Instructor: Hester Oberman
Wed | 2:00 PM - 2:50 PM | In-Person
Spring 2025
Within the context of social justice, this course will examine why difference and diversity matter. We will consider cultural constructions of identity, and we will discuss how films, literary works, and belief systems represent the self and the other. In addition, we will examine our own assumptions about race, gender, religion, class, and forms of social violence by looking outside the classroom. The relationship of ethics to politics and the relationship of power to difference will be important topics throughout the semester. Classes will be discussions rather than lectures; professors and students will be learning from each other! Together, we will test Michel Foucault’s claim that “the work of an intellectual is to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking.”