Art, Film & Globalization GTA Elliott Knight (One hour)
101-001: MWF 10:00-10:50 Course meets 1/07/09-2/11/09
101-002: MWF 10:00-10:50 Course meets 2/18/09-3/25/2009
In this course, we will explore how artists are both influenced by, and respond to, natural and built environments and landscapes. We will look at artists who use earth and nature as their medium; photographers who explore pattern and place in the natural landscape, as well as man-made spaces and a variety of other forms of expression, including film that examines human’s relationship with our environment.Americans in Paris 1920s GTA Allison Winston (One Hour)
102-001: MWF 9:00-9:50 Course meets 1/07/09-2/11/09
102-002: MWF 9:00-9:50 Course meets 2/18/09-3/25/2009
In the 1920’s, Paris was the center of modernism-a gathering of the world’s most creative writers, artists, poets, and playwrights. Many young American intellectuals sought “salvation by exile” (as Malcolm Cowley termed it) in Paris to escape a postwar American culture dominated by business, greed, consumerism, and materialism. Their experiences abroad produced what has been called the “second flowering” of American literature. In this class, we will sample the writing of the “Lost Generation,” including Sherwood Anderson, Malcolm Cowley, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, and Gertrude Stein.The American Hobo GTA Audrey Coleman (One Hour)
103-001: MWF 11:00-11:50 Course meets 1/07/09-2/11/09
103-002: MWF 11:00-11:50 Course meets 2/18/09-3/25/2009
During the early years of the twentieth century, millions of Americans took to the road, creating a society of hoboes. From people down on their luck to professional criminals, from free-spirited wanderers to working-class revolutionaries, this five-week course will take a close look at America’s underworld during a time of intense social and economic upheaval. Using a variety of sources, such as autobiographies, songs, film and propaganda, this course will explore themes of
crime, poverty, socialism, anarchism, and capitalist exploitation. We will get to know the colorful stories of Jack London, Box Bertha, Joe Hill, and many others who challenged mainstream ideas about what it meant to be an American.
Reading “The Wire” GTA Tracey Gholston (One Hour)
104-001: MWF 12:00-12:50 Course meets 1/07/09-2/11/09
104-002: MWF 12:00-12:50 Course meets 2/18/09-3/25/2009
HBO’s The Wire will explore the fourth season, “The Education System,” of David Simon’s gritty street series.
Through the work of Charles Dickens, we will come to understand Simon’s message, his characters, and their plight. This course will also analyze the underlying messages and metaphors of The Wire.
“Throughout its run, The Wire was unsurpassed by anything on TV-ever- in its depth, story-telling, wisdom, wit and sheer, searing honesty.” –Miami Herald
“From start to finish, The Wire has been one of the best series ever produced for American television, one in which the commitment to honesty and authenticity never wavered.” –USA TodayHow America Eats GTA Sarah Melton (One Hour)
105-001: MWF 1:00-1:50 Course meets 1/07/09-2/11/09
105-002: MWF 1:00-1:50 Course meets 2/18/09-3/25/2009
Why do Americans eat the foods we do? What does our food say about our culture? What are the societal, economic, and environmental impacts of American food production? This course examines the complicated relationship between food and society, as well as the implications of our modes of production and consumption. We will explore different ways of thinking and talking about food, from personal narratives to the mainstream media. Additionally, the course will investigate the dynamic struggle to control food, examining the interplay of policy and politics from Prohibition to now. Finally, we will contemplate the ethics of how we eat and possible alternatives to our current system.
Green Movem’t in Pop Culture GTA Joshua Sahib (One Hour)
106-001: TR 2:00-3:15 Course meets 1/07/09-2/11/09
106-002: TR 2:00-3:15 Course meets 2/18/09-3/25/2009
This discussion based course will explore the growing trend toward environmental awareness found throughout popular culture. Popular works of American art, music, film, and print media will be used to explore issues of environmentalism from various perspectives. We will explore environmental campaigns that are genuine in effort to positively affect the planet. We will discuss how companies around the world are responding to the social pressures to “go green”. The course will also examine some of the emerging green technologies.151-001 World, Nation, Regions Three hours
(Lecture MWF 10:00-10:50) Professor Edward Tang/Team
This course offers a broad survey of American culture formed by global, national, and regional influences. The first section, “World,” looks at the United States as a product and shaper of global movements, ideas, and cultures from 1500 to the present. The second section, “Nation,” examines the creation of a distinctly American identity between 1790 and 1890 that ultimately incorporated and reflected global issues. The third section, “Regions,” focuses on the South and other regions as contributors to and consequences of national and global interactions. Team-taught by the entire AMS faculty, lectures will include topics on film, music, literature, art, sports, and other cultural artifacts.
