SCCT Courses 2023-2024

Upcoming in Spring 2024!

SCCT 510: Borderlands Lab: Pedagogy, Praxis, and Poetics
Instructors: Professor's Carol Brochin (Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies) and Sandy Soto (Gender and Women's Studies)

In this graduate seminar, Professors Brochin (Teaching, Learning & Sociocultural Studies) and Soto (Gender & Women’s Studies), draw on their shared expertise in Chicana, transnational feminist theory as well as their unique specializations (queer literacies and pedagogy; and literary & cultural studies, respectively) to offer an interdisciplinary approach to the U.S./Mexico borderlands as a rich site of knowledge & cultural production; as a fraught space of racism, gender-based violence, environmental degradation, and militarization, as well as innovative resistance to these processes; and as a concept that is too often fetishized by academics and artists.

Upcoming in Spring 2025!

SCCT 510: Theorizing Food: Critical Approaches to the Global Study of Eating
Instructors: Professor's Ryan Kashanipour (History) and Joshua Schlachet (East Asian Studies)

Food, to gloss Hippocrates, is both apart of nature and from humanity. While academic interests in foodways have exploded in recent decades, the field of study has broadly rested on either positivist and materialist accounts of food and consumption or on narrow epistemological interrogations of identity formation, historical tradition, conviviality, or familial inheritance. As such, the study of food has been simultaneously overtheorized and undertheorized. This interdisciplinary seminar will expand the theoretical horizons of food studies by drawing on diverse approaches—from historical materialism and cultural studies to critical science studies and actor-network theory. The course will be organized into three units: 1. Foundational theories of social, cultural, and critical foodways; 2. Applied uses of critical food theory in humanistic and social science disciplines, often with Eurocentric ends; and 3. Critiques and alternative models from the global non-West, particularly in the area studies of East Asia and Latin America.


 

The following courses are currently scheduled for the upcoming semesters. Please review the list of approved electives to determine other courses offered this year. Please review the schedule of classes for the most up to date information, as availability may change. To request approval for an elective course that has not yet been reviewed, please contact a member of the Executive Committee

FALL 2023 
Courses Offered in Fall 2023

Course NBR
Title
Time
Instructor(s)

SCCT 500

Introduction to Social, Cultural and Critical Theory
(required for minor and certificate)
Tu 3:00PM-5:30PM
Leerom Medovoi

ANTH 595E

Anthropology and Education Tu 4:15PM-6:45PM Cindy Cruz

ARH 511A

Theory and Methods in Art History: Renaissance to 1960 Tu 8:00AM-10:50AM Paul Ivey

GWS 539A

Feminist Theories I Mo 3:30PM-6:00PM Kelsey John
GWS 696G Queer Theories We 5:30PM-8:00PM Derrais Carter

GEOG 689

History of Geographic Thought Th 3:00PM-5:30PM Stefano Bloch

MUS/LAS 568

Studies in Latin American Music We 4:00PM-6:30PM Jose Luis Puerta

 

SPRING 2024 
Courses Offered in Spring 2024

Course NBR Title Time Instructor(s)
SCCT 510
Borderlands Lab: Pedagogy, Praxis, and Poetics (required for minor)
Wed 4:00PM - 6:30PM Carol Brochin, Sandi Soto
 
ANTH 613 Culture and Power Wed 2:00PM - 4:30PM Brian Silverstein
ENGL 596L Theories of Criticism Tue 5:00PM - 7:30PM John Melillo
GWS 6884 Feminist Knowledge and Methods Mon 1:00PM - 3:30PM Wanda Alarcon
GEOG 696I Political Ecology Tue 3:30PM - 6:00PM  Andrew Curley
LIS 517 Introduction to Digital Cultures Fully Online Laura Lenhart
LAW 527 International Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples Wed 1:30PM - 3:10PM Robert Williams
LAW 631H Critical Race Practice Tue/Thu 6:30PM - 8:20PM Akilah Kinnison

 


 

Course Descriptions

SCCT 500: Introduction to Social, Cultural and Critical Theory
Philosopher Max Horkheimer once defined critical theory as a genre of intellectual writing whose purpose is to “liberate human being from the circumstances that enslave them.” While that definition remains useful, critical theory has traveled in many different directions over the last hundred and fifty years. This is true both because the social forms of freedom and unfreedom have proliferated across the many domains of life, but equally because our critical analyses have developed across increasingly diverse schools of theoretical investigation.

