AMSTUD 1B:
Media, Culture, and Society (COMM 1B)
The institutions and practices of mass media, including television, film, radio, and digital media, and their role in shaping culture and social life. The media's shifting relationships to politics, commerce, and identity.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 2:
Introduction to American National Government and Politics (POLISCI 2)
The role and importance of the ideal of democracy in the evolution of the American political system. American political institutions (the Presidency, Congress, and the Court) and political processes (the formation of political attitudes and voting) are examined against the backdrop of American culture and political history. The major areas of public policy in the current practice of the ideal of democracy.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 50N:
The Literature of Inequality: Have and Have-Nots from the Gilded Age to the Occupy Era (ENGLISH 50N)
Not since the turn of the last century have Americans experienced such a profound gap between those who have and those who do not, between wealthy and working poor, between defacto upper and lower classes, between those of the status quo and those who slip to the social periphery. We will be examining literary and artistic explorations of social and economic inequity, fiction and art that looks at reversals of fortune as well as the possibilities for social change. Readings include Jacob Riis¿ How the Other Half Lives, W.E.B. Du Bois¿ The Souls of Black Folk, Edith Wharton¿s House of Mirth , James Agee & Walker Evans¿ Let Us Not Forget Famous Men , T.C. Boyle¿s The Tortilla Curtain, Julie Otsuka¿s When the Emperor Was Divine and Occupy Movement art.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul
AMSTUD 51N:
Comparative Fictions of Ethnicity (COMPLIT 51N, CSRE 51N)
We may "know" "who" we "are," but we are, after all, social creatures. How does our sense of self interact with those around us? How does literature provide a particular medium for not only self expression, but also for meditations on what goes into the construction of "the Self"? After all, don't we tell stories in response to the question, "who are you"? Besides a list of nouns and names and attributes, we give our lives flesh and blood in telling how we process the world. Our course focuses in particular on this question--Does this universal issue ("who am I") become skewed differently when we add a qualifier before it, like "ethnic"? Satisfies PWR2.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 2
AMSTUD 68N:
Mark Twain and American Culture (ENGLISH 68N)
Preference to freshmen. Mark Twain has been called our Rabelais, our Cervantes, our Homer, our Tolstoy, our Shakespeare. Ernest Hemingway maintained that all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. President Franklin D.nnRoosevelt got the phrase New Deal from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Class discussions will focus on how Twain's work illuminates and complicates his society's responses to such issues as race, technology, heredity versus environment, religion, education, and what it means to be American.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 101:
American Fiction into Film: How Hollywood Scripts and Projects Black and White Relations
Movies and the fiction that inspires them; power dynamics behind production including historical events, artistic vision, politics, and racial stereotypes. What images of black and white does Hollywood produce to forge a national identity? How do films promote equality between the races? What is lost or gained in film adaptations of books?
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 105Q:
Law and Popular Culture
This seminar focuses on the interface between two important subjects: law and popular culture. Before class, students will see a series of films or television shows relating to law, lawyers, and the legal system. There is also a weekly homework assignment based on materials in the assigned text and the assigned film or TV show. We will discuss the pop culture treatment of subjects such as the adversary system, good and bad lawyers, female and gay lawyers, the work life of lawyers, legal education, ethical issues, the jury system, and criminal and civil justice. The seminar discussions will draw on film theory and film-making technique to deepen understanding of the interrelationship between law and popular culture. The discussions will illuminate the ways in which pop culture products both reflect and change social views about law and lawyers. The assigned text is Michael Asimow & Shannon Mader, "Law and Popular Culture: A Course Book" (Peter Lang 2004).
