Catalog
American Cultural Studies
Professors Carnegie (Anthropology), Creighton (History), Fra-Molinero (Spanish), Nero (Rhetoric), and Rice-DeFosse (French and Francophone Studies); Associate Professors Aronson (Psychology), Beasley (African American Studies and American Cultural Studies), Chapman (Music, chair), and Jensen (History); Visiting Associate Professor Plastas (African American Studies, Environmental Studies, and Women and Gender Studies); Visiting Assistant Professor Rubin (Anthropology); Visiting Instructor Marshall
What does it mean to be American? Students in this interdisciplinary major reflect on this question in multiple ways. American cultural studies core courses ponder the changing meanings of nation and citizenship in both the United States and in the Americas. They consider how groups of Americans see themselves and each other, and investigate how institutions have constructed such differences as race, gender, class, and sexuality. These discussions assume that what has been deemed natural or inevitable is in fact dynamic and changeable, and that what has been socially invisible must be brought to light. All American cultural studies students are grounded in African American studies and use this method of inquiry to better understand the meaning of belonging, privilege, and exclusion. Among current American cultural studies courses are those that 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-culture/).
Major Requirements
The major in American cultural studies requires ten courses and a senior thesis. The requirements are as follows:1) Required courses:
AAS 100. Introduction to African American Studies.
ACS 100. Introduction to American Cultural Studies.
ACS 220. Community Studies.
INDS 250. Interdisciplinary Studies: Methods and Modes of Inquiry.
In the event that ACS 220 is not offered, students may apply another community studies course approved in advance by the Program in American Cultural 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 specific American cultural studies courses and courses cross-listed in American cultural studies, the following courses from across the curriculum may be applied to the major:
AA/EN 114. Introduction to African American Literature I: 1600-1910.
AA/RH 162. White Redemption: Cinema and the Co-optation of African American History.
AA/WS 201. Race, Ethnicity, and Feminist Thought.
AA/HI 243. African American History.
AA/MU 249. African American Popular Music.
AA/AN 251. Imagining the Caribbean.
AA/DN 252. Contemporary Issues in Dance.
AA/EN 253. The African American Novel.
AA/EN. 259. Contemporary African American Literature.
AA/EN 265. The Writings of Toni Morrison.
AA/EN 267. Narrating Slavery.
AA/HI 301E. African Slavery in the Americas.
AN/RE 134. Myth, Folklore, and Popular Culture.
AN/SO 232. Ethnicity, Nation, World Community.
ANTH 103. Introduction to Archaeology.
ANTH 333. Culture and Interpretation.
ANTH s10. Encountering Community: Ethnographic Fieldwork and Service-Learning.
ANTH s32. Introduction to Archaeological Fieldwork.
AV/WS 287. Women, Gender, Visual Culture.
AVC 361. Museum Internship.
AVC 374. Methods in the Study of Art and Visual Culture.
AVC 377A. Picturesque Suburbia.
DANC 250. Early Modern Dance History.
DN/ED s29. Tour, Teach, Perform.
ECON 230. Economics of Women, Men, and Work.
ECON 331. Labor Economics.
EDUC 231. Perspectives on Education.
ED/SO 242. Race, Cultural Pluralism, and Equality in American Education.
ED/SO 380. Education, Reform, and Politics.
ENG 121C. Frost, Stevens, Williams.
EN/WS 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 152. Religion and Civil Rights.
FYS 177. Sex and Sexualities.
FYS 242. Blackness (and Whiteness) in the Social Imagination.
FYS 271. Into the Woods: Rewriting Walden.
FYS 299. Contemporary American Poetry.
FYS 300. Exploring Education through Narratives.
FYS 329. Latin American Time Machine.
FYS 363. The Rhetoric of Women: Politics, Prime Time, and Pop Culture.
FYS 381. Visualizing Identities.
FYS 385. Power and Authority in Latin America through Film.
FYS 393. DiY and Mash-up Culture.
FYS 419. Tobacco in History and Culture.
FRE 208. Introduction to the Francophone World.
HIST 140. Origins of the New Nation, 1500–1820.
HIST 142. America in the Twentieth Century.
HIST 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.
HIST 261. American Protest: From the Haymarket Riot to Occupy Wall Street.
HIST 279. The Age of Independence in Latin America.
HIST 282. The City in Latin America.
HI/LS 301H. The Mexican Revolution.
HIST 301P. Prelude to the Civil Rights Movement.
