Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity

RDIN 30233. Race in Contemporary American Society. 100 Units.

This survey course in the sociology of race offers a socio-historical investigation of race in American society. We will examine issues of race, ethnic and immigrant settlement in the United States. Also, we shall explore the classic and contemporary literature on race and inter-group dynamics. Our investigative tools will include an analysis of primary and secondary sources, multimedia materials, photographic images, and journaling. While our survey will be broad, we will treat Chicago and its environs as a case study to comprehend the racial, ethnic, and political challenges in the growth and development of a city.

Instructor(s): S. Hicks-Bartlett     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring. Autumn quarter offered at the Undergraduate level only and Spring offered at the Graduate level only
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 20233, SOCI 20233, MAPS 30233, SOCI 30233

RDIN 30305. The Construction of Education Inequality: Policy and Practice. 100 Units.

The problems confronting urban schools are bound to the social, economic, and political conditions of the urban environments in which schools reside. Thus, this course will explore social, economic, and political issues, with an emphasis on issues of race and class as they have affected the distribution of equal educational opportunities in urban schools. We will focus on the ways in which family, school, and neighborhood characteristics intersect to shape the divergent outcomes of low- and middle-income children residing with any given neighborhood. Students will tackle an important issue affecting the residents and schools in one Chicago neighborhood. This course is part of the College Course Cluster: Urban Design.

Instructor(s): M. Keels     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): CHDV Undergrad Distribution: B; Grad distribution: 2
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 20305, PBPL 20305, EDSO 40315, CHDV 30315, RDIN 20305, EDSO 20305

RDIN 30700. Global Health, Environment, and Indigenous Futures. 100 Units.

The global coronavirus pandemic has made evident the significance of ecological (im)balances for the well-being of societies. The relationship between structural inequalities, changing environments and health, especially for historically and socio-economically marginalized communities, is now well established. At the same time, a growing body of literature links the material conditions of marginalized communities-for instance, spaces of dwelling and conditions of labor-to health status, globally. Based on a set of interdisciplinary literature arranged through anthropological theories, this course will critically engage with notions of health and well-being for indigenous communities, tracing injustices that stem histories of racial, caste- and ethnicity-based, and environmental exclusions. The readings are organized around one central question: What does it mean to be indigenous in a changing planet where social, political, and economic systems are marked by enduring legacies of systemic violence? This graduate and undergraduate level course will introduce contexts within which structural exclusions lead to ill-health and loss of well-being among indigenous communities across the globe. The aim is to develop critical thinking on the political economy and political ecologies of indigenous health as imbricated with issues of social, economic, and environmental justice.

Instructor(s): Sanghamitra Das
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 20700, CHDV 20700, SALC 26501, ANTH 30700, SALC 32704, CHDV 30750, CEGU 20700, CEGU 30700, RDIN 20700

RDIN 31150. Psychology of Racism. 100 Units.

This upper-level seminar will focus on the psychology of race and racism. We will discuss both structural and individual level factors that create and maintain racism in the U.S. context. While this course will focus on social psychology, we will also draw from other areas of psychology. We will discuss social structures and institutions that perpetuate racism, policies that shape societal attitudes and behaviors, and psychological frameworks for understanding racism. We will begin the course with a discussion of the origins of race and racism. We will then transition to contemporary expressions of racism. The goals of this course are to analyze structural contexts influencing racist attitudes and behaviors, evaluate the impact of racism on racially minoritized groups, and to examine strategies and interventions to address racism.

Instructor(s): K. Henderson     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 21150, PSYC 31150, PSYC 21150

RDIN 31200. African-American History: 1900-2000. 100 Units.

The Black experience in America is one that encompasses a wide variety of walks of life. Within this introductory undergraduate course, we will explore the 20th century experience of African Americans in Jim Crow segregation, migration, labor, medicine, world wars, civil rights, and black power. This course considers racial barriers in the built environment, with a particular emphasis on the city. We will use primary and secondary sources to construct conceptions of political struggle, economic rights, resistance, and freedom in African American life.

Instructor(s): Caine Jordan     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 27420, HIST 37420, RDIN 21200

RDIN 31300. Aftermath: Literature of Reparation, Redress, Refusal, and Change. 100 Units.

What does it mean to address oneself to, or attempt to repair, legacies of violence and harm? What theories, resources, and models of personal, psychoanalytic, legal, political repair are available, and what kinds of possibilities do they enable? Is repair even a possibility, or a useful framework, for change? This course tracks the question of repair through contemporary conversations and historical case studies. Reading works by Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Eve Ensler, Saidiya Hartman, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, we will track how the concept of repair and reparation has motivated political action, activism, economic decision-making, artistic creativity and interpersonal ritual. We will read poems, engage performances, and consider other rituals of repair, breaking, and re-making. In addition, we will read literary and activist material pertinent to historical movements for reparations, including works from the Redress Movement for Japanese Internment in Canada and the United States and ongoing projects of the repatriation of Indigenous archival and cultural materials.

Instructor(s): Bellamy Mitchell     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 21300, ENGL 31302, ENGL 21302

RDIN 31402. South Side Home Movies: Amateur Cinema and the Politics of Preservation. 100 Units.

This course traces the history of amateur filmmaking on Chicago's South Side as a robust creative practice and mode of documentation revealing realms of moving image production and presentation grounded in everyday life. With the rise of scholarship on nontheatrical media, home movies have become a critical area of cinema studies and archiving. This course centers on the South Side Home Movie Project, founded by the instructor, housed at the University of Chicago's Arts + Public initiative/Film Studies Center. The collection has more than 1,000 reels of small-gauge (8mm, 16mm) films from the 1930s-1970s from a diverse range of South Side residents, with scenes of family and community gatherings, life milestones and more. We will engage in close readings of films in the archive to consider their styles and intended audiences. We will examine how they picture the South Side in an era of intense racial segregation, as discussed by writers, e.g., Horace Cayton, St. Clair Drake, etc. We will also discuss the SSHMP's approaches to stewarding this footage in relation to developments in film archival praxis, and tensions that crop up between preservation and access. Lectures and discussions with SSHMP staff, donors and collaborators will cover digitization, cataloguing, oral history, public programming, and engagement with filmmaker families, educators, and artists. Students will have opportunities to contribute original research and creative re-use projects to the SSHMP website.

Instructor(s): Jacqueline Stewart     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 21402, CMST 31402, RDIN 21402, CMST 21402

RDIN 31500. Mourning and Struggle in African, Native American, and Palestinian Narratives. 100 Units.

In this course, we will explore themes spanning three diverse bodies of literature and film, identifying points of connection and difference between expressions of sorrow and resistance in African, Native American, and Palestinian works. We focus on portrayals of mourning and examine how in response to catastrophic experiences and histories of colonialism, writers and filmmakers narrate loss and trauma. We will investigate how these authors renegotiate their identities, how they fashion national and political imaginaries, and how they envision alternative futures. Together, we will analyze source materials related to the themes of violence, memory, gender, and race. Through our weekly assignments and discussions, we will seek to determine the tropes and aesthetic tools that ignite modes of storytelling, and to answer: how do writers and artists employ aesthetic form to portray catastrophes? How might expressions of grief also be mobilized for resistance and struggle? Our class will be organized into three modules, touching upon African, Native American, and Palestinian prose, poetry, and film alongside theoretical works in memory and trauma studies. By the end of the quarter, students will be able to develop their own complex evaluations of these narratives-and recognize how comparisons through artistic expression can be a powerful tool for amplifying a multiplicity of stories about mourning and defiance.

Instructor(s): Stephanie Kraver     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 21500, CMLT 21505, CMLT 31505, NEHC 21500, NEHC 31500, GLST 21500

RDIN 31600. Histories of Abortion and Forced Sterilization in the United States. 100 Units.

In the United States, the politics of pregnancy and reproductive autonomy have historically been and continue to be categories of significance, meaning, and contention. In this course, we will explore a subsection of these broader categories, examining the relation between abortion and forced sterilization, the state, and women of color. The course will zero in on the experiences of Mexican American and Mexican immigrant women, African American women, Puerto Rican women, and Native American women, considering their struggles against the state and for reproductive justice.

Instructor(s): Caine Jordan     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 23181, RDIN 21600, CHDV 21600, HIST 37810, HIST 27810, GNSE 33181, HLTH 21600

RDIN 31700. The Power and Politics of Description: Ethnography, Documentary and Modernist Literature. 100 Units.

