A few new (non-SOC) courses for the Spring

The following are three newly-added courses in other departments that might be of interest to you.


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On Praxis: Scholarship and Activism
Instructor: Eric Tang, Ph.D. – Visiting Assistant Professor
Semester: Spring 2009
AFR 374D & ANT 324L
Unique Number 34988
TTH 12:30 – 2:00 EPS 1.128

Description
This course explores the intersection of scholarship with an array of community-based forms of knowledge: community organizers, advocacy, service and other grassroots modes of civic participation. As a course requirement, students will conduct an internship assignment with a community-based organization in Austin, developing a research project that analyzes the internship experience. It examines the way in which community-based knowledge (or organic intellectualism)—particularly as it is shaped within communities facing social inequities—informs accepted theories of how the world works. Course readings and discussions will be historical and methodological. Historically, we will review key social movement theories by situating them in mass movements that have shaped the 19th and 20th centuries: history of community organizing, the rise of Civil Rights and new social movements, the rise of autonomous movements in the age of neoliberalism. Methodologically, we will sound off on several recurring contradictions that complicate the relationship between scholarship and activism: objectivity versus accountability, the appropriation of ideas, illegitimate versus legitimate forms of knowledge, and the professionalization of activism.


Required Texts:
Charles R. Hale, ed., Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2008).

INCITE! Women of Against Violence, ed., The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-profit Industrial Complex. (Boston, South End Press, 2007).

Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York, New York Review of Books Press, 1967).

Booth, Wayne C., et al. The craft of research. (Chicago)

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, Decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples
(Zed)


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Third Wave Feminism and the UT Campus
Instructor: Ana Ixchel Rosal
WGS 301
Unique No: 47792
Gearing, Room 127
T, Th 3:30-5


Description:

The history of the women's movement in the US is often described as a series of “waves:” the first wave gave us the vote, the second wave is the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s and its aftermath, and the Third Wave is today’s feminism. The purpose of this class is to explore the tenets of Third Wave Feminism and engage the greater campus community in dialogue about the issues affecting women today. Students will analyze writings from the Third Wave movement through discussion and reflection papers. Students will also collaborate to design and implement a community engagement project with the goal of positive change on the UT campus. Community engagement projects may take any of a number of forms (for example, teach-ins, radio shows, education campaigns, etc.) and will address themes inspired by our reading (for example, reproductive rights, women and body image, violence against women, or others).



Possible Text/Readings:

Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism

Rebecca Walker (editor), To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism

Vivien Labaton and Dawn Martin (editors), The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism

Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future.

Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman (editors), Colonize This: Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism


Assignments:

25% of grade is based on class discussion

25% of grade is based on reading discussion questions

10 % of grade is based class presentation

30% of grade is based on campus action/project

10% of grade is based on final paper

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ANS 347K / Government 347K
Government and Politics in South Asia
Professor Sarada Balagopalan
Spring 2009

Readings include:
Chatterjee, Partha (2004) The Politics of the Governed: Popular Politics in Most of the World. Columbia University Press.

Ludden, David (2002) India and South Asia: A Short History. Oxford: OneWorld Publishers

Moon, Vasant (2000) Growing Up Untouchable in India. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.


The idea of South Asia often evokes paradoxical responses given the vast complexity of ethnicities, religious groups, political formations and types of government that characterize this region. Yet the issues that dominate this region – for example religious fundamentalism, economic liberalization, assertion of identity-based politics, increasing use of state violence – also echo across state borders marking this region as distinct and worthy of greater analytical attention. This course introduces students to the complex workings of contemporary politics through a focus on several key issues that signify this changing landscape in the Indian context. These include secularism and the rise of right-wing religious identities; neoliberalism and the politics of development; and electoral politics and identity-based assertions. The course will also have a special focus on education as a crucial and highly contested space that provides rich insights into the ways in which contemporary economic, social and cultural conflicts get reflected in everyday lives of marginal communities. Through having the student combine academic readings with autobiographical tracts, works of fiction as well as documentary films, this course will provide a critical understanding of contestations over power and politics in India.