UW Bothell Course Descriptions
UW Tacoma Course Descriptions
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Detailed course offerings (Time Schedule) are available for
AES 150 In-Justice for All: Intersection of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in the United States (5) SSc, DIV
Focusing on pre-Columbus era to 1970, students develop an understanding of how race, ethnicity, nationality, class, and gender impact all Americans - especially those viewed as racial ethnic minorities.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 150
AES 151 Identities, Cultures, and Power Across American Ethnic Groups (5) SSc, DIV
Provides an introduction to the major theories, debates, and issues concerning the study of identities and cultures of American ethnic groups as they are constituted through relationships of power. Course equivalent to: BIS 165.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 151
AES 211 Environmental Justice (5) SSc, DIV
Examines introductory studies of environmental racism and ecological injustice in the United States and select areas of the world. Reviews environmental justice theories and methods applied to risk science, ecosystem management, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable development. Includes comparative studies of social movements for "eco-justice." Offered: jointly with ANTH 211/ENVIR 211.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 211
AES 212 Comparative American Ethnic Literature (5) A&H/SSc, DIV
Reviews selected texts by African American, American Indian, Asian American, Chicano/Latino, and Euro American writers. Includes a comparison of how texts envision and interpret a diverse American culture and social, political relations among peoples of the United States. Explores the power of cultural agency in the creation of America's literature.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 212
AES 220 Comparative American Ethnic Cinema (5) SSc/A&H, DIV
Explores selected works of Black, Asian American, Chicanx/Latinx, and/or Indigenous cinema and related media, from an interdisciplinary comparative/relational approach. Examines their historical connections to the intellectual, political, and aesthetic traditions of ethnic studies. Offered: AWSpS.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 220
AES 250 Race in the American University (5) SSc
Racial integration in American institutions of higher education. Entry to, and impact on, American universities by people of color. History of ethnic studies and its relation to other disciplines.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 250
AES 312 Race and the Radical Imagination (5) SSc/A&H, DIV
Works of speculative culture and experimental writing in Black, Asian American, Chicanx/Latinx, and Indigenous literary and aesthetic traditions, such as Afrofuturism. Includes popular genres like sci-fi and horror, alongside demanding, innovative, and visionary texts. Considers their relation to radical and revolutionary political movements. Offered: AWSpS.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 312
AES 322 Gender, Race, and Class in Social Stratification (5) SSc, DIV
The intersection of race, class, and gender in the lives of women of color in the United States from historical and contemporary perspectives. Topics include racism, classism, sexism, activism, sexuality, and inter-racial dynamics between women of color groups. Prerequisite: GWSS 200. Offered: jointly with GWSS 300.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 322
AES 333 Race and Ethnicity in the U.S. Military (5) SSc
The experiences of racial minorities in the military. Topics include segregation of units, desegregation of military, career limitations and opportunities, minority women, military families, racism, and role of veterans in civil rights struggles after service.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 333
AES 335 History of African Americans and Sports (5) SSc, DIV
Development of sport in the US and its importance for US culture and society. Covers increased centrality of athletic competition as part of the new leisure time in the late - 19th century, revival of the Olympic movement, racial segregation/integration, today's American notions of celebrity and social style.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 335
AES 340 Race, Ethnicity, and Education (5) SSc, DIV
Focuses on critical social and political dimensions of race and ethnicity as they relate to issues and practices of pedagogy and power in American education. Considers schooling as sites at which contemporary politics of diversity play out amidst increasingly diverse demographics of students, teachers, and parents.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 340
AES 345 Ethnographies of School Inequalities (5) SSc, DIV
Explores various issues and practices of school inequalities through the methods of critical ethnography.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 345
AES 361 Ethnicity, Business, Unions, and Society (5) SSc
Interrelationships of ethnicity, business, unions, and the larger society. Examines financial and sociological structure of business and manufacturing sector, how this sector performs, and consequences of performance for selected ethnic groups in United States. Offered: jointly with SOC 363.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 361
AES 370 Race, Gender, and Class in the Global Economy: Asian and Latina Workers (5) SSc, DIV
Examines the lives and labor of Asian and Latina workers through structures of opportunity and inequality to examine how race and gender mark specific forms of labor as feminized and racialized, and thus precarious and devalued. Contextualizes social, political, and economic implications of colonialism and imperialism, economic restructuring, global capitalism, immigration policies, and welfare reform in the United States. Recommended: either AES 150, AES 151, POL S 249/HSTCMP 249/SOC 266, or HSTAA 353/LABOR 353. Offered: jointly with GWSS 370/LABOR 370; WSp.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 370
AES 380 Race, Ethnicity, and United States Public Policy (5) SSc
Explores the causes of disproportionate representation for people of color among the country's impoverished population; drawing on analysis of race/ethnicity, poverty, public policy, (including competing theories), public policy approaches, and ethnographic work addressing the causes and perpetuation of poverty in America.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 380
AES 389 Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Media (5) SSc, DIV
Introduction to media representations of gender, race, and sexuality. Offered: jointly with COM 389/GWSS 389.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 389
AES 398 Human Trafficking in an Era of Globalization: Forced Labor, Involuntary Servitude and Corporate, Civic Responsibility (5) SSc, DIV
Examines the causes of the human trafficking industry and analyses possible strategies to prevent and minimize the trade. Highlights includes essays, speakers and films on forced migration and labor rights, international trade agreements, human rights, public health, how to improve survivor services, ethical sourcing and sustainable development, and humanizing the impacts of human trafficking. Recommended: any previous AES, AAS, AFRAM, AIS, or CHSTU course. Offered: Sp.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 398
