Elective Courses | College of Liberal Arts | SIU

International

HIST 489/WGSS 489: Women, State, and Religion in the Middle East
Dr. Hale Yilmaz
Online asynchronous, or R 5:00-7:30
This course examines the changing status and experiences of women in the modern Middle East from Iran and Afghanistan to Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco. Readings include scholarly texts as well as first-person narratives and other primary sources.

LCIS 200b: Fairy Tales: The Brothers Grimm and Beyond
Dr. Chris Chiasson
Online MWF 9:00-9:50
The most famous collection of fairy tales is the Brothers’ Grimm. In this course, we examine the pre-history of their collection with tales from India, the Middle East, Italy, and France; the way they shaped the tales for a modern audience; and fairy tale adaptations after them.

LING 440/540: A Multiliteracies Approach to Language Education
Dr. Brianna Janssen Sánchez
On Campus, M 2:00-4:30
This course provides an introduction to a literacies-based approach to language teaching focusing on critical integration of texts, intercultural understanding, and language proficiency development (Paisani & Menke, 2023). Through theoretical and practical approaches, students will learn how to empower students, promote social justice language education and design instruction for TESOL and World Languages contexts through a multiliteracies pedagogical approach.

LING 440/540: Sociolinguistic and Cultural Studies in Minority Languages of the Americas
Dr. Santiago Gualapuro
On Campus, T/R 2:00-3:15
This course examines the ongoing struggle to maintain, preserve, and revitalize indigenous and other minority langauges of the Americas. This course will address the pre-Columbian history of indigenous languages, language contact, and the interrelated phenomena of language shift through contact linguistics and social connections. We will look at language endangerment, language death, and the maintenance and survival of endangered languages of the Americas, with special emphasis on Andean indigenous languages.

 

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Business, Politics, and Science

CMST 486.01: Film & Entertainment PR
Justin Young
On Campus, MWF 1:00-1:50
Film premieres, late night talk shows, social media campaigns, and more contribute to a positive (and sometimes negative) news cycle that can buoy or bury new media before we’ve even seen it. Join an exploration of public relations’ place in modern entertainment.

 

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Cultural Topics

AD310B: Greco-Roman Art and Archaeology
(Meets a Classics requirement and taught by a CoLA professor)
Dr. Mont Allen
On-Campus, T/R 2:00-3:15
A course on ancient Roman art and architecture, in all its extremes, from the most imposing and bombastic forms of art to the most whimsical and quirky: from cult images in majestic temples to raunchy paintings in notorious brothels, from monumental theaters and amphitheaters to secluded private interiors and family tombs, from epic historical scenes glorifying human conquerors to fantastic mythological scenes celebrating gods and heroes, satyrs and nymphs, the divine and the dead.

AFR 499, Sec 001/PHIL 559, Sec 001: Media Ecologies of Race
Dr. Joseph Smith
This course is limited to 5 students who will participate in two field trips that will be funded by the Mississippi Watershed Program grant.  The first trip will take place the week of Feb. 26, 2024 at a day and time to be worked out for convivence with the students.  The second trip April 5-7, 2024 to Montgomery, Alabama with visits to the Lynching Museum, the Legacy Museum, and to historical sites tracing Martin L. King's march from Selma to Montgomery.
This course thinks through how race and media are intimately entwined technologies that affect cultures, environments, quality of life, and the longevity of lived experiences. In invoking the term ecologies, we underscore race and media as key components in a complex web of relations among peoples, localities, institutional structures, and material environments. The course engages multiple theoretical frameworks for students to understand, space, place, and identity including Africana Studies, Black Feminisms, Black Studies, Cultural History, Critical Race Theories, Media Historiographies, Media Studies, and Social History.

AFR 499, Sec 001/PHIL 590 Sec 002/WGSS 491 Sec 001/WGSS 591 Sec 002: Black Male Studies
Dr. Joseph Smith
On-Campus, M 1:00-3:30
How has the category of gender been applied to Black men within theories of Black masculinity? Are Black men the mere pathological excess of white male patriarchy? What is the relationship between theories that posit Black masculinity as hyper-masculine and privileged, and the empirical and material aspects of Black male sexual life? This course will examine the above questions through the emerging field of Black Male Studies. We will focus on the work of Dr. Tommy Curry’s book titled The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. The course will also engage the theories of gender found in bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Sylvia Wynter, David Marriott, Frank B. Wilderson, and Jim Sidanius. Students will be introduced to theories that include Afro pessimism, Social Dominancy Theory, and Black Male Studies.

