In our 36th episode of Madness Chronicles, we’ll take a look at the craziness of what your child can study in college. Remember, insanity is a state of serious mental illness, extremely foolish behavior, and a frantic or chaotic form of activity. Let’s take a look at the craziness at Big Ten schools where sports rule.

We will start with the University of Illinois, Fighting Illinois! If your child is in education, how about EDU-202 Social Justice, School and Society? It examines the nature of justice and the dynamics of a pluralistic society to derive a conception of social justice. Or say you’re an English learner, try ENGL 277-Gender in Gaming. It examines the history of gender in video games, focusing on how movements like internet bullying, doxing, and trolling emerged as a coordinated effort to consolidate and maintain video games and geek culture as the domain of masculinity and whiteness. Did you get it?

Moving east to Bloomington, Indiana, we find the home of the Indiana University Hoosiers. Send your son here for courses like GNDR-G 304-Constructions of Masculinities. The show says it is an interdisciplinary examination of what constitutes (and has historically constituted) masculinity. Designed to illuminate the contested foundations of masculinity. Or if you like to cook, maybe take ANTH-E 337-Food, Sex, and Gender. Explore how food reflects and creates gender and promotes and expresses sexuality.

In what might surprise you, the University of Iowa, home of the Hawkeyes, offers the AFAM 2800-African American Women, Health, Hair, and Sexuality course. She says that from the exotic to the erotic, African-American women’s bodies have been constructed to fulfill a variety of personal and cultural fantasies and social roles that are killing us softly. I’m not sure what that means?

In Ann Arbor and the Michigan Wolverines. Your student could enroll in AAS 347-Urban Inequality in America. The class delves into these issues of inequality in the United States by focusing on how space and place have come to play an integral role in shaping poverty and disadvantage in US feminist art practices. This class investigates ecofeminist, ecological queer, and global feminist environmental justice art in the visual arts, sculptural practice, creative writing, performance, dance, somatic movement, and more. Now that was a mouthful.

In East Lansing, we find Michigan State University, home of the Spartans. Here your little one can study ANP 859-Gender, Justice and Environmental Change. Here they investigate gender, ecology and environmental studies, methodological issues and fieldwork from a feminist perspective in international and intercultural contexts. I’m not exactly sure what that is, but I’m sure there are plenty of job openings for someone that skilled.

If that precious one of yours chooses to be a Golden Gopher and heads to the frigid University of Minnesota, you won’t be disappointed. You can take CSCL 3405-Marx for today. The course provides students with an introduction to Marxist theory, with particular attention to its relevance to the contemporary world. Northwestern University is undoubtedly a good school. There your rising star can study AFAMST 339-Eerie Whiteness. They will learn about the historical, political, and cultural formation of whiteness in western modernity visible and narratable for comment and analysis.

I know this is funny, but we can’t cover all of the Big 10, which, of course, actually has 14 schools. We will close with a difficult pair to miss. Ohio State offers ANTHROP 3334-Zombies: The Anthropology of the Undead, Penn State offers AMST 226-Critical Approaches to Hip-Hop, and if you become a Cornhusker, the University of Nebraska offers HIST 336-Saints, Witches, and Madwomen.

The result of following these courses of study is rearing its ugly head right now in 2020 America. My best advice would be to not turn the little one’s room into an office just yet…they can catch you rebounding around $100,000 later.

Let’s wake up from this madness before it’s too late. I wish you all good health and until next time, have fun, enjoy life and beware the craziness among us. It’s 2020 and it’s getting out of hand.

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