The seminar will examine civil rights and racial justice initiatives conducted by grass-roots and established civil rights organizations over the past three decades. The seminar will explore in what areas progressive leaders have achieved progress and where the nation and leaders have made little progress. Despite the election of Barack Obama as president in 2009-2017, inequality among Black Americans in some areas such as income, education, housing, and access to health care, remain significantly behind White Americans. The seminar will examine civil rights and race relations through the life of George Floyd, an African American who met a brutal death at the hands of a white policeman. We will also assess the emergence of new organizations, such as the Black Lives Matter movement and the implications of aggressive policing in African American communities.

The United States Civil War continues to resonate throughout a variety of cultural forms and media. This summer seminar will help students to develop projects related to the literary, material, and visual culture of the war and its aftermath. In particular, this seminar will provide students with training in using primary source documents, historical newspapers, periodical databases, and other digital resources to undertake research on the nineteenth-century United States. The seminar will provide experience in interdisciplinary research methods, using primary and secondary sources, with particular attention to the visual and material archives of the era, including photography, painting, and printing. The seminar will be framed for participants to consider the war in its widest possible contexts, not limited to the battlefield, but rather to consider relationally the voices and works of women, children, disabled people, African Americans, and others who were, at different times, excluded from military service. Readings will provide historical and visual context for the era, which students are invited to pursue further depending on their research interests. At the end of the two weeks, all students will have a research question and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources that will be the basis for their honors project.

This interdisciplinary course delves into the web of relationships between climate change, nature, humanities, arts, and sciences, which form the foundations of the human predicament in the Age of Mass Extinction. Through exploration of environmental humanities, eco-spirituality, eco-feminism, eco-psychology, climate science, and the economics of ecology, we will engage with a diverse range of thinkers and creators, including philosophers, historians, authors, scientists, philanthropists, climate activists, bloggers, visual artists, and movie directors. The course bridges the realms of visual and textual analysis, eschewing standard assignments and instead culminating in experiential and creative projects that connect students directly with their personal experiences of nature. These projects encourage students to deeply engage with their own subjective creativity, realities, and identities. Students will become well-versed in environmental humanities through critical examination of conceptual issues, contemporary research, and examples from media, music, audiovisual sources, as well as current fiction and non-fiction. Special emphasis on examples and case studies will illuminate the socio-political, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of climate change and environmental issues. Lectures and discussions will be complemented by student project presentations. Our central objective is to empower students to cultivate a comprehensive understanding of how environmental, socio-political, cultural, and spiritual systems intersect.

This course examines digital capitalism as an economic and social system where digital technologies, such as the internet, data analytics, and automation, play a significant role in the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Through investigation of real-world case studies, interdisciplinary readings, and interactive discussions, students will delve into the transformative effects of advanced digital technologies on labor markets, job structures, and social organization during the seminar. We will discuss specific app technology such as Uber App, DoorDash, Lyft, Amazon, Apple Music, Obsidian, ChatGTP, and a range of social media applications (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok). The course emphasizes independent research projects, encouraging students to engage in original inquiries, analyze empirical data, and contribute to ongoing academic conversations surrounding the late-phase digital economy. Students will develop research-based projects during the 2024-2025 academic year under the guidance of the faculty director. During the seminar sessions, students will participate in a series of writing workshops that involve reading, providing constructive comments, and workshopping their ideas, topics, outlines, research design and methods, and project timelines. The primary objective is to finalize a comprehensive project proposal by the conclusion of the two weeks, thus ensuring a solid plan to carry out during the academic year.

This seminar uses a case study approach with a focus on our institution, Texas A&M University. Our discussion and research topics include: 1) the question of land (both the land we physically inhabit at the university and the lands expropriated under federal and state action), 2) the question of Indigenous students, faculty, and staff at the university (from its founding to the present), and 3) the question of the Native origins of the university’s research collections (including but not limited to materials and remains covered by NAGPRA). This seminar explores historical and anthropological evidence of Indigenous wealth that built and still empowers the university includes but also exceeds land/ territory. Thinking of “wealth” capaciously to include the cultural and intellectual capital of Native people as students, faculty, and staff, as well as Native knowledge and heritage as evident in material artifacts, human remains, and botanical specimens that continue to generate wealth for the university as the basis for ongoing research by faculty, staff, and students. Building on this foundation, student scholars will be able to choose a research project related to the repatriation of Native American remains currently held by Texas A&M University. Their historical and anthropological research projects will directly contribute to the successful repatriation of human remains to the appropriate descendant communities.