The work of description-the way that writers convey the characteristic features and significant details of people and places in language-can contain and confirm biases and anchor stale tropes of identity, but can also refuse, exceed, play with, and subverting readerly expectations. Descriptions made for the purposes of political consciousness-raising, journalistic documenting, or narrative storytelling bring into sharp relief senses of ourselves in relation to perceptions of "otherness" along lines of place, race, class, and gender. In this class, we will read literary and photographic works by authors such as Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, James Agee and Walker Evans and focus on how they experiment with methodologies of description and representation of people borrowed from anthropology, photography, and documentary journalism, as well as literary techniques like stream-of-consciousness narration and first-personal disclosure-to productively account for the limitations of their individual perspectives and authorial voices as a narrative and poetic tool. Particular attention will be paid to how gender and sexuality, race and racialization, and embodiment impact these accounts of social worlds, relations, and cultures, and person.

Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 31706, ENGL 21701, RDIN 21700, GNSE 21706, ENGL 31700

RDIN 31900. Race, Science and Empire. 100 Units.

The eighteenth century bore witness to the concomitant rise of scientific discovery and a modern sensibility of race hierarchy. Enlightenment pioneers-many with ties to the slave trade-who spearheaded the Age of Discovery also laid the groundwork for the "scientific" study of race. Drawing on the work of botanists, Linnaeus and Blumenbach developed taxonomic models for modern racial classifications. What had been the concern of a tiny group of physicians in the eighteenth expanded into a central focus of Euro-American scientific thought in the next. This shift into the new century marked a transition in inquiry from the origins of racial differences to their implications, accompanied by a shift from skin color to skull/body configurations as determinants of identity. Together, they gave rise to novel scientific practices such as phrenology, craniometry, anthropometry, and eugenics, enabling the quantification, with acute precision, of perceived racial differences. In this symbiosis of racial ideology and scientific method, the global expansion of the European empire found a powerful justification for the institution of slavery and the marginalization of the non-Europeans. By engaging with key texts from thinkers such as Kant, Voltaire, and Gobineau, alongside interdisciplinary critical scholarship on race science, students will examine how scientific racism was deeply intertwined with imperial ambitions and consider its lasting influence into the present day.

Instructor(s): Taimur Reza     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 21900, KNOW 31900, RDIN 21900, ANTH 21901, ANTH 31901

RDIN 31912. Global Sports, Global Politics. 100 Units.

The little brother of war" was the literal translation of the Iroquois name for a tense, bloody ball-and-stick game that missionaries, reminded of something else, renamed "Lacrosse." The "Muscular Christianity" movement brought to English boarding schools news of leagues of team sports, their controlled violence and its salutary effect on masculinity. Since then team sports entwined with race, class, gender and politics have been part of European political organization and action. From imperialism and colonialism, through the Cold War and into our era of "globalization," sporting institutions and events tell us things we won't learn otherwise about changing politics North and South, East and West, professional and amateur, gender binary and not, level playing fields and otherwise. Are there global sports? Are there global politics? It is easier to track political impacts on games, but we shall be at least as interested in sporting games impact on politics, with our eyes out for rules within the rules, levels of the games, and real histories of equality and avoidance, leagues, peace and justice. Most or all readings will be about sports, possibly including books by CLR James, Ashis Nandy, JA Mangan, Adrian Burgos, Donald Hall, Kazuo Sayama, John MacAloon, Joy Goodwin, David Margolick, Eduardo Galeano, Franklin Foer, Gwendolyn Oxenham, Lisa Uperesa.

Instructor(s): John Kelly
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 31912

RDIN 31968. Religious and Social Thought of Martin Luther King Jr. 100 Units.

This seminar is an intensive study of the religious life and social/religious thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. We will be reading a wide range of King's writings and speeches from his Crozer seminary years to his major speeches up to his assassination in 1968. We will also explore some of the classic and more recent scholarship that examines the influences on and sources of King's thought. Prominent themes in the course will include but will not be limited to King's ethical and social critique of American society, especially its racism, his social and moral evaluation of economic inequality, his commitment to nonviolence, his conception of the beloved community, and his evolving roles as preacher, social activist, and public intellectual.

Instructor(s): Curtis Evans     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the HS or CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): AMER 21968, RDIN 21968, AMER 31968, RAME 31968, RLST 21968, FNDL 21968, HCHR 31968

RDIN 31981. History of the Field, Part 1. 100 Units.

This graduate seminar explores recent work in the critical history of various academic disciplines and departments in the United States. Apart from the large-scale conditions that inform the politics of knowledge in areas of the humanities and social sciences (viz., Western imperial expansion, Cold War geopolitics, etc.), the course gives particular attention to problems of race and gender in the constitution and reproduction of institutional and disciplinary norms. Fields interrogated include Anthropology, Asian/Middle East Studies, Classics, Intellectual History, Philosophy, Religion, Sociology, South Asian Studies, and Critical University Studies.

Instructor(s): Anand Venkatkrishnan     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): CLAS 31981, AASR 31981, HREL 31981, NEHC 31981, ANTH 31981, SALC 31981, AMER 31981

RDIN 32200. Haunting and/as/of Power. 100 Units.

Haunting is a liminal category that signifies presence despite absence, unfinished pasts in the present, and ruptures within what is considered rational, normal and real. In this course we will examine multiple hauntings - as metaphor and as experience - situating them within the geographies and afterlives of racial and caste capitalism, gendered dispossession, empire, and the postcolony. Mediated through cultural theory, literature, film, historical archives and ethnographies, we will encounter vampires, zombies, witches, jinn, ghosts, transgender monsters, ancestors, the paranormal, phantoms, and other desiring, friendly or vengeful spirits in order to understand how they story memory, time, space, embodiment, and violence. How can the spectral be deciphered? What does being haunted feel like? How does haunting as an analytic foreground the sensuous, affective, intimate and overwhelming dimensions of structures of power? We will answer these questions and more through the work of David McNally, Tithi Bhattacharya, Silvia Federici, Hil Malatino, Diego Escolar, Hortense Spillers, Christina Sharpe, Avery Gordon, Stefania Pandolfo, Emily Ng, Ryo Morimoto, Susan Lepselter, and Tanya Tagaq, among others.

Instructor(s): Tanima Sharma     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 22200, GNSE 22200, GNSE 32201

RDIN 32203. Caste, Reproduction, and Citizenship in India. 100 Units.

This undergraduate and graduate level seminar will center on caste and reproduction in understanding notions of citizenship in India. The course will systematically engage with ideas of belonging to the post-colonial nation-state, particularly as experienced from following standpoints-gender, caste, indigeneity, and class. Understanding how citizenship is constituted, performed and negotiated in India, especially in relation to the biological and political reproduction of "good citizens", reveals the scopes and limits of citizenship as governance. The course is premised on the centrality of reproduction to governance in the largest democracy of the world. Drawing on a set of interdisciplinary literature, the readings are organized around feminist theorizations of the State, governance, and citizenship to locate the body within the body politic. The aim is to develop critical thinking on how the politics of reproduction is deeply imbricated with the reproduction of democratic politics; a politics that is entangled with knowledge, expertise and constructed human difference. In so doing, the course brings together reproductive governance with articulations of social justice in India.

Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 22203, ANTH 32203, CHDV 32203, SALC 35704, GNSE 22207, RDIN 22203, GNSE 32207

RDIN 32350. Black Game Theory. 100 Units.

This course explores games created by, for, or about the Black diaspora, though with particular emphasis on the United States. We will analyze mainstream "AAA" games, successful independent and art games, and educational games. Beyond video games, we will take a comparative media studies perspective that juxtaposes video games with novels, films, card games, board games, and tabletop roleplaying games. Readings will be drawn from writing by Frantz Fanon, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Lindsay Grace, Saidiya Hartman, Sarah Juliet Lauro, Achille Mbembe, Fred Moten, Frank B. Wilderson, and others.

Instructor(s): Patrick Jagoda and Ashlyn Sparrow     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 22352, RDIN 22350, CDIN 32350, MADD 12350, CMST 22350, ENGL 32352, CMST 32350

RDIN 32500. Seeing Islam and the Politics of Visual Culture. 100 Units.

