In this course students will be introduced to a series of Afro-contemporary dance warm ups and dance combinations that are drawn from a broad range of dance traditions of the African diaspora with a particular focus on Afro Brazilian, Afro Cuban and Haitian dance forms, modern dance techniques, and somatic movement practices. Our study of these dance disciplines will inform the movement vocabulary, technical training, class discussions, and choreography we experience in this course. Students will learn more about the dances and rhythms for the Orishas of Brazil and Cuba, and the Loa of Haiti. Dance combinations will consist of dynamic movement patterns that condition the body for strength, flexibility, endurance, musicality and coordination. Through this approach to our warm ups and class choreography, we will deepen our analysis and understanding of how African diaspora movement traditions are inherently embedded in many expressions of the broadly termed form known as contemporary modern dance.
Theater and Social Justice: Skills for Rethinking Everything
Mondays 2:30pm-5:20pm
3 units
Letter / Credit / No-Credit
Roble Gym Room 136 & 137
Instructor: Ellen Sebastian Chang
In this course we will employ theater foundations (writing, acting, staging and direction) to interrogate individual and collective belief systems prescribed through our lineage, geography, genetics, culture and class. We will ask big questions like: How do we rethink collective narratives? What can be made in the midst of ongoing pandemics and emergencies? Who am I within and beyond my current circumstances? Together we will learn from diverse practitioners within science fiction, documentary filmmaking, theater, site-specificity, and environmental activism to create performances that ignite our imaginations and skillsets for enacting social change.
WINTER 2023 – IDA VISITING ARTIST COURSE
Spoken Word Poetry and Resistance: 1990's-Present
Monday & Wednesday 1:00pm-2:20pm
3 units
Letter / Credit / No-Credit
Harmony House
Instructor: Daniel Gray-Kontar
In the 1990’s the Spoken Word movement exploded onto the public scene in multiple forms. The decade marked the birth of the Poetry Slam movement, the “Golden Age” of rap, and the re-emergence of Poetry as Performance. In the contemporary moment Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitizer Prize-winning album, “DAMN”, Mahogany Browne’s anthemic poem “Black Girl Magic”, and the rise of online Spoken Word platforms like “Button Poetry” are all evidence of a similar present-day uprising in the centuries-old Spoken Word tradition. This course will combine workshop and seminar approaches to provide students with space to read and examine the Black Spoken Word tradition from the 1990s to the present, and to write and perform their own work.
WINTER 2023 – IDA FEATURED COURSE
AFRICAAM 207: Emergent Thinking: Abolition and Climate Change
Details TBD
4 units
Letter / Credit / No-Credit
Instructor: David Palumbo Liu
Gesturing toward adrienne marie brown's notion of 'emergent strategy,' this course asks us to think in the most radical and imaginative ways possible about two systemic failures that animate what Achille Mbembe has called 'necropolitics' decisions on who lives, and who dies: the police, and climate change. We will look at both the material aspects of police and prison abolition, and climate change and environmental justice, and theoretical approaches to the same. Using works by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis, Alex Vitale, Dino Gilio-Whittaker, Candace Fukijane, Ben Ehrenreich, Amitav Ghosh, Ursula LeGuin and Octavia Butler, our texts put the imagination and the political will to work. This seminar course will be capped at 25 enrollments. I expect to offer this course annually.
SPRING 2023 – IDA FACULTY DIRECTOR COURSE
AFRICAAM 200N: Funkentelechy: Technologies, Social Justice and Black Vernacular Cultures
Wednesdays 3:00pm-4:20pm
4-5 units
Letter / Credit / No-Credit
Instructor: Adam Banks
From texts to techne, from artifacts to discourses on science and technology, this course is an examination of how Black people in this society have engaged with the mutually consitutive relationships that endure between humans and technologies. We will focus on these engagements in vernacular cultural spaces, from storytelling traditions to music and move to ways academic and aesthetic movements have imagined these relationships. Finally, we will consider the implications for work with technologies in both school and community contexts for work in the pursuit of social and racial justice.
