s prison abolition a serious proposal, an aspirational ideal, a trendy slogan, or a blueprint for social transformation? This interdisciplinary and community-engaged course situates the prison abolition movement in deep historical context and explores its current relation to the politics of criminal justice reform. We will study the movement’s connections to slavery abolitionism, anti-lynching activism, Indigenous struggles for sovereignty, and the Black Power movement. We will examine the emergence of...
Australian experience provides a lens from which to cast a wide historical view of the development of settler societies over two centuries, drawing comparisons with Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa and New Zealand. Despite their common focus on natural resources production and close engagement with the international economy, the experience of these economies often differed. Themes include: geography versus institutions as development determinants; colonialism’s impact on indigenous economy; and the...
The course uses interdisciplinary, critical, and transnational/global perspectives to study racism and other systems of oppression, poverty, and the disempowerment of peoples subordinated based on race, gender, and class. The sessions include readings regarding the experiences of Black Americans, Burakumin people, Dalit people, Jewish people, Romani people, Palestinians, and other oppressed and racialized peoples. This is an introductory course examining four main topics to be discussed in...
The seminars will be based around some themes and questions in the discussion of music in Australia and beyond, with an emphasis on my personal experience and output as a composer and on the work of other musicians and composers.
Topics to be covered may include: • landscape, seascape, open space and ‘country’; • tradition, innovation and influence in indigenous music; • ‘irreconcilable synchronicities’ - cross-cultural music encounters; • “Did you use the didj?’ - artistic debates about...
The world is on fire. Smoke darkens the sky. Scorching heat. Violent storms. Mass extinction.
In this perilous moment in human history, the world desperately needs leaders with the courage, drive and hardball political skills to fight climate change and help restore the natural world. Environmental leaders must also recognize how marginalized communities suffer disproportionately from pollution and climate change. Leadership is difficult in any enterprise, but it is especially...
Can international law be a tool for promoting global justice? In this class, we will explore diverse issues such as why the laws of war didn’t constrain the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and whether international criminal accountability for mass atrocity can deter human rights violations and satisfy victims? How could reparations for slavery be delivered? Can environmental law help reduce climate change and provide justice for climate refugees? Can trade law contribute to a fairer and...
Prerequisites: A prior or concurrent course or clinic in international human rights law is recommended but not required.
Exam Type: No Exam
During the last 70 years, the Inter-American System for the protection of human rights (IASHR) is the venue for some of the most significant developments in international law. Placed at the heart of the oldest international organization in existence (the Organization of American States, successor to...
How do we understand justice? What are the connections between trauma, education and mass incarceration? From cradle to prison cell, what is our praxis—that is, how do we do education, and what are its fruits? This course explores the systems of racialized punishment that have created the current conditions around school suspensions, arrests, and incarceration. It focuses on the growing movement for restorative/transformative justice, paying particular attention to factors...
*Lottery-based Enrollment* Engaging in conversations about racism, past and present, is essential to building bridges and promoting democratic values. Many educators wish to teach about racism but may hesitate to explore controversial topics with students, especially younger learners. In this course, participants develop the knowledge and skills to teach the histories and realities of racism in the United States. We consider the developmental needs of students in grades K-12, racial-...
F - Split Schedule: 9:00am to 12:00pm or 1:15pm - 2:30pm
The UN IPCC reports on climate change make it clear that to avoid the most devastating climate impacts, we need a global societal transformation, and we all have a role to play in advancing solutions. Education has been identified as a critical social tipping point to help the world meet the decarbonization needed by 2050, and yet education is underutilized in climate solutions. Whether transitioning our largely diesel school bus fleet to electric, leveraging post-...
An exploration of the ethics of scientific and social eugenics in 20th/21st century U.S. through historical, bioethical, critical race, Indigenous, gender, and disability frameworks. Attention to roles of medicine, law, and government in relation to eugenic techniques: sterilization, segregation, and marriage restriction as well as genetic technologies, land conservation, and immigration policy. Consideration of resistance to eugenics (moral, scientific, religious, artistic, political) and recent strategies of...
How does the growing inequality between and within nations—which is the major global issue of our times—impact the Caribbean region and, in turn, its U.S. neighbor?
This course explores the complex, formative role of the Caribbean in the development of Western colonialism and capitalism and the consequences for the peoples of the region. Four major themes will be examined. First, the importance of the region in the origin and early development of Western imperialism...
This course is a core requirement for all MPP students. No other students are allowed to enroll at this time. The course is in response to longstanding efforts by HKS students, and most recently, the HKS Equity Coalition, to insist that understanding race and racism and their intersecting forms of power and oppression is essential to an excellent education at a policy school. The United States’ global dominance has long been the envy of the world. But the role of race to native born and newcomer alike has often...
How has the ocean made the modern world? This course asks how stories of the Atlantic intersect with larger threads of world history such as empire, enslavement, and Indigenous dispossession. Mindful that the very word oceanography combines the Greek words for ocean and writing, we’ll investigate how biophysical conditions mediate cultural, historical, and even economic experience. How did Atlantic currents, prevailing winds, and fisheries facilitate the development of racial capitalism? And how do we write and...
Childbearing, pregnancy, and motherhood, and the uncanny bond between mother and child have been focalthemes in the history of religion since the Paleolithic period. This seminar considers the complex subject of motherhood through sacred histories from ancient Greece, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, Finnish epic, and select indigenous traditions. We will also read contemporary works in matrifocal theology, evolutionary biology, sociology, and literature.
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...