AMST 14
The Davis Center Histories Winter 2019

This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

This course will explore the history of the Williams College Davis Center (DC), formerly the Multicultural Center. In exploring this history, the course readings and discussions will contextualize the local specificities of the Center’s establishment within broader U.S. academic, political, and cultural discourses on student-led protest, the evolution of multiculturalism, the centrality of Black resistance, and the import of cultural specificity in creating an equitable and just world. The course will thus rely on resources in the College archives, and students will be encouraged to hone their research skills, but will also rely on communal construction of a theoretical framework to analyze the archived history of the Center while attending to the DC’s current mission to facilitate conversations about race, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, religion, and ability. Readings will include work by KimberlĂ© Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, Roderick Ferguson, Houston Baker, E. Patrick Johnson, Jeff Chang, Sami Schalk, and more. Students will be encouraged to engage in critical and constructive discussion about the historical place and work of the Davis Center, and contribute to that work with assignments that include weekly personal reflections and program proposals to enhance the curriculum and programmatic itinerary of the Center.
The Class: Format: mornings
Limit: 25
Grading: pass/fail only
Requirements/Evaluation: 2 program proposals, weekly reflections, and class participation
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: preference given to first-year students
Attributes: EXPE Experiential Education Courses

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