CMST 342: Popular Culture
Justin Young
On Campus, MWF 10:00-10:50
An exploration of popular culture, its place in our society, how we shape it through communication, and its impact on what we value. Course examines popular film, TV, books, music, video games, and more.

PHIL 102: Introduction to Philosophy (Plato's Republic)
Dr. Nicholas Guardiano
On-Campus, T/R 9:00-10:15
We have the good fortune to read in its entirety one of the greatest works of philosophy (and the world over!), Plato’s Republic. More than a treatise on political theory, the work covers a broad range of essential philosophical topics and disciplines. These include ethics, virtue and vice, the nature of the soul (psyche), types of human character, justice, art, education, metaphysics, epistemology, forms of government, social-class divisions, and reincarnation. In the Republic, questions on these matters arise in the course of an extended dialogue between Socrates and his Athenian peers. Their conversations, reasonings, and conclusions provide insights on essential issues while exemplifying the activity of philosophical inquiry. We join them in the search for truth and wisdom, while further reflecting on the relevance of their ideas in contemporary society and our personal lives. Our ultimate aim is the cultivation of our critical capacities and a careful examination of the good life with its direct implications for how we should live our lives.

ENG 381A/493 and CIN 470i: Queer Narratives in Literature, Film, and Visual Culture
Dr. Rafael Frumkin and Heather O'Brien
On-Campus, T 3:00-5:50
In this special topics course team-taught by Rafael Frumkin and Heather O’Brien, we will explore queerness – as an identity, a creative ethos, a politics, and more – in the modalities of the written word, film, and visual art. This class will not only immerse you in the many varieties of queer narratives in contemporary American culture (from the forbidden lesbian love in Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 classic The Price of Salt to BenDeLaCreme’s triumphant self-elimination on season three of RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars), but equip you with the creative and technical tools to create queer narratives of your own.

HIST 489/WGSS 489: Women, State, and Religion in the Middle East
Dr. Hale Yilmaz
Online asynchronous, or R 5:00-7:30
This course examines the changing status and experiences of women in the modern Middle East from Iran and Afghanistan to Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco. Readings include scholarly texts as well as first-person narratives and other primary sources.

LCIS 200b: Fairy Tales: The Brothers Grimm and Beyond
Dr. Chris Chiasson
Online MWF 9:00-9:50
The most famous collection of fairy tales is the Brothers’ Grimm. In this course, we examine the pre-history of their collection with tales from India, the Middle East, Italy, and France; the way they shaped the tales for a modern audience; and fairy tale adaptations after them.

LING 440/540: A Multiliteracies Approach to Language Education
Dr. Brianna Janssen Sánchez
On Campus, M 2:00-4:30
This course provides an introduction to a literacies-based approach to language teaching focusing on critical integration of texts, intercultural understanding, and language proficiency development (Paisani & Menke, 2023). Through theoretical and practical approaches, students will learn how to empower students, promote social justice language education and design instruction for TESOL and World Languages contexts through a multiliteracies pedagogical approach.

LING 440/540: Sociolinguistic and Cultural Studies in Minority Languages of the Americas
Dr. Santiago Gualapuro
On Campus, T/R 2:00-3:15
This course examines the ongoing struggle to maintain, preserve, and revitalize indigenous and other minority langauges of the Americas. This course will address the pre-Columbian history of indigenous languages, language contact, and the interrelated phenomena of language shift through contact linguistics and social connections. We will look at language endangerment, language death, and the maintenance and survival of endangered languages of the Americas, with special emphasis on Andean indigenous languages. 

PHIL 490: Buddhism and Death
Dr. Sabrina Starnaman
On-Campus, T 3:00-5:30
This course explores death, dying, and the meaning of life from a Buddhist perspective. Topics may include reincarnation, the significance of having a body, Buddhist rituals at death, traditional directions given to the dying and dead to help them with the transition, what happens to Buddhist souls after death, the realms of existence, accomplished monks who die meditating and do not seem to decay, and more. 

WGSS 491/591: Sex and Scandal in Film and Literature
Dr. Allison Hammer
On-Campus, W 3:00-5:30
Film, literature, and media-based exploration of historical and contemporary texts that feature sex and scandal. Using relevant cultural and literary criticism, this class explores how “scandalous” sexualities have their own specific histories and deployments. Topics to be considered include the meaning of the word “scandal” and how different sexual relationships can appear “scandalous” in a given context. The course will question how sex and scandal intersect with race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, class, ability, and more. 

