Special Topics courses are any course offered for credit in which the subject matter or content may vary within specific sections across academic terms.
The goal of these courses is to gain a more nuanced understanding of the contemporary racial justice movement, and to carry this knowledge from the classroom to your professional and personal lives.
The University Catalog is the authoritative source for information on courses. The Schedule of Classes is the authoritative source for information on classes scheduled for this semester. See the Schedule for the most up-to-date information and see Patriot web to register for classes.
03:00 PM to 04:15 PM TR
OnlineInstructor: Mark C Hopson
12:00 PM to 01:15 PM TR
OnlineInstructor: Ayondela McDole
04:30 PM to 07:10 PM M
OnlineInstructor: Tiffany Thames Copeland
03:00 PM to 04:15 PM MW
OnlineInstructor: Myrtle Liz Andrews
This course will look at a selection of regions, themes and historic moments in African art. It will begin with the questions: What is art?, What is African?, and what is a museum? The class will meet virtually during the scheduled course time on *Mondays for discussion (participation: speaking and in chat). Students can expect a weekly drop of digital content including two ~30 minute videos and supporting documents. This will serve as the Wednesday session. We will also do a couple virtual visits with African artists working today.
04:30 PM to 07:10 PM W
OnlineInstructor: Angela Ho
In the early modern period (c. 1400 to 1700), European powers encountered cultures in Asia, Africa, and the Americas in the contexts of trade, military conflict, colonization, and religious missions. This seminar explores the impact of the new knowledge and questions generated in these interactions on visual and material culture. We will study the circulation of goods (e.g., textiles, ceramics) through complex networks around the globe in this period. Related to this, how the exchange in artifacts shaped artistic production in various regions will be another topic of interest. We will also look at how the European elite, through the practice of collecting, viewed other cultures through the lenses of exoticism, curiosity and exploitation. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach that combines the study of objects, primary sources and recent scholarship on postcolonial theory and cross-cultural exchanges. Weekly readings, discussions, and writing assignments will focus on how images and objects can help us understand the historical conditions in which they were produced and received.
01:30 PM to 02:45 PM TR
Mason Korea A403Instructor: Claude Andre Drolet
The world that we live in is getting smaller...
It is nearly impossible that students would finish their degrees without meeting and interacting with people from countries and cultures other than their own. This course aims to make you think about your own role in the intercultural events you engage in each time you walk into a college classroom.
As you read and discuss you will think about your own experiences with language and cultural differences in the classroom and in the broader world. How did they manifest themselves? How did you react?
Topics include:
Analysis of communication variables as they relate to intercultural encounters; emphasize the influence of culture on the communication process; particularly the influence of verbal and nonverbal communication and how messages are interpreted.
12:00 PM to 01:15 PM TR
OnlineInstructor: Taylor N. Hartwell
12:30 PM to 01:45 PM TR
Instructor: Tauheeda Yasin Martin
Instructor: Jessica Hurley
Science fiction is often seen as an escapist genre that has little to say about the complexities and challenges of the contemporary world. Yet for many writers, science fiction has provided crucial spaces to interrogate and contest the world that we live in, and to imagine how we might live otherwise. In this class, we will read classic and contemporary science fiction in order to think about the relationship between fiction, speculation, and social justice. What kinds of critical commentary on the present does speculation make possible? How does science intersect with racial, gender, and other forms of oppression? How might speculating about the past or the future bring more just presents into being? These are just some of the questions that we will tackle through novels, films, and short stories by masters of the genre including Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Janelle Monáe.
Students will learn how to analyze textual mechanics and interpret texts within their social and historical contexts. Assignments will include weekly textual analysis drills, three short essays, and a creative group final project.
