spring '08 classes

Soooooo...... registration for next semester's classes is upon us! I'd like to tell you about some of the classes I'm considering taking, and I'd very much like to hear your opinions. Also, as many of you know, Smith is part of the 5 college consortium, meaning Smith students can take classes at Amherst, UMass, Mt. Holyoke, and Hampshire colleges, meaning....I have 5 times the typical number of classes to choose from, which makes my life very hard.

Also, to get my viewers more involved, I'm inserting a poll to the right to allow you to vote on the class you think sounds most interesting. Have fun!

So here are the classes: (also, I realize this is a hella long post, so if you don't wanna read it, just leave a comment that says, "Ashley, you is CRAZY and i no ain't readin all this junk a lunk!")

SWG 214 Migration, Gender and Transculturation (at Smith)
This course will provide students with an understanding of transnational encounters and intercultural communication by focusing on the contemporary German, Spanish and Mexican society and women’s migration in this context. Issues of power in terms of defining and representing culture(s) in relation to gender, ‘race’, ethnicity, class, work and sexuality will play a central role. In particular we will work with examples of ethnographic research and visual material (videos). On the basis of this material we will explore the moments of mobility and transformation by looking at the local cultural articulation of identity, space and culture. By doing this we will focus on the moments of migrancy, diaspora and shifting boundaries and borders. This will contribute to a comparative approach to understanding transnational processes and their local articulations. At all times an emphasis will be placed on relating theoretical material to ‘lived’ culture and visual culture.

SWG 323 Sex, Trade, and Trafficking (at Smith)
This seminar will examine domestic and international trade and trafficking of women and girls, including sex trafficking, bride trafficking, trafficking of women for domestic and other labor, child prostitution, sex work, and pornography. We will explore societal conditions that shape this market, including economics, globalization, war, and technology. We will examine the social movements growing up around the trafficking of women, particularly divisions among activists working on the issue, and study recent laws and funding initiatives to address trafficking of women and girls. Throughout the seminar, we will apply an intersectional analysis in order to understand the significance of gender, race and class to women's experiences, public discourse, advocacy, and public policy initiatives around sex trade and trafficking.

SWG 85 States of Poverty (at Amherst)
In this course students will examine the role of the modern welfare state in people’s everyday lives. We will study the historical growth and retrenchment of the modern welfare state in the United States and other Western democracies. The course will critically examine the ideologies of “dependency” and the role of the state as an agent of social control. We will analyze the construction of social problems linked to states of poverty, including hunger, homelessness, health care, disability, discrimination and violence. We will ask how conditions of poverty are defined in terms of their affect on the lives of women and children. These issues will be considered by taking a broad view of the welfare state beyond the impact of public assistance and social service programs, to the role of the police, family courts, therapeutic professionals, and schools in creating and responding to the conditions of impoverishment.

PoliSci 32 Human Rights Activism (at Amherst)
This course is intended to give students a sense of the challenges and satisfactions involved in the practice of human rights work as well as a critical sense of how the discourses calling it forth developed and continue to evolve. We intend to provide specific historical and cultural context to selected areas in which human rights abuses of women and men have occurred, and to explore how differing traditions facilitate and inhibit activism within these areas. The semester will begin by exploring the historical growth of human rights discourse in Europe and the United States, culminating in the emergence of the post-World War II Universal Declaration. We will then turn to the proliferation of these discourses since the 1970s, including the growing importance of non-governmental organizations, many of them internationally based, the use of human rights discourse by a wide range of groups, and expanding meanings of human rights including new conceptions of women's human rights. The third part of the course will explore criticisms of human rights discourses, particularly the charge that for all their claims to universalism, these discourses reflect the values of European Enlightenment traditions which are inimical to conceptions of rights and justice that are grounded in culture and religion. Throughout the course, rights' workers will discuss their own experiences, abroad and in the U.S., and reflect on the relationship between their work and formal human rights discourse.

And, because I'm required to take at least 2 Africa-related courses before going to Africa, here are some of the Africa courses I'm considering for this semester:

BLST 20 African Cultures/Societies (at Amherst)
This course explores the cultural meaning of indigenous African institutions and societies. Through the use of ethnographies, novels and films, we will investigate the topics of kinship, religion, social organization, colonialism, ethnicity, nationalism and neocolonialism. The principal objective is to give students an understanding of African society that will enable them better to comprehend current issues and problems confronting African peoples and nations. Limited to 50 students. Second semester. Professor Goheen.

HIST 161 History of Africa since 1500 (at UMass)

BLST 47 Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa (at Amherst)
This is a history of Africa from the late nineteenth century to the present day. In the first half of the course, we will study the imperial scramble to colonize Africa, the integration of African societies into the world economy, the social and medical impact of imperial policies, and the nationalist struggles that resulted in the independent African states. We will also examine the divisiveness of ethnicity in post-colonial states. In the final half of the course, we will investigate three cases: Congo-Zaire-Democratic Republic of Congo and the state as a source of chaos; the cultural and political dynamics of racial and individual identity in Botswana; and the historical background of the recent troubles and land-seizures in Zimbabwe.

SS 291 State and Politics in Africa (at Hampshire)
Sub-Saharan Africa faces multi-faceted difficulties including a crisis of the state. The state loomed large in all post-colonial scenarios of African development as the major agency of economic growth and of popular participation. The 1960s and 1970s brought mixed returns on those expectations, but the 1980s dashed prior hopes with international debt, structural adjustment economic policies, and repressive regimes. The turn of the past decade found angry people in the streets demanding democracy, while the end of the Cold War meant that major Western countries were willing to 147let go148 of some very unpopular leaders the West used to support. But despite democratic openings, and the unleashing of political voices, several states are marked by their failure to function as well as they did two decades ago, and a few have all but collapsed. Meanwhile economies are growing slowly and poverty maybe spreading. The way out of the general crisis will require state reform and that will require an understanding of the forces that created the current situation.

Please keep in mind how much I'm going to HATE MY LIFE when I'm spending all of next semester on the bus.

-Ashley