With George Fourlas In this course, you will become familiar with key figures and arguments in contemporary social-political philosophy. We will focus on the tradition of liberal social contract theory, which first emerged in the 17th century and continues to inform political thought. We begin with an introduction to the major theoretical and cultural origins […]
With George Fourlas This Division III seminar will focus on philosophical methods in writing and research. A specific emphasis will be placed on concept analysis and genealogy as critical frameworks for building, expanding, and sustaining social-political research projects. Students will be expected to share their Div III research for class critique.
With Margaret Cerullo In 1994, to everyone’s astonishment, the Zapatistas rose in revolt in Chiapas, Mexico, the same day that NAFTA went into effect-January 1, 1994. How to make sense of the coincidence? Why have so many, in Latin America and in the world, found the Zapatista messages exciting? What challenges face the Zapatistas today, […]
With Professor Loza Although early internet theorists imagined the World Wide Web as a wild frontier where only minds mattered, social media testifies to the lasting force of bodily inscriptions like race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and class. In this course, we will consider how identity shapes how we communicate, debate, collaborate, and mobilize online. We […]
With Professor Loza Since its founding, the US has closely regulated the bodies of Others and punished those that rebel against these socially-constructed designations. Utilizing an interdisciplinary amalgam of Critical Race Theory, Sexuality Studies, Queer Theory, Media Studies, Sociology, American Studies, Performance Studies, and Feminist Theory, this course will explore how the state, the media, […]
With Deborah Goffe How does one sustain a life in the arts? While this question looms large for lovers of the arts, a host of other questions lurk just beneath the surface: How is success defined and redefined? Where are the points of entry and who are the gatekeepers? How do performance, making, educational, community-engaged, […]
With Will MacAdams Across the country – and around the world – theater artists are creating work with organizers, elders, young people, and those whose stories are rarely on stage but who form the living heart of communities. Rejecting the belief that theater can only happen on traditional stages, this work is made in farming […]
With Hope Tucker “The way to right wrongs,” said journalist Ida B. Wells, “is to turn the light of truth upon them.” Through close examination of works by artists, filmmakers, photographers, and cultural workers who have turned towards borders and boardrooms; fields and factories; habitats and playgrounds; wetlands and wilderness, this course will advance students’ […]
With Ashley Smith Who decides which places are important for us to remember? How do we go about remembering them? And how do other places or other stories get pushed aside or silenced in the process? In this course we will explore how certain places and histories come to be important to us and our […]
With Thuy Le and Kara Lynch In this workshop, students will explore the idea and implications of aftermath. Utilizing aftermath as a framework, students will consider what remains-how the past persists in the present, how the future is shadowed, and the ways in which no framework is stable. This intensive theory/practice workshop in Installation and […]
With Kara Lynch This seminar on media analysis and production will consider how constructions of power are embodied in technologies and conversely, how technologies shape our notions of authority and how we actively mobilize against it. In recent years, access to information and images has shifted dramatically. Handheld technologies, social media networks, live web-streaming, video […]
With Chris Cianfrani This course will use a natural science lens to explore the UN Sustainable Development Goals with a specific focus on water, energy, and food production. We will develop an understanding of the role science and technology can play in carrying out the social and economic development agenda. We will explore the implementation […]
With Will MacAdams What is presence on stage? And how does an actor manifest it? In this course, you’ll explore acting through a hands-on, ensemble-based approach that is grounded in listening. The course begins with an exploration of the many stories that you carry, hear, and express through movement. We’ll then move to language, developing […]
With Professor Loza This course examines questions of race, gender/sexuality, and disability in science fiction and horror films. It investigates how and why people in different social positions have been constructed as foreign, freakish, or monstrous. In addition to exploring the relationship between sex/gender norms and hierarchies based on race/species or class/caste, we will also […]
With Lailye Weidman Athletes taking a knee, bodies marching in the street, dance movements that go viral. How can Dance Studies help us see and understand the urgency of [social] movement in our current moment? At the same time, how does dance challenge normative conceptualizations of history and politics? Exploring dance and embodied politics of […]
