NOTE: Areas listed are for the NEW PLAN only.
Session A (May 26 – July 2) six weeks
AFRICAM 136L: Criminal Justice & Surveillance in America Policing Race & Gender in the U.S. (3) (Area I or Area IV)
What is the relationship between the criminal justice system and surveillance in America? What role does power play in this relationship? How does this complicated relationship inform, reproduce, and engender understandings about race, class and sexuality? How has this relationship changed over time? How has technological change impacted this relationship? In this course, we will examine the relationship between the criminal justice system and the surveillance of vulnerable communities. We will examine social and historical trends, but our main focus will be on the evolution of this relationship since the mid-20th century, especially how this relationship developed in distressed urban neighborhoods in the post-Civil Rights era.
In this class, we will explore the relationship between policing, marginalized communities, and dynamics of power. Informed by historical, political, and social trends, we will examine how changes in legal regimes shape conditions in marginalized populations. Specifically, we will interrogate the institutionalization of the convict lease system, Jim Crow, and the War on Drugs to examine its impact on informal and formal policing practices. Using an intersectional framework, we will explore how policing reforms affect groups who are historically criminalized, surveiled, and incarcerated. We will conclude with how people resist and reimagine alternate forms of justice.
Chicano Studies 174: Chicanos Law & Criminal Justice (4) (Area I or II)
Chicanos Law & Criminal Justice (4) An examination of the development and function of law, the organization and administration of criminal justice, and their effects in the Chicano community; response to these institutions by Chicanos.
ETHSTD 180L 001: Racial Citizenship and US Immigration (3) (Area I or Area V)
Students will examine the fundamental interconnections between race and the law within and beyond the U.S. from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives. Possible course topics include The Carceral State; Race and Immigration; Social Movements and the Law; Citizenship; Indigenous Legal Systems; Law and Literature; and Race, Environmental Justice and the Law.
What do we mean when we say: “the United States is a ‘melting pot’ or a land of ‘immigrants’? What are the implications of such statements? Do these popular statements still hold true today? If so, what is the current image, picture, and state of US immigration today? Why does immigration and immigrants continue to play such an important role in understanding the trajectory of the country in general? One answer gives the impression that the origins of the United States lies in a history of migration with people from all over the world making it what it is today. Yet such popular understandings are fraught with contesting narratives and histories that suggest otherwise. This course explores, through an Ethnic Studies perspective, contemporary themes in US immigration that will help us chart/map several historical trajectories that contest the dominant narratives of US immigration as a ‘melting pot’ or a “land of immigrants.” Instead, by looking at immigration through the lenses of race, class, gender, sexuality, policing, and the nation, several themes emerge: 1) the United States as a settler colonial project furthered by white Supremacy and racial capitalism 2)the construction of an internal/external ‘other’ underpinning racial/sexual/gendered/class hierarchies and social divisions 3) the construction of an “illegal” subject without rights 4) and the militarization and enforcement of borders, boundaries, and walls at the local, national, and international level. Such themes help us understand the social/political/cultural/juridical landscapes and regimes in which (im)migration is shaped and understood in everyday life and more importantly how they may open opportunities for immediate and long term political/social action.
ETHSTD 182AC: Race, Rights & Citizenship (4) (Area IV or Area V)
This course will critically examine the complex relationship between race, rights, and citizenship. We will closely review contemporary laws on immigration, national security, voting rights, language access and affirmative action, and their associated social contexts and legal conflicts around racial profiling, education access, and citizenship rights. Citizenship rights are understood broadly in this class from “alienage” (the hierarchical demarcation of non-citizen versus citizen) to the right to marriage. A primary focus of this course is to understand how despite discrimination, outsiders have gained access to “insider” rights and in the process have naturalized what previously was considered out of the norm.
