The Critical Theory-Social Justice Colloquium introduces students to the CTSJ major. Students will engage with topics and materials in the areas of emphasis within the major: Critical Race Studies, Gender and Queer Studies, and Postcolonial Studies.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: INTERCULTURAL and GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
Courses
101 - Critical Theory - Social Justice Colloquium
105 - Immigration and Education
This course will locate the topic of immigration and education within historical, legislative, and cultural debates on what it means to be an American and who has the right to an Education. Students will explore and debate precedent-setting Supreme Court cases, such as Mendez v. Westminster, which challenged the segregation of Mexican children into separate schools, and Lau v. Nichols, which fought hard for non-English speaking students to have linguistic access to the public school curricula. In addition, students will research the historical antecedents to the recent anti-immigrant movements in California, Arizona, and Colorado, which target the use of languages other than English in school settings, and have all but abolished bilingual public schools. Against this historical and legislative backdrop, students will examine ethnographic research detailing the persistent challenges that immigrant children face in schooling, including migrant children, and the ways in which they, their parents, and communities experience those challenges. Satisfies the experiential learning requirement
106 - Representing the Metropolis
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: INTERCULTURAL AND GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
140 - Critical Theories of Sexuality
This course introduces students to critical theories concerning human sexuality. We read feminist, Marxist, psychoanalytic, structuralist, and poststructuralist theories of sexuality and discuss what makes each of these theories "critical." Topics include the political economy of marriage, the relation between sexuality and procreation, uses of the erotic, homosociality, and the incitement to discourse. The authors we read include Engels, Freud, de Beauvoir, Lévi-Strauss, Gayle Rubin, Andrea Dworkin, Foucault, and Judith Butler. Emphasis Topic: Queer Studies.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES and US DIVERSITY
180 - Stupidity
Stupidity is neither ignorance nor organicity, but rather, a corollary of knowing and an element of normalcy, the double of intelligence rather than its opposite. It is an artifact of our nature as finite beings and one of the most powerful determinants of human destiny. Stupidity is always the name of the Other, and it is the sign of the feminine. This course in Critical Psychology follows the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, and most recently, Avital Ronell, in a philosophical examination of those operations and technologies that we conduct in order to render ourselves uncomprehending. Stupidity, which has been evicted from the philosophical premises and dumbed down by psychometric psychology, has returned in the postmodern discourse against Nation, Self, and Truth and makes itself felt in political life ranging from the presidency to Beavis and Butthead. This course examines stupidity.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES and US DIVERSITY
186 - Introduction to Critical Theory
This course introduces critical theory in the context of the problem of social justice. Introductions will be made to psychoanalytic, Marxist, Feminist, Structuralist, Deconstructive, and Postcolonial Criticism. Reader-responses, New Criticism, lesbian, gay, and queer criticism will also be surveyed. There will be close readings of the work of Louis Althusser, Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida as well as in depth readings of essays by Guy Hocquenghem, Julia Kristeva, and Trinh T. Minh-ha.
210 - Mother Goose to Mash-Ups: Children's Literature and Popular Texts
Why did the London Bridge fall down? Is Rub-a-dub-dub really about bath time? Why didn't an old man live in a shoe? Who is more imperialist, Babar or Peter Pan? Is Tinky Winky gay? Is South Park a children's show? Is Harry Potter a Hero? How tired was Rosa Parks? Using different critical approaches, this course will examine children's poetry, picture books, novels, cartoons, feature films, and music videos. Analysis will include topics related to gender, race, culture, and nation, as they play out in the aesthetics, images, and poetics of children's texts. Emphasis topic: Critical Race Theory
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES and US DIVERSITY
211 - Critical Pedagogy
Critical pedagogy aims to develop collective critical consciousness for the purpose of transforming oppressive socio-political conditions. In this course, students will study critical pedagogy from historical, political, and sociological perspectives. Students in the course will consider traditional student/teacher relationships, pedagogical approaches, as well as hierarchies of knowledge promulgated by schools and textbook publishers. Students will analyze and critique theories of the Frankfurt School and the emancipatory works of Paolo Freire, the most renowned critical pedagogist. Additionally, contemporary readings from Henry Giroux, bell hooks, and Peter McLaren will focus on critical pedagogy in relation to social structures, globalization, media, and race. Emphasis topic: Postcolonial Theory
