Catalogue 2019-2020 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
American Studies Program
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Director: Molly McGlennen;
Steering Committee: Carlos Alamo (Sociology), Lisa Brawley (Urban Studies), Lisa Gail Collins (Art), Randolph R. Cornelius (Psychology), Eve Dunbarb (English), Dustin Frye (Economics), Maria Höhn (History), William Hoynes (Sociology), Jonathon S. Kahn (Religion), Erin McCloskeyab (Education), Molly S. McGlennen (English), Quincy T. Millsab (History), Justin Patch (Music), Hiram Perez (English), Tyrone Simpson, II (English);
Participating Faculty: Carlos Alamo (Sociology), Lisa Brawley (Urban Studies), Lisa Gail Collins (Art), Randolph R. Cornelius (Psychology), Eve Dunbarb (English), Dustin Frye (Economics), Maria Höhn (History), William Hoynes (Sociology), Hua Hsuab (English), Jonathon S. Kahn (Religion), Eileen Leonard (Sociology), Erin McCloskeyab (Education), Molly S. McGlennen (English), Justin Patch (Music), Hiram Perez (English), Eréndira Rueda (Sociology), Tyrone Simpson, II (English);
b On leave 2019/20, second semester
ab On leave 2019/20
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.
Major
Correlate Sequence in Native American Studies
American Studies: Required Courses
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AMST 100 - Introduction to American Studies Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 100 ) This course reveals and challenges the histories of the categories that contribute to the definition of “America.” The course explores ideas such as nationhood and the nation-state, democracy and citizenship, ethnic and racial identity, myths of frontier and facts of empire, borders and expansion, normativity and representation, sovereignty and religion, regionalism and transnationalism as these inform our understanding of the United States and American national identity. One goal of the course is to introduce students to important concepts and works in American Studies. Either AMST 100 or AMST 105 will satisfy the 100-level core requirement of the American Studies major. Topics vary with expertise of the faculty teaching the course.
Topic for 2019/20a: People, Culture, Power, and Place. A dynamic introduction to the interdisciplinary field of American Studies by focusing on the key concerns of people, culture, power, and place. Lisa Collins.
Open to first-year students and sophomores only.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 105 - Introduction to Native American Studies Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course is a multi-and interdisciplinary introduction to the basic philosophies, ideologies, and methodologies of the discipline of Native American Studies. It acquaints students with the history, art, literature, sociology, linguistics, politics, and epistemology according to an indigenous perspective while utilizing principles stemming from vast and various Native North American belief systems and cultural frameworks. Through reading assignments, films, and discussions, we learn to objectively examine topics such as orality, sovereignty, stereotypes, humor, language, resistance, spirituality, activism, identity, tribal politics, and environment among others. Overall, we work to problematize historical, ethnographical, and literary representations of Native people as a means to assess and evaluate western discourses of domination; at the same time, we focus on the various ways Native people and nations, both in their traditional homelands and urban areas, have been and are triumphing over 500+ years of colonization through acts of survival and continuance. Either AMST 100 or 105 will satisfy the 100-level core requirement of the American Studies major. Molly McGlennen.
Open to first-year students and sophomores only.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 250 - America in the World Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course focuses on current debates in American Studies about resituating the question of “America” in global terms. We explore the theoretical and political problems involved in such a reorientation of the field as we examine topics such as American militarization and empire, American involvement in global monetary organizations such as the World Trade Organization and the World Bank, the question of a distinctive national and international American culture, foreign perspectives on American and “Americanization,” and the global significance of American popular culture including film and music such as hip-hop. Jonathon Kahn.
Required of students concentrating in the program. Generally not open to senior majors. Open to other students by permission of the director and as space permits.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 302 - Senior Thesis or Project Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
Required of students concentrating in the program. The Department.
The senior project is graded Distinction, Satisfactory, or Unsatisfactory.
Yearlong course 302-AMST 303 .
Course Format: INT -
AMST 303 - Senior Thesis or Project Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
Required of students concentrating in the program. The Department.
