AMST 100 - Introduction to American Studies

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

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 American Studies 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 2014/15a: Empire/City. We investigate New York-both as “city of fact” and “city of feeling”-as a lens through which to explore the inter- and multi-disciplinary field of American Studies. New York, the Empire City, has also been called the capital of capitalism, the capital of the Twentieth Century, the pre-eminent American city in the American Century, and both the most and the least “American” of places. Along with other key global icons of modernity, New York also came to stand for “the city” itself. We attend to key transformations in the built environment from 1820 to the present, as we explore the particular role that New York City has played in the social, economic and political history of the United States. While our case studies are buildings and spaces, we are also interested in the modes of life and political visions that transformations in the built environment register and enable. And we discover the visible traces of this rich history in the city we encounter today. The course includes at least one field trip to New York. Ms. Brawley.

Topic for 2014/15b: The American Secular: Religion and the Nation-State. (Same as RELI 100 ) Is there a distinct realm in American politics and culture called the secular, a space or a mode of pubic discourse that is crucially free of and from the category of religion? This class considers the sorts of theoretical and historical moments in American life, letters, and practice that have, on the one hand, insisted the importance and necessity of such a realm, and on the other hand, resisted the very notion that religion should be kept out of the American public square. We will ask whether it is possible or even desirable—in our politics, in our public institutions, in ourselves—to conceive of the secular and the religious as radically opposed. We will ask if there are better ways to conceive of the secular and the religious in American life, ways that acknowledge their mutual interdependence rather than their exclusivity. Mr. Kahn.

Open to freshmen and sophomores only.

Two 75-minute periods.