This course considers America as contested territory, where multiple Americas are not just written but also performed. By studying performance we look at how different meanings of America have been constructed over time. This class especially focuses on race intersecting with class and gender in the United States towards stronger anti-racist and anti-imperialist collective strategies for artists, scholars, and other cultural producers. Course materials include plays, live performances, popular media, music,...
Seth Lunine is extensively involved with the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) Program and explores issues of power, race, and class in the contemporary city in his course: Geography X50AC: “California.” This course explores the complex history of California and dives into the darker histories of racism and oppression. Originally developed as part of the American Cultures...
Over the course of the semester, students in History 131C, In the Shadow of War: A Social History of the U.S. Military, investigate together how the military shaped and was shaped by the experiences of African American, indigenous American, Mexican American, Asian American, and white American soldiers, officers, and their families. Alongside race, ethnicity, and national origin, the course considers how personnel policies and exigent circumstances of war rendered gender, sexuality, class, religion, and disability visible and invisible, acceptable and...
English 135AC: “Race, Class, & Disability: An American Foundling Museum” analyzed race, ethnicity, and disability in American cultures, focusing particularly on histories of family separation. A final project for the course asked students to curate an artifact for an “American Foundling Museum," with an opportunity to work in a variety of different mediums: conventional papers, podcasts, video, graphic art, and more. Across the semester, students applied writing and arts-based practices to generate a major...
As we engage with the work of anti-racism and equity-based learning, what concrete examples are available and what strategies are necessary to create anti-racism and equity-based pedagogy in the classroom?
ESPM 50AC: “Introduction to Culture and Natural Resource Management” explores how the health of the environments we depend on is connected to natural resource management, which in turn arises out of historically and culturally specific relationships between humans and nature. The creative project utilizes a form of media to present the student’s research on a topic addressing a course-related theme in the United States or in an area of U.S. imperial influence and how natural resources intersect with race,...
Chicano Studies 174AC: “Chicanos, the Law, and the Criminal Justice System” situates itself within an abolitionist paradigm to understand the connections between Chicano, Latino, and migrant urbanization, race, poverty, state violence, and the criminal justice system. The project for this course asked students, as groups, to select a topic or theme that they wanted to engage and to create a Spark presentation introducing the topic, as well as produce a podcast on the chosen topic or theme.
This course covers the entire history of the Chinese in the U.S., from the Gold Rush period in the mid-l9th century to the present. Since Chinese immigration and exclusion are two continuous processes throughout this history, both will be the focus of the course. The two processes and their interaction with each other also generated considerable political, economic, and cultural dynamism in the settlement and development of the Chinese American community throughout the U.S. Adding to the complexity of the two processes and the community dynamics has been the continuous impact of the...
Each year, approximately 10 faculty from a wide variety of disciplines are selected to participate in the Creative Discovery Fellows program. Faculty participate in a year-long developmental program that includes a 3-day Institute, monthly cohort meetings, and various workshops, as well as individual consultations with media and pedagogy experts. During implementation, their students also receive support in the form of workshops, in-class demonstrations, individual consultations, group feedback, online resources, and tutorials.
Message from Dr. Pablo Gonzalez, Lead Editor of