General Course Information
Hurricane Katrina has raised important questions about race, racism, socioeconomic class, and poverty in the United States. In addition, this catastrophe has raised complex questions about security, environmental impact and governmental funding priorities. You will explore these and other questions as they relate directly to the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. As part of the course, we will travel to New Orleans to participate in a hurricane relief work project over WSU's spring break.
This is an inquiry-based course. Inquiry is an approach to teaching and learning that centers on the process of exploring a particular topic wherein students are guided—in this case by a combination of readings, discussion, and first-person experience—to understand issues in complex ways. Inquiry leads to asking questions and making discoveries in the search for new understandings.
In this class, we will emphasize asking questions, perhaps presented as “working hypotheses,” that will lead you to and through the process of gathering information and perspective to refine your working hypotheses about New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. You will have the opportunity to test out your hypotheses and perspectives with peers and faculty members.
In addition, you will learn to identify and collect appropriate evidence to support or refine your hypotheses and perspectives. Some information will be gathered from published sources. Other information will be generated as a result of directed inquiries such as interviews and field studies.
Enhanced oral and written communication abilities are an expected outcome of inquiry. Throughout the course, as well at the end of the course, you will describe your inquiry and the results associated with your intellectual journey in both written and oral formats.
Students enrolled in this course will
- understand what led up to the disaster, natural and otherwise, that followed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
- think critically about important questions of race, racism, socioeconomic class, and poverty in the United States
- participate in hurricane relief/recovery work in New Orleans, LA
- reflect on individual and group responses to disaster
- process, assess and come to some conclusions regarding the complex questions Katrina has raised for people living in the U.S.
- publicly present what they have learned from their scholarly and personal inquiries into Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath