» Wilkinson College First-Year Focus Programs: Health Equity

Jeffrey Koerber, Ph.D. - Associate Professor, Department of History, Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

FFC 100D-05 (M W 1:00 - 2:15 p.m.)

This First-year Focus Course (FFC) will examine how Nazi Germany radicalized constructions of race and community health, leading to persecution, sterilization, selected mass murder, and genocide. It focuses on the ideas and policies that formed the basis not only the Holocaust of European Jews, but concurrent attempts to annihilate Roma peoples (so-called “gypsies”) and cleanse the “Aryan race” of severely disabled people, African Germans, and gay German men. This FFC focuses on the emergence and implementation of policies tied to constructions of race and health. It traces the origins of these constructions and follows their development as they intersected with the fates of different marginalized groups, drawing in the voices of survivors where their eyewitness accounts are available. And this course is more than just a cautionary tale, it seeks to illuminate how over the course of only twelve years a radical racist movement attained political power, redefined social and individual notions of “health,” and subsequently oppressed and murdered millions designated from among the diverse communities under its rule. Students in the course will engage not only with scholarly histories but also works of literature, digital humanities (including oral histories), and film.

Ashley Kranjac, Ph.D. - Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

FFC 100D-06 (M W 2:30 - 3:45 p.m.)

This course offers a history of environmental inequality, linking individual disease and illness to larger societal forces such as environmental racism. We will focus on the ways in which social and economic conditions at the individual-, family-, and neighborhood-levels interact with neighborhood concentrations of environmental pollution to affect racial disparities in health and mortality, including the disproportionate burden of environmental hazards on minority and low-income populations. We will draw on the interdisciplinary and relatively new field of population health to apply understandings of social structure, social processes, and social interaction to identify the social and environmental causes of sickness in an effort to better understand the occurrence of disease.

This course is organized around the burgeoning body of literature emphasizing substantial racial and socioeconomic disparities in exposure to environmental hazards, including hazardous waste sites, manufacturing facilities, Superfund sites, and chemical accidents. We will connect the well-documented environmental injustices that give rise to significant disparities in a variety of outcomes, including physical and psychological health, educational and occupational success, and perceptions of social trust.

Fiona Shen, Ph.D. - Director, The Phyllis and Ross Escalette Permanent Collection of Art

FFC 100D-11 (T TH 11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.)

This course invites students to a personal and in-depth exploration of Wilkinson College’s unique resource - the Escalette Permanent Art Collection. The Collection, its growth, and mission will be contextualized within the dynamic field of contemporary museum studies and this year’s Engaging the World theme of health equity. Through first-hand experience of art objects, students will consider the role of collections as mediators and shapers of culture, and agents of representation and social justice. In Fall 2023, a special focus will be placed on artwork that engages with the subject of disparities in access to health and health care, and the conditions under which everyone has the just opportunity to attain the highest level of wellness. As the destination of their experiential journey, students will have the opportunity to help curate an exhibition on this topic, as part of the College’s ground-breaking Engaging the World initiative.

Art Blaser, Ph.D. - Professor, Department of Political Science, Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

FFC 100D-01 (T TH 11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.)

In this course we'll explore possible answers to the question in the course title – where, how, and when do we and others fit in global health equity, disability rights and humanitarianism? We will apply the answers to the related but different concepts. Through video excerpts, memoir, fiction, and descriptive accounts, we will identify similarities and differences of various groups. We will be discussing attractions and limitations of popular memes, such as "we are the world" global citizenship and "healthy life years." We will forecast alternative futures for a world with wars, climate change, gene editing, and humanitarian action, and our possible roles in making those alternatives more or less likely.

Cristina Fuentes – Assistant Director, Department of World Languages and Cultures, Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

FFC 100D-04 (T TH 1:00 - 2:15 p.m.)

In this course we will examine the mechanisms that shape our perception of sexuality and gender relations in mass media. We will begin by exploring the foundational and historical movements that politicized gender and have contributed to our understanding of sexuality in the 21st century. Finally, we will develop a better understanding of the ways in which mental health is affected by mass media and how we can use this knowledge to transform and reshape current and future constructions of gender identity.

After becoming familiar with the intersectionality of health, gender, and mass media, students will be able to examine various forms of media and share their experiences through a series of written self-reflection and small group discussions. The goal is to encourage students to identify media's portrayal of gender relations in the U.S. and to help them acquire the necessary tools to critically analyze media from a Health Humanities lens. Ultimately, the class provides an optimal learning environment where students can examine their personal experiences with health, gender, and mass media.