AFRICAAM 172: Transformative Art Practices for Engaging Community
Wednesdays 4:00pm-5:50pm
1-5 units
Letter / Credit / No-Credit
Instructor: A-lan Hot, amara tabor-smith
Focusing on the work of artists and cultural workers based in Oakland and East Palo Alto, CA we will explore how artists are addressing issues such as housing, healthy food access, education and prison reform as a way toward building healthy and self-sustaining communities. Our explorations will include visits from guest lecturers as well as site visits to surrounding communities to understand how the cultivation of creative relationships provide unprecedented conditions for collective healing and repair. Our course places great importance on ancestral inheritance, embodied histories, and the lived cultural experiences of diverse people in community.
UG Reqs: Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
Spring
Quayson, A.
AFRICAAM 200N
Funkentelechy: Technologies, Social Justice and Black Vernacular Cultures (CSRE 314, EDUC 314, STS 200N)
From texts to techne, from artifacts to discourses on science and technology, this course is an examination of how Black people in this society have engaged with the mutually consitutive relationships that endure between humans and technologies. We will focus on these engagements in vernacular cultural spaces, from storytelling traditions to music and move to ways academic and aesthetic movements have imagined these relationships. Finally, we will consider the implications for work with technologies in both school and community contexts for work in the pursuit of social and racial justice. UG Reqs: Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
Spring
Banks, A.
AFRICAAM 200X
Honors Thesis and Senior Thesis Seminar
Required for seniors. Weekly colloquia with AAAS Director and Associate Director to assist with refinement of research topic, advisor support, literature review, research, and thesis writing. Readings include foundational and cutting-edge scholarship in the interdisciplinary fields of African and African American studies and comparative race studies. Readings assist students situate their individual research interests and project within the larger. Students may also enroll in AFRICAAM 200Y in Winter and AFRICAAM 200Z in Spring for additional research units (up to 10 units total). UG Reqs: Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP) Units: 5
Autumn
Wallace, D.
COMPLIT 55N
Black Panther, Hamilton, Díaz, and Other Wondrous Lives (CSRE 55N)
This seminar concerns the design and analysis of imaginary (or constructed) worlds for narratives and media such as films, comics, and literary texts. The seminar's primary goal is to help participants understand the creation of better imaginary worlds - ultimately all our efforts should serve that higher purpose. Some of the things we will consider when taking on the analysis of a new world include: What are its primary features - spatial, cultural, biological, fantastic, cosmological? What is the world's ethos (the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize the world)? What are the precise strategies that are used by the artist to convey the world to us and us to the world? How are our characters connected to the world? And how are we - the viewer or reader or player - connected to the world? Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit. UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
Autumn
Saldivar, J.
CSRE 55N
Black Panther, Hamilton, Díaz, and Other Wondrous Lives (COMPLIT 55N)
This seminar concerns the design and analysis of imaginary (or constructed) worlds for narratives and media such as films, comics, and literary texts. The seminar's primary goal is to help participants understand the creation of better imaginary worlds - ultimately all our efforts should serve that higher purpose. Some of the things we will consider when taking on the analysis of a new world include: What are its primary features - spatial, cultural, biological, fantastic, cosmological? What is the world's ethos (the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize the world)? What are the precise strategies that are used by the artist to convey the world to us and us to the world? How are our characters connected to the world? And how are we - the viewer or reader or player - connected to the world? Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit. UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
Autumn
Saldivar, J.
CSRE 385
Race, Ethnicity, and Language: Pedagogical Possibilities (AFRICAAM 389C, EDUC 389C)
This seminar explores the intersections of language and race/racism/racialization in the public schooling experiences of students of color. We will briefly trace the historical emergence of the related fields of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, explore how each of these scholarly traditions approaches the study of language, and identify key points of overlap and tension between the two fields before considering recent examples of inter-disciplinary scholarship on language and race in urban schools. Issues to be addressed include language variation and change, language and identity, bilingualism and multilingualism, language ideologies, and classroom discourse. We will pay particular attention to the implications of relevant literature for teaching and learning in urban classrooms. UG Reqs: Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 4
Winter
Banks, A.
