Comparative Studies 5691 Topics in Comparative Studies: Bodies Race and Power (Grad and UG)
Professor Noah Tamarkin
W 4:10-6:55
This course uses ethnography and critical theory to investigate bodies as sites of the production and enactment of racialized power. Drawing from the medical humanities, anthropological studies of colonialism, imperialism, and citizenship, and science and technology studies, we will consider how race is made, remade, and embodied in different places and historical moments. Topics include race and science, knowledge production, genetics and race, medical practice, policing, and indigenous sovereignty. As we read, we will consider the work of the body and race in each text, and how each text engages and enacts discursive and materialist approaches and analyses. Students will have the opportunity to think through and write about their own research projects in relation to course readings. Prereq: Not open to students with maximum qtr cr hrs for 651. Repeatable to a maximum of 12 cr hrs.
Comparative Studies 5871/Japanese 5271 The Japanese Religious Tradition (Grad and UG)
Professor Tom Kasulius
TR 11:10-12:30
A survey of the Japanese tradition, including Shinto, Buddhism, Taoism, New-Confucianism, and folk religion from the 6th century B.C.E. to the present.
Prereq: Not open to students with credit for 641 or Japanse 5271 (641). Cross-listed in Japanse 5271.
Comparative Studies 5957.01 Comparative Folklore (Grad and UG)
Professor Katherine Borland
WF 2:20-3:40
Festival, Dance, Sport, Pilgrimage, Ritual Enactment, Street Drama, and Protest are complex, collective, embodied, artistic expressions worth studying comparatively. As sites of popular celebration, arenas of conflict, opportunities both for commerce and for intense interpersonal or religious identification, they provide rich folkloric texts for interpretation and analysis. In this course we will sample the ethnographic record of collective performances as we tackle a broad range of theories about and approaches to the study of people in motion including but not limited to: myth-ritual, collective effervescence, safety valve, place-making, symbolic inversion, collective reflexivity, semiotics, phenomenology, restored behavior, communitas, boundary marking and maintenance, play theory, performativity/theatricality, conflict, flow.
The course is run as a seminar. In addition to reading and discussing interpretive approaches to popular movement, students will take responsibility for surveying and presenting new work on their chosen cultural tradition. Students are expected to pursue independent research throughout the term, culminating in a paper and class presentation that frames their research within at least one of the analytic or interpretive approaches we have studied in class. Our class goal will be to develop a comparative framework for understanding the socially and historically contextualized studies students bring to the table through their research.
Comparative Studies 6391 Approaches to Comparative Cultural Studies II
Professor Eugene Holland
T 2:20-5:15
Professor Eugene Holland
T 2:20-5:15
The aim of this course is to introduce you to a range of theories and methods of cultural analysis and comparison, and acquaint you with some of the conceptual tools used in the construction of comparative studies scholarship. We will read texts by authors from diverse historical and geopolitical contexts and engage with their commentary upon the interpretation of culture. The central keyword serving as the focal point for the various theories and approaches under consideration is exchange, but we will also be addressing questions of disciplinarity, anti-disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity; citizenship; modernity and post-modernity; global cosmopolitanism; religion; ethnicity; science; and postcolonialism. The concepts will be explored through three kinds of comparative conversation: historical, geo-political, and inter/disciplinary. The concepts will also be assessed for their use in the critical analysis and comparative study of authoritative discourses and social practices in varying socio-historical contexts. Continuation of 6390. Discussion of theoretical tools, methods of investigation, and key concepts integral to research in comparative studies. Prereq: Grad standing or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 711.
Comparative Studies/NELC 7301 Theorizing Literature
Professor Naomi Brenner (NELC)
W 2:15-5:00
Provides an accelerated introduction to literary theory and criticism, surveying significant developments in modern and contemporary literary and cultural studies in global perspective. Cross-listed in NELC.
Comparative Studies 7350.01/English 7350.01/7350.11 Theorizing Folklore I: Tradition
Professor Ray Cashman (English)
T 9:10-12:10
The transmission of cultural forms through time and space across social networks, with special attention to the dynamics of conservation and innovation, reflexivity and habit. Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 792 or English 870. Cross-listed in English.
Comparative Studies 7370 Theorizing Religion
Professor Daniel Reff
W 10:20-1:05
Professor Daniel Reff
W 10:20-1:05
Relationships between religion and other domains in a cross-cultural, comparative framework with attention to theoretical models and particular texts and traditions.
Prereq: Grad standing or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 725.
Comparative Studies 7380 Theorizing America
Professor Theresa Delgadilo
R 11:10-1:55
Professor Theresa Delgadilo
R 11:10-1:55
This seminar will investigate some of the key questions facing Ethnic, American, and Latin America Studies today in conceptualizing and enacting “the Americas” in scholarship, curriculum, and public sphere work. Students will study theoretical and cultural constructions of “nation,” “America,” “Latin America,” and “Americas,” considering these alongside critical readings that address the terms through which “America” and “the Americas” takes shape, such as citizenship, empire, nationalism, sexuality, race, ethnicity, consumer, class, migration, immigration, diaspora, globalization. Our study will require us to read across disciplines and in doing so, to attend to the means by which knowledge is produced in disciplinary and trans-disciplinary contexts. Assignments include significant reading, engaged critical discussion, collaboration on class presentations, and a research paper. Possible readings: Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson (1983), Manifesting America by Mark Rifkin (2009), Imagined Globalization by Nestor Garcia Canclini (2014), Migrating to the Movies by Jacqueline Najuma Stewart (2005), When Biometrics Fail by Shoshana Amielle Magnet (2011), Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat (2008), Trans-Americanity: Subaltern Modernities, Global Coloniality, and the Cultures of Greater Mexico by José David Saldívar.
Prereq: Grad standing or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 715.
Comparative Studies/German 7888 Interdepartmental Studies in the Humanities
Professor TBA
W 2:20-5:15
Two or more departments present colloquia on subjects of mutual interest; topics to be announced. Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor. Repeatable to a maximum of 15 cr hrs or 10 completions. Cross-listed in German 7888, English 7888.01, and 7888.02.
Comparative Studies 8888 Interdepartmental Seminar in Critical Theory
W 9:10-12:25
Professor TBA
Interdisciplinary study of a movement or problem in critical theory. Repeatable to a maximum of 15 cr hrs. Cross-listed in English, French, German, Spanish, and WGSSt.