This course surveys both classic and emerging intellectual traditions while also asking how they are being employed across the academic disciplines that draw on critical theory. We will consider how the humanities, social sciences, arts, and law have thought, written and employed critical theory to address the relation of power to wealth, politics, subjectivity, language, space/time, race, sexuality, gender, nationality and life itself. In addition to reading classic texts by the likes of Karl Marx or Sigmund Freud, we will also encounter contemporary scholars writing in relation to feminist theory, cultural studies, queer theory, postcolonial and critical race theory. This course is intended as a contact zone in which we can think between and across the graduate programs at the University of Arizona through intensive group discussion of shared readings. This is the first of two core courses for the GIDP minor in Social, Cultural and Critical Theory.

SCCT 510: Borderlands Lab: Pedagogy, Praxis, and Poetics (Spring 2024 Offering)
In this graduate seminar, Professors Brochin (Teaching, Learning & Sociocultural Studies) and Soto (Gender & Women’s Studies), draw on their shared expertise in Chicana, transnational feminist theory as well as their uniquespecializations (queer literacies and pedagogy; and literary & cultural studies, respectively) to offer an interdisciplinary approach to the U.S./Mexico borderlands as a rich site of knowledge & cultural production; as a fraught space of racism, gender-based violence, environmental degradation, and militarization, as well as innovative resistance to these processes; and as a concept that is too often fetishized by academics and artists.

ANTH 506: Gender and Social Identity
An analysis of the social and cultural construction of gender across cultures. Emphasis will be on preindustrial societies, using data to test theories of gender. Graduate-level requirements include additional readings and a detailed research paper.

ANTH 511: Anthropology of Religion
Comparative approaches to the study of religion, systems of ritual and symbolization in the primitive world, shamanism and possession, religious movements, and religion in the modern world. Graduate-level requirements include a major term paper

ANTH 524A: Policital Ecology
This course introduces a variety of environmental thought linking the political sphere and the biosphere. It examines ecological economics, environmental history and ethics, theoretical ecology, ecofeminism, political ecology in anthropology and intellectual property law.  Graduate-level requirements include a longer research paper

ANTH 595E: Anthropology and Education
Historical, theoretical, methodological, and practical/pedagogical foundations of the field of educational anthropology. Explores the relationships among culture, education, and identity, with a focus on learning in cross-cultural contexts both inside and outside of schools. Ethnography as a mode of inquiry is emphasized. Research projects required

ANTH 608A and B: History of Anthropological Theory
An overview of early theoretical tools used in anthropological research

ANTH 612: Anthropology and Modernity
Course identifying and analyzing characteristically modern social forms; their historical emergence; role of colonial and imperial projects; articulation with locales on various scales and impact on the politics of self and community in cases from around the world

ANTH 613: Culture and Power
Examines the development, goals, techniques and practices of anthropology

ANTH 675A and B: Anthropology and Global Health
An intensive overview of the field of global health and anthropologists' contributions to it. Responses to biotechnology, primary health care and child survival, diseases and development; health care utilization patterns; world systems and multinational pharmaceutical industry; health care bureaucracies; interaction between traditional medicine and public health

ANTH 696B: Cultural Anthropology
The development and exchange of scholarly information, usually in a small group setting. The scope of work shall consist of research by course registrants, with the exchange of the results of such research through discussion, reports, and/or papers

ARH 511A: Theory and Methods in Art History: Renaissance to 1960
First half of required theory and methods component to introduce participants to the methods and theories of art history from the Renaissance to 1960.