WGSS 495/597: Intersectional Queer Studies
Dr. Caleb McKinley-Portee: WGSS 495, On-Campus, W/F 2:00-3:15
Dr. Allison Hammer: WGSS 597, On-Campus, T/R 2:00-3:15
These courses explore historical and contemporary questions related to intersectional queer studies and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, asexual, and Two-spirit experiences, among others, both in the United States and transnationally. The course will be divided into three units: overview of theories of intersectionality and their applications, politics and activism, and cultural production (film, streaming media, and music). We will be attentive to how concepts and theories in intersectional queer studies have their own specific contextualizations and deployments.

 

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Race and Identity

AFR 499/PHIL 559: Media Ecologies of Race
Dr. Joseph Smith
This course is limited to 5 students who will participate in two field trips that will be funded by the Mississippi Watershed Program grant.  The first trip will take place the week of Feb. 26, 2024 at a day and time to be worked out for convivence with the students.  The second trip April 5-7, 2024 to Montgomery, Alabama with visits to the Lynching Museum, the Legacy Museum, and to historical sites tracing Martin L. King's march from Selma to Montgomery.
This course thinks through how race and media are intimately entwined technologies that affect cultures, environments, quality of life, and the longevity of lived experiences. In invoking the term ecologies, we underscore race and media as key components in a complex web of relations among peoples, localities, institutional structures, and material environments. The course engages multiple theoretical frameworks for students to understand, space, place, and identity including Africana Studies, Black Feminisms, Black Studies, Cultural History, Critical Race Theories, Media Historiographies, Media Studies, and Social History.

AFR 499, Sec 001/PHIL 590 Sec 002/WGSS 491 Sec 001/WGSS 591 Sec 002: Black Male Studies
Dr. Joseph Smith
On-Campus, M 1:00-3:30
How has the category of gender been applied to Black men within theories of Black masculinity? Are Black men the mere pathological excess of white male patriarchy? What is the relationship between theories that posit Black masculinity as hyper-masculine and privileged, and the empirical and material aspects of Black male sexual life? This course will examine the above questions through the emerging field of Black Male Studies. We will focus on the work of Dr. Tommy Curry’s book titled The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. The course will also engage the theories of gender found in bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Sylvia Wynter, David Marriott, Frank B. Wilderson, and Jim Sidanius. Students will be introduced to theories that include Afro pessimism, Social Dominancy Theory, and Black Male Studies.

ENG 381A/493 and CIN 470i Queer: Narratives in Literature, Film, and Visual Culture
Dr. Rafael Frumkin and Heather O'Brien
On-Campus, T 3:00-5:50
In this special topics course team-taught by Rafael Frumkin and Heather O’Brien, we will explore queerness – as an identity, a creative ethos, a politics, and more – in the modalities of the written word, film, and visual art. This class will not only immerse you in the many varieties of queer narratives in contemporary American culture (from the forbidden lesbian love in Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 classic The Price of Salt to BenDeLaCreme’s triumphant self-elimination on season three of RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars), but equip you with the creative and technical tools to create queer narratives of your own. 

WGSS 491/591: Sex and Scandal in Film and Literature
Dr. Allison Hammer
On-Campus, W 3:00-5:30
Film, literature, and media-based exploration of historical and contemporary texts that feature sex and scandal. Using relevant cultural and literary criticism, this class explores how “scandalous” sexualities have their own specific histories and deployments. Topics to be considered include the meaning of the word “scandal” and how different sexual relationships can appear “scandalous” in a given context. The course will question how sex and scandal intersect with race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, class, ability, and more. 

WGSS 495/597: Intersectional Queer Studies
Dr. Caleb McKinley-Portee: WGSS 495, On-Campus, W/F 2:00-3:15
Dr. Allison Hammer: WGSS 597, On-Campus, T/R 2:00-3:15
These courses explore historical and contemporary questions related to intersectional queer studies and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, asexual, and Two-spirit experiences, among others, both in the United States and transnationally. The course will be divided into three units: overview of theories of intersectionality and their applications, politics and activism, and cultural production (film, streaming media, and music). We will be attentive to how concepts and theories in intersectional queer studies have their own specific contextualizations and deployments.

 

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Interactive Learning

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Conflict

HIST 393/493: American Military History, 1607-Present
Dr. Jonathan Bean
Online, asynchronous
This course tackles some of the toughest dilemmas faced by Americans, past and present: how and when to kill, and to defend and protect, while maintaining our humanity as soldiers and citizens. We cannot understand the American military without knowing how it developed over time, from colonial insecurity to global power. We will survey American wars and the evolution of the U.S. military, both professional and semi-professional.