Professor Ring currently teaches the following online courses at the University of Nevada, Reno. Excerpts from the syllabi are listed below:
Identity Politics in the United States
This is a course about cultural pluralism in the American democracy. Rather than the usual approach to diversity in the United States through race, class, and ethnicity, this course will explore our multicultural heritage through the lens of what we have in common: a history of displacement, loss of home, and loss of a language. These issues have impacted American emotional life because of our history of slavery, immigration, and the colonization of Native Americans. Loss of home and language is more than loss of a physical place: people can feel homeless from the isolation that accompanies any sort of “otherness,” as, for example, being female in a “male” world, identifying as LGBTQ in a hetero-normative world, being the “wrong” religion in a Christian nation. By focusing on the common traumas that accompany both physical and emotional displacement, the hope is that issues such as race, ethnicity, religion and class will become more accessible, able to be discussed without the usual defensiveness that inhibits productive conversation.
The material we will be studying is intense, and sometimes a live chat provides a needed forum for discussion. If there are any major political events that take place during the semester, it’s helpful to talk about them in a live chat. Please be on the lookout for announcements indicating when sessions are being held.
Women and Politics in the United States
Welcome! In this course we study an aspect of American political history that is almost entirely overlooked in conventional courses on American politics and history: the centrality and inseparability of race and gender in American life. The structure of the course is both theoretical and historical. We begin by considering the concept of race itself: What we often assume to be self-evident (appearance) or scientific (genetic or biological) about race is in fact socially constructed. Although both race and gender are concepts that have been historically created, and are somewhat artificial and changeable, they nonetheless have very real impact on our lives and have served as the central stumbling block to full equality and inclusion in American life.
Beginning with an analysis of what race means, we turn to where race and gender troubles began for Americans: in slavery. Using American slavery as a template that has forged race and gender relations since the beginning of American history, we investigate the sexual core of slavery, and trace the nineteenth century women’s movement in America from slavery to passage of the Nineteenth (women’s suffrage) Amendment in 1920. We then proceed to follow the history of the movement for sexual and racial equality through the twentieth century to the present day. Points along the way include the “Roaring Twenties,” the Great Depression, World War II, the “Feminine Mystique” of the 1950’s, The Civil Rights Movement, passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and Title IX, and gender and sports.
By studying the relationship between movements for racial equality and movements for sexual equality, students will gain an entirely new perspective on American history. The goal of the course is not only to study the neglected and overlooked aspects of our history, but to train our minds to see gender and race as they impact American politics. We will also study the lives of movers and shakers in the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements of the nineteenth century, and civil and women’s rights activists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Frances Ellen Harper, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Remond, Elizabeth Stanton, Susan Anthony, Alice Paul, Betty Friedan, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Anita Hill are major actors in American history who have, in more traditional courses, been pushed to the margins, overlooked, or included only as footnotes in courses that focus on the deeds of wealthy white men.
The course is designed to teach historical substance and encourage critical thinking. We make use of scholarly readings, films, and as much discussion as an online course will allow. Students are encouraged to read critically and carefully, to think for themselves, and to make well-thoughtout critical presentations incorporating readings, films and discussions.
Political Theory and Political Action
This is a course using one modern and two contemporary political theorists to explore the relationship between theory and action. Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and Paolo Friere were three thinkers and writers who were interested in political participation and political change. What is the good of studying political theory if it doesn’t have any effect upon the world? What can we learn from them about how to make our lives relevant to the political world in which we live?
In keeping with the subject of theory into action, the pedagogy that guides the class, will be oriented from the (online) classroom into the world. The theoretical work will be focused on the major writings of Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt, studied from the context of their lives and the historical times they lived through. Both political theorists wrote much more than we can possibly read and comprehend in one semester. I have chosen readings that I think are central to your understanding of these two seminal thinkers of the modern age, and I will guide you through those readings in my lectures. But how we use them will be a collaborative project. My hope is that we will be able to apply them to issues that we face in the world today, to create action for change.
Paolo Freire’s book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed will be used as an introduction to the theory of teaching and learning employed in class. Freire was a twentieth century Brazilian educator who utilized Marxist theory, decentering the authority structure of traditional education. He believed that learning was a dialectical process taking place between students and teachers: we teach each other, bringing the perspectives of our own lives. Freire’s theory is my model of liberated education, and so in this course, I will be transferring some of the responsibility and authority of teaching to you, the students.
We will spend approximately four weeks reading and discussing Marx (including one introductory lecture on Hegel) and four weeks reading and studying Arendt. During week 10 I will offer a short lecture on the economic theory of Robert Reich, as a contemporary response to Marxian economics. Students will make presentations to the class on political action projects they have undertaken during weeks 10 and 11.
The Marx readings are challenging and may strike some of you as written in an unfamiliar vernacular. I have found, teaching this course in a face to face classroom for years, that Marx sometimes requires me to “translate” the text (which is already translated from German) into modern American English for students. You may despair that you don’t know what Marx is talking about. You will be invited to give voice to that confusion by asking questions to your classmates. The discussions for the first few weeks of the course will take the form of student questions to each other and me. Each of you will be required to articulate something that you don’t understand about the Marx writings, and pose that question to the class. You will then try to discuss and answer a question posed by another student that interests or puzzles you, and also to respond to the students who try to answer your questions with further elaboration, questions, or even just, “Ah hah! Now I get it! Thank you!” I will then select themes each week that have evoked the most confusion to explain to the class as a whole.
Since the point of reading these old dead theorists is that they still have much to teach us about political change and political action, an ongoing project will be for you to choose a political or social issue that you feel strongly about, and to use the teachings of Marx and/or Arendt (if they seem helpful to you) to inform a plan to affect a change in the world. These will be collaborative projects undertaken by several students interested in the same political issue. Political Action requires a group effort, and I understand that there is often resistance to working with other students on a project, especially in an online class. I think it’s important for the success of the project, but as with everything else in this class, I am open to being convinced otherwise by you.
I’ll ask for each of you to submit an issue that you want to act on, and I will post them all in a class announcement. Then we’ll vote to prioritize the issues and narrow them down to a manageable number. When we have narrowed down the issues that interest you most, I’ll set up groups that you can join to work with the other students on your choice of issue. I recommend that you pick an issue that you genuinely believe to be important and worth your effort.
As I write this now, the nation continues suffering from a deadly pandemic and at the same time convulsed over the death of George Floyd and the issue of violent and lethal policing of black people. The economy is collapsing and more people are jobless than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The nation continues to be divided over voter suppression and mail-in voting; immigration policy; white supremacy; violence against women; sexual harassment; LGBTQ+ rights; mass incarceration; second amendment rights and frequent mass shootings; income inequality and tax breaks for the wealthy. The hits just keep on coming. If we can narrow the issues down to, let’s say, the eight that interest you most, and seem most important to you, I will set up work groups for you to design plans of action too present to the class as your final assignment.
History of Political Thought: Ancient and Medieval
A Study of the major works of Plato, Aristotle and Machiavelli. Plato’s Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo; Aristotle’s Politics, Nichomachean Ethics; Machiavelli’s Prince and Discourses. Class discussions focus on the applicability of these works to contemporary social and political issues. How do the classics still help us to make sense of our world?
The Politics of Sports
(Not Available Online)
The course is focused on the relationship between sports and politics. Our first order of business will be to identify what we mean by sports, and what we mean by politics. The history and politics of sports is as enormous as the history of the world and for that reason, much of the focus and direction will be provided by the interests of the members of the class. The books I have chosen for us to begin with are historical: the origins of competitive organized sports in the Ancient Greek Olympics; a history of the modern Olympics from 1896 to the recent games; my own book on the history of baseball as a sex-segregated “national pastime.” There are also several paired choices of books, where you are asked to “pick one” and share it with the class so that we all get the benefit of all the readings.
We will start with theories and myths about the origins of organized sports in the Ancient Greek Olympics. We will read the chapter of Homer’s Iliad that describes the “funeral games” as a catharsis to mourn and honor the fallen heroes in the Trojan War; competing Greek Myths about the origins of the Olympics; the role of civic and national pride in the Ancient Olympics; issues surrounding competition between the aristocracy and common men; Greek and Roman myths about female athletes, and the history of girl athletes in Sparta; Greek male athletes and homosexuality and contemporary attitudes toward gay and lesbian athletes. Did sports begin as an extension of war, or as an alternative to war? What is the difference between sports and games? How have sports been used as a courtship ritual? Why are sports primarily associated with masculinity?
My book on the American “National Pastime” analyzes baseball’s history of white male exclusivity and will serve as a bridge to contemporary questions about nationhood, gender, race and class. It questions the relationship between national identity and masculinity; professional and amateur competitive sports; capitalism and sports; control of professional sports by MLB, the NFL, NBA and so forth; control of collegiate sports by the NCAA; the relationship between professional, collegiate and youth sports….and whatever else you may be interested in.
