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: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 5I:
Hamilton: An American Musical (AFRICAAM 5I, CSRE 5I, HISTORY 3G)
"Hamilton" is one the most popular and most celebrated musicals in American history. It has received 11 Tony Awards, including best musical, and 16 Tony nominations, the most nominations in Broadway history. It won the Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award. The musical draws on the language and rhythms of hip-hop and R & B, genres that are underrepresented in the musical theater tradition. "Hamilton" has redefined the American musical, particularly in terms of sound, casting, and storytelling. What explains the deep cultural impact and acclaim for this play?n nThis interdisciplinary course examines Alexander Hamilton and his world as well as Hamilton: An American Musical through a series of lectures from faculty in History, Theater and Performance Studies, English, Music, and Writing and Rhetoric.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 1
AMSTUD 12A:
Introduction to English III: Introduction to African American Literature (AFRICAAM 43, ENGLISH 12A)
(Formerly English 43/143). In his bold study, What Was African American Literature?, Kenneth Warren defines African American literature as a late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century response to the nation's Jim Crow segregated order. But in the aftermath of the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights movement, can critics still speak, coherently, of "African American literature"? And how does this political conception of African American literary production compare with accounts grounded in black language and culture? Taking up Warren's intervention, this course will explore African American literature from its earliest manifestations in the spirituals and slave narratives to texts composed at the height of desegregation and decolonization struggles at mid-century and beyond.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 25Q:
The Origins of the Modern American City, 1865-1920 (HISTORY 55Q, URBANST 25Q)
Are we living in a new Gilded Age? To answer this question, we go back to the original Gilded Age, as well as its successor, the Progressive Era. How did urban Americans around the turn of the twentieth century deal with stark inequalities of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? And what can we learn from their struggles for our own time? Students use primary and secondary sources in digital and print formats. Possible field trip to San Francisco.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 27Q:
Fashion and Photography
Preference to sophomores. Seminar on the history of 20th and 21st century fashion photographs, with a focus on American examples. Topics include: the relationship of fashion and photography to modernity; interplay between mass consumption and luxury; intersection of art and commerce; the role of designers, photographers, editors, and models; studio v. street photography; and the place of mass media, alternative magazines, and online publications. Photographers covered: Edward Steichen, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Steven Meisel, and others. Readings on American culture, film, photography, and fashion.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 41N:
Family Drama: American Plays about Families (ENGLISH 41N, TAPS 40N)
Focus on great dramas about family life (Albee, Kushner, Shephard, Vogel, Kron, Nottage, Parks). Communication in writing and speaking about conflict central to learning in this class.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 41Q:
Madwomen and Madmen: Gender and the History of Mental Illness in the U.S. (FEMGEN 41Q)
This seminar explores the ways that gender and historical context shaped the experience and treatment of mental illness in U.S. history. What is the relationship between historically constructed ideas of femininity and masculinity and madness? Why have women been the witches and hysterics of the past, while men experienced neurasthenia and schizoid conditions? Why have there historically been more women than men among the mentally ill? How has the emotional and psychological suffering of women differed from that of men, and how has it changed over time? Among the sources we use to explore these questions are memoirs and films such as The Three Faces of Eve and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. By contrasting the changing ways women and men experienced mental illness and were treated in the past, this seminar will elucidate the historically embedded nature of medical ideas, diagnoses and treatments.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 48N:
The American Songbook and Love Poetry (ENGLISH 48N)
A study of performances (Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra etc) of songs by classic American composers (Porter, Rogers and Hart, Cohen).
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
AMSTUD 50N:
The Literature of Inequality: Have and Have-Nots from the Gilded Age to the Occupy Era
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.
Last offered: Spring 2013
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul
AMSTUD 51Q:
Comparative Fictions of Ethnicity (COMPLIT 51Q, CSRE 51Q)
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"? Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take course for a Letter Grade.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP, Writing 2
AMSTUD 53N:
African American Autobiography (ENGLISH 53N)
Since the publication of slave narratives in the eighteenth century, the genre of autobiography has occupied a unique position in the history of African American literary expression. By studying classic autobiographical narratives by black writers, this course will explore questions about racial inequality and democracy, the individual and society, and writing and freedom, among other topics.
| Units: 3
AMSTUD 55F:
The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1830 to 1877 (AFRICAAM 55F, AMSTUD 155F, HISTORY 55F, HISTORY 155F)
(History 55F is 3 units; History 155F is 5 units.)This course explores the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War. The Civil War profoundly impacted American life at national, sectional, and constitutional levels, and radically challenged categories of race and citizenship. Topics covered include: the crisis of union and disunion in an expanding republic; slavery, race, and emancipation as national problems and personal experiences; the horrors of total war for individuals and society; and the challenges--social and political--of Reconstruction.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 57Q:
10 American Photographs (ARTHIST 57Q)
Preference to sophomores. "The humor, the sadness, the EVERYTHING-ness and American-ness of these pictures!" wrote Jack Kerouac of photographer Robert Frank's iconic collection, The Americans. This seminar takes Kerouac's enthusiasm and applies it to ten American photographs, a new one each week. Examples span the medium's history and were taken as art, science, commerce, journalism, or personal mementos. Close study of the photo of the week will address how it looks and why; its history, from initial responses to later reception; and its relationship to the larger American visual and cultural context. Also under discussion: What story does this set of pictures tell about Americanness? What might another set of photos convey?
