Fall 2009 Course Descriptions (PDF)
AMST 201 Introduction to American Studies
0101 MWF 9:00 - 9:50 HZF0101 Maria Vargas; 0201 MWF 10:00 - 10:50 HZF0101 Maria Vargas; 0301 MWF 1:00 - 1:50 HZF0106 Aaron Allen; 0401 MWF 2:00 - 2:50 HZF0106 Aaron Allen; 0501 TuTh 8:00 - 9:15 HZF0101 Andrew Nelson; 0601 TuTh 9:30 - 10:45 HZF0101 Andrew Nelson; FC01 F 10:00-10:45 CHE2145 Heidi Temple; FC02 Manouchka Poison
Introduction to American cultural studies-past and present-by examining the concepts of “self” in American autobiographical writing and the concept of society” in accounts of various communities.
AMST 203 Popular Culture in America
0101 MWF 11:00 - 11:50 HZF 0101 Christine Muller; FC01 F 11:30 - 12:45 HBK0105 Christine Muller
What is popular culture, how does it function, and why does it matter? Conventionally, “high culture” has been clearly distinguished from and privileged over ‘low culture’. High culture has enjoyed connotations of elite, at times even esoteric, importance and low culture has endured effective dismissal as something of vulgar irrelevance. But if we regard culture generally as essentially the ways in which we cultivate collective meanings about our lives and our place(s) in the world, what then might be the role of popular culture? What might be the scope and limits of a set of cultural forms that are considered to be, in their “popularity,” commonly accessible? What possible contributions, for better and for worse, can popular forms offer to the cultivation of collective meanings in diverse American cultural contexts? Specifically, how does popular culture address the crucial notions of subjectivity and agency, notions that typically shape the parameters of meaningful life and–conversely– functional, if not actual, death?
This semester, we will keep such questions in mind as we engage a variety of popular culture forms, including (but not limited to) music, film, television, and sports, with specific attention to how these forms relate to the everyday practices and beliefs of a contemporary American context. Because as participants we are, all of us, necessarily and inextricably implicated in any discussion of American popular culture, such as exploration will invoke our personal investments in the discussion. This approach will outline our terrain and provide the tools with which we can work through our questions thoughtfully, responsively, and responsibly. Through our diligent, collaborative, critical, and self-reflexive efforts, our class together will develop resources we can use to interrogate how popular culture matters to the most critical of meaning formations, the understanding of life and death.
AMST204 Film and American Culture Studies
0101 W 6:00 - 9:30 HBK H0301 Myron Lounsbury
How does one interpret the meaning of motion pictures in our digital, post-industrial age? Utilizing Timothy Corrigan’s A Short guide to writing About Film as our manual, we will investigate individual movies as texts possessing a production history, exhibiting a narrative structure, and stimulating reactions from their audiences. As both voyeurs and academics, we will focus on movies portraying and/or masking ethically suspect, even criminal, behavior in New York City, Los Angeles and other global cities around the world. We will also explore motion pictures from the perspective of our contemporary context, where the film medium often intersects with television and the newer, virtual technologies and where the boundaries of what is “real” and what is simulated, what is private and what is public, what is local and/or national and/or international have become increasingly blurred in our wired world. AMST205 Material Aspects of American Life 0101 TuTh 8:00 - 9:15 MMH0108 Portia Barker 0201 TuTh 9:30 - 10:45 MMH0108 Portia Barker Historical survey of American material culture. Ways of describing and interpreting accumulated material evidence (e.g. buildings, town plans) introduced by stressing relationship between artifact and culture.
AMST207 Contemporary American Cultures
FC01 F 1:00 - 2:15 SYM0215 Rebecca Krefting
Telling stories is the job of the ethnographer. By collecting data, making cultural observations, attuning interview skills and working in the field, ethnographic researchers reveal important dimensions of contemporary American cultures. This course introduces the tools and techniques of ethnography while examining how social position, memory interpretation and cultural differences create dilemmas and challenges for the study of people, organization, communities and societies.
AMST212 Diversity in American Culture
0101 TuTh 12:30 - l:45 HZF0106 Tiffany King; 0102 TuTh 2:00 - 3:15 HZF0101 Tiffany King
In this course, we attend specifically to the challenges and opportunities diversify poses to cultural constructions of everyday life. The interdisciplinary approach informing our analysis of everyday practices and beliefs is grounded primarily in literature, history, media studies and the social sciences. Through our diligent, collaborative, critical and self-reflexive exploration of diversity, our class together will generate a productive interrogation of how American culture makes sense of and through identifications of difference.
