Well, its the first day of the spring quarter. It will go fast, ten weeks of classes, readings, lectures, discussions, grading. Here is the graduate seminar: Political and Racial Humor and Social Control We will investigate the power of political humor, a social practice that constructs discriminatory hierarchies in interpersonal settings and mass media. With the goal of developing a set of principled methods to investigate its manifestations, we will read the outstanding humanistic contributions across history of its social function and power, develop a classification of the types and settings of political humor, and critically evaluate recent social scientific models of its nature. In this iteration of the course, we will specifically focus on racist humor, in the last two centuries. And two undergrad courses: (1) Chicano Language in Public Education We explore the daily plight of Chicanos/as in public education, with a focus on language. The rationalizations of Chicano student failure in the system are critiqued. We examine pertinent language issues: language inequity, bilingual education, standardized testing, as well as language minority elements of NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, and the Common Core State Standards. (2) An undergraduate Apprenticeship course: Reporting Critically on a Public Figure’s Discourse Students will work together to produce a very high quality critical discourse analysis (CDA) of a public figure. We will meet formally at least once a week (but I will meet with small groups if needed), and we will be engaged in a variety of tasks that will require substantial outside team to help the instructor produce a complete, formatted, and referenced 40-page expert report with summary tables (and a high quality data tables). This report will be submitted to a judge in a court proceeding. Much of the work will be computer-aided, but it has to be carefully inspected. The instructor is responsible to teach the students the techniques needed at each point of this process, and remains responsible for the ultimate quality of the report. By the end of the spring quarter, the students will have all the tools to conduct CDA on public figures. Whew!
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 15:54:19 +0000