Spring 2025 Course List

• Instructor: Dr. Malinda Lowery
• Meeting Days/Time: M & W 10:00am - 11:15am

In this junior-level seminar, we will focus on two questions: What do the histories of African-American and Indigenous peoples share in North America? And why do we often discuss them separately? The course will include readings, discussions, presentations, written assignments and a research project that engages Emory’s work to fulfill its land acknowledgment and honor the enslaved persons whose labor contributed to the life of Emory College and Emory University. By answering these questions, students will get comfortable with and practice the basics of historical analysis, practice interpreting evidence about the past to appreciate the importance of different perspectives on the past, and explain the impact of this history today. 

 Students will spend a large portion of the semester in Rose Library locating Black and Native histories in through the library's collections of rare books and manuscripts. Students will notice that Black and Native people often appear separately in the records and will be tasked with finding out why this is the case, and the way that the historical record itself established these communities as separate, rather than overlapping.

• Instructor: Dr. Emil’ Keme
• Meeting Days/Time: T & Th 2:30pm – 3:45pm

Through a critical examination of novels, short stories, creative nonfiction, other artistic expressions (film, mass media), this course will explore the representation of masculinities in indigenous literatures in Abiayala (of the Americas). Among other topics, we will examine questions of family and domesticity; reservation and/or communal life; Indigenous sexual diversity in diverse social contexts (rural, urban, reservation, etc.); labor and activism; politics and aesthetics of masculinity. Our discussions of the literary and artistic production will be complemented with historical and theoretical scholarly works from prominent Indigenous studies scholars. 

Required texts:

Masculindians: Conversations About Indigenous Manhood By Sam McKegney 

Drowning in Fire by Craig Womack, 

Time Commences in Xibalba by Luis de Lión, 

Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead. 

• Instructor: Dr. Heidi Senungetuk
• Meeting Days/Times: T & Th 2:30pm-3:45pm

• Instructor: Dr. Mandy Suhr-Sytsma
• Meeting Time: T & Th 2:30pm-3:45pm

In this course, we will pursue a historically grounded study of Indigenous American fiction, non-fiction, and poetry produced between the mid-nineteenth century and the present. We will read texts written during the periods of history they represent as well as more recent texts depicting the US Dakota war, the Navajo Long Walk, the Wounded Knee massacre, Indian boarding schools, allotment, reorganization, termination/relocation, Red Power movements, the Native American renaissance, and the AIDS epidemic. We will also read recent literary texts that portray current and future work related to cultural/political resurgence, LGBTQ2+ empowerment, language revitalization, and environmental restoration. Throughout the course, we will draw connections between these literary texts/contexts and current issues of concern for Indigenous nations. All students are expected to complete readings as well as writing/communication assignments as scheduled and to participate in class discussions.  

*This four-credit survey course picks up where Dr. Keme’s fall English 270W course concludes. Like 270W, 271W fulfills Emory’s Continued Communication, Humanities & Arts, and Race & Ethnicity general education requirements.

• Instructor: Dr. Megan E. O’Neil
• Meeting Days/Times: T & Th 10:00am-11:15am

This course addresses the history and ethics of the collecting and display of Indigenous arts of North and Central America, including ancestral artistic traditions. We will study the intertwined histories of private and institutional collecting and consider the legality and ethics of those practices. We also will study histories of repatriation and examine collaborative practices in which contemporary artists, curators, and activists critique, contextualize, or transform historic collections and displays.

