| AMST 101-01 |
Racial Politics of American Popular Music
Instructor: Cotten Seiler
Course Description:
This course considers popular music as both a reflection of and a transformative force within the larger American culture. Beginning with the nineteenth century and moving toward our own time, we will look at (and listen to) how popular music has helped to form and challenge racial identities in the United States. In the first part of the course, we will examine theories of musical aesthetics, inquire into the origins and revisions of the ever-weird entity called race, and discuss the power of popular music to reflect and influence politics and cultural values. These discussions will give us analytical tools and historical knowledge for thinking and writing about the genres such as minstrelsy, blues, "race" music, hillbilly/country, rhythm & blues, rock, folk, disco, rap/hip-hop, funk, conjunto, punk, heavy metal, reggae, and "indie" (to name just a few!).
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09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 303 |
| AMST 101-02 |
Latinx Popular Culture
Instructor: Jed Kuhn
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 104 |
| AMST 101-03 |
Prisons and Policing in American Culture
Instructor: John Rufo
Course Description:
Prison and policing have long been a special point of focus and tension in American culture, with notable responses to organized state violence including calls for abolition and reform. In this class, we will ask after the carceral texture of U.S. life in and beyond its borders, especially as articulated through the categories of class, race, gender, sexuality, and disability. What do the institutions of prison and police represent in American life and what work is performed through those representations? We will attune ourselves to organizational and community efforts to engage with prison and police. We will pay special attention to how American culture depicts disciplinary regimes by way of arts and activism in the genres of journalism, visual media, poetry, theory, and memoir. Possible texts we will consider include work by Stuart Hall, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis, Mike Davis, Eric Foner, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Assata Shakur, Brett Story, Barbara Harlow, George Jackson, Michel Foucault, Mariame Kaba, Alison Mountz and Jenna M. Loyd. We will potentially discuss local, national, and international organizations and campaigns such as Critical Resistance, Survived and Punished, No More Deaths, Decarcerate PA, and the Campaign to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. Key areas of study addressed include Representation and Structures & Institutions.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 203 |
| AMST 200-01 |
Fashion & Politics of the Body
Instructor: Amy Farrell
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 202-02.
Note: Part of the Fashioning the Body, Shaping the Nation Mosaic.
Fashion and the Politics of the Body will focus on the historical question of clothing, fashion and adornment in U.S. culture. Who has had the right to wear what? What does this reveal about the hierarchies of class, of race, of gender and the very idealization of the "normal" body? How have different groups of people struggled for the right to wear what they want to wear? We will focus on a variety of historical moments, from the laws structuring what enslaved people could wear, to the Zoot Suit riots, the shop girls' fast fashion, the "ugly laws" that forced disabled people to cover themselves, and the most recent push by fat activists for fashion that not only fits but that goes beyond "minimizing " fatness. We will explore the questions of who gets to wear what, how the history of making the clothes relates to the question of wearing the clothes, and, finally, how all this relates to questions of clothing and adornment in a time of climate crisis.
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 212 |
| AMST 200-02 |
Introduction to Native American & Indigenous Studies
Instructor: John Truden
Course Description:
A basic introduction into key concepts, texts and movements within Native American and Indigenous Studies and American Studies. This course is designed for students with no prior knowledge of NAIS. Using a thematic lens selected by the instructor, this course will introduce students to 1) local Indigenous communities in Cumberland County, 2) a broader, multidisciplinary conversation about Indigenous peoples in the United States, and 3) a framework to recognize and understand First Peoples across the globe. Students who successfully complete this course will possess an interdisciplinary Indigenous "toolkit" - an awareness of the world's Indigenous cultures combined with critical thinking, indigeneity, and respect - which will be useful regardless of major or career path.
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12:30 PM-01:20 PM, MWF
DENNY 103 |
| AMST 200-03 |
Angela Davis
Instructor: John Rufo
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 201-01 and AFST 220-06. This class introduces the political and philosophical contributions of Angela Y. Davis. We will discuss international communism, Black feminism, and abolition as crucial concepts and practices in her repertoire. Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944, Angela Davis became internationally known in the late '60s/early '70s as a political prisoner. She successfully gained her freedom from prison through an enormous global campaign. Davis has been active in international movements for freedom against class oppression, racism, imperialism, sexism, incarceration, and transphobia. We will consider key texts by Davis, including An Autobiography, the edited volume If They Come in the Morning, Women, Race, and Class, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, and Are Prisons Obsolete? We may also read excerpts from Davis' influences, teachers, and comrades: Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Claudia Jones, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, George Jackson, Erika Huggins, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mike Davis, and Assata Shakur. Key areas of study addressed include Representation and Structures & Institutions.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
DENNY 212 |
| AMST 200-04 |
Indigenous Environmental Justice
Instructor: Daniel Schniedewind
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ANTH 205-01. Environmental justice--as both a social movement and an affiliated area of scholarship--emphasizes the disproportionate impact of environmental harm on human communities already marginalized because of factors like race, class, and indigeneity. While Indigenous activists and scholars have strategically mobilized under the banner of environmental justice, conventional U.S. environmental justice frameworks have not always acknowledged the unique status of Indigenous communities as sovereign political and legal entities. How does this status make for distinctive articulations of "justice?" Likewise, in what ways is the term "environment" inadequate in describing the more-than-human relationships that Indigenous peoples maintain? This course will explore how Indigenous land and water protectors have long put forward visions for collective futures that diverge from intertwined histories of social and ecological violence, including through multiracial collaborations and campaigns. The course will be global in scope and will draw on a deeply interdisciplinary range of course materials.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
DENNY 211 |
| AMST 201-01 |
Introduction to American Studies
Instructor: Jed Kuhn
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, MR
DENNY 110 |
| AMST 202-01 |
Workshop in Cultural Analysis
Instructor: John Rufo
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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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 204 |
| 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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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 103 |
| AMST 303-01 |
Make Live and Let Die: Biopolitics in the Americas
Instructor: Cotten Seiler
Course Description:
This course looks at the American past and present through the lens of what the philosopher Michel Foucault called "biopolitics." This theory has offered contemporary thinkers rich new ways of thinking about how the state and other powerful institutions "make live" or "let die" the populations they govern. In this workshop, we'll look at how American thought and practices around evolution, incarceration, enslavement, reproduction, health, race, justice, climate change, and wealth have reflected the biopolitical regime that has dominated the modern era. We'll also look at how film, literature, music, and other cultural products have illustrated or challenged that regime.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 315 |
| AMST 402-01 |
Writing in American Studies
Instructor: Jed Kuhn
Course Description:
Students research and write a substantial research project, normally drawing on their work in 401. Students research and write a substantial research project, normally drawing on their work in 401.
Prerequisite: 303, 401.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DENNY 204 |
| AMST 500-01 |
Fashioning the Body, Shaping the Nation Mosaic
Instructor: Amy Farrell, Nicoletta Marini Maio, Regina Sweeney
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 500-01, HIST 500-01, FMST 500-01 and ITAL 500-01. Permission of Instructor Required. Part of the Fashioning the Body, Shaping the Nation Mosaic.
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03:00 PM-04:30 PM, M
BOSLER 222 |