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
AMSTUD 107:
Introduction to Feminist Studies (ANTHRO 142A, CSRE 108, FEMST 101)
Introduction to interdisciplinary feminist scholarship, which seeks to understand the creation, perpetuation, and critiques of gender inequalities. Topics include the historical emergence of feminist politics and contemporary analyses of work and family, health and sexuality, creativity, and politics. Close attention to the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality and to international, as well as U.S., perspectives. Students learn to think critically about gender in the past, present, and future.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 114N:
Visions of the 1960s
Preference to sophomores. Introduction to the ideas, sensibility, and, to a lesser degree, the politics of the American 60s. Topics: the early 60s vision of a beloved community; varieties of racial, generational, and feminist dissent; the meaning of the counterculture; and current interpretive perspectives on the 60s. Film, music, and articles and books.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 116:
American Economic History (ECON 116)
The American economy from colonial times to the present, illustrating the role of history in economic life. Topics: U.S. economic development in global and comparative context; slavery as an economic system; origins and consequences of the American technology and business organization; economics of the Great Depression and New Deal; post-World War II economic performance and social change. Prerequisite: 1A.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 120:
Digital Media in Society (COMM 120W, COMM 220)
(Graduate students register for 220.) Contemporary debates concerning the social and cultural impact of digital media. Topics include the historical origins of digital media, cultural contexts of their development and use, and influence of digital media on conceptions of self, community, and state. Priority to Juniors and Seniors.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 121:
Masterpieces of American Literature
(English majors and others taking 5 units, register for 121.) A survey of some of the definitive texts of American writing, such as Leaves of Grass, Benito Cereno, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Waste Land, The Sun Also Rises, The Golden Apples, and The Crying of Lot 49.
Last offered: Spring 2011
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 121X:
Hip Hop, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language (AFRICAAM 121X, ANTHRO 121A, CSRE 121X, EDUC 121X, LINGUIST 155)
Focus is on issues of language, identity, and globalization, with a focus on Hip Hop cultures and the verbal virtuosity within the Hip Hop nation. Beginning with the U.S., a broad, comparative perspective in exploring youth identities and the politics of language in what is now a global Hip Hop movement. Readings draw from the interdisciplinary literature on Hip Hop cultures with a focus on sociolinguistics and youth culture.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-4
AMSTUD 123D:
American Literature, 1855 to World War I
A survey of American writers from Whitman to T.S. Eliot, including Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Kate Chopin, Theodore Dreiser, and Henry James. Topics include the tension between romance and realism, the impact of naturalism and modernism, as well as race, gender, and the literary evolution of the American language.
Last offered: Autumn 2010
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
AMSTUD 123G:
Mark Twain: A Fresh Look at an Icon and Iconoclast, 100 Years after His Death
The vitality and versatility of a writer who has been called America's Rabelais, Cervantes, Homer, Tolstoy, and Shakespeare. Journalism, travel books, fiction, drama, and sketches by Mark Twain; how Twain engaged such issues as personal and national identity, satire and social justice, imperialism, race and racism, gender, performance, travel, and technology. What are Twain's legacies in 2010, the centennial of his death, the 175th anniversary of his birth, and the 125th anniversary of his most celebrated novel? Guests include actor Hal Holbrook.
Last offered: Spring 2010
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul
AMSTUD 135:
Deliberative Democracy and its Critics (COMM 135, COMM 235, COMM 335, POLISCI 234P, POLISCI 334P)
This course examines the theory and practice of deliberative democracy and engages both in a dialogue with critics. Can a democracy which emphasizes people thinking and talking together on the basis of good information be made practical in the modern age? What kinds of distortions arise when people try to discuss politics or policy together? The course draws on ideas of deliberation from Madison and Mill to Rawls and Habermas as well as criticisms from the jury literature, from the psychology of group processes and from the most recent normative and empirical literature on deliberative forums. Deliberative Polling, its applications, defenders and critics, both normative and empirical, will provide a key case for discussion.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-ER, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 137:
The Dialogue of Democracy (COMM 137W, COMM 237, POLISCI 232T, POLISCI 332T)