EAS 556: Humanities and the Global Creative Economy
The course investigates ways in which humanities engage in the global creative economy. It examines key concepts such as creativity, aesthetics, and contemporaneity in humanities, and examines how they become inseparable to the rise of the global creative economy, whether through culture industries, digital media, creative spaces, artistic activisms, or urban development. It focuses on the connections and intersections between aesthetics and art, knowledge and information, and creative economies around the world. Examples of the creative economy include cities from Asia, America, Europe, and Africa. This course is suitable for students who are interested in humanities, global studies, media arts, e-society, visual culture and media studies, urban planning, economics, business, and even those dealing with intellectual property laws

ENGL 515: History of Criticism and Theory
A systematic introduction to the history of criticism and/or modern and contemporary critical theory.

ENGL 573: Semiotics and Language
Introduction to semiotics, survey of major figures and trends. Saussure and structuralism, Jakobson and functionalism/poetics, Pierce and pragmaticism. Focus on what these trends tell us about language. Students' written work will represent students' specific interests.

ENGL 596B: Studies in Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature and Theory
The development and exchange of scholarly information, usually in a small group setting. The scope of work shall consist of research by course registrants, with the exchange of the results of such research through discussion, reports, and/or papers.

ENGL 596U: Comparative Rhetorics
The development and exchange of scholarly information, usually in a small group setting. The scope of work shall consist of research by course registrants, with the exchange of the results of such research through discussion, reports, and/or papers.

ENGL 596L: Theories of Criticism
The development and exchange of scholarly information, usually in a small group setting. The scope of work shall consist of research by course registrants, with the exchange of the results of such research through discussion, reports, and/or papers.

ENGL 680: Reader Response Theories
This course focuses on historical and theoretical developments in modern rhetoric and composition and may focus entirely on selected figures and schools of thought.

ENGL 696T: Contemporary Rhetorical Theories
This course focuses on historical and theoretical developments in modern rhetoric and composition and may focus entirely on selected figures and schools of thought.

FREN 554: French Theory
Focuses on key concepts in theory and criticism with an emphasis on writers who have shaped modern French thought in particular. Students will read and discuss major theoretical works that are of continued relevance today within the French-speaking world

GWS 503: Latina Feminisms in the Americas
In this course, we will examine Latina feminisms as they break off from nationalist politics of the 1960's to a politics concerned with transnational practices of "feminismo popular" (popular feminism) in the United States and Latin America. Through the study of essays, testimonios, and literatures that engage feminism, we will discuss how material conditions, civil wars, and revolution allow working class women in the Americas to engage in activities that we might understand as feminist.

GWS 525: Gender, Culture, and Capitalism
This course explores the relationship between economic processes (especially capitalism), social formations such as gender, race, ethnicity, nation and sexuality, and the production and consumption of culture, in the various senses of that complex term. We will read fundamental texts of liberal and Marxist theory, various attempts to integrate Marxist, feminist and anti-racist analyses, and theories that situate culture in relation to industrialization, globalization, and international divisions of labor.  We will also take up numerous case studies, analyzing the discourses of class, gender, race and sexuality as they are deployed in and promoted by cultural texts that engage issues such as domestic labor, prisons, and welfare.

GWS 533: Feminist Political Theory
Examines the tradition of Western political theory through a gender-sensitive lens and surveys the development of feminist political theory.  Graduate-level requirements include an additional research paper and readings.

GWS 539A and B: Feminist Theories
This course is Part 1 of a two-semester survey of feminist theories. The course covers major issues, debates and texts of feminist theory and situates feminist theory in relation to a variety of intellectual and political movements. The course is a discussion format and requires active participation of all students. [B follows a similar description]

GWS 544: Women and the Body
Exploration of the ways that women have defined their bodies; how the representation of woman as body permeates  culture and affects women's sense of self and self-esteem. Examination of feminist theoretical analyses of women's power and the control of women's bodies. Graduate-level requirements include a more comprehensive research paper and preparation of a lecture/summary on several books in the topic.

GWS 554: Contemporary Feminist Theories
Introduction to contemporary feminist theories, posing and analyzing the questions that propel theorizing about women's relationships to processes of gender differentiation. By examining the assumptions about gender relations that ground theoretical positions from various disciplines, analytic traditions, and subject areas, students will be enabled to read, synthesize and critique across the spectrum of feminist theorizing.

GWS 561: Feminist and IR Theories
Issues in epistemology; survey and integration of feminist and IR theories; application of feminist theories to IR.  Graduate-level requirements include a classroom presentation, an additional paper, or more extensive writing on papers.

