The Imperial Optic
US Empire in Our Everyday Lives
This course is about intentionally studying US imperialism in our everyday lives. It has been said that twenty-first century US imperialism evades detection, and critique, precisely because it appears diffuse and lacks a linear narrative. However research reveals that the “invisibilization” of US empire in everyday life is based on state and non-state propaganda. In this class, we focus on pulling back the layers through deep readings, films, podcasts, and critical discussion. Students will analyze their everyday lives to consider how they might extricate themselves from US empire and its violence.
Dr. Mariam Durrani is Professorial Lecturer and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Peace, Human Rights, and Cultural Relations at American University. She is an interdisciplinary anthropologist whose scholarship and teaching focuses on global racialization, language, migration, education, and food studies. Based on over 20 years of writing and teaching about Islamophobia, Dr. Durrani seeks to shift how academic and public discourse reckon with the racialized impact of global wars for Muslim youth in the US and Pakistan through multi-sited ethnography and multimodal methods.
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By the end of this course, you’ll be better able to:
Analyze identity dynamics at the individual, group, societal, and global levels (including dynamics related to identities such as race, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship status, migrant status, regional background, socioeconomic class, language, disability, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, and caste).
Examine how the US empire's practices and policies include or exclude individuals, groups, and countries.
Explore and develop local and global practices that increase equity and justice on a global scale.
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This course is for anyone who wants to extricate themselves from US imperialism.
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Students will choose what kind of final hands-on project they’d like to produce as the final course assignment. This can be an op-ed article, policy paper, podcast, community event, workshop, academic essay, or zine.
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8 Weeks
Class is limited to 25 students. Sign up to be notified when registration opens.