A student looks at the other-worldly landscape of the Grand Canyon

American Studies looks at American culture through the lens of many disciplines. This includes the institutions, values, and beliefs that have shaped the experiences of U.S. residents. Core courses provide an introduction to the scholarly work in the field. Other courses draw from art history and religion to history, economics, and political science.

A student looks at the other-worldly landscape of the Grand Canyon

About American Studies

This program is designed to encourage and support the interdisciplinary study of American culture. It draws upon the expertise of faculty in various disciplines and strives to understand the institutions, values, and beliefs that have shaped the experiences of U.S. residents. Recognizing the diverse and pluralistic nature of our society, the American Studies program enables the student to construct an interdisciplinary major around topics of the student’s own choice such as urban studies, ethnicity, media, religion, gender roles, environmental thought or some other aspect of the American experience. The program supports interdisciplinary courses taught by Carleton faculty and it brings to campus nationally known visiting artists and scholars under the auspices of the Fred C. Andersen Foundation.

Requirements for the American Studies Major

American Studies is an interdisciplinary major which a student constructs from offerings in two or more departments of instruction. Students take both core courses in the field of American Studies and additional courses from one of five broad, thematic streams (listed below). This theme will both provide additional structure and points of comparison and a foundation for a comprehensive exercise.

Majors must complete 69 credits in the following general areas:

I. Core Courses: Each student must complete all of these:

  • AMST 115 Introduction to American Studies or AMST 287 California Art and Visual Culture (offered as part of the “Visions of California” OCS Program). One or the other of these is a prerequisite for AMST 345 and AMST 396.
  • AMST 345 Theory and Practice of American Studies
  • AMST 396 Junior Research Seminar
  • AMST 398 Advanced Research in American Studies
  • AMST 399 Senior Seminar in American Studies
  • AMST 400 Colloquium and Integrative Exercise in American Studies (3 credits, to be taken in winter term of the senior year, along with AMST 399.) A senior may choose:
    • Essay or Project Option: A 35-40 page essay on an approved topic; or an approved project (e.g., a critical documentary, radio narrative, web design project, performance piece, or academic civic engagement project) accompanied by a 15-20 page essay. Open only to students who receive approval of a project prospectus.
    • Examination Option: A written examination given early in spring term.

II. Survey Courses: Students must take three survey courses. Two of these courses must come from a single department. Students will also take a one-term survey course from a different department. Because the entire range of these survey courses is not offered every year, students should consult the online catalog and plan accordingly.

Two courses from a single department (two-term sequence):

  • HIST 116: Intro to Indigenous Histories, 1887-present · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 122: U.S. Women’s History to 1877
  • HIST 123: U.S. Women’s History Since 1877
  • HIST 125: African American History I: From Africa to the Civil War · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 126: African American History II
  • POSC 271: Constitutional Law I
  • POSC 272: Constitutional Law II

One-term course from a different department:

  • AMST 254: The 1930s: Social and Cultural Impact of the Great Depression · not offered in 2023-24
  • ARTH 160: American Art to 1940 · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 117: African American Literature · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 120: American Short Stories · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 212: Nineteenth-Century American Literature · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 215: Modern American Literature · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 235: Asian American Literature
  • MUSC 126: America’s Music
  • POSC 122: Politics in America: Liberty and Equality
  • RELG 140: Religion and American Culture

III. Topical Courses: Each student must take twenty-four credits that deal with elements of the American experience from one of the thematic streams below. Courses that will fulfill this requirement are listed under each group. No more than six of these credits may be from a 100-level course. (Survey courses above and beyond those used to satisfy the required one-term and two-term sequences may count as a Topical Course.) Students must take courses from at least two departments. In order that majors acquire the research skills necessary to complete the major, six of these twenty-four credits must be at the 300-level.

