1 - 10 of 112 results for: AMSTUD

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.

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. (This course has merged with Political Science 123/PubPol 101)

"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.

(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.

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.

Explores how gender and historical context have shaped the experience and treatment of mental illness in U.S. history. Why have women been the witches and hysterics of the past, and why have there historically been more women than men among the mentally ill? Topics include the relationship between historical ideas of femininity and insanity, the ways that notions of gender influence the definition and treatment of mental disorder, and the understanding of the historically embedded nature of medical ideas, diagnoses, and treatments.

A study of performances (Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra etc) of songs by classic American composers (Porter, Rogers and Hart, Cohen).

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.

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.