2026-2027 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, HIST 17910, LACS 10200, CEGU 10200, CHST 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): ANTH 10201, CEGU 10201, CHST 10201, LACS 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): CHST 10202, LACS 10202, ANTH 10202, CEGU 10202

RDIN 10411. Survival Guides: Apocalypse, Dystopia, and the End of the World. 100 Units.

Stories of apocalypse invite readers into worlds in ruin. Issues surrounding housing, energy, class, and race permeate these narratives as authors seek to both reflect and critique the shortcomings of our current world. But do these narratives serve as mere pessimistic takes on the future of human society, or can they be read as cautionary tales invested in a future that does not have to end in disaster? If so, what arguments do they make for different ways of societal being? Could apocalyptic narratives even be considered survival guides? These are the questions that frame this seminar, which features 20th and 21st century dystopian, apocalyptic, and end of the world stories by authors such as W.E.B. DuBois, Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, and Rita Indiana. By the end of the course, students will be able to identify and analyze speculative literary conventions, situate assigned primary and secondary works within a larger context of contemporary dystopian writing, and come up with their own arguments about how these narratives may or may not teach us how to survive--and even prevent--the end of the world.

Instructor(s): Misha McDaniel     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 10411

RDIN 10435. Black Noise: Music, Media, Literature. 100 Units.

How has race been "instrumentalized" throughout sonic modernity, and what has it been instrumentalized in service of? And how have Black diasporic writers, artists, and performers, resisted processes of instrumentalization, while simultaneously mobilizing the aesthetic devices of noise and sound to do so-using "the masters tools to dismantle the masters house," so to speak, to borrow from Audre Lorde? In this course, we begin to answer these very questions by orienting our gaze towards various genres of non-canonical Black sound and its manifestations in Black diasporic literature and performance, representations of "noise" and indeterminacy in the visual and poetic field, and philosophical precepts and questions about Blackness' instrumentality in Black Studies from theorists spanning Frank B. Wilderson, Calvin Warren, Zakkiyah Iman Jackson, Alexander Weheliye, Daphne Brooks, and Fred Moten. Bringing into focus texts and disciplinary debates around Aunt Hester's scream in Frederick Douglass' Narrative of a Life, lynching phonographies, contemporary genres and experiments in non-canonical Black music (such as Classical, electronic, and avant-garde repertoires), sound and assemblage poetry, as well as media ecologies of telecommunications infrastructure on the African continent, we will begin to conceive of provisional answers to these questions about sonic modernity and instrumentality in Black diasporic literature and performance from the 19th century to present.

Instructor(s): Gasira Timir     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MUSI 10435, TAPS 20205, ENGL 10435

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): HIST 10600, LACS 10600, DEMS 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): Joyce Bell     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): None

RDIN 12143. Trans Literature in the United States. 100 Units.

This course focuses on the American history and aesthetics of trans literature. How has American literature changed through the innovations of trans writers? How has trans identity been shaped by literary narrative and form? And how has trans literature responded to or been shaped by American politics and culture, up to and including the executive declaration against the category of "gender" entirely? In this class, we will read together through major works by trans authors to gain a sense of the relationship between transgender life, narrative/poetic form, and the culture of the United States. Our syllabus thinks comparatively about trans literature across time periods, genres, and genders, including taking other forms of difference like sexuality, race, and ability as active analytical questions which modify and are modified by gender.

Instructor(s): Gabriel Ojeda-Sague     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 12143, ENGL 12143

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: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 12706, PLSC 22200, 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): Uahikea Maile     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 12800, RDIN 32301, CHST 12300, HIST 17800

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

RDIN 14516. Black British Cinema and the Speculative Archive. 100 Units.

TBD.

Instructor(s): Allyson Nadia Field     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 14516, CCCT 14516

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
Note(s): Fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Latin American
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 16101, SOSC 26100, LACS 16100, ANTH 23101

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): LACS 16200, ANTH 23102, HIST 16102, SOSC 26200

RDIN 16300. Introduction to Latin American Civilization III. 100 Units.

Spring Quarter focuses on the twentieth century, with emphasis on how Latin American peoples and nations have grappled with the challenges of development, inequality, imperialism, revolution, authoritarianism, racial difference, migration, urbanization, citizenship, violence, and the environment.

Instructor(s): Schwartz-Francisco; staff     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 16103, SOSC 26300, ANTH 23103, LACS 16300

RDIN 17904. Chinatown, the Japanese Garden, the Period Room: Diasporic Architecture from East Asia. 100 Units.

The built environment serves as a powerful connection to its time, place, and cultural origins. This course examines East Asian architecture and landscapes that have transcended their native contexts, as well as East Asian-style buildings designed for cultural others. From the bustling streets of Chinatown to the serene Japanese gardens and the meticulously curated period rooms showcasing East Asia's arts and cultures, the course explores a wide range of architectural forms, urban designs, and landscapes spanning two centuries. These structures are studied not as static artifacts but as dynamic platforms for social events, cultural debates, and political opportunities, shaped by historical and ongoing negotiations between their home and host contexts. Central to the course is the concept of diaspora, through which we investigate how the experience of living outside one's home country-sometimes in foreign or even unwelcoming environments-can be understood through the lens of the built environment. In this framework, architecture becomes a reflection of the dynamic experiences of immigration, racialization, cultural exchange, and confrontation. It is also subject to processes of representation, appropriation, modification, and reinvention. Through immersive field trips in the Chicago metropolitan area, students will critically analyze the formal language, spatial experiences, cultural symbolism, and social dynamics embedded in East Asian-style architecture and landscapes.

Instructor(s): Z. Yang     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: Asian, modern (post-1800), European and American, modern (post-1800). This course is an Art in Context seminar
Equivalent Course(s): ARCH 17904, CHST 17904, ARTH 17904

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

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

Instructor(s): R. Johnson     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): DEMS 17908, HIST 17908, AMER 17909

RDIN 18405. Histories of Native America. 100 Units.

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

Instructor(s): M. Kruer     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 18405

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 18860. Black Shakespeare. 100 Units.

This course explores the role played by the Shakespearean canon in the shaping of Western ideas about Blackness, in long-term processes of racial formation, and in global racial struggles from the early modern period to the present. Students will read Shakespearean plays portraying Black characters (Othello, Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, and Antony and Cleopatra) in conversation with African-American, Caribbean, and Post-colonial rewritings of those plays by playwrights Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Bernard Jackson, Djanet Sears, Keith Hamilton Cobb, Aimé Césaire, Derek Walcott, Lolita Chakrabarti, and film-makers Max Julien and Jordan Peele. This course is open to MAPH students and to PhD students upon request. (Drama, Medieval/Early Modern)

Instructor(s): Noémie Ndiaye     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 18860, ENGL 38860, TAPS 20040, RDIN 38860, TAPS 30040

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
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 20007

RDIN 20122. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. 100 Units.

Ralph Ellison's acclaimed novel, Invisible Man (1952), is, among other things, an extended reflection on the relationship between literary fiction and the idea and practice of democracy. In this course we will focus on Invisible Man as well as Ellison's collected essays in order to understand Ellison's effort to articulate the art of the novel with politics and morality. Among the questions we will explore is whether a novel that so powerfully addressed the problem of democracy in a society that was still legally segregated can continue to speak for our post Civil-Rights world.

Instructor(s): Kenneth Warren     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 27307, FNDL 25801

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: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 20140, CHDV 20140, RLST 20140

RDIN 20151. Environmental Histories of the Pacific. 100 Units.

The Pacific Ocean is the world's largest geographic feature. It spans 64 million square miles, is encircled by 83,000 miles of coastline, contains 25,000 islands, and is home to one-third of the Earth's human population. European and American explorers of the 18th century deemed the Pacific an immense and restrictive void; historians of the late-20th century echoed such sentiments when referring to the Pacific as "Earth's Empty Quarter." Recent scholarship has sought to reframe the Pacific as a constellation of overlapping "worlds" by charting interconnected patterns of human mobility, ecological exchange, economic development, and environmental destruction. Focusing on the past 250 years, this discussion-based research seminar will adopt micro-historical, comparative, and transnational methods to examine the environmental histories of three Pacific worlds: Australasia; Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia; and the Northeastern Pacific. Throughout the course, we will investigate how race, ethnicity, gender, class, politics, and health shaped and were shaped by large-scale socio-environmental processes across these regions. Thematic topics include Traditional Environmental Knowledge; Euro-American exploration and settler colonization; environmental extraction and degradation; agricultural, industrial, and urban development; labor migration and commercial growth; disease transmission and demographic change; and imperial expansion, scientific experimentation, and tourism.