With Anne Hendrixson This course is a critical introduction to international development history and theory, through the lens of population, or “overpopulation.” “Overpopulation” has been seen as a fundamental impediment to nations’ economic and social development and a global environmental and security crisis requiring an emergency response on an international scale. We will upend this […]
With Ernie Alleva This course explores central questions in the philosophy of education: What is education, and what is it for? What is the meaning and value of education to individuals and society? What should the aims of education be? Are there things that everyone should know or be able to do? Should education promote […]
With George Fourlas This is a course in decolonial and political theory that will explore the historical legacy of colonialism and the ongoing conflict between the so-called east/west. Through a range of texts, we will analyze and critique the major theoretical and cultural origins of various contemporary social-political phenomena that are connected to the east/west […]
With George Fourlas In this class, we will explore the fields of ethics and politics from the starting point of a primordial tension: the experience of being both an individual and a member of a collective social-political environment. This starting point places our exploration in stark contrast to classical approaches to normative thought, which focus […]
With Kara Lynch Video I is an introductory video production course. Over the course of the semester students will gain experience in pre-production, production and post-production techniques as well as learn to think and look critically about the making of the moving image. We will engage with video as a specific visual medium for expression […]
With Dawn Leaks Through this course students will develop their own community and world-changing ideas into venture plans, using practical frameworks and principles. Students will learn about social entrepreneurism as a vehicle for change, and about the different forms and structures social entrepreneurism can take. Accomplished social entrepreneurs from around the world will share their […]
With Deborah Goffe How does one sustain a life in the arts? While this question looms large for lovers of the arts, a host of other questions lurk just beneath the surface: How is success defined and redefined? Where are the points of entry and who are the gatekeepers? How do performance, making, educational, community-engaged, […]
With Wilson Valentín-Escobar In moments of political and economic crisis, activist-artists, or artivists, often respond to the call for social change. They generate art as social action and also help realize a new social world into being. Drawing from disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, this seminar investigates the “who, what, where, when, why and how” of […]
With Robin Sears Forests comprise a major component of the New England landscape, and in much of the world. How do we know our forests, how do we treat them? We will look through blended lenses of ecology and social science, resource management and the humanities to gain an appreciation for the complexities and nuances […]
With April Merleaux Since 1990 overdose deaths in the United States have increased five-fold, resulting in what is best described as an overdose crisis. Many of the states with the highest prescription opioid overdose deaths-and the greatest harms from crystal meth-also vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. In this course we will consider […]
With Ashley Smith and Jennifer Hamilton This course introduces students to the critical study of settler colonialism in the United States and Canada by focusing on historic and continuing expansion of colonial and federal power into Indigenous territories. We begin in the eighteenth century in the Northeastern part of the continent looking at early treaties […]
With Lynda Pickbourn This course examines the often contradictory impacts of economic development on gender relations in developing countries. The course begins with an introduction to alternative approaches to economics and to economic development, focusing on the differences between neoclassical and feminist economics. We will then go on to examine and critique the theoretical frameworks […]
With Will MacAdams In this multi-disciplinary theatre class, you will create original written and performance pieces that weave together moments from your time at Hampshire with moments from Hampshire’s past, gleaned from archival research and interviews. At the heart of this process is the idea that a community is made up of both memory and […]
With Amy Jordan Recently, several states including New York, Massachusetts, and California have passed Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, legislation. This legislation establishes clear standards, for defining the length of the work day, the right to sick, days and maternity leave as well as appropriate rest and, meal breaks. These recent victories bode well for […]
With Amy Jordan African American dance and music traditions have played a critical role in the African-American struggle to sustain its humanity and to express joy and pain corporeally and through a particular relationship to rhythm. This class will explore the forms, contents and contexts of black traditions that played a crucial role in shaping […]
With Roosbelinda Cardenas This course explores central topics in contemporary Latin American society and politics by reading recent ethnographic works. The course does a very brief historical introduction to the region and then moves on to analyze current issues by focusing on how historical landscapes of difference and inequality are challenged and reproduced. Our entry […]
