Catalogue 2025-2026
American Studies Program
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Director: Molly McGlennen (English)
Steering Committee: Lisa Brawley (Urban Studies)a, Amy Chin (American Studies and Asian Studies), Lisa Gail Collinsab (Art), Eve Dunbara (English), Kristi Leora Gansworth (American Studies), Gordon Hall (Art), William Hoynesa (Sociology), Jonathon S. Kahnab (Religion), Erin McCloskey (Education), Molly S. McGlennen (English), Justin Patch (Music), Hiram Perez (English), Tyrone Simpson, II (English), Mallory Whiteduck (Political Science), Kimberly Williams Brown (Education).
Participating Faculty: John Andrews (Sociology), April Beisaw (Anthropology), Brian Godfrey (Earth Science and Geography), Amitava Kumara (English), Serena Qiu (Art), Shivani Radhakrishnan (Philosophy), Ashanti Shih (History), Noel Smyth (History), David Tavárez (Anthropology).
a On leave 2025/26, first semester
b On leave 2025/26, second semester
ab On leave 2025/26
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 Indigenous, European, 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
Approved Courses
American Studies: I. Introductory
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AMST 100 - Introduction to American Studies
1 unit(s)
An invitation to the open interdisciplinarity of American Studies, a socially-engaged area of inquiry that seeks to holistically understand the lives of people in—and in relation to—the US, both past and present, and critically work toward the creation of a just and livable nation, hemisphere, and world.
Either AMST 100 or AMST 102 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.
Priority given to first-year students and sophomores.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 102 - Introduction to Asian American Studies Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 102 ) Why are Asians in America? What does it feel like to be Asian in America? Who counts as Asian in the first place? This introduction to Asian American Studies explores the different systems of power that shape Asian migration, racialization, and resistance in the US. We focus on sites of encounter–the plantation, the internment camp, the military base, the interrogation room, the refugee camp, the orphanage, the spa, and the protest–where the meeting of bodies and ideas can reveal how modes of difference-making emerge and endure within and across local contexts. Students engage in articles, legal cases, policy reports, film, art, music and poetry to understand how the experiences of Asians in America are tied to historical systems of power and the ways in which Asians have grappled with their experiences on their own terms. Amy Chin.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 105 - Introduction to Native American Studies Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course is an introduction to the discipline of Native American Studies. Because the area of study is interdisciplinary, we will take into consideration the histories, legal traditions, linguistics, material cultures, geographies, politics, and religions of tribal communities through Indigenous perspectives. Utilizing principles stemming from vast and various Native North American belief systems, worldviews, and cultural frameworks, we will learn to objectively examine key Native American Studies terms such as sovereignty, nationhood, language, land, relationality, and Indigenous consciousness among others. We will investigate how tribal epistemologies inform and shape the way Indigenous peoples conceive of themselves, their communities, and their futures. We will also work to deconstruct hurtful and derogatory myths and misconceptions about Indigenous nations stemming from ongoing colonialities. Course materials will demonstrate the breadth of the discipline amongst the various backgrounds, cultural beliefs, and geographical locations of Native North American tribes. Since this course, for most, will be an introduction to Native American texts and materials, we will work to unpack the fundamental vocabulary of the field. Overall, we will be introduced to the key scholars and artists of Indigenous North America as they work to center Native voices and perspectives against systems of violence and cultural genocide.
Either AMST 100 or AMST 102 or AMST 105 satisfies the 100-level core requirement of the American Studies major. Leora Gansworth.
Priority given to first-year students and sophomores.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 106 - Writing Home: language for travel, belonging, and foreignness Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
How might we arrange ourselves around (dis)orientation or (un)belonging through writing? Together we read essayists, poets, translators, and thinkers who may give us language, and practice embodied writing about being in/out of place. Serena Qiu.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 150 - Critical Approaches to Youth Justice Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 150 and EDUC 150 ) This course explores how children’s school experiences contribute to their involvement in youth justice systems. Students read about the theories that undergird different approaches to youth justice and how these impact individuals, families and communities. This class weaves together personal narratives and storytelling, policy studies, and curriculum studies to examine the approaches that are currently utilized and to imagine ways to create socially just experiences for youth. Erin McCloskey.