Instructor(s): Christopher Kindell     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 20151, CEGU 20151, GNSE 22151, CEGU 30151, HIST 25030, GLST 25151, HIPS 20151

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: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 20154, CEGU 20154, CHST 20154

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 quarter offered at the Graduate level only
Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 20233, SOCI 30233, MAPS 30233, RDIN 30233, CRES 20233

RDIN 20305. The Construction of Education Inequality: Policy and Practice. 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 Undergrad Distribution: B; Grad distribution: 2
Equivalent Course(s): EDSO 20305, RDIN 30305, CHDV 20305, EDSO 40315, CHDV 30315, PBPL 20305

RDIN 20350. Identity and Adoption Across the Life Course: Anti-Racist Approaches to Practice. 100 Units.

This course is designed to provide students with a foundational understanding of social work principles relevant to working with adoptive families and adoptees throughout their lives, grounded in contemporary scholarship. Students will critically reflect on their own beliefs regarding family and kinship while being introduced to adoption-specific models of identity and practice, including the adoptee consciousness model (Bronco et al., 2022). Students will explore adoption-related forms of discrimination, such as historical and contemporary epistemic injustices and adoption micro-aggressions, along with learning about adoption-centered identity formation, beyond those that presume biological family relationships. The course aims to equip students with the skills needed to support adoptive families and individuals who are themselves adopted, fostering healing through an understanding of how factors like racism, classism, colorism, war, sexism, policy, colonialism, and capitalism influence adoption. Key topics include the adoption process, attachment, race, biology, identity, adoption-related trauma, and everyday needs for post-adoption support.

Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 40350, RDIN 40350, SSAD 20350, SSAD 40350

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): LACS 20401, KREY 20400, 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, ARTV 20707, CHST 20500

RDIN 20606. New Topics in Asian American Studies. 100 Units.

This course offers an introduction to new critical works of Asian American studies covering critical themes in an interdisciplinary fields including research from anthropology, cultural studies, gender and women studies, history, political science, psychology and sociology. This course will focus on new works published in recent years that showcase recent theoretical innovations and literary styles that will sharpen our analysis of both Asian and Asian American experiences in the United States and globally. We will cover topics as they relate to migration, war and empire, violence, race/class/gender/sexuality, and immigration integration in educational institutions and the labor market.

Instructor(s): K. Hoang     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 20606, SOCI 30606

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, SALC 32704, ANTH 30700, CHDV 30750, ANTH 20700, SALC 26501, CEGU 30700, CHDV 20700, CEGU 20700

RDIN 21014. Toxic Chicago. 100 Units.

In this field trip-rich course, students will learn about Chicago's many toxic environments, focusing in particular on fallout from the city's industrial past and on racialized, unequal distributions of harmful exposure. We will ask: What is unique (and not unique) about the way that Chicago's toxic geography has been shaped by environmental racism? What happens when we think about toxicity on different temporal and geographical scales, from molecule to neighborhood to international corporation, from a day in the life to deep time? How does this trouble everyday ideas about cause and effect, responsibility and liability? And finally, what unique challenges are presented by the difficulty of producing scientific knowledge about toxic environments, especially when it comes to environmental justice activism or other attempts at change-making? We will visit former Superfund sites, city history museums, industrial processing facilities, and environmental justice non-profits, among other sites. Readings will be drawn from environmental anthropology, STS, Black studies, Native studies, and the history of science, and will forefront scholarship about Chicago. Excerpts from final projects will be collected together into a (physical) zine that will be distributed guerilla-style around the city.

Instructor(s): Reed McConnell
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 21014, CEGU 21014, ANTH 21014, CHST 21014, HLTH 21014

RDIN 21150. Psychology of Racism. 100 Units.

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

Instructor(s): K. Henderson     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): PSYC 21150, RDIN 31150, PSYC 31150

RDIN 21303. Christianity and Slavery in America, 1619-1865. 100 Units.

We will be examining the relationship between Christian thought/practice and the institutions of slavery as they evolved historically, especially in the context of European enslavement of peoples of African descent in the colonies of British North America and in the antebellum South. The following questions will be addressed in some form through our readings and class discussions: How and why did slavery become a moral problem for abolitionists? How and why did white evangelical Christians, especially in the South, become the most prominent defenders of slavery? What role did race play in the historical development of slavery and how did Christianity sustain and perpetuate racial divisions and sanction for human bondage? How did people of African descent shape and practice Christianity in British North America and in the Southern states?

Instructor(s): Curtis Evans     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): HCHR 42901, RLST 21303, RDIN 42901, RAME 42901, KNOW 42901, KNOW 21303, HIST 27111, AMER 42901, HIST 47102, AMER 21303

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

RDIN 21355. Diaspora, Language, Identity: North African Literature and Film. 100 Units.

What happens when your "mother tongue" is a language you were never taught to speak or write? In the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia), language is not just a tool of communication, but a contested territory. It is a space where French, Classical Arabic, Amazigh (Berber), and Darija (colloquial dialect) collide-and where identity is often shaped in the gaps between them. This course explores how North African writers and filmmakers navigate the tension between mother tongues and colonial languages, the body as a site of resistance, and the search for belonging. Through selections of memoir, short stories, and film, we will examine questions of language, identity, and displacement-from colonial history to contemporary diaspora in France. Readings include Assia Djebar, Leïla Sebbar, and Mohamed Choukri; films range from The Battle of Algiers to recent works by Nabil Ayouch, Leyla Bouzid, and Mounia Meddour.

Instructor(s): Esther Kim     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Note: Taught in English. Students registered for French credit will complete all primary source readings and written assignments in French.
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 21355, FREN 24326, RDIN 31355, NEHC 31355, CMLT 31355, NEHC 21355

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

This course traces the history of home movies on Chicago's South Side as a robust creative, documentation, and screening film practice grounded in everyday life. The course centers on the South Side Home Movie Project, founded by the instructor here at UChicago, which holds more than 1,200 reels from the 1930s-1970s shot by a diverse range of South Side residents. We will look at their scenes of family and community life through the lenses of amateur filmmaking, the South Side's intense racial segregation, and the rise of a Black middle class. 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 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
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 31501, SSAD 41501, SSAD 21501, GLST 21501, CEGU 21501, HMRT 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: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 37810, HIST 27810, CHDV 21600, HLTH 21600, GNSE 33181, GNSE 23181, RDIN 31600

RDIN 21650. Histories from the Margins. 100 Units.

Scholars have long been interested in the question of how to reconstruct the lived historical experiences of "ordinary," marginalized, or otherwise "unknown" people. Doing "history from below" marked an important turn in social history that generated new questions about and approaches to reconstructing the lives, histories, and cultures of people who were consigned to the peripheries of (or absent altogether from) historical records. While radical, this approach over-emphasized binary relations of power. Thinking about "histories from the margins," however, opens up new questions about how power, oppression, and marginalization cut across intersecting categories-such as race, gender, sexuality, class, and colonialism. This course will adopt a thematic and broadly comparative approach from scholarship on the Americas (including Latin American and the Caribbean) and western Europe to explore how scholars have conceptualized the social worlds of everyday people-including microhistory, capitalism, slavery, colonialism, race, class, gender and sexuality, and inequality.

Instructor(s): Deirdre Lyons     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 39920, GNSE 21523, LACS 21650, GNSE 31523, MAPS 31650, HIST 29920, RDIN 31650, MAPS 21650, LACS 31650

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, LACS 22677

RDIN 21701. Italian American Chicago. 100 Units.

