2019-2020 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Courses
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HIST 335 - The Atlantic World
A course that deliberately moves away from the traditional focus on nation-states and continents, concentrating instead on the Atlantic world that was created in the wake of the Portuguese explorations and Columbus’ voyages. The emphasis will be on the flow of people, commodities, germs, and ideas between the Old World (Europe and Africa) and the New.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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HIST 336 - Gender, War and Genocide in 20th Century
Boys become real men through military service and by participation in war, by killing and dying for the fatherland, while giving birth to and raising children-motherhood–serves as central marker of womanhood. Gender stereotypes such as these were questioned but also reinforced throughout the wars of the 20th century. These wars mobilized men as well as women, and they increasingly blurred the boundaries between men and women. On all fronts and sites, however, concepts of masculinities and femininities structured propaganda and emotions, fighting morals and antiwar movement, the preparation of minds for mass violence, and its remembrance. We will discuss the impact of gender on mass violence and vice versa from World War I to World War II, from the Holocaust to the genocidal wars in former Yugoslavia, and from America’s “Good War” to Americans’ twisted coping with the Vietnam War to the rise of a ‘gender-neutral’ army. Focusing on European and American wars, the course includes comparative views on other regions of the world and puts emphasis on regional differences and peculiarities, such as transformation of a deeply gendered war culture in Europe into a peace culture after 1945. Special attention will be paid to various approaches to gender history, such as the analysis of discourses and images, or the analysis of gender practices. We will do this by critically analyzing scholarly work, written testimonies, literature, films, and propaganda materials.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically.
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HIST 337 - The Holocaust Perpetrators
This course explores the main parts of the German and Central European society that committed the Holocaust, that is the desktop perpetrators like Adolf Eichmann, the physicians who carried used Jews for medical experiments, the concentration-camps guards, and the killing units as the hard core of the SS elite, but also “ordinary” Germans and soldiers who served in police battalions or in the drafted army, on women who served as guards or as part of the occupational regime, and not least on non-German collaborators or volunteers. The course focuses on the interrelation of individual and biographical backgrounds, mental and ideological orientations, and social and institutional arrangements: What are the reasons that made “normal” human becoming mass murderers?
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered biannually
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HIST 338 - America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1917-1991
This course will focus on the Russian-American rivalry at the center of world politics from the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 through the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Major topics include the escalating nuclear arms race, recurrent crises in Vietnam, Cuba and other parts of the Third World, and important personalities from Harry Truman and Josef Stalin to Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
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HIST 339 - Special Topics Course in Global History
The content of this course will vary by instructor.
SPRING 2019 Topic: The Making of Modern Iran, 1500 - 2009
Twentieth century Iranian history was characterized by revolutions (in 1906 and 1978), military occupation, and coups. This period demonstrated tensions between competing visions of modern Iran, forged over the preceding four centuries; the emergence of Khomeinism and Guardianship of the Jurists was never a foregone conclusion. This course will examine the history of the Iranian state and society, beginning with the emergence of a Shi’i Safavid Empire in 1501 and ending with Green Movement protests following the 2009 Presidential Election. Rejecting approaches to Iran that reduce its history to the origins of the Islamic Revolution, the course will explore the complexity of modern Iranian history, from Sufi-ruled empire to a politically fragmented monarchy to a centralizing national state. Iran has been home to diverse cultural, religious, and ideological currents. It will trace the rise of Iranian nationalism, in inclusive and exclusive forms, regional separatism, secularism, and the Islamist and left-wing opposition into and through the twentieth century. The course will seek to nuance and complicate students’ impressions of Iran by including views from Iranian women and religious and linguistic minorities. Finally, it will place this society in contexts of the Middle East, Persianate Eurasia, and global modernity.
May be repeatable for credit
Anticipated Terms Offered: very other year
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HIST 343 - American Antiquarian Society Seminar in American Studies
Given at the American Antiquarian Society (about two miles from Clark); students conduct original research in the society’s unique holdings. Students apply in the spring through Professor Neuman, English Dept.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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HIST 345 - U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East Since 1945
This course explores America’s stormy relationship with the Middle East from World War II through 9/11 and the war in Iraq, with special emphasis on oil, the Cold War, and the rise of radical Islam. Among the key topics will be the Arab-Israeli conflict, the battle for control of the Persian Gulf, and the impact of the Middle East on American popular culture.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year.
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HIST 352 - The Holocaust Through Letters and Diaries
The aim of this course is to engage in a bifocal understanding of history: from the perspective of those who experienced events as they unfolded, and from our vantage point today. Our goal is to recognize anew the potentiality of an unfolding present when many options are available, and to analyze the factors that conduced to the decisions and choices we now know were taken. What did people know, and when did they know it? What role did denial and silence play? What, if any, patterns of daily life choices emerge? Do specific human traits or values loom large when life is lived in extremis? To explore these questions we will read a range of diaries and letter collections. These may include Hidden Letters by the seventeen-year-old (in 1940) Flip Slier from a forced labor camp in the Netherlands and Letters to Sala, a girl of about the same age in a forced labor camp in Poland written by her sister in the Sosnowiec ghetto. We shall look too at the letters passed between family members separated by an ocean, one side caught in the Nazi trap, the other side safe in America. (Inter alia: Every Day lasts a Year; One Family’s Letters from Prague) Diaries provide a different lens. We will scrutinize the perspectives they offer, each from its own place and time: Mihail Sebastian (Diaries, 1935-1944) at home in Bucharest; Lena Jedwab (Girl With Two Landscapes), a Polish girl who found refuge in the Soviet Union; Etty Hillesum (An Interrupted Life) about the same age, living in Amsterdam and sent to the Westerbork transit camp; and Abraham Lewin (A Cup of Tears), a husband and father in Warsaw ghetto.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically
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HIST 353 - Beauty, Gender, and Power around the World, 1800 to the Present
The costs of beauty are enormous. We alter our physical appearance to be perceived beautiful. We invest considerable resources to acquire objects and services that make us feel beautiful, often harming ourselves to reach unattainable ideals. And, undoubtedly, we suffer emotionally from these desires and efforts. Yet, we seldom ask ourselves how beauty norms and practices are constructed or why we chose to sacrifice so much to achieve them.
This course examines changing and multifaceted beauty standards around the world (Asia, Europe, America, Africa, and Oceania) with the aim of deconstructing them in order to understand the power dynamics embedded in ideal appearances. Positioning beauty at the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality, we will examine its construction through political and cultured readings on the meanings of body parts and body languages (i.e. hair, face, teeth, skin, smile, and feet). This course encourages students to problematize contemporary beauty templates in various countries and cultures. We will also use our examination of beauty as a way to further develop student’s skills in historical research, reasoning, and writing.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually
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HIST 354 - Age of Atlantic Revolution
The half-century after 1776 was a period marked by the violent pursuit of political liberty and economic opportunity on both sides of the Atlantic. In North America, the Thirteen Colonies were transformed into the United States of America informed by an Enlightenment ideology of rationalism, secularism and democracy, which had long been cultivated in Europe. Tapping the same sources, the French rebels soon saw their revolution degenerate into a bloody spectacle. Another consequence of the French Revolution was the rebellion in the Caribbean colony of St. Domingue, in the course of which slavery was abolished and independence achieved.
Anticipated Terms Offered: N/A
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HIST 356 - The British Empire
By the early 20th century, one in five people in the world lived in the British Empire, a vast territory that covered a quarter of the globe. This class will examine the evolution of this empire from the very first colonies to the present day. We will explore India and Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, Africa, Australia, the Middle East, Canada–and, of course, the origins of the United States. In doing so, we will consider issues of immigration, emigration, settlement, race, religion, politics, revolution, violence, war, culture, literature, and just what it means to be an empire.
Anticipated Terms Offered: varies
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HIST 359 - Special Topics in European History
This course addresses current or timely topics, that are in a pilot phase or that are known to be one time offerings. Content & topics vary by semester and instructor. May be repeatable for credit.