• Instructor: Dr. Mandy Suhr-Sytsma
• Meeting Days/Times: T & Th 10-11:15am

The long-running fight for increased diversity in children’s literature entered a new chapter in 2014 with the emergence of We Need Diverse Books (WNDB). #WeNeedDiverseBooks launched as a social media campaign in response to an all-white BookCon panel of 30 youth literature authors. WNDB quickly developed into a non-profit organization and powerful social movement. In her highly influential 1990 work, Rudine Sims Bishop contends that children need books to serve as “windows,” “mirrors,” and “sliding glass doors.” Uma Krishnaswami adds “prisms” to that list. Christopher Myers adds “maps.” How do diverse children’s and young adult books enable readers to see themselves, empathize with others, see their intersectional realities in a fresh light, and map the course of their futures? This question will guide our course. We will focus primarily on recent youth literature by US-based writers directly involved with WNDB. We will read many literary titles together, and students will have opportunities to select titles independently based on their interests, too. We will also enter broader conversations about youth literature and diversity in literary/cultural studies scholarship, the publishing industry, public libraries, K-12 schools, and communities. 

*This four-credit course includes attention to Indigenous youth literature and fulfills Emory’s Continued Communication and Humanities & Arts general education requirements.

• Instructors: Dr. Lauren Klein & Dr. Sarah Salter
• Meeting Days/Times: Th 10:00am-12:45pm

 How can we analyze early American cultural archives through digital humanities methods? What new knowledge can these methods reveal? What are their limits? This course, which brings together English PhD students with advanced QTM undergraduates, will explore these questions in theory and practice. We will read scholarship about data and archives from the fields of literary studies, history, critical data studies, Black studies, Indigenous studies, gender studies, and more, and then work as class to produce a series of computational analyses of the digitized materials of The Founders Online, part of the US National Archives. (We will also read several primary texts from this era along the way). Our computational and archival work will inform a miniseries on the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States being produced by Alabama Public Television.

• Instructor: Dr. Megan E. O’Neil
• Meeting Days/Times: Th 1:00pm-3:45pm

We live in a moment of reckoning regarding museums and the building of their collections. In the United States, for example, at least once a month a news story surfaces about a country demanding the return of items from a museum or about a museum’s voluntary return of items to a country of origin. How did we get here? And where do we go from here?

This seminar will examine selected episodes in the history of museums and the building of collections, as well as the legality and ethics of those practices. We will read critiques and defenses of universal museums holding art from around the world; explore contemporary debates concerning restitution and repatriation of cultural heritage; and consider creative curatorial approaches and new directions in museums today.   

• Instructor: Dr. Christine Ristaino
• Meeting Days/Times: T & Th 1:00pm-2:15pm

 What does it mean to be from one place and live in another, or to leave and return, or to never be allowed to return? What constitutes home when you are away from it? In this class we will look at the concept of diaspora (people who have spread out or been dispersed from their homelands), starting with the diaspora present in Italy and the Italians and Italian Americans living in the United States. We will investigate our own voyages away from home and those of our families, and research our family histories. We will work with two renowned photographers, authors of the ARRIVALS project (https://www.idahomid.org/arrivals), and train with them in a photo-based participatory mapping workshop on diaspora, where community members will contribute their own experiences and stories of arrivals, serving as a snapshot of the communities with whom we partner. We will learn Photovoice techniques, capture images, and create photo captions to share individual and community strengths, challenges, and stories. We will plan and carry out an exhibition of photographs from the ARRIVALS Project with the photographers who train us and develop our own interviews and photos to represent and nurture community members of the diaspora from Emory, Clarkston, and beyond. Our course will begin by talking about diaspora in Italy. Next, we will explore Italian American communities. We will look at the great diaspora located in Atlanta, Clarkston, and Emory. Finally, we will explore our own family stories of diaspora. This course will not only help us learn about Italy, diaspora, and the world, it will also promote investigation into who we and our families are in relation to the broader diaspora and communities we study.

*This course will fulfill Writing, Humanities, Arts, & Performance, and Diversity Requirements.

• Instructor: Dr. Megan G. Massa
• Meeting Times: T & TH 10:00am-11:15am

As social conceptions of gender and sex change, how can (and does) the neuroscience keep up? In this seminar, we will examine how neuroscientists, queer feminist theorists, and sociologists destabilize "sex" and reimagine what neuroscientific studies could look like in this new future.

Required prerequisite: NBB 370 Intro. to Feminist Neuroscience (S24 or F24 acceptable).