American Studies Courses |
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First Year Seminars The 199Y1 and 199H1 seminars are designed to provide the opportunity to work closely with an instructor in a class of no more than twenty-four students. These interactive seminars are intended to stimulate the students’ curiosity and provide an opportunity to get to know a member of the professorial staff in a seminar environment during the first year of study. Details here. USA200H1 An interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the United States and to the field of American Studies. Drawing from a variety of source materials ranging from political and literary to visual culture and material artifacts, this course examines the politics, history and culture of the U.S. A major emphasis will be learning to analyze primary sources. USA300H1 This course, required for majors and minors but open to all who have met the pre-req, explores a range of approaches to the field of American Studies. The course is organized around the decade of THE 1920s, a period of tremendous social, political, and economic change as the U.S. emerged from WWI as a global industrial power and Americans debated competing ideas about the meanings of modernity. The course looks at THE 1920s through a series of thematic weeks, drawing from interdisciplinary primary and secondary sources, such as black migration and urban modernities; gender, sexuality, and global beauty culture; immigration policy and racial formation; modernism in the visual arts; Prohibition and gangsters; market empires and global commodity chains. Students will be introduced to some of the many ‘theories and methods’ that have animated the field of American Studies, including historical methods; formal analysis of visual and literary texts; commodity chain analysis; ‘race,’ ‘commodity,’ ‘gender,’ ‘diaspora’ and ‘affect.’ USA310H1 Topic for SprING 2011: Technology and American LifeThis course examines the place of technology in American culture from the 18th-century to the present, with a particular focus on the entanglement of commerce (money; markets; manufacturing; industry) with ‘life itself’ (humans; animals; plants and microbes). What counts as an American life? How have different kinds of life been granted different kinds of value, both historically but also by scholars in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies? How has technology figured in the production, management, taking and (more recently) banking of American life? And how has American life (in all its varied forms and scales) shaped the history of technology? Readings pair recent scholarship with literary and theoretical texts. Key sites of study range from slave pens, iron mills, farms, factories, hospitals and prisons to nuclear test sites, ‘dead’ malls, toxic ghost towns and organ banks. USA400H1 Topic for fALL 2010: Taking Shots at the Man: Assassination and the American PresidencyThis interdisciplinary seminar focuses on political violence directed at the U.S. President from the Civil War to the War on Terror. At key historical moments of national crisis, the office of the Presidency has repeatedly become a target of assassination. While much can be learned by investigating the grievances articulated by assassins, interpretations of their explanations shifted considerably as their acts reverberated through American culture. Public debates surrounding these acts of violence have been framed by historically-specific notions of race, class, gender, and mental fitness. In this class we will cover several assassination attempts fROM 1865-2001 through interwoven themes of power and memory. As a capstone course, students will be required to pursue original research on a topic of their choice, and write a 25 page research paper. USA401H1 In depth examination of specific themes relating to American Studies. USA494H1 DR=HUM/SOC SCI; BR=TBA USA495Y1 DR=HUM/SOC SCI; BR=TBA |