Spring 2026: Seeing Justice

PART 1: Contextualizing Justice

Week 1

Tue Jan 20  

• PLENARY: Welcome back; here we go

Thu Jan 22 AM

• WATCH: Marlon Riggs, Ethnic Notions
• SECTION: Representational Power/Representational Damage

Thu Jan 22 PM

• READ: Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Digging the Africanist Presence (selections)
• PLENARY: Minstrelsy & its aftermath

Week 2

Tue Jan 27 

• WATCH: Bill T. Jones, Dancing to the Promised Land
• PLENARY: Re-imaging representations

Thu Jan 29 AM

• READ: Ann Cooper Albright, “Embodying History”
• SECTION: Making Meaning, Staging Worlds

Thu Jan 30 PM

• PLENARY: Down and dirty writing

 

Week 3

Mon Feb 2 by 9am

• SUBMIT: Draft of Assignment #3

Tue Feb 3 

• READ: Harris, “Whiteness as Property” (excerpt); March 2 (p1-110)
• PLENARY: Legacies

Thu Feb 5 AM

• READ: March 2 (p111-end)
• SECTION: Meaning as Content & Form

Thu Feb 06 PM

• PLENARY: Storytelling Justice

 

PART 2: Enacting Justice?

Week 4

Tue Feb 10 

• WATCH: Foucault Disciple and Punish Explained Simply
• READ: Foucault, Panopticism
• PLENARY: Being Watched, Being Punished

Thu Feb 12 AM

• READ: Brayne, Predict and Surveil (Selection)
• SECTION: Surveillance as tactic

Thu Feb 13 PM

• PLENARY: Preparing for the Research Paper

Week 5

Mon, Feb 16 by 9am

• SUBMIT: Assignment #3 Revised

Tue Feb 17  

• READ: Alexander, The New Jim Crow (selection)
• PLENARY: The Carceral State

Thu Feb 19 AM

• READ: Sered, Until We Reckon (selection)
• PLENARY: Reckoning with Punishment

Thu Feb 19 PM

• WATCH: 13th (Documentary)
• SECTION: Reckoning with Histories of Punishment

Week 6

Mon Feb 23 by 9am

• SUBMIT: Research Paper Topic

Tue Feb 24 

• READ: Jacqueline Bhabha, Margareta Matache and Caroline Elkins, eds., Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), p1-8;
• WATCH:Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with Bill Moyers (2014)
• WATCH: Dr Shashi Tharoor MP – Britain Does Owe Reparations (2015)
• SECTION: Time for Reparations?

Thu Feb 26 AM

• READ: Raj Patel and Jason Moore, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (University of California Press, 2017), Introduction (1-43)
• PLENARY: Repairing the World: Capitalism, Nature, and Just Futures

Thu Feb 27 PM

• SECTION: Repairing the World: Capitalism, Nature, and Just Futures

Week 7

Mon Mar 2 by 9am

• SUBMIT: Campus Commentary #3

Tue Mar 3 

• READ: Patel & Moore, Chapter 1 & Chapter 4
• PLENARY: “Cheap Nature,” “Cheap Care”

Thu Mar 5 AM

• READ: Patel & Moore, Chapter 7
• SECTION: “Cheap Lives”

Thu Mar 5 PM

• READ: Patel & Moore, Conclusion
• PLENARY: What is to be done?

PART 2: MAKING JUSTICE

Fri Mar 6 

• TRAVEL: Leave for DC at 9:45am

Sat Mar 7 

• VISIT: National Museum of African American History and Culture
• VISIT: American History Museum or American Indian Museum
• TOPIC: Curation and Narratives of Justice

Sun Mar 8 

• VISIT: Galleries & Memorials
• TOPIC: Nationhood and Memory/History Making

Mon Mar 9 

• TRAVEL: Leave from DC at 9:45am

Week 8

Tue Mar 10 

SPRING BREAK

Thu Mar 12

SPRING BREAK

 

Week 9

Mon Mar 16 by 9am

• SUBMIT: D-Draft

 

Tue Mar 17 

• READ:Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice (Intro, Ch. 1 & 7)
• READ: Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking Recognition”
• PLENARY: I can’t believe my eyes: Exposing Epistemic Injustice

Thu Mar 19 AM

• READ: WJT Mitchell, “What Is an Image?”
• SECTION: Practicing Visual Analysis

Thu Mar 19 PM

• READ: Review Rawls excerpts from fall; Nagel, “Concealment and Exposure”
• READ: Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection Ch. 1
• PLENARY: Who Blindfolded Justice?

