printer friendly pageAMSTUD 93: Food and Popular Culture
This course introduces students to the social history, political economy and aesthetics of eating in America, paying particular attention to representations of food in popular culture over the last hundred years. Though firmly grounded in American Studies, an interdisciplinary perspective draws from the material and methods of anthropology, cultural studies, art history, and history. Topics include the California citrus industry, competitive eating, food art, utopias, and edible landscapes. Students will actively engage with primary sources including cookbooks, paintings and art installations, diet books, TV shows, film, and advertisements.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Bitar, A. (PI)
AMSTUD 94: Topics in Food Studies
This course examines food in the United States over the last hundred years as it relates to the broad themes of nature, disease, technology, and labor. Though firmly grounded in American Studies, an interdisciplinary perspective draws from the material and methods of anthropology, cultural studies, art history, and history. Specific topics include diet-related disease, tipping and the subminimum wage, the concept of agrarian democracy, supermarkets, and food preservation. Creative assignments include writing a menu, conducting a food observation, and reviewing a restaurant. Students will actively engage with paintings, sculpture, film, advertisements, restaurant reviews, commercials, and music videos.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Bitar, A. (PI)
AMSTUD 95: Consumer Culture
This course will examine consumerism in the United States, first focusing on the rise of advertising, mass market goods, catalogues, and department stores at the turn of the 20th century. We will then examine post-WWII suburbia and the rise of the "good life" and the ensuing backlash in 1960s counterculture anti-consumerist movements. Our topics will include the annual no-shopping day, back to nature movements, urban homesteading, thrift, slow food activism, and the efforts to resist mass production in food, clothing, and housing. Sources include novels, films, magazines, music, and advertisements.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Bitar, A. (PI)
AMSTUD 101: American Fiction into Film: How Hollywood Scripts and Projects Black and White Relations
Movies and the fiction that inspires them; power dynamics behind production including historical events, artistic vision, politics, and racial stereotypes. What images of black and white does Hollywood produce to forge a national identity? How do films promote equality between the races? What is lost or gained in film adaptations of books?nLimited Enrollment, Instructor¿s Consent Required. Class meetings held in Manzanita Multipurpose Room.
Last offered: Spring 2015
| 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, and immigrant rights? 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 of marginalization and modeled ways of resisting that marginalization. For three decades feminist artists 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 the Occupy and #BlackLivesMatter movements. Why are each of these examples successful as influential and enduring markers of social criticism? We will also consider the visual culture of new protest strategies in the Post-Occupy era. What have these socially responsive practices contributed to our understanding of American history? We will conclude with an investigation into large-scale transnational participatory projects, including Tania Bruguera¿s Immigrant Movement International and Ai Weiwei¿s @Large on Alcatraz Island.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Hertz, B. (PI)
AMSTUD 103: On the Road: Cars and the Auto-Mobility of Race, Gender, Class, and Age in American Literature
The car in American literature, history, and culture, provides hope and makes it possible to relocate, transcend social status, and reinvent oneself. In this class we will examine how the car allows Americans to navigate identity in new ways. Readings include: Fitzgerald, Stein, Steinbeck, Escovedo-Colton, Nabokov, Barrett, Walker, Murray, Simpson, Wolfe, Kerouac, Davis, Freeman, Gilroy, Lucasi, Hamper, Moore, and Nass.
Last offered: Spring 2012
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
AMSTUD 104: America at Play: A History of Leisure in the United States
This course examines recreational pursuits from the 19th century to the present. It investigates how changes in values, economics, politics, technology, and modes of social interaction affected what Americans did for fun. We will see how the 1950s¿ DIY craze and today¿s maker movement, for instance, differ due to historical context. Central course themes include the work/leisure dichotomy, consumption, community formation, gendered divisions, and amateurs¿ expertise. The class draws upon popular and critical sources, conversations with guests, and hands-on experience.
Last offered: Winter 2016
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).
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Asimow, M. (PI)
AMSTUD 105R: Religion and War in America (CSRE 105, HISTORY 154D, HISTORY 354D, RELIGST 105)
Scholars have devoted much attention to wars in American history, but have not agreed as to whether religion was a major cause or simply a cover for political, economic, and other motives. We will compare interpretations that leave religion out, with those that take it into account. We will also look at the impact of war on the religious lives of ordinary Americans. We will examine both secondary as well as primary sources, beginning with King Philip's War in the 17th century, and ending with the "War on Terror" in the present day.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
AMSTUD 106: Spectacular Trials: Sex, Race and Violence in Modern American Culture (CSRE 66)
This course will use the phenomenon of the spectacular trial as a framework for exploring the intersections of sex, race, and violence in the formation of modern American culture. Beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing through the 1990s, we will focus our inquiry on a number of notorious cases, some associated with familiar names¿the ¿Scottsboro Boys,¿ Emmett Till, O.J. Simpson¿others involving once-infamous actors¿like Joan Little and Inez Garcia¿whose ordeals have receded into historical memory, considering a range of questions arising from this thematic nexus. For instance, in what ways are sexual transgressions racialized and gendered? What are the practical and theoretical ramifications of the seemingly inextricable conjunction of sex and violence in legal and popular discourse? And what insights might such spectacles afford when broached as an arena in which sexual meanings, identities, and practices are refracted and ultimately constructed? We will also examine the role of the pertinent professions in the evolution of these events, in particular how the interplay of law, medicine, psychiatry, and forensic science helped define the shifting boundaries of legality, and how print, radio, and television journalism operated not only in sensationalizing, but also in reflecting, modeling, and shaping prevailing attitudes and behaviors. Our study of this vital facet of our ¿society of the spectacle¿ will draw on a series of compelling secondary readings complemented by a diverse array of primary sources¿from contemporaneous pamphlets and newspaper accounts to photographs, letters, trial testimony, and psychological commentary¿that will enable class members to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different textual genres, experiment with alternative methods of fashioning historical interpretations, and contemplate the ways history might be employed to illuminate the persistent problems of racial bias, reflexive sexualization, and the packaging of trials as mass entertainment in the present day.
Last offered: Winter 2016
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