| AMST 101-01 |
American Childhood
Instructor: Amy Farrell
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 202-01. Drawing from history, literature and art, this course will explore the changing meanings of childhood in the United States, from the 19th century through the present. We will pay particular attention to the ways that concepts of the "child" and "childhood innocence" change dramatically dependent upon time period, gender, race, and class.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 212 |
| AMST 101-02 |
Latinx Popular Culture
Instructor: Andy Aguilera
Course Description:
Cross-listed with LALC 200-01. This course will examine how the increasing diversity of audiences, voices, and participants in popular culture point to deficits, needs, and changes in American culture. Focusing specifically on Latinas/os, we will analyze representation of Latinas/os in a variety of different genres - music, film, sports, and television - for what they tell us about race, gender, class, sexuality, citizenship, and language. We will look particularly at how Latinas/os negotiate mainstream media representations and create new forms of culture expression. Exploring how Latinas/os produce media representations that defy both narrow understandings of Latinidad as well as dominant U.S. culture, class discussion will explore how identity is produced and contested through popular culture.
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10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 204 |
| AMST 101-03 |
Indigenous Storytelling: Digital Media & Beyond
Instructor: Amanda Cheromiah
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 220-02. Since the beginning of time, Indigenous Peoples and Communities have shared stories through the oral tradition. This interactive course explores Indigenous storytelling traditions, Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Being, and the dynamic intersection with modern digital platforms. Students will explore how Indigenous Communities use digital tools to preserve and amplify their cultural narratives, challenge stereotypes, and advocate for the futures of Native Peoples. The course will cover traditional Indigenous storytelling techniques and how these have been adapted to contemporary forms such as podcasts, photography, blogs, videos, and social media. Through critical analysis and hands-on projects, students will examine the role of storytelling in identity formation, community building, and resistance against cultural erasure. By the end of the course, students will have a deeper understanding of the power of storytelling in Indigenous cultures, and they will develop the skills and confidence to create and amplify their own stories.
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
LIBRY MMORRIS |
| AMST 200-01 |
Fat Studies
Instructor: Amy Farrell
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 206-01. 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.
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 212 |
| AMST 200-02 |
Indigenous Futurism in Contemporary Culture
Instructor: Darren Lone Fight
Course Description:
In the field of what scholar Grace Dillon calls "Indigenous Futurism," Native artists from the visual to the literary have found a profoundly ripe stage for the exploration of Indigenous representation and artistic exploration. Following historically on other alternative-futurist projects such as Afrofuturism and Queer Futurism, Indigenous Futurism shares certain sensibilities with these related aesthetic forms, perhaps most strikingly as a strategy of decolonial clapback against the white-washing tendencies of the majority of popular speculative art throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. Nevertheless, Indigenous Futurism marshals the field of SF/Futurism in critically different ways unique to the history and relationship of Native America to popular culture. Indeed, this emerging field has a particular strategic advantage due to its temporal and pop-cultural orientation, allowing such art to function as a laboratory of resistance to the colonial project. This course examines Native authors, filmmakers, and visual/multimedia artists in order to evolve an understanding of the character of the field of Indigenous Futurism and why it operates as a critical strategic negotiation site for the representation of Native people in contemporary American culture.
