Lee Baker
AAAS 251/CultAnth208/ICS239/RIGHTS 208
Spring 2020
Human variation and the historical development of concepts of race; science and scientific racism; folk-concepts of race; and the political and economic causes of racism; ethics of racism.
Category: International Comparative Studies
Eileen Chow
AMES 335/HISTORY 228/AMI 337/ICS 336
Fall 2019
Explores the intersection of space and ethnicity through the myriad ways Chinatown has circulated as memory, fantasy, narrative, myth, in the dominant cultural imagination, and how lived realities of overseas Chinese communities, Asian American history, andchanging conceptions of “Chineseness” have productively engaged with real and phantom Chinatowns. Research will emphasize multi-disciplinary approaches, such as urban history, architecture, ethnography, economics; or engagement in a creative project.
Nayoung Aimee Kwon
AMES476S, ICS411S, AMI476S, LIT476S, VMS476S, HISTORY446S, DOCST476S
Fall 2019
Engages students in the practices and theories of archiving, documenting and curating marginal histories. Hands-on research in the archives of Duke’s Rubenstein Special Collections and elsewhere. Examines histories of movements and encounters between the “West” and “Asia.” Teaches original archival research and documentary methods through guided excavations in digital, audiovisual, and material resources.Directed readings and special guest lectures guide students on how to think critically on the theories and praxis of knowledge production, collection, documentation, circulation, and consumption. Students curate projects for final research assignment.
Jessica Namakkal
ICS 335S /Immigration and Citizenship Focus Cluster
Fall 2020
This course explores decolonization as an historical event, a category of theoretical analysis, and a series of contemporary social movements. Course material will introduce students to the history of decolonization as both idea and event, putting global anti-colonial movements of the twentieth century into conversation with contemporary struggles for the decolonization of occupied land, institutions, and epistemologies. This interdisciplinary course draws on work in history, geography, anthropology, women’s studies, and postcolonial and decolonial studies. Students will also read and research manifestos, memoirs, archival documents, documentary films, oral histories, and museum exhibits.
Sucheta Mazumdar (Course also taught by Susan Bramley Thananopavarn in Writing Program)
HISTORY 183S/AMES 187S/RIGHTS 183S/AAAS 133S/ICS 183S/PUBPOL 175S
Spring 2020
Study of crucial legal and political moments in the struggle for equal civil rights of minorities, beginning with the laws of Chinese Exclusion, the struggle to define who was “White,” the Asian Immigration Exclusion Acts, the relationships of Asians and African Americans and the struggle for equal schooling in the American South, the Japanese Concentration camps, the Redress and Reparations Civil Rights struggle, and the involvement of Asians Americans in the African American-led Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, including working with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and Asian Americans in the anti-sweatshop unionization movement.
Erika Weinthal
ENVIRON 216S/PUBPOL 279S/POLSCI 367S/ICS 229S/RIGHTS 229S
Fall 2018
Environmental and natural resources as a source of conflict and/or peacebuilding between and within nations and states. Analysis of the role of the environment in the conflict cycle and international security. Topics include refugees, climate change, water, and infectious disease. Particular focus on post-conflict and rebuilding in war-torn societies. Examination of the role of international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and emerging standards for environmental management. Examples drawn from conflicts such as Rwanda, Israel/Palestine, Nepal, Sierra Leone and others.
Kerry L. Haynie, Ralph Bruce Lawrence
ICS 213S, POLSCI/RIGHTS 235S, PUBPOL 285S
Fall 2018
A comparative examination and analysis of urban governance in South Africa and the US. Examines potential consequences of persistent racial and class disparities for housing and neighborhoods, public health, education, community infrastructure, and general economic and social development. Specific attention to how the physical layout, government structures, politics, culture, and the civil society of cities and urban areas may both promote and hinder human development and social justice