Spring 2025

The following courses are approved courses for SP25 for those pursuing a graduate certificate in Social Theory (listed alphabetically):

ENG 570/HIS 595: Anticolonial Writing and Thought: The Primary Documents (3 credits)
Instructor: Peter Kalliney
Day & Time: Thursdays, 2:00-4:30pm
Course Description: This course looks at the traditions of anticolonial thought from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Comparing movements for national liberation, realignment, and literary self-determination from across the world, we'll consider the shifting claims of the British, American, French, Spanish, and Russian empires, and the colonial subjects, postcolonial frameworks, and decolonial movements that sought to contest these formations from Chile to Alcatraz, India to Ireland, and Azerbaijan to Martinique. Our focus will most often be on the manifestos and essays in which anticolonial writers outlined their literary and political programs, but we may also look at a few poems, stories, and films. From Vicente Huidobro's fantasies of a secret international society to end British Imperialism to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's call to abolish the English Department, how did the radical claims of anticolonial political thought take shape in literary writing? This course will be taught in conjunction with a parallel course offered by Professor Harris Feinsod at Johns Hopkins University. We anticipate building opportunities for cross-campus research among students as part of an ongoing, large-scale collaboration.

GEO 712: Global Political Ecology (3 credits)
Instructor: Nari Senanayake
Day & Time: Mondays, 1:00-3:30pm
Course Description: This course will examine global debates in Political Ecology, with a focus on work that rethinks classic questions about nature, power, and difference through recent feminist and decolonial contributions to the field. As we read current work, we will endeavor to place it in the context of the longer trajectory of political ecological research as well as the politics of knowledge production within the field itself.

GWS 600-001: Prejudice & Inequality (3 credits)
Instructor: Jenn Hunt
Day & Time: Wednesdays, 3:30-6:00pm
Course Description: In recent decades, there have been marked improvements in attitudes toward many groups that are stigmatized due to race, gender, sexual orientation, social class, and other social identities. Nevertheless, considerable inequalities remain across social groups, subtle forms of discrimination thrive, and, in many cases, prejudice is still openly expressed. This course will attempt to understand this juxtaposition by examining theories of prejudice and inequality from different social science perspectives, including Psychology, Sociology, Gender Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Critical Whiteness Studies. First, we will consider theories on the nature of contemporary prejudice to understand why biases related to race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. persist, how prejudices against different groups are similar and different, and how intersectional oppression occurs. Second, we will consider how pervasive inequality and discrimination occurs at both individual and structural levels and how those experiences affect members of targeted groups. We also will examine how members of dominant groups, especially White people, form group-based identities and understand their experiences of privilege. Third, we will analyze different approaches – both good and bad – to reducing prejudice and promoting meaningful rather than rhetorical equality. This course counts toward requirements for the GWS graduate certificate, PhD, and other degrees as appropriate.

GWS 600-002: Feminist Disability Studies (3 credits)
Instructor: Anastasia Todd
Day & Time: Mondays, 3:30-6:00pm
Course Description: Disability activists, scholars, and advocates have long pushed back against a myopic understanding of disability as a pathologized condition, an individual deficit, and as a self-evident truth of the bodymind. Instead, they argue for the recognition of disability as multiplicitous: as an identity, as culture, and as valuable embodied human difference. This graduate level seminar takes up these arguments and critiques, but from a decidedly feminist perspective. Throughout the semester, we will traverse the field of feminist disability studies, paying close attention to how different scholars think and write about disability, pain, and chronic illness. We will also read scholarship from feminist authors who don’t always use the language of disability. We will think about care labor, mental health apps, the debilitating effects of academia, crip feelings, and how gender, race, and sexuality inform the experience and legibility of disability, pain, and chronic illness.

