Self, Culture and Society

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THEME: In this HUM120 section, students will have opportunities to revisit and explore your past and present and envision your future in this course. We will discuss how memory shapes our identity by looking into our turning points in our life. We will also examine how language shapes our identity. This examination will help you build an empowering relationship with language, in particular English, the major medium that is needed in your academic journey. With the empowered feeling, you will venture to envision and compose your future self, not only your career but also how you want to be in the future - what kind of life you want/what kind of cultural wealth and values you want to keep without compromising.

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Storytelling: Identities, Passions and Purposes In this course, students will explore personal experiences related to their identities, passions and purposes while honing the craft of narrative storytelling. After discussing and analyzing model narratives, students will develop their own stories presented in a variety of genres and modalities. In the process of listening to peers' stories and coaching one another on story development, students will reflect on their own and others' cultural wealth and experiences

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THEME: Media Studies and Censorship A New Landscape for Practicing and Interrogating Critical Perspectives on Media and Society. In this course we will be examining many of the current questions social and humanist scholars are exploring through the lens of critical media studies and issues of censorship writ large. We will delve into issues of what it means to have free speech and democracy when technology firms own the platforms for that speech and democracy, and for the means of its production. We will look at politics and censorship in political parties in the contexts of legacy and new media platforms and what this may mean for democratic practices big and small. We delve into the current context of war and censorship, what role large powers like the US, Russia, China or others play, and how censorship becomes central to that project. Finally, we end the course with an exploration of censorship in and around the greater Middle East, forms of self-censorship, and the emergence of new/old forms of trauma in our lives.

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THEME: Equal and Cultural Wealth at Home Students will define and engage the concepts of equity and culture wealth in their own lives and local communities. Using Boston as our starting point, we will explore systemic and structural inequality in housing, healthcare, education, and employment and its impact on people from communities of color. We will also explore the concept of cultural wealth and examine how people from historically marginalized communities have leveraged their strengths to combat these forms of inequality and oppression. We will then use what we learn to identify the inequalities that are present in our own lives and explore how we can leverage our own cultural wealth for success at home, school, and work.

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THEME: Self-Care/Community Care through the Lenses of Equity and Cultural Wealth: In this course, we will interrogate and bring our own stories, ideas images, histories, and practices to notions of home-grown, community-based, movement-making models of "care." Get ready to share home remedies for healing, record gratitude scripts, research The Black Panthers' community schools, interrogate Karl Jung's theories of universal archetypes, review second-wave lesbian-feminist Press-movements, and commune with Black Lives Matters' activist meditations. Our studies will be grounded in equity and cultural wealth lenses that pose questions about care and caring, such as: How do all of us care for ourselves and one another? And how have racially "marginalized" communities created care practices for one another historically and currently, as forms of resistance?

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THEME: Immigrant Experiences: In this class you will explore immigrant identities, stories, narratives, and movements in relation to your own experiences and views through discussing a novel or memoir in addition to various articles, podcasts and videos. Designed for students with immigrant backgrounds, one goal of this class is for you to explore how your multicultural background and experiences relate and connect with those of your classmates and other immigrants in the US and how they can be used as assets for your academic and career goals. Finally this course aims to provide a critical perspective on immigrant discourses in the US and support you in questioning and challenging institutions and beliefs that unfairly limit possibilities and opportunities.

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THEME: New Paths and Fresh Starts This course explores the experience of choosing new directions and goals in life, career, and/or school. In this course we will learn how our adult brains respond to new environments and how we can leverage previous life experience and knowledge in these new environments. We will consider cross-cultural experiences that shape our core values and academic expectations. We will also critically examine what it means to learn and work in an American college setting. Be prepared to discuss topics such as imposter syndrome, identity formation, more!

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Theme: A Change is Gonna Come: Creativity as Community Technology: Nothing happens in a vacuum, including art making. Art in any form (visual art, music, film, literature, theater etc.) is a response to the external and internal conditions of the artist(s), as well as an intervening force upon the world around them. Looking both forwards and backwards, this course examines the interrelationship between social/political, economic, technological and collective psychological conditions and the emergence of major creative movements (e.g. rock & roll, hip-hop, Harlem Renaissance, Mexican muralism, Italian Neorealism, Dadaism), as well as the impact of those movements on future generations of artists and activists. Students inquire into the functions of art during periods of transition and consider how creative practice can shape their own lives, communities, and careers.