DANCE 1
Contemporary Modern I: Liquid Flow
Students in Liquid Flow will participate in a dance and movement class that teaches the fundamentals of dance technique and addresses the way we already dance through the world. By discovering our own movement signatures, and becoming aware of other people's dance, motion, and energy in space, we will transform the way we inhabit flow states, from the dance studio, into everyday life, and ultimately onto the stage. Accompanied by a live DJ, students will develop technique, articulation, flexibility, and grace, to gain freedom while dancing, and mine dance's potential for social transformation and connection. We will draw from various movement traditions and practices, including contemporary modern, ballet, lyrical, Tai chi and yoga, with opportunities to remix other styles. Designed for all levels, we welcome beginners, student movers from diverse dance traditions, athletes, and advanced dancers, who desire more fluidity in their lives. UG Reqs: WAY-CE, way_ce Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 1
The Chocolate Heads Movement Band will engage in an interdisciplinary project-based course to develop collaborative choreography and installation art with visual and musical components. How can we attune our senses to perceive the subtleties of our surroundings? How can we learn to perceive the magic hiding in plain sight? The Autumn '23-'24 project will make use of remixing strategies, deep listening practices, and outdoor exploration to animate these questions in a multisensorial performance piece. We will cultivate an imaginary garden full of wild, surprising, and mysterious entities. Taking inspiration from landscape architecture, textiles, lighting, and projection design, we will bring the outside world in to create a dance and performance ecology. The course will feature collaborations with guest scientists, artists, and somatic practitioners. Our garden is open to all forms of creative expression and all levels of experience; we invite dancers, movers, and emerging creators of all styles and backgrounds. WEEK 1: TU 9/26--Introduction to the Project & CHs Band; THU 9/28--1st Audition Workshop. Contact Aleta Hayes (ahayes1@stanford.edu) for more information. UG Reqs: WAY-CE Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 2
Autumn
Hayes, A.
COMPLIT 51Q
Comparative Fictions of Ethnicity (AMSTUD 51Q, CSRE 51Q)
Explorations of how literature can represent in complex and compelling ways issues of difference--how they appear, are debated, or silenced. Specific attention on learning how to read critically in ways that lead one to appreciate the power of literary texts, and learning to formulate your ideas into arguments. Course is a Sophomore Seminar and satisfies Write2. By application only UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 2 Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP) Units: 5
Spring
Palumbo-Liu, D.
DANCE 128
Roots Modern Experience - Mixed Level (AFRICAAM 128)
In this course students will be introduced to a series of Afro-contemporary dance warm ups and dance combinations that are drawn from a broad range of dance traditions of the African diaspora with a particular focus on Afro Brazilian, Afro Cuban and Haitian dance forms, modern dance techniques, and somatic movement practices. Our study of these dance disciplines will inform the movement vocabulary, technical training, class discussions, and choreography we experience in this course. Students will learn more about the dances and rhythms for the Orishas of Brazil and Cuba, and the Loa of Haiti. Dance combinations will consist of dynamic movement patterns that condition the body for strength, flexibility, endurance, musicality and coordination. Through this approach to our warm ups and class choreography, we will deepen our analysis and understanding of how African diaspora movement traditions are inherently embedded in many expressions of the broadly termed form known as contemporary modern dance. UG Reqs: way_ce Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 1
Autumn
Smith, A.
ASNAMST 91A
Asian American Autobiography/W (AMSTUD 91A, CSRE 91D, ENGLISH 91A)
This is a dual purpose class: a writing workshop in which you will generate autobiographical vignettes/essays as well as a reading seminar featuring prose from a wide range of contemporary Asian-American writers. Some of the many questions we will consider are: What exactly is Asian-American memoir? Are there salient subjects and tropes that define the literature? And in what ways do our writerly interactions both resistant and assimilative with a predominantly non-Asian context in turn recreate that context? We'll be working/experimenting with various modes of telling, including personal essay, the epistolary form, verse, and even fictional scenarios. First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot. UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-EDP Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
Spring
DANCE 108
Hip Hop Choreography: Hip Hop Meets Broadway
What happens when Hip Hop meets "Fosse", "Aida", "Dream Girls" and "In the Heights"?nThe most amazing collaboration of Hip Hop styles adapted to some of the most memorable Broadway Productions.nThis class will explore the realm between Hip Hop Dance and the Broadway Stage. Infusing Acting thru dance movement and exploring the Art of Lip Sync thru Hip Hop Dance styles. UG Reqs: WAY-CE, way_ce Grading: Satisfactory/No Credit Units: 1
Spring
Reddick, R.