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: INTERCULTURAL
215 - Critical Discourse Analysis
This seminar introduces students to discourse analysis as the ontological and epistemological deconstruction of every day language and symbols and their relationship to power. Throughout the course, students develop techniques for gathering and analyzing multimodal transcripts of naturally occurring conversations, interviews, discourses in institutional settings, media discourses, and texts of historical materials. The course draws from systemic functional linguistics, genre/text studies, multi-modal semiotics, interactional sociolinguistics, and critical social theory to understand how linguistic features of texts constitute and are constituted by the social, cultural and local relations, processes and contexts in which they are embedded. Using a seminar format, students will engage the readings and apply discourse analysis strategies in order to develop their own independent qualitative research projects.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
222 - Body Politics
The course offers an interdisciplinary analysis of gender, power, and the body. The theoretical center of the course will be Foucault's work on biopower, including Discipline and Punish and Foucault 2.0. Topics include: class and the body (Atwood, Bodily Harm, and Larsen, Passing); law and the female body (Wendy Williams, Mary Poovey); science and gender (Emily Martin, Thomas Laqueur); pornography (Catherine McKinnon, Laura Kipnis); race, body, and gender (Morrison, Beloved; Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler); multiculturalism and cross-race identifications (John Stahl, Imitation of Life, Wyatt, "The Hazards of ldealization"); and, Latin American perspectives on gender, torture, and memory. Prerequisite: at least sophomore standing.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: INTERCULTURAL
230 - Fundamentals of Queer Theory
This class is designed to introduce the classical texts of Anglo-American queer theory as well as explore recent trends in the field. While situating queer theory's 1990s academic advent in its historical context of identity politics, the emergence of the AIDS pandemic, and the U.S. "culture wars," the course will begin by reviewing crucial antecedents in gay and lesbian studies, psychoanalysis, and the interventions of Michel Foucault. Readings will include works by Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, Leo Bersani, Lee Edelman, and Teresa de Lauretis. Additional readings will trace recent debates about "what is still queer in queer theory?" as critics engage ongoing questions about neoliberalism, homonormativity, and politics in the 21st century. Emphasis topic: Feminist and Queer Studies.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES and US DIVERSITY
232 - Introduction to Cultural Studies
This course introduces the methodologies and key theories of Cultural Studies, focusing on analyses of popular cultural and subcultures. Readings will include selections from Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, bell hooks, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Deborg, Stuart Hall, Matthew Arnold, Raymond Williams, J. Halberstam, Michel de Certeau, Henry Louis Gates, Inderpal Grewal, Oliver Sacks and others. We will focus on non-traditional academic disciplines and media including television studies, new media theory, performance studies, history of science, fashion, cartoons, built environments, slang, and fan culture with the intention of honing rigorous research skills and critical argumentation.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: INTERCULTURAL and GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
233 - Queer Literature and Culture
This course introduces students to literary questions of queerness, canonization, and nation in the context of the United States’ twentieth century discourses about homosexuality. Students will critically examine the production of certain ideas of the nation through literature by examining questions raised through queer texts. The course will run concurrently with CTSJ 333: The Queer Novel; assignments for CTSJ 233 will be designed for a 200-level course. Emphasis Topic: Feminist and Queer Studies.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES and US DIVERSITY
234 - Materialist Feminism
Is there such a thing as a "woman's condition" and can that condition be explained by examining the economic dimensions of women's history? Is the violence that people are disproportionately exposed to based on gender, race, sex, and sexuality only a tool in the production and reproduction of economic classes or do these identities and experiences require an analytic framework that transcends economic relations? In this course we will consider a particular intellectual tradition that engages these questions: Materialist Feminism. We will begin our readings by considering texts by Marx and Engels that form the backbone of this tradition. We will then consider texts from American, British, and Italian traditions of thought and activism that include feminists working in national and transnational Women of Color traditions. Readings will include Michèle Barrett, Hazel Carby, Carolyn J. Eichner, Silvia Federici, Combahee River Collective, Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, Angela Davis, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemberg, Karl Marx, Heidi Hartmann and Denise Riley. Emphasis Topic: Feminist and Queer Studies.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: US DIVERSITY AND UNITED STATES
