Joseph Singer, HUNAP Faculty Member Open to Upper Level JD students Mondays/Tuesdays, 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
This course examines how courts choose which law should be applied to transactions, relationships, or occurrences having contacts with more than one state in the United States, or with a state in the United States and a foreign nation. The course will also touch on adjudicatory jurisdiction, recognition of foreign judgments, and tribal sovereignty of American Indian nations. We will address the various approaches adopted by states and...
Community development is a heterogeneous and contested field of planning thought and practice. The profession has generally prioritized people and places that are disproportionately burdened by capitalist urbanization and development. In the US, the dominant focus has been on personal or group development and widening access to opportunities, with a growing reliance on market incentives to deliver housing options and spur economic development. Yet for many communities at the margins, development has rather connoted practices of...
Kathryn Sinkkink Mondays/Wednesdays, 9:00 AM - 10:15 AM ET
Can international law be a tool for promoting global justice? We will explore whether international criminal accountability for mass atrocity can deter human rights violations and satisfy victims. Should reparations be given for slavery? Can environmental law help reduce climate change and provide justice for climate refugees? Can trade law contribute to a fairer and more equitable trade system? Could better international health law mitigate a future crisis like COVID-19? We will use a global...
Why does the Mexico-U.S. border continue to be a space for debate and controversy? This course examines how the creation of the U.S.-Mexico border in 1848 shaped modern Mexican society from the nineteenth century to our present. For many, the border served (and serves) as a protective barrier from poverty, violence, and, especially, disease. By the early twentieth century many Mexican bodies were perceived as “alien,” “illegal,” and in need of patrolling. Yet these descriptions were also used by Mexican politicians to describe and isolate groups such as Indigenous and Chinese within...Read more about GENED 1089 The Border: Race, Politics, and Health in Modern Mexico
This course examines the colonial basis of the continental political economy of the United States and Canada, which has long been understood as the United States’ main resource hinterland. It offers students a range of analytical tools through which to understand contemporary contestation over land and resources in both countries. Drawing on writings by political scientists, geographers, anthropologists, and historians, the course moves between theories of nature and settler colonialism; Indigenous perspectives that transcend and exceed...
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. At the same time, we need leaders who will advocate for social equity, recognizing how marginalized and low-income communities suffer disproportionately from pollution and climate change.Leadership is difficult in any enterprise, but it is especially difficult for environmental leaders who face opponents with...
Thomas Dichter Mondays/Wednesdays, 12:00 PM - 1:15 PM ET
Is 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...
This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of how North American Indigenous communities, particularly women and two-spirit people, navigate activist movements through material culture and media. We will examine Indigenous material culture across various timelines and focus specifically on trajectories of objects of resistance. Students will learn how to approach material objects from a historical perspective as well as how to consider these objects in their current cultural context. In addition to...
In this advanced seminar course, we will explore questions of indigeneity and decolonization in Latinx and Xicanx communities and diasporas across Abya Yala (the Americas, including the Caribbean). Thinking from the intersections of Latinx/Xicanx and Native/Indigenous Studies and communities — and through a comparative and critical Ethnic Studies lens — we will trace key terms and concepts that emerge from these important transdisciplinary fields, social movements and debates. How does indigeneity relate to concepts such as...
Collier Brown Undergraduate Seminar Dates/Time: TBA
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 of science fiction. In this course, we will grapple with both imaginary and actual wastelands. We will begin with short...
Zach Nowak Mondays/Wednesdays, 7:30 PM - 8:45 PM ET
Harvard’s history is a story of professors, students, courses, and research that has led to world-changing innovations. But it is also a story of student unrest, gender unease, and the exclusion of women and minorities, enslaved people, Native Americans, and working-class people. All of them made Harvard and left traces in its archives, libraries, and museums, its buildings, and even in its soil. Some Harvard stories have been told; others have been forgotten. In this class, we will uncover Harvard’s past...
Sarah Dimick Mondays/Wednesdays, 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM ET
This course considers the relationships between systems of human injustice and environmental issues—including industrial disasters, ocean acidification, and resource extraction. We examine environmental justice writing and artwork with a transnational, interconnected approach. For example, we ask how the Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa’s writing on oil pipelines in the Niger Delta anticipates Native American protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. We draw connections between a poem documenting...
Sven Beckert Tuesdays/Thursdays/ 12:00 PM - 1:15 PM ET
How did capitalism emerge, expand and transform daily life in North America over the past 500 years? In this course, students will gain an in-depth understanding of how North America turned from a minor outpost of the Atlantic economy into the powerhouse of the world economy, how Americans built a capitalist economy and how that capitalism, in turn, changed every aspect of their lives. In the process, they will come to understand how contemporary capitalism is the result of centuries of human engagement, struggle...
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...
This community based research course focuses on some of the major issues Native American Indian tribes and nations face in the 21st century. It provides in-depth, hands-on exposure to native development issues, including: sovereignty, economic development, constitutional reform, leadership, health and social welfare, tribal finances, 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...
