Firstbridge courses are offered to degree seeking freshmen and registration is done via webform in pre-arrival checklist.
Course Master:
Term:
Spring 2023
Discipline:
HI (History)
Credits:
4 credits
Type:
CCI
Level:
Undergraduate
Can be taken twice for credit?:
No
Exam Date:
Monday, May 15, 2023 - 12:30
Pre-requisites:
None
Co-requisites:
None
Professor(s)
Notes
Given that there is only one human species, Homo sapiens, why are some societies so obsessed with separating people into groups and referring to differences between groups as “racial”? Humans have always identified some people as “Us” and everybody else as “Other,” but the “scientific” discourse of race dates from the 19th century. After examining what science can say about the origins and evolution of our species, students will look at how racialized discourse came into use, how it came to justify slavery and imperialism, how it gave rise to eugenics, and how it can culminate in the ultimate denial of the kinship of humanity, genocide.
Learning Outcomes
- Information Literacy: Students will comprehend how information is produced and valued in order to discover, evaluate, use, and create information and knowledge effectively and ethically. In FirstBridge, students will demonstrate the conversational nature of scholarship, and recognize their potential role and responsibilities as contributors to that conversation. For each discipline taught in FirstBridge, students will identify reference works, journals, databases and/or major works in history, in order to start effective research in the field (FB LO1)
- Life at University: Students will acquire the study skills, time management, and interpersonal skills needed to meet the demands of university-level academic work at a Liberal Arts College individually or as a team. Students will value the multiple meanings of place through experiential learning at AUP and beyond in the Parisian or global context (FB LO2)
- Students will enhance their information literacy, acquiring an understanding of how information is produced, and discovering how to evaluate, create and use it effectively and ethically. Students will develop an awareness of the conversational nature of scholarship and be able to identify appropriate secondary sources to conduct effective research.
- Students will develop public speaking and presentation skills in order to participate effectively and appropriately in academic discussion and as community leaders, in a professional and engaging manner that can convey complex information
- Students will be able to appreciate place as a site of knowledge, to interrogate the multiple meanings of place and develop a more informed and sensitive understanding of interactions between people and their physical environment.
- Students will learn to formulate questions that can lead to greater learning and productive individual and group research projects.
- Students will strengthen the concrete skills and aptitudes to be successful at AUP and beyond, such as study skills and time management, the mindsets that lead to lifelong learning, and desired classroom behaviors and interpersonal skills.
- Students will analyze what science can say about the origins of the human species and the concept of race.
- Students will recognize “race” is a fallacious biological concept used to discriminate, isolate, and dehumanize, and to contrast that “racism,” a very real structure for othering that has disastrous impacts in our societies.
- Students will assess the ways in which genocide and other mass crimes are often legitimized by pseudoscientific discourse that has been integrated into and legitimated by a particular social context.
- Local and Global Perspectives: Students will enhance their intercultural understanding of languages, cultures, and histories of local societies and the global issues to which these relate.
- Exploring and Engaging Difference: Students will think critically about cultural and social difference; they will identify and understand power structures that determine hierarchies and inequalities that can relate to race, ethnicity, gender, nationhood
Syllabus
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Book List
| Title | Author | Publisher | ISBN Number |
|---|---|---|---|
Sapiens | Harari, Yuval | Vintage | 9780099590088 |
Schedule
Start Date:
Monday, January 16, 2023
End Date:
Monday, May 15, 2023
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Monday | 13:45 | 15:05 | G-102 |
Thursday | 13:45 | 15:05 | G-102 |