First-Year Writing Seminar (101-8-1)

Topic

The Politics of Public Space

Instructors

Jillana B Enteen
847/491-4337
Crowe 1-113
Office Hours: by appointment

Meeting Info

Willard Hall B72: Mon, Wed 11:00AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

Who gets to feel at home in the student center? Who is visible, who is overlooked, and who feels entitled to occupy its spaces? In this first-year seminar, students will use the Norris student center as a site for exploring the politics of public space through the interdisciplinary lens of gender and sexuality studies. Throughout the course, we will study the student center as a social, cultural, and political space. We will examine how its architecture, layout, signage, furniture, policies, programming, and everyday patterns of use shape who gathers there, how people interact, and who feels that they belong. Paying particular attention to gender, sexuality, race, class, disability, and other forms of social difference, we will pair readings and observations to ask how apparently neutral spaces can reproduce inequalities—and how students themselves can challenge or transform them. Students will conduct close observations of the student center and engage with scholarship in gender studies and related fields. We will consider questions of privacy and visibility, safety and surveillance, accessibility, labor and service work, protest and expression, socializing and exclusion. We will also investigate how different bodies move through and experience the space, and whose needs and perspectives are reflected in its design.

Evaluation Method

Class participation, three papers.

Class Materials (Required)

All will be provided in Canvas

Class Attributes

WCAS Writing Seminar

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Weinberg First Year Seminars are only available to first-year students.
Add Consent: Department Consent Required