Fall 2023

  • AMST 100: Walt Whitman’s New York City

    “O City / Behold me! Incarnate me as I have incarnated you!” An investigation of the burgeoning metropolitan city where the young Walter Whitman became a poet in the 1850s. Combining historical inquiry into the lives of nineteenth-century citizens of Brooklyn and Manhattan with analysis of Whitman’s varied journalistic writings and utterly original poetry, we will reconstruct how Whitman found his muse and his distinctively modern subject in the geography, demographics, markets, politics, and erotics of New York.

     6 credits; Argument and Inquiry Seminar, Writing Requirement, Intercultural Domestic Studies; offered Fall 2023 · Peter Balaam

  • AMST 115: Introduction to American Studies

    This overview of the “interdisciplinary discipline” of American Studies will focus on the ways American Studies engages with and departs from other scholarly fields of inquiry. We will study the stories of those who have been marginalized in the social, political, cultural, and economic life of the United States due to their class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, citizenship, and level of ability. We will explore contemporary American Studies concerns like racial and class formation, the production of space and place, the consumption and circulation of culture, and transnational histories.

     6 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Intercultural Domestic Studies, Writing Requirement; offered Fall 2023, Spring 2024 · Christopher Elias

  • AMST 231: Contemporary Indigenous Activism

    Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island and the Pacific Islands are fighting to revitalize Indigenous languages, uphold tribal sovereignty, and combat violence against Indigenous women, among many other struggles. This course shines a light on contemporary Indigenous activism and investigates social justice through the lens of Indian Country, asking questions like: What tools are movements using to promote Indigenous resurgence? And what are the educational, gendered, environmental, linguistic, and religious struggles to which these movements respond? Students will acquire an understanding of contemporary Indigenous movements, the issues they address, and the responsibilities of non-Native people living on Indigenous lands.

     6 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Intercultural Domestic Studies; offered Fall 2023 · Meredith McCoy

  • AMST 250: Asian American Reckonings

    As both targets of racism and beneficiaries of privilege, Asian Americans defy easy categorization. In a timely intervention, Cathy Park Hong, in her 2020 essay collection Minor Feelings, undertakes an “Asian American Reckoning.” Following Hong’s lead, this five-week course will reckon with Asian America in its most vexing aspects. Through an exploration of memoir, cultural criticism, poetry, fiction, and film/media, we will think hard about questions of privilege and discrimination, interracial politics, settler colonialism, and transnational ties. Grappling with the past and looking towards the future, this course asks: What does it mean to be Asian American?

     3 credits; Literary/Artistic Analysis, Intercultural Domestic Studies; offered Fall 2023 · Nancy Cho

  • AMST 260: Sexuality in American Film since 1945

    This five-week class uses feature-length films to examine debates around sexuality in the United States since the end of World War II. Designed to allow students to develop both a deeper understanding of modern American gender & sexual history as well as a fuller appreciation for film as a rich, historically-contingent artform. Explores a number of themes, including but not limited to: sexual identity, gender identity, censorship, racial politics and racism, class anxieties, cultural production, trans experiences, and representation. Will include films like Some Like it Hot (1959), The Graduate (1967), Philadelphia (1993), and Tangerine (2015).

     3 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Intercultural Domestic Studies; offered Fall 2023 · Christopher Elias

  • AMST 398: Advanced Research in American Studies

    This seminar introduces advanced skills in American Studies research, focusing on the shaping and proposing of a major research project. Through a combination of class discussion, small group work and presentations, and one-on-one interactions with the professor, majors learn the process of imaging, creating, and preparing independent interdisciplinary projects as well as the interconnections of disparate scholarly and creative works.

     Prerequisites: American Studies 345 3 credits; S/CR/NC; Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement; offered Fall 2023 · Christopher Elias

Winter 2024

  • AMST 142: U.S. Latinx Identity and Representation: Cultures of Belonging

    Popular culture and mass media serve as key sites of identity formation. In this course we will examine U.S. Latinx identity formation by focusing on three case studies: Selena Quintanilla, the singer; telenovelas; and the Disney films Coco and Encanto. These case studies will help us explore how transnationalism, intergenerational knowledge and trauma, and civic and cultural belonging contribute to the shaping of U.S. Latinx collective identities. We will attend to the particular processes of production and reception as we study how audiences engage with cultural producers both in private and in public (notably on social media).

