Current offerings (Fall 2007):
AMST 201-1: Race, Identity and American Visual Culture, Camenita Higginbotham
TR 1230-1345, CAB 323
This course surveys the role that popular visual culture played in constructing racial and ethnic identities in the United States in the early 20th century. Debates about immigration, imperialism, labor and urbanism will be explored through an examination of critical texts and images (including advertisements, films, paintings and photographs.)
AMST 201-3: GLOBALIZATION AND THE PERSISTENCE OF BORDERS, Daniel Chavez
MWF 1000-1050, CAB 324
Using the U.S. Mexico border as a primary example of a contact zone where unequal material and symbolic forces are at play, this course proposes the study of the economic, social and cultural practices that make borders not places for the proliferation of the marginal but critical spaces where the consequences of globalization, both positive and negative, can be gauged and measured before they reach the main territories of nations. By considering the historical and sociological evolution of this area and by analyzing the texts, musical styles, and visual culture generated by or about borderlanders, we will develop a set of multidisciplinary tools to study other borders. These tools will challenge the common perception of borders as anomalous areas at the fringe of nations where confrontation and violence persist and help us conceptualize them as rich and complex zones for cultural and economic exchange where future identities are formed.
Following a cultural and media studies approach this class analyzes short stories, novels, films, photos, songs, newspaper articles, chronicles, historical and sociological writings, and performance pieces produced in or about the U.S. Mexico border. For the final weeks of the course we will also make references to the India-Pakistan and Israel -Palestine borders as comparative cases.
Assignments include short reaction papers, a midterm exam, and a final
research paper focusing on some of the practices and artifacts studied
during the semester. Every other week there will be required film
screenings after the regular class time.
AMST 201-4: Language in the US, Ashley Williams
MW 1530-1645, CAB 323
Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. is not (and never has been) linguistically homogenous: from dying and revitalized Native American languages to newly arrived immigrant languages, from regional and social dialect variation to innovation among adolescents and Hip Hop, the American language situation is diverse and changing. This course invites students to investigate this not-quite-melting-pot variety both through readings in current research and through small-scale field research. Topics covered in the course will include the origins and distinctions of American English, language controversies such as Ebonics and the English-Only movement, research in language attitudes and discrimination, topics in bilingualism and education, plus the latest studies in language issues involving different ethnicities, genders, sexualities, ages, and social classes.
In this course we will pull material from a variety of sources (including films, literature, the media, and recent studies), and will employ a variety of approaches (linguistic, anthropological, sociological, historical, and more) as we investigate and debate what is uniquely “American” about the language situation in the United States.
AMST 201: California and the Future of the Past, Adam John Waterman,
MWF 0900-0950, CAB 341
In August 2000, the US Census Bureau announced a statistic that many presumed a long time coming: California had become the second state in the US, the first of the mainland states, to boast a non-white majority. The news of California’s demographic watershed was greeted by a veritable cacophony, with some predicting race war and civil apocalypse, and some holding out the promise of a just future and a transformed world. These reactions were notable, if less for their politics than for their intensity. Although both the District of Columbia and Hawai’i have had non-white majorities for some time, neither has prompted much in the way of commentary. California’s population demographics were occasion for controversy, on the other hand, because of the quixotic social and cultural matrix that makes California into a bellwether for the United States, in general. “Where California goes, the rest of America is predicted to follow,” Anthony Browne wrote in the Guardian on 3 September 2000, noting that by 2060, white people were predicted to be a statistical minority throughout the United States.
Because the end of white numerical supremacy seems a statistical inevitability, California has become the first front in the struggle to maintain white political supremacy. This course will consider the ostensibly global dimensions of that struggle, as it has been expressed in and through recent ethnic studies scholarship from intellectuals in the California public university system. We will explore trends in that scholarship as they relate to the present political and economic conjuncture of Californian society. Through close readings of literature and film—including John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Chester Himes’ If He Hollers Let Him Go, Joan Didion’s Run River, Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, George Lucas’s American Graffiti, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire—we will pursue an understanding of California’s historical geography that foregrounds its relationship to the material and ideological bases of US imperialism and the present form of globalization; namely, the military-industrial complex and Hollywood cinema. Through this lens, we will contextualize the identification of California with the proverbial American Dream, and consider how that dream has been materially bound to the perpetuation of white supremacy. As this is an introductory course in American Studies, we will concentrate the greatest share of our attention on primary texts, with express purpose of developing students’ critical faculties and close-reading skills, while introducing the basics of political economic critique and cultural analysis.
