The impenetrable wilderness of The Revenant, the diseased streets of Children of Men, the trash heap cities of Wall-E—these are the wastelands that fascinate our pop culture. On the screen, they come to life as horrifying alternate universes and dead civilizations—the very fates we must avoid at all costs. And yet wastelands are not exclusively the stuff...
Caroline Light Tuesday/Thursday 10:30 am - 11:45 am
This course provides an introduction (in no way exhaustively) to key concepts and texts in the study of women, gender, and sexuality. Together, we will develop a shared vocabulary to help prepare you for advanced study in the concentration. We will become adept in using foundational concepts such as essentialism, historical “waves” of feminism, intersectionality, homonationalism, neoliberalism, borderlands, mestiza consciousness, critical trans studies, and gender as a category of analysis. We will...
In the US, there are over 300 federal Indian reservations, covering over 50 million acres of land in 36 states. However, a majority of Native Americans—as many as 78 percent—live off reservations in urban areas. Since the passage of the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, which encouraged Native Americans to assimilate into the general population by moving to cities, the population of so-called “urban Indians” has been increasing rapidly. But the assumptions behind the Indian Relocation Act and similarly...
What assumptions about race and sex are embedded in the term “interracial,” and why are different types of interracial relationships viewed differently? How did White fears of relationships between Black men and White women influence the creation of the Ku Klux Klan? How did the story of Pocahontas influence the development of a settler colonial state? This course investigates the significance of interracial intimate relations throughout United States history and through the lens of race, class, gender, and sexual...
Melissa Bartholomew, Diana Moore Tuesdays, 3:00 pm - 4:59 pm
Beginning with the arrival of Europeans in lands now known as the United States and continuing to the present day, religion has been and remains a powerful force in sanctioning white supremacy, inspiring resistance, and cultivating moral imagination. In this seminar, we will adopt a critical race theory framework to explore a series of case studies focused on race and racism in the U.S. to examine the complex ways that religion functions in explicit and implicit ways to promote and mitigate...
How does American law treat transgender, genderfluid, nonbinary, agender, and gender‐nonconforming people? What assumptions about gender operate in legal doctrines, and how do these assumptions interact with the lives of transgender people, especially those at the intersection of multiple axes of oppression?
This seminar will discuss contemporary cases involving transgender rights, as well as historical cases where the rights of transgender people were directly or indirectly contested. Readings will incorporate case law, sociological...
Flavia Perea Tuesdays, 12:45-2:45 (can be changed to better meet the needs of all students in the course)
Course Description: This course will examine the principles and methods of community based, participatory, action, and decolonizing approaches to inquiry. In addition to developing this knowledge and skill-set among students in the course, the purpose of...
In this seminar course we will trace the contours of decolonial theory and practice through the literary, visual and performing arts. We will read cultural and theoretical texts from Black, Indigenous, Latinx and people of color artists, scholars and social movements. Weaving Ethnic Studies...
Rebeca Hogue Tuesdays/Thursdays 6:00-7:15 in Fall 2020
This course will examine nuclear narratives in global contexts as reminders and remainders of empire. Are nuclear futures only tied to whims of unpredictable world leaders, or are they already part of our daily realities? Whose stories of nuclear proliferation are told, and whose are...
How do we know the histories of colonialism and empire? In this course, we will study how European expansion in the Americas fueled and was fueled by the production of records and representations of colonial spaces and their peoples. We will study how violence and resistance shaped alternative systems of...
Halla Logadottir Tuesdays/Thursdays 7:30 AM – 8:45 AM (or 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM on Thursday)
Climate change is transforming the Arctic region. The region is warming at least twice as fast as the global average, and as the ice retreats on the top of our planet, it is unleashing challenges with local, regional, and global implications across multiple policy...
Robert Anderson (Oneida Nation Law Chair at HLS) Monday/Tuesday 9:10 AM – 10:10 AM
This course will provide you with a basic understanding and overview of the fundamental principles of public land law and federal natural resource management. The class covers general principles and several federal resources management regimes with a brief...
Robert Anderson (Oneida Nation Law Chair at HLS) Monday/Tuesday 3:20 PM – 4:50 PM
Students in this class will study the colonization process leading to the present day status of Indian tribes as sovereigns within the United States. We will study the policies, statutes, and caselaw that makes up the fabric of federal Indian law. Equal...
