Course Description:

For many decades, the hip-hop culture has resonated with young men and women across America and has played a crucial role in history as the voice of the voiceless and oppressed. This course seeks to address, analyze and explore the historical, political and social aspects of the hip-hop movement and culture through a close examination of race, gender and feminism. The course serves as a space for debate, critical thinking and discussion about the relationship between hip-hop and the feminist understandings of Americans. We will ultimately explore hip-hop’s ability to empower and inspire young black women, while sharing and recognizing their often-misunderstood narrative.

Continue reading 8-Week Syllabi: Hip Hop Feminism in the 21st Century

Introduction: Harley Quinn: Is she a feminist icon? A competent psychiatrist fallen tragic victim to severe mental illness? Villain(ess) extraordinaire? The Joker’s girlfriend? Champion of the LGBTQ community?

Or does she, throughout her myriad iterations, rather claim a small piece of all of those identities, exhibiting the nuanced liminality that is the practiced territory of characters so complex, so enduring, and so popular that they transcend their own medium and permeate into more mainstream pop cultural consciousness?

In this class, we will examine Harley Quinn as an unlikely proponent of a peculiar phenomenon: the acknowledgement and celebration of queerness in many of its varied psychosocial configurations. We will critically engage with the character as a prism through which audiences could — and can — situate themselves within a particularly palatable manifestation of the third wave feminism movement and its emergent principles.

Students are encouraged to follow this fascinating character from her origins as a silly, sexy sidekick to her breakthrough into blockbuster cinema and beyond. Using a feminist lens, we will undertake an intense character analysis of Harley Quinn and trace her metamorphoses across multiple media.

 

Continue reading Harley Quinn: The Clown Princess of Crime as a Paradigm of Particularly Palatable Queerness

Course Description:

The aim of this course is to gain an understanding of how religion influences public policy in the United States. We will do this by investigating the case of Mormonism and its role in public policy in the United States. For the purpose of this course, the terms Mormon and LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) will be used interchangeably, as they are used interchangeably by members of that church. I chose this religion to focus on instead of faiths with greater numbers of adherents and political influence in the United States, like Evangelical Christianity or Catholicism, for a number of reasons. Among them is that it is easy to decide who counts as Mormon due to the orthodoxy of the religion that leaves little room for the gray areas that exist in the Bible Belt. Additionally, there is a strong concentration of LDS members in the intermountain west region of the United States. This makes it easier to specifically attribute certain policies to the influence of Mormonism as opposed to political or other influences. This makes it a strong first foray into public policy analysis with respect to religion in the U.S. In order to fully analyze this, we will approach Mormonism and government policies that were affected by it through a historical, philosophical, and religious studies approach with the aim of understanding how public policy is influenced by the “elephant in the room” of our personal beliefs and worldview so that we might be more effective in creating empathetic policy.

Continue reading 8 Week Syllabus

Course Description

The purpose of our class is to examine changes and developments in the way our public school elementary systems curriculums are designed. Our end goal will be to take a close at elementary school curriculums from a few different decades and to make hypotheses as to why certain aspects of elementary school education have changed (or have not changed).

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Course Description: In this course, we will explore Autism from its initial recognition as a disorder to its perception today. It is estimated that one in two hundred and fifty individuals worldwide has received an Autism Spectrum diagnosis. Just as there is a spectrum of disorders that affect both high and low functioning individuals, there are different ways of seeing Autism, and thus different ways of addressing treatment of individuals with ASD diagnoses. This course will be divided into two parts. In the first, we will analyze three different ways that autism has been defined: as a disorder, as a disease, and as a natural product of neurodiversity. In the second half of the course, we will explore how individuals with autism are being included in the classroom, workplace and community with the new sociocultural move toward neurodiversity. Continue reading Autism, Analyzed: 8 Week Syllabus

Course Description:

In this class we will examine the need for change in modern medicine to tackle current demands from contemporary society. These will include looking at current controversies that have required new demands from doctors and even attempts at reform to address them.

Continue reading Challenges in Modern Medicine: Gender, Politics, Technology, and the Internet

Course description:
Chinese Americans have their own set of stereotypes when it comes to education. Asians are smart. Asians are hardworking. Asians are great at math. This course aims to discuss how Chinese culture play a role in Chinese American education and how Chinese culture might be seen to encapsulate the model minority stereotype. It will look at how the history of Chinese students in American educational systems as well as how filial piety based family structure effects how Chinese students are brought up. Is is where model minority stereotype comes from? The course aims to dissect this identity and discuss if this identity helps Chinese American students succeed or does it actually put them at a disadvantages and the ramifications of the “myth of Asian American success” Continue reading Course: Model Minority Identity and how it affects Chinese American Students in American Education.

Course Description

Humans have always asked are we alone? We were fascinated with the unknown and what creatures lurked in the far away corners of the map and behind the stars. It was not until recently until we as a species had the technology to really intensify and standardize our search. In this course we exploring both the real and fictional search for aliens by humans. From popular television shows to NASA’s real life exploratory missions, students will learn the methodology and the science behind searching for alien life as well as the philosophical implications and other ramifications of being successful in our search.

The long running science fiction television show, The X-Files, will introduce us to aspects that represent the struggles of looking for aliens as well what exactly do we expect or desire to see from our intelligent relatives from across the universe. And what does that say about our own desires and nature.

Continue reading 8 Week Syllabus: I Want to Believe – Probability, Alien Life, and Exoplanets