Sociology

How does the setting up of a textile factory in Malaysia connect with life in the United States? Or of ship building in Bangladesh? What was the relationship of mothers to children in 17th-century, upper-class French households? What do we expect of the same relationships today? In the United States? In other societies? Across rural and urban areas? How do contemporary notions of leisure and luxury resemble, or do they, notions of peoples in other times and places regarding wealth and poverty? What is the relation between the local and the global, the individual and society, the self and “other”? How is the self constructed? How do we connect biography and history, fiction and fact, objectivity and subjectivity, the social and the personal? These are some of the questions that sociology and sociologists attempt to think through. In this seminar, we will ask how sociologists, and social thinkers in general, analyze and simultaneously create reality. What questions do we/they ask? How does one explore these questions and arrive at subsequent findings and conclusions? Through a perusal of comparative and historical materials, we will look afresh at things we take for granted; for example, the family, poverty, identity, travel and tourism, progress, science, and subjectivity. The objective of the seminar will be to enable students to critically read sociological texts and become practitioners in “doing” sociology (something we are always already involved in, albeit often unself-consciously). This last endeavor is both designed to train students in how to undertake research and intended as a key tool in interrogating the relationship between the researcher and the researched, the field studied, and the (sociological) text. In fall, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences; in spring, individual conferences will be biweekly. 

In an era of unprecedented global connectivity, why do economic and social inequalities continue to deepen? This lecture will provide students with a critical introduction to the sociological study of global inequalities, moving beyond national boundaries to examine the transnational structures, institutions, and processes that produce and sustain disparities in wealth, power, and opportunity. We will explore key themes such as human rights, migration, labor, health, climate justice, and development, analyzing how these intersect with racial, gendered, and class-based inequalities across different societies. Rather than treating nations as isolated "containers" of social issues, we will focus on the ways in which global forces—such as capitalism, colonial legacies, and international policy regimes—shape patterns of privilege and precarity. Students will engage with interdisciplinary sources, including sociological research, ethnographies, policy reports, and case studies from regions in the Global South and North. Topics will include the rise of transnational migration networks, the impact of neoliberal economic policies on developing economies, the persistence of racial hierarchies in global labor markets, and the consequences of climate change for displaced communities. As part of group conferences, students will identify a key global issue and develop a research portfolio using a variety of methods—statistical analysis, historical records, qualitative interviews, and ethnographic sources—to investigate how inequality is shaped and contested in different contexts. The course will encourage students to think critically about solutions, exploring social movements, policy interventions, and alternative models of economic and social justice. This course is open to all students interested in understanding the dynamics of inequality on a global scale. No prior coursework in sociology is required, but students should be prepared for rigorous reading, discussion, and research.

Much of our lives is spent dealing with organizations in one fashion or another; they are a staple of our everyday lives, whether directly or indirectly, and we rarely escape them. They include government and nongovernmental structures, ranging from government bureaucracies to schools, hospitals, religious spaces, and less formal entities such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Because of their ubiquitousness—and the assumption that bureaucracies exemplify “modernity” and “value-free” systems—the study of organizations has been a key subfield within sociology. This course will address the veracity of the claims made on behalf of bureaucracies, as well as critiques directed at organizational theory and behavior. Overarching objectives include examining the manner in which organizations have been conceptualized, as well as the processes and practices through which they operate and change and their implications for those who are “subjected” to them. Beginning with Max Weber, a seminal figure in the field, we will examine underlying assumptions regarding “objectivity” and “subjectivity,” the rule of law, bureaucratic activism and inertia, the relation between organizations and their larger political and economic milieu, as well as ongoing organizational struggles. In addition to Weber, we will read other classics, such as Sloan Wilson’s novel, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and William Whyte’s The Organization Man. These and more contemporary critiques of organizations—both written and visual—will enable us to go beyond simplistic and normative understandings of bureaucracies and classic sociological theories and texts to rethink historical and contemporary organizations in order to analyze the functioning of power at an everyday and structural level alongside its attendant outcomes. While applicable to sociology students and those studying social sciences, this course will also be of direct relevance to rethinking the workings of science and medicine, the law, education, the business world, the media, and/or the arts. For conference, working in small groups, students will undertake archival and/or ethnographic research on a specific aspect of organizational practice at Sarah Lawrence—historical and/or contemporary. Possible topics include an examination of space and design, changes in the student body and/or curricular design, processes of decision making, student governance and activism, and/or the relationship between the school and its environs.

Cities are shaped not only by official policies and infrastructures but also by the informal and everyday interactions that blur boundaries—between legality and illegality, local and global, self and other. This seminar will explore informality as a defining feature of urban life and globalization, examining how people navigate unregulated economies, build informal networks of care and survival, and redefine cosmopolitanism through daily acts of negotiation, adaptation, and contamination. Using a transnational and ethnographic lens, we will look at how informal economies—street vending, unregistered housing, underground labor networks—shape cities from the margins. We will also examine cultural and social "contaminations"—where urban residents of different class, racial, ethnic, and migratory backgrounds encounter and transform each other’s ways of life—sometimes in conflict, sometimes in collaboration. Rather than viewing informality as a "problem" to be solved, we will investigate how it can be a form of survival, resistance, and even innovation. Key themes include the role of informal housing and precarious urbanism, as seen in slums, refugee camps, and do-it-yourself architecture, as well as the dynamics of street economies and alternative labor structures. We will explore how migrant communities shape transnational place making; the politics of food, music, and everyday cultural hybridity; and how public space is governed, contested, and informally negotiated in cities. These intersecting themes highlight the ways in which urban life is constantly being reshaped through both structural constraints and human agency. Readings will include works by Teresa Caldeira, Asef Bayat, AbdouMaliq Simone, Ananya Roy, and Saskia Sassen, alongside ethnographic case studies of cities in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and North America. Students will conduct ethnographic fieldwork— exploring the informal landscapes of urban spaces, neighborhoods, and/or digital communities around them—as part of conference work. These projects can culminate in ethnographic essays, photo essays, digital maps, or multimedia storytelling. This course is designed for students interested in urban studies, migration, globalization, and the sociology of everyday life. No previous background in sociology is required, but students should be ready to engage in active field observation, lots of fieldnote writing, discussion, and critical and creative thinking.