SPRING 2019 Topic: THE BLACK DEATH: MEDICINE, CULTURE, AND CRISIS IN MEDIEVAL EURASIA What disease was the Black Death of the later Middle Ages? How many people died and how did the survivors rebuild their lives and societies? Thanks to recent, revolutionary advances in paleogenetics, bioarcheology, and epidemiology, we can now answer these questions definitively: the Black Death was indeed plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, and it killed roughly half of all people in Europe, the Near East, and Central Asia during the fourteenth century. But these scientific discoveries demand that historians reevaluate the primary sources and historiography of the Black Death with a new understanding, now informed by genetic and genomic data. Students in this seminar will do just that, as we closely read and discuss the latest analyses of plague as both a pathogen and a historical actor, and explore the consequences of applying both historical and scientific methods to diseases of the past. (No previous experience in biology or genetics is required.)
Special Topics: Fall 2018: Crusade and Jihad: Medieval Holy Wars. The Crusades remain one of the best known, most controversial, and least understood events in Western history, as the imagery of crusading has been embraced and manipulated by presidents, terrorists, artists, and teachers. In this course students will explore the creation of the idea of “holy war” and jihad in Christian and Muslim societies and the key events and players of the medieval crusades to the Near East from the launch of the First Crusade in 1095 to the end of the Middle Ages. You will read primary sources from Christian and Muslim perspectives and examine some of the key historical arguments about the crusades, crusading, and their impact on European and Middle Eastern societies. The class will also explore the cultural memory of the Crusades in Western society and its impact on our interactions with the Islamic Middle East in modern society.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Every other year
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HIST 360 - Rescue and Resistance During the Holocaust
Investigates rescue and resistance activities during the second World War. Our aim will be to come to a critical understanding of what we mean by “rescue” and “resistance,” and to analyze how these undertakings were organized, who participated in them and why people felt compelled to do so. Looks at the role and function (if any) of age, gender, degree of religious observance, political affiliation and social class in our attempts to understand not only what activities were undertaken, but the motivation for such actions.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically
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HIST 362 - Genocide, Denial, Facing History and Reconciliation
After the term “Genocide” was coined for macro crimes in 1948 by the United Nations, the word became not only one of the most important legal, social and political terms, but also an important inter-disciplinary field in the Social Sciences. History, sociology, political science, international law, and psychology, among others, have developed their own fields of genocide specialization. The usage or non-usage of the term for certain macro crimes in recent years has become an important political problem of our time. Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur are only some examples. This course considers the emergence, definition and meaning of the term genocide - particularly the development of the concept of genocide in International Law and how was the term created by Raphael Lemkin. Special place is given to the discussions in the UN leading to the final adoption and definition of the UN Convention in 1948 and the problems arising from the 1948 definitions. In addition to legal concepts, the course concentrates on the different sociological concepts of genocide, taking a closer look at theoretical explanations of genocide. Other topics include: question of premeditation in decision-making process, genocide denial, prevention of genocide, and problems of the comparative approach to case studies. Finally, the course examines why societies should deal with atrocities in their past, the meaning of facing history, and the different forms of dealing with past (amnesia, retributive justice, restorative justice, truth and reconciliation committees, etc.).
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically
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HIST 366 - Refugees
The aim of this course will be to investigate and analyze the history of the “Refugee Question” in Europe and America, and to explore the impact of these international and national debates on the lives of the asylum seekers.
Prerequisites: Graduate course - undergraduates welcome with permission.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Periodically
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HIST 368 - Special Topics:
Content & topics vary by semester and instructor. May be repeated for credit (2 times)
SPRING 2020 Topic: BORDERLANDS: VIOLENCE AND COEXISTENCE
A border is a line separating two sovereign entities-crossing a border means switching into a different state. But borderlands are also spaces of interaction. They are characterized by diversity, malleable identities, and-at times-violence. This course explores the modern history of borderland regions, including case studies in Central and East Central Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the US-Mexico border. Looking at these examples we will consider how populations in these regions coexist, as well as the processes that transform groups in the borderlands into perpetrators and objects of intense violence.
FALL 2019 Topic: HOLOCAUST MEMORY
This seminar will examine the development of Holocaust memory after 1945, with a special emphasis on communist and post-communist Europe and the role Holocaust memory has played in European integration. Together we will explore the relationship between Holocaust memory as individual experience, family history, national project, and a transnational discourse of European identity and human rights. How have individual and family memories challenged, shaped, or conformed to national, European, or global representations of the Holocaust? Students will think about how the memory of the Holocaust is framed, mediated, and performed through readings of important secondary scholarship, eyewitness reports, postwar testimonies, memoirs, and relevant works of fiction and film. Students with an interest in the memory of genocide and violence in other geographical regions and chronologies are encouraged to attend and bring their different perspectives to the discussion.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Varied
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HIST 369 - The History and Culture of Business in East Asia
Sony, Samsung, Xiaomi, Alibaba: Where did these giants of industry come from, and where are the economies of East Asia headed? This course will approach the successes of business in East Asia from a historical viewpoint. In it, we will approach “business” not as a single game with universal set of rules, but rather as commercial activities that is the result of specific historical and cultural processes that precede this century and our own lifetimes. We will first look at how business was conceptualized and regulated in Confucian society, and then examine contemporary questions or issues concerning the practice of business in East Asia. In the final phase of the course, participants will form teams that will collaborate in research, reviewing the history of a specific trade, and finally pitching business plans to the class.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually
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HIST 371 - Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Europe, 1100-1900
European Christians, Jews, and Muslims have lived alongside each other, in tension and in tolerance, for well over a millennium. Modern conflicts between these monotheistic religions dominate the European news cycle and political imagination. The recent history of the relationship between European Christians, Jews and Muslims is well-known and much-discussed, both in academic and popular analyses. But what exactly are the roots of these conflicts and confluences? This class will examine the relationship between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Europe from 1100-1900. It will explore economic, social, cultural, intellectual, and political developments during this period. In doing so, it will examine alliance and antagonism; toleration and expulsion; assimilation and separation; and the long history of contemporary issues.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Regularly
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HIST 376 - Collective Memory and Mass Violence
There is no present and no future without the past. This is true not least when it comes to mass violence: the way societies decide about whether to engage in war or even genocide depends on their collective experiences with events of mass violence in the past, and on which lessons they have drawn from these experiences. This seminar examines how societies, nations, and political movements fabricate, transmit, and consume collective memory of war, genocide, and terror. It will inquire into different theories of, and approaches to, the concept of collective memory and apply them to major events of mass violence and political terror in the 20th century, such as World War I, World War II, the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, Apartheid, and the recent wars and the genocide in former Yugoslavia. The course will explore a broad range of different dimensions, issues, and mediums of collective memory, such as war trials, traumas, memoirs and testimonies, fictional literature and popular culture, memorials and museums and other representations of collective memory. Particular attention will be paid to how national identities shape and rely on the memory of mass violence. Fulfills the historical perspective.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered biannually
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HIST 379 - Massacres, Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention: Western Powers in the Balkans and the Middle East
Course begins with a general introduction to the subject of Humanitarian Intervention and will examine the Western powers’ policy towards the Balkans and the Middle East with the establishment of the Concert of Europe in 1815. The different case studies will be: Ottoman Greeks in 1821-33; Lebanon and Syria (1860-61); Crete (1866-69), Serbia and Bulgaria (1875-78) and Macedonia (1903-08) and analyze the different types of intervention and non-intervention policies of the Great Powers. Seminar
Prerequisites: The student should have taken at least one course in Holocaust Concentration.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring Annually
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HIST 381 - China since 1949: State, Economy and Family in the People’s Republic
This course explores China’s historical development from the founding of the People’s Republic (PRC) in 1949 through the early years of the 21st century. Rather than attempting to cover all aspects of PRC history, the course focuses on three interconnected themes: the nature of the modern state, the shift from a socialist to post-socialist economy, and the changing dynamics of family life. Topics include agrarian revolution and land reform in the 1950s, the impact of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the economic reform program of the 1980s and 1990s, political protest, family change, and the role of migrant labor in China’s growing economy. We shall investigate these issues through a variety of sources: scholarly monographs, primary documents, fiction, ethnography, memoir, feature film, and documentaries. While there are no formal prerequisites, some background in Asian studies and/or 20th century history is highly recommended.