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 58Q:
American Landscapes of Segregation (AFRICAAM 58Q, HISTORY 58Q)
This course examines various landscapes of segregation in U.S. history from 19th century reconstruction and settler expansion through the contemporary U.S. security state. Each week we consider different histories of segregation including native reservation and boarding school stories, Jim Crow and post-World War II urban/suburban segregation, school integration and bussing, and the rise of the carceral state. We will ask: How have Americans moved through space with different degrees of freedom and constraint over time, and how has that shaped what it has meant to be an American in different ways for different groups? How has access to land, property, consumer, recreational and educational spaces and resources been regulated by categories of race, gender, sexuality, colonial subjectivity, immigrant status and class? To gain a better sense of our local history, we will also consider how structures of segregation have historically mapped the Bay Area. Sources include primary and secondary historic texts, feature and documentary films, photography, and poetry.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 68N:
Mark Twain and American Culture (ENGLISH 68N)
Preference to freshmen. Mark Twain defined the rhythms of our prose and the contours of our moral map. He recognized our extravagant promise and stunning failures, our comic foibles and tragic flaws. He is viewed as the most American of American authors--and as one of the most universal. How does his work illuminate his society's (and our society's) responses to such issues as race, gender, technology, heredity vs. environment, religion, education, art, imperialism, animal welfare, 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 73:
Mexican Migration to the United States (CHILATST 173, HISTORY 73, HISTORY 173)
(History 73 is 3 units; History 173 is 5 units.) This class examines the history of Mexican migration to the United States. In the United States we constantly hear about Obama's immigration plan, the anti-immigrant laws in Arizona, and the courage of DREAM Activists; in Mexico news sources speak about the role of remittances, the effect of deportations, and the loss of life at the border. Unfortunately, few people truly understand the historical trends in these migratory processes, or the multifaceted role played by the United States in encouraging individuals to head there. Moreover, few people have actually heard the opinions and voices of migrants themselves. This course seeks to provide students with the opportunity to place migrants' experiences in dialogue with migratory laws as well as the knowledge to embed current understandings of Latin American migration in their meaningful historical context.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
AMSTUD 75N:
American Short Stories (ENGLISH 75N)
How and why did the short story take root and flourish in an American context? Early works of classic American literature read alongside stories by women and minority writers, stretching from the early nineteenth century to the contemporary period.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 91:
Exploring American Religious History (CSRE 91, HISTORY 260K, RELIGST 91)
This course will trace how contemporary beliefs and practices connect to historical trends in the American religious landscape.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 91A:
Asian American Autobiography/W (ASNAMST 91A, CSRE 91D, ENGLISH 91A)
This is a dual purpose class: a writing workshop in which you will generate autobiographical vignettes/essays as well as a reading seminar featuring prose from a wide range of contemporary Asian-American writers. Some of the many questions we will consider are: What exactly is Asian-American memoir? Are there salient subjects and tropes that define the literature? And in what ways do our writerly interactions both resistant and assimilative with a predominantly non-Asian context in turn recreate that context? We'll be working/experimenting with various modes of telling, including personal essay, the epistolary form, verse, and even fictional scenarios. First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 96:
Signal to Noise: The Sounds of American Culture
Inundated by images and associated with the meteoric rise of such media as film and photography, the past century has long been considered a predominantly visual era. Yet, sound offers alternative sensory platforms for understanding American culture and history. ¿Sound history,¿ as Jonathan Sterne writes, ¿indexes changes in human nature and the human body ¿ in life and in death.¿ Similarly, transformations in American landscapes, from its cities to its national parks, can be heard as well as seen. In this course, we will explore the intertwined histories of sound, society, and space, asking how developments in auditory media have engaged with broader American culture. Through a study of history, film, literature, music, and other media, we will look at the relationship between sound and cultural change, as well as evolving attitudes towards diverse human bodies and identities.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 3
AMSTUD 101:
Black & White Race Relations in American Fiction & Film (AFRICAAM 101, CSRE 41)
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? NOTE: Students must attend the first day; admission to the class will be determined based on an in class essay.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 102:
Art and Social Criticism (AFRICAAM 102B, ARTHIST 162B, CSRE 102A, FEMGEN 102)
Visual artists have long been in the forefront of social criticism in America. Since the 1960s, various visual strategies have helped emergent progressive political movements articulate and represent complex social issues. Which artists and particular art works/projects have become key anchors for discourses on racism, sexism, economic and social inequality, immigrant rights and climate change? We will learn about a spectrum of political art designed to raise social awareness, spark social change and rouse protest. The Art Workers Coalition's agit-prop opposing the Vietnam War and ACT-UP's emblematic signs and symbols during the AIDS/HIV crisis of the 1980s galvanized a generation into action. Works such as Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party (1979), Fred Wilson's Mining the Museum (1992), and Glenn Ligon's paintings appropriating fragments from African-American literature all raised awareness by excavating historical evidence of the long legacy resisting marginalization. For three decades feminist artists Adrian Piper, Barbara Kruger and the Guerilla Girls have combined institutional critique and direct address into a provocative form of criticality. Recent art for social justice is reaching ever broadening publics by redrawing the role of artist and audience exemplified by the democratization of poster making and internet campaigns of Occupy and the Movement for Black Lives. We will also consider the collective aesthetic activisms in the Post-Occupy era including Global Ultra Luxury Faction, Climate Justice art projects, and the visual culture of Trump era mass protests. Why are each of these examples successful as influential and enduring markers of social criticism? What have these socially responsive practices contributed to our understanding of American history?
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 103S:
Introduction to American Art (ARTHIST 103S)
How do images tell stories about the people who made them and the places they depict? How can we encounter the histories of America in works of art and why should we care about encountering them? This course will explore such questions by surveying some of the most compelling paintings, sculptures, films, photographs, prints, and decorative arts produced in the United States from the Colonial period to our present moment. In class lectures and discussions, our goal will be to articulate how pictures from the past shape and construct our sense of American history. Works by important artists such as Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kara Walker, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Jacob Lawrence, among others, will help students to understand and express how Images have power, and how art continues to matter today.
Last offered: Summer 2018
| Units: 3
AMSTUD 104:
America at Play: A History of Leisure in the United States
What we call "free time" is actually the product of multiple constraints, from economics and gender roles, to trends, moral strictures, and more. This course studies leisure to explore American culture from the late 19th century to the present. We consider, for instance, how new forms of entertainment, such as movies and iPods, altered notions of community and ideals of personal expression. For historical context, the class draws upon popular and critical sources, conversations with guests, and hands-on activities.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 105Q:
Law and Popular Culture (LAWGEN 105Q)
(Same as AMSTUD 105Q) 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 & Popular Culture: A Course Book" (Peter Lang, 2d edition, 2013).
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 3
AMSTUD 106A:
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence in Fiction (ENGLISH 106)
From self-driving cars to bots that alter democratic elections, artificial intelligence is growing increasingly powerful and prevalent in our everyday lives. Literature has long been speculating about the techno-utopia¿and catastrophe¿that A.I. could usher in. Indeed, literature itself presents us with a kind of A.I. in the many characters that speak and think in its pages. But how do we classify an intelligence as ¿artificial¿ or not? Is there a clear boundary that demarcates bodies from machines? What, if anything, separates the ¿genre¿ of technology from that of literature? What classifies literature as ¿science fiction,¿ ¿scientific,¿ ¿futuristic,¿ ¿psychological,¿ or ¿dystopian¿? And can technology or literature ever overcome the ultimate division between all intelligences¿the problem of other minds? This course consists in curated multi-genre combinations of literature, philosophy, film, and television that explore what makes someone¿or something¿a person in our world today. Special events will include celebrating the current bicentennial of Mary Shelley¿s Frankenstein (1818) in Stanford Special Collections; a possible visit to Stanford¿s A.I. Laboratory; and chatting with the ELIZA chatbot.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
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 the emergence of sexuality studies in the academy, social justice and new subjects, science and technology, art and activism, history, film and memory, the documentation 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, and sexuality from local and global perspectives.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 109Q:
American Road Trips (HISTORY 69Q)
"Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road." --Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957. From Jack Kerouac's On the Road to Cheryl Strayed's Wild, this course explores epic road trips of the twentieth century. Travel is a fundamental social and cultural practice through which Americans have constructed ideas about the self, the nation, the past, and the future. The open road, as it is often called, offered excitement, great adventure, and the space for family bonding and memory making. But the footloose and fancy-free nature of travel that Jack Kerouac celebrated was available to some travelers but not to all. Engaging historical and literary texts, film, autobiography, memoir, photography, and music, we will consider the ways that travel and road trips have been represented in American culture. This course examines the following questions: How did men and women experience travel differently? How did the motivations for travel change over time? What role did race, ethnicity, class, relationships, and sexuality play in these trips? Students will work together to plan a road trip of their own which the class will take during the quarter.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
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 to fulfill the WIM requirement should enroll in POLISCI 110D for 5 units. International Relations majors taking this course should enroll in INTNLREL 110D for 5 units. SCPD students should enroll for 3 units.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 114X:
Reading Comics (FILMSTUD 114, FILMSTUD 314)
The modern medium of comics, a history that spans 150 years. The flexibility of the medium encountered through the genres of humorous and dramatic comic strips, superheroes, undergrounds, independents, journalism, and autobiography. Innovative creators including McCay, Kirby, Barry, Ware, and critical writings including McCloud, Eisner, Groenstee. Topics include text/image relations, panel-to-panel relations, the page, caricature, sequence, seriality, comics in the context of the fine arts, and relations to other media.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 115:
Asian American Film and Popular Culture (ASNAMST 115)
Since the later part of the nineteenth century, representations of Asian Americans in popular culture have played a defining role in shaping ideas of citizenship and national belonging in the United States. Tracing the evolution Asian American representations from the silent film era through the advent of online media, this course examines the economic, political, and cultural influence of Asian American screen images on U.S. society. Through a focus on both mainstream and independent productions, we discuss the work of Asian American actors, audience members, media producers, consumers, and activists. Films and TV shows to be discussed include The Cheat (1915), Daughter of the Dragon (1931), Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1989), Sai-i-gu (1993), AKA Don Bonus (1995), episodes of the Mindy Project and Master of None, and work by early Asian American YouTube stars including Michelle Phan and KevJumba.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 116:
American Economic History (HISTORY 156)
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; emergence of American technology and business organization; economics of the Great Depression and the New Deal; post-World War II economic performance and social change; globalization, information technology, and inequality. Prerequisite: 1 or 1V.
Last offered: Spring 2017
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 117:
Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Contemporary American Film (AFRICAAM 117J, ASNAMST 117D, CSRE 117D, FEMGEN 117F)
This course introduces students to the theoretical and analytical frameworks necessary to critically understand constructions of race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary American film. Through a sustained engagement with a range of independent and Hollywood films produced since the 1990s, students analyze the ways that cinematic representations have both reflected and constructed dominant notions of race, gender, and sexuality in the United States. Utilizing an intersectional framework that sees race, gender, and sexuality as always defined by one another, the course examines the ways that dominant notions of difference have been maintained and contested through film in the United States. Films to be discussed include Better Luck Tomorrow, La La Land, Mosquita y Mari, Get Out, and Moonlight.nTO BE ADDED TO THE WAITLIST: Please email williamgow@stanford.edu
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 117N:
The Fourth "R": Religion and American Schools (EDUC 117N, RELIGST 13N)
In this seminar, we will engage with historical, legal, and sociological texts, in order to trace the complicated relationship between church and state as it has played out in and around questions of education. Deciding what belongs in schools, what does not, whose interests are served in the process, and what the Constitution will allow are just some of the questions that will guide us. Through close readings of text and critical writing, we will develop alternative narratives about church-state issues that can make sense of everything from prayer in schools to civic education. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 117R:
Christianity in 21st-century America (RELIGST 117)
As the largest religion practiced in the United States, Christianity not only shapes the lives of a large number of its citizens but also impinges on public discourse, policies, and debates. This course investigates the ways in which Christianity in America is changing and what these changes bode for its role in the public and private spheres. Issues include shifting demographics lead to declining numbers in 'mainline' denominations; the polarization of Christian conservatives and religious 'nones'; interfaith toleration and cooperation alongside interreligious conflict; the rise of 'spiritual, not religious' young adults; the effects of immigration; religion and science.
Last offered: Spring 2017
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 118:
Exploring Race and Ethnicity through Family History (AFRICAAM 118X, ASNAMST 118S, CSRE 118S)
Who determines which narratives of race and difference are included in the national memory? In what ways does the family represent an archive for understanding race and social power in the United States? How does your own family history support or subvert dominant historical narratives of race and difference in the United States? Approaching race as an intersectional construct always defined by class, gender, and sexuality, this course examines family history as a site for understanding race, social power, and difference in American society. Topics to be discussed will include the family as an archive for understanding racial difference; family photo collections as sites through which ideas of race and ethnicity are contested and reinforced; and oral history as a tool for documenting family memories of race and social difference. Assignments will encourage students to apply course theories and readings to their own family histories as a means of better understanding the history of race and difference in the United States.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 119:
Science Fiction: Cyborgs & Human Simulacra in the Cinema (FILMSTUD 119, FILMSTUD 319)
The human simulacrum has a long history in mythology, fairy tales and children¿s stories, as well as in the genres of horror and science fiction. This course explores synthetic human narratives in the cinema. Stories of artificially created life, living statues, automata, body snatchers, robots, cyborgs and electronic simulations all direct our attention to our assumed definitions of the human.The fantasies and anxieties that undergird these stories engage with such issues as labor, gender, sexuality, death, emotion, rationality, embodiment, consumerism, reproductive technologies, and power relations. Attention will also be given the relation of cinema¿s human simulacra to changing cinematic technologies. Films will include Metropolis, Pinocchio, Robocop, Bride of Frankenstein, The Golem, A.I., My Fair Lady, Her, Blade Runner, and the HBO iteration of Westworld. Readings will include essays, as well as some fiction and possibly comics.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| Units: 4
AMSTUD 120:
Digital Media in Society (COMM 120W, COMM 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, seniors, and graduate students.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 121X:
Hip Hop, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language (AFRICAAM 121X, ANTHRO 121A, CSRE 121X, EDUC 121, 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.
Last offered: Spring 2013
| Units: 3-4
AMSTUD 121Z:
Political Power in American Cities (POLISCI 121, PUBLPOL 133, URBANST 111)
The major actors, institutions, processes, and policies of sub-state government in the U.S., emphasizing city general-purpose governments through a comparative examination of historical and contemporary politics. Issues related to federalism, representation, voting, race, poverty, housing, and finances. Political Science majors taking this course to fulfill the WIM requirement should enroll in POLISCI 121.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 122D:
Free Speech and Inclusion on Campus (SOC 122D)
How do we balance norms of inclusion and respect with norms of free speech? This seminar course utilizes readings from sociology, political science, and legal/ethical reasoning to elucidate the larger structures and ideals that are at stake in the debates over what kind of speech is tolerable, or more normatively speaking, desirable, at colleges and universities. The expected learning outcomes are: a greater understanding of the free speech's role in American society and democracy, how America's position on free speech compares to other countries, and how speech restriction and liberties can reveal larger patterns in social structure and agency. Finally, key skills students will develop are learning how to identify common ethical frameworks that academic and popular authors use and how to analyze the origins of and changes in social institutions and social structures.
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-ER, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 123X:
Politics and Public Policy (POLISCI 102, PUBLPOL 101, PUBLPOL 201)
American political institutions (the Presidency, Congress, and the Court) and political processes (the formation of political attitudes and voting) have for some time now been criticized as inadequate to the task of making modern public policy. Against the backdrop of American culture and political history we examine how public policy has been and is being made. We use theories from Political Science and Economics to assess the state of the American system and the policy making process. We use case studies and lectures to analyze contemporary issues including environmental policy, taxes and spending , gun control , economic growth and inequality and mobility. In some of these issue areas we use comparative data from other countries to see how the U.S. is doing relative to other countries. In addition to class room lecture and discussion, student groups are formed to analyze policy issues of relevance to them. Undergraduate Public Policy students are required to enroll in this class for five units.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 124A:
The American West (ARTHIST 152, ENGLISH 124, HISTORY 151, POLISCI 124A)
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.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 124B:
European and North African Visions of the American West (COMPLIT 124B, DLCL 124B)
This course is an interdisciplinary investigation of the rewriting of the American West in the Mediterranean context through the transnational lenses of filmmakers and artists of diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds, through primarily cinema, but also graphic novels, novels, and murals. How do these films and novels adopt and adapt the Western genre? How do these artistic endeavors tell us about the enduring aura and stereotypes of the American West mythology? Films: Jacques Audiard, The Sisters Brothers, Sergio Leone, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, David Oelhoffen, Far From Men, Karl May, Winnetou, Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist, Agnès Varda, Mur murs. Special guest: photographer/street artist JR. Readings: Mark Twain, Joan Didion, Romain Gary.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 125:
Perspectives on American Journalism (COMM 125, COMM 225)
An examination of American journalism, focusing on how news is produced, distributed, and financially supported. Emphasis on current media controversies and puzzles, and on designing innovations in discovering and telling stories. (Graduate students register for COMM 225.)
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 125C:
The Lost Generation: American literature between the World Wars
An exploration of American literature between the World Wars, with a focus on themes such as expatriation, trauma, technology, race, modernism; writers include Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 127:
American Style and the Rhetoric of Fashion (ARTHIST 165B, FILMSTUD 165B)
Focus on the visual culture of fashion, especially in an American context. Topics include: the representation of fashion in different visual media (prints, photographs, films, window displays, and digital images); the relationship of fashion to its historical context and American culture; the interplay between fashion and other modes of discourse, in particular art, but also performance, music, economics; and the use of fashion as an expression of social status, identity, and other attributes of the wearer. Texts by Thorstein Veblen, Roland Barthes, Dick Hebdige, and other theorists of fashion.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 129:
Animation and the Animated Film (FILMSTUD 129, FILMSTUD 329)
The fantasy of an image coming to life is ancient, but not until the cinema was this fantasy actualized. The history of the movies begins with optical toys, and contemporary cinema is dominated by films that rely on computer animation. This course considers the underlying fantasies of animation in art and lit, its phenomenologies, its relation to the uncanny, its status as a pure cinema, and its place in film theory. Different modes of production and style to be explored include realist animation, abstract animation; animistic animation; animated drawings, objects, and puppets; CGI, motion capture, and live/animation hybrids.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| Units: 4
AMSTUD 130A:
In Sickness and In Health: Medicine and Society in the United States: 1800-Present
Explores the history of medical institutions, ideas and practices in the United States from the early nineteenth century to the present. How are ideas of illness and health historically rooted and socially constructed? How did scientific and medical discoveries lead to the rise of scientific medicine, and how were these innovations adopted within the American cultural landscape? Topics include the transformation of therapeutics and technologies, medicine and the scientific ideal in the U.S., gender and race and medicine, the history of public health, and the professionalization and specialization of American medical practice.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 131:
Food and American Culture
This course introduces students to the cultural history, politics, and aesthetics of eating in America, exploring topics that have fueled debates about what Americans should eat over the last hundred years. Discussions of American cuisine will lead directly into larger concepts of American identity, culture, and politics. We will ask questions such as: What role does food play in national identity? Have restaurants shaped American social life? What is modern American cuisine?nnCourse goals include fluency in the key terminology and theoretical frameworks of American Studies and a deep historical understanding of our contemporary food system. Students will actively engage with primary sources, including nutrition manuals, advertisements, cookbooks, restaurant menus, and paintings.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
AMSTUD 132:
American Art and Culture, 1528-1910 (ARTHIST 132, ARTHIST 332)
The visual arts and literature of the U.S. from the beginnings of European exploration to the Civil War. Focus is on questions of power and its relation to culture from early Spanish exploration to the rise of the middle classes. Cabeza de Vaca, Benjamin Franklin, John Singleton Copley, Phillis Wheatley, Charles Willson Peale, Emerson, Hudson River School, American Genre painters, Melville, Hawthorne and others.
Last offered: Autumn 2013
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 133:
Technology and American Visual Culture (FILMSTUD 133B)
An exploration of the dynamic relationship between technology and the ways we see and represent the world, with a focus on American visual culture from the 19th century through the present. We study the history of different tools from telescopes and microscopes to digital detectors that have changed and enhanced our visual capabilities; the way technological shifts, such as the introduction of electric lights or train travel, have shaped our visual imagination and aesthetic sensibilities; and how technology has inspired or responded to visual art. Special attention is paid to how different media, such as photography, cinema, and computer screens, translate the visual experience into a representation; the automation of vision; and the intersection of technology with notions of time and space.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 134C:
The Western: Imagining the West in Fiction and Film (ENGLISH 134C)
The Wild West: a mythical place seared deep into the American imagination. Its familiar tropes lone riders on horseback, desert sunsets, saloon fights, train robberies echo through countless Western stories, novels, films, radio programs, and television series. Both formulaic and flexible, the Western has endured as a popular genre in American culture for more than a century, embodying and responding to many of the nation's broader anxieties surrounding its colonial history, its notions of masculinity and gender roles, its fascination with guns and violence, and its ideals of self-reliance and individualism. In this class we'll examine the Western genre through a selection of its central works in fiction and film, from the first dime novel Western, Ann S. Stephens Malaeska (1860), to Cormac McCarthy¿s acclaimed Blood Meridian (1985); and from the first silent film Western, Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery (1903), to the mid-century Hollywood films of John Ford, to Maggie Greenwald¿s feminist Western, The Ballad of Little Jo (1993). Along the way we'll examine the Western as both a literary form and a cultural phenomenon, probing the history of its enduring appeal as a genre. How do these novels and films construct, adapt, and subvert the form and expectations of the Western, and how do they both perpetuate and challenge the broader cultural problems of their, and our, time? Finally, as Californians and inheritors of the nation's westward expansion, what does the Western tell us about national myths of the West, and the place in which we live?
Last offered: Summer 2018
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
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: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-ER, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 135X:
Islam in America (AFRICAAM 135A, CSRE 135, GLOBAL 137, RELIGST 135)
This course explores the history of Islam in North America with special emphasis on the experience of Muslims in the United States. Contrary to popularly held belief, Muslims have been critical participants in the construction of American identity from the 16th century onwards when Muslim slaves were forcibly brought to Colonial America. Our course will explore the diverse ways Muslims in America have imagined, practiced, and negotiated their religious identity. We will move chronologically, and we will focus upon three crucial themes: the convergence of constructions of racial, religious, and national identities in America; the ever-shifting terrain of notions of authority and authenticity amongst Muslims in America; and global resonances of the practices and ideas of American Muslims.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, 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: Spr
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-ER, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 139B:
American Women Writers, 1850-1920 (ENGLISH 139B, FEMGEN 139B)
This course traces 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.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 141F:
Short Story to Big Screen (ENGLISH 141F)
This course will study the adaptation from short stories to films, with a particular eye toward the form and structure of each media and their relationship to each other. Students will read a variety of 20th and 21st century stories and watch their adaptations (including ¿Rashomon" and ¿Brokeback Mountain,¿), as well as write a short screenplay adaptation and a short critical essay on a story/film of their choosing.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 3-5
AMSTUD 143A:
American Architecture (ARTHIST 143A, ARTHIST 343A, CEE 32R)
A historically based understanding of what defines American architecture. What makes American architecture American, beginning with indigenous structures of pre-Columbian America. Materials, structure, and form in the changing American context. How these ideas are being transformed in today's globalized world.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 143M:
American Indian Mythology, Legend, and Lore (ENGLISH 43A, ENGLISH 143A, NATIVEAM 143A)
(English majors and others taking 5 units, register for 143A.) Readings from American Indian literatures, old and new. Stories, songs, and rituals from the 19th century, including the Navajo Night Chant. Tricksters and trickster stories; war, healing, and hunting songs; Aztec songs from the 16th century. Readings from modern poets and novelists including N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, and Leslie Marmon Silko, and the classic autobiography, "Black Elk Speaks."
