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AMSTUD 18B: Jazz History: Bebop to Present, 1940-Present (AFRICAAM 18B, MUSIC 18B)

Modern jazz styles from Bebop to the current scene. Emphasis is on the significant artists of each style.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Low, M. (PI); Koplitz, D. (TA)

AMSTUD 51Q: Comparative Fictions of Ethnicity (COMPLIT 51Q, CSRE 51Q)

Explorations of how literature can represent in complex and compelling ways issues of difference--how they appear, are debated, or silenced. Specific attention on learning how to read critically in ways that lead one to appreciate the power of literary texts, and learning to formulate your ideas into arguments. Course is a Sophomore Seminar and satisfies Write2. By application only
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 2
Instructors: ; Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI)

AMSTUD 54N: African American Women's Lives (HISTORY 54N)

This course encourages students to think critically about historical sources and to use creative and rigorous historical methods to recover African American women's experiences, which often have been placed on the periphery of American history and American life.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Hobbs, A. (PI)

AMSTUD 107: Introduction to Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (CSRE 108, FEMGEN 101, TAPS 108)

Introduction to interdisciplinary approaches to gender, sexuality, queer, trans, and feminist studies. Topics include social justice and feminist organizing, art and activism, feminist histories, the emergence of gender and sexuality studies in the academy, intersectionality and interdependence, the embodiment and performance of difference, and relevant socio-economic and political formations such as work and the family. Students learn to think critically about race, gender, disability, and sexuality. Includes guest lectures from faculty across the university and weekly discussion sections.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 110D: War and Peace in American Foreign Policy (INTNLREL 110D, POLISCI 110D, POLISCI 110Y)

The causes of war in American foreign policy. Issues: international and domestic sources of war and peace; war and the American political system; war, intervention, and peace making in the post-Cold War period. Political Science majors taking this course for WIM credit should enroll in POLISCI 110D for 5 units. International Relations majors taking this course for WIM credit should enroll in INTNLREL 110D for 5 units. All students not seeking WIM credit should enroll in POLISCI 110Y or AMSTUD 110D.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 111: Notes from the Underground: Alternative Media from Fanzines to Memes

Beginning with Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense (1776), independent publishing has been an integral component of American popular culture. In this course, we will historicize the self-publishing revolutions that have shaped the twentieth century, paying special attention to the social movements that created their own media ecosystems. Beginning with the amateur press associations of the 1920s, our attention will then turn to the fanzine network of Science Fiction writers in the 1930s and 1940s, the poetry mimeograph revolution of the 1950s, the underground press and comics (or "comix") of the 1960s, and the expansive culture of punk and "riotgrrrl" fanzines from the 1970s-1990s. The insights gleaned from our historical analysis will be applied to the digital culture of memes, and their use among progressive social movements. Visits to archives at Stanford will allow students to connect secondary and primary source research, thereby elucidating how scholars have analyzed the material culture of people on the margins of mainstream culture.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Greer, J. (PI)

AMSTUD 115S: Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence (INTNLREL 115, POLISCI 115, PUBLPOL 114)

WILL NEXT BE OFFERED IN FALL 2024. This course examines the past, present, and future of American espionage. Targeted at first years and sophomores, the class surveys key issues in the development of the U.S. Intelligence Community since World War II. Topics include covert action, intelligence successes and failures, the changing motives and methods of traitors, congressional oversight, and ethical dilemmas. The course pays particular attention to how emerging technologies are transforming intelligence today. We examine cyber threats, the growing use of AI for both insight and deception, and the 'open-source' intelligence revolution online. Classes include guest lectures by former senior U.S. intelligence officials, policymakers, and open-source intelligence leaders. Course requirements include an all-day crisis simulation with former senior officials designed to give students a hands-on feel for the uncertainties, coordination challenges, time pressures, and policy frictions of intelligence in the American foreign policy process.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-SI

AMSTUD 120B: Superhero Theory (ARTHIST 120, ARTHIST 320, FILMEDIA 120, FILMEDIA 320)

