Content with Disciplines : History

History Course on Race Inequality in DC

Washington, DC is “a city where the American dream and the American nightmare, pass each other daily, on the street and do not speak,” wrote an anonymous American some time back. Today she could be speaking about the plight of many in the nation’s capital: African Americans, Latin Americans, the homeless, many of them veterans, and others who had not benefited from the American Dream, in this city. In fact, DC is only capital city in the world where voters do not select their own voting representative to the national Congress. In this course, we will explore the “other Washington”…

Sociology SL Course: US Poverty, Welfare & Social Justice

Student Course Learning Goals: Students will be able to define poverty and identify the underlying causes and consequences of poverty in the US. Students will gain an in-depth understanding of the impact of poverty on people’s lives, particularly in the Cleveland area. Students will learn to critically evaluate the effectiveness and fairness of social welfare policies & programs. Students will be able to discuss various strategies for reducing poverty, including the programs at Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry (LMM) Students will work together in research teams and learn how to conduct a program evaluation for LMM Connection to the Department Student Learning…

Women and Social Change in Modern Africa

Course Description: This course examines the lives of women in various parts of the African continent, taking into account social, economic, and political change.  Looking into women’s private as well as their public lives, the course considers gender relations and family, issues of power, and resistance.  Readings include women’s own life histories and novels, as well as the work of academic historians. Course Objectives: To understand the great diversity in African women’s lives across time and space To understand gender roles and relations within the public and private spheres To understand the impact of social, economic, and political change on…

Connecting Families, Past and Present

Goals: This course will explore “the family” in relation to cultural identities and political policies in the United States and around the world, combined with a unique opportunity to reach out to and interact with diverse families nearby. With topics including the “Holy Family” to “Father Knows Best,” from Freud’s “Oedipal Complex” to current debates on “Family Values,” from children with AIDS to international adoption, students will analyze changing family socio-economic and psychological structures and the evolving representations of motherhood, fatherhood and childhood in the past and particularly in the present. We will compare public and private efforts to aid…

Colonial America

HIST 367 ? Colonial America A Designated Civic Learning/Mentoring Course Course Description and Objectives: Hist 367 is an undergraduate, upper level history course that examines the evolution of American colonies from initial European exploration to mature provincial societies. Emphasis is placed on the interactions between Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans (and their descendants), and on the development of distinctive regions. This course will enhance your historical knowledge, teach you to locate and analyze primary materials, dissect secondary sources, evaluate complex issues, express yourself clearly and convincingly, and present your research in a scholarly fashion. Students enrolled in Hist 367 have…

Women, Race & Class

Women, Race & Class is an interdisciplinary examination of the historical institutions, forces and movements that have shaped the status, identities and conditions of multicultural women. While many of the assigned readings are based in the United States, we will also look at global connections and contexts. We will emphasize relationships between theory, practice/action and multiple perspectives.

Multicultural Issues in Urban Affairs

  URBAN SEMESTER PROGRAM Multicultural Issues in Urban Affairs HE470 Seminars are normally embedded in the site visits. 3 credits This course uses New York City as a classroom. The landscape, built environment, and people in it are our texts. A great teacher, Paolo Freire, once said that we need to learn how to “read the word and the world.” This is what we will do in this course with an emphasis on reading the world. Two parts direct our attention. The first part focuses us on the formation and development of this multicultural city. We will traverse lower Manhattan…

Poverty and Homelessness in America

Course Description This two quarter course will combine formal academic study on the topic of poverty and homelessness in the United States with an internship experience in a shelter-providing agency either in Santa Clara County or San Mateo County. Students will read weekly selections of articles and books relating to analyses of and personal experiences with poverty and homelessness in American cities. Perhaps the most important part of the course is the internship each student will be involved in at a local homeless shelter. Students will engage in a directed social service-type internship and will be expected to devote about…

Seminar in American Architecture: Landscape, History, and Public Culture

Tuesdays 7-10 PM Class: 2227 AA Email: scobey@umich.edu Office: 3126 AA OVERVIEW: How is history represented or effaced in the built and natural environment? What role do historical narrative and historical awareness play in public culture, so that stories about the past become expressions of present-day values and conflicts? How does social memory inform processes of city-building, and how might it inform landscape design? This seminar explores the links among place-making, historical consciousness, and public culture. It will explore such topics as cultural landscape studies, the relation of place to community identity, the role of historical narrative in public discourse,…