Current Courses

SPRING 2024 /AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS POLITICAL AGENCY / CHC 441/431H / ANITA CHARI

This class explores the autobiography as a form of both personal and political expression. The class begins by complicating, questioning and demystifying the divide between the personal and political by linking personal stories and histories with narratives of broader social structures. We will read autobiographies from diverse sources, including diaries, quasi-fictionalized autobiographies, poetry, and autobiographies of political activists. We will also engage with theories of social structure and agency in order to interrogate the interface between personal experience and political agency. Finally, we delve into trans-generational narratives in order to think about social structure and agency across time and space. Students will produce a significant body of writing in class and in homework assignments in order to create their own (political) autobiographies. Authors that we will read in the class include the following: Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, James Weldon Johnson, Gloria Anzaldua, Anne Frank, Hannah Arendt, Iris Young, Walter Benjamin, Nellie Wong, Kitty Tsui, Aime Cesaire, and Nelson Mandela.

SPRING 2024 /LEGAL STUDIES HARD CASES: PHYSICIAN ASSISTED SUICIDE / LS 410 / ROBERT ROCKLIN

This course is designed to take a particular look at our country’s laws and legal system by following a single, complex case from its very beginning to the end—when the United States Supreme Court issues its decision. Specifically, we will follow the case called Gonzales v. Oregon, from when Oregon enacted its “Death with Dignity Act” in 1994 through challenges to the law that ultimately resulted in a decision by the Supreme Court in 2006. We will review the law and consider whether the policy embodied in the law is a good policy. We will examine early challenges to the law and the challenge that ultimately ended up in the Supreme Court. We will be reading statutes, regulations, judicial opinions, briefs, and other legal documents in our journey from 1994 to 2006. In following the case from beginning to end, we will have opportunities to discuss and evaluate positions taken by the parties to the lawsuit; majority and dissenting opinions; public opinion; and the correctness of the Supreme Court’s 2006 opinion. In addition, we will consider the broader question of the wisdom of physician assisted suicide and its adoption by other states and countries.