GWS 596S: Technology and Social Theory
Seminar in technology and social theory.

GWS 605: Moral Politics
This course will engage the terms of morality, ethics, and pietistic practice as they appear in social and cultural analysis.  Though often used in religion and religious studies, we will focus on how these terms are used in progressive and feminist analyses that may not be fundamentally about religion or religiousness.  In other words, we will examine how 'the moral' is understood to function in 'the social,' 'the cultural' and 'the analytical,' rather than in the study of religion, per se

GWS 645: Psychoanalysis and Cultural Theory
Course will provide an in-depth introduction to psychoanalysis and its utilization in cultural theory.  The first half of the course will be devoted to reading the work of Sigmund Freud.  We will then explore the uptake of Freudian psychoanalysis within cultural studies of race, gender, sexuality and nation.  Particular attention will be paid to the work of Frantz Fanon and his critical interlocutors

GWS 684: Feminist Knowledge Production
Exposure to issues in feminist research design, methods, methodology, and epistemology, and consideration of critiques of methodology and assumptions in disciplinary inquiry. Discussion of feminist critiques of methodology, and consideration of issues of ethics and power in the research process

GWS 695B: Gender and the Law

GWS 696A: Latina/o Literary and Cultural Studies
This course will analyze Latina/o cultural production through a variety of Cultural Studies approaches.  Whether Latina/o literary representations can help us move beyond some of the impasses of Cultural Studies will be considered. Readings include R. Williams, C. Sandoval, C. Pineda

GWS 696G: Queer Theories
This seminar examines theories of sexuality, focusing on relations between sexuality, gender, race, and economic processes. The course may include foundational theorists such as Foucault, Butler, and Sedgwick as well as the most recent publications in the field

GWS 696H: Science and Social Theory
Science and technology are prominent features of contemporary society.  The sociology of knowledge, science, and technology are rapidly growing and increasingly important areas of inquiry in the social and behavioral sciences, arts, and humanities.  This seminar will be an opportunity to read very broadly across social and political theory and its relations to science (both the natural and social) and knowledge.  The goals of the course are to expose students to the various schools of thought, methodologies, and themes in the sociology of science and knowledge and the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies, and to explore resources from which to develop research questions in these areas

GWS 696J: Sexuality and Aesthetics
The study of sexuality as it pertains to cultural and aesthetic production. Topics may include camp, kitsch, "subcultures," film, music, and popular culture

GEOG 689: History of Geographic Thought
History of geographic philosophy and methodology

GEOG 696A: Economic Geography
Based on the exchange of information, usually in a small group setting, this course examines contemporary developments in economic geography. The selected topics rotate according to the interests of the faculty convener and the graduate student enrollees. Generally grounded in economic theories of space and place, typical topics include regional inequalities and development; location theory, urban economics, and transportation; marxist and post-marxist political economy; retailing and consumption; alternative economies; resources and agriculture; gender and work; migration and economic change; institutional approaches; the intersection of culture and economy; and money, finance, and trade. The scope of work shall consist of research by course registrants, with the exchange of the results of such research through discussion, reports, and/or papers

GEOG 696B: Cultural Geography
Based on the exchange of scholarly information, usually in a small group setting, this course examines contemporary developments in cultural geography. The selected topics rotate according to the interests of the faculty convener and the graduate student enrollees. Generally grounded in cultural theories of space and place, typical topics include transnationalism, globalization, resistance, identity, landscape, postcolonialism, social nature, the body, and media. The scope of work shall consist of research by course registrants, with the exchange of the results of such research through discussion, reports, and/or papers

GEOG 696G: Urban Geography
Based on the exchange of scholarly information, usually in a small group setting, this course examines contemporary developments in urban geography. The selected topics rotate according to the interests of the faculty convener and the graduate student enrollees. Generally grounded in theories of urban space, typical topics include urban politics and governance, economic restructuring, alternative urbanisms, gender and race, urban subcultures, migration and cities, urban form and the built environment, world cities, and transportation. The scope of work shall consist of research by course registrants, with the exchange of the results of such research through discussion, reports, and/or papers