The senior project is graded Distinction, Satisfactory, or Unsatisfactory.
Yearlong course AMST 302 -303.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 313 - Multidisciplinary Research Methods
1 unit(s)
This course explores the challenges of conducting multi- and interdisciplinary inquiry within the field of American Studies. Drawing on key texts and innovative projects within the field, the course examines the ways in which varying disciplines make meaning of the world and puts specific modes of inquiry into practice. Students learn how to seek, produce, and evaluate different forms of evidence and how to shape this evidence in the direction of a broader project. Specific forms of inquiry may include: interpreting archival documents, conducting interviews, making maps, crafting field notes, analyzing cultural texts, among others.
Prerequisite(s): or co-requisite: a discipline-specific methods course appropriate to the student.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 315 - Senior Project Seminar
1 unit(s)
This course is required for all senior American Studies majors. The seminar engages current debates in the field of American Studies, as it prepares students to undertake the Senior Project. The course is designed to help students to identify a compelling research problem, locate appropriate critical resources, deepen their engagement with the disciplinary and interdisciplinary methods appropriate to their focus within the major, and locate their projects within a broader field of inquiry. Texts include Bruce Burgett and Glen Hendler, Keywords for American Culture Studies; Wayne Booth et al., The Craft of Research. Taught by the Director, Hua Hsu.
Corequisite(s): Senior Project; offered in the fall semester in the senior year.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 316 - Senior Project Lab Intensive Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This workshop is designed to help students embarking on the program’s senior project to identify a compelling research problem, locate appropriate critical resources, and deepen their engagement with the disciplinary and interdisciplinary methods appropriate to their focus within the major. Alongside the focus on individual projects, the participants in the workshop also identify a common research problem and discuss ways to approach it, by collectively building a syllabus and archive. Molly McGlennen.
Course Format: INT
American Studies: Core Courses
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AMST 101 - The Art of Reading and Writing
1 unit(s)
Development of critical reading in various forms of literary expression, and regular practice in different kinds of writing.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 160 - Art and Social Change in the United States
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 160 ) In this first-year writing seminar, we explore relationships between art, visual culture, and social change in the United States. Focusing on twentieth and twenty-first century social movements, we study artists and communities who have sought to inspire social change–to cultivate awareness, nurture new ideas, offer fresh visions, promote dialogue, encourage understanding, build and strengthen community, and inspire civic engagement and direct action–through creative visual expression. Lisa Collins.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 177 - Special Topics
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 177 and URBS 177 )
First six-week course.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 203 - These American Lives: New Journalisms
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 203 ) This course examines the various forms of journalism that report on the diverse complexity of contemporary American lives. In a plain sense, this course is an investigation into American society. But the main emphasis of the course is on acquiring a sense of the different models of writing, especially in longform writing, that have defined and changed the norms of reportage in our culture. Students are encouraged to practice the basics of journalistic craft and to interrogate the role of journalists as intellectuals (or vice versa). Hua Hsu.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 207 - Commercialized Childhoods Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 207 ) This course examines features of childhoods in the U.S. at different times and across different social contexts. The primary aims of the course are 1) to examine how we’ve come to the contemporary understanding of American childhood as a distinctive life phase and cultural construct, by reference to historical and cross-cultural examples, and 2) to recognize the diversity of childhoods that exist and the economic, geographical, political, and cultural factors that shape those experiences. Specific themes in the course examine the challenges of studying children; the social construction of childhood (how childhoods are constructed by a number of social forces, economic interests, technological determinants, cultural phenomena, discourses, etc.); processes of contemporary globalization and commodification of childhoods (children’s roles as consumers, as producers, and debates about children’s rights); as well as the intersecting dynamics of age, social class, race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in particular experiences of childhood. Eréndira Rueda.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 231 - Native American Literature
1 unit(s)
