Social Justice Studies

Spanish Intensive is an immersion language course offered through Prescott College's Kino Bay Center in Sonora, Mexico. Students will formally study an intermediate or advanced language curriculum during daily classes focusing on grammar and vocabulary, as well as speaking and comprehension skills. Students will live with local host families in Kino Viejo, providing the opportunity to informally practice and advance their language and inter cultural communication abilities. Additionally, students will participate in service projects, guest lectures, discussions, and local field outings allowing them to further engage in Spanish, while experiencing the culture, history, and ecology of coastal Sonora. This course provides an excellent foundation for students wishing to pursue further studies at the Kino Bay Center or in Latin American Studies.

Spanish Intensive is an immersion language course that introduces the student to the Spanish language and Hispanic cultures. Students will formally study a beginning or intermediate language curriculum during daily classes focusing on grammar and vocabulary, as well as speaking and comprehension skills. Students will visit via Zoom with local, native speaking host families in Kino Viejo, Mexico, providing the opportunity to informally practice and advance their language and intercultural communication abilities. Active student participation and use of contemporary multimedia resources are integral aspects of the course design.

This course presents the foundations of the curriculum in Social Justice Studies, encompassing economic, political and social developments from the 18th Century to the present, as well as their potential impacts on the future. Student will be introduced to ongoing global debates including: war and achievement of peace, sovereignty and power, borders and changing international law, privilege and the mal-distribution of wealth and opportunity, religions and their impacts, and contemporary efforts to create a better world that benefits all. Students will learn and apply skills of critical social research. They will develop communication skill by participation in discussion, and writing analytical papers. This course will prepare them to use the lenses of both knowledge and theory to view current events and long term developments of global importance, with the goal of creating positive action. Students will build a supportive community in which to experientially explore individual and group identity and the ethics of community-based learning. Upon successful completion of this course, (and a course in social research methods), students will be able to take further Global Studies courses, having a broader knowledge of the fields, critical understanding of issues, and an appreciation of the stakes of knowledge production.

Image and Power in Mass Culture explores the meaning, production, and uses of images and how they are embedded in the popular imagination by what Marxist theorist, Louis Althusser, named "Ideological State Apparatuses". Through deep investigation of what has become known as the "occult" (a word that has its roots in the Latin, "occultus," meaning "hidden, secret"), we will explore and critique closely held, common sense notions of hope and reason by applying theories of representation put forward by Stuart Hall and Roland Barthes, and the postmodernist reasoning of Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida and other thinkers of the late 20th Century. Assignments will include exploring ways alternative thinkers have written about psychedelic drugs as gateways to the expansion of consciousness, reflecting on the power of the manifesto through writing, and uncovering hidden texts within texts through cut up and collage making.

Through this class we will discuss philanthropy and the structures of the Non-profit enterprise. We will explore the ways philanthropies and nonprofits set priorities, how nonprofit leaders cultivate donor relationships, and how to vision a project that is competitive in the funding arena. We will also explore new and nontraditional funding structures including social business, social entrepreneurship and grassroots fundraising strategies. Core concepts of the course will include the essentials of visioning, researching, writing, obtaining, and maintaining grants. This conceptual work will be implemented through an intensive short-term internship working with a local change organization to actualize and submit a funding proposal.

Each person owns stories that arise from living a full life. Sharing these experiences connects people at the visceral level and helps create healthy communities. In this course, students learn storytelling by telling their own stories and collecting stories from members of the local community. Students practice interview techniques that document the lives and times of the storytellers and provide the raw data for creating their digital stories. Students combine stories with images and music through digital technology to bring these stories to a larger audience. Students learn to use digital camcorders, Photoshop and digital video editing programs.

Bamboozled: Race, Power, and Representation in Cinema explores the politics and production of racial representation in contemporary US film. Students will learn to analyze narrative structures and visual codifications of race and identity in both Hollywood and independent films. They will also examine the dynamics of race, racism, and efforts to dismantle racial inequities through cultural production by and for oppressed communities. Students will develop the analytical tools to critically assess the impacts of social systems on cinematic representations and ways in which cinematic images, in turn, shape group identity, political consciousness, and movements for racial justice.

Radical Media offers students an academic curriculum focusing on journalistic ethics and how to use media production to promote social justice. Throughout the course we will cover the journalistic "toolkit" that is necessary to convey social and political messages effectively. Students will research, write, create and edit a media product about a contemporary and pressing social issue . Students will work in production teams and travel off campus to interview people, working with non-profits and community organizations to create media with a powerful social message. The aim of this course is to help students become media literate and to sharpen their skills as producers and consumers of news through screenings, critiques, and guest lectures. Readings and discussions focus on current news, media ethics, media literacy, social justice issues and the powerful role of media (TV news, documentaries, new media, digital storytelling) as tools for civic engagement and positive social change.

Biocultural Landscapes explores the nexus of culture, environment, place, and community and how it plays out in our socially, politically, and economically complex world. This includes the connections between cultural diversity and biodiversity, social justice and environmental justice, where we live and how we live. We will map out a range of global environmental issues and topics, focusing on cultural and community impacts, as well as power, voice, equity, and strategies being used by communities to bridge the gaps between stakeholder groups. The goal of the course is to equip students with the knowledge, critical perspectives, and tools to evaluate, apply, and develop different methods, theories, and solutions to preserve and nurture biocultural systems. Some of the theories we will discuss include: biocultural diversity, sumak kawsay (buen vivir), and endogenous development.

This course introduces students to the extremely dynamic field of climate change policy with a focus on contemporary climate advocacy. We will examine the historic failure to develop comprehensive climate change policy in the United States and internationally, assess the current use of federal and state legal regimes to address climate, and consider the future of climate advocacy under the law. Students will critically evaluate existing and proposed legal mechanisms that seek to mitigate against and adapt to the impacts of climate change—including the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Public Trust Doctrine, and the international regime under the United Nations Framework Convention. Although the course will focus on the role of advocates using law to address climate change, discussions will be broad-based and interdisciplinary. Together students will consider how policies are informed and influenced by science, economics, politics, and culture.

This course examines the central theme of separatism and unity within the United States. It poses the question of whether or not it is possible or even desirable to create and live in a unified nation. In order to grapple with this question, we will study a series of paradoxes through which our country's identity was formed: how can a country founded on the principle of freedom have built its economy, in part, through slavery? How can a nation that represents to the world economic prosperity continue to maintain such a large underclass? The course will develop chronologically so it will give you a good general overview of the major events of U.S. history.

This course examines the history of the Southwest region from the first inhabitants to the 19th century. Emphasis is placed on the diverse groups that have inhabited this region, currently divided by the U.S./Mexico border. Students will look at the history of contact, domination, conflict, and collaboration among these groups, and the relationship between political borders and the formation of identity.

It is widely accepted that current global policies have resulted in loss of biodiversity and environmental sustainability. For more than a century, the objective of post-colonial development has resulted in the creation of protected natural areas, refuges, and national parks, both in the United States in the global south. Ironically, this has threatened the survival of indigenous peoples, not only through the seizure of land and removal of people, but through cultural commodification designed to sell tourist destinations as remote and "exotic." Tourism, like other industries generated from the frames of western cultures, encourages the use of open land by seeking out and developing the "last unspoiled places on earth." But the question becomes, can tourism be a strategy for both land and wildlife conservation through Indigenous cultural survival? How are indigenous communities protecting their land and resources? How can collaborative alliances with Indigenous strategies use tourism as a means of global education and conservation? This course will explore the common elements of these dynamics experienced by Indigenous communities in different parts of the world, possibly using East Africa as a case study.

This course explores the origin and history in the U.S. of what we refer to as "race", which is neither a biological difference or an 'idea,' but rather a social production, a component of a shared cultural reality rooted in the structure of economic systems that function to move wealth from the many to the few. Race was invented originally to facilitate slavery and displacement of native communities in the Americas and it has proved tenacious as an ideology over time, as it continues to be profitable, changing in form but not in effect. In this class we will reconstruct that history, from the early European colonization of North America and establishment of chattel slavery, through U.S. statehood and settler colonial appropriation of land, through industrialization, internal colonization of the south and western regions, the rise of U.S. imperialism and current race politics today. The class will also introduce the several hundred year tension in North America between dominant-white, Euro-American, protestant, middle classes and radical Black, Chicano, and Indigenous challenges, and the conflicts and collaborations that have emerged from those tensions. We will read the words of the social theorists and activists who have sought racial justice through the history of the U.S., including slave and Indigenous revolts, Civil Rights, Black Power, and other movements and efforts.

