American Studies

This course introduces students to the subjects of American Studies through discussion of some of the signature ideas, events, and debates in America's past and present in order to understand America as it exists today. It examines both historical and mythic manifestations of America from local, national, and global perspectives and considers the historical and cognitive processes associated with the delineation of America. The course examines a wide range of material and media from the point of view of multiple fields of study, and it engages the voices of diverse individuals and cultures in telling the story of America then and now.

This topics course explores the complex interplay between political, economic, and cultural forces that shape our understanding of the historic achievements and struggles of African-descended people in the United States and their relation to others around the world.

This course focuses upon the evolution, nature, and role of black politics within the American Political System, in the post- civil rights era. The concern is with black people as actors and creators and initiators in the political process. Specifically, this course will examine various political controversies that surround the role of race in American society. These controversies or issues, affect public opinion, political institutions, political behavior, and salient public policy debates. Thus this course will assess and evaluate the contemporary influence of race in each of these domains while also exploring their historical antecedents.

This course offers a survey of the varieties of animation across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as well as their critical reception. Animation is a ubiquitous form, present across media and in advertising. Many viewers take its components and effects for granted. But the archive of animation fundamentally complicates any easy assumptions about "realism" in the twentieth century; animation, moreover, challenges assumptions about bodies and their functions, exaggerating their features and functions, promoting alternatives to more mundane notions of life and liveliness, and relatedly, to ideas of time, contingency, and experience.

This course will delve into the many historical themes, social issues, and musical aspects that arise from surveying and comparing the diverse musical traditions of Mexico, the U.S., and Canada.

This course focuses on the history, criticism, and aesthetics of dance as a theatrical art form and/or a social practice. Topics might include an examination of dance through personal, aesthetic, religious, social, and/or political lenses. Classes will be augmented by film, videos, music, guest speakers, occasional demonstrations, and studio work. One three-hour seminar.

A study of modern American writings, from Faulkner to Diaz, that emphasize the interplay between formal experimentation and thematic diversity. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

Students gain special access to the critical understanding of literature through their involvement in the creative process. Topics include autobiography, prosody, non-fiction, revision and point of view. Students are expected to prepare a manuscript at least every other week. Specific topics and prerequisites will vary. By application.

This course will at different times deal with particular currents of literature and thought in the 18th century, or with individual authors. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

An investigation of issues outside the scope of traditional surveys of American literature. Topics may include: definitions of "America," literature of the South, contemporary poetry, New Historicism, America on film, the Harlem Renaissance, the Vietnam War, the sentimental novel, colonial encounters, literature of the Americas, fictions of empire, Jewish American writers. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

The history of the place we now know as the U. S. West, from European contact to the mid-twentieth century. Primary focus on the struggles over access to land, resources, and power in old and new Wests, with particular attention given to the role of visual and popular culture in shaping the national imagination of the region. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

An exploration of women's roles and experiences, and constructions of gender in diverse settings within North American religion. The seminar will examine women, gender, and religious leadership in varied religious contexts, such as Puritanism, evangelicalism, Catholicism, Judaism, African American Protestantism, native traditions, and American Islam. Emphasis on the dilemmas faced by women in religious institutions as well as the creative approaches to shaping religious and social opportunities in light of shifting ideas about religion, gender, and authority. One three-hour seminar.

This course introduces students to the multiple and varied experiences of people of Asian heritage in the United States from the 19th century to the present day. It focuses on three major questions: (1) What brought Asians to the United States? (2) How did Asian Americans come to be viewed as a race? (3) How does Asian American experience transform our understanding of U.S. history? Using newspapers, novels, government reports, and films, this course will cover major topics in Asian American history, including Chinese Exclusion, Japanese internment, transnational adoption, and the model minority stereotype.

As articulated by Thelma Golden, postblack refers to the work of African American artists who emerged in the 1990s with ambitious, irreverent, and sassy work. Postblack suggests the emergence of a generation of artists removed from the long tradition of Black affirmation of the Harlem Renaissance, Black empowerment of the Black Arts movement, and identity politics of the 1980s and early 90s. This seminar involves critical and theoretical readings on multiculturalism, race, identity, and contemporary art, and will provide an opportunity for a deep engagement with the work of African American artists of the past decade. AAS Subfield: AACL, GRE

In this seminar we examine how the modern constructed categories of "race" and "religion" have interacted in American history and culture. We explore how religious beliefs and practices have shaped ideas about race and how American racialization has shaped religious experience. We consider the impact of religion and race on notions of what it means to be American and how these have changed over time. Topics include race and biblical interpretation; religion and racial slavery; religion, race, and science; popular culture representations; race, religion, and politics; and religious resistance to racial hierarchy.

From colonial settlement to the present, this course weaves a comprehensive history of American cities. Over centuries, cities have symbolized democratic ideals of "melting pots" and innovation, as well as crises of disorder, decline, crime, and poverty. Urban life has concentrated extremes like rich and poor; racial and ethnic divides; philanthropy and greed; skyscrapers and parks; violence and hope; downtown and suburb. The course examines how cities in U.S. history have brokered revolution, transformation and renewal, focusing on class, race, gender, immigration, capitalism, and the built environment. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

The Caribbean is an archipelago made up of islands that both link and separate the Americas - islands that have weathered various waves of colonization, migration, and revolution. How do narratives of the Caribbean represent the collision of political forces and natural environments? Looking to the many abyssal histories of the Caribbean, we will explore questions of indigeneity, colonial contact, iterations of enslavement, and the plantation matrix in literary texts. How do island-writers evoke gender and a poetics of relation that exceeds tourist desire and forceful extraction?

In this course we explore the politics of representing religion at key moments in American film and religious history. We consider how movies provide unique insight into aspects of American religious life and how representations of religion reveal the shifting contours of constructions of American identity. Topics include: censorship; representations of religious, ethnic, and racial minorities; gender, sexuality, and religion; recent filmmaking strategies of religious groups.

Each term course will be offered in special topics of English and American literature. One three-hour seminar.

Advanced seminars bring students into spaces of collaborative exploration after pursuing their individual paths of study in American studies, Asian American/diasporic studies, and/or Latino studies. To students culminating programs of study toward one or more of the certificates offered by the Effron Center for the Study of America, advanced seminars offer the important opportunity to integrate their cumulative knowledge.

Advanced seminars bring students into spaces of collaborative exploration after pursuing their individual paths of study in American studies, Asian American/diasporic studies, and/or Latino studies. To students culminating programs of study toward one or more of the certificates offered by the Effron Center for the Study of America, advanced seminars offer the important opportunity to integrate their cumulative knowledge.

Advanced seminars bring students into spaces of collaborative exploration after pursuing their individual paths of study in American studies, Asian American/diasporic studies, and/or Latino studies. To students culminating programs of study toward one or more of the certificates offered by the Effron Center for the Study of America, advanced seminars offer the important opportunity to integrate their cumulative knowledge.

A close study of the works of one or two authors. May include Austen, Dickinson, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Dickens, Melville, Faulkner, James, Stevens, or Woolf, among others. Two 90-minute seminars.

From "Chinese opium" to Oxycontin, and from cocaine and "crack" to BiDil, drug controversies reflect enduring debates about the role of medicine, the law, the policing of ethnic identity, and racial difference. This course explores the history of controversial substances (prescription medicines, over-the-counter products, black market substances, psychoactive drugs), and how, from cigarettes to alcohol and opium, they become vehicles for heated debates over immigration, identity, cultural and biological difference, criminal character, the line between legality and illegality, and the boundaries of the normal and the pathological.

An examination of changing patterns of manhood and womanhood, with an emphasis on women's experience. Topics include housekeeping, child rearing, birth control, sexuality, work, feminism, and the role of gender in religious and political movements and economic development. Two lectures, one preceptorial.