30 courses with the subject PEAC H, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
Introduction to the study of peace, justice and human rights, surveying philosophies of rights and justice; approaches to (and reasons for) peace, war, and nonviolence; clashes between human rights and conflict resolution; why study of human rights is necessarily interdisciplinary.
This course considers a civics of interdependence. We have a role to play, but who are “we,” what role is that, and what ideas, methods, and skills might help us take action for more just, inclusive, sustainable communities? We take up this analytical challenge and the action-oriented disposition it suggests, through consideration of key concepts in local-global civic inquiry and action - through the lens of the Philadelphia region and broader national and international partnerships. Pre-requisite(s): Students must be selected for a summer CPGC Fellowship.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Quakers engaged in a number of remarkable—and controversial—activities that were intended to provide assistance to people who were being persecuted by the Nazis. Those actions were criticized by some US citizens (who thought that Quakers were giving unwitting aid to the Nazis) and also derided by Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels (who thought that Quakers were demonstrating a complete lack of awareness about how the world really works.) Nevertheless, Quakers’ actions did end up saving some lives. Students in this course will examine what Quakers accomplished—and failed to accomplish—in the 1930s and 1940s. The course is not designed as a venue in which to decide, once and for all, which of the Quakers’ actions were wise and which were foolish. The course is meant, rather, to offer students an opportunity to reflect on the ethical questions with which Quakers wrestled and an invitation to compare those questions with the ones they face themselves. Crosslisted: Independent College Programs; Religion; Peace, Justice and Human Rights
This course surveys major legal and ethical theories with a view to helping students understand arguments about peace, justice and human rights and formulate their own creative approaches to ethical problems. Theories will be applied to concrete problems of justice. No prerequisites.
This course examines the possibilities and limits of forgiveness, apology and mercy in politics, and the role mourning plays in recovery from violence. In our readings we will focus on specific historic and contemporary instances of forgiveness and apology, violence and recovery; but our overall approach to the topic will be philosophical: The course will propose a thought experiment wherein we subject our ideas and presuppositions about what justice is, what it can and cannot be, and what forgiveness is, and what it can and cannot do, to a critical reappraisal. Prerequisite(s): PEAC 101 or 201, a Philosophy course, or instructor consent
Households of low to moderate income struggle in multiple ways. To what extent can access to appropriate financial tools help alleviate some of their stress? While microcredit, the provision of small loans to people in poverty, is typically associated with developing countries, issues of access to appropriate financial products are everywhere. This course focuses on Access to Finance in the US and will involve direct engagement with Philadelphia organizations dealing with the issue that finance might address - and both the potential and actual problems that arise within households, small business and the industries that are in the ecosystem supporting them. We will read books, articles and studies to ground us in different understandings of poverty and households' financial needs, whether theoretical, empirical and/or directly observed. And, we will examine how the financial sector and adjacent industries are providing products and services to serve those households and small businesses, not always in helpful ways. We will look at eco-systems, providers, regulators and financial literacy. A major portion of the class will be project-based and will have you take a deep dive into one of the Philly organizations involved in access to finance to better understand what they do, how they are doing it and how they are making strategic decisions. We will develop basic analytical skills and deploy useful frameworks to better understand the operations of each organization. And, we will assess how their success is affected both by the capabilities they bring and the environment in which they are working. This class will be taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program. Come join Professor Mudd in the city and learn together the issues and current local efforts to deal with them. Prerequisites: Priority in registration will be given to students participating in the Tri-Co Philly Program (https://www.haverford.edu/philly-program) and PJHR concentrators. Remaining seats are available to other Tri-Co students, by lottery, if demand exceeds remaining spaces in the course. If you are interested in the program, you must fill out the application, which is due on Friday, Nov. 1 by 11:59 pm. This program includes registering for two of three of the program’s courses, which include this course OR A City of Homes: Housing Issues in Philadelphia (ENGL B260) OR Philadelphia Music City (MUSI 005C). Those not participating in the Philly program do not need to complete the application and can simply pre-register for the class
This course is an introduction to “decoloniality,” a mode of critical theory that examines and attempts to systematically undermine the notion that ascendance to power of European modernity (including contemporary American culture) can be understood without a constitutive and ongoing relation to colonial domination. This includes domination on the basis of race, gender, religion, and a variety of other ways that modern systems of rationality, governance, normalcy, order, and accumulation have been constructed through practices of domination and subjugation. The course focuses specifically on the American context, including the interplay between the African continent and North and South America. Key writers from Afro-diasporic, Afro-Caribbean, and indigenous Latin American perspectives will be studied in depth. While introducing students to salient currents in decolonial thought, the course will also examine relations between decolonial and postcolonial thought, as well as between decolonial theory and recent work in feminist and query theory.
