The courses listed below are provided by the JHU Public Course Search. This listing provides a snapshot of immediately available courses and may not be complete.
Course registration information can be found on the Student Information Services (SIS) website. Please consult the academic catalog for cross-listed courses and full course information.
The Environmental Justice Workshop is a space for engaged learning and collaborative environmental work, giving students a chance to join in the collective struggle to build equitable and sustainable urban futures in Baltimore. In the fall of 2025, the workshop will be taught by anthropologist Anand Pandian (Johns Hopkins) as a cross-institutional partnership with anthropologist Chloe Ahmann (Cornell University) and the South Baltimore Community Land Trust. Working together as a team of faculty and students at both universities, we will collaborate with environmental justice activists and Baltimore residents to research, write, and produce a four-part digital humanities curriculum about the discriminatory history of waste management in Baltimore and its impact on working-class and minority residents. Students enrolled in this course will gain experience with archival and ethnographic research methods, learn how to conduct time-sensitive research responsive to community needs, and produce media resources for a broader civic audience engaged in the fight for environmental justice. Many class sessions will take place in various community locations in south Baltimore, and meeting times include transportation to/from the Homewood campus.
This course examines Latinos and the American political landscape – taking seriously the political lives of Latinos to sharpen accounts of American political development. In Part I: Latinos and American Empire, we will examine how American state building, American racial capitalism, and American empire created a varied set of racialized citizenship regimes that shaped the legality and membership of Latinos – depending on the interplay between domestic racial hierarchies and international projects. In Part II: Latinos and the Administrative State, we will examine how the regulation of Latino immigrants and asylum seekers from Latin America and the Caribbean have been an engine for American political development – including the making of border bureaucracies, networked policing that harnesses the institution of federalism, and the development of ocean-spanning detention infrastructure. In Part III: Latinos as Targets, we will examine how Latinos became racialized as ‘illegals’ and became the prime targets of state action – and how state efforts have led to the suppressing of political agency, mobilization of collective action, and even integration of Latinos into the enforcement apparatus. In Part IV: Latinos, Hierarchies, and Power, we will examine the political power of those most marginalized among the Latino population – including Black, Trans, Queer, Immigrant, and Undocumented Latinos – to learn about how these groups contend with intragroup and intergroup hierarchies, their role in intersectional movements, and their organizing under repressive conditions. In Part V: Latinos and Placemaking, we conclude with Latino placemaking across the United States to examine how Latinos – in relation with and to, and in coalition with Black, Indigenous, and Asian organizing – are cultivating and asserting political and policy influence in the face of climate change, policing, detention, and gentrification.
In The Great Derangement Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh writes that “the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of imagination.” Worldwide, climate and environmental change is stirring the imaginary of novelists, filmmakers, and artists who are finding ways to frame, emplot, or even perform, an unmanageable phenomenon like climate change. How is climate change shaping new modes of storytelling and aesthetics? How do film, literature, and environmentally conscious art transform our perception of the world we inhabit and its unpredictable changes? Can climate change narratives help us to imagine futures of possibilities, maybe dystopian, uncertain, or even happy, but futures nonetheless? This multimedia course explores, through a transnational perspective, a variety of contemporary novels, films, and other media that attempt answer these questions.
An introduction for students unfamiliar with the Korean language but interested in Korean culture / literature. Students will read a variety of translated texts, especially of works written in the 20th and early 21st centuries by authors including Kim Tong-in, Hwang Sun-wŏn, Pak Wansŏ, Hwang Sŏk-yŏng and Han Kang; there will also be classes on traditional sijo poetry. Students will become familiar with Korean literary genres and formal features, and develop a broad understanding of the historical and sociocultural context of Korean literature.
