Sophomore Seminar (TASS) | 2010 Programs
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PROGRAM
Blackness, Literature, and the Media
Indiana University, Bloomington
June 27 – August 7, 2010
Faculty: Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, Department of Theatre and Drama, Indiana University; and Libya Pugh, New York–based actor and educator
Tutors: Joseph Blue, Syracuse University; and Angela Crumdy, University of Michigan
This course explores ways in which literature and modern media document, dramatize, and reveal cultural notions of racial, gender, and sexual difference. In particular, we will focus on questions about the cultural relevance of racial representations in literature and media, as well as how a tradition of black writers, artists, and performers has challenged and transformed the cultural politics of race, representation, and difference. Our priority will be the close reading and critical analysis of a set of African American literary texts and approaches to African American cultural production. Students will gain improved writing and critical thinking skills and be exposed to African American performance traditions and styles. Reading materials for this class include James Baldwin’s novel Go Tell It On the Mountain, Alice Walker’s essay “Father,” as well as plays by J. E. Franklin, August Wilson, Ntozake Shange and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka). Additionally, students will view clips from several documentary and narrative films in context, including Marcus Garvey: Look for¬,Me in the Whirlwind, several speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stan Lathan’s film adaptation of Go Tell It on the Mountain, Lady Sings the Blues, and Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN TASS PROGRAM
Poverty, Environment, Work, and Social Inequality in America
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
June 27 – August 7, 2010
Faculty: Dorceta Taylor, School of Natural Resources and Environment; and Ian Robinson, Department of Sociology and the Residential College, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Tutors: Nina Idemudia, University of Michigan; and Emily Slager, Calvin College
This course examines how race and class interact in American rural and urban environments to produce or sustain inequalities. Topics include the relationship between degraded environments and poor schooling, including environmental hazards in schools; problems of disinvestment and concentration of poverty; the potential for revitalization in poor communities; the relationship between the changing structure of the labor market and economic opportunities; and the problem of food security, including the rise in community gardening as an attempt to combat lack of access to healthy food.
Students and faculty will be concerned with defining environmental justice. Environmentally hazardous facilities are frequently sited in minority and low-income communities, leaving the inhabitants of these communities with an unfair burden. Work conditions are usually unsafe and wages low in these facilities. How do economic cost and political power impact related processes, and how can poor communities be compensated for past environmental damage? We will ask how the long-term health of people and their environment can take center stage when community residents seek to determine how to balance economic development with concerns about sustainability. The course ends with students examining inequalities in the way community amenities such as parks and open space are distributed and maintained, as well as the challenges cities face in providing funding for parks.
Included in the course will be field trips to a variety of sites in nearby Michigan cities such as Ann Arbor, Detroit, Ypsilanti, and Flint.