Tuesdays & Fridays, 1:45 – 3:25 p.m.

CRN 41388

Yvette Kisor
Professor of Literature

This course will take as its focus a genre that is spread across cultures and times: the fairy tale. We will focus on a number of classic fairy tales and examine their cultural variants as well as their modern adaptations. Our approach is diachronic and interdisciplinary, and we will explore fairy tales through a number of critical lenses, including the socio-cultural, structuralist, psychoanalytic, and feminist, as well as those of folklore and film studies.

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Peer Facilitators

Tuesdays & Fridays 11:50 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.

CRN 40588

David Colman
Associate Professor of African American History

This course examines efforts to build community in the diverse city and New York City suburb of Englewood New Jersey. Since its founding in 1859, Englewood has been one of the more diverse New Jersey suburbs. In the late 19th century on the city’s east hill that stretches up to the Palisades overlooking the Hudson River, wealthy white industrialists and bankers built grand estates and mansions. At the same time, in Englewood’s lowlands on the west side of the railroad tracks, vibrant working and middle class African American and eastern and southern European immigrant communities developed. After 1965, Englewood became even more diverse, as thousands of immigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America, in particular Colombia, began to settle in the city.

In this course we will examine how these various groups have developed a sense of “Place” and the role of “Place” in community formation. We will think about how the city’s surroundings shape the residents’ identities, politics, and community building efforts. We will explore how race, class, religion and ethnicity have shaped the geography of the city, its politics, its culture, economy, and its rich history. We will think about how block associations, houses of worship, non profits, schools, political parties, fraternal organizations, and city officials seek to build community. We also also examine how racial, class, ethic, and religious divisions create challenges to building community. We will explore how environmental activists, and government officials incorporate residents’ understanding of their local neighborhoods and its “non-human spaces” into planning decisions. And we will pay particular attention to the current challenges Englewood faces from climate change and development and its impact on the city’s various communities.

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Peer Facilitators

Mondays & Thursdays, 8:00 – 9:40 a.m.

CRN 41592

Kaitlin Sidorsky
Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy

This course studies the political histories of elders in Englewood, New Jersey. Throughout the semester we will learn the power of political socialization, identification, and lived experience through conducting one-on-one interviews with elders in the Englewood community. We will consider how the research on political socialization fits with findings from the interviews, and how race, class, gender, and religion result in various political lived experiences. Englewood is a diverse suburb of New York City with a rich history making it an excellent community to conduct oral political history.

We will study how one’s political upbringing informs current political beliefs, particularly in the context of the 2024 elections. Students in this course will learn how to conduct and record interviews, transcription strategies, and how to analyze interviews to present a clear narrative of the respondent’s political lives. Finally, students will be asked to reflect on their own political socialization to compare with what they learned from the elders in the community.

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Peer Facilitators