American Studies Current Courses

Course Offerings Spring 2013

Course Code	Title/Instructor	Meets
AMST 101-01	Transnational America Instructor: Perin Gurel Course Description: Taking domestic politics and foreign policy as two sides of the same coin, this course explores how modern American culture was built through the crucible of immigration at home and empire-building abroad. How have Americans imagined the world and how have non-Americans imagined the United States? Is there such a thing as "cultural imperialism" or "Americanization" and, if so, how does it operate? How has culture influenced U.S. foreign policy and how have U.S. foreign policy makers and non-governmental groups sought to influence culture both within the United States and elsewhere? Finally, how have different groups and individuals reacted to changes and challenges in transnational and international U.S. histories through cultural production? This course will encourage interdisciplinary cultural analysis to get at the intersections between culture and power internationally and transnationally.	1500:MR DENNY 304
AMST 200-01	Fat Studies Instructor: Amy Farrell Course Description: Cross-listed with WGST 202-02. This course introduces students to an emerging academic field, Fat Studies. By drawing from historical, cultural, and social texts, Fat Studies explores the meaning of fatness within the U.S. and also from comparative global perspectives. Students will examine the development of fat stigma and the ways it intersects with gendered, racial, ethnic and class constructions. Not a biomedical study of the obesity epidemic, this course instead will interrogate the very vocabulary used to describe our current crisis. Finally, students will become familiar with the wide range of activists whose work has challenged fat stigma and developed alternative models of health and beauty.	0900:TR DENNY 212
AMST 200-02	Caribbean Diasporic Identities Instructor: Jerry Philogene Course Description: Cross-listed with AFST 220-02 and LALC 200-02. This course provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the development of Caribbean diasporic identities during the 20th century. Drawing on a wide range of materials including: essays, novels, and popular culture, this course contextualizes the social, cultural, and political processes that have shaped Caribbean diasporic peoples. Geared towards students who are interested in the intersections of immigration, ethnicity, race, and culture, this course opens up perspectives to explore the transformative experience of immigration and the making of Caribbean diasporic identities. More broadly, the course utilizes popular and visual arts, including music and carnival, as critical lenses to examine the meaning and formation of Caribbean diasporic identities. This course will bring to light the interconnectedness of immigration, identity formation, and cultural production; processes that have been central to the creation of American peoples.	0900:TR DENNY 204
AMST 200-03	Introduction to Queer Studies Instructor: Laura Grappo Course Description: This course will examine major ideas in the field of queer studies. Relying upon theoretical, historical, and cultural studies texts, we will consider the representation and constructions of sexuality-based identities as they have been formed within the contemporary United States. We will explore the idea of sexuality as a category of social identity, probing the terms of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender to try and understand what they really mean in various cultural, social, legal, and political milieus. In doing so, we will we ask: what does it mean to study sexuality? How do institutions religious, legal, scientific, shape our understandings of queer identities? In what ways do sexuality and gender interact, and how does this interaction inform the meanings of each of these identity categories? How do other social categories of identification race, ethnicity, class, etc. affect the ways in which we understand expressions of queerness? What does studying queerness tell us about the workings of contemporary political, cultural, and social life?	1330:MR DENNY 304
AMST 200-04	American Capitalism Instructor: Charles Barone Course Description: Cross-listed with ECON 223-01 and SOCI 230-03. Permission of Instructor Required. Designed for those interested in social activism and social justice, this course draws on critical perspectives from Political Economy, American Studies, and Sociology to examine how power is structured in American capitalism across institutions including the social relations of production and distribution, corporations, and markets. Special attention is given to the ways in which powerful economic groups and organizations are able to exert economic control, influence government, and dominate American institutions, such as the media, that shape American culture. Looking beyond capitalism, social movements for greater social and economic justice, and greater economic and political democracy are also examined.	1030:TR DENNY 311
AMST 200-05	Religion & Politics US History Instructor: Kim Rogers Course Description: Cross-listed with HIST 211-01. This class will focus on two parallel trends in post-World War II America: the rise of conservative evangelical Christianity, and the increased presence of other religious beliefs and forms, especially after 1965. These "new religions" were often older world religions transplanted by the migration of communities and teachers from South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East. These new belief systems found a ready audience among the third of "baby boomers" who turned East for religious practices and identities that often collided with those of their parents. Hence we will study evangelical Christians and the religious right, divisions among orthodox and activist Jewish communities, and new Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh communities in the US. We will also consider "New Age" belief systems generally, and how these orientations co-existed with other traditions. Students should expect to write several papers, a mid-term, and a final, and will conduct participant observation research in a new religious community.	1330:TF DENNY 103
AMST 201-01	Intro to American Studies Instructor: Laura Grappo Course Description: Introduces students to basic theories and methods used for the interdisciplinary analysis of U.S. cultural materials and to the multiplicity of texts used for cultural analysis (mass media, music, film, fiction and memoir, sports, advertising, and popular rituals and practices). Particular attention is paid to the interplay between systems of representation and social, political, and economic institutions, and to the production, dissemination, and reception of cultural materials. Students will explore the shaping power of culture as well as the possibilities of human agency. This course fulfills the DIV II social sciences distribution requirement.	1330:TF DENNY 104
AMST 202-01	Workshop in Cultural Analysis Instructor: Jerry Philogene Course Description: Intensive workshop focused on theoretical approaches to the interpretation of social and cultural materials. The course provides an early exposure to theories and methods that will be returned to in greater depth in the senior year. Intended to develop independent skills in analysis of primary texts and documents. This course fulfills the DIV II social sciences distribution requirement and WR graduation requirement.	1030:TR DENNY 204
AMST 301-01	Postcolonial Fem Sci Studies Instructor: Megan Glick Course Description: Cross-listed with AFST 320-01 and WGST 300-01. This course will provide an introduction to postcolonial feminist critiques of medicine, science, and technology. We will begin by interrogating how ideas of gender, sex, and sexuality are shaped by medical, scientific, and technological discourses. We will continue on to address how these concepts are deployed in reproductive politics, the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare, and the use and dissemination of modernizing technology in developing nations. We will then consider the place of women both as objects of, and active participants in - scientific research projects. We will examine all of these phenomena from cross-cultural perspectives, paying particular attention to the circulation of knowledge and research across the globe, and the relationship between scientific progress and conditions of socio-economic inequality.	1030:TR ALTHSE 109
AMST 302-01	Workshop in Field Methods Instructor: Perin Gurel Course Description: Approaches to the responsible collection and analysis of social and cultural materials to be found in the immediate community and environment. Intensive training in participant observation, interviewing, and historical analysis. The ethics of field work will be stressed. Prerequisite: Completion of, or concurrent enrollment in 202, or permission of the instructor. This course fulfills the DIV II social sciences distribution requirement.	0900:TR WESTC 1
AMST 402-01	Writing in American Studies Instructor: Sharon O'Brien Course Description: Students research and write a substantial research project, normally drawing on their work in 401. Prerequisite: 303, 401. This course fulfills the DIV II social sciences distribution requirement.	1330:T DENNY 303
AMST 402-02	Writing in American Studies Instructor: Laura Grappo Course Description: Students research and write a substantial research project, normally drawing on their work in 401. Prerequisite: 303, 401. This course fulfills the DIV II social sciences distribution requirement.	1330:W DENNY 204
AMST 500-01	Independent Study Instructor: Perin Gurel Course Description:	: