Course Search Results

Imagine any of the following:

• You start school as a child and are not taught in your home language, the only one you speak well.
• You are arrested by the police, but you don’t understand the language they speak.
• You go to the Department of Motor Vehicles or another government office, and the people speak to you in an unfamiliar language.
• You talk to your friends in public but can’t use the language you use with them in private.
• Your parents give you one name, but the government insists you be called something else.

All around the world these very things happen. How would your life be affected? How do you think you would react?

In this course we examine issues of linguistic human rights: the fundamental right to use one's language and the efforts made to secure those rights and deny them. We explore how language rights are integral to human rights in general and an individual's definition of personal and cultural identity through studying a variety of case studies of the abrogation of language rights locally, nationally, and internationally. Course requirements include one midterm exam, four 1-2 page written assignments, a group project and presentation focusing on a particular case of language rights, and regular discussion posts.

More information on Prof. Souaiaia's website (link: https://ahmed.souaiaia.com/teaching/ ). 

In this course, we will explore the origins and evolution of human rights in the context of Western and Islamic civilizations. First, students will be introduced to a list of rights derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Second, students will examine religious texts since the formative period of the Islamic Civilization (7th century) to see the presence or lack thereof of human rights regimes therein. Third, students will survey the evolution of human rights since Enlightenment. Fourth, students will learn about human rights regimes, institutions, and mechanisms. Lastly, we will consider current events and recent human rights cases in order to highlight the interplay between theory and practice.

This section is offered through Distance and Online Education . Visit our Courses  page to learn more about Distance and Online Education courses at the UI. Contact 319-335-2575 or doe-reg@uiowa.edu  for assistance. 

The European Union, a political project begun after World War II to bring peace to war-ravaged continent, today constitutes the world’s second largest economy and its third largest population. In this course, we will examine the history and political institutions of the European Union and its member states as well as the challenges the EU faces today. Possible topics include Brexit and relations with the United Kingdom, separatism, euroskepticism, the democratic deficit, the migrant crisis, authoritarianism and erosion of the rule of law, the recurrent crises of the eurozone, and the European Union’s prospects for further expansion. Grades will be based on quizzes, short writing assignments, eight low-stakes exams, and class participation.

Examination of contemporary economic geography; types of national economies, uneven development, role of government in shaping economy, multinational corporations; foundation for understanding national economies and economic statistics; contemporary issues including economic globalization, commodification of nature, de-industrialization.

Why are various economic activities located in different places? How are these locations changing? What is globalization and how does it affect local economies? This course, designed for students in all majors, examines the economic geography of the world. During the first 12 weeks, we focus on important factors that affect the location and distribution of economic activities across the globe. Major topics include population distributions, variation in regional economies, natural resource distribution, industrial location, foreign investment, and international trade. The remaining weeks are devoted to examining the position of selected nations and groups of nations in the international economy. Here, the key topics are world economic development, regional economic structures, and regional growth and decline. Class meetings include lectures and discussions. Final grades are based on four assignments, two midterms, the final exam, and participation. One or more sections may be assigned to a TILE classroom.

In the world we live today, what kind of role can anthropology play? We have violence, climate change, economic inequalities, racism and other forms of discrimination. Taking examples from around the world, the class will discuss how everyday people navigate their lives and attempt to address societal challenges amidst constraint. This course offers a venue to think about the problems in relation to anthropology as a scholarly discipline.

This course is designed to help you improve your international literacy. The first part of the course is structured around an International Studies framework with four themes: global interactions, global tensions, global forces, and inside-out and outside-in interactions. The second part of the course focuses on eight complex global challenges, each of which requires multifaceted solutions which transcend international boundaries and reach multiple populations across the globe all at once. By applying an International Studies approach to these eight global challenges, you will begin to appreciate how taking an interdisciplinary approach is becoming not only increasingly relevant, but indispensable. This class consists of two weekly lectures and a discussion session; you are expected to have read the required readings before each session. You are expected to attend all lecture and discussion sessions; This class fulfils the CLAS International and Global Issues general education (GE) requirements.