More often than not, sports and the arts are seen as two distinct fields with little in common. Those interested in international sports events rarely pay attention to international arts events and/or world expos, and vice versa. News organizations and mainstream media overall accentuate their differences. In this course, we will connect these frequently separated fields to parse out their identicality and differences. Through a close examination of international sports, expos, and biennales, we will tease out what they share, as well as how and where they depart from each other. We will start with Raymond William’s The Sociology of Culture, following it up with writings by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu on sports and the arts. We will build on these texts by reading specific accounts of historical and contemporary events, as well as interrogating visual materials. All three international events are normatively represented as sites of leisure and consumption. Going beyond these twin dimensions, an examination of their underlying practices of production will enable us to see the centrality of money, work, and labor in each of these activities/events. This examination will then allow us to interrogate the claim that art is “superior” to sports and, instead, see the relation of each to politics and market forces. In this vein, we will examine their relationship to gentrification, nationalism, tourism, and corporate power, as well as to their ability to serve as sites of resistance and as critique of local, national, and global inequities. In other words, we will see these events in terms of their multiplicity of meaning, complexity, and contradictions. Among possible conference topics, students could examine specific international events and their relationship to local sites, peoples, or politics; undertake analyses of media coverage; examine policy perspectives and justifications for location choices and/or the re-making of space; and/or examine these events, individually or collectively, in relation to issues of class, gender, race, and/or nation.

In her study of transnational adoptees, Eleana Kim noted the profound differences between discourses about the immigration of Chinese brides to the United States and those describing the arrival of adopted Chinese baby girls: the former with suspicion and the latter with joy. Two ways that families form are by bringing in spouses and by having children. We tend to assume that family building involves deeply personal, intimate, and even “natural” acts; but, in actual practice, the pragmatics of forming (and disbanding) families are much more complex. There are many instances where biological pregnancy is not possible or not chosen, and there are biological parents who are unable to rear their offspring. Social rules govern the acceptance or rejection of children in particular social groups, depending on factors such as the marital status of their parents or the enactment of appropriate rituals. Western notions of marriage prioritize compatibility between two individuals who choose each other based on love; but, in many parts of the world, selecting a suitable spouse and contracting a marriage is the business of entire kin networks. There is great variability, too, in what constitutes “suitable.” To marry a close relative or someone of the same gender may be deemed unnaturally close in some societies; marriage across great difference—such as age, race, nation, culture, or class—can also be problematic. And beyond the intimacies of couples and the interests of extended kin are the interests of the nation state. This lecture will examine the makings and meanings of kinship connections at multiple levels, from small communities to global movements. Topics will include the adoption and fostering of children, both locally and transnationally, in Peru, Chile, Spain, Italy, Ghana, the USA, China, and Korea. We will look at technologies of biological reproduction, including the global movement of genetic material in the business of transnational gestational surrogacy. We will look at the ways in which marriages are contracted in a variety of social and cultural settings, including China and Korea, and the ways they are configured by race, gender, and citizenship. Our questions will include: Who are “real” kin? Who can a person marry? Which children are “legitimate”? Why do we hear so little about birth mothers? What is the experience of families with transgender parents or children? What is the compulsion to find genetically connected “kin”? How many mothers can a person have? How is marriage connected to labor migration? Why are the people who care for children in foster care called “parents”? The materials for this class include literature, scholarly articles, ethnographic accounts, historical documents, and film.

There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarity. —Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is one of the most important thinkers and writers of the 20th century. His many writings and innovative concepts, which continue to be discussed and debated today, are of pressing relevance for the contemporary moment, marked as it is by themes of technological and aesthetic transformations, political violence, and histories of exile and displacement. The purpose of this intensive seminar will be to delve into the textures of Benjamin’s life—from his childhood years in Berlin to his final days in France and Spain—while considering the diverse and intricate formations of Benjamin’s thought and writing. For this inquiry, we will be drawing from a number of biographical, historiographic, political, literary, and anthropological lines of analysis to gain an incisive sense of his groundbreaking writings on film and photography, literature and translation, concepts of history, and the politics of culture. Along the way, we will connect Benjamin’s thought to other significant writers and philosophers, including Charles Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Derrida. We will focus on a number of key texts authored by Benjamin, including Berlin Childhood around 1900, The Arcades Project, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” “The Task of the Translator,” “The Storyteller,” and “On the Concept of History.” In engaging with these and other challenging texts and giving thought to Benjamin’s life and death more generally, students will develop a richly informed understanding of the life and thought of this singularly compelling person while coming to terms with the haunted histories of the 20th and 21st centuries.

We are told, in one of the earliest accounts of the life and work of the Netherlandish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-1569), that his prints and paintings elicited laughter. From pictures of carnival celebrations and children’s games to peasant weddings and riotous hellscapes, the comic artist makes his viewers, both in the late 16th century and today, question whether any of it should be taken seriously. This course will explore the humor element in the work of Bruegel and many others in early modern Europe, examining the possible beginnings of a recognition of the artistic value of comedy and the contributions of these artists to the culture of laughter. Following art historians, as well as cultural historians who have theorized about the emergence of new comic techniques and the impulse to produce pictures in a “comic mode,” we will explore innovative creative practices and the social contexts of humor throughout Europe—from Bruegel in the Netherlands to Annibale Carracci in Italy to Albrecht Dürer in Germany to Jacques Callot in France and beyond. Topics of discussion will include early modern medical perspectives on laughter, shifting notions about humor in relation to civility and decorum, the functions of tragicomedy, the secularization of the image, and the dual roles of entertainment and didacticism in art. This course will involve visits to area museums to study paintings and prints in person.

What do TikTok, Bitcoin, ChatGPT, self-driving vehicles, and Zoom have in common? The answer lies in this course, which focuses on how digital technologies have rapidly altered (and continue to alter) daily life. In this course, we will develop a series of core principles that attempt to explain the rapid change and forge a reasoned path to the future. We will begin with a brief history of privacy, private property, and privacy law. Two examples of early 20th-century technologies that required legal thinking to evolve are whether a pilot (and passengers) of a plane are trespassing when the plane flies over someone's backyard and whether the police can listen to a phone call from a phone booth (remember those?) without a warrant. Quickly, we will arrive in the age of information and can update those conundrums: A drone flies by with an infrared camera. A copyrighted video is viewed on YouTube via public WiFi. A hateful comment is posted on reddit. A playful TikTok is taken out of context and goes viral for all to see. An illicit transaction involving Bitcoin is made between seemingly anonymous parties via Venmo. A famous musician infuriates their fanbase by releasing a song supporting an authoritarian politician—but it turns out to be a deepfake. A core tension in the course is whether and how the internet should be regulated and how to strike a balance among privacy, security, and free speech. We will consider major US Supreme Court cases that chart slow-motion government reaction to the high-speed change of today's wired world. In fall, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences; in spring, individual conferences will be biweekly. 

