“Creative Citizens” courses build students' skills in creative activism and civic engagement. Course topics may include social justice, environmental activism, civic or political engagement, activist movements, forms of protest, social practice, community engagement, design activism, and more.

Architecture

Lisa Findley

ARCHT-5500-1: HT: History/Theory Elective (RADICALLY LOCAL: Architectural Critiques For Our Precarious Time)

MARCH-6500-1: HT: History/Theory Elective (RADICALLY LOCAL: Architectural Critiques For Our Precarious Time)

This seminar investigates architects who practice within a critique of standard practice models; an acute awareness of climate change; a suspicion of globalization; a disdain for the impacts of “flat world” labor, material supply and environmental impacts; a critical position in regard to environmental justice; and/or an active engagement with decolonization. These positions lead to an exploration of architectural form and production that is often profoundly local in material, construction craft and technique, capacity building and sustainability (environmental, social, economic and cultural). In the hands of the most talented of these architects, these attitudes lead to fresh, elegant, and leading edge architectural works and ideas. These practices provide an insight into a shift of the international conversation around architecture away from Europe and North America (though not excluding them). Among practices we will engage with are Hua Li (China), Li Xiaodong (China), Amateur Architecture Studio (China), Rural Urban Framework (Hong Kong), Tropical Space (Vietnam), Studio Mumbai (India), Anapuma Kundoo (India), Francis Keré (Burkina Faso), Minimo Comun (Paraguay), Elemental (Chile), TALCA (Chile), Atelier Masomi (Niger), Studio Gracia (Mexico), ORU (Mexico), COMUNAL (Mexico), Studio Indigenous (USA), Natura Futura (Ecuador), and many others.

Critical Ethnic Studies

Marcel Pardo Ariza

ETHST-2000-1: Caring Futures: Disruptive Rebellions

What does it mean to prioritize care in your practice? In the face of continued anti-trans discrimination, how can we envision a caring future for all? In this course, we will delve into the concepts of creative forms of protest, disruptive acts of rebellion, and artistic expressions that contribute to a profound understanding of collective care. Throughout the semester, we will examine the intersections of the Trans Liberation and Disability Justice movements, while establishing a strong foundation in the history of revolutionary organizing and rebellions that have propelled our society forward. We will draw insight from the works of various writers, artists, and organizers, including but not limited to Jack Halberstam, Paul B. Preciado, Miss Major, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Susan Stryker, Marquis Bey, Tourmaline, Judith Heumann and Chris Vargas. Additionally, we will explore contemporary art practices that emphasize mutual aid, collective power and a commitment to looking out for each other. This interdisciplinary course will encourage collaborative projects with your peers. It provides an opportunity for students to enhance their creative practice in innovative, sustainable, and purposeful ways. Through readings, assignments, site visits, and collaborative efforts, we will engage in public art, visual thinking, and creative production. Students are encouraged to evolve their practice with a profound grasp of positionally, care and intention.

Jack Leamy

ETHST-2000-5: Mural Project

This course explores murals as public living spaces, visual geographical multi-layered zones for political activism, expressing cultural identity and liberation, social/cultural awareness and aesthetic advancement. The overarching goal is to inform the students rapidly into the domain in which they will create. By using a series of documentary films, starting with Mexican social realist painters from the early 1930’s to the present murals brought forth from the BLM movement, we will look at these movements as sources of meaning and forms of social justice activism. Students will also center their Critical Ethnic Studies pedagogy as a means to focus and polish their artist vision. We ask, what is the role of mural art as it is displayed strategically in public spaces? Where does public space become available and to whom? Who claims public spaces and how? How do we define public space and who has the authority to have a voice and be heard in the public realm and why? The Mural Project will provide an historical and current day context. Students have the opportunity to contribute to a mural site in East Oakland at Bret Harte Middle School by contributing to The Heroic Murals Pedagogy Project. This is organized based on student choice and availability.

ETHSM-2000-5: Spirituality as Resistance

In this course we will learn about the significance of spirituality through the legacy of ancestral societies, the freedom struggles of BIPOC, and the creative power of diasporic people. We will delve into the philosophies and practices that shaped the formation of spirituality since time immemorial; closely examining the cyclical context of these sensibilities prior to and after the apocalypse of 1492. We will collectively analyze the impact of the last 531 years of imposed colonial forces using critical race theory, ecofeminism, intersectionality and decoloniality. Simultaneously, we will celebrate and put into practice ancestral wisdom—passed down, safeguarded despite genocide, ecocide, censorship, enslavement, displacement and forced assimilation. Our course has twin components, theory and embodiment, through which we will reflect and act on the importance of ritual, of remembrance and of gratitude within liberatory movements and within our lives. Our focus for this course will be the autonomies sprouting and permeating, despite the power configurations of nation/states and transnational corporations, in Turtle Island, Anahuac, Abya Yala (Americas) and beyond.This course requires rigorous interdisciplinary study of ourselves, ancestral lineage, Indigenous medicine, art, astronomy, archeology, art history, pictographic language and traditional ecological knowledge.