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HIST 385 - Proposal Writing
Offered for Variable credit for History PhD students who are writing their proposal.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every semester
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HIST 386 - The Vietnam War
Explores the Vietnam War, emphasizing American involvement in Vietnam in the decade 1965 to 1975. Includes a survey of the history and culture of Vietnam, French experience in Vietnam, and American involvement with Vietnam from World War II to the present.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically
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HIST 388 - Sem: Public History
The topic of this course may vary each time it is offered. May be repeated for credit (taken a max of 2 times).
The title for Spring 2017 is Public History: Race, Community, and Photography. This course is devoted to research and preparation for the photography exhibition, “William Bullard: Reimagining an American Community of Color, 1897-1917,” which will be open at the Worcester Art Museum in October 2017. The exhibition will feature 80 photographs of people of color taken in Worcester. In addition to gaining hands-on experience by preparing wall text for the exhibition and contributing to an accompanying website, students will learn about the larger contexts of African American history and people of color in Worcester at the turn of the twentieth century; about nineteenth century portraiture; the use of photography by black Americans for both personal and political purposes; and the many challenges of interpreting and presenting these images to the public. Taught with Nancy Burns, Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Worcester Art Museum.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically
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HIST 391 - Advanced Topics
This course addresses current or timely topics, that are in a pilot phase or that are known to be one time offerings. Content & topics vary by semester and instructor. May be repeated for credit (2 times).
SPRING 2019 Topic: AMERICA CONFRONTS RADICAL ISLAM This course will explore America’s uneasy encounter with the Muslim world from the late 18th century to the present, with special emphasis on the Cold War and the post-Cold War era. Among the issues to be addressed are the rise of Arab nationalism, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the emergence of Islamic radicalism. We will examine not only well publicized topics such as the Iranian Revolution and civil wars in Afghanistan but also lower profile matters such as the rise of Hamas and Hezbollah. Here is the overarching question that will preoccupy us this spring: “Is the clash between America and the Muslim world the product of fundamental ideological, strategic, and economic disagreements, or is it the result of cultural misunderstanding and mutual misperception?”
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every other year
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HIST 393 - African American Social and Political Movements
This course will examine the African American struggle against social and political oppression in America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specifically, students in this course will explore black American involvement in the Antislavery Movement, the Women’s Club movement, the Harlem Renaissance, Anti-colonial activities, and the rise and fall of the Black Power and Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. By the end of the course, students will understand how black-led organizational efforts helped to transform America’s social and political landscape.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered bi-annually.
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HIST 394 - Dissertation Writing
This is a variable unit, graduate course for students engaged in writing a Ph.D. Dissertation.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Every Semester
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HIST 395 - Dangerous Women
This course will explore the history of dangerous women from Bible through the present, concentrating most heavily on early modern Europe. We will focus primarily on England, France and Germany (though occasionally we will draw on scholarship about the U.S. and other regions). We will examine discourses of dangerous women developed in religious writings, myth, literature and fairy tales, medicine, crime reporting, social science and legal texts in order to interrogate the very concept of the dangerous woman and ask why certain women at certain times were considered dangerous. We will also look at the experiences and treatment of women labeled dangerous specifically examining saints, heretics, prostitutes, witches, step-mothers, queens, lesbians, criminals, mentally-ill women and women’s rights activists.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically.
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HIST 397 - Master’s Thesis
Universitywide course number reserved for work on the Master’s thesis. Variable Credit.
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HIST 399 - Graduate Readings
Graduate students construct an independent study course on a topic approved and directed by a faculty member. Offered for variable credit.
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HIST 1000 - Modern Germany
Germany has stood at the center of world events throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; its crises have profoundly impacted Europe and the United States for the past 150 years. German unification in 1871 profoundly upset the balance of power in Europe. Germans helped plunge Europe into World War I, were responsible for the Second World War, and perpetrated the Holocaust. After 1945, West Germany, a NATO member, developed into one of the strongest economies in the world, while East Germany, part of the Warsaw Pact, became one of the most repressive regimes in Europe. Today, Germany’s stability is at the heart of a new post-Cold War Europe and the driving force behind the European Union.
The unifying theme of this course will be the search for a stable national identity in times of great upheaval. As we explore the creation of modern Germany out of a hodgepodge of states in which people often spoke mutually unintelligible dialects, we will ask what it meant to be German and what Germans chose to remember and forget about their history. Beginning with the transformation of 19th century Germany into an industrial world power with a thriving, liberal middle-class, we will examine Germans’ role on the European stage up to 1914, in World War One, the Weimar Republic, during National Socialism, the Holocaust, and the European Union. We will pay particular attention to the “catastrophe” that was German history from 1914-1945, asking whether Germany developed along a special path (Sonderweg), what made possible the rise of Hitler, yet remaining open to the possibilities of the Weimar Republic. We will then explore the division of communist East and capitalist West Germany and the fall of the Iron Curtain, and ask how Germans successfully transitioned from autocracy to democracy after 1945.
Anticipated Terms Offered: varies
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HIST 1200 - American History Through Film
SUMMER 2018: American History Through Film 1870-1985
The history of the United States has long been a canvas upon which filmmakers have painted an ever evolving picture of the American experience. This course will use films about the American past as a jumping off point to discuss the ways in which American history has been portrayed on the silver screen, as well as exploring themes and important moments in American history more broadly speaking. One note that needs to be made at the beginning: this is not a film course in the traditional sense. The technical aspects of film making and the finer points of the cinematic craft will not be the main thrust of the course discussions (though it may come up from time to time).
May be repeatable for credit once for a maximum of two units of credit.
Course Designation/Attribute: HP (summer only)
Anticipated Terms Offered: summer
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HIST 1560 - A History of Russia: to 1861
A study of Russia from the Kievan period to the emancipation of 1861 with special attention to such topics as the Byzantine influence, Westernization, technological development, art and literature, and the Russian revolutionary tradition. Emphasis is on societal and cultural evolution, as well as essential political problems.
Course Designation/Attribute: HP (summer only)
Anticipated Terms Offered: n/a
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HIST 1570 - Twentieth Century Russia: 1861 to Present
This interdisciplinary survey course focuses on the major political, intellectual, ideological, social and cultural forces that shaped Soviet Russia during the pre- and post-revolutionary movement and the politics of the autocracy to the Brezhnev regime in the 1970s. Themes include the Russian autocracy, the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, the origins of the Cold War, the rise of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev, de-Stalinization and Soviet foreign policy. Students also examine a series of more contemporary topics of the Commonwealth in transition.
Course Designation/Attribute: HP (summer only)
Anticipated Terms Offered: varies
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HIST 2040 - World War I: The Great War in Society, Literature, and Culture: 1914-1919
Described as the axis on which the 20th century has revolved, World War I stands out in history as the cataclysmic backdrop to the beginnings of the modern age. We will consider the origins of the war in the industrial and imperial expansionism of the previous half-century and the determinism of diplomatic alliances that locked countries into a conflict perceived as unavoidable.
Anticipated Terms Offered: varies
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HIST 2070 - Twentieth Century Europe: Versailles to European Union
In 1900 Europe was made up of the most dominant industrial and politically powerful states in the world. No other region could compare with Europe in military power and political influence. Only the United States compared with Europe in terms of wealth and productivity. We will investigate the cataclysmic events in Europe from the conclusion of World War I to the rise of a united Europe and the European union formed at Maastricht in 1993.
Course Designation/Attribute: HP (summer only)
Anticipated Terms Offered: varies
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HIST 2080 - The Rise Of Modern Europe: Renaissance to World War I
Investigates the emergence of early modern Europe from the Christ-centric Middle ages, the secularity of the Southern Renaissance, the emergence of Christian humanism in northern Europe, the rise of the modern nation-state, the Glorious Revolution in England, the Enlightenment and French Revolution, the industrial revolution and rise of modern nationalism, the revolution of 1848, the rise of realpolitik and the modern nation state, Imperialism and the causes of World War I. In addition, the course will study the rise of urbanization and the middle classes, the emergence of political parties and mass movements and the rise of modern ideologies such as nationalism, socialism and Marxism. Great figures such as Petrarch, Erasmus, Luther, Voltaire, Cromwell, Robespierre, Bismarck and Napoleon will be studied.
