with a special focus for the version of the course taught in Paris on that city, but significant attention is given to Africa and the United States. The course is chronological in organization, but each class also focuses on a different theme, such as the place of politics, industrial development, migration, culture, and commerce in the transformation of urban forms and experiences.

Equivalent Course(s): HIST 23210, ARCH 23210, ENST 23210

RDIN 23510. The Sociology of Racism: Evolutions, Debates, and Future Directions. 100 Units.

This course seeks to give students a rigorous introduction to the sociological subfield of the study of race over the last roughly 100 years - with a specific focus on how scholars have theorized racism(s). Moving chronologically, we will begin in the early to mid 20th century with ideas of race relations and race as a social construction, move to ethnic assimilation and racial formation, racial attitudes, and then to racialized social systems and colorblind racism. Alongside this trajectory, we will read critical scholarship that troubles the more mainstream understandings of racism in each period. We will end by exploring contemporary ways scholars are pushing the subfield forward. Scholars we might read include: Julian Go, Victor Ray, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Adia Harvey Wingfield, Howard Winant, Patricia Hill Collins, W.E.B. Du Bois, Franklin E. Frazier, Robert Ezra Park, Oliver Cromwell Cox, and many more.

Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 20603, MAPS 33510, SOCI 30603, RDIN 33510

RDIN 24001. Colonizations I: Colonialism, Enslavement and Resistance in the Atlantic World. 100 Units.

This quarter examines the making of the Atlantic world in the aftermath of European colonial expansion. Focusing on the Caribbean, North and South America, and western Africa, we cover the dynamics of invasion, representation of otherness, enslavement, colonial economies and societies, as well as resistance and revolution.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Note(s): This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. This course is offered every year. These courses can be taken in any sequence.
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 24001, HIST 18301, SOSC 24001, ANTH 24001

RDIN 24002. Colonizations II: Imperial Expansion, Anti-Imperialism, and Nation in Asia. 100 Units.

This quarter covers the histories of modern European and Japanese colonialism in South and East Asia and the Pacific. Themes examined include the logics and dynamics of imperial expansion and rule; Orientalist discourses; uprisings and anti-imperial movements; the rise of nationalisms; and paths to decolonization in the region.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Note(s): This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. These courses can be taken in any sequence.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 18302, CRES 24002, ANTH 24002, SALC 24002, SOSC 24002

RDIN 24003. Colonizations III: Decolonization, Revolution, Freedom. 100 Units.

The third quarter considers the processes and consequences of decolonization both in newly independent nations and former colonial powers. Through an engagement with postcolonial studies, we explore the problematics of freedom and sovereignty; anti-colonial movements, thinking and struggles; nation-making and nationalism; and the enduring legacies of colonialism.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Note(s): This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. These courses can be taken in any sequence.
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 20702, HIST 18303, CRES 24003, ANTH 24003, SOSC 24003

RDIN 24205. Narrating Social Change. 100 Units.

This course is a mixed enrollment class which brings UChicago students and incarcerated students together for a quarter of learning, dialogue and knowledge-building across the prison wall. We will examine how individuals, groups, and oppressed communities produce, reproduce and reimagine what equality, justice, agency and freedom mean as they engage in activism for social change. Throughout the quarter, we will explore contemporary and historical examples of people engaging in resistance to oppression. In some cases, people act alone or in small groups to provide themselves with limited agency. In other examples, people work collectively to build organizations and social movements that transform countries. To explore these topics, we will use materials from multiple mediums including film, poetry, memoir, and cultural works. This is the first time UChicago students will have the opportunity to participate in a mixed enrollment course with incarcerated students at Stateville. (In Spring 2020, we were scheduled to begin a mixed enrollment course when the pandemic shut down classes at Stateville Prison and UChicago pivoted to remote learning). Eight to ten UChicago students will be selected for enrollment in the course. If all goes according to plan, the class will be held on Fridays, 10:30-1:15pm at Stateville Correction Center in Crest Hill, Illinois. For UChicago students, classes may alternate between Stateville and UChicago's Hyde Park Campus.

Instructor(s): Alice Kim, Pozen Center for Human Rights Director of Human Rights Practice, Cathy Cohen, David and Mary Winton Green Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science      Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Undergraduate students who have taken at least two classes in Human Rights and/or Critical Race and Ethnic Studies are eligible to apply. A special application will be required in advance of Fall 2022 quarter. If you are interested in applying for this course, please email Alice Kim and you will receive the application when it becomes available in August 2022.
Note(s): Only students who receive notice of acceptance are eligible to enroll in this course with instructor consent.
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 24205, CHST 24205, HMRT 24205

RDIN 24400. After Camp: Re-Imagining a Japanese American Chicago. 100 Units.