Compilers are often known as translators—and for good reason: Their job is to take programs written in one language and translate them to another language (usually assembly or machine language) that a computer can execute. It is, perhaps, the ideal meeting between the theoretical and practical sides of computer science. Modern compiler implementation offers a synthesis of: 1) language theory: how languages (both natural languages and programming languages) can be represented on, and recognized by, a computer; 2) software design and development: how practical software can be developed in a modular way—for example, how components of one compiler can be connected to components of another compiler to form a new compiler; and 3) computer architecture: understanding how modern computers work. In this course, we will write a program implementing a nontrivial compiler for a novel programming language (partly of our own design). Topics covered will include the difference between interpreters and compilers; regular expressions and finite automata; context-free grammars and the Chomsky hierarchy; type checking and type inference; contrasts between syntax and semantics; and graph coloring as applied to register allocation. Conference work will allow students to pursue different aspects of compilers, such as compilation of object-oriented languages, automatic garbage collection, compiler optimizations, just-in-time compilation, WebAssembly, and applications of compiler technology to natural-language translation.

When we encounter dancing, what are we seeing, experiencing, and understanding? How do current representations of dance reflect, perpetuate, and/or disrupt familiar assumptions about personal and social realities? Embedded historical ideas and enforcements based on race, economic class, gender, social/sexual orientation, nationality/regional affiliation, and more are threaded through our daily lives. Performing arts inside and outside of popular culture often reinforce dominant cultural ideas and feelings. Can they also propose or inspire alternatives? In fall, we will view samples of dancing in film, video, digital media, television programs, and commercials, as well as live performance. These viewings—along with reading selected texts from the fields of dance and performance, literary criticism, feminist theory, queer theory, and cultural studies—will form the basis of class discussions and exercises. In spring, we will shift focus to viewing still images and live action, with readings from additional fields, including art criticism and neuroscience, as well as fine-tuning approaches to writing about our subject matter. Students will complete several class assignments each semester, as well as develop one or more substantial lines of inquiry for conference work. Conference projects may draw upon multiple disciplines, including those within humanities and creative arts. The central aim of this course will be to cultivate informed discussion and to produce new knowledge, increasing both individual and collective capabilities. We will use academic research, along with personal experience, to advance our recognition of dance as an elemental art form and as a potentially important orientation in adjacent studies. In both fall and spring, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences.

Data are everywhere. And data contain plenty of valuable hidden information that is waiting to be uncovered. How can we use data properly to help inform policy decisions? In this research workshop, we will learn the essential skills and contemporary methods for conducting applied studies of economic, political, social, and policy issues using data. We will discuss how to properly formulate a research hypothesis, how to select and organize quantitative data, how to construct relevant variables, how to select empirical research methods, and how to present and communicate your research findings. The course will cover a range of contemporary applied research methods that emphasize causal inference, including panel data, fixed effects, difference-in-difference, matching, Regression Discontinuity Design, instrumental variables, and so on. We will start with finding correlations among variables of interest (e.g., How do X and Y relate to each other?), but will focus more on making causal inferences (e.g., Does X cause Y?). We will learn Stata, a relatively advanced statistical package used widely by the social science and science research communities. The ultimate goal of the course will be to help students write a successful applied conference project. But first, do no harm!

This seminar, broadly speaking, will cover introductory microeconomics and macroeconomics from a wide range of theoretical perspectives, including neoclassical, post-Keynesian, Marxian, feminist, and institutional political economy perspectives. The course will enable students to understand the more "technical aspects" of economics (e.g., usage of supply/demand analysis within and outside neoclassical economics), as well as significant economic history and the history of economic thought. Theoretical issues will be applied to contemporary policy debates such as industrial policy, foreign trade, global warming, and inequality.

What factors determine the status of women in different societies and communities? What role is played by women’s labor, both inside and outside of the home? By cultural norms regarding sexuality and reproduction? By religious traditions? After a brief theoretical grounding, this course will address these questions by examining the economic, political, social, and cultural histories of women in the various racial/ethnic and class groupings that make up the United States. Topics to be explored include: the role of women in the Iroquois Confederation before white colonization and the factors that gave Iroquois women significant political and social power in their communities; the status of white colonist women in Puritan Massachusetts and the economic, religious, and other factors that led to the Salem witch trials of 1692; the position of African American women under slavery, including the gendered and racialized divisions of labor and reproduction; the growth of competitive capitalism in the North and the development of the “cult of true womanhood” in the rising middle class; the economic and political changes that accompanied the Civil War and Reconstruction and the complex relationships between African American and white women in the abolitionist and women’s rights movements; the creation of a landless agricultural labor force and the attempts to assimilate Chicana women into the dominant culture via “Americanization” programs; the conditions that encouraged Asian women’s immigration and their economic and social positions upon immigrating; the American labor movement and the complicated role organized labor has played in the lives of women of various racial/ethnic groups and classes; the impact of US colonial policies on Puerto Rican migration and Puerto Rican women’s economic and political status on both the Island and the mainland; the economic/political convulsions of the 20th century—from the trusts of the early 1900s to World War II—and their impact on diverse women’s paid and unpaid labor; the impact of changes in gendered economic roles on LGBT communities; the economic and political upheavals of the 1960s that led to the so-called “second wave” of the women’s movement; and the current position of women in the US economy and polity and the possibilities for more inclusive public policies concerning gender and family issues. In addition to class participation and the conference project, requirements for the course will include regular essays that synthesize class materials with written texts. Possibilities for conference work include traditional conference papers, group conference papers, “dialogue” papers, and on- or off-campus service projects.

In this course, we will explore the power dynamics behind images and how they shape the way we see and experience the world. Drawing on John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, we will examine how visuals—whether in art, film, or everyday life—are never neutral but, rather, always tied to politics. We will dive into works like Harun Farocki’s An Image, Tony Cooke’s Disco Inferno, Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen, Jean-Luc Godard’s radical cinema, and Brechtian approaches to audiovisual composition. Through these films and ideas, we will see how artists and filmmakers use images to challenge the status quo, resist dominant ideologies, and spark political change. With screenings and discussions, we will sharpen the ability to critically analyze the images that surround us and understand how they influence both political consciousness and personal identity. This course is a thought-provoking investigation into how images can manipulate, provoke, invent, and sometimes resist the political forces at play in our world.

