Indiana University professors Wendy Gamber (History), Lauren MacLean (Political Science), Lisa-Maria Napoli (Political and Civic Engagement), and Stephanie Sanders (Gender Studies) reflect on a semester of co-teaching a Themester course titled “Sex, Race, & Voting Rights.” The class commemorated and interrogated the centennial of the passage of the United States Constitution's 19th Amendment, which established that the right to vote in the United States could not be denied or abridged on account of sex.

IU Themester

Sex, Race, and Voting Rights

In this episode, IU Religious Studies Professor Dr. Jay Kameron discusses the origins and development of the racial imaginary that lays ground for white supremacy. Carter explains how whiteness operates as religion.

Tracing Whiteness, Liberating Blackness

Dr. Hussein Banai, a professor in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, discusses democratic backsliding and erosion as well as the rise of nationalism and polarization. In this episode, Dr. Banai explains the difference between backsliding and erosion and distinguishes between ethnonationalism and civic nationalism. Civic nationalism can co-exist with democracy while ethnonationalism and polarization undermine democratic ideals.

Democracy Waning

Dr. Ben Robinson, associate professor of Germanic Studies, discusses the emergence of capitalism as the mode of production and questions its continued utility. In considering the driving forces of society under capitalism, the state and the market, Dr. Robinson urges us to consider the power the people wield. It is among the people, the public, that creativity and the possibility of progress lives. We, the people, also have influential power.

Capitalism and Democracy

Dr Freya Thimsen, a professor in the English department at Indiana University, discusses how rhetoric can be used to create change. In this episode Dr. Thimsen asks us to consider the impact of social media. Can it used to mobilize the masses or is just empty self-gratification?

Democracy is Dissent

Myths of Protecting and Serving by College of Arts + Sciences

Myths of Protecting and Serving

In part one of a two-part conversation, Dr. Rasul Mowatt (Indiana University) discusses the eleven forms of racial violence on a continuum, from what is intolerable to what is impossible to conceive.

Racial Violence: A Continuum

Dr. Rich Shiffrin, head of Indiana University's Memory and Perception Laboratory speaks about his storied career and what questions remain about our own brains. Spoiler alert: there’s a lot of them. This is an episode from the Remembering and Forgetting Podcast series presented by Themester and the College of Arts and Sciences of Indiana University.

Shrouded In Memory

Dr. Jeanne Sept takes us on a journey from animal to human. Dr. Sept, a professor in the Anthropology department, looks at our evolution from our earliest hominid ancestors to modern-day humans. By examining our past, she takes us on a journey that will help us understand who we are today and who we may become in the future.

Becoming Human

The Indiana University, College of Arts and Sciences's Themester program is a focused and multi-faceted inquiry into a variety of topics that change each fall semester. It fosters the exchange of ideas and connects the issues our faculty teach in the classroom to our students’ lives through courses, lectures, exhibits, films, and more.

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IU Themester

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