Director: Hua Hsu;

Steering Committee: Carlos Alamo-Pastrana^b (Sociology), Lisa Brawley (Urban Studies), Randolph R. Cornelius^ab (Psychology), Eve Dunbar (English), Wendy Graham^a (English), Maria Höhn (History), William Hoynes^a (Sociology), Hua Hsu (English), Jonathon S. Kahn (Religion), Eileen Leonard^b (Sociology), Erin McCloskey (Education), Molly S. McGlennen^b (English), Quincy T. Mills^a (History), Tyrone Simpson, II^ab (English);

Participating Faculty: Carlos Alamo-Pastrana^b (Sociology), Peter Antelyes (English), Abigail A. Baird (Psychology), Lisa Brawley (Urban Studies), Andrew K. Bush^b (Hispanic Studies), Gabrielle H. Cody (Drama), Miriam Cohen (History), Lisa Gail Collins^b (Art), Randolph R. Cornelius^ab (Psychology), Dean Crawford (English), Eve Dunbar (English), Rebecca Edwards^b (History), Wendy Graham^a (English), Maria Höhn (History), William Hoynes^a (Sociology), Hua Hsu (English), E.H. Rick Jarow (Religion), Jonathon S. Kahn (Religion), Timothy Koechlin (International Studies), Kiese Laymon^b (English), Eileen Leonard^b (Sociology), Judith Linn (Art), Karen Lucic (Art), Robert E. McAulay (Sociology), Erin McCloskey (Education), Molly S. McGlennen^b (English), James Merrell (History), Marque-Luisa Miringoff (Sociology), Leonard Nevarez (Sociology), Joseph Nevins (Earth Science and Geography), Judith Nichols (English), Robert Rebelein (Economics), Julie A. Riess (Psychology), Tyrone Simpson, II^ab (English), Adelaide Villmoare (Political Science), Patricia Wallace^a (English);

^a On leave 2013/14, first semester
^b On leave 2013/14, second semester
^ab On leave 2013/14

American Studies is an interdisciplinary field defined both by its objects of study - the processes, places, and people that comprise the United States - and by a mode of inquiry that moves beyond the scope of a single disciplinary approach or critical methodology. American Studies majors develop a rich understanding of the complex histories that have resulted from the conflict and confluence of European, Indigenous, African, and Asian cultures throughout the Western Hemisphere, and explore U.S. nation-formation in relation to global flows of American cultural, economic and military power. An individually designed course of study, which is the hallmark of the program, allows students to forge multidisciplinary approaches to the particular issues that interest them.

The American Studies program offers both core program courses and cross-listed electives via the following inter-related rubrics:

The United States in a global context: the role of the United States outside of its national borders, the flow of peoples, ideas, goods and capital both within and beyond the United States; explorations of historic and contemporary diasporas; contexts and cultures of U.S. militarism and anti-militarism.

Spaces, places, and borders: explorations of particular places and processes of place-making in the U.S.; focus on borders and borderlands as contested geographical and figurative spaces of cultural, political, and economic exchange.

U.S. cultural formations: investigations of literary, visual, audio, and performance cultures, and their interaction; U.S. popular culture, music and media.

Identity, difference & power: the contest to extend the promises of abstract citizenship to the particular experiences of embodied subjects; shifting politics of U.S. immigration; explorations of the production, representation and experience of race and ethnicity in the U.S., including structural dimensions of race and racism; investigations of the intersections of race with gender, class, sexuality, and other systems of difference.

U.S. Intellectual traditions and their discontents: explorations of American religious, cultural and political thought; traditions of social and political protests; discourses of sovereignty, liberty, federalism, individualism, rights.

The program also offers a correlate sequence in Native American Studies which enables students to examine Indigenous cultures, politics, histories, and literatures, in a primarily North American context. Students electing the correlate sequence are trained in the methodology of Native American Studies as a means to critically assess colonial discourses, examine the many ways Native peoples have contributed to and shaped North American culture, and analyze and honor the autonomy and sovereignty of Indigenous nations, peoples, and thought.

The American Studies program values close faculty-student interaction. Courses utilize a range of collaborative learning strategies; mentored independent senior work is an integral component of the major.

Programs

Major

• •  American Studies Major

Correlate Sequence in Native American Studies

• •  Native American Studies Correlate Sequence

Approved Courses

• •  American Studies Department Approved Courses

Courses

American Studies: I. Introductory

• •  AMST 100 - Introduction to American Studies
• •  AMST 105 - Unsettling America
• •  AMST 112 - Family, Law, and Social Policy
• •  AMST 160 - Politics of Art/Art of Politics

American Studies: II. Intermediate

• •  AMST 203 - These American Lives: New Journalisms
• •  AMST 205 - Arab American Literature
• •  AMST 213 - American Music
• •  AMST 214 - History of American Jazz
• •  AMST 235 - The Civil Rights Movement in the United States
• •  AMST 250 - America in the World
• •  AMST 251 - Modern America: Visual Culture from the Civil War to WWII
• •  AMST 252 - The American Military at Home and Abroad
• •  AMST 257 - Reorienting America: Asians in American History and Society
• •  AMST 262 - Native American Women
• •  AMST 266 - African-American Arts and Artifacts
• •  AMST 275 - Race and Ethnicity in America
• •  AMST 281 - Repatriating Individ/Objects
• •  AMST 283 - U.S. Consumer Culture
• •  AMST 284 - Decolonizing the Exhibition: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Indigenous Art
• •  AMST 286 - Framing Autism in U.S. Policy and Practice
• •  AMST 290 - Field Work
• •  AMST 297 - Readings in American Studies
• •  AMST 298 - Independent Study

American Studies: III. Advanced

• •  AMST 302 - Senior Thesis or Project
• •  AMST 303 - Senior Thesis or Project
• •  AMST 313 - Multidisciplinary Research Methods
• •  AMST 315 - Senior Project Seminar
• •  AMST 350 - Confronting Modernity
• •  AMST 366 - Art and Activism in the United States
• •  AMST 367 - Artists’ Books from the Women’s Studio Workshop
• •  AMST 375 - Seminar in Women’s Studies
• •  AMST 380 - Art, War, and Social Change
• •  AMST 382 - Documenting America
• •  AMST 385 - Darkness and Disorder: Gothic American Art
• •  AMST 389 - From the Natural History Museum to Ecotourism: The Collection of Nature
• •  AMST 399 - Senior Independent Work

American Studies

• •  AMST 297.01 - Native American Art
• •  AMST 297.02 - Regional Cultures of Native North America
• •  AMST 297.03 - Regional Prehistory of Native North America
• •  AMST 297.04 - Native American Memoir and the Premise of Memoir
• •  AMST 297.05 - Native American Philosophies and Religions
• •  AMST 297.06 - Native American Ethnobotany