200-001 Twilight Zone Culture Three hours
( TR 12:30-1:45 ) Mr. Larry Fagen
Screenings of 1950s and early 1960s video taped episodes of the television science fiction anthology series “The Twilight Zone, created by Rod Serling, supplemented by selected readings, will develop an understanding of the cultural background for this show’s many- faceted offerings. Serling knew he could use the more fantastic elements of science fiction to address the issues that plagued America: Bigotry, racism, prejudice, nuclear war, ethics, anti-intellectualism, loneliness, mental health, and conformity. He had said, "You know, you can put these words into the mouth of a Martian and get away with it. If it was a Republican or Democrat they couldn't say it."
200-002 Queer Culture Three hours
(TR 11:30-12:15) Instructor Joshua Burford
Queer is a word that is packed with cultural misconceptions, political discourse, and individual liberation in a time period where things in flux have become the standard of behavior. Contemporary Queer Culture will focus on the construction of Queer identity in late 20th century American culture and how this category helps to eliminate old ideas while it simultaneously makes additional room for others. This class will look at some specific areas of Queer culture to show how political, social, religious, and gender shifts have created a space in the 21st century that is both wonderfully open and distressingly murky for both LGBTQ individuals as well as heterosexual society. Some topics for the course will include AIDS and the response of American society, the construction of Queer in media (film, TV, online), the effects of religion on sexual communities with a look at the Ex-Gay Movement, and will spend a considerable time looking at Trans culture in all its forms. This class will use a variety of media and will include autobiography, theory, fiction, and hybrid texts for exploration.201-001 Intro to African American Studies Three hours
(TR 11:00-12:15) Professor Lowell Davis
American Studies/African American Studies 201 provides a basic outline of the diversity and complexity of the African American experience in the United States. Using African American socio-cultural history as our point of departure, we will undertake a chronological examination of what we have come to recognize as the discipline of African American Studies. Attention to literature, essays, history, popular culture (music, television, magazines, newspapers, movies, film documentaries), and politics will allow us to explore and interrogate critical discourses shaping and shaped by African American life and culture.204-001 Western Lives Three hours
(MWF 12:00-12:50) Mr. Larry Fagen
This course introduces the salient themes, principal issues, and central developments of the American West both as lived experience and constructed myth. Few subjects in all the American experience loom so large, carry such weight, or provoke the kind of passion that this one does. Fewer still embrace the totality or the complexity of America as idea and experience on anything like its scale. Throughout the term, we’ll examine several key western lives, some real, others imagined, and some that are a little of each, as a way of confronting such crucial themes and concepts as “westering,” “frontier,” “pioneer,” “conquest,” “progress,” “success, ” “individualism,” “equality,” and “democracy,” among others. AMS 204 is a lecture/discussion course, which requires student preparation and participation.205-001 Working Lives (HU) Three hours
(TR 9:30—10:45) Mr. Larry Fagan
Work is one of the aspects that most shapes individual lives. Who we are (and what we believe about our life) helps to shape what work an individual chooses. The work then further shapes who the individual becomes. This course will use a variety of autobiographies, oral histories, fictional and non- fictional sources to explore these questions. We will use written narratives, music, and films to consider the role of work in individual lives—both on and off “the job.”300-001 Race and Ethnicity in the US Three hours
(TR 9:30-10:45) Professor Coquet Mokoko
The purpose of this class is to address the notions of race and ethnicity as social constructs which have determined how each of us is defined by, and defines her- or himself for, the communities in which we live, bond and work.