This course will seek to understand the origins and rise of the New Right in the United States and elsewhere as it has taken shape in the latter half of the 20th century to the present. We will seek to identify the origins of the New Right and what defines it, alongside exploring the varied geographies of the movement and its numerous strands and identifying the constituents of the contemporary right coalition. In addition, we will explore the actors and institutions that have played a role in the expansion of the New Right (e.g., courts, state and local governments, the Tea Party movement, conservative think tanks, lawyers, media platforms, evangelical Christians, billionaires, militias, and more) and the issues that motivate the movement (e.g., anti-communism, immigration, environment, white supremacy and nationalism, voter suppression, neoliberal economic policies, anti-globalization, free speech). This is a reading-intensive, discussion-oriented seminar in which we will survey a broad sweep of the recent literature on the New Right. While the course will focus most specifically on United States context, conference papers based on international/comparative case studies are welcome. Students will be required to attend associated talk and film viewings; write weekly essays and engage classmates in conversation online the night before seminar; and write two short research papers that link the themes of the class with their own interests, creative products, research agenda, and/or political engagement. Students will also conduct two associated creative projects/expressions. Transdisciplinary collaborative activities across the college and community are encouraged. Film, performance, written commentary, podcasts, workshops, and other forms of action can provide additional outlets for student creative projects and engagement.

Despite widespread daily reporting on China’s rise to superpower status, and both its challenge to and necessary partnership with the United States, what do we really know about the country? We will explore China’s evolving place in the world through political-economic integration and globalization processes. Throughout the seminar, we will compare China with other areas of the world within the context of broader theoretical and thematic questions. We will consistently focus efforts on reframing debates, both academic and in mass media, to enable new insights and analyses not only concerning China but also in terms of the major global questions—in theory, policy, and practice—of this particular historical moment. The course will begin with an overview of contemporary China, discussing the unique aspects of China’s modern history and the changes and continuities from one era to the next. We will explore Revolutionary China and the subsequent socialist period to ground the primary focus of post-1978 reform and transformation to present day. Rooted in the questions of agrarian change and rural development, we will also study seismic shifts in urban and industrial form and China’s emergence as a global superpower on its way to becoming the world’s largest economy. We will analyze the complex intertwining of the environmental, political-economic, and sociocultural aspects of these processes as we interpret the geography of contemporary China. Using a variety of theoretical perspectives, we will analyze a series of contemporary global debates: Is there a fundamental conflict between the environment and rapid development? What is the role of the peasantry in the modern world? What is the impact of different forms of state power and practice? How does globalization shape China’s regional transformation? How does China’s global integration impact development in every other country and region of the world? Modern China provides immense opportunities for exploring key theoretical and substantive questions of our time. A product of its own complex history, other nation-states and international actors and institutions—such as the World Bank, transnational corporations, and civil society—have also heavily influenced China. The “China Model” of rapid growth is widely debated in terms of its efficacy as a development pathway, yet it defies simple understandings and labels. Termed everything from neoliberalism, to market socialism, to authoritarian Keynesian capitalism, China is a model full of paradoxes and contradictions, not least of which is China’s impact on global climate change. Other challenges include changing gender relations, rapid urbanization, and massive internal migration. In China today, contentious debates continue on land reform, the pros and cons of global market integration, the role of popular culture and the arts in society, how to define ethical behavior, the roots of China’s social movements—from Tiananmen to contemporary widespread social unrest and discontent among workers, peasants, students, and intellectuals—and the meaning and potential resolution of minority conflicts in China’s hinterlands. Land and resource grabs in China and abroad are central to its rapid growth and role as the largest industrial platform for the world. But resulting social inequality and environmental degradation challenge the legitimacy of China’s leadership like never before—as recent protests in Hong Kong and elsewhere attest. The COVID-19 pandemic and the state’s response revealed new challenges to state legitimacy. And China’s role as a foil for the Trump administration, in its tariff wars, accompanies the nationalistic turn in both countries. As China borders many of the most volatile places in the contemporary world—and increasingly projects its power to the far corners of the planet and beyond—the seminar will conclude with a discussion of global security issues, geopolitics, and potential scenarios for China’s future. Weekly selected readings, films, mass media, and books will be used to inform debate and discussion. A structured conference project will integrate closely with one of the diverse topics of the seminar.

Where does the food we eat come from? Why do some people have enough food to eat and others do not? Are there too many people for the world to feed? Who controls the world’s food? Will global food prices continue their recent rapid rise and, if so, what will be the consequences? What are the environmental impacts of our food-production systems? How do answers to these questions differ by place or the person asking the question? How have they changed over time? This course will explore the following fundamental issue: the relationship between development and the environment, focusing in particular on agriculture and the production and consumption of food. The questions above often hinge on the contentious debate concerning population, natural resources, and the environment. We will begin by critically assessing the fundamental ideological positions and philosophical paradigms of “modernization,” as well as critical counterpoints that lie at the heart of this debate. Within this context of competing sets of philosophical assumptions concerning the population-resource debate, we will investigate the concept of poverty and the making of the “Third World,” access to food, hunger, grain production and food aid, agricultural productivity (e.g., the Green and Gene revolutions), biofuels, the role of transnational corporations (TNCs), the international division of labor, migration, globalization and global commodity chains, and the different strategies adopted by nation states to develop natural resources and agricultural production. Through a historical investigation of environmental change and the biogeography of plant domestication and dispersal, we will look at the creation of indigenous, subsistence, peasant, plantation, collective, and commercial forms of agriculture. We will analyze the physical environment and ecology that help shape but rarely determine the organization of resource use and agriculture rather, through the dialectical rise of various political-economic systems—such as feudalism, slavery, mercantilism, colonialism, capitalism, and socialism—we will study how humans have transformed the world’s environments. The course will follow with studies of specific issues: technological change in food production; commercialization and industrialization of agriculture and the decline of the family farm; food and public health, culture, and family; land grabbing and food security; the role of markets and transnational corporations in transforming the environment; and the global environmental changes stemming from modern agriculture, dams, deforestation, grassland destruction, desertification, biodiversity loss, and the interrelationship with climate change. Case studies of particular regions and issues will be drawn from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the United States. The final part of the course will examine the restructuring of the global economy and its relation to emergent international laws and institutions regulating trade, the environment, agriculture, resource extraction treaties, the changing role of the state, and competing conceptualizations of territoriality and control. We will end with discussions of emergent local, regional, and transnational coalitions for food self-reliance and food sovereignty, alternative and community-supported agriculture, community-based resource-management systems, sustainable development, and grassroots movements for social and environmental justice. Films, multimedia materials, and potential distinguished guest lectures will be interspersed throughout the course. Attendance will be required for one farm/factory field trip. Regular postings of short essays will be required, as well as follow-up commentaries with classmates. There will be occasional in-class essays and a final quiz at the end of the semester. Group conferences will focus on in-depth analysis of certain course topics and will include debates, a film, workshopping, and small-group discussions. Students will prepare a poster project over the semester on a related topic presented at the end of the course in the final group conference.

