Foundation Seminars

• Instructor: Professor Roger Rothman, Art History: Art of Protest

  In response to a world plagued by war, oppression and inequality, artists of all stripes rise up in protest.

  Some do so aggressively, assaulting us with words and images that tear at our souls. Others provoke us less violently, by guiding us with images of a better world imagined but not yet realized.

  Some artists make their art for museums, where only an elite minority can experience them, but others — and more and more each day — make artworks that live on billboards, city streets and public buildings, and still others that exist only in the virtual world of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

  This course will dig deeply into the ways that contemporary artists are using art to make the world more just, more kind and more equal.

   

• Instructor: Professor Deepak Iyer, Physics and Astronomy: Climate Justice

  In this course, students will engage with the following questions regarding the climate crisis using social justice as the primary lens:

  • What is the scientific, political and economic landscape that underpins the crisis and continuing lack of action?
  • Which populations are facing the worst effects of rising seas, extreme weather and changing climate?
  • Who benefits from supposed climate mitigations and adaptations and who doesn't?
  • How can we build fair and just solutions, mitigations and adaptations to the climate crisis?

   

• Instructor: Professor Meenakshi Ponnuswami, English: Whose Story is History

  In recent years, the United States has been embroiled in spirited and sometimes bitter struggles over confederate flags and monuments, sports mascots, museum exhibits, national holidays, reparations, cultural appropriation and cancel culture. Underlying these disputes are deep divisions over national and group identity, historical truths and the meaning of the past.

  Our course will explore several such controversies and the possibilities for consensus and reconciliation. Whose story is history? Do we own our own past? How do we understand where we came from and tell stories about our origins? Are some stories more true than others? Who gets to decide? How do our histories (and stories) define who we are? How can they shape our future?

   

• Instructor: Professor Jasmine Mena, Psychology: (Un)intended Health Disparities

  Critical thinking, writing and action are required to move the status quo toward social justice.

  In this foundation seminar within the Social Justice Residential College, we will examine basic concepts of social justice, the usually hidden sources of direct and structural violence, the ongoing epidemic of sexual violence on college campuses, and ways to build collective power for the common good.