1 - 10 of 21 results for: AMSTUD

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.

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"?

This course explores the emergence of concepts of gender equality in world history. It asks how gender inequality relates to racial, ethnicity, and sexual identities, how men engage with feminism, whether gender equality is purely a western cultural tradition, and much more. We approach the long history of ideas about gender and equality by reading primary historical documents from around the world, moving from the 15th century to the present. Topics include education, the body, sexuality, violence, labor, and politics.

Contemporary visual artists have long been in the forefront of social criticism in America and their key works have become anchors for discourses on racism, sexism, economic inequality, and immigrant rights. We will consider political art by artists such as ACT-UP, Judy Chicago, Fred Wilson, Guerilla Girls, Ai Weiwei and many others that raises social awareness, inspires social change and galvanizes activism. What makes their art enduring social criticism? How have they contributed to our understanding of American history?

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.

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.

From Mark Twain¿s Roughin¿ It to Cheryl Strayed¿s Wild, this seminar explores epic road trips of the twentieth century. Travel is a cultural practice through which Americans have constructed ideas about the self, society, race, the past, and the future. Engaging historical and literary texts, film, autobiography, photography, and music, we will consider how writers have explored the theme of travel and what the differences in their texts tell us about American writing, American history, and American life.

(Formerly PS 2) 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.

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.