255 - Women of Color
This course will examine intersecting and overlapping categories of "difference" by focusing on the lives of women of color. By looking at conditions that shape race, sexuality, gender, class, and cultural differences, this class will critically examine multiple discourses surrounding feminism, anti-racism, heteronormativity, and critiques of imperialism. We will consider contexts of individual and collective work for social change. Using personal essays, stories, scholarly writings, artistic works, music, film, and other media, the course will look at sources that women of color draw from to ground themselves and their activist work. Emphasis topic: Critical Race Studies or Feminist and Queer Studies.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES and US DIVERSITY
257 - Critical Praxis: Voice, Memory, and Community Transformation
This course will employ community-based research strategies to engage students with questions of "voice;" dynamics of race, gender and class; and multiple perspectives that shape understandings of community transformation. Students in the course will work with community partners to develop and implement a research project. Satisfies the experiential learning requirement
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES
259 - Bodies for Exchange: Migrations, Markets, Politics
This course examines movements of bodies through political, legal, economic, and social exchanges. Drawing from a variety of materials (theory, literature, film), the course examines practices such as human trafficking, organ transplantation, transnational adoption, and surrogacy. Emphasis topic: Critical Race Studies or Postcolonial Theory.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: INTERCULTURAL and GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
271 - Theatre for Social Justice
This course will serve as a hands-on introduction to the use of Theatre for Social Justice. Through theatre and diversity exercises, improvisation, discussion and readings in Theatre and social sciences, students will explore diverse strategies for tackling discrimination and/or other forms of social injustice and promoting safer and more inclusive communities. Topic for Spring 2015: LGBTQ & Allied Theatre Activism Practicum. The Spring 2015 course will draw from Theatre and Psychology to explore diverse strategies for addressing homophobia, transphobia, and sexism and promoting a safer and more inclusive campus for students of all genders and sexual orientations. Ultimately, students in the course will collaborate with Occidental College community members to craft a piece of theatre that can be used to address current LGBTQQIAA issues on the College campus.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: US DIVERSITY and FINE ARTS
280 - Rasatafari
This course will examine the character of postcolonial theory in the Afro-Caribbean. Particular attention will be paid to the work of C.L.R. James, Walter Rodney, Franz Fanon, Marcus Garvey, Aimé Césaire, Eric Williams, Kamau Brathwaite, and Bob Marley. The course will also examine Rastafari as a religio-political protest movement. We will chart the musicological development of Reggae and Dub Poetry as distinctive expressions of Rasta. Emphasis topic: Postcolonial Theory.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: INTERCULTURAL
285 - Foucault
This course will cover the early writings of Michel Foucault, paying particular attention to his psychological writings. We will conduct a close reading of "Madness and Civilization".
Prerequisite: a 100-level CTSJ class
286 - Whiteness
This course seeks to engage the emergent body of scholarship designated to deconstruct whiteness. It will examine the construction of whiteness in the historic, legal, and economic contexts which have allowed it to function as an enabling condition for privilege and race-based prejudice. Particular attention will be paid to the role of religion and psychology in the construction of whiteness. Texts will include Race Traitor, Critical White Studies, The Invention of the White Race, The Abolition of Whiteness, White Trash, and Even the Rat was White. Emphasis topic: Critical Race Theory.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES
295 - Topics in Critical Theory-Social Justice
This seminar will engage important topics and issues in Critical Theory ─ Social Justice. All CTSJ faculty will participate in order to facilitate an interdisciplinary engagement with complexities and nuances of these topics. Students from other CTSJ courses will be invited to participate in the construction of discourse around the topics. Topics might include Whiteness, Theory-Practice (Critical Theory - Social Justice), and Representation-Embodiment. Prerequisite: a 100-level CTSJ course or permission of instructor.
Property: Public and Private. From Defoe's "kept" woman, to Austen's marriage market; Melville's slave vessel, to Gaskell's factory floor, and finally to Woolf's manor house, "Property: Public and Private," examines the way in which novels depict owned things and scenes of work. Through the depictions that constitute this thematic thread however, these novels also provoke interrogation of the concept "property." Can people be bought and sold? Are families units of labor? Whose economic and emotional conditions interest our novelists and how do these authorial choices guide our readings?
