Courses

This course explores basic concepts relating to personal health and wellness. Physical, mental-emotional, social, spiritual, and environmental dimensions of health will be explored. Topics include stress management, sexuality, nutrition, drug use, and international concerns, among others. The focus of the course is on strategies for enhancing one’s personal health. As a result of taking this course, students will acquire health-related knowledge through the use of current, reliable, and valid sources of information; determine their health risks and protective factors through the use of personal assessments and thoughtful reflection; apply health-related concepts, theories, and information to their personal lives. Recommended for students in their first or second year.

This course provides students with opportunities to practice a range of conventions, standards of proof, and ways of knowing that characterize language in the concentration areas that make up the SUA liberal arts education: the humanities, environmental studies, social and behavioral sciences, life sciences, and international studies. In the process, students develop critical reading and thinking skills as well as competence in written and oral English so as to produce coherent, interesting, thoughtful, and largely error-free papers that are congruent with appropriate standards of academic discourse.

Continuing development of the fundamental aspects of modern Spanish as in SPA 101 with more emphasis on vocabulary/ expressions and grammatical structures.

Aims at further developing students’ Spanish language proficiency in the six aspects of listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar, and cultural understanding.

Continuation of SPA 201 while further enhancing students’ proficiency level in listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar, and cultural understanding. Relevant linguistic, sociolinguistic, and cultural information to prepare students for Study Abroad studies is included.

This course introduces students to major classical, contemporary, critical, and post-modern sociological theories and theorists. Students obtain both a conceptual foundation and historical perspective of sociological theories. In addition they become familiar with various themes associated with sociological theories. The application and linkage of theory with contemporary social issues and social science research is also a feature of this course.

This course will explore writing and communication through the broad conventions of “visual rhetoric.” Visual rhetoric has historically been found in a variety of disciplinary locations (art history, American studies, communication studies, English departments, rhetoric and composition programs, history programs, media and visual studies programs). In this course we will attempt to understand the political and ideological dimensions of visual rhetoric across a wide range of genres or media such as photography, graphic novels, works of art, architecture, films (fiction and documentary), advertisements, television, journalism, televised political speeches, and more. Students in this class may use selections from ancient rhetorical texts in conjunction with contemporary theoretical writings in their written work and oral presentations.

In this course, students will explore trans-disciplinary connections between culture, empire and science around the ever-evolving concept of gender. Topics students may research and write about include: associations between “women” and “nature” that have informed intellectual, scientific, and cultural traditions; indigenous concepts of natural science and gender; female, trans, and indigenous bodies as collectible objects; notions of truth, science and gender; connections between gender, science, biopolitics and surveillance; feminist science studies, and more. We will consider a variety of written, visual and cultural texts in this course.

What is race? How is race assigned, assumed, constructed, performed, and consumed? Aiming to develop complex understandings of the production of race and its effects, this course may explore the intersections of race with gender, sexuality, class, indigeneity, nation, citizenship, and other modalities of power; intercede into the racial politics of representation and public discourse; and generate theoretically informed critical/creative interventions that grapple with the vexed issues of race.

This course provides students with a comprehensive overview of the state of social movements and social change in 20th Century. Students become familiar with the history of the field, recent developments and its current status. Case studies of social movements and social change may be analyzed cross-nationally. Students also examine empirical studies and theoretical frameworks associated with social movements and social change.

This course focuses on how “apocalypses” manifest themselves in various academic disciplines. Work in the course will analyze cinematic and literary representations of the apocalypse; interrogate whether societies have participated in end-of-the-world thinking throughout history; scrutinize how the politics of late capitalism and globalization drive such notions; and engage in how various discourses of race, gender, sexuality, class, nationality and trauma may lead to apocalypses of an internalized type. Students will be asked to examine texts and generate critical and/or creative responses to class discussions.

This course is designed to enhance students’ oral fluency and comprehension in Spanish while at the same time increasing their own intercultural awareness. In addition, it is specifically tailored to prepare students for their study abroad (SA) semester. As such, the main objective of the class is to use Spanish as a vehicle to promote their awareness of key concept related to interculturality (e.g., essentialism, stereotyping, otherising). In each class students will be invited to reflect on different types intercultural encounters and how these encounters shaped/will shape their upcoming SA experience: these encounters will be real ones (from students’ own experiences meeting new people) mediated (through videos, narratives, readings) and improvised (through roles plays and improvisations).

This course explores archives as sites for cultural interpretation, civic engagement, and social justice. We will explore a broad range of archives, including family archives, community archives, digital archives, and institutional archives. Drawing on feminist, rhetorical, indigenous, decolonial, and other perspectives, we will focus on what stories, social memories and public histories can be revealed through archival research, and just as importantly, what remains hidden, invisible, missing, absent, silenced, or excluded from archival collections. Students will learn how to engage in reciprocal and collaborative archival practices, reflect on questions of ethics and representation, and come to understand research as a lived process. Course projects may include exploring family and community archives, conducting oral histories, contributing to digital archives, and working with community organizations. Through this work, students will cultivate an appreciation for human diversity, one of SUA core values.

