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American Studies

Faculty

The American Studies Program is designed to provide students with a broad, yet deep, education about the United States. To ensure breadth, students are required to take an interdisciplinary core course that ranges widely both with respect to the themes covered and disciplinary perspectives applied. As well, the Program offers a wide selection of courses from participating departments and programs in the Faculty, giving students broad exposure to fundamental themes of American life. To ensure depth, the American Studies Program relies heavily on upper level courses, including its own capstone seminars at the 400-level.

American Studies Programs

Enrolment in this program requires the completion of 4.0 courses.

6.5 full courses or equivalent (FCEs), specified as follows:

1. Students must take one of the 200-level gateway survey courses in American Studies, English, History, Geography, or Political Science indicated below.

2. Students must take USA300H1

3. Students must take at least .5 courses in American Studies at the 400+ level.

4. The Faculty of Arts & Science requires American Studies majors to complete at least 0.5 FCE in Arts & science courses in Breadth Requirement Category 5: The Physical and Mathematical Universes.

5. Overall, students must take 1.0 FCEs in at least three disciplines (and American Studies can be one of them).

6. At least 2.0 of the student’s 6.5 courses must be at the 300+ level or above.

First year:

Students are encouraged to take any pre-requisites for the 200-level courses, and/or enrol directly in USA200H1 as a first year student. Of the required second-year disciplinary survey courses only one, POL203Y1, has a pre-requisite; students interested in politics, therefore, should take one full POL course, a pre-req for POL203Y1. Other recommended courses at the first year level include: HIS106Y1 Natives, Settlers and Slaves: Colonizing the Americas, 1492-1804.

Second year:
USA200H1 Introduction to American Studies (recommended)
HIS271Y1 History of the United States since 1607 (or)
ENG250Y1 American Literature (or)
GGR240H1/GGR254H1 Historical Geography of North America/Geography USA (or)
POL203Y1 U.S. Government and Politics

Third year and Fourth Year: USA300H1 plus at least 1.0 300+ or above series courses from the list below, as well as .5 courses in American Studies at the 400+ level.

Enrolment in this program requires the completion of 4.0 courses.

(4 full courses or their equivalent, including at least one 300+ series course in at least two disciplines)

Second year:
1. HIS271Y1 or ENG250Y1 or POL203Y1 or GGR240H1/GGR254H1
Third year:
2. USA300H1
Second, third, or fourth year:
3. 2.5 courses from the following: ABS302H1, ABS341H1; ANT357H1, ANT365H1; DRM310H1; ECO423H1; ENG250Y1, ENG254Y1, ENG268H1, ENG275Y1, ENG360H1, ENG363Y1, ENG364Y1, ENG365H1, ENG368H1, ENG434H1/ENG435H1/ENG436Y1/ENG437Y1, ENG438H1/ENG439Y1; FAH375H1; GGR240H1, GGR254H1, GGR336H1, GGR339H1; HIS106Y1, HIS202H1, HIS271Y1, HIS300H1, HIS310H1, HIS316H1, HIS343Y1, HIS365H1, HIS366H1, HIS369H1, HIS370H1, HIS372H1, HIS374H1, HIS375H1, HIS376H1, HIS377H1, HIS378H1, HIS389H1, HIS393H1, HIS400H1, HIS401H1, HIS404H1, HIS408Y1, HIS436H1, HIS447H1, HIS463H1, HIS471H1, HIS473Y1, HIS475H1, HIS476H1, HIS478H1, HIS479H1, HIS484H1, HIS487H1; INI225Y1, INI322Y1, INI324Y1, INI383H1, INI397H1, INI467H1, INI482Y1, INI483H1, INI484H1; MUS306H1; POL203Y1, POL326Y1, POL420Y1, POL433H1; RLG315H1, RLG442H1; USA200H1, USA310H1, USA311H1, USA312H1, USA313H1, USA400H1, USA401H1, USA402H1, USA403H1, USA494H1, USA495Y1: VIC130H1, VIC132H1

NOTE: Other 300+ series courses with American content may be allowed; students should seek early approval of program credit for such courses.

Courses eligible for program credit include those appearing below. Please note that some of these courses have pre-requisites; in all cases, and for updates on courses being offered, check individual department/program websites. Other 300+ series courses with American content may be allowed; students should seek early approval of program credit for such courses.
  
