Spring 2026
Instructor: skylar kaat
Lorna Simpson
Ice 4, 2018
| Graded Activities | Percent of Final Grade | |
|---|---|---|
| Participation | 10% | |
| Forum Posts | 50% | Labor-based grading |
| Mid-term Project | 15% | |
| Project Proposal | 5% | Labor-based grading |
| Final Project | 20% |
Midterm Project: Museum of Culture and Society
Course schedule updated 2/26/2026 TTH
Course schedule updated 2/26/2026 MW
| DATE | TOPICS | READING | | --- | --- | --- | | 1/28 1/27 | Introductions, walk through syllabus | Syllabus | | 2/2 1/29 | What is Culture? | Keyword: Culture. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
recommended: Fischer, Michael MJ. "Culture and cultural analysis as experimental systems." Cultural Anthropology 22, no. 1 (2007): 1-65 | | 2/4 2/3 | What is Society? | Durkheim, Emile. “What is a Social Fact.” In The Rules of Sociological Method.
Ho, Karen et al. “What Happened to Social Facts?” American Anthropologist 121, no. 1 (2019):160-204 | | 2/9 2/5 | Other | Said, Edward W. 1978. “Knowing the Oriental.” In Orientalism, 31–49. New York: Pantheon Books.
Fanon, Frantz. 2008. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press.
Recommended: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/things-that-divide-us | | 2/11 2/10 | Race | Keyword: Black. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
Moses, Yolanda T. 2010. “Thinking Anthropologically About ‘Race’: Human Variation, Cultural Construction, and Dispelling Myths." In Thinking Anthropologically: A Practical Guide for Students, 3rd edition, edited by Philip Salzman and Patricia Rice, 94−105. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall. | | 2/16 2/12 | Race pt. 2 | Chou, Rosalind S., and Joe R. Feagin. The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2016. (Selections TBD)
Recommended: SupaduDev**The Yellow Plague and Romantic Anticapitalism - Monthly Revi…**
| | 2/18 2/17 | whiteness in question | Keyword: Whiteness. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
“Reading Trash: Deliverance and the Poetics of White Trash” in Society for Visual Anthropology Newsletter 8(2):8-15 by John Hartigan (2008). OR (Pg. 316-343) “Unpopular culture: The case of ‘white trash’, Cultural Studies, 11:2, 316-343 by John Hartigan (1997). OR (Pg. 11-34) “Remembering White Detroit: Whiteness in the Mix of History and Memory” in City and Society 12(2):11-34 by John Hartigan (2008). | | 2/23 2/19 | Intersectionality as framework | Kimberlé Crenshaw, The Washington Post (2015), “Why intersectionality can’t wait. | | 2/25 2/24 | gender and sexuality | Keyword: Gender. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
Mara Viveros Vigoya, “A Brief History of the Concept” and “The Sex/Gender Dyad: Feminist Debates of the Second Wave” in Sex/Gender, in The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory, 2015. 852-856. | | 3/2 2/26 | gender and sexuality | Keyword: Queer. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
Plemons, Eric. The Look of a Woman: Facial Feminization Surgery and the Aims of Trans-Medicine. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. (Read introduction) | | 3/4 3/3 | Disability | Keyword: Normal. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (Selections TBD) | | 3/9 3/5 | Indigeneity | Keyword: Indigenous. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2012) “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1, 1-40. | | 3/11 3/10 | nation and border | Keyword: Citizenship. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
De León, Jason. The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. (Read introduction) OR Jasbir Puar and Amit Rai (2003) “Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots”,117-148. | | 3/11 3/12 | midterm workshop | | | | | | | | | | | 3/25 3/24 | Week on School: School to Prison Pipeline | no readings, documentary screening in class. work on midterm | | 3/30 3/26 | Week on School: Fixing School Food or One Laptop per Child | Poppendieck, Janet. 2010. Free for All: Fixing School Food in America, 133–60. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chapter: The Missing Millions: Problems of Participation. OR Chapter: Hunger in the Classroom: Problems of Access.
OR Ames, Morgan G. The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019. | | 4/1 3/31 | Week on Cities: Global cities | Robinson, Jennifer. 2005. “Introduction: Post-colonialising Urban Studies.” In Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development, 1–12. London: Routledge.
BMW Guggenheim Lab. 2011. Urbanology Online. BMW Guggenheim Lab website. Accessed January 19, 2026. https://www.bmwguggenheimlab.org/urbanology-online | | 4/6 4/2 | Week on Cities: Technologies and Design | Keyword: Technology. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
Cheesman, Margie (2022). Blockchain for Refugees. Data & Society: Points. | | 4/8 4/7 | Week on Science:
| Emily Martin, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles”
Sarah FRANKLIN, “The ‘obstacle course’: the reproductive work of IVF,” in Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception. | | 4/13 4/9 | Week on Science: Medical Science | Goodman, Alan.2015. “Disease and dying while black: How racism, not race, gets under the skin,” in Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology: Biosocial and Cultural Approaches, 3e, Peter J. Brown and Svea Closser, eds, pp. 52–57. | | 4/15 4/14 | Week on Environment: Sacrifice Zone | Lerner, Steve. 2010. Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Introduction and chapter on Green point, New York | | 4/20 4/16 | Week on Environment: Air | Zee, Jerry. Continent in Dust: Experiments in a Chinese Weather System. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. | | 4/22 4/21 | Week on Everyday: Social media | Steele, C. K. (2021). Black feminist pleasure on TikTok: An ode to Hurston’s “Characteristics of Negro Expression”. Women's Studies in Communication, 44(4), 463-469.
Williams, Ruth. 2011. ‘Eat, Pray, Love: Producing the Female Neoliberal Spiritual Subject’, The Journal of Popular Culture, pp 1-21. | | 4/27 4/23 | Week on Everyday: Food (and dumpster) | Giles, David Boarder. 2021. “Introduction: Of Waste, Cities, and Conspiracies.” In A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People: Food Not Bombs and the World-Class Waste of Global Cities, 1–20. New York: Duke University Press. | | 4/29 4/30 | Final Project Workshop | | | 5/4 5/5 | Week on Technology: Big Tech | Reena PATEL, “Off-Shoring Customer Service: A New Global Order,” in Working the Night Shift: Women in India’s Call Centers Industry.
Henriksen, S. E., & Richey, L. A. (2022). Google’s Tech Philanthropy: Capitalism and Humanitarianism in the Digital Age. Public Anthropologist, 4(1), 21-50 | | 5/6 5/7 | Week on Technology: GenAI | Chiang, Ted (2023). ChatGPT is a Blurry JPEG of the web. The New Yorker.
Roberts, Sarah (2021). Your AI is Human. In Your Computer is On Fire eds Mullaney, Peters, Hicks, Philip. 51-67.
recommended: Cave, S., & Dihal, K. (2021). AI Will Always Love You: Three Contradictions in Imaginings of Intimate Relations with Machines. In Minding the Future: Artificial Intelligence, Philosophical Visions and Science Fiction. 107-125. | | 5/13 5/12 | Final Class: Thinking about the future | Keyword: Futurity. Bruce Burgett, and Glenn Hendler. 2020. Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. Vol. 00011. NYU Press. EBSCOhost.
Recommended: https://jiahuileeq.wixsite.com/clouds/project-description-1 https://feralatlas.org/# | | Reading Days and Exam Days | | |