This course is held at the Dutchess County Jail.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 160 - Art and Storytelling
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 160 ) Stories and storytelling reside at the heart of human experience; they have the power to shape–and shift–our understandings, actions, and imaginations. How do artists, makers, and other cultural workers draw on the power of storytelling to deepen seeing and knowing and enable emergent stories and realities? Focusing on generative twentieth and twenty-first century creative projects in or in relation to the U.S., this first-year writing seminar–a community of practice and care–explores critical arts and acts of storytelling.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 170 - Introduction to Native American History Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 170 ) This course introduces students to the diverse experiences and histories of Indigenous peoples in North America since before European contact to the present moment. And course materials invite students to engage with many Indigenous voices and their perspectives on the past. The course focuses on the historical development of a U.S. Federal Indian policy and its ongoing impact on Native peoples. Students analyze the persistence, change, and adaption of Native cultures to historical and contemporary social conditions of the U.S. settler colonialism as well as individual and community efforts to maintain sovereignty in the 21st century. Since Indigenous peoples have their own culturally specific ideas and practices concerning gender and sexuality, students also examine the ways in which Indigenous ideas and practices around gender and sexuality have become sites of resistance to settler colonialism and an assertion of Indigenous identity, both in past and present. Students also investigate issues related to race, identity, and community by analyzing historical relations between African Americans and Native Americans across North America. Noel Smyth.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 177 - Special Topics
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ART 177 and URBS 177 ) Beginning with visual and written descriptions of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec Empire (today’s Mexico City), this course explores visual and discursive representations of American cities from the colonial encounter to the present. Interpretations of urban landscapes have shaped the practice of planners, builders, artists, and activists in cities across the Americas. By introducing students to philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s theory of urban space—as materially, socially, and symbolically produced—this seminar invites students to reflect critically on the role of writing, representing, and intervening in public space in giving meaning to the built environment of North and Latin American cities.
Second six-week course.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS
American Studies: II. Intermediate
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AMST 203 - These American Lives: New Journalisms Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 203 ) This course examines the various forms of journalism that report on the complexity of contemporary American lives. In the past I have said that this course, in a plain sense, is an investigation into American society. And, of course, that a part of the aim of the course is to acquire the basic craft of journalistic practice. The other main aim of the course has been that we examine different models of writing, especially in longform, that have defined and changed the norms of reportage in our culture. But in honor of the decisive contributions to American life made over the last several years by the previous president, I want to make #fakenews also a focus of our course. How do we pay attention to, how do we produce, and how do we give compelling form to facts? Amitava Kumar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 204 - Intersections of Our Homes, Schools, and Communities Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 204 and EDUC 204 ) This course draws on varied and rich experiences of all participants to read about, share and discuss the ways our homes, schools and communities intersect to create experiences for youth. We discuss the benefits and drawbacks of different school structures and different behavioral and instructional approaches. We explore how school structures such as standardized testing, tracking, and curriculum design influence students’ experiences in and out of school. Throughout the course we grapple with the continued significance of socially differentiating factors such as race, gender, class, sexuality, dis/ability, and citizenship in shaping public policy and youth’s experiences.
Essential questions we explore together include:
- What are the effects of having a predominately white teaching staff teaching in schools that enroll predominately students of color? What effects does this have on families and communities of color?
- How have zero tolerance policies contributed to a disproportionate suspension and expulsions for children of color?
- How do families and communities come together to offer alternative educational experiences for youth?
- How are our own school experiences reflected, or not, in the readings for this course?
Erin McCloskey.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 207 - Commercialized Childhoods
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.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 208 - Demilitarizing the Pacific Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 208 ) The Pacific euphemistically called “America’s Lake” has been a site of US empire building and Indigenous and Asian resistance against US military expansion. This course examines demilitarization movements in the Pacific through visual and material culture. We analyze historical and ongoing processes of military basing, nuclear testing, tourism, sex work and logistics industries among others to better understand the relationship between demilitarization and decolonization in the Pacific. Through different forms of visual representation and material objects, this course engages oceanic indigenous voices, island feminism, bomb survivor narratives and global demilitarization activism. Students grapple with how militarism becomes invisible in American daily life, the colonial foundations in which this invisibility is produced through American and Asian imperialisms, and how demilitarization movements are reimagining what genuine security and safety can look in our world without militarism as a governing ideology. Amy Chin.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 213 - Indigenous Environmental Activism
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 213 and ENST 213 ) This intensive seeks to foster a community of students dedicated to learning about Indigenous environmental activism. We read publications, watch films, and listen to interviews that highlight the work of Indigenous activists, scholars, and scientists. Students must be willing and able to invest 3-5 hours a week on this intensive. An hour of that time is spent monitoring news sources for recent events and discussing them with others in this learning community. This is not a traditional course, so students with existing knowledge of Indigenous activism or ways of knowing are best prepared for this intensive.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: INT -
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.
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 2025/26.
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AMST 215 - Global Indigenous Film
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 215 and MEDS 215 ) This intensive acquaints students with some of the documentary, experimental, and narrative films/videos of indigenous filmmakers from North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Screenings include films by Rachel Perkins, Tracey Moffatt, Sherman Alexie, Victor Masayesva, Alanis Obamsawin, and Zacharias Kunuk. Discussions of films engage the notion of visual sovereignty, and the use of film/video to document indigenous lives and concerns, and to reframe stories told about them and to tell new stories.
First six-week course.