Anticipated Terms Offered: varies
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HIST 2110 - Warfare and Society in Modern Europe
Modern European history cannot be understood without also studying the history of war. Nor can military developments in Europe be viewed in isolation, without considering the broader social, political, cultural, economic, and technological context within which Europeans fought their wars. This course explores the military history of Europe and those portions of the world in which European military institutions and practices dominated from the French Revolution through the present. We will situate the European imagination and practice of war within the larger fabric of European “state-making” and society and relate military strategy and operations to the pursuit of global power and empire. Examining European practices of machine warfare, military exterminism, and genocidal war, we will pay special attention to languages, conceptions, and experiences of war and the use of military force across the civil-military divide. This is not a course devoted to tactics and military operations. Although we will not ignore the development of strategies within which to apply organized, socially sanctioned armed violence, our goal is to to integrate the study of warfare in Europe with social, political, economic, and gender history in order to better understand the all-encompassing activity that war has become.
Course Designation/Attribute: HP (summer only)
Anticipated Terms Offered: varies
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HIST 2180 - Malefica: Origin of Witchcraft
Examines the mythological inheritance of European civilization that eventuated in the Witch craze of the Middle Ages through the Reformation as well as the development of pagan Wicca from the 18th century to the present day. Topics covered include goddess mythology, the Witch craze, Salem, Wicca and ecofeminism. Readings will include poetry, fiction, and drama as well as historical documents and various myths. Prerequisite:A compositon course or VE fulfilled.
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HIST 2210 - Rise, Fall and Rebirth: Germany in the 20th Century
Germany has stood at the center of world events throughout the twentieth century; its crises have profoundly impacted Europe and the United States for over the past hundred years. Germans helping plunge Europe into Worl War I, were responsible for the Second World War, and perpetrated the Holocaust. Beginning with the transformation of 19th century Germany into an industrial world power with a thriving, liberal middle-class, we will examine Germans’ role in World War One, the Weimar Republic, and during National Socialism and the Holocaust. We will pay particular attention to the “catastrophe” that was German history from 1914-1945, asking whether Germany developed along a special path (Sonderweg), what made possible the rise of Hitler, yet remaining open to the possibilities of the Weimar Republic. We will then explore the division of communist East and capitalist West Germany and the fall of the Iron Curtain, and ask how Germans successfully transitioned from autocracy to democracy after 1945. After 1945, West Germany, a NATO memeber, developed into one of the strongest economies in the world, while East Germany, part of the Warsaw Pact, became one of the most repressive regimes in Europe. Today, Germany’s stability is at the heart of a new post-Cold War Europe and the driving force behind the European Union.
Course Designation/Attribute: HP (summer only)
Anticipated Terms Offered: varied
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HIST 2230 - The Rise and Fall of Modern China: 1839-1949
Considers the essential themes and events in China from the beginnings of the 19th century in late Imperial China to the origins of the People’s Republic of China. We will examine the social and political structures of the late imperial state, the effects of foreign imperialism and peasant rebellion in the nineteenth century and the sources and development of modern revolution in the twentieth century. Topics considered include Western Imperialism and domestic rebellion, the Opium War, the Taiping Revolution, the dynastic revival and the Self-Strengthening Movement, the Boxer Rebellion, the Republic Revolution in 1911 and Warlordism, the May 4th Movement, the rise of the Guomindang and the Civil War. Emphasis will be placed on the political, social and cultural transformation of China in the twentieth century. Serves as an introduction to major personalities and conflicts in Modern Chinese history and attempts to analyze the degree of continuity and change in China in such areas as politics, economics, social organization, foreign relations and intellectual and cultural developments.
Course Designation/Attribute: HP (summer only)
Anticipated Terms Offered: varies
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HIST 2240 - People’s Republic of China:1949-Present
A general survey of the People’s Republic of China from the Manchu Dynasty in 1911 and the emergence of the Chinese Civil War and the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949 to the present. Involves a detailed chronological overview of the historical events and causes leading up to the 1949 Revolution, the origins of the Chinese Communist ideology known as Maoism, the struggle of the Chinese Communist Party in the early years to collectivize agriculture and to industrialize, the Great Leap Forward, the Five Year Plans and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. We will attempt to penetrate the Chinese village in order to understand traditional rural culture and the nature of peasant society. In addition, we will emphasize the historical and ideological evolution of the CCP with special emphasis on Mao and the post-Mao era.
Course Designation/Attribute: HP (summer only)
Anticipated Terms Offered: varies
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HRD 1530 - Principles of Management
Introduces the fundamental managerial of functions planning, organizing, lending and controlling. Through an examination of the major motivational theories of management, we will work to increase our awareness of the personal skills required to be a manager and learn to apply managerial planning, and organizing processes as well as design a control system to measure results.
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HS 010 - Dialogue Seminar
This half-credit course is intended to deepen students’ understanding and experience of dialogue through a small set of readings, short papers, and participation in in-class dialogues. Our conversations will draw from the experiences and issues raised by the public events in the Higgins School dialogue symposium. Students should plan on attending up to seven Dialogue Symposium events over the course of the semester.
In Fall 2018, the dialogue seminar will examine the topic of evidence. How do we know what we know? Why do we believe what we believe? While it is proverbial to say that facts don’t lie, the interpretation of evidence can be messy and even contradictory. What role does instinct play in our decision making, and what obligations do we have to look beyond personal and societal perspective, especially when what is accepted (or rejected) as evidence can have far-reaching implications for many other individual lives beyond our own? How do we navigate unfamiliar and even uncomfortable topics-on the one hand truly listening to the expertise of specialists while on the other hand honestly hearing critiques of systems of knowledge that privilege existing power structures? The expansion of knowledge and the formulation of belief is never simple, nor is it always easy to arrive at new conclusions or embrace new concepts. Explore what it means to discover and interpret, to listen and rebut, to learn and reconsider, and, throughout, to better understand evidence in all its forms.
May be repeatable for credit.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall
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HS 012 - Mindful Choices
What holds my attention, and calls for me to explore it further? What do I enjoy, and what do I care most about? Where do I find a sense of meaning and purpose?
How do my interests and concerns relate to the choices I am making in my education? Do I listen well to what my intuition is telling me about my life choices? How do I visualize myself participating in our society and world when I graduate?
Students are invited to explore and reflect on these questions in a new art-making course called Mindful Choices. This guided, intensive arts immersion will offer students a chance to engage in creative practice and reflection as they consider paths of study at this important juncture of their undergraduate career, and encourage a more conscious commitment to the direction of their education. The process of exploration and discernment will be supported through artistic practice in the visual arts, music or creative writing.
Students will receive a half-credit for the course, which is pass/fail.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall and Spring
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HS 100 - Symposium Seminar
Students will explore the Higgins School’s symposium theme in-depth through event attendance, readings and screenings, in-class discussions, and short written assignments. While the symposium program is interdisciplinary by nature, the section instructor will draw particularly from their areas of specialization. This half-unit course may be added to a standard four-course load without fifth course approval, is offered on a “pass/fail” grading basis, and may be repeatable for credit. As with other Higgins School courses, this class is designed to help students to strengthen and enhance their college experience and to forge connections across and beyond conventional coursework.
Topic for Fall ‘19 and Spring 2020 “Bodies” - What if we talked not about “the body” but about bodies? In the shift from singular to plural comes a movement away from abstraction and its claims to universality and toward specific embodiments and diverse lived experience.
To pluralize bodies is to begin breaking down rhetorical binaries-body and soul, mind and body, sickness and health, pleasure and pain, flesh and spirit. To consider actual bodies is to interrogate and re-engage familiar metaphors with new perspective-body as temple, bodies of work, bodies politic, body as machine.
In a social sense, our bodies are how we encounter the world, and how the world first comes to perceive us. Bodies are sites of desire and projection, bias and recognition. How can difference itself become an alternative foundation from which to consider continuities of experience?