HI/WS 301Q. A Woman's Place: Gender and Geography in the United States, 1800–Present.
HIST 301W. The Civil Rights Movement.
HIST s20. Visions of the Past: Political Film and Historical Narrative.
INDS 301Y. The Spanish Inquisition.
INDS 321. Afroambiente: Writing a Black Environment.
INDS 325. Black Feminist Literary, Theory, and Practice.
INDS 342. Performance, Narrative, and the Body.
MUS 212. Introduction to Ethnomusicology.
MUS 247. History of Jazz.
MUS 248. Music in Contemporary Popular Culture.
MUS 254. Music and Drama.
MUS 266. Miles Davis.
MUS 396. Junior-Senior Seminar in Musicology: Music History and Cultural Politics.
PLTC 115. American Political Institutions and Processes.
PT/WS 155. Women, Power, and Political Systems.
PLTC 215. Political Participation in the United States.
PT/WS 220. Gender, War, and Peace.
PLTC 230. The U.S. Congress.
PLTC 249. Politics of Latin America.
PLTC 310. Public Opinion.
PLTC 320. Immigrants and Their Homelands.
PLTC 329. American Political Development.
PY/SO 210. Social Psychology.
PY/SO 371. Prejudice and Stereotyping.
PSYC 372. Racial and Ethnic Identity Development.
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.
REL s27. Field Studies in Religion: Cult and Community.
RHET 260. Lesbian and Gay Images in Film.
RHET 265. The Rhetoric of Women's Rights.
RHET 391A. The Rhetoric of Alien Abduction.
RHET 391B. Presidential Campaign Rhetoric.
RHET 391E. The Interracial Buddy Film.
SOC 250. Privilege, Power, and Inequality.
SOC 270. Sociology of Gender.
SOC 395I. Race, Class, Gender, and Family.
SPAN 224. Protest and Justice.
SP/WS 323. Gendered Experiences in the Américas Borderlands.
SPAN 343. Postcolonial Thought in Latin America.
WGST 100. Introduction to Women and Gender Studies.
WGST 355. Gender and Technology.
3) ACS 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
ACS 100. Introduction to American Cultural Studies.
This course introduces students to the different methods and perspectives of cultural studies within an American context. The course considers the separate evolution of American studies and cultural studies in the academy, and considers how cultural studies provides a lens through which to investigate dynamic American identities, institutions, and communities. Of particular concern is how differences such as race, gender, class, ethnicity, and sexuality are constructed and expressed in diverse settings, and how they connect to the deployment of power. Enrollment limited to 35. Staff.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AA/AC 119. Cultural Politics.
This course examines the relationship of culture to politics. It introduces the study of struggles to acquire, maintain, or resist power and gives particular attention to the role culture plays in reproducing and contesting social divisions of class, race, gender, and sexuality. Lectures and discussion incorporate film, music, and fiction in order to evaluate the connection between cultural practices and politics. Normally offered every year. M. Beasley.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AC/HI 141. America in the Age of the Civil War.
This course surveys United States history from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century, focusing particularly on the experience of immigrants, women, the plantation South, and the urbanizing North. Special attention is also given to the history of the American Civil War. Enrollment limited to 48. M. Creighton.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
INDC 177. Caribbean Popular Cultural Insurgency.
Caribbean popular culture exerts influence on the world stage disproportionate to the region's size. This course examines the politics and creolized development of Caribbean popular culture through some of its best-known modes of expression such as music, the Trinidad Carnival, and the game of cricket. Placing these cultural forms in their historical and social contexts reveals their oppositional, dissenting qualities. By applying various critical analytical lenses, however, including gender and sexuality, ethnicity, nationalism, and transnationalism, the course also considers certain conservative undercurrents of these cultural formations. Cross-listed in African American studies, American cultural studies, anthropology, and Latin American studies. C. Carnegie.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
INDC 211. Environmental Perspectives on U.S. History.
This course explores the relationship between the North American environment and the development and expansion of the United States. Because Americans' efforts (both intentional and not) to define and shape the environment were rooted in their own struggles for power, environmental history offers an important perspective on the nation's social history. Specific topics include Europeans', Africans', and Indians' competing efforts to shape the colonial environment; the impact and changing understanding of disease; the relationship between industrial environments and political power; and the development of environmental movements. Cross-listed in American cultural studies, environmental studies, and history. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 40. J. Hall.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AA/AC 213. Police, Klansman, Colonizer.