The Middle East is the world's most volatile political and social region. Before our eyes revolutions are taking place which will forever change Arab civilization as the old system of dictators' rule is overthrown and the people are searching for new models of governance. This region has become a focus of both Eastern and Western worlds, because half the world's oil reserves are there, creating fierce competition and grim politics. Israel and the Arab world are locked in a struggle over land, water, and ideology. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity collide there, and fundamentalists of all three believe the prophesied apocalypse to bring our world to final judgment will be ignited there --and soon. The United States has been a major player, for good or evil, over the last fifty years, and is now leading a struggle to prevent Iran's development of atomic weapons and delivery systems. By invading and nation building in Iraq, we have been involved in the deaths of well over a hundred thousand people on all sides--soldiers, Iraqi citizens, contractors, and terrorists. Iraq is poorer and more conflicted than before, but may develop a real democracy. And in these conflicts we have spent over a trillion (one thousand billions) dollars building up a huge national debt, and certainly billions have been spent by others. Yet we are now committed to building a democratic society in Afghanistan, a project which many great empires since the Ancient Persians and Greeks have fail to achieve. For these reasons, everyone should learn about this vital region and the forces causing such turmoil, as well as hopeful signs and possible solutions to age old problems. In the first part of the course, we will study the history that has shaped the Middle East from ancient times to the present. Then we will study in detail the social, political, religious, and economic forces driving events today, including how we might deal with our own issues related to the Middle East. Finally, we will examine all options we have to help bring peace and stability to the Middle East.

What does it mean to be a man? Outdated models of manhood have led to masculine identities bound to power, contempt and fear of women, aggression and violence, sexuality detached from emotional intimacy, thinking without the integration of feelings, and an ecological imbalance that threatens the planet in every manner: environmentally, nationally, culturally, and familially. This course will examine the social/psychological dynamics that shape the current masculine identity and will also discuss solutions and models to replace outdated definitions of masculinity. What can we take from the old to carry forward to the new? What must we transition out of to usher in a new paradigm that fosters a productive sense of masculinity?

Native American communities have a complex relationship to their respective landscapes. A special relationship between Indian people and their land may provide a visual map of the community's significant historic and cultural events as recounted through its oral traditions. Through field trips to the landscape of some Arizona tribes, exploration of oral traditions and ethnographic readings, we will examine specific people's relationships to the unique space they inhabit and how this relationship informs identity, traditions and cultural values. However, this first requires that we critically engage with some of our own assumptions and projections about Native peoples and their environment in order to understand the Euro-American culture tendencies to romanticize and stereotype this connection. We will look at ways that cultures can be bridged with respect, and how indigenous and non-indigenous communities can collaborate on this work.

What is the relationship, today, between wilderness and colonization, in the United States? This course examines the relationship between US settler colonialism and American imaginaries of nature in order to ask how productions of race, class and nation in US history and culture are intimately tied to dominant understandings and treatments of wilderness. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, we read critical theories, histories, ethnographies and personal essays by native and non-native authors to trace the evolution of ideas in American culture which position settler and Native societies differently in relation to nature and to explore how those ideas have contributed to centuries of violence and displacement directed at Native peoples and groups marginalized by race and class. Additionally, this course investigates the environmental movement behind wilderness as a legal designation and examines the importance of these spaces for conservation efforts in the United States. This class requires students to undertake a personal exploration of our common and different imaginaries of nature and wilderness so that we can forge critically informed, ethical, and accountable relationships to place. For the final project, students will work collaboratively to create and deliver experiential outdoor education curriculum that envisions a critical relationship to place for Indigenous Studies students, adventure education students and for anyone teaching and learning in the outdoors. There will be required overnight field-based trips and several day trips as well as guest speakers.

