This digital gallery of student work is a culmination of the Klein GO Winter 2022 course Rocking The World: Disrupting Stereotypical Notions of Race, Class and Religion.
The three-credit winter session course consisted of three days of classroom learning on campus and a trip to Washington, DC for three days. The class visited The National Museum of African American History and Culture and The US Holocaust Memorial Museum. The course content was based on the required reading, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. As a final project, the students were tasked with creating a digital artifact which summarized and analyzed their experiences from the course and excursions.
The course was taught by a team of three Klein College instructors— Prof. David Brown, Dr. Meghnaa Tallapragada, and Prof. Dana Saewitz.
Program Overview:
In this course, we examined the history of slavery and racism in the United States, the history of the caste system in India, and the history of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany during World War II. Students read the book Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, a powerful and beautifully written book which ties together the themes and events discussed in the course.
Students learned about structural racism and genocide. Lessons were conducted about the powerful role of propaganda through media, as well as through oral and written communication, to define and reinforce the caste system. Students gained personal, in-depth exposure to other cultures, and learned to respect and appreciate diversity, equity and inclusion in a multicultural world. Students were also encouraged to come up with ways to address racism and prejudice in their own areas of interest.
Although the course material was difficult, the course was ultimately extremely uplifting and enriching. The only way to prevent these devastating events from happening again is through education.