AMST 250 - Critical Approaches to American Studies

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

In this course, students explore the history and present state of American Studies as a field and interdiscipline. Central to the course is its analysis of the logics of difference and the ways they have produced, sustained, challenged, and unmade the United States and its mythologies. We examine how indigeneity, race and ethnicity, sexuality and gender, and disability act as critical interventions of normative understandings of the nation-state and its definitions of citizenship. Importantly, we learn to situate primary texts within the tensions and trajectories of historical moments; curate archives of heuristic categories via a of variety of genres, as well as disciplinary and methodological approaches; and practice reading against the grain to map out the historiographical and epistemological meanings of American Studies topics. Finally, the course works to understand the transnational and global dynamic of “American” influence and culture, as it contends with the settler colonial and racialized bedrock of the United States and its institutions. Raquel Madrigal.

Required of students concentrating in the Program. Generally not open to Senior Majors. Open to other students with permission of the Director and as space permits.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS