Fall 2023 registration is now open! Make sure to check out our exciting, upper-division electives in African American and African Diaspora Studies, American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Latinx and Latin American Studies.
Our undergraduate degree majors and minors provide students with the skills they need to address real-world issues and succeed professionally in an increasingly diverse world. For more information, please email iges@unlv.edu
African American and African Diaspora Studies
AAS 105-1001 African American Music and Culture
Instructor: David Barragan – Tu/Th 2:30-3:45
Introduction to African American music and its relationship to politics and society. Topic: Hip-Hop.
AAS 264-1002 / PSY 264 African-American Psychology
Instructor: Dr. Patricia Heisser-Metoyer - WEB
Examines current psychological research and literature on the cultural, societal, historical, and political
influences on the psychological well-being and characteristics of African Americans. Contextual issues
include world views, values, beliefs, minority status, slavery, and oppression.
AAS 330-1001 From Civil Rights to Black Power and Beyond
Instructor: Dr. Kendra Gage – M/W 10:00-11:15
From Civil Rights to Black Power and Beyond is a course based on the interdisciplinary study of African
Americans Studies beginning with the Civil Rights Movement and continuing to the present day. The
course will focus on the transition from civil rights to the emergence of the Black Power revolution, the
continued push for inclusion in the areas of education, employment and in the political arena, all the way
to the present with the current and continuing struggles for Black equity and protection highlighted by the
Black Lives Matter Movement. We will pay special attention to how the larger African American
freedom movement has both intersected and influenced past and current debates about gender, labor,
sexuality, and politics of hierarchy.
AAS 403X-1001 Slavery in Film and Media
Instructor: Dr. Tyler Parry – Tu 11:30-2:15
This course provides a dual focus on both slavery as an institution in American history and its relevance
in influencing US popular culture as presented through the venues of film and media. The enslavement of
people of African descent has had a profound impact on the development of the United States and the
western hemisphere more broadly, but the historical memory of slavery and enslaved people has been a
contested topic for over three centuries. How does one responsibly depict enslavement in film and other
media? Who tells the story? Can the theme of slavery fit into the traditional “genres” of the film? Do such
films have political agendas? Is holding a bias as producer/director/actor inherently negative? This class
uses a variety of primary and secondary sources to interrogate films about enslavement in the United States
and abroad, with cinematic features ranging chronologically from the early 20th century into the
21st, alongside films and television shows categorized as “action,” “drama,” or even “comedy.”
AAS 440-1001 African American Medical History
Instructor: Dr. Christopher Willoughby – M/W 1:00-2:15
From the American Revolution to the present, African Americans have faced racism from the medical
profession just as they fought to reform and enter it. In this course, we will examine these two threads.
First, students will study the development of the scientific race concept, which physicians and politicians
have used to exclude Black people from entering the medical profession and to justify preventable health
disparities. Second, we will examine how African Americans have challenged medical racism from
nineteenth-century attempts to integrate medical schools to the Black Panther Party’s work to oppose
medical racism and establish community clinics in the late twentieth century.
American Indian and Indigenous Studies
AIIS 494A-1001 / ENG 494A / ENG 694A Native American Literature
Instructor: Dr. Steven Sexton – Tu/Th 10:00-11:15
Literature of Native American peoples, oral traditions through contemporary works.
Asian and Asian American Studies
AIS 485A-1001/ENG 485A Asian Literature
Instructor: Dr. Siddharth Srikanth - Tu/Th 2:30-3:45
This course will be organized around the topic “Global Asias.” We will read/view literature and films that
engage with the global dimensions of Asian experiences, such as the relations among regions in South,
Southeast, and East Asia from the 19th century, the diversity of South and East Asian diasporic
experiences both within Asia and in the West, and how globalization, capitalism, and colonialism mediate
relationships between Asian literatures and the world. Readings will include novels and short stories by
Lu Xun, Leslie Chang, Tash Aw, Kamila Shamsie, Balli Kaur Jaiswal, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, and Viet
Thanh Nguyen. Films will include Minari (2020), Platform (2000), Parasite (2019).
AIS 449C-1001 / HIST 449C Topics in Japanese History
Instructor: Dr. Edgar Weir – WEB
In-depth study of specific aspects of Japanese history. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credits.
Please verify that all credits will apply towards your degree.
AIS 425-1001 / JPN 425 Topics in Japanese Culture
Instructor: Dr. Naoko Takemaru - M/W 1:00-2:15
This course is designed for those who wish to broaden their knowledge of Japanese culture and society as
well as to further improve their overall language skills. The course may be repeated with a different topic
for up to six credits.
AIS 124-1002 / PHIL 124 Philosophical Traditions of Asia
Instructor: Sandeep Dhillon – Tu/Th 2:30-3:45
Study of the nature of self, mind, knowledge, truth, logic and related themes characteristic of India,
China, Japan, or any other Asian country; any one of these may be taught separately. May be repeated for
a maximum of 9 credits.
