Breaking with the generally sobering tone of the course, spring 2014 students Brienne Ellis and Eddie Grystar created a promotional website for a fake app to promote the gentrification of Oakland, gentri.fy. From the proclamation on the front page of the site–”A brighter tomorrow starts with you”–to the list of partners (Lean In of course wants in…
From the Archives: Displacement, Genocide, Resistance
Produced by fall 2012 students Eduarda Araujo, Jonathon Tollefson, and Mika Zacks, this zine, “Struggles of Our Time: Memories from Palestine and Guatemala,” is filled at once with exquisite multimedia pieces, a collection of poetry, photography, and other artwork from survivors of displacement, and prose elegant enough to be art itself. In its 44 pages, the zine tells a story…
From the Archives: Nuclear Narratives
Barry Elkington’s website* for Professor Shibusawa’s Stories to Live By course presents the history of nuclear weapons production in the American Southwest. Pairing insightful prose with thought-provoking videos, Elkington draws out subtle–and some unsubtle–themes in the public discourse around nuclear weapons testing and production. The essays on each page shed light on these themes, which range from the American…
From the Archives: El Trujillato
Women and Nationalism: El Trujillato. The title of this teaching resource, a final project from spring 2013 by Saudi Garcia, Madilynn Castillo, and Kate Blessing, understates the depth of the research behind the words on the screen. Though the site focuses on the impact of the 1930-1961 rule of Rafael Trujillo on women, it also explores various aspects of the history…
Resource: Visualizing History
For students in the 2014 Decolonizing Minds course, this video will be very familiar. Presented by Swedish global health professor Hans Rosling, the five minute video is a visualization of the progress of 200 countries in the last 200 years, measured as life expectancy against income per capita. The video is a captivating visualization of the data; however, it ends on…
From the Archives: Walmart Exposé
In this documentary-style final project from fall 2012, Stoni Tomson and Sharina Gordon tell the story of how Walmart, a company considered by many in the mainstream media to be the exemplar of the American entrepreneurial spirit, in fact relies upon exploiting labor at home and abroad for its success. Walmart not only takes advantage of unequal…