03:00 PM to 04:15 PM TR
OnlineInstructor: Jessica Hurley
Toxic Humanities
Ecological disaster is all around us, from the immediate crises of tsunamis and wildfires to the slow disasters of toxicity and climate change. Meanwhile, the environmental humanities are one of the fastest-growing fields in contemporary critical theory. In this class, students will be introduced to the major topics and texts in the field of environmental humanities, with a particular focus on critical theories of environmental toxicity. We will ask questions such as: how can critical theory help us to understand the environmental realities of our present? what is the relationship between the environment and literary form? How has literature adapted to portray ecological change? How can literary tools such as genre and narrative help us to understand environmental crisis? Students will learn how to read, understand, and engage with theoretical texts, as well as how to approach literature through a theoretical lens.
01:30 PM to 02:45 PM MW
OnlineInstructor: Eric Gary Anderson
This course is not about Gone With the Wind. The novels and short stories we’ll read are far stranger and far more daring than what you’ll find on any given page of Margaret Mitchell’s very big novel. We'll investigate multiple Souths and various Southern literary multicultures—including Native Southern and African-American—in this course. We'll read stories of Southern ecstasies and terrors, uplift and degradation, fragility and brutality, healing and trauma, gossip and silence. Except for some blues, film clips, respectful nods to the Athens, GA music scene, and criticism, our course texts will be all fiction, all the time, beginning with early 1930s novels and ending in the here and now. We’ll read a Faulkner novel early on, then consider Civil Rights/Cold War era Southern fictions by women writers, then dedicate a significant portion of the class to what’s going on now in 21st-century southern literature. As Annette Trefzer and Kathryn McKee write, "the U.S. South is not an enclave of hyperregionalism but a porous space through which other places have always circulated." When we consider the South as the northern rim of the Caribbean or as one among many Atlantic coasts or as a place that has been inhabited by interesting human beings for over 100 centuries or as a hotbed of American literature, our sense of Southern cultures and literatures changes for the richer.
We'll start with William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor and end with a virtual reality Trail of Tears theme park and various other recent takes on the South.
04:30 PM to 07:10 PM R
OnlineInstructor: Michael G Malouf
07:20 PM to 10:00 PM W
OnlineInstructor: Alexander Monea
Instructor: Ricardo F Vivancos-Pérez
This course will focus on the study of human rights issues in recent border-crossing narratives by migrants and refugees, as well as in films that focus on their experiences of isolation, discrimination, adaptation and community-building. We will learn basic notions and concepts in border studies, immigration studies, intersectionality and human rights discourse, and will apply them to the study of testimonies, autobiographical narratives, novels, poetry, artwork and films about migrants and their experiences crossing borders. Readings will focus on crossings of the US-Mexico border, the borders of Europe and Australia and the experience of migrants from Mexico and Central America, Africa, and the Middle East. They include Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), Jason De León’s The Land of Open Graves (2015), Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends (2019), Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Leaving Tangier (2006), Wendy Pearlman’s We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (2017), and Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains (2019). Films may include ¡Alambrista! (1977), El Norte (1984), Sleep Dealer (2008), Frontières (2002), Human Flow (2017), Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (2017), and relevant scenes from classical 20th-century movies and documentaries about migration. Main objectives of this course include fostering comparative critical thinking, interdisciplinary research, and ethical commitment in the study of cultural production.
Instructor: Ricardo F Vivancos-Pérez
This course will focus on the study of human rights issues in recent border-crossing narratives by migrants and refugees, as well as in films that focus on their experiences of isolation, discrimination, adaptation and community-building. We will learn basic notions and concepts in border studies, immigration studies, intersectionality and human rights discourse, and will apply them to the study of testimonies, autobiographical narratives, novels, poetry, artwork and films about migrants and their experiences crossing borders. Readings will focus on crossings of the US-Mexico border, the borders of Europe and Australia and the experience of migrants from Mexico and Central America, Africa, and the Middle East. They include Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), Jason De León’s The Land of Open Graves (2015), Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends (2019), Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Leaving Tangier (2006), Wendy Pearlman’s We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (2017), and Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains (2019). Films may include ¡Alambrista! (1977), El Norte (1984), Sleep Dealer (2008),Frontières (2002), Human Flow (2017), Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (2017), and relevant scenes from classical 20th-century movies and documentaries about migration. Main objectives of this course include fostering comparative critical thinking, interdisciplinary research, and ethical commitment in the study of cultural production.