With their fantastic powers, mutable bodies, multiple identities, complicated histories, and visual dynamism, the American superhero has been a rich vehicle for fantasies (and anxieties) for 80+ years across multiple media: comics, film, animation, TV, games, toys, apparel. This course centers upon the body of the superhero as it incarnates allegories of race, queerness, hybridity, sexuality, gendered stereotypes/fluidity, politics, vigilantism, masculinity, and monstrosity. They also embody a technological history that encompasses industrial, atomic, electronic, bio-genetic, and digital.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Bukatman, S. (PI)

AMSTUD 139: Walking, Writing, and Freedom, the American Way

An interdisciplinary approach to walking, writing, and freedom in American culture and life. The course will also incorporate a walking and writing practice into weekly meetings to inspire students to think critically about the pedestrian, peripatetic, flaneur, pilgrim, hiker. Assignments will be generated from readings and walks. The reading list also includes scientific and theoretical work on the impact of walking on the mind. Ways AII. 3 units. Class limit 16
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Mesa, C. (PI)

AMSTUD 146: Working

The average person spends one third of her life working. But what is work? Why do we do it? Whose labor is valued, and whose is invisible? From nineteenth-century factories to the girl boss, this course looks at the cultural imagination of work in the United States. Possible texts include: novels Mildred Pierce and My Year of Rest and Relaxation; television series Mad Men and The Hills; and nonfiction writing by Studs Terkel and Barbara Ehrenreich. Students will encounter related materials in visits to Stanford Special Collections and the upcoming Cantor Arts Center exhibition "Day Jobs." For their final assignment, students will conduct oral histories or produce creative work to be collected in a course publication.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Bolten, R. (PI)

AMSTUD 150: Introduction to English II: American Literature and Culture to 1855 (ENGLISH 11B)

In this course we'll explore the uncanny world--at once strange and strangely familiar - of early American literature and culture, as we read diverse works - including poetry, captivity and slave narratives, seduction novels, Native American oratory, short stories, essays, autobiographies, and more - in relation to political, social, and artistic as well as literary contexts from the colonial period to the eve of Civil War. Note: students majoring (or planning to major) in English or American Studies should take the course for 5 units and for a letter grade.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Richardson, J. (PI)

AMSTUD 150C: The United States in the Twentieth Century (AFRICAAM 150C, HISTORY 150C)

(Same as HISTORY 50C. 50C is 3 units; 150C is 5 units.) 100 years ago, women and most African-Americans couldn't vote; automobiles were rare and computers didn't exist; and the U.S. was a minor power in a world dominated by European empires. This course surveys politics, culture, and social movements to answer the question: How did we get from there to here? Suitable for non-majors and majors alike.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 152K: Mixed-Race Politics and Culture (AFRICAAM 226, CSRE 152K, ENGLISH 152K)

Today, almost one-third of Americans identify with a racial/ethnic minority group, and more than 9 million Americans identify with multiple races. What are the implications of such diversity for American politics and culture? This course approaches issues of race from an interdisciplinary perspective, employing research in the social sciences and humanities to assess how race shapes perceptions of identity as well as political behavior in 21st-century U.S. Issues surrounding the role of multiculturalism, immigration, acculturation, racial representation, and racial prejudice in American society. Topics include the political and social formation of race; racial representation in the media, arts, and popular culture; the rise and decline of the "one-drop rule" and its effect on political and cultural attachments; the politicization of census categories and the rise of the multiracial movement. If you have any questions about enrollment or need a permission number, please contact Farrah Moreno (farrahm@stanford.edu).
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

AMSTUD 159: James Baldwin & Twentieth Century Literature (AFRICAAM 159, ENGLISH 159, FEMGEN 159)

Black, gay and gifted, Baldwin was hailed as a "spokesman for the race", although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. This course examines his classic novels and essays as well his exciting work across many lesser-examined domains - poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy and artistic collaboration. Placing his work in context with other writers of the 20C (Faulkner, Wright, Morrison) and capitalizing on a resurgence of interest in the writer (NYC just dedicated a year of celebration of Baldwin and there are 2 new journals dedicated to study of Baldwin), the course seeks to capture the power and influence of Baldwin's work during the Civil Rights era as well as his relevance in the "post-race" transnational 21st century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership and country assume new urgency.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Elam, M. (PI)