One 2-hour period plus outside screenings.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 216 - Language Revitalization Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 216 and LALS 216 ) This Intensive focuses on language revitalization and documentation efforts of endangered languages, and also of languages that are undervalued or discriminated against by majority populations. Students can develop their own project, or work with the instructor in an ongoing digital humanities project that focuses on Mesoamerican languages. David Tavarez.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 90-minute period.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 219 - Queer of Color Critique Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 219 and ENGL 219 ) “Queer of Color Critique” is a form of cultural criticism modeled on lessons learned from woman of color feminism, poststructuralism, and materialist and other forms of analysis. As Roderick Ferguson defines it, “Queer of color analysis…interrogates social formations as the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class with particular interest in how those formations correspond with and diverge from nationalist ideals and practices.” This course considers what interventions the construction “queer of color” makes possible for queertheory, LGBT scholarship and activism, and different models of ethnic studies.We assess the value and limitations of queer theory’s “subjectless critique” (in other words, its rejection of identity as a “fixed referent”) in doing cultural and political work. What kind of complications (or contradictions) does the notion “queer of color” present for subjectless critique? How might queer of color critique inform political organizing? Particular attention will be devoted to how “queer” travels. Toward this end, students determine what conflicts are presently shaping debates around sexuality in their own communities and consider how these debates may be linked to different regional, national or transnational politics. Throughout the semester, we evaluate what “queer” means and what kind of work it enables. Is it an identity or an anti-identity? A verb, a noun, or an adjective? A heuristic device, a counterpublic, a form of political mobilization or perhaps even a kind of literacy? Hiram Perez.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 222 - The Politics of Borders
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 222 and LALS 222 ) This course interrogates the normative construction of nation-state borders and the meaning of nation-state borders. We do so from the United States/Mexico border, and utilize a comparative approach, relating Latinx Studies to critical Indigenous feminist perspectives. While focused mainly on the United States landmass the course also critically foregrounds Native/Indigenous land and sovereignty to reconceptualize the United States as a settler colonial, imperial state. Utilizing the knowledges of Latinx and Indigenous thinkers, students trace the construction of modern borders and productively reframe assumptions around immigration/migration, citizenship, nationalism and indigenismo/Indigeneity.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 231 - Native American Literature Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 231 ) 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 written and oral traditions, 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 various theoretical debates that have created and nurtured a robust field of Native American literary criticism. A Native American Studies framework acknowledges Indigenous literatures as the cultural and creative labor of Native peoples on behalf of their respective Nations or communities, as well as how the literatures are necessarily entangled with the on-going legacy of settler 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 Tommy Pico, among other Native theorists, performance and fine artists, and filmmakers. Molly McGlennen.
This course satisfies the REGS requirement for the English major.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 232 - Asian American Women’s Oral History Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 232 ) This course examines the methodology of oral history as employed by Asian American women and oral histories of Asian American women. It expands what we understand to be traditional oral history to include, testimonies, political speeches, speaking tours, lullabies, pop music and podcasting. We use sound and story as an object to study subaltern methods of capturing and articulating these stories. Students are able to conduct an oral history project of their own. Amy Chin.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 233 - Museums, Collections, Ethics Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 233 ) 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. Thirty years after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) repatriation remains a controversial issue and few are satisfied with the 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 235 - Picturing Transnational Indigenous Sovereignty in the Americas
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 235 ) This course examines identities, memories, and social movements of and by Indigenous peoples depicted through film and video in Turtle Island and Abya Yala (North and Latin America). Students learn about visual representations, Indigenous sovereignty, and Indigenous futures by juxtaposing Indigenous communities past and present struggles. They also critically analyze the different actors, such as nation-states, non-profit organizations, individuals, and collectives, that produce dramas, independent films, and documentaries.
This course addresses several questions: How has the discourse around Indigeneity transformed from the 20th century to the 21st century? How does the nation-state inform certain Indigenous representations? How can we think about Indigeneity in terms of self-performativity, autonomy, and solidarity instead of authenticity? How do Indigenous communities challenge authenticity and self-represent themselves through visual mediums, which they often seek to decolonize?
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 236 - Native North America
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 236 ) Native Americans have been in North America for at least the last 10,000 years. From the earliest archaeological record we can see how they farmed in the scorching desert, hunted in the frozen tundra, and traded resources over thousands of miles. From the more recent record, we can see how homelands relate to reservation lands and how lifeways changed but culture persists. Now, indigenous archaeologists and community archaeology programs are changing how archaeology is done, who it is done by and for, and what questions are asked of the past. This course surveys the archaeology of two distinct geographical culture areas, the Southwest and the Northeast. This contrast allows us to examine how knowledge of the past is constructed by archaeologists, museum professionals, descendant communities, and public interest.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 239 - Feeling the Present: Affect and Emotion in Contemporary Social Life
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 239 ) Contrary to the Enlightenment vision of a society comprised of rational, self-contained individuals, feelings, moods, and affects in fact play a primary role in contemporary social life, affecting most everything from consumer behavior to political beliefs to the health of the economy. This course examines not only how feelings and moods are profoundly collective but also why and how these collective emotions have come to matter in contemporary culture, politics, and economy. In analysis of current and classic scholarship in the sociology of emotions, affect studies, and psychoanalysis - as well as film and popular culture - we attend to the ways in which anxiety, depression, hope, fear, rage, and other moods figure into everyday life, work, social movements, and other key sites. We consider topics including: mental health and the pharmaceutical industry; neoliberalism and financialization; the #metoo and Black Lives Matter movements; Trumpism and resurgent nationalisms globally; and emotion and social media among other topics addressed. Readings include work by Sara Ahmed, Zygmunt Bauman, Lauren Berlant, Ann Cvetkovitch, Jennifer Doyle, Sigmund Freud, Arlie Hochschild, Jack Katz, Pankaj Mishra, Fred Moten, José Munoz, Amber Musser, Sianne Ngai, and Kathleen Stewart.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 240 - Italy and its Migrations: Stories of Italian Emigration and Immigration
1 unit(s)
(Same as ITAL 240 ) This course follows the waves that shape and change Italian culture from the time of Unification, in 1861, up through today. We 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 consider the ways different narrative styles reflect the historical realities of the times, and 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 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 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 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.
