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American Studies

Professors Aronson (Psychology) and Rice-DeFosse (French and Francophone Studies); Associate Professors Beasley (American Studies, chair) and Chapman (Music); Assistant Professors Barnett (American Studies), and Shrout (Digital and Computational Studies); Visiting Assistant Professor Salter (English and Rhetoric, Film and Screen Studies); Lecturer Rubin (Anthropology)

What does it mean to be “an American?” How does our understanding of American culture, and our relation to it, differ depending on historical context, social position, and the interpretive and ideological perspectives we bring to bear? American studies pursues these questions using a variety of interdisciplinary approaches, texts, performance, and material culture as points of departure for a wide-ranging exploration of American culture. While it focuses on the United States, American studies situates the United States in a wider transnational context. In particular, American studies explores the various ways that institutions, values and practices shape, maintain, and challenge relations of power. American studies courses are designed to elucidate what has been rendered socially invisible.

Such discussions interrogate realities and discourses that have been deemed natural in order to expose their socially contingent character. Through their critical engagement with race, gender, sexuality, social class, disability, and other sites of identity, and with their own relation to them, students interrogate the meaning of belonging, privilege, and exclusion. Current American studies courses focus on cultural geography and cultural politics, borderlands, diasporas, film and media, gender, history, literature, music, performance, queer theory, and race theory.

More information on the American cultural studies program is available on the website (bates.edu/american-studies/).

Major Requirements for the Class of 2022 and beyond

The major in American studies requires ten courses and a senior thesis. The requirements are as follows:

1) Required courses:
AA/AM 119. Cultural Politics.
AMST 200.Introduction to American Studies. (formerly ACS 100. Introduction to American Cultural Studies.)
INDS 250. Interdisciplinary Studies: Modes and Methods of Inquiry.

2) One 300-level or 400-level course (exclusive of 457 and 458) in American studies, or cross-listed in American studies including but not limited to:

3) Six additional courses drawn from the American studies course listing. American studies is a diverse body of interdisciplinary intellectual inquiry. This allows students to engage and direct their area of specialization in consultation with their program advisor. Below are some optional suggestions for areas of specialization within American studies.

1) Identity and intersectionality
2) Indigenous and decolonizing studies
3) Performance
4) Power and structure
5) Material culture

Major Requirements for the Class of 2021

The major in American cultural studies requires ten courses and a senior thesis. The requirements are as follows:

1) Required courses:
AFR 100. Introduction to African American Studies.
AMST 200. Introduction to American Studies.
AMST 220. Community Studies.
INDS 250. Interdisciplinary Studies: Methods and Modes of Inquiry.
In the event that AMST 220 is not offered, students may apply another community studies course approved in advance by the Program in American Studies.

2) Six other courses from the list below, which should include:
a) courses should include courses at the 200 and 300 levels;
b) at least one course on the African diaspora outside of the United States;
c) at least one course on gender as an interpretive category;
d) at least one cultural studies course on the Arab American, Asian American, Franco-American, Native American, Canadian, or Latin American experience. The selection and sequence of courses must be discussed with the faculty advisor and approved by the fall semester of the junior year.

In addition to American studies courses and courses cross-listed in American studies, the following courses from across the curriculum may be applied to the major:

AF/EN 114. Introduction to African American Literature I: 1600-1910.
AF/RF 162. White Redemption: Cinema and the Co-optation of African American History.
AF/GS 201. Race, Ethnicity, and Feminist Thought.
AF/MU 249. African American Popular Music.
AF/DN 252. Contemporary Issues in Dance.
AF/EN 259. Contemporary African American Literature.
AF/EN 265. The Writings of Toni Morrison.
AF/EN 269. Narrating Slavery.
AF/HI 301E. African Slavery in the Americas.
ANTH 103. Introduction to Archaeology.
AN/RE 134. Myth, Folklore, and Popular Culture.
AN/MU 212. How Music Performs Culture: Introduction to Ethnomusicology.
ANTH 333. Culture and Interpretation.
ANTH s32. Introduction to Archaeological Fieldwork.
AV/GS 287. Gender and Visual Culture.
AVC 361. Museum Internship.
AVC 374. Methods in the Study of Art and Visual Culture.
DANC 250. Dance History.
AVC 377A. Picturesque Suburbia.
DN/ED s29. Tour, Teach, Perform.
EDUC 231. Perspectives on Education.
ED/SO 242. Race, Cultural Pluralism, and Equality in American Education.
ED/SO 380. Education, Reform, and Politics.
EN/GS 121G. Asian American Women Writers.
ENG 142. Early American Literature.
ENG 143. Nineteenth-Century American Literature.
ENG 152. American Writers since 1900.
ENG 241. Fiction in the United States.
ENG 395F. Five American Women Poets.
FYS 300. Exploring Education through Narratives.
FYS 381. Visualizing Identities.
FYS 393. DiY and Mash-up Culture.
FYS 419. Tobacco in History and Culture.
FRE 208. Introduction to the Francophone World.
GSS 100. Introduction to Women and Gender Studies.
GS/PT 155. Women, Power, and Political Systems.
GS/HS 327. Gendered Experiences in the Américas Borderlands.
HISP 224. Power and Justice.
HIST 140. Origins of New Nations, 1500–1820.
HIST 142. America in the Twentieth Century.
HI/LS 181. Latin American History: From the Conquest to the Present.
HIST 241. The Age of the American Revolution, 1763–1789.
HIST 249. Colonial North America.
HI/LS 272. The Mexican Revolution.
HI/LS 279. The Age of Independence in Latin America.
HI/LS 282. The City in Latin America.
INDS 301Y. The Spanish Inquisition.
INDS 321. Afroambiente: Escritura negra y media ambiente.
MUS 247. History of Jazz.
MUS 248. Music in Contemporary Popular Culture.
MUS 266. Miles Davis.
PLTC 115. American Political Institutions and Processes.
PLTC 215. Political Participation in the United States.
PLTC 230. The U.S. Congress.
PLTC 249. Politics of Latin America.
PLTC 310. Public Opinion.
PLTC 329. Problems and Progress in U.S. Political Development.
PY/SO 210. Social Psychology.
PY/SO 371. Prejudice and Stereotyping.
REL 100. Religion and Film.
REL 216. American Religious History, 1550–1840.
REL 217. American Religious History, 1840–Present.
REL 247. City upon the Hill.
REL 270. Religion and American Visual Culture.
RFSS 260. Lesbian and Gay Images in Film.
RFSS 265. The Rhetoric of Women's Rights.
RFSS 391A. The Rhetoric of Alien Abduction.
RFSS 391B. Presidential Campaign Rhetoric.
RFSS 391E. The Interracial Buddy Film.
SOC 250. Privilege, Power, and Inequality.
GS/SO 270. Sociology of Gender.
GS/SO 395I. Work, Family, and Social Inclusion.

3) AMST 457 or 458. Senior Thesis.

Pass/Fail Grading Option

Pass/fail may not be applied to the four required courses. There are no restrictions on the use of the pass/fail option for other courses taken for the major.

Courses
Short Term Courses