CST 200B  - J. Sze - Theories of Cultural Studies

Definitions of "critical" scholarship and examination of various contexts in which cultural studies theory has emerged worldwide. Both mainstream and alternative theoretical traditions, such as those developed by people of color and by other minoritized groups.

Tue: 10:00am - 1:00pm

CST 210 / HMR 200B - M. Lazzara - Memory, Culture, & Human Rights

Explores the multiple convergences among memory, culture, and human rights. Discusses diverse approaches to how societal actors in different historical, cultural, and national settings, construct meanings of past political violence, inter-group conflicts, and human rights struggles.

Tue: 2:10pm - 5:00pm

CST 250  - R. Kim -  Research Seminar: 

This seminar focuses on the preparation and writing of a draft dissertation prospectus in the qualitative interdisciplinary field of cultural studies. A dissertation prospectus is a distinct genre that can vary somewhat in its characteristics depending on specific field(s). During the quarter you will write components of the prospectus and critique each other’s work. By the end of the quarter you will have a workable initial draft of a dissertation prospectus.

While our work will focus on developing a working draft for your dissertation prospectus, we will also attend to other important writing opportunities such as academic journal articles, grant proposals, and public-facing, activist-oriented scholarship. This seminar should provide you space to think about how all these writing activities might fit within the developing trajectory of your research, scholarship, and public engagement.

Tue: 1:10pm - 4:00pm  

CST 290 - Colloquium: CST Speaker Series.  

Designed to provide cohort identity and faculty student exchange. Opportunity to present papers, hear guest lecturers, and see faculty presentations, gather for organizational and administrative news, exchange information, and make announcements.

Thur: 4:10pm - 6:00pm

CST 295 - C. Rojas - Abolition Feminisms 

This course engages herstories and emergent political and intellectual formations of abolition feminisms.  Course foregrounds the genealogies of Black, Indigenous, Chicanx/Latinx and women of color feminist social movements, epistemologies and radical imagination and praxis that shape abolition feminisms in the 21st century.

Wed: 10:00am - 12:50pm

AFFILIATE COURSES

WMS 200A - W. Ho - Current Issues in Feminist Theory 

This seminar examines current issues in feminist theory, techniques employed to build feminist theory in various fields.  

Wed: 10:00am - 12:50pm

WMS 201 - B. Jafri - Special Topics in Feminist Theory & Research: The Settler Colonial Question 

What is settler colonialism and (why) does it matter? Over the last two decades, settler colonialism has emerged as a keyword not only in gender and sexuality studies, but across interdisciplines such as cultural studies, ethnic studies, American studies, and environmental studies. At the same time, settler colonial studies—both its field formation, and its interventions—has come under question by scholars in a number of overlapping fields. Critics have noted troubling ways in which settler colonial studies is perceived as substitute for Native American/Indigenous studies, for instance; or tendencies to exceptionalize and isolate settler colonialism from other forms of historical violence. Rather than offering an overview of settler colonial studies, the course will ask after the conversations and debates that the concept of settler colonialism has animated, particularly engaging the insights of Indigenous queer and feminist scholarship, as well as critical ethnic studies critiques. The geographical focus of the class is primarily (but not exclusively) the US and Canada, though a transnational frame will orient our discussions.

Tues: 10:00am - 12:50pm

ANT 210/PFS 265 - C. Giordano - What Stories Tell and Don't Tell: Memory and Archives between Textual and Non-textual Experimentation 

This seminar explores the forms and practices of representation, storytelling, and narrative production in the social sciences, humanities, and the arts. We ask: What is a story? What is in a story? How do we, as anthropologists, artists, performers, and philosophers choose what constitutes a story? How do we relate to what in a story remains unsaid? For social scientists and artists working with empirical material, what constitutes the “real”? what different kinds of archives do we encounter in our research projects? How do we move from our ethnographic, archival, visual, and sonic research material into a text, installation, or performance? How do the different temporalities of memory affect the time of telling and listening? We will explore experiments in ethnographic research and writing that play with truth and representation, translation and creation, blurring the boundaries of the real and the unreal. We will draw from other disciplines and practices to tell stories in ways that rather than reproducing a linear effect, introduce estrangement and interruption and compel readers and audiences to think differently about a given event or world. Readings will range from classic and contemporary ethnographies to short stories and novels, from reportage photo-stories and plays to philosophical texts and art installations. In our readings and discussions, we will approach stories and archives as linear accounts, montages, and dream like assemblages of words and images, in their fictional, documentary, performative, and evocative forms.

This seminar is intended for graduate students engaging in the task of textual and non-textual representation and creation, whether they are writing papers, dissertations, preparing to do fieldwork, making performances, and other artistic practices. The seminar has four components: 1) Readings and discussions; 2) Presentations; 3) Writing workshops where participants share drafts of their writings/creations and reflect on their processes of experimentation; 4) some embodied and collaborative practices. Each seminar meeting is organized around practices to revitalize our relation to our respective empirical material, engagement with theory, and creating our own texts.

Wed: 10:00am - 12:50pm

PFS 265C - L. Bogad - Performance and Society 

This seminar examines the often-fraught relationship between politically motivated performances (broadly defined), social movements, the media, and the state.  Students will analyze and discuss the texts, and will be responsible for independent research in preparation for class presentations.  Final project will be a major research paper, or a practical project complemented by a shorter paper which theorizes and justifies the project. 

Wed: 2:10pm - 5:00pm 

HIS 201W - S. Sen - Advanced Topics in World History - Rethinking Subaltern Studies 

More than three decades ago, scholars of Subaltern Studies from South Asia and Latin America ignited a series of debates around the figure of the “subaltern” as the unrepresented and disembodied subject of history. This course explores the aftermath and legacy of this surge of “histories from below” and addresses how scholars have studied the struggles of disempowered, marginalized, dispossessed, displaced, underground and silenced subjects of history in the contexts of postcolonialism, globalization and the present-day climate crisis.

Tues: 3:10pm - 6:00pm