  • Race, Ethnicity and Indigeneity: What is the relationship between race and ethnicity and U.S. cultures? Students will look at these questions in a comparative and interdisciplinary framework. Concentrators in this area should take a combination of courses that will allow them to comparatively assess the experiences of at least two ethno-racial groups in America.  
  • AFST 112: Black Revolution on Campus · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 130: Latinx Social Movements: From Bandits to the Young Lords · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 142: U.S. Latinx Identity and Representation: Cultures of Belonging
  • AMST 204: What’s Race Got To Do With It?: Constructing Communities that Discard Lives · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 222: Indigenous Film · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 225: Beauty and Race in America
  • AMST 231: Contemporary Indigenous Activism
  • AMST 238: 9/11 and the War on Terror in American Culture · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 244: Approaches to Indigenous Studies · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 248: Confine and Detain: The Carceral State in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 250: Asian American Reckonings
  • AMST 269: Woodstock Nation · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 325: Labor and Identity in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • ARCN 211: Coercion and Exploitation: Material Histories of Labor · not offered in 2023-24
  • DANC 254: Jazz Dance: Roots and Grooves
  • ECON 262: The Economics of Sports · not offered in 2023-24
  • EDUC 138: Multicultural Education
  • EDUC 330: Refugee and Immigrant Experiences in Faribault, MN · not offered in 2023-24
  • EDUC 338: Multicultural Education
  • EDUC 340: Race, Immigration, and Schools · not offered in 2023-24
  • EDUC 344: Teenage Wasteland: Adolescence and the American High School · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 117: African American Literature · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 212: Nineteenth-Century American Literature · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 227: Imagining the Borderlands · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 230: Studies in African American Literature: From the 1950s to the Present
  • ENGL 233: Writing and Social Justice · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 234: Literature of the American South · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 235: Asian American Literature
  • ENGL 239: Democracy: Politics, Race, & Sex in Nineteenth Century American Novels · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 241: Latinx Voices in the Age of Trump · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 248: Visions of California · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 252: Caribbean Fiction · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 253: Food Writing: History, Culture, Practice · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 258: Playwrights of Color: Taking the Stage · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 352: Toni Morrison: Novelist
  • ENTS 210: Environmental Justice
  • GWSS 250: Politics of Reproductive Justice · not offered in 2023-24
  • GWSS 265: Black Feminist Thought · not offered in 2023-24
  • GWSS 289: Pleasure, Intimacy, Violence · not offered in 2023-24
  • GWSS 398: Capstone: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Culture · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 116: Intro to Indigenous Histories, 1887-present · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 122: U.S. Women’s History to 1877
  • HIST 123: U.S. Women’s History Since 1877
  • HIST 125: African American History I: From Africa to the Civil War · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 126: African American History II
  • HIST 127: The Roaring Twenties & the Rough Thirties in U.S. History · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 202: Oral History Research Methods: Theory, Ethics, and Practice
  • HIST 203: American Indian Education
  • HIST 211: Revolts and Resistance in Early America · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 212: The Era of the American Revolution · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 214: Sport and the Color Line · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 218: Black Women’s History
  • HIST 228: Civil Rights and Black Power · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 275: Latin American Immigration to the US · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 301: Indigenous Histories at Carleton
  • HIST 316: Presenting America’s Founding
  • LING 140: Language in the U.S.
  • MUSC 126: America’s Music
  • MUSC 130: The History of Jazz · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 131: The Blues From the Delta to Chicago · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 136: History of Rock · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 232: Golden Age of R & B · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 246: Music in Racism and Antiracism · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 247: 1950s/60s American Folk Music Revival · not offered in 2023-24
  • PHIL 228: Freedom and Alienation in Black American Philosophy · not offered in 2023-24
  • PHIL 304: Decolonial Feminisms
  • POSC 122: Politics in America: Liberty and Equality
  • POSC 204: How American Campaigns and Elections Work (and Don’t Work) · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 212: Environmental Justice · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 218: Schools, Scholarship and Policy in the United States · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 271: Constitutional Law I
  • POSC 272: Constitutional Law II
  • POSC 273: Race and Politics in the U.S.
  • POSC 275: Black Political Thought
  • POSC 302: Subordinated Politics and Intergroup Relations
  • POSC 306: Identity Politics and Group Behavior in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 315: Polarization and Democratic Decline in the United States
  • POSC 339: LGBTQ Politics in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 355: Identity, Culture and Rights · not offered in 2023-24