With Jaime Dávila This course will examine the ways in which current technology facilitates and even encourages the collection of information on individuals, the ways in which that information can be used, pros and cons of such tendencies, and a variety of techniques to either expand or restrict the sharing and collection of data. The […]
With Alexis Salas Understanding cinema as one of the most active forces in the visual, political, and social structure of place, we will screen and discuss films that have acted as social agents in the Americas. We will read major thinkers on class, social movements, and colonialism such as Hegel, Marx, Fanon, Malcom X, Castro, […]
With Patricia Montoya This course will examine historical and contemporary stereotyping and representations of class/race/gender/ethnicity/sexuality in contemporary media, and discuss music videos, documentaries, experimental film and video that challenge such notions. Through readings, screenings and discussions, the class will inquire into the reasons for and consequences of stereotyping and the ways in which tensions of […]
With Daniel Altshuler and Polina Barskova This course will explore how narratives live and die; how society can endanger them and bring them to fruition; how various environments, social and natural, influence production of language and narrative. Among these environments, we will look at writing in and about prison, concentration camps and environmental disaster, with […]
With Donna Cohn This course will look at the issues involved with design and fabrication in situations where there are limited resources. Students will engage in the hands-on study and design of technologies considered appropriate for less developed and small-scale local economies. Topics will include water quality, human powered cargo transportation, energy production, food storage […]
With Ernie Alleva We will examine diverse concerns regarding work: What is “work”? What significance does it have in our lives? How does work vary across social groups, classes, professions, communities, and traditions? How are individual and group identity related to work? What makes work be regarded as easy or hard, desirable or undesirable, meaningful […]
With Marlene Fried Abortion rights continue to be contested in the U.S. and throughout the world. Since the legalization of abortion in the U.S. in 1973, there have been significant erosions in abortion rights and access to abortion. Harassment of abortion clinics, providers, and clinic personnel by opponents of abortion is routine, and there have […]
With Laura Greenfield This interactive seminar for students selected to work as peer mentors with Hampshire’s Transformative Speaking Program will provide an opportunity to help shape the work of a new discipline emerging at the intersections of education, politics, communications, philosophy, anthropology, and critical social thought: peer mentoring in speaking. Students will grapple with questions […]
With Alexis Salas This introductory course explores global contemporary art produced between 1960 and 2018, with a focus on art in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, along with the practices of artists of color in the Euro-America. The course challenges art history’s Euro-American-centrism by considering the multiple histories that artwork produced on the so-called “periphery” […]
With Laura Sizer Most ethical debates concern moral obligations towards human beings. But what moral obligations – if any – do we have towards non-human entities? Do non-human animals have rights? Do trees and rivers? What about entire ecosystems? What might be the basis for such rights and obligations? We will discuss how traditional ethical […]
With Laura Greenfield What does it mean to listen radically? This course focuses on the role of listening in communication practices geared towards sociopolitical transformation. Moving beyond listening as performance or listening as merely “active,” we will explore what kinds of listening practices open up opportunity for ethical change to happen. In particular, we will […]
With Monique Roelefs Recognizing the centrality of aesthetic frameworks and concepts to black thought and cultural production, this course examines conceptual frames and artistic/literary strategies that shape the burgeoning field of Black Aesthetics. What role do evolving notions of aesthetics, politics, and blackness play in shifts that are occurring in the field? How do philosophical […]
With Megan Dobro When the HIV virus was first identified as the cause of AIDS, people never imagined we still wouldn’t have a cure 35 years later. What’s happened in all that time? What is taking so long? In this seminar, we will read about the milestones of HIV research and discuss why finding a […]
With Anne Hendrixson Populationism refers to “ideologies that attribute social and ecological ills to human numbers” (Butler and Angus 2011, xxi). In this class, we will examine three dimensions of populationism: demo-, geo- and bio. Demopopulationism refers to knowledges, practices and policies that blame human numbers for global problems in order to rationalize efforts to […]