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: EUROPE
Soc. Movements/Representational Forms
In this course, we will examine the competing advocacy, within social movements, for documentary, fiction, journalism, lyric, abstraction, and other representational forms. For each social movement or political issue that we cover, students will compare multiple modes of representation, considering why they emerged, what their strengths and weaknesses were at each specific conjuncture, and what significance they have for future struggles. We will begin with some theoretical grounding and then proceed via a set of case studies: these may include debates about realism vs. modernism in the Frankfurt school, testimonios in Latin America, confession vs. experimentation in feminist literature, reportage vs. the essay in journalism, and slogans, songs, and posters in queer activism.n this course, we will examine the competing advocacy, within social movements, for documentary, fiction, journalism, lyric, abstraction, and other representational forms. For each social movement or political issue that we cover, students will compare multiple modes of representation, considering why they emerged, what their strengths and weaknesses were at each specific conjuncture, and what significance they have for future struggles. We will begin with some theoretical grounding and then proceed via a set of case studies: these may include debates about realism vs. modernism in the Frankfurt school, testimonios in Latin America, confession vs. experimentation in feminist literature, reportage vs. the essay in journalism, and slogans, songs, and posters in queer activism.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: INTERCULTURAL
Reading RuPaul:Camp Culture, Gender Insubordination, and the Politics of Performance
This course introduces methods in Queer Theory and Feminist Theory by taking as the central object of study the reality competition show "RuPaul’s Drag Race." As the show brings the art of drag performance and issues attendant to contemporary queer subcultures to a wide audience, the course will consider how it addresses histories of drag and U.S. gay culture, as well as a broad range of issues such as transgender identity, HIV/AIDS, bullying and violence, racial identity, gender identity, body size, and LGBT political activism. Students will consider claims about the transformative, recuperative, and empowering art of drag performance. The course will draw from readings on the history of sexuality, feminist critiques of gender identity, transgender affect and embodiment, the history of race and racial identity, and drag and the politics of camp. Emphasis Topic: Feminist and Queer Studies
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: U.S. DIVERSITY and UNITED STATES
310 - Qualitative Interview Methods
This course is designed to introduce students to the methods and approaches used in qualitative interviewing. In addition to structured interviews, students learn about semi-structured, biographical, and narrative interviewing methods. The course also explores the ethical dilemmas and research challenges inherent during interviewing, as well as the details of conducting qualitative interviews. By the end of the semester, each student will have constructed, modified, conducted, analyzed, and written up an interview study. Satisfies the experiential learning requirement.
311 - Children, Poverty, and Public Policies
In this course, students examine contemporary child poverty both in the United States and abroad. Topics include how poverty is defined both locally and globally, the numbers and distribution of poor children, as well as the causes of child poverty. Readings explore poverty in relation to education, economics, homelessness, child labor, family, gender, and race. Students analyze historical anti-poverty policies such as the New Deal, the War on Poverty, and the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child, as well as contemporary proposals to reduce child poverty such as childcare, welfare, job training, job creation, and tax policy.
Emphasis topic: Postcolonial Theory
CORE REQUIREMENT: INTERCULTURAL ● UNITED STATES and GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
312 - Language, Literacy and Culture
This course combines theory and practice in the study of language and literacy across cultures and institutions. It will introduce students to competing theories of language and literacy development and the politics that undergird those theories. The course will also explore topics such as gender, race, culture, and ethnicity as they intersect and shape language learning. Students will learn about language acquisition, heritage languages, language variation, dialects, and bilingualism. The course will also explore controversies surrounding multimodal literacies involving speech, writing, drawing, pictures, video, and music. Prerequisite: Junior Standing
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: INTERCULTURAL
320 - Culture and Community
This class provides an opportunity for students who wish to continue and deepen their intellectual and community work to interact with a highly-motivated small group of students and community activists and organizations. Topics we will examine will be determined in consultation with community partners. Students will work together on a significant final project that links academic learning and community praxis and engagement. Satisfies experiential learning requirement.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES and US DIVERSITY
332 - Psychic Life of Violence
Sigmund Freud's intervention in personal sexual life often overshadows how psychoanalysis uniquely theorized violence in the context of two World Wars. This course will consider how contemporary social justice issues might be informed by psychoanalytic concepts including aggressivity, group identification, neighbor relations, and altruism. Readings include Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and key essays; Franz Fanon's anti-racist masterpiece Black Skin, White Masks; Melanie Klein's studies of negative affect; queer theory's relation to the death drive; and essays by contemporary critical theorists grappling with the ongoing problems of war, racism, class conflict, and sexual violence. Prerequisite: 200-level CTSJ course