This course explores the origins and evolution of the Italian American community in Chicago, examining its local presence and artistic, cinematic, and literary representations in the context of a global history of the twentieth century. For example, we will compare the current absence of Christopher Columbus statues in Little Italy to the permanence of the Balbo monument, an ancient column gifted to the city by the Italian fascist regime in 1933. These case studies will allow us to engage with broader issues, such as local and national Italian-American identity and how it is represented artistically. The course will be structured in three units: Past, Present, and Fiction. Past: Where did Italian Americans come from? What are the racial implications of this migrant community's existence in the United States? How does the local history of Chicago's Italian Americans intertwine with the global history of the 20th century? Present: How does the city show traces of Italian American history? When and how have Italians assimilated? What does it mean for a migrant group to be assimilated? Fiction: What role have fictional representations of Italian Americans played in their assimilation? In what ways do representations of the home-country and of the migrant experience differ in texts by Italian authors and ones by Italian American authors? As a Chicago Studies class, we will also engage deeply with Chicago's urban landscape and local heritage sites.

Instructor(s): Taddei, Fara     Terms Offered: Spring. This class will involve field trips, engage with guest speakers, and offer weekend enrichment opportunities throughout the city.
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 21709, HIST 27319, CHST 21700

RDIN 21785. Black in Colonial America: Three Women. 100 Units.

Through a survey of texts by and about Sally Hemings, Phillis Wheatley and Tituba, "the Indian," we will consider the lives of three black women in colonial America. In this period of expansion and contraction of the concepts of race and bondage, what kind of "tellings" were possible for these women? By reading texts written as early as 1692 and as late as 2008, we will also consider how representations of these women have changed over time. (18th/19th, Theory)

Instructor(s): SJ Zhang     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 21785, SIGN 26076, GNSE 20162

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): Larissa Brewer-García (autumn), Agnes Lugo-Ortiz (winter)     Terms Offered: Autumn Winter
Prerequisite(s): SPAN 20300 or consent of instructor. Taught in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 21900, SPAN 21905

RDIN 21968. Religious and Social Thought of Martin Luther King Jr. 100 Units.

This seminar is an intensive study of the religious life and social/religious thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. We will be reading a wide range of King's writings and speeches from his Crozer seminary years to his major speeches up to his assassination in 1968. We will also explore some of the classic and more recent scholarship that examines the influences on and sources of King's thought. Prominent themes in the course will include but will not be limited to King's ethical and social critique of American society, especially its racism, his social and moral evaluation of economic inequality, his commitment to nonviolence, his conception of the beloved community, and his evolving roles as preacher, social activist, and public intellectual.

Instructor(s): Curtis Evans     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the HS or CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 21968, RLST 21968, HCHR 31968, RDIN 31968, RAME 31968, AMER 31968, AMER 21968

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: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 25033, CEGU 32100, HLTH 22100, HIPS 22210, CEGU 22100, GLST 22101

RDIN 22200. Haunting and/as/of Power. 100 Units.

Haunting is a liminal category that signifies presence despite absence, unfinished pasts in the present, and ruptures within what is considered rational, normal and real. In this course we will examine multiple hauntings - as metaphor and as experience - situating them within the geographies and afterlives of racial and caste capitalism, gendered dispossession, empire, and the postcolony. Mediated through cultural theory, literature, film, historical archives and ethnographies, we will encounter vampires, zombies, witches, jinn, ghosts, transgender monsters, ancestors, the paranormal, phantoms, and other desiring, friendly or vengeful spirits in order to understand how they story memory, time, space, embodiment, and violence. How can the spectral be deciphered? What does being haunted feel like? How does haunting as an analytic foreground the sensuous, affective, intimate and overwhelming dimensions of structures of power? We will answer these questions and more through the work of David McNally, Tithi Bhattacharya, Silvia Federici, Hil Malatino, Diego Escolar, Hortense Spillers, Christina Sharpe, Avery Gordon, Stefania Pandolfo, Emily Ng, Ryo Morimoto, Susan Lepselter, and Tanya Tagaq, among others.

Instructor(s): Tanima Sharma     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 22200, GNSE 22200, GNSE 32201, RDIN 32200

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, SALC 35704, GNSE 32207, ANTH 32203, GNSE 22207, CHDV 32203, CHDV 22203

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): Victoria Saramago (autumn)     Terms Offered: Autumn Winter
Prerequisite(s): SPAN 20300 or consent of instructor. Taught in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 22005, SPAN 22005

RDIN 22301. Sydney: Colonization, Health, and the Environment. 100 Units.

Colonial Sydney was both a site of British imperial experimentation and a crucial node in Pacific World networks of trade, migration, and disease transmission. Focusing on the period between the First Fleet's arrival in 1788 and Australian Federation in 1901, this September term course examines how encounters among Aboriginal Australians, British convicts, colonial officials, and East Asian and Pacific Island immigrants altered the social, environmental, and urban fabric of Sydney. What does Sydney's built environment tell us about the city's colonial past? What sociocultural, economic, and physical forces transformed Sydney from the traditional lands of the Eora people into Britain's most distant colonial outpost? How did the global importation and exploitation of people, plants, animals, and diseases reshape both the natural environment and human experience in this thriving Pacific seaport? What tensions emerged as colonial authorities sought to impose control over unfamiliar landscapes and diverse populations while pursuing broader imperial strategies? Students will explore such questions and develop essential skills in historical analysis and place-based learning through a series of in-class lectures, readings, and guided visits to many of Sydney's museums, heritage sites, and cultural landmarks. Excursions throughout Sydney and its surroundings will illuminate how colonial cities often developed as crucibles of contestation, environmental change, and imperial governance.

Instructor(s): Christopher Kindell     Terms Offered: September Term
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 22300, HIST 25036, HIPS 22300, CEGU 22300

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): HIPS 26311, CCCT 36311, AASR 36311, CHSS 36311, ANTH 36311

RDIN 22350. Black Game Theory. 100 Units.

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

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

RDIN 22424. Between History and Fiction: Race, Modernity, and Revolution in the Hispanic Caribbean. 100 Units.

This course will introduce students to twentieth-century historical fiction from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Reflecting on the ambiguous contours between history and fiction, we will use literature and film to illuminate cultural debates of Hispanic Caribbean modernity. How do literary and filmic representations of a historical past reflect on the present moment? What is fiction's relationship to archives and history? What can these fictional emplotments teach us about the crafting of national narratives? Particular attention will be given to questions of race and revolution - understood for our purposes as the constitutive vectors of Caribbean modernity - in the texts studied. Authors and filmmakers to be discussed will include Alejo Carpentier, Tomás Gutierrez Alea, Humberto Solás, Rosario Ferré, José Luis González, and Julia Álvarez, among others.

Instructor(s): Cristina Esteves-Wolff     Terms Offered: Not offered this academic year
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 22424, SPAN 22424

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): RLST 25561, HMRT 25561

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 23183, RDIN 42755, SSAD 22755, SSAD 42755, GNSE 33183

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: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 32800, ANTH 22800, RDIN 32800, HIST 37212, HIST 27212

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: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 16001, EALC 23001, EALC 43000

RDIN 23007. Language, Culture, and Education. 100 Units.

In this course, we examine past and current theories and research about differential educational achievement in US schools, including: (1) theories that focus on the characteristics of people (e.g., their psychological characteristics, their internal traits, their essential qualities); (2) theories that focus on the characteristics of groups and settings, (e. g., ethnic group culture, language, school culture); and (3) theories that examine how cultural processes mediate political-economic constraints and human action. We will discuss the educational consequences of these positions, especially for low income and ethnic and linguistic minority students in the US.

Instructor(s): Lily Ye     Terms Offered: Summer Winter. Offered 2022-23
Equivalent Course(s): EDSO 23007, CHST 23007, SOCI 20538, ANTH 27215, CHDV 23007

RDIN 23011. Beyond the Culture Wars: Social Movements and the Politics of Education in the U.S. 100 Units.

