Spring 2025
Chocolate, Culture, and the Politics of Food
Carla D. Martin PhD, Lecturer on African and African American Studies, Harvard University
This course examines the sociohistorical legacy of chocolate, with a delicious emphasis on the eating and appreciation of the so-called food of the gods. Interdisciplinary course readings introduce the history of cacao cultivation, the present day state of the global chocolate industry, the diverse cultural constructions surrounding chocolate, and the implications for chocolate's future of scientific study, international politics, alternative trade models, and the food movement. Assignments address pressing real-world questions related to chocolate consumption, social justice, responsible development, honesty and the politics of representation in production and marketing, hierarchies of quality, and myths of purity.
Fall 2024
Understanding Race and Racism
Carla D. Martin PhD, Lecturer on African and African American Studies, Harvard University
This course examines the history of race and racism key analytical constructs that express fundamental issues not only of power and inequality, but also of justice, democracy, equity, and emancipation. The study of race in the social sciences and humanities is an established, dynamic, multidisciplinary, and international field. To understand race and racism with a global perspective, it is necessary to have a trans-disciplinary, cross-cultural view to critically read the phenomena that intersect with this variable. Course readings are drawn from the fields of African and African American studies, sociology, history, cultural studies, political science, anthropology, philosophy, journalism, and public health. The vast literature produced by scholars in diverse fields provides evidence of how race is based on narratives created to enslave, subordinate, exploit, and exclude millions of human beings across the globe. Assignments address pressing real-world questions related to race and racism, as well as pedagogically significant areas of intellectual and academic development.
Spring 2025
African Landscape Architecture: Alternative Futures for the Field
Gareth Doherty PhD, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design
A central aim of this course is to reveal the plurality of ways landscapes are shaped across the African continent and how they help mitigate the impacts of changing climates and social injustices now and in the future. Africa is a continent rich in landscape projects and practices but only eight out of fifty-four African nations have professional associations of landscape architects. The course is framed around three central questions: how is landscape architecture currently practiced in African countries? What lessons can we learn from landscape practices in various African societies that can help mitigate the impacts of climate change and social inequities? And as landscape architecture unfolds across the continent in the next 50-200 years, how can it continue assert its agency in the fight against changing climates and social inequity and claim a central space in the shaping of African cities of the future? In collaboration with several practitioners and academics from across the continent, this course explores what it means to practice and teach landscape architecture in societies in which the profession is nascent or non-existent and speculate on the future of the shaping of landscapes in the global south.