AMST 401-2:
The Hollywood Studio and the Director,
Robert Kolker
W 1300-15:30, CLM 322A
The history of Hollywood film can be understood as a tension between the individual talents of director, screenwriter, actor, and the studio, which acted as a tightly run factory, whose product was works of the imagination.
The seminar will concentrate on the function of the director in the studio system. We will look at studio films as well as films showing a strong directorial mark. We will analyze the cinematic texts, cultural contexts, studio economics, and audience response.
Students will prepare written presentations for the week’s discussion and there will be a major research paper.
AMST 401: Race, Punishment, and the State, Adam John Waterman
M 1300-1530, BRN 334
In 2005, 3.2% of the US adult population—nearly seven million people—was on probation, in jail, or on parole, with some two million people actually serving time behind bars. In that year, the percentage of black men in US prisons was nearly five times greater than the percentage of black men who were incarcerated during the last year of apartheid in South Africa. Additionally, since 2001, the United States has detained, without trial, anywhere from 300 to 500 “enemy combatants” at its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These detainees join the some 21,000 who were disappeared from the streets of New York and Washington D.C. in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and the nearly 26,500 who are detained on a daily basis as part of regular immigration and deportation hearings. In the face of these statistics, one might justifiably reconsider the extent to which the US can claim itself to be a free society.
How did the United States, the recently declared ‘servant of freedom’ around the world, come to house the largest prison population in the world? This course will attempt to answer that question by exploring the history of penal discipline as a technique of modern state power, from its origins in the colonization of the Americas and the expropriation of the European peasantry to its most contemporary expression in the form of the commercial prison industry and the extra-legal detention center. We will track the evolution of the penitentiary in the United States, and consider the ways in which its use has been defined by particular constellations of class and political interest. Building upon theories of the body, pain, and the social constitution of subjectivity, we will attend to the ways in which our experience of the world is shaped by our relationship to punishment, paying particular attention to the ways in which punishment is a racialized and racializing phenomenon. Focusing our historical analyses through close readings of contemporary state theory, we will trace a material genealogy of the present, bridging Bentham’s panopticon and the slave plantation with the contemporary supermax prison and Abu Ghraib. While our inquiries will be most conscientiously attuned to the emergence and transformation of penal power, this course will provide students a range of perspectives upon the materiality of the state and race.
AMST 201 0001 INTRO
TO AMERICAN STUDIES: ASIAN-AMERICAN CULTURAL HISTORY, Prof. Sylvia Chong ß this should be some kind of standard subheading, that is used throughout the
site for 2nd level headers
The historical experiences of Asian Americans--a broad,
panethnic category inclusive of Americans with roots in the Philippines, China,
Taiwan, Japan, North and South Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh and more--shed light on issues of immigration, citizenship,
education, war, labor, and assimilation which have affected all Americans to
differing degrees. This "multi-media" cultural history will draw
heavily on American visual and popular culture to situate, visualize, and
define Asian Americans at various historical moments against and alongside
African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and white Americans. Some of
these moments involve intense conflict and division, while others gesture
towards camaraderie and affiliation. This class will be neither a simplistic
celebration of ethnic pride and diversity, nor a condemnation of American
history as singularly oppressive, although we will acknowledge both these
strands. Rather, the eclectic materials of this class will replicate the
heterogeneous history and make-up of Asian America, and establish Asian America
as a relationship with itself and with America, rather than a "thing"
to isolate and analyze.
This is an introductory course that assumes no prior
knowledge of American Studies or Asian American history. During the semester,
we will concentrate on developing close reading skills for visual, cinematic
and textual materials that may prove useful to future courses you might take in
American Studies, History, English or Media Studies. We will engage with a
number of primary texts from various genres (fiction, poetry, graphic novel,
political cartoon, theater, narrative film, documentary, news media,
sociological texts, Supreme Court cases), and spanning the mid-19th century to
contemporary times. While obviously not an exhaustive overview of Asian
Americans in American cultural history, we will try to touch upon a diverse
range of historical moments and cultural and political issues, so as to gain
insight into the interconnectedness of multi-ethnic America.
Assignments include weekly homework response papers, two
short essays (4-5 pages), and a final exam. There will be an additional evening
set aside for required film screenings. Finally, there will be a required class
trip to the DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival in October 2006.
This class is a prerequisite to the Asian Pacific American
Studies minor, and recommended for American Studies majors.
