Spoiled kids who get to dole out the big bucks to attend America’s elite and pretentious private colleges not only get to pay outrageous tuition fees but also get brainwashed with flagrantly leftist propaganda.
Here, The Daily Caller proudly presents the definitive list of hare-brained classes taught at some of the most highly ranked private (but not Ivy League!) universities in America. (RELATED: The Ivy League’s 13 Most Daffy, Outrageously Liberal College Courses)
Claremont McKenna College, Religious Studies: Queer Theory and the Bible
The course looks at biblical passages that are central to prohibitions on homosexuality, as well as passages that can be read as queer friendly. Texts will be examined through biblical scholarship and queer theory.
Duke University, Women’s Studies: Vampire Chronicles: Fantasies of Vampirism in a Cross-Cultural Perspective
Literary and cinematic representations of vampirism, from Dracula to Buffy, Chinese jiangshi to the politics of blood-selling and blood donation. The figure of the vampire as embodiment of anxieties about sexuality, desire, gender identity, and ethnic alterity. Cross-cultural circulation of vampiric traditions, vampirism as a symbol of circulation in its own right. Instructor: Rojas
Amherst College, Political Science Department: Taking Marx Seriously
Should Marx be given yet another chance? Is there anything left to gain by returning to texts whose earnest exegesis has occupied countless interpreters, both friendly and hostile, for generations? Has Marx’s credibility survived the global debacle of those regimes and movements which drew inspiration from his work, however poorly they understood it? Or, conversely, have we entered a new era in which post-Marxism has joined a host of other “post-”phenomena? This seminar will deal with these and related questions in the context of a close and critical reading of Marx’s texts. The main themes we will discuss include Marx’s conception of capitalist modernity, material and intellectual production, power, class conflicts and social consciousness, and his critique of alienation, bourgeois freedom and representative democracy. We will also examine Marx’s theories of historical progress, capitalist exploitation, globalization and human emancipation.This course fulfills the requirement for an advanced seminar in Political Science.
Swarthmore College, Religion Department: Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology
The God of the Bible and later Jewish and Christian literature is distinctively masculine, definitely male. Or is He? If we can point out places in traditional writings where God is nurturing, forgiving, and loving, does that mean that God is feminine, or female? This course examines feminist and queer writings about God, explores the tensions between feminist and queer theology, and seeks to stretch the limits of gendering—and sexing—the divine. Key themes include: gender; embodiment; masculinity; liberation; sexuality; feminist and queer theory. (RELATED: The Daily Caller Presents: Public Universities’ Most Liberal And Moronic Courses)
Smith College, Art History Department: Gender, Sexuality, and the Built Environment
This course investigates how gender and sexuality are constitutive of, and constituted by, the built environment. Approaching the topic from the perspective of nineteenth and twentieth-century European and American history, the course addresses a number of interrelated questions: How have women shaped the built environment? What role has gender played in shaping dominant understandings of private and public spheres? What role does architecture play in defining socially acceptable and unacceptable sexual relationships? Finally, how have the histories of LGBTQ communities marked the urban landscape, and what efforts have been made to preserve these sites? Prerequisites: a 100-level art history course or permission of the instructor.
Macalester College, History Department: Lines in the Sand: History and Culture of the U.S. – Borderlands
This course examines cultural and political contacts in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Fundamentally this course argues that rather than construct the borderlands as a rigid frontier outpost, we should understand it as a site of social and political discourse and an interzone of diverse cultures. In order to understand this condition we will begin with an examination of the region before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formalized a national border between the United States and Mexico. Two major themes will frame our discussions: violence and accomodation. However, we will examine several other concepts through those lenses including captivity and the struggle for empire, gender and border crossings, how the construction of race shaped the politics of identity, warfare, and immigration and the Border Patrol, among others. We will also watch films, read poetry, and listen to borderlands inspired music.
Hampshire College, Critical Social Inquiry Department: Framing Climate Change: Who’s Taking the Heat for Global Warming?
Climate change is one of the most important environmental, social, economic and political challenges of our time. While there is now widespread scientific agreement about its causes, considerable controversy exists over its potential effects and what measures should be taken to address it. This course will look at the competing ways climate change is framed by different actors, including governments, international agencies, energy companies, militaries, environmental movements, celebrities, politicians, and social justice activists. What rhetorical and political strategies do different actors employ? How is popular culture implicated? How do race, gender and economic inequalities shape vulnerabilities and responses to climate change nationally and internationally?