COMPLIT 348
US-Mexico Border Fictions: Writing La Frontera, Tearing Down the Wall (ILAC 348)
A border is a force of containment that inspires dreams of being overcome, crossed, and cursed; motivates bodies to climb over walls; and threatens physical harm. This graduate seminar places into comparative dialogue a variety of perspectives from Chicana/o and Mexican/Latin American literary studies. Our seminar will examine fiction and cultural productions that range widely, from celebrated Mexican and Chicano authors such as Carlos Fuentes (La frontera de cristal), Yuri Herrera (Señales que precederan al fin del mundo), Willivaldo Delgaldillo (La Virgen del Barrio Árabe), Américo Paredes (George Washington Gómez: A Mexico-Texan Novel), Gloria Anzaldúa (Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza), and Sandra Cisneros (Carmelo: Puro Cuento), among others, to musicians whose contributions to border thinking and culture have not yet been fully appreciated such as Herb Albert, Ely Guerra, Los Tigres del Norte, and Café Tacvba. Last but not least, we will screen and analyze Orson Welles' iconic border films Touch of Evil and Rodrigo Dorfman's Los Sueños de Angélica. Proposing a diverse and geographically expansive view of the US-Mexico border literary and cultural studies, this seminar links the work of these authors and musicians to struggles for land and border-crossing rights, anti-imperialist forms of trans-nationalism, and to the decolonial turn in border thinking or pensamineto fronterizo. It forces us to take into account the ways in which shifts in the nature of global relations affect literary production and negative aesthetics especially in our age of (late) post-industrial capitalism. Taught in English. UG Reqs: Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP) Units: 5
Winter
Saldivar, J.
AFRICAAM 199
Honors Project
May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. UG Reqs: Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
Spring
ASNAMST 31N
Behind the Big Drums: Exploring Taiko (MUSIC 31N)
Preference to Freshman. Since 1992 generations of Stanford students have heard, seen, and felt the power of taiko, big Japanese drums, at Admit Weekend, NSO, or Baccalaureate. Taiko is a relative newcomer to the American music scene. The contemporary ensemble drumming form, or kumidaiko, developed in Japan in the 1950s. The first North American taiko groups emerged from the Japanese American community shortly after and coincided with increased Asian American activism. In the intervening years, taiko has spread into communities in the UK, Europe, Australia, and South America. What drives the power of these drums? In this course, we explore the musical, cultural, historical, and political perspectives of taiko through readings and discussion, conversations with taiko artists, and learn the fundamentals of playing. With the taiko as our focal point, we find intersections of Japanese music, Japanese American history, and Asian American activism, and explore relations between performance, cultural expression, community, and identity. UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 3
Spring
Uyechi, L.
CSRE 144
Transforming Self and Systems: Crossing Borders of Race, Nation, Gender, Sexuality, and Class (ASNAMST 144, FEMGEN 144X, LIFE 144)
Exploration of crossing borders within ourselves, and between us and them, based on a belief that understanding the self leads to understanding others. How personal identity struggles have meaning beyond the individual, how self healing can lead to community healing, how the personal is political, and how artistic self expression based in self understanding can address social issues. The tensions of victimization and agency, contemplation and action, humanities and science, embracing knowledge that comes from the heart as well as the mind. Studies are founded in synergistic consciousness as movement toward meaning, balance, connectedness, and wholeness. Engaging these questions through group process, journaling, reading, drama, creative writing, and storytelling. Study is academic and self-reflective, with an emphasis on developing and presenting creative works in various media that express identity development across borders. UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-EDP Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
Winter
DANCE 45
Dance Improvisation from Freestyle to Hip Hop (AFRICAAM 45)
In this dance improvisation class, we will develop techniques and practices to cultivate an improvisational practice in dance and domains beyond. This class is an arena for physical and artistic exploration to fire the imagination of dance improvisers and to promote collaborative and interactive intelligence. We will draw upon dance styles and gestural vocabularies, including contemporary dance, hip-hop, vogue and more. Students will learn how to apply these improvisational dance ideas to generate and innovate across disciplines. Accompanied by a live DJ, students will practice listening with eyes, ears, and our whole bodies. Open to students from all dance, movement, and athletic backgrounds. Beginners welcome. UG Reqs: WAY-CE Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 2
Spring
DANCE 160J
Conjure Art 101: Performances of Ritual, Spirituality and Decolonial Black Feminist Magic (CSRE 160J)
Conjure Art is a movement and embodied practice course looking at the work and techniques of artists of color who utilize spirituality and ritual practices in their art making and performance work to evoke social change. In this course we will discuss the work of artists who bring spiritual ritual in their art making while addressing issues of spiritual accountability and cultural appropriation. Throughout the quarter we will welcome guest artists who make work along these lines, while exploring movement, writing, singing and visual art making. This class will culminate in a performance ritual co-created by students and instructor. UG Reqs: WAY-CE Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 2
Autumn
Smith, A.