This course examines Indigenous North American literatures from a Native American Studies perspective. Native American literature is particularly vast and diverse, representing over 500 Indigenous nations in the northern hemisphere and written/spoken in both Indigenous languages and languages of conquest (English, Spanish, French). Because of this range of writing and spoken stories, our goals for the class are to complicate our understanding of “texts,” to examine the origins of and evolution of tribal literatures (fiction, poetry, non fiction, graphic novel, etc.), and to comprehend the varied theoretical debates and frameworks that have created and nurtured a robust field of Native American literary criticism. A Native American Studies framework positions the literature as the creative work of Native peoples on behalf of their respective Nations or communities and complicated by the on-going legacy of colonialism. Authors include William Apess, Luther Standing Bear, Pauline Johnson, Mourning Dove, Gerald Vizenor, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko, Louise Erdrich, Wendy Rose, Thomas King, Beth Brant, Kimberly Blaeser, and Richard Van Camp, among other Native theorists, spoken word artists, filmmakers, and artists. Molly McGlennen.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 252 - The American Military at Home and Abroad
1 unit(s)
After 1945 the U.S. created the world’s largest and most far-reaching network of military bases. Today, more than 700 military bases in over 150 countries are hosts to American troops, civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and private military contractors. Readings explore the development of this unprecedented global network of military bases, the differing Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) that govern the relationship between the U.S. military and the local populations, as well as the impact of the U.S. troops on these communities. By taking a transnational perspective, we explore the possibilities and limits for democratic change due to the U.S. presence, but also the way in which America’s military deployments abroad brought about change at home. Assigned readings draw on the writing of scholars of the U.S. military, texts produced by opponents of the U.S. military, as well as artistic responses (films, plays, novels, poems) to the U.S. global base structure. Maria Höhn.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 258 - Studies in Sound
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 258 ) This course familiarizes students with the emerging field of sound studies. We spend the first eight weeks exploring the different facets of sound culture: histories and ethnographies of listening; theories of sound capture and reproduction; the political economy of recording media (particularly the MP3); the experience of the modern American soundscape. We conclude with case studies of contemporary sonic experiences: “glitch”-based digital music and the aesthetics of failure; new developments in sonic weaponry; art and activism that “listens” to drones and the US-Mexico border. Hua Hsu.
Prerequisite(s): 100-level course work within the multidisciplinary programs, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 262 - Native American Women Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as WMST 262 ) In an effort to subjugate indigenous nations, colonizing and Christianizing enterprises in the Americas included the implicit understanding that subduing Native American women through rape and murder maintained imperial hierarchies of gender and power; this was necessary to eradicate Native people’s traditional egalitarian societies and uphold the colonial agenda. Needless to say, Native women’s stories and histories have been inaccurately portrayed, often tainted with nostalgia and delivered through a lens of western patriarchy and discourses of domination. Through class readings and writing assignments, discussions and films, this course examines Native women’s lives by considering the intersections of gender and race through indigenous frameworks. We expose Native women’s various cultural worldviews in order to reveal and assess the importance of indigenous women’s voices to national and global issues such as sexual violence, environmentalism, and health. The class also takes into consideration the shortcomings of western feminisms in relation to the realities of Native women and Native people’s sovereignty in general. Areas of particular importance to this course are indigenous women’s urban experience, Haudenosaunee influence on early U.S. suffragists, indigenous women in the creative arts, third-gender/two-spiritedness, and Native women’s traditional and contemporary roles as cultural carriers. Molly McGlennen.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 266 - Art, Urgency, and Everyday Life in the United States Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 266 and ART 266 ) An interdisciplinary exploration of how a range of U.S. based creators–through their artistic practices, aesthetic choices, and expressive interventions–are grappling with urgent issues of our time. Lisa Collins.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or coursework in Africana Studies, American Studies, Women’s Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 290 - Community-Engaged Learning Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission of the director required.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 297 - Readings in American Studies Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: OTH -
AMST 298 - Independent Study Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission of the director required.
Course Format: OTH -
AMST 329 - American Literary Realism Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 329 ) Exploration of the literary concepts of realism and naturalism focusing on the theory and practice of fiction between 1870 and 1910, the first period in American literary history to be called modern. The course may examine past critical debates as well as the current controversy over realism in fiction. Attention is given to such questions as what constitutes reality in fiction, as well as the relationship of realism to other literary traditions. Authors may include Henry James, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Charles Chestnutt, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and Willa Cather.