AMST260 American Culture in the Information Age
0101 MWF 1:00 - 1:50 HBK RM-H Maria Velaquez; 0201 MWF 2:00 - 2:50 HBK RM-H Maria Velaquez
This course will examine the incorporation of information technologies into everyday life, paying particular attention to cybercultures, the digital divide, and the globalization of cyberspace.
AMST298C Introduction to Asian American Studies
0101 TuTh 3:30 - 4:45 ASY3207 Larry Shinagawa
This aggregate experience of Asian Pacific Americans, from developments in the countries of origin to their contemporary issues. The histories of Asian Pacific American groups as well as culture, politics, the media, the stereo types, viewed from an interdisciplinary perspective.
AMST298N Filipino American Studies
0101 Tu 5:00 - 7:30 JMP3216 G. Daus
This course will introduce and examine major themes in Filipino American Studies. Course themes include the impact of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines, the effects of U.S. labor needs on Filipino migration and settlement patterns in the U.S., and the significant (yet often unrecognized) contributions of Filipinos and Filipino Americans in political and spcial movements. The class will combine a historical analysis of immigration flows and adaptation patterns with an exploration of contributions made by present-day Filipino Americans including community leaders, activists, and everyday people.
AMST328C Chicano/Latino Art & Museum Studies
0101 MW 12:00 - 1:15 HZF0101 Robb Hernandez
In this course, students will be introduced to the history of Chicano/Latina art in the U.S., the politics of exhibition, and visual culture methodologies. We will chart the development of Latina/o art movements in the U.S., alternative museums and gallery spaces and trace the careers of major U. SW. Latina/o artists. We will discuss the impact of prolific Chicano/Latino art exhibitions in the Americas, including: Hispanic Art in the United States, Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, and Phantom Sightings. Through case studies, our investigation also looks at Latina/o art controversies and how American identity and culture are contested in museums, cultural centers, and heritage preservation efforts. Students will produce research papers on a Latina/o artist or art exhibition and interpret how it challenges American culture and shapes Latino representation. This class will include regular guest speakers including Latina/o artists, curators, collectors, and tours of exhibitions, special collections, and murals in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area.
AMST340 Introduction to History, Theories and Methods in American Studies
0101 MW 10:00 - 11:15 HZF0106 Jo Paoletti; 0201 TuTh 2:00 - 3:15 HZF1108 Mary Sies
Prerequisite: 2 AMST courses. Sophomore standing. For AMST majors only.
Introduction to the process of interdisciplinary research literatures, questions, first-hand sources and library and analytic methods in American Studies. Each student will craft a prospectus for original research. If you don’t already feel like an AMST major, you will by the semester’s end. This course introduces AMST majors to the intellectual history of our field of study, and to a variety of interdisciplinary theories and methods active in contemporary AMST. The goal of this course is to help our majors find their voice, so to speak, their intellectual and research interests within AMST, which will ultimately prepare them for the AMST450 senior seminar research project, and the senior honors thesis.
AMST386 Experiential Learning
Permission of instructor and department
AMST388 Honors Thesis
Permission instructor and department
AMST418A African-American Visual and Material Culture
0101 W 4:00 - 6:40 PHY1402 Cheryl LaRoche
Moving from the shores of Africa to the birth of African American culture to the study of African diasporic cultural influences, this class will explore the active role of visual and material culture in the shaping and defining of identity. Our goal is to discover the historical uses of the arts in service of the struggles for freedom and equality. Visual art, material culture, archaeology, popular culture, music, literature, film, poetry and anthropology will shape te inquiry through which we examine both the diasporic dimensions of African American aesthetics and its economic exploitation in the service of global capitalism. Understanding the multi-layered impact of African American history and cultural influences on a personal, societal and global scale will be the mission of this class.
AMST418L Asian Religions in American Culture
0101 TuTh 11:00 - 12:15 HZF0101 Suzanne Gordon
This course will explore the influence of Asian Religious/Spiritual tradition in American society. For 150 years Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, Taoism, and Zen Buddhism have been of significance to difference kinds of Americans. Asian immigrants have brought such traditions with them to the US and other kinds of Americans, including those involved in 19th century transcendentalism, 20th century counter-cultures, or various contemporary 21st century artistic movements, have also engaged with these spiritual resources. Using the anthropological model of cultural encounter, we will focus on how various writers, artists, musicians, and ordinary individuals have adapted these traditions to life in America.