Although fundamentally grounded in human existence, Illness, pain, and suffering are also cultural experiences that have been depicted in literature and film. The way different cultures relate to and convey pain is embedded in the cosmogonic ideas each society holds about suffering and its outcomes. Reading through different literary texts from different parts of the world and drawing on movies that portray varied experiences of illness, this course aims to help students think about illness and its ramifications in a more transcultural way in order to understand how illness functions across different geographic, climatic, political, and social conditions. The students will also gain a better understanding of the causes of pain, its symptoms, and the different manners in which the authors and filmmakers whose works we will study mediate it to their readers and viewers. From basic traditional potions to hyper-modern medical technologies, illness also mobilizes different types of science across cultures and social classes. By the end of the course, students will develop an ethics of reading for illness not a as monolithic condition but rather as an experience that has unique cultural codes and mechanisms that need to be known to better understand it and probably treat it.
Introduction to Critical Diaspora Studies will explore the transnational, relational, and comparative approach to racism, migration, and colonialism at the heart of this major. It will introduce students to cutting-edge literature in the major’s four tracks: Migration and Borders; Global Indigeneities; Empires, Wars, and Carceralities; and Solidarities, Social Movements, and Citizenship. Topics covered will include diasporic and indigenous cultures and politics from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as the United States. Students should expect to learn the value of interdisciplinary and transnational approaches to questions of social belonging, activism, justice, and politics. This course will also be useful to students in all humanities and social science majors who are interested in questions of racism, migration, and colonialism. This course may entail travel over fall break.
How is the so-called “AI Revolution” altering the landscape of work? This course takes up this question through the lens of underemployment, migratory labor, and diasporic communities. We will read a variety of key works on migration and imagined communities, precarity and alienation, labor, automation, and empire—as well as texts produced in the margins of globalization. In conversation with these texts, we will investigate the dynamics of diasporic communities, migration, and solidarity vis-a-vis the future of work in a global society increasingly automated by AI models such as DeepSeek, ChatGPT, and Qwen 2.5, and the entities that own them. Through a variety of writing assignments and presentations, students engage issues such as race, class, gender, the border, citizenship, and community as they exist for diasporic and migratory workers. This course explores themes relevant to students of Critical Diaspora Studies, as well as the history of science and technology, political science and political economy, international studies, literature, film, and sociology. Readings may include works by Ruha Benjamin, Audre Lorde, Harry Braverman, Benedict Anderson, David Harvey, Edward Said, Mary L. Gray, Octavia Butler, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
This course examines how theories of internal colonialism help us understand the recent global migration trends and dynamics within and among ethnic communities. The course has three main objectives. First, it will discuss how the legacy of colonial and postcolonial relations of unequal exchange and domination explain the recent migration patterns from the global south. Second, it discusses how internal colonialism helps us understand how political, economic, and cultural mechanisms reproduce inequalities within and among communities of color. Lastly, how different resistance strategies manifest themselves in marginalized communities would be considered. The course surveys diverse views and perspectives including the work of Gonzalez Casanova, Du Bois, Bonilla-Silva, Blauner, Hechter, and Allen.
This course surveys museums, from their origins to their most contemporary forms, in the context of broader historical, intellectual, and cultural trends including the social movements of the 20th century. Anthropology, art, history, and science museums are considered.
This course critically examines the role of exhibitions in shaping cultural narratives and public understanding of people and places across the globe. Students will explore the history, theory, and practice of exhibiting cultures in museums, galleries, and digital platforms. Topics include curatorial ethics, representation and identity, postcolonial critiques, audience engagement, and the impact of emerging technologies on exhibition design. Through case studies and hands-on projects, students will analyze how cultural heritage is displayed and interpreted, considering issues of appropriation, authenticity, and inclusivity. The course culminates in a final project where students conceptualize and design their own cultural exhibition proposal.