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 143X:
Starstuff: Space and the American Imagination (ARTHIST 264B, FILMSTUD 264B)
Course on the history of twentieth and twenty-first century American images of space and how they shape conceptions of the universe. Covers representations made by scientists and artists, as well as scientific fiction films, TV, and other forms of popular visual culture. Topics will include the importance of aesthetics to understandings of the cosmos; the influence of media and technology on representations; the social, political, and historical context of the images; and the ways representations of space influence notions of American national identity and of cosmic citizenship.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 145:
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley. The site and source of vibrant economic growth and technological innovation. A disruptive force in social, economic, and political systems. An interface between technology and academia, with the the quirky influence of the counterculture in the background. A surprisingly agile cultural behemoth that has reshaped human relationships and hierarchies of all sorts. A brotopia built on the preferences and predilections of rich, geeky white guys. A location with perpetually sunny skies and easy access to beaches and mountains. nnThis seminar will unpack the myths surrounding Silicon Valley by exploring the people, places, industries, and ideas that have shaped it from post-WWII to the present. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject and considers region's history and development; the products of Silicon Valley, from computers and circuit boards to search algorithms and social networks; and Silicon Valley's depictions in photography, film, television, and literature.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 145D:
Jewish American Literature (ENGLISH 145D, JEWISHST 155D, REES 145D)
From its inception, Jewish-American literature has taken as its subject as well as its context the idea of Jewishness itself. Jewish culture is a diasporic one, and for this reason the concept of Jewishness differs from country to country and across time. What stays remarkably similar, though, is Jewish self-perception and relatedly Jewish literary style. This is as true for the first-generation immigrant writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer and Anzia Yezierska who came to the United States from abroad as it is for their second-generation children born in the United States, and the children of those children. In this course, we will consider the difficulties of displacement for the emigrant generation and their efforts to sustain their cultural integrity in the multicultural American environment. We'll also examine the often comic revolt of their American-born children and grandchildren against their (grand-)parents nostalgia and failure to assimilate. Only by considering these transnational roots can one understand the particularity of the Jewish-American novel in relation to mainstream and minority American literatures. In investigating the link between American Jewish writers and their literary progenitors, we will draw largely but not exclusively from Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 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, FEMGEN 145)
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.
Last offered: Spring 2014
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 146A:
Steinbeck (ENGLISH 146A)
Introduction to the work of an American writer, beloved by general readers, often reviled by critics, whose career spanned from the Great Depression through World War II to the social upheavals of the 1960s. Focus on the social and political contexts of Steinbeck's major works; his fascination with California and Mexico; his interdisciplinary interest in marine biology and in philosophy; his diverse experiments with literary form, including drama and film.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 147A:
Speaking of Baseball (ENGLISH 147A)
Since its invention in the nineteenth century, baseball has been steeped in lore and rhetoric. A cultural commentator recently pegged it one of three significant American contributions to world culture, along with jazz and the U.S. constitution. Literary and artistic representations of baseball abound, often treating it as more than a game and only a little less than a religion. In this class, we¹ll track representations and grand claims made for baseball by American poets, novelists, and commentators of all sorts. We'll weigh the cornucopia of literary nonfiction depicting the game. The goal will be to map the scope of this literature, defining a tradition's edges, determining its peaks, assessing its limits, challenges, and stakes. This class is open to anyone, whether familiar with the game, or totally new to it. We'll cover a variety of issues: Americana, mythologies of sport, gender and class, race, history, sociology, lots of poetry, and film.
Last offered: Summer 2017
| Units: 3-5
AMSTUD 150:
Introduction to English II: American Literature and Culture to 1855 (ENGLISH 11B)
(Formerly English 23/123). 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:
Nineteenth Century America (AFRICAAM 150B, CSRE 150S, 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 (AFRICAAM 150C, HISTORY 150C)
(Same as HISTORY 50C. History majors and others taking 5 units, register for 150C.) 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? Two historical research "labs" or archival sessions focus on the Great Depression in the 1930s and radical and conservative students movements of the 1960s. Suitable for non-majors and majors alike.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 150J:
Queer Poetry in America (ENGLISH 150J, FEMGEN 150J)
Some poets are known for portraying alternative sexualities in their poetry. Others seem to cover sexuality up. Can we use a poem to determine whether a poet is gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or questioning? Or do some poets simply defy categorization? What makes a poem queer? Is poetry somehow more or less queer than other literary forms? Even if we can answer these questions, what would they tell us about literature in general? This course will investigate such topics and more by tracking queer poetry in twentieth-century America. We'll start with nineteenth-century figures Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, then move on to Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, and others. We'll ask what their poetry meant in their own times, as well as what it means to us in our present era of expanding civil rights and changing sexual attitudes.
Last offered: Summer 2017
| Units: 3-5
AMSTUD 150X:
From Gold Rush to Google Bus: History of San Francisco (HISTORY 252E, URBANST 150)
This class will examine the history of San Francisco from Native American and colonial settlement through the present. Focus is on social, environmental, and political history, with the theme of power in the city. Topics include Native Americans, the Gold Rush, immigration and nativism, railroads and robber barons, earthquake and fire, progressive reform and unionism, gender, race and civil rights, sexuality and politics, counterculture, redevelopment and gentrification. Students write final project in collaboration with ShapingSF, a participatory community history project documenting and archiving overlooked stories and memories of San Francisco. (Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center)
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 151:
Migration and Diaspora in American Art, 1800-Present (ARTHIST 151, ARTHIST 351, ASNAMST 151D, CSRE 151D)
This lecture course explores American art through the lens of immigration, exile, and diaspora. We will examine a wide range of work by immigrant artists and craftsmen, paying special attention to issues of race and ethnicity, assimilation, displacement, and political turmoil. Artists considered include Emmanuel Leutze, Thomas Cole, Joseph Stella, Chiura Obata, Willem de Kooning, Mona Hatoum, and Julie Mehretu, among many others. How do works of art reflect and help shape cultural and individual imaginaries of home and belonging?
