This course explores the role of race and ethnicity in modern American politics. It focuses on social science approaches to measuring the effects of race, both at the individual level and more broadly. Topics include race and representation, measurement of racial and ethnic identities, voting rights and electoral districting, protest and other forms of political participation, and the meaning and measurement of racial attitudes.

This course provides an introduction to the issues of immigrants, planning, and race. It identifies the complexities and identities of immigrant populations emerging in the United States context and how different community groups negotiate that complexity. It explores the critical differences and commonalities between immigrant and non-immigrant communities, as well as how the planning profession does and should respond to those differences. Finally, the course explores the intersection of immigrant communities’ formation and their interactions with African Americans and the idea of race in the United States.

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

Dr. Christopher Pramuk, Associate Professor of Theology at Xavier University, discusses cultural acceptance and understanding and Ignatian spirituality through the music of Stevie Wonder. This video was inspired by Dr. Pramuk’s research and reflections on race and spirituality found in Hope Sings, So Beautiful. For more information, go to the link below:

This course examines one of the most enduring and influential forms of identity and experience in the Americas and Europe, and in particular the ways race and racism have been created, justified, or contested in scientific practice and discourse. Drawing on classical and contemporary readings from Du Bois to Gould to Gilroy, we ask whether the logic of race might be changing in the world of genomics and informatics, and with that changed logic, how we can respond today to new configurations of race, science, technology, and inequality. Considered are the rise of evolutionary racism; debates about eugenics in the early twentieth century; Nazi notions of “racial hygiene”; nation-building projects and race in Latin America; and the movement in modern biology from race to populations to genes and genomes.

This unit, designed for a Constitutional Law elective, but applicable to U.S. History/Civics courses too, will introduce students to the basic framework of Critical Race Theory and the need to disrupt the perceived neutrality of the law, while also interrogating the notion of colorblindness. Students will study the history of housing and school segregation in the U.S. They will examine the role the federal government played in purposefully creating and perpetuating housing segregation throughout the first half of the 20th century. They will have the opportunity to explore interesting primary sources, such as original HOLC Residential Security maps, which helped to create the basis for redlining. Students will also draw connections between housing segregation and school segregation, analyzing their reciprocal nature. Additionally, they will investigate the history of desegregation and resegregation of American public schools. Throughout the unit, they will look at the role the Supreme Court played and evaluate the extent to which the court worked to dismantle versus uphold segregation. Lastly, students will brainstorm, research and discuss ways to address persistent segregation today. In addition to useful resources, the unit provides tools and guidance for dissecting Supreme Court cases, implementing a student-led seminar and more.

This simulation is showing the Race between a dropped ball and one launched horizontally هذه المحاكاة توضح الفرق بالسرعه بين كرة سقطت من الأعلى الى الأسفل وبين كرة اطلقت من الأسفل الى الأعلى.

This lesson covers four important lawsuits brought by Asian Americans with important consequences for American citizenship, equal protection, and racial identity: Yick Wo, Wong Kim Ark, Takao Ozawa, Bhagat Singh Thind.

2021 Social Science Standards Integrated with Ethnic Studies:
Civics and Government: 6.4, 7.5, 8.7, 8.8, HS.1, HS.2, HS.6, HS.11
Historical Knowledge: 5.22, 6.20, 6.21, 8.22, 8.25, HS.52, HS.58, HS.63, HS.64
Historical Thinking: 5.24, 6.23, 7.25, 8.31, HS.69, HS.70
Social Science Analysis: 5.26, 5.27, 6.24, 7.27, 8.36, HS.72, HS.73, HS.74, HS.78

Racial profiling occurs when law enforcement agents impermissibly use race, religion, ethnicity or national origin in deciding who to investigate. This lesson focuses on racial profiling. Students learn what the term means, discuss why it matters, conduct research and present their insights.

In this video from Wide Angle, an Afro-Brazilian model discusses the predominance of whites in the Brazilian advertising industry.

In his historic March 2008 speech on race, Barack Obama explained some of the barriers to opportunity that created the racial wealth divide. In this lesson, students take a deeper look at the lingering economic effects of slavery, segregation and other forms of institutionalized bias.

This lesson uses Hispanic Heritage Month as a jumping off point for discussing how history is shaped and what we can do together to include a larger variety of voices and narratives in our study of history.

This simulation involves relative velocity in one dimension. It is an out-and-back race between two women. Mia runs on the moving sidewalk, while Brandi runs on the non-moving floor. Under what conditions is the race a tie? Under what conditions does Mia win? Under what conditions does Brandi win?

In this seminar, we will explore the significance of struggles over reproductive rights in the United States. Throughout the course, we will ask such questions as: What is reproductive freedom and why has attaining it been so central to women’s liberation movements? Why have attempts to regulate reproduction been so prevalent in American politics?

A noose is found hanging from a goalpost on a high school campus.

A swastika, 20 feet in diameter, is burned into the pavement at a junior high school.

A group of white high school students dresses in banana suits for a basketball game and taunts their majority-black rival with racial slurs.

A Sikh student has his turban pulled off and hair cut by fellow students.

Your school has plans and protocols in place to respond to fires, severe weather, medical emergencies, fights and weapons possession. But what about school incidents like those listed above that involve bigotry and hate? Are plans in place to respond to a bias incident or hate crime? Too often these plans are created in the moment during the actual crisis. Bias incidents are far too complex for on-the-fly planning; an early misstep can heighten tension and damage chances for long-term success.

What does it mean to run while Black? Writers such as Mitchell S. Jackson and Alison Mariella Désir encourage us to reflect upon the intersection between race, running, and embodiment. As a Black runner and Sport Studies scholar, I am also deeply interested in this relationship. In this audio short, I bring listeners with me to a 5K race held on Juneteenth and examine the relationship between running, historical memory, racial trauma, and social action.

This subject examines the role scientists have played as activists in social movements in the U.S. following World War II. Themes include scientific responsibility and social justice, the roles of gender, race, and power, the motivation of individual scientists, strategies for organizing, and scientists’ impact within social movements. Case studies include atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and the nuclear freeze campaign, climate science and environmental justice, the civil rights movement, Vietnam War protests, the March 4 movement at MIT, concerns about genetic engineering, gender equality, intersectional feminism, and student activism at MIT.
Read a profile of the class “Scientists as Engaged Citizens” by the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

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

This course offers an introduction to the history of gender, sex, and sexuality in the modern United States, from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first. It begins with an overview of historical approaches to the field, emphasizing the changing nature of sexual and gender identities over time. The remainder of the course flows chronologically, tracing the expanding and contracting nature of attempts to control, construct, and contain sexual and gender identities, as well as the efforts of those who worked to resist, reject, and reform institutionalized heterosexuality and mainstream configurations of gendered power.

This course explores the issue of human trafficking for forced labour and sexual slavery, focusing on its representation in recent scholarly accounts and advocacy as well as in other media. Ethnographic and fictional readings along with media analysis help to develop a contextualized and comparative understanding of the phenomena in both past and present contexts. It examines the wide range of factors and agents that enable these practices, such as technology, cultural practices, social and economic conditions, and the role of governments and international organizations. The course also discusses the analytical, moral and methodological questions of researching, writing, and representing trafficking and slavery.