This course examines the definition of gender in scientific, societal, and historical contexts. It explores how gender influences state formation and the work of the state, what role gender plays in imperialism and in the welfare state, the ever-present relationship between gender and war, and different states’ regulation of the body in gendered ways at different times. It investigates new directions in the study of gender as historians, anthropologists and others have taken on this fascinating set of problems.

This course will provide students with an analytic framework to understand the roles that gender, race, and class play in defining and determining access to leadership and power in the U.S., especially in the context of the workplace. We will explore women and men in leadership positions within the corporate, political and non-profit sectors, with attention to the roles of women of color and immigrant women within this context. We will also look at specific policies such as affirmative action, parental leave, child-care policy, and working-time policies and the role they play–or could play–in achieving parity. We will further investigate ways in which these policies address gender, racial, and class inequities, and think critically about mechanisms for change. The course will be highly interactive, and will combine texts, theater, videos and visual arts.

This course explores how gender shaped the historical experiences and cultural productions in the North American West during the time it was being explored, settled, and imagined. The North American West of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provides a fascinating case study of the shifting meanings of gender, race, citizenship, and power in border societies. As the site of migration, settlement, and displacement, it spawned contests over land, labor disputes, inter-ethnic conflicts and peaceful relations, and many kinds of cultural productions.
The Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies (GCWS)
This course is part of the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies. The GCWS at MIT brings together scholars and teachers at nine degree-granting institutions in the Boston area who are devoted to graduate teaching and research in Women’s Studies and to advancing interdisciplinary Women’s Studies scholarship. Learn more about the GCWS.

Prepares students for working and living in German-speaking countries. Focus on current political, social, and cultural issues, using newspapers, journals, TV, radio broadcasts, and Web sources from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Emphasis on speaking, writing, and reading skills for professional contexts. Activities include: oral presentations, group discussions, guest lectures, and interviews with German speakers. No listeners.

This course focuses on main currents in contemporary German literary and visual culture. Taking Nietzsche’s thought as a point of departure, students will survey the dialectics of tradition and modernity in both Germany and other European countries, particularly the UK, France, Denmark, and Poland. Primary works are drawn from literature, cinema, art, and performance, including works by Peter Sloterdijk, Thomas Vinterberg, and Michel Houellebecq.

Have you seen a Clean Coal baseball cap? In the challenge to meet soaring energy demand with limited resources, volatile issues like those related to the environment, national security and public health are often addressed outside of normal market transactions and are called externalities, or nonmarket factors. Stakeholders can act in resourceful ways to create a nonmarket environment that best serves their interest. A firm may challenge a law that makes it expensive or difficult to do business or compete with others, for example. An individual may organize a boycott of products or services that violate the individual's interests or principles--hey, don't buy from them! Nonmarket strategy in the energy sector is the subject of this engaging course.

This course explores the values (aesthetic, moral, cultural, religious, prudential, political) expressed in the choices of food people eat. Analyzes the decisions individuals make about what to eat, how society should manage food production and consumption collectively, and how reflection on food choices might help resolve conflicts between different values.

In this activity, students will have the opportunity to create a campaign commercial to run as the new president of Boise State. They will practice using vocabulary related to governments and actions that political figures take. Students will be able to discuss preferences relating to politics and government.

This graduate-level course focuses on mass political behavior within the American political system. The goal of this course is to give an introduction to some of the major questions in the study of American political behavior, and how people have gone about answering them. The background goal is to help students practice reading work critically, and thinking through the difficulties of social science research, in preparation for individual research projects. The course examines political ideology, public opinion, voting behavior, media effects, racial attitudes, mass-elite relations, and opinion-policy linkages.

This course examines the economic, political, social, and spatial dynamics of urban growth and decline in cities and their key component areas (downtown, suburbs, etc.). Topics include impacts of industrialization, technology, politics, and social practices on cities. Students will examine the role of public and private sector activities, ranging from zoning and subsidies to infrastructure development and real estate investment, in affecting urban growth and decline. Readings are both theoretical and empirical, with considerable thought paid to comparative and historical differences.

This class explores the political and aesthetic foundations of hip hop. Students trace the musical, corporeal, visual, spoken word, and literary manifestations of hip hop over its 30 year presence in the American cultural imagery. Students also investigate specific black cultural practices that have given rise to its various idioms. Students create material culture related to each thematic section of the course. Scheduled work in performance studio helps students understand how hip hop is created and assessed.

This page contains information, recordings, and transcriptions materials that I collected during two research trips to Bolivia and Peru. The common theme for these trips was Indigenous voices and representation. Here, I visited indigenous groups as well as had different discussions and presentations with different academics and social activist in these two countries. I hope that the information and materials here are helpful to everybody that visit this page. Click on the links below to access the materials per country.
If you use any of this information for a class, please feel free to share your lesson plan with me so that I can post it. In this way, other instructors/teachers/professors can also use these materials. The goal is to make all of these materials and lesson plans accessible.

Here are the recordings of the interviews, talks, and different explanation of some traditions and stories*, **. Each section is divided by subject as well as location.
The recordings are number for ease of access.
The transcripts for each recording can be found at the end of this page, inside the file folders.
*This data collection was possible thanks to the Fulbright Hays Group Abroad Projects (2016) funding with Oakton College.
**The sub-section of High Andes within the "Interviews and Talks" section was collected thanks to the LACC's US Department of Education Title VI Grant (2023) funding with FIU.