  • PSYC 384: Psychology of Prejudice
  • RELG 212: Black Religious Thought
  • RELG 220: Justice and Responsibility · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 236: Black Love: Religious, Political, and Cultural Discussions
  • RELG 239: Religion & American Landscape
  • RELG 267: Black Testimony: Art, Literature, Philosophy
  • RELG 285: Islam in America: Race, Religion and Politics · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 114: Modern Families: An Introduction to the Sociology of the Family · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 151: Global Minnesota: An Anthropology of Our State · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 206: Critical Perspectives on Work in the Twenty-first Century · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 225: Social Movements
  • SOAN 272: Sociological Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in the United States · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 278: Urban Ethnography and the American Experience · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 288: Diversity, Democracy, Inequality in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 310: Sociology of Mass Incarceration · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 325: Sociology of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction · not offered in 2023-24
  • THEA 227: Theatre for Social Change
  • WGST 389: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Culture · not offered in 2023-24
  • Democracy, Activism, and Class: How does a longstanding American Studies emphasis on engaged scholarship reveal the relationships of politics, capitalism and power? This theme investigates the emergence of social groups and their political struggles at the local and national levels emphasizing the themes of power, inequality, and social justice. 
  • AMST 100: Walt Whitman’s New York City
  • AMST 130: Latinx Social Movements: From Bandits to the Young Lords · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 142: U.S. Latinx Identity and Representation: Cultures of Belonging
  • AMST 222: Indigenous Film · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 231: Contemporary Indigenous Activism
  • AMST 248: Confine and Detain: The Carceral State in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 254: The 1930s: Social and Cultural Impact of the Great Depression · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 256: Walt Whitman’s New York · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 269: Woodstock Nation · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 325: Labor and Identity in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • ARTH 247: Architecture Since 1950
  • ARTH 341: Art and Democracy · not offered in 2023-24
  • CAMS 225: Film Noir: The Dark Side of the American Dream
  • CAMS 270: Nonfiction
  • ECON 264: Health Care Economics · not offered in 2023-24
  • ECON 270: Economics of the Public Sector
  • ECON 271: Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment
  • ECON 273: Water and Western Economic Development
  • EDUC 245: School Reform: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
  • EDUC 250: Fixing Schools: Politics and Policy in American Education
  • EDUC 330: Refugee and Immigrant Experiences in Faribault, MN · not offered in 2023-24
  • EDUC 340: Race, Immigration, and Schools · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 228: Banned. Censored. Reviled.
  • ENGL 230: Studies in African American Literature: From the 1950s to the Present
  • ENGL 233: Writing and Social Justice · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 239: Democracy: Politics, Race, & Sex in Nineteenth Century American Novels · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 241: Latinx Voices in the Age of Trump · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENTS 210: Environmental Justice
  • ENTS 307: Wilderness Field Studies: Grand Canyon
  • GWSS 150: Working Sex: Commercial Sexual Cultures · not offered in 2023-24
  • GWSS 212: Foundations of LGBTQ Studies
  • GWSS 265: Black Feminist Thought · not offered in 2023-24
  • GWSS 289: Pleasure, Intimacy, Violence · not offered in 2023-24
  • GWSS 334: Feminist Theory
  • GWSS 398: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Culture · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 116: Intro to Indigenous Histories, 1887-present · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 123: U.S. Women’s History Since 1877
  • HIST 125: African American History I: From Africa to the Civil War · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 126: African American History II
  • HIST 127: The Roaring Twenties & the Rough Thirties in U.S. History · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 202: Oral History Research Methods: Theory, Ethics, and Practice
  • HIST 205: American Environmental History
  • HIST 212: The Era of the American Revolution · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 213: Politics and Protest in the New Nation · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 214: Sport and the Color Line · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 216: History Beyond the Walls · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 220: From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Black History and/in Film
  • HIST 226: U.S. Consumer Culture
  • HIST 228: Civil Rights and Black Power · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 229: Working with Gender in U.S. History · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 230: Black Americans and the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 275: Latin American Immigration to the US · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 301: Indigenous Histories at Carleton
  • HIST 306: American Wilderness
  • HIST 307: Advanced Wilderness Studies · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 308: American Cities and Nature · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 126: America’s Music
  • MUSC 247: 1950s/60s American Folk Music Revival · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 337: Music in Social Movements · not offered in 2023-24
