The School of Mind & Society · the social sciences
Area, Ethnic & Gender Studies
How region, race, and gender organize human experience — studied with sources, not slogans.
Sex, gender, and society: the concepts, the history, and the evidence behind the debates.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — Concepts
Sex and gender: terms and distinctions · A short history of feminist thought · Masculinities
Unit II — Gender at Work
Labor markets and the pay gap · Care work · Gender and the state
Unit III — Bodies & Representation
Representation in media · Gender and health · Global perspectives
Race as a social invention with real consequences: history, measurement, and lived fact.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~26 hours
Unit I — Inventing Race
Race before and after science · Ethnicity, nation, and caste compared · What genetics does and does not say
Unit II — Systems & Structures
Slavery, empire, and their afterlives · Segregation and wealth gaps · Measuring discrimination
Unit III — Identity & Change
Panethnicity and mixed identities · Civil rights movements worldwide · Race in the census
Indigenous nations on their own terms: sovereignty, land, language, and renewal.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — Peoples & Places
Indigenous diversity in the Americas and beyond · Oral tradition as history · Land and relation
Unit II — Colonial Encounters
Treaties and their breaking · Removal, residential schools, and resistance · Law and sovereignty today
Unit III — Resurgence
Language revitalization · Land return and co-management · Indigenous scholarship and method
Communities that live across borders: memory, remittance, and the meaning of home.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~22 hours
Unit I — What Makes a Diaspora
Classic and new diasporas · Exile, trade, and labor migrations · Homeland as an idea
Unit II — Case Studies
The African diaspora · South Asian and Chinese diasporas · Refugee diasporas
Unit III — Living Transnationally
Remittances and return · Second-generation identity · Diaspora politics
China, Japan, and Korea in one frame: shared script, divergent paths, entangled present.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~20 hours
Unit I — Foundations
Geography and agriculture · The classical Chinese inheritance · Buddhism's eastward journey
Unit II — Divergent Modernities
The Meiji transformation · China's long twentieth century · Korea divided
Unit III — East Asia Now
Economic growth compared · Popular culture across borders · Regional tensions and ties