Following FDR's Executive Order 9066 and the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans, Chicago's Japanese American population exploded beginning in 1943 when the wartime internment camps began to release internees deemed sufficiently 'loyal' on the condition that they not reside on the West Coast. More than 20,000 former internees settled in Chicago, creating new communities that persisted for decades with their own institutions and cultural practices-often in the face of racial discrimination, economic hardship, and continuing Cold War suspicions of 'disloyalty.' This course traces the history of this local community in terms of questions of collective and individual memory and cultural imagination. With a focus on visual culture (photography, painting, and motion pictures), musical practice, fiction and poetry, and oral history, we will explore the complex legacies of both the prewar and postwar Chicago Japanese American communities, including their alliances and conflicts with other marginalized groups and with more recent immigrants from Japan and elsewhere.

Instructor(s): Michael Bourdaghs     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 34400, EALC 24400, CHST 24400, EALC 34400

RDIN 24599. Historical and Contemporary Issues in U.S. Racial Health Inequality. 100 Units.

This course explores persistent health inequality in the U.S. from the 1900s to the present day. The focus will be on racial gaps in urban health inequality with some discussion of rural communities. Readings will largely cover the research on Black and White gaps in health inequality, with the understanding that most of the issues discussed extend to health inequalities across many racial and ethnic groups. Readings cover the broad range of social determinants of health (socioeconomic status, education, access to health care, homelessness) and how these social determinants are rooted in longstanding legacies of American inequality. A major component of class assignments will be identifying emerging research and innovative policies and programs that point to promising pathways to eliminating health disparities.

Instructor(s): M. Keels     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Only students with 2nd year standing or above.
Note(s): Fulfills grad requirement: 2,4 and undergrad major requirement B.
Equivalent Course(s): PBPL 24599, CHST 24599, HLTH 24599, CHDV 24599, CRES 24599, CHDV 44599

RDIN 24601. Martin and Malcolm: Life and Belief. 100 Units.

This course examines the religious, social, cultural, political, and personal factors that went into the making of the two most prominent public leaders and public intellectuals emerging from the African American community in the 1950s and 1960s: Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. We will review their autobiographies, the domestic trends within the USA, and the larger international forces operating during their times. Their life stories provide the contexts for the sharp differences and surprising commonalities in their political thought and religious beliefs. At the end of their lives, were they still radical contrasts, sharing the same views, or had their beliefs shifted - did Malcolm become Martin and Martin become Malcolm?

Instructor(s): Dwight Hopkins     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): AMER 24601, HIST 27209, FNDL 24601, RLST 24601

RDIN 25119. Architecture and Colonialism in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. 100 Units.

This seminar invites students to examine the intersections of colonialism with architecture in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Throughout the semester, we will discuss the designs of architects working in the region (Le Corbusier, Fernand Pouillon, Shadrach Woods, etc.) and concepts defining colonialism as a design project (segregation, repression, primitivism, etc.). We will also pay particular attention to modes of opposition pursued by residents and their historical impact toward the region's decolonization. Moments of heightened historical consequence, such as the strategic use of selected architectural spaces by independentist guerrillas, will be thoroughly discussed. The class will progress through a chronological scope, from Orientalism as a 19th century phenomenon to the enmeshment of modernism with colonialism in the 20th century. We will conclude with the emergence of postcolonial modernities.

Instructor(s): Jacobé Huet      Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARCH 25119, ARTH 25119, RDIN 35119, ARTH 35119

RDIN 26050. Race, Ethnicity, Language, and Citizenship in the United States. 100 Units.

This course is intended to help students make sense of the current discourse on diversity and inclusion/exclusion from a historical perspective. They will be trained to read critically the evolution of political discourse on citizenship in the United States since the American Revolution. They will learn to detect the role of shifting interpretations of race and ethnicity, after that of European nationality, in determining who is (not) a (full) citizen. For instance, who counted as "American" in the early stages of the Republic? Why were Native Americans and (descendants of) forced immigrants from Africa excluded at the outset? How did English become the unofficial language of American citizenship and inclusion? What factors favored its rise and drove to extinction the competing European national languages?