04:30 PM to 05:45 PM MW
OnlineInstructor: Jennifer Leeman
04:30 PM to 07:10 PM R
Aquia Building 346Instructor: Lisa M. Rabin
04:30 PM to 07:10 PM T
OnlineInstructor: Randolph Scully
This course introduces History majors to the practices and methods of researching, interpreting, and writing history by focusing on the history of slavery in Virginia, and particularly three key moments of resistance and rebellion: the American Revolution, Gabriel’s Conspiracy of 1800, and the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831. By exploring these and other arenas in which enslaved people contested the terms of their bondage, students will develop skills in historical imagination and empathy, framing historical questions, working creatively with sources, dealing with ambiguity and silences in the record, and presenting the results of research in oral and written forms.
Instructor: Christopher H. Hamner
This course analyzes the history of the American Civil War from its origins in the late eighteenth century to the withdrawal of Federal troops from the south in 1877. Examines the political, social, and economic issues that led to war; the home fronts, war leadership, diplomacy, combat motivation, and grand strategy; problems associated with reconstituting the nation's political institutions and the re-integration of millions of newly-freed slaves.
01:30 PM to 04:10 PM TR
OnlineInstructor: Huseyin Yilmaz
We are finding ourselves in a historical moment, questioning not only racism but also its connection to slavery in our nation’s past. Both issues complicate the pasts and present of many other societies, including those of the Islamic world. This course will explore the issues of race and slavery in Islam. We will ask, is there a connection between race and the institution of slavery in the Islamic world? What legacies have both issues left today? We will consider instances of slave revolts in early Islam, the experience of elite slaves in the early modern period, the paradoxical role of female slaves, case studies of Muslim slaves in the west, and slavery in the Muslim world today, among other examples, as we survey the issues of race and slavery in this global faith community, through primary, secondary, visual, literary, and documentary sources. Changing legal, philosophical, and cultural expositions of race and slavery in specific historical contexts as well as such entangled concepts as freedom, equality, and justice will be covered.
12:00 PM to 01:15 PM MW
OnlineInstructor: Stephen Robertson
This course is a thematic study of the history of crime and its policing and prosecution in the United States from the 1870s to the 1920s. We will use newspapers in the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America collection to explore the incidence, definition, and policing of offenses such as murder, assault, prostitution, rape, sodomy, theft, counterfeiting and forgery, and arson. To make sense of that evidence, we will analyse the history of how newspapers reported crime, the development of criminal law and the how the criminal justice system developed. Each student will choose a newspaper from a particular time and place, research each offense in that publication and the criminal law that applied for the class meetings, and for the major assignment develop a digital project that examines the reporting of one of those crimes.
07:20 PM to 10:00 PM T
OnlineInstructor: Laura Moore
In HIST 499, students build on their experience in HIST 300 and the skills and knowledge they have developed as history majors to write an original research paper of about 20 pages. In this section of HIST 499, we will focus on late 20th century U.S. history (approximately the 1960s-1980s) and paper topics will grow out of research related to the women’s movement and other social movements of that time period. This approach allows for a broad range of potential topics. In this writing-intensive course, students will complete weekly writing assignments, both on the required reading and on their research. In the first few weeks of the semester, students will complete a series of research projects using various GMU library resources. An original research question will emerge out of those initial projects. Students will then spend the bulk of the semester doing their original primary research, placing their research within relevant secondary literature, and writing their senior thesis paper. They will also regularly share their findings and drafts with classmates. In the end, as a capstone to a history major’s college career, HIST 499 students gain experience with the methods, challenges, and collaboration required of advanced historical scholarship.