  • PHIL 228: Freedom and Alienation in Black American Philosophy · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 122: Politics in America: Liberty and Equality
  • POSC 202: Tools of National Power: Statecraft and Diplomatic Power · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 204: How American Campaigns and Elections Work (and Don’t Work) · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 205: Congress and The Presidency
  • POSC 209: Money and Politics · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 210: Misinformation, Political Rumors, and Conspiracy Theories
  • POSC 212: Environmental Justice · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 213: Psychology of Mass Political Behavior · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 216: Politics in the Post-Truth Society · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 218: Schools, Scholarship and Policy in the United States · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 220: Politics and Political History in Film · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 231: American Foreign Policy · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 240: At the Corner of Broadway and Main Street: The Contrasting Politics of Northfield and the Twin Cities · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 266: Urban Political Economy · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 269: I Did My Own Research: Information and Political Division in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 272: Constitutional Law II
  • POSC 273: Race and Politics in the U.S.
  • POSC 275: Black Political Thought
  • POSC 302: Subordinated Politics and Intergroup Relations
  • POSC 306: Identity Politics and Group Behavior in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 315: Polarization and Democratic Decline in the United States
  • POSC 339: LGBTQ Politics in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 130: Native American Religions · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 140: Religion and American Culture
  • RELG 212: Black Religious Thought
  • RELG 219: Religious Law, Il/Legal Religions · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 220: Justice and Responsibility · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 236: Black Love: Religious, Political, and Cultural Discussions
  • SOAN 114: Modern Families: An Introduction to the Sociology of the Family · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 206: Critical Perspectives on Work in the Twenty-first Century · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 225: Social Movements
  • SOAN 252: Growing up in an Aging Society · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 272: Sociological Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in the United States · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 288: Diversity, Democracy, Inequality in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 310: Sociology of Mass Incarceration · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 314: Contemporary Issues in Critical Criminology · not offered in 2023-24
  • THEA 227: Theatre for Social Change
  • Space and Place: How is space organized, and how do people make place? This includes the study of natural and built environments; local, regional, national and transnational communities; and international and inter-regional flows of people, goods, and ideas. 
  • AMST 100: Walt Whitman’s New York City
  • AMST 204: What’s Race Got To Do With It?: Constructing Communities that Discard Lives · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 230: The American Sublime: Landscape, Character & National Destiny in Nineteenth Century America · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 240: The Midwest and the American Imagination · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 248: Confine and Detain: The Carceral State in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 256: Walt Whitman’s New York · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 287: California Program: California Art and Visual Culture · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 325: Labor and Identity in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • ARTH 171: History of Photography · not offered in 2023-24
  • ARTH 240: Art Since 1945 · not offered in 2023-24
  • ARTH 247: Architecture Since 1950
  • ARTH 265: Architectural Studies in Europe Program: Urban Planning in Europe
  • ARTH 341: Art and Democracy · not offered in 2023-24
  • CAMS 225: Film Noir: The Dark Side of the American Dream
  • ECON 271: Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment
  • ECON 273: Water and Western Economic Development
  • EDUC 138: Multicultural Education
  • EDUC 338: Multicultural Education
  • EDUC 344: Teenage Wasteland: Adolescence and the American High School · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 212: Nineteenth-Century American Literature · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 221: “Moby-Dick” & Race: Whiteness and the Whale · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 227: Imagining the Borderlands · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 234: Literature of the American South · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 236: American Nature Writing
  • ENGL 247: The American West · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 248: Visions of California · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 253: Food Writing: History, Culture, Practice · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 288: California Program: The Literature of California · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 329: The City in American Literature · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 332: Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald
  • ENGL 352: Toni Morrison: Novelist
  • ENTS 210: Environmental Justice
  • ENTS 307: Wilderness Field Studies: Grand Canyon
  • HIST 126: African American History II
  • HIST 202: Oral History Research Methods: Theory, Ethics, and Practice
  • HIST 203: American Indian Education
  • HIST 205: American Environmental History
  • HIST 228: Civil Rights and Black Power · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 229: Working with Gender in U.S. History · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 301: Indigenous Histories at Carleton