This seminar will begin by examining competing paradigms and approaches to understanding “development” and the “Third World.” The course will set the stage by answering the question: What did the world look like 500 years ago? The purpose of this part of the course is to acquaint us with and to analyze the historical origins and evolution of a world political-economy of which the Third World is an intrinsic component. We will thus study the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the rise of merchant and finance capital, and the colonization of the world by European powers. We will analyze case studies of colonial "development" to understand the evolving meaning of this term. These case studies will help assess the varied legacies of colonialism apparent in the emergence of new nations through the fitful and uneven process of decolonization that followed. The next part of the course will look at the United Nations and the role some of its associated institutions have played in the post-World War II global political-economy, one marked by persistent and intensifying socioeconomic inequalities as well as frequent outbreaks of political violence across the globe. By examining the development of institutions that have emerged and evolved since 1945, the course will attempt to unravel the paradoxes of development in different eras. We will deconstruct the measures of development through a thematic exploration of population, resource use, poverty, access to food, the environment, agricultural productivity, and different development strategies adopted by Third World nation states. We will then examine globalization and its relation to emergent international institutions and their policies; for example, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization. The course will then turn to contemporary development debates and controversies; for example, the widespread land grabbing (by sovereign wealth funds, China, hedge funds, etc.), rising nationalism and anti-state populism, the contested role of international aid, and the climate-change crisis. Throughout the course, investigations of international institutions, transnational corporations, the role of the state, and civil society will provide the backdrop for the final focus of the class—the emergence of regional coalitions for self-reliance, environmental and social justice, and sustainable development. Our analysis of development in practice will draw upon case studies primarily from Africa, but also from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the United States. Conference work will be closely integrated with the themes of the course, with a two-stage substantive research project. Project presentations will incorporate a range of formats, from traditional papers to multimedia visual productions.

This seminar will provide an interdisciplinary analysis of the phenomenon of propaganda and mass communications within modern society. How does propaganda “work”? How should we characterize the individuals and institutions that shape and disseminate it? What are the specific languages and visual symbols that propagandists have typically used to persuade and communicate with mass audiences? How have both “democratic” and “authoritarian” societies sought to generate consent? And how, in turn, have individuals and social groups drawn the line between what is truth and what is propaganda? Although the manipulation of information for political ends has been intrinsic to human societies across history, this course will focus on the so-called “axial age of propaganda”—beginning with World War I, which saw the emergence of tightly organized, large-scale, government-sponsored propaganda efforts across Europe and the United States. This course will utilize a variety of case studies to explore the symbolic content of specific kinds of propaganda and the institutional milieux that produce it, paying attention to propaganda that seeks both to overthrow social structures and to maintain them. We will place special emphasis on the interwar period, when—amid the onset of totalitarian regimes in Europe—the very nature of “public opinion” and mass society were hotly debated by intellectuals and interpretive experts. The course will also closely investigate the emergence of mass communications “experts” during World War II and trace their role in shaping social-science research throughout the Cold War. Finally, the course will consider the ubiquity of propaganda in contemporary society, focusing on the role of image-making professionals working in the spheres of political campaigning, advertising, and public relations. 

By the 20th century, African Americans produced a distinctive ethos and aesthetic of pleasure not only in music and dance but also in sports and other creative arts. Artists like Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young, Duke Ellington, and John Coltrane were paradigmatic in that cultural production. In turn, the blues ethos and jazz aesthetics influenced the African American imagination in social, political, economic, and cultural life, as well as in architecture and science.

In recent decades, historians have become increasingly interested in the unique role and power of memory in public life. Historians have sought to understand the innumerable ways that collective memory has been constructed, experienced, used, abused, debated, and reshaped. This course will focus on the rich literature on historical memory within the field of modern Middle Eastern history in order to explore a number of key questions: What is the relationship between history and memory? How are historical events interpreted and rendered socially meaningful? How is public knowledge about the past shaped and propagated? How and why—and in what contexts—do particular ways of seeing and remembering the past become attached to various political projects? Particular attention will be paid to the following topics: the role of memory in the Palestine-Israel “conflict”; postcolonial state-building and “official memory”; debates over national remembering, forgetting, and reconstruction following the Lebanese Civil War; Middle Eastern diaspora formation and exilic identity; the myth of a “golden age” of Arab nationalism; Turkish nostalgia for the Ottoman imperial past; and the role of museums, holidays, and other commemorative practices in the construction of the national past across the region. Throughout the course, we will attend to the complex interplay between individual and collective memory (and “countermemory”), particularly as this has played out in several formulations of Middle Eastern nationalism. 

This course will aim to improve and perfect the students’ speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills, as well as their knowledge of Italy’s contemporary culture and literature. In order to acquire the necessary knowledge of Italian grammar, idiomatic expressions, and vocabulary, a review of all grammar will be carried out throughout the year. As an introduction to modern Italian culture and literature, students will be introduced to a selection of short stories, poems, and passages from novels, as well as specific newspaper articles, music, and films in the original language. Some of the literary works studied will include selections from Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg, Gianni Rodari, Marcello D’Orta, Clara Sereni, Dino Buzzati, Stefano Benni, Antonio Tabucchi, Alberto Moravia, Achille Campanile, and Elena Ferrante. In order to address the students’ writing skills, written compositions will be required as an integral part of the course. Biweekly conference topics might include the study of a particular author, literary text, film, or any other aspect of Italian society and culture that might be of interest to the student. In small groups, conversation classes will be held twice a week with the language assistant; students will have the opportunity to reinforce what they have learned in class and hone their ability to communicate in Italian. When appropriate, students will be directed to specific internship opportunities in the New York City area, centered on Italian language and culture. 