American Studies
USA200H1 Introduction to American Studies
USA300H1 Theories and Methods in American Studies (req.)
USA310H1 Approaches to American Studies
USA311H1 Approaches to American Studies
USA312H1 Approaches to American Studies
USA313H1 Approaches to American Studies
USA400H1 Topics in American Studies
USA401H1 Topics in American Studies
USA402H1 Topics in American Studies
USA403H1 Topics in American Studies
USA494H1 Independent Studies
USA495Y1 Independent Studies

Aboriginal Studies
ABS302H1 Aboriginal Representation in the Mass Media and Society
ABS341H1 North American Indigenous Theatre

Anthropology 
ANT357H1 Cultures of U.S. Empire
ANT365H1 Native America and the State

Cinema Studies
INI225Y1 American Popular Film Since 1970
INI322Y1 Avant-Garde and Experimental Film
INI324Y1 American Filmmaking in the Studio Era
INI383H1 The Origins of the Animation Industry, 1900-1950: A Technosocial History
INI482Y1/INI483H1/INI484H1 Advanced Studies in Cinema (depending on topic)

Drama
DRM310H1 Contemporary American Drama

Economics
ECO423H1S Topics in North American Economic History

English
ENG250Y1 American Literature

ENG254Y1 Indigenous Literatures of North America 

ENG268H1 Asian North American Literature
ENG275Y1 Jewish Literature in English
ENG360H1 Early American Literature
ENG363Y1 Nineteenth-Century American Literature
ENG364Y1 Twentieth-Century American Literature
ENG365H1 Contemporary American Fiction
ENG368H1 Asian North American Poetry and Prose
ENG434H1/ENG435H1/ENG436Y1/ENG437Y1 Advanced Studies: American and Transnational Literatures 
ENG438H1/ENG439Y1 Advanced Studies Seminar: American and Transnational Literatures

Fine Art History
FAH375H1 American Architecture: A Survey

Geography

GGR240H1 Historical Geography of North America

GGR254H1 Geography USA

GGR336H1 Urban Historical Geography of North America

GGR339H1 Urban Geography, Planning and Political Processes

History

HIS106Y1 Natives, Settlers and Slaves: Colonizing the Americas, 1492-1804

HIS202H1 Gender, Race and Science

HIS271Y1 American History Since 1607
HIS300H1 Energy Cultures in North American History

HIS310H1 Histories of North American Consumer Culture
HIS316H1 History of Advertising
HIS343Y1 History of Modern Espionage
HIS365H1 History of the Great Lakes Region
HIS366H1 Aboriginal Peoples of the Great Lakes from 1815 to the Present
HIS369H1 Aboriginal Peoples of the Great Lakes from 1500
HIS370H1 The Black Experience in the United States Since the Civil War
HIS372H1 United States & Great Depression
HIS374H1 American Consumerism - The Beginnings

HIS375H1 Politics and Protest in Postwar North America
HIS376H1 The United States: Now – and Then
HIS377H1 20th-Century American Foreign Relations
HIS378H1 America in the 1960s
HIS389H1 Topics in History (depending on topic)
HIS393H1 Slavery and the American South

USA400H1 The American War in Vietnam
HIS401H1 History of the Cold War
HIS404H1 Topics in North American Environmental History
HIS408Y1 History of Race Relations in America
HIS436H1 Culture and the Cold War
HIS447H1 Sex, Money, and American Empire

HIS436H1 Cloth in American History to 1865
HIS471H1 United States and Globalization
HIS473Y1 The United States and Asia in the Cold War Era
HIS475H1 Race, Segregation, and Protest: South Africa and the United States
HIS476H1 Voices from Black America
HIS478H1 Hellhound on my Trail: Living the Blues in the Mississippi Delta, 1890-1945
HIS479H1 American Foreign Policy Since World War II
HIS484H1 The Car in North American History
HIS487H1 Animal and Human Rights in the Anglo-American Culture

Music
MUS306H1 Popular Music in North America

Political Science

POL203Y1 U.S. Government and Politics

POL326Y1 United States Foreign Policy
POL349H1S Globalization and Urban Politics
POL420Y1 Elements of United States Foreign Policy
POL433H1 Topics in United States Government and Politics

Religion
RLG315H1 Rites of Passage
RLG442H1 North American Religions

Victoria College
VIC132H1 The USA in the Cold War
VIC130H1 Movies, Madness and the Modern Condition

American Studies Courses

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.

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.  

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.

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.

Prerequisite: At least two courses from the American Studies list or USA300H1
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities or Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

USA311H1 Approaches to American Studies [24L]

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.

Prerequisite: At least two courses from the American Studies list or USA300H1
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities or Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

USA312H1 Approaches to American Studies [24L]

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.

Prerequisite: At least two courses from the American Studies list or USA300H1
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities or Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

USA313H1 Approaches to American Studies [24L]

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.

Prerequisite: At least two courses from the American Studies list or USA300H1
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities or Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

USA400H1    Topics in American Studies [24S]

In-depth examination of specific themes relating to American Studies.

In-depth examination of specific themes relating to American Studies.

Prerequisite: At least two courses from the American Studies list
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities or Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

USA402H1    Topics in American Studies [24S]

In-depth examination of specific themes relating to American Studies.

Prerequisite: At least two courses from the American Studies list
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities or Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

USA403H1    Topics in American Studies [24S]

In-depth examination of specific themes relating to American Studies.

Prerequisite: At least two courses from the American Studies list
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities or Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: None

USA494H1    Independent Studies

Independent Studies

Independent Studies