EDUC 141
Counterstory in Literature and Education (CSRE 141E, EDUC 341, LIFE 124)
Counterstory is a method developed in critical legal studies that emerges out of the broad "narrative turn" in the humanities and social science. This course explores the value of this turn, especially for marginalized communities, and the use of counterstory as analysis, critique, and self-expression. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we examine counterstory as it has developed in critical theory, critical pedagogy, and critical race theory literatures, and explore it as a framework for liberation, cultural work, and spiritual exploration. UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-EDP Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 3
Winter
CSRE 389A
Race, Ethnicity, and Language: Racial, Ethnic, and Linguistic Formations (ANTHRO 320A, EDUC 389A, LINGUIST 253, SYMSYS 389A)
Language, as a cultural resource for shaping our identities, is central to the concepts of race and ethnicity. This seminar explores the linguistic construction of race and ethnicity across a wide variety of contexts and communities. We begin with an examination of the concepts of race and ethnicity and what it means to be "doing race," both as scholarship and as part of our everyday lives. Throughout the course, we will take a comparative perspective and highlight how different racial/ethnic formations (Asian, Black, Latino, Native American, White, etc.) participate in similar, yet different, ways of drawing racial and ethnic distinctions. The seminar will draw heavily on scholarship in (linguistic) anthropology, sociolinguistics and education. We will explore how we talk and don't talk about race, how we both position ourselves and are positioned by others, how the way we talk can have real consequences on the trajectory of our lives, and how, despite this, we all participate in maintaining racial and ethnic hierarchies and inequality more generally, particularly in schools. UG Reqs: Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
Autumn
Rosa, J.
EDUC 389C
Race, Ethnicity, and Language: Pedagogical Possibilities (AFRICAAM 389C, CSRE 385)
This seminar explores the intersections of language and race/racism/racialization in the public schooling experiences of students of color. We will briefly trace the historical emergence of the related fields of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, explore how each of these scholarly traditions approaches the study of language, and identify key points of overlap and tension between the two fields before considering recent examples of inter-disciplinary scholarship on language and race in urban schools. Issues to be addressed include language variation and change, language and identity, bilingualism and multilingualism, language ideologies, and classroom discourse. We will pay particular attention to the implications of relevant literature for teaching and learning in urban classrooms. UG Reqs: Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 4
What are the roles of sexuality, intimacy, and relationships in my life? How do I tell a compelling story? In this class, you will learn about these topics from the inside out. We will explore various perspectives on sexuality, intimacy, and relationships and then dive into our own stories to discover the richness and vibrancy of our lived experience. Due to the personal nature of the topic, we will emphasize safety, trust, and confidentiality throughout. The class offers the structure and guidance to 1) mine your life for stories, 2) craft the structure and shape of your stories, and 3) perform with presence, authenticity, and connection. Students will be selected from this class to tell their stories in Beyond Sex Ed during NSO 2023. Please fill out this short application for enrollment: bit.ly/Spring2023StoryCraft. UG Reqs: WAY-CE Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 2
Spring
Booth, B.