| Course # (Section) | Title | Day/Times | Instructor | Location | Term | Course Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS.070.402 (01) | Environmental Justice Workshop | T 1:30PM - 4:00PM | Pandian, Anand | Mergenthaler 426 | Fall 2025 | The Environmental Justice Workshop is a space for engaged learning and collaborative environmental work, giving students a chance to join in the collective struggle to build equitable and sustainable urban futures in Baltimore. In the fall of 2025, the workshop will be taught by anthropologist Anand Pandian (Johns Hopkins) as a cross-institutional partnership with anthropologist Chloe Ahmann (Cornell University) and the South Baltimore Community Land Trust. Working together as a team of faculty and students at both universities, we will collaborate with environmental justice activists and Baltimore residents to research, write, and produce a four-part digital humanities curriculum about the discriminatory history of waste management in Baltimore and its impact on working-class and minority residents. Students enrolled in this course will gain experience with archival and ethnographic research methods, learn how to conduct time-sensitive research responsive to community needs, and produce media resources for a broader civic audience engaged in the fight for environmental justice. Many class sessions will take place in various community locations in south Baltimore, and meeting times include transportation to/from the Homewood campus. |
| AS.190.304 (01) | Latinos and the American Political Landscape | W 1:30PM - 4:00PM | Bautista-Chavez, Angie M. | Fall 2025 | This course examines Latinos and the American political landscape – taking seriously the political lives of Latinos to sharpen accounts of American political development. In Part I: Latinos and American Empire, we will examine how American state building, American racial capitalism, and American empire created a varied set of racialized citizenship regimes that shaped the legality and membership of Latinos – depending on the interplay between domestic racial hierarchies and international projects. In Part II: Latinos and the Administrative State, we will examine how the regulation of Latino immigrants and asylum seekers from Latin America and the Caribbean have been an engine for American political development – including the making of border bureaucracies, networked policing that harnesses the institution of federalism, and the development of ocean-spanning detention infrastructure. In Part III: Latinos as Targets, we will examine how Latinos became racialized as ‘illegals’ and became the prime targets of state action – and how state efforts have led to the suppressing of political agency, mobilization of collective action, and even integration of Latinos into the enforcement apparatus. In Part IV: Latinos, Hierarchies, and Power, we will examine the political power of those most marginalized among the Latino population – including Black, Trans, Queer, Immigrant, and Undocumented Latinos – to learn about how these groups contend with intragroup and intergroup hierarchies, their role in intersectional movements, and their organizing under repressive conditions. In Part V: Latinos and Placemaking, we conclude with Latino placemaking across the United States to examine how Latinos – in relation with and to, and in coalition with Black, Indigenous, and Asian organizing – are cultivating and asserting political and policy influence in the face of climate change, policing, detention, and gentrification. | |
| AS.211.424 (01) | Climate Change Narratives | Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM | Di Bianco, Laura | Fall 2025 | In The Great Derangement Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh writes that “the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of imagination.” Worldwide, climate and environmental change is stirring the imaginary of novelists, filmmakers, and artists who are finding ways to frame, emplot, or even perform, an unmanageable phenomenon like climate change. How is climate change shaping new modes of storytelling and aesthetics? How do film, literature, and environmentally conscious art transform our perception of the world we inhabit and its unpredictable changes? Can climate change narratives help us to imagine futures of possibilities, maybe dystopian, uncertain, or even happy, but futures nonetheless? This multimedia course explores, through a transnational perspective, a variety of contemporary novels, films, and other media that attempt answer these questions. | |
| AS.220.220 (01) | Reading Korean Literature in Translation: A Survey | Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM | Kim, Kyeong-Soo | Fall 2025 | An introduction for students unfamiliar with the Korean language but interested in Korean culture / literature. Students will read a variety of translated texts, especially of works written in the 20th and early 21st centuries by authors including Kim Tong-in, Hwang Sun-wŏn, Pak Wansŏ, Hwang Sŏk-yŏng and Han Kang; there will also be classes on traditional sijo poetry. Students will become familiar with Korean literary genres and formal features, and develop a broad understanding of the historical and sociocultural context of Korean literature. | |
