Questions about the courses or the DSSC minor program? Contact Anant Maringanti at [email protected].
Fall 2025
DSSC 8111: Ways of Knowing
Credits: 3
Instructor: Dr. Anant Maringanti
Course Schedule: Fridays, 9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Who takes this course? ICGC Scholars in their first year of the program should enroll in DSSC 8111. ICGC Scholars from earlier cohorts who have not yet taken Ways of Knowing due to scheduling conflicts should also enroll in this seminar.
Course Description: This seminar, usually taken in the first semester, introduces students to the challenges and advantages of cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research in international and crosscultural contexts. In discussing various "ways of knowing," emphasis is placed on concrete issues and methodological challenges facing interdisciplinary international studies to assist in preparing the ground for students’ subsequent research on social change in global and local contexts. This course is offered in a colloquium format providing students with opportunities to interact with a range of DSSC faculty members. (Download past syllabus)
DSSC 8211: Doctoral Research Workshop
Credits: 2
Instructor: Dr. Anant Maringanti
Course Schedule: TBA
Who takes this course? ICGC Scholars in their third year, or in the year prior to their dissertation research year, should enroll in DSSC 8211 in Fall semester.
Course Description: Students take this seminar the year prior to initiating dissertation research, which is typically in their third year. The course has two primary objectives. First, students receive guidance and feedback on writing grant proposals and developing dissertation topics in an interdisciplinary setting. Second, this seminar returns to the epistemological and methodological issues of interdisciplinary research and collaborative learning that were introduced in DSSC 8111 and 8112, to maintain them in focus while students conceptualize and articulate their dissertation topics. This is accomplished in part through specific skillbuilding sessions focused on research methods and ethics, and also through reading and discussion on interdisciplinary research. (Download past syllabus)
DSSC 8110: Interdisciplinary Research Colloquium
Credits: 1
Course Schedule: Fridays, 12-1pm
Who takes this class? ICGC Scholars beginning in their first semester should enroll for DSSC 8110. Students are expected to enroll in multiple sections of DSSC 8110 (doctoral students must complete at least three credits; master's level students must complete at least two credits).
Course Description: A colloquium series of weekly sessions presenting work in progress and feedback on that work by ICGC fellows and faculty as well as visiting scholars; some sessions each semester will focus on interdisciplinary peer review and research skills. Regular attendance plus serving as a designated discussant for one or more sessions are the primary requirements to receive credit for the series.
Spring 2026
DSSC 8112: Scholarship and Public Responsibility
Credits: 1
Instructor: TBA
Course Schedule: TBA
Who takes this course? ICGC Scholars in their first year of the program should enroll in DSSC 8112. ICGC Scholars from earlier cohorts who have not yet taken DSSC 8112 due to scheduling conflicts should also enroll in this seminar.
Course Description: This seminar, usually taken in the second semester, addresses the responsibility of public engagement in academic work. Students will explore the common pursuits, the asymmetries of location and capabilities, and the transformative potential of dialogue and collaborative work between the University and the various local, national, and transnational communities that it is committed to serving. In this seminar students will examine a range of themes relevant to public engagement, such as diverse practices of reading, writing, and pedagogy, the privileged locations of knowledge, languages, strategies, and tactics of civil society organizing, and the politics of collaborative work, in order to understand how to traverse and potentially transform the distinctions frequently drawn between academic and non-academic knowledge. Through meetings with guest speakers invited by the course instructors, students will have the opportunity to meet with individuals, organizations, and groups who are already participating in various political activities, social movements, art projects, and civil society organizing. They will also develop individual and collective projects that will reflect their understanding of their public responsibility in academic learning and knowledge production. (Download past syllabus)
DSSC 8110: Interdisciplinary Research Colloquium
Credits: 1
Course Schedule: Fridays, 12-1pm
Who takes this class? ICGC Scholars beginning in their first semester should enroll for DSSC 8110. Students are expected to enroll in multiple sections of DSSC 8110 (doctoral students must complete at least three credits; master's level students must complete at least two credits).
Course Description: A colloquium series of weekly sessions presenting work in progress and feedback on that work by ICGC fellows and faculty as well as visiting scholars; some sessions each semester will focus on interdisciplinary peer review and research skills. Regular attendance plus serving as a designated discussant for one or more sessions are the primary requirements to receive credit for the series.
DSSC 8310: Topics in Development Studies and Social Change (section 1) – Beyond Bias: AI and the Justice Imperative
Instructor: Anant Maringanti
Credits: 1
Course Schedule: Fridays, 9:30–11:30 a.m.; First half of term (1/20–03/16/2026)
Course Description: This one-credit seminar introduces students to the emerging challenges of AI governance and global development by examining the Justice Imperative that artificial intelligence now places on institutions. Moving beyond bias, we study how AI systems—from data centers and training pipelines to predictive models—are becoming deeply embedded in, and reshaping, global arrangements of knowledge, power, and decision-making.
AI is not merely a technical tool; it is a force requiring societies to reconsider long-standing questions about responsibility, equity, and institutional design. We explore how countries and organizations are incorporating AI into core sectors such as finance, welfare, mobility, and environmental management.
Each session focuses on a central structural question: Does “algorithmic fairness” address deeper historical inequalities, or does it leave them intact? How do systems of data collection and governance redefine relationships between states, markets, and citizens? What forms of authority gain traction—and which lose ground—as automated systems expand?
Drawing on public policy, political economy, and development studies, this course provides an accessible yet analytically rigorous entry point into AI’s implications for institutional change, public accountability, and global development pathways. No technical background is required; intellectual clarity and engagement with challenging questions are essential.
DSSC 8310: Topics in Development Studies and Social Change (section 2) – From the Ruins: Global south and a World Making
Instructor: Rachmi Diyah Larasati
Credits: 1
Course Schedule: Fridays, 9:30–11:30 a.m.; Second half of term (3/17–5/4/2026)
Course Description: This course on Development Studies and Social Change takes a unique approach by drawing on ethnography, literature, aesthetics, and stories from the Global South as references, theories, and methods. This creative use of materials, grounded in knowledge as a way of knowing, inspires new genres of analysis. The course offers a fresh perspective on the analysis of the Global South and its relation to the metropole, as well as within the post-colonial state and its nation-building. It presents a unique view on the cartography of capitalist script and relationality in world-making and coloniality. The course's focus on knowledge production in the periphery and/or on tracing the potential and creative imagination to assess the possible condition is sure to pique different interests in marking development. By decentering the narrative of the structure of living, the daily form of resistance in this course—an ordinary note, quotidian—is a site with potential discursive decolonizing power. Many theories of global development focus on the economy, human rights responses, and sustainability to understand the context of livelihoods; This course, however, reverses the method by using field notes, literature, performances, writing, and readings from research sites as comparative sources. These sources, including stories from the periphery that relate to positionality as a mechanism of knowledge production, thus including the creative industry, provide a unique and diverse perspective on the subject. This established mechanism of knowledge production resonates with diverse responses to nation-state formation and signals how cultural and political economies operate in necropolitics.