FEMGEN 314
Performing Identities (TAPS 314)
This course examines claims and counter-claims of identity, a heated political and cultural concept over the past few decades. We will consider the ways in which theories of performance have offered generative discursive frameworks for the study of identities, variously shaped by vectors of race, gender, sexuality, religion, class, nation, ethnicity, among others. How is identity as a social category different from identity as a unique and personal attribute of selfhood? Throughout the course we will focus on the inter-locking ways in which certain dimensions of identity become salient at particular historical conjunctures. In addition, we will consider the complex discourses of identity within transnational and historical frameworks. Readings include Robin Bernstein, Ann Pellegrini, Tavia Nyong'o, Jose Munoz, Michael Taussig, Wendy Brown, Talal Asad, Jasbir Puar, among others. Note: This course satisfies the Concepts of Modernity II requirement in the interdisciplinary graduate program in Modern Thought and Literature. UG Reqs: Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
Spring
Brody, J.
STS 200N
Funkentelechy: Technologies, Social Justice and Black Vernacular Cultures (AFRICAAM 200N, CSRE 314, EDUC 314)
From texts to techne, from artifacts to discourses on science and technology, this course is an examination of how Black people in this society have engaged with the mutually consitutive relationships that endure between humans and technologies. We will focus on these engagements in vernacular cultural spaces, from storytelling traditions to music and move to ways academic and aesthetic movements have imagined these relationships. Finally, we will consider the implications for work with technologies in both school and community contexts for work in the pursuit of social and racial justice. UG Reqs: Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
What are the roles of sexuality, intimacy, and relationships in my life? How do I tell a compelling story? In this class, you will learn about these topics from the inside out. We will explore various perspectives on sexuality, intimacy, and relationships and then dive into our own stories to discover the richness and vibrancy of our lived experience. Due to the personal nature of the topic, we will emphasize safety, trust, and confidentiality throughout. The class offers the structure and guidance to 1) mine your life for stories, 2) craft the structure and shape of your stories, and 3) perform with presence, authenticity, and connection. Students will be selected from this class to tell their stories in Beyond Sex Ed during NSO 2023. Please fill out this short application for enrollment: bit.ly/Spring2023StoryCraft. UG Reqs: WAY-CE Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 2
Spring
Booth, B.
ENGLISH 91A
Asian American Autobiography/W (AMSTUD 91A, ASNAMST 91A, CSRE 91D)
This is a dual purpose class: a writing workshop in which you will generate autobiographical vignettes/essays as well as a reading seminar featuring prose from a wide range of contemporary Asian-American writers. Some of the many questions we will consider are: What exactly is Asian-American memoir? Are there salient subjects and tropes that define the literature? And in what ways do our writerly interactions both resistant and assimilative with a predominantly non-Asian context in turn recreate that context? We'll be working/experimenting with various modes of telling, including personal essay, the epistolary form, verse, and even fictional scenarios. First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot. UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-EDP Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
Spring
Lee, C.
ENGLISH 159
James Baldwin & Twentieth Century Literature (AFRICAAM 159, AMSTUD 159, FEMGEN 159)
Black, gay and gifted, Baldwin was hailed as a "spokesman for the race", although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. This course examines his classic novels and essays as well his exciting work across many lesser-examined domains - poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy and artistic collaboration. Placing his work in context with other writers of the 20C (Faulkner, Wright, Morrison) and capitalizing on a resurgence of interest in the writer (NYC just dedicated a year of celebration of Baldwin and there are 2 new journals dedicated to study of Baldwin), the course seeks to capture the power and influence of Baldwin's work during the Civil Rights era as well as his relevance in the "post-race" transnational 21st century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership and country assume new urgency. UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 3
Spring
Elam, M.
HISTORY 255D
Racial Identity in the American Imagination (HISTORY 355D)
From Sally Hemings to Barack Obama, this course explores the ways that racial identity has been experienced, represented, and contested throughout American history. Engaging historical, legal, and literary texts and films, this course examines major historical transformations that have shaped our understanding of racial identity. This course also draws on other imaginative modes including autobiography, memoir, photography, and music to consider the ways that racial identity has been represented in American society. Most broadly, this course interrogates the problem of American identity and examines the interplay between racial identity and American identity. UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP) Units: 5
Spring
Hobbs, A.
