Jina Fast

In this course we will explore the intersecting and multidimensional systems and institutions (law, medicine, the family, the state, education) that affect global health politics, access to reproductive health care, rights, and justice. Some of the questions we will investigate include: How do the socio-cultural, economic, and political contexts in which people live affect health and well-being? How are reproductive health, reproductive rights, and reproductive justice connected to inequities in systems of global health, development, and power? How do global systems of racialized capitalism and the exploitation of the land and people of the Global South affect global health and development practices? How do local and global systems of structural violence impact health and well-being? What policies and practices function to negotiate systems of violence, marginalization, and inequity? Keywords:Reproductive Justice, Global Health, Feminist Philosophy, Intersectionality

In this class students will dive deep into the LC questions and investigate theories and practices for community change, with emphasis on praxis (the relationships(s) between theory, practice, and reflection). Students will become conversant in critical change theories to consider how to create liberatory spaces, sustainable and just futures, and use art and politics to create community change. Toward this end, the course will engage critical theories of change across disciplines centering social, political, environmental and economic movement building that is actionable. Additionally, through a weekly lecture series, accompanying common readings, small group discussion, and project work students will examine social justice / social change theories and practices of community change using a framework of context, history, meaning, and possibility to examine theories and work toward enacting practices of community change through policy advocacy, activism, art-making, writing, research, etc. Wednesdays 4-5:20 pm will be an LC learning event and Fridays 10:30-11:50 am will be discussion groups with 16 students where all will work on collaborative project development. Friday Discussion sessions and project work will center the Arts and Politics question: How can art and politics intersect to challenge dominant narratives and create new visions for community? Keywords:Urgent Questions, Social Justice, Theory, Community Change, Project-Based Learning

Employs an intersectional philosophical approach to the study of human sexuality. Specific topics include ethical, epistemological (knowledge), and political questions related to sexual orientation, lust, casual sex, adultery, love, sexual orientation and practice, different types of relationships, and the intersectionality of sexual identity and orientation with other identities such as race, gender, and disability status. As we consider these questions, we will challenge assumptions regarding human sexuality, consider the importance of sexuality and friendship to the good life, and discuss what, if any, is the appropriate role of the state in human sexual behavior. Keywords:Ethics, Sex, Sexuality, Sexual Orientation, Relationships

The meaning of race has been scrutinized across philosophical traditions and subdisciplines. Philosophers have asked questions such as the following: What is race/what does it mean in contemporary societies? What roles does race play not only in social and political domains, but also in individual modes of embodiment, identity, and self-consciousness? How does whiteness exist as an unacknowledged norm in philosophical thinking and society, and how can this norm be critically reassessed and overcome? How are race, racialization, and racism phenomenologically experienced? In what ways is racism coded into cultural and political forms of power in contemporary societies? In law? In the valuing of citizenry and life? How do conceptions and experiences of race differ across cultures? This survey course will examine the metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological issues that are generated by our concepts of race and racism. Keywords:Philosophy, Critical Theory, Racism, Anti-Racism, Black feminist Theory

Students will examine contemporary moral issues and the methods of philosophic thought and will discover the place and influence of philosophy in life today as they increase their ethical awareness and identify their own beliefs and values as well as understand the foundation(s) for those values. This course will provide an overview of the history of philosophical analysis of moral dilemmas arising in professional and public settings and enable students to develop independent project based study of an ethical issue and/or issue related to the common good. This course fulfills the project requirement for Division II. Keywords:Philosophy, Applied Ethics, Research Methods, Social and Political Thought

Nanny Share:Supporting Local Families

This course critically engages a range of transnational feminist theories, movements, and praxis to analyze structures of power shaping people's lives in global and local contexts. By focusing on African, Asian, South American, Indigenous, and Middle Eastern feminisms, this course seeks to decenter a body of feminist scholarship that often assumes shared visions of gender equality. Such studies conceptualize gender issues and concerns through a Eurocentric/colonial viewpoint by overlooking differences among people with respect to race, class, sexuality/sexual orientation, and nationality. Course readings explore the ethics of cross-cultural knowledge production, activism, warfare, commodification of women and queer peoples' bodies, sexualities, and local resources. The main goals of the course are to expose students to a broad range of feminist thought and action and locate transnational feminist theories in relation to colonial and post-colonial narratives. It urges students to examine their own positions within global systems that connect the (often uneven) exchange of persons, capital, and ways of knowing. Keywords:Feminist Theory, Queer Theory, Postcolonial feminisms, African/a Philosophy