This course is offered in English; Italian majors please see ITAL 340 .
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 241 - Asian American Women and Gender History
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 241 and HIST 241 ) This course focuses on Asian American women as key historical actors and the use of gender analysis to re-examine major themes in Asian American history: immigration, labor, communtiy formation, cultural representations, feminist political organizing, sexuality, and marriage and family life. We also touch on the “queering” of Asian American history, as well as ideas of masculinity and the intersections of sexuality and racialization for Asian American men. Course materials emphasie Asian American women’s voices and include memoirs, poetry, film, oral histories, and artwork in addition to traditional academic texts. Students explore different types of archives and methodologies to evelop a final reserch project of their choice.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 242 - Who Cares? Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 242 ) The ongoing care crisis in America reveals major gaps and obstacles between care needs and care provision. What care obligations does the state have to support the welfare of its citizens? How can we make care more affordable and accessible? Can the provision of care be socially organized in a different way—safely and with dignity to caregivers? This multidisciplinary course explores how the social value of care has changed over time in modern US history and society through theoretical debates in feminist care ethics, empirical studies of feminized work and social welfare history. Topics to be discussed include racialized domestic work, political economy of childcare, aging and eldercare, disability activism and veterans benefits. Theoretical concerns involve the commodification of intimate life, the relationship between state, family, and market in welfare provision and social citizenship. Often evoked but rarely defined, this course helps students better understand what is meant when we talk about care. Amy Chin.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 248 - The Book in America
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 248 ) This course examines the history and influence of books and printing in American society from earliest times to the present. We touch on a range of topics, including the place of books in the colonial era and the new republic, the spread of printing technologies in the 19th century, the emergence of large publishing houses and rising rates of literacy, the role of libraries, bookstores, and book clubs, modernist publishing, the rise of the paperback, the work of private presses, artist’s books, and the effect of recent technologies on reading. Along the way we consider questions relating to the production, dissemination, and reception of texts. The Archives & Special Collections Library serves as a laboratory for the course. Guest speakers and one or more field trips enhance our study of key topics.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 250 - A Sense of Place Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course examines the key concept of ‘place.’ We examine the evolution of how a place is understood through geographic inquiry and how the concept has grown to include a variety of experiences, voices, and historical events. Students explore how being “on” and “with” lands in the Lenape diaspora (which are also claimed by both New York State and the United States at large) builds a relationship and understanding of place. We also study recent interventions from scholars working in a range of disciplines and geographies, including scholars and practitioners from Native nations around the world. Leora Gansworth.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 251 - Introduction to American Art Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 251 ) Americanist Art History Revisited. How did certain objects come to be recognized as “American art”? This course examines the visual and material cultures, artistic productions, and institutions that repeatedly grappled with this question from early contact & settler conquest through early 20th century transnational modernism. We examine the substance and limits of “American Art” through ideas of territory vs. Landscape, enfiguring race/gender/class and national belonging, museum and exposition practices, constructions of history and nostalgia, and the many impacts of global exchange. We study objects from our inherited American Art canon, and objects that challenge this inheritance. With special emphasis on local collections and resources, we develop familiarity with the methods and questions guiding Americanist art history today. Serena Qiu.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or a 100-level American Studies course, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 254 - Memory and Justice in Latin America and North America
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 254 ) This course seeks to understand the social and political movements of feminist Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities through frameworks of cultural memory, collective trauma, and collective healing. Students compare, contrast, and link the inequalities in countries in North America (United States and Canada) and Latin America. Students in the class consider the discourse of memory and the various actors who influence and defy accounts of nation-state led narratives. This course validates individual and collective forms of witnessing atrocities but also seeks to complicate notions of witnessing. Besides privileging testimonies of events, it also considers what it means for generations not directly impacted by catastrophic events to remember, reflect, and be affected by the past. Students contextualize histories and memories through a lens that questions the role of race, class, gender, sexuality, and age.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 262 - Native American Women Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as WFQS 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 263 - Current and Emerging Issues in Public Health Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as STS 263 ) This course explores contemporary issues affecting public health on local, national, and global scales. Students discuss public health challenges and responses, the impact on populations, and consider interventions. We analyze public health events as they unfold, evaluating trends, policy implications, and the roles of public health. Topics include health disparities, environmental health, reproductive health, technology, and healthcare delivery. Students develop critical thinking skills and practical knowledge to address current public health challenges through lectures, discussions, case studies, guest speakers, and projects. Christie Van Horne.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 264 - Apocalypse Now: Finding Agency and Hope in a Deteriorating World
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENST 264 ) The course is an exploration of how humans must confront the challenges of global climate change and the collateral hazards associated with it, e.g., the climate refugee crisis, the spread of new diseases that may be worsened by climate change, the disruption of governmental and other institutions, etc., not with dread or denial, but with a sense of hope and the realization that these are challenges that may be ameliorated if we move swiftly to confront them. The course does not shy away from taking a hard look at both the enormity of the problem of climate change and the little time left we have to do something about it. But its focus is on climate resilience and how humans have always been able to adapt to such problems and what we must do today to both adapt to them and to mitigate their effects.