From terrorists to "good Muslims," standards in the racial, cultural, and religious representations surrounding Islam have fluctuated across U.S. media. How do we conceptualize the nature of visual perception and reception? The history of colonialism, secular modernity, gender, patriarchy, and the blurred distinctions between religion and racialization have all contributed to a milieu of visual cultures that stage visions of and arguments about Islam. Hostility towards Muslims has not abated as we venture well into the 21st century, and many remain quick to blame an amorphous media for fomenting animosity towards the "real" Islam. We use these terms of engagement as the start of our inquiry: what is the promise of a meaningful image? What processes of secular translation are at work in its creation and consumption? Is there room for resistance, legibility, and representation in U.S. popular culture, and what does representation buy you in this age? We will pair theoretical methods for thinking about imagery, optics, perception, and perspective alongside case studies from film, stage, comedy, streaming content, and television shows, among others. Students will critically engage and analyze these theories in the contexts from which these works emerge and meld into a mobile and diasporic U.S. context. Together, we will reflect on the moral, political, and categorical commitments vested in different forms of media against historical trends of the 20th and 21st century.

Instructor(s): Samah Choudhury     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Undergrad students register for Section 1; Grad students register for section 2
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 22500, ISLM 37555, RLST 27555, ENGL 32505, GNSE 22511, CMST 22500, ARTV 20667, GNSE 32511, CMST 32500, ENGL 22505

RDIN 32604. Race, Justice, and the Assemblage of American Moralities. 100 Units.

This course explores the racial and moral imperatives that are encapsulated within concepts of "Americanness" and the theoretical notions that define the discursive, historical, and sociopolitical boundaries of American identities. How have claims to American identity relied on created religious or religiously-inflected Others? Together, we will consider how the human phenomena of religion and race have developed across our histories in concert with one another. How do racial and moral imperatives the define discursive, historical, and sociopolitical boundaries of American identities? We will examine how these formations have been deployed, defined, and bent to fit particular historical and cultural contexts while continuing to inform each other in a variety of permutations, especially in the United States. How do race and religion also intersect with gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and politics? Our theoretical grounding in migration, encounters, and transnational mobilities will provide insight into how race is imagined on and into differently minoritized people while considering what it means to be participants in the project of racecraft today. Our readings will include historical materials, literary texts, theological reflections, and examples from popular culture that meditate on these topics.

Instructor(s): Samah Choudhury     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ISLM 32600, RDIN 22600, GNSE 32604, GNSE 22604, RLST 26337, AMER 22600, RAME 32600, AASR 32600

RDIN 32700. Diasporic Literature and Modern Islam in the Imperial Core. 100 Units.

The 19th century enslaved scholar Omar Ibn Said opens his autobiography with the words: "I cannot write my life." This seminar takes this starting point -the thick of chattel slavery, mercantile capitalism, and colonial violence - to investigate literary productions by racialized others dispersed in and by the so-called era of modernity. We will complicate what constitutes the modernity and how Islam, perhaps more than any other tradition, has been configured as its inverse. We will read works ranging from poetry, novels, short stories, comics, & memoirs as they relate to encounters & engagements particularly with Islam as a religious tradition, colonialism, industrialization, & nationalism, even as global understandings of tradition, genre, & form are being contested & rapidly changing. In addition to primary sources, we will theoretically situate these works within larger discussions of racecraft, oral transmission & culture, "folk" vs. "high" literature, Orientalism, politics, gender, sexuality, & identity. We will look at this is articulated in diasporic literary forms written within -and sometimes for- the imperial core. Through in-class discussions, readings, & a final paper, students will strengthen their global literacy, demonstrate knowledge of global historical trends, analyze the shifting and even contradictory interpretations of the role of religion in racial formations, all while identifying, critiquing & assessing these key course themes.

Instructor(s): Samah Choudhury     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ISLM 36717, CMLT 32700, AASR 36717, GLST 22710, RLST 26717, RDIN 22700, CMLT 22705

RDIN 32800. An Indigenous People's History of Hawaiʻi. 100 Units.

What you know about Hawai'i is most likely untrue. An archipelago in Oceania's sea of islands, Hawai'i has been locally constructed and globally consumed as a tropical paradise for pleasure and play, attracting tourists, settlers, corporations, and military forces to its shores. It is a fantasized paradise produced through the dispossession, elimination, appropriation, and exploitation of Indigenous people, institutions, worldviews, and practices. This course tells a truer story about Hawai'i. Because ideas and narratives crafted about the history, politics, economics, law, ecology, and society of Hawai'i are dominated and often distorted by non-Indigenous writers, we turn to Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) scholars to learn from their subjugated knowledge. The course examines interdisciplinary research, from the 19th century to the present, and excavates the truths advanced through it: the development of the Hawaiian Kingdom and its government, political order, economy, and society; the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian government and US military occupation and annexation of its territory; legal constructions of race and techniques of gender and sexuality in the territorial period; the creation of the State of Hawaii amid World War II and the Cold War; the birth and evolution of the modern Hawaiian sovereignty movement; and contemporary Kanaka Maoli struggles with federal recognition, militourism, and technoscientific development.

Instructor(s): Uahikea Maile     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 22800, GNSE 32806, HIST 37212, ANTH 32800, GNSE 22806, HIST 27212, RDIN 22800

RDIN 33001. What is Asian American Studies? 100 Units.

What is Asian American studies? Who is an Asian American? For that matter, what does it mean to be Asian? Or American? Where do we locate Asian America, and what are its relationships to Asian homelands or other diasporas? Where does Asian America fit into the US racial landscape? What does studying Asian Americans or Asian America help us understand? This course is not a traditional introduction to Asian American studies and its more canonical histories and literatures. Rather, in this course, we will interrogate the normative categories, histories, geographies, and approaches of Asian American studies to consider what it means to study Asian American populations, what we gain from these inquiries, and what the future of Asian American studies research might look like.

Instructor(s): Maya Singhal     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 23000, HIST 37702, RDIN 23000, HIST 27703, ANTH 33000

RDIN 33016. The History of American Urban Education. 100 Units.

This course explores the complex history of American urban education from the 19th century to modern times. Our primary analytical lens will be the role of place, race, and ethnicity in the making of contemporary schools, schooling, and curriculum in US urban centers. We will undertake this exploration by examining a selection of books, some of which are "foundational" texts in the history of American urban education, others that have opened new and important areas of research in the field, and still others that have addressed vital issues in the history of urban education in a particularly compelling way.

Instructor(s): DuJuan Smith     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered 2024-25
Equivalent Course(s): EDSO 33016, CHDV 23016, RDIN 23016, CHDV 33016, EDSO 23016, CHST 23016, SSAD 23016

RDIN 33100. Indigenous Feminisms. 100 Units.

Indigenous women, queers, trans, non-binary, and Two Spirit people have been at the forefront of Indigenous resistance struggles, most recently at Standing Rock, at Mauna Kea, and in protests against Line 3 and Line 6 pipelines in the upper midwest and Canada. Their voices, along with Indigenous queer and feminist scholars in academia, have been working to understand the interrelatedness of gendered violences, land dispossession, and cultural appropriation. This class will consider how Indigenous feminist, queer, and Two Spirit scholars have theorized gender, sexuality, race, and colonialism alongside queer and feminist of color critiques toward accountable visions of resistance. We will read works by Indigenous feminist scholars, writers, poets, and activists from the nineteenth-century to the twenty-first to consider how Indigeneity challenges how gender and sexuality are experienced in the context of ongoing settler colonialism.

Instructor(s): Jodi Byrd     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 23100, GNSE 20152, GNSE 30152, ENGL 23101, ENGL 33101

RDIN 33400. Treaty Ports and Modern East Asia. 100 Units.

Treaty ports shaped modern East Asia by providing key venues for colonial encounter, commercial expansion, and cultural exchange. This course explores how the (forced) opening of treaty ports in the 19th and early 20th centuries reconfigured the political, social, and spatial order of China and Japan. Focusing on cities such as Yokohama, Nagasaki, Tianjin, and Shanghai, we'll examine how foreign concessions, extraterritoriality, and new institutions of governance met with local practices and resistance. Key topics to be investigated include urban development and administration, transnational networks, racial and ethnic relations, and everyday life under (semi-)colonialism. The course also considers how treaty port legacies continue to influence contemporary East Asia and the wider world.

Instructor(s): Jiakai Sheng     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 34715, EALC 33400, HIST 24715, RDIN 23400, EALC 23400

RDIN 33500. Sorry, Not Sorry: The Literary and Political History of Apologies, Confessions and Defense Speeches. 100 Units.