  • HIST 306: American Wilderness
  • HIST 307: Advanced Wilderness Studies · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 308: American Cities and Nature · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 316: Presenting America’s Founding
  • LING 140: Language in the U.S.
  • MUSC 115: Listening to the Movies
  • MUSC 247: 1950s/60s American Folk Music Revival · not offered in 2023-24
  • PHIL 304: Decolonial Feminisms
  • POSC 212: Environmental Justice · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 218: Schools, Scholarship and Policy in the United States · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 240: At the Corner of Broadway and Main Street: The Contrasting Politics of Northfield and the Twin Cities · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 273: Race and Politics in the U.S.
  • POSC 302: Subordinated Politics and Intergroup Relations
  • POSC 315: Polarization and Democratic Decline in the United States
  • RELG 130: Native American Religions · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 239: Religion & American Landscape
  • SOAN 114: Modern Families: An Introduction to the Sociology of the Family · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 151: Global Minnesota: An Anthropology of Our State · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 206: Critical Perspectives on Work in the Twenty-first Century · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 252: Growing up in an Aging Society · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 272: Sociological Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in the United States · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 278: Urban Ethnography and the American Experience · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 310: Sociology of Mass Incarceration · not offered in 2023-24
  • Production and Consumption of Culture: How do people represent their experiences and ideas as culture? How is culture transmitted, appropriated and consumed? Students will examine the role of artists and the expressive arts, including literature, visual arts and performance as well as that of consumers and producers. 
  • AMST 100: Walt Whitman’s New York City
  • AMST 142: U.S. Latinx Identity and Representation: Cultures of Belonging
  • AMST 204: What’s Race Got To Do With It?: Constructing Communities that Discard Lives · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 222: Indigenous Film · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 225: Beauty and Race in America
  • AMST 230: The American Sublime: Landscape, Character & National Destiny in Nineteenth Century America · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 238: 9/11 and the War on Terror in American Culture · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 240: The Midwest and the American Imagination · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 250: Asian American Reckonings
  • AMST 254: The 1930s: Social and Cultural Impact of the Great Depression · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 256: Walt Whitman’s New York · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 260: Sexuality in American Film since 1945
  • AMST 269: Woodstock Nation · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 287: California Program: California Art and Visual Culture · not offered in 2023-24
  • ARTH 171: History of Photography · not offered in 2023-24
  • ARTH 240: Art Since 1945 · not offered in 2023-24
  • ARTH 247: Architecture Since 1950
  • ARTH 265: Planning Utopia: Ideal Cities in Theory and Practice · not offered in 2023-24
  • ARTH 341: Art and Democracy · not offered in 2023-24
  • CAMS 187: Cult Television and Fan Cultures · not offered in 2023-24
  • CAMS 215: American Television History
  • CAMS 216: American Cinema of the 1970s · not offered in 2023-24
  • CAMS 225: Film Noir: The Dark Side of the American Dream
  • CAMS 258: Feminist and Queer Media · not offered in 2023-24
  • CAMS 270: Nonfiction
  • CAMS 340: Television Studies Seminar
  • DANC 254: Jazz Dance: Roots and Grooves
  • DANC 266: Reading The Dancing Body · not offered in 2023-24
  • ECON 262: The Economics of Sports · not offered in 2023-24
  • EDUC 344: Teenage Wasteland: Adolescence and the American High School · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 113: Horror Fiction · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 117: African American Literature · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 120: American Short Stories · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 136: Black Speculative Fiction · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 212: Nineteenth-Century American Literature · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 215: Modern American Literature · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 221: “Moby-Dick” & Race: Whiteness and the Whale · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 227: Imagining the Borderlands · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 228: Banned. Censored. Reviled.
  • ENGL 230: Studies in African American Literature: From the 1950s to the Present
  • ENGL 233: Writing and Social Justice · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 234: Literature of the American South · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 235: Asian American Literature
  • ENGL 236: American Nature Writing
  • ENGL 239: Democracy: Politics, Race, & Sex in Nineteenth Century American Novels · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 241: Latinx Voices in the Age of Trump · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 247: The American West · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 248: Visions of California · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 253: Food Writing: History, Culture, Practice · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 258: Playwrights of Color: Taking the Stage · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 288: California Program: The Literature of California · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 332: Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald
  • ENGL 352: Toni Morrison: Novelist