Co-facilitated by Natalie Sowell and Javiera Benavente In this course, we will explore various theories and practices that support collective group process, shared learning, and collaborative actions with the aim of creating more just and resilient communities. Through reading, discussion, reflective exercises, and intentional community engagement, we will seek answers to questions such as: How […]
With Kara Lynch What are sustainable practices that expand and promote our vision of freedom? This course will focus on installation and community engaged art practices in conversation with diverse media and the local ecosystem. The thematic focus of the seminar will critically engage in the question: How can we create a dynamic practice in […]
With Dasha Chapman In this combined technique and theory course, students will engage in the practice of Haitian dance, and support this embodied learning with study of Haitian artists, history and culture. Bi-weekly physical practice introduces students to the foundations of Haitian dance, and reading, writing and discussion familiarizes students with both important Haitian dance […]
With Ashley Smith From battles against oil pipelines and fracking on indigenous lands, to the fight for clean fish and traditional sustenance fishing rights, to the struggle for indigenous sovereignty, Indigenous peoples around the globe are engaging in social and environmental activism. In this course we will consider how the histories of dispossession and settler […]
An EPEC facilitated by Bar Kolodny and Desta Cantave On December 6, 2017, President Trump gave a speech formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and directed the State Department to begin the process of relocating the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Nonetheless, several hours after the announcement, he signed a six […]
With George Fourlas and Daniel Ross Hampshire and Five College students will often take on positions of leadership in companies and organizations, on campus and beyond, usually with little practice or training. People often think of leadership as individualistic and autocratic, requiring outgoing personality. But there are many styles of leadership, and effective leadership is […]
With George Fourlas In this course we will explore communal modes of life through a theoretical and practical lens. We will engage several communitarian theorists and we will also study some of the recent pragmatic work that has been done to reclaim common space, common practices, and community as such.
With Deborah Goffe, Jana Silver, and Natalie Sowell Creative Interventions will deeply explore the intersections between global environmental change, sustainability, the arts, education, and social action. In particular, we will highlight the essential role that creativity and art-making plays in organizing, strategizing and initiating powerful and effective social change. Through creative thinking and expanding on […]
With Djola Branner This workshop course explores principles of acting through the lens of contemporary American drama, and simultaneously pushes our perceptions of gender. In addition to expanding physical awareness, vocal expression and relaxation & focus, we will consider the ever-changing historical, cultural and social landscapes that have defined and continue to define male, female […]
With Billie Mandle Photography’s history is rich with diverse theories and practices of community engagement and documentation; in this class students will contribute their own approach. Throughout the semester students will work closely with older members of the Amherst community, photographing together, participating in critiques and exploring photography’s ability to communicate. As a class we […]
With Chris Tinson and Mei Ann Teo This upper level course brings together the humanities and social sciences, in particular, theater and history in exploration of multiple, conflicting, and contested meanings of the U.S. flag. We will explore the meanings woven into the flag, artistic and political reimagining of the flag, alongside popular meanings and […]
With Rachel Conrad John Wall has written that “children’s rights are arguably the major human rights challenge of the twenty-first century.” In this course, we will critically explore approaches, controversies, ambiguities, and promise related to theory and practice concerning the rights of people under the age of 18. We will review the emergence across the […]
With Tim Zimmerman In this introductory course, students will explore the history, practices, career options, and problems of environmental education – educational efforts promoting an understanding of nature, environmentally responsible behavior, and protection of natural resources. Shifts in environmental education research foci, relationships to current and past environmental challenges (e.g., air pollution, species loss, climate […]
With Sarah Partan, Jana Silver and Seeta Sistla Worried about climate change and how we will live sustainably in the future? Join us to brainstorm and assess solutions together. This will be a course for first and second year students interested in learning how to evaluate potential solutions to current local and global environmental and […]
The necessity of paid work weighs heavy on those who are not born into gratuitous wealth, yet it is taken as given that one must work. Indeed, in the United States there are various moral expectations associated with work, an ethos, such that if one does not work or if one’s labor does not meet the monetary qualifications of dignity, then one will probably be met with various forms of condemnation.
