Political, Social Sciences & Society   

Since 2008, white supremacist movements have become part of mainstream American politics and society. The result is growing racial hatred, violence, domestic terrorism, discrimination, and attacks on democracy. The instructor will lecture on the problem and solutions. The primary source is the new book, Out of Hiding: Extremist White Supremacy and How It Can Be Stopped, written by three of America’s experts on the topic. Class members are not required to purchase or read the book. We will have at least one guest speaker.

2024 is the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The class will first look at the decision and the Supreme Court that produced it; move on to the law arising from the decision; examine the factors affecting the realization of the goals of the decision; and conclude with a discussion about where we are as a nation and where we need to go in terms of successful public education.

This course explores the art, history, and cultures of the American Southwest, from ancient Native American homeland to the contemporary cultural mosaic. We begin some 2,000 years ago, with the homeland of the Ancestral Pueblo people, visiting such archaeological sites as Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and Canyon de Chelly. We then turn to the historical communities of the Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo peoples and their Navajo and Apache neighbors. We trace the impact of the coming of the Spanish in the 16th and 17th centuries, and then the arrival of Anglo traders and settlers, and the genesis of the Southwest as a multicultural mecca from the 1920s to the present day.

Do you ever want more information when presented with new cultural practices, beliefs, and behaviors? To help you develop your agility and competency to better understand our evolving culture, this course will investigate our social worlds and how to sensitively engage with them. We’ll use frameworks to explore “similarity” and “otherness,” particularly around ideas of gender, race, age, and DEIA. We’ll explore ways to navigate uncomfortable or difficult conversations while expanding cultural awareness.

This course explores five big trends in the human and physical geographies of our planet. It begins with investigation from a global perspective and then explores how it similarly or differently impacts regions of the globe. The five big issues are climate change, human migration, endangered languages, population growth, and urbanization.

Sustainability has become an increasingly important consideration in global, regional, and local arenas. This course will offer participants foundational knowledge about sustainability related to economic, environmental, and equity issues. Using the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as our framework, we will discuss how the three domains of sustainability relate to challenges of climate change, food security, and racial justice, among others. Concepts of climate anxiety will be interwoven in the course as we discuss tangible solutions to these issues and historical context that has led us here. Pitt’s Oakland campus will serve as a hyper-local case study.

In this course, we will discuss what defines a culture, different cultural theories, and cross-cultural communication. Working and living in a diverse community allows the chance to gain knowledge and understanding of cultural differences, values, communication styles, and behaviors. We will discuss ways that communication varies across cultures, help participants to recognize those differences, and provide strategies to bridge communication styles. There will be many fun activities for people to share their own cultural experiences and discuss cultural scenarios.

Most media coverage of the Supreme Court concerns its decisions interpreting the Constitution on high profile matters like the right to abortion, the right to bear arms, or the constitutionality of race-based affirmative action. Far less attention goes to cases accounting for about half of the Court's docket: those requiring the interpretation of federal statutes passed by Congress. Through consideration of several cases, ranging from the amusing and seemingly trivial (is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?) to the very consequential (will Obamacare survive?), this course will explore the ways in which the Court dissects Congress's enacted words and tries to discern its ever-elusive intent.

This course is a study of Irish culture in Ireland as well as in the Irish diaspora overseas over the past ten years. Members will explore aspects of Irish culture and traditions still vibrant and thriving today. The course will be conducted in English. Discussions and lectures will be organized around themes from Gaelic games, to music, to Irish language, and will include current cultural changes and advances in Ireland and among its people. 

This course explores the political ramifications of how police, policing, law enforcement, and prisons are portrayed in the media. We'll consider things like the "CSI Effect", COPS, C.O.P.S. (yes, those are different), CHiPS, Batman, The Wire, The Shield, Blue Bloods, Bad Boys, Hawaii Five-O, Law and Order, The Andy Griffith Show, and even Paw Patrol. The course will examine how policing in the American context is constructed, narrativized, and shared via media sources. We'll then talk about the politics of this portrayal, and how lived experience (especially that of marginalized groups) clashes with the mass public's held notions, creating real concern for policy change.

The media tells us that candidates are up in the polls, then they are down in the polls. That unemployment is up. A recession is looming (or not). That every candidate who does X goes on to win (or lose.) What does it all mean? How accurate is all this? Sure, the candidates and media will claim to explain it, but do any of them know what the numbers really mean? In this class, we will consider how to read opinion polls, graphs, and charts, and make sense of all the technical data that candidates and media like to cite, so that you can interpret it all for yourself.

 

This course will be a discussion of the characteristics that make a great president. We will examine those presidents that history has judged to be exceptional. We will also look at those who have failed or have not quite succeeded and why they did not make the grade. We will consider interesting facts that explore why the status of some presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Andrew Jackson has fallen recently.