G.R.O.U.P. Course Offerings 2005-2006

Environmental Struggles: Humans and the Global Environment
Kate O’Neill (Environmental Science, Policy, and Management).
(ESPM 150; Spring 2006.)

The course examined the complex interrelationships between humans, human activity, globalization and the environment, presenting key ideas, debates and approaches in this arena within broader humanities and social science frameworks. The first part of the course examined struggles over key ideas present in debates over the environment and globalization. The middle portion applied these ideas to global struggles over specific resources, inviting guest speakers who work on these topics. The final portion of the course presented cases in science and technology, and examine how humanities and social science perspectives inform debates over science, risk, expertise and participation. The course involved readings from new and classic texts in the field, and also sessions on how to do research, especially scholarly research, on the global environment.

New Media and Social Memory
Richard Rinehart (Digital Media, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive)
and Nezar AlSayyad (Architecture/Center for Middle Eastern Studies).
(New Media 190; Spring 2006.)

This course investigated how the canonical historical record is created and maintained in the digital age by “memory institutions” such as museums, libraries, and archives, and how digital media artists are influencing and critiquing this construction of social memory. Students considered questions such as “What is important to remember?” on a long-term public scale, and investigated how this kind of public memory is impacted by new media. Students used—and co-opted—the ultimate memoryorganizationclassification tool, the database, as a medium for project-making, and created their own art project around issues of social memory, relying on original research to propose creative solutions to real-world problems. Guest speakers included experts in media art and museum curation.

Using People:
Human Rights and the Transnational Commodification of Women
Pheng Cheah (Rhetoric). (Rhetoric 189; Spring 2006.)

This course built on a philosophical understanding of human rights to address practical questions of human rights violations. Students examined the philosophical tradition beginning with Kant that discusses the use of human beings merely as means to other ends, taking this tradition as the foundation of our understanding of human rights. In the second portion of the course, students brought this understanding to an examination of case studies of human rights abuse, specifically with regard to female migrant labor and sex trafficking in globalizing Asia. Instrumental rationalities are pervasive on every level of these industries. How does this complicate the philosophical understanding of human rights? How can understanding the philosophical underpinnings of human rights provide possible new outcomes for these bleak scenarios? Guest speakers—both academic experts and activists working with NGOs specializing in these areas—addressed these questions from their own perspectives. Students were expected to undertake independent case studies of their own on the effectiveness of human rights instruments in a particular area of transnational traffic in women’s labor.

Violence, Genocide, and Social Suffering:
Perspectives from Medicine and the Humanities
Nancy Scheper-Hughes (Medical Anthropology) and Beatriz Manz (Geography). (Anthropology 119/Geography 175; Fall 2005.)

This course explored unrecognized forms of violence in everyday life. It considered the structural and symbolic violence of poverty as it impacts the sick and the socially marginalized — the homeless, immigrants, the mentally ill. The first portion of the course introduced students to interdisciplinary approaches — from anthropology, medicine, philosophy, theology, and literature — to the definitions and meanings of violence and suffering. The second part of the course looked at responses to the question of violence, especially the application of human rights discourse to medicine and psychiatry. Visiting experts from academic fields and NGOs were brought in to illuminate aspects of these questions throughout the course, and students participated in an expanded research practicum, through which they became involved in the instructors’ current projects on violence and social suffering.