This course examines the genre of the apology and, asks-but does not necessarily answer-the question of what a good apology is. We will read a broad historical arc of classical Greek apologia and defense speeches, works and practices of Christan confessionals, Sir Philip Sidney's Elizabethan "Apology for Poetry", as well as criticism and theory about regret and forgiveness in the "Age of Apology" after WWI. We will end by reading a number of contemporary political apologies (as well as the archive of apologies offered by celebrities and YouTube confessionals) as well as a collection of alter-apologetic literature that re-works or responds to the terms of the apologies and offers antagonistic forms of relation to the ongoing present of settler-colonialism, structural racism, and patriarchal violence. In particular, we will read works by Eve Ensler, Layli Long Soldier, Jordan Abel, and Tanya Lukin Linklater, and the queer performance collaboration between Adrian Stimson and settler artist AA Bronson, works which explore how apologetic genres open unique ways to address a national politics whose power comes about through instruments that are bureaucratic, archival, and issued on paper.

Instructor(s): Bellamy Mitchell     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 23500, ENGL 23550, ENGL 33550, SCTH 36101, SCTH 26101

RDIN 33600. Documentary Literature in the 20th and 21st Century. 100 Units.

In this course we will read works of literature from the 20th and 21st centuries that present, subvert, challenge and question the stories of "what happened" through a variety of literary, filmic, and documentary techniques. We will read works of nonfiction journalism as well as novels, examine how the development of photographic technologies and the circulation of "the news" change the perception of time and history, read experimental and poetic utopian re-tellings of historical violences towards activist ends of social change, consider the function of monuments and performances that attempt to preserve or change our memories of the past, and watch performance works and embodied movements that all engage the documentary. We will examine the play between the subjective perspective and presentational form of historical events and the people that documentary literature portrays through the work of artists and authors such as Dorothea Lange, Charles Reznikoff, Muriel Rukeyser, Joshua Oppenheimer, Mark Nowak, and Divya Victor.

Instructor(s): Bellamy Mitchell     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 23600, RDIN 23600, ENGL 33602

RDIN 34000. Soundtrack for Changing the World: Mavis Staples, Chicago, & the Music of the Civil Rights Movement. 100 Units.

Mavis Staples was nine years old in 1948 when she joined her father, Roebuck "Pops' Staples and three siblings to form the Chicago gospel group The Staple Singers. Inspired by the rich musical crosscurrents of the South Side, the Staples fused gospel vocal harmonies with Delta Blues guitar to create a revolutionary form of American music. In the 1960s, the group collaborated with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and traveled the back roads of the South at great personal risk to spread his message. Their music became synonymous with the Civil Rights Movement. A lifelong South Side resident, Mavis Staples continues to blend soul, blues, folk, gospel and rock in her albums and has worked with Bob Dylan, Prince, Public Enemy's Chuck D and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. Students in this interdisciplinary course will blend journalism, history, biography, and musicology to illuminate the pioneering path mapped out by Mavis Staples and her family. The students will explore how art and activism intertwine, and how popular music sparks democratic change. Students will create research projects grounded in the Staples' epic history by developing oral histories and drawing on recordings, photographs, manuscripts, newspapers, film, and video in archives nationwide. Students will be able to further their work by applying for Summer 2025 travel grants and research fellowships. Guest speakers in the course will include artists who were influenced by or played with Mavis Staples and The Staple Singers.

Instructor(s): Greg Kot, former Chicago Tribune music critic and host of public radio's Sound Opinions; Nora Titone     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 24000, PARR 34000, HIST 27316, MUSI 34200

RDIN 34400. After Camp: Re-Imagining a Japanese American Chicago. 100 Units.

Following FDR's Executive Order 9066 and the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans, Chicago's Japanese American population exploded beginning in 1943 when the wartime internment camps began to release internees deemed sufficiently 'loyal' on the condition that they not reside on the West Coast. More than 20,000 former internees settled in Chicago, creating new communities that persisted for decades with their own institutions and cultural practices-often in the face of racial discrimination, economic hardship, and continuing Cold War suspicions of 'disloyalty.' This course traces the history of this local community in terms of questions of collective and individual memory and cultural imagination. With a focus on visual culture (photography, painting, and motion pictures), musical practice, fiction and poetry, and oral history, we will explore the complex legacies of both the prewar and postwar Chicago Japanese American communities, including their alliances and conflicts with other marginalized groups and with more recent immigrants from Japan and elsewhere.

Instructor(s): Michael Bourdaghs     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 24400, CHST 24400, EALC 34400, RDIN 24400

RDIN 34555. Ecological Explorations of the Francophone World. 100 Units.

The environmental humanities - that is, the study of nature through humanistic disciplines such as literature and history - has long been dominated by texts and theories from privileged sections of Europe and North America. However, alternative understandings of our natural world, including the role of living beings within it, have always existed. In this course, we will explore how contemporary francophone literature can renew, expand and complicate our perceptions of the oceans, deserts, mangroves and forests that surround us. Particular attention will be paid to questions of race, gender, language and indigeneity; course material may include theoretical texts, fiction, poetry, songs, podcasts, film, graphic novels and social media material.

Instructor(s): Nikhita Obeegadoo     Terms Offered: Course not taught in 2025-26
Prerequisite(s): For students seeking French credit, FREN 20500 or equivalent.
Note(s): Taught in English or French, based on course composition
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 34555, FREN 34555, FREN 24555, RDIN 24555, CEGU 24555

RDIN 34770. Sex, Crime and Horror in Argentine Literature. 100 Units.

This course examines the historical evolution of Argentine literature, cinema, and the visual arts through the study of three thematic currents that significantly influenced Argentina's cultural and socio-political experience with nation-building, modernization, and democracy: sex, crime, and horror. The primary objective of the course is to foster a critical exploration of how foundational works of Romanticism and Realism in the Río de la Plata, the Noir genre, and the Gothic tradition accounted for decisive changes in the social fabric of the country. Students will assess the role of sexuality, crime, and horror stories in the representation of momentous events in Argentine history, spanning from the revolutionary era in the nineteenth century to the contemporary period. Topics include the Wars of Independence, gaucho literature, indigenous resistance, the great migratory flows, the rise of the middle classes, Peronismo, Youth culture, military dictatorships, human rights violations, LGBT movements, and economic precarity in neoliberal times. Works by Esteban Echeverría, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Juana Manuela Gorriti, José Hernández, Lucio V. and Eduarda Mansilla, Eugenio Cambaceres, Leopoldo Lugones, Roberto Arlt, Jorge Luis Borges, Juan José Saer, Antonio Di Benedetto, Olga Orozco, Alejandra Pizarnik, Juan Gelman, Andrés Rivera, Silvina Ocampo, Horacio Quiroga, Rodolfo Walsh, Manuel Puig, Ricardo Piglia, Mariana Enríquez, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, María Luisa Bemberg,

Instructor(s): Carlos Halaburda      Terms Offered: Course not taught in 2025-26
Prerequisite(s): Reading proficiency in Spanish required.
Note(s): Class discussions and reading materials in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 34770, LACS 24770, SPAN 34770, SPAN 24770, RDIN 24770, GNSE 24770, GNSE 34771

RDIN 34960. Creole Genesis and Genetic Linguistics. 100 Units.

In this seminar course we will review the "creole exceptionalism" tradition against the uniformitarian view, according to which creoles have emerged and evolved like other, natural and non-creole languages. We will situate creoles in the context of the plantation settlement colonies that produced them and compare their emergence specifically with that of languages such as English and the Romance languages in Europe. We will also compare these evolutions with those of new colonial varieties of European languages (such as Amish English, mainstream American English varieties, Brazilian Portuguese, and Québécois French) which emerged around the same time but are not considered creoles. Using the comparative approach (in evolutionary theory), we will assess whether the criteria used in the genetic classification of languages have been applied uniformly to creole and non-creole languages. In return, we will explore ways in which genetic creolistics can inform and improve genetic linguistics (including historical dialectology).

Instructor(s): Salikoko Mufwene
Equivalent Course(s): LING 24960, LING 34960, RDIN 24960, CHDV 24960, CHDV 34960

RDIN 35119. Architecture and Colonialism in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. 100 Units.

This seminar invites students to examine the intersections of colonialism with architecture in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Throughout the semester, we will discuss the designs of architects working in the region (Le Corbusier, Fernand Pouillon, Shadrach Woods, etc.) and concepts defining colonialism as a design project (segregation, repression, primitivism, etc.). We will also pay particular attention to modes of opposition pursued by residents and their historical impact toward the region's decolonization. Moments of heightened historical consequence, such as the strategic use of selected architectural spaces by independentist guerrillas, will be thoroughly discussed. The class will progress through a chronological scope, from Orientalism as a 19th century phenomenon to the enmeshment of modernism with colonialism in the 20th century. We will conclude with the emergence of postcolonial modernities.

