UCOR Section Descriptions

Course Description

This course investigates the philosophical, social and psychological forces at work in the way humans create and deploy monsters to cope with the fear and uncertainty. Using philosophical and psychological resources, and drawing from stories, myths and media, this class seeks to understand and rethink the way strangers are turned to monsters.

Course Description

This course will examine U.S. military intervention in the world from 1898 to the present.

Course Description

The global challenge this course explores, through dystopian literature, is how desires for social order, and the globalizing philosophies underlying those desires, result in hegemonic forms of social control achievable only through the imposition of ideologies of perfection. Dystopian literature imagines grim worlds where plurality and co-existence are sacrificed for the hegemonic establishment of social harmony. Students will engage and critique these literary landscapes to analyze and assess how global dreams can become global nightmares.

Course Description

In this course we will be seeking to understand the very meaning of what constitutes "global" history. Through an intellectual-historical and theoretical perspective we will investigate four universal histories written over the course of European history from the classical to the modern period. Our goal will be come to some understanding as to how Europeans have, in attempting to construct an historical identity for themselves, constructed the history of the world. In this manner, we will investigate the history of the history of the world and so be better able to understand whether the writing of such a history is possible, both in an ethical and an historical sense.

Course Description

This course will examine U.S. military intervention in the world from 1898 to the present.

Course Description

Through a study of literary texts, this course will explore nationalism, citizenship, and belonging in South Asia post 1945. The course will focus primarily on India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lankan writers.

Course Description

This course starts with a study of the UNESCO charter on world heritage sites, which represents sites of both tangible and non-tangible heritage for the world. Then we will study the historical and contemporary conditions of some of these sites in all continents. At the end of the course, we will go back to the UNESCO charter in light of everything students have learned, to re-examine the global challenges regarding cultural heritage. Covered topics include the selection criteria for the world heritage sites and procedures of campaigns for the selection of sites, as well as the aftermaths of the selection of the sites.

Course Description

This course explores the idea of American blues and jazz as universal moral and cultural language, as well as being important work of cultural, metaphysical, and social criticism. Through a combination of individual expression and community creative initiatives activism via the art of politics and the politics of the arts, we explore how blues and jazz music embodied alternative visions and dreams inspire new generations to continue to struggle for progressive and positive change, anti-racism, anti-imperialism, justice and freedom.

Course Description

Empires are often associated with power, and utopia with impossible visions. What are the global challenges created by legacies of modern imperialism? How are these reflected in unequal contemporary political and economic relations? We will explore how African Diaspora intellectual history has engaged with inequality in the discourse of justice. Under the rubric of empire and utopia, we will explore how freedom and justice, and philosophical and material progress are encoded in African Diaspora narratives.

Course Description

This course explores the core tenets and limitations of the field of postcolonial studies. After drawing on this critical lens to read literature written from the epicenter of British empire, we will turn to later writers who respond to and critique the legacies of imperialism and its concomitant literary traditions. We will trace the emergence of this field in its historical and cultural context, recognizing its productive value as well as potential fault lines.