Subject: USSO

Term: Summer 2019

USSO 291X: "We're Dying in America": The History of the U.S. AIDS Crisis (100/3180)

MWF 12:00-01:30 PM Jun 03-Jul 29

Milne, A

Thirty-seven years have passed since the summer of 1981, when the Centers for Disease Control published a report on the mysterious deaths of five previously-healthy gay men. In that time, more than thirty-nine million people have died of AIDS around the globe. Approximately 600,000 of those people died in the United States; at least 10,000 more Americans will die this year. Why, given the global scope of the crisis and the dramatic impact it has had on US society and culture, do so few students learn about the AIDS crisis in school? Why does it receive less attention than, for example, terrorism? In this course, we will study the first 20 years of the United States' AIDS crisis, and use what we learn to contemplate the current status of HIV-positive people and people with AIDS. We will examine the origins of AIDS as a biological, political, and cultural phenomenon in the hopes of understanding why the United States experienced the virus as it did. We will also address the myriad responses to the virus by presidents and preachers, artists and activists, doctors and business people. How did this tragedy impact American politics and culture? What lessons did we learn, and what mistakes are we still repeating today? How can (and should) the history of AIDS inform our response to the opioid crisis, or the battle over Obamacare? Are we ready for the next epidemic?

USSO 292M: What We Talk about When We Talk about Food (100/3347)

TWR 01:00-02:30 PM Jun 03-Jul 29

Thielen, B

Food. What is seemingly a simple choice of what to put into our bodies is at the same time deeply connected to how we think about ourselves, and our relationship to our culture and our communities. In this course, we will explore food in American culture and society by discussing topics such as food and personal/ethnic identity; eating for nutrition vs. pleasure; food access and insecurity; Community Supported Agriculture; genetically-modified organisms; and hunting as a food sources. We will not only focus on these topics and issues themselves, but the way in which they are discussed--the language and rhetorical techniques employed in the conversation.