Instructor(s): Jacobé Huet      Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARCH 25119, RDIN 25119, ARTH 35119, ARTH 25119

RDIN 35500. New Directions in Afro-Latin Performance. 100 Units.

This class engages contemporary conversations in the study of Afro-Latin performance and explores the work of emerging black performance artists across the hemisphere. Tracing performances of blackness from the Southern cone to the Caribbean, we will examine the ways blackness is wielded by the State and by black communities themselves in performance and visual art across the region. We ask: what is the relationship between race and theatricality? What work is blackness made to do in states organized around discourses of racial democracy and mestizaje? How are notions of diaspora constructed through performances of blackness? We take up these questions in our study of reggaetón, hip hop, samba, el baile de los negritos and examine the works of noted and upcoming black artists such as Victoria and Nicomedes Santa-Cruz, Carlos Martiel, Las Nietas de Nonó, and others.

Instructor(s): Danielle Roper     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Knowledge of Spanish is recommended.
Note(s): While the course will be taught in English, many of the performances and at least four of the readings will be in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 35500, LACS 35501, TAPS 34880

RDIN 36050. Race, Ethnicity, Language, and Citizenship in the United States. 100 Units.

This course is intended to help students make sense of the current discourse on diversity and inclusion/exclusion from a historical perspective. They will be trained to read critically the evolution of political discourse on citizenship in the United States since the American Revolution. They will learn to detect the role of shifting interpretations of race and ethnicity, after that of European nationality, in determining who is (not) a (full) citizen. For instance, who counted as "American" in the early stages of the Republic? Why were Native Americans and (descendants of) forced immigrants from Africa excluded at the outset? How did English become the unofficial language of American citizenship and inclusion? What factors favored its rise and drove to extinction the competing European national languages?

Instructor(s): Salikoko Mufwene     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 26050, LING 36050, LING 26050, RDIN 26050, CHDV 36055

RDIN 36206. American Political Economy and Race. 100 Units.

This course will explore how individual or group identity and social location is understood in economics. Specifically, we will use a political economy framework, which emerges from the premise that economic life has material, cultural, and political dimensions and that an individual's (or group's) identity or social location--e.g., race, gender, and class--may constrain or empower agents in their participation in economic and political life. The readings will draw from diverse disciplines including political science, economics, and sociology and will focus primarily on the intersection of race and class.

Instructor(s): P. Posey     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 36206

RDIN 36220. Dance, Identity, and Appropriation. 100 Units.

This survey course will look at the ways that dance-across genres, geographies, and histories-has negotiated, challenged, and complicated ideas of identity and authority. Grounded in histories including the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, where Swedish-American Christine Olson performed Turkish dance on the Midway, as well as modern dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis' imitation of the Indianness she encountered on a cigarette ad, we will explore case studies including American minstrel traditions, hip hop dance, the Nutcracker and other classical ballets, dance tourism like Hula and West African forms, viral K-pop dance tutorials, and more. These case studies will be used to discover how dance, and the dancing body, performs and problematizes appropriation. Part seminar/part practicum, assignments will include short written papers and performance projects including dance reconstructions.

Instructor(s): E. Leopold     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 26220, TAPS 36220, RDIN 26220

RDIN 36290. Mapping Black Social Dance: Hip Hop and House in the Community and Onstage. 100 Units.

This hybrid studio/seminar course offers an overview of the formal techniques, cultural contexts, and social trends that shape current Black social and vernacular dance practices. Modules will be built around Black social culture by looking at key histories and theories around Black dance, music and other cultural aesthetics from hip hop to house. As part of our exploration, we will cover themes such as: the Great Migration, the range of Black social dance forms from blues, jazz, disco, and dancehall that have influenced the evolution of hip hop and house on global scale; and the spectrum of social spaces from clubs to lounges and public events that have been critical to preserving Black cultural heritage and creating safe spaces for belonging and flourishing. Selected readings and viewings will supplement movement practice to give historical, cultural, and political context.

Instructor(s): M. McNeal     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MUSI 33620, MUSI 23620, RDIN 26290, TAPS 36290, TAPS 26290, CHST 26290

RDIN 36380. Indigenous Politics in Latin America. 100 Units.

This course examines the history of Indigenous policies and politics in Latin America from the first encounters with European empires through the 21st Century. Course readings and discussions will consider several key historical moments across the region: European encounters/colonization; the rise of liberalism and capitalist expansion in the 19th century; 20th-century integration policies; and pan-Indigenous and transnational social movements in recent decades. Students will engage with primary and secondary texts that offer interpretations and perspectives both within and across imperial and national boundaries.

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz Francisco     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 26318, GLST 26380, ANTH 23077, RDIN 26380, LACS 26380, HIPS 26380, LACS 36380

RDIN 36386. Greater Latin America. 100 Units.

What is "Latin America," who are "Latin Americans" and what is the relationship among and between places and people of the region we call Latin America, on the one hand, and the greater Latinx diaspora in the US on the other? This course explores the history of Latin America as an idea, and the cultural, social, political and economic connections among peoples on both sides of the southern and eastern borders of the United States. Students will engage multiple disciplinary perspectives in course readings and assignments and will explore Chicago as a crucial node in the geography of Greater Latin America. Some topics we will consider are: the origin of the concept of "Latin" America, Inter-Americanism and Pan-Americanism, transnational social movements and intellectual exchanges, migration, and racial and ethnic politics.

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz Francisco     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 36386, ANTH 23003, HIST 26321, SPAN 26386, LACS 36386, RDIN 26386, LACS 26386

RDIN 36780. Caribbean Music, Performance, and Popular Culture in the Age of Precarity: 1990 to the Present. 100 Units.

This course explores the concept of precarity and its influence on artistic and cultural expressions within contemporary Caribbean popular culture, primarily from the 1990s to the present day. Precarity is broadly defined as the feeling or experience of instability resulting from various social, economic, political, and environmental factors, including structural adjustments, climate change (such as hurricanes and earthquakes), and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, among others. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of art in shaping popular responses to precarity, including significant events like mass protests, the Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protests, uprisings against the deportation of Haitians in the Dominican Republic, as well as interrelated international movements like #LifeinLeggings and #Metoo. The course delves into how Caribbean performance and popular music have engaged with these issues, with a focus on music genres like dancehall, wylers, soca, reggaetón, and the individual artistic works of Caribbean artists such as LaVaughn Belle, Helen Ceballos, Joiri Minaya, and others. These artists use their work to explore themes of precarity and to envision potential alternatives to the contemporary challenges of insecurity, touching on issues related to gender, sexuality, and race.

Instructor(s): Jessica Baker and Danielle Roper     Terms Offered: Course not taught in 2025-26
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 36780, RDIN 26780, MUSI 26780, MUSI 36780, SPAN 26780

RDIN 38055. Queerness in the Shadow of Empire: Sexualities in the Modern Middle East. 100 Units.

Critics, from both the Right and the Left, claim that liberal sexual regimes are Western, imperial impositions onto Muslim and Middle Eastern societies. On the other hand, LGBTQ+ advocates claim that the restriction of sexuality is itself a colonial legacy. This class will delve into this debate by examining cutting edge empirical and theoretical work on Queer lives in the modern Middle East.

Instructor(s): E. Abelhadi     Terms Offered: Autumn. Distribution: C;3
Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent
Note(s): Distribution: C;3
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 38055, GNSE 20141, GNSE 30141, NEHC 28055, CHDV 28055, RDIN 28055, CHDV 38055

RDIN 38100. New Studies in African American Religion. 100 Units.

This seminar will focus on studies of African American religion published within the last five years. We will explore how classic questions of the field are being asked and answered with new sources and methods, as well as what problems remain for future consideration. The selected books will range in topic and method (historical, ethnographic, and theoretical), with a focus on the twentieth century.

Instructor(s): Matt Harris     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Undergraduates may petition to enroll. This course meets the Historical Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RAME 38100

RDIN 38619. Postcolonial Openings. 100 Units.