This course examines white supremacist violence and white separatism. In particular, studenst look at the histories of white violence against black bodies in Kenya, South Africa, and the United States in order to uncover both the histories of public incitement to violence and contemporary ruses that preserve cultures of black body-destruction in a moment where explicit calls for racial violence are thought indecent. Students examine the related fight for white sovereign space through the concepts of Lebensraum and Whitopia. They consider editorials, film, political tracts and scholarship dating from the late nineteenth century until the present day. New course beginning Winter 2017. Open to first-year students. One-time offering. Y. Marshall.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
ACS 220. Community Studies.
Too often, students experience college within an academic cocoon, taking for granted their surrounding environment. This course moves beyond the bubble of the academy. After a review of cultural studies methodology, students consider the evolution of the college itself as well as the dynamic history of Lewiston, Maine. Students' understanding of the community is developed in readings on immigration and on practical work in local service-oriented agencies. In addition to community work and weekly assignments prepared for seminar discussions, students produce a research paper relevant to the themes of the course. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 12. (Community-Engaged Learning.) Normally offered every year. Staff.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
INDC 222. History of American Popular Culture.
We live in a world surrounded by the trends of popular culture. What has defined American pop culture through history? This course examines the history of popular culture in America from the nineteenth century to the present. Students investigate the ways that Americans have popularized trends, with special focus on the following case studies: chapbooks, dime novels, blackface and minstrel shows, P. T. Barnum, burlesque and vaudeville, baseball and American visual culture, amusement parks, advertising, popular music, television, and film. Cross-listed in American cultural studies, art and visual culture, and history. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 40. Staff.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AA/AC 227. #BlackLivesMatter.
This course examines the history of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. It examines invisibility and spectacle in black death, voyeurism, and the destruction of the black body in the new public square. Is it true that black lives are more easily taken and black bodies destroyed with less legal consequence than others? What are the ways in which black lives do not matter? This course analyzes media coverage and debates on social media about black death. Students place these discussions in conversation with the critique of race and racialized violence offered in literature, music, film and social theory. Open to first-year students. One-time offering. Y. Marshall.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AC/HI 228. Making Asian America: Citizenship, Identity, Belonging.
Contemporary discourse of Asian Americans as the "model minority" obscures a long history of struggles for equality and glosses over the community's rich diversity. This course surveys the history of Asians in the United States from the late sixteenth century to the present. Students examine the causes and effects of migration and settlement; anti-Asian violence and legal exclusion; wartime internment and refugee resettlement; and the formation of intersectional identities and transnational communities. Ultimately, this course advances the argument that citizenship and belonging in U.S. history cannot be fully understood without taking into account the experiences of Asians in the country. New course beginning Fall 2017. Open to first-year students. One-time offering. I. Shin.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AC/FR 240I. French in Maine.
An appreciation and analysis of what it means to speak French and to be "French" in the local and regional context. Students examine questions of language, ethnic identity, and cultural expression through novels, short stories, autobiographies, film, and written and oral histories. Visits to local cultural sites enhance students' understanding of the Franco-American community and its heritage as well as other French speakers. Prerequisite(s): FRE 207, 208, 235, 250, or 251. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 20. [W2] M. Rice-DeFosse.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AC/HI 244. Native American History.
A survey of Native American peoples from European contact to the present, this course addresses questions of cultural interaction, power, and native peoples' continuing history of colonization. By looking at the ways various First Nations took advantage of and suffered from their new relations with newcomers, students learn that this history is more than one of conquest and disappearance. In addition, they learn that the basic categories of "Indian" and "white" are themselves inadequate for understanding native pasts and presents. Much of this learning depends on careful readings of native writers. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 40. J. Hall.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AC/EN 247. Contemporary Arab American Literature.
This course studies Arab American literature from 1990 until the present. Students examine novels, short fiction, memoirs, or poetry in an effort to understand the major concerns of contemporary Arab American authors. Students are expected to engage theoretical material and literary criticism to supplement their understanding of the literature. In addition to a discussion of formal literary concerns, this course is animated by the way authors spotlight gender, sexual orientation, politics, and history. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level course in English. Enrollment limited to 25. T. Pickens.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AC/HI 248. Back East, Down South, Out West: Regions in American Culture.