This course explores the theories and methodologies associated with barrio pedagogy, critical pedagogy and social justice education as a means for countering the hegemonic forces so prevalent in our public school system. By engaging in specific educational movements in southern Arizona, with a focus on Latinx and border communities, students will have an opportunity to apply theory and practice to on-the-ground community organizing and learn from experts in the areas of Ethnic Studies and educational access for Latinx students. A key component of this course will be a focus on activist teaching as a method for deconstructing the impact of neoliberalism in education and for working toward a pedagogy of liberation.

The phrase 'human rights' has become a staple in social justice organizing; it is evoked when discussing a wide range of issues such as the Darfur genocide, Guantanamo Bay prisoners and anti-G20 protests, yet the meaning and impact of this important concept are often not carefully considered. This course takes a critical look at the history of human rights discourse and how it has become so central in world politics today. We will examine the risks and benefits involved with the idea of human rights such as: the risk of encouraging racist state violence in the name of the 'greater good' of human rights; the risks of addressing complex issues around gender and culture through universal policies; the potential for protecting Indigenous sovereignty through international law; and the potential for international law to challenge U.S. supremacy and exceptionalism. We will hear from local and international activists that work both within and outside the legal sphere and become familiar with the current literature in the debate around human rights. Students will explore the possibilities and pitfalls of drawing on 'human rights' as an organizing strategy in part by developing a human rights campaign around a current issue.

From Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and Red For Ed in the United States to uprisings and grassroots campaigns across the planet for Climate Justice, Decolonization, Economic Equity, and Democracy, a promising array of new and refreshed political organizing strategies have emerged globally in the past decade. Why? As political power and wealth are rapidly being concentrated and inequality expands, the gains made by historic grassroots struggles are being attacked and eroded. At the same time, reactionary politics, automation, and climate threats are presenting new obstacles to creating a more just and sustainable future for all. How are working class, poor, and marginalized communities building political power under these changing conditions? What methodologies do organizers employ to build grassroots momentum? How has the state aided or impeded the growth and power of organizing efforts? What new kinds of collaboration are becoming possible? This course will introduce students to cutting edge approaches to making social change, familiarizing and immersing them in key contemporary challenges, debates, and opportunities within social and environmental justice movements. During this course, students will hear firsthand from organizers and activists on contemporary organizing models while engaging with contemporary critiques between practitioners.

As increasing droughts, floods, superstorms, rising sea levels, and other environmental damage caused by global economic and military forces drive more and more communities across international borders, a new global arms race has taken shape in the form of heavily militarized border enforcement technologies, policies and industries. This class will analytically connect the dots between climate change, displacement and migration, and borders and homeland security. In doing so, we will also look into the potential for alternatives, resistance, activism, and movements that could change the future of migration and climate adaptation in small and/or big ways. In this class, the students will be treated like journalists investigating the most pressing dynamics of our time. They will be expected to do their own research, interview people, and present their findings (in the form of a scholarly or journalistic essay, video, or podcast) that documents and critically engages with contemporary realities of environment and migration crises and emerging possibilities for climate justice.

Environmental Politics introduces students to environmental justice perspectives and questions that put systems of social inequality and movements for social justice at the center of the study of environmental problems and solutions. Environmental justice is neither a rejection of nor an alternative to the science and policy-based study of environmental problems, rather, it is complementary to science and policy studies, with the aim and potential to radically broaden the scope, base, and transformative potential of movements for environmental sustainability, resilience, and well being. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches from the academic fields of human geography, critical political economy, and cultural studies and from the research and analysis of social movement researchers, this course explores the disparate impacts of environmental problems on human beings and the natural systems of which we are a part. It asks students to explore grassroots social justice movements and policy oriented political projects.