GWS 700: Gender, Law and Courts (3 credits)
Instructor: Srimati Basu
Day & Time: Thursdays, 4:00-6:30pm
Course Description: This course examines gender and law in cross-cultural and theoretical context.  In this course, we look at law not merely as being in the domain of legislation and adjudication, but as a cultural object, an important signifier in politics, a technology for people’s strategic use. We read some theoretical work on feminist jurisprudence that problematize concepts such as equality, difference, justice, and agency, applying them to contemporary debates. We will try to evaluate concepts that have proved useful over time and others which appear to have troubled legacies, seeking to map the complicated terrain through which legal remedies can be used. We will also read (and watch) several ethnographies of legal spaces such as courtrooms and informal dispute resolution venues, and other works of film and fiction and social science research, to concretely study the ways in which gender operates in legal realms. Critical Legal Studies, which studies the ways in which race, class and sexuality are embedded in law, is another significant strand. Other questions include: Is it possible to eradicate sexual violence through law? Can marriage/ domestic partnerships be inscribed outside the domain of exchange? Is human rights discourse the best solution for mainstreaming gender justice issues?

LAS 610/HIS 638: Interdisciplinary Seminar in Latin American Studies (3 credits)
Instructor: Mónica Diaz
Day & Time: Tuesdays, 3:30-6:00pm
Course Description: This course is an introduction to Latin American Studies as an academic and intellectual endeavor. We will begin by studying the origins and development of Latin American Studies in the US and Latin America. In the first part of the course, we will focus on the main historical and political events, social movements, and intellectual trends that were decisive in the evolution of Latin America as area studies. After laying the ground to understand the context, we will focus on sample readings that represent current scholarship in various disciplines and will discuss the interdisciplinary nature of area studies. We will also have four guest lectures from scholars whose works we will read in class, and a zoom conversation with the editor-in chief of the academic journal Latin American Research Review. An important component of the course will be a collaborative project that the students will engage in and that will mirror the kinds of research that scholars in Latin American and Latinx Studies are conducting today.

SOC 751: Contemporary Sociological Theory (3 credits)*
Instructor: Ana Liberato
Day & Time: Tuesdays, 5:00pm-7:30pm
Course Description: The division between classical and contemporary theory is artificial. However, teaching the follow up course to the classical sociological theory seminar requires some structure. Minding this fact, this course will focus on late Twentieth Century’s theorists whose work falls outside of the once dominant Parsonian’s structural functionalism. Most authors belong to the contemporary theory canon or have at least accrued a great deal of recognition in sociology and other fields. This is also true of all the featured minoritized theorists. In any case, we can only study a handful of theorists/theories in one semester, and so, we will focus on a sample of them and study them. The seminar provides opportunities to discuss key sociological concepts, such as power, agency, social structuree, social change, social integration, and social order and to theorize about key social issues and developments of our time. 

*This course (SOC 751) may also be substituted for the required ST 500 course.

ST 600: Environmental Justice and Disasters (3 credits)
Instructor: Loka Ashwood & Kathryn Newfont
Day & Time: Fridays, 2:00-4:30pm
Course Description: The expression and experience of disasters often involves injury to the self and community that crosses species, time, and social space. This course will begin and end by emphasizing sociological works that document and seek to transform the social conditions and constructions of nature that shape disasters. In-between, the course will dance across disciplines, genres and mediums. Together, we will explore fiction, poetry and film as tools of empowerment in consideration of the past and future.  Students will have space to experiment with different forms of delivery as they consider the role of environmental justice and disasters in their own lives and work in a time of acute and ongoing climate catastrophes.

WRD 569: Kentucky Cancer Narratives (3 credits)
Instructor: Katherine Rogers-Carpenter
Day & Time: Mondays-Wednesdays-Fridays, 12:00-12:50pm
Course Description: Kentucky has the highest cancer rate in the country according to the CDC. And Eastern Kentucky has suffered the most, reporting the highest number of cancer cases and mortality rates in the region. In WRD 569, we will explore what this means to the people who live there. We will analyze the stories of patients, family members, and health care providers tell about cancer in their communities. These oral histories will serve as a jumping off point for more in-depth class research. Finally, each student will conduct an oral history interview with someone connected to Kentucky’s cancer crisis. Students interested in oral histories, Eastern Kentucky, health and environmental policy, and healthcare would benefit from this course.­­­­ This class will address the following theoretical aspects of storytelling: using storytelling to co-generate information and build community (Kate Fisher, Nancy Tomes); narrative's role in health settings (Rita Charon); the connection between illness and identity (Susan Sontag). We will also explore what Kentucky's cancer stories mean practically—in terms of influencing health policy.