Savitri Maya Kunze

We will examine how these areas define what constitutes an American; how the government makes specific identities within its jurisdiction visible and invisible. Topics we will cover include: statelessness and denaturalization, American extraterritorial courts in China, gender and sexuality under the law, the American Guano Islands, outlawing “coolies,” the insular cases and citizen-subjects, and Guantanamo Bay, not to mention the making and unmaking of physical borderlands around the United States. This course meets the Diversity Requirement for the PPE major.

It discusses the emergence of a modern “human rights” culture as a product of the formation and expansion of the system of nation-states and the concurrent rise of value-driven social mobilizations. It proceeds to discuss human rights in two prevailing modalities. First, it explores rights as protection of the body and personhood and the modern, Western notion of individualism. Second, it inquires into rights as they affect groups (e.g., ethnicities and, potentially, transnational corporations) or states.

It examines the boundaries of different membership categories such as citizenship and nationality, but also includes other forms of group identity like ethnicity, race, alienage, subjecthood, among others. Engaging with theoretical texts, the course uses the development of a federal immigration policy in the US as its primary case study to frame inquiry and analysis. This course is for Sophomore and Junior students. Freshmen and Senior enrollment with instructor consent. This course is cross-listed with the Political Science Department and fulfills the Diversity Requirement for the PPE major.

We will concentrate on the pre- and post-facto rhetoric and reality – intentions, decisions, execution, and legitimation – of violence against civilians among major combatants. We will consider historical efforts to protect civilians and examine why laws of war and international agreements have protected civilians in the first place. We will explore how and whether we can differentiate between licit and illicit forms of violence against civilians. We will ask whether we can distinguish Soviet, American, British, German, and Japanese use of force, and what difference genocide and the Holocaust make in completing our analysis. This course is cross-listed with the Political Science Department.

Students will examine the construction of race since 1865, how it has been defined, and how it has changed over time. Students will look at the internal logic and contradictions contained within racial categories and how people have deployed them to do political, economic, and cultural work in the United States. We will approach these issues from a comparative perspective, probing the experiences of differently racialized groups through analysis of primary and secondary sources. Topics students will cover include, Jim Crow and apartheid policies, racism in medicine from the Tuskegee Experiment to the Holocaust, immigrant exclusion and the expansion of whiteness to different immigrant groups, sex across the color line and miscegenation laws, post-World War II housing policies and the rise of suburbanization, and the evolution in American politics of the War on Poverty to the War on Drugs. This course is cross-listed with the Political Science Department.

We will start our inquiry in the mid-nineteenth century by tracing how ideas about immigration developed from state laws into federal statutes. We will examine the establishment, expansion, and contraction of federal legislation through the twentieth century. We will conclude by looking at the Immigration Record and Control Act of 1986, the most recent comprehensive immigration reform enacted in the United States. Through our primary and secondary readings, we will consider the political, economic, and racial dimensions of migration and how they have created enduring legacies that continue to inform American immigration policy to this day. The course meets the diversity requirement for the Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) Major and is cross-listed with the Political Science Department.

We will learn about broad themes about the ways people have historically approached human rights norms including humanitarianism, conscience, bearing witness, justice, responsibility, and utilitarianism. We will apply those frameworks to specific human rights issues, such as wars, prisoners of conscience, minority rights, forced population transfers, refugees, and economic rights. The texts we will read are a combination of primary and secondary sources that are designed to provide a framework of what historical argumentation looks like and the kinds of sources you might use to substantiate a point. Using that framework, students will develop and execute an original seminar paper which they will present at the end of the course.   

Students will learn the basic facts and conceptual themes involved in the promises and reality of Reconstruction. Students will study the continental and overseas expansion of the United States through the lenses of formal and informal empires. We will take up the tension between democratic idealism and the realities of inequalities, focusing on industrial expansion, urbanization, and labor and then how World War I, the Depression, and World War II transformed how people in the US considered these themes. Students will develop, practice, and strengthen their capacity to complete historical analysis using primary and secondary sources. In addition, the course will emphasize critical thinking and analytical writing skills, emphasizing close readings of primary texts, class discussions, and written responses.

Students will learn the basic facts and conceptual themes involved in creating the American state and its expansion through the 19^th century. We will conclude our historical investigation by analyzing the Civil War and the disconnect between the promise and reality of Reconstruction. Students will develop, practice, and strengthen their capacity to complete historical analysis using primary and secondary sources. In addition, the course will emphasize critical thinking and analytical writing skills, emphasizing close readings of primary texts, class discussions, and written responses.  

Because of the scope of our task, we will not cover every important date, person, and place. We will, however, develop a framework with which we can think about how social and cultural phenomena operate in different parts of the world. Using this comparative perspective, we will examine where these histories converge and where they separate. By looking at primary sources – the materials created by our historical subjects – we can gain access to different modes of historical thinking.

Because of the scope of our task, we will not cover every important date, person, and place. We will, however, develop a framework with which we can think about how social and cultural phenomena operate in different parts of the world. Using this comparative perspective, we will examine where these histories converge and where they separate. By looking at primary sources – the materials created by our historical subjects – we can gain access to different modes of historical thinking.

It is followed by two thematic clusters. “Anti-Slavery, Humanitarianism, and Rights” focuses on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to historicize notions of dignity, sympathy, and witness. “Declarations as a Human Rights Genre” examines revolutionary eighteenth-century rights declarations in France, the United States, and Haiti against the aspirations of the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“Migration, Minorities, and Refugees” examines minority rights, the evolution of legal norms around refugees, and human trafficking. “Late Twentieth Century Human Rights Talk” explores the contestations between rights claims in the political-civil and socio-economic spheres, calls for sexual rights, and cultural representations of human rights abuses. “Global Justice” considers forms of international criminal law, transitional justice, and distributive justice. “Indigenous Rights as Human Rights” takes up the relatively new domain of the rights of indigenous peoples and how they relate to contemporary human rights practice.

Emphasis on research techniques, conferences with the instructor, and independent development of individual projects focused on a topic with a global or comparative component.

The daily activity of the class most often involves discussion, wherein students and faculty consider together classic and contemporary works from multiple disciplines, including a variety of genres in literature and art, essays, drama, music, film, and new media. The goals of EQ are: (1) to facilitate the development of fundamental intellectual skills of careful reading, considerate thought, and effective written and oral communication, (2) to encourage students to consider and communicate with one another about ideas that matter, and (3) to build relationships among students, staff, and faculty. In addition to regular class sessions, students are expected to attend affiliated speakers and programs both on and off-campus.

The course is organized around a 30-minute lecture from each professor, followed by 30-minute, small-group discussions facilitated by current Wabash students. In their talks, professors will address what questions this topic and, more broadly, their academic discipline, bring to the COVID-19 crisis. The professors will ask how these questions lend understanding or meaning to the current pandemic. The coordinating professor will be with the students from week to week to help them synthesize the lecture material, oversee their progress, and provide feedback and grades throughout the course. The course gives incoming first-year students a chance to build relationships with each other, upper-level students, and professors. It will expose them to different disciplines, exemplifying the Wabash liberal arts education they have just begun.