2025-2026 Catalog

RDIN 10200. Latin America in/at Chicago. 100 Units.

This course explores the city of Chicago's Latin American and Caribbean roots by considering hemispheric connections, both in the city at large and at the University of Chicago. Students will analyze 1) the ways Latin(e/x) American actors have participated in and shaped Chicago's political economy, 2) how Latin(e/x)s on both sides of the US-Mexico border have impacted and been impacted by social thought at the University of Chicago, 3) the collection and display of Latin American material culture in several of the city's museums, and 4) Latin(e/x) American civil and human rights activism in the city. The course will move through the city chronologically as well as geographically over the long twentieth century.

Instructor(s): Schwartz-Francisco, Diana     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered irregularly in Spring as part of Chicago Studies CIV sequence "Latin America/Latinx Chicago"
Note(s): This class is part of the Chicago Studies Civilizations Core sequence "Latin America/Latinx Chicago." Classes in this sequence include weekly experiential learning activities in the city, usually on Fridays.
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 10200, CEGU 10200, HIST 17910, CHST 10200, LACS 10200

RDIN 10201. Immigrant Chicago. 100 Units.

Since the early 1900's, thousands of Latin Americans have made Chicago their home. Today, approximately one-third of Chicagoans trace their roots to Latin America. These significant demographic flows raise critical questions: Why have Latin Americans moved to Chicago? How have they adapted to the city? How have they influenced it? This course will expose students to the latest social science research on contemporary immigration with a strong focus on Latinos in Chicago. We will explore its origins, adaptation patterns, and long-term effects on our city. To explore the Latino experience in Chicago, the course will focus on three communities: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Venezuelans. These three groups migrated to Chicago during distinct periods, with Mexicans arriving in the early 1900s, Puerto Ricans in the 1940s, and Venezuelans in 2023. This temporal variation will enable us to investigate how the evolving social, economic, and political conditions in Chicago have influenced immigrants' experiences.

Instructor(s): Flores, René     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered irregularly in Spring as part of Chicago Studies CIV sequence "Latin America/Latinx Chicago"
Note(s): This class is part of the Chicago Studies Civilizations Core sequence "Latin America/Latinx Chicago." Classes in this sequence include weekly experiential learning activities in the city, usually on Fridays.
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 10201, LACS 10201, CHST 10201, ANTH 10201

RDIN 10202. Latinx Arts in Chicago. 100 Units.

This course is an overview of the Latinx arts in Chicago. It explores artworks and artmaking as documents and critical fictions created in response to the social realities of urban Latinx populations in the U.S. and in Chicago in particular. It challenges students to think about (Latinx) art and the humanities under two modalities: as privileged arenas for understanding experience and exploring the values that guide a society, and as economic engines and instruments of political intervention. The course pursues these objectives though the study of the Latinx arts in Chicago, and through immersive engagements with local institutions where Latinx art operates (as historical object, as tool for social change, as fruit and seed of creative process, as instrument for economic development). Using the work of Latinx artists, curators, filmmakers, and other cultural brokers based in Chicago, the course studies artworks in the context of the social realities that gave rise to these works.

Instructor(s): Delgado Moya, Sergio     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered irregularly in Spring as part of Chicago Studies CIV sequence "Latin America/Latinx Chicago"
Note(s): This class is part of the Chicago Studies Civilizations Core sequence "Latin America/Latinx Chicago." Classes in this sequence include weekly experiential learning activities in the city, usually on Fridays.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 10202, CHST 10202, CEGU 10202, ANTH 10202

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?

Instructor(s): M. Hicks     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): DEMS 10600, HIST 10600, LACS 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): Cathy Cohen     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): None
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 12600

RDIN 12134. Geographies of Race and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Italy. 100 Units.

This interdisciplinary course takes you on an engaging journey through literary masterpieces, historical texts, maps, and artistic representations (13th-17th century). Students will explore how early modern ideas on race and gender were constructed, challenged, and redefined by literary texts and other mediums, and within various spatial contexts-encompassing real and imagined geographies, Mediterranean and Atlantic trade routes, and urban social spaces. We will read poetry, essays, travelogues, and analyze the context within which a given literary work is entangled. Drawing on theories from cultural, gender, and critical race studies, this course reveals how early modern texts, art, intellectual debates, and politics shaped notions on gender, cultural identity, and racial categories, and why these ideas intertwine with concepts of "place" and "space." Understanding the historical construction of race and gender not only empowers students to apply historical knowledge to current issues, but also equips them with the critical thinking skills to question and deconstruct stereotypes and harmful narratives.

Instructor(s): Beatrice Fazio     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course counts as a Foundations course for GNSE majors
Equivalent Course(s): MDVL 12134, GNSE 12134

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): Adom Getachew     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 22200, HIST 12706, CRES 12700, GLST 22700

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): Matthew Kruer     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 12800, HIST 17800, CRES 12800, CHST 12300

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's America is In the Heart, Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior, Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman, Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night, and Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer. (Fiction)

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

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

Autumn Quarter examines the origins of native civilizations in Latin America, with a focus on the political, social, and cultural dimensions of the major pre-Columbian civilizations (the Maya, the Inca, and the Aztecs); the causes and consequences of the Spanish and Portuguese conquests; and the establishment of colonial societies and economies in the 16th century.

Instructor(s): Kourí; Brittenham; TBD     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 23101, LACS 16100, HIST 16101, SOSC 26100, CRES 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): Hicks; Schwartz-Francisco; TBD     Terms Offered: Autumn Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 23102, HIST 16102, SOSC 26200, LACS 16200, CRES 16102

RDIN 17762. Architecture and Colonialism in Algeria and Morocco. 100 Units.

This seminar invites students to examine the intersections of colonialism with architecture in Algeria and Morocco. Throughout the quarter, we will discuss designs of architects working in these two contexts (Le Corbusier, Fernand Pouillon, Elie Azagury, etc.) and concepts defining colonialism as a design project (urban repression, apartheid, Orientalism, 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 independentist guerrillas' strategic use of selected architectural spaces, will be thoroughly discussed. The class will progress through a chronological scope, from the inception of French colonialism in Algeria in the 19th century to the enmeshment of modernism with colonialism in the 20th century. We will conclude with the emergence of postcolonial modernities.

Instructor(s): J. Huet     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 17762, ARCH 17762, FREN 27762, CEGU 17762

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

Kneeling or standing for the national anthem? Breaking the glass ceiling, coming out of the closet, or crossing the color line in sports? This course will take up the question of why sports are so central to American identity and what historic role sports and athletes have played in American political life. Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Jackie Robinson, and Bill Russell are only a few of the athletes who fought for freedom, inclusion, and equality in sports and American life. Through close critical readings of popular and scholarly writing, memoirs, and visual culture (film and television), we will examine the seminal overlapping events in sports history and American history to understand the collision and convergence of our politics and sports culture.

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): HIST 20007, GNSE 20007

RDIN 20012. The Work of the Past: Colonialism, Slavery, Institutions. 100 Units.

In 1897, a British force destroyed the capital of the Kingdom of Benin-annexing the territory and looting the royal bronze sculptures. For over a century these sculptures, known as the Benin Bronzes, have been held in museums, universities, and private collections across the world. Yet in the past few years public and scholarly debates surrounding these objects has led to new conversations about the legacy of colonial violence in the contemporary world-and calls for material change. Now, led by the University of Iowa's Stanley Museum of Art in the United States and others abroad, these looted bronzes have or are in the process of being repatriated to Nigeria. This course will examine this case and others to demonstrate the continuing work of the past in the present; the ways groups and individuals have organized research projects to address historic violence: from creating digital humanities databases to major European Union initiatives; small student publications to extended newspaper investigative reporting. These projects illuminate the possibilities of addressing historic violence both in and beyond museums, universities, and other institutions. From forensic accounting to museum provenance reporting, archeological investigations to new legal specializations, students in this course will become familiar with types of historical research-especially collaborative projects-and gain familiarity with the possibilities and limitations of their transformative potential.

Instructor(s): K. Hickerson     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 30012, LACS 20012, HIST 20012, LACS 30012, RDIN 30012

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://tinyurl.com/Afrofuturisms2025

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 20154. Class, Race and Urban Space: producing the city. 100 Units.

Class and race are through lines in the determinative processes that produce and transform urban space and inform conceptual models of urban growth and change. This lecture course examines historical geographies of class and race relations in crucial arenas of urban life like employment, housing, public space and urgently during the contemporary era, climate change. A recurring theme we will explore is how Chicago's experience has shaped the field of urban studies across a range of thematic and conceptual domains.

Instructor(s): Mary Beth Pudup     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ENST 20154, CHST 20154, ANTH 20154, CEGU 20154

RDIN 20205. Race in African History. 100 Units.

This course examines the category of race in African history from the nineteenth century to the contemporary era. It references the legacies of earlier identity constructions in the creation of these categories, as well as analyzing its transnational and trans-imperial dimensions. The class combines intellectual, cultural, and social history to illuminate the actors, encounters, and debates animating this dynamic field of study-moving beyond assumptions of African societies as spaces of ethnic-and not racialized-identities to examine the construction of difference through transnational history of science, gender and sexuality studies, histories of slavery, Middle Eastern colonial projects, as well as the invention of the category of "native" in European colonial discourse. Are categories of differences primarily due to European colonialism, as many claim? Or are they embedded in a more complex configuration coming from settler colonial projects, national liberation struggles, and postcolonial nativist discourses? Students examine case studies from across the continent-from Ghana to Sudan to South Africa-paying close attention to experiences of Asian, Arab, and mixed-race peoples navigating colonial and postcolonial African states; while keeping an eye on how debates about difference, diaspora, and nationalism in North America and Europe inform discussions of race in Africa, and how Africans shape discourses of race in colonial metropoles and the United States.

Instructor(s): K. Hickerson     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students who have not take African Civiliizations I, II, and III are asked to read African History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2007) in preparation for this course.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 20205, HIPS 20205, GNSE 22225

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): SOCI 20233, MAPS 30233, SOCI 30233

RDIN 20305. Inequality in Urban Spaces. 100 Units.