Topic for 2019/20a: American Literary Realism and Naturalism: A Reading of Major American Novels Written Primarily Between 1870 and 1910. After the Civil War, the U.S. experienced increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid growth of industrialism and urbanization, an expanding population due to immigration, and a rise in middle-class affluence, which provided a fertile literary environment for writers interested in explaining these rapid shifts in culture. A grand explanatory narrative directs the plot and action of these novels. Authorial intentions give way to a set of laws or principles derived from the dominant ideologies that supported America’s maturation into a super-power: Social Darwinism, the Gospel of Efficiency (new Protestant work ethic), or Imperialism (new Manifest Destiny). Surprisingly, the myth of American ‘progress’ is tested and found wanting in almost every book on the syllabus. In seeking scientific objectivity, writers plied a representational strategy focused on ‘hard facts’ and minute detail, which as often as not found the protagonist at odds with his or her environment. Though post-war, the terrain we cover is embattled: race riots, strikes, downward economic mobility, criminality, and homelessness. Shut out of the canon by reason of changing fashions in literary tastes, the less familiar authors on the syllabus belong to the emerging protest novel. Authors include: Henry James, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, Frank Norris, William Dean Howells, Edith Wharton, Thorstein Veblen, Theodore Dreiser, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison. Wendy Graham.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 338 - German-American Encounters since WW I
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 338 ) This seminar explores the many ways in which Germans envisioned, feared, and embraced America in the course of the twentieth century. We start our readings with WWI and its aftermath, when German society was confronted and, as some feared, overwhelmed, by an influx of American soldiers, expatriates, industry, and popular culture. The Nazi Regime promised to overcome Weimar modernity and the alleged Americanization of German society, but embraced nonetheless aspects of American modernity in its quest to dominate Europe militarily and economically. For the period after WWII, we study in depth the U.S. military occupation (1945-1955), the almost seventy-year lasting military presence in West Germany, and the political, social and cultural implications of this transatlantic relationship. Maria Höhn.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 352 - Indigenous Literatures of the Americas Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 352 and LALS 352 ) This course addresses a selection of creation narratives, historical accounts, poems, and other genres produced by indigenous authors from Pre-Columbian times to the present, using historical, linguistic and ethnographic approaches. We examine the use of non-alphabetic and alphabetic writing systems, study poetic and rhetorical devices, and examine indigenous historical consciousness and sociopolitical and gender dynamics through the vantage point of these works. Other topics include language revitalization, translation issues, and the rapport between linguistic structure and literary form. The languages and specific works to be examined are selected in consultation with course participants. They may include English or Spanish translations of works in Nahuatl, Zapotec, Yucatec and K’iche’ Maya, Quechua, Tupi, Aymara, and other indigenous languages of Latin America. David Tavárez.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 365 - Racial Borderlands
1 unit(s)
Borders have been made to demarcate geographic and social spaces. As such, they often divide and separate national states, populations, and their political and cultural practices. However, borders also serve as spaces of convergence and transgression. Employing a comparative and relational approach to the study of American cultures, this seminar examines concepts, theories and methodologies about race and ethnicity that emerged along the U.S. racial borderlands between the 18th and 20th centuries. We also consider the historical and contemporary ways in which discourses about race have been used to define, organize, and separate different social groups within the U.S. racial empire state. Throughout the semester we ask the following questions: How does race emerge as an idea in the U.S. political and social landscape? What is the relationship between race, gender and empire? What are the relational and historical ways in which ideas about race have been used to arrange and rank distinct social groups in the U.S. imperial body? How have these hierarchies shifted across space and time and how have different groups responded to these racial formations? Lastly, this seminar considers the future potential and limits of solidarity as a practice organized around ideas about race and exclusion for different marginalized populations within the U.S. empire state. Carlos Alamo.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 366 - Art and Activism in the United States