Contradictory assumptions about the relation of homosexuals to groups have dominated accounts of modern LGBT life. In Western Europe and the United States, from the late 19th century onward, queers have been presented as profoundly isolated persons—burdened by the conviction that they are the only ones ever to have had such feelings when they first realize their deviant desires and immediately separated by those desires from the families and cultures into which they were born. Yet, at the same time, these isolated individuals have been seen as inseparable from one another, part of a worldwide network always able to recognize their peers by means of mysterious signs decipherable only by other group members. Homosexuals were denounced as persons who did not contribute to society. Homosexuality was presented as the hedonistic choice of reckless, self-indulgent individualism over sober social good. Nevertheless, all homosexuals were implicated in a nefarious conspiracy, stealthily working through their web of connections to one another in order to take over the world or the political establishment of the United States; for example, its art world, theatre, or film industries. Such contradictions could still be seen in the battles that have raged since the 1970s, when queers began seeking public recognition of their lives within existing social institutions from the military to marriage. LGBT persons were routinely attacked as threats (whether to unit cohesion or the family) intent on destroying the groups they were working to openly join. In this class, we will use these contradictions as a framework for studying the complex social roles that queers have occupied alongside some of the complex social worlds that they have created—at different times and places and shaped by different understandings of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and nationality—within the United States over the past century and a half. Sources will include histories, sociological and anthropological studies, the writings of political activists, fiction, and film. 

Variance, correlation coefficient, regression analysis, statistical significance, and margin of error—these terms and other statistical phrases have been bantered about before and seen interspersed in news reports and research articles. But what do they mean? How are they used? And why are they so important? Serving as an introduction to the concepts, techniques, and reasoning central to the understanding of data, this course will focus on the fundamental methods of statistical analysis used to gain insight into diverse areas of human interest. The use, misuse, and abuse of statistics will be the central focus of the course; and specific topics of exploration will be drawn from experimental design theory, sampling theory, data analysis. and statistical inference. Applications will be considered in current events, business, psychology, politics, medicine, and many other areas of the natural and social sciences. Statistical software will be introduced and used extensively in this course, but no prior experience with spreadsheet technology is assumed. Group conferences, conducted in workshop mode, will serve to reinforce student understanding of the course material. This course is recommended for any student wishing to be a better-informed consumer of data, and strongly recommended for those planning to pursue advanced undergraduate or graduate research in the natural sciences or social sciences. 

This course will examine how music and its global circulation make the relationships between people audible. In the social contexts of listening and musical performance, we will understand how music and its movement across community-based, regional, and national boundaries shape people’s lives. As recordings, musicians, and ideas about music move, we will learn how they sound interpersonal relationships by using selected ethnographic examples of art and popular music from across Asia. Class topics may include Javanese gamelan, South Indian classical music, Japanese taiko, Southeast Asian heavy metal, Iranian pop, brass bands, Japanese hip hop, Bollywood, music from the Silk Road Project, world jazz, Japanese noise, K-pop, the music of M.I.A., World Music 2.0, and others. Course themes related to the circulation of music will include the ideology of tradition, cultural imperialism, sound technologies, and the more recent proliferation of cultural nationalisms that seek to impede circulation. By encountering musical diversity through listening and reading materials, students will develop the critical thinking skills to make connections between sonic and textual resources and to better understand the many ways in which music and sound are meaningful around the world. Participation in Solkattu, our Indian vocal percussion ensemble, or African Classics, our African popular music ensemble, is strongly encouraged. No prior musical experience is necessary.

This course will look at the intersections of music, culture, and nature. We will study how artists and musicians use music and sound to address climate change by surveying important trends in the young field of ecomusicology, such as soundscape studies, environmental musical criticism, acoustic ecology, and animal musicalities. Themes will range from music versus sound and the cultural construction of nature to aurality and the efficacy of sonic activism. Class sessions may include Appalachian coal-mining songs, indigenous music from the Arctic, art music composition, soundscapes, field recordings, birdsong, soundwalks, and musical responses to environmental crises such as Hurricane Katrina and the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan. Participation in the Solkattu Ensemble (Indian vocal percussion) is strongly encouraged. No prior experience in music is necessary.

What is education for? And what kind of human being does it aim to shape? This seminar will invite students to explore education not merely as a set of practices but, rather, as a reflection of our deepest convictions about human nature, freedom, and society. Through philosophical inquiry, students will develop critical, reflective, and ethically grounded perspectives on their role as educators. The seminar will be structured around four compelling visions of the human being, each giving rise to a distinct educational ideal and each delivering a pointed critique of dominant educational paradigms. Through readings in Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates, we will examine classical humanism and its belief in a universal human essence that education must actualize through the pursuit of virtue, fulfillment, and happiness. We will then turn to the Romantic-Naturalist tradition—Montaigne, Rousseau, and Fröbel—who emphasized the child’s innate goodness and warned against educational systems that suppress natural growth. The existentialist approach, represented by Nietzsche, Sartre, and Greene, shifts from self-realization to self-creation, challenging us to resist conformity. Finally, we will explore critical pedagogy through the works of Freire, Giroux, hooks, Arendt, and Adorno, who argue that education must address broader social injustices and guard against the political dangers of uncritical obedience. This seminar will offer students not only a rich encounter with the history of educational thought but also an invitation to take a stand—to reflect on who we are, who we aspire to become, and what kind of education might lead us there.

Winston Churchill purportedly remarked that “we shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us,” suggesting that the built environment and geography, more generally, have a profound impact on society, culture, and politics. This course explicitly will take the study of politics and the social world out of the narrow and traditional views of political science—views that regularly see individuals as “atoms” that are, in the words of Kenneth Shepsle, “unconnected to the social structure in which he or she is embedded”—and, instead, look at how “politics and people” are embedded in particular spaces and places and networks are highly conditioned, based on specific locational qualities, histories, and features. This course rejects the idea that individuals are atoms and explicitly brings geography into the picture in our study of American politics at the start of the 21st century—in a moment of intense rancor and polarization. After examining theory and methodology, students will tackle a number of big issues that are hotly debated in academic, political, and policy circles vis-à-vis the built environment. One example is the ever-growing literature on geographic differences and regionalism in the United States as an underlying cause of American division and fractionalization. These geographic fissures do not fall along easy‐to‐map state lines but, rather, along a variety of regions in the United States that have been described and mapped by scholars in a number of social-science disciplines. We will examine and review a number of literatures and large amounts of localized data that will enable us to look more precisely into the numerous claims that there are nontrivial regional differences in terms of political beliefs, behaviors, and distinct regional political cultures. While American regions display varied histories and cultures, the question that we will attempt to answer is whether these histories and cultures have an impact on contemporary political attitudes, behaviors, and social values. We will take on similar empirical topics throughout the year, using many tools available from the social sciences—from GIS to historical election and economic data—to examine issues of welfare, mobility, and “hollowing out the middle”; employment; innovation; gerrymandering and issues of representation; competition over natural resources; mass transit and the impact of transportation and highways on sociopolitical development; and urban and rural differences. Many of these topics will be familiar, but the tools through which we examine them will be via a geospatial lens; and the way in which we understand the surrounding politics will, hopefully, be more complete when compared to the traditional lenses of political science. This seminar will be an open, nonpartisan forum for discussion and debate and, as such, driven by data, not dogma. We will use a variety of approaches based in logic and evidence to find answers to various puzzles about American policy and will treat this material as social scientists, not ideologues. Comfort with numbers and statistics is expected, and group work along with fieldwork will be a regular feature of this seminar. Biweekly in fall and spring, students will alternate between individual conferences with the instructor and small-group activities that will include research and fieldwork.