The problems confronting urban schools are bound to the social, economic, and political conditions of the urban environments in which schools reside. Thus, this course will explore social, economic, and political issues, with an emphasis on issues of race and class as they have affected the distribution of equal educational opportunities in urban schools. We will focus on the ways in which family, school, and neighborhood characteristics intersect to shape the divergent outcomes of low- and middle-income children residing with any given neighborhood. Students will tackle an important issue affecting the residents and schools in one Chicago neighborhood. This course is part of the College Course Cluster: Urban Design.

Instructor(s): M. Keels     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): CHDV Distribution: B; 2*
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 30315, PBPL 20305, EDSO 40315, CHDV 20305

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, RDIN 30400, ENGL 20422, GNSE 23167, ENGL 30422

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): GNSE 20133, ENGL 22408

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.

Instructor(s): Gerdine Ulysse     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): For those seeking credit in Kreyòl, this course is open to students who have taken KREY 12300 (Kreyòl for Speakers of French II), KREY 12301 (Kreyòl for Speakers of Romance Languages II), or instructor consent. Heritage learners are also welcome.
Equivalent Course(s): KREY 20400, LACS 20401, CHST 20400

RDIN 20501. Arts + Public Life: Relationships, Engagement and Cultural Stewardship on Chicago's South Side. 100 Units.

Founded in 2011 and located in Chicago's legendary Washington Park neighborhood, Arts + Public Life (APL) is a dynamic hub of exploration, expression, and exchange that fosters neighborhood vibrancy through the arts on the South Side of Chicago. This class gives students an opportunity to learn from APL's embedded practice of supporting the arts and cultural history of the South Side of Chicago to learn how they might become responsible and responsive stewards of this work themselves. Each week students will be immersed into a different aspect of APL's robust portfolio, all of which center relationships, community engagement, and cultural stewardship. Readings and visitors will provide background, inspiration, and know-how about APL's cultural production processes and location in Washington Park. Students will engage with APL team members to refine their own project ideas throughout the quarter. Class will primarily take place in APL's spaces on the Arts Block in Washington Park.

Instructor(s): Bharani, Nootan     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Consent is required for this class. Interested students should email the instructor Nootan Bharani, nbharani@uchicago.edu, to briefly explain their interest, however no previous experience is necessary.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 20500, CHST 20500, ARTV 20707

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): RDIN 30700, CEGU 30700, SALC 26501, ANTH 30700, CHDV 20700, ANTH 20700, CEGU 20700, SALC 32704, CHDV 30750

RDIN 20817. Race, Social Movements and American Politics. 100 Units.

Throughout history it has often been the collective action of the most oppressed groups that has changed political systems and hierarchies in unprecedented ways, providing a vehicle for the participation of the those formally disempowered. It is just such collective political action that we will examine in this course. Throughout the quarter we will concentrate on one particular form of collective resistance-social movements. Given the rise of race-based social movements such as the Immigrant's Rights Movement and the Movement for Black Lives, exploring this form of mobilization, voice and political participation seems especially pertinent to the study of American politics today. Under consideration throughout the quarter will be such questions as: What counts as a social movement? What motivates people to engage in such activity? What are the challenges that movements and their leaders face? What impact do social movements have on the distribution of the lives of marginal communities and the general functioning of the state?

Instructor(s): Cathy Cohen and Ramon Garibaldo Valdez     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 40817, PLSC 20817, PLSC 40817

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.

Instructor(s): Maya Singhal     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 32547, CRES 22900, ANTH 22547, HIST 27907, RDIN 30900

RDIN 21000. Race & American Public Schools. 100 Units.

This course explores the fundamental role that race and racism have played in the structure, stratification, and social functioning of American public schools, and how schools in turn shape our collective ideas about race in the United States. Working from both a historical perspective and an analysis of contemporary policy, we will use theoretical and empirical texts to explore questions of identity, otherness, and ethics, such as: what can the histories of schooling for Black and Native students reveal about the educational project of the nation? How does the notion of whiteness as property shape public presumptions about what makes a "good" school? How are taken-for-granted ideas about other vectors of identity such as class, disability, and language informed by racialized school policies? Most fundamentally, can schools contribute to creating a more just world, and if so, how?

Instructor(s): Eve L. Ewing
Equivalent Course(s): EDSO 21000, HMRT 21000

RDIN 21200. African-American History: 1900-2000. 100 Units.

The Black experience in America is one that encompasses a wide variety of walks of life. Within this introductory undergraduate course, we will explore the 20th century experience of African Americans in Jim Crow segregation, migration, labor, medicine, world wars, civil rights, and black power. This course considers racial barriers in the built environment, with a particular emphasis on the city. We will use primary and secondary sources to construct conceptions of political struggle, economic rights, resistance, and freedom in African American life.

Instructor(s): Caine Jordan     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 27420, RDIN 31200, HIST 37420

RDIN 21300. Aftermath: Literature of Reparation, Redress, Refusal, and Change. 100 Units.

What does it mean to address oneself to, or attempt to repair, legacies of violence and harm? What theories, resources, and models of personal, psychoanalytic, legal, political repair are available, and what kinds of possibilities do they enable? Is repair even a possibility, or a useful framework, for change? This course tracks the question of repair through contemporary conversations and historical case studies. Reading works by Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Eve Ensler, Saidiya Hartman, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, we will track how the concept of repair and reparation has motivated political action, activism, economic decision-making, artistic creativity and interpersonal ritual. We will read poems, engage performances, and consider other rituals of repair, breaking, and re-making. In addition, we will read literary and activist material pertinent to historical movements for reparations, including works from the Redress Movement for Japanese Internment in Canada and the United States and ongoing projects of the repatriation of Indigenous archival and cultural materials.

Instructor(s): Bellamy Mitchell     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 31300, ENGL 31302, ENGL 21302

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): HCHR 41315, KNOW 41315, AMER 41315, AMER 21315, HIST 27304, RLST 21315, RAME 41315, CRES 22315, HIST 47304, RDIN 41315

RDIN 21402. South Side Home Movies: Amateur Cinema and the Politics of Preservation. 100 Units.

This course traces the history of amateur filmmaking on Chicago's South Side as a robust creative practice and mode of documentation revealing realms of moving image production and presentation grounded in everyday life. With the rise of scholarship on nontheatrical media, home movies have become a critical area of cinema studies and archiving. This course centers on the South Side Home Movie Project, founded by the instructor, housed at the University of Chicago's Arts + Public initiative/Film Studies Center. The collection has more than 1,000 reels of small-gauge (8mm, 16mm) films from the 1930s-1970s from a diverse range of South Side residents, with scenes of family and community gatherings, life milestones and more. We will engage in close readings of films in the archive to consider their styles and intended audiences. We will examine how they picture the South Side in an era of intense racial segregation, as discussed by writers, e.g., Horace Cayton, St. Clair Drake, etc. We will also discuss the SSHMP's approaches to stewarding this footage in relation to developments in film archival praxis, and tensions that crop up between preservation and access. Lectures and discussions with SSHMP staff, donors and collaborators will cover digitization, cataloguing, oral history, public programming, and engagement with filmmaker families, educators, and artists. Students will have opportunities to contribute original research and creative re-use projects to the SSHMP website.

Instructor(s): Jacqueline Stewart     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 31402, CMST 21402, CHST 21402, RDIN 31402

RDIN 21500. Mourning and Struggle in African, Native American, and Palestinian Narratives. 100 Units.

In this course, we will explore themes spanning three diverse bodies of literature and film, identifying points of connection and difference between expressions of sorrow and resistance in African, Native American, and Palestinian works. We focus on portrayals of mourning and examine how in response to catastrophic experiences and histories of colonialism, writers and filmmakers narrate loss and trauma. We will investigate how these authors renegotiate their identities, how they fashion national and political imaginaries, and how they envision alternative futures. Together, we will analyze source materials related to the themes of violence, memory, gender, and race. Through our weekly assignments and discussions, we will seek to determine the tropes and aesthetic tools that ignite modes of storytelling, and to answer: how do writers and artists employ aesthetic form to portray catastrophes? How might expressions of grief also be mobilized for resistance and struggle? Our class will be organized into three modules, touching upon African, Native American, and Palestinian prose, poetry, and film alongside theoretical works in memory and trauma studies. By the end of the quarter, students will be able to develop their own complex evaluations of these narratives-and recognize how comparisons through artistic expression can be a powerful tool for amplifying a multiplicity of stories about mourning and defiance.

Instructor(s): Stephanie Kraver     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 21500, NEHC 21500, RDIN 31500, CMLT 31505, CMLT 21505, NEHC 31500

RDIN 21501. Theory and Practice in Environmental Organizing and Activism. 100 Units.

This course explores how organizations-civic, private, governmental-working in the field of environmental advocacy construct, deploy and are shaped by distinct discourses governing relationships between nature and society. The environment is a field of social action in which organizations attempt to effect change in large domains like resource conservation, access, stewardship, and a basic right to environmental quality in everyday life. The work of effecting change in these complex domains can assume a variety of forms including public policy (through the agencies of the state), private enterprise (through the agency of the market), 'third sector' advocacy (through the agency of nonprofit organizations) and social activism (through the agency of social movements and community organizations). State, market, civil society and social movement organizations are where ideas are transmitted from theory to practice and back again in a recursive, dialectical process. These contrasting forms of organization have different histories, wellsprings and degrees of social power. Moreover, they bring different epistemologies to their claims about being legitimate custodians of nature-that is to say they can be understood genealogically. As such, organizations working to effect environment change are at once animated by and constitutive of distinct discourses governing the relationships between nature and society. The course explores how those distinct discourses are associated with a suite of different organizational realms of social action; the goal is trying to connect the dots between discursive formations and organizational forms.

Instructor(s): Mary Beth Pudup     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course counts towards the ENST 4th year Capstone requirement.
Equivalent Course(s): MAPS 31101, SSAD 21501, HMRT 21501, ENST 21501, SSAD 41501, CEGU 31501, CEGU 21501, GLST 21501

RDIN 21600. Histories of Abortion and Forced Sterilization in the United States. 100 Units.

In the United States, the politics of pregnancy and reproductive autonomy have historically been and continue to be categories of significance, meaning, and contention. In this course, we will explore a subsection of these broader categories, examining the relation between abortion and forced sterilization, the state, and women of color. The course will zero in on the experiences of Mexican American and Mexican immigrant women, African American women, Puerto Rican women, and Native American women, considering their struggles against the state and for reproductive justice.

Instructor(s): Caine Jordan     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 31600, GNSE 33181, HLTH 21600, GNSE 23181, HIST 27810, HIST 37810, CHDV 21600

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 21700. The Power and Politics of Description: Ethnography, Documentary and Modernist Literature. 100 Units.

The work of description-the way that writers convey the characteristic features and significant details of people and places in language-can contain and confirm biases and anchor stale tropes of identity, but can also refuse, exceed, play with, and subverting readerly expectations. Descriptions made for the purposes of political consciousness-raising, journalistic documenting, or narrative storytelling bring into sharp relief senses of ourselves in relation to perceptions of "otherness" along lines of place, race, class, and gender. In this class, we will read literary and photographic works by authors such as Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, James Agee and Walker Evans and focus on how they experiment with methodologies of description and representation of people borrowed from anthropology, photography, and documentary journalism, as well as literary techniques like stream-of-consciousness narration and first-personal disclosure-to productively account for the limitations of their individual perspectives and authorial voices as a narrative and poetic tool. Particular attention will be paid to how gender and sexuality, race and racialization, and embodiment impact these accounts of social worlds, relations, and cultures, and person.

Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 31706, ENGL 31700, RDIN 31700, ENGL 21701, GNSE 21706

RDIN 21900. Race, Science and Empire. 100 Units.

The eighteenth century bore witness to the concomitant rise of scientific discovery and a modern sensibility of race hierarchy. Enlightenment pioneers-many with ties to the slave trade-who spearheaded the Age of Discovery also laid the groundwork for the "scientific" study of race. Drawing on the work of botanists, Linnaeus and Blumenbach developed taxonomic models for modern racial classifications. What had been the concern of a tiny group of physicians in the eighteenth expanded into a central focus of Euro-American scientific thought in the next. This shift into the new century marked a transition in inquiry from the origins of racial differences to their implications, accompanied by a shift from skin color to skull/body configurations as determinants of identity. Together, they gave rise to novel scientific practices such as phrenology, craniometry, anthropometry, and eugenics, enabling the quantification, with acute precision, of perceived racial differences. In this symbiosis of racial ideology and scientific method, the global expansion of the European empire found a powerful justification for the institution of slavery and the marginalization of the non-Europeans. By engaging with key texts from thinkers such as Kant, Voltaire, and Gobineau, alongside interdisciplinary critical scholarship on race science, students will examine how scientific racism was deeply intertwined with imperial ambitions and consider its lasting influence into the present day.

Instructor(s): Taimur Reza     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 31900, ANTH 21901, GLST 21900, ANTH 31901, KNOW 31900

RDIN 21905. Latin American Literatures and Cultures: Colonial and 19th-Century. 100 Units.

This course introduces students to the writing produced in Hispanic and Portuguese America during the period marked by the early processes of European colonization in the sixteenth century through the revolutionary movements that, in the nineteenth century, led to the establishment of independent nation-states across the continent. The assigned texts relate to the first encounters between Indigenous, Black, and European populations in the region, to the emergence of distinct ("New World") notions of cultural identity (along with the invention of new racial categories), and to the disputes over the meaning of nationhood that characterized the anti-colonial struggles for independence. Issues covered in this survey include the idea of texts as spaces of cultural and political conflict; the relationships between Christianization, secularization, and practices of racialization; the transatlantic slave trade; the uses of the colonial past in early nationalist projects; and the aesthetic languages through which this production was partly articulated (such as the Barroco de Indias, or "New World baroque," Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Modernismo, among others). In addition to enhancing your knowledge of Latin American cultural history and improving your close reading and critical thinking skills, this course is designed to continue building on your linguistic competence in Spanish.

Instructor(s): Luis Madrigal (Autumn), Larissa Brewer-García (Winter)     Terms Offered: Autumn Winter
Prerequisite(s): SPAN 20300 or consent of instructor.
Note(s): Taught in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 21905, LACS 21900

RDIN 22000. Introduction to Black Studies. 100 Units.

This course introduces students to the study of Blackness from multiple perspectives: racial, political, cultural, and intellectual. We will adopt a global perspective to our study that highlights differential histories and experiences of Black people in various areas of the world. Attentive to the origin of the discipline in political struggle, we will constantly question the ties of Black studies scholarship to the communities whose struggle it is founded on. With a consideration of the adjacent histories of racialization and other forms of oppression, this course invites students to consider the relation between Blackness and other social categories such as gender and class. We will ask questions such as: What are the methods and approaches to the study of Blackness? How has the history of African and African diasporic people shaped the contemporary world? How can we build a world founded on freedom for all? Assigned materials include academic texts, fiction, and other media such as film & music. Select topics include the histories of enslavement and colonization, revolution, Black feminism, and Afrofuturism. Students will work on weekly reflections, a mid-term paper and a final team project. For the sake of a collaborative pedagogy anchored in the work of social movements, students are encouraged to imagine together the best form this course can take and to enact course practices and changes that keep us all true to the radical vocation of Black Studies as a discipline.

Instructor(s): Kevin Irakoze     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 22000

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

Recent concerns about infectious diseases and the environmental determinants of health have attracted renewed attention to previous accounts of disease, many of which have significantly shaped human political, social, economic, and environmental history. Former examples include: respiratory diseases and sexually transmitted infections among Indigenous communities during the age of European exploration and colonial settlement; nutritional deficiencies resulting from the forced relocation and labor of enslaved Africans throughout the Atlantic World; "filth" diseases and urban sanitary reform during the Bacteriological Revolution; zoonotic diseases and pest control campaigns during imperial expansion projects across the Caribbean; and cancers borne of industrial pollutants in the modern era. Through readings, in-class discussions, 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 physical environments. Finally, we will explore how social factors and human interventions have influenced the distribution of infectious diseases and environmental health risks.

Instructor(s): Christopher Kindell     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course counts towards the CEGU/ENST 4th year Capstone requirement.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 25033, HLTH 22100, CEGU 22100, GLST 22101, CEGU 32100, HIPS 22210

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): RDIN 32203, ANTH 32203, CHDV 32203, SALC 35704, CHDV 22203, GNSE 32207, GNSE 22207

RDIN 22205. Latin American Literatures and Cultures: 20th and 21st Centuries. 100 Units.

This course will survey some of the main literary and cultural tendencies in Latin America from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. We will pay special attention to their aesthetic dimensions, as well as the socio-historical and political conditions that made them possible, and in which they simultaneously intervened. Questions to be studied might include the innovations of the Modernist and avant-garde movements, fantastic literature, the novel of the so-called "Boom," cultural production associated with revolutionary movements, military dictatorships, and the Cold War, as well as new currents in literary and theatrical practices. Likewise, the course will foreground some of the following concepts relevant to the study of this production: modernity and modernization; development and neoliberalism; neo-colonialism and empire; cultural autonomy and ideas of poetic and cultural renewal; the epic vs. the novel; realism and non-verisimilitude; and performativity, among others. In addition to enhancing your knowledge of Latin American cultural history and improving your close reading and critical thinking skills, this course is designed to continue building on your linguistic competence in Spanish.

Instructor(s): Danielle Roper (Winter), Carlos Gustavo Halaburda (Spring)     Terms Offered: Spring Winter
Prerequisite(s): SPAN 20300 or consent of instructor.
Note(s): Taught in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 22005, SPAN 22005

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, CCCT 36311, ANTH 36311, CHSS 36311, HIPS 26311

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.

Instructor(s): Patrick Jagoda and Ashlyn Sparrow     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 32350, MADD 12350, CDIN 32350, CMST 22350, RDIN 32350, ENGL 22352, ENGL 32352

RDIN 22500. Seeing Islam and the Politics of Visual Culture. 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 use these 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 and 21st century.

Instructor(s): Samah Choudhury     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Undergrad students register for Section 1; Grad students register for section 2
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 32500, ENGL 22505, RDIN 32500, RLST 27555, ENGL 32505, ISLM 37555, ARTV 20667, CMST 22500, GNSE 32511, GNSE 22511

RDIN 22510. African American Cinema. 100 Units.

TBD

Instructor(s): AE Stevenson     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 22510, CMST 32510

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): CRES 22561, HMRT 25561, RLST 25561

RDIN 22600. Race, Justice, and the Assemblage of American Moralities. 100 Units.

This course explores the racial and moral imperatives that are encapsulated within concepts of "Americanness" and the theoretical notions that define the discursive, historical, and sociopolitical boundaries of American identities. How have claims to American identity relied on created religious or religiously-inflected Others? Together, we will consider how the human phenomena of religion and race have developed across our histories in concert with one another. How do racial and moral imperatives the define discursive, historical, and sociopolitical boundaries of American identities? We will examine how these formations have been deployed, defined, and bent to fit particular historical and cultural contexts while continuing to inform each other in a variety of permutations, especially in the United States. How do race and religion also intersect with gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and politics? Our theoretical grounding in migration, encounters, and transnational mobilities will provide insight into how race is imagined on and into differently minoritized people while considering what it means to be participants in the project of racecraft today. Our readings will include historical materials, literary texts, theological reflections, and examples from popular culture that meditate on these topics.

Instructor(s): Samah Choudhury     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ISLM 32600, AMER 22600, RLST 26337, RAME 32600, GNSE 22604, GNSE 32604, AASR 32600, RDIN 32604

RDIN 22700. Diasporic Literature and Modern Islam in the Imperial Core. 100 Units.

The 19th century enslaved scholar Omar Ibn Said opens his autobiography with the words: "I cannot write my life." This seminar takes this starting point -the thick of chattel slavery, mercantile capitalism, and colonial violence - to investigate literary productions by racialized others dispersed in and by the so-called era of modernity. We will complicate what constitutes the modernity and how Islam, perhaps more than any other tradition, has been configured as its inverse. We will read works ranging from poetry, novels, short stories, comics, & memoirs as they relate to encounters & engagements particularly with Islam as a religious tradition, colonialism, industrialization, & nationalism, even as global understandings of tradition, genre, & form are being contested & rapidly changing. In addition to primary sources, we will theoretically situate these works within larger discussions of racecraft, oral transmission & culture, "folk" vs. "high" literature, Orientalism, politics, gender, sexuality, & identity. We will look at this is articulated in diasporic literary forms written within -and sometimes for- the imperial core. Through in-class discussions, readings, & a final paper, students will strengthen their global literacy, demonstrate knowledge of global historical trends, analyze the shifting and even contradictory interpretations of the role of religion in racial formations, all while identifying, critiquing & assessing these key course themes.