In an academic sense, to speak of bodies is to invite interdisciplinary conversations. Scientific and philosophical inquiry seeks to understand what animates bodies. Cultural, social, and political analysis traces the contours of similarities and differences resulting from embodiment. Theoretical paradigms and creative practice can both critique and remake what bodies are, how they signify, and where the boundaries of physical limitation lie.
Throughout, bodies incorporate and synthesize contradiction. They are simultaneously metaphor and reality, machine and sensorium, the mortal coil and the site of transformation and wonder.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Most semesters
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HS 110 - Engaging the Arts
Students will explore a range of visual and performing arts through programming at Clark and in the larger Worcester community while developing aesthetic understanding, critical judgment, and appreciation for creative process and the challenges of public presentation. While Clark Arts and related Higgins School programming in music, visual arts, and theater provide the core opportunities for event attendance, students are encouraged to seek out additional opportunities on campus and beyond. Weekly class discussions foster a deeper understanding of the history, aesthetics, politics, practicalities, and processes of creative work and its presentation. In-class readings, screenings, and listening sessions as well as creative exploration across a range of media will allow students to develop their own ideas for practice-based projects, such as creative work, criticism, advocacy, education, and outreach. This half-unit course may be added to a standard four-course load without fifth course approval, is offered on a “pass/fail” grading basis, and is not repeatable for credit. As with other Higgins School courses, this class is designed to help students to strengthen and enhance their college experience and to forge connections across and beyond conventional coursework.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Most semesters, beginning Spring 18
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HS 120 - Special Topics
Courses listed as “Special Topics” are in a pilot phase or are known to be one-time offerings. Special Topics courses can vary by semester.
Fall 2019 Topic: Introduction to Higher Education
This course is designed for incoming students who are the first in their family to go to college. In addition to gaining skills that promote college success, students will benefit from the small class size and use discussion, short readings, and interactive activities to explore their relationship to the University, its diverse constituencies, college in general, and their own goals and aspirations.
May be repeatable for credit.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall 2019
Placement Guidelines
The course will NOT be visible on the regular grid. Students will be notified of the class via first-year advising and given the CRN in order to register.
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HS 299 - Directed Study
Undergraduates, typically juniors and seniors, construct an independent study course on a topic approved and directed by a faculty member. Offered for variable credit. May be repeatable for credit.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Every Semester
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ID 105 - Visualizing Human Rights: Culture, Law, and the Politics of Representation
What do human rights look like? This seminar examines the advocacy strategies NGOs use to make human rights visible to different audiences the general public, government officials, policy-makers, international courts, etc. Particular attention is focused on the tactics NGOs employ to mobilize expert opinions, popular sentiment, and material resources to contest the status quo and to promote the protection of human rights. Students will gain familiarity with some of the key actors, legal frameworks, and best practices used in the “human rights community,” including their main strengths and weaknesses. They will also develop a grounded understanding of human rights campaigns and the role advocacy efforts play in shaping international affairs, legal proceedings, and moral debates. Finally, students will enhance their ability to critically analyze and to ethically employ the digital technologies (e.g. mobile phones, social media, crisis mapping, satellite imagery) that shape how human rights violations are visualized today.
Course Designation/Attribute: VP
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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ID 106 - Healthy Cities
What makes a city a healthy place to live, work, and go to school? How does the health of a “place” affect the health of the individuals who live there? Who is responsible for the health of a city’s residents? The goal of this course is to introduce students to key challenges in urban public health and to Worcester, MA as a city determined to be the “the healthiest city in New England by 2020” in Worcester, MA. Students in the course will acquire an understanding of the key concepts and methodologies from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, and public health, and how they employ those tools to examine urban health problems.
Students in this course will explore and engage in a wide range of topics related to healthy cities. This is an entry course to the newly established collaboration between Clark and the Worcester Division of Public Health. Students who enroll in this class will get in-depth exposure to issues related to healthy cities, rights to the city, and environmental and urban issues that can potentially impact (positively or negatively) the health of its residents. Health, here, of course will be considered as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (WHO 1948). Students will have to critically reflect on reading material, but will also be introduced to interpreting basic health data and relating it to the urban environment in which they live. They will also get the opportunity to interact with public health professionals from the Department of Public Health, and apply through field trips what they learn in class to the real world.
Course Designation/Attribute: GP
Anticipated Terms Offered: Piloted Fall 2014
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ID 108 - What is Public Health?
What is public health? What is the role of public health in preventing disease and responding to different kinds of health challenges? Who are the key players in public health, and what are their roles and responsibilities? In this course students will be introduced to the field of public health as a mode of inquiry that focuses on population health and as a government institution that is designed to protect the public’s wellbeing. With a growing recognition in the United States that every citizen deserves health care, informed and engaged citizens must understand the role that public health plays in maintaining a healthy populace. This course will examine the many intricacies of public health in the United States by focusing on the history of public health and the responsibilities and functions of public health and health care agencies. Much of this inquiry will employ classic case studies in public health, from seat belt laws to the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina.
Anticipated Terms Offered: bi-annually
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ID 120 - Introduction to Socio-Cultural Anthropology
From Cannibals to Corporations: Humanity in Context. The purpose of this course is to provide students with a rich anthropological understanding of culture. What does it mean to be human across our many differences and similarities? How do people give meaning to their lives across time and space? How are some of the most intimate features of our lives socially patterned? Students will learn to see the familiar in the strange and the strange in the familiar-in other words to appreciate something about other cultures and, through this mirror, to learn something new about their own. The class also provides an introduction to anthropological history, ethnographic method, and social theory. From the U.S. suburbs to hunter-gatherers in the Amazon, students will explore the diversity of human societies around the world through the lens of critical issues such as development, power, identity, war, globalization, inequality, and cultural survival in the twenty-first century. Through class assignments, students will also have the opportunity to use tools of anthropological observation and problem-solving. Throughout the semester, we will discuss the politics and practicality of applying anthropological knowledge for a more just world.
Course Designation/Attribute: GP
Anticipated Terms Offered: -
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ID 121 - Culture, Health, and Development: What Makes Us Sick?
Why are there so many different approaches to health and healing worldwide? How are the experiences of illness and suffering fundamental to human lives and societies? What are the major health challenges of the 21st century and how will we resolve them? This course introduces students to the intersection of medical anthropology with international development and global health. The course explores theoretical and methodological approaches in medical anthropology and how anthropological tools can be used to study health and disease. We will explore how different societies cope with illnesses from epilepsy to HIV/AIDS and how medical anthropology offers a unique way of addressing health problems in domestic and international settings.
Course Designation/Attribute: GP & DI
Anticipated Terms Offered: varied
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ID 125 - Tales from the Far Side: Contemporary Dilemmas in Development
Discussions of geopolitics invariably refer to the problems of Third World or ‘under’ development. What is so compelling about the idea of development? Why does it ail much of the so-called Third World? What are some of the solutions to development dilemmas: neoliberal market reforms or social justice programming attention to women, ethnic groups and/or the environment? Is the development enterprise fundamentally flawed as some postcolonial scholars claim? This course introduces students to key histories, concepts and debates in international development through critical and analytical engagements with fiction, films and theoretical literature on the subject.
Course Designation/Attribute: GP
Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually
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ID 131 - Local Action/Global Change: The Urban Context
In this seminar, undergraduate students at Clark, along with a selected number of activists and practitioners who are based in Worcester, elsewhere in the United States, or in the Global South will interrogate the ‘local’, the ‘global’, and explore the meanings and strategies to achieve social change and transformation. Students will do so by reflecting critically on specific human rights, social justice and sustainable development issues or causes.
Through examining selected readings from the interdisciplinary field of development studies, and from political science, sociology, anthropology, international human rights law, gender studies, literature, art, and film; and through specific case studies, the students will learn about ways theorists, activists, civil society organizations, social movements and networks have conceptualized actions and strategies for change.
Students will supplement learning in class and from course readings, with practical community and global engagement with selected organizations and networks (especially youth networks and organizations) in Worcester, elsewhere in the United States, and globally. Students will utilize the Internet (including email, Skype, Facebook and Twitter) for communication and action.