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: EUROPE
333 - The Queer Novel
This course addresses literary questions of queerness, canonization, and nation in the context of the United States' twentieth century discourses about homosexuality. To reframe Eve Sedgwick's famous question about queer literature, the course asks, has the twentieth-century U. S. produced a gay Socrates, Shakespeare, or Proust? While acknowledging that poetry, drama, film, memoir, "zines," television, and the Internet have increasingly provided more salient outlets for queer content, this course traces the nationalist ideology of "the Great American Novel" through queer negotiations with the genre. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher. Emphasis topic: Feminist and Queer studies
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES and US DIVERSITY
335 - The Queer of Color Critique
This course examines the emergent field of queer of color critique. Combining woman of color feminism with queer theory, queer of color critique analyzes intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class through interdisciplinary methodologies. This course will engage essential background and formative essays including the texts of Kimberlé Crenshaw, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Chandra Mohanty; cultural instances of race and sexuality's crossings in work by James Baldwin, Cheryl Dunye, and Issac Julien; and recent critical work by such contemporary theorists as Roderick Ferguson, Jasbir Puar, and José Esteban Muñoz. Prerequisite: any 100- or 200-level CTSJ course. Emphasis topic: Feminist and Queer Studies.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: INTERCULTURAL and US DIVERSITY
337 - Queer Los Angeles
This seminar is designed to uncover genealogies of sexuality in Los Angeles and Southern California by examining diverse archives and cultural sites. We will study histories of gays and lesbians in the film industry; connections and conflicts around local bar scenes; leftist homophile organizing and the mainstreaming of homosexual identities; the economic and social worlds of queer sex workers; and sociologies of queer demographics and architectures. Students will be encouraged to conduct primary research in archives and engage in community organizing around the city while honing skills in their chosen critical methodologies. Satisfies the experiential learning requirement. Prerequisite: any 100- or 200-level CTSJ course. Emphasis topic: Feminist and Queer Studies.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES and US DIVERSITY
340 - Critical Ethnography
In this course students learn how to do ethnographic research and writing by conducting exercises in participant-observation on or near campus. We review the history of the ethnographic method and its relation to anthropology and the colonial encounter. We also discuss what makes an ethnography critical and the tensions between ethnography sympathy and critical theory. Authors we read include Malinowski, Geertz, Delmos Jones, Dorinne Kondo, Renato Rosaldo, Ruth Behar, Jim Thomas, and Kamala Visweswaran. Satisfies the experiential learning requirement. Prerequisite: a 200-level CTSJ class. Emphasis topic: Postcolonial Theory.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: INTERCULTURAL and GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
355 - Boundaries and Borderlands
This course employs postcolonial theory to consider transformations of religions and cultures that occur when physical, experiential, geographic, and intellectual borders are crossed and blurred. How are cultures and "differences" named? From what locations? We consider cultural hybridities, re-mapped borders of culture and difference, postcoloniality, transnational migrations, and other postmodern conditions as sources for reconceiving identities, relationships between religions and cultures, and social transformations. Prerequisite: a 200-level CTSJ class. Emphasis topic: Postcolonial theory.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: INTERCULTURAL and GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
357 - Law and Empire
This course employs interpretive tactics from critical legal theory and critical race theory in order to examine the use of law to justify and sustain U.S. colonial/imperial projects. We will look at how these projects are connected to the control of domestic populations (especially indigenous and racialized groups) and the expanding desire for territory. We will look at questions about nation, state, and sovereignty; law and hegemony; and relationships between "change" and maintenance of the same in legal discourse. The course will also investigate relationships between globalization, international legal regimes, and new forms of Empire. We will consider specific topics that raise questions about ongoing operations of and resistances to imperialism, including trafficking in persons, sovereignty and indigenous people's rights, the legal status of territories and protectorates and the selective use of the U.S. Constitution in those locations, and issues rising from the "war on terror." Prerequisite: a 200-level CTSJ class. Emphasis topic: Critical Race Theory or Postcolonial Theory.
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES and US DIVERSITY
369 - Clinical Psychology Laboratory
The Clinical Psychology Laboratory (CPL) provides experiential opportunities for students interested in graduate study in psychology, law, and social justice. Students are given the opportunity to participate in the data analysis of clinical psychological assessments. Students will also participate in research under a Human Studies Committee approved project, with the goal for an early exposure to the field, and with the objective to yield research data for presentation or publication. In some projects, students may have limited opportunities to observe and participate in forensic psychological assessments as prescribed in the respective protocols. Prerequisite: instructor interview and approval required. May be repeated three times for credit.
