This course is an introduction to the consideration of technology as the outcome of particular technical, historical, cultural, and political efforts, especially in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics include industrialization of production and consumption, development of engineering professions, the emergence of management and its role in shaping technological forms, the technological construction of gender roles, and the relationship between humans and machines.

In the decades following the Second World War, a cluster of extraordinary French thinkers were widely translated and read in American universities. Their works were soon labeled as "French Theory." Why would sharing the same nationality make authors such as Lacan, Cixous, Derrida, Foucault or Debord, ambassadors of a specifically "French" theory? The course will explore the maze of transatlantic intellectual debates since 1945 and the heyday of French existentialism. We will study the debates on communism, decolonization, neo_liberalism, gender, youth culture and mass media. This course is taught in English.

This subject investigates the special relation of women to several musical folk traditions in the British Isles and North America. Throughout, we will be examining the implications of gender in the creation, transmission, and performance of music. Because virtually all societies operate to some extent on a gendered division of labor (and of expressive roles) the music of these societies is marked by the gendering of musical repertoires, traditions of instrumentation, performance settings, and styles. This seminar will examine the gendered dimensions of the music -- the song texts, the performance styles, processes of dissemination (collection, literary representation) and issues of historiography -- with respect to selected traditions within the folk musics of North America and the British Isles, with the aim of analyzing the special contributions of women to these traditions. In addition to telling stories about women's musical lives, and studying elements of female identity and subjectivity in song texts and music, we will investigate the ways in which women's work and women's cultural roles have affected the folk traditions of these several countries.

This course surveys both cinematic and literary representations of diverse eras and aspects of Japanese culture such as the classical era, the samurai age, wartime Japan and the atomic bombings, social change in the postwar period, and the appropriation of foreign cultural themes, with an emphasis on the modern period. Directors include Akira Kurosawa and Hiroshi Teshigahara. Authors include Kobo Abe and Yukio Mishima. Films shown have subtitles in English. Taught in English.

Graduate Women at MIT (GWAMIT) is an institute-wide, student-led group founded in 2009. Its mission is to promote the personal and professional development of MIT's graduate women. GWAMIT welcomes all members of the MIT community, including men. This OCW site features selected videos from the two conferences GWAMIT runs each academic year: a Leadership Conference in the fall and an Empowerment Conference in the spring. It also provides a list of related readings and other resources.

This seminar provides intensive study of exciting texts by four influential American authors. In studying paired works, we can enrich our sense of each author's distinctive methods, get a deeper sense of the development of their careers, and shake up our preconceptions about what makes an author or a work "great." Students will get an opportunity to research an author in depth, as well as making broader comparisons across the syllabus.

Close study of a limited group of writers. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Fall: Willa Cather. Topic for Spring: Oscar Wilde and the 90s. From Course Home Page: This seminar provides intensive study of texts by two American authors (Herman Melville, 1819-1891, and Toni Morrison, 1931-) who, using lyrical, radically innovative prose, explore in different ways epic notions of American identity. Focusing on Melville's Typee (1846), Moby-Dick (1851), and The Confidence-Man (1857) and Morrison's Sula (1973), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), and Paradise (1998), the class will address their common concerns with issues of gender, race, language, and nationhood. Be prepared to read deeply (i.e. a small number of texts with considerable care), to draw on a variety of sources in different media, and to employ them in creative research, writing, and multimedia projects.

" What is the history of popular reading in the Western world? How does widespread access to print relate to distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow culture, between good taste and bad judgment, and between men and women readers? This course will introduce students to the broad history of popular reading and to controversies about taste and gender that have characterized its development. Our grounding in historical material will help make sense of our main focus: recent developments in the theory and practice of reading, including fan-fiction, Oprah's book club, comics, hypertext, mass-market romance fiction, mega-chain bookstores, and reader response theory."

An exploration of colonial and postcolonial clashes between theories of healing and embodiment in the African world and those of western bio-medicine. Examines how Afro-Atlantic religious traditions have challenged western conceptions of illness, healing, and the body, and have offered alternative notions of morality, rationality, kinship, gender and sexuality. Analyzes whether contemporary western bio-medical interventions reinforce colonial or imperial power in the effort to promote global health in Africa and the African diaspora.