We shall first focus on the concept of Americanization as sociologists have applied it to immigrant groups. We will also work on a selection of life stories from contemporary members of various communities—Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans and Arab Americans—either in written form or in documentaries such as Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s America Beyond the Color Line or PBS’s Caught in the Cross-Fire. This theoretical approach will allow us to discuss and analyze our personal experiences of racial and ethnic awareness and the issues of communicating such experiences to others.300-002 The Black Bourgeois Three hours
(TR 12:30-1:45) Professor Coquet Mokoko
The emergence of an African American middle class occurred in spite of the ideology of the slavery system, which posited the inability of Black people to provide for their families’ needs. The free Black communities of the antebellum South already demonstrated a unique form of class consciousness, entailing a variety of cultural codes and social patterns designed to ensure the perpetuation of the group and its values.
Together, we shall discuss the evolution of these values and behavioural patterns to grasp the complex nature of the African American elite and its varying commitment to improving the conditions of the less well-off in the community. What roles did such institutions as churches, social clubs or HBCUs play? How did migrations between southern and northern or western states, the rise of African American Islam, and the recent representation of successful Black families or individuals in the mass media contribute in the transformation of African American middle class patterns? Fieldwork in your communities and analyses of family histories will provide us with rich material for talks in class, along with critical approaches to scholarly texts.345-001 WW II: The “Good War” Three hours
(TR 11:00-12:15) Professor Rich Megraw
In the popular memory, then and since, it is, say many, the defining moment of the twentieth century, perhaps all the American experience. Between 1941 and 1945, the American people waged global war, an undertaking of unprecedented scale and urgency. After Pearl Harbor, the national will stiffened and at least for the duration, Americans forgot their differences, rallied to the cause, and in their suffering and sacrifice saved the world. This was not just a necessary war; it was a good war fought against a palpable evil, one that reduced the world to rival spheres of right and wrong and justified any means for the only acceptable end: victory. Virtue abroad, cohesion at home, and prosperity in the marketplace, the war united all three in a way previous Americans had only dreamed about and never achieved. Small wonder, then, that over the years since 1945, in a world less simple and a society more divided, that the memory of World War II has hardened into myth, a golden moment of rectitude, shared sacrifice, and uncomplicated moral triumph. This course is very much about that moment and the myth it established. It is not a military history of the Second World War, replete with situation maps, and production figures, and casualty reports. It is instead a topical examination of the American experience at home and abroad during this pivotal moment in the history of this society and the world.364-001 The Beatles Era Three Hours
(WF 2:00-3:15) Professor James Salem
An interdisciplinary investigation of American culture from the Kennedy assassination in 1963 to the Kent State University massacre in 1970, using the popular cultural explosion of the Beatles as a prism which informs the whole. Reading includes works by James Baldwin, Truman Capote, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Primary consideration is given to the Beatles’ early singles, along with their contributions to the development of the LP: Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper, and Abbey Road.486-001 American Experience II Three hours
(TR 2:00-3:15) Professor Michael Innis-Jimenez
This is a lecture/discussion class designed to give students an overall view of the transitions in American cultural, social, and intellectual history over the past 150 years. It will focus on major themes and transformations of society including the transition from agriculturally too industrially to service and information based society; the rise of urbanization; changing ethnicity, and rise of the consumer culture. In all topics, questions of race, gender, and ethnicity will be carefully considered. We will also consistently ask questions such as which social groups hold what kind of power, and how each group's ideas, values, behavior, and purposes permeates our culture and society.491-001 SEMINAR: Asian/American Worlds Three hours
(M 2:00-4:30) Professor Edward Tang