This course familiarizes students with the perspectives, debates, and attitudes that characterize the contemporary field of postcolonial theory, with critical attention to how its interdisciplinary formation contributes to reading literary works. What are the claims made on behalf of literary texts in orienting us to other lives and possibilities, and in registering the experiences of displacement under global capitalism? To better answer these questions, we read recent scholarship that engages the field in conversations around gender, affect, climate change, and democracy, to think about the impulses that animate the field, and to sketch new directions. We survey critiques within the field, looking at canonical critics (Fanon, Said, Bhabha, Spivak), as well as reading a range of literary and cinematic works by writers like Jean Rhys, E.M. Forster, Mahasweta Devi, Derek Walcott, and Arundhati Roy). (Theory; 20th/21st)

Instructor(s): Darrel Chia     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 28619, GNSE 34520, ENGL 38619, ENGL 28619, MAPH 34520, GNSE 24520, HMRT 34520, KNOW 38618

RDIN 38860. Black Shakespeare. 100 Units.

This course explores the role played by the Shakespearean canon in the shaping of Western ideas about Blackness, in long-term processes of racial formation, and in global racial struggles from the early modern period to the present. Students will read Shakespearean plays portraying Black characters (Othello, Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, and Antony and Cleopatra) in conversation with African-American, Caribbean, and Post-colonial rewritings of those plays by playwrights Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Bernard Jackson, Djanet Sears, Keith Hamilton Cobb, Aimé Césaire, Derek Walcott, Lolita Chakrabarti, and film-makers Max Julien and Jordan Peele. This course is open to MAPH students and to PhD students upon request. (Drama, Medieval/Early Modern)

Instructor(s): Noémie Ndiaye     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 20040, ENGL 38860, ENGL 18860, TAPS 30040, RDIN 18860

RDIN 38888. Mosquitos and Morphine: A Seminar in the Global Medical Humanities. 100 Units.

This course examines well-being and illness from transnational, decolonial and intersectional perspectives. Together, we will explore the various ways in which fiction and film can help challenge and expand our notions of what it means to be sick or healthy in complex circumstances. Some guiding threads: To what extent is illness an intensely personal experience, and to what extent does it draw in those around us - family members, friends, partners, medical practitioners, legal counsel? What renewed valences do concepts of autonomy, care and responsibility take when overshadowed by the spectre of disease? How might we ethically and productively relate the medical humanities to broader entangled concerns such as migration (both legal and clandestine), gender, class, race, community, queerness and neocolonialism? Beyond the justified responses of fear and anger, what are other ways to relate to death and mortality - ways that are infused with creativity and resilience? How does human "health" relate to planetary and interspecies well-being?

Instructor(s): Nikhita Obeegadoo     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): For students seeking French credit, FREN 20500 or equivalent.
Note(s): Taught in English.
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 38888, CMLT 28888, HLTH 28888, GNSE 38888, FREN 38888, RDIN 28888, GNSE 28888, FREN 28888

RDIN 39000. Cinema and the Speculative Archive: Theory & Practice Seminar. 100 Units.

Recent years have seen the flourishing of work by experimental filmmakers that imaginatively engages with absences in the historical record, especially around the visual history of African Americans. How might scholarship adapt methodologies from these creative practices? How can scholarly methods, in turn, inform art making (as the formation of another kind of history)? Engaging theory and practice, this course investigates these questions through-and against-African American media history's precarious archival condition. Students interested in enrolling should contact Professor Field at anfield@uchicago.edu.

Instructor(s): Allyson Nadia Field & Christopher Harris     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Not offered in 2024-25.
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 29000, RDIN 29000, CMST 39000, CCCT 39000, CHST 29000

RDIN 39030. Islam, Race and Decoloniality. 100 Units.

This course explores western perspectives, attitudes and representations of Muslims and Islam from medieval European thought, through liberal colonial encounters to contemporary media and political discourses. Students will examine the intersection of race and religion as it applies to the construction of Muslim identity and alterity in the Western imagination. We will explore the remarkable consistency across centuries of the threatening, menacing, barbaric and uncivilized Muslim "Other". The course centers around these Orientalist constructions and will explore the power structures, colonial modalities, epistemological frameworks, and ideological assumptions that perpetuate the racialization of Islam and Muslims within the United States and abroad. This course ultimately aims to uncover potentials for resistance, recovery and renewal through the politics and praxis of decoloniality. Students will gain familiarity with decolonial theory and practices, as well as the important project of 'epistemic delinking' as it is framed by contemporary scholars intent on challenging, possibly undoing and remapping the Muslim experience within global liberal political modernity.

Instructor(s): Maliha Chishti     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 29030, INRE 39030, RDIN 29030, INRE 29030, ISLM 39030, NEHC 39030, AASR 39030, NEHC 29030, ANTH 39030, KNOW 39030, RLST 29030

RDIN 39108. Atlantic Empires. 100 Units.

This course explores classic and emerging scholarship on European empires and colonies in the early modern Atlantic world (c. 1400s-1800s). We will examine the rise and consolidation of empires and colonies through comparative, trans, and circum-Atlantic approaches. Additionally, the course will pay particular attention to the perspectives of colonized peoples (such as enslaved and freed people of African descent, Creole populations, and Indigenous peoples). Geographically, the course will span the Atlantic World, including regions such as the Caribbean, West Africa, Latin America, and North America. Topics we will cover include the formation of empires and colonial systems; Atlantic slavery; the emergence of Atlantic ideologies of race; gender, and kinship; knowledge formation, environment, and disease; anti-slavery struggles, and the "Age of Revolution."

Instructor(s): Lyons, Deirdre     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): MAPS 39108, ANTH 39208, RDIN 29108, HIST 29108, HIST 39108

RDIN 39117. Theater and Performance in Latin America. 100 Units.

What is performance? How has it been used in Latin America and the Caribbean? This course is an introduction to theatre and performance in Latin America and the Caribbean that will examine the intersection of performance and social life. While we will place particular emphasis on performance art, we will examine some theatrical works. We ask: how have embodied practice, theatre and visual art been used to negotiate ideologies of race, gender and sexuality? What is the role of performance in relation to systems of power? How has it negotiated dictatorship, military rule, and social memory? Ultimately, the aim of this course is to give students an overview of Latin American performance including blackface performance, indigenous performance, as well as performance and activism.

Instructor(s): Danielle Roper     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 2025-26
Prerequisite(s): Undergraduates must be in their third or fourth year.
Note(s): Taught in English.
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 39117, LACS 29117, SPAN 29117, RDIN 29117, TAPS 38479, TAPS 28479, LACS 39117, SPAN 39117, GNSE 29117

RDIN 40006. Politics, Race, and American Cities. 100 Units.

This seminar will explore the politics of American cities by bringing together the vantage points of urban political economy, history, sociology, and political science. Readings and discussions will cross those literatures, folding in considerations of race, ethnicity, and gender in American city life, with a focus on the changes in urban political economy over time. We will reconstruct the history of the different tracks of urban studies in the U.S. while also trying to understand these various intellectual trajectories in relation to dynamics contemporaneously shaping urban politics and policy.

Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 40006

RDIN 40100. Proseminar in Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity: Core Works. 100 Units.

This graduate proseminar serves as an introduction to the concepts and categories that orient the study of race, diaspora, and Indigeneity. This includes repertoires of Black and Indigenous worldmaking alongside histories of plantation slavery, settler colonialism, and their afterlives in the Americas; circuits of racialized labor in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans; and the construction of race and Indigeneity as categories of scientific and occult origins. Students will consult the works of Toni Morrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Audra Simpson, Amitav Ghosh, Kim Tallbear, Audre Lorde, and Frantz Fanon, among others.

Instructor(s): Ryan Jobson     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): PhD students only, instructor consent required
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 40101

RDIN 40200. Proseminar in Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity: Core Methods. 100 Units.

This second graduate proseminar section engages with new approaches to research in fields of race, diaspora and indigeneity, including archival speculation, art as argument and evidence, geography and environment as critical epistemologies, intermodal investigation (sovereignty and survivance, technology and mythologies, semantics and sensoria of both domination and resistance), communally responsible research, and the dialectics of trauma and futurism. The class will be a mix of survey, practice and consultation with partners, meant to bring students close to the methodological experiments RDI faculty and partners utilize in their work.

Instructor(s): Adam Green     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): PhD students only; instructor consent required
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 40200, HIST 47005

RDIN 41315. Narratives of American Religious History. 100 Units.

How do we tell the story of religion in America? Is it a story of Protestant dominance? Of religious diversity? Of transnational connections? Of secularization? This course examines how historians have grappled with such questions. We will read the work of scholars who have offered narratives explaining American religious history, including figures like Sydney Ahlstrom, Albert Raboteau, Mark Noll, Ann Braude, Catherine Albanese, and Thomas Tweed. This course will introduce students to key historiographical questions in the study of American religion, as well as to classic texts which have shaped the field's development.

