Comparative Studies
This list is current as of October 28, 2024. Course schedule and descriptions are subject to change; we are adding here course-specific descriptions, as well, as they become available. Please refer to SIS for the most up-to-date information. Contact arceno.1@osu.edu if you notice any discrepancies or have any questions.
COMPSTD 5240 / PUBAFRS 5240 / AFAMAST 5240 Race and Public Policy in the United States
Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:35-10:55 | Miranda Martinez | Page 60
This course explores Race and Public Policy in the United States from Reconstruction to the present. In particular, the class is designed to look at the long list of "hot topics" in the current policy landscape, including policing, housing, wealth gap, immigration, voting, political representation, and others. Cross-listed in African American and African Studies and Public Affairs. Not open to students with credit for AFAMAST 5240 or PUBAFFAIRS 5240.
COMPSTD 5691 Gender, Sexuality, and Music
Wednesdays 9:15-12 | Abigail Lindo | Hagerty 451
This course examines the music of queer artists and gendered language in popular music from the 20th and 21st century. With special attention to the United States, we will explore various eras of musical creations to understand how formations of gender identity and expectations, and sexual preferences, have evolved in music, performance, and artistic discourse. We will employ musicological, (Black) feminist, and queer studies literature to approach the lives and works of different performers as case studies, allowing us to put foundational literature into action across different research interests.
COMPSTD 6400 Foundations: Interdisciplinarity and Collaboration (class number 36903)
Thursdays 9:15-12 | Isaac Weiner | Hagerty 451
Description forthcoming.
COMPSTD 6425 / SPANISH 6705 Introduction to Latinx Studies
Tuesdays 12:45-3:30 | Mintzi Martinez-Rivera | Dulles 016
This course introduces graduate students to the broad themes, concepts, and questions raised in the interdisciplinary field of Latina/Latino studies. Cross-listed in SPANISH.
COMPSTD 6750.02 / ENGLISH 6751.02/.22 Ethnography of Speaking
Thursdays 2:15-5 | Galey Modan | Denney Hall 435
COMPSTD 7320 Theorizing Race & Ethnicity
Wednesdays 2:15-5 | Kwaku Korang | Hagerty 451
Description forthcoming.
COMPSTD 8200 / Interdisciplinary Learning Lab 2
Thursdays 2:15-5 | Barry Shank + Ryan Skinner | Hagerty 451
The Comparative Studies Interdisciplinary Learning Laboratories are two-part courses that seek to give participants opportunities to engage in sustained interdisciplinary research, to workshop their research projects in conversation with one another, and to share their projects with broader publics. This year’s CS 8200 provides an opportunity for students to work together to design and produce musical performances that engage audiences both on and off campus. Goals of these performances include testing principles that have been examined in CS 8100 for their real-world applicability and providing innovative performance opportunities for musicians (amateur and professional).
Having taken Autumn 2024's COMPSTD 8100 is not a pre-requisite for enrollment in Spring 2025's COMPSTD 8200.
COMPSTD 8791 Radical Black Aesthetics
Tuesdays 2:15-5 | Sam Aranke | Hagerty 451
The title of this class comes from Fred Moten’s 2008 article "The Case of Blackness," in which he suggests that black is, does, means, and exceeds the visual field. Taking Moten’s notion of blackness’s social chromatism to work, this graduate seminar explores black cultural theory and its interventions on aesthetic theory. Working primarily out of anticolonial and antiracist politics, the scholars and artists we will examine take skin, color, sound, and touch as their primary mediums in order to further understandings of blackness, antiblackness, and other afterlives of slavery. Some of the scholars we will study include Sylvia Wynter, Édouard Glissant, Frantz Fanon, Hortense Spillers, Huey Copeland, Fred Moten, Saidiya Hartman and Katherine McKittrick. We will ask ourselves: What constitutes blackness? What is the art-historicity of black aesthetics? What radicality exists within and despite of the ongoing violence of antiblackness? These questions might lead us to further theoretical and aesthetic explorations how blackness extends tactile, audible, and imaginary qualities to the visual field.
COMPSTD 8843 Seminar in Technology and Culture
Hybrid | Thursdays 12-2 | Liliana Gil | Hagerty 451
This advanced graduate seminar explores the intersections of science and technology with key sociopolitical topics such as activism, labor, environmental justice, inequality, repair, and improvisation. Foregrounding ethnographic methods and feminist and postcolonial perspectives, the course offers students a critical and global framework to examine science and technology broadly conceived.
Please note that this class is scheduled to meet in person for two hours. In addition to assigned homework, students should expect additional, outside work to account for the third hour of course credit.
COMPSTD 8990 / Dissertation Writing Workshop
Tuesdays 12-2 | Miranda Martinez | Hagerty 451
Since the dissertation is often your first effort to construct a complex, original, and extended argument, interpretation and/or analysis, this writing workshop will assist you in developing concrete strategies for tackling this major task, hold you accountable for making progress on the dissertation, and contribute to the creation of an intellectual community among Comp Studies graduate students. Repeatable to a maximum of 9 cr hrs or 9 completions. This course is graded S/U.