Instructor(s): Salikoko Mufwene     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): LING 26050, LING 36050, CHDV 26050, CHDV 36055

RDIN 26220. Dance, Identity, and Appropriation. 100 Units.

This survey course will look at the ways that dance-across genres, geographies, and histories-has negotiated, challenged, and complicated ideas of identity and authority. Grounded in histories including the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, where Swedish-American Christine Olson performed Turkish dance on the Midway, as well as modern dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis' imitation of the Indianness she encountered on a cigarette ad, we will explore case studies including American minstrel traditions, hip hop dance, the Nutcracker and other classical ballets, dance tourism like Hula and West African forms, viral K-pop dance tutorials, and more. These case studies will be used to discover how dance, and the dancing body, performs and problematizes appropriation. Part seminar/part practicum, assignments will include short written papers and performance projects including dance reconstructions.

Instructor(s): E. Leopold     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 26220, TAPS 36220, RDIN 36220

RDIN 26290. Mapping Black Social Dance: Hip Hop and House in the Community and Onstage. 100 Units.

This hybrid studio/seminar course offers an overview of the formal techniques, cultural contexts, and social trends that shape current Black social and vernacular dance practices. Modules will be built around Black social culture by looking at key histories and theories around Black dance, music and other cultural aesthetics from hip hop to house. As part of our exploration, we will cover themes such as: the Great Migration, the range of Black social dance forms from blues, jazz, disco, and dancehall that have influenced the evolution of hip hop and house on global scale; and the spectrum of social spaces from clubs to lounges and public events that have been critical to preserving Black cultural heritage and creating safe spaces for belonging and flourishing. Selected readings and viewings will supplement movement practice to give historical, cultural, and political context.

Equivalent Course(s): MUSI 33620, TAPS 26290, CHST 26290, TAPS 36290, RDIN 36290, MUSI 23620

RDIN 26302. Bodies at Work: Art & Civic Responsibility. 100 Units.

Contemporary artists are quickly adapting their practices to be more inclusive, diverse, accessible and physically safe. In particular, the rise of intimacy design and anti-racist work in theatre, film and television has opened up a dialogue about how artists do their work responsibly. Through practice and investigation, this class will dive into the responsibility of artists in contemporary artistic processes. We will explore both how the tools and capacities of artists can transform civic practice and, conversely, how artists are grappling with the civic issues of body safety, anti-racism and accessibility in arts practice. We will explore how centering the body can create respectful engagement in the arts. We will look at the work of Enrich Chicago, Nicole Brewer, Sonya Renee Taylor, Not in Our House and Intimacy Directors & Coordinators among others.

Instructor(s): D. Serna     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 26302, MAAD 20302, TAPS 26302, GNSE 26303

RDIN 26312. Race, Crime, and Justice in the City. 100 Units.

The size and growth of the U.S. jail and prison census, and its deleterious consequences for the poor, and especially for poor black people who reside in the nation's most disadvantaged communities, has been well documented. This course examines some of this work but goes further in addressing how the targets of mass incarceration experience crime control policy, how criminal legal expansion shapes urban, and, in recent years, suburban and rural sociality, and how criminalized people work to bring about change in the laws and policies that regulate their lives.

Equivalent Course(s): SSAD 46312, RDIN 46312, SSAD 26312

RDIN 26380. Indigenous Politics in Latin America. 100 Units.

This course examines the history of Indigenous policies and politics in Latin America from the first encounters with European empires through the 21st Century. Course readings and discussions will consider several key historical moments across the region: European encounters/colonization; the rise of liberalism and capitalist expansion in the 19th century; 20th-century integration policies; and pan-Indigenous and transnational social movements in recent decades. Students will engage with primary and secondary texts that offer interpretations and perspectives both within and across imperial and national boundaries.

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz Francisco     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 36380, GLST 26380, HIST 26318, RDIN 36380, HIPS 26380, LACS 26380, CRES 26380, ANTH 23077

RDIN 26384. Art and the Archive in Greater Latin America. 100 Units.

How and why do artists engage records of the past in their work? What are the politics of both creating archives and culling from them to visually render or represent the past? Focusing on artists, art-making, and archives in Greater Latin America (including the United States), this course will consider the process of collecting and creating in artistic production from the perspectives of both theory and practice. Students in the course will work directly with archival materials in Chicago and collaborate on contemporary artistic projects that consider issues of relevance to people and places of the Western Hemisphere.

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz-Francisco     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 26319, ARTH 26384, LACS 26384, CHST 26384, ARTV 20017

RDIN 26386. Greater Latin America. 100 Units.