Passionate conflicts over school curriculum and educational policy are a recurring phenomenon in the history of US schooling. Why are schools such frequent sites of struggle and what is at stake in these conflicts? In this discussion-based seminar, we will consider schools as battlegrounds in the US "culture wars": contests over competing visions of national identity, morality, social order, the fundamental purposes of public education, and the role of the state vis-à-vis the family. Drawing on case studies from history, anthropology, sociology and critical race and gender studies, we will examine both past and contemporary debates over school curriculum and school policy. Topics may include clashes over: the teaching of evolution, sex and sexuality education, busing/desegregation, prayer in schools, multiculturalism, the content of the literary canon, the teaching of reading, mathematics and history, and the closure of underperforming urban schools. Our inquiry will examine how social and political movements have used schools to advance or resist particular agendas and social projects.

Instructor(s): Lisa Rosen     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered spring 2025
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 33011, EDSO 23011, EDSO 33011, RDIN 33011, CHDV 23011, SOCI 30588, PBPL 23011, HIST 27718, SOCI 20588, HIST 37718

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 2025-2026
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 28712, RDIN 33016, SSAD 23016, EDSO 33016, CHDV 33016, EDSO 23016, CHST 23016, CHDV 23016

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: Autumn
Note(s): This course counts as a Concepts course for GNSE majors
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 23178, HMRT 23178, PLSC 23178

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 33201, CEGU 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): HIST 27416, RLST 22202, AMER 22202, HIST 47416, RAME 42202, HCHR 42202, AMER 42202

RDIN 23288. Tracing Black and Native Relations in South Chicago. 100 Units.

This course traces the labor of Black and Native people in relation to Hyde Park, Chicago, beginning with the 1893 World's Fair through Nuclear Development in the 20th century. We will study the afterlives of slavery and native dispossession by visiting local sites and archives. Using methodologies from the fields of Anthropology, Literary Studies and Native Studies, we will foreground the importance of being in place, to situate ourselves as students and teachers in the neighborhood. Students will theorize themselves in place and in relation to those past as they work towards a public facing final assignment. (20th/21st, Theory)

Instructor(s): Teresa Montoya & SJ Zhang     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 23288, RDIN 43288, ENGL 23288, ENGL 43288, ANTH 43288, CHST 23288

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): RLST 23304, HMRT 23304, GLST 23304

RDIN 23335. Racial France. 100 Units.

Over the last two decades, questions of race, racial identity, and racial discrimination have come increasingly to the fore in France, despite (or because of) the country's prevailing rhetoric of colorblind indivisibility. These issues are becoming ever more pressing on a background of intensifying racisms and right-wing populisms in Europe. The purpose of this course is to offer analytical perspectives about these critical tensions and their ripples across the landscape of contemporary French politics. Using readings from a wide variety of fields (among others, anthropology, sociology, literature, philosophy, history, political science, and news media), we will unpack the discourses and lived experiences of race that have shaped the politics of national identity and difference in France since the late 18th century. We will see that the question of 'racial France' has been intimately bound up with the country's history of colonialism and decolonization, with its Republican ideology, with matters of law and government, with questions of citizenship, religion and sexuality, with recent debates on multiculturalism, and with white malaise and resentment stirred by the growth of right-wing extremisms. In the course of our examinations, we will also reflect on the specificity of race and racialization in France, and its differences from racecraft in the United States.

Instructor(s): Francois Richard     Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 23335, RDIN 33335, FREN 23335, FREN 33335, ANTH 33335

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 23400. Treaty Ports and Modern East Asia. 100 Units.

Treaty ports shaped modern East Asia by providing key venues for colonial encounter, commercial expansion, and cultural exchange. This course explores how the (forced) opening of treaty ports in the 19th and early 20th centuries reconfigured the political, social, and spatial order of China and Japan. Focusing on cities such as Yokohama, Nagasaki, Tianjin, and Shanghai, we'll examine how foreign concessions, extraterritoriality, and new institutions of governance met with local practices and resistance. Key topics to be investigated include urban development and administration, transnational networks, racial and ethnic relations, and everyday life under (semi-)colonialism. The course also considers how treaty port legacies continue to influence contemporary East Asia and the wider world.

Instructor(s): Jiakai Sheng     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 34715, EALC 23400, RDIN 33400, HIST 24715, EALC 33400

RDIN 23500. Sorry, Not Sorry: The Literary and Political History of Apologies, Confessions and Defense Speeches. 100 Units.

This course examines the genre of the apology and, asks-but does not necessarily answer-the question of what a good apology is. We will read a broad historical arc of classical Greek apologia and defense speeches, works and practices of Christan confessionals, Sir Philip Sidney's Elizabethan "Apology for Poetry", as well as criticism and theory about regret and forgiveness in the "Age of Apology" after WWI. We will end by reading a number of contemporary political apologies (as well as the archive of apologies offered by celebrities and YouTube confessionals) as well as a collection of alter-apologetic literature that re-works or responds to the terms of the apologies and offers antagonistic forms of relation to the ongoing present of settler-colonialism, structural racism, and patriarchal violence. In particular, we will read works by Eve Ensler, Layli Long Soldier, Jordan Abel, and Tanya Lukin Linklater, and the queer performance collaboration between Adrian Stimson and settler artist AA Bronson, works which explore how apologetic genres open unique ways to address a national politics whose power comes about through instruments that are bureaucratic, archival, and issued on paper.

Instructor(s): Bellamy Mitchell     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): SCTH 26101, RDIN 33500, ENGL 33550, ENGL 23550, SCTH 36101

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): ANTH 23507, HIPS 23570, RLST 23507, GLST 23507, CEGU 23507

RDIN 23600. Documentary Literature in the 20th and 21st Century. 100 Units.

In this course we will read works of literature from the 20th and 21st centuries that present, subvert, challenge and question the stories of "what happened" through a variety of literary, filmic, and documentary techniques. We will read works of nonfiction journalism as well as novels, examine how the development of photographic technologies and the circulation of "the news" change the perception of time and history, read experimental and poetic utopian re-tellings of historical violences towards activist ends of social change, consider the function of monuments and performances that attempt to preserve or change our memories of the past, and watch performance works and embodied movements that all engage the documentary. We will examine the play between the subjective perspective and presentational form of historical events and the people that documentary literature portrays through the work of artists and authors such as Dorothea Lange, Charles Reznikoff, Muriel Rukeyser, Joshua Oppenheimer, Mark Nowak, and Divya Victor.

Instructor(s): Bellamy Mitchell     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 33600, ENGL 33602, ENGL 23600

RDIN 23700. Wonder Lab: Learning from the Musical Art and Craft of Stevie Wonder. 100 Units.

Stevie Wonder is one of the defining artists of the recent U.S. and the world. A celebrated and beloved musician, he is a spiritual visionary, polymath of genres, prophetic truth-teller, bard of love and loss. His vision refracts the victories, losses and contradictions of Black struggle and endeavor in America. Authenticated in this way as a Black artist, he also resonates as a global artist. Embraced by all, there seems little to say about Wonder's art, career and influence that is not self-evident. And yet, leaving appreciation of Stevie Wonder at this level allows us to revere him without recognizing his ingenious inventiveness - as artist and crafter of sound. How he brought and brings essential perspective to our experience of selves, relationships, community, power, and consciousness in all facets may be overlooked, if not lost. This class, conceived as a cultural lab, will investigate Stevie Wonder's art: his exemplification of Black music's breadth; his ambition as a sonic innovator; his commentary on social and political worlds; his insights on love, and his engagement with faith and spiritualism that summoned a global community of musicians, fans and partners. Class will involve close listening, readings, analysis of technological and sensory effects, consultation of "genius" and "collaborative" models of culture-making, and experiment in contextualizing singular imaginative achievement.

Instructor(s): Adam Green     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course will be a community-engaged course, comprised of College students and members of the broader community. Consent is required to join. Please write a sentence or two about your interest in the course.
Equivalent Course(s): MUSI 23705, HIST 27726, ARTV 20237

RDIN 23800. Power and Medicine. 100 Units.

