via University of Chicago
HUMA 17000. Language and the Human I-III.
Explores "the role of language in articulating, maintaining, and subverting power relations in society. Some of the questions we discuss include: How does language support structures of power and privilege? How does language shape our assumptions and beliefs? How does language motivate us to act or keep us from acting? Is language a basic human right? How does language influence the ways we think about race, gender, sexual orientation, and species? How do we use language to perceive or shape the identity of others?"
Also explored: "language ideologies and hierarchies, vernacular languages and literatures, linguistic nationalism, language in the education system, and the involvement of language in constructing identities around race, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion and culture"
And: "Does language shape your thought, or vice versa? Is thought even possible without language? Are you the same person across different languages that you speak? Do animals use language to think and communicate? How does language acquisition in children change their capacity to think? Does learning languages make us smarter? What kind of thought does translation involve? Does body language "count" as language?"
Texts: George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, Shakespeare's The Tempest, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale; Patanjali, Dante Alighieri, Lu Xun, Zora Neale Hurston, Antonio Gramsci, Richard Rodriguez, Junot Díaz, and Sumathi Ramaswamy