Ruben Espinoza, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

FFC 100D-03 (M W 2:30-3:45PM)

Since the 1990s, medical professionals have uncovered evidence that Latinx immigrants have better overall health outcomes than U.S. citizens. This phenomenon is a paradox because Latinx immigrants’ social indicators, such as extreme poverty, lack of quality healthcare, and low levels of education, are consistent with poor health outcomes in the United States. Social scientists argue that The Latino Health Paradox represents only one aspect of the Latinx community’s experience in the U.S. healthcare system. This course will analyze and complicate the Latino Health Paradox. Students will investigate the reasons why some Latinx immigrants arrive in better health than the average U.S. citizen, why these positive health outcomes deteriorate over time, and why the Latino Health Paradox cannot be understood without understanding the diverse experiences of Latinx people. The course will use the Latino Health Paradox as a point of departure to engage students in issues of class, race, gender, environmental justice, social movements, labor, migration, and citizenship. The goal of the course is to help students understand how health equity is inseparable from other social inequalities.

Jan Osborn, Ph.D. - Associate Professor, Department of English, Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

FFC 100D-09 (T TH 2:30 - 3:45 p.m.)

Despite the call for universal access to reproductive health at the 4th International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, reproductive health remains a political battleground at the intersection of several related health and human rights issues. Barriers to reproductive health care access are increasing at local and national levels through institutional and legislative restrictions. Students in this course will examine reproductive rights discourse, from the rhetoric of the entrenched adverse stereotypes of women as they are embedded in reproductive health laws, policies, and practices to the call for reproductive health for all women, regardless of economic status, race, or sexual identity.

Joshua Liashenko, Ph.D. - Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

FFC 100D-07 (T TH 2:30 – 3:45 p.m.)

This course examines how stigma and inequality frame cultural perspectives of health and the community bonds that emerge from shared illness experience. It will use the history of HIV/AIDS activism as a starting point to facilitate students in developing of an interpretive lens for assessing how class, race, sexuality, and power contribute to attitudes about what it means to “healthy” and how stigma is embedded within healthcare systems. Through centering narrative medicine and research on health movements, students will be introduced to social science and humanities literature centering HIV/AIDS and other global health crises, patient experience, and contemporary challenges in addressing health inequity.

Kyndra Rotunda -  Executive Director, Military and Veterans Law Institute

FFC 100D-10 (T TH 1:00 – 2:15 p.m.)

An exploration of how “trials” which are designed to protect individual rights have ironically resulted in the deprivation of them at certain times in American and world history. This course will examine famous and infamous cases in the health humanities and history genres, including the trial of Socrates; cases regarding Euthanasia; and the historical treatment of marginalized populations including immigrants, minorities; women; children; native Americans, etc. This course explores cases in their historical context and challenges students to contemplate where we have been and where we are going.

James Brown, Ph.D. - Professor of Teaching, Attallah College of Educational Studies, and Department of Peace Studies, Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

FFC 100D-12 (M W 1:00 – 2:15 p.m.)

FFC 100D-13 (M W 2:30 – 3:45 p.m.)

“Who are you and what will you fight for?” Noble Peace Laureate Nadia Murad asks us to examine our humanity and then act to make the world more humane. Too often, humans turn to violence and make the choice to commit great harm. In the face of atrocities and other forms of injustice, it has become all too common for many of us to be passive and complicit bystanders. But we also have the potential for courage and resilience if at crucible moments we carefully consider our beliefs and how they are linked to our readiness and willingness to act. In this FFC, we read accounts, view documentaries, and talk face-to-face with the people who may have been survivors and rescuers and who had to make choices in response to atrocities.  As students study the lessons of “difficult” histories, reflect on their identity, and consider postmodern perspectives and critical alternatives to the dominant narratives that perpetuate violence and injustice, they learn to make the essential connections between historical decisions and the moral choices they confront in their own lives. 

CK Magliola - Instructor, Department of Sociology, Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

FFC 100D-08 (F 1:00 - 3:50 p.m.)