Bodies as sites of meaning, modes of representation, political signifiers, and lived experiences are of central concern to work across the disciplines. Taking as its purview the production, regulation, and circulation of bodies in the context of late capitalism and globalism, this course considers how bodies are politically, socially, sexually, racially, culturally, metaphorically, and historically constituted, and promotes the invention of insurgent forms for reading and writing bodies that do not reinscribe the body in narrative myths and dualistic structures that dominate conventional understandings of bodies.

What does it mean to become leaders for the creative co- existence of nature and humanity? To gain an awareness of the interdependence of ourselves, others, and the environment? These questions, central to SUA’s mission, will guide our course work as we explore questions of social and environmental justice, sustainability, and our relation with nature in the age of the Anthropocene. Students will go on self-guided field trips to natural settings to engage more deeply with environmental topics through lived experience. They will write about contemporary environmental challenges in a variety of genres. In particular, public/advocacy, natural history/science, and creative/nonfiction writing will be emphasized. Students will undertake an ambitious intellectual project, conduct extensive, in-depth inquiry and present their work to relevant audiences.

This course explores writing for social change, including rhetorics of civic engagement, rhetorics of protest and resistance, and rhetorics of civil disobedience. Students will study the impact of rhetoric and writing on activism, public protest, and social change and compose genres that can support civic engagement, intervene in social injustice, and support agency and activism. Students will also reflect on ethical uses of language and means of persuasion. The class is conducted as a writer’s workshop in which students share their work and learn from one another. Students will be asked to generate theoretically informed critical/ creative interventions that grapple with civil disobedience, unruly rhetorics, and social change.

What does it mean to live and write in the borderlands? This course examines and calls for writing in and about the borderlands; explores how writing from the borderlands resists, reshapes, and/or plays with dominant discourses and power relations; investigates the relationships among writing, ideology, hegemony, and the politics of culture; and situates the borderlands globally amidst materials conditions and the production of “others.”

Experimental critical writing is a slippery genre that challenges and breaks down traditional genre distinctions, sidestepping and/or transforming conventional expository protocols. A hybrid form, experimental critical writing challenges disciplinary boundaries and borrows, as it pleases, from various genres – personal essay, historical writing, memoir, non-fiction, drama, diary, autobiography, fiction, reportage, poetry, rant, and manifesto. Exceeding genre and discipline boundaries, experimental critical writing produces new epistemologies not possible within forms bound by conventional constraints. This course will uncover some of the rhetorical possibilities traveling under the name “experimental critical writing;” explore emergent “alternative” theoretical and methodological frameworks related to the production of knowledge; blur the boundaries between disciplines, genres, the academic and non-academic; and consider what it means to produce new knowledge as a socially and ethically responsible global citizen.

What does it mean to be “literate” today? How are new communication technologies impacting what it means to be literate? What cultural competencies and literacy skills are required to fully participate in the digital present? This course will involve exploring forms and examples of new media and the theories that underlie and emerge from these forms in addition to engaging and creating new media texts enabled by networked, digital environments that push the limits of writing/ composing. New media includes, but is not limited to, blogs, wikis, websites, social networking sites, audio, video, gaming, digital photography and other converged/hybrid media such as performance art and museum installations.

This course will explore topics in the field of creative writing, focusing specifically on the genres of fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry. In this course, students will be asked to think of writing as a process. They will attend to and observe the world around them, invent new work, elaborate on and revise that work, and then reflect back on their own writerly development. Moreover, students will study the work of contemporary writers from a craft and technique perspective, learning how these writers manipulate narrative, subtext, point-of-view, description, metaphor, lineation, and syntax in their work. Finally, students will have their own texts evaluated during in-class workshops, and they will compile their work toward an end-of-semester portfolio.

This course will introduce students to the genre of poetry.  Students in this course will explore the craft techniques associated with writing poems, including description, imagery, metaphor, lineation, rhythm and syntax.  With these in mind, students will imitate contemporary poems and invent and revise their own.  Furthermore, this course will be an intensive study of poetry and the writing processes associated with it.  The class will be conducted as a writer’s workshop, in which students share their work and comment on that of their classmates.

This course provides an overview of schooling, its purpose, and function in historical and contemporary societies. It introduces theoretical and methodological perspectives for understanding the purpose, structure, and function of educational systems in various societies. Students examine, discuss, and debate multiple perspectives regarding the roles, purposes, and outcomes of schooling, and they conduct an in-depth study of a major issue regarding schooling in different societies. A focus on cultural issues such as ableism, racism, sexism, and inequality in education is also offered.

This course introduces students to different genres of creative nonfiction, including autobiography, memoir, personal essay, reflection, and reportage. The course provides students an opportunity to practice these genres and emphasizes creativity of expression. Students are encouraged to experiment with a variety of first-person forms and write about subjects that they know about and that are important to them. Students will study the work of contemporary writers from a craft perspective in order to develop and hone their writing strategies. The class is conducted as a writer’s workshop in which students share their work and learn from one another. Students will prepare and submit an end-of-semester portfolio of their writing.