What is "Latin America," who are "Latin Americans" and what is the relationship among and between places and people of the region we call Latin America, on the one hand, and the greater Latinx diaspora in the US on the other? This course explores the history of Latin America as an idea, and the cultural, social, political and economic connections among peoples on both sides of the southern and eastern borders of the United States. Students will engage multiple disciplinary perspectives in course readings and assignments and will explore Chicago as a crucial node in the geography of Greater Latin America. Some topics we will consider are: the origin of the concept of "Latin" America, Inter-Americanism and Pan-Americanism, transnational social movements and intellectual exchanges, migration, and racial and ethnic politics.

Equivalent Course(s): LACS 26386, HIST 26321, CRES 26386, ANTH 23003, SPAN 36386, RDIN 36386, SPAN 26386, LACS 36386

RDIN 26674. The Global Black Panther Party. 100 Units.

In America, the Black Panther Party and its leaders, like Fred Hampton in Chicago, are famous for their revolutionary fight against white supremacy and their violent suppression by US government forces. But what does a Global Studies approach teach us about the Black Panthers? This seminar explores how the Black Panther Party's worldwide networks impacted global understandings of politics, race, and religion. Our readings examine a series of comparative case studies, including the Dalit Panther Party in India, the Mizrahi Black Panther Party in Israel, and the Polynesian Panthers in New Zealand. We analyze primary sources, such as the various Panther Parties' publications, their mainstream press coverage, and their pop cultural representations, like Ta-Nehisi Coates' Black Panther graphic novel and the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In this course, students learn the global Black Panther Parties' roles in reshaping worldwide conceptions of race, caste, and religion through their encounters with the Nation of Islam, Hindu Nationalism, Zionism, and Indigenous rights. No prior knowledge or coursework is required.

Instructor(s): Andrew Kunze     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 26674, ANTH 20537, GLST 26674

RDIN 26922. Structuring Refuge: U.S. Refugee Policy and Resettlement Practice. 100 Units.

The UN estimates that there are 100 million forcibly displaced people around the world (UNHCR, 2022), with over 27 million refugees among them, but in 2022 only 57,500 refugees were resettled to third countries. Historically the U.S. has been the largest resettlement country, and in the U.S. refugees are entitled to federal, state, and local supports that other immigrants do without. At the same time, refugees in the U.S. are arguably subject to greater scrutiny and social control than most other un-incarcerated domestic populations. This course asks the central questions: How is refugee status politically constructed and experienced by individuals; what are the interrelationships between institutional actors and refugee policies, with what implications for service delivery; what does research tell us about the resettlement outcomes. and what drives these outcomes; and finally, what are the points of intervention for social workers in the resettlement process? We will address these questions by: 1. detangling the web of international and domestic policies that relate to the refugees' political identity, 2. focusing on U.S. resettlement, 3. analyzing resettlement policies and exploring the implications for social work practice targeted at integration, employment, and mental health, and 4. holding the inherent tension that can result from a dual focus on macro issues of scale and policy and micro issues related to the lived experience of human beings.

Equivalent Course(s): HMRT 46922, SSAD 26922, CHST 26922, SSAD 46922, CRES 26922

RDIN 27006. Not Just the Facts: Telling About the American South. 100 Units.

The great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once observed: "The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live." This course concerns itself with the various ways people have striven to understand the American South, past and present. We will read fiction, autobiography, and history (including meditations on how to write history). Main themes of the course include the difference between historical scholarship and writing history in fictional form; the role of the author in each and consideration of the interstitial space of autobiography; the question of authorial authenticity; and the tension between contemporary demands for truthfulness and the rejection of "truth."

Instructor(s): J. Dailey     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Open to upper-level undergraduates; graduate students by consent of instructor.
Note(s): Assignments: three short papers.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 37006, HIST 27006, AMER 37006, AMER 27006, LLSO 25411

RDIN 27379. Reparations. 100 Units.

This course focuses on reparations for racialized slavery in the United States. As we'll see, the debate over reparations raises a number of complex philosophical questions: what does it mean today to atone for hundreds of years of slavery, given that those who were enslaved, and those who enslaved other human beings, are now dead? Who today has an obligation to atone for it? What are they obligated to do? And, perhaps most importantly, who should have the authority to decide what successful atonement or reparation would look like? These questions arguably cannot be answered decisively without a precise accounting for the wrongs intrinsic to the institution of slavery, on the one hand, and an analysis of post-slavery racial oppression, on the other. Some of the authors we'll read include: Bernard Boxill, Angela Davis, Fredrick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Charles Mills, Robert Nozick and Jeremy Waldron. (A)

Instructor(s): Tyler Zimmer     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 27379, CRES 27379, PHIL 37379

RDIN 27500. Reimagining Our Future: Past, Present & Future of Campus-Neighborhood Relations. 100 Units.