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 366 , ART 366 , and WMST)366 Exquisite Intimacy. An interdisciplinary exploration of the work and role of quilts within the US. Closely considering quilts–as well as their creators, users, keepers, and interpreters–we study these integral coverings and the practices of their making and use with keen attention to their recurrence as core symbols in American history, literature, and life. Lisa Collins.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 374 - Ideas, Sound, and Story: Podcast Production Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 374 ) This is a course on narrative audio production that focuses on the study and production of various nonfictional genres in the American podcasting landscape, including audio documentaries, investigative reporting, confessionals, art pieces, storytelling for academic purposes, and others. Students learn the craft of audio production from getting tape, tape-logging, writing for audio, story and tape-editing, and sound-tracking. Students complete various technical assignments, and submit a final 10-minute piece, with regular progress graded throughout. In order to model the highly competitive nature of the podcasting production space today, students must be highly-motivated, highly-organized, and grading is very rigorous, with the highest of standards and strict deadlines. Barry Lam.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 1-hour period.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 382 - Documenting America
1 unit(s)
The demand for documentation, the hunger for authenticity, the urge to share in the experiences of others were widespread in the first half of the twentieth century. A huge world of documentary expression included movies, novels, photographs, art and non-fiction accounts. This course explores the various ways in which some of these artists, photographers, writers and government agencies attempted to create documents of American life between 1900 and 1945. The course examines how such documents fluctuate between utility and aesthetics, between the social document and the artistic image. Among the questions we consider are: in what ways do these works document issues of race and gender that complicate our understanding of American life? How are our understandings of industrialization and consumerism, the Great Depression and World War II, shaped and altered by such works as the photographs of Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange,the paintings of Jacob Lawrence, the films of Charlie Chaplin, the novels and stories of Chester Himes, William Carlos Williams and Zora Neale Hurston, the non-fictional collaboration of James Agee and Walker Evans.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 383 - Indigenous New York
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 383 ) Over half of all Native American people living in the United States now live in an urban area. The United States federal policies of the 1950’s brought thousands of Indigenous peoples to cities with the promise of jobs and a better life. Like so many compacts made between the United States and Native tribes, these agreements were rarely realized. Despite the cultural, political, and spiritual losses due to Termination and Relocation policies, Native American people have continued to survive and thrive in complex ways. This seminar examines the experiences of Indigenous peoples living in urban areas since the 1950’s, but also takes into consideration the elaborate urban centers that existed in the Americas before European contact. Using the New York region as our geographical center, we examine the pan-tribal movement, AIM, Red Power, education, powwowing, social and cultural centers, two-spiritedness, religious movements, and the arts. We study the manner in which different Native urban communities have both adopted western ways and recuperated specific cultural and spiritual traditions in order to build and nurture Indigenous continuance. Finally, in this course, we understand and define “urban” in very broad contexts, using the term to examine social, spiritual, geographical, material, and imagined spaces in which Indigenous people of North America locate themselves and their communities at different times and in different ways. Molly McGlennen.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 384 - Native Religions/Americas
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 384 and LALS 384 ) The conquest of the Americas was accompanied by various intellectual and sociopolitical projects devised to translate, implant, or impose Christian beliefs in Amerindian societies. This course examines modes of resistance and accommodation, among other indigenous responses, to the introduction of Christianity as part of larger colonial projects. Through a succession of case studies from North America, Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, the Andes, and Paraguay, we analyze the impact of Christian colonial and postcolonial evangelization projects on indigenous languages, religious practices, literary genres, social organization and gender roles, and examine contemporary indigenous religious practices. David Tavárez.