Prerequisite(s): Any First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 265 - Decolonizing the Exhibition: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Indigenous Art
1 unit(s)
This course consists of two areas of inquiry: the study of the impact and importance of Indigenous art from a Native American Studies perspective and the research and exhibition of Inuit works on paper from the Edward J. Guarino Collection at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. We begin by exploring Indigenous art through culturally and tribally specific perspectives in order to challenge the ethnographic lens that has traditionally examined and catalogued Native artists. Through a Native American Studies framework, we approach Indigenous art not through western categories of artifact or craft, but as artworks that stress the continuance of Indigenous peoples in direct conversation with the non-Indigenous world. From this understanding, the class constructs an exhibition to be installed in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at the end of the semester. Students research and interpret Inuit works from the collection, design the exhibition installation, write the exhibition catalogue and create the accompanying website.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 266 - Art, Urgency, and Everyday Life in the United States
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 266 and ART 266 ) What is this thing called socially-engaged, social practice, activist, and/or community-centered art? Where does it come from, who makes it, who is it for, how does it work, and what can it do? What are some of the ways this interdisciplinary practice–often woven within struggles for justice and healing–is defined and deployed? And how might its success be assessed? Dwelling together on these questions by way of dynamic case studies, we consider how a range of U.S. based creators are grappling with urgent issues of our time.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or coursework in Africana Studies, American Studies, Women, Feminist, and Queer Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 268 - Indigenous Legal Traditions and Governance Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as GEOG 268 ) This course introduces students to the policy histories of the United States (and to a lesser extent, Canada) pertaining to the legal category of persons sometimes called “Indians.” In the era of today, sometimes called the ‘self-determination’ era, many Tribal Nations within the United States are engaged in trust relationships with federal governments based on negotiated treaties and other acts of diplomacy. There are multiple meanings of the term ‘Indigenous’ both domestically and internationally, which we also discuss. Despite histories of attempted assimilation and dissolvement of Native cultures, languages, and spiritual traditions, there are persisting knowledge systems that inform Indigenous understandings of law, justice, governance, and relatedness. The course develops a “timeline” approach of native/newcomer relations in specific geographies starting in the Northeast, before the United States were formed. It examines multinational Indigenous world views and experiences as recorded in literature, film, artistic expressions, and other materials sourced directly from Native peoples. Leora Gansworth.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 271 - Native American Visual Sovereignty Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as POLI 271 ) This course studies the ways in which Native American visual culture asserts and affirms Indigenous political sovereignty. With a focus on visualities, including painting, printmaking, performance art, street art, film and television, we examine the multiple ways Native artists claim political power for themselves on and for their territories and nations. Leaning on Native American scholars such as Scott Richard Lyones and Michelle Rahaja, we examine Native American sovereignty as a ‘doing’ rather than a ‘being,’ as well as a process that can be defined artistically and kinesthetically. We consider the spectrum of “high” and “low” arts, looking at – for example – paintings that might hang in a national gallery and graffiti that might be tagged on an abandoned building. While it is tempting to consider this an “artwork of resistance” or “activist art,” in the case of Native American artists the attention paid to sovereignty is the resistance itself. In this course, we ask: How do Native American creative practices speak to sovereignty in ways that differ from what we might call traditional or standard forms of politics? And, how are Native American visual sovereignties tied to decolonial discourses? In addition to this being a co-taught class environment, we aim to offer a variety of perspectives by including guest speakers and visits. Molly McGlennen, Mallory Whiteduck.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 273 - Critical Ethnic Studies Curricula for Secondary Schools
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 273 and EDUC 273 ) In this intensive, Vassar students work with the professor on developing curricula for a new Grades 9-14 AAPI Digital Textbook that is being produced and published by UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center. The larger textbook uses AAPI history and experiences as a lens to understand American history, emphasize understanding the world through multiple perspectives, and demonstrate the ability to collaborate and resolve conflicts across many facets of difference and diversity towards shared goals for the common good. Chapters in the textbook are organized around the four foundational themes: Global Capitalism and Migration; Empire and War; Community Foundations and Activism; Race, Power and Identity. Our group is tasked with developing accompanying lesson plans and activities for the chapter on Chinese garment workers in New York. As well, we consider developing curricula for a similar nascent project on SWANA studies for high schoolers. Students are expected to travel to NYC for meetings with the historians writing the chapter.