Instructor(s): William Schultz and Curtis Evans     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course meets the HS or SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 27304, HCHR 41315, AMER 21315, KNOW 41315, AMER 41315, RLST 21315, RDIN 21315, RAME 41315, HIST 47304

RDIN 42200. Fictions of the Indian Ocean. 100 Units.

This course will explore contemporary fiction, film, music and theory emerging from the Indian Ocean world - its oceans, its archipelagoes, and its bordering regions. Examples of potential texts include La mémoire délavée (2023) by Nathacha Appanah, Le Silence des Chagos (2005) by Shenaz Patel and The Dragonfly Sea (2020) by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. We will be in conversation with decolonial theory, the environmental humanities, critical race and caste studies, and gender studies, among others.

Instructor(s): Nikhita Obeegadoo     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor required.
Note(s): Taught in English.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 42200, CMLT 43200

RDIN 42755. Labor and Resistance at the Margins: Race, Gender, and "Dirty" Work. 100 Units.

Over 100 years ago, Black feminist scholar Anna Julia Cooper challenged narrow definitions of work---which excluded much of the household labor relegated to women---and argued for work to be more broadly defined as "all human exertion." In this class, we put gender in conversation with race, ethnicity, class, power, and labor to answer the following questions: 1) What is labor? What types of labor do we deem "dirty" work? 2) Who does the dirty work and the care work that keeps society going? What social, economic, and political constraints influence the type of work we do? 3) How do we practice resistance in our work? While global perspectives on labor are welcome and incredibly useful, this course and its readings mainly discuss labor and work within the U.S. context.

Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 22755, SSAD 42755, SSAD 22755, GNSE 33183, GNSE 23183

RDIN 42901. Christianity and Slavery in America, 1619-1865. 100 Units.

We will be examining the relationship between Christian thought/practice and the institutions of slavery as they evolved historically, especially in the context of European enslavement of peoples of African descent in the colonies of British North America and in the antebellum South. The following questions will be addressed in some form through our readings and class discussions: How and why did slavery become a moral problem for abolitionists? How and why did white evangelical Christians, especially in the South, become the most prominent defenders of slavery? What role did race play in the historical development of slavery and how did Christianity sustain and perpetuate racial divisions and sanction for human bondage? How did people of African descent shape and practice Christianity in British North America and in the Southern states?

Instructor(s): Curtis Evans     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): AMER 21303, RLST 21303, HIST 27111, HCHR 42901, HIST 47102, RAME 42901, AMER 42901, RDIN 21303, KNOW 42901, KNOW 21303

RDIN 43367. Panafricanism: Histories, Aesthetics, and Politics. 100 Units.

Organized in conjunction with the Art Institute exhibition, Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica (December 15-March 30), this course considers the cultural politics of Pan-Africanism beginning with the origins of the term in the late-nineteenth century and extending to the present day. This course asks: What are the cultural dimensions of Pan-Africanism's drive for self-determination, civil rights, and political emancipation? What forms and formats have been important vectors for the circulation of Pan-African idea(l)s? How might we differentiate Pan-Africanism from related concepts such as Afropolitanism and Black internationalism? Please note the that this course will meet at the Art Institute of Chicago. Students should be prepared to travel to the museum weekly for the course. Instruct consent is required for this class. In your email request, please provide information about how the course's themes intersect with your research and include any related prior courses or other relevant background. Space is very limited.

Instructor(s): Getachew, Adom     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Instructor Consent Required
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 43367

RDIN 43500. Archives of Slavery and Gender in the Americas. 100 Units.

This class offers an in-depth introduction to archival research methodologies with a focus on gender and slavery in the Americas. Students will apply their knowledge by working in historical and contemporary archives trips to special collections: to view archival texts from the period and to find an archival object of the student's choosing that will provide the topic of their final research paper.(18th/19th)

Instructor(s): SJ Zhang     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 43500, GNSE 43500, ENGL 43500

RDIN 43900. Queerness and Disability in Latin American Literature and Culture, 1880-1930. 100 Units.

With the rise of Latin American modernity, LGBTQ and crip populations were portrayed in literature, medical science, and visual culture as deviant. The discursive mechanisms to produce truths about bodies as normative or perverse, real or unreal, fit or disabled not only achieved authority in medicine, but also in numerous platforms where ableist heteronormativity was sedimented as a hegemonic way of life. Literature, theater, museums, the modern press, and the visual arts became semiotic territories for the production of racial, gender, sex, and psychophysical difference. But queer/crip/trans* and critical race theory have offered tools to critique the sexual hegemony and ableism of such patriarchal-colonial mindset. This graduate course introduces students to such debates in new Latin American critical studies, with a global perspective. Focusing on the cultural production of modern Latin America and the Caribbean, students will investigate and critique the somatic constructions of the so-called "deviant" in excerpts from novels, plays, chronicles, early films, and clinical studies. Texts by José Tomás de Cuéllar, Luis Montané Dardé, Leonidio Ribeiro, Eduardo Castrejón, Adolfo Caminha, Augusto D'Halmar, Rómulo Gallegos, José González Castillo, Elías Castelnuovo, Teresa de La Parra, Bernardo Arias Trujillo, Francisco de Veyga, Ofelia Rodríguez Acosta, among others.

Instructor(s): Carlos Halaburda     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): The course will be taught in Spanish and English.
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 43901, GNSE 43900, LACS 43900

RDIN 44599. Historical and Contemporary Issues in U.S. Racial Health Inequality. 100 Units.

This course explores persistent health inequality in the U.S. from the 1900s to the present day. The focus will be on racial gaps in urban health inequality with some discussion of rural communities. Readings will largely cover the research on Black and White gaps in health inequality, with the understanding that most of the issues discussed extend to health inequalities across many racial and ethnic groups. Readings cover the broad range of social determinants of health (socioeconomic status, education, access to health care, homelessness) and how these social determinants are rooted in longstanding legacies of American inequality. A major component of class assignments will be identifying emerging research and innovative policies and programs that point to promising pathways to eliminating health disparities.

Instructor(s): M. Keels     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Only students with 2nd year standing or above.
Note(s): Fulfills grad requirement: 2,4 and undergrad major requirement B.
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 24599, CHDV 44599, PBPL 24599, RDIN 24599, CHST 24599, AMER 24599, CHDV 24599

RDIN 45000. Second-Generation Maghrebis in France: Immigration, Identity, and Belonging. 100 Units.

France is home to the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, of which the majority is of North African descent. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Maghrebi immigrants were subject to various forms of discrimination and violence. In recent years, ongoing debates on immigration and citizenship have shed light on the enduring legacies of French imperialism, along with the widely held perception of France's failure to effectively integrate its African and Muslim minorities. This course explores how narrative works by second-generation Maghrebis respond to these debates by addressing questions about collective memory, socioeconomic inequalities, police brutality, intergenerational relationships, and the banlieue environment. Authors studied may include Mehdi Charef, Azouz Begag, Leïla Sebbar, Faïza Guène, and Kaoutar Harchi.

Instructor(s): Khalid Lyamlahy     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Taught in English.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 45000

RDIN 45800. Black Ownership of Wealth: A Theological Consideration. 100 Units.

Since Africans were brought to the Virginia Colony (August 1619), throughout slavery and segregation until today, black Americans (men and women) have always owned wealth. They have always had human agency. These black families accumulated wealth and offered a concurrent narrative and framing from the mainstream understanding of black Americans as victims. Who are these black families who remain mainly invisible from the dominant black story? What is material, financial wealth? Who has it? And how did they get it?

Instructor(s): Dwight Hopkins     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 37419, RLST 25800, RDIN 25800, AMER 45800, AMER 25800, THEO 45800, HIST 27419

RDIN 46000. Beyond the Blanks of History: When Women of Color Reclaim the Narrative. 100 Units.