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 151F:
Angelheaded Hipsters: Beat Writers of San Francisco and New York (ENGLISH 151F)
Reading of central writers of the Beat movement (Ginsberg, Kerouac, di Prima, Snyder, Whalen) as well as some related writers (Creeley, Gunn, Levertov). Issues explored include NY and SF, Buddhism and leftist politics, poetry and jazz. Some exposure to reading poems to jazz accompaniment. Examination of some of the writers and performers growing out of the Beats: Bob Dylan, rock music, especially from San Francisco, and jazz.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
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.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 153:
Warhol's World (ARTHIST 153, ARTHIST 353, FEMGEN 153, TAPS 153W, TAPS 353W)
Andy Warhol's art has never before been more widely exhibited, published, or licensed for commercial use, product design, and publication than it is today. For all Warhol's promiscuous visibility and global cachet at the current moment, there is much we have yet to learn about his work and the conditions of its making. This course considers the wide world of Warhol's art and life, including his commercial work of the 1950s, Pop art and films of the 1960s, and celebrity portraiture of the 1970s and 80s. Of particular interest throughout will be Warhol's photography as it reflects his interest in wealth and celebrity on the one hand and on the everyday life of everyday people on the other. The course will include multiple visits to Contact Warhol: Photography without End, an exhibition co-curated by Prof. Meyer on view throughout the quarter at the Cantor Arts Center.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 154X:
The American Civil War: A Visual History (ARTHIST 154, ARTHIST 354)
A painting of men charging across a field, a photograph of dead bodies in a ditch, a fragment of metal, a sliver of bone, and a brass button: how do we make sense of the visual record of the American Civil War (1861-65)? From the Capitol Dome to a skeleton dug up in a highway project a hundred years after the last battle, the course will consider the strange and scattered remnants of a famous era. Drawing on the poetry of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Herman Melville, the paintings of Winslow Homer, the photographs of Alexander Gardner, and the oratory of Abraham Lincoln, the course will examine what cannot be portrayed: the trauma of war.
Last offered: Winter 2015
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 155:
American Constitutional History from the Civil War to the War on Poverty (HISTORY 155)
(Same as LAW 7008.) This course addresses U.S. constitutional history from the post-Civil War Reconstruction period through the mid-20th century. Because of the breadth of the subject matter, the view will necessarily be partial. In particular we will take as our focus the way the Constitution has provided a point of political mobilization for social movements challenging economic and social inequality. Topics covered include: Civil War Reconstruction and restoration; the rise of corporate capitalism and efforts to constrain it; Progressive Era regulation; the New Deal challenge to federalism and the anti-New Deal backlash; government spending; WWII and the Japanese Internment; the Civil Rights Era, and the War on Poverty. Readings will include both legal and historical materials with a focus on the relationship between law and society. Readings will include both legal and historical materials with a focus on the relationship between law and society. Elements used in grading: Class Participation, Attendance, Written Assignments, Final Paper. Paper extensions will be granted with instructor permission. No automatic grading penalty for late papers.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 155C:
Abstract Expressionism: Painting/Modern/America (ARTHIST 155C)
The course will focus on American abstract painting from the 1930s to the 1960s, emphasizing the works of art at the Anderson Collection at Stanford. We will focus on looking closely at pictures by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and other renowned abstract painters, developing skills of speaking and writing about these works of art. We will also place these pictures in their mid-20th century context: World War II and the Cold War; Hollywood and popular culture generally; Beat literature; and locations such as New York and San Francisco.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 155F:
The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1830 to 1877 (AFRICAAM 55F, AMSTUD 55F, HISTORY 55F, HISTORY 155F)
(History 55F is 3 units; History 155F is 5 units.)This course explores the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War. The Civil War profoundly impacted American life at national, sectional, and constitutional levels, and radically challenged categories of race and citizenship. Topics covered include: the crisis of union and disunion in an expanding republic; slavery, race, and emancipation as national problems and personal experiences; the horrors of total war for individuals and society; and the challenges--social and political--of Reconstruction.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 156H:
Women and Medicine in US History: Women as Patients, Healers and Doctors (FEMGEN 156H)
This course explores ideas about women's bodies in sickness and health, as well as women's encounters with lay and professional healers in the United States from the eighteenth century to the present. We begin with healthy women and explore ideas about women's life cycle in the past, including women's sexuality, the history of birth control, abortion, childbirth, and aging. We then turn to the history of women healers including midwives, lay physicians, professional physicians and nurses. Finally, we examine women's illnesses and their treatment as well as the lives of women with disabilities in the past. We will examine differences in women's experience with medicine on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexuality and class. We will relate this history to issues in contemporary medicine, and consider the efforts of women to gain control of their bodies and health care throughout US history.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 157:
The Constitution: A Brief History (HISTORY 157, POLISCI 128S)
A broad survey of the Constitution, from its Revolutionary origins to the contemporary disputes over interpretation. Topics include the invention of the written constitution and interpretative canons; the origins of judicial review; the Civil War and Reconstruction as constitutional crises; the era of substantive due process; the rights revolution; and the Constitution in wartime.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul
AMSTUD 157P:
Solidarity and Racial Justice (AFRICAAM 157P, CSRE 157P, FEMGEN 157P)
Is multiracial solidarity necessary to overcome oppression that disproportionately affects certain communities of color? What is frontline leadership and what role should people play if they are not part of frontline communities? In this course we will critically examine practices of solidarity and allyship in movements for collective liberation. Through analysis of historical and contemporary movements, as well as participation in movement work, we will see how movements have built multiracial solidarity to address issues that are important to the liberation of all. We will also see how racial justice intersects with other identities and issues. This course is for students that want to learn how to practice solidarity, whether to be better allies or to work more effectively with allies. There will be a community engaged learning option for this course. Students who choose to participate in this option will either work with Stanford's DGen Office or a community organization that is explicitly devoted to multiracial movement-building.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 4-5
AMSTUD 157X:
Language as Political Tool: Feminist and LGBTQ Movements and Impacts (FEMGEN 157, FEMGEN 257)
How does a social or political movement gain traction? For example, how did 20th-century movements of the disenfranchised, such as the Civil Rights movement, LGBTQ movements, or feminist movements, gain a voice and eventually enact change? In the mediascape of today, where everyone with access to a computer could have a voice, how does a movement change the national conversation? How do written and verbal choices of the movements impact their success and outreach to supporters? In this course, students will write and revise their own arguments in order to best understand the rhetorical potential in these movements¿ choices and to consider how those rhetorical moves are incorporated into political discourse. We'll examine the role of rhetoric, the use of argument to persuade, in social movements working toward social justice, party platforms, and public policy.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: 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.
Last offered: Spring 2014
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
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: Aut, Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 163:
Queer America (FEMGEN 163)
This class explores queer art, photography and politics in the United States since 1930. Our approach will be grounded in close attention to the history and visual representation of sexual minorities in particular historical moments and social contexts. We will consider the cultural and political effects of World War II, the Cold War, the civil rights movement, psychedelics, hippie culture and sexual liberation, lesbian separatism, the AIDS crisis, and marriage equality.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-AmerCul
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: Aut
| Units: 3-5
AMSTUD 168D:
American Prophet: The Inner Life and Global Vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. (AFRICAAM 68D, CSRE 68, HISTORY 68D, HISTORY 168D)
Martin Luther King, Jr., was the 20th-century's best-known African-American leader, but the religious roots of his charismatic leadership are far less widely known. The documents assembled and published by Stanford's King Research and Education Institute provide the source materials for this exploration of King's swift rise to international prominence as an articulate advocate of global peace and justice.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
AMSTUD 169:
California's Minority-Majority Cities (AFRICAAM 169A, CSRE 260, URBANST 169)
Historical development and the social, cultural, and political issues that characterize large cities and suburbs where communities of color make up majority populations. Case studies include cities in Los Angeles, Santa Clara, and Monterey counties. Comparisons to minority-majority cities elsewhere in the U.S. Service Learning Course (certified by Haas Center).