All forms of democracy require some kind of communication so people can be aware of issues and make decisions. This course looks at competing visions of what democracy should be and different notions of the role of dialogue in a democracy. Is it just campaigning or does it include deliberation? Small scale discussions or sound bites on television? Or social media? What is the role of technology in changing our democratic practices, to mobilize, to persuade, to solve public problems? This course will include readings from political theory about democratic ideals - from the American founders to J.S. Mill and the Progressives to Joseph Schumpeter and modern writers skeptical of the public will. It will also include contemporary examinations of the media and the internet to see how those practices are changing and how the ideals can or cannot be realized.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-ER, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 139B:
American Women Writers, 1850-1920 (ENGLISH 139B)
The ways in which female writers negotiated a series of literary, social, and intellectual movements, from abolitionism and sentimentalism in the nineteenth century to Progressivism and avant-garde modernism in the twentieth. Authors include Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, Rebecca Harding Davis, Emily Dickinson, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, Willa Cather, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Last offered: Winter 2012
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 140:
Stand Up Comedy and the "Great American Joke" Since 1945
Development of American Stand Up Comedy in the context of social and cultural eruptions after 1945, including the Borscht Belt, the Chitlin¿ Circuit, the Cold War, censorship battles, Civil Rights and other social movements of the 60s and beyond. The artistry of stories, monologues, jokes, impersonations, persona, social satire, scatology, obscenity, riffs, rants, shtick, and more by such artists as Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Margaret Cho, Sarah Silverman, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, as well as precursors such as Mark Twain, minstrelsy and vaudeville and related films, TV shows, poems and other manifestations of similar sensibilities and techniques.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 142:
The Literature of the Americas (COMPLIT 142, CSRE 142, ENGLISH 172E)
A wide-ranging overview of the literatures of the Americas innncomparative perspective, emphasizing continuities and crises that are common to North American, Central American, and South American literatures as well as the distinctive national and cultural elements of a diverse array of primary works. Topics include the definitions of such concepts as empire and colonialism, the encounters between worldviews of European and indigenous peoples, the emergence of creole and racially mixed populations, slavery, the New World voice, myths of America as paradise or utopia, the coming of modernism, twentieth-century avant-gardes, and distinctive modern episodes--the Harlem Renaissance, the Beats, magic realism, Noigandres--in unaccustomed conversation with each other.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 143:
Introduction to African American Literature (AFRICAAM 43, ENGLISH 43, ENGLISH 143)
(English majors and others taking 5 units, register for 143.) African American literature from its earliest manifestations in the spirituals, trickster tales, and slave narratives to recent developments such as black feminist theory, postmodern fiction, and hip hop lyricism. We will engage some of the defining debates and phenomena within African American cultural history, including the status of realist aesthetics in black writing; the contested role of literature in black political struggle; the question of diaspora; the problem of intra-racial racism; and the emergence of black internationalism. Attuned to the invariably hybrid nature of this tradition, we will also devote attention to the discourse of the Enlightenment, modernist aesthetics, and the role of Marxism in black political and literary history.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 145M:
Culture Wars: Art and Social Conflict in the USA, 1890-1950 (ARTHIST 145, ARTHIST 345)
This course examines social conflicts and political controversies in American culture through the lens of visual art and photography. We consider how visual images both reflect and participate in the social and political life of the nation and how the terms of citizenship have been represented¿and, at times, contested¿by artists throughout the first half of the 20th century. The class explores the relation between American art and the body politic by focusing on issues of poverty, war, censorship, consumerism, class identity, and racial division.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 146:
Asian American Culture and Community (ASNAMST 146S, COMPLIT 146, CSRE 146S)
An examination of the history, art and culture of Vietnamese Americans, and their contemporary experiences in the South Bay. The course will combine in-class learning with a major conference featuring prominent artists and scholars on the Vietnamese Diasporic community. A service learning component requires community work at a service organization in San Jose. Service Learning Course (certified by Haas Center). Course can be repeated once.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
AMSTUD 15:
Global Flows: The Globalization of Hip Hop Art, Culture, and Politics
This course consists of film screenings, dialogues, and performances that examine and engage Hip Hop Cultures and artists from around the world. We will explore diverse scenes and artists, from the formation of new musical genres such as hiplife in Ghana, to the impact of the first Hip Hop concert in Morocco, to comparative investigations of race and citizenship in Japan, Cuba, Palestine, France, and the United States (including Black, Mexican and Arab-Americans).