How should societies commemorate and respond to past injustices that continue to impact community members? This course will investigate various approaches, including apology, repatriation, reparation, and remembrance. What is the best course of action in the aftermath of gross violations of human rights? Which responses are feasible in a particular context, and how might the possibilities shift over time? Where have repatriation efforts been successful? Why have reparations been won in some cases but not others? Our discussions will consider the needs of victims, as well as the interests of states and the possible contradictions between the two. We will focus on the role of power in the international system and international law, as well as the ways in which seemingly less powerful groups have engaged and challenged prominent domestic and international actors. Case studies will include, but are not limited to, Native American demands for the repatriation of remains, postcolonial states’ demands for the return of cultural artifacts, Jewish struggles for restitution in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Japanese American and African American campaigns for reparations, as well as debates over environmental reparations. We will also consider the role of art, narratives, and memorials in expanding discussion in each of these case studies.

At the end of the Cold War, many Western writers wrote triumphantly about the global victory of democracy and capitalism. In the last decade, we have been bombarded with news of autocrats, both at home and abroad, undermining democracy. Income and wealth inequality have been on the rise. At the same time, surveys in a number of high- and middle-income democracies show increasing dissatisfaction with democracy. This course will address both the promise and challenges of democracy. We will consider the connections between liberal democracy and market capitalism as they have reinforced and contradicted one another. We will explore the role of social movements, including on university campuses, in bringing about change and the alternative ideals that they have offered. In this moment of great significance for the future of American democracy, particular attention will be paid to the United States; but we will also consider a set of powerful states outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which have defined themselves as the BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. We will explore the increase in populist leaders and popular uprisings across these states, as well as the role of ethnic nationalism and inequality. As we learn from the past to evaluate the present, we will consider a range of popular responses to these challenges, as well as alternative frameworks for the future.

Despite frequent pleas for unity from United States presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, alongside the rise of groups such as BridgeUSA, Third Way, and No Labels to promote political centrism and compromise, the seemingly never-ending sociopolitical polarization appears to be the new norm in American political life—and it may not have reached its violent peak back in January 2021. To many politicians, pundits, and others alike, the social and political scene in the United States in the 21st century appears to be one of turmoil, disagreement, division, and instability. We regularly hear about a polarized and deadlocked political class; we read about increasing class and religious differences—from the alleged divides between Wall Street and Main Street to those who are secular and those who are religious; and we often see disturbing, dangerous, and violent images and actions from various politically-oriented groups. This seminar will look at the history of division in America and explore the puzzle of how to move on from this divided state. While the course will briefly examine the veracity of these recent impressions of the American sociopolitical scene, we will center our course on the question: Is policymaking forever deadlocked, or can real political progress be made? Moreover, what are the social and policy implications of polarization? How does the nation govern and function in the Trumpian political epoch, and are the political parties representing the will of the people? What about the impact of the 2024 elections? What are we to make of the frequent calls for change and for healing America’s divisions? In this seminar, we will examine these questions and deeper aspects of American political culture today. Covering a lot of ground from America's founding to today, after reviewing some basics of the political economy, students will study American political cultures from a variety of vantage points with a number of different stories emerging. We will look at numerous aspects of American social and political life—from examining the masses, political elites, Congress, and policymaking communities to social movements, the media, and America’s position in a global community—all with a focus on policy and moving the country forward. This course will be driven by data, not dogma. We will use modern political-economy approaches based in logic and evidence to find answers to contemporary public-policy problems and questions of polarization. The material will be treated as social scientists, not as ideologues. Students should anticipate extensive reading. Comfort with data and statistics will be expected.

This course will provide a unique opportunity to investigate key questions of democracy in a diverse group at a crucial moment in American history. We will begin by exploring theoretical arguments regarding the merits of various forms of democracy over other regime types. If democracy is presumed to be a better system than its alternatives, why might this be the case and how might we evaluate this? We will consider key historical moments in the rise and decline of democracy from the ideals of early American democracy and its shortcomings, to the Nazi seizure of power and the end of democracy in 1930s Germany, to the triumph of nonracial democracy with the end of apartheid in South Africa. We will investigate whether and how democracies might outperform other regimes. The class will engage empirical research, comparing democratic, transitioning, and authoritarian regimes as far as economic growth and development, human development indicators, interstate and intrastate wars, human rights, and business innovation, including artificial intelligence. Students will consider the role of free speech and censorship by exploring the ways in which a free press and open social networks support basic principles of democracy, as well as how misinformation and disinformation can starkly undermine it. The course will employ theory, history, and empirical data to evaluate the state of democracy in the United States and the possible impact of recent changes to American institutions. Occurring at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, this course will bring together students from both Sarah Lawrence and Bedford Hills.

Our subject will be the worlds of childhood. In this course, we will implement different psychological theories to highlight different aspects of those worlds. Freud, Erikson, Bowlby, and Stern will provide perspectives on emotional development. Skinner, Bandura, Piaget, and Vygotsky will present various approaches to the problems of learning and cognition. Chess and Kagan will take up the issue of temperament and its interaction with experience. Chomsky and others will deal with the development of language. Bronfenbrenner and his colleagues will emphasize the importance of considering the contexts of children’s development in family, school, community, and culture. We will also look at some systematic studies that developmental psychologists have carried out to confirm, test, and critique various theories: studies of parent-infant relationships, the development of cognition and language, and the emergence of intersubjectivity. In several of these domains, studies done in cultures other than our own will cast light on the question of universality versus cultural specificity in development. Another major way of learning the worlds of childhood is via direct experience with children. In this course, all students will do fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center (ECC). At times, the course will draw on students' written ECC observations to support or critique theoretical concepts. The fieldwork will also provide the basis for developing conference work. Typically, conference projects will combine student interests, library readings, and fieldwork observations. Children’s friendships, what makes children laugh, the functions of language, and a case study of a single child are included among the many diverse topics of past student projects. With the permission of the head teacher, creating an activity for the children at ECC in music, dance, or science may be possible as a conference work option.