Instructor(s): Samah Choudhury     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 32700, RLST 26717, AASR 36717, GLST 22710, RDIN 32700, CMLT 22705, ISLM 36717

RDIN 22733. Marxism, Anarchism, and the Black Radical Tradition. 100 Units.

This course serves as an introduction to Black Radical Tradition as an insurgent political formation and intellectual practice. While many genealogies of Black Studies depart from the formal institutionalization of Black Studies departments and programs in the latter half of the 20th Century, this course is differently attuned to the dialectic of Black thought and Black insurgency in which the latter-what C.L.R. James describes as a history of Pan-African revolt against the plantation and its afterlives-is always a precondition of the former. As a critical survey of said histories and the ideas derived from them, this course will examine the relationship between knowledge production (theory) and material struggle (praxis) in the Black Radical Tradition alongside adjacent but distinct political traditions such as Marxism and anarchism. Born out of a protracted "state of emergency," the Black Radical Tradition permits us to appraise, critique, and confront the alarms raised by the COVID-19 pandemic and global climate collapse alongside settler colonialism and plantation slavery in the longue duree. To this end, students will consult non-fiction, literature, art, and film from authors and creators such as James, Audre Lorde, Lizzie Borden, W.E.B. Du Bois, Josina Machel, Kimathi Mohammed, and Lorenzo Ervin.

Instructor(s): Ryan Jobson
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 22733

RDIN 22755. Labor and Resistance at the Margins: Race, Gender, and "Dirty" Work. 100 Units.

Over 100 years ago, Black feminist scholar Anna Julia Cooper challenged narrow definitions of work---which excluded much of the household labor relegated to women---and argued for work to be more broadly defined as "all human exertion." In this class, we put gender in conversation with race, ethnicity, class, power, and labor to answer the following questions: 1) What is labor? What types of labor do we deem "dirty" work? 2) Who does the dirty work and the care work that keeps society going? What social, economic, and political constraints influence the type of work we do? 3) How do we practice resistance in our work? While global perspectives on labor are welcome and incredibly useful, this course and its readings mainly discuss labor and work within the U.S. context.

Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 33183, SSAD 22755, RDIN 42755, GNSE 23183, SSAD 42755

RDIN 22800. An Indigenous People's History of Hawaiʻi. 100 Units.

What you know about Hawai'i is most likely untrue. An archipelago in Oceania's sea of islands, Hawai'i has been locally constructed and globally consumed as a tropical paradise for pleasure and play, attracting tourists, settlers, corporations, and military forces to its shores. It is a fantasized paradise produced through the dispossession, elimination, appropriation, and exploitation of Indigenous people, institutions, worldviews, and practices. This course tells a truer story about Hawai'i. Because ideas and narratives crafted about the history, politics, economics, law, ecology, and society of Hawai'i are dominated and often distorted by non-Indigenous writers, we turn to Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) scholars to learn from their subjugated knowledge. The course examines interdisciplinary research, from the 19th century to the present, and excavates the truths advanced through it: the development of the Hawaiian Kingdom and its government, political order, economy, and society; the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian government and US military occupation and annexation of its territory; legal constructions of race and techniques of gender and sexuality in the territorial period; the creation of the State of Hawaii amid World War II and the Cold War; the birth and evolution of the modern Hawaiian sovereignty movement; and contemporary Kanaka Maoli struggles with federal recognition, militourism, and technoscientific development.

Instructor(s): Uahikea Maile     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 32800, ANTH 22800, GNSE 22806, GNSE 32806, RDIN 32800, HIST 37212, HIST 27212

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): ENGL 22930, CRES 12900

RDIN 23000. What is Asian American Studies? 100 Units.

What is Asian American studies? Who is an Asian American? For that matter, what does it mean to be Asian? Or American? Where do we locate Asian America, and what are its relationships to Asian homelands or other diasporas? Where does Asian America fit into the US racial landscape? What does studying Asian Americans or Asian America help us understand? This course is not a traditional introduction to Asian American studies and its more canonical histories and literatures. Rather, in this course, we will interrogate the normative categories, histories, geographies, and approaches of Asian American studies to consider what it means to study Asian American populations, what we gain from these inquiries, and what the future of Asian American studies research might look like.

Instructor(s): Maya Singhal     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 23000, HIST 27703, RDIN 33001, ANTH 33000, HIST 37702

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): EALC 43000, EALC 23001, MADD 16001, CRES 23001

RDIN 23016. The History of American Urban Education. 100 Units.

This course explores the complex history of American urban education from the 19th century to modern times. Our primary analytical lens will be the role of place, race, and ethnicity in the making of contemporary schools, schooling, and curriculum in US urban centers. We will undertake this exploration by examining a selection of books, some of which are "foundational" texts in the history of American urban education, others that have opened new and important areas of research in the field, and still others that have addressed vital issues in the history of urban education in a particularly compelling way.

Instructor(s): DuJuan Smith     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered 2024-25
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 33016, EDSO 23016, CHDV 33016, CHST 23016, SSAD 23016, CHDV 23016, EDSO 33016

RDIN 23100. Indigenous Feminisms. 100 Units.

Indigenous women, queers, trans, non-binary, and Two Spirit people have been at the forefront of Indigenous resistance struggles, most recently at Standing Rock, at Mauna Kea, and in protests against Line 3 and Line 6 pipelines in the upper midwest and Canada. Their voices, along with Indigenous queer and feminist scholars in academia, have been working to understand the interrelatedness of gendered violences, land dispossession, and cultural appropriation. This class will consider how Indigenous feminist, queer, and Two Spirit scholars have theorized gender, sexuality, race, and colonialism alongside queer and feminist of color critiques toward accountable visions of resistance. We will read works by Indigenous feminist scholars, writers, poets, and activists from the nineteenth-century to the twenty-first to consider how Indigeneity challenges how gender and sexuality are experienced in the context of ongoing settler colonialism.

Instructor(s): Jodi Byrd     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 30152, RDIN 33100, ENGL 33101, GNSE 20152, ENGL 23101

RDIN 23178. The Queer Enemy and the Politics of Homophobia. 100 Units.

How is the queer enemy politically constructed? And what are the uses and effects of this enemy in contemporary politics? This course investigates queer sexuality as a specific kind of threat and homophobia as a specific mode of political antagonism. Key to understanding this specificity is the examination of other kinds of political enemies. Across categories of gender, sexuality, race, religion, and empire, the course theorizes the queer enemy in a comparative perspective. Engaging scholars like Monique Wittig, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, and Jean Paul Sartre, we compare homophobia with other forms of political enmity like misogyny, anti-Black racism, and anti-Semitism. After investigating antagonism across categories of political difference, we delve into the specificities of homophobic antagonism in the second half of the course. Here, we explore how the queer threat is framed: through metaphors of civilizational destruction but also through anti-sodomy and anti-disclosure laws. We also trace how the normalization of the queer enemy has produced new enemies. Through notions of "Pinkwashing" and the "Gay International," we further examine how queer liberation is made to stand in for colonial domination. But we also read critiques of the "gay=colonialism" equation, asking how homophobia mediates anti-colonial politics. Finally, we conclude the course with Michel Foucault's seminal essay and relate the question of the queer enemy to the threat of new human relations.

Instructor(s): Omar Safadi     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course counts as a Concepts course for GNSE majors
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 23178, HMRT 23178, GNSE 23178

RDIN 23200. Race and Indigeneity in Video Games. 100 Units.

This class will read key texts in critical video game studies to consider how race, diaspora, and Indigeneity shape the code and the machines that structure the games we play. In addition to critical readings by scholars in Indigenous studies, Black feminism, settler colonial studies, and video game studies including Joanne Barker, Christine Sharpe, and Chris Patterson, we may also read creative works by Gabrielle Zevin and Elissa Washuta among others to consider how narratives about society and identity transform in relation to video games. Games and/or franchises to be discussed will include Norco, Umurangi Generation, Assassin's Creed, Undertale, and Spiritfarer among others

Instructor(s): Jodi Byrd     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 12303

RDIN 23201. American Monsters: An Ecocritical Look at Cryptozoology. 100 Units.

Cryptids are everywhere. From household monsters like Bigfoot and Mothman to local creatures like the Wisconsin Hodag and the Illinois Piasa Bird, folkloric animals appear across the United States in advertisements, star in TV and film, and even feature in conspiracy theories. Despite their ubiquity, yet perhaps unsurprisingly, cryptozoological animals have received little scholarly attention. This course aims to change that! By taking cryptozoology seriously, or at least as a serious object of study, students in American Monsters will study the history of cryptid folklore to unearth the historical context surrounding each creature and apply ecocritical methodologies to these tales in order to uncover the cultural values that cryptozoological stories hold. This course will think primarily about the place of cryptids in American understandings of wilderness, extinction, settler colonialism, and race. Course materials will come from a variety of disciplines including history, animal studies, material culture studies, and Indigenous studies, and include film, primary sources, and experiential learning activities.

Instructor(s): Jessica Landau     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 23201, CEGU 33201, ENST 23201

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): RAME 42202, RLST 22202, AMER 42202, AMER 22202, HCHR 42202, HIST 27416, HIST 47416

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 in France and the French Empire, with a focus on Paris, from the Middle Ages through 1968. 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.

Instructor(s): L. Auslander     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Admission to the Paris: Social Sciences Urbanism program
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 23210, CEGU 23210, ANTH 23210

RDIN 23300. Narratives of Incarceration and Justice. 100 Units.