In Changing World Order, students explore, pose, and investigate questions about the political, social, cultural, and environmental implications of globalization. Readings, documentaries, and other texts introduce political economic terms and concepts, explore theories and histories of the development of global capitalism, delve into the emergence of new cultural practices and modes of political resistance, and enable students to critically analyze ways in which local places, identities, and power relationships are being reshaped through global institutions and practices today. Students will apply their learning to the analysis of global inter-connections through a semester-long commodity chain research project. Through reading, discussion, writing and reflection as well as hands on activities, the study of current events, and several optional field trips, students will explore social, economic, and environmental justice projects and movements seeking to challenge and transform the most negative impacts of globalization today.

Global megacities, drones and self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, reproductive technologies, geo and genetic engineering: do these innovations signify progress? Towards what and for whom? This course critically considers the meaning, opportunities, contradictions, and consequences of scientific and technological advancement. Students will pursue three objectives: a) to understand the role of science and technology in narratives of progress; b) to examine how science and technology reflect social, political, philosophical, economic and cultural contexts and relationships; and c) to explore the human, ecological, ethical and policy implications of particular visions of progress and civilization.

Social Movements explores the question: How do ordinary people unify and act to create mass movements for social change? In this course we will study the history of U.S. and international social movements that have taken shape over the past 150 years, such as the labor movement, movements for suffrage, the Civil Rights movement, Indigenous Rights movements, and Environmental advocacy and activism. We will explore arguments about why and how these social movements have formed, to what extent they have succeeded or failed, and whether or not they have lasted. These movements and questions will be contextualized within larger economic and cultural realities. The U.S. based history sets the stage for expanding our consciousness of and collaborations with movements that originate in the Global South, often in response to some of the same complex web of impacts stemming from 21st century globalization. Students will have opportunities to identify, research, write about, and present on contemporary or historical movements that are the most interesting to them and/or relevant to their lives.

U.S.- Mexico Border Studies introduces students to political, economic, cultural, and environmental border issues in the unique region of the Sonoran borderlands. After a period of preparation and research in Prescott, students travel through southern Arizona and Sonora, Mexico where we will sojourn with local people, organizations, and institutions including community scholars, workers, culture bearers, faith communities, journalists, immigration activists, organizers, students, and others directly affected by border policy. In an effort to both theorize and contextualize the historical and contemporary reality of la frontera, students will explore the border through the lens of napantla (Nahuatl) -- an inbetween place where people and cultures both converge and chocar [clash/crash]. Within that framework, we will analyze themes of Indigenous cultural rights, resistance, and sovereignty; transnational migration and transculturation: globalization; education; climate change and environmental degradation; and border militarization. Questions explored in this course include: What role does the border play in conversations about race, citizenship, and belonging? How are border communities imagined, constructed, and exploited by individuals, governments, and corporations on both sides of la frontera? How does border infrastructure affect human environmental interaction? How are communities on the border resisting injustice and violence?

Chicano Studies emerged from the Chicano Movement of the 1960's and 1970's as part of a larger political project to challenge racial and ethnic inequality in the United States and an interdisciplinary intellectual project to study Chicano and Latino culture, experience, and history. This course offers a survey of the field, providing opportunities to explore and understand diverse histories and contemporary issues within multiple Latino communities. Students will explore the politics of cultural representation and learn about socio-economic issues through examinations of the intersections of race, class, ethnicity, citizenship, gender, and sexuality and apply them to contemporary issues in the Southwestern United States.

Through investigation and close reading of several Xicano/Indigenous foundational novels, short stories and cinematic productions students in this course will deconstruct these popular works of literature and film to uncover the evolving/emerging role representation plays in Xicano/Indigenous culture and politics. The course will consider how Xicanos and other Indigenous people have been type cast by colonization as outsiders and foreigners in the Americas and the role literature and other works of culture play in challenging the myth of the United States as a white European settler homeland.

This course will consider major and minor works of Xicano/Indigenous literature and video from the 1800s to the present. The class will divide roughly into four topics of consideration: Aztlan/Turtle Island, Indigenous Cosmology, Mestizaje and Anti Colonial/Liberation Movements. Indigenous peoples in the United States have been known by many names during the 20th century including Mexican Americans, Chicanos, Native American, First Nations and more. The identities imposed upon and claimed by this group have changed over time, but what has not changed is the subjective relationship oppressed indigenous people occupy to the settler colonial structure that has dominated their history for the past 500 years. Simultaneously, documenting though literature the political and cultural resistance to colonialism through the creation of a rich, diverse and vibrant politico-cultural landscape that has shaped the U.S. national project and the lives of every American. In this way Xicano/Indigenous peoples in the U.S. defined both themselves and the United States over the course of the 19th and 20th century.