This course will introduce students to the genre of fiction.  Students in this course will explore the craft techniques associated with writing short stories, including narrative structure, characterization, setting, point-of-view, imagery and theme.  With these in mind, students will imitate contemporary short stories and invent and revise their own.  Furthermore, this course will be an intensive study of fiction and the writing processes associated with it.  The class will be conducted as a writer’s workshop, in which students share their work and comment on that of their classmates.

This course examines the many facets of inequality and rankings that exist among various groups and organizations in different societies, as well as methods of assessing inequality. Students engage in cross-cultural comparisons to explore global stratification and inequality between countries and produce a project that entails a cross-cultural, comparative analysis.

Visual rhetoric can be understood as visual argument (or an argument using images). This course encourages students to explore and write about non-traditional forms of rhetoric drawing from a wealth of topics related to film genres, ancient rhetorical genres, and film studies. This is not a film appreciation course but rather a writing and rhetoric course that encourages students to engage with the way in which visual culture communicates and makes arguments. Each week, students will explore and write about a different film genre and its particular concerns. They might, for example, explore arguments about gender and sexuality in the post-war genre of Film Noir. In this case, we students would combine psychological theory with gender studies in their written analyses of films like Double Indemnity or Gilda. Alternately, by exploring the early documentaries of Robert Flaherty and Dziga Vertov, students might ask how do we understand “realism” and, in the process, how do we understand what is included and what is left out of their versions of reality? Analyses of movies in this course will turn on the fundamental examination of how meaning is created through the power of artistic vision and visual technology.

This course introduces students to traditional and contemporary principles, theories, models and research on leadership across cultures and sub-cultures within various societies. It will examine leadership from an interdisciplinary perspective, thereby drawing upon theories and research in psychology, political science, anthropology and women studies. The course will also examine leadership in practice through the exploration of a variety of leaders, leadership styles and challenges for diverse gender and racial/ethnic groups in various societies. Students will also learn about and have a basis for reflecting on and assessing their leadership skills, styles and what it means to be a leader in an increasing diverse and global world.

This course is aimed at understanding different theoretical approaches to studying gender, sexuality, identity, sexism, exchanges of women, patriarchy, labor, otherness, oppression, and theoretical change. In addition it will cover more abstract interrogations of theoretical assumptions within explicative frameworks of post-modernism, post-structuralism, social constructivism, post-colonialism, materialism, transnational feminism and also critical and queer theoretical frameworks. Different feminist perspectives will be covered such as liberal, Marxist, radical, standpoint, etc. Special attention will be given to the exploration of power relations and other forms of inequality. We will also spend significant time engaging with feminist/ queer critiques of knowledge production, notions of perspective, representation, identity, and objectivity.

This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of social disparities in health, with an emphasis on sociological contributions to the area. Students will examine the social determinants of health and health inequities in various country contexts. Links between health outcomes and social factors—such as the social identities we inhabit (social class, gender, race), the relationships we have, and the places where we live, work, and play—will be identified and examined. Theoretical explanations for the relationships between these social factors and health disparities will be critically explored, along with possible policy solutions for achieving health equity. In particular, this course emphasizes the importance of examining multiple levels of social life, from individual behaviors to social relationships to public policy, for understanding the causes and consequences of health disparities. This course satisfies the upper-level writing requirement for graduation.

This course satisfies the Upper-Level Writing Requirement

This sociolinguistic course expands understanding of the historical development of Spanish and awareness of the great sociocultural diversity within the Spanish-speaking world and its impact on the Spanish language. It surveys Spanish as a language which has undergone a series of transformations since its birth in the Iberian Peninsula, and as the offspring of Latin, in order to explain the diversity and regional variety that exists across the Spanish-speaking world today. In addition, this course revises traditional narratives and explores the notion of ‘Spanish’ as a collection of speaker-based language systems that have been shaped historically by many different forms of multilingual and multidialectal language settings.

The body is at once material and symbolic and exists at the intersection of multiple discourses. It is an object of regulation and control, a site of meaning creation, the location of contentious political struggle, a place where power operates, and situated within contextual time, space and place. In this seminar, we will draw on interdisciplinary sources and use a range of theoretical traditions to consider ways in which the body is constituted by these discourses.

Body and embodiment studies encourage and enhance theory, research, and scholarship on a wide range of embodied dynamics.  These “body dynamics” are understood through micro and macro sociological analysis of the political, social and individual bodies. Themes and topics included are: human and non-human bodies, bioethics, morphology, anatomy, body fluids, biotechnology, genetics; but also theories of embodiment, virtual bodies, productivity of bodies, changing bodies, bodies and inequality, bodily meanings, bodies and identity, the natural environment and bodies, deviant bodies, abjection, and more.

How are we situated to the body? What is a subject, object or abject? How are distinctions made between the normal and pathological? Are bodies subordinate to the mind? How are bodies commodified? How are bodies categorized and constituted by discourses of race, class, gender, sexuality, ableism, and more?

The Summer Research Program, which occurs between the first and second years, is a non-credit-bearing instructional option designed to enable graduate students to conduct MA thesis research. This may include work at one or more discrete locations in the United States or abroad. Students may identify a field site(s) where they can obtain first-hand experience and pursue research in an area of scholarly interest.