Amana Harris

ETHST-2000-7: Your Art, Your Impact: Education & Community Development

This course takes a new look at community based and contemporary art practices from a social justice and civic engagement lens. We will investigate values, ethics and self-development concepts; explore education from a historical and present day context; learn about activist artists; and infuse all of these concepts to inform and push the boundaries of your own art practice. Art that incorporates spiritual and ethical renewal, as well as social responsiveness and environmental transformation is a primary focus as we investigate methods employed by a growing movement of activist artists. The heart of this course is the notion that artists are problem solvers, and with this inherent skill we can work on solutions to many of the important issues of our times. Students will be required to travel/ commute during this course. Part of the time will be spent having lectures, discussion and presentations on site at the SF campus. The other portion of our time will be spent in schools/ community and creating and developing a final art project. Students will work in the ways they are accustomed to as studio artists for the final art project, while also addressing social, political and/or environmental concerns.

ETHSM-2000-7: Collective Practices and Resistance

This course introduces students to the historical and theoretical foundations of Collective Practices + Resistance across disciplines and is designed for those interested in understanding the complex dynamics that drive societal change, with a strong focus on local Bay Area artivist movements and legacies. Students investigate the historical, social, political, and aesthetic forces, including class, status, power, and mobility that create resilience in nature, culture, and society through art and design. Through assigned texts, site visits, and writing assignments, students develop the critical thinking skills and knowledge necessary to explore arguments and practices that shape current debates regarding ethics of cultural production and engagement, including those practices that imagine new social relationships amongst artists, designers, writers, architects, urban planners, curators, and community organizers.

Rickey Vincent

ETHSM-3000-2: The Black Panthers and Popular Culture

This course explores the rise of Black Power as a social movement in the 1960s with a focus on the Oakland-based Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The course emphasizes the cultural dimension of the movement, involving identity formation, expressive arts and ideological growth alongside community action and outreach efforts.Critical Ethnic Studies 3000-level seminars deepen students’ knowledge of the fundamental theoretical and political questions regarding the social construction of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class from both domestic and global perspectives. The seminars utilize decolonial, transnational and intersectional approaches for producing knowledge about resistance, power, oppression, and systems of knowledge from the interdisciplinary fields of critical ethnic studies: Africana studies, African-American Studies, Asian American studies, Indigenous studies, Chicano/a /x and Latino /a/x studies, Women’ studies, border studies, cultural studies, and global racialized and global silenced communities.

Shalini Agrawal

ETHSM-2000-8: Radical Redesign

Decolonizing design and architecture practices starts with understanding the roots and steadfast legacy of colonization to resurface narratives that have been hidden, erased and forgotten. We can disrupt our biases and blindspots towards anti-racism and decoloniality by taking time to learn about forgotten history, and reflect on the unreconciled impacts of colonization. How might we acknowledge the injustices, colonial practices and racism in design and architecture, and acknowledge the resulting long lasting and harmful impacts? This studio begins by identifying areas of Radical Redesign within the traditional design process starting with researching colonization and its correlation with issues of diversity, identity, race, gender and culture. Building on this knowledge, we identify and confront our personal biases that have maintained systems of dominance, while challenging formulaic design processes. Moving from individualism, perfectionism and urgency, we prioritize non-Western methods of knowing, doing with the goal of defining and achieving personal translations of belonging, care and healing. We reexamine traditional design processes and propose new methods of designing with, instead of for, positioning ourselves as agents of care with traditional design processes.

Stephanie Sherman

ETHSM-3000-5: Queer & Trans Futures

In this course, we contest the objectification, pathologization, and exoticization of queer and transgender lives. Instead, we will engage with scholars, activists, artists in queer and trans cultures and political movements to advance equity. We examine queerness and transgender as a categories, processes, a social assemblage, and a rubric for understanding the variability and contingency of gender across time, space, and cultures. Topics explored can be the cultural production of queer and trans communities, critiques of political economy, trans futures, racism, transphobia, intersectionality and the problems of translating gender concepts and practices across linguistic communities.

