printer friendly pageAMSTUD 143: Introduction to African American Literature (AFRICAAM 43)
(English majors and others taking 5 units, register for 143.) African American literature from its earliest manifestations in the spirituals, trickster tales, and slave narratives to recent developments such as black feminist theory, postmodern fiction, and hip hop lyricism. We will engage some of the defining debates and phenomena within African American cultural history, including the status of realist aesthetics in black writing; the contested role of literature in black political struggle; the question of diaspora; the problem of intra-racial racism; and the emergence of black internationalism. Attuned to the invariably hybrid nature of this tradition, we will also devote attention to the discourse of the Enlightenment, modernist aesthetics, and the role of Marxism in black political and literary history.
Last offered: Winter 2013
| 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.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Meyer, R. (PI)
;
Stephan, K. (TA)
AMSTUD 150: American Literature and Culture to 1855 (ENGLISH 23, ENGLISH 123)
(English majors and others taking 5 units, register for
ENGLISH 123 or
AMSTUD 150). 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: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Fernandez, I. (PI)
;
Richardson, J. (PI)
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
Instructors:
duRivage, J. (PI)
AMSTUD 152E: African American Literature (AFRICAAM 152E, ENGLISH 152E)
What is African American literature? This course is both an introduction to some of the great works of black literary expression and an examination of this category. We will examine the formal and rhetorical strategies that figure most prominently in this literary tradition and investigate the historical circumstances (including slavery, Reconstruction, the Great Migration, and Jim Crow) that have shaped¿and been shaped by¿this body of literature. Topics to be addressed include canon formation, negotiations between fiction and history, sectional tensions (between North and South), gender politics, and folk culture.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Spingarn, A. (PI)
AMSTUD 152G: Global Harlem Renaissance (AFRICAAM 152G)
Examination of the explosion of African American artistic expression during 1920s and 30s New York known as the Harlem Renaissance. Amiri Baraka once referred to the Renaissance as a kind of ¿vicious Modernism,¿ as a ¿BangClash,¿ that impacted and was impacted by political, cultural and aesthetic changes not only in the U.S. but Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. Focus on the literature, graphic arts, and the music of the era in this global context.
Last offered: Autumn 2010
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
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.
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
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.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 169B: Asian American Fiction (ENGLISH 169B)
Why are stories told in particular voices and from particular perspectives? This course explores such a question from the vantage point of Asian American fiction, where we will investigate dynamic and equivocal narrative voices, including "we" narration, "you" narration, multi-person narratives, and unreliable storytellers. We will further engage how these storytelling constructs affect and help to augment our understandings of racial formation. Selections may include: Julie Otsuka's "The Budda in the Attic," Ed Park's "Personal Days," among others.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Sohn, S. (PI)
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
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
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