The history, current status, and future of three neighborhoods adjacent to campus (Hyde Park, Washington Park, and Woodlawn) are the focus of this ground-breaking course that could not be offered at a more pivotal time. How have these neighborhoods and their relationship with campus evolved, what is their character and current status as healthy communities, and what actionable propositions are in play or could be considered for continued revitalization and positive campus interaction? Given that change on the horizon is inevitable, how best to protect current residents from displacement or other negative consequences?

Equivalent Course(s): PBPL 27500, PARR 27500, CHST 27500, BPRO 27500

RDIN 27685. History Colloquium: Asian/Pacific Islander American History, 1850-2021. 100 Units.

Looking through a broad interdisciplinary lens, this course will examine the trajectory of Asians and Pacific Islanders in America. How did nineteenth- and early twentieth-century "sojourners" become "citizens"? What constituted the public's shift in perception of Asians from unassimilable alien to ostensible "model minority"? We will interrogate not only what it means to have been and to be an Asian in America but also what role APIAs have played in striving for a multiracial democracy. The history of anti-Asian violence will be traced from the mid-nineteenth century to the most recent hate crimes in the age of COVID. Conscious of the tendency to homogenize all Asians in the historical imagination, the course will be explicitly comparative, incorporating the diverse and disparate experiences of East, Southeast, and South Asians, as well as Pacific Islanders in America over time. We will, also, at times, investigate the histories of other ethnic/racial groups and compare their experiences to the Asian American experience.

Instructor(s): M. Briones     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Priority registration is given to History majors.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 29685

RDIN 27708. Feeling Brown, Feeling Down. 100 Units.

Taking its cue from José Esteban Muñoz's 2006 essay in Signs, this course interrogates negative affective categories as they are expressed in US ethnic literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. As Muñoz argues, "depression has become one of the dominant affective positions addressed within the cultural field of contemporary global capitalism"; this course explores orientations such as depression, shame, sickness, and melancholy to think critically about racial formations amidst capital and how these are posed alongside literary questions. Primary texts may include Larsen, Ozeki, Morrison, and Okada; secondary texts may include Ahmed, Freud, Muñoz, Cheng, and Spillers.

Instructor(s): Megan Tusler     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): MAPH 47708, AMER 27708, ENGL 27708, RDIN 47708, ENGL 47708, AMER 47708

RDIN 29000. Cinema and the Speculative Archive: Theory & Practice Seminar. 100 Units.

Recent years have seen the flourishing of work by experimental filmmakers that imaginatively engages with absences in the historical record, especially around the visual history of African Americans. How might scholarship adapt methodologies from these creative practices? How can scholarly methods, in turn, inform art making (as the formation of another kind of history)? Engaging theory and practice, this course investigates these questions through-and against-African American media history's precarious archival condition. Students interested in enrolling should contact Professor Field at anfield@uchicago.edu.

Equivalent Course(s): CMST 39000, CMST 29000, CCCT 39000, CHST 29000, RDIN 39000

RDIN 29117. Theater and Performance in Latin America. 100 Units.

What is performance? How has it been used in Latin America and the Caribbean? This course is an introduction to theatre and performance in Latin America and the Caribbean that will examine the intersection of performance and social life. While we will place particular emphasis on performance art, we will examine some theatrical works. We ask: how have embodied practice, theatre and visual art been used to negotiate ideologies of race, gender and sexuality? What is the role of performance in relation to systems of power? How has it negotiated dictatorship, military rule, and social memory? Ultimately, the aim of this course is to give students an overview of Latin American performance including blackface performance, indigenous performance, as well as performance and activism.

Instructor(s): Danielle Roper     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Undergraduates must be in their third or fourth year.
Note(s): Taught in English.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 29117, SPAN 39117, GNSE 29117, LACS 29117, TAPS 28479, GNSE 39117, LACS 39117, TAPS 38479, RDIN 39117

RDIN 29427. Fashion, Empire, Capitalism. 100 Units.

