- CHID 222: BIOFUTURES (A&H, SSc, NSc)
Class Description: This class explores key legal, ethical, cultural, scientific, and commercial aspects of the rapidly changing world of biotechnology and bioinformatics. It specifically asks how new discoveries in biology encourage us to rethink issues of ownership, communication, geography, identity, and artistic practice. Come find out about the often exhilarating and frequently frightening scenarios for the future of your body.
Students will be specifically encouraged to ask the following questions:
What are the ethical and legal issues involved in patenting human cell lines?
How are recent biotechnologies portrayed in science fiction films? What can we learn by studying these portrayals?
What does it mean to suggest that biotechnology is part of "an information society"?
How are race, class, gender, and disability mapped onto or intersect with biomedicine?
How are artists using live organisms in their artwork? What can we learn about art, ethics, and scientific practice by studying this work?
This class is designed to appeal to all. No prerequisites needed!
2. CHID 250C: ART, MEMORY, AND VIOLENCE IN LATIN AMERICA (A&H, SSc)
Class description: This class invites students to think critically about art, violence, memory, and social activism in Latin America, with a focus on cultural politics in Peru. Students examine notions of otherness and the power to label as central to the cultural politics of violence.
- CHID 250E: RELIGIONS AND HORROR FILMS (A&H, SSc)
Class description: From the Exorcist (1973) to Midsommar (2019) and the VVITCH (2016), religious themes have been a major element of modern horror films in the history of western cinema, particularly in the field of religious studies and comparative religion.
- CHID 250G: GRUNGE IS FOR LOSERS – SEATTLE ALTERNATIVE MUSIC SCENES, 1964 – 2024 (A&H)
Class description: Stage dive into Seattle and Pacific Northwest (PNW) alternative music scenes, past and present. Start in the 1960’s with the Dave Lewis Trio and the Sonics. Fast forward into the 1980’s and beyond with Tina Godmother of Grunge Bell, U-Men, Green River, Soundgarden, Black Anger, Nirvana, Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Band of Horses, TacoCat, and the Black Tones.
- CHID 260: RETHINKING DIVERSITY – SOUTHERN QUEERS, SOUTHERN FEARS (SSc, DIV, A&H, & W)
Class description: Are monsters real? According to Zora Neale Hurston, a Black female anthropologist from the U.S. South, there were zombies in Haiti in 1933. This course investigates key texts and visuals from the genres of the Caribbean and U.S. Southern Gothic. We will study a variety of monsters, their respective discourses of / on monstrosity, as well as the social and epistemic politics informing such discourses.
- CHID 270C: MOTION AND MOVEMENT (A&H, SSc)
Class description: We will investigate the material connections between physical motion moving images, and political movements, and put theories of motion, from the ancient Greeks to contemporary quantum theory, in conversation with radical Black and leftist social and political critiques, and the recent film and video works. From this, we will develop a heuristic with which to elaborate our own analysis of the occupy movement and the George Floyd uprising.
- CHID 325: MATH: PRACTICE & POWER (NSc, W)
Class description: Introduces the cultural, historical, artistic, political, and scientific resonances of the practice of mathematics
- CHID 480: THE UNCONSCIOUS, ONLINE, DREAMING WITHOUT ALGORITHMS (A&H, SSc, W)
Class descriptions: We’ll ask how psychoanalytic logics of the unconscious mind cryptically haunt our devices, platforms, and network tech, and how these animate our nightmares and dystopian visions of the future (Calderwood Seminar)
- CHID 480C: DECOLONIZING SOVIET CINEMA – FILMS OF RESISTANCE AND DESIRE (A&H, SSc)
Class description: In this course we will study films from countries that have emerged in post-Soviet space, looking at both Soviet-era and contemporary films in which directors explore their own and their country’s sense of cultural identity vis-à-vis the dominant Soviet, often Russian culture.
- CHID 480E: BORDER STORIES: SEMINAR IN PUBLIC WRITING – (SSc, W)
Class description: Despite often contrasting wildly with the reality of borders and migrants, stories about borders are powerful forces that profoundly affect the fates of individuals, families, and communities. In this seminar, students will learn how to write and edit public-facing essays that translate ideas from films, long-form journalism, podcasts, and social scientific about four kinds of border stories.