AES 404 Advanced American Ethnic Studies in Humanities (5, max. 15) A&H, DIV
Comparative interdisciplinary study of race and ethnicity. Examines experiences and cultural expressions of racialized communities in the U.S. and its diasporas from a cultural studies' perspective. Explores how expressive cultures engage and transform racial formations and their intersections, animating social relations of everyday life and reshaping structures of power. Offered: AWSpS.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 404
AES 405 Advanced American Ethnic Studies in Social Science (5, max. 15) SSc, DIV
Advanced study of race and ethnicity in a critical and comparative context. Examines social, cultural, historical, political and economic experiences of racialized communities in AES major. Social science theories and methods used to study various topics, including education; migration, refugee, carceral and legal studies; politics and public policy, social movements, global health, and environment. Offered: AWSpS.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 405
AES 440 History and Memory: Race, Archives, and Afterlives (5) SSc/A&H, DIV
Addresses questions such as: What is memorialized and archived and what is forgotten? How is history racialized and how are racial histories told? Who produces knowledge and what counts as knowledge? Examines how official and unofficial discourses deal with memory, violence, silence, haunting, history, and subjectivity, through historical and cultural studies approaches. Topics may include U.S. empire and war, slavery, and colonialism. Recommended: any AES, AAS, CHSTU, AFRAM, GWSS, or AIS course. Offered: WSp.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 440
AES 442 Undocumented Immigrant Communities (5) SSc, DIV
Sociological examination of the concepts of undocumented, citizen, and the structuring of (il)legality as they are situated in axes of power, specifically in racialized and gendered contexts. Topics include identity formation and experiences across communities, i.e., UndocuLatino, UndocuBlack, UndocuAsian and Pacific Islander, and UndocuQueer. Institutional outcomes in migration, law, labor, education, carceral spaces, and health. Recommended: AES 150; AES 151; AES 322; AES 461; and AES 462. Fluency with discourses in race, ethnicity, and gender as well as a basic familiarity in studies of transnational migrations, inequality and globalization. Offered: AWSp.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 442
AES 446 Music in American Cultures (3) A&H/SSc
Compares musical history and experience of selected American cultures that have fed into the American musical mainstream or had significant popularity on its periphery. Case studies may include African Americans, Latino/a Americans, Jewish Americans, Asian Americans, or European Americans. Considerations of social identity as well as musical styles. Offered: jointly with MUSIC 446.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 446
AES 450 American Ethnic Health: Race, Gender, and Status Groups (5) SSc, DIV
Introduces newer social science and health science related work on race, ethnicity, culture, socio-cultural, and environmental issues affecting American racial minorities. Considers differential rates of physical and medical problems such as cardiovascular disease rates, diabetes statistics, low birth weight children, etc. Offered: AWSp.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 450
AES 461 Comparative Ethnic Race Relations in the Americas (5) SSc
Sketches the ethnoracial systems operating in American society. Studies these systems as systems and examines their institutional and interpersonal dynamics. Compares ethnoracial systems in order to arrive at empirical generalizations about race/ethnorelations in the Americas. Offered: jointly with SOC 461.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 461
AES 462 Comparative Race and Ethnic Relations (5) SSc, DIV
Race and ethnicity as factors of social differentiation in a number of Western and non-Western societies in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Offered: jointly with SOC 462.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 462
AES 480 Critical Migration and Refugee Studies (5) SSc, DIV
How immigration and displacement complicate race and ethnicity as forms of social differentiation. Reviews theories of refugee and migration studies, exploring the historic role that sovereignty, borders, movement, and displacement have had on the formation of national and social identities as a result of Western intervention, capitalism, conflict, and war. Course overlaps with: T HIST 376. Recommended: AES 150 or AES 151.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 480
AES 487 Cultures and Politics of Environmental Justice (5) SSc, DIV
Comparative survey of environmental justice movements in the world with focus on critical studies of environmental racism, risk, and sustainable development. Provides theoretical knowledge and research methods incorporating the study of equity and autonomy in environmental impact and risk assessment and other aspects of environmental policy politics. Offered: jointly with ANTH 487.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 487
AES 489 Black Cultural Studies (5) SSc, DIV
Examines how images of blackness have been (re)constructed through identity formation and entrenched inequality. Topics include black women's bodies, black men's bodies, blackface minstrelsy, black queer studies, black power, and black hybridities. Offered: jointly with COM 489/GWSS 489.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 489
AES 490 Representing Beyond the Binaries: Mixing Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Media (5) SSc, DIV
Cultural studies approach to examining the mixed formations that race, sexuality, and gender take in the contemporary United States media. Draws upon multi-disciplinary scholarship in examination of the media. Offered: jointly with COM 490/GWSS 486.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 490
AES 494 Community Practicum and Internship (3-5, max. 10)
Faculty supervised practicum and internship experience in variety of settings and agencies, e.g., ethnic specific agencies, government and civic community-based offices. Students contribute skills and knowledge to respective communities and gain experience by working with professionals and community organizers. Credit/no-credit only.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 494
AES 496 Honors Senior Thesis (5-10, max. 10)
Supervised individual and independent/tutorial study for AES Departmental Honors students involving research, writing, project completion, and completion of a major 30-page paper or commensurate project. Offered: AWSpS.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 496
AES 498 Special Topics in American Ethnic Studies (1-5, max. 15) SSc
Designed to provide the student an opportunity to concentrate on one specific aspect of American Ethnic Studies through a comparative, interdisciplinary approach.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 498
AES 499 Independent Study or Research (1-5, max. 10)
Independent readings and/or research under the supervision of a faculty member.
View course details in MyPlan: AES 499