This course is an introduction to the field of ethnic studies in the United States. Students will learn about the foundational struggles of US ethnic studies and will be introduced to the major theoricians and theories underpinning our contemporary understandings of Black, Asian American, Indigenous and Xicano Studies. Students taking this class will explore the theories and theorist who have emerged in this field over the past 50 years. They will write a final paper synthesizing their classroom experience with the required organizing project.

This course offers a survey of African American literary, political, and visual texts from the 1700s to the present. From the writings of Frederick Douglass to contemporary film, novels, and non-fiction works, students will learn about the historical circumstances in which each text is produced and explore a range of approaches to conceptualizing African American aesthetic and cultural production as both a specific tradition and as a key part of broader cultural, national, and global movements. Emphasizing approaches from the fields of African American Literary Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, American Studies, and Cultural Studies, we will learn to ask questions about the relationship between culture, power, and representation. We will examine the uneasy relationships between identity, agency, social change, and representation by asking: What role have aesthetic texts produced by African Americans played in the long fight for Black political freedom and equality? How have these texts changed over time— stylistically or otherwise—to reflect and participate in defining the different political needs present in diverse historical moments? How have these texts been shaped by different ways of thinking about identity, belonging, and agency? How have dominant and counter narratives about race been shaped or constructed by these texts? And how do these texts participate in the construction of new understandings of history, agency, freedom, and social transformation?

The surge in unaccompanied children migrating from Central America's northern triangle, the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, over the past few years has created an interest in the region not seen since the armed internal conflicts that besieged the region in the 1970s and 1980s. This course will attempt to understand the roots of that phenomenon - not as a crisis in and of itself, but as just one symptom of a larger crisis of social and economic inequity, poor governance, and weak institutions. Through an exploration of some of the contemporary history of the region, and an analysis of the interplay between the three countries and their complicated relationship with the United States, we will consider how this resource rich region has emerged as one of the most violent and politically unstable in the western hemisphere. Some of the issues the course will examine include: indigenous rights struggles, popular movements, violence and security, the rise of military regimes, women's rights and femicide, and environmental degradation.

This course explores the history and culture of the Maasai people, an Indigenous community whose lands included much of East Africa for hundreds of years before they were colonized by the British Empire and since have been absorbed into the state of Kenya. Maasai society continues to exist and build its future from the land that remains. The course is taught collaboratively with community elders to present Maasai history from the early times to the present and provides students not only with knowledge of this particular place and community, but a more general roadmap to understanding European colonization and statehood throughout the Global South.

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will orient students to Maasailand, the history and ecology of the region, Maasai culture and society, present day challenges to the community’s sustainable use of land, and solutions the community is exploring to enable its survival into the future on its own terms. Students will learn about the wildlife of Maasailand and grassland ecosystems they share with Maasai people. The course models the integration of ways of knowing about these things, forms of western and indigenous knowledge that many agree is critical to conservation and human survival in this place. Students will also learn from Maasai teachers about Maasai language and culture: the consensus-based justice system; communal family and political structures; and shared economy. They will learn about ways that Maasai are facing challenges to their land and way of life, through human-wildlife conflict resolution, for example, local economic rights and empowerment, and tourism reform.

SPECIAL NOTES:

This course provides an historical context for the recent 500 year recreation of the world through a convergence of new social forms: colonization, capitalism, and the reordering of human beings and societies according to class. Students will learn a timeline and vocabulary that provides a basis for understanding the broad strokes of inequality in our time, and movements that have mobilized in response.