Clothing, famously termed the "social skin", mediates the space between individuals and societies. Whether articulating personal taste or reflecting a collective identity, dress can be a powerful symbol-both historically and in the contemporary world. Worn against the skin, clothing is both intimate and connects us to a global, multi-billion-dollar system that employs roughly one in every ten people worldwide. This course addresses the multivalent history of dress from early modern imperial encounters in the Atlantic World, to anti-colonial movements in South Asia, to the nineteen-forties American Zoot Suit Riots-demonstrating the ways that clothes are connected to gendered and racial categories, political projects, and the shape of global capitalism. Students will analyze case studies from Malabar to Manchester, colonial Lima to revolutionary France, nineteenth-century Zanzibar to nineteen-eighties New York. Examining the history of dress and its global interconnections necessitates an interdisciplinary approach; therefore, students will combine historical scholarship with theoretical frameworks from the anthropology of dress and methodologies from material culture studies to analyze sources ranging from museum objects to films, haute couture fashion to flip-flops. Finally, this course sheds light on historic interconnections and the development of fashion systems, asks what ways these continue to animate our contemporary world, and imagines new possibilities for the future.

Equivalent Course(s): HIST 29427, GNSE 29427

RDIN 29634. African Cities and Urbanism. 100 Units.

This course looks at urbanism and urbanization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through a focus on selected cities in East, Southern, and West Africa. Beginning with existing trade routes and economic centers onto which some colonial cities were mapped, the course explores waves of migration over different historical periods, infrastructural imaginaries and the policies that shaped them, informal and formal economies, and cultural expressions and representations of life and living in the city. We will draw from a diversity of sources including fiction, non-fiction, architecture, town planning, photography, and the arts to examine political, social, economic, and topographical features and forces that drove the growth and development of each city studied, and also to reflect on commonalities that emerged between cities across different regions of the continent.

Equivalent Course(s): HIST 29634, CEGU 29634

RDIN 29700. Readings in Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity. 100 Units.

This is a general reading and research course for independent study not related to the BA thesis/capstone project. To register, students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. May be taken for P/F grading with consent of instructor. With prior approval, students who are majoring/minoring in RDI may use this course to satisfy program requirements.

Instructor(s): staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter

RDIN 29800. BA Thesis/Capstone Seminar. 100 Units.

This course is designed to introduce students to a range of research methods and to help determine which method(s) would fit a research thesis or capstone project focusing on topics related to race, diaspora, and/or indigeneity. The seminar functions as a research workshop in which students identify a research topic, develop a research question and explore a range of methods for their research thesis or capstone project. Class of 2024: Students will attend this seminar both in Autumn and Winter quarters of their fourth-year. In Autumn quarter the seminar meets weekly. In Winter quarter the seminar meets every other week. Class of 2025 and beyond: Students will attend this seminar in Spring of their third-year and Autumn of their fourth-year. In Spring quarter, the seminar meets weekly. In Autumn quarter the seminar meets every other week. In both cases, the seminar spans two quarters, and students may enroll in the course the quarter of their choosing.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 29800

RDIN 29900. BA Essay / Capstone Project. 100 Units.

Students may register for RDIN 29900 during any quarter of their fourth year. Use the College Reading and Research Course Form to register. Must be taken for a quality grade.

Instructor(s): staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter

RDIN 29913. Ancient Greek Philosophy of Race and Ethnicity. 100 Units.

This course will introduce students to race and ethnicity as topics of interest to ancient Greek philosophers, primarily Plato and Aristotle. We will look at the ways that Plato and Aristotle ask and address philosophical questions about human difference that approximate the modern concepts of race and ethnicity, such as the notion of a "barbarian", mythologies of ancestry, the role of shared language, culture, and political forms versus genealogy, and the association of character traits and political capacities with groups of people. We will also consider relevant connections to other perceived forms of difference, such as gender, sexuality, and political status (e.g. slave, resident non-citizen). Since they are often relevant to how Plato and Aristotle address these issues, we will also consider relevant texts from the broader Greek intellectual world: medicine, drama, ethnography, and oratory. Finally, we will consider methodological issues, such as whether it is meaningful to talk about "race" in Greek antiquity, how it might differ from "ethnicity", and how classicists, historians, and philosophers interested in this study can be misled by their own prejudices. (A) (III)

Instructor(s): John Proios     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Some familiarity with ancient Greek philosophy is expected.
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 22913, RDIN 39913, PHIL 29913, PHIL 39913


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Director of Undergraduate Studies
Eve L. Ewing