TEACHING
Course Taught
CADT-UH 1029 Inspiration, Art, and the Examined Life
Has a book ever knocked you out?
Has a story stuck with you for years?
Has an image stopped you cold?
Are you changed by these encounters?
This course explores, examines, and activates the elusive and subjective motor for creative work. It begins with material that has directly impacted the professor’s life and work. Later, students will share igniting materials from their own experiences. The aim: to incite the imagination, culminating in an original work. Where do you turn for inspiration? Can you engage your fears in pursuit of your goals? How do you flip your script to make progress?
The class sessions are expected to be salon-style, pursuing the free exchange of ideas and influences among all participants in the class. Students will be expected to participate in class discussion, submit materials for the class to consider, submit journal writings and images regularly. The course culminates in each student presenting an art action of their own creation, descended from discussion or materials encountered in class.
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SRPP-UH 2801X Community- Engaged Scholarship: Addressing Social Hierarchies in the UAE
An exciting question that appears when conducting social science research is how it can be
applied beyond academia. In this course, students will engage with research on social hierarchies
(race, class, gender, citizenship), with a special focus on the UAE. The course will begin by
addressing topics such as structural inequality, power dynamics and positionality. It will explore
what it can look like to use research to work with different communities with empathy and care.
There have been international efforts by academics to address social hierarchies in various ways,
ranging from university public outreach or service-based learning. But the UAE has its own
limitations, restrictions and opportunities. What can community-engaged scholarship look like in
this context?
The class will explore the research that navigates social hierarchies in the UAE. What
assumptions does this research challenge (or promote)? How does it allow us to see the
complexity of different communities in an often-misrepresented region? How can we use research to benefit the communities it is about? Students will work directly with an entity to
implement a project, using the research and discussions in class to guide their work.
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