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 175E:
Animals and the Fictions of Identity (ENGLISH 175E)
In a post-Darwin world, the notion that we might all have an animal alter-ego lurking inside seems quite familiar. But ideas about animals¿how they think and feel, act and react¿involve identity categories such as race, gender, class and ability in surprising ways. This course will trace the relationship between animality and human life in twentieth-century American fiction, from race and indigeneity in Jack London¿s dog stories to the storytelling practices of contemporary animal advocacy groups. The course may also include an experiential component in which students will have the opportunity to explore multispecies concerns with a local organization.
Last offered: Summer 2017
| Units: 3-5
AMSTUD 176B:
Documentary Fictions
More and more of the best American fiction, plays, and even comics are being created out of documentary practices such as in-depth interviewing, oral histories, and reporting. Novels like Dave Egger¿s What is the What, plays like Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight Los Angeles, and narrative journalism like Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, all act as both witnesses and translators of people's direct experience and push art into social activism in new ways. In this course students will examine the research methods, artistic craft, and ethics of these rich, genre-bending works and then create documentary fictions of their own. Readings will include works by Katherine Boo, G. B. Tran, and Charles Johnson, and author visits will include a master class with Rebecca Skloot. No prior creative writing or journalism experience required.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
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: Win
| Units: 3-5
AMSTUD 178:
Ethnicity and Dissent in United States Art and Literature (ARTHIST 178, ARTHIST 378)
The role of the visual arts of the U.S. in the construction and contesting of racial, class, and gender hierarchies. Focus is on artists and writers from the 18th century to 1990s. How power, domination, and resistance work historically. Topics include: minstrelsy and the invention of race; mass culture and postmodernity; hegemony and language; memory and desire; and the borderlands.
Last offered: Spring 2004
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
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:
Re- Imagining American Borders (CSRE 183, FEMGEN 183)
In this second volatile and violent year of the Trump presidency, American borders of all kinds seem to be dangerously tight. Immigrant travel bans and ICE deportations, mass incarceration, gendered violence, racialized attacks, urban and rural divisions emphasizing class, and constant social media anger all underscore a vision of an America of intractable difference. This course investigates sources of these borderlines and most crucially how novelists, filmmakers, poets, visual artists and essayists perceive racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, religious and class borders in this country as they may ¿re-imagine¿ difference possibly via Vijay Prashad¿s ¿polyculturalism¿ or Gloria Anzaldùa¿s ¿borderlands.¿ Texts include those of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Boots Riley, Dee Rees, Ryan Coogler, Magdalena Gomez, Janice Lobo Sapigao, Layli Long Soldier, Naomi Shihab Nye, Edwidge Danticat, Sherman Alexie, Shailja Patel, Beyonce, Kara Walker, and the podcast ¿Ear Hustle,¿ narratives created and produced from inside San Quentin. Course work includes active discussion, journal entries, one comparative analytical essay and a creative final project/with analytical paper examining personal or community identities.
Terms: Aut
| 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);
Potemski, A. (GP)
AMSTUD 186D:
Asian American Art: 1850-Present (ARTHIST 186B, ASNAMST 186B)
In 1968, the Asian American Political Alliance began a successful campaign to jettison the designation "oriental" in favor of "Asian American." Given the term's recent genesis, what do we refer to when we discuss "Asian American art," and how can we speak of its history? This lecture class will explore these questions by considering artists, craftsmen, and laborers of Asian descent in the United States, beginning with Chinese immigration to California in the mid-nineteenth century, and extending through our current moment of globalization. We will consider their work alongside art and visual culture of the United States that engages "Asia" as a place, idea, or fantasy. Special attention will be paid to the crucial role Asia and Asian Americans played in movements including photography in San Francisco, Abstract Expressionism, Beat Culture, performance art, and New Queer Cinema. Artists include Chiura Obata, Isamu Noguchi, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Manuel Ocampo, Zarina, and Wu Tsang, among many others.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
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);
Herman, L. (PI);
Jenkins, N. (PI);
Jimenez, T. (PI);
Jones, G. (PI);
Kelman, A. (PI);
Kessler, E. (PI);
Koelle, A. (PI);
Mesa, C. (PI);
Obenzinger, H. (PI);
Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI);
Rakove, J. (PI);
Reich, R. (PI);
Richardson, J. (PI);
Rutten, A. (PI);
Saldivar, R. (PI);
White, R. (PI);
Wilcox, M. (PI);
Wolf, B. (PI);
Wright, G. (PI);
Potemski, A. (GP)
AMSTUD 199A:
American Studies Honors Seminar
*Enrollment Required for American Studies Honors students in their senior year.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 1
AMSTUD 199B:
American Studies Honors Seminar
*Required for all American Studies honors students
Terms: Win
| Units: 1
AMSTUD 199C:
American Studies Honors Seminar
*Required for American Studies honors students
Terms: Spr
| Units: 1
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.
Last offered: Spring 2017
| Units: 3-5
AMSTUD 215:
Understanding Jews (JEWISHST 215)
This discussion-based course will give students an opportunity to explore the constellation of religious, ethnic, national, cultural, artistic, spiritual, and political forces that shape Jewish life in the 21st century. Drawing on historical documents, classical texts, and contemporary events, this course will give students from any background an opportunity to ask hard questions, deepen their own understandings, and challenge their conceptions of what makes Jewish life 'Jewish.' No matter where you went for Sunday school - church, synagogue, the woods, or nowhere at all - this course is a chance to question what you know, and interrogate how you came to know what you know about Jews, Judaism, and Jewish culture.
| Units: 1-2
AMSTUD 218:
Islam, Race and Revolution: A Pan-American Approach (CSRE 218, RELIGST 218, RELIGST 318)
Taking a pan-American approach to the study of religious traditions, this upper-level course traces the history of the critical intersection between race, religion and revolution among Muslims from the turn of the nineteenth century until the present day. Moving from the Atlantic Revolutions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to the United States, to the decolonizing Third World, and then finally to the contemporary Middle East, this class will emphasize that Islam and race together have been used by many groups in order to challenge existing power structures, agitate for change, and more than occasionally, transform the social, cultural and governmental structures comprising their worlds. Moreover, although this class is concentrated upon religious formations in the Americas, students will explore global events throughout the Muslim world in order to examine how global politics contribute to religious formations, solidarities and identities. At the conclusion of this course, students will be expected to write a 10-15 page research paper, and a topic will be chosen in consultation with the instructor. Students will also be expected to write weekly reflection papers, which will serve to facilitate class discussion. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 220B:
Being John Wayne (FILMSTUD 220, TAPS 220A)
John Wayne's imposing corporeality and easy comportment combined to create an icon of masculinity, the American West, and America itself. Focus is on the films that contributed most to the establishment, maturation, and deconstruction of the iconography and mythology of the John Wayne character. The western and war film as genres; the crisis of and performance of masculinity in postwar culture; gender and sexuality in American national identity; relations among individualism, community, and the state; the Western and national memory; and patriotism and the Vietnam War.
