CHID 496 B: HOW CAN WE ETHICALLY ENGAGE IN SOCIAL JUSTICE?
Peer Facilitator: Melanie Robinson robmelan@uw.edu
How can undergraduates participate in the human rights movement? What are the consequences of doing international volunteer work? How can human rights be realized at a local level? Could doing research for social justice organizations resolve these issues? How can this be done ethically? We’ll discuss these questions with the goal of imagining a structure for a research-based class.

CHID 496 C: PERN: DEEPER THAN DRAGONS
Peer Facilitator: Eliot Hemingway elhcorb@uw.edu
This focus group is a collective exploration of ideas of science, culture, identity, and more through Anne McCaffery’s Pern novels.

CHID 496 D: CHALLENGING FORTH: METHODS OF CRITICAL PLAY, AN INTRODUCTION TO GAME STUDIES
Peer Facilitator: Eliot Hemingway elhcorb@uw.edu
An introduction to game studies focused on ideas of play, representations, and the nature of technology itself. Assigned material includes digital games and assignments include game play, readings, and critical synthesis.

CHID 496E: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON DISABILITY
Peer Facilitator: Rasanna rhosze@uw.edu
This focus group will examine the social, environmental and political factors surrounding disability from a multinational perspective. Students will select a location of their choice and research regional and cultural outlooks on disability, as well as historical and contemporary policies and law pertaining to disability. We will begin the quarter with a brief introduction to disability studies to prepare students to interpret and contextualize their findings within the disability studies framework.

CHID 496F: CLOSE PLAYING, OR, BIOSHOCK AS PRACTICUM
Peer Facilitators: Timothy Welsh twelsh@uw.edu & Edmond Chang changed@uw.edu
As part of a continuing series on video games generated by the Critical Gaming Project at UW, will discuss, develop, and do close playing. Like close reading, close playing requires careful and critical attention to how the game is played (or not played), to what kind of game it is, to what the game looks like or sounds like, to what the game world is like, to what choices are offered (or not offered) to the player, to what the goals of the game are, to how the game interacts with and addresses the player, to how the game fits into the real world, and so on. To engage all of this, we will take 2K's critically-acclaimed first-person shooter Bioshock (Xbox360, PS3, PC) as our central gamic text (though other supplemental games will be included as needed).

CHID 496G: SERIOUS RESEARCH MODE: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO BUFFY (& STUFF)
Peer Facilitators: Jane Lee jlee33@u.washington.edu and Ed Chang changed@uw.edu
When Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer television debuted in 1997, no one could have foreseen the cult following, the spinoffs, the cultural phenomenon, and the critical and scholarly interest it would inspire. Now, over a decade later, “Buffy Studies” is an established field that draws on a range of disciplines and perspectives. Our focus group will take up some of these critical approaches including film and genre studies, Victorian studies, feminism, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and queer theory. Our goal is to address the critical question “Why Buffy?” and how might Buffy help us think about the recent resurgence of vampire culture, about the role of monsters, and about cultural anxieties over the body, the self, and the Other. Overall, we hope to explore in general the value of examining pop culture.

CHID 496H: QUEER 101: ANALYSIS OF QUEER/LGBTQ HISTORIES
Facilitator: Jennifer Self qcenter@uw.edu
Queer 101 will focus on the analysis of Queer/ LGBTQ histories, contemporary issues and experiences. The class will be taught from a liberatory perspective and will encourage critical analysis and understanding of the intersections of queerness, race, class, gender, ability, age, and other social identities.

CHID 496K: RE-IMAGINING JUSTICE: ALTERNATIVES TO THE POLICE
Peer Facilitator: Cody Lestelle cslestelle@uw.edu
This course is initiated by the Antechamber Collective. We will utilize this space to critically examine the “Police” and consider how best to transition to more democratically accountable modes of community safety.

CHID 496L: ANTICOLONIAL FEMINISM
Peer Facilitator: Chris Schultz schulc@uw.edu
Come explore the writings of radical women of color who shed light on defiance in the face of first world colonialism, the exclusion of women and trans people’s perspectives in race movements, the invisibility of women of color in the feminist movement, and the need for transformative approaches to violence against queer identities and communities of color.

CHID 496 M: PLAY MATTERS
Peer Facilitator: Amanda Chan amandc@uw.edu
All boards games have something to offer by way of academic examination. The choices that designers and artists make reveal something about the sociopolitical environment in which they create games. The games that players choose to play send a message about their background and opinions. Our focus group will use these assumptions as a jumping off point into deeper discussions.

We will play a variety of board games alongside matched readings what game and text can illuminate about each other that might otherwise remain hidden. What can “At the Gates of Loyang” tell us about Baudrillardian Simualcra and Simulation? What statements does “Small World” make about conquest, colonialism and civilizations?

This group will meet once a week for 2 hours to engage in discussion and reflective play. Throughout the quarter, we will focus on the mechanics and aesthetics of each game, supplementing the discussion with weekly readings.

CHID 496O: SELF – CARE IN SOCIAL JUSTICE: HOW DO WE PREVENT BURN OUT
Peer Facilitator: Christy Forrester csforrester@yahoo.com
Self-Care IS Social Justice‖ explores the notion of self-care as a form of social justice, an idea that emerged through the collaboration of three very different people from very different fields. We all know that working toward and for social justice involve intense fatigue, and often leads to self-destructive practices in the name of ―the cause.‖ And while we all know the personal pitfalls of overextending ourselves or working too hard with too little reward, this pain is usually individuated and rarely enters into conversation about ―the movement‖ in general. In our workshop we want to interrupt this cycle of how we speak about personal exhaustion and burnout. We believe that when we expand exhaustion discourse, and move it from the personal realm into the political; we then can begin a real conversation about sustainable social justice work. Reimagining where personal exhaustion ends and political work begins can best happen, we feel, in collaboration and community. The three workshop facilitators have found energy; support and joy in our interdisciplinary collaboration with each other, and our workshop will highlight this work as an example of self-care on both an individual personal level as well as how this must be thought of as social justice.