We first examine the Soviet Union: its founding, political evolution, and what life was like for its citizens. The Soviet period continues to exert a strong influence on politics in the 15 countries that were once part of the Soviet Union as well as on the Soviet satellite countries. Knowing the Soviet legacy is vital for understanding the current issues in all these countries, stretching from the Baltic republics to Central Asia and Mongolia. The course then turns to the politics of the largest Soviet successor country, Russia. Students will examine Russia’s formal political institutions and its informal political processes, the country’s political economy, how Russian citizens interact with the political system, and how Russia deals with other countries. Russia’s political system is a leading example of one type of authoritarianism, making Russia a valuable point of comparison with other countries. Russia is also a regional great power and a significant emerging economy. It represents a major world culture, with contributions to literature, science, music and athletics rivaled by few other countries. Knowledge of Russian politics can therefore benefit all future citizens and should be particularly valuable for those who will go into government service, the non-profit sector, journalism, the military, or international business. This course fulfills a general education requirement in International and Global Issues. It also fulfills a requirement for the following degrees or programs: Political Science International Relations (Regional Politics and Relations), International Studies (Development; or Russian, East European and Eurasian), and the International Business Certificate.

Textbook and materials:

All reading material, including the two assigned books, are available digitally without charge, but you may wish to purchase these two books for convenience:

• Sakwa, Hale and White, Developments in Russian Politics 9 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019); ISBN: 978-1478004806.
• Garrels, Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia (New York: Farrah, Straus & Giroux, 2016); ISBN: 978-1250118110.

In this course, you will learn about all facets of the modern Russia: politics, business, family, traditions, everyday life, social problems and much more. We will also look into Russian culture and mindset to help you understand the life in modern Russia more deeply. The course will feature documentaries and invited guest speakers. The course materials and readings will be available on ICON. This course is taught in English.

The original tree huggers were rural Indian women who in the 1970s wrapped themselves around tree trunks to keep loggers at bay. It is this class of women who today trek long distances in search of firewood to cook dinner on wood stoves now deemed harmful to their own health, local forests, and the earth’s climate. From policy to individual livelihoods and aspirations, this course introduces you to the politics of environment in India from the colonial period (19th century) to today. Gender, class, caste, and indigeneity are key to understanding ‘environmentalism from below’ in India, where tiger protection, forest conservation, mega dams, industrial agriculture, the global patent regime and family planning initiatives have sparked public protest, everyday resistance, and social change. While the course will focus primarily on India, occasional comparative case studies offer insight into the Indian situation. We will reflect on these questions: How is your life connected to environmental and social processes unfolding on the other side of the planet? How do the questions we ask shape the knowledge we produce?  How can we bring together knowledge from different fields to address complex human problems?  Assignments include quizzes, exams, essays, and a final research project. This course assumes no prior knowledge of India or South Asia and meets a General Education requirement in the area of International and Global Issues. It is also an approved course for the Sustainability Certificate. For GWSS majors, it will fill the Global/Comparative Focus distribution requirement. For SJUS majors, it qualifies for two Social Justice Emphasis Areas: The Environment and Ecological Justice and Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies.

Global health as a study of the dynamic relationship between human health and social, biological, and environmental factors that drive the spread of disease; core areas of global health research that may include health inequalities, maternal and child health, infectious diseases, nutrition, environmental health, and health interventions.

This class offers a comprehensive introduction to the field of Global Health Studies.

Within global health, it is imperative to situate health and disease within historical and geographical contexts. We will do this by exploring how sociocultural, economic, environmental, and political systems impact medicine, disease, and health in profound ways. As we become more interconnected, global health fundamentally asks us to consider why health inequities continue to persist (and even worsen) both between countries and within countries, and what we can do about it.  Global health scholars are also invested in understanding the tensions within practicing clinical medicine across cultures and the many systems of healing and medicine beyond Western biomedical approaches.

Course subthemes include the interplay between health and race, gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, as well the political and economic forces that shape global health policies and practices. Course topics include, but are not limited to health inequalities, maternal and child health, infectious diseases, nutrition, environmental health, and health interventions.

Major course assignments include attendance & participation; weekly reading questions; weekly quizzes; critical reflection paper; short research analysis.

From the favelas of Brazil to the townships of South Africa, the social dynamics of urban places has served as a long-standing area of interest in the discipline of anthropology. Today more than half of the world’s population lives in cities, with this number projected to grow further. In order to address the growth and importance of urban social formations, the course will take different approaches to understanding the culture of cities. Class readings will derive from anthropology, history, geography and urban studies in order to offer a multidisciplinary perspective on urban space and society. Further, case studies will be drawn from the United States, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere in order to offer a cross-cultural perspective.