History" is skewed and incomplete. It leaves out as much as it reveals. As they relegate past suffering to oblivion, historical omissions perpetuate the violence that they seek to hide. And this violence is often felt on multiple levels by women of color who find themselves imbricated within (neo)colonial, patriarchal, heteronormative, classist and ableist societal structures. In this course, we will situate ourselves at the intersection of literature, history and gender studies. We will explore the following questions together: Faced with the blind spots of history, how can literature function as an alternative archive that draws attention to the invisibilized stories of women of color? Simultaneously, how does literature sensitize us to the impossibility of fully knowing the past, no matter how hard we try? Course material may include theoretical texts, fiction, poetry, songs, podcasts, film, graphic novels and social media material. Potential examples include Saidiya Hartman's "Venus in Two Acts" (2008), Gina Prince-Bythewood's The Woman King (2022), Gaiutra Bahadur's Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (2013), Nathacha Appanah's La Mémoire Délavée (2023), Lia Brozgal's Absent the Archive: Cultural Traces of a Massacre in Paris, 17 October 1961 (2022), Marie Clements' Bones of Crows (2022), and Natasha Kanapé Fontaine's poetry.

Instructor(s): Nikhita Obeegadoo     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Advanced undergraduates with appropriate experience in the subject may petition for admission.
Note(s): Taught in English. All course material will be available in English, though students are encouraged to engage with original materials. Work may be submitted in English, French or Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 46001, FREN 46000, CMLT 46100

RDIN 46312. Race, Crime, and Justice in the City. 100 Units.

The size and growth of the U.S. jail and prison census, and its deleterious consequences for the poor, and especially for poor black people who reside in the nation's most disadvantaged communities, has been well documented. This course examines some of this work but goes further in addressing how the targets of mass incarceration experience crime control policy, how criminal legal expansion shapes urban, and, in recent years, suburban and rural sociality, and how criminalized people work to bring about change in the laws and policies that regulate their lives.

Equivalent Course(s): SSAD 46312, SSAD 26312, RDIN 26312

RDIN 46635. Liberatory Violence. 100 Units.

From 18th century slave rebellions in the Americas to 20th and 21st century anticolonial revolutions, oppressed peoples' struggles for liberation have often incorporated violent tactics, even against non-combatants. This course examines anticolonial violence in light of the work of the Martiniquan revolutionary Frantz Fanon and some of his interlocutors. We study specific freedom movements: Nat Turner's slave rebellion, the Haitian and Algerian revolutions against French colonialism, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers' mobilization against white supremacy and police violence, and the ongoing Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. Throughout, we will pay attention to how revolutionaries evaluated the place of violence in their own movements, including religious criteria for justifiable and unjustifiable use of force.

Instructor(s): Alireza Doostdar     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Graduate student enrollment by permission only. Please send one or two paragraphs explaining your interest and prior preparation.
Note(s): This course meets the SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 26635, AASR 46635, SSAD 26635, HMRT 26635, RLST 26635, RDIN 26635, ANTH 36635, ANTH 26636

RDIN 46636. Liberatory Violence: Part II. 100 Units.

In this follow up to the Autumn course "Liberatory Violence," we explore the temporality of revolutionary violence, its victories and defeats, its tragedies, promises, and pitfalls. The course will be split into three parts, attending to revolutionary violence in the past, the present, and the future. Our case studies will include the Grenada revolution, the Irish Republican Army's struggle for independence, ongoing Palestinian resistance against Zionist colonization, and speculative fiction about future liberation.

Instructor(s): Alireza Doostdar     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Open to student who took RLST 26635/AASR 46635 "Liberatory Violence" in autumn 2024, or by instructor's permission.
Note(s): This course meets the SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 46636, RLST 26636, HMRT 26636, RDIN 26636, ANTH 26637, AASR 46636

RDIN 46922. Structuring Refuge: U.S. Refugee Policy and Resettlement Practice. 100 Units.

UNHCR estimates that one of every 67 people are forcibly displaced people around the world. Of these, over 42 million are refugees, less than .5% of whom accessed permanent resettlement. Over the last 45 years the US has resettled more refugees than any other nation. Yet even as the need for third country resettlement rises, the US has rescinded its welcome to this population: the Trump Admin is actively dismantling the refugee resettlement institution. We will keep up with the shifting terrain of policy and practice as we pursue our goal of understanding US resettlement. This course asks: How is refugee status politically constructed; how is it experienced by individuals; what are the interrelationships between institutions and refugee policies, and how do these interrelationships impact service delivery to refugees; what can research tell us about the resettlement outcomes of refugees in the US and what drives these outcomes; and, where are intervention points for social workers in the resettlement process? We will address these questions by 1) detangling the web of intl and domestic policies relating to the refugee political identity, focusing on the US system of resettlement, 2) analyzing the structure of US resettlement policy and exploring its implications for social work practice, and 3) holding the inherent tension that results from a dual focus on macro level issues of scale and policy alongside micro level issues related to the lived experiences of human beings.

Equivalent Course(s): SSAD 26922, CHST 26922, SSAD 46922, HMRT 46922, RDIN 26922

RDIN 49000. Archives. 100 Units.

This doctoral seminar explores the theorical, epistemological, and methodological underpinnings of archival work and imagination, along with its poetics, politics and technologies. The course is designed for students already working with their own set of archival materials. During the quarter, we will attend to the problems that have guided modern archival thinking. We will see that archive/archiving often has a great deal to do with the production of traces and fragments, with impermanence and materiality, with the interplay of presence and absence, as well as milieus of power mediating between past and present. Beyond matters of truth and evidence, archives also entail inevitable questions of loss, memory, forgetting, repression, and desire. Drawing on a wide range of examples and theoretical literatures, we will examine how archival operations play out in a variety of media -- texts, film, photography, drawings, maps, objects, landscapes, and digital worlds - as well as the challenges and possibilities they contain."

Instructor(s): Francois Richard
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 49000

RDIN 50092. Sem: Religion and Politics. 100 Units.

In this seminar we will consider meanings of religion and politics, and examine their interactions from a comparative perspective. After digesting alternative theoretical understandings of the relationship between religion, states, and political processes, we will turn to empirical accounts that illuminate historical and local issues at points around the globe. Among other phenomena, students will explore patterns of secularization, religious nationalism, fundamentalisms, and policy-oriented religious social movements.

Instructor(s): O. McRoberts     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): AASR 50092, SOCI 50092

RDIN 50541. Reconstruction for Reconstitution. 100 Units.

This class will think about transitional moments in the "aftermath" of long histories of oppression by asking about the meanings, potentials and challenges of reconstruction and reconstitution. It will do so by thinking comparatively across the different historical and situated experiences of Reconstruction in the United States, independence from British rule in India, and the transition from apartheid in South Africa. Specifically, it will focus on a close reading of W.E.B. DuBois' "Black Reconstruction", set against the constitutionalist and anti-casteist writings of B.R. Ambedkar (one of the architects of the Indian Constitution), and the writings of South African historian, educator and anti-apartheid revolutionary Neville Alexander. The attempt here is to think about what emancipatory thought means when systems of oppression are formally "overturned", but the social formations that structured them are very much still in place. How do we understand the relationships between the struggle to repudiate injustice and the struggle to build just institutions in such conjunctures? Is transition from oppression always doomed to disappointment and failure? Can something be learned by thinking across time and historical experience? Through a finite and close reading of these three thinkers, the hope is to think rigorously and imaginatively about the promises and pitfalls of transitional histories in ways that keep open their insistent optimism of the will.

Instructor(s): Kaushik Sunder Rajan
Equivalent Course(s): CCCT 50541, ANTH 50541

RDIN 62705. Colloquium: Approaches to Atlantic Slavery Studies. 100 Units.

We are witnessing an outpouring of scholarship on Atlantic slavery even as some historians are increasingly critical of the archival method. This course uses select theoretical readings and recent monographs and articles to examine this conceptual and methodological debate. Topics to be examined include histories of women, gender, and sexuality; dispossession and resistance; urban and migration history; and interdisciplinary and speculative techniques.

Instructor(s): R. Johnson     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 62705, HIST 62705, LACS 62705

RDIN 69600. Black Women Work: The labor of Black women in communities, families, and institutions. 100 Units.

This multidisciplinary course will explore the labor of Black women in three distinct arenas-communities, families, and institutions. Students will explore these areas through engaging with historical and contemporary narratives, research, and popular media, heavily drawing in a U.S. context, but not exclusively. Through an engagement of Black women in the U.S. labor force, this course will explore three questions. How has the labor of Black women contributed to the sustainability of communities, families, and institutions? What are the choices Black women make to engage and sustain their work? What is the future of the labor of Black women? Is the future one that is liberatory or not? Students will leave this course with an understanding of the ways intersectional experiences of oppression contribute to complex conditions and decision-making, that shape the labor of Black women, the function of certain labor decisions as sites of resistance, as well as the generative resources that support the professional success and well-being of Black women.

Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 20127, RDIN 26600, SSAD 29600, SSAD 69600