| Units: 1-2
AMSTUD 150:
American Literature and Culture to 1855 (ENGLISH 123)
A survey of early American writings, including sermons, poetry, captivity and slave narratives, essays, autobiography, and fiction, from the colonial era to the eve of the Civil War.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 150A:
Colonial and Revolutionary America (HISTORY 150A)
(Same as HISTORY 50A. History majors and others taking 5 units, register for HISTORY 150A.) Survey of the origins of American society and polity in the 17th and 18th centuries. Topics: the migration of Europeans and Africans and the impact on native populations; the emergence of racial slavery and of regional, provincial, Protestant cultures; and the political origins and constitutional consequences of the American Revolution.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 150B:
19th-Century America (AFRICAAM 150B, HISTORY 150B)
(Same as HISTORY 50B. History majors and others taking 5 units, register for 150B.) Territorial expansion, social change, and economic transformation. The causes and consequences of the Civil War. Topics include: urbanization and the market revolution; slavery and the Old South; sectional conflict; successes and failures of Reconstruction; and late 19th-century society and culture.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 150C:
The United States in the Twentieth Century (HISTORY 150C)
(Same as HISTORY 50C. History majors and others taking 5 units, register for 150C.) Major political, economic, social, and diplomatic developments in the U.S. Themes: the economic and social role of government (Progressive, New Deal, Great Society, and Reagan-Bush eras); ethnic and racial minorities in society (mass immigration at the turn of the century and since 1965, the civil rights era of the 50s and 60s); the changing status of women since WW II; shifting ideological bases, institutional structures, and electoral characteristics of the political system (New Deal and post-Vietnam); determinants of foreign policy in WW I and II, and the Cold War.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 151H:
ID21 STRATLAB: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Improvising Identities (CSRE 151H, DANCE 151H, DANCE 251H, TAPS 151H, TAPS 351H)
A quarter-long exploration of improvisation in relationship to identity and race in the 21st century in which students investigate new dynamics of doing and thinking identities through the arts. Panel discussions, performances, and talks that engage critically with the theme, concept, and practice of improvising identity across a variety of contexts and genres such as jazz music, modern dance, contemporary art, race comedy, food, and hip-hop poetry/freestyle. Strategies that artists/scholars have used to overturn essentializing notions of identity in theory and practice.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
AMSTUD 152A:
"Mutually Assured Destruction": American Culture and the Cold War (ENGLISH 152A)
The temperature of the early Cold War years via readings of Soviet and U.S. propaganda; documentary film and film noir; fiction by Bellow, Ellison, O¿Connor, and Mailer; social theory by Arendt, the New York Intellectuals, and the Frankfurt School; and political texts such as Kennan¿s Sources of Soviet Conduct, the ¿Truman Doctrine¿ speech, and the National Security Council Report 68. Major themes include the discourse of totalitarianism, MacCarthyism, strategies of containment, the nuclear threat, the figure of the ¿outsider¿ and the counterculture, and the cultural shift from sociological to psychological idioms.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
AMSTUD 152G:
Global Harlem Renaissance (AFRICAAM 152G)
Examination of the explosion of African American artistic expression during 1920s and 30s New York known as the Harlem Renaissance. Amiri Baraka once referred to the Renaissance as a kind of ¿vicious Modernism,¿ as a ¿BangClash,¿ that impacted and was impacted by political, cultural and aesthetic changes not only in the U.S. but Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. Focus on the literature, graphic arts, and the music of the era in this global context.
Last offered: Autumn 2010
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 156H:
Women and Medicine in US History: Women as Patients, Healers and Doctors
Women's bodies in sickness and health, and encounters with lay and professional healers from the 18th century to the present. Historical consttruction of thought about women's bodies and physical limitations; sexuality; birth control and abortion; childbirth; adulthood; and menopause and aging. Women as healers, including midwives, lay physicians, the medical profession, and nursing.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 159X:
American Photographs, 1839-1971: A Cultural History (ARTHIST 159, ARTHIST 359)
This course concentrates on many important American photographers, from the era of daguerreotypes to near the end of the pre-digital era. We study photographs of the Civil War, western exploration, artistic subjects, urban and rural poverty, skyscrapers, crime, fashion, national parks, and social protest, among other topics. Among the photographers we study: Carleton Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand, and Diane Arbus. Emphasis on developing students' abilities to discuss and write about photography; to see it.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 160:
Perspectives on American Identity
Required for American Studies majors. Changing interpretations of American identity and Americanness.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 161:
Women in Modern America (CSRE 162, HISTORY 161)
The transformation from the New Woman of the 1890s to the New Woman of the 1990s; attention to immigrant, black, and white women, both historical analyses and personal accounts. Topics include: workforce participation; family and reproductive labor; educational and professional opportunities; the impact of wars, economic depression, and popular culture; and recurrent feminist movements.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 165:
History of Higher Education in the U.S. (EDUC 165, EDUC 265, HISTORY 158C)
Major periods of evolution, particularly since the mid-19th century. Premise: insights into contemporary higher education can be obtained through its antecedents, particularly regarding issues of governance, mission, access, curriculum, and the changing organization of colleges and universities.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
AMSTUD 166:
Introduction to African American History: The Modern African American Freedom Struggle (AFRICAAM 166, HISTORY 166)
This course is an introduction to African-American Political movements of the period after 1930, with special emphasis on mass protest and civil rights activism as well as leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcom X, Jesse Jackson, and Barack Obama. The lectures will utilize audio-visual materials extensively, and the exams will cover these materials as well as the traditional lectures. In addition to attending lectures, students are encouraged to undertake research projects.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul
AMSTUD 179:
Introduction to American Law (POLISCI 122, PUBLPOL 302A)
For undergraduates. The structure of the American legal system including the courts; American legal culture; the legal profession and its social role; the scope and reach of the legal system; the background and impact of legal regulation; criminal justice; civil rights and civil liberties; and the relationship between the American legal system and American society in general.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci
AMSTUD 183:
Border Crossings and American Identities (CSRE 183)
How novelists, filmmakers, and poets perceive racial, ethnic, gender, sexual preference, and class borders in the context of a national discussion about the place of Americans in the world. How Anna Deavere Smith, Sherman Alexie, or Michael Moore consider redrawing such lines so that center and margin, or self and other, do not remain fixed and divided. How linguistic borderlines within multilingual literature by Caribbean, Arab, and Asian Americans function. Can Anzaldúa's conception of borderlands be constructed through the matrix of language, dreams, music, and cultural memories in these American narratives? Course includes examining one's own identity.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 185:
American Studies Internship
Restricted to declared majors. Practical experience working in a field related to American Studies for six to ten weeks. Students make internship arrangements with a company or agency, under the guidance of a sponsoring faculty member, and with the consent of the director or a program coordinator of American Studies. Required paper focused on a topic related to the internship and the student's studies. May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-3
| Repeatable
for credit
Instructors: ;
Abrams, W. (PI);
Bernstein, B. (PI);
Breitrose, H. (PI);
Bukatman, S. (PI);
Chang, G. (PI);
Eisen, A. (PI);
Elam, M. (PI);
Fishkin, S. (PI);
Freedman, E. (PI);
Gillam, R. (PI);
Jenkins, N. (PI);
Jones, G. (PI);
Mesa, C. (PI);
Obenzinger, H. (PI);
Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI);
Rakove, J. (PI);
Reich, R. (PI);
Saldivar, R. (PI);
White, R. (PI);
Wolf, B. (PI);
Wright, G. (PI);
Deisinger, V. (GP);
Hammann, A. (GP)
AMSTUD 186:
Tales of Three Cities: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles
How urban form and experience shape literary texts and how literary texts participate in the creation of place, through the literature of three American cities as they ascended to cultural and iconographical prominence: New York in the early to mid 19th century; Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and Los Angeles in the mid to late 20th century.
Last offered: Winter 2011
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 195:
Individual Work
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
for credit
Instructors: ;
Abrams, W. (PI);
Bernstein, B. (PI);
Breitrose, H. (PI);
Bukatman, S. (PI);
Chang, G. (PI);
Eisen, A. (PI);
Elam, M. (PI);
Fishkin, S. (PI);
Freedman, E. (PI);
Gillam, R. (PI);
Jenkins, N. (PI);
Jimenez, T. (PI);
Jones, G. (PI);
Koelle, A. (PI);
Mesa, C. (PI);
Obenzinger, H. (PI);
Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI);
Rakove, J. (PI);
Reich, R. (PI);
Rutten, A. (PI);
Saldivar, R. (PI);
White, R. (PI);
Wilcox, M. (PI);
Wolf, B. (PI);
Wright, G. (PI);
Deisinger, V. (GP);
Hammann, A. (GP)
AMSTUD 201:
History of Education in the United States (EDUC 201, HISTORY 158B)
How education came to its current forms and functions, from the colonial experience to the present. Focus is on the 19th-century invention of the common school system, 20th-century emergence of progressive education reform, and the developments since WW II. The role of gender and race, the development of the high school and university, and school organization, curriculum, and teaching.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
AMSTUD 214:
The American 1960s: Thought, Protest, and Culture
The meaning of the American 60s emphasizing ideas, culture, protest, and the new sensibility that emerged. Topics: black protest, the new left, the counterculture, feminism, the new literature and journalism of the 60s, the role of the media in shaping dissent, and the legacy of 60s protest. Interpretive materials from film, music, articles, and books.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 226:
Race and Racism in American Politics (CSRE 226, POLISCI 226, POLISCI 326)
Topics include the historical conceptualization of race; whether and how racial animus reveals itself and the forms it might take; its role in the creation and maintenance of economic stratification; its effect on contemporary U.S. partisan and electoral politics; and policy making consequences.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 240A:
Pre-Honors Seminar
Methods, interpretations, and issues pertinent to honors work in American Studies. Open to juniors interested in honors.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2-5