As we move into the twenty-first century, it has become common to think of social life as increasingly connected across formerly separate domains of existence. In keeping with this shift, this course will take an approach to understanding culture and society that takes seriously the interconnected social, political, economic and cultural dynamics associated with the contemporary phase of globalization. For the analysis of urban space and society, much work has focused on the rise of neoliberal models of socio-economic organization and their effects on everyday people. This point of focus will serve as a common thread in the course, which will give students the requisite knowledge to answer the following questions over the course of the semester:

• How do urban environments and the experience of urban space influence the behavior of people?
• What social and institutional mechanisms do groups of people develop in order to meet their material and cultural needs in urban spaces?
• How does social inequality manifest in urban settings?
• How have groups of people gone about changing challenging social conditions they face in their everyday lives? This course will take a cross-cultural approach in introducing students to the ways that anthropologists and social scientists have understood the cultural complexity of urban areas around the world. Within this broad focus, the emphasis will be on how people living in urban areas navigate their lives within a set of historically particular political, economic, institutional and cultural conditions.

This is an undergraduate introduction to the visual arts of Africa. No prior study of art history is necessary. This is a one-semester study of the sculpture, pottery, weaving, architecture, and other art forms of Africa from the Sahara to the Cape of Good Hope. The focus is on arts in cultural context. That means you will learn a great deal about the lives and history of many African peoples. You will see many, many slides of objects being made and used by African peoples to understand what the objects meant to the people who created them, and how the objects mirrored their social, educational, political, and economic systems.

Requirements for the online class include written participation in discussion sections, a midterm exam,  a final exam, several short quizzes and a short paper.  All readings will be available on ICON. Please note: There is a lot of writing in the discussion sections, and it will be very difficult for late enrollments to catch up after the first week of classes.

The demands on earth’s resources have never been greater, leading to a wide array of environmental impacts on a grand scale. This introductory course profiles the leading global environmental issues of our time, particularly those associated with land use, population change, pollution, energy, and climate change.  The class adopts an interdisciplinary perspective that emphasizes their causes, consequences, and solutions. The major goals of the course are to: 1) explore the most urgent global environmental issues and their relationships with physical, social, biological, and economic processes; and 2) introduce you to basic geographic concepts in the context of current environmental challenges.

This course explores the increasingly prominent position of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in post-Cold-War international affairs against the backdrop of twentieth-century history. A substantial focus will be on Germany's role in the EU and the changing relationship between Europe and the United States, but lectures will also address German art and business.  Grading will be based on a combination of discussion postings, papers, and exams. Taught in English.

Course readings will be posted on ICON. No textbook is required.

How does history help to explain our interconnected world? Introduction to international and global thinking through a variety of topics.

Examination of contemporary global society, focusing on world regions, including physical environment, culture, economy, and politics of each region and relationships between regions; analysis of current conflicts within and between regions, including social, religious, political, and economic issues.

Have you ever wondered how the Olympic Games started? Why cricket matches can last for days? Why millions of Parisians poured into the streets when France won the World Cup in 2018? How athletes become national heroes? Why a hockey match is displayed on the Canadian 5-dollar bill? How Lance Armstrong hid his doping for so long?

In this class, we will study sports from all over the world, focusing on what they tell us about national cultures. We will begin by asking ourselves, “What is sport?” and learning about the rise of mass sporting culture at the end of the 19th-Century with the Industrial Revolution. We will then examine the history of the Olympic Games; soccer in Europe, Africa and Latin America; cricket in England, Australia, India and the Caribbean; traditional wrestling in Senegal; the Tour de France; hockey in Canada. We will end our study by examining other sports in a global context, including tennis, golf, track and field, and baseball.

This course is designed to provide students with a global perspective on sport. At the end of the semester, students will be able to:

1. Examine the world from the global perspective of other cultures and peoples through the study of the role of sport in different societies.
2. Explain the histories of various sports, including their origins in Western Europe and spread throughout the world, often via colonialism.
3. Describe specific sporting cultures such as game rules, fan bases, players, location, rituals and protocol, and important sites.
4. Explain the role of sport in the formation of national identities.
5. Analyze contemporary sports events and link them to past occurrences.

This course explores the long and complex relationship between the United States and France, particularly as revealed through cultural encounters and experiences.  We will focus on differing customs, lifestyles, ways of thinking, attitudes towards art, architecture, food, wine, travel, tourism, mass media, language differences and stereotypes.

More information on Prof. Souaiaia's website.

Women in Islam and the Middle East is a course about women within and without the Muslim community. It focuses on women from the early time periods of the rise of Islam until modern times. We will consider the textual references to women in the primary religious texts (Qur’ân and the Sunnah) and references and stories of prominent women as told in the Islamic history books. In order to provide a comprehensive exploration of the status of women and gender issues, the course will also rely on interviews, guest lectures, images, documentaries, and films produced from a variety of perspectives and through the lenses of a number of disciplines.In this course, we aim to explore the role and status of women in the modern and pre-modern Middle East with respect to institutions such as the law, religious practices, work, politics, family, and education. Additionally, we will examine themes of social protocols, sexuality, gender roles, and authenticity as contested norms.The course will also discuss contemporary Muslim women, the factors informing constructions of gender in Islam and the Middle East. We will focus on contemporary Muslim women in a number of different cultural contexts in order to highlight a variety of significant issues including, veiling and seclusion, kinship structures, violence, health, feminist activism, literary expression, body and mind, and other themes.

Men of honor, loyalty, and respect: Hollywood has an enduring fascination with mobsters. Over the last fifty years, successful movies by Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, and Martin Scorsese have contributed to shape the myth of the Mafia and keep it alive in the American imaginary. This course will explore this myth and re-discuss its function through a selection of American and Italian films. It will investigate the multifaceted nature of Italian organized crime considering its social and economic impact and its local, national, and international dimensions. It will analyze how 21st century Italian cinema portrays the Mafia and pays tribute to the anti-mafia resistance. This journey from commonplace images to a more complex picture of the Mafia phenomenon will help students examine the role of media in shaping the collective imaginary and acquire a deeper, broader, and more critical understanding of global issues. Requirements include class attendance and participation, writing exercises, a group project, a midterm and a final exam.

Films are a fundamental component of the syllabus for ITAL:2770:0001 – The Mafia and the Movies. Since this course involves screenings, the instructor needs extra time to fully cover course materials.

This course is an introduction to the study of modern Latin American politics, with a specific focus on roadblocks to economic and political development within the region. In particular we will explore Latin America?s cycles of democratic and authoritarian rule, and its political institutions.

This course is for students with an interest in learning about the Islamic civilization, the religious practices and beliefs, and/or the history or the regions where Muslims are in the majority.  We will examine the traditions and main social and legal institutions of Islam. Arguably, Islam, as a major system of beliefs and practices in the world, affects both Muslims and non-Muslims. Consequently, besides examining the basic tenets, texts, and ideas of the Islamic civilization, this course focuses on the variety of ways in which Muslims and non-Muslims have understood and interpreted Islam. We will review the discussions surrounding the life of the Prophet of Islam, Islamic pre-modern and modern history, the place and role of individuals and society, the legal and economic status of women, and Islamic governments and movements. As a survey course, we will examine these topics through an interdisciplinary approach: we will apply textual, legal/normative, anthropological, geographical, sociological, analytical, linguistic, and historical methodologies.

Surveying the civilization of a vast region that includes present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, this course will impart basic geographic, political, religious, cultural, economic and social information from antiquity to the present, and foster an appreciation of the region's lasting achievements in art, literature, science, social organization, religion and philosophy.

The instructor is Professor Fred Smith.

Survey of key issues in international relations, including causes of wars, different types of theories of international relations, international organizations, and global environmental problems.

Politics worldwide, including all regions and levels of development; wide-ranging themes, including regime types, political change, political culture, public opinion, government structures, state-society relationship, electoral systems, public policy issues.

Comparative politics is the field that uses evidence to answer questions about the workings of domestic politics by comparing the experiences of different countries. Our study of the topic begins with countries relatively similar to the one most of you know best, the United States. We will investigate why the advanced industrial democracies have pursued such different social and economic policies, the policies that have the most direct impact on the wellbeing of their citizens. In doing so, we will also learn how political institutions differ across democracies and the effects that these differences have on politics. During the second half of the course, we will turn to recently democratizing countries to study how authoritarian regimes maintain power, the circumstances in which they give way to democracy, and the problems often faced by new democratic governments in the developing world. Throughout the course, we will consider how comparison allows us to draw conclusions about political processes. Grades will be based on quizzes, short writing assignments, eight low-stakes exams, and class participation.