Graduate Fine Arts

Deeds Brackens

FINAR-6040-1: Fine Arts Seminar: The Shape of Survival

Our world is separate and distinct from the earth on which we reside. After loss and devastation, humans reshape their communities again and again. In this course, students will examine a host of texts and media ranging from poetry, theory, film, and visual arts to think about the end of the world and its bearing on artistic voice and contemporary discourse. The seminar will examine how artists deal with climate collapse, illness, warfare and genocide, gender and sexuality, politics and religion. The agenda the class will use as a focal point and political framework is one rooted in survival and its formal and theoretical economies. This seminar will operate as a laboratory, a place to gain practical survival skills, through making, writing, and critique. Fine Arts Seminars are intended to broaden and clarify students' perspective on contemporary art practice. Each semester these seminars shift in focus and subject matter. Seminars may concentrate on art from the perspectives of art history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and so forth, or may take the form of a discipline-based critique focusing on the history, theory, and practice of painting, sculpture, and photography, among others.

Graduate Visual and Critical Studies

Michael Washington

VISCR-6220-1: Theories of Identity, Difference, and Power

GELCT-6800-2: Theories of Identity, Difference, and Power

The politics of identity continues to be a compelling and hotly debated topic in visual culture. This course explores the construction, negotiation, and contestation of identity and difference in visual and critical studies. The theoretical scope of this course includes postcolonial theory, race theory, gender studies, and whiteness studies. Students investigate how theorists and artists address the complex intersections of race, sexuality, gender, class, health, and nationality in light of subjects such as immigration, transnational media, diasporic communities, disidentification, belonging, and desire. Special attention is given to critical and visual perspectives that challenge monolithic views of identity. Instead we privilege diverse, multiple, and intersectional approaches that connect lived experience, social critique, and artistic practice. This course focuses on cultural diversity, critical analysis, and visual literacy. Students also sharpen their research, verbal communication, and writing skills. Students will develop a general understanding of visual and critical studies in relation to theories of identity and difference, hone skills for analyzing culture from a visual and critical perspective, and focus on a final research project and class presentation using principles of visual and critical studies.

Illustration

Michael Wertz

ILLUS-2110: Tools: Illustrated Poster

PRINT-3120-2: Advanced Screen Printing: The Illustrated Poster

PRINT-2120-2: Screen Printing: The Illustrated Poster

This comprehensive and rigorous studio class will design and produce a set of hand made screen printed posters, blending image and typography to communicate ideas, events or political causes. This studio will be a crash-course in illustrated poster design as well as a complete introduction to the screen printing process. Students will develop digital and screen printing skills, including both hand created film separations of colors as well as digital film output. The focus of this class is hands-on experience and studio time with numerous forays into the poster scene with examples shown and guests invited. Additional outside studio time will be required to complete the assigned poster projects.

Literary & Performing Arts

Faith Adiele

LITPA-2000-1: Literary & Performing Arts: Black Feminist Eco-Stories

WRLIT-2100-1: Literature: Modern Topics: Black Feminist Eco-Stories

Both American nature writing and the environmental movement have historically been associated with whiteness and maleness. This seminar will consider the exciting explosion of writing from Black female-bodied voices and its intersection with feminist/womanist, queer, and indigenous/decolonial ecologies. We will engage with diverse readings that explore such themes as race, gender, motherhood, climate, healing, environmental justice, language, and metaphor vs. anthropomorphism. Our texts will include contemporary personal essays, poetry, lyric and enumeration/list essays, dialogs, hybrid creative nonfiction, and new nature writing, a genre-fluid form that encompasses memoir/travel/nature writing and foregrounds Climate Crisis. Together we will see what Black Feminist voices can teach us about global majority perspectives and narrative strategies for making environmental/ ecological/ nature writing accessible and relevant to all.

Anne Shea

LITPA-2000-2: Literary & Performing Arts: Arundhati Roy

WRLIT-3200-1: Ways of Reading: Arundhati Roy

Born in northeast India in 1961, Arundhati Roy grew up on the southwestern coast in Kerala. She attended the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi and worked as a screenwriter before penning her lyrical novel, The God of Small Things, which won the 1997 Booker Prize. “A novel gives a writer the freedom to be as complicated as she wants – to move through worlds, languages, and time, through societies, communities, and politics,” she tells us. But this acclaimed novelist, who loves the freedom the form provides, turned in 1998 to essay writing, authoring a scathing critique of her country’s nuclear arms tests. Since then, Roy has used her body and pen to fight against ecological devastation caused by dams, the violence of empires, and for the freedom struggle in occupied Kashmir. For her courageous stand against state power, critic and writer John Berger called her “the direct descendant of Antigone.” In this class, we will begin with the novel The God of Small Things (1997) and then examine how Roy employs the figurative language of fiction in her essays by reading selections from My Seditious Heart (2019), The End of Imagination (2016), and Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. We will conclude the class with Roy’s most recent novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), which she describes as “a novel written in English but imagined in several languages.” Roy understands novel writing as a political act, arguing that fiction's emotional and narrative complexity is “our beehive, our maze” against “the sweeping simplifications of fascism.” Through the work of writer and activist Arundhati Roy, we will consider the “place of literature in the times in which we live” (Roy).