07:20 PM to 10:00 PM R
OnlineInstructor: Randolph Scully
Class meets synchronously ONLINE –
Students are expected to participate on the day and time scheduled.
This course examines the place of North America in the wider early modern world from approximately 1500 to 1800. As European empires expanded, they reshaped connections and power relations among different parts of the world, bringing North America into that world in a variety of new ways. We will draw on new and classic literature to explore the ways in which historians have framed and interpreted these processes. Throughout, the focus will be on the circulation of goods, people, and ideas through this world and on the structures and labor that facilitated this movement. Topics will include maritime trade, settler colonialism, slavery and the slave trade, consumption and material culture, systems and technologies of knowledge production, and imperial warfare.
07:20 PM to 10:00 PM W
OnlineInstructor: Matthew B. Karush
Class meets synchronously ONLINE –
Students are expected to participate on the day and time scheduled.
Fascism and populism are historical terms that have suddenly returned to the center of political discourse. They are applied to a wide variety of regimes and movements located across the ideological spectrum from left to right. Some scholars have even begun to question whether the terms retain their meaning and usefulness. This course will seek to locate these political phenomena in history: When and where did they emerge? How have they changed over time and in different contexts? We will be particularly interested in exploring the transnational evolution of fascism and populism and in exploring how Latin American histories can illuminate European ones. Among the cases we will consider are: Italy, Spain, Argentina, Mexico and Brazil.
07:20 PM to 10:00 PM T
OnlineInstructor: Benedict Carton
Class meets synchronously ONLINE –
Students are expected to participate on the day and time scheduled.
This course explores the comparative histories of South Africa and the United States. From the 1700s to 1800s, a growing number of indigenous and immigrant groups in south Africa and the United States resisted settler rule, as the legacies of slavery increasingly defined the rights of "European" and "non-European" populations. With widening global networks in the twentieth century, the identities of indigenous, settler and immigrant peoples continued to evolve. At this time, transnational movements such as Ethiopianism and Garveyism brought the two societies closer together in far-reaching struggles against legalized racism. Indeed, more and more South Africans and Americans recognized what they shared in common: white supremacy. By the 1940s, the South Africa state had come to embrace apartheid while the US government edged away from segregation. Our seminar focuses on scholarship that examines these intersecting and divergent paths. Along the way, we consider whether national comparisons deepen or distort our historical understandings of South Africa and the United States.
04:30 PM to 07:10 PM W
OnlineInstructor: Cynthia A. Kierner
Class meets synchronously ONLINE –
Students are expected to participate on the day and time scheduled.
This course is both a new addition to the Mason Legacies initiative and an introduction to documentary editing. Students will transcribe and annotate sections of an account book that belonged to Stevens Thompson Mason (1787-1819). By reading, transcribing, and annotating the account book, students will learn about family relationships and finances, legal practice and fees, medicine, slavery, the plantation economy and local trade, and other related topics. They will also develop certain digital and editing skills. The digitized account book, with the students' transcriptions and annotations, will be accessible online via Special Collections at Fenwick Library, which owns the account book.
07:20 PM to 10:00 PM R
OnlineInstructor: Randolph Scully
Class meets synchronously ONLINE –
Students are expected to participate on the day and time scheduled.
This course examines the place of North America in the wider early modern world from approximately 1500 to 1800. As European empires expanded, they reshaped connections and power relations among different parts of the world, bringing North America into that world in a variety of new ways. We will draw on new and classic literature to explore the ways in which historians have framed and interpreted these processes. Throughout, the focus will be on the circulation of goods, people, and ideas through this world and on the structures and labor that facilitated this movement. Topics will include maritime trade, settler colonialism, slavery and the slave trade, consumption and material culture, systems and technologies of knowledge production, and imperial warfare.
07:20 PM to 10:00 PM T
OnlineInstructor: Benedict Carton
Class meets synchronously ONLINE –
Students are expected to participate on the day and time scheduled.
