Director: Lisa Brawley;

Steering Committee: Carlos Alamo (Sociology), Lisa Brawley (Urban Studies), Lisa Gail Collins (Art), Eve Dunbar (English), Maria Höhn (History), William Hoynes (Sociology), Hua Hsu^a (English), Jonathon S. Kahn (Religion), Eileen Leonard (Sociology), Erin McCloskey (Education), Molly S. McGlennen^a (English), Quincy T. Mills (History), Eréndira Rueda (Sociology), Tyrone Simpson, II (English);

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

^a On leave 2015/16, first semester
^b On leave 2015/16, second semester
^ab On leave 2015/16

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

• •  Approved Courses for the Native American Studies Correlate Sequence
• •  Native American Studies Correlate Sequence

Courses

American Studies: Required Courses

• •  AMST 100 - Introduction to American Studies
• •  AMST 105 - Introduction to Native American Studies
• •  AMST 250 - America in the World
• •  AMST 302 - Senior Thesis or Project
• •  AMST 303 - Senior Thesis or Project
• •  AMST 313 - Multidisciplinary Research Methods
• •  AMST 315 - Senior Project Seminar

American Studies: Core Courses

• •  AMST 101 - The Art of Reading and Writing
• •  AMST 160 - Art and Social Change in the United States
• •  AMST 203 - These American Lives: New Journalisms
• •  AMST 207 - Commercialized Childhoods
• •  AMST 252 - The American Military at Home and Abroad
• •  AMST 258 - Studies in Sound
• •  AMST 262 - Native American Women
• •  AMST 266 - Art and Everyday Life in the United States
• •  AMST 283 - U.S. Consumer Culture
• •  AMST 290 - Field Work
• •  AMST 297 - Readings in American Studies
• •  AMST 298 - Independent Study
• •  AMST 338 - German-American Encounters since WW I
• •  AMST 365 - Racial Borderlands
• •  AMST 366 - Art and Activism in the United States
• •  AMST 382 - Documenting America
• •  AMST 383 - Indigenous New York
• •  AMST 384 - Native Religions/Americas
• •  AMST 386 - Baseball and American Society
• •  AMST 389 - From the Natural History Museum to Ecotourism:The Collection of Nature
• •  AMST 399 - Senior Independent Work

American Studies: Electives

• •  AMST 170 - Topics in Anthropology
• •  AMST 213 - American Music
• •  AMST 214 - History of American Jazz
• •  AMST 217 - Studies in Popular Music
• •  AMST 231 - Native American Literature
• •  AMST 235 - The Civil Rights Movement in the United States
• •  AMST 249 - Encounter and Exchange: American Art from 1565 to 1865
• •  AMST 251 - Modern America: Visual Culture from the Civil War to WWII
• •  AMST 257 - Reorienting America: Asians in American History and Society
• •  AMST 275 - Race and Ethnicity in America
• •  AMST 331 - Topics in Archaeological Theory and Method
• •  AMST 350 - Confronting Modernity
• •  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 385 - Seminar in American Art