AMSTUD 160: Perspectives on American Identity (ENGLISH 165)

Required for American Studies majors. In this seminar we trace diverse and changing interpretations of American identity by exploring autobiographical, literary, and/or visual texts from the 18th through the 20th century in conversation with sociological, political, and historical accounts. *Fulfills Writing In the Major Requirement for American Studies Majors*
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Kessler, E. (PI)

AMSTUD 163: Land Use: Planning for Sustainable Cities (EARTHSYS 168, PUBLPOL 163, URBANST 163)

Through case studies with a focus on the San Francisco Bay Area, guest speakers, selective readings and interactive assignments, this survey course seeks to demystify the concept of land use for the non-city planner. This introductory course will review the history and trends of land use policies, as well as address a number of current themes to demonstrate the power and importance of land use. Students will explore how urban areas function, how stakeholders influence land use choices, and how land use decisions contribute to positive and negative outcomes. By exploring the contemporary history of land use in the United States, students will learn how land use has been used as a tool for discriminatory practices and NIMBYism. Students will also learn about current land use planning efforts that seek to make cities more sustainable, resilient and equitable to address issues like gentrification, affordable housing, and sea level rise.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 169: Race, Ethnicity, and Water in Urban California (AFRICAAM 169A, CSRE 260, URBANST 169)

Is water a human right or an entitlement? Who controls the water, and who should control the water, in California? Private companies? Nonprofits? Local residents? Federal, state, or local governments? This course will explore these questions in the context of urban California more generally, the players and the politics to make sense of a complex problem with deep historical roots; one that defines the new century in California urban life. The required readings and discussions cover cities from Oakland to Los Angeles, providing a platform for students to explore important environmental issues, past and present, affecting California municipalities undergoing rapid population change. In addition, our research focus will be on the cities located on the Central Coast of California: agricultural Salinas, Watsonville, and Castroville and towns along the Salinas Valley; tourist based Monterey, Pebble Beach, Carmel, Pacific Grove; the bedroom community of Prunedale to the north, and former military towns, Marina and Seaside, as all of these ethnically, socioeconomically diverse communities engage in political struggles over precious, and ever scarcer water resources, contend with catastrophic events such as droughts and floods, and fight battles over rights to clean water, entitlement, environmental racism, and equity. Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; McKibben, C. (PI)

AMSTUD 177: Contemporary Novel in U.S. Perspective (ENGLISH 177)

This course investigates a selection of novels from 2001 to the present, either authored in the United States or strongly and meaningfully received here by critics and gatekeepers. In the absence of a fixed academic canon or acknowledged tradition of exemplary works, this course includes evaluation as one of its central enterprises. Students help to make arguments for which works matter and why. Students consider topics including the demotion of the novel to a minor art form, competition from the image, transformations of celebrity culture (in literature and outside it), relevance or irrelevance of the digital age, aftermaths of the modernist and postmodernist project, eccentricity and marginality, race and gender politics in putatively post-feminist, post-racial,and post-political vantage, and problems of meaning in rich societies oriented to risk, probability, economization, health, consumption, comfort, and recognition or representation (rather than action or event). Novels and short stories may be supplemented by philosophical and sociological visions of the contemporary.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Greif, M. (PI)

AMSTUD 177B: Contemporary American Short Stories (ENGLISH 177B)

An exploration of the power and diversity of the American short story ranging from the 1970s to the present day. By examining short stories historically, critically, and above all as art objects, students will learn how to read, interpret, critique, and enjoy short stories as social, political, and humanist documents. Students will learn techniques to craft their own short stories and their own critical essays in a course that combines creative practice and the art of critical appreciation.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE

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

AMSTUD 198: American Studies Pre-Honors Seminar

Recommended for American Studies Juniors planning to apply to the honors program
Terms: Spr | Units: 1

AMSTUD 199C: American Studies Honors Seminar

*Required for American Studies honors students
Terms: Spr | Units: 1
Instructors: ; Kessler, E. (PI)

AMSTUD 201: History of Education in the United States (EDUC 201, HISTORY 258B)