Eugenia M Mitsanas

LITPA-3200-4: Literary & Performing Arts [Multilingual Learner]: Environmental ARTivism

How and why is art an empowering vehicle for successful environmental activism and for initiating environmental policy change? Through readings, lectures, seminar-style discussions, research, and field trips, this course will highlight specific environmental issues by focusing on select environmental art actions around the globe. Our investigations will center on topics of eco-feminism, and re-wilding ecology. Through this study we will begin to locate ourselves within the larger context of global environmental ARTivism by deepening our understanding of thinking globally and acting locally.Writing & Research in the Discipline courses engage with the writing and research skills relevant to the particular discipline at an advanced, upper-division level. The course will be closely linked to the upper-division work in the major program. Frequent writing assignments.

Philosophy and Critical Theory

Maxwell Leung

SSHIS-2000-1: Culture and Politics of San Francisco

From gold miners in 1849 who dreamt of riches, the Gay and Lesbian community in the Castro in the 1980s, to our current tech overlords dominating our social cityscape, the popular image of San Francisco has been humble, colorful, provocative, and tragic. In this course, we will explore topics to trace the adventurous and provocative history of The City. We also use primary sources including oral history, art, film, newspaper articles, and photographs to examine the rise of various communities around The City. Emphasizing digital history and writing for a public audience, this course will ask students to research and write like historians, producing historical content to share online about the history of San Francisco. The goal of this class is to generate a digital history project that creates and organizes content for the public about a story that you create to tell to the public.

Rebekah L Edwards

PHCRT-2000-4: Philosophy & Critical Theory: Radical Kinship in Queer, Trans, and Disability Studies

This course explores how art, activism and critical theory challenges normative constructions of identity, embodiment, kinship, temporality, and futurity. Drawing on queer, trans, and disability frameworks, we investigate how radical kinship, mutual aid, and creative practice have been central to questioning, subverting, and reconstructing societal norms and navigating the complexities of marginalized, intersectional identity and embodiment.Using theoretical analysis, seminar discussion, and small creative-critical projects, students are encouraged to engage with complex theoretical concepts while also applying them to their own artistic practices. Emphasis is placed on developing ethical, self-reflective approaches to creative and critical practices of making.

Social Science and History

Melinda De Jesus

SSHIS-2000-4: Girl Culture

What does it mean to be a girl today? What is “girl culture”? This course, an overview of the emerging field of “girls’ studies” employs an interdisciplinary, intersectional feminist lens to explore the construction and meaning of girlhood in contemporary American culture, and emphasizes the following themes: identity formation and development, socialization, education and equity, sexuality, body consciousness and self-esteem, media representation, consumerism, agency and activism, and cultural production. Social Science and History (SSHIS) courses develop students' critical thinking skills through the study of history and the social sciences (e.g. sociology, psychology, economics, political science, anthropology, geography), as well as through contemporary interdisciplines that draw heavily on these fields (e.g. feminist and queer studies, media studies, urban studies, ethnic studies). Subject matter in these courses contributes to students' cultural literacy while instructional materials and classroom assignments introduce basic research problems and techniques.

Upper Division Interdisciplinary Studio (UDIST)

Shalini Agrawal and Ava Roy

UDIST-3000-9: Insights in Site: Spatial Activations of Belonging

Insights in Site explores our relationships with the surrounding environment, local communities and broader society through interdisciplinary thinking and collaboration that consider race, gender, and the environment. In a time of social and environmental uncertainty, disconnection and isolation, this course grounds students in multi-sensory activations in and around indoor and outdoor space, examining how collective, embodied and sensory-based activations translate to belonging, care and healing. Students build new sensory skills as a means for nonverbal communication that introduce non-Western methods of learning, heighten sensitivity and awareness of place, support health and well-being, and embrace diversity through community-building. The outcomes of this course are a series of collective responses that reflect the comforts and discomforts in spatial engagement, connection, and belonging. This course aims to provide a safe and compassionate environment within which to lean into our edges, honor and disrupt our habituated modes of perception.