2024-2025 Academic Year

Fall 2024

AMST 101 Prisons & Policing Am Culture
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.

WGSS 101 Disorderly Women
"Disorderly Women" is a term used by labor historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall to describe the collectivity of working-class women in southern Appalachia. We will begin our course by reading Hall's 1986 article before rapidly expanding our scope to emphasize the enormous energy created by the feminist movement in the United States. We will think about race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, and more to provide various angles on the opportunities and problems posed through the questions of feminism(s). We will look at activist work, academic scholarship, art, music, fiction-writing, editing, and the many avenues by and through which women fought for civil rights, freedom, and autonomy at all scales and sites (domestic, local, state, national, regional, international, global). Especially with the recent political repression around the overturning of Roe V. Wade, we will treat this course as an intervention in the present by way of the past. Our central guiding texts will be from Black Feminist activist-intellectuals such as Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and Toni Cade Bambara, first published in the 1980s.

LALC 123 Latinx Studies
Cross-listed with AMST 200-03. Who are Latinxs? At nearly 20% of the population (and growing), Latinxs comprise the largest minority group in the United States. Despite this large number, however, U.S. popular discourse about Latinxs continues to be plagued by assumptions, stereotypes, and misunderstandings. For instance, not all Latinxs speak Spanish, not all Latinxs are immigrants, and not all Latinxs like or would even use the term "Latinx." Through an interdisciplinary approach to Latinx histories, cultures, and politics, this course introduces students to the breadth and diversity of Latinx experiences in the United States as well as to Latinx Studies as a site of scholarly inquiry. While Latinx presence in the United States is a story of im/migration, it is also a story of overlapping histories of colonization, U.S. imperial expansion, and U.S. intervention into Latin America. Major topics in this course may include the politics of labeling; race, racialization, and ethnicity; borders and borderlands, including recent events at the U.S.-Mexico border; cultural change, assimilation, and resilience; gender and sexuality; and popular culture and representation. In addition to helping us better understand the experiences of Latinxs in the United States, this course asks how Latinx experiences and Latinx Studies can help us better understand America.

AMST 200 Disorderly Women
"Disorderly Women" is a term used by labor historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall to describe the collectivity of working-class women in southern Appalachia. We will begin our course by reading Hall's 1986 article before rapidly expanding our scope to emphasize the enormous energy created by the feminist movement in the United States. We will think about race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, and more to provide various angles on the opportunities and problems posed through the questions of feminism(s). We will look at activist work, academic scholarship, art, music, fiction-writing, editing, and the many avenues by and through which women fought for civil rights, freedom, and autonomy at all scales and sites (domestic, local, state, national, regional, international, global). Especially with the recent political repression around the overturning of Roe V. Wade, we will treat this course as an intervention in the present by way of the past. Our central guiding texts will be from Black Feminist activist-intellectuals such as Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and Toni Cade Bambara, first published in the 1980s.

AMST 200 Latinx Studies
Cross-listed with LALC 123-01. Who are Latinxs? At nearly 20% of the population (and growing), Latinxs comprise the largest minority group in the United States. Despite this large number, however, U.S. popular discourse about Latinxs continues to be plagued by assumptions, stereotypes, and misunderstandings. For instance, not all Latinxs speak Spanish, not all Latinxs are immigrants, and not all Latinxs like or would even use the term "Latinx." Through an interdisciplinary approach to Latinx histories, cultures, and politics, this course introduces students to the breadth and diversity of Latinx experiences in the United States as well as to Latinx Studies as a site of scholarly inquiry. While Latinx presence in the United States is a story of im/migration, it is also a story of overlapping histories of colonization, U.S. imperial expansion, and U.S. intervention into Latin America. Major topics in this course may include the politics of labeling; race, racialization, and ethnicity; borders and borderlands, including recent events at the U.S.-Mexico border; cultural change, assimilation, and resilience; gender and sexuality; and popular culture and representation. In addition to helping us better understand the experiences of Latinxs in the United States, this course asks how Latinx experiences and Latinx Studies can help us better understand America.

AMST 200 Queer Communities
This course investigates how queer communities (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, 2-Spirit, and more...) have survived and thrived across 20th century and into the 21st. This course will interrogate an interdisciplinary mix of historical, ethnographic, and cultural texts to chart the emergence of queer community spaces and activism from the early 20th century to Stonewall to the AIDS crisis to gay marriage debates to contemporary concerns. A major focus of this course will be the examination of how queerness and transness intersect with race, indigeneity, religion, and more. A primary question guiding the class is: How do people marginalized in multiple and intersecting ways carve out livable lives, find moments of pleasure, and build community?

WGSS 200 Feminist Pract, Writing & Rsrc
Building upon the key concepts and modes of inquire introduced in the WGSS Introductory course, WGSS 200 deepens students’ understanding of how feminist perspectives on power, experience, and inequality uniquely shape how scholars approach research questions, writing practices, methods and knowledge production. Approaches may include feminist approaches to memoir, oral histories, grassroots and online activism, blogging, visual culture, ethnography, archival research, space, art, literary analysis, and policy studies.Prerequisite: 100 or 208, which can be taken concurrently.

AMST 202 Workshop in Cultural Analysis
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.

WGSS 202 Queer Communities
This course investigates how queer communities (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, 2-Spirit, and more...) have survived and thrived across 20th century and into the 21st. This course will interrogate an interdisciplinary mix of historical, ethnographic, and cultural texts to chart the emergence of queer community spaces and activism from the early 20th century to Stonewall to the AIDS crisis to gay marriage debates to contemporary concerns. A major focus of this course will be the examination of how queerness and transness intersect with race, indigeneity, religion, and more. A primary question guiding the class is: How do people marginalized in multiple and intersecting ways carve out livable lives, find moments of pleasure, and build community?

AMST 401 Research and Methods in Am St
This integrative seminar focuses on the theory and methods of cultural analysis and interdisciplinary study. Students examine the origins, history, and current state of American studies, discuss relevant questions, and, in research projects, apply techniques of interdisciplinary study to a topic of their choosing. Prerequisite: 303, Senior American studies major, or permission of the instructor.