Prerequisite(s): Prior coursework in Anthropology, American Studies or Latin American Latino/a Studies or permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 388 - True Crime and the American Novel Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 388 ) This intensive would be offered to eight students of ENGL 329 American Literary Realism , where the relationship between journalism and literature is a constant feature. Most of the writers on the syllabus were either journalists, before they became novelists, or wrote for or edited magazines throughout their lives. Literary naturalism, a sub-genre of realism, eschews literary devices and stylistic preciosity, instead describing characters and events in the direct, unembellished prose of the newspaper account. From Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (inspired by the Wilmington, NC race riot of 1898) to Frank Norris’s Mcteague (inspired by the murder of a charwoman) to Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier (inspired by Charles Yerkes financial chicanery) to Richard Wright’s Native Son (inspired by newspaper accounts of a murder) the American novel has relied on ‘real events’ to generate ideas for character and plots. Students may conduct research into the events inspiring these and other novels for the course and present their findings to the group (signed up for the intensive). In addition, students may choose a crime from any period or region (be it Lizzy Borden’s alleged murder of her parents, Jack the Ripper’s murders, serial killers, political assassinations, the murder of Emmett Till) and locate and compare multiple representations of the event (whether in novels, plays, movies, comics, newspapers, trials, forensic science). In most instances, representations highlight historical, class, and racial tensions (or obliviousness) over the subject and even who has a right to speak for the victim. (The recent controversy over the Whitney museum’s exhibition of Dana Schutz’s depiction of the open casket funeral of Emmett Till is a good example. Schutz is a white artist and her detractors objected to her appropriation of an iconic black figure and potentially profiting from her work.) Students are not limited to 19th century crimes or media for their final projects. The recent Kavanaugh hearings raise questions about the extrapolation of the principle that one is innocent until proven guilty beyond the courtroom. What should be the status of hearsay or personal testimony in determining ‘the truth’ of allegations? I see this as fertile ground for projects with a women’s studies slant. Wendy Graham.
Prerequisite(s): For juniors and seniors and with permission of the instructor.
Second six-week course.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 399 - Senior Independent Work
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Course Format: OTH
American Studies: Electives
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AMST 110 - Gender, Social Problems and Social Change Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 110 and WMST 110 ) This course introduces students to a variety of social problems using insights from political science, sociology, and gender studies. We begin with an exploration of the sociological perspective, and how social problems are defined as such. We then examine the general issues of inequalities based on economic and employment status, racial and ethnic identity, and gender and sexual orientation. We apply these categories of analysis to problems facing the educational system and the criminal justice system. As we examine specific issues, we discuss political processes, social movements, and individual actions that people have used to address these problems. Eve Dunbar and Eileen Leonard.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
This class is taught at the Taconic Correctional Facility for Women to a combined class of Vassar and Taconic students.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 214 - History of American Jazz
1 unit(s)
(Same as MUSI 214 ) An investigation of the whole range of jazz history, from its beginning around the turn of the century to the present day. Among the figures to be examined are: Scott Joplin, “Jelly Roll” Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie, Thomas “Fats” Waller, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Miles Davis. Justin Patch.
Prerequisite(s): One unit in one of the following: music, studies in American history, art, or literature; or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 217 - Studies in Popular Music Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 217 and MUSI 217 ) Justin Patch.