Drawing from ecofeminist, critical race, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theory, this course examines the history and current contours of reproductive politics in the U.S. with an emphasis on the ongoing struggle for reproductive justice in the shadow of the overturning of Roe v Wade, the violation of trans rights to bodily autonomy, inequitable access to health care and their connections to other systems of symbolic, bodily, and structural violence.  How do race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, immigration status-- and their intersections-- shape experiences of reproduction and practices of biopolitical control? 

This course investigates the histories/legacies of scientific racism, eugenics, population control, gynecological experimentation, the medicalization of birth, the Women’s Health Movement, the feminist struggle for reproductive health access, including abortion rights, and the Reproductive Justice Movement (pioneered by women of color) to better understand how contemporary reproductive politics play out on the battlegrounds of bodies.

Antiracism- Continuous Journey
Prexy Nesbitt
As the world grapples with social injustices related to race, it is critical to learn from past movements and contemporary change-makers who work for racial justice. This course examines the Civil Rights, Black Lives Matter, Anti-Apartheid, Anti-Colonial, and Environmental Justice activism around the globe. Readings, speakers, films, and assignments encourage students to examine the historical and present-day implications of racism, and develop ways to build capacity in individuals and institutions that can move toward an antiracist future.

Black Music & African Diaspora
Monique Charles
This course is designed to introduce students to some of the key themes related to music in the African diaspora, specifically the themes that produce it and the cultural forms, ideas, and practices that it shapes. The module takes a sociological, cultural study, and critical theory approach to understanding how race, gender, and sexuality inform and are informed by music as creative and technological expression, as well as understanding how music, and its constitutive cultures, are impacted by its commodity status: a thing to be bought, sold, and marketed.

Borders and Migration
Nancy Rios-Contreras
This course provides a broad and comprehensive overview of migration, reasons for displacement and the social construction of borders. The course covers criminalization, militarization, and securitization, as well as the challenging conditions migrants encounter when crossing land, sea, and invisible borders to get through Latin America to the United States.

Chicanx Literature
Renee Hudson
This course introduces Chicanx literature by examining the emergence of Chicanxs – from the masculinist Chicano Movement to Chicana feminist appropriations of Greek myths, Chicanx identity has always been a staging ground over competing issues of gender and sexuality along with the historical facts of conquest, colonization, and immigration. To that end, this course explores how Chicanx authors conceptualize their identity alongside a particular set of politics, such as a commitment to social justice and a celebration of Indigenous heritage.

Daoism and Racism in the United States
Brian Glaser
This course contextualizes the expression and practice of Daoism in the United States by examining its relationship to anti-Asian racism. We will read Daoist classical texts, artwork informed by Daoism, and research into the reception of Daoism in the US as well as texts about anti-Asian racism.

Developing Critical Thinking Habits: Media, Identity and Ethnic Studies
Cristina Fuentes
The goal of this course is to help students develop healthy critical thinking habits by examining the relationship between media, identity, and ethnic studies. The course begins with an introduction to the history of ethnic studies in the U.S. Throughout the semester, we will examine the media's representation of cultures within various milieus: history, pop-culture, film, and social media. Students will be able to engage in critical thinking through written responses, group discussions, and in-class presentations.

Exploring the Escalette Collection of Art: An Experiential Journey
Fiona Shen
This course invites students to a personal and in-depth exploration of Wilkinson College’s unique resource - the Escalette Permanent Collection of Art. The Collection, its growth, and mission will be contextualized within the dynamic field of contemporary museum studies. Through first-hand experience of art objects, students will consider the role of collections as mediators and shapers of culture, and agents of representation and social justice. In Fall 2022, a special focus will be placed on artwork that engages with the College’s new minor in Ethnic Studies. As the destination of their experiential journey, students will have the opportunity to help curate an exhibition on this topic, as part of the College’s ground-breaking Engaging the World initiative.

Mexican Communities in the United States
Ruben Espinoza
This First-Year Foundations Course focuses on the formation of Mexican and Chicanx communities in the United States. How have Mexican people developed a shared and fragmented ethnic identity? What contributions have Mexicans made to the United States through their labor and culture? How do Mexican communities make the United States their home? How have Mexican American and Chicanx social movements shaped civil rights and social justice? The course will focus on issues and topics such as labor, gender, indigeneity, ethnicity and race, immigration, transnationalism, citizenship, borderlands, farm workers, environmental justice, and the Chicano Movement. Our primary focus will be on California, but experiences from other regions of the U.S. will also be included throughout the semester.