| AS.300.405 (01) | Illness across Cultures: The Ethics of Pain in Literature and Film | T 1:30PM - 4:00PM | El Guabli, Brahim | Fall 2025 | Although fundamentally grounded in human existence, Illness, pain, and suffering are also cultural experiences that have been depicted in literature and film. The way different cultures relate to and convey pain is embedded in the cosmogonic ideas each society holds about suffering and its outcomes. Reading through different literary texts from different parts of the world and drawing on movies that portray varied experiences of illness, this course aims to help students think about illness and its ramifications in a more transcultural way in order to understand how illness functions across different geographic, climatic, political, and social conditions. The students will also gain a better understanding of the causes of pain, its symptoms, and the different manners in which the authors and filmmakers whose works we will study mediate it to their readers and viewers. From basic traditional potions to hyper-modern medical technologies, illness also mobilizes different types of science across cultures and social classes. By the end of the course, students will develop an ethics of reading for illness not a as monolithic condition but rather as an experience that has unique cultural codes and mechanisms that need to be known to better understand it and probably treat it. | |
| AS.305.101 (01) | Introduction to Critical Diaspora Studies | MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM | Schrader, Stuart Laurence | Fall 2025 | Introduction to Critical Diaspora Studies will explore the transnational, relational, and comparative approach to racism, migration, and colonialism at the heart of this major. It will introduce students to cutting-edge literature in the major’s four tracks: Migration and Borders; Global Indigeneities; Empires, Wars, and Carceralities; and Solidarities, Social Movements, and Citizenship. Topics covered will include diasporic and indigenous cultures and politics from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as the United States. Students should expect to learn the value of interdisciplinary and transnational approaches to questions of social belonging, activism, justice, and politics. This course will also be useful to students in all humanities and social science majors who are interested in questions of racism, migration, and colonialism. This course may entail travel over fall break. | |
| AS.305.135 (01) | The Future of Work: AI, Labor, and Migration | TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM | Todarello, Josh | Fall 2025 | How is the so-called “AI Revolution” altering the landscape of work? This course takes up this question through the lens of underemployment, migratory labor, and diasporic communities. We will read a variety of key works on migration and imagined communities, precarity and alienation, labor, automation, and empire—as well as texts produced in the margins of globalization. In conversation with these texts, we will investigate the dynamics of diasporic communities, migration, and solidarity vis-a-vis the future of work in a global society increasingly automated by AI models such as DeepSeek, ChatGPT, and Qwen 2.5, and the entities that own them. Through a variety of writing assignments and presentations, students engage issues such as race, class, gender, the border, citizenship, and community as they exist for diasporic and migratory workers. This course explores themes relevant to students of Critical Diaspora Studies, as well as the history of science and technology, political science and political economy, international studies, literature, film, and sociology. Readings may include works by Ruha Benjamin, Audre Lorde, Harry Braverman, Benedict Anderson, David Harvey, Edward Said, Mary L. Gray, Octavia Butler, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. | |
| AS.305.138 (01) | Internal Colonialism, Migration, and Migrant Communities | MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM | Staff | Fall 2025 | This course examines how theories of internal colonialism help us understand the recent global migration trends and dynamics within and among ethnic communities. The course has three main objectives. First, it will discuss how the legacy of colonial and postcolonial relations of unequal exchange and domination explain the recent migration patterns from the global south. Second, it discusses how internal colonialism helps us understand how political, economic, and cultural mechanisms reproduce inequalities within and among communities of color. Lastly, how different resistance strategies manifest themselves in marginalized communities would be considered. The course surveys diverse views and perspectives including the work of Gonzalez Casanova, Du Bois, Bonilla-Silva, Blauner, Hechter, and Allen. | |
| AS.389.201 (01) | Introduction to the Museum: Past and Present | TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM | Kingsley, Jennifer P | Fall 2025 | This course surveys museums, from their origins to their most contemporary forms, in the context of broader historical, intellectual, and cultural trends including the social movements of the 20th century. Anthropology, art, history, and science museums are considered. | |
| AS.389.233 (01) | Exhibiting Cultures | Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM | Roome, Kristine | Fall 2025 | This course critically examines the role of exhibitions in shaping cultural narratives and public understanding of people and places across the globe. Students will explore the history, theory, and practice of exhibiting cultures in museums, galleries, and digital platforms. Topics include curatorial ethics, representation and identity, postcolonial critiques, audience engagement, and the impact of emerging technologies on exhibition design. Through case studies and hands-on projects, students will analyze how cultural heritage is displayed and interpreted, considering issues of appropriation, authenticity, and inclusivity. The course culminates in a final project where students conceptualize and design their own cultural exhibition proposal. |