This course will use science fiction to situate contemporary problems of political life and political theory in new contexts. Our main aim will be to decenter some of our presuppositions about what form political writing, persuasion, and action ought to take. Readings include science fiction, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, political science, neuroscience, poetry, literature, gender studies, Indigenous studies, and Black studies. Assignments include analysis of texts, storytelling, worldbuilding thought experiments, political writing, and visual argument. Pre-requisite(s): PEAC 101 or 201 or consent of instructor Lottery Preference: PJHR concentrators, 7 spaces reserved for first years
This course provides students with focused opportunities to identify and develop their applied skills. It engages text, experience, and reflective processes to develop the methods, skills, and habits for translating theoretical inquiry and applied experiences for continuous growth, improvement and informed ethical action. Each student should grow in their understanding of themselves and their vocation, while also developing capacities to better contribute to broader organizations, communities, businesses, and movements. Pre-requisite(s): Students must participate in a summer internship through the College.
This course explores the existence and effects of caste as a manifestation of power through several vectors such as religion, gender, class, etc.
This course investigates the plantationocene, a term used to describe the connections between the exploitation of natural resources and forced labor on plantations and ecological destruction around the world. Topics discussed include: the history of forced labor systems, such as slavery and indentureship, the consequences of subsequent geographical changes, plantation tourism, land dispossession, the possibilities and limitations of small-scale farming and plantation housing, and what repair might look like in the wake of the plantation. Lottery Preference: PJHR first, space for 10 first-years and sophomores.
This course offers an overview of the human rights system, looking at its basic elements and studying how it works. At the heart of this course is the question of “culture” and its relation to human rights. We will focus on the tensions and translations between human rights and culture and between global ideas and practices and local ones. The goal of the course is developing an understanding of human rights in practice and theorizing the intersections between social fields thought of as global and local. Crosslisted: Anthropology; Peace, Justice and Human Rights Prerequisite(s): Intro to Anthropology OR Intro to PJHR
This course examines the relationship between urban space, conflict, and human rights. Drawing on a range of disciplines, including urban planning, architecture, geography, law, and human rights scholarship, students will investigate how the built environment has been used as an instrument of domination, segregation, and violence, and how it can also become a site of resistance, repair, and restorative justice. Lottery Preference: PJHR and Cities students first, then all other students.
This course examines how citizens challenge state power and repression across a range of tactics — armed insurgency, mass nonviolent campaigns, resistance through law, and indigenous self-governance. Drawing on cases from Guatemala, Chile, and Colombia, we analyze why movements choose the tactics they do and whether resistance delivers the change it promises. Cross-listed: Political Science/Peace, Justice and Human Rights Prerequisite(s): One course in Political Science
Global indebtedness has reached astronomical and obscene proportions, and vast numbers of human beings are effectively enslaved to debt. This course examines the history of debt politics and the role of credit and debt in struggles for justice and sovereignty, in both pre-capitalist and capitalist societies. Particular focus will be placed on contemporary debates in the theory of money, and on the ambiguous and fraught relations between money and credit. Special consideration will be given to arguments for debt resistance politics as a strategy of emancipation and democratization in the context of neoliberal ideology, extreme wealth inequality, and environmental destruction, since these forces are arguably both the effects and causes of power relations enabling some to maintain perpetual creditworthiness while most have their futures foreclosed by the requirement that they pay their debts. Crosslisted: PEAC,ECON Prerequisite(s): one PEAC course or consent of instructor
Where should the law come from, the individual or the state? How can you protest an unjust system, and how can an ancient story help you do it? Who owns a “Classic”? These are just a few questions that Sophocles’ Antigone has raised for philosophers and playwrights from the Enlightenment to today. We'll read several versions of the Antigone myth and explore this character’s enduring relevance to theories of gender, performance, world literature, and politics. Crosslisted: COML,PEAC.