Performative Identity
Samantha Dressel
This course introduces students to theories of performative identity, which suggests that identity is created by actions and interactions with the people around us. We will use this theory to think critically about a variety of texts, from Shakespeare to Mean Girls and think about identity in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, class, and more.

Political Responses to Climate-related Disasters
Patrick Hunnicutt
Climate change continues to increase the frequency and intensity of natural disasters like droughts and hurricanes. Discussions regarding the consequences of climate-related disasters are both wide-reaching and urgent, given that climate change threatens the well-being of over three billion people worldwide. This course explores the political ramifications of climate-related disasters specifically, with a particular focus on how race and other identities shape the distribution of their harms. Case studies of recent climate-related disasters from within and beyond the United States will ground our discussions.

Queer Cinema
Ian Barnard
This section of FFC focuses on a selection of contemporary queer films, emphasizing work by LGBTQIA+ BIPOC filmmakers and/or about LGBTQIA+ BIPOC characters in order to investigate larger questions the films raise about relations of power, colonial legacies, social justice, lived experiences, and representation. We'll ask how race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and class intersect and diverge in the creation and articulation of diverse queer identities and practices in these films and beyond.

Shakespeare and Racism
Kent Lehnhof
Several of Shakespeare's plays focus on characters who experience racial persecution. In this course, we will study these plays with the aim of analyzing their depictions of racism and exploring how they can be read and performed in anti-racist ways.

Trials on Trial: Famous Legal Cases
Kyndra Rotunda
From Salem Witches to Japanese Americans imprisoned during WWII - How  “trials” which are designed to protect individual rights have ironically resulted in the deprivation of them in American and world history.

Utopia and Dystopia in Film and Fiction
Michael Valdez Moses
The 20th century was an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, personal happiness and social harmony. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that technology could play in making possible different ways of living and forms of social control that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time. Focusing on major works of literature, film, and philosophic prose, we will look at some of the most prominent and thought-provoking visions of utopia/dystopia in the 20th and 21st centuries and reflect on what these (mostly) fictional portrayals of society can teach us about the limits of political thinking in reshaping our conceptions of morality, human nature, and social life. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing. In so doing, we will also examine utopian visions of racial harmony as well as dystopian visions of racial discord and eugenics.

“Who are you and what will you fight for?”- Difficult Histories and Critical Theory
Jim Brown
“Who are you and what will you fight for?” Noble Peace Laureate Nadia Murad asks us to examine our humanity and then act to make the world more humane. Too often, humans turn to violence and make the choice to commit great harm. In the face of atrocities and other forms of injustice, it has become all too common for many of us to be passive and complicit bystanders. But we also have the potential for courage and resilience if at crucible moments we carefully consider our beliefs and how they are linked to our readiness and willingness to act. In this FFC, we read accounts, view documentaries, and talk face-to-face with the people who may have been survivors and rescuers and who had to make choices in response to atrocities.  As students study the lessons of “difficult” histories, reflect on their identity, and consider postmodern perspectives and critical alternatives to the dominant narratives that perpetuate violence and injustice, they learn to make the essential connections between historical decisions and the moral choices they confront in their own lives. 

Yellow Peril to Yellow Power
Stephanie Takaragawa
This course offers a history of Asians in America, examining different immigrant groups and their integration into the “American melting pot.” It is intended to teach critical thinking skills through analyses of the social construction of race, identity and various forms of power, introducing students to critical race theory, the yellow peril, and stereotypes of the model minority and where they come from.

Antiracism- Continuous Journey
Prexy Nesbitt and Pete Simi
As the world grapples with social injustices related to race, it is critical to learn from past movements and contemporary change-makers who work for racial justice. This course examines the Civil Rights, Black Lives Matter, Anti-Apartheid, Anti-Colonial, and Environmental Justice activism around the globe. Readings, speakers, films, and assignments encourage students to examine the historical and present-day implications of racism, and develop ways to build capacity in individuals and institutions that can move toward an antiracist future.