This is a community-engaged course which brings enrolled UChicago students and community members together for a quarter of learning, dialogue and knowledge building. We will examine and analyze narratives of incarceration and justice in multiple mediums (history, memoir, film, visual art, storytelling) to explore how narratives of incarceration and justice are documented, told and historicized. What are the dangers of a single story and how can dominant narratives be disrupted? What tools and methods can be deployed to surface previously marginalized lived experiences and truths? How have individuals and communities developed platforms to tell their stories and shape new futures? This course will include field trips, including visiting a class at Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, Illinois. An application is required to register for this course. Application Due Date: Friday, Feb 28, at 12pm https://tinyurl.com/RDIN23300

Instructor(s): Alice Kim     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HMRT 23301, CHST 23300

RDIN 23304. Abolitionist Theologies. 100 Units.

How might religions activate the abolitionist imagination? The contemporary abolition movement is not just about dismantling prisons or the police. It is about imagining alternatives to this apparatus of fear, punishment, and scarcity-and experimenting with new modes of living together premised on mutual aid rather than state power. Many abolitionist thinkers thus see abolition as a sacred force interrupting the normalized brutalities of everyday life. This course focuses on Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theologies that interrogate incarceration, capitalism, the war on terror, and the settler colonial state. We will analyze the possibilities and limits of these theologies as revolutionary resources. Our readings will include a variety of genres: scriptural interpretation, spiritual autobiography, and speculative fiction. No prior experience with academic theology or abolition required.

Instructor(s): Olivia Bustion     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 23304, RLST 23304, HMRT 23304

RDIN 23367. Panafricanism: Histories, Aesthetics, and Politics. 100 Units.

Pan-Africanism, a concept first theorized during the late nineteenth century, has been widely understood as a political movement claiming solidarity and freedom for African and African diasporic peoples around the world. What are the cultural dimensions of Pan-Africanism's drive for self-determination, civil rights, and political emancipation? What forms and formats have been important vectors for the circulation of Pan-African idea(l)s? How might we differentiate Pan-Africanism from related concepts such as Afropolitanism and Black Internationalism? This course is designed to coincide with the Art Institute exhibition, Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica (December 15-March 30). There will be at least two class trips to the exhibition and students will also have an opportunity to participate in related programming.

Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 23367

RDIN 23507. Power and Responsibility in the Anthropocene. 100 Units.

Humanity's immense impact on Earth's systems has led some scientists to claim that we have entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. Humans' influence on Earth's landscape, climate system, and biodiversity inspires many to ask, in turn, What should be done about humankind's planetary powers? Some scholars and religious leaders claim that people should take responsibility and influence Earth's systems for good ends, while others argue that we should radically scale down such power. Still others suggest that the Anthropocene requires us to entirely revise our ideas of power and responsibility and even develop new religious sensibilities. Through discussions and focused writing assignments, students in this class will explore and evaluate these and additional responses to the Anthropocene, paying specific attention to how Anthropocene ethical thought wrestles with the place of religion on a changing planet. The course culminates in an extended examination of how Anthropocene discourse conceals racial antagonisms and contemporary decolonial struggles.

Instructor(s): Colin Weaver     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 23507, RLST 23507, HIPS 23570, GLST 23507, ANTH 23507

RDIN 24000. Soundtrack for Changing the World: Mavis Staples, Chicago, & the Music of the Civil Rights Movement. 100 Units.

Mavis Staples was nine years old in 1948 when she joined her father, Roebuck "Pops' Staples and three siblings to form the Chicago gospel group The Staple Singers. Inspired by the rich musical crosscurrents of the South Side, the Staples fused gospel vocal harmonies with Delta Blues guitar to create a revolutionary form of American music. In the 1960s, the group collaborated with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and traveled the back roads of the South at great personal risk to spread his message. Their music became synonymous with the Civil Rights Movement. A lifelong South Side resident, Mavis Staples continues to blend soul, blues, folk, gospel and rock in her albums and has worked with Bob Dylan, Prince, Public Enemy's Chuck D and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. Students in this interdisciplinary course will blend journalism, history, biography, and musicology to illuminate the pioneering path mapped out by Mavis Staples and her family. The students will explore how art and activism intertwine, and how popular music sparks democratic change. Students will create research projects grounded in the Staples' epic history by developing oral histories and drawing on recordings, photographs, manuscripts, newspapers, film, and video in archives nationwide. Students will be able to further their work by applying for Summer 2025 travel grants and research fellowships. Guest speakers in the course will include artists who were influenced by or played with Mavis Staples and The Staple Singers.

Instructor(s): Greg Kot, former Chicago Tribune music critic and host of public radio's Sound Opinions; Nora Titone     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): PARR 34000, HIST 27316, RDIN 34000, MUSI 34200

RDIN 24001-24002-24003. Colonizations I-II-III.

This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. This three-quarter sequence critically unsettles the concept of ‘civilization’ by focusing on the histories and discourses of power, resistance, and political possibility that have given shape to the modern world. We explore modern forms of colonialism across the globe: their dynamics of dispossession, exploitation and domination; their contradictions and unforeseen consequences; their relationships with processes of resistance, revolution, freedom and independence; and their legacies in the present. The sequence also centers colonialism’s fundamental entanglement with capitalism and with the processes of race/racialization, labor/class, gender, and sexuality that have come to configure political identities today. Courses in this sequence may be taken in any order.

RDIN 24025. Opera, Modernity, Empire. 100 Units.

Inspired by recent trends in global music history; Black, Asian, and indigenous opera studies; as well as contemporary operatic productions and their critical responses, we will consider: exoticist and Orientalist tropes and racial costuming; exportation, adoption, and adaptation of European opera across the globe; depictions, explorations, and transgressions of the gender frontier; and postcolonial and hybrid re-interpretations and stagings of works from the operatic canon. In broaching these and other topics, we will survey a variety of genres-from Restoration semi-opera to contemporary Baroque-folk fusion, and across film adaptations, television opera, and the concept album-and confront the de-/neo-colonial potential of today's lyric stage with special guests from the industry.

Instructor(s): Devon Borowski      Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MUSI 24025, TAPS 26512

RDIN 24252. Black Quietude. 100 Units.

This course considers modes of quietude as they intersect experiences of blackness. What can be conveyed or contained in moments of stillness or quiet? Is black quietude a moment of universalism that transcends the determinations of race? Or do black subjects carry or project the experience of racialization into their spaces of quiet? Do we define quiet for the black subject on the same terms as for other racial categories? (Theory)

Instructor(s): Tina Post     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 24252

RDIN 24305. Exile and Émigré Literature. 100 Units.

This course navigates the global refugee, exilic, expatriate and émigré crises and experiences as modes of displacement that permeate modern and contemporary literature. Using a comparative approach, this course offers a sustained and nuanced examination of the notion of displacement in most of its forms as represented by many canonical literary works produced by writers of various nations. This course compares the historical, socio-political, economic, cultural and national motives behind the experiences of displacement discussed throughout the course. The main topics covered in this course are: Loss, Alienation and Disorientation, Displacement and Gender Crossing, Displacement and Imperialistic Gestures, Displacement and Mobility, Displacement and Self-fashioning, Acts of Departure: Roots and Routes, Home-Abroad Dichotomy, Displacement, Memory and the Narrative/Poetic Imagination, Displacement and Individual/ National Identity, Abjection and Assimilation, Cross-Cultural Psychology and Dialogical Acculturation, The Crisis of Acceptance and Belonging, Biopolitics and Zoopolitics, The American Dream and Otherness.

Instructor(s): Ahmad Qabaha     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 34305, CMLT 34305, NEHC 24305, RDIN 34305, CMLT 24305, ENGL 33434, ENGL 23434

RDIN 24332. Themes in the Anthropology of Islam: Debates, Tradition, Critiques. 100 Units.

The course begins by examining principal themes and debates the anthropology of Islam has engaged with in its attempt to undo Western universalist concepts such as secularism and the anthropological categories of culture and religion. We will learn to historicize these concepts and explore alternative frameworks anthropologists have offered for studying Muslim societies. We will turn an ethnographic lens towards studies on the Islamic Revival in Egypt, Turkey, Europe, and East Asia in order to study how Muslims cultivate piety, relate to the unseen, and retain cultural ties alongside their religious identities. In the process, we will learn the ways they trouble conventional notions around women's agency, ideas around modernity's "disenchantment," and secular conceptions of belief. We will then explore texts that indirectly problematize the anthropology of Islam's coordinates around orthopraxy, authority, and ritual. As we do so, we will interrogate the relationship between U.S. Blackness and Islam, religious piety and consumer capitalism, as well as transnationalism and incarceration. We will situate our readings and discussions within the broader political context of the Global War on Terror and secular governmentality, with a particular attention to questions of race, gender, and political struggle.

Instructor(s): Alexis Chavez     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 27332, ANTH 24332, GNSE 27332

RDIN 24555. Ecological Explorations of the Francophone World. 100 Units.

The environmental humanities - that is, the study of nature through humanistic disciplines such as literature and history - has long been dominated by texts and theories from privileged sections of Europe and North America. However, alternative understandings of our natural world, including the role of living beings within it, have always existed. In this course, we will explore how contemporary francophone literature can renew, expand and complicate our perceptions of the oceans, deserts, mangroves and forests that surround us. Particular attention will be paid to questions of race, gender, language and indigeneity; course material may include theoretical texts, fiction, poetry, songs, podcasts, film, graphic novels and social media material.

Instructor(s): Nikhita Obeegadoo     Terms Offered: Course not taught in 2025-26
Prerequisite(s): For students seeking French credit, FREN 20500 or equivalent.
Note(s): Taught in English or French, based on course composition
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 24555, CEGU 34555, RDIN 34555, FREN 34555, FREN 24555

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): AMER 24599, CHST 24599, CHDV 24599, HLTH 24599, PBPL 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): RLST 24601, HIST 27209, AMER 24601, FNDL 24601

RDIN 24770. Sex, Crime and Horror in Argentine Literature. 100 Units.