With George Fourlas If speech is action, as key twentieth-century and current philosophers argue, then what is it that we are doing to each other when we talk? Is linguistic injury a real thing? To what extent can, and should, we control our bodily habits of speaking and responding? In this course we will explore […]
Facilitated by Javiera Benavente, Maya Sungold and Jamila Jackson The Ethics & the Common Good Changemaker Cohort is a practice-based learning community that supports the cultivation of relational leadership and collaborative change-making. In this course, we will engage with a variety of theories, approaches, methods, and practices to support students in developing and growing their […]
Facilitated by Javiera Benavente and Alina Ortiz Salvatierra In this course, we will learn about various approaches and methods for facilitating group process, shared learning, and collaborative actions that effect and create change in the wider world. We will explore how group facilitation can be used as a tool for cultivating connections and relationships, building […]
Taught by George Fourlas In this course we will first analyze traditional philosophical perspectives on punishment alongside critical genealogical descriptions of how it is that certain penal mechanisms emerged and determined our present: namely, the prison-industrial complex and the militarization of police forces. We will then take up the abolitionist question and reflect on how […]
Taught by George Fourlas In this course, we will analyze several key texts in liberation thought. The question motivating these readings is: What does our liberation require? Our primary text will be Enrique Dussel’s recently translated Ethics of Liberation, which we will carefully read in its entirety. As we read Dussel, we will supplement the […]
Taught by George Fourlas In this course we will focus on advanced topics in the global justice debate: war, human rights, and the demands of peace. We will begin with a survey of mainstream approaches to global justice, ranging from Kant’s “Perpetual Peace,” to Rawls’s Law of Peoples, and various cosmopolitan approaches. We will then […]
Taught by George Fourlas This class explores the field of ethics from the starting point of a primordial tension: the experience of being an individual and a member of a relational environment. This starting point places our exploration in stark contrast to classical approaches to ethics, which focus on the consequences of individual actions, universal […]
Taught by Perry Zurn The explosion of information in the 21st century has centralized the role of curiosity and research in our everyday lives. Never have the production mills of detail been more active. But how should we research and is curiosity a good place to start? Here, we investigate the basic contours of research […]
Taught by Perry Zurn The human species has quite recently become a predominantly urban one. In this course, we will analyze and practice ethical engagement with the city. We begin by investigating philosophy’s relationship to the city, stretching back to the development of dialogical thinking in the polis of Athens. How is philosophical reflection affected […]
Taught by kara lynch and Javiera Benavente This course will focus on installation and performance in conversation with diverse media and the local ecosystem. The thematic focus of the seminar will critically engage in the question: How can we create a sustainable environment in which to pursue and create artistic, agricultural, ecological, and socio-economic equity? […]
Taught by Perry Zurn This course will offer students an introduction to the primary subfields of applied ethics: business ethics, biomedical ethics, research ethics, environmental ethics, and food ethics. Unconventionally, however, it will do so through the thematic of the prison. The course will analyze prison labor, mental and physical healthcare in prison, the aging prison […]
Taught by Perr Zurn This course is an in-depth study of environmental ethics. Reading widely in classic environmental literature, we begin by interrogating the changing referent of the term “nature,” from animals and wilderness to city parks and the organics movement. We then critically compare 1) “nature” with forms of life that are socially naturalized […]