Rice University, Freshman Writing Seminars: Sex at Rice: The Good, The Bad, and The Awkward
This course will ask students to think critically about how they have conceptualized sexuality and the ethical norms governing their sexual practices. Readings will include sociological, historical, philosophical, and religious texts. Issues to be covered: The Rice Purity Test, NOD, Theme Parties, Hooking-Up, Pornography, Objectification, Gender, and Same-Sex Relationships.
Occidental College, Critical Theory and Social Justice Department: Whiteness
This course seeks to engage the emergent body of scholarship designated to deconstruct whiteness. It will examine the construction of whiteness in the historic, legal, and economic contexts which have allowed it to function as an enabling condition for privilege and race-based prejudice. Particular attention will be paid to the role of religion and psychology in the construction of whiteness. Texts will include Race Traitor, Critical White Studies, The Invention of the White Race, The Abolition of Whiteness, White Trash, and Even the Rat was White. Emphasis topic: Critical Race Theory.
Occidental College, Critical Theory and Social Justice Department: Critical Blackness
Critical Race Theorists have begun to describe a “new blackness,” “critical blackness,” post-blackness,” and “unforgivable blackness.” This emergent scholarship, which describes a feminist New Black Man, also seeks to “queer blackness” and to articulate a black sexual politics that addresses a “new racism.” By calling us to examine the possibility of a black political solidarity that escapes the problems of identity politics, this scholarship provokes We Who Are Dark to imagine more complex and free identities. This course invites all of us to engage this scholarship.
Swarthmore College, Peace and Conflict Studies: Securities and Defense: Nonviolent Strategies
Threats to security exist on many levels: environment, community, nation, human rights, and others. People naturally mobilize for defense, but often choose among a very narrow set of options. This course broadens the framework to focus on modes of nonviolent defense which have had concrete application sometimes involving millions of people, but which remain “off the radar” of most strategic analysis. Students will learn from cases of successful nonviolent defense of nations, communities, environmental resources, and human rights under threat and will research and write “forgotten cases” for publication in the Global Nonviolent Action Database, providing experience with the data of civilian resistance. They will also take an example of threat in today’s world and begin to explore how a nonviolent strategy could be devised given the circumstances. Through these activities students will gain research skills and broaden their view of the dynamics of struggle.
Stanford University, African American Studies: Possessive Investment in Whiteness
An approachable but nuanced way of developing a notion of the construction and maintenance of whiteness in the United States. By focusing on George Lipsitz’s book, the class works to challenge and refine the ideas of white privilege and race in the history and contemporary United States. By focusing on the single text, with some outside supplementary material, the course does not contend that Lipsitz is providing the only truth, but the class looks to complicate his notions and expand them with personal and outside understandings. May be repeated for credit.
Wesleyan University, English Department: Queer Times: The Poetics and Politics of Temporality
What are the relationships among textuality, sexuality, and temporality? The course will explore this question by analyzing a range of literary, visual, and theoretical works from the early 20th century to the present day, including iconic modernist texts and contemporary queer literary, visual, and theoretical production, including works responding to the AIDS epidemic.
Carleton College, Women’s and Gender Studies: FemSex
Fem Sex is a collaborative, student-facilitated, no-credit class seeks to engage participants in reading and discussions on female sexual health and sexuality. Adapted from a course created at University of California at Berkeley, *FemSex* explores topics such as history and culture of female sexuality, sexual anatomy, body image, pleasure, effects of power and privilege on female sexuality, reproductive health, and the intersections of race, class, sex, and gender. Expect creative homework assignments, sweet field trips, speakers, and discussions.
Oberlin College, African American Studies: Katrina and Black Freedom Struggle
This course situates August 29, 2005 and the meaning of the Katrina disaster in the history of Black Struggle in Louisiana and the surrounding region. Using texts such as Adam Fairclough’s Race and Democracy, Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, and Hartman and Squires’s There Is No Such Thing As A Natural Disaster, students examine the historical interplay of race, gender, poverty, and the politics of resistance in a unique area of the U. S. South.
Oberlin College, Sociology Department: Seminar in Rural Sociology: “Rednecks,” Cowboys, and Country Queers
This seminar examines rural American life using a cultural lens. How are symbolic boundaries drawn, reinforced, or dissolved in response to identities and practices in rural places? Drawing from the interdisciplinary field of rural studies, this course investigates the cultural meanings of community, isolation, and exclusion in rural America. Topics include: rural “others,” queers in the countryside, urban readings of the rural, “rural chic” trends, and deconstructing “white trash.” Open to sociology and non-sociology majors. Fieldtrip required.