2 units
370 - Marx, Freud, and the Frankfurt School
This seminar will explore the origins of the world famous Frankfurt School, a group of German social philosophers and theoreticians which emerged at the Institute for Social research of the University of Frankfurt am Main in the 1920s who wanted a) to analyze the conditions of modern capitalism and its impact on society in general, on family and social structures, value systems and mass culture, b) critically review the theories of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Max Weber, and c) to establish the principles and foundations of a ‘critical theory.’ We’ll read and discuss major works by Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Siegfried Kracauer, Leo Loewenthal and others. The seminar will focus on the ‘first phase’ of the Frankfurt School, its beginnings and its work and development during the thirties and forties – when the school relocated to New York and many of its collaborators lived in other American cities or abroad - and the immediate post WWII period. (A second seminar will follow next year and explore the school’s development and its world wide impact in the sixties and seventies.) The course is taught in English. Students minoring or majoring in German will read some of the original texts (especially Marx, Freud, Benjamin, and Kracauer) in German. Prerequisite:Junior/senior standing. Same as GERM 370
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: EUROPE
380 - Psycho Analysis: Freud
The work of Sigmund Freud continues to be of signal importance to students of literature, psychology, and feminist social theory. This course is designed to provide students with an in depth knowledge of his work as a model of intellectual courage and as a great and problematic achievement of the human imagination. The course will rely on the work of historian Peter Gay, Freud, a Life for our Time, for a well-contextualized treatment of Sigmund Freud's life and work. There will be close readings of three of Freud's seminal works, The Interpretation of Dreams, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, and Beyond the Pleasure Principle. We will also read two case studies central to the emergent feminist critique and re-analysis of Freud's work: Anna O. and Dora, an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. In addition to critically evaluating his contributions to contemporary thought, this course will employ Freud as a great writer. The assignments will therefore emphasize the recognition and imitation of Freud's skill as a writer. There will be four writing assignments from the different psychoanalytic genres: case history, dream interpretation, death-wish analysis, and an exercise in psychoanalytic theory. The course will be taught as a seminar with an emphasis on student participation. Prerequisite: a 200-level CTSJ class. Emphasis topic: Feminist and Queer Studies. Satisfies experiential learning requirement.
384 - Bataille
A close reading of the works of Georges Bataille, including The Impossible, The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, The Accursed Share, On Nietzsche, Story of the Eye, The Dead Man, and Collected Poems. Prerequisite: 1st year students cannot enroll in this class.
386 - Critical Blackness
Critical Race Theorists have begun to describe a "new blackness," "critical blackness," post-blackness," and "unforgivable blackness." This emergent scholarship, which describes a feminist New Black Man, also seeks to "queer blackness" and to articulate a black sexual politics that addresses a "new racism." By calling us to examine the possibility of a black political solidarity that escapes the problems of identity politics, this scholarship provokes We Who Are Dark to imagine more complex and free identities. This course invites all of us to engage this scholarship.
390 - CTSJ Junior Seminar: Interventions
The CTSJ Junior Seminar is designed to develop students' methodological sophistication and theoretical skills in anticipation of the senior comprehensive project. Students will be required to acquire an applicable understanding of the range of archives and the complex interdisciplinary methodological strategies used in Critical Theory and Social Justice. They are also to develop an understanding of the meaning of the CTSJ comprehensive project as an "intervention." Prerequisite: Junior year standing.
395 - Cosmopolitanism & Identity: Kwami Anthony Appiah
This 2-unit seminar offers students the opportunity to engage the works of the 2011 graduation commencement speaker Kwame Anthony Appiah. The course will focus on Appiah's writing on the concepts of cosmopolitanism and identity, paying particular attention to how these developments challenge the mission of Occidental College. Several distinguished faculty from across Occidental's majors will join the CTSJ faculty in an interdisciplinary exploration of the ways in which collective identities such as race, gender, social class, and ethnicity constrain or enable freedom, individuality and a global awareness. Additionally, the course will consider the evolution of cosmopolitanism as it relates to multiculturalism, and interrogate the power of multiculturalism to ground an adequate ethic "in a world of strangers.
2 Units
CORE REQUIREMENT MET: PARTIAL INTERCULTURAL
395 - Special Topics in Critical Theory - Social Justice
An advanced seminar in Critical Theory - Social Justice. Prerequisite: a 200-level class in CTSJ or permission of instructor. May be repeated for credit.
397 - Independent Study in CTSJ
Prerequisite: permission of instructor.
2 or 4 units
490 - Senior Seminar in Critical Theory - Social Justice
This course is offered in conjunction with CTSJ majors' ongoing research for the senior thesis. Seminar meetings will be devoted to discussion and critique of students' work in progress and to close readings of a select few texts in Critical Theory - Social Justice. Prerequisite: senior CTSJ majors only.
499 - Honors Project in Critical Theory - Social Justice
Prerequisite: permission of the department.