In support of the development of innovative courses that explore issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, the Center for Teaching Excellence invited full-time faculty to submit proposals to develop new courses that focus on historically marginalized populations, are intersectional, and/or expand curricular capacity for inclusive excellence. Ten full-time faculty members were selected to receive Diversity and Inclusive Excellence Curriculum (DIEC) grants of up to $2,500 to develop courses that centered on the voices, experiences, and contributions of members of marginalized populations, contextualize inequality within broader contexts, and reflect inclusive pedagogical approaches.

 From exploring what it means to be white and how whiteness intersects with class and gender to produce social and economic inequality to examining Asian American food and food practices that help students gain insights into crucial roles that food has played in the formation of Asian American culture and identities, the courses being developed present unique opportunities that will authentically engage students. The list of awardees along with their respective course descriptions are listed in the following entries.

Pia Bertucci Senior Instructor, Italian Program Director Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures The Other Italians: Emigrants and Immigrants / ITAL 340  This course explores issues of “race” and identity in contemporary Italy as well as among Italian Americans. These cultural issues will be studied through various media, narratives, and cultural artifacts. The course studies marginalized ethnic and religious populations in Italy, with a special focus on the struggles of Black Italians. The intersection of recent Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. with Black Italian activism provides a relevant and timely lens to view racism in both countries. The course also studies the earlier journey of Italian American immigrants to assimilate despite intense discrimination and persecution. Through analysis of texts, media, and interactive discussions, this course aims to generate a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the impact of racial discrimination in Italy and the United States.
Alanna Breen Senior Instructor Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures Social Justice in the Lusophone World / PORT 400 This upper division research course will develop investigation skills as well as formal academic Portuguese writing and speaking. Students will explore contemporary social justice topics throughout the Portuguese-speaking world, including Africa and Asia. The course will empower students to challenge stereotypes, think critically about their sources of information, and make personal connections with issues they encounter in their own communities. Encouraging students to think objectively about difficult topics studied from the perspective of emotional distance will enable them to think critically about the same issues on the local level with more objectivity. Beyond providing students with strategic investigation strategies, it includes a focus on Lusophone Africa and Asia, amplifies marginalized voices, and explores a wide variety of social justice issues about which the students are passionate, such as racism, eurocentrism, and heterosexism.
Alexandria Carrico Assistant Professor of Music History School of Music; Music History Music, Disability, and Activism / MUSC-310 This course will explore disability in its many manifestations – physical, mental, emotional, intellectual – in relation to intersecting identities, such as race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, through the lens of music and popular culture. The course will investigate disability history, representation, and advocacy. It will analyze disability in its many manifestations and explore the lives and experiences of disabled musicians/composers and narratives of disability in a variety of musical genres. The course will be divided into four main units: 1) theories, models, and intersectionality will familiarize students with terminology, theories within disability studies, and intersectionality; 2) disability and popular music will explore case studies of blindness, mental health, physical disability, and neurodiversity in relation to popular music genres such as jazz, rock and roll, the blues, and hip hop; 3) media and popular culture will investigate issues of disability representations in television, movies, social media, and music; and 4) Deaf culture will explore Deaf culture and dip hop (Deaf hip hop) to examine the many ways humans “hear” music.
Jordan Cooler Clinical Assistant Professor College of Pharmacy Off the SCRxIPT: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Perspectives in Healthcare Now more than ever, the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) must be incorporated in health professional education to improve the quality of care provided to all patients and enhance outcomes. As the most accessible healthcare professional, pharmacists must play a key role in identifying social determinants of health and diminishing health disparities. Regardless of the specific career path within the pharmacy profession, pharmacists serve diverse patient populations, including those who have been historically marginalized. Increased emphasis continues to be placed on educating future healthcare professionals on concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The development of this course as an elective in the College of Pharmacy curriculum will allow students to further increase skills necessary to interact with and treat a variety of patient populations, including those who have been historically marginalized. Additionally, students will engage in interprofessional and transprofessional activities with a multitude of healthcare professionals and faculty from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications to highlight key DEI learning points through development of innovative educational delivery models (e.g., podcasts) for distribution of others.
Lisa Fitton Assistant Professor Communication Sciences & Disorders Cultural Responsiveness in Clinical Practice / COMD 710 This project focuses on the development on a new course for students enrolled in the Communication Sciences & Disorders (COMD) Master of Science program. Currently, there are no USC COMD courses that focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Historically, COMD has followed an “infusion” model, which relies on integration of content related to equity and inclusion in all courses. However, without a dedicated class included in the curriculum that explicitly centers equity and inclusion, students do not have the foundational knowledge to converse effectively about marginalization, power dynamics, and systemic racism, or to develop equity-mindedness that is vital to effective clinical practice. This proposal was developed to begin to address this gap and lay the groundwork to support cultural responsiveness in the speech-language pathology field. The course will first focus on individual reflection, definitions, and theoretical frameworks of culturally responsive practice. Then, power structures and histories of discrimination will be discussed to provide a lens for recognizing inequities and considering how to disrupt perpetuated biases.
