Comparative Studies
Check out our course flyers in the Spring 2022 catalog!
COMPSTD 5240 / PUBAFRS 5240 / AFAMAST 5240 Race and Public Policy in the United States
In-Person | Hagerty 259 | WF 2:20-3:40 | Suparna Bhaskaran
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 AAAS and PUBAFFAIRS.
COMPSTD 5691 Material Culture, Materiality, and Agency
In-Person | Hagerty 050 | MW 11:10-12:30 | Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth
What do things do? How do they influence our actions and social lives we assemble around us? How does their circulation and movement influence global flows and processes? This course explores how the world of things and materials surrounding us impact our lives, our environments, our economies, and ourselves by surveying social theory related to material culture and materiality. From Marx and Mauss to Tsing and Tallbear, we will draw upon an inter-disciplinary framework to explore how thinkers in Anthropology, Folklore Studies, Geography, Archaeology, Economics, Science and Technology Studies, Museum Studies and beyond have thought through things in time and space. Students will take on a semester-long study of material culture of their choice through the lenses of various theories of material culture, materiality, and agency. They will also experiment with museum exhibition, accession, and repatriation practices and gain skills in building global commodity chains through ARC GIS Story mapping.
COMPSTD 6200 Critical Foundations: Interdisciplinarity & Methods
Hybrid | Hagerty 451 | TuThu 2:15-5:00 | Barry Shank
This course introduces interdisciplinarity as an approach to knowledge production that is problem and question-driven and that therefore draws from varied approaches and methodologies. It considers a range of tools that scholars across humanities and social sciences disciplines use to critically analyze the pressing global issues.
COMPSTD 6425 / SPANISH 6705 Introduction to Latino Studies
In-Person | Hagerty 255 | TuThu 12:45-2:05 | Paloma Martinez-Cruz
Introduction to the cultures, experiences, histories and definitions of Latino peoples in the United States; taught in English. Prereq: English 1110 (110) or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 242 or CompStd 2322 (242). GE cultures and ideas and diversity soc div in the US course. Cross-listed in CompStd 2322.
COMPSTD 6500 Teaching Seminar in Interdisciplinary Studies
In-Person | Hagerty 062 | W 2:15-5:00 | Maurice Stevens
The Transformative Access Project (https://u.osu.edu/transformativeaccess/) defines transformative access as “a collective process that centers race, ethnicity, disability, class, gender, and sexuality” and “a constantly unfolding collaborative endeavor.” These two linked seminars will explore a shared central question: How can this understanding of access be enacted in pedagogical spaces?
Moving toward Transformative Access Pedagogy invites participants to consider access as more than a question of who shows up in the classroom and who gets excluded from it. Instead, we will ask how our classroom practices engage access as a practice and process of transformation at the individual, learning community, institutional, and social levels.
COMPSTD 6500 (Teaching Seminar in Interdisciplinary Studies; Spring 22) and DSABLST 6700 (Introduction to Graduate Study in Disability Studies; Fall 22) are designed to work consecutively as linked courses exploring the larger theme “transformative access.” Students who enroll in both courses during Spring and Fall 22 will have the opportunity to experience a collaborative environment led by Professors Stevens and Price, and to work on an extended project over the span of both seminars. Both courses can also be taken as stand-alone seminars.
Both COMPSTD 6500 and DSABLST 6700 intentionally engage silence/listening and pacing/temporal experience in the classroom in ways that enhance learning outcomes. In addition, both courses include a practical component (classroom visits and collaborative syllabus design, for example), that allow us to reflect on and learn about who and what we are in the classroom, what and how we teach in the classroom, and what possibilities and constraints emerge in the classroom in response to the kinds of teaching/learning spaces we conjure and populate.
Individual course descriptions
COMPSTD 6500 (Teaching Seminar in Interdisciplinary Studies) introduces graduate students in the Humanities to a range of approaches to teaching in interdisciplinary settings that engage Critical Pedagogy and Transformative Access Pedagogy. To do so we will reflect upon our role as teachers/learners in the classroom, the power dynamics that are part of institutionalized learning, and our opportunities to employ our human and material resources in creative and enriching ways. Moving towards Transformative Access Pedagogy invites participants to consider access as more than a question of who shows up in the classroom and who gets excluded from it. Instead, we will ask how our classroom practices engage access as a practice and process of transformation at the individual, learning community, institutional, and social levels.
DSABLST 6700 (Introduction to Graduate Study in Disability Studies) offers a multi-disciplinary introduction to Disability Studies (DS) as a field and theoretical frame. During Fall 2022, the course will take up a special focus on Transformative Access Pedagogy, which overlaps with but also moves beyond Disability Studies pedagogical approaches. We will examine the politics of language in DS, especially contested concepts such as “crip,” “person-first” versus “identity-first” language, diagnostic labels, and self-representation. We’ll explore conventional models of disability, including the social model and medical model; we will also discuss ways these models have been challenged and have changed in the past 20 years through approaches including Black Disability Studies, feminist theory, queer studies, disability justice, inclusive / universal design, and posthumanism.
COMPSTD 6750.02 Theorizing Folklore II: Fieldwork and Ethnography of Communication
In-Person | Denney 419 | Thu 9:10-12:10 | Galey Modan
Introduction to fieldwork and ethnographic writing in the humanities - interviewing, participant observation, and research ethics. Focus on the ethnography of communication and community representations. Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 770.02, 770.03, English 6751.02, 6751.22, 770.02, or 770.03. Cross-listed in English 6751.02.
COMPSTD 7301 / NELC 7301 Theorizing Literature
Hybrid | Hagerty 451 | F 12:00-2:45 | Ashley Pérez
Provides an accelerated introduction to literary theory and criticism, surveying significant developments in modern and contemporary literary and cultural studies in global perspective. Prereq: Cross-listed in NELC.
COMPSTD 8200 Interdisciplinary Lab II
In-Person | Hagerty 451 | Thu 2:15-5:00 | Melissa Curley and David Horn
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. Expect to enroll in CompStd 8100 subsequent to this course. Repeatable to a maximum of 18 cr hrs.
COMPSTD 8858 Graduate Folklore Seminar: Ecofeminist/Ecocritical Fairytales
In-Person | Denney 447 | W 9:10-12:10 (Hybrid) | Mary Hufford
Advanced seminar exploring international variants and modern revisions of the classic canon of fairy tales from ecofeminist and ecocritical perspectives. Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor. Not open to students with 9 sem cr hrs of English 8858.01 (can include equiv qtr cr hrs for 870), English 8858.02, or CompStd 8858. Repeatable to a maximum of 9 cr hrs. Cross-listed in CompStd 8858.
COMPSTD 8990 Dissertation Writing Workshop
Hagerty 451 | M 9:00-10:50 | Miranda Martinez
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.