1. Plantation World Syllabus
This syllabus is an open-ended resource for both academic and non-academic audiences. Each of the three main sections signals an approach to understanding plantation worlds, and may be taken up in sequence or as stand-alone units. The sources listed under each subsection are featured based on the relevance they bear to the respective theme. The 13 subsections roughly correspond to each week of an academic semester, giving instructors the opportunity to customize the syllabus by using any remaining weeks to explore certain themes in greater depth, or to connect selections on the multimedia to previous discussions held in the classroom. Alternatively, we envision this syllabus as a guide for critical reflections on the enduring legacies of past and present plantation worlds, through an anthropological lens that trangresses academic boundaries. The subsections in our syllabus can, for example, inform critical conversations on pedagogies, epistemologies, praxes, and methodologies in creative and organizing spaces, as well as in institutional settings like governmental and non-governmental organizations.
Citation:
Sophie Sapp Moore and Aida Arosoaie.“Plantation Worlds Syllabus.” Fieldsights: Syllabus Archive, Society for Cultural Anthropology, June 2022
2. SOC 496 Race and the Scientific Method
At the heart of science lies the scientific method: hypothesis, observation, experimentation, analysis, theory… and repeat. Yet the neutral language of the scientific method that ultimately gives science its undisputed legitimacy leave room to interrogate its social context: Who makes the hypothesis? Who observes whom? How and what is being experimented with? Who makes the theory and why? With a focus on the scientific method, this course explores the ways in which racialized notions of bodies, nature and society inform scientific thought and practice. Taking the NSF Classroom Activity Sheet on the Scientific Method as a springboard for discussion, the course focuses on aspects of colonialism and racial capitalism from the 17th century until today to critically explore the enduring——albeit shifting——interdependencies between the scientific norms of authority, objectivity, evidence and expertise and racially extractive frameworks. Featuring inter-disciplinary scholarship from STS, anthropology, history of science, environmental humanities and STEM, the course exposes aspects of science that inconspicuously legitimize white perspectives while simultaneously appropriating, extracting and erasing the global majority’s ways of living in the world. As we will unpack STEM notions of authority, objectivity and expertise throughout the semester, we will foreground alternative perspectives to science to help generate more racially equitable frameworks for scientific research and practice.
Taught at UW-Madison, Fall 2024. Contact me for the syllabus.
3. HEALing the Sciences
The HEALing the Sciences Short Course is a learning initiative designed to advance racial equity in STEMM, with a special focus on pedagogy. Structured in 4 sessions of approximately 2 hours each, the course introduces participants to key concepts and critical histories of STEMM disciplines to emphasize the interrelations between race and the production and teaching of scientific knowledge from colonialism until the present day. The course shows how scientific research and pedagogy practices are socially, politically, and economically situated endeavors. The objective is to help participants think critically about their own direct or indirect contributions to racial inequity within scientific knowledge and practice. In doing so, the course aims to assist participants in developing actionable strategies for advancing anti-racist and anti-colonial research and pedagogy in STEMM disciplines.
HEALing the Sciences is part of the HEAL STEM, an Andrew Mellon Foundation Just Futures Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.