This course explores the comparative histories of South Africa and the United States. From the 1700s to 1800s, a growing number of indigenous and immigrant groups in south Africa and the United States resisted settler rule, as the legacies of slavery increasingly defined the rights of "European" and "non-European" populations. With widening global networks in the twentieth century, the identities of indigenous, settler and immigrant peoples continued to evolve. At this time, transnational movements such as Ethiopianism and Garveyism brought the two societies closer together in far-reaching struggles against legalized racism. Indeed, more and more South Africans and Americans recognized what they shared in common: white supremacy. By the 1940s, the South Africa state had come to embrace apartheid while the US government edged away from segregation. Our seminar focuses on scholarship that examines these intersecting and divergent paths. Along the way, we consider whether national comparisons deepen or distort our historical understandings of South Africa and the United States.
10:30 AM to 11:45 AM TR
Peterson Family Health Sciences Hall 1105Instructor: Mark Rudnicki
12:00 PM to 01:15 PM TR
Peterson Family Health Sciences Hall 1105Instructor: Mark Rudnicki
09:00 AM to 10:15 AM TR
OnlineInstructor: Lauren B Cattaneo
01:30 PM to 02:45 PM TR
OnlineInstructor: C Joseph Genetin-Pilawa
01:30 PM to 02:45 PM MW
OnlineInstructor: Caroline S. West
03:00 PM to 04:15 PM TR
OnlineInstructor: Shayna Lillian Maskell
03:00 PM to 04:15 PM TR
OnlineInstructor: Aoi Yamanaka
01:30 PM to 04:10 PM M
OnlineInstructor: Cher Weixia Chen
01:30 PM to 02:45 PM TR
OnlineInstructor: Sophia Balakian
04:30 PM to 07:10 PM W
Aquia Building 213Instructor: Thomas C Wood
01:30 PM to 04:10 PM TR
OnlineInstructor: Sumaiya A. Hamdani
04:30 PM to 05:45 PM M
Nguyen Engineering Building 1101 - HybridInstructor: Wendi N. Manuel-Scott
04:30 PM to 05:45 PM T
Peterson Family Health Sciences Hall - HybridInstructor: Wendi N. Manuel-Scott
04:30 PM to 07:10 PM W
Peterson Family Health Sciences Hall 1113Instructor: David Powers Corwin
04:30 PM to 05:45 PM T
Peterson Family Health Sciences Hall - HybridInstructor: Wendi N. Manuel-Scott
04:30 PM to 05:45 PM M
Nguyen Engineering Building - HybridInstructor: Wendi N. Manuel-Scott
Instructor: Ricardo F Vivancos-Pérez
Understanding the intricate interconnections between immigration and social justice is at the core of US Latinx cultural studies. Not all Hispanics, Latinxs, Latinas and Latinos identify as immigrants, but their communities always comprise multidimensional immigration experiences of displacement, transiting, settlement, discrimination, cultural resistance and social adaptation that are central to their heritage and their everyday lives. These experiences encompass specific goals regarding ethnic, racial and gender justice, diversity, equality, inclusivity and accountability. In this context and with a transdisciplinary, intersectional approach, this course will focus on the study of
Our emphasis will be on the relationship between social justice and cultural production by studying non-fiction, fiction, films, artwork and symbolic imaginative representations that emerge from and are part of immigration experiences and immigration activism. Main objectives of this course include fostering comparative critical thinking, transdisciplinary research, and ethical commitment in the study of immigration and social justice with an emphasis on creativity and imagination.
This course is conducted in Spanish, and all oral and written assignments must be in Spanish.
04:30 PM to 07:10 PM R
Aquia Building 346Instructor: Lisa M. Rabin
07:20 PM to 10:00 PM W
OnlineInstructor: Courtney Diener
Using nonfiction, research documentaries, oral histories, case studies, literature, feature films, music, dance, and visual arts, examines the dynamics of violence through different cultural lenses. Students work in university and community settings to integrate their academic experiences with practice