GEOG 696H: Political Geography
This course will consist of a seminar format allowing different topics in political geography to be presented.  Topics offered will likely include the state, governance, critical geopolitics, social movements, or an exclusive focus on a number of key political/social theorists inside and outside of the discipline of geography from Frederich Ratzel, to Karl Marx to David Harvey

GEOG 696I: Political Ecology
This course is a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding resource access by different people, the institutions and environmental conditions through which resource access is mediated, and the sorts of environmental change that these systems may create.  It also involves an analysis of the political institutions that have a bearing on environmental outcomes.  It frames local resource use systems within the 'nests' of processes that help to shape them - e.g. political economy, globalization, gender relations, and historically produced 'narratives.'

GEOG 696N: Geography and Social Theory
Based on the exchange of scholarly information, usually in a small group setting, this course examines developments in socio-spatial theory. Selected topics and thinkers will rotate according to the interests of the faculty convener and the graduate students enrolled. Course organization may be historical, e.g., based on a survey of trends in socio-spatial theory, or thematic, e.g., examining the intersection between spatial theory and such topics as politics, resistance, feminism, globalization, etc. The scope of work shall consist of research by course registrants, with the exchange of the results of such research through discussion, reports, and/or papers.

GER 506: Representing the “Other”
Explores narratives that construct the Other, the foreigner, and the outsider; discusses the politics of racism, sexism and exclusion using texts from various fields

GER 507: Criticism and Creativity in German Culture
Examines the relationship between theories of literature and literary practice, and the question of the nature of writing in general

LIS 517: Introduction to Digital Cultures
Digital information technologies shape our lives.  The benefits and the possible dangers of digital information technologies will be explored from a multidisciplinary perspective, looking at the insights into our digital age from history, linguistics sociology, political theory, information science, and philosophy.  Students will have opportunities for active reflection on the ways in which digital technology shapes learning and social interaction.  Graduate-level requirements include different percent break-down of requirements and more stringent expectations in work produced.

LAW 527: International Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples
Over the last few decades, international law's human rights regime has developed to address the concerns of indigenous peoples worldwide, giving rise to new international norms and procedures that generally favor their cultural survival, land and resource rights, and self-determination.  Because international law is part of the law of the United States law by virtue of the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent, international human rights law as it concerns indigenous peoples does not just function on the international plane, but it also should be considered part of Federal Indian Law.  This course provides students with an exposure to the theory and practice of international human rights law and to how it is developing in this field.  Particular attention will be paid to developments in the U.N. and the Organization of American States, and how those developments relate to the domestic legal systems of the United States and selected other countries.

LAW 631F: Law and Culture
With increasing frequency, disputes arise over who can control the use of culture and cultural resources, particularly as culture has come to be viewed as a marketable commodity.  These disputes often involve protection of cultural property and both items and places of cultural importance; ethical and legal issues involved in collection, display and return of cultural objects; and intellectual property issues involved in traditional knowledge.  These issues most commonly arise with respect to indigenous cultures, and this course will concentrate primarily on native culture, but we will also examine other discrete and insular communities.

LAW 631H: Critical Race Practice
This course, limited to twenty students, will explore the legal history of racism in the post-colonial and post-modern West from critical race and post-colonial theoretical and practice-oriented clinical perspectives.  This seminar will focus on the difficulties in defining and understanding the meanings of the term 'race;' the nature of 'racism' and racial oppression; theories of racial formation; the differing implications of colonization and immigration; the formation of stereotypes; unconscious racism; the gendered and sexualized nature of race and theories of racial identity.

LAW 682: Cyberlaw
The nature and scope of the Internet and the World Wide Web, including the role of web browsers as both search and transaction tools, the proposed national information infrastructure; the general impact of technology on law and law on technology; encryption, anonymity and privacy.

MUS/LAS 568: Studies in Latin American Music
Studies of selected topics in Latin American music in social context, with emphasis on shared patterns of transmission, development and reception.  Case studies of musical genres, styles and historical periods, from pre-conquest to contemporary pop and folkloric to classical.  Graduate-level requirements include reading additional scholarly literature, as necessary, and will deliver a conference-style presentation of their final project.