     6 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Writing Requirement, Intercultural Domestic Studies; offered Winter 2024 · Adriana Estill

  • AMST 244: Approaches to Indigenous Studies

    Indigenous Studies is both a body of content knowledge and a research methodology. This course provides an overview of the history of exploitative research dynamics between universities and Indigenous peoples while exposing students to alternative methodologies that center Indigenous perspectives and research priorities. Students will discuss what it means to be an ethical research partner as they learn about decolonizing and Indigenous research strategies. This course brings together ideas from history, anthropology, law, public health, education, literature, art, and social work to evaluate studies relating to Indigenous peoples for their methods, contributions, and ethics.

     6 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Intercultural Domestic Studies; offered Winter 2024 · Meredith McCoy

  • AMST 345: Theory and Practice of American Studies

    Introduction to some of the animating debates within American Studies from the 1930s to the present. We will study select themes, theories, and methodologies in the writings of a number of scholars and try to understand 1) the often highly contested nature of debates about how best to study American culture; and 2) how various theories and forms of analysis in American Studies have evolved and transformed themselves over the last seventy years. Not designed to be a fine-grained institutional history of American Studies, but a vigorous exploration of some of the central questions of interpretation in the field. Normally taken by majors in their junior year.

     Prerequisites: American Studies 115, 287 or instructor permission 6 credits; Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement, Intercultural Domestic Studies; offered Winter 2024 · Meredith McCoy

  • AMST 399: Senior Seminar in American Studies

    This seminar focuses on advanced skills in American Studies research, critical reading, writing, and presentation. Engagement with one scholarly talk, keyed to the current year’s comps exam theme, will be part of the course. Through a combination of class discussion, small group work and presentations, and one-on-one interactions with the professor, majors learn the process of crafting and supporting independent interdisciplinary arguments, no matter which option for comps they are pursuing. Students also will learn effective strategies for peer review and oral presentation.

     Prerequisites: American Studies 345 3 credits; Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement; offered Winter 2024 · Adriana Estill

  • AMST 400: Integrative Exercise: Exam and Essay

    Exam: Students read selected works and view films in the field of American Studies and in a special topic area designated by the program. For integrative exercise examination students only. Essay: Seniors working on approved essays or projects in American Studies with the support of their advisers, will work independently to complete their theses, performances or projects to satisfy the college “comps” requirement. Students will be required to give a public presentation on their papers or projects during the spring term.

     Prerequisites: American Studies 396 3 credits; S/NC; offered Winter 2024 · Adriana Estill

Spring 2024

  • AMST 115: Introduction to American Studies

    This overview of the “interdisciplinary discipline” of American Studies will focus on the ways American Studies engages with and departs from other scholarly fields of inquiry. We will study the stories of those who have been marginalized in the social, political, cultural, and economic life of the United States due to their class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, citizenship, and level of ability. We will explore contemporary American Studies concerns like racial and class formation, the production of space and place, the consumption and circulation of culture, and transnational histories.

     6 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Intercultural Domestic Studies, Writing Requirement; offered Fall 2023, Spring 2024 · Christopher Elias

  • AMST 225: Beauty and Race in America

    In this class we consider the construction of American beauty historically, examining the way whiteness intersects with beauty to produce a dominant model that marginalizes women of color. We study how communities of color follow, refuse, or revise these beauty ideals through literature. We explore events like the beauty pageant, material culture such as cosmetics, places like the beauty salon, and body work like cosmetic surgery to understand how beauty is produced and negotiated.

     6 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Writing Requirement, Intercultural Domestic Studies; offered Spring 2024 · Adriana Estill

  • AMST 396: Producing Latinidad

    As Arlene Dávila points out in Latinos Inc, Latinidad—the term that names a set of presumably common attributes that connects Latinxs in the U.S.—emerges in part from communities but, importantly, is developed heavily by the media, advertising, and other political and social institutions, including academia. In this course we consider how ideas and imaginings of who Latinxs are and what Latinidad is develop within political spaces (the electorate, the census), in local places, and through various media, including television, advertising, and music. We will consider how individual writers and artists contribute to the conversation. Throughout, we will engage with social and cultural theories about racial formation, gender, and sexuality.

     Prerequisites: American Studies 115 or instructor consent 6 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Writing Requirement, Intercultural Domestic Studies; offered Spring 2024 · Adriana Estill