Spring 2026 Course Offerings

Also LATA 4704/6704

Elizabeth Barrios 
3 credits. 
Spring 2026
Thursday 11:15am-1:45pm

Plastics are a staple of everyday life. Yet, the oil and petrochemicals that make them possible remain largely out of sight. Their afterlife either as microplastics inside our bodies, or as trash that will take centuries to decompose, are subjects of fear and avoidance. This course explores why plastics are everywhere, how they affect our societies and cultures, and how artists, thinkers, and activists across North and South America are working to imagine alternatives to a life dependent on plastics and other petrochemicals.

Also ENGL 4709/6709, COML 4713/6713

Leif Weatherby
3 Credits
Spring 2026
Tuesdays 11:15am-1:45pm

This course compares narrative method and statistical modeling historically, teaching the history of predictive data techniques from the 19th century to the present while reading short-form literature – Aesop, Gogol, Dickinson – to compare the stories the numbers tell to narrative itself. The intent is to illuminate the rhetorical forms that prediction uses while studying the development of its quantitative techniques.

Also HIST 4711/6711

Ernesto Bassi
3 credits
Spring 2026
M 11:15am-1:45pm 

This seminar will introduce students to some of the classic and more recent works that have allowed historians to re-think geographical and temporal scales, paying particular attention to the definitions, possibilities, and limitations of microhistory, world history, global history, and big history and the multiple geographical scopes of regional histories. We will start by analyzing how historians have thought about scale as a useful tool to recast grand historical narratives, before moving to readings that offer critical takes on how microhistory, world history, and global history have been defined and used. We will then read a variety of case studies that have productively played with scale to uncover worlds that tended to be eclipsed by approaches that favored national or conventional area studies frameworks.

ANTHR 4713/6713, ASRC 4712/6712

Michell Chresfield
3 credits
Spring 2026
Tuesdays, 2-4:30pm

Race is but one of many ways that we classify ourselves and others as we navigate the world. But what role has science, technology, and medicine played in shaping our understanding of race as both a concept and aspect of our personal identity? This course investigates how ideas about race have been constructed and deployed at various scales in both social and scientific contexts. Students will trace the historical production of racial meaning from the 18th century to the present, exploring topics such as: individual projects of racial self-fashioning, national projects of technological racial surveillance, and even global networks of genomic data. Rather than focusing solely on scientific authority, this course will underscore how marginalized communities have challenged scientific scrutiny and engaged as co-producers of racial knowledge.

ASIAN 4713/6713, VISST 4706/6706, PMA 4513/6513

Shaoling Ma
3 Credits
Spring 2026
Tuesdays 2:00-4:30pm

Labor is a universal human activity that orders societal hierarchies and determines value. Cinema and television, by zooming in and out of labor paid or unpaid, masculine or feminine, tedious or pleasurable, individual or collective, manual or intellectual, variously highlight the dual nature of work and workers as scaled objects on screen, and scaling agents off screen. This course introduces students to North American, European, and Asian films and television series that raise questions about what it means to work, and how work has shaped the way we think about time, space, identities, and social relations.

ALSO ANTHR 4714/6714, RELST 4714/6714

Tiffany Hale
3 Credits
Spring 2026
Thursdays 2-4:30pm

This course uses an interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion to introduce students to Indigenous histories from a sample of locations around the world. The class is organized geographically and thematically and encourages students to engage with questions about the category of religion, the idea of "Indigenous" as a global term, and the role of colonization in shaping history.

ASIAN 3319
From Meditation to Mat, Cave to Cartoon: Yoga as Philosophy, Practice, and Public Performance

ALSO RELST 3319
Aditya Bhattacharjee
TR 2:55pm - 4:10pm

Fitness. Flexibility. Relaxation. Spirituality. These are just a sampling of the many buzzwords associated with groups of allied practices like Yoga, Meditation, and Mindfulness that have contemplative and physical dimensions. With mythologized origins among communities of obscure holy men living in the mountains of South Asia, yoga-centered traditions are now part of a multi-billion-dollar global industry, endorsed by celebrities and everyday people alike. In fact, statistics show that at least 1 out of 6 Americans today performs some kind of regular yoga routine. Indeed, the image of the proverbial yoga practitioner has been so influential on American public life, that at least two popular cultural icons from the past century, a baseball player and a cartoon character, have borne the first name Yogi. This course examines the evolution of yogic systems across three key historical periods—the classical, colonial, and contemporary—and offers students new perspectives on how activities that originated or stemmed from religious practice have acquired new meanings and objectives. Our approach will allow us to investigate both the continuities and disruptions within yogic philosophies from ancient times to the present. It will also allow us to assess how yoga-related concepts intersect in present times with notions of spiritual liberation, health and wellness, capitalist success, and racial justice.

HIST 4243/6243
Public History in Place: Interpreting the Environment

ALSO SHUM
Amanda Martin
T 2-4:30pm

This class moves beyond the traditional disciplinary confines of academic history to examine museums, archival collections, parks, monuments, podcasts, op-eds, maps, and more as sites of historical inquiry, memory, and knowledge production. We will think critically about what it means to craft place-based and environmental history narratives for a “public” audience. Throughout the semester, we will also consider the following questions: Who counts as a historian? To whom are historians responsible when they conduct archival research and craft narratives? What makes history in/accessible? Who are the actors in environmental history (humans, or also non-human animals and plants)? This course will also reconsider what it means to write place-based histories by incorporating site visits (including a park, an archive, and a museum) into our coursework.

GERST 3212
Germanophone Science and Speculative Fiction

ALSO FGSS, LGBT, SHUM
Liz Schoppelrei
TR 10:10-11:25am

A humanoid robot, an attic portal to another world, a haunted small town, an instance of time travel gone wrong—we will encounter all of these (and more) in this course on science and speculative fiction. Instructed in German, this course centers texts in German and/or about Germanophone spaces. Students will read novels, short stories, and poems; look at zines, comics, and webcomics; play through video games; and watch films. Class discussions will address topics like colonialism, climate change, escapism, dystopia/utopia, and formations of gender, sexuality, race, and nation. We will explore how narratives make use of worldbuilding, immersion, plot devices, and formal elements to unfurl these futuristic and fantastic places. Taught in German.