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ID 132 - Research Methods for International Development and Social Change
This course examines the value of ethnographic forms of research and knowledge production, its conceits, as well as its limits. While other genres of research design and methods will be considered, the primary focus will be upon qualitative ones, including participatory techniques developed by field practitioners. Special emphasis will be placed upon cultivating a critical stance towards these methods, the cultural assumptions that underlie them, and the impact relations of power have upon the research process as a whole. Towards this end, assignments (including a mini-ethnography) are designed to help students: 1) design their own research project; 2) select methods that are appropriate to it; 3) gain the intellectual flexibility and confidence to make adjustments as necessary in “the field”; and 4) to reflect upon the inter-personal dynamics of the research process during the write up phase of their project.
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ID 133 - Gender and Refugee Issues in International Development
More than 40 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced as a result of conflict and natural disasters. Some are considered refugees who have fled their home countries, while others are people who remain internally displaced within their own nation-state borders. How does displacement affect women and men differently and according to their marital status or age? How are the needs of women, children, the disabled, LBGTQI populations taken into consideration across the refugee cycle (from the moment of first displacement until the return ‘home’)? What key agencies work on displacement and refugee issues and how do they conceptualize their needs? These questions can be answered by untangling the nexus of displacement, gender, refugees and resettlement. In this course, students will analyze intersecting strands of literature: gender and development and the displacement and resettlement literature. Lectures, writings, country case studies and films will illuminate the gender dimensions of post-conflict and post-disaster resettlement of displaced population. Students will have the opportunity to strengthen their critical thinking, presentation and writing skills through close reading, in-class discussions, exams.
Course Designation/Attribute: GP
Anticipated Terms Offered: Varies
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ID 207 - Beyond the Population Bomb: Rethinking population and the environment in an era of climate change
Population, or “overpopulation,” has long been blamed as a primary reason for environmental problems, including climate change. In this class, we will examine the gendered and racialized ways that environmental thinkers have framed population in relation to resource scarcity, food insecurity, conflict and violence, environmental degradation and climate change. Starting from the 1948 bestsellers Our Plundered Planet and Road to Survival to the 2014 coffee table book, Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot, we will analyze environmental discourses that call for population reduction to address environmental issues. We will explore how these discourses influence environmental activism, impact sexual and reproductive health policy, and fuel anti-immigrant rhetoric, while obscuring the complex contributors to environmental problems. In the class, we will look to reproductive, environmental and climate justice movements to find frameworks that propose action on environmental issues while fighting for social justice.
Prerequisites: ID 121 or ID 125
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall
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ID 208 - Health (in)equity: social determinants and policy solutions
Even in the most affluent countries and cities, those who have more access to resources and social capital, tend to live longer and healthier lives. Why? What makes a city a healthy place to live, work, play, and go to school? How does the health of a “place” affect the health of the individuals who live there? Who is responsible for the health of a city’s residents? What is the link between economics, policy, environment, and health? How do the social constructions of race, gender, and class, influence the quality of health one receives and their access to health care resources?
In this course, we define “social determinants” as the circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, work and age, and the systems put in place to deal with illness. These circumstances are in turn shaped by a wider set of forces: economics, social policies, and politics.
Upon completion of the course, students will be able to explain the link between social, economic, political, and environmental factors that affect health; the use of indicators to assess determinants; the main theories and methods of assessing social determinants; and how diseases are patterned in specific (and predictable) ways in a city. Students will also explore case studies that demonstrate how sound economic and development policies lead to an overall improvement of the health of a population.
NOTE: This course will satisfy the requirements for the Graduate Health Certificate in Community and Global Health and the MHS in Community and Global Health
Prerequisites: ID 108 What is Public Health? ID 106 Healthy Cities ID 121 Culture, Health, and Development: What Makes Us Sick?
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall
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ID 212 - Development Management in Developing Countries: Concepts, Contexts, and Problems
In attempting to fulfill the real and perceived needs and aspirations of their people, countries in the Global South have employed (through both coercion and agency) various approaches to manage development policies. Yet such development initiatives and the processes of implementing them face enumerable structural constraints, both local and global. This upper level undergraduate and graduate seminar engages with these concerns and introduces students to the administrative and policy contexts of development in “third world” settings. Consequently, we will explore such ideas and practices as public bureaucracy, the new public management, and “good governance” in developing countries. The course also examines major conditions that developing countries encounter as they pursue “development” aspirations, including: public debt, international migration, international free/fair trade, and crime and violence. We approach these subjects primarily from the standpoint of developing states, while locating such concerns in a larger global setting.
Course Designation/Attribute: GP
Anticipated Terms Offered: Bi-annually
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ID 214 - Education and Youth in a Global Context
The human population is younger today than ever before. At the same time, education is seen as the most influential source of socialization for youth to become citizens, workers and change agents. This course, “Education and Youth in a Global Context,” is a graduate and upper level undergraduate (juniors and seniors) seminar that explores the natural synergies of youth and education from a global perspective. We will analyze the intersection of education and youth in thematic areas such as: self-discovery, identity and belonging; jobs and livelihood; vulnerability of youth; and the ways in which youth are viewed with suspicion and hope. We will also examine youth and education/schooling in the context of areas such as gender and sexuality, equity and equality, and justice in its various forms. The course aims to integrate practical field-based experience with classroom-based learning. Such practical experiences may take place through opportunities in Worcester and/or internationally (possibly Jamaica, Haiti or South Africa).
Anticipated Terms Offered: Bi-annually
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ID 221 - Food Systems: Place, Politics and Policy
Agriculture and animal production have changed dramatically over the last century, especially after WWII, bringing higher yields and less expensive food to people. The changes also brought considerable costs to the natural environment and human (and animal) health. The “agribusiness model”, as we have termed the combination of low-cost, industrial, mechanized, fertilizer-intensive food production, has fueled global climate change, which in turn is dramatically shifting yields and costs, and our strategies to feed people. This course will investigate the causes and consequences of the transformation, and alternative pathways to protect communities against the negative impact of such large-scale transformation. We will explore, first, the economic and political determinants of the industrialization of food and animal production: the agribusiness model and its diffusion throughout the world. The drivers of the agribusiness model are highly concentrated corporate entities, which control the production of agricultural commodities, and rely upon vast supply chains to move products from production to the consumer throughout the world. The global control and outreach capacity of such corporate entities is backed-up by a robust scientific and political complex whose main objectives are not necessarily to feed the growing population of the planet. The second section of the course will be devoted to understand and dissect in greater depth the joint effects of global climate change and the agribusiness model on the environment and health of territories, with a focus on trade, gender, health disparities, and food waste. The third section of the course will be devoted to examine the challenges of development for local and regional food systems, with a special emphasis on policy instruments, collective action, and community development. While the focus of the course is on the United States, we examine a variety of topics in a comparative and global perspective. The course has a seminar format.
Concentrations:
Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation- Healthy People, Healthy Planet- Urban Regeneration.
This course may be repeatable for credit one time.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually Spring
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ID 222 - The Political Economy of Food and the Ethics of Eating
Is it possible to eat in an ethical fashion in world with more than seven billion people? What would this entail? And what are the likely consequences of our choices upon others as well as the environment?