This course is an introduction to current debates in radical feminism. Beginning with the psychanalytical, Marxist, and Black Radical feminists of the 1960’s and 70’s, the course outlines contemporary radical feminist positions on race, gender, consumption, domesticity, care, labor, ecology, and the prospects of collective life within and beyond capitalist planetary endgame. Crosslisted: POLS. Pre-requisite(s): PEAC 101 or 201 or any PHIL or POLS class, or consent of instructor. Lottery Preference: PJHR and GenSex students first
Impact investing is investing to generate both a financial return and a positive social benefit. It supports firms seeking to address social, environmental and /or governance problems (ESG) in a sustainable way often within market activity. The focus of this course is to not only gain an understanding of the theory and practice of impact investing across its many components, but also to gain practical experience by assessing a particular set of potential impact investments, making formal presentations of findings to an investment committee leading to a recommendation for investment to a partnering foundation. Crosslisted: Economics, Independent College Programs, PJHR Prerequisite(s): ECON 104 or 105 or 106
What does it mean to “abolish” an institution, and how does abolition differ from reform? Throughout the semester, we will explore how abolition has been used to imagine political, ethical, and social projects of transformation. The course takes a historical approach, examining the evolving meanings and contexts of abolition within theoretical debates and political struggles against institutions and social practices such as serfdom, slavery, the death penalty, prisons, and gender-based and racialized violence. By tracing abolitionist thought across different historical moments, students will consider how movements and thinkers have challenged systems of domination and proposed alternative visions of justice and social organization. Readings will draw from theoretical, historical, and activist traditions and may include works by Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, C. L. R. James, Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, W. E. B. Du Bois, Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Tarana Burke, and Mariame Kaba. Prerequisite(s): one PEAC course
Advanced inquiry into creative and critical responses to the death penalty in the United States from the 1830s to the 1970s. Our aim is to explore the relationship between art and social protest, and to examine how capital punishment has manifested U.S. histories of race, class, gender, religion, and sexuality. Readings in primary historical materials, literary and cultural analysis, and critical theory. Pre-requisite(s): Freshman writing, plus one 200-level ENG course; or freshman writing plus PEAC101 or PEAC201. Crosslisted: ENGL and PEAC
This interdisciplinary course (workshop) will pivot around close readings of classic and contemporary writings and robust discussions with distinguished visitors about the ethical dimensions of and practical responses to contemporary social conditions, problems, and controversies. Crosslisted: Independent College Programs (HU), Peace, Justice and Human Rights (SO)
An examination of socialist armed struggles in 1970s, women’s rights and feminist movements in Latin America. A comparative study of literary texts, testimonials and documentary films addresses theoretical issues such as Marxism, global feminism, hegemony and feminisms produced in the periphery. This course is conducted in Spanish. Course taught in Spanish. Cross-listed: Spanish, Gen/Sex, and PJHR Prerequisite(s): One 200-level, preferred 300- level course, or instructor consent
Explores legal theories underpinning legal systems in settler colonial states. Studies settler legal forms and Indigenous legal forms alongside each other, and thinks about what gives law power, how that power stays in place, and what law is supposed to be and do for those who are guided by it. Readings include classics of settler/western legal theory and various Indigenous traditions. Assignments include papers, presentations, research, storytelling, and moot courts in multiple traditions. Pre-requisite(s): PEAC 101 or 201 or consent of instructor Lottery Preference: PJHR Concentrators
This interdisciplinary course analyzes the relationship between Black and Asian communities in the Americas, highlighting moments of solidarity and unity and areas of divergence and conflict. Moving from slavery to indentureship to U.S. immigration, particularly post 1960s, students will examine the rhetoric of the yellow peril, the myth of the model minority, the rise of Black Power movements, orientalist stereotypes, and anti-blackness within the Asian (inclusive of South Asian and Indo-Caribbean) community. Pre-requisite(s): PEAC 101 or 201 or consent of instructor Lottery Preference: PJHR, AFST, and FGSTC students
This discussion seminar explores technologies from a cultural, sociological, and always critical perspective. Drawing on literature from an interdisciplinary set of fields including science and technology studies, media, cultural, and infrastructure studies, we will explore how relationships and understandings of technology are built throughout society. Through this social constructivist view, students will be exposed to the politics of technology while also building awareness of how these politics have and can be challenged.
A study of the relations between political possibility and visions of ultimate reality, this course introduces students to a range of visions for order and change both within and beyond the West, past and present. Special attention is given to conceptions of "the end of the world" in relation to the ongoing ecological crisis and its political causes and consequences.
This class will trace the historical evolution of the concept of rights in early modern Europe. We will explore the origins of notions of rights and consider whether rights were invented, as some historians claim—and if so, when. We will analyze how ideas about rights intersected with the histories of constitutionalism, colonialism, revolution, and liberalism. Additionally, we will examine competing theories of rights to understand which rights historical actors claimed, and whose rights they were. Crosslisted: HIST, PEAC. Pre-requisite(s): One prior course in history.
Co-developed with members of Right2Redemption currently incarcerated in SCI Phoenix, this seminar explores how technologies have been deployed to expand the the prison-industrial complex, restricted the agency of community members from having their voices heard in political decision-making, and what can be done about this. Students must undergo clearance checks at SCI Phoenix in order to gain access to participate in the workshops, and visits may require time outside of class (approx. 4-6h extra month). Lottery Preference: PJHR, Political Science, Sociology
This course explores creative process within the context of environmental interventions. It offers multi-disciplinary creative exercises to help students become the innovative and creative environmental professionals.The course unfolds as hands-on workshop through a series of micro-experiences, helping students evolve into fully-conscious, creative environmental professionals who approach communities empathically and connect to Nature profoundly, ethically facilitating the voices of humans and non-humans, as part of researching, assisting, protecting, and promoting fragile places under threat. Crosslisted: ENVS,PEAC,VIST. Lottery Preference: ENVS majors
This capstone course consolidates student experience of a program that integrates scholarship, theory, library and field research, and policy perspectives. It incorporates research assignments, collaboration, a conference presentation and a dossier on student work in the concentration. For PJHR senior concentrators.
Source: Haverford College's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 59