Ecofeminism: Past, Power, Future
C.K. Magliola
Ecofeminist thought offers one of the most profound insights on justice ever developed: oppressions are connected. In this course, students are exposed to both ecofeminist theory and “cli-fi” literature as resources to analyze the linkages between ecological damage and structures of oppression (e.g., sexism and misogyny, racism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, specie-ism, nationalism, colonialism, neocolonialism). If, as ecofeminists centrally assert, the domination of women and the human domination of nature (the nonhuman) are connected, how does this cultural association of women with nature and animals help us decode multiple forms of bodily and structural violence? Students will study examples of early and contemporary scholarly figures and activist movements, such as Rachel Carson, Berta Caceras, Vandana Shiva, Carol J. Adams, Greta Thunberg, The Poor People’s Campaign). In addition to scholarly nonfiction, students will study examples from the burgeoning genre of literary fiction on climate change-- “cli-fi” novels and film (e.g., Watership Down, Year of the Flood, Gold Fame Citrus, Children of Men, Annihilation) and what they can teach us about environmental apocalypse and redemption.

Environmental Justice in California's Farm Working Communities
Ruben Espinoza
This course focuses on the intersection of Latinx communities, the environment, and social justice. How do Latinx people experience environmental issues in the United States? How are social inequalities, such as class, race, and gender, embedded in those experiences? What mechanisms and tactics do Latinx people utilize in their struggles for environmental justice? The class will emphasize farm working communities in California. Students will learn how to analyze the environment and social justice with a theoretically informed lens and as a space of cross-cultural advocacy. A comparative approach between farm working communities in California and other Latinx communities across the United States will also guide this course throughout the semester.

Exploring the Escalette Collection of Art: An Experiential Journey
Lindsay Shen
This course invites students to a personal and in-depth exploration of Wilkinson College’s unique resource - the Escalette Permanent Collection of Art. The Collection, its growth, and mission will be contextualized within the dynamic field of contemporary museum studies. Through first-hand experience of art objects, students will consider the role of collections as mediators and shapers of culture, and agents of representation and social justice. In Fall 2021, a special focus will be placed on artwork about the environment and climate. As the destination of their experiential journey, students will have the opportunity to help curate an exhibition on this topic, as part of the College’s ground-breaking Engaging the World initiative.

ETW: Fallout: Chernobyl-Fukushima
Alexander Bay
Twenty-twenty-one marks the 35th anniversary of disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine and the 10th anniversary of the comparable catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeast Japan. Fallout: Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the Legacies of Nuclear Power, examines the initial disasters and their long-term effects. It highlights the themes addressed by the fall interdisciplinary series Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on the Significance of Environmental Justice, specifically how environmental toxicity and risk disproportionately impact populations based on economic standing. In both nuclear accidents, authorities evacuated those living within immediate danger of radioactive contamination yet were slow to inform urban and rural populations located outside of designated “exclusion zones” of the risks and hazards to their lives.

Health Disparities
Ashley Kranjac
This course offers a history of environmental inequality, linking individual disease and illness to larger societal forces such as environmental racism. We will focus on the ways in which social and economic conditions at the individual-, family-, and neighborhood-levels interact with neighborhood concentrations of environmental pollution to affect racial disparities in health and mortality, including the disproportionate burden of environmental hazards on minority and low-income populations. We will draw on the interdisciplinary and relatively new field of population health to apply understandings of social structure, social processes, and social interaction to identify the social and environmental causes of sickness in an effort to better understand the occurrence of disease. This course is organized around the burgeoning body of literature emphasizing substantial racial and socioeconomic disparities in exposure to environmental hazards, including hazardous waste sites, manufacturing facilities, Superfund sites, and chemical accidents. We will connect the well-documented environmental injustices that give rise to significant disparities in a variety of outcomes, including physical and psychological health, educational and occupational success, and perceptions of social trust.

Photography: Staking a Claim
Julie Shafer
This course offers a critical look at the role photography played in the Westward Expansion of America in the mid 1800’s. This course will analyze the parallel histories of the rise of photography as a visual medium and the development of the West, and how they relied on one another as they continued to grow. An historical timeline from the mid-1800’s to the present, will explore evolving ideas of land ownership, and how that lead to various methods for extracting natural resources. This course will culminate with examining lands, and peoples, that have been negatively, and, permanently affected by this history.

Social Control and Its Discontents
Samantha Dressel
This course explores forms of social control, both in terms of explicit legal systems and implicit pressures, and the ways people attempt to throw off those rules. Throughout the course, we will explore how social control affects lives on many levels, from language patterns to the environment to incarceration. Texts will range from Shakespeare to Snowpiercer, from real life through dystopic fiction.