The marvel of modern medicine has been lauded as a great leveler of the human condition. From sanitary regimes, to the discovery of antibiotics, to anaesthesia and the development of successful surgery and lifestyle intervention, medicine has improved the lives of all humankind. However, research shows that this improvement is not uniform - that some benefit more from medicine than others. This disparity, which public health scientists and medical researchers have followed for decades, is borne of a complex set of societal factors - including socioeconomic status, race, genetic background, environment, and lifestyle. These studies show us a key feature of medicine: it does not exist in a vacuum, and one's lifespan and quality of life are as tethered to social factors as they are to scientific innovation. This class will explore the effects of uneven power systems on health and human medicine in modern history. We will explore how different peoples - of diverse racial, socioeconomic and historical backgrounds - experienced medical and sanitary regimes, and how they navigated disparities in access. Every week we will examine a particular theme in the history of medicine and explore its effects first on a regional scale in the U.S., and the following meeting in the global context. The goal in this structure is to demonstrate the diversity of experience and the complex systems that influence medical regimes.

Instructor(s): Caine Jordan     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 25320, HIST 35320, HIPS 23830, RDIN 33800, CHSS 33830

RDIN 23900. The Art of Revolution. 100 Units.

This interdisciplinary course introduces theories of aesthetics and politics within the realms of popular culture, art, and revolutionary praxis. Traversing theatre, film, literature, visual art, dance, and music, it examines debates about revolutionary art that emerged within anticolonial struggles for national liberation, left political movements, and agitations against fascism, patriarchy, race and caste in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. How do capitalism and allied systems of domination attempt to control creative life? How have radical movements theorized cultural consumption and production, or grappled with representing vs. shaping reality? What is the role of the artist in times of revolutionary ferment? We will address these questions and more, as well as themes of audiences, sensuous life, revolutionary subjectivity, and utopian futures in contexts that include FRELIMO choral songs in Mozambique, Brecht's epic theatre, the cinema of the Cuban revolution, and the graffiti art of the Arab Spring. Students can expect to read widely, make weekly Canvas posts, and have the option of creating their own revolutionary art as a final project.

Instructor(s): Tanima Sharma     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 33900, GLST 23900, ANTH 23901

RDIN 23907. Gandhi and His Critics. 100 Units.

The moral and political writings of M.K. Gandhi constitute one of the most influential archives of ethics in the twentieth century. For a man so devoted to periodic vows of silence and withdrawal, he nevertheless left over ninety volumes of public speeches, personal correspondence, and published essays. A modernist arrayed against the brutalities of modernity, Gandhi's thought encompassed concepts of sovereignty, the state, self and society, religion, civilization, and force. His insistence on cultivating technologies of the self as a response to both colonial and intimate violence was inspired by an eclectic range of source material. Generations of critical thinkers from around the world, including Black, feminist, Communist, and Dalit political activists, engaged with his ideas. This course explores several themes in Gandhi's ethical thought and the responses they have generated.

Instructor(s): Anand Venkatkrishnan     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 23907, HREL 33907, GLST 23907, RETH 33907, FNDL 23907, RDIN 33907

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): RDIN 34000, MUSI 34200, HIST 27316, PARR 34000

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 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, TAPS 24252

RDIN 24267. Architecture of Memory. 100 Units.

This architecture studio course asks students to design a memorial. By imagining spaces that evoke emotion and incite action, and examining relationships and meaning between architecture and place, students will explore concepts for spaces created for the purpose of holding, preserving or honoring aspects of culture and history. The South Side of Chicago will be the primary focus. Students will reflect on readings about the South Side and 2020 events. Guest presentations and Arts + Public Life media and archives will be key resources. To form a basis for understanding and analyzing space and form, students will research and critique precedents. The class will visit spaces around the city either in-person or via virtual tours. As a beginning point for inquiry about space and emotions, students will reflect on readings about phenomenology in architecture. Seminars and discussions about architecture practice today will also be presented. Students will generate an analog portfolio of drawings and models throughout the quarter. For final design projects, students will choose real sites and will create a design for a memorial for an aspect of social history of the South Side of Chicago.

Instructor(s): N. Bharani     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): ARCH 24267, CHST 24267, ARTH 24267, CEGU 24267, ARTV 24267, ARTH 34267, ARTV 34267, RDIN 34267

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): GNSE 27332, ANTH 24332, RLST 27332

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

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

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

RDIN 24401. Afro-Brazilian Literature. 100 Units.

During most of Brazil's colonial period and decades after its independence from Portugal, the country's labor force was primarily composed of enslaved people from Africa and of African descent. The African diaspora is a crucial component to understand Brazil's history, society, economy and culture. From the abolitionist prose of Maria Firmina dos Reis and Machado de Assis's subtle reflections on race to the exponential growth of Afro-Brazilian authors in the mainstream of contemporary literature, such as Conceição Evaristo and Itamar Vieira Jr., Brazilian literature has been shaped by the rich diversity of African diasporic cultures as well as by the numerous challenges faced by Afro-Brazilians in a society that is still today deeply unequal. In this course, we will delve into Afro-Brazilian history and culture through literature. We will cover a century and a half of Afro-Brazilian literary production and understand how its main themes, potentialities and challenges have evolved over the course of the decades. Besides the authors mentioned above, we will read works by Abdias do Nascimento, Carolina Maria de Jesus, Djamila Ribeiro and Ricardo Aleixo, among others.

Instructor(s): Victoria Saramago     Terms Offered: Not offered this academic year
Prerequisite(s): Taught in English, with readings in English (readings in Portuguese will be available to Portuguese speakers when applicable), and optional discussion section in Portuguese.
Equivalent Course(s): PORT 34400, LACS 24400, RDIN 34401, LACS 34500, PORT 24400

RDIN 24409. Tracing Korea's Twentieth-Century Diasporas. 100 Units.

This course explores Korea's many diasporas in the twentieth century. What factors shaped twentieth-century Korean migration? How were individuals and families impacted by their diasporic contexts? We will examine migration trajectories from Korea to other parts of the Asia-Pacific, to Europe, and to the Americas, tracing the historical processes of colonization, war, marriage migration, international adoption, and labor migration. We will also engage with questions of citizenship, identity, and memory. Readings will include a range of primary sources such as personal letters, diaries, interviews, and artwork, as well as selected excerpts from literature and film. By the end of the course, students will have a deeper understanding of the diversity of experiences within Korea's twentieth-century diasporas.

Instructor(s): H. Park     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 24409, HIST 24409

RDIN 24550. Blackness in Latin America: Popular Culture, Performance and Visual Art, and Discourses of Mestizaje. 100 Units.

The course examines how blackness has been both constructed and reimagined across Latin America and the Caribbean through an exploration of the performance and cultural practices of Afro-Latin communities. We treat popular and performance traditions as a crucial terrain for discerning how Black people across the region navigate discourses of racial democracy, mestizaje, multiculturalism, and racial fraternity even as they faced the realities of racism in individual nations. The course examines imaginations of blackness in hip hop, reggaetón, rumba, folklore, carnivals, and visual art in varied sites such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. Grounded in Black and Diaspora Studies, the writings of Frantz Fanon, W.E.B. Dubois, Paul Gilroy and others will serve as theoretical touchstones for placing these forms and lived realities in diasporic context. We will also engage the work of noted and upcoming Black artists from the region.

Instructor(s): Danielle Roper     Terms Offered: Not offered this academic year
Prerequisite(s): Undergraduates must be in their third or fourth year.
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 25805, TAPS 35805, RDIN 34550, LACS 34550, SPAN 34550, LACS 24550, SPAN 24550

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: Not offered this academic year
Prerequisite(s): For students seeking French credit, FREN 20500 or equivalent.
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 34555, CEGU 34555, FREN 34555, CEGU 24555, 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): CHDV 44599, HLTH 24599, PBPL 24599, AMER 24599, CHDV 24599, CHST 24599, RDIN 44599

RDIN 24601. Martin and Malcolm: Life and Thought. 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 black American community in the 1950s and 1960s: Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. We will review their autobiographies, domestic and international forces operating during their times. Their life stories provide 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 sifted - did Malcolm become Martin and Martin become Malcolm?

