FALL 2026

Feminist Ethnography, Day/Time TBA

Soniya Munshi

Feminist Ethnography is a methodology that approaches the study of people in their everyday structural and cultural contexts through feminist analyses of power to examine gender, sexuality, race, class, nation, disability and other modes of social difference. Feminist ethnography is rooted in praxis, a process that transforms theory into action, and takes up questions of how and where it can contribute to social change. Through this course, we will engage topics such as the histories of feminist ethnography including debates and critical interventions, methods, ethics and accountabilities, and applications. We will also attend to practical considerations, such as strategies to build meaningful relationships with people and place over time that take into account the realities of everyday graduate student life in NYC.  In this course, you will be invited to work with a research question that will inform an independent feminist ethnographic research project over the course of the semester. This course will also attend to the craft of feminist ethnographic writing through close readings of texts as well as our own practice with the genre.   

Study of Lives, Day/Time TBA

Molly Andrews

A course in the study of lives invites students to grapple with the uniqueness, challenges, and wisdoms of the individual person.  In addition to reading some critical (and interesting) life stories, including those of people who contend with various forms of injustice and struggle, we will reflect on the theories, interviewing and interpretive strategies, and ethical issues connected with the study of lives.  Throughout the course, we will consider how the study of lives fits with, enhances, and is distinctive from a variety of other conceptual and methodological frameworks that students are engaging within their own research.  Please note that we will focus much of our energies this semester on the “doing” of the work as students sketch the life of another person. 

SPRING 2027

Critical Discourse Theory and Analysis, (PSYC72203) , 3 CR

Colette Daiute

Critical Discourse Theory and Analysis focuses on expression as activity and subjectivity in processes of social change and learning. Expressive media, like personal narratives, policies, laws, images, interviews, and curricula occur in tension, synergy, and transformation. We review research focused on how individuals, cultural groups, and institutions use those and other discourse genres to share/impose/resist/innovate ways of knowing and living, especially at moments of major change such as in social movements and displacements. Drawing on social sciences and humanities, we consider research designs within naturally occurring practices and craft detailed analytic strategies to learn about interactions among and within diverse participants, privileging especially the voices of people who have been marginalized, discriminated against, and excluded in other ways, while also shining a light on those with resources and power. Topics organizing our work include literary readings of everyday interactions, the language of microaggressions, silences in policy reports, and multiple voices in interviews. The course features discourse analysis workshops, with previous data sets and as applied to students’ projects. We also work with computer databases, such as Atlas ti, Nvivo, and selected AI tools. Students are invited to bring their own projects and data to the course.  No prerequisite.