This seminar examines two interrelated developments that began in earnest during the nineteenth century: American overseas expansion in the Pacific, and Asian immigration into the United States. During the 1890s, the United States acquired colonial possessions in the Pacific theater (Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, Wake Island), viewing this expansion as an extension of Manifest Destiny. Since then, the United States sought to exercise its influence in Asia, fighting wars with Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. On the other hand, Asian immigration to the U.S., which started in the 1840s, endured cycles of bust (with legislative restrictions) and boom (with Asians now one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the U.S.). This course focuses not so much on the intricacies of international relations or immigration policies, but on the attitudes, beliefs, and debates about them as manifested in American popular culture. Thus through an interdisciplinary analysis of history, literature, film, photography, and other cultural artifacts, the class will explore the dynamics of how Americans imagined Asians (both abroad and within U.S. borders), and how Asians and Asian Americans responded in kind.Graduate Courses
531-001 Studies in Popular Culture Three Hours
(WF 2:00-3:15) Professor James Salem
An interdisciplinary investigation of American culture from the Kennedy assassination in 1963 to the Kent State University massacre in 1970, using the popular cultural explosion of the Beatles as a prism which informs the whole. Reading includes works by James Baldwin, Truman Capote, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Primary consideration is given to the Beatles’ early singles, along with their contributions to the development of the LP: Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper, and Abbey Road.536-001 Studies in Social Experience Three hours
(TR 11:00-12:15) Professor Rich Megraw
In the popular memory, then and since, it is, say many, the defining moment of the twentieth century, perhaps all the American experience. Between 1941 and 1945, the American people waged global war, an undertaking of unprecedented scale and urgency. After Pearl Harbor, the national will stiffened and at least for the duration, Americans forgot their differences, rallied to the cause, and in their suffering and sacrifice saved the world. This was not just a necessary war; it was a good war fought against a palpable evil, one that reduced the world to rival spheres of right and wrong and justified any means for the only acceptable end: victory. Virtue abroad, cohesion at home, and prosperity in the marketplace, the war united all three in a way previous Americans had only dreamed about and never achieved. Small wonder, then, that over the years since 1945, in a world less simple and a society more divided, that the memory of World War II has hardened into myth, a golden moment of rectitude, shared sacrifice, and uncomplicated moral triumph. This course is very much about that moment and the myth it established. It is not a military history of the Second World War, replete with situation maps, and production figures, and casualty reports. It is instead a topical examination of the American experience at home and abroad during this pivotal moment in the history of this society and the world.537-001 Studies in the West Three hours
(TR 9:30-10:45) Professor Rich Megraw
This lecture/discussion course examines the growth of the American West during the 20th century as both the embodiment of modernity and, as mythic imagination, an escape from the very modernity it represents.
538-001 Studies in African America Three hours
(TR 12:30-1:45) Professor Coquet Mokoko
The emergence of an African American middle class occurred in spite of the ideology of the slavery system, which posited the inability of Black people to provide for their families’ needs. The free Black communities of the antebellum South already demonstrated a unique form of class consciousness, entailing a variety of cultural codes and social patterns designed to ensure the perpetuation of the group and its values.
Together, we shall discuss the evolution of these values and behavioural patterns to grasp the complex nature of the African American elite and its varying commitment to improving the conditions of the less well-off in the community. What roles did such institutions as churches, social clubs or HBCUs play? How did migrations between southern and northern or western states, the rise of African American Islam, and the recent representation of successful Black families or individuals in the mass media contribute in the transformation of African American middle class patterns? Fieldwork in your communities and analyses of family histories will provide us with rich material for talks in class, along with critical approaches to scholarly texts.586-001 American Experience II Three hours
(TR 2:00-3:15) (R 3:30-4:45) Professor Michael Innis-Jimenez
This is a lecture/discussion class designed to give students an overall view of the transitions in American cultural, social, and intellectual history over the past 150 years. It will focus on major themes and transformations of society including the transition from agriculturally too industrially to service and information based society; the rise of urbanization; changing ethnicity, and rise of the consumer culture. In all topics, questions of race, gender, and ethnicity will be carefully considered. We will also consistently ask questions such as which social groups hold what kind of power, and how each group's ideas, values, behavior, and purposes permeates our culture and society.589 Teaching American Studies Three hours
MWF 11:00-11:50 Prof. Lynne Adrian
Prerequisite: consent of the department. A study of basic approaches to interdisciplinary teaching in American culture at the college level, along with supervised teaching experience.