Instructor(s): Dwight Hopkins     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 27209, FNDL 24601, AMER 24601, RLST 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: Not offered this academic year
Prerequisite(s): Reading proficiency in Spanish required.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 34770, GNSE 34771, LACS 24770, SPAN 24770, GNSE 24770, LACS 34770, RDIN 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): CHDV 34960, LING 24960, LING 34960, RDIN 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): GLST 24002, GNSE 12130, RLST 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): LACS 25003, HMRT 25003, SSAD 25003, SOCI 28079, PBPL 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, RDIN 35119, ARTH 35119, ARTH 25119

RDIN 25340. The 'Child' in South Asia: Minor Lives, Major Questions. 100 Units.

What does it mean to think about the history, culture, and politics of a region through the figure of the "child"? This course explores "childhood" as a powerful concept that has shaped debates about race, colonialism and development, particularly in the history of colonial and postcolonial South Asia. From the stereotype of the "childlike native" to the infantilization of women, the child figure repeatedly gets invoked to mark social hierarchies. Even in a globalized world, the status of children across the world, measured under the rubric of the UN Child Rights Convention, fuels understandings of "development" and "progress" among nations and communities. We will survey Southern Asia's colonial legacy, postcolonial present and globalized afterlife to examine how "childhood" has been imagined in relation to national and ethnic identities as well as class, caste, gender, and religious affiliations of people. Taking a wide range of visual and textual genres as objects of study -  such as textbooks, educational charts, children's literature, advertisements, biographies and films -- this course will enable students to study the category of the "child" through a humanistic lens and see how it's embedded in the cultural history of South Asia.

Instructor(s): Titas Bose     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 26705, SALC 25340, EDSO 25340, HMRT 25340, CHDV 25340, CMLT 25340, GNSE 25340

RDIN 25540. Introduction to Critical Development Studies. 100 Units.

This course provides an introductory overview of Critical Development Studies (CDS), covering the main critical historical, philosophical and theoretical undercurrents that shape and inform the field of global development. In the first part of the course we delve into key philosophical concepts and major theoretical frameworks and trends of international development from the post-World War II era to the present. Students will explore the underlying assumptions and modalities of modernization theory, dependency and world-systems theory, post-colonial and post-development thought and the contemporary articulation of decoloniality by Latin American and African scholars. The latter part of the course delves into major trends, approaches, and best practices of CDS. This course is designed to be a theory-intensive reading course, appropriate for students interested in the theoretical debates and the ethico-political tensions that continue to shape and inform the field and practice of global development. This course was previously named Critical Development Theories and Approaches.

Instructor(s): Chishti, M     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): PBPL 25540, GLST 25540, AASR 35530, PPHA 35530

RDIN 25541. New Caribbean Writing. 100 Units.

Caribbean literature is having a moment. NPR reported in 2023 that "this region has long been punching above its weight on the international literary scene." We will read Safiya Sinclair's (Jamaica/U.S.) How to Say Babylon, a memoir of self-discovery after being raised by an authoritarian father; a new translation of Mayra Santos Febres' (Puerto Rico) collection of migration poems, Boat People; Myriam Chancy's novel What Storm, What Thunder (Haiti/Canada/U.S.), set after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti; and poems from Shivanee Ramlochan (Trinidad & Tobago) and Dionne Brand (Canada/T&T). Our class will also include trips to literary events and visiting speakers.

Instructor(s): Kaneesha Parsard     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 25540, CMLT 25540, ENGL 25540

RDIN 25550. Molière Embodied. 100 Units.

This course will use Molière-the most famous French classical playwright and the most studied one outside of France-as testing grounds for some of the most exciting theoretical frameworks focusing on embodiment that have emerged in literary studies and cultural studies over the last few decades. What happens when we start thinking through the aversion to physicians and the distrust of medicine for which Molière's comedies are known with the help of Disability studies and Medical Humanities? What becomes visible about Molière's participation in the invention of racial whiteness in seventeenth-century Europe when we read his plays of conversion to Islam and enslavement in the Mediterranean through the lens of Premodern Critical Race Studies (PCRS)? How can the concerns and tenets of Queer studies enrich and complicate the more established feminist accounts of Molière's place in "la querelle des femmes," his ideas about gender and sexuality, and his embrace of the normative violence of comedic laughter? What new dimensions does Molière's keen interest in transformation and transcendence in the latter half of his career take on when we rethink it in light of Trans studies' epistemological tools? By applying the theoretical frameworks of Disability studies, Critical Race studies, Queer studies, and Trans studies to Molière's plays, and by comparing those plays to the source texts from which Molière was drawing to compose them, we will ask new questions.

Instructor(s): Larry Norman, Noémie Ndiaye     Terms Offered: Not offered this academic year
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 35550, TAPS 38478, GNSE 25551, FREN 35550, TAPS 28478, FREN 25550, GNSE 35551

RDIN 25630. Family Sagas: Women's Writing from Africa and the African Diaspora. 100 Units.

When asked why she writes, Jamaica Kincaid once said, "I liked to talk about my mother, her family, my life, what happened to me…and I could only get to them in this way." This English and Creative Writing seminar focuses on family sagas: multigenerational stories of intimacy, friction, and survival in women's writing of Africa and the African diaspora. Reading novels and poetry, we will come to understand how Black women writers have remembered or imagined family. The works we will read take place against the backdrops of slavery, colonialism, war, intimate violence, nationalism, and migration. Yet, they also portray the rhythms and joys of everyday life. Throughout the quarter, we will explore the imaginative techniques these authors use to engage the senses, both the mundane and the fantastical. This body of work will also be a guide for our own creative writing, in which we will mine our own family stories, meditating on family heirlooms, portraits, and more. In addition to our classroom work, we will engage the study and craft of family sagas in the city of Chicago: activities may include visiting libraries, bookstores, and theatres, and special visits from writers. (Fiction, 20th/21st)

Instructor(s): Julie Iromuanya & Kaneesha Parsard     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 17020, GNSE 20160, SIGN 25630, ENGL 25630

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
Equivalent Course(s): HMRT 25704, RLST 25704, CEGU 25704, CHST 25704, AMER 25704, PBPL 25704, KNOW 25704

RDIN 25707. Contested Concepts: "Indigeneity" and Ecological Thought. 100 Units.

The figure of "The Ecological Indian" has been critiqued on anti-colonial grounds as a racist inheritance of the conquest era and also affirmed and mobilized by Indigenous scholars and activists as capturing something true about pre- and post-colonial Indigenous forms of life. Despite these tensions, "indigeneity" and the idea that Indigenous peoples are uniquely attuned to nonhuman reality persist as givens in much environmental thought. In this class we will examine and evaluate this persistence, asking, Why are Western environmentalists so attracted to the idea of indigeneity and what do they mean by it? Where does the idea of "the Ecological Indian" come from? In what ways does this idea track reality and how might it obfuscate or distort distinctive Indigenous perspectives? How do different Indigenous people understand and take up this concept? In pursuit of these and related questions, our readings will span Renaissance utopias, theories of colonialism, studies of the religious roots of environmentalism, historical and contemporary environmental writing, and various Indigenous perspectives on empire, the environmental movement, and the other-than-human.

Instructor(s): Colin Weaver     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 25707, HIPS 25707, CEGU 25707, RLST 25707

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): HIST 37419, AMER 45800, AMER 25800, HIST 27419, RDIN 45800, THEO 45800, RLST 25800

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): RLST 26945, GLST 25945, ANTH 25945

RDIN 25988. James Baldwin. 100 Units.

In our contemporary moment of rising inequality, James Baldwin has gained much purchase as a kind of prophet. But in his own time, Baldwin consistently called himself a witness, holding to his belief that an "artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian" who must "make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are." All in all, his artistic mission was to express "what it is like to be alive." Reading across both his fiction and nonfiction, we will consider Baldwin's concept of the artist, exploring the affective life of inequality through what we might call his moral imagination. (Fiction, 20th/21st)

Instructor(s): Korey Williams     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 25988, GNSE 25988, FNDL 25988

RDIN 26026. Cultural Histories of the Blues: From the Chicago Renaissance to Sinners. 100 Units.