AMSTUD 244:
The Visual Culture of the American Home Front, 1941-1945 (ARTHIST 244)
How does home front of WWII look now? What sort of meanings appear with the vantage of more than sixty years' distance? Examining Hollywood films from those years -films made during the war but mostly not directly about the war - the seminar focuses on developing students' abilities to write emotion-based criticism and history. Weekly short papers, each one in response to a film screening, are required. Among the films screened: Shadow of a Doubt, Gaslight, I Walked with a Zombie, The Best Years of Our Lives.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
AMSTUD 250:
Senior Research
Research and writing of senior honors thesis under the supervision of a faculty member. The final grade for the thesis is assigned by the chair based on the evaluations of the primary thesis adviser and a second reader appointed by the program. Prerequisite: consent of chair.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-15
| Repeatable
for credit
AMSTUD 251C:
The American Enlightenment (HISTORY 251C)
Eighteenth century America was like a laboratory for exciting new social, political, religious, scientific, and artistic theories that we collectively call "the Enlightenment." With readings in original texts and studies of material culture, examines ways in which eighteenth century Americans applied Enlightenment thinking to some of the most important problems and questions of their time. What was the best kind of government, and how could this be known? Was the new world of America fundamentally different or the same as Europe, and did animals, plants,and people improve or worsen there? What creatures (children, apes, women, slaves) were considered unreasonable in the Age of Reason, and why? What was the place of religion and passion in the Age of Reason?
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 255D:
Racial Identity in the American Imagination (AFRICAAM 255, CSRE 255D, HISTORY 255D, HISTORY 355D)
Major historical transformations shaping the understanding of racial identity and how it has been experienced, represented, and contested in American history. Topics include: racial passing and racial performance; migration, immigration, and racial identity in the urban context; the interplay between racial identity and American identity; the problems of class, gender, and sexuality in the construction of racial identity. Sources include historical and legal texts, memoirs, photography, literature, film, and music.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
AMSTUD 256:
U.S.-China Relations: From the Opium War to Tiananmen (HISTORY 256, HISTORY 356)
The history of turbulent relations, military conflict, and cultural clashes between the U.S. and China, and the implications for the domestic lives of these increasingly interconnected countries. Diplomatic, political, social, cultural, and military themes from early contact to the recent past.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom
AMSTUD 258:
Topics in the History of Sexuality: Sexual Violence (CSRE 192E, FEMST 258, FEMST 358, HISTORY 258, HISTORY 358)
Recent historical interpretations of sexual violence, with particular attention to the intersections of gender and race in the construction of rape, from early settlement through the twentieth century. Topics include the legal prosecution of rape in Early America; the racialization of rape in the U.S.; lynching and anti-lynching in the U.S.; and feminist responses to sexual violence.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 261B:
East Goes West: Transnational Asia/Pacific Spatial Geographies (ASNAMST 261B, ENGLISH 261B)
East goes west as a metaphor to invoke the conceptions of fantasy and desire that play out in transnational scope. What attracts diasporic Asian/American subjects to the locations that they travel to, whether it be an identified homeland with which a character attaches a strong affinity, or to a new country where the promise of economic possibilities await?
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul
AMSTUD 262F:
Transnational American Studies (ENGLISH 262F, ENGLISH 362F)
Exploration of the transnational turn in American Studies, focusing on how transnational perspectives enrich and complicate our understanding of American literature, history and the arts. Readings include recent work in transnational American Studies. Topics include experiments with ways of using digital technology to allow archival materials in different locations to be in conversation with each other.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 265:
Writing Asian American History (ASNAMST 265, HISTORY 265, HISTORY 365)
Recent scholarship in Asian American history, with attention to methodologies and sources. Topics: racial ideologies, gender, transnationalism, culture, and Asian American art history. Primary research paper.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 267:
Religion in Twentieth Century American Life (HISTORY 267)
Why is the United States such a religious country? Over 90% of Americans profess a belief in God, and more than half identify religion as "very important" to their lives. In this seminar, we will examine the durability and power of religion in modern American history, from the emergence of Christian fundamentalism to the theology of the Cold war to the conflict with radical Islam. Other topics include: the Holocaust, Civil Rights and religion, gender and sexuality.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-AmerCul
AMSTUD 103:
On the Road: Cars and the Auto-Mobility of Race, Gender, Class, and Age in American Literature
The car in American literature, history, and culture, provides hope and makes it possible to relocate, transcend social status, and reinvent oneself. In this class we will examine how the car allows Americans to navigate identity in new ways. Readings include: Fitzgerald, Stein, Steinbeck, Escovedo-Colton, Nabokov, Barrett, Walker, Murray, Simpson, Wolfe, Kerouac, Davis, Freeman, Gilroy, Lucasi, Hamper, Moore, and Nass.