The Anthropocene: Humans and the Environment
Jan Osborn
This class looks at the impact humans have had on the environment in specific ways that illustrate environmental injustice. The class will focus on the discourse surrounding specific cases of environmental injustice, exploring how the event is represented in the media, by the government, and by the impacted communities. The study will begin with an overview of the Anthropocene, students familiarizing themselves with both the Anthropocene and environmental injustice as concepts as well as an overview of discourse analysis. Thi Bui’s illustrated memoir, The Best We Could Do, will provide students an opportunity to consider the continuing refugee crisis as one family navigates the realities of war, immigration, and trauma. Students will then narrow their focus to study particular examples of environmental injustice.

Tijuana & the Dream of Environmental Justice
Brian Glaser
In this course we will focus our attention on the dream of environmental justice and its relation to the city of Tijuana today. We will look at a platform from a Mexican political party, an essay and two book chapters, a book of poems, a podcast, a video, an academic lecture, and a work of long-form journalism. We will seek together to be informed, critical thinkers about the confluence of ideals of environmental justice and Tijuana, and we will make efforts at the end of the course to view our subjects in a global context.

Utopia and Dystopia in Film and Fiction
John Thrasher IV and  Michael Valdez Moses
The 20th century was an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, personal happiness and social harmony. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that technology could play in making possible different ways of living and forms of social control that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time. Focusing on major works of literature, film, and philosophic prose, we will look at some of the most prominent and thought-provoking visions of utopia/dystopia in the 20th and 21st centuries and reflect on what these (mostly) fictional portrayals of society can teach us about the limits of political thinking in reshaping our conceptions of morality, human nature, and social life. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing. In so doing, we will also examine utopian visions of racial harmony as well as dystopian visions of racial discord and eugenics.

Past Events:

• Anthropocene: Environemental Injustice Case Studies
  Conference Featuring students in FFC 100D.03 The Anthropocene: Humans and the Environment
• Godzilla and the Imagination of Anxiety, from Hiroshima to COVID-19
  FFC 100 Fallout: Chernobyl–Fukushima.
  
• Legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima
  FFC 100 Fallout: Chernobyl–Fukushima
• Storming the Wall with Todd Miller
  FFC 100 Tijuana & the Dream of Environmental Justice.
  
• District 15
  FFC 100 The Anthropocene: Humans and the Environment
• The Quest for Environmental and Climate Justice with Dr. Robert D. Bullard
  Co-Sponsors: Schmid College of Science and Technology; Environmental Science & Policy Program.
  

Civil Rights in Constitutional History 
Ron Steiner
Any serious conversation on the significance of race in American history must consider the complicated and convoluted development of American Constitutional Law. Instead of the usual tree-top survey of many cases, this course offers an historical and cultural deep dive on a handful of fascinating cases and the stories and people behind the cases. We will consider the larger political, social, and economic forces surrounding the battle for civil rights. The course aims to provide a rigorous intellectual introduction to university-level inquiry, and will examine primary texts and secondary materials as we begin to study civil rights law as a manifestation of cultural and institutional factors which are vital to an understanding of U.S. history and politics.

The Classical Influence in America
Bill Cumiford
The classical influence on America with specific comparative study regarding ideas of “race” in the ancient western world and contemporary perceptions of race and ethnicity.

Feminism at the Movies
CK Magliola
In this course, students will be introduced to feminist theory as a mode of analysis for exploring and critiquing movies and popular culture.  Such investigation will include the ideological and material impact of American cinema as a vehicle for disseminating and reinforcing patriarchal norms, especially that of rape culture. Moreover, students will learn to better examine the possibility of developing a critical and “oppositional gaze” in relation to both the creation/production and reception/spectatorship of narrative film.  This course brings feminism to the movies in two senses: first, students will become familiar with feminist visual theories in order to critically examine the “male gaze” of mainstream narrative film through examples from various genres; and second, students will analyze diverse examples of (explicitly or implicitly) “feminist” films — as points of comparison and as political attempts to enact cultural sea-change.  Students will learn to identify well-worn misogynist archetypes of American cinema (such as the castrating mother, and other exemplars of the monstrous feminine-- as racialized, classed, and heterosexist embodiments), and learn to better understand the complex historical arc of “feminism at the movies” by tracing cultural “flashpoints” in American cinema. 