HISTORY 355D
Racial Identity in the American Imagination (HISTORY 255D)
From Sally Hemings to Barack Obama, this course explores the ways that racial identity has been experienced, represented, and contested throughout American history. Engaging historical, legal, and literary texts and films, this course examines major historical transformations that have shaped our understanding of racial identity. This course also draws on other imaginative modes including autobiography, memoir, photography, and music to consider the ways that racial identity has been represented in American society. Most broadly, this course interrogates the problem of American identity and examines the interplay between racial identity and American identity. UG Reqs: Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP) Units: 5
Spring
Hobbs, A.
ILAC 348
US-Mexico Border Fictions: Writing La Frontera, Tearing Down the Wall (COMPLIT 348)
A border is a force of containment that inspires dreams of being overcome, crossed, and cursed; motivates bodies to climb over walls; and threatens physical harm. This graduate seminar places into comparative dialogue a variety of perspectives from Chicana/o and Mexican/Latin American literary studies. Our seminar will examine fiction and cultural productions that range widely, from celebrated Mexican and Chicano authors such as Carlos Fuentes (La frontera de cristal), Yuri Herrera (Señales que precederan al fin del mundo), Willivaldo Delgaldillo (La Virgen del Barrio Árabe), Américo Paredes (George Washington Gómez: A Mexico-Texan Novel), Gloria Anzaldúa (Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza), and Sandra Cisneros (Carmelo: Puro Cuento), among others, to musicians whose contributions to border thinking and culture have not yet been fully appreciated such as Herb Albert, Ely Guerra, Los Tigres del Norte, and Café Tacvba. Last but not least, we will screen and analyze Orson Welles' iconic border films Touch of Evil and Rodrigo Dorfman's Los Sueños de Angélica. Proposing a diverse and geographically expansive view of the US-Mexico border literary and cultural studies, this seminar links the work of these authors and musicians to struggles for land and border-crossing rights, anti-imperialist forms of trans-nationalism, and to the decolonial turn in border thinking or pensamineto fronterizo. It forces us to take into account the ways in which shifts in the nature of global relations affect literary production and negative aesthetics especially in our age of (late) post-industrial capitalism. Taught in English. UG Reqs: Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP) Units: 5
Winter
Saldivar, J.
LIFE 124
Counterstory in Literature and Education (CSRE 141E, EDUC 141, EDUC 341)
Counterstory is a method developed in critical legal studies that emerges out of the broad "narrative turn" in the humanities and social science. This course explores the value of this turn, especially for marginalized communities, and the use of counterstory as analysis, critique, and self-expression. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we examine counterstory as it has developed in critical theory, critical pedagogy, and critical race theory literatures, and explore it as a framework for liberation, cultural work, and spiritual exploration. UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-EDP Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 3
Winter
MUSIC 4SI
Taiko as performance, social justice, and a therapeutic modality
Taught by Stanford Taiko members. Techniques and history. No experience necessary. May be repeated for credit. This course was initiated by Mitchell Fukumoto and Stanford Taiko. UG Reqs: Grading: Satisfactory/No Credit Units: 1
Winter
Sano, S.
MUSIC 31N
Behind the Big Drums: Exploring Taiko (ASNAMST 31N)
Preference to Freshman. Since 1992 generations of Stanford students have heard, seen, and felt the power of taiko, big Japanese drums, at Admit Weekend, NSO, or Baccalaureate. Taiko is a relative newcomer to the American music scene. The contemporary ensemble drumming form, or kumidaiko, developed in Japan in the 1950s. The first North American taiko groups emerged from the Japanese American community shortly after and coincided with increased Asian American activism. In the intervening years, taiko has spread into communities in the UK, Europe, Australia, and South America. What drives the power of these drums? In this course, we explore the musical, cultural, historical, and political perspectives of taiko through readings and discussion, conversations with taiko artists, and learn the fundamentals of playing. With the taiko as our focal point, we find intersections of Japanese music, Japanese American history, and Asian American activism, and explore relations between performance, cultural expression, community, and identity. UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 3
Spring
Uyechi, L.