AIS 403X - 1001 Food and Asian America
Instructor: Dr. Mark Padoongpatt – W 11:30-2:15
Food is an indelible part of the Asian American experience. This course explores the role of food in the
making of Asian America. We’ll examine foodways in all its facets—from cooking and eating to
procurement and representation—and take an interdisciplinary and transnational approach to exploring a
variety of cuisines, their evolution, and how and why food acts as a dynamic site of identity and self-
expression as well as the formation of race, gender, class, and nation. We will also venture out together to
local restaurants and grocery stores to enhance our experience and understanding of the Asian American
culinary landscape—and eat. Students can expect to learn about specific dishes, how to make them, and to
think and write about the broader food cultures and communities they are part of.
Gender and Sexuality Studies
WMST 295 - 1001 Gender and Popular Culture
Instructor TBA – M/W 11:30-12:45
This course uses an intersectional feminist framework to examine how various forms of popular culture,
from film to social media and beyond, shape our understandings of who we are and how the world works.
WMST 302 - 1001 Feminist Research Methodology
Instructor: Dr. Lynn Comella M/W 1:00-2:15
What makes feminist research feminist? What is involved in conducting good research? What counts as
evidence, and how do researchers collect, analyze, and make sense of it? This course is designed to be a
rigorous, interdisciplinary introduction to the process of conducting feminist and queer research. You will
learn about different techniques for gathering information (methods) and how research can be guided by
feminist and queer theories, frameworks, and principles (methodology). We will discuss different
qualitative research methods, including interview methods, oral history, archival research, and survey
design, and examine how feminist scholars challenge dominant theories about objectivity and the
production of knowledge (epistemology).
WMST 380 - 1001 / JOUR 380 Women and Media
Instructor: TBA – WEB
Exploration of the role of women within the media and the treatment of women by the media.
WMST 401J - 1001 / PSC 401J / HIST 453 Women in Politics
Instructor: Dr. Valerie Taylor – WEB
This course examines the role of Black women’s political participation at the local, national and
international levels. We will interrogate how the intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation, faith and
class impact Black women’s success as political organizers, activists, elected officials, voters and policy
makers. We will analyze the various ways that Black women defy the racist and sexist political
institutions, laws and practices that have been designed to exclude their participation. The course will
include selections from books such as Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote and
Insisted on Equality for All and Women, Men and U.S. Politics, alongside relevant articles, speeches,
essays, films, and interviews.
WMST 424 - 1001 / THTR 424 Gay Plays
Instructor TBA – Tu/Th 11:30-12:45
Study of selected gay plays which includes an examination of appropriate themes and issues.
WMST 428 - 1001 / SOC 428 Women and Crime
Instructor: TBA - WEB
Women as offenders and as processed through the criminal justice system; women as victims and the
response of the criminal justice system and the community.
WMST 453-1001 / SOC 453 Gender and Society
Instructor: TBA – Th 5:30-8:15
Examines the micro-social and political aspects of gender, including socialization into gender roles, same-
sex, and cross-sex communications, interactions, and long-term relationships.
WMST 488-1001 / WMST 688 Bodies, Sex, and Health
Instructor: Dr. Danielle Roth-Johnson – Tu/Th 1:00-2:15
This course will examine the complex relationships between gender and health using analytical
frameworks from a multidisciplinary of disciplines. In readings and class discussions we will consider
how different frameworks for addressing gender and biological sex shape the questions people ask about
societal patterns of health, disease, and well-being. Major topics to be addressed in this course include:
Historical and cultural notions of body, self, personhood, and power within health contexts; how
biological categories such as “female” and “male” and cultural categories such as “woman” and “man”
affect patterns of health and disease for both individuals and populations; how intersections of gender,
biology, sexuality, class, race, and racism produce health disparities, among other key areas of inquiry.
Latinx and Latin American Studies
LAS 227A – 1001 / SPAN 227 Spanish for Heritage Speakers II
Instructor: Dr. Jorge Galindo – Tu/Th 10:00-11:15
Intended for students who have a Spanish language background but little or no formal training. Emphasis
on writing skills, grammar, and vocabulary enrichment.
LAS 228-1001 / HIST 228 Introduction to Latin American History and Culture II
Instructor: Carlos Dimas – WEB
Survey of the historical development of Spanish and Portuguese America from the independence
movements, c. 1810 - 1825, to the present day, including an examination of the countries differing
approaches to dealing with the social, economic, political and cultural legacies of Iberian colonialism.
LAS 496D-1001 / ENG 496D Contemporary Latino/a Literature
Instructor: Dr. Vincent Perez – M/W 10:00-11:15
This course presents a comparative survey of modern (post-WWI to the present) Latinx literature.
Covering writings from the 1920s through the early 2000s, the course explores works by a group of
writers whose backgrounds include Chicanx, Mexican American, Cuban-American, Puerto
Rican/NuYorican, Dominican American, and Salvadoran American. Writers taught in the class include
Junot Diaz, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Ana Menendez, Gloria Anzaldua, Roberto Lovato and Lorna Dee
Cervantes. The related themes of history, memory, and identity form the center of this course. All literary
works are repositories of cultural (or collective) memory. Cultural or collective memory denotes the
shared remembrances through which a society, group, or community imagines and defines itself, giving it
a sense of its past and defining its identity in the present. It consists of that body of texts, narratives, and
images specific to each society or group in each epoch, whose cultivation serves to stabilize and convey
that group’s identity and self-image.