591-001 SEMINAR: Asian/American Worlds Three hours
(M 2:00-4:30) Professor Edward Tang
This seminar examines two interrelated developments that began in earnest during the nineteenth century: American overseas expansion in the Pacific, and Asian immigration into the United States. During the 1890s, the United States acquired colonial possessions in the Pacific theater (Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, Wake Island), viewing this expansion as an extension of Manifest Destiny. Since then, the United States sought to exercise its influence in Asia, fighting wars with Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. On the other hand, Asian immigration to the U.S., which started in the 1840s, endured cycles of bust (with legislative restrictions) and boom (with Asians now one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the U.S.). This course focuses not so much on the intricacies of international relations or immigration policies, but on the attitudes, beliefs, and debates about them as manifested in American popular culture. Thus through an interdisciplinary analysis of history, literature, film, photography, and other cultural artifacts, the class will explore the dynamics of how Americans imagined Asians (both abroad and within U.S. borders), and how Asians and Asian Americans responded in kind.596 AMS Colloquium II Two hours
T 3:30-4:45 Prof. Rich Megraw/ Ed Tamg
Discussions of methodological and theoretical issues in American Studies. Students must be concurrently enrolled in AMS 586.
597 Topics in American Cultural Analysis: One hour
M 2:00-3:15 Prof. Lynne Adrian
Coordinating course required of MA candidates in their last semester.
598 Non-Thesis Research One to Three hours
(MWF 11:00-11:50)
(Pass/Fail.)AMS 150 Arts and Values Three hours
( MWF 10:00-10:50) Professor Lynne Adrian & Team
An exploration of the relation between the arts--popular, folk, and elite--and American culture in four selected periods: Victorian America, The Twenties and Thirties, World War II and the Postwar Era, and The Sixties. Class presentations and discussions revolve around novels, movies, slides, music, artifacts, and readings about the periods. (This course is team-taught by all the members of the American Studies faculty.)
AMS 101 Art, Film, & Globalization Three hours
( MWF 12:00-12:50) Instructor Elliott Knight
101-001 Meets 08/20/2008 thru 09/26/2008
101-002 Meets 09/29/2008 thru 10/31/2008
This course will explore the societal exchanges that are taking place in societies that are more connected with the rest of the world than ever before. Creative works of art, music and film will be used to explore issues of globalization from various viewpoints. We will explore works that are possible because of the global integration of contemporary society as well as art that critiques or seeks to offer alternatives to our current systems. The course will be broken down into three units, each focusing on a different medium of creative expression. As part of the visual art unit, we will look at ways potters and other artisans from underdeveloped areas of the world are changing the crafts they produce under gloablized market pressures. We will also explore how graffiti artists around the world are responding to the political and social issues of our times through their street art. The music portion of the course will focus on the emergence of bands such as DeVotchKa, Gogol Bordello and M.I.A. who blend music from around the world for American ears. We will also look at how some musicians and bands such as The Flaming Lips and Michael Franti are using their music as a platform to critique contemporary political and social policies. The film section will feature David Byrne's True Stories and Godfrey Reggio's Quatsi trilogy to explore different ways filmmakers have responded to the contemporary structure of society.
AMS 200 Special Topics: Latino/a Lives Three hours
(MWF 9:00-9:50) Professor Michael Innis-Jimenez
An examination of the lives of the wide variety of individuals who constitute various Latino communities in the United States, both in the past and in the present. Using autobiographies, novels and films, we will learn about both America’s fastest growing population and broaden our understanding of American culture as a whole.
AMS 201 Intro to African American Studies Three hours
(TR 11:00-12:15) Professor DoVeanna Fulton
American Studies/African American Studies 201 provides a basic outline of the diversity and complexity of the African American experience in the United States. Using African American socio-cultural history as our point of departure, we will undertake a chronological examination of what we have come to recognize as the discipline of African American Studies. Attention to literature, essays, history, popular culture (music, television, magazines, newspapers, movies, film documentaries), and politics will allow us to explore and interrogate critical discourses shaping and shaped by African American life and culture .
AMS 204 Western American Lives (HU) Three hours
001- (MWF 11:00-11:50) Mr. Larry Fagen
002- (MWF 1:00-1:50)
Few subjects in all the American experience loom so large, carry such weight, or provoke the kind of passion that this one does. Fewer still embrace the totality or the complexity of America as idea and experience on anything like its scale. Throughout the term, we’ll examine several key western lives, some real, others imagined, and some that are a little of each, as a way of confronting such crucial themes and concepts as “westering,” “frontier,” “pioneer,” “conquest,” “progress,” “success,” “individualism,” “equality,” and “democracy,” among others.AMS 205 Working Lives Three hours
001- (TR 11:00-12:15) Mr. Larry Fagen
002- (TR 2:00-3:15)
Work is one of the aspects that most shapes individual lives. Who we are (and what we believe about our life) helps to shape what work an individual chooses. The work then further shapes who the individual becomes. This course will use a variety of autobiographies, oral histories, fictional and non- fictional sources to explore these questions. We will use written narratives, music, and films to consider the role of work in individual lives—both on and off “the job.”