This course examines American regions as they have emerged as cultural entities from the eighteenth century to the present. Its primary texts are grounded in contemporary scholarship in history and cultural geography and in popular literature, film, music, and architecture. Students investigate the intersection of demographic and economic history with cultural invention. Beginning with a focus on "olde" New England and continuing with a study of the cultural power of the "wild" West, students devote considerable attention to the "deep" South to understand how region mediates the identities and experiences associated with race, class, and gender difference. Prerequisite(s): AC/HI 141 or HIST 243. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 40. M. Creighton.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
INDC 250. Interdisciplinary Studies: Methods and Modes of Inquiry.
Interdisciplinarity involves more than a meeting of disciplines. Practitioners stretch methodological norms and reach across disciplinary boundaries. Through examination of a single topic, this course introduces students to interdisciplinary methods of analysis. Students examine what practitioners actually do and work to become practitioners themselves. Cross-listed in African American studies, American cultural studies, and women and gender studies. Prerequisite(s): AAS 100, ACS 100, or WGST 100, and one other course in African American studies, American cultural studies, or women and gender studies. Normally offered every year. Staff.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
INDC 267. Blood, Genes, and American Culture.
Places recent popular and scientific discussions of human heredity and genetics in broader social, political, and historical context, focusing on shifting definitions of personhood. Topics include the ownership and exchange of human bodies and body parts, the development of assisted reproductive technologies, and the emergence of new forms of biological citizenship. Recommended background: course work in biology and/or women and gender studies. Cross-listed in American cultural studies, history, and women and gender studies. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 40. R. Herzig.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AC/RE 272. Islam in America.
Islam, with its mosaic of different beliefs and practices, has been part of America’s social and religious fabric for centuries. This course traces a history of Islam in America from the West African slaves, to voluntary immigration, to experiences of Muslims in the post-September 11 era. Students explore the historical and contemporary realities of Muslims living in America, including the role of religious authority, racial identity, and activism of American Muslim women. These explorations take students into the Lewiston-Auburn community to discover its religious diversity and hear how local residents speak about and practice their Islamic faith. Enrollment limited to 40. (Community-Engaged Learning.) Staff.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
INDC 277. Chanting Down Babylon: Caribbean Popular Cultural Insurgency.
Caribbean popular culture exerts influence on the world stage disproportionate to the region's size. This course examines the politics and creolized development of Caribbean popular culture through some of its best-known modes of expression such as music, the Trinidad Carnival, and the game of cricket. Placing these cultural forms in their historical and social contexts reveals their oppositional, dissenting qualities. By applying various critical analytical lenses, however, including gender and sexuality, ethnicity, nationalism, and transnationalism, the course also considers certain conservative undercurrents of these cultural formations. Cross-listed in African American studies, American cultural studies, anthropology, and Latin American studies. Course renumbered as INDS 177 beginning Winter 2017. Not open to students who have received credit for INDS 374. Enrollment limited to 20. C. Carnegie.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
ACS 280. Story of Things: Introduction to Material Culture.
The phrase "material culture" refers to the "things" of our daily lives. Our material lives range from our bodies to the clothes we wear, the specific objects we use, the food we eat, and the places we go. Material culture has been defined from numerous perspectives, most notably anthropology, archaeology, art history, cultural theory, and history. Scholars in these and other disciplines have used material culture as sources of evidence to explore the everyday lives of ordinary citizens. This seminar introduce students to consider how objects are used to reinforce, propagate, and resist cultural hierarchies based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and national identity. Prerequisite(s): ACS 100, AA/AC 119, or ANTH 101. Enrollment limited to 30. M. Beasley, K. White.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AC/AV 288. Visualizing Race.
This course considers visual constructions of race in art and popular culture, with a focus on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. General topics include the role of visual culture in creating and sustaining racial stereotypes, racism, white supremacy, and white-skin privilege; the effects upon cultural producers of their own perceived race in terms of both their opportunities and their products; and the relations of constructions of race to those of gender, class, ethnicity, and sexuality. Not open to students who have received credit for AVC 288. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 30. [W2] E. Rand.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AC/HI 289. China in the U.S. Imagination.
Many observers call the United States and China the most important bilateral relationship in the world today, but few realize these links predate the signing of the U.S. Constitution. This course explores how and why American perceptions of China have changed from the colonial period to the present and what they tell us about how the United States has constructed itself as a nation. Students grapple with questions about racism and imperialism by examining current scholarship as well as diaries, novels, political cartoons, material objects, and other primary sources. Topics covered include trade, missionary work, popular entertainment, immigration, and global war. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 40. One-time offering. I. Shin.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
INDC 301L. Exhibiting American Culture.