AMST 201 0003
LANGUAGE IN THE U.S.
Prof. Ashley Williams
Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. is not (and never has
been) linguistically homogenous: from dying and revitalized Native American
languages to newly arrived immigrant languages, from regional and social
dialect variation to innovation among adolescents and Hip Hop, the American
language situation is diverse and changing. This course invites students to
investigate this not-quite-melting-pot variety both through readings in current
research and through small-scale field research. Topics covered in the course
will include the origins and distinctions of American English, language
controversies such as Ebonics and the English-Only movement, research in
language attitudes and discrimination, topics in bilingualism and education,
plus the latest studies in language issues involving different ethnicities,
genders, sexualities, ages, and social classes.
AMST 301 0001
AMERICAN STUDIES SEMINAR (PART I) Prof. Eric Lott
AMST 301 0002
AMERICAN STUDIES SEMINAR (PART I), Prof. Sylvia Chong
We begin our yearlong introduction to American Studies
methodology by exploring the culture and history of post-WWII America, from
1945 to the present. This semester we will concentrate on primary sources,
examining a wide-range of texts from the period. These will include television
programs, fiction, political manifestoes, poetry, journalism, painting, and
film. We have divided the syllabus into five sections, each organized around
what we take to be an iconic text from the period. We will work to build a
context for these widely remembered texts and, in doing so, build our
understanding of how culture evolves through the interaction between art and
event, between texts, and between past and present. Some of the questions we will
take up: how do people accommodate rapid and startling change-finding ways to
represent circumstances so new as to seem unbelievable? How did some of the
most influential artists of the day craft new ways of thinking about race,
gender, power, and democracy? How did the advent of television transform ways
of thinking about political participation and reality itself?
AMST 401 0001 WHITE
SUPREMACISTS WRITE THE AMERICAS: FROM ARYAN ATLANTIS TO WHITE AZTLAN. Prof.
Ruth Hill.
This seminar examines various racial projects that
contributed to the national formation of white supremacy, ca. 1915-2005,
especially those hemispheric projects that have constructed the ancient Aztec,
Maya and Inca civilizations as Caucasian/ Aryan/ White. We will also be
examining the related racial projects of ancient White Egypt and ancient White
India, some transamerican racial formations of black supremacy and brown
supremacy, and the confluence of white supremacy and Christian extremism in
postmodern, electronic racial projects. Evaluation: Active and intelligent
participation in classroom dialogues and weekly study group meetings, plus 1-2
pp. response papers after study group meetings: 20%; mid-semester précis of
research paper including annotated bibliography (10 pp.): 20%; brief oral
presentation of research project: 10%; research paper (25-30 pp.): 50%.
Readings and other materials will be on reserve at Clemons and available
through toolkit. They include materials from white supremacist websites and
selections from the following:
Madison Grant, Passing of the Great
Race or the Racial Basis of European History; Conquest of A Continent.
AMST 401 0002 IMAGES
OF CULTURE AND THE CULTURE OF IMAGES: AMERICA SEEN IN AND ON FILM. Prof. Robert
Kolker
The seminar will be both a broad survey and a close reading
of how the culture is represented, and how it wants to be represented, in film.
Throughout the semester, we will pair films across the history of Hollywood
that address issues of culture, politics, race, class, and gender from different,
often opposing points of view: films like Rebel Without a Cause and Fight Club;
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and JFK; The Searchers and Taxi Driver. The films
will be analyzed from a variety of perspectives, concentrating on their
cinematic form and narrative structure.
AMST 401 0003
AMERICAN INDIANS/AMERICAN CULTURE. Prof. Christian McMillan
This seminar will explore the
place of American Indians in American thought and culture from the colonial
period to the present. The course will be interdisciplinary and will pay
particular attention to anthropology, art (painting and photography), law,
literature, history, and film. We will look not only at the historical
experience of Indians, but will pay close attention to the ways in which they
have been represented over time—and how those representations have effected
their lives. Additionally, because there are connections to be made between the
American Indian experience and that of other indigenous peoples we will also
explore, in a limited fashion, some issues in a global context. General topics
will include, but not be limited to, the following: wilderness and the erasure
of Indian land rights; the politics of writing history; the practice of
anthropology; the Indian body as diseased, dirty, and unhygienic; racial
identity; legal sovereignty; the marketing of Indians in fiction and film;
Indian sacred sites. We will read a combination of primary and secondary
materials, from both Indian and non-Indian perspectives, as well watch several
films.