AMS 231 Contemporary America Three hours
(TR 9:30-10:45) Professor Stacy Morgan
This course analyzes the changing nature of American values for the period dating from the early 1970s to the present. We will do this by examining key developments in the everyday life patterns and cultural expressions of Americans in contexts that range from the local to the international. By placing materials drawn from literature, film, the visual arts, music, and popular culture within broader social & historical contexts, we will explore the values affirmed and/or challenged by these works. This course also will serve as an introduction to the interdisciplinary research methods used in the field of American Studies.
300-001 Special Topics: Latino/a Experience Three Hours
(MWF 12:00-12:50) Professor Michael Innis-Jimenez
Using a wide variety of sources we will explore the Latino experience in the United States from 1898 to the present. Our sources will include historical accounts of a variety of Latino communities from those who have lived in the United States for generations to the most recent immigrants from a variety of Latin American and Caribbean nations, novels, songs, and films.330-001 America Between the Wars Three Hours
(TR 9:30-10:45) Professor Rich Megraw
This course explores the first two decades of America’s “Modern Times.” Adjusting to modernity required Americans to square old values with new departures, something that makes this period more than merely two decades linked by the calendar and the Stock Market Crash. Top to bottom, between 1919 and 1941, Americans redefined themselves and their society, embracing and debating (sometimes hotly) old beliefs, new conceptions, and the implications of a machine-driven modern mass society. The course is intended to focus of many points of that debate, especially as they are reflected in such crucial areas as popular culture and the visual arts.
485-001 American Experience 1620-1865 Three hours
(TR 2:00-3:15) Professor Edward Tang
This advanced-level survey addresses certain specific themes and issues that occurred within American culture from about 1500 to 1865. The period begins with conceiving new worlds, in which European, African, and Native American populations engaged and influenced one another in profound and sometimes unexpected ways. Through primary sources like travel narratives, autobiographies, paintings, fiction, and music, we will also explore the following topics: the emergence of colonial societies; the creation of a revolution; nineteenth-century manners, communities, and institutions; and the cultural politics behind slavery and the Civil War.
491-001 Seminar: The West in Our Eyes Three Hours
(W 2:00- 4:30) Professor Rich Megraw
Since its creation toward the close of the 19th century, the western has been the most popular genre in American film history. Critics generally designate a western, “The Great Train Robbery,” (1903) as the first American “film.” Its star, Bronco Billy Anderson, together with such other early western heroes as William S. Hart and Tom Mix, number among the first generation of American movie stars. Other, more recognizable names appearing in westerns ever since include Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Alan Ladd, and Gregory Peck. Many of the country’s most influential directors have worked within the genre, including D.W, Griffith, Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, George Stevens, Sam Peckinpaugh, Anthony Mann, and Clint Eastwood. Then there is John Ford, arguably the most influential American film maker of the 20th century, whose credits include such “classic” titles as "Stagecoach"(1939), "Fort Apache" (1948), "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949), "Rio Grande" (1950), "The Searchers" (1956), and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962). Ford’s leading man on each of those occasions and several others was John Wayne, more than a quarter century after his death, still among the country’s favorite film stars and a man whose on-screen persona remains linked with the mid-twentieth century definition of “Americanism.”
Suffice to say that over the years no popular genre has generated anything like the kind of sustained attention, enthusiasm, interest, passion, anger, or debate as the American western. Which is the focus of the course: a chronological treatment of the on-going relationship between the western film and the meaning of modern America.532 Studies in Art Three hours
(TR 12:30-1:45) Professor Stacy Morgan
This course will examine ways in which African American art has alternately reflected, shaped, and challenged such important historical events and currents as the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the Civil Rights & Black Power movements, and postmodern identity politics. Equally important, the course will evaluate the contributions of selected artists in relation to such key art movements as modernism, social realism, abstract expressionism, and performance art.
