Fall 2026 Course List

MUS 379W/ANT 379W: North American Indigenous Music and Modernity

Instructor: Dr. Heidi Senungetuk
Meeting Days/Time: M & W 2:30pm - 3:45pm

This course is an introduction to a diverse selection of Indigenous musics of North America, with a central focus on the ideas Race and Ethnicity and music. Particular attention will be paid to ways in which music articulates and shapes issues of tradition and modernity, place and identity, revitalization and resurgence, and sovereignty and self-determination. Ethnomusicological and interdisciplinary methods will be used to examine historical and social dynamics behind Indigenous musical and cultural arts in the 21st century.

DSC 100: Decolonizing Research: Ethics, Power & Indigenous Frameworks

Instructors: Dr. Elise Blasingame
Meeting Days/Time: M & W 11:30am-12:45pm

This course introduces students to critical questions about how knowledge is produced, validated, and used in society. Inspired by Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, the course examines how research has historically been shaped by colonialism, hierarchy, and unequal power relations—and how these legacies continue to influence contemporary scholarship and public policy.

Through close reading of Smith’s work, alongside selections from political theory, social science, feminist, and postcolonial scholarship, students will explore how authority around “legitimate” research is constructed and contested. The course asks: Who gets to define what counts as knowledge? Whose voices are amplified or excluded? And what ethical responsibilities do researchers have to the communities they study? Designed as a discussion-based seminar, the course emphasizes critical reading, reflection, and foundational research skills for the social sciences and humanities.

ENV 285: Biocultural Environments

Instructor: Dr. Megan Mucioki
Meeting Days/Time: T & Th 2:30pm-3:45pm

In this course we consider how environments are shaped by social and cultural practices for the integrated health and wellbeing of both human and ecological communities. We consider topics like place-based knowledge systems, management, stewardship, and conservation practices, food sovereignty, relational health, climate change, and co-management or Indigenous led policy. Biocultural landscapes are closely tied to and stewarded by Indigenous Peoples. In this course we present perspectives of Indigenous Peoples and ontologies grounded in Indigenous studies and pedagogies to understand how biocultural environments are Indigenous environments with place-based peoples and practices that have shaped these lands for generations. In this vein we will explore several regional case studies. Students will be introduced to concepts of Indigenous knowledge systems, sovereignty, stewardship practices, and colonization. In entirety the course encourages students to explore how their view and perspective of environments and land shift when they are viewed as biocultural spaces and how interdisciplinary and cross-ontological work can support Indigenous stewardship and revitalization of these spaces.

ENV 560: Research Design and Practice in Environmental Sciences

Instructor: Dr. Megan Mucioki
Meeting Days/Times: T 8:30am-11:15am

This course will serve as an introduction to a range of research methods and approaches in Environmental Sciences as an interdisciplinary practice and as part of the Environmental, Sciences, and Society graduate program. Students in the first year of the program will have the opportunity to sample different methods in ENVS that they may want to delve in further through additional reading, mentorship, and course work in subsequent years. Methods include approaches in ecology, ethnobotany, and field studies, social-ecological systems thinking, social science and qualitative approaches, geospatial and big data, environmental decision making and governance, computer sciences, health sciences, Black and Indigenous Ecologies, and more. A number of foundational experts will share an introduction to their methods and further foundational approaches will be represented as resources in the ESS methods “library”. A good portion of the class is focused on mixed methods, methodological innovation, and ethics and values that shape how we work in environmental sciences. Through the class we will discuss and deeply think about ethics, values, and ourselves that shape our work. Ethics are pulled from practices common to community based participatory and Indigenous research ethics and approaches. The class will host interdisciplinary guest speakers from within and outside of Emory, many who are faculty in the ESS program, who will share their methods and approach. Students will work on various assignments that include self-reflection, planning work, and a starting point of data and methods and ethics that will be part of their dissertation research proposal.

ENGRD411RW: History & Theory of Rhetoric/Writing/Literacy: Cultural Rhetorics

Instructor: Dr. Vani Kannan
Meeting Days/Times: M & W 10am-11:15am

Cultural Rhetorics is a growing subfield of Rhetoric, Writing, and Literacy studies that poses a critical challenge to the discipline’s foundations in Greek and Roman oratorical traditions. In this course, we will engage with scholarly/creative traditions and genres/modes of scholarship that have sought to decolonize and localize the field. We will engage with guest speakers; take a day trip to the Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration; attend the Emory Mvskoke Teach-In, and engage with “rhetorics” as shared practices that exist in deep relationality with embodiment, land, culture, and community.