Firstbridge courses are offered to degree seeking freshmen and registration is done via webform in pre-arrival checklist.
Course Master
Credits
4 credits
Pre-requisites
None
Co-requisites
None
Given that there is only one human species, Homo sapiens, why are some societies so obsessed with separating people into groups and referring to differences between groups as “racial”? Humans have always identified some people as “Us” and everybody else as “Other,” but the “scientific” discourse of race dates from the 19th century. After examining what science can say about the origins and evolution of our species, students will look at how racialized discourse came into use, how it came to justify slavery and imperialism, how it gave rise to eugenics, and how it can culminate in the ultimate denial of the kinship of humanity, genocide.
Term
Fall 2020
Discipline
HI (History)
Type
CCI
Can be taken twice for credit?
Off
Level
Undergraduate
CAMS ID
41858
Code
HI1099FB8
Learning Outcomes
Students will analyze what science can say about the origins of the human species and the concept of race.
Students will distinguish “race” is a fallacious concept used to discriminate, isolate, and dehumanize from the very real “racism”.
Students will assess the ways in which genocide and other mass crimes are often legitimized by pseudoscientific discourse that has been integrated into and legitimated by a particular social context.
Local and Global Perspectives: Students will enhance their intercultural understanding of languages, cultures, and histories of local societies and the global issues to which these relate (CCI 1).
Exploring and Engaging Difference: Students will think critically about cultural and social difference; they will identify and understand power structures that determine hierarchies and inequalities that can relate to race, ethnicity, gender, nationhood, religion, or class (CCI 3).
Information Literacy: Students will comprehend how information is produced and valued in order to discover, evaluate, use, and create information and knowledge effectively and ethically. In FirstBridge, students will demonstrate the conversational nature of scholarship, and recognize their potential role and responsibilities as contributors to that conversation. For each discipline taught in FirstBridge, students will identify reference works, journals, databases and/or major works in history, in order to start effective research in the field.
Life at University: Students will acquire the study skills, time management, and interpersonal skills needed to meet the demands of university-level academic work at a Liberal Arts College individually or as a team. Students will value the multiple meanings of place through experiential learning at AUP and beyond in the Parisian or global context.
Name
SCIENCE, SOCIETY AND HUMAN ORIGINS
First Name
Linda
Last Name
Martz
Real name
Section
FB8
Start Date
Tuesday, September 22 2020
End Date
Monday, December 21 2020
Start Month
September
Exam Date
Monday, December 21 2020 - 17:30
Last update with CAMS