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 208: Women of the Movement (AFRICAAM 208, FEMGEN 208, FEMGEN 308, HISTORY 268, HISTORY 368, RELIGST 208, RELIGST 308)

This seminar will examine women and their gendered experience of activism, organizing, living, and leading in the Modern Civil Rights Movement. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.
Terms: Win, Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-EDP

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 255D: Racial Identity in the American Imagination (AFRICAAM 255, CSRE 255D, HISTORY 255D, HISTORY 355D)

From Sally Hemings to Michelle Obama and Beyonce, this course explores the ways that racial identity has been experienced, represented, and contested throughout American history. Engaging historical, legal, and literary texts and films, this course examines major historical transformations that have shaped our understanding of racial identity. This course also draws on other imaginative modes including autobiography, memoir, photography, and music to consider the ways that racial identity has been represented in American culture.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5
Instructors: ; Hobbs, A. (PI)

AMSTUD 259C: The Civil Rights Movement in American History and Memory (HISTORY 259C, HISTORY 359C)

This course examines the origins, conduct, and complex legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as the continuing struggle over how the movement should be remembered and represented. Topics examined include: the NAACP legal campaign against segregation; the Montgomery Bus Boycott; the career of Martin Luther King, Jr.; the birth of the student movement; the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project; the rise of Black Power; Black political movements in the urban North; and the persistence of racial inequality in post-Jim Crow America.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
Instructors: ; Campbell, J. (PI)

AMSTUD 285: American Photographs: A Magical History (ARTHIST 285)

What is a "magical" photograph? Who makes one? What is the photograph's relation to the world, to the real? To time and memory and to the viewer? What hold can photographs have on us if they are now everywhere, all the time? Who is the person who could bother to care and look closely at the world and at pictures? If there is such a person, why might she see her role as an ethical one? Starting with the invention of the medium in the 1830s, this course will consider the many distinguished American photographers who have pursued their own answers to these questions: Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks, Diane Arbus, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, William Eggleston, Francesca Woodman, Laura Aguilar, Deana Lawson, and others. Pursuing the magical, the course offers: a meditation on photography as a medium (its difference from and relation to poetry, literature, and painting); a partial history of America since 1960; a questioning of photography's relation to history; a theory of human intelligence at work - but also passive - before the world; a reflection on how a mechanical medium allows for a personal touch, a personal vision, on the part of master practitioners; yet how even an amateur can make a photograph of haunting power; an attempt to investigate whether or not - if you are quiet and attentive and lucky enough - such a thing as an actual American experience appears before your eyes
Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Nemerov, A. (PI)

AMSTUD 290: Movies and Methods: The Judy Garland Seminar (FILMEDIA 290, FILMEDIA 490)

Acting and performance have been prominent in cinema throughout the medium's history, but have received relatively little attention in film studies. Performance provides a compellingly different way of engaging with a film. The Judy Garland Seminar proposes, first, that we attend to the centrality of performance in film, and, second, that the work Garland produced across three decades demonstrates not only a coherence and consistency, but also a variety and richness, that merits close examination. Judy Garland was one of the most accomplished performers of her time, her seeming naturalism a function of her fierce discipline. Her career straddled multiple media: film, recording, live performance and television. From childhood, her life was lived in the public eye and her personal travails were as well known as the characters she incarnated on screen - in fact, her biography informs some of her later film roles. Garland's work in this period occurs primarily in two genres: musical comedy and melodrama (and what we can call the melodramatic musical). Some of her best films were directed by two of the foremost studio directors - Vincente Minnelli and George Cukor - intersections of star, genre, and director will inform the seminar, as will explorations of Garland's work on television and the concert stage. The seminar will begin with an overview of the writing around film acting and the star text while considering some of Judy's earlier film appearances. Classes will be divided between critical engagement with assigned readings and close readings of Judy Garland performances. The screening list will be supplemented with ample clips from other films, and earlier work will be compared to later performances wherever useful. Both a mainstream star and a gay cult icon, Garland's persona was read differently by different audiences, so the seminar will also consider the reception of Judy Garland and her significance then and now.
Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Bukatman, S. (PI)
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