What is a participatory city? What has that term meant in the past, what does it mean now, and what will it mean going forward? Against the backdrop of increasing inequality and inequity, and the rise in a search for solutions, what role can citizens play in co-creating more just cities and neighborhoods? How can citizens be engaged in the decision making processes about the places where we live, work, and play? And most importantly, how can we work to make sure that all kinds of voices are meaningfully included, and that historically muted voices are elevated to help pave a better path forward?
Designated as an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course.
This course will connect theory with praxis as we explore together history, challenges, methods, and approaches, and impact of community participation and stakeholder involvement in cities.
An Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) Course
Additional information about the course will be posted as it becomes available.
Fall 2026
During times that seem politically bleak, you might ask: how is it possible to create lasting social change? What does it mean to organize? What can justice look like in practice? This course examines how change is created incrementally, in the everyday, and in response to structures of oppression, and how it is possible to renew the power of the collective and of the imagination. We will read Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba’s Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care to examine how organizers enact the hard work of transformative social and political change. Through theoretical, historical, ethnographic, and practical examples, students will gain an understanding of political mobilization and movement building across different contexts. Student research will focus on contemporary movements for justice, articulating their analyses for different audiences through their white paper and op-ed projects.
Fall 2026
How smart are you? How smart is your dog? We often measure intelligence by human standards – testing parrots on their ability to name shapes or timing dogs while they solve puzzles. Through this course, we’ll flip the script and put ourselves in animals’ shoes. We’ll mainly read Ed Yong’s recent book examining what various animals actually take in through their senses. Students may focus their research on the sensing, cognition, or communication of a specific species, or on the adoption of new tools, like AI, for improving our understanding of animals. Writing assignments will focus on articulating the recent findings, as well as gaps, within animal intelligence research.