Fall 2021 Courses
Prof. Hamid Rezai (Pitzer) WRIT 31: Writing for Social Justice (M 12:30-3:30pm)
What is justice? And how can writing be deployed to promote it? The prolific, 19th century intellectual Karl Marx stated that the philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point, however, is to change it. In this course we will read and write to challenge common assumptions about race, sexuality, gender, class, and memory, among others. We will write about relevant issues that are absent in a world dominated by profit-oriented capitalist ideologies. Our aim will be to construct powerful narratives about the overlooked individual and collective suffering and resilience of marginalized peoples. Writing will be used as an instrument of active engagement and remembering to come to terms with the wrongs of the past to envision a more just socio-political order. Additionally, we will integrate multimodal platforms, such as podcasting, into the course with the aim of actively connecting with local and global communities for change.
Prof. Brian Charest (University of Redlands) MALT 601: Foundations of Education: Education and Inequality in the U.S. (M 5:30-8:30pm)
This course examines issues related to education and inequality in the US with a focus on our experiences in the education system (our stories about schooling and education). We look at the intersections of race, class, and gender in American education. Through readings, discussions, and writing workshops, University of Redlands students and students at CDRC will explore how social, political, and economic systems have shaped our individual experiences in and out of schools. We also spend time thinking about and researching how we can work with others to transform schools and communities. Students in this course will write weekly reflections and work together on final projects that address relevant issues related to education and community transformation. Final projects will require students to work creatively in groups to develop their ideas for transforming schools and communities. Collectively, these projects will represent some of our best thinking about how to make our schools and communities healthy and sustainable spaces.
The questions we will explore together may include the following: How do race, gender, and class shape our experiences in and out of schools? What should schools do in a free and democratic society? What can educational philosophies teach us about teaching, learning, and how to organize our schools in ways that better serve our communities? How might we account for why some students are pushed down a path to college, while other students are pushed towards prison? What is the school-to-prison pipeline and how can we disrupt it?
Prof. Tyee Griffith (Pitzer) POST 20: American Politics in Black and White: An Introduction to the Founding of Racial Politics (Tu 12:30-3:30pm)
This discussion-based seminar is designed to explore the racialization of American democracy and politics. Despite the inclusive and egalitarian principles written in the U.S. Constitution, words like equality, liberty, and freedom were not universally applied. Exclusion was built into the fabric of American politics, and many of the inequalities we see today stem directly from this early framework. Black people and other people of color have demanded inclusion and representation in American politics, which has broadened opportunities for all. This introductory course will explore the founding of American democracy and politics in a racially divided world, and the ways that minoritized people have broadened American democracy.
Prof. Alexandra Cavallaro (Cal State San Bernardino) ENG 5140: Community-Based Writing Inside-Out: Writing Archival Encounters (Tu 5:30-8:30pm)
An archive refers to a place where records are kept, and yet archives are much more than simply collections of paper documents, computer files, images, or objects. What we collectively choose to archive and how our archives are read speaks volumes about who holds and maintains power in society. The archive becomes a function of whose history is preserved and made accessible. In this course, we will examine three archival collections from carceral settings: a girls’ prison in upstate New York in the early 20th century, a Japanese internment camp during World War II, and a contemporary books to prisoners program. Through these collections, we will consider the role that reading and writing play in these institutions, how it is linked to the construction and maintenance of identity, and the social practices that surround reading and writing in these spaces. Together, we will ask: How might the form or content of archives invent, challenge, or narrate knowledge of the past? How do archives silence? How might we (re)present archival collections to the community as a form of public knowledge-making? Our aim through all of this will be to study archival spaces, objects, and narratives not as repositories of facts or fixed knowledge, but as contested sites of inquiry, disruption, and dissonance. Upon completion of this course, students will have a better understanding of scholarly conversations surrounding archival work, a familiarity with archival research methods, and the ability to conduct independent and collaborative archival research and (re)presentation. Student projects will include a research paper dealing with an archival collection of their choice and a collaborative community archival exhibit.
Prof. Derik Smith (Claremont McKenna) LIT 129: African American Literature (W 12:30-3:30pm)
This course introduces students to some of the most influential literary and vernacular texts emerging from the African American cultural context. For the most part, these literary and vernacular works will be considered in relation to the historical moments in which they were produced. This historicized approach will provoke class discussions primarily focused on the way in which black literary production chronicled, reflected, and contributed to African America’s varied, vexed relation to the American “democratic project.” Attention to history will also lead students into considerations of the intimate connection between the aesthetic choices of African American writers and the evolving legal and social statuses of black people in America.
Prof. Omar Ramirez (Pomona) CHLT 67: Chicanx Art and Its Antecedents (W 5:30-8:30pm)
Chicanx art as an autonomous offspring of Mexican art. The influence of Mexican muralists and other Mexican artists depicting the dramatic changes brought by the revolution.
This course seeks to support Communities & Scholars of Color in analyzing antecedent cultural works and developing new cultural projects. The course uses Restorative Cultural ArtsTM (RCA) as a method to assign meaning to objects, practices, and processes materialized in Communities of Color intergenerationally. The goal of utilizing RCA in this course is to: 1) examine formative Chicanaxo artists movement acting as an autonomous offspring of Mexican art (post revolution); 2) understand Restorative Cultural ArtsTM (RCA) praxis, principles, parameters, and outcomes; 3) apply RCA to Chicanaxo works from the 20th century; 4) evaluate 21st Chicanaxo works; and 5) and conceptualize new works utilizing RCA principles centering the artistic process, storytelling practices, cultural aesthetics, traditional cultural arts, ancestral knowledge, and experiential knowledge.
Prof. Kim Drake (Scripps) WRIT 169A: Topics in Writing Pedagogy – Classroom-Based Tutoring (Th 12:30-3:30pm)
In this course, we discuss the theory and practice of a range of pedagogical practices that have been called “writing fellows/mentors,” “embedded tutoring,” “classroom-based tutoring,” “curriculum-based tutoring,” and “subject-area specialist tutoring.” In contrast to generalist tutoring that takes place in a writing center or otherwise outside of a classroom, with a tutor who works from a position of unfamiliarity with the subject matter of the essays they tutor, this kind of tutoring presumes specialization and familiarity. It also presumes a working relationship with the faculty member whose students are being tutored and allows group tutoring and workshops in the classroom. We will examine the history of this kind of tutoring and the discussions of its theory, scholarly research, and practice in the discipline of Writing Center Studies; we will also develop our working Inside-Out pedagogical praxis in the classroom and implement it in other Inside-Out courses. Students will write responses to the readings, observe and critique tutoring sessions, and work on adding a section on this kind of tutoring to the CRC Writing Center Handbook.
Prof. Hamid Rezai (Pitzer) POST 162: Comparative Revolutions (F 12:30-3:30pm)
In this course we will study comparative conceptual approaches to the causes, trajectories, and outcomes of the great revolutions of the modern world. Although infrequent, revolutions have profoundly transformed the political, cultural, and social structures of countries like France, Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Iran. Utilizing theoretical models, we will discuss questions like these: is there a universal definition of revolution? Are there common causes for revolutions across time and space? What are the ideological, cultural, and economic origins of revolutions? And finally, why do some revolutions succeed and some fail?