The Blues set the template for American popular music in the twentieth century. But its influence was felt across all corners of the arts, and beyond. In this class, we will explore the musical history of the Blues, from its roots in the US South, through the Chicago of the Great Migration, to its explosion across the globe. But we will do so in tandem with considering its tremendous cultural reach: in literature, philosophy, art, and film. We will examine how poets like Langston Hughes found in the Blues a new poetic language; how philosophers and political thinkers like Amiri Baraka, Albert Murray, and Angela Davis found a powerful social analytic; how artists like Archibald Motely and Romare Bearden spun music into a new visual language; and how filmmakers-most recently Ryan Coogler-turned to the mythology of the Blues to reanimate the Southern Gothic in Hollywood. Across these domains and more, we will consider how the Blues-as sound and idea-became a cypher for notions of race, class, and respectability in twentieth-century culture, and how these notions continue to play out in the present day.

Instructor(s): Alexander Cowan      Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MUSI 26026

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, LING 26050, LING 36050, CHDV 26050

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

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

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

RDIN 26226. American Political Economy and Race. 100 Units.

This course will explore how individual or group identity and social location is understood in economics. Specifically, we will use a political economy framework, which emerges from the premise that economic life has material, cultural, and political dimensions and that an individual's (or group's) identity or social location--e.g., race, gender, and class--may constrain or empower agents in their participation in economic and political life. The readings will draw from diverse disciplines including political science, economics, and sociology and will focus primarily on the intersection of race and class. (Previously PLSC 26205 - may not count both classes toward major)

Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 26226

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): TAPS 36260, CHST 26260, TAPS 26260

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): MUSI 33620, MUSI 23620, CHST 26290, RDIN 36290, TAPS 26290, TAPS 36290

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, CHST 26302, GNSE 26303, TAPS 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): RDIN 46312, SSAD 26312, SSAD 46312

RDIN 26335. Principles of Kinship. 100 Units.

This introductory course is an attempt to think about the theoretical and historical debates around kinship and world-making practices in anthropology. People everywhere across time and space create meaning about the world they live in and their relations in that world. For this reason, anthropology, the study of human societies past and present, has been preoccupied with kinship relations since its inception as a discipline. Co-taught by an archeologist and a socio-cultural anthropologist, the course will explore different forms of making kin from the deep past to the present. We will ask how and why anthropologists have made kinship a central category in understanding ourselves and others, and review critiques of the concept. The ultimate goal of this course is to encourage students to recognize the ongoing importance of kinship in our own lives and in the contemporary world. By the end of the course we hope to have provided tools to think about kinship and its centrality in human societies from an informed, critical perspective.

Instructor(s): Sarah Newman / Natacha Nsabimana
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 26335

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, GLST 26380, LACS 36380, LACS 26380, HIST 26318, ANTH 23077, HIPS 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): LACS 26384, HIST 26319, ARTV 20017, CHST 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): SPAN 36386, LACS 26386, HIST 26321, ANTH 23003, SPAN 26386, RDIN 36386, LACS 36386

RDIN 26555. Asian American Mental Health. 100 Units.

Asian Americans are one of the fastest-growing and most diverse racial groups in the US, yet they face significant disparities in mental health care access, stigma, and representation. This introductory course will explore the unique challenges and strengths of Asian Americans across the diaspora, including the historical, sociopolitical and cultural forces that shape identity, family process, mental health and trauma, resilience and resistance at the individual and community level. Throughout the course, we will explore how intersecting identities, including ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, disability, religion, and generational position, impact mental health experiences and access to care for Asian Americans. The goals of this introductory course are (1) to provide a scope of the knowledge of Asian American identity and mental health that are shaped by cultural societal influences, (2) to examine and engage in a critical analysis of current research and practice with Asian Americans, and (3) to consider approaches in promoting positive mental health, well-being and resilience among Asian Americans. The course will combine theoretical frameworks, case studies, and practical applications to prepare students to provide culturally competent, trauma-informed, and compassionate care.

Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 26555, SSAD 46555, RLST 26555, RDIN 46555, SSAD 26555

RDIN 26578. Black Cinema and Media in Chicago. 100 Units.

From the birth of African American filmmaking to Spike Lee's Chiraq; from the Chicago Defender newspaper to Ebony and Jet magazines; from the first broadcasts of Soul Train to Lena Waithe's The Chi - for more than a century Chicago has produced much of the most visible, controversial and impactful African American media. We will trace the ways that Chicago, as a center of African American entrepreneurship, journalism, artistic innovation and political organizing, has shaped media works and practices in film, television, publishing, radio. We will study how Black mediamakers have navigated economic challenges and political threats in their efforts to convene Black publics, resist erasure and misrepresentation in mainstream media, and imagine more equitable futures.

Instructor(s): Jacqueline Stewart     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): SIGN 26578, CMST 26578, CHST 26578

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): RDIN 69600, SSAD 69600, GNSE 20127, SSAD 29600

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, ANTH 36635, RLST 26635, SSAD 26635, RDIN 46635, HMRT 26635, AASR 46635, GLST 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): RLST 26636, ANTH 46636, RDIN 46636, HMRT 26636, AASR 46636, ANTH 26637

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: Not offered this academic year
Prerequisite(s): For students seeking French credit, FREN 20500 or equivalent.
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 26770, CMLT 26771, FREN 26770

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: Not offered this academic year
Equivalent Course(s): MUSI 26780, SPAN 26780, MUSI 36780, SPAN 36780, RDIN 36780

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

UNHCR estimates that one of every 67 people are forcibly displaced people around the world. Of these, over 42 million are refugees, less than .5% of whom accessed permanent resettlement. Over the last 45 years the US has resettled more refugees than any other nation. Yet even as the need for third country resettlement rises, the US has rescinded its welcome to this population: the Trump Admin is actively dismantling the refugee resettlement institution. We will keep up with the shifting terrain of policy and practice as we pursue our goal of understanding US resettlement. This course asks: How is refugee status politically constructed; how is it experienced by individuals; what are the interrelationships between institutions and refugee policies, and how do these interrelationships impact service delivery to refugees; what can research tell us about the resettlement outcomes of refugees in the US and what drives these outcomes; and, where are intervention points for social workers in the resettlement process? We will address these questions by 1) detangling the web of intl and domestic policies relating to the refugee political identity, focusing on the US system of resettlement, 2) analyzing the structure of US resettlement policy and exploring its implications for social work practice, and 3) holding the inherent tension that results from a dual focus on macro level issues of scale and policy alongside micro level issues related to the lived experiences of human beings.

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

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

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

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

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): PSYC 27350, CHDV 27500, SSAD 27500

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

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

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

RDIN 27721. Jewish Civilization III: The Jewish Question and the Color Line. 100 Units.

This class opens with a simple question: why are Jewishness and Blackness represented as both comparable and conflicting in the twentieth century? The answer sometimes appears just as simple: because they are divided by what W.E.B. DuBois called the problem of the twentieth century: the color-line. But such an answer not only glosses over the varied racial and religious identities of Jewish and Black people throughout history; it also begs another question: what is the relationship between race and religion, and how is it overdetermined by Christianity and political construct known as "the West"? Examining the relationship between Jews, religion, and race on an international scale, this course begins with the Dreyfus Affair in France, and crosses the Atlantic to discuss how that relationship changed through two world wars, the Civil Rights Movement, the politics of Black Power, and the global rise of discourses on colonialism and feminism. Drawing on historical and philosophical work by Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, and James Baldwin, as well as literary classics by Nella Larson and Sarah Kofman, this course traces out how Jewishness and Blackness have been reconstructed over and over in relation to each other, and in reference to the concepts of gender, race, religion, and colonization that continue to circulate in political discourse today.

Instructor(s): Kirsten Collins     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 27721, RLST 27721, CMLT 27721, ANTH 23916, JWSC 12013

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: Not offered this academic year
Equivalent Course(s): SIGN 27777, FREN 27777, LACS 27777, SPAN 27777, PORT 27777, CEGU 27777

RDIN 28008. African Magic. 100 Units.

