Comparative Studies
This list is current as of September 29, 2025. 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 12:45-2:05 | Michael Fisher | Mendenhall 185
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 5957.02 Folklore in Circulation
M 9-11:45 | Liam Waters | Hagerty 451
Folklore in Circulation: Memes, Conspiracies, and Digital Traditions focuses on the movement and transformation of vernacular culture in online environments. From memes to viral rumors, internet legends to conspiracy theories, we will investigate how folklore circulates through digital networks, mutates across platforms, and gains new resonance in political and popular discourses. We will begin with digital case studies, then situate them within core folkloristic theories of transmission, performance, and tradition. Throughout the course, we will pay special attention to how digital folklore functions as a bottom-up, communal process of meaning-making while also noting how it is frequently appropriated by political actors, ideologies, and corporate interests.
A central theme of the course explores the recycling of traditional motifs and narratives in digital contexts: how tradition is reassembled, parodied, or hybridized in memes, copypasta, and internet legends, to name a few. In exploring this theme, we will consider the role of generative AI as a new agent in the circulation of digital folklore, questioning how algorithmic re-composition challenges assumptions about authorship, authenticity, and the human-centered nature of folklore.
Assignments for this course include weekly readings, discussion, and a hands-on project in which students will collect and document examples of digital folklore currently in circulation. Through this work, students will gain grounding in folklore theory while applying it directly to contemporary digital traditions.
COMPSTD 6400 Foundations: Interdisciplinarity and Collaboration
Tuesdays 9:15-12 | Liliana Gil | Hagerty 451
Description forthcoming.
COMPSTD 6425 / SPANISH 6705 Introduction to Latinx Studies
Thursdays 12:45-3:30 | Paloma Martinez-Cruz | Hayes 12
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 6500 Teaching Seminar in Interdisciplinary Studies
Thursdays 9:15-12 | Melissa Curley | Hagerty 451
Description forthcoming.
COMPSTD 6750.02 / ENGLISH 6751.02/.22 Ethnography of Speaking
Tuesdays 12:15-3 | Galey Modan | Denney Hall 419
Description forthcoming.
COMPSTD 7320 Theorizing Race & Ethnicity
Thursdays 2:15-5 | Instructor: TBD | Hagerty 451
Description forthcoming.
COMPSTD 8200 / Interdisciplinary Learning Lab 2
Wednesdays 9-11:45 | Maya Cruz + fabian romero | 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 2025's COMPSTD 8100 is not a pre-requisite for enrollment in Spring 2025's COMPSTD 8200.
COMPSTD 8791 Seminar in Interdisciplinary Theory: Queer Indigenous Theory
Wednesdays 2:15-5 | fabian romero | Hagerty 451
This interdisciplinary seminar delves into the growing filed of queer Indigenous studies. The seminar will provide an overview of the origins of feminist and queer Indigenous studies in the 1980s, the term “Two-Spirit,” constructions of sexuality, gender and their relation to structures of power, and movements for social justice by queer Indigenous people. There are two main objectives, first to learn about gender and sexuality before contact, and secondly to understand how Indigenous queer joy, pleasure and relational practices are intertwined with contemporary struggles for abolition and decolonization. Students will be encouraged to self-reflect on their relationship to course materials and their role within social change. Texts will include creative and scholarly works by Billy-Ray Belcourt, Deborah Miranda, Jodi Byrd, Smokii Sumac, Joseph Pierce, Dian Million, Luana Ross, Christos and many more.
COMPSTD 8990 / Dissertation Writing Workshop
Mondays 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.