This workshop is designed to introduce students to different perspectives on politics and the state of the world through new visualization techniques and approaches to interactive political gaming (and selective ’edutainment’). Specifically, we shall explore applications of interactive tools (such as video and web-based games, blogs or simulations) to examine critical challenges in international politics of the 21C century focusing specifically on general insights and specific understandings generated by operational uses of core concepts in political science.

International Women’s Voices has several objectives. It introduces students to a variety of works by contemporary women writers from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and North America. The emphasis is on non-western writers. The readings are chosen to encourage students to think about how each author’s work reflects a distinct cultural heritage and to what extent, if any, we can identify a female voice that transcends national cultures. In lectures and readings distributed in class, students learn about the history and culture of each of the countries these authors represent. The way in which colonialism, religion, nation formation and language influence each writer is a major concern of this course. In addition, students examine the patterns of socialization of women in patriarchal cultures, and how, in the imaginary world, authors resolve or understand the relationship of the characters to love, work, identity, sex roles, marriage, and politics.

This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or downloaded as a zip file.

As taught Autumn Semester 2010/2011.

This module introduces students to the study of international political economy (IPE) and global development. It examines the reciprocal, interactive relationship between politics and economics or between states and markets in the contemporary international system by exploring how political factors influence international economic relations and how the international economy in turn shapes domestic and international politics.

The module introduces the main theoretical approaches in international political economy and global development and illustrates the contributions of these approaches to our understanding of the global political economy.

The module surveys the interactions between state and societal actors at the interface between the domestic and international domains in a variety of issue areas. These include international trade and monetary relations, transnational production, economic development, and global governance. In studying these issues, the module examines the causes and effects of policy choices that states and societal groups make to regulate international economic relations, of international and regional co-operation and conflicts over trade, monetary, development and other policies, and of global market integration.

This module is designed in such a manner that it will provide second-year politics students with an accessible introduction to the basic concepts of political economy and global development and sensitise them to interdisciplinary methods and models in the study of international relations. The module not only provides a comprehensive introduction to international political economy and global development but also serves a foundation course that qualifies students to take further options in the political economy of international trade, monetary relations, financial markets, development, and globalisation.

Module Code: M12089

Suitable for study at: Undergraduate level 2

Credits:20

Dr Xiaoke Zhang, School of Politics and International Relations

Dr Xiaoke Zhang is an Associate Professor in political economy and Asian studies in the School of Politics and International Relations, the University of Nottingham. Before joining the School of Politics and International Relations in September 2003, Dr Zhang was a lecturer in the International School of Humanities and Social Sciences and a research fellow in the Amsterdam School of Social Science Research, both at the University of Amsterdam.

Dr Xiaoke Zhang's major research interests are in comparative and international political economy, with a regional focus on Asia-Pacific.

In which John Green teaches you the history of the Indian Ocean Trade. John weaves a tale of swashbuckling adventure, replete with trade in books, ivory, and timber. Along the way, John manages to cover advances in seafaring technology, just how the monsoons work, and there's even a disembowelment for you Fangoria fans.

Chapters:
Introduction
Indian Ocean Trade
Monsoon Winds
How did trading work along the Indian Ocean?
An Open Letter to Kota Rani
Benefits of seaborne trade
How Indian Ocean trade facilitated the spread of technology
Indian Ocean Trade and the spread of Islam
Geography, Politics, and Indian Ocean Trade
Review

Through the comparative study of different cultures, anthropology explores fundamental questions about what it means to be human. It seeks to understand how culture both shapes societies, from the smallest island in the South Pacific to the largest Asian metropolis, and affects the way institutions work, from scientific laboratories to Christian mega-churches. This course will provide a framework for analyzing diverse facets of human experience such as gender, ethnicity, language, politics, economics, and art.

This course examines why democracy emerges and survives in some countries rather than in others; how political institutions affect economic development; and how American politics compares to that of other countries. It reviews economic, cultural, and institutional explanations for political outcomes. It also includes case studies of politics in several countries. Assignments include several papers of varying lengths and extensive structured and unstructured class participation.

Introduction to Media Studies is designed for students who have grown up in a rapidly changing global multimedia environment and want to become more literate and critical consumers and producers of culture. Through an interdisciplinary comparative and historical lens, the course defines “media” broadly as including oral, print, theatrical, photographic, broadcast, cinematic, and digital cultural forms and practices. The course looks at the nature of mediated communication, the functions of media, the history of transformations in media and the institutions that help define media’s place in society.
Over the course of the semester we explore different theoretical perspectives on the role and power of media in society in influencing our social values, political beliefs, identities and behaviors. Students also have the opportunity to analyze specific media texts (such as films and television shows) and explore the meaning of the changes that occur when a particular narrative is adapted into different media forms. We look at the ways in which the politics of class, gender and race influence both the production and reception of media. To represent different perspectives on media, several guest speakers also present lectures. Through the readings, lectures, and discussions as well as their own writing and oral presentations, students have multiple opportunities to engage with critical debates in the field as well as explore the role of media in their own lives.