This course examines the evolving political-economy and ethics of food production, distribution, and consumption and its effects upon our ecosystems, animal welfare, worker safety, consumer health, and cultural identities. Course readings introduce different theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches to the study of what we eat. They range from: historical accounts to food exposés and detailed empirical studies to forecasts of what we will eat in the future. All of them are provocative and they provide us with the opportunity to develop critical perspectives on the following:
1)The development of a global food system and the industrial techniques used to sustain it: confinement livestock operations, genetic homogenization, fisheries and aquaculture, and (trans-) national supply chain management;
2)Contemporary debates over food safety: genetically modified organisms, oversight mechanisms, regulatory regimes, famine prevention and humanitarian relief;
3)The possibilities and limits of ethical alternatives: organics, locavore, fair trade, biotech, and food sovereignty.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall
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ID 223 - Educational Policy Issues in Developing Countries: Course Value
This upper level undergraduate (juniors and seniors) and graduate seminar examines some of the most significant policy issues that “developing” countries grapple with in their efforts to improve the capacity of “human resources” to meet the assumed needs of the new knowledge economy. The course focuses on key policy issues in a variety of national settings in the areas of governance, management, and financing of education. It examines the basic socio-economic needs and conditions that drive educational policy in “developing” countries, the practical and ideological considerations that influence policy responses, and the results and implications of various policy choices. While focusing on these broader issues, we explore the role of different stakeholders, including the state, local, regional and international organizations, and citizens in these policy debates and practices. Additionally, we will critically examine globalization’s impact on educational policy, particularly its ideological influence on the financial and management arrangements for the provision of education.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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ID 224 - People on the Move Research Studio
Refugee Integration in Worcester
People on the move, including refugees, migrants, and undocumented movers, can be hard to incorporate in standard social science methodologies and difficult to include in participatory research. The first third of this full-semester participatory research studio familiarizes students with innovative techniques for producing knowledge of mobile people’s lives, livelihoods, and concerns in a collaborative way, and promotes understanding of local, state, and national policies for refugee support, integration, or management. During the middle of the semester, students will participate in an action research project with refugee participants, agency staff, and other researchers (project may change from year to year). Analysis of data, write-up, and community sharing take place in the final part of the semester. This year, we will be exploring Refugee Integration in Worcester-Best Practices with community partners and practitioners.
Anticipated Terms Offered: spring 2015
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ID 226 - Beyond Victims and Villains? Politics of Gender-Based Violence in the “Global South”
Reductionist analyses of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in the “Global South”, that often depict women as victims and men as villains, are embedded in the imagery and discourses of International media, politics, and the realm of International development. While GBV continues to be a predicament worldwide, this problematic representation of this region has served to reinforce cultural, religious, political, and moral stereotypes of the “Other.” How do we understand and critique GBV in the “Global South”? How can we acknowledge the seriousness of GBV without contributing to the stigmatization of particular communities and their representation as exceptional? How can GBV be understood and analyzed in a way that does not (re)produce the Orientalist and xenophobic stereotypes of victims and villains? This course aims to look at the politics of GBV as a highly complex and variable phenomenon, which intersects with a web of political, structural, and legal systems of oppression and power relations operating locally, regionally, and globally (Merry, 2011). The course will examine these structures of power that continue to shape and complicate the experiences of women and men in the “South” with violence.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Bi-annually
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ID 229 - Property and Community
“Property is not a thing, but a social relationship,” is this course’s point of departure. Questions relevant to a “social relations theory of property” have captured attention within the social sciences on many fronts. For example, what are the rights ‘ownership’ in different societies? What gives property its value (prestige, power, privilege)? How do land tenure and property rights interventions change community relations, family dynamics, and/or improve environmental outcomes? Course readings are global in nature, allowing us to examine property as a social relation in South Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Students are involved in setting some of our collective learning objectives and learning outcomes / assessment tools. UG Capstone eligible seminar; Fulfills IDCE Conservation and Development & Gender and Identity concentration.
Anticipated Terms Offered: varies
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ID 233 - Approaches to Community Health
What makes a community healthy? Why do some community members thrive, while others consistently experience health disparities? The social determinants of health - the conditions in which people are born, live, work, play and age have significant impact on individual and population health. Similarly, the factors that influence community health and wellness are complex and inter-related such as health literacy, availability of services, culture, and social and behavioral norms, these issues require multi-disciplinary coordinated approaches across sectors. In this course, you will learn:
How to assess a community’s health and how to identify needs using evidence-based methodologies
How to identify and select evidence-based approaches to solve problems
How to empower and mobilize community members to engage in community health improvement efforts
Paying particular attention to vulnerable populations, we will examine challenges and barriers communities face, as well as current movements that promote social justice and health equity across a variety of current and emerging threats to community health.
NOTE: This course will satisfy the requirements for the Graduate Health Certificate in Community and Global Health and the MHS in Community and Global Health
Prerequisites: ID 106 Healthy Cities , or ID 108 What is Public Health? , or ID 121 Culture, Health, and Development: What Makes Us Sick?
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall
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ID 234 - Special Topics
This course addresses current or timely topics, that are in a pilot phase or that are known to be one time offerings. Special Topics are unique for each instroctor and vary from semester to semester. May be repeatable for credit.
Spring 2020 TOPIC: THE NEC COUNCIL COLLABORATIVE
(half unit)
The NEC Council Collaborative introduces students to the theory and practice of council, deepens their engagement with the literature of climate change, and prepares them to help facilitate sessions of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future.
As a collaborative, the course is shared and horizontally organized. Conducted as a council and beginning with the CUHF process, its further structure and content are generated collectively, building especially on questions and problems generated by the students in the initial sessions.
Council practice is at the core of the New Earth Conversation, a curriculum initiative at Clark designed to explore the role of universities in the context of our unfolding climate disaster.
NEC asks, What are universities called to be and to do at this moment? How can we best prepare students to face the existential challenges of these times? The Council Collaborative goes to the heart of these concerns, while modeling one distinctive way of answering them.
Before enrolling in this course, students must have participated in one or more UHF Councils and receive permission of the instructors.
Spring 2020 TOPIC: section 03 LOCAL CLIMATE JUSTICE PRAXIS
Fall 2019 TOPIC: CLIMATE PRAXIS: REFLECTION AND ACTION FOR THE UNTHINKABLE
This Collaborative will explore the question of how we live responsibly in the unprecedented time of climate crisis. We will explore the question of why we have collectively failed to appropriately address the threat of climate change for the past 40 years as well as looking forward to how we navigate coming disruption. After engaging in the Council on the Uncertain Human Future process, students will co-design the remainder of the course with an emphasis on holistic approaches.
Anticipated Terms Offered: every semester
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ID 235 - Trafficking: Globalization and Its Illicit Commodities
This course turns a critical eye towards the different cultural, political, and economic processes that make contemporary forms of “trafficking” possible. It examines these transnational processes from three different vantage points, each composing one part of the course as a whole. Part one will engage many of the key concepts that inform the existing literature on “trafficking” (e.g. commodification, shadow economies, transnational criminal networks, and regulatory authority) to explore both their assumptions and their limits. Special attention is focused on the ways scholars, policymakers, and activists have historically constructed trafficking as a “problem” either for analysis or action, and how the different legal and policy frameworks created to combat it have changed over recent decades. Part two examines the above concerns in greater detail through a series of case-studies on different forms of human trafficking, the global market for organs, genetic information, animal parts, and endangered species, among others. Part three will consider some of the opportunities and dilemmas (theoretical, methodological and ethical) such practices present for those who wish to study, to manage, or to advocate on behalf of those affected by different forms of trafficking.
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ID 236 - Spatial Analysis for Health
This course introduces Geographic Information Science and its application in public health research and practice. Each week incorporates a lecture and a computer lab that focuses on a health-care issue. Topics covered include mapping disease rates, analyzing health outcomes, access to health care and health resources, environmental justice, exposure assessment, and social determinant of health. Students will learn how to visualize and analyze health-related and demographic data, and how to geocode tabular data. They will have the opportunity to develop their GIS skills using commercial and open source GIS software and to conduct their own independent research on a topic of their interest.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Spring
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ID 237 - Program Evaluation for Youth and Community Development Initiatives
This course provides students with skills required to apply research methods to the assessment of youth and community development programs. By gaining exposure to the various types of program evaluation (e.g. process evaluation, impact evaluation, empowerment evaluation, etc.), analyzing evaluation case studies, and working on an actual evaluation of a program. Students will leave this class with an understanding of the importance of and challenges involved in conducting high quality program evaluations. Students will gain enough skill to assist in the development and implementation of evaluations.
Course Designation/Attribute: POP
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every other year
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ID 240 - Fundamentals of Youth Work
Youth workers are the front line staff at youth serving organizations, such as the Boys and Girls Club and youth centers. Youth workers have been referred to as “wizards” because they succeed with young people where other individuals and institutions have failed. Despite the critical role youth workers play in the lives of young people, they receive very little professional development or training; this comes to the detriment of the youth, the youth workers, and the field. There are emerging efforts in the United States to professionalize youth work and provide youth workers with critical training. This course is a one strategy to that end.