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
AMSTUD 152:
U.S. Society and Politics since 1945
Surveys United States history following Word War II, blending political, cultural, and intellectual history. Topics include: the Cold War as foreign policy and domestic concern, the Civil Rights movement as a political, social, and religious phenomenon, the Sixties including social movements like the New Left, feminism, black power, and the New Right, the Vietnam War, contemporary transformations in the U.S. economy, the culture wars of the 1980s, and the growing geopolitical importance of the Middle East.
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 164C:
From Freedom to Freedom Now: African American History, 1865-1965 (HISTORY 164C)
(Same as HISTORY 64C. History majors and others taking 5 units, register for 164C.) Explores the working lives, social worlds, political ideologies and cultural expressions of African Americans from emancipation to the early civil rights era. Topics include: the transition from slavery to freedom, family life, work, culture, leisure patterns, resistance, migration and social activism. Draws largely on primary sources including autobiographies, memoirs, letters, personal journals, newspaper articles, pamphlets, speeches, literature, film and music.
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul
AMSTUD 186A:
American Hauntings
Cultural, psychological, social, and political dynamics of haunting in American literature, from the early national period to the late 20th century. Sources include ghost stories and other instances of supernatural, emotional, or mental intervention. Authors include Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Charles Chesnutt, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Toni Morrison, and Stephen King.
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
AMSTUD 257:
Journalism and Imaginative Writing in America (COMM 278)
Walt Whitman spent twenty-five years as a journalist before publishing his first book of poems. Mark Twain was a journalist for twenty years before publishing his first novel. Topics include examination of how writers¿ backgrounds in journalism shaped the poetry or fiction for which they are best known; study of recent controversies surrounding writers who blurred the line between journalism and fiction. Writers include Whitman, Fanny Fern, Twain, Pauline Hopkins, Theodore Dreiser, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ernest Hemingway, Meridel LeSueur.
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 261A:
Geography, Time, and Trauma in Asian American Literature (ASNAMST 187)
The notion that homes can be stable locations for cultural, racial, ethnic, and similarly situated identity categories. Tthe possibility that there really is no place like home for Asian American subjects. How geography, landscape, and time situate traumas within fictional Asian American narratives.
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 261E:
Mixed Race Literature in the U.S. and South Africa (AFRICAAM 261E)
As scholar Werner Sollors recently suggested, novels, poems, stories about interracial contacts and mixed race constitute ¿an orphan literature belonging to no clear ethnic or national tradition.¿ Yet the theme of mixed race is at the center of many national self-definitions, even in our U.S. post-Civil Rights and South Africa¿s post-Apartheid era. This course examines aesthetic engagements with mixed race politics in these trans- and post-national dialogues, beginning in the 1700s and focusing on the 20th and 21st centuries.
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 261F:
Gender and Sexuality in Asian American Literature (ASNAMST 188, ENGLISH 261F, FEMST 261F, FEMST 361F)
How writers and representations dialogue, challenge, resist, and complicate such formative constructions of gendered/sexual identities. How queer Asian Americans face ¿multiple negations¿ that include potential expulsion from their own families and from various communities. Authors include Bharati Mukherjee, Russell Leong, Suki Kim, Shawn Wong, Louis Chu, Lawrence Chua, Catherine Liu, Jessica Hagedorn, Timothy Liu, Shani Mootoo, David Mura, among others. Secondary readings will include literary criticism, feminist and queer theory.
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 262D:
African American Poetics (AFRICAAM 262D)
Examination of African American poetic expressive forms from the 1700s to the 2000s, considering the central role of the genre--from sonnets to spoken word, from blues poetry to new media performance--in defining an evolving literary tradition and cultural identity.
| Units: 5
