Granger, Sumayya KR | Public & Applied Humanities

sracy@arizona.edu

Office

CESL 100

Granger, Sumayya KR

Assistant Professor of Practice

Assistant Professor of Practice, Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Second Language Acquisition & Teaching

Associate Director, Center for English as a Second Language

I am a native Tucsonan and I have always enjoyed learning and investigating languages and learning about different cultures. I love teaching, program administration, and exploring the humanities in the world around us. It is always exciting to find new ways to connect with our campus and our local community. I am currently interested in intercultural competence, leadership, and memes.

Currently Teaching

PAH 160D2 – Living the Good Life: Humanities Perspectives on Culture and Community

This interdisciplinary course analyzes myths and cosmologies that reflect various societal approaches to the grand mysteries of life as represented in language, culture, and narratives. Beginning with an overview of myth as a moving force in life, students generate a list of grand mysteries to pursue answers that explore the past, present, and future. Select texts analyzing myth as well as works of fiction and contemporary film and television will round out the course as students work toward analyzing their own cosmology, a chosen mythology, or develop their own unique mythology for the digital age. Particular emphasis will be paid to myths and cosmologies of groups in conflict and an analysis of the clash resulting from competing perspectives.

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PAH 221 – Creating, Imagining, Innovating: Intercultural Approaches for Academic and Career Success

The course helps students to engage deeply with the habits of mind and an expanding set of critical and practical applied humanities skills developed specifically for understanding and improving the human condition. Over the course of the semester we will: (1) read and critically analyze the writing of people from many cultures who have found creative and innovative approaches to a variety of complex challenges, with particular attention to their applied habits of mind; (2) engage in reflective projects that open pathways to developing students' own creativity and imagination for real-world applications of successful habits of mind; and (3) design a project in which students focus on something in the world that requires personal applications of at least three of the habits of mind they have studied. Students will use project management and planning methods to write a project description, carry out an initial pilot version of the project, report on steps they have accomplished, and write a critical analysis of the project.

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PAH 160D3 – Memes: The Art and Craft of Microstorytelling

Most everyone is familiar with memes: Gangnam Style music videos, the Success Baby, Rickrolling, Pepe the Frog, and other images, text, and sounds that serve as storytelling shorthand in today's digital world. Memes are not an entirely digital phenomenon, however. On the contrary, they have a deep history within the context of human ideas and expression. In this course, we will explore the concept of the meme and the practice of meming, beginning with pre-digital examples and extending up through the most current instances. We will consider a variety of theories behind this kind of microstorytelling, as well as its craft, leading to the creation of meme portfolios and predictions about future forms of human expression.

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PAH 240 – Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Global Perspectives on Human/Animal Relationships

Human and animal lives have always been intertwined, and animals are omnipresent in human society on both metaphorical and practical, material levels. Animals often play a central role in cultural metaphors and myths, but they are also physically present in homes and workplaces, and in local as well as global economies. Both levels in this complex web of relationships structure society in areas as varied as art, economy, entertainment, health, law, media, and science. However, the ways in which human society deals with its coexistence with animals, and the ways it interacts with, uses, and handles them; are complex and embedded in paradoxes that are often affected by structures of power. The purpose of this course is to stimulate critical reflections on different social constructions and the ethical and moral implications of human relationships with animals. Over the course of the semester we will: (1) examine the evolution of human/animal relationships over time, (2) consider the unique roles that different species play in human lives and the ways we treat them as a result, and (3) engage in interviews, personal reflections, argumentative essays, and research reports about human/animal relationships.

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