AMST429D Children and the Media
0101 TuTh 2:00 - 3:15 BPS1236 Michael Brody
This course includes; 1) critical analysis of children’s media from television to cyberspace (Sesame Street, Batman, Disney, South Park, chat rooms) discussing not just content but message of media-McLuhan, 2) application of themes as they reflect society (violence, sex, development), 3) influence on childhood experiences (story telling, toys, socialization), 4) advocacy issues (V chips, ratings, privacy and news media) and 5) advertising and consumerism.
AMST429E Television Situation Comedy
0101 Tu 3:30 - 6:30 HZF0101 Greg Metcalf
This course will consider the historical development and cultural function of the situation comedy. This will include the television development from earlier radio format and the placeand importance of the situation comedy in reinforcing the cultural values of the 1950s (and in the broader context of television’s presentation of life in the 1950s). From that base we will explore the situation comedy as a reflection of–and a tool for–social conservatism or social normalization in relation to key cultural changes in the ensuing six decades. Specifically, we will consider the issue of sit com presentation of race and gender images and the issue of social responsibility in the sit com, the rise of the “relevent” sitcoms in the 1970s, and the resulting questions of form vs. content. We will also consider the implications of differences in British approaches to the sit com and self-referential trends in the American situation comedy. This is not a funny course. It is theoretical and cultural in its orientation.
AMST429J Social Activism and Popular Culture
0101 MW 2:00 - 3:15 HZF0101 Sheri Parks
Social Activism and Popular Culture examines the continuous interplay between serious social activism and the playful forms of popular culture. The course will examine popular culture that carries the messages of social discourse for the benefit of social activism. Each participant will adopt a cause and a related non-profit organization, analyze their icon, website, audience and opposition/obstacles and devise a strategy around them.
AMST429Q Global Cinema, Global Cities
0101 MW 2:00 - 4:45 HBK0109 Myron Lounsbury
This semester, we will engage in a cinematic journey of Europe, Latin America, and Asia, and the Middle East as we seek to answer a major issue: In our Information Age (the emergence of the digital technology and the Internet), is our movie-going love of the cinema as experience of the past? Do today’s global cities possess the same neighborhoods and characterics of the 20th century?
AMST432 Literature and American Society
0101 On Line R. Gordon Kelly
Literature and American Society is designed to familiarize students with the central issues in the socio-cultural study of American literature. Approaching “literature” as both a socially-constructed category and a social institution, we will investigate the use of literacy works as cultural evidence; examine the creation, distribution, interpretation, evaluation, and selective retention of literary works in American cultural memory from the nineteenth century to the present; and analyze the functions of literary works in selected social groups.
AMST450 Senior Seminar in American Studies
0101 MW 10:00 - 11:15 HZF1108 Myron Lounsbury; 0201 TuTh 12:30 - 1:45 HZF1108 P. Williams-Forson
This seminar will engage students in primary research on a topic of their choice, using the insights, theoretical constructs and methods they have learned in the course of their American Studies program. We will begin with a review of American Studies methodologies and basic principles of research project management. Each student will then select a cultural text or social issue to explicate, contextualize and critique using primary sources, producing an essay or multi-media final project. AMST498P Black Class: Stories of Race and Consumption from the Harlem Renaissance to Hip Hop 0101 TuTh 2:00 - 3:15 PLS1129 P.Williams-Forson To study material culture is to use objects-works of art, household utensils, and interior decorations-to study the beliefs, values, ideas, attitudes and assumptions of particular communities or societies at a given time. In this course we will consider the ways that material evidence conveys stories of African American class identities of the past and the present. We will learn and apply the techniques for interpreting historical sources reading visual culture, and analyzing artifacts of material culture, from the everyday to the decorative . From representations in photographs, to magazine, to films like “The Wire” we will consider major cultural transformations and fixations that have dominated African American middle-class spaces. The end result will be to create an on line exhibition of our collective research on black people and their stories of race, class, and consumption.
AMST498Q Advanced Material Culture- Craft & Production
0101 MW 2:00 - 3:15 HBK0108 Jo Paoletti
This course will build on the theoretical foundation of AMST205, using multiple approaches (ethnography, object analysis, history) to examine the production of objects and the relationship between maker and artifact. Topics will include historical reenactment, professional craftspeople and amateur DIY (including gardening, knitting, furniture hacking, and all forms of cookery). Students will be expected to be willing to work and interact outside the classroom (required field trips and online activities).
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