Winter 2020

January 6 – January 24, 2020

Undergraduate Course Descriptions

Cultures & Economies: #Me too? Histories of Sexual Assault & Harassment – SCA-UA 234.001

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 1-4pm 

Prof. Lisa Duggan

In this course, we will place the current #MeToo and #Time'sUp phenomena in context, by examining the history of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment. We'll consider sexual violence, social movements, media and law as they are embedded within structures of racial, class and gender inequality. In addition to considering the pervasiveness of violence against women and analyzing social responses to it, we'll also examine social and moral panics based on false allegations of rape and abuse-- from early 20th century lynching, to the Satanistic child abuse panic that swept US day care centers in the 1980s. (Counts as faculty elective for these major/minors: American, Gender & Sexuality and SCA.)

Topics: Afro-Latin Soundscapes / SCA-UA 721.001 Same as SPAN-UA 551.001

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 12:30-4pm 

Prof. Dylon Robbins

How does what you listen to shape your sense of self?  How do we relate to each other through music? And how does music cross linguistic, political, social, and ethnic boundaries?  This course will take up some of these questions as it explores a few historical instances in which music has traveled extensively, finding listeners in a wide array of places.  We will revisit the reception and performance of different music in the Americas and beyond to consider how rhythms and compositions were resituated in different contexts, with particular concern for their roles in bridging between members of the African diaspora.  Throughout the course, we’ll listen to musical examples from Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, New Orleans, New York, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast, while reading interventions by critics and musicians regarding this music, their contexts, and their theoretical implications.

The course is taught in English and carries no prerequisites. The course will count toward the major and minor in Spanish if students complete writing and key readings in Spanish. (Counts as cross listed elective for these major/minors: Africana and Latino and for American and SCA majors NOT minors.)