  • ENGL 366: The Carleton Miscellany · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENTS 307: Wilderness Field Studies: Grand Canyon
  • GWSS 150: Working Sex: Commercial Sexual Cultures · not offered in 2023-24
  • GWSS 398: Capstone: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Culture · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 122: U.S. Women’s History to 1877
  • HIST 127: The Roaring Twenties & the Rough Thirties in U.S. History · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 211: Revolts and Resistance in Early America · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 216: History Beyond the Walls · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 220: From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Black History and/in Film
  • HIST 226: U.S. Consumer Culture
  • HIST 229: Working with Gender in U.S. History · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 306: American Wilderness
  • HIST 307: Advanced Wilderness Studies · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 308: American Cities and Nature · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 316: Presenting America’s Founding
  • HIST 320: The Progressive Era? · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 115: Listening to the Movies
  • MUSC 126: America’s Music
  • MUSC 130: The History of Jazz · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 131: The Blues From the Delta to Chicago · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 136: History of Rock · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 232: Golden Age of R & B · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 246: Music in Racism and Antiracism · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 247: 1950s/60s American Folk Music Revival · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 341: Rock Lab and Lab
  • PHIL 228: Freedom and Alienation in Black American Philosophy · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 204: How American Campaigns and Elections Work (and Don’t Work) · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 216: Politics in the Post-Truth Society · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 220: Politics and Political History in Film · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 355: Identity, Culture and Rights · not offered in 2023-24
  • PSYC 384: Psychology of Prejudice
  • RELG 140: Religion and American Culture
  • RELG 232: Queer Religions · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 249: Religion and American Public Life · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 267: Black Testimony: Art, Literature, Philosophy
  • RELG 285: Islam in America: Race, Religion and Politics · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 344: Lived Religion in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 114: Modern Families: An Introduction to the Sociology of the Family · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 206: Critical Perspectives on Work in the Twenty-first Century · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 252: Growing up in an Aging Society · not offered in 2023-24
  • THEA 227: Theatre for Social Change
  • WGST 389: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Culture · not offered in 2023-24
  • America in the World (Migration, Borderlands, and Empire): How is the society and culture of the United States shaped by the historical and contemporary flows of people, goods and ideas from around the world? In turn, students will also focus on the various ways in which both colonial America and the United States have shaped the world. 
  • AMST 225: Beauty and Race in America
  • AMST 238: 9/11 and the War on Terror in American Culture · not offered in 2023-24
  • AMST 240: The Midwest and the American Imagination · not offered in 2023-24
  • ARTH 240: Art Since 1945 · not offered in 2023-24
  • ECON 262: The Economics of Sports · not offered in 2023-24
  • ECON 264: Health Care Economics · not offered in 2023-24
  • ECON 271: Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment
  • ECON 273: Water and Western Economic Development
  • EDUC 330: Refugee and Immigrant Experiences in Faribault, MN · not offered in 2023-24
  • EDUC 340: Race, Immigration, and Schools · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 221: “Moby-Dick” & Race: Whiteness and the Whale · not offered in 2023-24
  • ENGL 235: Asian American Literature
  • ENGL 252: Caribbean Fiction · not offered in 2023-24
  • GWSS 150: Working Sex: Commercial Sexual Cultures · not offered in 2023-24
  • GWSS 398: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Culture · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 211: Revolts and Resistance in Early America · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 213: Politics and Protest in the New Nation · not offered in 2023-24
  • HIST 275: Latin American Immigration to the US · not offered in 2023-24
  • LING 288: The Structure of Dakota · not offered in 2023-24
  • MUSC 339: Music and Humanitarianism
  • PHIL 304: Decolonial Feminisms
  • POSC 122: Politics in America: Liberty and Equality
  • POSC 216: Politics in the Post-Truth Society · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 220: Politics and Political History in Film · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 231: American Foreign Policy · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 269: I Did My Own Research: Information and Political Division in America · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 274: Covid-19 and Globalization
  • POSC 280: COVID-19 and Globalization · not offered in 2023-24
  • POSC 355: Identity, Culture and Rights · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 212: Black Religious Thought
  • RELG 243: Native American Religious Freedom · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 249: Religion and American Public Life · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 285: Islam in America: Race, Religion and Politics · not offered in 2023-24
  • RELG 289: Global Religions in Minnesota
  • SOAN 151: Global Minnesota: An Anthropology of Our State · not offered in 2023-24
  • SOAN 170: Investigating (In)Equality: Comparative Welfare States · not offered in 2023-24

American Studies Courses

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • AMST 130 Latinx Social Movements: From Bandits to the Young Lords

    In this class, we will discuss Latinx social and political movements across America, from post-1848 to the twentieth century. We will work to understand both their historical and historiographical impact: What conditions were these movements responding to? What emerged from their actions? And how are these movements talked about and remembered now? We will also track state responses to these movements, including the creation of law enforcement agencies in the Southwest and national counterintelligence programs.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • 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).

  • AMST 204 What’s Race Got To Do With It?: Constructing Communities that Discard Lives

    In this course students will engage race and other forms of identity (including class and disability) using both social scientific and humanistic approaches to examine how the process of building place in the U.S. has historically meant discarding lives, excluding communities, and maintaining caste. Subtopics include: Art’s impact on gentrification, POC suburbanization, Disposable lives in America, Apartheid from architectural design, and Comparative memoir.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • AMST 222 Indigenous Film

    This course introduces students to the world of Indigenous films, beginning with representations of Indians and how these images shape what most people “know” about “Indians.” Simultaneously, Indigenous filmmakers exercise visual sovereignty by not only refusing representations of Indigenous people, but by creating visual representations of Indigenous peoples that speak to the urgent issues of the present. Through Indigenous films, we will examine genres, develop an appreciation for historical and cultural contexts of films, and consider how these films are forms of Indigenous resurgence. We will also learn the basics of media literacy and film analysis. Our key concepts include visual sovereignty, Indigenous, Indians, settler colonialism, decolonization, resurgence, tradition, and gender.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • 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.

  • AMST 230 The American Sublime: Landscape, Character & National Destiny in Nineteenth Century America

    Focusing on the early nineteenth century struggle to create an American nation and a national culture, we will look at the ways Americans adopted and adapted European ideas, particularly the aesthetic idea of the Sublime, in their attempt to come to terms with the conquest of the new land and its native inhabitants and with the nature of their national enterprise. Writers Irving, Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson and painters Cole, Bierstadt, Church, Kensett, and Lane will be included. Major themes will include attitudes towards landscape and settlement, a distinctively American character, the nature and utility of art, and ideas of American empire.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • 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.

  • AMST 238 9/11 and the War on Terror in American Culture

    An exploration of how the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 and the subsequent War on Terror impacted American culture. We will focus on issues of both form (the elements determining the look and feel of post-9/11 artwork) and content (the social and moral concerns driving post-9/11 culture). Shared texts will include novels, short stories, poetry, music, art, and films. Particular attention will be paid to themes such as race and racism, religion and religious discrimination, immigration and xenophobia, debates over American exceptionalism, critiques of American capitalism, the “death of irony,” attempts to define “truth,” and the spread of conspiracy theories. 