ISF 100E: Globalization of Rights, Values & Law in the 21st Century (4) (Area II or IV or V)
This interdisciplinary course is an introduction to the complex interplay of transnational values, international rights and legal institutions that increasingly govern social, cultural and geopolitical interactions in our contemporary world. Theoretical and methodological tools from the social sciences, jurisprudence, and philosophy will be applied im the analyses of these interplays. A study of rights and norms presupposes not only an understanding of the empirical evolution of rights traditions (including constitutional traditions) in a variety of global regions, but also an understanding of the theories of rights and laws that support such traditions as they are embedded in them (just war theories, peace theories, etc.) The study of rights and norms also requires an exploration of the transformations of crucial international norms and rights due to the formation of supranational institutions and organizations in the 20th century (UN, UNESCO, GO’s, etc.). The course will provide the students with an opportunity to place emerging transnational rights institutions into a historical and geopolitical framework.
UGBA 107: Social & Political Environment of Business (3) (Area III)
Study and analysis of American business in a changing social and political environment. Interaction between business and other institutions. Role of business in the development of social values, goals, and national priorities. The expanding role of the corporation in dealing with social problems and issues.
Session D (July 6 – August 14) six weeks
AFRICAM 125AC WBL 001: The History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement (3) (Area IV)
The objective of this course is to examine the modern Civil Rights Movement. As traditionally understood, this period began with the May 17, 1954, “Brown vs. Board of Education” Supreme Court decision and ended with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This course will expand this time frame and seek to place this movement in the context of global developments and the broad sweep of United States History. Assigned readings consist of historical and autobiographical texts. Lectures will contextualize the readings by placing the material and its significance within the overall history and culture of Americans. Visual media will augment the lectures.
Africam 139L: The Black Panther Party and American Popular Culture (3) (Area I)
This course will explore the rise and fall of the Oakland, California based Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP), and the role of the organization in rearticulating the urban narrative of resistance to power in America in the 1960s and 1970s. Consideration will be given to the unique relationship the BPP has had with government and law enforcement officials.
Eth Std 144AC: Racism & the U.S. Law: Historical Treatment of Peoples of Color (4) (Area II or IV)
Intensive histori-legal survey of racism in the United States, exploring the legal antecedents of the country’s contemporary stratified society and emphasizing the role of law as a social policy instrument.Readings and lectures will investigate the prevailing legal currency of racism in the United States through an examination of the country’s formative legal documents and the consequent effects of a myriad of judicial decisions on peoples of color.
ETHSTD 180L 002: Race & U.S. Immigration Law & Policy (3) (Area II or Area V)
Students will examine the fundamental interconnections between race and the law within and beyond the U.S. from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives. Possible course topics include The Carceral State; Race and Immigration; Social Movements and the Law; Citizenship; Indigenous Legal Systems; Law and Literature; and Race, Environmental Justice and the Law.
The goal of this class is to review the social, political and economic factors, including changing views on race, that have influenced the development of US immigration policy and obtain a basic understanding of the key concepts and principles of immigration law. This course will focus on the ways in which the USA addressed the needs for labor and population as the country’s economy developed and changed, while at the same time the country grappled with racial attitudes and identity, particularly from colonial times to 1965. We will then look at the 1965 law and subsequent efforts to address illegal immigration. We will also examine how the 1965 led to changing the demography of the country’s population leading to the current heated and difficult immigration debate. Finally, we will also compare USA attitudes toward migration to other countries’ attitudes towards migration.
Film 177: Entertainment Law (4) (Area II, IV)
The practice of entertainment law in the United States lies at the intersection of a number of legal disciplines, among them Constitutional law, tort law, copyright law, and trademark law, and applies those disciplines to the world of entertainment. This course will introduce you to basic principles of those disciplines and their use in entertainment law. The goal of the course is to equip practitioners in film and media with an understanding of entertainment law sufficient to recognize legal issues that may arise in their practice so as to either avoid problems or find their solutions.
Philosophy 115 Political Philosophy (4) (Area V) This course is devoted to some of the central questions in contemporary political philosophy: liberty, justice and equality. The course is focused particularly on the work of John Rawls.
Political Sci 157A Constitutional Law of the U.S. (4) (Area IV or V) Fundamental principles of constitutional law, leading cases, causes, and consequences of legal decisions and their role in influencing, shaping, and constraining the American political system. A. Judicial Review and the Limits to National Power. B. Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.