Identity development is viewed as the psychosocial task of adolescence and young adulthood. A person in this period of development will look within and to others to answer the question of “Who am I”? In this course, we will examine the ways that ethnicity, race, culture, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, socio-economic status, citizenship and other factors influence young adult development. Critical perspectives will be taken to illuminate the ways in which systemic inequity can impact identity development. Assignments will consist of weekly reading analyses. The final project will be to create a research proposal on an aspect of identity development that will be presented to the class. We will spend time developing a research question, annotating the sources, writing the proposal and literature review.

Transfer and upper-level students should register for one of the evening sections.

Major Requirement | BFA

Millions of people around the world have been forced from their homes by interlinked factors including persecution, armed conflict and war, natural disasters, structural violence, and development projects. The seminar explores the “refugee” and “migrant” status and examines the refugee crisis and forced migration in a global perspective and through an interdisciplinary lens. It provides a historical background of the formation of the “refugee” concept going back to inter-war Europe and placing emphasis both on its construction in international law and on the precarious state that refugees and migrants face today globally through various case studies. The seminar also addresses the politics of humanitarianism, the role of international organizations, especially UNHCR, and the securitization of human rights as well as the ethnic, gendered, and religious identities being reshaped by forced displacement. 

The course is organized both chronologically and thematically, to understand the ways in which global migration and contemporary refugee crises have changed over time, highlighting continuities and ruptures especially in the construction of the refugee and the migrant as the “other.” Lectures and readings provide a global perspective but focus on regional case studies, often using a comparative and transdisciplinary framework. Similarly, writing assignments, lectures, and class materials will draw upon international relations, anthropology, gender studies, sociology, and history, and examine different types of sources, including academic books and journal articles, first-person narratives, and visual resources.

Prerequisite: HPSS-S101 for Undergraduate Students

Elective