This course borrows the term "African magic" from a digital satellite service devoted to showing films that preponderantly project African beliefs in the supernatural. Throughout the semester, we will examine the African belief in the supernatural, its representation in films, and consequent engagement with the enfolded magic of mystical reality and the technology that visualizes, enhances, and even disrupts it. We will be studying the ideas of Gods, mythology, deities, witchcraft and the occult, as expressed in indigenous religions, Christianity, and Islam. By also exploring different visual materials that illustrate how Africans use their religious performances to formulate and navigate their conceptions of the sacred and supernatural power, we will analyze the social practices of their religious beliefs and determine the dimensions of the inventiveness that underline African religious practices.

Instructor(s): Abimbola Adelakun     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 28008, ANTH 28008

RDIN 28017. Black Americans and MAGA. 100 Units.

In November 2024, over 77 million American citizens voted for Donald J. Trump, Make America Great Again, and Put America First policies. Millions of black American citizens voted this way. This class will look at some of the political and theoretical books written by black conservatives. Conversations throughout the term will be purely academic research to understand and highlight the intellectual contributions of Black MAGA thought.

Instructor(s): Dwight Hopkins     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): AMER 28017, RLST 28017

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): GNSE 30141, CHDV 28055, RDIN 38055, NEHC 38055, CHDV 38055, GNSE 20141, NEHC 28055

RDIN 28300. Poéticas Afrocaribeñas: de la esclavitud a Bad Bunny. 100 Units.

In this course, we will study key manifestations of the Afro-Hispanic Caribbean poetic tradition, from its earliest known expressions in the nineteenth century to present-day practices in hip-hop and reguetón. The course examines what is meant by Afro-Caribbean poetics, the tropological systems and thematic repertoires that have characterized it, how these have transformed over time, and the extent to which this poetry has served as a vehicle for exploring the cultural and racial identities of the region and as an instrument of resistance to various forms of extreme violence. The course will also introduce the concepts and methods necessary for poetic analysis. Materials to be studied will include the work of enslaved and free Afro-descendants in the late period of Spanish colonialism in the Americas (Plácido and J. F. Manzano); the experimental approaches of the Negrista avant-garde (Nicolás Guillén and Luis Palés Matos); feminist reformulations of these traditions (Nancy Morejón, Mayra Santos); and the music of contemporary artists such as Calle Trece, iLe, and Bad Bunny.

Instructor(s): Agnes Lugo-Ortiz     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): SPAN 22005 is recommended. Taught in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 38301, SPAN 28300, LACS 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): RDIN 38619, ENGL 28619, ENGL 38619, MAPH 34520, GNSE 24520, GNSE 34520, KNOW 38618, HMRT 34520

RDIN 28703. Baseball and American Culture, 1840-1970. 100 Units.

This course will examine the rise and fall of baseball as America's national pastime. We will trace the relationship between baseball and American society from the development of the game in the mid-nineteenth century to its enormous popularity in the first half of the twentieth century to its more recent problems and declining status in our culture. The focus will be on baseball as a professional sport, with more attention devoted to the early history of the game rather than to the recent era. Emphasis will be on using baseball as a historical lens through which we will analyze the development of American society and culture rather than on the celebration of individuals or teams. Crucial elements of racialization, ethnicity, class, gender, nationalism, and masculinity will be in play as we consider the Negro Leagues, women's leagues, the Latinization and globalization of the game, and more.

Instructor(s): M. Briones     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 28703, RDIN 38703, HIST 38703

RDIN 28777. Black and Brown in Babylon. 100 Units.

In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), W.E.B. Du Bois proclaimed that "the problem of the color line [is] the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea." Du Bois imagined one solution to this problem in his novel Dark Princess (1928) through the romance of an African American man with an Indian princess. What other relationships have Black and South Asian people imagined and concretized in their struggles for freedom? This course explores the braided histories of Black and South Asian peoples in their various diasporas in order to interrogate the world-systems of race, caste, and colonialism. We study how the connections between Blacks and South Asians have generated new modes of critical analysis, knowledge production, and artistic creation to imagine possible worlds beyond the conditions imposed by racial capitalism.

Instructor(s): Anand Venkatkrishnan and Matthew Harris     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): AASR 38777, RLST 28777, HREL 38777, RDIN 38777, RAME 38777

RDIN 28888. Mosquitos and Morphine: A Seminar in the Global Medical Humanities. 100 Units.

This course examines well-being and illness from transnational, decolonial and intersectional perspectives. Together, we will explore the various ways in which fiction and film can help challenge and expand our notions of what it means to be sick or healthy in complex circumstances. Some guiding threads: To what extent is illness an intensely personal experience, and to what extent does it draw in those around us - family members, friends, partners, medical practitioners, legal counsel? What renewed valences do concepts of autonomy, care and responsibility take when overshadowed by the spectre of disease? How might we ethically and productively relate the medical humanities to broader entangled concerns such as migration (both legal and clandestine), gender, class, race, community, queerness and neocolonialism? Beyond the justified responses of fear and anger, what are other ways to relate to death and mortality - ways that are infused with creativity and resilience? How does human "health" relate to planetary and interspecies well-being?

Instructor(s): Nikhita Obeegadoo     Terms Offered: Not offered this academic year
Prerequisite(s): For students seeking French credit, FREN 20500 or equivalent.
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 38888, GNSE 38888, GNSE 28888, HLTH 28888, FREN 28888, FREN 38888, RDIN 38888, CMLT 28888

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): CCCT 39000, CMST 29000, CHST 29000, RDIN 39000, CMST 39000

RDIN 29002. Envisioning Freedom. 100 Units.

Did the emancipation of millions of African-descended people from the bonds of chattel slavery-beginning with the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti and ending with Brazilian abolition in 1888-mark the beginning of an irrevocable march towards Black freedom? Or was it merely an evolution in the continuing exploitation of Black people throughout the Americas? This course scrutinizes the complex economic, political, ideological, social, and cultural contexts that caused and were remade by emancipation. Students are asked to consider emancipation as a global historical process unconstrained by the boundaries of the modern nation-state, while exploring the reasons for and consequences of emancipation from a transnational perspective that incorporates the histories of the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. By focusing on the ideological ambiguities and lived experiences of enslaved people, political actors, abolitionists, religious leaders, employers, and many others, this seminar will question what constitutes equality, citizenship, and freedom. Finally the course will explore what role emancipated slaves played in shaping the historical meanings and practices of modern democracy.

Instructor(s): M. Hicks     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 39002, LACS 29002, LACS 39002, RDIN 39002, HIST 29002

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): RDIN 39030, ANTH 29030, NEHC 39030, INRE 39030, AASR 39030, RLST 29030, NEHC 29030, ISLM 39030, ANTH 39030, KNOW 39030, INRE 29030

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): Deirdre Lyons     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 39108, HIST 29108, MAPS 39108, RDIN 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: Not offered this academic year
Prerequisite(s): Undergraduates must be in their third or fourth year.
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 28479, GNSE 39117, SPAN 29117, LACS 29117, LACS 39117, TAPS 38479, SPAN 39117, RDIN 39117, 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): ARCH 29634, CEGU 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 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): K.J. Hickerson     Terms Offered: Spring

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): Joyce Bell     Terms Offered: Autumn

RDIN 29926. The Master's Tools: Agency and Resistance from Below. 100 Units.

Audre Lorde famously suggested that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." And yet for as long as human societies have been organized by structural oppression, disenfranchised peoples have managed to exercise subversive forms of agency by reinterpreting the societal structures and cultural resources they have inherited from their oppressors, retooling these structures to serve their own marginalized communities' needs. This syllabus foregrounds the works of LGBTQ and BIPOC scholars and artists to discuss the various ways agency is exercised from below in the seemingly intractable context of heteropatriarchal white supremacist settler colonialism. As many of these writers and performers demonstrate, such agency often involves working directly with "the master's tools" while strategically subverting these same resources in service of minoritarian goals. Throughout the quarter, we will use music and performance as our lens to interrogate these subversive forms of resistance and the performative power of artistic expression.

Instructor(s): Varshini Narayanan     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MUSI 39926, MUSI 29926