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • AMST 240 The Midwest and the American Imagination

    The history of American culture has always been shaped by a dialectic between the local and the universal, the regional and the national. The particular geography and history of the Midwest (the prairie, the plains, the old Northwest, Native Americans and white adventurers, settlers and immigrants) have shaped its livelihoods, its identities, its meanings. Focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this course will explore literature, art history, and the social and cultural history of the Midwest.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • 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.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • AMST 248 Confine and Detain: The Carceral State in America

    What function do prisons and immigrant detention centers serve? How do they figure in American history and society, especially since their current forms are relatively new? In this class, we will examine state-sponsored confinement and detention practices from seventeenth to twenty-first century America. Across three units, we will analyze abduction and captivity, forced labor and relocation, and internment and border security as carceral practices. We will pay particular attention to race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability to understand how confinement and detention have shaped American state-building. 

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • 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?

  • AMST 254 The 1930s: Social and Cultural Impact of the Great Depression

    Through cultural manifestations–literature, painting, movies, radio, historic preservation, and music–we will trace progress from shock and despair to hope in the ‘30s and see how Americans of all races and classes coped with the disruptions and opportunities of economic cataclysm, political shifts, new social programs and expectations, and technology. Materials will include texts on the New Deal, labor, the Great Migration and race relations; fiction, essays, and plays by Steinbeck, Nathaniel West, James Agee, Thornton Wilder, Meridel LeSueur, Hurston, and Wright; popular movies and music; and photography, painting, Art Deco, and the 1939 World’s Fair.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • AMST 256 Walt Whitman’s New York

    An interdisciplinary investigation of the burgeoning, brash, alluring Other that the young Walter Whitman found in New York in the 1850s. Considering “Leaves of Grass,” as well as his journalistic, “self-help,” and political writings, we will reconstruct how Whitman found his muse, his voice, and his distinctively modern and democratic subject in the geography, demographics, markets, politics, and erotics of New York: “O City / Behold me! Incarnate me as I have incarnated you! I have rejected nothing you have offered me!–whom you adopted, I have adopted; good or bad…”

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • 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).

  • AMST 269 Woodstock Nation

    “If you remember the Sixties, you weren’t there.”  We will test the truth of that popular adage by exploring the American youth counterculture of the 1960s, particularly the turbulent period of the late sixties. Using examples from literature, music, and film, we will examine the hope and idealism, the violence, confusion, wacky creativity, and social mores of this seminal decade in American culture. Topics explored will include the Beat Generation, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, LSD, and the rise of environmentalism, feminism, and Black Power. 

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • AMST 287 California Program: California Art and Visual Culture

    An in-depth exploration of the dynamic relationship between the arts and popular conceptions of California: whether as bountiful utopia, suburban paradise or multicultural frontier. We will meet with California artists and art historians, and visit museums and galleries. Art and artists studied will range from Native American art, the Arts and Crafts movement and California Impressionism to the photography of Ansel Adams, urban murals and the imagery of commercial culture (such as promotional brochures and orange-crate labels).

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • AMST 289 California Program: California Field Studies

    Students will participate in a number of fieldtrips dealing with California’s history, literature, and environment. Sites visited will include Sutter’s Fort, Pt. Reyes, the Modoc Lava Beds, El Teatro Campesino, Hearst Castle, Silicon Valley, Joshua Tree, Watts Towers, the Rose Bowl and Yosemite National Park. Students will also complete an Oral Culture Project.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • AMST 325 Labor and Identity in America

    How have social categories (i.e., race, class, gender, sexuality) been constructed according to labor? How have people lived their identities through their labor? This course will focus on manual labor, with special attention to agricultural work, and will span from the Antebellum South to the present. We will examine how manual labor has functioned as a symbol of belonging in the nation. Throughout the course, we will emphasize lived experience–or, how people responded to cultural shifts, and made social or political change through their work–using oral histories, community archives, cultural productions and social customs in the workplace.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • 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.

  • AMST 396 AIDS in America

    This junior seminar for AMST majors studies AIDS in America as a means of preparing students to write their own research papers. The AIDS crisis made deep impact on various areas of American society, resulting in a robust, interdisciplinary discourse about the pandemic’s origins, scope, impact, and legacy. We will utilize a variety of media, including poetry, music, memoir, fiction, oral history, film, visual art, performance art, and scholarship. Using the tools of inquiry encountered in this class and throughout their work in the major, students will then prepare an original research paper on a topic of their choice.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

    • Winter 2024
    • S/NC
    • 3
    • American Studies 396
    • Adriana Estill 🏫 👤