| AMST 101-01 |
Science Fiction Cinema
Instructor: Nevil Jackson
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 210-02. Science fiction cinema enables us to imagine and explore the hopes and perils intertwined with scientific and technological progress. As a medium where science, philosophy, and the sociopolitical intersect, it offers a lens through which we can examine the aspirations, fears, and anxieties of society. Through films ranging from Georges Mlis' A Trip to the Moon (1902) and Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) to contemporary films like Ex Machina (2014) and They Cloned Tyrone (2023), we will explore major themes in science fiction such as artificial intelligence and posthumanism, dystopias and utopias, space exploration and alien contact, genetic engineering and bioethics, climate catastrophe and ecological futures, and Afrofuturism. Evening Film screening time is optional.
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06:00 PM-08:00 PM, W
ALTHSE 106
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 212 |
| AMST 101-02 |
Making Home: Latina Writings
Instructor: Elena Perez-Zetune
Course Description:
Cross-listed with LALC 200-01. What makes home? Is home a place, a person, a feeling, or a community? Maybe home is not a place you can go to, but a language you speak. What if you cannot return home? In this class we will encounter Latina writers, artists, scholars, journalists, and more through the lens of home. In other words, this class focuses on how Latinas represent home in their works. We will begin with an introduction to feminist and critical race theories, enabling us to better read, analyze, and interpret course texts, visuals, and audio materials.
|
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 204 |
| AMST 101-03 |
Gender, Race and Pop Culture
Instructor: Charity Fox
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 101-01. This course investigates the influence of popular culture on our perceptions of gender, sexuality, race, and class, emphasizing their interconnected nature. Students will engage with a diverse range of theories and methodologies from the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and apply them to popular culture content such as advertising, music and music videos, television, film, toys, and social media. The course posits that popular culture is never simply entertainment. Instead, it functions as a platform for constructing and communicating narratives and imagery that reflect and shape our understanding of race, ethnicity, femininities, masculinities, and sexualities as well as the broader social dynamics of these overlapping identities. These cultural representations exert influence on various aspects of everyday life, including consumer choices and our shifting perceptions of what we consider normal, acceptable, or aspirational. By honing critical thinking skills, students will learn to independently analyze and deconstruct layers of meaning in popular cultural products. Class meetings will be a mixture of lectures, group discussions, individual and group exercises, and films. Assignments will include active class participation, informal and formal writing and research assignments, class presentations, and an individual project exploring a popular culture topic of your choice.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 204 |
| AMST 101-04 |
Indigenous Storytelling: Digital Media & Beyond
Instructor: Amanda Cheromiah
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 220-06. 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.
|
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
LIBRY MMORRIS |
| AMST 200-01 |
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.
|
10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 110 |
| AMST 200-02 |
Introduction to Documentary Film
Instructor: Nevil Jackson
Course Description:
Cross-listed with FMST 210-04. What does it mean for a film to be "nonfiction" when every choice a filmmaker makes - what to film, what to exclude, and how to edit, shapes the reality we see on screen? This course introduces students to documentary film through an exploration of its major modes: observational, expository, reflexive, performative, participatory, and poetic. We will examine how documentaries reflect the world, construct truth, and represent communities, while also confronting ethical questions that arise in nonfiction storytelling.
|
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 212 |
| AMST 200-03 |
History of American Feminism
Instructor: Amy Farrell
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HIST 211-02 and WGSS 220-01. This course will emphasize such topics as the 19th century women's movement, the suffrage movement, radical and liberal feminism, and African-American feminism. We will pay particular attention to the diversity of women's experiences in the United States and to women's multiple and often conflicting responses to patriarchy and other forms of oppression.
|
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 212 |
| AMST 200-04 |
Kendrick Lamar & THE Super Bowl Halftime Show
Instructor: Anna Neumann
Course Description:
While the by now notorious line "A minorrrrrr" had half of the Caesar Superdome stadium off their seats and singing along, this was only one of countless memorable moments in Kendrick Lamar's Superbowl half-time show that took place on February 9, 2025, in New Orleans, LA. In this course we will parse the myriad meanings and references in the, arguably, politically most relevant and subversive Superbowl half-time show to date. Steeped in Black (pop)culture and history and rife with symbolism, Lamar's show offers a plethora of entry points from which to engage. For the purpose of our class and while addressing the show in its entirety, we will focus on Kendrick Lamar's references to Black and thus American history, present, and future. During his performance, Lamar skillfully weaves in personal storytelling with larger societal events and political commentary, all of which we often witness as condensed through the lens of an iconography of his hometown, Compton, California. Considering the show and branching out to include more of Lamar's work that highlights Black cultural narratives and never shies to critique the U.S. past and present, we will come to understand Lamar as one of the greats and the show as key social, political, and cultural text that puts into sharp relief the urgency of the moment we find ourselves in.
|
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
DENNY 317 |
| AMST 201-01 |
Introduction to American Studies
Instructor: Elena Perez-Zetune
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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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 104 |
| AMST 202-01 |
Workshop in Cultural Analysis
Instructor: Darren Lone Fight
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.
|
12:30 PM-01:20 PM, MWF
DENNY 204 |
| AMST 303-01 |
Reading the Archive: POC Storytelling
Instructor: Elena Perez-Zetune
Course Description:
This course focuses on archives related to communities of color within an American context, while engaging in the following questions: How does an archive obtain artifacts (materials) belonging to and about communities of color? How do we engage with these artifacts? What methods have been practiced by American academics to research communities of color? What methods do radical, liberatory scholars practice? Throughout the course, we will visit local and digital archives.
|
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 103 |
| AMST 402-01 |
Writing in American Studies
Instructor: Anna Neumann
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 112 |