Jie Guo Associate Professor Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Home and the World: Asian American Food Culture / CPLT 415 This is an upper-level culture course examines Asian American food and food practices, with the aim to not only help students gain specific knowledge about the history of Asian Americans and their foodways but also to enhance their overall cultural literacy and ability to interact, communicate, and work with people from different cultural traditions. The course examines the rich food culture of Asian Americans, a minority group that is often underrepresented in college curriculums. Indeed, food has long played a crucial role in the formation, maintenance, negotiation, and rejuvenation of Asian American culture and identities. This course offers students the opportunity to explore the diverse and dynamic Asian American foodways and their representation in literature and culture. Using food as a lens, this course aims to helps students to achieve a picture of the history of Asian Americans. Students will be expected to develop the ability to understand, identify, and analyze basic food practices, customs, and traditions of Asian America, the ability to appreciate Asian American food culture and its transformative impact within and beyond the Asian American community, and the ability to discuss Asian American food culture both orally and in writing.
Deena Isom Assistant Professor African American Studies & Criminology and Criminal Justice Unpacking Whiteness / AFAM 397/SOC 398 “Being White” in the United States is an identity often left unquestioned. Whiteness and Americanness have become so closely intertwined that they are almost undistinguishable in public discourse. While other ethnic and racial groups (e.g., African Americans, Asian Americans) have “descriptors” to demonstrate their belonging to the nation, White Americans typically do not face such challenges. Whiteness therefore appears as a default, invisible identity, a norm against which minorities are defined as “Others.” The purpose of this course is to deconstruct this idea and to critically interrogate whiteness. What does it mean to be white? How does whiteness intersect with class and gender to produce social and economic inequality? What is white privilege? How do we explain racial inequality in a time of almost universal disavowal of racism? What does anti-racist practice/activism look like in twenty-first century America? To begin to answer these questions, this course will examine where the idea of “whiteness” came from historically in addition to investigating the implications of whiteness in terms of status, privilege, and identity as well as for social structure and institutions.
Nancy Linthicum Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies, Arabic Program Director Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Women Writers of the Global South / ARAB 290 This lower-level undergraduate course “Women Writers of the Global South” that will meet the Carolina Core Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding requirement. It will be the first foundational Core course to necessarily center on literature by writers from historically marginalized populations. Students will be introduced to a survey of writings by and about women and gender-expansive writers from Africa, Middle East, Latin America, and/or parts of Asia from the 20th and 21st centuries. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are inherent in the content of this course and in the student learning outcomes, which emphasize analytical thinking and interpretation of literature through students’ critical engagement with the intersectional identities of the writers we study, their literature, and students’ own identities and backgrounds. The course centers on historically marginalized populations and consistently features their voices, rather than relying on others writing about them to relay their experiences and perceptions. As such, it demonstrates to students the importance of having these populations actively participate in narratives from which they often have been excluded – including narratives about themselves – while inviting students to take part in these discussions, too, as they practice making effective, culturally sensitive arguments about literature.
Farzad Salamifar Instructor Department of Languages, Literature & Culture Francophone Graphic Memoirs / FREN 450 Conducted in French, this course provides an overview of the contemporary French and Francophone world through the study of various subgenres of autobiography and memoir in the medium of bande dessinée (comics). The course addresses many significant topics in postcolonial studies in the French sphere and centers historically marginalized voices which have been excluded from the French literary canon and colonial literature. The main thematical focus will be expressions of postcolonial identity, gender, sexuality, and trauma in selected works. As this medium is analyzed, two parallel developments in contemporary French literature will be explored. First, the popularization of various modes of self-writing: autobiography, memoirs, and autofiction. Second, the transformation of bande dessinée from a para-literary medium into the “ninth art” and a serious medium of literary significance. The role of graphic novels in democratizing literary aesthetics will be explored and students will learn how the universality of the visual allows many immigrants, exiled, and members of the diaspora to tell their stories through this medium. Students will learn of the medium’s narrative capacity for the expressions of trans/national and postcolonial identities as well as narratives of homosexuality, disability and/or illness.
Emily Schafer Assistant Professor of Psychology Union Special Topics: Global Perspectives on Child Advocacy / PSYC 589 The purpose of this course is to guide students to a deeper understanding of the lives of children around the world, and to help them recognize international child advocacy issues. Taking a global perspective allows American students to decenter the US culture and experience when thinking about child rights. It also allows them to have exposure to the realities from which immigrant children may be arriving here. The course will be focused on issues facing children around the world using Bronfenbrenner's Socioecological Model and the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child as frameworks. Cultural sensitivity and competency will be addressed as a pillar of coursework, while exposing students to international child rights, practitioners around the world, and various intervention strategies used in different environments. How students can work with global children locally will also be an important focus.