Social Change Courses @ Northeastern

Course Number: LAW7495

Department: Law (LAW)

During this course, students will examine the law of criminal investigation. The primary focus of the course will be to present and discuss leading Supreme Court decisions in the field of constitutional criminal procedure. Students will study decisions which apply the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments and the Due Process Clause to the criminal justice process and the procedures through which criminal laws are enforced.

Course Number: ARCH 3370

Department: Architecture (ARCH)

Focus will be on “Extraction Landscapes” that historicizes the extraction capital from the eighteenth century to the present. The class would look at commodities (oil, sugar, gold, etc.) and examine their extraction and refinement methods, systems of exchange, and waste streams. A significant focus from a social justice standpoint would be labor politics of extraction, geopolitics of exchange, and environmental pollutants. The class will be a combination of reading seminar looking at scholarship on resource histories, and a design-research seminar (where groups of students research a specific commodity and produce visual data regarding extraction, refinement, and waste), or some combination.

Course Number: COMM 3409

Department: Communication Studies (COMM)

Offers an Advanced Writing in the Disciplines (AWD) course. Dedicated to teaching students to write scholarly arguments in the discipline of public advocacy and rhetoric and to translate that work for a general audience. Features both an academic approach to writing in the field of rhetoric and a practical approach to writing persuasively for general audiences.

Course Number: SOCL 4526

Department: Sociology (SOCL)

Examines the comparative racialization of Blacks and Asians in the Americas and relations between these communities. Introduces sociological theories of race/ethnicity, a chronology of Afro-Asian relations in the United States, and the impact of 1970s deindustrialization and post–1965 Asian immigration. Covers the internationalism of Black and Asian leaders (e.g., W.E.B. du Bois and Mao Tse-Tung) in the developing nations and the overlapping Civil Rights, Black Power, and Asian American movements.

Course Number: THTR 2200

Department: Theatre (THTR)

Introduces students to the art of Black theatre and cultivates an appreciation of the local Black theatre scene. Black theatre in the United States has a 200-year history that is important to understand for insight into contemporary Black theatre in the Boston area. Traces the growth of Black theatre from minstrel shows to James Brown’s “King Shotaway” in 1823, to William Wells Brown’s “The Escape” in 1858, to contemporary performances. Surveys the historical influence of the Harlem Renaissance, World War II, the Ethiopian Art Theatre, the Federal Theatre Project, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Black Arts Repertory Theatre to situate August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, and George Wolfe as heirs to this rich heritage. Includes attendance at local theatre productions.

Course Number: LAW7608

Department: Law (LAW)

This course contrasts critical-theoretic approaches to law (e.g., legal realism, critical legal studies, identity-based jurisprudence, socio-legal studies, transformative jurisprudence) with mainstream legal thinking. In part the course is an intellectual history of American law, and in part it addresses contemporary jurisprudence and legal theory. Drawing on students’ personal experience, the course also examines American legal education and the professional socialization of law students. A “big” question underlying the course is whether legal work is a medium in which one can pursue projects oriented toward political and social change. There is no prerequisite for this course, and no prior background in legal theory, history, or jurisprudence is needed. All students are expected to read the assigned texts very closely and participate in discussing them in class.