Recommended: one unit in either Music, Sociology, or Anthropology.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 218 - Spiritual Seekers in American History & Culture 1880-2008
1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 218 ) This course examines the last 120 years of spiritual seeking in America. It looks in particular at the rise of unchurched believers, how these believers have relocated “the religious” in different parts of culture, what it means to be “spiritual but not religious” today, and the different ways that Americans borrow from or embrace religions such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. We focus in particular on unexpected places of religious enchantment or “wonder” in our culture, including how science and technology are providing new metaphors for God and spirit. Christopher White.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 235 - The Civil Rights Movement in the United States
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 235 ) In this interdisciplinary course, we examine the origins, dynamics, and consequences of the modern Civil Rights movement. We explore how the southern based struggles for racial equality and full citizenship in the U.S. worked both to dismantle entrenched systems of discrimination—segregation, disfranchisement, and economic exploitation—and to challenge American society to live up to its professed democratic ideals. Lisa Collins.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 240 - Italy and its Migrations: Stories of Italian Emigration and Immigration Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ITAL 240 ) This course will follow the waves that shape and change Italian culture from the time of Unification, in 1861, up through today. We will learn about the experiences, dreams, memories and politics of Italian emigration and immigration through a careful study of novels, poetry, cinema, and theater, as well as letters and media coverage. We will consider the ways different narrative styles reflect the historical realities of the times, and will take a critical analysis approach to the question of how public attitudes towards immigrants have shaped Italian national and diasporic sentiment. Beginning with the first major waves of emigration to the United States in the 1880s, this course provides a unique look at a moment of significant transition in Italian history and the makings of Italian-American Culture; we will read literary texts, personal letters detailing the immigrant experience of cross the Atlantic at the turn of the century and of crossing the Mediterranean today, news coverage of significant events like the trial and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, and cinematic renditions of past and current migrant experiences. We will look at this cultural material in relation to the specific historical context in which it was produced, reflecting on the impact and legacy of things like the U.S. Emergency Quota Act of 1921, and the Italian Race Laws of 1938. As we read and discuss narratives of migration, we will also examine the ways gender, sexuality and social roles determine and are determined by movement through space and time, reflecting critically on the exclusion of women’s voices from early accounts of migration. Sole Anatrone.
This course will be offered in English, Italian majors please see ITAL 340 .
Two 75 minute periods
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 249 - Encounter and Exchange: American Art from 1565 to 1865
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 249 ) This course provides a survey of the visual arts made in the United States (or by American artists living abroad) until 1865, beginning with the first European representations of Native Americans in the 16th century and ending with Alexander Gardner’s images of death and destruction on the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War. It emphasizes the significance of cross-cultural encounter and international exchange to the creation and reception of artworks produced in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and prints. Our approach will be both chronological and thematic, considering topics such as the role of art in the construction of national identity; the origins of the U.S. art market; and the tensions of class, gender, race, and ethnicity in early American art.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 251 - Modern America: Visual Culture from the Civil War to WWII Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 251 ) This course examines American visual culture as it developed in the years between the Civil War and World War II. Special attention is paid to the intersections among diverse media and to such issues as the emergence of new forms of mass imagery, consumerism, cosmopolitanism, regionalism, abstraction, gender, primitivism, mechanized reproduction, and the rise of modern art institutions. Artists studied include Winslow Homer, Timothy O’Sullivan, James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Aaron Douglas, and Edward Hopper, among others.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or a 100-level American Studies course, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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AMST 257 - Reorienting America: Asians in American History and Society
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 257 and SOCI 257 ) Based on sociological theory of class, gender, race/ethnicity, this course examines complexities of historical, economic, political, and cultural positions of Asian Americans beyond the popular image of “model minorities.” Topics include the global economy and Asian immigration, politics of ethnicity and pan-ethnicity, educational achievement and social mobility, affirmative action, and representation in mass media. Seungsook Moon.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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AMST 275 - Race and Ethnicity in America
1 unit(s)