How sociopolitical life in China is shaped by political structure, economic modernization, and traditional political culture; topics include historical, political, economic, and social conditions in contemporary China; course objectives are to broaden student's horizons in global affairs by learning about a foreign country that seems completely different and to sharpen student's analytical and communication skills.

One of the most significant world events in the 21st century is the rise of China. Today, China’s economic and political influence can be felt in almost every corner of the world. Yet the interaction between China and the rest of the world, particularly the Western world, is often challenged by misperceptions, stereotypes, biases, fear and even ignorance on both sides. The goal of this course is to provide a comprehensive understanding of how China has achieved its fast growth, the problems that are troubling its further development and interaction with the outside world, and its future role in international politics.

This course is divided into three components. First, it will review the historical legacies of Chinese society, including the 19th century encounter with the Western world, the communist revolution, the Cultural Revolution, the 1989 Tiananmen protest, and how these legacies contribute to the recent domestic political developments and Chinese foreign policy in the 21^st century. Second, it will examine the current Chinese political system, its political culture and the relationship between the state and the public. Third, the course will look into several political, social and economic policies and their consequences. We will cover some hot topics in Chinese politics and society, including economic inequality, ethnic relations, freedom of press and media, contentious politics, gender and women rights, and among others.

Sport as both a global and local phenomenon; influence of global economic, political, and cultural forces on local sporting expressions, experiences, and identities; global sporting cultures from cricket to capoeira; global sporting spectacles from the Olympics and Paralympics to the FIFA World Cup; global sporting celebrities and athlete migrants from Maria Sharapova and Christiano Rinaldo to Yao Ming and Dominican Republic baseball; global sporting production, consumption, and development from global labor and environmental concerns to sport for development and peace.

Sport is everywhere in the truest sense of the word; a nearly cultural universal. However, while sport involvement (both in terms of participation and spectating) could be said to be a globally ubiquitous practice, sport continues to act as a vehicle for the expression of local (in most cases, national or regional) cultural difference. From Argentina to Zimbabwe, sport plays an important role in forming the experiences and identities of people living in varying differing cultural, political, and economic conditions. Thus, sport could be said to be both a global and local phenomenon. 

The specific aim of the course is to encourage students to consider how various sport practices, bodies, products, and spectacles operate and are experienced as manifestations of the global-local nexus. By examining sport within differing cultural settings, it becomes evident how contemporary sport cultures are influenced by the workings of global cultural, political, and economic forces, while simultaneously seeking to express local conditions and identities. 

The course is organized around 4 primary modules - global sport practices (origins of global sport and its circulation), bodies (sporting migrants and celebrities), products (global labor forces and transnational corporations), and spectacles (global sport mega-events, tourism and activism) - with topics in each explored through a variety of case studies and related discussions, debates, and presentations.

The selection of countries to be studied includes Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Palestine and Israel. Topics to be studied include: The Foundations of Islam, the Legacy of Western Colonial Rule and Imperialism, Government Structures and Processes, Political Leaders and Oppositional Movements, the Political Economy of Oil, War and Regional Conflicts, plus Religious and Nationalist Ideologies. The course focuses on political behavior in the Muslim world and on the institutions and social systems that shape and are shaped by that behavior. Through comparative political inquiry we will evaluate the operation of government institutions in the context of specific historical legacies, natural resources, economic structure, population characteristics, and geographic position of the region.

Requirements include attendance at lectures, completion of required readings in preparation for discussion section participation, writing a research paper, and taking two midterms and one final exam. The course is designed to meet the comprehensive criteria of the GE Program as well as the criteria for the Social Sciences and Intl and Global Issues areas.

The course is designed to show the past and current global issue in women rights violations in North Caucasus. The North Caucasus is a mountainous region situated between the Black and Caspian Sea and Iran, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Till today Caucasian women experience till today many difficulties: abductions for marriage, early and arranged marriages, polygamy, domestic violence, and honor killing. They very often become the instrument of war, blood feuds and suicide terrorists.