Based on existing scientific evidence, certain nonhuman animals - specifically great apes, dolphins, and elephants - should be entitled to such basic legal rights as bodily liberty and integrity. Despite scientific proof that they are self-aware autonomous beings with complex cognitive abilities equal to that of children, non-human animals are not protected or granted rights within our legal system. This has raised some complex questions about who should have these rights and how should these rights be determined and distributed along the continuum of species. In recent decades a new field has developed to study the role of animals in human societies. Human-Animal Studies, or Critical Animal Studies, draws on multidisciplinary research to develop new ways of thinking about animals and animal-human relationships. CAS examines animal-human relationships, the role of animals in human societies, the boundary between humans and animals, representation and images of animals, and our ethical imperatives concerning animals. Through a critical theoretical framework, we focus on the emancipation of those who have been historically marginalized and explore the meaning of social justice for non-human animals. We look at issues of non-human rights and animal exploitation as patterns of inequality connected to those related with age, ability, gender, sexuality, race, environment and social class. The course enables students to develop a rigorous engagement with some of the more complex questions of animal treatment and our role as humans in creating these inequalities. With an emphasis on the knowledge produced about humans and other animals from a cultural and environmental studies perspective, we will interrogate such issues as: the historical and philosophical scope of animal studies; animal agency, sociality and consciousness; animal representation in popular culture;

This course will examine structural issues of inequality in modern society as it pertains to race. Students will interrogate the ways white supremacy manifests in our daily lives, and learn strategies for combating oppression. Focus will be placed on movements for social justice, specifically how to create transformative multiracial alliances and collaborative organizing efforts. We will examine the work of anti-racist organizations such as People's Institute for Survival and Beyond and the Catalyst Project.

This course is designed to prepare students to do international/intercultural study consciously, sensitively and ethically. Students will explore the political economy of global tourism in all of its forms, including tourism for education and service work. They will study the history of relationships between tourist societies and host communities, which are often located in under-resourced parts of the world. Students will examine their own culturally produced lenses on the world through films, readings, discussion and guests.

In 1996, Guatemala emerged from thirty-six years of internal armed conflict. The conflict left an estimated 200,000 people dead, 40,000 disappeared, 654 rural villages burned to the ground, more than a million people internally displaced, and another 150,000 were refugees in Mexico. Recognized as genocide by the United Nations and human rights groups, it is estimated that 93% of the atrocities and human rights violations were committed by the Guatemalan military or other state sponsored forces and more than 83% of the victims were Indigenous civilians who were regarded as "internal enemies" of the State. Drawing on ethnography, history, genocide studies, critical theory, Mayan epistemology, and other disciplines, this field course explores how the past is constructed, commemorated and contested in post-conflict Guatemala, and how communities are make use of historical (collective) memory in their quest for justice. Through readings, discussions, and hands-on work, students will deconstruct how the Guatemalan conflict has been characterized nationally and at the local level; the relationship between trauma, memory, and forgetting; and the role of personal narrative and accounts in reconciliation efforts. Students will be based in Guatemala's Verapaz region and will sojourn with community and academic scholars, culture bearers, community based NGOs, students, and others, supporting individuals, families, and communities, affected by the conflict, find closure and justice.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Communities large and small across the U.S. and the world are discovering the global effect of a pandemic while simultaneously learning how to re-imagine things we take for granted, such as: food, work, school, travel, elections, recreation, medical care, relationships and connections, and other aspects of everyday life. This course invites students to reflect together on the experiences we all have as we move through this uncertain time, engaging in experiential activities wherever we are, and sharing our learning. Instructors from across Prescott College and invited guests will join the class weekly to share their expertise on relevant topics from many different perspectives. Together, we will explore the questions: How does this crisis reveal and highlight interdependence among people and places, between social and natural systems? How are individuals, communities, educators, businesses, institutions, and governments around the world responding? How are communities impacted differently? How can we address feelings of uncertainty and fear with compassion and creativity? How can we connect with nature and culture in a time of "social distancing"? What new opportunities and possibilities are people creating as they live through this time that might help us all imagine a more compassionate, sustainable, and life-affirming future? The course will culminate in the creation of a Prescott College Pandemic Archive, recording the experiences, reflections, research, and insights of our community as we support each other through this historic moment.