Whales, wolves, great apes, big cats, buffalo, bears-- these animals populate human cultural imaginations. From animal advocacy groups to zoos to movies, so-called "charismatic megafauna" and/or “flagship species” dominate a wide swath of debates. By focusing on a selection of animals, this course explores a) how people interpret these animals, and b) how human interactions impact these animals and their natural environments. Organized around different animals and the controversies, questions, and events...
Throughout history, social justice movements and social justice organizations have utilized disciplined inquiry or research to highlight untold stories, illuminate goodness, expose power and colonialism, and offer pathways to more equity and freedom. Yet, we often do not provide educators or doctoral students with research methodology training oriented to these aims. More specifically, we often do not provide educators in the field or doctoral students with research methodology training beyond those...
The purpose of this course is to question prevailing, relatively uniform and quite limiting forms of education in light of approaches that escape or overcome these forms. A mode of education is more than mere content and pedagogy. It refers to ways of knowing, forms of life, conceptions of power, value systems, and structuring goals that ultimately underlie a people’s understanding of what education is and does. Therefore, this course concerns more than a simple familiarity with alternative models of learning—rather,...
This field-based research course focuses on some of the major issues that Native American Indian tribes and nations face as the 21st century begins. It provides in-depth, hands-on exposure to native development issues, including: sovereignty, economic development, constitutional reform, leadership, health and social welfare, land and water rights, culture and language, religious freedom, and education. In particular, the course emphasizes problem definition, client relationships, and designing and completing a research project. The course...
Ju Yon Kim Tuesday and Thursdays, 1:30 PM - 02:45 PM
From depictions of exchanges in the early colonial Americas to efforts to envision alternate and imminent futures, this class will examine representations of interracial encounters in U.S. American culture. We will explore how various texts and performances have conceived, embodied, and reimagined the relationships not only among differently racialized groups, but also between race and nation, individual and community, and art and politics. Topics addressed in this course will include narratives of indigeneity,...
Zachary Nowak Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:00am-10:15am
What’s the problem with wilderness? Or the environmental movement? Or invasive species? This course examines how humans thought about and used the natural world over the centuries—and the consequences of both use of and thoughts about the nature. Students will learn about food, climate change, pollution, conquest and resistance, environmentalism, and energy. This course actively seeks to show the importance of the material world and the contributions of a broad spectrum of historical actors to US...
Water is life, but is it a human right? Water governance is a contentious issue globally because humans rely on water for nearly every productive activity; moreover, it is often scarce and not distributed equally. To better understand the persistence and escalation of struggles over water access around the world, this course uses a multidisciplinary approach that allows students to examine both the social and physical shape of water in a modern and historical context. While all bodies of water deserve mention,...
This hands-on course will introduce key episodes and issues in the history of American astronomy by close looking at rare early scientific instruments and tangible objects in Harvard collections. Starting with the story of Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, and a sundial, the course will move from colonial relations with Native Americans to the controversial placement of observatories on sacred mountaintops today. In between, we will discuss the roles of religion, politics, science, and culture in the...
Initiated by a Muskogee student, this course will be advised by Prof. Ann Braude (Harvard Divinity) and Marcus Briggs-Cloud, HDS 2010. Any student interested in indigenous history and culture of the Southeastern US is welcome. Meeting time to be arranged. Permission of the Instructor required. For further information contact ann_braude@harvard.edu.
Eleanor Craig Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:30am-11:45am
How might critical attention to race and ethnicity as they intersect with gender and sexuality—and also frameworks of indigeneity and class—shape how we study? How do these lenses shift the questions we ask, the information that counts as data, and the genres of work that we recognize as 'academic'?For those newer to studies of race and ethnicity, this course provides intersectional frameworks for recognizing what assumptions undergird academic projects and fields of study. For...
This course explores ways in which human collectives have conceived of other animals, whether in analogical relations for scientific research, exploitative relations for food and labor, affective relations like fear, disgust, love. What are some histories of these unique interdependencies between human animals and nonhuman animals? We will critically explore the relentless and yet slippery divisions between humans and nonhuman animals, seeing them as a falsely singular, conflictual and segregatory divide that has played...
This course introduces the archaeological study of the ancient societies of eastern North America, with a focus on the Ohio River Valley region, the first frontier of the United States. We will explore inter-related aspects of religion, economy, technology, and human biology associated with the span of time ranging from the first arrival of humans to the European invasion of the continent. The emphasis is on key forms and changes in social organization associated with shifts between foraging and farming, the...