This course examines the historical evolution of Argentine literature, cinema, and the visual arts through the study of three thematic currents that significantly influenced Argentina's cultural and socio-political experience with nation-building, modernization, and democracy: sex, crime, and horror. The primary objective of the course is to foster a critical exploration of how foundational works of Romanticism and Realism in the Río de la Plata, the Noir genre, and the Gothic tradition accounted for decisive changes in the social fabric of the country. Students will assess the role of sexuality, crime, and horror stories in the representation of momentous events in Argentine history, spanning from the revolutionary era in the nineteenth century to the contemporary period. Topics include the Wars of Independence, gaucho literature, indigenous resistance, the great migratory flows, the rise of the middle classes, Peronismo, Youth culture, military dictatorships, human rights violations, LGBT movements, and economic precarity in neoliberal times. Works by Esteban Echeverría, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Juana Manuela Gorriti, José Hernández, Lucio V. and Eduarda Mansilla, Eugenio Cambaceres, Leopoldo Lugones, Roberto Arlt, Jorge Luis Borges, Juan José Saer, Antonio Di Benedetto, Olga Orozco, Alejandra Pizarnik, Juan Gelman, Andrés Rivera, Silvina Ocampo, Horacio Quiroga, Rodolfo Walsh, Manuel Puig, Ricardo Piglia, Mariana Enríquez, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, María Luisa Bemberg,

Instructor(s): Carlos Halaburda      Terms Offered: Course not taught in 2025-26
Prerequisite(s): Reading proficiency in Spanish required.
Note(s): Class discussions and reading materials in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 34770, SPAN 24770, LACS 24770, RDIN 34770, GNSE 34771, GNSE 24770, LACS 34770

RDIN 24960. Creole Genesis and Genetic Linguistics. 100 Units.

In this seminar course we will review the "creole exceptionalism" tradition against the uniformitarian view, according to which creoles have emerged and evolved like other, natural and non-creole languages. We will situate creoles in the context of the plantation settlement colonies that produced them and compare their emergence specifically with that of languages such as English and the Romance languages in Europe. We will also compare these evolutions with those of new colonial varieties of European languages (such as Amish English, mainstream American English varieties, Brazilian Portuguese, and Québécois French) which emerged around the same time but are not considered creoles. Using the comparative approach (in evolutionary theory), we will assess whether the criteria used in the genetic classification of languages have been applied uniformly to creole and non-creole languages. In return, we will explore ways in which genetic creolistics can inform and improve genetic linguistics (including historical dialectology).

Instructor(s): Salikoko Mufwene
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 34960, LING 24960, CHDV 34960, LING 34960, CHDV 24960

RDIN 25002. Is Religion Bad for Women? 100 Units.

Some scholars working in the study of gender and sexuality view religion as the conservative enemy of progress, irreconcilably antagonistic to the flourishing of any non-normative gender or sexuality. At the same time, some religious practitioners view feminism as a Western or liberal invention, an imposition that attempts to manage the lives of religious subjects. Still others find feminism and religious commitment mutually reinforcing, and have developed feminist, womanist, and queer rituals and theologies. This course examines contemporary texts, ethnographies, memoirs, and films that grapple with these tensions. In so doing, the course also helps students develop familiarity with foundational categories both in religious studies and in the study of gender and sexuality. Further questions to be explored include: Does religion facilitate or oppose the flourishing of women, queers, and people of color? Is religion a guardian of tradition that resists politically progressive aims, or do religions offer resources for interrogating secular liberalism? The course primarily considers Islamic, Christian, and Jewish traditions. Prior coursework in religious studies or gender and sexuality studies is helpful but not necessary.

Instructor(s): Hannah Jones     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 12130, RLST 24002, GLST 24002

RDIN 25003. Immigration, Law and Society. 100 Units.

Law is everywhere within the social world. It shapes our everyday lives in countless ways by permitting, prohibiting, protecting and prosecuting native-born citizens and immigrants alike. This course reviews the major theoretical perspectives and sociological research on the relationship between law and society, with an empirical focus on immigrants in the United States, primarily from Mexico and Central America. To begin, we explore the permeation of law in everyday life, legal consciousness, and gap between "law on the books" and "law on the ground." The topic of immigration is introduced with readings on the socio-legal construction of immigration status, theories of international migration, and U.S. immigration law at the national and subnational levels. We continue to study the social impact of law on immigrants through the topics of liminal legality; children, families, and romantic partnerships; policing, profiling, and raids; detention and deportation; and immigrants' rights. This course adopts a "law in action" approach centered on the social, political, and cultural contexts of law as it relates to immigration and social change. It is designed to expose you to how social scientists study and think about law, and to give you the analytical skills to examine law, immigration, and social change relationally.

Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): PBPL 25003, HMRT 25003, SOCI 28079, LACS 25003, SSAD 25003

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 35119, ARTH 25119, RDIN 35119

RDIN 25704. Environmental Justice in Chicago. 100 Units.

This course will examine the development of environmental justice theory and practice through social scientific and ethical literature about the subject as well as primary source accounts of environmental injustices. We will focus on environmental justice issues in Chicago including, but not limited to waste disposal, toxic air and water, the Chicago heat wave, and climate change. Particular attention will be paid to environmental racism and the often understudied role of religion in environmental justice theory and practice. Throughout the course we will explore how normative commitments are expressed in different types of literature as well as the basis for normative judgments and the types of authorities authors utilize and claim as they consider environmental justice.

Instructor(s): Sarah Fredericks     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Graduate students can enroll with permission of instructor and will have additional requirements.
Equivalent Course(s): PBPL 25704, RLST 25704, AMER 25704, CHST 25704, HMRT 25704, ENST 25704, CEGU 25704, KNOW 25704

RDIN 25706. Climate Justice. 100 Units.

Climate injustice includes the disproportionate effects of climate change on people who benefit little from the activities that cause it, generally the poor, people of color, and people marginalized in other ways. Given the complex economic, physical, social, and political realities of climate change, what might climate justice entail? This course explores this complex question through an examination of various theories of justice; the gendered, colonial, and racial dimensions of climate change; and climate justice movements.

Instructor(s): Sarah Fredericks     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Graduates may enroll with permission of the instructor and will have extra readings and longer assignments.
Equivalent Course(s): HMRT 25706, KNOW 25706, GNSE 25702, CEGU 25706, ENST 25706, PBPL 25706, RLST 25706, GLST 25766

RDIN 25800. Black Ownership of Wealth: A Theological Consideration. 100 Units.

Since Africans were brought to the Virginia Colony (August 1619), throughout slavery and segregation until today, black Americans (men and women) have always owned wealth. They have always had human agency. These black families accumulated wealth and offered a concurrent narrative and framing from the mainstream understanding of black Americans as victims. Who are these black families who remain mainly invisible from the dominant black story? What is material, financial wealth? Who has it? And how did they get it?

Instructor(s): Dwight Hopkins     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 25800, RDIN 45800, THEO 45800, HIST 37419, HIST 27419, AMER 25800, AMER 45800

RDIN 25945. Settler Colonialism: Epistemologies. 100 Units.

In this course, we will consider settler colonialism as a contemporary, ongoing process, thinking through the problems of state formation, citizenship, land expropriation, and the law. We will interrogate the epistemological foundations that connect divergent settler colonial states. For example, what is the relationship between modern liberal democracy and ongoing settler-colonial violence? Has the livestreamed genocide in Gaza marked a turning point in that relationship, or has it simply revealed what many people have known for a long time: that settler-colonial states are necessarily undemocratic? We will also take seriously the question of what a decolonial project look like in the very different settler-colonial contexts. Over the quarter, we will examine the transformations of space and subjects effected by the settler colonial project, drawing on historical, anthropological, and theoretical literature.

Instructor(s): Callie Maidhof     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 25945, ANTH 25945, RLST 26945

RDIN 25950. The Psychology of Stereotyping and Prejudice. 100 Units.

This course introduces concepts and research in the study of stereotyping and prejudice. Topics include the formation of stereotypes and prejudice; the processes that underlie stereotyping and prejudice; stereotyping and prejudice from the target's perspective; and prejudice and stereotype reduction. The course will cover a variety of groups (e.g., race, gender, weight, and sexual orientation) and explore the implications of stereotyping and prejudice across a number of settings (e.g., educational, law, and health).

Instructor(s): A. Light     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): PSYC 25950

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): RDIN 36050, CHDV 36055, CHDV 26050, LING 26050, LING 36050

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): RDIN 36220, TAPS 26220, TAPS 36220

RDIN 26260. Katherine Dunham: Politics in Motion. 100 Units.

This course traces the creative, political, and scholarly legacies of Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), exploring the immeasurable impact of her career as a dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, activist, and creator of the Dunham Technique. Students will merge embodied practice with in-class discussions of theoretical texts, questioning the role of Black dance traditions of the 20th century in helping shape transnational and Black diaspora studies. In keeping with the geographic scope of Dunham's practice and research, we will engage Black dance and social movements of the Caribbean, Latin America, the United States, and beyond. Central concepts of performance ethnography, Caribbean studies, and Black feminisms will anchor an investigation of dance as an intellectual process and as social action. We will contemplate the methods of artist-activists and artist-scholars in traversing disciplines and foregrounding new fields of thought. This course will balance training with a certified practitioner in Dunham Technique with field studies, archival research, and short choreographic experiments while taking advantage of concurrent city-wide events celebrating Dunham's legacy. No previous dance experience is required, and students should be prepared to engage through the body as well as intellectually in each class.

Instructor(s): R. Russell     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 26260, TAPS 26260, TAPS 36260

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.

Instructor(s): M. McNeal     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 26290, CHST 26290, MUSI 23620, TAPS 36290, RDIN 36290, MUSI 33620

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): MADD 20302, GNSE 26303, TAPS 26302, CHST 26302

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: Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 36380, HIST 26318, ANTH 23077, LACS 36380, GLST 26380, HIPS 26380, CRES 26380, LACS 26380

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: Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 20017, CHST 26384, HIST 26319, LACS 26384, ARTH 26384

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.

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz Francisco     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 26386, LACS 36386, HIST 26321, SPAN 36386, RDIN 36386, CRES 26386, ANTH 23003, SPAN 26386

RDIN 26600. Black Women Work: The labor of Black women in communities, families, and institutions. 100 Units.

This multidisciplinary course will explore the labor of Black women in three distinct arenas-communities, families, and institutions. Students will explore these areas through engaging with historical and contemporary narratives, research, and popular media, heavily drawing in a U.S. context, but not exclusively. Through an engagement of Black women in the U.S. labor force, this course will explore three questions. How has the labor of Black women contributed to the sustainability of communities, families, and institutions? What are the choices Black women make to engage and sustain their work? What is the future of the labor of Black women? Is the future one that is liberatory or not? Students will leave this course with an understanding of the ways intersectional experiences of oppression contribute to complex conditions and decision-making, that shape the labor of Black women, the function of certain labor decisions as sites of resistance, as well as the generative resources that support the professional success and well-being of Black women.

Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): SSAD 29600, GNSE 20127, SSAD 69600

RDIN 26635. Liberatory Violence. 100 Units.

From 18th century slave rebellions in the Americas to 20th and 21st century anticolonial revolutions, oppressed peoples' struggles for liberation have often incorporated violent tactics, even against non-combatants. This course examines anticolonial violence in light of the work of the Martiniquan revolutionary Frantz Fanon and some of his interlocutors. We study specific freedom movements: Nat Turner's slave rebellion, the Haitian and Algerian revolutions against French colonialism, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers' mobilization against white supremacy and police violence, and the ongoing Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. Throughout, we will pay attention to how revolutionaries evaluated the place of violence in their own movements, including religious criteria for justifiable and unjustifiable use of force.

Instructor(s): Alireza Doostdar     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Graduate student enrollment by permission only. Please send one or two paragraphs explaining your interest and prior preparation.
Note(s): This course meets the SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 26636, RDIN 46635, AASR 46635, SSAD 26635, HMRT 26635, ANTH 36635, GLST 26635, RLST 26635

RDIN 26636. Liberatory Violence: Part II. 100 Units.

In this follow up to the Autumn course "Liberatory Violence," we explore the temporality of revolutionary violence, its victories and defeats, its tragedies, promises, and pitfalls. The course will be split into three parts, attending to revolutionary violence in the past, the present, and the future. Our case studies will include the Grenada revolution, the Irish Republican Army's struggle for independence, ongoing Palestinian resistance against Zionist colonization, and speculative fiction about future liberation.

Instructor(s): Alireza Doostdar     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Open to student who took RLST 26635/AASR 46635 "Liberatory Violence" in autumn 2024, or by instructor's permission.
Note(s): This course meets the SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): HMRT 26636, RLST 26636, AASR 46636, ANTH 26637, RDIN 46636, ANTH 46636

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, GLST 26674, ANTH 20537

RDIN 26770. Stories of Oceans and Archipelagos. 100 Units.

According to Fijian-Tongan writer Epeli Hau'ofa, "There is a world of difference between viewing the Pacific as 'islands in a far sea' and as 'a sea of islands.'" In this course, we will delve into the "world of difference" that exists between viewing islands as remote and insignificant, and considering them as crucial nodes in an ever-expanding planetary network. Simultaneously, we will consider the stakes of moving away from traditional representations of the ocean as a blank canvas for human movement, to instead consider it as a vibrant material and multispecies space. This course will encourage students to formulate their own approaches to cutting-edge debates in archipelagic theory and critical ocean studies, and to situate those debates within the broader fields of environmental humanities and postcolonial studies. Readings will be drawn from the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean (including the Caribbean Sea), and the Indian Ocean.

Instructor(s): Nikhita Obeegadoo     Terms Offered: Course not taught in 2025-26
Prerequisite(s): For students seeking French credit, FREN 20500 or equivalent.
Note(s): Taught in French.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 26770, CEGU 26770, CMLT 26771

RDIN 26780. Caribbean Music, Performance, and Popular Culture in the Age of Precarity: 1990 to the Present. 100 Units.

This course explores the concept of precarity and its influence on artistic and cultural expressions within contemporary Caribbean popular culture, primarily from the 1990s to the present day. Precarity is broadly defined as the feeling or experience of instability resulting from various social, economic, political, and environmental factors, including structural adjustments, climate change (such as hurricanes and earthquakes), and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, among others. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of art in shaping popular responses to precarity, including significant events like mass protests, the Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protests, uprisings against the deportation of Haitians in the Dominican Republic, as well as interrelated international movements like #LifeinLeggings and #Metoo. The course delves into how Caribbean performance and popular music have engaged with these issues, with a focus on music genres like dancehall, wylers, soca, reggaetón, and the individual artistic works of Caribbean artists such as LaVaughn Belle, Helen Ceballos, Joiri Minaya, and others. These artists use their work to explore themes of precarity and to envision potential alternatives to the contemporary challenges of insecurity, touching on issues related to gender, sexuality, and race.

Instructor(s): Jessica Baker and Danielle Roper     Terms Offered: Course not taught in 2025-26
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 36780, MUSI 36780, RDIN 36780, SPAN 26780, MUSI 26780

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): CHST 26922, SSAD 46922, HMRT 46922, CRES 26922, SSAD 26922

RDIN 26994. Anticolonial Worlding: Literature, Film, Thought. 100 Units.

This course explores anticolonial worldbuilding through literature, film, art, and philosophy. It focuses on the role of the cultural Cold War in shaping anticolonial aesthetics and politics during the twentieth century as well as its impact on our current political moment. The mid-century was characterized by an expansion of anticolonial festivals, exchanges, and congresses and marked by political crises and coalitional solidarity across Vietnam, Palestine, Cuba, Soviet and US imperial expansion, and the May 1968 student protests. We will explore how Pan-Arab, Pan-African, Non-Aligned/Global South, Marxist-Leninist, indigenous land rights, and racial justice movements mobilized class, gender, and language politics. Exploring anticolonial literature, film, and art across a multilingual and transnational archive we will ask how socialist and speculative realisms, engaged literature, third cinema, agitprop, and other aesthetic movements generated powerful internationalist imaginations and networks of resistance.

Instructor(s): Leah Feldman     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 36994, GNSE 36994, CMLT 36994, HMRT 26994, CMLT 26994, REES 26994, NEHC 26994, GNSE 26994, ENGL 26994

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.
Equivalent Course(s): AMER 27006, HIST 27006, LLSO 25411, HIST 37006, AMER 37006

RDIN 27501. Introduction to Black Psychology. 100 Units.

Psychological research often presents the experiences of Black Americans using a narrow, one-dimensional, and deficit-based lens. Further, many in society overlook or are unaware of the critical contributions Black psychologists have made in shaping federal policies many Americans benefit from today. In response to these concerns, this course will introduce students to relevant psychological scholarship by drawing from both historical and current arguments that center questions of identity development, wellbeing, goodness, and cultural strengths already present within Black communities. The goals of this course are to examine factors that inform the racialized lived experiences of Black Americans across the lifecourse, while also interrogating the structural forces that impede quality of life and other key health-related outcomes overtime.

Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 27500, PSYC 27350, SSAD 27500

RDIN 27543. Black and/or Human: On Humanism and Racialized Being. 100 Units.

What is it to be human and why does it matter? This course invites students to engage the question within the relation between theories of humanism and the histories of dehumanization as pertains to the racialization of Black people. Specific theories of the human have served as foundations of practices of dehumanization, and yet experiences of dehumanization have led to the development of new forms of humanism. In light of histories of enslavement and colonization and the related hierarchies of the human, what is the conceptual basis of the hierarchization within or exclusion from the category of the human? What does it feel like to be dehumanized and how does one adequately respond to such an experience? Some thinkers reject the concept while others reclaim it to inspire new existential outlooks on the world or political struggles. This course will explore the wide literature on these questions, supplementing written texts with other media such as film and music. We will focus on the implications of theories of humanism for the particularly human form of being, the pursuit of the good, and the organization of social life. Engagement in this course will be based on discussion, personal reflection, and the relation of course material to contemporary issues.

Instructor(s): Kevin Irakoze     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 37543, RDIN 37543, PHIL 27543

RDIN 27600. Cinema in Africa. 100 Units.

This course examines Africa in film as well as films produced in Africa. It places cinema in Sub Saharan Africa in its social, cultural, and aesthetic contexts ranging from neocolonial to postcolonial, Western to Southern Africa, documentary to fiction, art cinema to TV, and includes films that reflect on the impact of global trends in Africa and local responses, as well as changing racial and gender identifications. We will begin with La Noire de... (1966), by the "father" of African cinema, Ousmane Sembene, contrasted w/ a South African film, African Jim (1960) that more closely resembles African American musical film, and anti-colonial and anti-apartheid films from Lionel Rogosin's Come Back Africa (1959) to Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga, Sembene's Camp de Thiaroye (1984), and Jean Marie Teno's Afrique, Je te Plumerai (1995). The rest of the course will examine 20th and 21st century films such as I am a not a Witch and The wound (both 2017), which show tensions between urban and rural, traditional and modern life, and the implications of these tensions for women and men, Western and Southern Africa, in fiction, documentary and fiction film. (20th/21st)

Instructor(s): Loren Kruger     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): One or more of the following: Intro to Film/ International Cinema AND/OR Intro to African Studies or equivalent
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 48602, CMST 24201, ENGL 47600, GNSE 28602, ENGL 27600, RDIN 37600, CMLT 42900, CMLT 22900, CMST 34201

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 27777. Disrupting Environmental Narratives: Colonialism, Race and Toxicity. 100 Units.

The environmental humanities have long been dominated by texts and theories from privileged sections of Europe and North America. How might this field be "disrupted" to make way for alternative understandings of our natural world that have always existed and yet remain on the margins of academic discourse? And if we are to focus on works from the "Global South," how do we account for its internal divisions and hierarchies, such as the oft-invisibilized archipelagoes of the Indian Ocean? In this course, we engage with works by contemporary writers and filmmakers from parts of the world usually grouped as the "Global South" (a label we will interrogate within the course), as a means of nourishing our creative and critical understandings of what it means to tell stories about the various ecologies we inhabit. What is the role of storytelling from the Global South in our perception of environmental change and in the current environmental crisis? How can novels, films, and short stories raise awareness of and emotional engagement with the racialized environmental impact of colonialism and coloniality in South Asia, Africa, and Latin America? We will explore the potential of narratives to challenge common assumptions regarding the environment, race, and power; and discuss how contemporary literature and film address the continuities between colonial pasts and the growing levels of toxicity in multiple regions of the Global South.

Instructor(s): Nikhita Obeegadoo, Victoria Saramago     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Taught in English, with readings available in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 27777, SPAN 27777, FREN 27777, LACS 27777, SIGN 27777, PORT 27777

RDIN 28055. Queerness in the Shadow of Empire: Sexualities in the Modern Middle East. 100 Units.