535 Studies in Ethnicity Three Hours
(MWF 12:00-12:50) Professor Michael Innis-Jimenez
Using a wide variety of sources we will explore the Latino experience in the United States from 1898 to the present. Our sources will include historical accounts of a variety of Latino communities from those who have lived in the United States for generations to the most recent immigrants from a variety of Latin American and Caribbean nations, novels, songs, and films.
536 Studies in Social Experience Three Hours
(TR 9:30-10:45) Professor Rich Megraw
This course explores the first two decades of America’s “Modern Times.” Adjusting to modernity required Americans to square old values with new departures, something that makes this period more than merely two decades linked by the calendar and the Stock Market Crash. Top to bottom, between 1919 and 1941, Americans redefined themselves and their society, embracing and debating (sometimes hotly) old beliefs, new conceptions, and the implications of a machine-driven modern mass society. The course is intended to focus of many points of that debate, especially as they are reflected in such crucial areas as popular culture and the visual arts.
585 American Experience 1620-1865 Four Hours
(TR 2:00-3:15 & R 3:30- 4:30) Professor Edward Tang
An exploration of the formative years of the American cultural experience, from early European encounters with the New World to the attainment of continental nationhood. The course will draw upon insights from many disciplines and will include several kinds of cultural evidence (for example: literature, art, and photography; religious, political, and social thought and behavior; economic, technological, and geographical development) as well as consideration of recent major synthetic works of cultural scholarship. Topics covered include: the growth of colonial societies; the Revolutionary movement and the political foundations of the American Republic; the Market Revolution and the rise of middle class culture; the Ante-bellum South and the emerging West; and the origins and evolution of American cultural diversity.
588 Teaching Internship One Hour
(MWF 11:00-11:50) Professor Lynne Adrian
Required of all American Studies graduate teaching assistants in AMS 150. Includes administrative techniques and test construction.
591 Seminar: Contemporary America Three Hours
(M 2:00-4:30) Professor Stacy Morgan
This seminar will analyze the changing nature of American cultural values for the period dating from the late 1960s to the present. Making use of studies that examine consumer culture, the workplace, economies of pleasure, cyberspace, television, film, music, and the arts, we will examine key developments in the everyday life patterns and cultural expressions of Americans in contexts that range from the local to the international. In so doing, the seminar will expose students to a sampling of the range of interdisciplinary methodologies applicable to work in the field of American Studies.
595 Colloquium: Research and Methods Two Hours
(T 3:30-4:45) Professor Rich Megraw
Discussions of methodological and theoretical issues in American Studies. Students must be concurrently enrolled in AMS 585.
597 Topics in American Culture Analysis One Hour
(MWF 11:00-12:00) STAFF
Coordinating course required of MA candidates in their last semester.
598 Non-Thesis Research One-Three Hours
(MWF 1:00) STAFF
Pass/Fail
NOTE: Unless otherwise specified, all courses earn three hours credit
Interim/Summer 2006
INTERIM 2006 SCHEDULE OF AMERICAN STUDIES CLASSES
Class Days Time Room Instructor
300 U.S. South on Film MTWRF 9:00-12:00 TH102
531 Studies in Popular Culture
(See Entry for 364)
534 Studies in the South
(See Entry for 300)
536 Studies in Social Experience
(See Entry for 367)
SUMMER 2006 SCHEDULE OF AMERICAN STUDIES CLASSES
Class Days Time Room Instructor
First Half of Term
300 Hollywood's West MTR 1:00-3:50 TH103 Megraw400 Internship TBA
405 Directed Study TBA Staff
500 Internship TBA Staff
505 Directed Study TBA Staff
536 Studies in Social Experience
(See Entry for 330)
Second Half of Term
300 History of Rock 'n' Roll MTWRF 10:00-11:45 TH103 Salem
400 Internship TBA Staff
406 Directed Study TBA Staff
491 Seminar in the 1950s MTR 1:00-3:50 TBA Salem500 Internship TBA Staff
506 Directed Study TBA Staff
591 Seminar in the 1950s MTR 1:00-3:50 TH 102 Salem
597 Topics Amer Cult Analysis TBA Salem
598 Non-Thesis Research TBA StaffNOTE: Unless otherwise specified, all courses earn three hours credit
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