One of the biggest injustices of climate change is that the hardest hit places and communities 'are the least responsible for contributing to the problem' (as the Bali Principles of Climate Justice affirm.) Climate Justice is both a political framework and a growing global social movement that seeks to broaden the constituency providing leadership on climate change. This course explores climate justice theory and practice emerging and expanding from the most heavily environmentally burdened communities and regions. Learning from cutting edge struggles around the world - from global cities to indigenous lands - we will examine strategies and visions for environmental and cultural survival, resiliency, cooperation, and transformation coming from the global grassroots. Through self-directed and collaborative research, hands-on experiential action, and close, active learning from organic and scholarly movement intellectuals, students will explore the international geography of climate justice activism, learn to identify key fronts and strategies for building the power and capacity to make systemic change, and engage with meaningful opportunities to get involved.

The course utilizes a critical analyses and social science research approach to deconstruct and help students develop an understanding of the contemporary issues related to Urbanization and the Environment. Students will develop their critical thinking skills and writing skills while learning more about the social science study and contemporary social issues of environmental justice, ecological legitimacy, environmental ethics, and environmental racism through the specific context of Urbanization in the United States. At the end of the course, students will be expected to articulately write, discuss and present comparisons between the varying environmental issues impacting urban populations throughout the United States. Student's grades will be based on weekly writing assignments, in class discussions/activities, a mid-term exam, and final research paper.

This course is a multidisciplinary, multimedia introduction to some of the major conflicts of the modern world. Among topics to be discusses are conflicts based on national interests; e.g., World War I; ideological conflicts, e.g.. Communism, Fascism and other totalitarian schemes; ethnic conflicts with indigenous peoples in the Americas, tribalism in Africa, and the disintegration of old European states; religious/cultural conflicts, particular as manifesting in terrorism in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent; and, competing economic interests, e.g., earlier colonialism, ecoterrorism, resource allocation, nuclear technology, industrial development and globalization. The course will briefly examine the root cause of such conflicts, but will center on how these conflicts manifest through the humanities - film, literature, music - in a multimedia exploration.

This course will introduce students to the social entrepreneurs, innovators, and visionaries who are coming up with new methods of solving society's problems. We will examine how these go beyond traditional methods of social change. We will also study a new theory called "transformative action." The first few weeks of the course will introduce the students to many case studies of success in restoring the environment, resolving conflicts, curing diseases, overcoming poverty, and addressing other problems of social injustice. Then the rest of the course will be devoted to reviewing the skills, strategies, and ideas of effective social change advocates in the 21st century. This course is not a traditional lecture course. It is highly interactive, experiential, and dynamic. There is a clinical part of the course, where you will be engaged in the community, working on a project to improve real-life problems.

Contemporary globalization has reconfigured landscapes of power, in part, through the emergence of global cities such as Los Angeles. In addition, for the first time in history, the majority of humans live in urban areas. The study of urbanization has become crucial to understanding processes of uneven development, social decision making, and struggles for social transformation and sustainability. This course will take students to Los Angeles to immerse them in processes of experiential learning, expose them to major questions and debates in the interdisciplinary and applied study of urbanization and globalization, to build an intentional learning community, and to explore themes of justice, home, and community in diverse contexts of social justice organizing and activism.

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will orient students to Maasailand, the history and ecology of the region, Maasai culture and society, present day challenges to the community’s sustainable use of land, and solutions the community is exploring to enable its survival into the future on its own terms. Students will learn about the wildlife of Maasailand and grassland ecosystems they share with Maasai people. The course models the integration of ways of knowing about these things, forms of western and indigenous knowledge that many agree is critical to conservation and human survival in this place. Students will also learn from Maasai teachers about Maasai language and culture: the consensus-based justice system; communal family and political structures; and shared economy. They will learn about ways that Maasai are facing challenges to their land and way of life, through human-wildlife conflict resolution, for example, local economic rights and empowerment, and tourism reform.

SPECIAL NOTES:

This course provides an historical context for the recent 500 year recreation of the world through a convergence of new social forms: colonization, capitalism, and the reordering of human beings and societies according to class. Students will learn a timeline and vocabulary that provides a basis for understanding the broad strokes of inequality in our time, and movements that have mobilized in response.