Results for AMSTUD

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.

This course-series brings together leading scholars with critically-acclaimed artists, local teachers, youth, and community organizations to consider the complex relationships between culture, knowledge, pedagogy and social justice. Participants will examine the cultural meaning of knowledge as "the 5th element" of Hip Hop Culture (in addition to MCing, DJing, graffiti, and dance) and how educators and cultural workers have leveraged this knowledge for social justice. Overall, participants will gain a strong theoretical knowledge of culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogies and learn to apply this knowledge by engaging with guest artists, teachers, youth, and community youth arts organizations.

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.nRoosevelt 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.

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?

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: 1 or 1A.

(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.

The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.

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.

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.

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.

(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.

(Same as HISTORY 59. History majors and others taking 5 units, register for 159.) The historical experience of people of Asian ancestry in the U.S. Immigration, labor, community formation, family, culture and identity, and contemporary social and political controversies. Readings: interpretative texts, primary material, and historical fiction. (Chang)

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.

Required for American Studies majors. Changing interpretations of American identity and Americanness.

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.

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.

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.

In an age when some 50% of museum visitors only "visit" museums online and when digital technologies have broken open archival access, anyone can be a curator, a critic, an historian, an archivist. In this context, how do museums create experiences that teach visitors about who they are and about the world around them? What are the politics of representation that shape learning in these environments? Using an experimental instructional approach, students will reconsider and redefine what it means to curate experience.

Methods, interpretations, and issues pertinent to honors work in American Studies. Open to juniors interested in honors.

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.

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.