Debt Threats [6-weeks, $250 Suggested]
Instructor: Madden | Wednesdays, January 12-February 16 | 7:00-9:00 PM ET
Taking on debt in college orients students towards a supposedly “better future.” But what happens to those who are unable to access these better futures? Modern life is built and based on debt and many people are familiar with the need to use debt to access basic life necessities. Debt is a topic that makes news headlines regularly: politicians propose plans to eliminate student debt, the national debt rises, and debt is hampering access to medical care. Debt is deepening inequalities and while it has been a focus for scholars of economics, it is also increasingly a concern for those who study US culture. In this class, we marshal recent scholarship from the humanities to understand how debt functions, whom it fails, and what it says about economic inequality and its relationship to race and gender in the contemporary US. We will work together to understand the moral charge of debt and we ask how ideas about personal responsibility circulate. The 6-week class begins with an introduction to racial capitalism so that we can understand debt in historical context. The remaining 5 weeks focus on different forms of debt: student debt, reparations for Black Americans, medical debt, the relationship of debt and environmental disaster, and municipal/state/national debt. Throughout the class, we work together to imagine alternatives to the current debt system. Writers will include Tressie McMillan Cottom, Eli Clare, Marta Russell, Andrew Ross, Kiese Laymon, Dean Spade, William Darity and Kirsten Mullen, Lucí Cavallero and Verónica Gago, and debt resistance groups Strike Debt and Debt Collective.
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If at any point up to 48 hours before your first class session you realize you will be unable to take the class, we will work with you to reallocate your funds to a future class, to another student’s scholarship, or refund it. After classes begin, we are only able to make partial refunds and adjustments.