 

INTERLUDE: Art & Surveillance

Week 10

Tue Mar 24 

• READ: Michel Foucault, “Docile Bodies”
• SECTION: Docility & Productivity

Thu Mar 26 AM

• READ: Andre Lepecki, “Choreopolice and Choreopolitics”
• PLENARY: What is the task of a dancer?

Thu Mar 27 PM

• READ: US v. Jones
• SECTION: Surveillance and the Law

 

PART 3: MAKING (more) JUSTICE

Week 11

Mon Mar 30 by 9am

• SUBMIT: C-Draft

Tue Mar 31 

• PLENARY: Writing Intervention

Thu Apr 2 AM

• READ: Feinberg, “The Expressive Function of Punishment”
• READ: Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography Ch. 2
• PLENARY: Communicative Punishment: Seeing, interpreting, interpellating

Thu Apr 2 PM

• READ: Sen, “Why health equity?”
• READ: Samuels, “Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time”
• SECTION: Meet in the Atrium of the VAC (Belk Visual Arts Center); Bring your paper notebook.

Fri Apr by 9am

• SUBMT: C-Draft 2.0

Week 12

Tue Apr 7 

• Monday Schedule/No Class

Thu Apr 10 AM

• READ: Giorgio Agamben, The State of Exception Ch. 1 and 2
• READ: Simone Browne, Dark Matters (Ch. 1: “Notes on Surveillance Studies Through the Door of No Return)’
• WATCH: Hito Steyerl, How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013). 15:52.
• PLENARY: Just Data? Surveillance and Personhood; deconstructing in/justice

Thu Apr 10 PM

• READ: Game Book: The Cost of Neutrality: Censorship and Cultural Agency in Denver’s Little Saigon
• SECTION: Reacting to the Past Microgame

Week 13

Tue Apr 14 

• READ: Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams (Preface and This Battlefield Called Life: Black Feminist Dreams)
• READ: adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy (Intro and Creating More Possibilities: how we move towards life)
• PLENARY: Envisioning Just Futures/ using critique to synthesize and generate

Thu Apr 17 AM

• READ (**To access the file, Mac users need to download the Panels app; PC users need to download the Cover app””): Wojnarowicz & Romberger, seven miles a second 
• PLENARY: Visual Arts as Documentation, Historicization, and Activism

Thu Apr 17 PM

• SECTION: Seven Miles a Second

 

Week 14

Mon Apr 20 by 9am

• DUE: B-Draft

Tue Apr 21 

• WATCH: “Stop the Church” and How to Survive a Plague
• SECTION: ACT-UP and Social Activism

Thu Apr 23 AM

• READ: Susan Foster, “Choreographies of Protest”
• SECTION: The Power of Protest

Thu Apr 24 PM

• READ: David Gere, “How to Make Dances in an Epidemic” (selection)
• PLENARY: Dancing while your dying

Week 15

Mon Apr 27 by 9am

• DUE: Campus Commentary #4

Tue Apr 28 

• READ: Calderon and Takeshita, “A Future of Creative Placemaking”
• PLENARY/PANEL: Creative Placemaking as Cultural Justice
  • Dr. Anita Bateman, Vice President of Creative Direction, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture
  • Allen Compton, Founder / Principal, SALT Landscape Architects
  • Todd Stewart, Vice President, Public Art, Arts & Science Council
  • Dr. Yao-Fen You, Acting Director, Asian Pacific American Center, Smithsonian

Thu April 30 AM

• PLENARY: Workshop/Paper Revisions

Thu May 01 PM

• PLENARY: Revisions/Portfolio Planning

WEEK 16

Mon May 4 by 9am

• DUE: A-Draft of Research Paper

Tue May 5 

• READ: Everything you missed along the way
• PLENARY: Final Roundtable: Wrestling with not knowing

Thu May 7, 10:30-11:30am,  

VERNA MILLER CASE SYMPOSIUM

C. SHAW SMITH 900 ROOM

• PRESENT: Portfolio Elements
  • Be prepared with a 5 minute pitch of something that showcases your work in the course.

Fri May 8 2026

READING DAY

Sat May 9 2026-Wed May 13

• MEETING: Portfolio Review