Below are the WAYS 102 Seminars that will be offered in Fall 2024.
This course examines city life in Africa since 1900ce. Africa is the world's fastest-urbanizing continent, which means the western world's tendency to focus on rural villages, safaris, or lions is missing what's really happening, from malls to traffic jams to middle class suburbs. We'll look at the evolution of cities, portrayals of urban life, and examine issues some of Africa's biggest cities (including Lagos, Johannesburg, and Cairo) have been facing.
This course introduces you to critical analysis of fandoms and how to write about them in an academic context. We will consider how fans use media to highlight racism, sexism, transphobia, and other oppressive systems. We will also examine fan practices of composition as a model for public writing.
Do women of color or women with disabilities face different hurdles than women who do not share those identities? How have women fought against multi-layered discrimination? Intersectional feminists recognize the complexity of identity and the need to address interlocking systems of privilege and oppression. This course uses readings from a variety of disciplines to explore origins, current issues, and future directions of intersectional feminist activism.
The course addresses teacher myths and the oppression of teachers as a female-dominated profession. The course title is a play on the expression “stand up” as in stand-up comedy, because we will explore using humor in teaching and standing up to social injustice (to both the profession as well as families and children) in education.
Literature has frequently been dismissed for supposedly being "untrue" because it is the result of an imaginative and subjective artistic process. Such claims have -- among other things -- justified massive cuts in the study of literature at American colleges and universities in recent decades. This course questions such thinking in looking at the philosophical, social, psychological, and even biological value of reading "stories that aren't even true."
Should all art in museums around the world be returned to the country of origin? Should we “fix” broken statues and clean and restore dirty and damaged paintings? This course will examine these and other issues in the arts, such as appropriation (using work originally created by other artists) and AI-generated art. Writing assignments will include reactions to readings on art of aboriginal Australia, China, Egypt, Greece and Rome, and Native American cultures.
Modern society is built upon the mineral resources that we extract from the Earth. But how do a bunch of rocks and minerals get turned into cell phones, art, or even milkshakes? In this class we will learn about minerals, how they form, the social and environmental costs of extracting them, and how they are used to build the world around us
Why do women write science fiction? Ursula LeGuin, author of The Left Hand of Darkness, suggests that science fiction is really a thought experiment about the present, and the writers we will study tackle such relevant issues as gender identity, reproduction, and the environment.
Do you know the difference between a conga and a djembe? Have you ever wondered why there are so few women percussionists? Drumming has frequently been a male-dominated practice, but that has continued to change over the past several decades. This course will examine the unique music and lives of trailblazing women drummers, especially in light of significant gendered shifts since the late Twentieth Century and emergence of new musical practices for women. We’ll learn about percussive traditions in cross-cultural contexts including samba, bata, taiko, and salmunori, in addition to touching on women’s roles as drummers in popular music.