Intersections of Identity 
Jan Osborn and David Rojo-Arjona
Students in this course will question how identities and a mass culture intersect in the 21st Century. This course combines philosophical, literary, and economic texts and tools to explore phenomena at the heart of today’s world, including immigration, segregation, identity politics, and conflict. 

New Manifestations of Racism and  New Stages in the Combat against Racism
Prexy Nesbitt
No issue has proved more insidious in the United States than that of racism, both individual and institutionalized. This class seeks to examine questions, including: Why is racism so rooted in the United States? Why is it so difficult to uproot and eliminate its presence?

Performative Identity
Sam Dressel
In daily life, we tend to think of identity as innate - something we are born with or develop which dictates our thoughts and actions.  Theories of performative identity flip this assumption on its head, suggesting that identity is created by actions and interactions with the people around us.  This class will explore this idea and its repercussions on diverse fields such as language, gender, and race.

The Power of Greek Mythology
Eileen Jankowski 
This course explores the pivotal role ancient Greek literature played in shaping much of current Western culture. We will consider the social, historical, and psychological impact of the dominant myths on both structuring individual identity as well as society as a whole, including a consideration of Aristotle’s ideas about race and gender in the Poetics. Our goal is to gain a deeper understanding of the conscious and unconscious roots of culture, both to celebrate and to critique the transformative power of myth.

Speculative Fictions of Race and Ethnicity
Renee Hudson
In this course, we examine issues of race and ethnicity through the lens of speculative literature, which encapsulates both science fiction and fantasy. While science fiction in particular would seem to be future-oriented and fantasy might seem to exist in a merely allegorical relation to the present, this course puts pressure on both of these ideas. As Samuel R. Delany reminds us in Starboard Wine: More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction, “Science fiction is not about the future; it uses the future as a narrative convention to present significant distortions of the present” (26). Indeed, we might even think about how science fiction also encourages us to rethink our relation to the past. Fantasy, meanwhile, is often cast as existing in a faraway past, a world full of witches, dragons, and magic. But what if, in much the same way science fiction isn’t actually about the future, fantasy isn’t actually about the past? What if it’s about the recent past, the present, and, even, the future? This set of questions will guide us throughout the semester as we consider how authors of color use the genres of science fiction and fantasy – genres from which we are often excluded – to write themselves and their histories into and against the past, the present, and the future. By reading a range of authors of color, we will consider how speculative literature gives us alternate imaginaries to our dystopian present. Possible authors include Octavia Butler, Stephen Graham Jones, Daniel José Older, Ken Liu, Samuel Delany, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Cadwell Turnbull, and Rebecca Roanhorse.

Utopia and Dystopia in Film
John Thrasher and Michael Moses
Focusing on major works of literature, film, and philosophic prose, we will look at some of the most prominent and thought-provoking visions of utopia/dystopia in the 20th and 21st centuries and reflect on what these (mostly) fictional portrayals of society can teach us about the limits of political thinking in reshaping our conceptions of morality, 
human nature, and social life. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing. In so doing, we will also examine utopian visions of racial harmony as well as dystopian visions of racial discord and eugenics.

Yellow Peril to Yellow Power
Stephanie Takaragawa
This course offers a history of Asians in America, examining different immigrant groups and their integration into the “American melting pot.” It is intended to teach critical thinking skills through analyses of the social construction of race, identity and various forms of power. In addition to an anthropological framework, this course will introduce critical race theory, the yellow peril, and stereotypes of the model minority and where they come from.  

Past Events:

• Slaying the Dragon & Slaying the Dragon Reloaded
  FFC 100 Yellow Peril to Yellow Power, FFC 100 Feminism at the Movies.
  Slaying the Dragon is an in-depth look at media’s generation of stereotypes of exoticism and docility of Asian and Asian American women in film.
• Film - Children of Men
  FFC 100 Utopia and Dystopia in Film.
  Children of Men is a dystopian science-fiction thriller. The film takes place in a futuristic United Kingdom on the brink of collapse after nearly two decades of mass human infertility.
• Film - 100 Years: One Women's Fight for Justice for Native Americas
  FFC 100 Civil Rights in Constitutional History
  Over 100 years ago, the United States Government broke up numerous Indian reservations and allotted millions of acres of tribal land. The Government promised to manage the land and collect lease payments for oil, gas, timber, and grazing into an Indian Trust Fund, but instead the Department of the Interior grossly mismanaged the money owed to the Native peoples.