Last offered: Winter 2017
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 231X:
Learning Religion: How People Acquire Religious Commitments (EDUC 231, JEWISHST 291X, RELIGST 231X)
This course will examine how people learn religion outside of school, and in conversation with popular cultural texts and practices. Taking a broad social-constructivist approach to the variety of ways people learn, this course will explore how people assemble ideas about faith, identity, community, and practice, and how those ideas inform individual, communal and global notions of religion. Much of this work takes place in formal educational environments including missionary and parochial schools, Muslim madrasas or Jewish yeshivot. However, even more takes place outside of school, as people develop skills and strategies in conversation with broader social trends. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to questions that lie at the intersection of religion, popular culture, and education. May be repeat for credit.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 8 units total)
AMSTUD 236:
Interfaith Dialogue on Campus: Religion, Diversity, and Higher Education (CSRE 136A, EDUC 436, RELIGST 336X)
How are we to talk across religious and spiritual differences? What is the purpose of such dialogues? What do we hope to gain from them? How do such dialogues take shape on college campuses, and what do they indicate about how students cultivate spiritual, political, and civic commitments? This course will explore these questions and others through seminar discussions, fieldwork, and writing that will examine the concepts, assumptions, and principles that shape how we think about interfaith dialogue.
Terms: Win
| Units: 2-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
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.
Last offered: Winter 2013
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
AMSTUD 246:
Constructing Race and Religion in America (AFRICAAM 236, CSRE 246, HISTORY 256G, HISTORY 356G, RELIGST 246, RELIGST 346)
This seminar focuses on the interrelationships between social constructions of race, and social interpretations of religion in America. How have assumptions about race shaped religious worldviews? How have religious beliefs shaped racial attitudes? How have ideas about religion and race contributed to notions of what it means to be "American"? We will look at primary and secondary sources, and at the historical development of ideas and practices over time.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 246B:
Pop Art (ARTHIST 246B)
A new course on the history and meaning of Pop art in the United States and abroad. The course will feature close study of paintings, photographs, and prints at the Cantor Art Center. The course will be given in the Denning Family Resource Room, located in The Anderson Collection building. If you have any questions regarding the location, please contact Linda Esquivel at lindae@stanford.edu.
Last offered: Spring 2015
| Units: 5
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 250J:
Baldwin and Hansberry: The Myriad Meanings of Love (AFRICAAM 250J, CSRE 250J, FEMGEN 250J, TAPS 250J)
This course looks at major dramatic works by James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry. Both of these queer black writers had prophetic things to say about the world-historical significance of major dramas on the 20th Century including civil rights, revolution, gender, colonialism, racism, sexism, war, nationalism and as well as aesthetics and politics.
| Units: 4
AMSTUD 251:
Topics in Constitutional History (HISTORY 251G, POLISCI 222S)
Ideas of rights in American history emphasizing the problem of defining constitutional rights, the free exercise of religion, freedom of expression, and the contemporary debate over rights talk and the idiom of human rights.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul
AMSTUD 251X:
Creating the American Republic (HISTORY 251, HISTORY 351, POLISCI 222P, POLISCI 422P)
Concepts and developments in the late 18th-century invention of American constitutionalism; the politics of constitution making and ratifying; emergence of theories of constitutional interpretation including originalism; early notions of judicial review. Primary and secondary sources.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
AMSTUD 255D:
Racial Identity in the American Imagination (AFRICAAM 255, CSRE 255D, HISTORY 255D, HISTORY 355D)
From Sally Hemings to Barack Obama, 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 society. Most broadly, this course interrogates the problem of American identity and examines the interplay between racial identity and American identity.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
AMSTUD 256A:
Horror Comics (FILMSTUD 256)
This seminar will explore the vast array of horror comics. How does horror work in comics, as distinct from prose and cinema? How and why are non-moving images scary? The different narrational strategies of short stories, self-contained works, and continuing series will be explored, as will American, Japanese, and European approaches. Special attention will be given to Frankenstein, in novel, film, illustration, and comics. Example of such sub-genres as literary horror, horrific superheroes, cosmic (Lovecraftian) horror, ecological horror, as well as the horrors of bodies, sexuality, and adolescence will be encountered.nnStudents will read many comics, some comics theory, and will do an in-class presentation on a comic or topic of their choosing. The course is a seminar, so discussion will be continuous and required. Enrollment limited.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 258:
Sexual Violence in America (AFRICAAM 192, CSRE 192E, FEMGEN 258, FEMGEN 358, HISTORY 258, HISTORY 358)
This undergraduate/graduate colloquium explores the history of sexual violence in America, with particular attention to the intersections of gender and race in the construction of rape. We discuss the changing definitions of sexual violence in law and in cultural representations from early settlement through the late-twentieth century, including slavery, wartime and prison rape, the history of lynching and anti-lynching movements, and feminist responses to sexual violence. In addition to introducing students to the literature on sexual violence, the course attempts to teach critical skills in the analysis of secondary and primary historical texts. Students write short weekly reading responses and a final paper; no final exam; fifth unit research or CEL options.nnLimited enrollment, permission of instructor required. Submit application form and indicate interest in CEL option. Priority admission to History, FGSS, CSRE, AFRICAAM, and AMSTUD declared majors and minors. (Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center)
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 261:
Personal Narratives in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (FEMGEN 261, FEMGEN 361)
This course explores the contribution of personal narratives to knowledge in the field of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. Each week, students do extensive readings of exemplary personal narratives that have contributed in substance and method to the field and that have opened up new areas of inquiry. These narratives deal especially with issues of individual and group identity; gender, sexuality, racial and ethnic diversity; and disability. Students select a topic of special interest to them to focus their readings and guide individual research during the quarter. The approach of the course is feminist, ethnographic, and welcoming of a variety of approaches to personal narrative. Instructor consent required; students apply at the first class meeting.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 275B:
History of Modern Mexico (CHILATST 275B, CSRE 275B, HISTORY 275B, HISTORY 375C)
(History 275B is an undergraduate course offered for 5 units; History 375C is a graduate course offered for 4-5 units.) Surveys the history of governance, resistance, and identity formation in Mexico from the nineteenth century to the present. Explores Mexico's historical struggles to achieve political stability, economic prosperity, and social justice and examines how regional, class, ethnic, and gender differences have figured prominently in the shaping of Mexican affairs. Topics include Mexico's wars and their legacies, the power of the state, violence and protest, debates over the meaning of "Mexicanness," youth culture, and the politics of indigenismo.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
AMSTUD 281:
Asian Religions in America; Asian American Religions (ASNAMST 281, RELIGST 281, RELIGST 381)
This course will analyze both the reception in America of Asian religions (i.e. of Buddhism in the 19th century), and the development in America of Asian American religious traditions.
Last offered: Winter 2014
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP
