Program in American Studies
Director
Hendrik A. Hartog
Executive Committee
M. Christine Boyer, Architecture
Anne A. Cheng, English, African American Studies
Rachael Z. DeLue, Art and Archaeology
Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Religion, African American Studies
William A. Gleason, English
Carol J. Greenhouse, Anthropology
Hendrik A. Hartog, History
Beth K. Jamieson, Politics
Stanley N. Katz, Woodrow Wilson School
Lee C. Mitchell, English
Daniel T. Rodgers, History
Gideon A. Rosen, Philosophy, ex officio
Martha A. Sandweiss, History
Kim Lane Scheppele, Woodrow Wilson School, University Center for Human Values
Paul E. Starr, Sociology, Woodrow Wilson School
Emily A. Thompson, History
Marta Tienda, Sociology, Woodrow Wilson School
Alexandra T. Vazquez, English, African American Studies
Sarah M. Whiting, Architecture
R. Sean Wilentz, History
The Program in American Studies is an interdepartmental plan of study. The aim is to give students an understanding of American society—its culture, its institutions, its intellectual traditions, and the relationships among its diverse people—by exploring and debating issues raised in the separate disciplines.
The cooperating departments from which the program draws faculty and other resources include anthropology, architecture, art and archaeology, economics, English, history, music, philosophy, politics, psychology, religion, sociology, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Students from all departments are welcome to apply for admission.
Requirements for Admission
The program accepts approximately 45 students each year. Criteria for admission are a strong academic record and particular interest in the multidisciplinary work of the program. Before applying for admission, students must take American Studies 201, preferably during the sophomore year, and achieve a satisfactory standing in the course.
Course of Study
In addition to 201, students must complete two 300- or 400-level American studies courses. The work of these courses involves cooperative study of a major topic in American history or culture and its relation to other aspects of American life. Usually, the course operates as a seminar, with emphasis on independent research and writing. Lectures and discussions led by outside specialists, as well as films or field trips, frequently supplement the work.
Students must also complete three American studies electives, which are courses in the American field offered by departments throughout the University and approved by the program director (pass/D/fail not acceptable).
Students are expected to complete a normal departmental course of study with such emphasis on the American field as that department permits. The senior thesis must be on a topic related to American culture or history.
Certificate of Proficiency
Students who fulfill all requirements of the program will receive a certificate of proficiency in American studies upon graduation.
Courses
AMS 201 American Places: An Introduction to American Studies Fall HA
An introduction to the key themes of interdisciplinary work on North America, from the 16th century to the modern era. Readings and related material will focus on the study of particular American places. Topics may include native-European contact, the American Revolution, slavery, urbanization, the rise of mass culture, and the computer revolution. One 90-minute lecture, one 90-minute preceptorial. W. Gleason, R. Montez
AMS 301 Listening In: Sound, Music, Noise, and Technology in American History Fall HA
Explores the historical meaning of sound, music, and noise in American culture, and examines how new sonic technologies shape, and are shaped by, the values of the cultures that produce them. Topics range from the sonic characterization of Native Americans by European colonists, to the transformation of musical culture through digital technologies like the iPod. Students will consider sound on slave plantations, in modern cities, in cinemas and shopping malls and will examine how—in all these places—people’s lives were shaped by what they heard. One three-hour seminar. E. Thompson
AMS 323 America in Judaism (also JDS 323, REL 394) Fall EM
Although the idea of an “American Judaism” emerged in the early decades of the 19th century, scholars have yet to define this concept in precise terms and explain how it differs from a simpler historical understanding of “Judaism in America.” This seminar will examine the Americanization of Judaism beginning with the earliest transplanted Iberian concepts of Judaism in the “new world” to the transformation of Jewish religious life in the United States. Special attention will be paid to Jewish theology, the rabbinate, gender, denominationalism, and the polity of the American synagogue. One three-hour seminar. L. Sussman
AMS 324 American Trials, American Stories Fall HA
This seminar will explore the role of the jury trial in America and the greater cultural significance of certain high-profile proceedings such as the Amistad mutiny trials (1841), the Scopes “monkey” trial (1925), the espionage trial of Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg (1951), and the trial of Patricia Hearst (1974). Students will study court transcripts and other source materials as well as literary, journalistic, and cinematic responses to these historic contests. Particular attention will be given to the narrative strategies and theatrical arts of trial advocacy. One three-hour seminar. C. Marsh
AMS 332 Special Topics in Performance History and Theory (see THR 331)
AMS 342 Music in Antebellum America, 1800–1860 (see MUS 352)
AMS 350 Civil Society and Public Policy (see WWS 325)
AMS 353 Moby-Dick Unbound Spring LA
This seminar undertakes a close reading of Moby-Dick (1851), often acclaimed as the greatest American novel. Why was this story of a tragic sea voyage so neglected in its day, and so celebrated by later generations? To explore its twin lines of action—Ahab’s drive to kill a white whale versus Ishmael’s quest to know it—we use the methods of history, literature, art, religion, economics, philosophy, and ecology. Of special interest are the ways Melville anticipates recent environmental thought, depicts a globalized culture, and dramatizes the national struggle to reconcile faith and fact, race and justice. W. Howarth
AMS 356 Migration, Urban Space, and African American Culture (see AAS 356)
AMS 361 Festival, Celebration, and Ritual in American Culture (see REL 361)
AMS 372 Postblack (see AAS 372)
AMS 462 Life Writing, Writing Lives: Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir in Britain and America, c. 1700–2000 (also HIS 462) Fall LA
This course, taught by a writer and a historian, will study signal autobiographical writing in trans-Atlantic comparison, from the master diarist Samuel Pepys, through lives bogus (Robinson Crusoe), stoically female (a Maine midwife), and boyishly on the make (Boswell, Franklin). We will encounter self-consciously marginal Irishmen (Yeats, Joyce) and Southerners (Agee, Welty), the nervous splendor of Bloomsbury (Woolf), the distant battlefields of Vietnam (Herr), and the nearer trenches of family dysfunction (Gosse, Franzen). Themes include attitudes towards place, faith, work, privacy, intimacy, gender, fame, race, and self-fashioning. L. Colley, N. Dawidoff