Critics, from both the Right and the Left, claim that liberal sexual regimes are Western, imperial impositions onto Muslim and Middle Eastern societies. On the other hand, LGBTQ+ advocates claim that the restriction of sexuality is itself a colonial legacy. This class will delve into this debate by examining cutting edge empirical and theoretical work on Queer lives in the modern Middle East.

Instructor(s): E. Abelhadi     Terms Offered: Autumn. Distribution: C;3
Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent
Note(s): Distribution: C;3
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 38055, GNSE 30141, NEHC 28055, CHDV 28055, CHDV 38055, RDIN 38055, GNSE 20141

RDIN 28201. Art on My Mind. 100 Units.

A critic who began as an abstract painter, bell hooks (Gloria Watkins) was also a queer woman of color and among the most penetrating cultural observers in recent US history. This course centers on the close reading of hooks' 1995 book, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics, which fearlessly and sympathetically took as its subject a perennial conundrum wherein black artists and critics' relationship to art and aesthetics threatens to be subsumed by their efforts to challenge an art world bent on marginalization and exclusion. By hooks's own account, she designed this collection of essays and interviews to continue discussions of art and aesthetics begun in earlier work-specifically, to further engage the politics of feminism in conjunction with liberatory Black struggle. The result did a great deal more than this already considerable feat of intersectional study. Art on My Mind demonstrates then-new, still-woefully-underutilized means to think about visual art, write about visual art, and create actual spaces for 'dialogue across boundaries.' Art on My Mind, then, remains a model for confronting what addles critical consideration of the work of artists and cultural producers in all groups marginalized by structures of domination. This makes it also a book about transgression, and an excellent object to debate at a moment when generative meetings across boundaries seem increasingly unlikely.

Instructor(s): D. English     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 28201, ARTV 38201, ARTH 38201, ARTV 28201, RDIN 38201

RDIN 28300. Poéticas Afrocaribeñas. 100 Units.

En este curso haremos una revisión panorámica de la producción poética afrocaribeña desde sus primeras expresiones conocidas en el siglo XIX hasta el presente. ¿Qué condiciones culturales y políticas han dado cuenta de su surgimiento y desarrollo? ¿Qué sistemas tropológicos y repertorios temáticos la han caracterizado? ¿En qué medida esta poesía ha sido vehículo para pensar las identidades raciales de la zona e instrumento de resistencia en coyunturas de violencia extrema y cuáles han sido sus disidencias? Entre los materiales a estudiar se encuentra la obra de sujetos esclavizados y de afrodescendientes libres victimizados por el colonialismo esclavista (entre ellos Juan Francisco Manzano y Plácido); las experimentaciones vanguardistas de Nicolás Guillén y Luis Palés Matos y de sus seguidores Emilio Ballagas y Manuel del Cabral; y las reformulaciones feministas de esta tradición avanzadas por poetas contemporáneas tales como la cubana Nancy Morejón y la puertorriqueña Mayra Santos Febres.

Instructor(s): Agnes Lugo-Ortiz     Terms Offered: Course not taught in 2025-26
Note(s): Taught in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 28300, SPAN 28300

RDIN 28421. Theater for Social Change. 100 Units.

Augusto Boal argues that theatre is "rehearsal for the revolution." Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed provides key strategies for collaboratively crafting dramatic narrative. These strategies challenge the conventional Aristotelian structure that privileges a single protagonist and subordinates other stories. Instead, Boal structures a poetics in which the "spect-actor" contributes their voice. Students will engage in devising and embodiment exercises in Image Theatre, Newspaper Theatre, Forum Theatre, and more, by interpreting texts, (e.g., religious texts, constitutional documents, or political manifestos), interrogating current events, exploring public narratives, and valuing diverse learning styles. Students will contextualize destinations for the course material according to the aesthetic and academic questions that they bring into the classroom. To consider ethical concerns surrounding participatory theatre, we will examine arts groups past and present that employ the techniques of the Theatre of the Oppressed. Readings include Boal, Freire, Jan Cohen-Cruz, Michael Rohd, bell hooks, and Knight and Schwarzman.

Instructor(s): D. Serna     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Attendance at first class is mandatory
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 38421, TAPS 28421

RDIN 28619. Postcolonial Openings. 100 Units.

This course familiarizes students with the perspectives, debates, and attitudes that characterize the contemporary field of postcolonial theory, with critical attention to how its interdisciplinary formation contributes to reading literary works. What are the claims made on behalf of literary texts in orienting us to other lives and possibilities, and in registering the experiences of displacement under global capitalism? To better answer these questions, we read recent scholarship that engages the field in conversations around gender, affect, climate change, and democracy, to think about the impulses that animate the field, and to sketch new directions. We survey critiques within the field, looking at canonical critics (Fanon, Said, Bhabha, Spivak), as well as reading a range of literary and cinematic works by writers like Jean Rhys, E.M. Forster, Mahasweta Devi, Derek Walcott, and Arundhati Roy). (Theory; 20th/21st)

Instructor(s): Darrel Chia     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MAPH 34520, RDIN 38619, ENGL 28619, GNSE 24520, ENGL 38619, GNSE 34520, HMRT 34520, KNOW 38618

RDIN 28660. Contemporary Palestinian Life Writing. 100 Units.

This course analyzes a range of Palestinian life narratives produced by authors based in different places, both in Palestine and the diaspora, united in a common cause and a desire to speak out, thereby circulating their works as a form of Palestinian testimony. This course sees these writers conversing with each other, each attempting to represent their own personal experience but also responding to the broader context of ongoing Palestinian dispossession, making this integral to the snapshot of experience they want to narrate. This course shows that such texts, individually meaningful but also conversant with wider concerns and messages of solidarity and advocacy, are ideal components of contemporary Palestinian literature that position itself as future-orientated, and expresses a desire to combat the international community's failure to acknowledge Palestinian rights for justice and self-determination. This course contends that contemporary Palestinian life writing goes beyond narrating the specifics of the conflict in order to reflect on central questions of dignity, justice, and solidarity at the time Palestine is still a place that is not fully recognized. All readings will be in English, although there will be an opportunity to read and discuss texts in the original language (Arabic).

Instructor(s): Ahmad Qabaha     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 28660, RDIN 38660, NEHC 38660, ENGL 28661, CMLT 38660, NEHC 28660, ENGL 38661

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.

Instructor(s): Allyson Nadia Field & Christopher Harris     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Not offered in 2024-25.
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 39000, CMST 29000, CCCT 39000, RDIN 39000, CHST 29000

RDIN 29030. Islam, Race and Decoloniality. 100 Units.

This course explores western perspectives, attitudes and representations of Muslims and Islam from medieval European thought, through liberal colonial encounters to contemporary media and political discourses. Students will examine the intersection of race and religion as it applies to the construction of Muslim identity and alterity in the Western imagination. We will explore the remarkable consistency across centuries of the threatening, menacing, barbaric and uncivilized Muslim "Other". The course centers around these Orientalist constructions and will explore the power structures, colonial modalities, epistemological frameworks, and ideological assumptions that perpetuate the racialization of Islam and Muslims within the United States and abroad. This course ultimately aims to uncover potentials for resistance, recovery and renewal through the politics and praxis of decoloniality. Students will gain familiarity with decolonial theory and practices, as well as the important project of 'epistemic delinking' as it is framed by contemporary scholars intent on challenging, possibly undoing and remapping the Muslim experience within global liberal political modernity.

Instructor(s): Maliha Chishti     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 39030, RLST 29030, ISLM 39030, INRE 39030, ANTH 29030, KNOW 39030, ANTH 39030, AASR 39030, NEHC 29030, INRE 29030, RDIN 39030

RDIN 29108. Atlantic Empires. 100 Units.

This course explores classic and emerging scholarship on European empires and colonies in the early modern Atlantic world (c. 1400s-1800s). We will examine the rise and consolidation of empires and colonies through comparative, trans, and circum-Atlantic approaches. Additionally, the course will pay particular attention to the perspectives of colonized peoples (such as enslaved and freed people of African descent, Creole populations, and Indigenous peoples). Geographically, the course will span the Atlantic World, including regions such as the Caribbean, West Africa, Latin America, and North America. Topics we will cover include the formation of empires and colonial systems; Atlantic slavery; the emergence of Atlantic ideologies of race; gender, and kinship; knowledge formation, environment, and disease; anti-slavery struggles, and the "Age of Revolution."

Instructor(s): Lyons, Deirdre     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 29108, MAPS 39108, RDIN 39108, HIST 39108, ANTH 39208

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: Course not offered in 2025-26
Prerequisite(s): Undergraduates must be in their third or fourth year.
Note(s): Taught in English.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 39117, SPAN 39117, TAPS 28479, LACS 29117, SPAN 29117, GNSE 39117, RDIN 39117, TAPS 38479, GNSE 29117

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.

Instructor(s): T. Thipe     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 29634, ARCH 29634, HIST 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. Methods of Inquiry. 100.00 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. This course is open to all RDI majors. Students intending to complete a research thesis or capstone project must take this course in their third year.

Instructor(s): Samah Choudhury     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 29800

RDIN 29900. Capstone/Thesis Workshop. 100 Units.

This workshop is for fourth-year Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity majors completing a BA thesis or capstone project. Students intending to complete a thesis/capstone must attend this workshop in Autumn of their fourth-year. Students' RDIN 29900 grade will include workshop participation, faculty adviser meetings, and the final thesis/capstone project.

Instructor(s): staff     Terms Offered: Autumn

RDIN 29943. Exhibiting the Art of the Ancient Americas. 100 Units.

This course will consider the history of exhibiting the art of the ancient Americas from the colonial period until the present. From the European Wunderkammer to the development of the modern museum, we will consider how colonial institutions and categories shaped the reception of visually elaborated objects from past Indigenous cultures. Paying close attention to the choice of objects presented in exhibitions as well as to the museographical decisions that shaped their presentation-to the extent that they can be reconstructed from archival materials-we will explore how exhibitions both reflected and shaped changing understandings of the ancient American past.

Instructor(s): C. Brittenham     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Consent Only
Note(s): Fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Latin American
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 39943, RDIN 39943, LACS 39943, ARTH 29943, LACS 29943