This course examines “white” American identity as a cultural location and a discourse with a history—in Mark Twain’s terms, “a fiction of law and custom.” What are the origins of “Anglo-Saxon” American identity? What are the borders, visible and invisible, against which this identity has leveraged position and power? How have these borders shifted over time, and in social and cultural space? How has whiteness located itself at the center of political, historical, social, and literary discourse, and how has it been displaced? How does whiteness mark itself, or mask itself? What does whiteness look like, sound like, and feel like from the perspective of the racial “other”? What happens when we consider whiteness as a racial or ethnic category? And in what ways do considerations of gender and class complicate these other questions? We read works by artists, journalists, and critics, among them Bill Finnegan, Benjamin DeMott, Lisa Lowe, David Roediger, George Lipsitz, Roland Barthes, Chela Sandoval, Eric Lott, bell hooks, Cherríe Moraga, Ruth Frankenberg, James Baldwin, Homi Bhabha, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, James Weldon Johnson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Faulkner, Nathanael West, Alice Walker, and Don DeLillo. We also explore the way whiteness is deployed, consolidated and critiqued in popular media like film (Birth of a Nation, Pulp Fiction, Pleasantville) television (“reality” shows, The West Wing) and the American popular press.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2019/20.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 281 - Museums, Collections, and Ethics Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 281 ) Collecting Native American objects and human remains was once justified as a way to preserve vanishing cultures. Instead of vanishing, Native Americans organized and asked that their ancestors be returned, along with their sacred objects. Initially, museums fought against the loss of collections and scientists fought against the loss of data. Governments stepped in and wrote regulations to manage claims, dictating the rights of all parties. Twenty-five years after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) repatriation remains a controversial issue with few who are truly satisfied with the adopted process. This course examines the development of American museums and the ethics of collecting cultures to anchor our study of repatriation. Perspectives of anthropology, art, history, law, museum studies, Native American studies, philosophy, and religion are considered. Recent U.S. cases are contrasted with repatriation cases in other parts of the world, for repatriation is not just a Native American issue. April Beisaw.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 285 - Resistance Literature: Protest, Activism, and American Literature Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 285 ) In 1926 the African-American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois declared, “all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists.” These were and continue to be fighting words for many writers who value “craft” over ideology. But does the distinction matter? Should it? Can a text be well-crafted and move us to (want to) change the world? At some level, these are rhetorical questions. American literature is rife with stories, novels, poems, and essays that have incited or speak to the necessity of our fighting for significant shifts in American culture. Thus, this course examines how US-based writers have used their art to right/write the world otherwise. Topics covered may range from abolition, the climate crisis, food justice, Civil Rights, #BlackLivesMatter, gender equity, #MeToo, and prison reform/abolition. We will work between the genres of realism and the speculative (utopic/dystopic) in the hopes of thinking about how literature has and continues to allow us to see and be the change we need. Eve Dunbar
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 326 - Challenging Ethnicity Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
An exploration of literary and artistic engagements with ethnicity. Contents and approaches vary from year to year.
Topic for 2019/20b: Racial Melodrama. (Same as AFRS 326 and ENGL 326 ) Often dismissed as escapist, predictable, lowbrow or exploitative, melodrama has also been recuperated by several contemporary critics as a key site for the rupture and transformation of mainstream values. Film scholar Linda Williams argues that melodrama constitutes “a major force of moral reasoning in American mass culture,” shaping the nation’s racial imaginary. The conventions of melodrama originate from popular theater, but its success has relied largely on its remarkable adaptability across various media, including print, motion pictures, radio, and television. This course investigates the lasting impact of such fictions as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Fannie Hurst’s Imitation of Life, the romanticized legend of John Smith’s encounter with Pocahontas, and John Luther Long’s Madame Butterfly. What precisely is melodrama? If not a genre, is it (as critics diversely argue) a mode, symbolic structure, or a sensibility? What do we make of the international success of melodramatic forms and texts such as the telenovela and Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain? How do we understand melodrama’s special resonance historically among disfranchised classes? How and to what ends do the pleasures of suffering authenticate particular collective identities (women, the working-class, queers, blacks, and group formations yet to be named)? What relationships between identity, affect and consumption does melodrama reveal? Hiram Perez.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 367 - Artists’ Books from the Women’s Studio Workshop
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 367 and WMST 367 ) In this interdisciplinary seminar, we explore the limited edition artists’ books created through the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York. Founded in 1974, the Women’s Studio Workshop encourages the voice and vision of individual women artists, and women artists associated with the workshop have, since 1979, created over 180 hand-printed books using a variety of media, including hand-made paper, letterpress, silkscreen, photography, intaglio, and ceramics. Vassar College recently became an official repository for this vibrant collection which, in the words of the workshop’s co-founder, documents “the artistic activities of the longest continually operating women’s workspace in the country.” Working directly with the artists’ books, this seminar will meet in Vassar Library’s Special Collections and closely investigate the range of media, subject matter, and aesthetic sensibilities of the rare books, as well as their contexts and meanings. We will also travel to the Women’s Studio Workshop to experience firsthand the artistic process in an alternative space. Lisa Collins.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2019/20.
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