This course examines the conversation on poverty in Washington, DC through scholarship, research, and community-based service-learning with an afterschool program. Horton’s Kids is a local nonprofit that serves families in Ward 8’s Wellington Park neighborhood, where the average household income is below $10,000 a year. Students discover how Horton’s Kids has evolved since 1989 using […]
Author: rcomfort
Global Hip-Hop & Resistance
This course will explore one enduring question: Why and how has hip-hop become equally a tool for revolution and capitalist expansion across the world? As hip-hop has attained the interest of corporate America, it has gone from being vilified by many in the mainstream to a source of expansion for American ideals. As hip-hop began […]
Cities: Destroyed & Reinvented
The turmoil and traumas of modernity have transformed urban spaces into architectural and commemorative battlegrounds. This seminar introduces theories of memory and nationalism alongside controversies over architecture and planning with special case examples from twentieth-century European urban transformations. The dynamic environment of the US capital also informs the course. Intense discussion of weekly readings, short […]
Fight Club: US War & Peace
This course provides an overview of the history and modern issues of peace and war with an emphasis on the institutions in Washington, D.C. (ie. Pentagon, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Amnesty International, State Department, CIA). Through reading ethnographic and historical case studies, as well as theoretical, journalistic, and polemical works, the course explores why and how the […]
Borders, Migration & Globalization
Borders, migration, and globalization are terms invoked by the media and in everyday conversations; but it is important to dig deeply to understand what these terms mean. This course studies policies and the discourse around border security; the cause and effects of international migration; the origin of the term “globalization” and the theories associated with […]
Dying, Death, & the Afterlife
Few ideas have stirred the human imagination as has the question of the end of life. This course examines visions of the process of dying and accounts of a possible second life from Judaism to Hinduism, Dante to Milarepa, The Wings of Desire to the Book of Mormon, offering a wide-ranging examination of pathways to […]
Locating the International
This two-part course begins by exploring how we understand the international. Usually, we tend to think of the international as being defined by the line between the domestic and the foreign. However, this line is often moving, blurrier than we think, and even appears in new places. By engaging students with a range of material […]
Navigating Intimacy
The complexity of forming intimate relationships is an enduring topic of research, fascination and questioning throughout time. This course offers the unique opportunity for an intensive exploration of how the current state of navigating intimacy in emerging adults was shaped through the lens of modern history. Navigating Intimacy exposes students to an exciting and timely […]
Religion and World Politics
Religion can mean different things to different people. While modern secular thought has permeated religious and communal life, traditional understandings of religion are still vibrant while fundamentalist and religion-based nationalisms have surged despite globalization. Wars of culture and power based on the different understandings of the interplay between religion, society and state rage in America […]
Quenching World Water Scarcity
Is there enough drinkable water to meet future global needs? Is water a US national security issue and will twenty-first-century wars be fought over water? Can economically struggling countries develop without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation? Does everyone have a right to clean drinking water or should it be treated like […]