NATIVEAM 221
Crafting Challenging Conversations in a Conflicted World (CSRE 221D)
In moments of divisive, time-sensitive conflict and disagreement, interdependent community groups that are we-us oriented often struggle to maintain cohesive relationships. In this interactive, project-based course, participants will dive into the art of designing new products, services, or experiences for conflict. Throughout the course, participants can expect to unpack the fundamentals of design thinking and components of strong listening, leadership, and effective cultural competency. Individual one-on-one conversations as well as indigenous forms of group-interviewing, known as Peacemaking and Ho'oponopono, will be also explored. At the end of the course, students can expect to have created a low-resolution prototype based on qualitative research that answers the question: How might we lead with community-centered approaches, rather than with independent, divisive reactions in moments of conflict? UG Reqs: Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 3
Winter
EDUC 389A
Race, Ethnicity, and Language: Racial, Ethnic, and Linguistic Formations (ANTHRO 320A, CSRE 389A, LINGUIST 253, SYMSYS 389A)
Language, as a cultural resource for shaping our identities, is central to the concepts of race and ethnicity. This seminar explores the linguistic construction of race and ethnicity across a wide variety of contexts and communities. We begin with an examination of the concepts of race and ethnicity and what it means to be "doing race," both as scholarship and as part of our everyday lives. Throughout the course, we will take a comparative perspective and highlight how different racial/ethnic formations (Asian, Black, Latino, Native American, White, etc.) participate in similar, yet different, ways of drawing racial and ethnic distinctions. The seminar will draw heavily on scholarship in (linguistic) anthropology, sociolinguistics and education. We will explore how we talk and don't talk about race, how we both position ourselves and are positioned by others, how the way we talk can have real consequences on the trajectory of our lives, and how, despite this, we all participate in maintaining racial and ethnic hierarchies and inequality more generally, particularly in schools. UG Reqs: Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
Autumn
Rosa, J.
LINGUIST 253
Race, Ethnicity, and Language: Racial, Ethnic, and Linguistic Formations (ANTHRO 320A, CSRE 389A, EDUC 389A, SYMSYS 389A)
Language, as a cultural resource for shaping our identities, is central to the concepts of race and ethnicity. This seminar explores the linguistic construction of race and ethnicity across a wide variety of contexts and communities. We begin with an examination of the concepts of race and ethnicity and what it means to be "doing race," both as scholarship and as part of our everyday lives. Throughout the course, we will take a comparative perspective and highlight how different racial/ethnic formations (Asian, Black, Latino, Native American, White, etc.) participate in similar, yet different, ways of drawing racial and ethnic distinctions. The seminar will draw heavily on scholarship in (linguistic) anthropology, sociolinguistics and education. We will explore how we talk and don't talk about race, how we both position ourselves and are positioned by others, how the way we talk can have real consequences on the trajectory of our lives, and how, despite this, we all participate in maintaining racial and ethnic hierarchies and inequality more generally, particularly in schools. UG Reqs: Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 5
Autumn
Rosa, J.
TAPS 154G
Black Magic: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Performance Cultures (AFRICAAM 154G, AFRICAAM 254G, CSRE 154D, FEMGEN 154G, TAPS 354G)
In 2013, CaShawn Thompson devised a Twitter hashtag, #blackgirlmagic, to celebrate the beauty and intelligence of black women. Twitter users quickly adopted the slogan, using the hashtag to celebrate everyday moments of beauty, accomplishment, and magic. The slogan offered a contemporary iteration of an historical alignment: namely, the concept of "magic" with both Black people as well as "blackness." This course explores the legacy of Black magic--and black magic--through performance texts including plays, poetry, films, and novels. We will investigate the creation of magical worlds, the discursive alignment of magic with blackness, and the contemporary manifestation of a historical phenomenon. We will cover, through lecture and discussion, the history of black magic representation as well as the relationship between magic and religion. Our goal will be to understand the impact and history of discursive alignments: what relationship does "black magic" have to and for "black bodies"? How do we understand a history of performance practice as being caught up in complicated legacies of suspicion, celebration, self-definition? The course will give participants a grounding in black performance texts, plays, and theoretical writings. *This course will also satisfy the TAPS department WIM requirement.* UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit Units: 4