This course covers how to work with young people in a positive youth development framework-focusing on building protective factors (e.g. positive discipline, making referrals, and building relationships with families), reducing risk factors (e.g. violence, mental health problems, sexual behavior, and substance abuse) and building professional skills in program development and management. Reflection on youth work practice will be a key teaching and learning strategy in the course. Students in this class will be both community youth workers as well as Clark students. For Clark students who are not currently doing youth work, they will be matched with youth workers for an apprenticeship opportunity. Each week, a different youth development professional in the greater Worcester area will co-facilitate the course session. In this way, students have the opportunity to network with those working in the field. This is a Problems of Practice course.
Course Designation/Attribute: POP
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall
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ID 243 - Seeing Like a Humanitarian Agency
Since World War II, several different but overlapping regimes have emerged to help structure humanitarian responses to large-scale forms of displacement. In what ways do these evolving regimes enable humanitarian agencies to “see,” and in what ways does their particular field of vision differ from that of states, academics, policymakers and the displaced themselves? What kinds of blind-spots (theoretical, methodological, and ethical) inevitably result? This seminar will explore these questions from three different vantage points, each composing one part of the course as a whole. Part one will provide an overview of the literature and the main concepts of the course. Special attention is focused on the ways scholars and policymakers have historically constructed displacement as a “problem” either for analysis or action, and how these concerns have shifted over the past three decades. Part two will consist of ethnographic studies of humanitarian interventions in different geographic settings, which will highlight the relevance (and limits) of concepts and methods drawn from the social sciences, including anthropology. Part three will address some of the opportunities and dilemmas humanitarian emergencies present for those who wish to study or to manage them.
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ID 249 - Networks and Analytics of Development
This course introduces students to advanced analysis of data related to development and interpretation and communication of quantitative data. We begin with an overview of theoretical approaches to data analysis, explore their use, and guide students in applying them to individual projects. We will learn ways of organizing, analyzing, visualizing, and presenting data from publicly available national and international databases. The first half of the semester will include quantitative analytics, visualization, and presentation of health-related data. The second half of the semester will consist of ways of researching mobile, hidden, and vulnerable populations using social network analysis. Social network analysis, not to be confused with social networking, is a specialized methodology that examines the patterns of relationships among individuals, community, countries, etc. to identify who the most important people are in a network, who has the most influence or social capital, sub-groups, and if time permits, “hidden or shadow networks”. SNA can also be used to evaluate collaboration, coalition, and partnership networks.
Prerequisites: Statistics course
Course Designation/Attribute: FA
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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ID 254 - Mega Development: Exploring the nexus between natural resource extraction, infrastructure development and Environment
Across the planet, countries, led by the G-20, promote multi-billion dollar investments in natural resource extraction and large-scale infrastructure development, including: mines, oil and gas fields, hydroelectric power plants, dams, multi-modal transport systems, pipelines and port facilities. Increasing investment in natural resource extraction and infrastructure development is regularly promoted as a pathway to economic growth in the global south. However, investment in mega-projects is often accompanied by corruption, increased inequality, environmental harm and human rights violations. In this seminar, students will conduct research on specific mega-projects and initiatives to understand the socio-political and economic dynamics that drive them, explore the synergistic relationship between investments in infrastructure and extraction, the emergence of socio-environmental conflict linked mega-projects, and learn of the initiatives of business, government and civil society actors to reduce negative impacts pursue alternative, more sustainable forms of development.
Prerequisites: junior/senior standing only; with permission of instructor
Course Designation/Attribute: GP
Anticipated Terms Offered: Bi-annually
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ID 264 - Advanced Topics in Development Theory
Advanced Topics in Development Theory. This seminar provides students with an opportunity to engage in an in-depth study of some classical theorists of modernity and development. It aims to establish firm theoretical and textual foundations for the future study of politics, economics, culture and social relations related to “third world development.” Topics vary. May be repeatable for credit.
Spring 2019 topic: DISPLACEMENT AND REPRESENTATION: ART, ADVOCACY, AND PUBLIC EDUCATION
The movement of people is depicted in many forms and for many purposes. Often used to inform or influence, the stories and portrayals of displaced people have become common topics in everything from news broadcasts and documentaries to museum exhibits, social protest art, and avant-garde performances. Moreover, art and visual mediums produced by displaced people have become important means of countering stereotypes, supporting humanitarian projects, aiding community formation and providing therapeutic expression for individuals.
In this class we will focus on the representation of displaced people and visualization of displacement more generally in a variety of creative and informative formats. We will take a broad view of displacement comparing and contrasting the experiences forced migration, homelessness, refugeeism, and restrictive immigration processes. We will pair these experiences with particular visual forms: documentary film, ethnographic photography, protest performance art, and therapeutic graphic arts. Students will engage with theory and case studies as well as produce their own visual project centered on representing the experiences of displaced people.
Anticipated Terms Offered: varied
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ID 277 - Approaches to Global Health
Global health examines the impacts of structural inequalities on the health of populations and suggests ways to ease the burdens of disease and premature death. Students in this course will gain familiarity with the history, politics, and possibilities of global health as a discipline of study, professional field, and vibrant arena of activism and social change. Central to the discipline are the principles of cultural sovereignty and self-determination. We will center solutions arising from the global South as we interrogate the political and ethical dimensions of the changing roles of the global health professional.
Juniors and Seniors only.
Prerequisites: ID 106 , ID 108 , or ID 121
Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually
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ID 296 - Advanced Vector GIS
This course builds upon the concepts of GIS introduced in Introduction to GIS, and focuses on the more advanced analytical vector GIS tools. Topics include exploratory spatial data analysis, spatial statistics, interpolation techniques, 3D data presentation and analysis, network analysis and multi-criteria decision making. Hands-on laboratory exercises illustrate GIS applications in natural resource management, global change, environmental justice, urban and environmental planning, public health, and census data analysis. Students work individually and in groups to develop solutions to a weekly spatial problem, using ArcGIS or GeoDa software. Final project is required. Knowledge of basic statistics is useful.
Prerequisites: GEOG 190 /GEOG 390 /IDCE 310 .
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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ID 297 - Honors
Students receive variable credit for advanced research and readings in the honors program.
Anticipated Terms Offered: every semester
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ID 298 - Internship
Academic experience taking place in the field with an opportunity to earn credit.
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ID 299 - Directed Study
Students construct an independent study course on a topic approved and directed by a faculty member. Offered for variable credit.
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IDCE 302 - Python Programming
This course provides a general introduction to the Python programming language. Topics include the Python programming environment; elements of the language, such as functions, conditionals, recursions, iterations, and file operations; basic data types, such as lists and dictionaries; and concepts of classes and objects. Upon the completion of this course, students will be able to understand the concept of programming and will be able to design and develop Python programs for scientific computing. This course is open to both graduate students and undergraduate students, no programming background is required. Offered each year.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually
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IDCE 308 - Health (in)equity: social determinants and policy solutions
Even in the most affluent countries and cities, those who have more access to resources and social capital, tend to live longer and healthier lives. Why? What makes a city a healthy place to live, work, play, and go to school? How does the health of a “place” affect the health of the individuals who live there? Who is responsible for the health of a city’s residents? What is the link between economics, policy, environment, and health? How do the social constructions of race, gender, and class, influence the quality of health one receives and their access to health care resources?
In this course, we define “social determinants” as the circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, work and age, and the systems put in place to deal with illness. These circumstances are in turn shaped by a wider set of forces: economics, social policies, and politics.
Upon completion of the course, students will be able to explain the link between social, economic, political, and environmental factors that affect health; the use of indicators to assess determinants; the main theories and methods of assessing social determinants; and how diseases are patterned in specific (and predictable) ways in a city. Students will also explore case studies that demonstrate how sound economic and development policies lead to an overall improvement of the health of a population.
NOTE: This course will satisfy the requirements for the Graduate Health Certificate in Community and Global Health and the MHS in Community and Global Health
Concentrations:
Health Equity - Healthy People, Healthy Planet - Urban Regeneration: Economic and Workforce Development
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall
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