When is sex not a natural act? Every time a human engages in sexual activity. In sex, what is done by whom, with whom, where, when, why, and with what has very little to do with biology. Human sexuality poses a significant challenge in theory. The study of its disparate elements (biological, social, and individual/psychological) is inherently an interdisciplinary undertaking; from anthropologists to zoologists, all angles of study add something to our understanding of sexual behaviors and meanings. From an intersectional perspective, in this course, we will study sexualities in social contexts across the lifespan, from infancy to old age. Race, ethnicity, gender, and social class, among other identities, impact sexuality both individually and structurally. Within each period, we will examine biological, social, and psychological factors that inform the experience of sexuality for individuals. We will also examine broader aspects of sexuality, including sexual health and sexual abuse. Conference projects may range from empirical research to a bibliographic research project.

How does the human mind represent the world? How do these representations vary across people? Could using a different language change how we experience time—or even how we see color? Seemingly straightforward concepts such as “in” versus “on” mean different things in different cultures; and words such as “two” and “three” may not be linguistically universal. Indeed, this very course description makes culturally-specific assumptions about psychology and implicitly assumes objectivity. At the same time, humans seem to share many central experiences, such as perceiving events, creating categories, and recalling the past. In this course, we will draw on research from psycholinguistics, cognitive development, and cultural psychology to learn cognitive science in a larger context. Critically, we will consider how these fields have been affected by a focus on Western, white, industrialized experiences. The course will investigate the broader social and ethical consequences of these assumed perspectives and explore insights and challenges that emerge when we step out of them. We will draw on primary and secondary sources, including scientific research articles, literature, and recordings. Students will develop projects in conference work that combine their interests with the course content, such as designing an experiment to test cross-linguistic effects on visual attention, analyzing vocabulary from languages other than English, or developing proposals to redesign existing experiments using culturally-informed practices.

The question of how Judaism does and does not map onto contemporary racial categories has been a defining question for centuries of how Jews, as a small minority group, relate to their surrounding cultures. In many ways, the story of the historical construction of racial categories is itself a story indissolubly bound up with Jewish history; ranging from the development of the concept of blood purity during the Spanish Inquisition, which was then exported to the New World through Spanish colonialism, to late 19th-century racial theorists, who were preoccupied with the question of how Jews do or do not relate to European peoples. As such, this course will consider the overarching question—“Are Jews white?”—from a historical and sociological perspective. In so doing, we will think about the historical development of the concept of whiteness itself and the relationship between the emergent concept of race and concepts of religion, ethnicity, nationhood, and nationality. We will look at how Jews were and are racially defined and categorized in different historical and cultural contexts in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and the United States—and how this question is bound up with broader questions about power relations, political structures, and minority and majority identities. We will look at how Zionism and other forms of Jewish nationalism have altered Jewish racialization; how Jews relate to broader discourses of postcolonialism and Orientalism; and the different racializations of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ethiopian Jews in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. The course will look at the ways in which Jews responded to the rise of Black nationalism in the United States and how racialized divisions between different ethnic Jewish communities shape politics in the modern state of Israel, with a particular focus on the rise of the Mizrahi Black Panthers. We will read sources from Jews of color and Jews who identify as white, from many diverse national backgrounds, as well as from many non-Jewish thinkers who find Jewish identity a fruitful way to think about the question of racial identity and its attendant political conflicts. We will explore how racial categories for Jews function both internally, within the Jewish community, and externally. In so doing, we will come to see how Jews and their relationship to whiteness is a defining question not just for Jewish identity but also how Jewishness can help shed light on the very concept of race itself.

This course is for students who want to break free from the conventions of the traditional essay and memoir and discover a broader range of narrative and stylistic possibilities available to nonfiction writers. During the first half of the semester, students will read and discuss examples of formally innovative nonfiction that will serve as the inspiration for brief assignments. Completed assignments will also be read aloud and discussed each week. During the second half of the semester, students will workshop longer pieces, which they will have written in consultation with the instructor as a part of their conference work. Required texts will include: The Next American Essay, edited by John D’Agata, and Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra; all other readings will be accessible in a photocopied handout. 

Long-form investigative journalism has opened many doors, perhaps most literally in America’s penal system where journalists have regularly revealed—and freed—the wrongfully convicted. This course will set out to expose the innocence (or confirm the guilt) of a man or woman convicted of a controversial murder or other serious felony. Working collectively and using all of the tools and traditions of investigative journalism, the class will attempt to pull out all known and unknown threads of the story to reveal the truth. Was our subject wrongfully accused? Or are his or her claims of innocence an attempt to game the system? The class will interview police, prosecutors, and witnesses, as well as friends and family of the victim and of the accused. The case file will be examined in depth. A long-form investigative piece will be produced, complete with multimedia accompaniment. 

As central to the historical development of the modern essay as its concern with personal experience is the essay's usefulness in politics and the representation of political experience. The essay can be polemical, informative, argumentative, lyrical, intimate, condemnatory. It can narrate and describe, or it can persuade or cajole, or it can satirize. As an open, improvisational form, the essay is particularly suited to giving depth to individual experience by placing that experience in social and political contexts and among allegiances and identities—and also suited to imparting drama to collective experience by locating the individual within his, her, or their social conditions and conflicts. We will follow this give and take in our readings, which will be across the reasonable political spectrum. Some examples: Samuel Taylor Coleridge on William Pitt the Younger, George Orwell on his education, H. L. Mencken on The Presidency, James Baldwin in Switzerland, Joan Didion on the counter-culture, Adrienne Rich and Anne Carson on patriarchy, Mike Davis on class and the politics of firefighting in contemporary Los Angeles, and a series of recent editorials and op-eds about our ever-present political crises. These various pieces will be used as models for our own writing, which will range from the small to the medium to the large and will be presented to the class for critique of both their rhetorical realizations and their plausibility or implausibility.