" This course will focus on issues that arise in contemporary public debate concerning matters of social justice. Topics will likely include: euthanasia, gay marriage, racism and racial profiling, free speech, hunger and global inequality. Students will be exposed to multiple points of view on the topics and will be given guidance in analyzing the moral frameworks informing opposing positions. The goal will be to provide the basis for respectful and informed discussion of matters of common moral concern."

This is an introductory course exploring intersecting histories, ideas, and social, political and cultural structures in Latin America. We will focus on the workings of Latin American cultures as shaped by race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, place, and religion. Throughout this course we will ask: Where is Latin America and what is Latin America? Over the semester, we will ask critical questions of a wide variety of materials: essays, television, poems, photographs, films, music, visual art, historical documents and legal texts. Students will be exposed to and experiment with a wide range of current interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches with particular attention to research approaches to the study of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and other categories of difference.

This course is primarily a literature seminar. We will use American literature as a lens through which to examine different passing tropes. It will provide an introduction to queer, gender, and critical race theories for science and math majors. We will read such works as Running A Thousand Miles for Freedom, Incognegro, and Focault's A History of Sexuality, to name just a few.

Explore where the prohibitions and permissions that occur in every day life come from, why they exist, and what gives them force. For example: food- you are only willing and able to eat a subset of the world's edible substances. Marriage- some marriages are prohibited by law or by custom. Addresses questions of prohibition and permission using psychological sources and literary works from ancient to modern. Includes texts by Shakespeare, Melville, Mary Rowlandson, and Anita Desai. Students give group and individual oral presentations.

Examines evidence (and lack thereof) regarding when and how an individual's thoughts, feelings, and actions are affected by gender. Topics include: gender development; gender differences in cognition and emotion; gender stereotypes; how gender is related to physical and mental health, sexuality, close relationships, and work.

This course explores the ways in which various American artists view race and class as performed or performable identities. Discussions will focus on some of the following questions: What does it mean to act black, white, privileged, or underprivileged? What do these artists suggest are the implications of performing (indeed playing at or with) racial identity, ethnicity, gender, and class status? How and why are race and class status often conflated in these performances?

This course hub website contains OER/ZTC (Open Educational Resources/Zero Textbook Cost) resources for faculty teaching Introduction to Sociology (SOC 100) at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC). These resources are freely available for use by BMCC faculty and beyond.

General study of modern architecture as a response to important technological, cultural, environmental, aesthetic, and theoretical challenges after the European Enlightenment. Focus on the theoretical, historiographic, and design approaches to architectural problems encountered in the age of industrial and post-industrial expansion across the globe, with specific attention to the dominance of European modernism in setting the agenda for the discourse of a global modernity at large. Explores modern architectural history through thematic exposition rather than as simple chronological succession of ideas.

Examines different types of historical writing: political, social, cultural, demographic, biographical, and comparative. Includes discussion of historical films, fiction, memoirs, and conventional history. Particular attention given to works which have broken new ground in terms of their methodology and approach. Required writing includes brief weekly response papers and a substantial research paper (including proposal, first draft, and final draft), in conjunction with a formal oral presentation. Weekly discussion of readings include periodic student-led discussion and/or presentations. Open to all students, but required of history majors and minors in junior year. This course is designed to acquaint students with a variety of approaches to the past used by historians writing in the twentieth century. The books we read have all made significant contributions to their respective sub-fields and have been selected to give as wide a coverage in both field and methodology as possible in one semester's worth of reading. We examine how historians conceive of their object of study, how they use primary sources as a basis for their accounts, how they structure the narrative and analytic discussion of their topic, and what are the advantages and drawbacks of their various approaches.

The founders of sociology in the United States wanted to make a difference. A central aim of the sociologists of the Chicago school was to use sociological knowledge to achieve social reform. A related aim of sociologists like Jane Addams, W.E.B. DuBois, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett and others since was to use sociological knowledge to understand and alleviate gender, racial, and class inequality.

Steve Barkan’s Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World makes sociology relevant for today’s students by balancing traditional coverage with a fresh approach that takes them back to sociology’s American roots in the use of sociological knowledge for social reform.

Intensive study of a range of texts by a single author or by a limited group of authors whose achievements are mutually illuminating. Some attention to narrative theory, and biographical and cultural backgrounds. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic: Joyce's Ulysses and Its Legacy.