Individual conferences with the instructor.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 274 - Reading and Writing American Memoir
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 274 ) On the first page of Heavy: An American Memoir, Kiese Laymon writes, “I did not want to write about us. I wanted to write an American memoir. I wanted to write a lie.” This course asks students to consider what it means to write an American memoir, particularly from perspectives historically excluded from mainstream publishing and prestigious literary journals. Keeping Laymon’s words in mind, we might ask how marginalized voices engage the presumed transparency of the memoir form to render lies (or mythologies) that arguably consolidate the US as a nation. How does the American memoir write from and to the nation?
This course centers students’ voices. We learn about memoir (and memory) from reading selected memoirs and criticism, but also from our own life writing, which we share in a workshop setting. Our reading selections provide us with a variety of models for transforming memory into story, including the braided essay, lyric forms, flash, the hermit crab essay, and epistolary, among others. Authors may include Kiese Laymon, Deborah Miranda, Melissa Febos, Doris Cheng, Bich Minh Nguyen, and Hilton Als, among others.
Two hours every other week.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 276 - How to Write a Black Memoir Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 276 and ENGL 276 ) Though our culture has become increasingly comfortable with self exposure, it does not completely explain why people so frequently resort to the genre of memoir to publicize the self. What might be required of the writer—in terms of aesthetics, historical memory, the publishing industry, and the market—might also be mysterious to many. This intensive seeks to peak behind the curtain of memoir making, with an eye toward having students produce a substantial, but hardly oversized (20 pages), draft of a memoir of their own. We meet with real live memoirists, and having read their works, question them mercilessly about how they brought their stories into being. Among the inquiries that will drive our enterprise is what makes a memoir black. Another is what difference does this (racial) difference make for memoir- writing. Tyrone Simpson.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor and 200-level courses in English/ Africana Studies/American Studies.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 280 - Landmarks of New York City Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as GEOG 280 and URBS 280 ) Reading human or cultural landscapes has a long tradition in history, geography, architecture, urban studies, and related fields. This multidisciplinary intensive course focuses on the changing historical landscapes of people and power that have created New York City. This year, we study the making of landmarks and historic districts in the city –– their histories and rationales. We rely on the designations of the Landmark Preservation Commission as well as site visits and interviews. Students prepare three reports on landmarks of their choice. Brian Godfrey.
Two 75-minute periods plus extra periods.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 286 - Theorizing Asian America Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as PHIL 286 ) This class investigates philosophical, social and psychoanalytic currents in Asian American thought. Through close encounters with writers like Anne Anlin Cheng, Chandra Mohanty, Gaiutra Bahadur, Lisa Lowe, David Eng, and Grace Cho, among others, we ask about the ways that Asian American subjects are formed, how this is connected with questions of gender, labor migration, globalization, imperialism, and coloniality. Shivani Radhakrishnan.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 287 - Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Modern America Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 287 and WFQS 287 ) This course explores the social, cultural, political, and economic history of the United States from the 1890’s to the 2010’s through the lens of race, gender, and sexuality. We analyze the work of historians and work with primary sources like newspapers, magazines, government documents, images, speeches, television songs, memoirs, and poetry. Students engage with women’s history, African American history, Latinx American history and queer history as we amplify the diversity of perspectives in US history. We interrogate the construction of social categories and how they impacted people’s daily lives. This course offers the opportunity to dig deeper into topics and trace them over time including Jim Crow segregation, women’s sufferage, immigration, and social movements such as the United Farm Workers and gay rights. Amanda Brennan.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 288 - Public Health and Social Welfare Policy in Modern America Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 288 and WFQS 288 ) What is the state’s responsibility in ensuring the welfare of its citizens? How does the state define the welfare of its citizens? Who has the state deem worthy of receiving aid from the government? How has the state entangled social welfare, survelliance, and incarceration? This course investigates the history of public policy related to welfare, health, reporduction, and care in the United States in the twentieth century. It analyzes how interactions with the state are shaped by race, class, gender, and sexuality. We engage with works of historians and primary sources such as government documents, newspapers, magazines, and posters as we eplore the impact of policies surrounding labor legislation, Social Security, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, childcare, vaccinations, reproductive rights, disability, AIDS, and child welfare. We examine the impact of cultural ideals and stereotypes on the enactment of public policy. Amanda Brennan.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
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 296 - Art and an Archive
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ART 296 ) The Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution is the most widely used research center dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in the United States. Diaries, scrapbooks, letters, manuscripts, financial records, sketches, photographs, films, and recordings can all be found in its vast holdings. It also holds the largest collection of oral histories anywhere on the subject of art.
