CAN YOU GUESS WHICH SEVEN COURSES ARE ACTUALLY BEING OFFERED THIS YEAR…. AND WHICH THREE WERE COMPLETELY MADE UP BY YOUR FAITHFUL EDITOR? READ ON…
(With thanks to Young America’s Foundation, which has catalogued the ridiculous courses below, as well as many others in all 50 states).
10. Gender & Sexuality Studies 2613: “Compulsory Couplehood.” (Vanderbilt University) Focus on the “marginalization of the single person.”
9. Social Work 7004: “Human Diversity and Oppression.” (Louisiana State University) “Social dynamics of human oppression…” studying the effects of ableism, cissexism, heterosexism, racism, etc. and “implications of human oppression… for social work practice and social policy.”
8. African-American Studies 339-0-20: “Unsettling Whiteness.” (Northwestern University) How whiteness leads to “dominating and violating forms of… doing and ordering, that define, assemble and rule the worlds of white and non-white populations.”
7. Gender and Women’s Studies 446: “Queer of Color Critique.” (University of Wisconsin at Madison) Study the emergent theoretical “field of queer of color critique, a mode of analysis grounded in the struggles and world-making of LGBTQ people of color. …Articulate the role of queer of color analysis in a vision for racial, gender, sexual and economic justice.”
6. Global Studies 3724: “Howard Zinn, Dorothy Day and the Imperatives of Christian Analysis and Life.” (University of Notre Dame). “With guest lectures from the Theology Department, we will explore the liberating revelations of Marxist Howard Zinn and the works of Dorothy Day, as instructive pathways for the society of equity, shared resources and inclusion that the Apostles might have envisioned.”
5. Comparative Literature 104A: “Voice. Dissent. Resistance: Antiracist and Antifascist Discourse and Action.” (Stanford University) The rise of right-wing movements in the United States and Europe signal a resurgence of nativist and ethno-nationalist politics.” “The goal will be to understand how those involved in anti-racist and anti-fascist struggles have invented, created and practiced discourses and actions that attempt to resist racism and fascism.”
4. Brookdale Center for Health Aging 557: “20th Century Struggles of Transgender Elders.” (Hunter College / C.U.N.Y.) Identifies transgender leaders, including formerly closeted-heads of state and Fortune 100 corporations, and how they coped with their realities, usually hiding their true selves. Due to censorship and otherism, this rich historiography has been suppressed from emerging until the 21st century.”
3. Ethnic Studies 3630: “Reproductive Justice.” (University of Utah) “…We will discuss the reproductive health and access of people across genders, sexualities, social class, and race/ ethnicity and immigration status. We discuss past and ongoing reproductive oppression of communities of color, but we will also talk about the ways in which society can support pregnant people and parents.”
2. Criminal Justice 709: “Shifting Police Resources to Social Service Interventions.” (University of Arizona). Building on the consensus that more police action and paramilitary spending is making us less safe, students will explore how social workers, mental health counselors, and nutrition experts can substitute for police response to domestic violence, disturbances of the peace and other situations that we have over-militarized in the past.
…and the NUMBER ONE NUTTIEST COLLEGE COURSE OFFERED THUS FAR in 2022 is:
1.Gender Studies 113: “Sex Work.” (UCLA) “Analysis of variety of contemporary sex work both in U.S. and abroad, from a feminist perspective. Examination of how race, class and gender alter experience and perception of erotic labor….”
(“Courses” numbered #6, #4 and #2 were created by your editor. All others are actual courses being taught in the universities listed.)
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