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09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 204 |
| AMST 200-03 |
Disorderly Women
Instructor: Anna Neumann
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 101-02. According to Merriam-Webster someone behaves disorderly when they are engaged in conduct offensive to public order. In this course, we will ask which women have been (and still are) considered disorderly, why, and by whom. In an American context, who are these women unsettling, upsetting, and disrupting public order in meaningful ways? Predominantly focusing on the particular intersection of race and gender, in our time together we will prioritize narratives and intellectual and cultural production of African American women who have caused good, necessary trouble throughout US-American history. Engaging with activist work, academic scholarship, fiction, art, and film as significant contributions in the struggle for freedom, civil rights, and equality, we will be guided by Black Feminist activist-intellectuals, artists, and creators such as Sojourner Truth, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Assata Shakur, Faith Ringgold, Carrie Mae Weems, and Kara Walker. From todays vantage point, and two years after the dramatic overturning of Roe v. Wade, it has become evident once more that hard fought victories and progress can never be taken for granted and that our engagement with current (and past) debates about feminism, gender, power, and justice is as pressing as ever.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 211 |
| AMST 200-04 |
Latinx Political Histories
Instructor: Andy Aguilera
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HIST 211-05 and LALC 200-02, and POSC 290-03. Since the 2016 election, the Latine/x voting base for Donald J. Trump has been a prominent discussion within the U.S. media. Such coverage broadly tackles the supposed rise of the conservative Latine/x or Hispanic vote with surprise. Their liberal or conservative politics, however, are a product of history, not nature as a leading historian has recently asserted. This course traces this trajectory to examine Latine/x political histories since the nineteenth century to the present. Beginning with Mexican politics in Texas and California during and after conquest, this course aims to highlight the diverse political activities and coalitions of Latine/xs in United States history. Likewise, the course will raise questions on how politics informs notions of identity and sense-of-belonging in the United States. Moreover, we will also examine the transnational and transhemispheric elements that help shape their politics. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the diverse politics that unite and divide Latine/xs across time and space.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 303 |
| AMST 200-05 |
"A Black Gaze": How Black Visual Artists Imagine a World Otherwise
Instructor: Anna Neumann
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 220-04. Engaging with thought-provoking visual texts -- music videos, photographs, short films, and documentary film -- we come to know an array of contemporary Black artists whose creative practices "reject traditional ways of seeing blackness - ways of seeing that historically depict blackness only in a subordinate relation to whiteness" (Tina M. Campt, 2021). Concerned with images of everyday life that challenge said ways of narrating the Black experience, we will engage with visual texts alongside Campt's book, A Black Gaze. Centered around works of art that point us to the precarity of Black life while celebrating Black joy and beauty, we uncover the productive tension between the harsh realities these artists grapple with and the worlds they imagine in response. One goal of the course is to familiarize students with this cohort of Black visual artists who have powerfully changed the ways we engage with Black visual culture and to make them critically aware of the significant moment we are in. Questions we will ask ourselves are: How does the concept of a Black gaze challenge our ways of seeing the world? How do these artists imagine "a future beyond the confines of the given" and what are this moment's possibilities (and limitations)?
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 315 |
| AMST 201-01 |
Introduction to American Studies
Instructor: Andy Aguilera
Course Description:
Introduces students to basic theories and methods used for the interdisciplinary analysis of United States and hemispheric 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.
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09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 311 |
| AMST 202-01 |
Workshop in Cultural Analysis
Instructor: Anna Neumann
Course Description:
This intensive writing workshop focuses 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 upper level departmental courses. Intended to develop independent skills in analysis of primary texts and documents.Prerequisite: Any AMST course or permission of instructor.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
DENNY 211 |
| AMST 301-01 |
American Futures: Digital Culture & the Imagined Tomorrow
Instructor: Darren Lone Fight
Course Description:
This course explores the profound relationship between digital technologies and the multifaceted visions of the future they inspire, particularly as they have evolved in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will delve deep into the digital cultures birthed by these technologies, examining how they shape and are shaped by anticipations of cultural, national, and individual identities. In doing so, we'll uncover the intricate interplay and antagonisms between various projections of the future. These imagined futures not only mirror but also question established notions about the roles of race, gender, and class in the times ahead. The visions of the future that a society or culture champions, and importantly, who is given the authority to craft and steer these visions, reveal the complex role "the future" plays in American ideology, socioeconomics, and representational politics. Our exploration will be both analytical and reflective, probing the nexus between thought, representation, political/cultural institutions, and the pressing issues of class, race, gender, and ideology across diverse mediums like art, literature, and advertising. We'll chart the genesis and evolution of digital-cultural spaces and communities, recognizing their roots in "real-life" culture while also examining their growth beyond "IRL." By emphasizing the interplay between race/gender and future representations, we will dissect these forward-looking imaginings to discern the cultural underpinnings from which they spring. What, for instance, do the speculative narratives of Indigenous Futurism reveal about the intricate dynamics of race and gender in the contemporary United States? Throughout this course, we will delve deeply into diverse digital domains, examining how they either contest, validate, or transform dominant narratives surrounding America's prospective future. By analyzing these forward-looking visions, we will gain insights into the prevailing mood and spirit of our current era. Moreover, these digital projections serve as a mirror, reflecting our collective hopes, anxieties, and aspirations for the unfolding chapters of our shared future. In essence, by understanding how we imagine tomorrow through today's digital lens, we can better comprehend the underlying currents shaping our contemporary society and its trajectory.
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11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
DENNY 204 |
| AMST 402-01 |
Writing in American Studies
Instructor: Darren Lone Fight
Course Description:
Students research and write a substantial research project, normally drawing on their work in 401.
Prerequisite: 303, 401.
|
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DENNY 103 |