In this collaborative exploratory workshop we immerse ourselves in the Archives’ online resources, paying particularly close attention to the in-depth oral histories, life stories, and other firsthand accounts by visual artists and other cultural workers. Together we critically and creatively analyze sources, freshly interpret artwork, piece together stories, and engage key questions of interpretation, evidence, and the limits and possibilities–including potential future histories–of a key archive.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
Second six-week course.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 298 - Independent Study Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission of the director required.
Course Format: OTH
American Studies: III. Advanced
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AMST 302 - Senior Project Intensive Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Required of students concentrating in the program. Jonathon Kahn.
The senior project intensive is graded Distinction, Satisfactory, or Unsatisfactory.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 313 - Approaches to Multidisciplinary Inquiry Semester Offered: Spring
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. William Hoynes.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 314 - History of Asian American Social Movements
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 314 and HIST 314 ) This seminar uses primary and secondary sources to explore the history of social movements by and for Asian Americans. After brief discussion of early forms of resistance and organizing, the course focuses primarily on social movements during and after the “Asian American movement” arose in the long 1960’s. Topics include struggles for ethnic studies. Yellow Power and recognition for “Brown Asians,” antiwar, Redress (reparations for Japanese American WWII incarceration), fair working conditions, Asian American feminisms, gay marriage, environmental justice, and anti-Asian violence and #StopAsianHate. Throughout the course, we ground Asian American activists and their ideas in their transnational dimensions,including Third World Liberation and anticolonial ideaologies, and we explore their solidarities with other liberation movements such as Civil Rights, Black Power, and Indigenous sovereignty. For the final project, students work together to create our own archive and interpreation of Asian American student activism at Vassar College.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2025/26.
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/or an archive. Jonathon Kahn.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 317 - Museums in a Time of Change
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 317 ) The current environment creates challenges to ways museums carry out their missions, sometimes forcing institutions to affirm or reimagine how to build better versions of themselves. Through a critical historical survey of the evolution of art museums, we examine their purpose in times of crises. How can we better connect audiences and objects? How do we describe the impact we want to make? If we can’t be all things to all people, how do we determine which of our museum’s “products” to retain, embellish, or drop? From difficult times come opportunities and new habits and ways of thinking.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 329 - American Literary Realism
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 329 and GNCS 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.
This course satisfies the pre-1900 requirement for the English major.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 332 - Then Whose Negro Are You? Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 332 and ENGL 332 ) Topic for 2025/26a: On the Art and Politics of James Baldwin. When interviewers sought out some sense of James Baldwin’s ambition, the artist often responded, “I want to be an honest man and a good writer.” The forces constellated around Baldwin’s career made this hardly a simple declaration. The MATTER of becoming a writer was an arduous task in itself, so much so that Baldwin felt he had to leave the United States, particularly his adored Harlem, to do so. Getting in the way of his artistry was the nation’s troubled negotiation with its own soul: the US was trying to figure out what it wanted to be—an apartheid state? A nuclear dreadnought? A den of prudish homophobes? An imperial power? A beloved community? A city on the Hill? This course looks at all things Baldwin, or at least as many things as we can COVER a four-month period. It certainly indulges his greatest hits-his essays, Notes of A Native Son; his novel, Giovanni’s Room; his play, Blues for Mr. Charlie’s–and several other writings both published and unpublished. It does so with an eye toward understanding Baldwin’s circulation as a celebrated author and a public intellectual both in the mid-twentieth century and the present day. Tyrone Simpson.
One 3-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 336 - Black Ecologies
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 336 , ENST 336 , HIST 336 , and WFQS 336 ) This seminar operates on the notion that structural racism and environmental degradation are historically related–and that Black Americans have confronted the two together. Over the course of the semester, we interrogate how different Black activists have done so, from the Antebellum period to the present day. We consider how enslaved people drew from nature in their resistance to slavery, as well as the role of pollution, environmental disasters, and gentrification in twentieth-century organizing. Toward the end of the course, we explore the concepts of environmental justice and ecofeminism.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 337 - Eels as Teachers: Learning with Earth’s Ancient Residents Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENST 337 ) This interdisciplinary seminar integrates material from human geography, biological sciences, critical animal studies, and Indigenous legal traditions to consider the case of Anguilla rostrata/American eel decline as a matter of serious importance across North America. We look at the holistic story of eels and review data pertaining to known historical distribution and significance of eels in and around Poughkeepsie and beyond. We study current and future threats to the species in the Hudson Valley and surrounding estuary which are prime habitat for the only migratory Anguillid in all North America. Leora Gansworth.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 338 - Debt and Indebtedness in Asian America
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 338 ) The critical question of what is owed in return for the life you are given strikes at the heart of Asian American subjectivity. What sorts of debts are accrued in exchange for “a better life”? What type of contract is constructed to mediate this relationship? Debt has served as a point of legal, political, and economic departure for Asian migration to the US since the mid-19th century. From indentured “coolie” labor to paper sons to refugee sponsorships to transnational adoption—different types of economic, political, social, and moral debts have helped shaped Asians’ conditional belonging in America. Yet what happens when material conditions of debt turn into psychic relations of indebtedness? In this seminar, we explore this question of indebtedness through histories of labor migration from Asia to the Americas, legal cases concerning Asian personhood, transnational workplace ethnographies, literatures of immigrant family conflict, and multidisciplinary theories of debt to interrogate key themes of redemption, guilt, obligation, and responsibility.
Prerequisite(s): ASIA 102 or ASIA 104 .
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
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 Tavarez.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 355 - Twenty- and Twenty-First Century Poetry
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 355 )
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 360 - Memory Work Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Toni Morrison describes, what we would call memory work, as “a kind of literary archeology: on the basis of some information and a little bit of guesswork you journey to a site to see what remains were left behind and to reconstruct the world that these remains imply.” This seminar focuses on the process of this reconstruction through major works in memory studies concerning the politics of remembering and forgetting, narrative and form, and philosophical and cognitive aspects of memory as well as recent interventions in the phenomenology of memory, the industry of memorialization, hauntology, indigenous protocol, and ruin as methodology from a global perspective. Students engage these topics through texts, visual culture, digital archives, and sound to gain a deeper understanding of the functions and purposes of memory. Finally, students are asked to grapple with and put into practice course material through a personal memory work project. Amy Chin.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 366 - Art and Activism in the U.S.
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 366 , ART 366 , WFQS 366 )
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 369 - Thinking Doing: Research and Creative Practice Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 369 ) Thinking Doing: Research and Creative Practice is a multidisciplinary laboratory for research-based creative production. Crosslisted between Studio Art and American Studies, this course welcomes advanced studio art students and upper level students from across the disciplines at Vassar who are engaged in creative work as a major component of their studies. The course fosters the creation of research-based work in forms other than academic writing. We ask ourselves the following questions: How can research be embodied and materialized? What is the full range of diverse forms that knowledge production can take? How does research fuel creative practice? How can we acknowledge our influences and nurture our creativity through engagement with those who came before us? Students in this course are challenged to expand your making practice, producing several ambitious creative projects over the course of the semester. Weekly course materials are determined in relation to each student’s interests, and each class-member is responsible for engaging your peers in discussion about the questions, themes, and histories relevant to your individual work. As a class, we look to writing by artists to better understand the ways that artists articulate the questions motivating their creative process and the artworks that result from it. The course is punctuated by rigorous group critique, with the aim of strengthening your work and gaining fluency in the skill of giving and receiving critical feedback within a diverse community. The heart of this class is to support each participant in developing as a creative practitioner and a scholar by identifying and exploring your unique guiding questions through research, conversation, and hands-on making. This course is ideal for seniors from Studio Art, American Studies, and other departments and multidisciplinary programs, though juniors can also enroll with permission. Gordon Hall.
Prerequisite(s): ART 102 -ART 103 and any two 200-level studio art courses, or permission of the instructor.
Two 2-hour periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 379 - War and Adoption
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 379 and HIST 379 ) This intensive seeks to explore the links between war and adoption in Asia and the US. The consequences of US wars in Asia and the Pacific have been multifaceted and reverberating for adoptees through the formation of new families, institutions, and subjectivities-topics of which we are just beginning to study and theorize. Yet adoptees are more than their conditions of adoption. Through this intensive, we analyze the historical and legal origins of transnational adoption, the relationships between veteran fathers and first mothers, state, religious and civic institutions that facilitated adoptions, as well as the individual lives of adoptees. In particular, we aim to highlight the diversity of adoptee narratives through historical monographs, memoirs, films, photography, graphic novels, comics, oral histories, and performances. It takes a multidisciplinary historical approach to understanding the militarized aspects of adoption in the US by honing in on the interstitial figures that emerge out of war: the orphan, waifs and mascots, the adoptee, American GI fathers, social workers, Asian first/birthmothers.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: INT -
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.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2025/26.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 385 - Seminar in American Art Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Topic for 2025/26a: Asian Americanist Visuality in the 19th Century: Histories, Methods, Ethics. (Same as ART 385 ) What does it mean to visualize Asian America in the nineteenth century? What tools do we have for responsibly and rigorously engaging the communities, objects, images, and histories that predate the term “Asian America”? This course asks how an Asian Americanist approach to American visual culture can expand our understandings of citizenship and empire, land and landscape, display culture, intersectional constructions of gender, and archival authority. Our chronology begins with the visual imprint of the first Chinese woman to visit in the United States and ends with the exhibit of Philippine colonies in the 1904 St. Louis world’s fair. Through readings in critical methods and thematic historical topics, we develop a familiarity with the field of Asian Americanist studies past and present, and interrogate what constitutes “Asian American art/history.” Serena Qiu.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 399 - Senior Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission of the director required.
Course Format: OTH
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