Ethnographic Writing

Picture this: you and your friends are grabbing burgers and you overhear someone order a pop. You instantly get the urge to correct them because soda is the proper word you were taught. Later, the server brings the coke they ordered, which further increases your urge to intervene because they actually ordered Sprite. After all, soda is the correct word. Or is it? Which word is correct? Actually, they all are.

Linguistic variation is inherent to all languages and from a linguistic standpoint, all languages are equal. Yet, humans are continuously judged, evaluated, and discriminated against based on how they speak and write in professional, academic, and everyday settings. These seemingly innocuous comments about correctness have harmful effects on people who don’t conform to perceived language standards. As a result, various forms of discrimination and policies that exist continue to marginalize people due to misinformation and in some cases, disinformation. In this class, we will examine the intersections of language, ideology, and discrimination in everyday, educational, and professional settings while developing our research practices.

Classes will be facilitated through weekly reading discussions and discourse analysis of data (i.e., data sessions) in small and whole group activities. Readings will address the intersections of language and discrimination, such as accentism, racialization, language subordination, and social identities. The class will provide foundational concepts from applied linguistics and related fields, such as sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. The course is also focused on developing your research literacies and project management skills. You will learn how to develop and carry out a project, evaluate the credibility of information, and various types of data. Labs will be used to create space for data sessions and peer-reviews.

Through discourse analysis, you will apply concepts you learned in class to develop your understanding of linguistic diversity and language related issues. Projects can utilize print and digital media to address, for instance, monolingual policies and their impact in educational or workplace settings, intersections of language and gender or race, and various forms of linguistic discrimination in the US or other contexts.

There are no prerequisites and this course is suitable for students who are curious about language, discourse, social issues, as well as research. Students will be evaluated based on completed assignments, such as readings and other homework, research projects, peer-review, and overall class contributions, including lab sessions. You must be prepared to reflect on implicit biases and perceptions of language and rethink how you approach and conceptualize research. This course meets both the writing requirement and HS requirement as it develops genre knowledge, rhetorical awareness, understanding of writing as dynamic and iterative processes, and research literacies grounded in social sciences.

This course is an introduction to concepts and practices of nationalism, the modern nation-state, and questions about postcolonial contexts and concepts. Over the term we will draw on the disciplines of anthropology, literature, history, philosophy, and on the interdisciplinary fields of psychoanalysis, postcolonial and feminist studies to think critically about the relations between group and individual, between governments and corporations, as well as about citizenship, sovereignty, border control, migration, repression, genocidal violence, patriotism, belonging and exclusion. The course will begin with key points of historical reference such as the Peace of Westphalia and the French, US, and Haitian Revolutions. We will then proceed to focus on examples of nationalist projects in 19th, 20th, and 21st century Europe, as well as on nationalist and postcolonial movements in the Americas, Africa, and Western Asia. Students will be asked to consider course materials in relation to contemporary discussions about asylum, racism, sexism, capitalism and poverty, political economy, freedom of speech, academic and artistic freedom, genocide, human rights, and political violence. Course materials will likely include work by Nadia Abu El-Haj, Benedict Anderson, Hannah Arendt, Aime Césaire, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, Eric Hobsbawm, Ranjana Khanna, Deborah Thomas, Carol Pateman, Jacques Rousseau, Edward Said, Carl Schmitt, Gayatri Spivak, and Françoise Vergès.

Students will be evaluated on class participation, weekly reading responses, and two short essays.

How has human history shaped and been shaped by "the environment"? Environmental history is one of the most exciting new fields in history. In this course we examine world history from Mesopotamia to the present to see the role such things as resource scarcity, mythology, philosophy, imperialism, land policy, theology, plagues, scientific revolutions, the discovery of the new world, the industrial revolution, etc. on the natural, social, and built environments.

The European Union is a fascinating, ongoing experiment in international cooperation. Currently twenty-eight countries have joined together in a supra-national political and economic union, creating a political entity unique to a world of sovereign individual nation-states. This course focuses on understanding this complex and evolving union through study of its main political institutions: the European Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, and the European Commission. We will look at the workings of and functional relationships between these institutions through readings, meetings with politicians, bureaucrats, and NGOs involved in European-level politics, and visits to each of the institutions during two weeks in Brussels. We will also spend some time in the course looking at the broader political and cultural context in which the institutions operate, through examination of several important current topics in European politics. Topics could include: refugees and migrants in Europe, the reauthorization of the Common Agricultural Policy, Brexit, the rise of right-wing movements across countries in the EU. Students will be evaluated based on participation in class discussions, a reflective journal kept during their time in Brussels, and a presentation and final essay on a current EU-relevant political issue of their choosing.

This course is offered through collaboration with CAVILAM as part of the COA program in Vichy, France. Students take 20 hours a week of language classes and workshops taught by immersion methods and advanced audio-visual techniques. Students live with host families in homestays and take part in a variety of cultural activities. They are carefully tested and placed at levels appropriate to their ability and are expected to advance in all four language skills - reading, writing, speaking and listening - as gauged by the European Erasmus scale of competency.

"Save the whales"; "save the tiger"; "save the rainforest" - - increasingly wildlife and their habitats are the subject of international debate with many seeing wildlife as part of the common heritage of humankind. Wildlife does not recognize the political boundaries of national states and as a result purely national efforts to protect wildlife often fail when wildlife migrates beyond the jurisdiction of protection. This course focuses on two principle aspects of international wildlife conservation: 1) the framework of treaties and other international mechanisms set up to protect species; and 2) the system of protected areas established around the world to protect habitat. We begin with an examination of several seminal wildlife treaties such as the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, CITES, migratory bird treaties, and protocols to the Antarctica Treaty. Using case studies on some of the more notable wildlife campaigns, such as those involving whales and elephants, we seek to understand the tensions between national sovereignty and international conservation efforts. The Convention on Biological Diversity and its broad prescriptions for wildlife protection provide a central focus for our examination of future efforts. Following on one of the key provisions in the Convention on Biological Diversity, the second half of the course focuses on international and national efforts to create parks and other protected areas. In particular we evaluate efforts to create protected areas that serve the interests of wildlife and resident peoples. Students gain familiarity with UNESCO's Biosphere Reserve model and the IUCN's protected area classifications. We also examine in some depth the role that NGO's play in international conservation efforts. The relationship between conservation and sustainable development is a fundamental question throughout the course.