Rooted Futures Lab

Description
The Levitt Center invites students to apply to this Spring '26 Justice Lab "Learning from Atrocity". The Lab is a semester-long opportunity where students take a set of three to four parallel courses that combine mutually reinforcing academic and experiential learning around the broad theme of justice. All the instructors in the Lab work together to coordinate syllabi and assignments and to provide students in the Lab with an integrated, interdisciplinary understanding of the topic.
For this Justice Lab, Profs. Heidi Ravven, Janina Selzer and Jaime Kucinskas will teach three connected courses in which students will study responses to atrocity through community, memory and creativity. Together, these courses will chart a continuum from past to future: from the intimate and cultural representations of atrocity, to the collective processes of memorialization, and finally to the imagination of what new forms of community and possibility can emerge. Students will develop tools to critically engage with histories of violence, understand the social and cultural mechanisms of memory and cultivate the creative practices necessary to envision and build better futures.
Professor Ravven's course will examine victims, perpetrators, rescuers, resistors, and bystanders through selected memoirs, fiction, documentaries and other films. Professor Selzer's course on global commemoration will explore the frequently contested politics of remembering atrocities, tracing the long-lasting legacies of human brutality from North America to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Professor Kucinskas's course will examine the roots of creativity and collective action from a sociological perspective, which can be the foundation of cultural and civil resistance to political hegemony and silencing.
This Lab will be rooted in multiple experiential learning opportunities including collaboration with the Wellin Museum, a field trip to the south to visit prominent Civil Rights Era landmarks, memorials and museums during the first week of spring break, as well as potential opportunities to engage in memorialization and imagination of the future with community partners.
There are no prerequisites for these courses. The Lab schedule is akin to an ordinary semester's schedule. This means that student-athletes will be able to get to practice, and students can work out schedules for on-campus jobs.
You can find a description of this Justice Lab's courses below. If you have questions about the Lab please email us at levitt@hamilton.edu. Please note that the Justice Lab will require several field trips and regular trips into the local community. You can find the course schedule here.
JWST-132/332 Holocaust Literature & Films
An examination of victims, perpetrators, rescuers, resistors, and bystanders through selected memoirs, fiction, documentaries and other films. Students who take the course as JWST-332W will have longer writing assignments including a longer research paper or creative project. (W) Heidi Ravven
SOC-276 Global Commemoration: Remembering the Unspeakable
This course examines how atrocities - big and small - are remembered around the globe: What is the process through which individual experiences are transformed into credible testimonies and collective traumas? What role do state actors, educational institutions, community organizations, and civic society play in the production of memory? And what is the purpose of keeping the past alive if societies are ever-changing and evolving? Taking the U.S. and Germany as a starting point, we will trace the long-lasting legacies of human brutality to different parts of the globe. By embarking on field visits, listening to survivors, and combing through evidence accumulated by investigative journalists, we will critically engage with and expand upon foundational sociological texts on history, memory, and commemoration. Janina L. Selzer
SOC-320 Creative Community, Movement and Imagining New Futures
Grounded in the sociology of creativity, this course will examine different ways of understanding and engaging in collective creativity and imagining new ways of being and futures in a moment when the world is facing polycrises, and rapid political and economic change. This course was inspired by and will be embedded in the Wellin museum's current exhibit "Another World, and Yet the Same," created by Jamea Richmond Edwards. In particular, we will explore sociological theory on creativity and collective action, consider the different social capacities of museums, and deliberate on how college campuses can be institutional engines of creativity. We will also experiment and play with collective movement, creative works, and collective action. Jaime Kucinskas
Qualifications
Enrollment in the program is limited. Applications to the Justice Lab are open to all students.
Application Instructions
Please fill out the following application form. Upon clicking "Apply Now", you will be prompted to create a free account with Interfolio. If you already have an Interfolio account, you should sign in. If you don't already have an Interfolio account, click on the "Sign up" button (NOT the "sign in through partner institution link). Applications are due November 4th.