How is America defined through cultural exhibitions and performances of national identity? This course examines the politics of exhibiting American culture. Each week the course investigates distinct exhibitions of visual culture and the cultural body, such as historic house museums, plantations and American slavery museums, Colonial Williamsburg, world expositions, the phenomenon of the wild west show, cowboy culture, Native American exhibitions, and displays of American culture in music videos, film, and television. Through these types of exhibitions, students consider issues of stereotype, race, and national and local identity. Cross-listed in American cultural studies, art and visual culture, and history. Enrollment limited to 40. [W2] Staff.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
INDC 302. Black Feminist Activist and Intellectual Traditions.
This junior-senior seminar examines the intersections of gender with black racial and ethnic identities as they have been and are constructed, expressed, and lived throughout the African/black diaspora. Special attention is given to the United States but substantial consideration is given to Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Canada, Europe, and Australia. The course combines approaches and methodologies employed in the humanities, social sciences, and arts to structure interdisciplinary analyses. Using black feminist (womanist), critical-race, and queer theories, students examine African-descended women’s histories, activism, resistance, and contributions to culture, knowledge, and theorizing. Prerequisite(s): one course in African American studies, American cultural studies, or women and gender studies. Crosslisted in African American studies, American cultural studies, or women and gender studies. New course beginning Fall 2017. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. Normally offered every other year. S. Houchins.INDC 305. Art, Power, and Politics.
This course is an anthropological examination of the relationship among art, power, and politics. What can the artistic works of various societies say about their worlds that other creations cannot? What claims can art make about the workings of power, and what artistic techniques does power itself employ? Students consider these and other questions from a number of different perspectives, including the politics of perception, the place of art in modern life, the artistry of terror, the art of protest and propaganda, and the dream of building a beautiful regime. Recommended background: familiarity with classical social theory, especially Marx, is encouraged but not necessary. Cross-listed in African American studies, American cultural studies, and anthropology. Not open to students who have received credit for ANTH s22. Enrollment limited to 15. J. Rubin.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
INDC 352. Preserving the Vibration: Digitizing the Legacy of Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor.
This course introduces public and digital humanities through the life and work of noted journalist, food anthropologist, and public broadcaster Vertamae Grosvenor. Public humanities is concerned with expanding academic discourse beyond academia and facilitating conversations on topics of humanistic inquiry with the community at large. Digital studies provide a plethora of unconventional ways to engage community in public dialogues for the greater good. Drawing from books, operas, NPR audio segments, interviews, cookbooks, and other artifacts of Grosvenor, students create and curate a digital archive. Themes include Gullah culture, African American migration, foodways, memoir, public memory, and monuments. Leading theories and methods of black feminism, material culture, race, food studies, new media and digital humanities are foregrounded. Cross-listed in African American studies, American cultural studies, digital and computational studies, and women and gender studies. Prerequisite(s): AA/AC 119; AA/HI 243; AAS 100; ACS 100; AC/AV 340; AC/EN 395B; AV/WS 287; INDS 250 or 267; REL 255 or 270; or WGST 100. New course beginning Winter 2017. Enrollment limited to 15. Normally offered every other year. M. Beasley.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AC/WS 353. Critical Theory/Critical Acts.
Critical theory unravels streams of repressive discourses and hierarchies in our contemporary world, and artists have fostered ruptures and fissures in everyday life. This seminar ponders the concept of "cultural worker" and laments the domain of theory by exploring the intersections between critical theory, art, and cultural politics. Students engage in the ruptures, the fragments of knowledge, and making sense of the residue of "social change" while not forgetting the problematization of the aesthetic. They consider U.S.-based interdisciplinary artists such as Thiong'o, Fusco, Ana Mediata, Tania Bruguera, David Hammon, Jay-Z, Pope.L, and Lady Gaga with critical theorists such as Fanon, Butler, Foucault, Phalen, Muñoz, Moten, Adorno, Barthes, Olkowski, and Benjamin. This seminar is based on close readings of theoretical texts and connecting those texts with contemporary cultural politics. Prerequisite(s): one of the following: AA/AC 119, ACS 100, AC/AV 340, AC/EN 395B, AV/WS 287, INDS 250 or 267, or WGST 100. Enrollment limited to 15. M. Beasley.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
ACS 360. Independent Study.
Students, in consultation with a faculty advisor, individually design and plan a course of study or research not offered in the curriculum. Course work includes a reflective component, evaluation, and completion of an agreed-upon product. Sponsorship by a faculty member in the program/department, a course prospectus, and permission of the chair are required. Students may register for no more than one independent study per semester. Normally offered every semester. Staff.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AA/AC 375. Curatorial Studies and Contemporary Culture.
Cultural studies interprets curatorial practice such as how people come to understand and express identities through interactions with spaces, things, and shared social relations in contemporary daily life. This seminar considers the definitions of "curating" from an act of collecting, arranging, and displaying things for others to understanding curatorial projects that investigate rituals, objects, sites, and events of everyday life and their interplay with identity and cultural politics. Students consider the work of such scholars as Wilson, Golden, Benjamin, Foucault, Gonzalez, and de Certeau. They discuss the usual sites for curatorial work such as museums, galleries, libraries, and botanic gardens, as well as less conventional sites such as food displays, magazines, dorm rooms, websites, music (the DJ as curator), and video programs. Prerequisite(s): One of the following: ACS 100, AA/AC 119, AAS 100, WGST 100, INDS 250, AVC 280, AVC 374, AV/WS 296, ANTH 100, AV/WS 297, ACS 283, or AC/AV 288. Enrollment limited to 30. M. Beasley.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AC/EN 395B. Privacy, Intimacy, and Identity.
This seminar explores American concepts of "self" in historical and cultural context, focusing on distinct yet overlapping discourses of privacy, intimacy, and identity, as these are shaped by evolving understandings of race, sexuality, gender, class, and nation. Beginning with a critical investigation of how the nation's Puritan settlers articulated, practiced, and regulated "the self" and concluding with a consideration of how self and identity are presented via social media on platforms such as Facebook, students consider scholarship in American literary and cultural history, critical theory, and primary literary and legal texts. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course or one American cultural studies course. Recommended background: WGST 100. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission is required. [W2] E. Osucha.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
ACS 457. Senior Thesis.
Under the supervision of a faculty advisor, all majors write an extended essay that utilizes the methods of at least two disciplines. Students register for ACS 457 in the fall semester. Majors writing an honors thesis register for both ACS 457 and 458. [W3] Normally offered every year. Staff.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
ACS 458. Senior Thesis.
Under the supervision of a faculty advisor, all majors write an extended essay that utilizes the methods of at least two disciplines. Students register for ACS 458 in the winter semester. Majors writing an honors thesis register for both ACSs 457 and 458. [W3] Normally offered every year. Staff.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AA/AC s16. The Wire: The City and Race in Popular Culture.
This course focuses on the HBO series The Wire. Students discuss the episodes in terms of their narrative structure and content as well as cinematic techniques including shot sequence, lighting, camera angle, editing, and transitional devices. They also explore some of the sociopolitical issues this series examines: poverty, unemployment, the drug trade, public education, the decline of newspapers, and public housing. The intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and class serves as the lens through which they scrutinize these topics. Enrollment limited to 20. S. Houchins.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
INDC s19. Food, Culture, and Performance.
This interdisciplinary seminar examines the idea of cultural engagement through food. Students explore the meanings of food and eating across cultures, with particular attention to how people define themselves socially, symbolically, and politically through food consumption practices. Students in this community-based course collaborate with Nezinscot Farm exploring themes of gathering, homesteading, and biodynamic farming. The course develops research and writing skills, introduces visual and performance theories of culture, and fosters an understanding of the importance of food and its relationship to identity construction, histories, and cultural literacy. The course culminates in a performative meal. Cross-listed in African American studies, American cultural studies, anthropology, and women and gender studies. Enrollment limited to 20. (Community-Engaged Learning.) M. Beasley.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
INDC s30. Visual Narratives: The City, Ethnography, and Cultural Politics.
The focus of this course is to create visual narratives of the City of Lewiston. Situated as a visual methods research course, it builds on theories of urban studies, critical ethnography, and the cultural politics surrounding the photographic documentation of people performing everyday life in the context of Lewiston. Particular attention is given to the development of photography both as a mode for representing culture and as a site of cultural practice. In the first two weeks, students engage theory and history; during the third week, are joined by a guest photographer. The course culminates in visual display of students' work at a location in downtown Lewiston. Cross-listed in African American studies, American cultural studies, and art and visual culture. Prerequisite(s): one of the following: AA/AC 119; AC/AV 288, 340; ACS 100, 280; AC/WS 353; AV/AS 246; AVC 218, 219, 293, 350A, 374; AV/WS 287 or 296. Not open to first-year students or sophomores. Enrollment limited to 15. (Community-Engaged Learning.) M. Beasley, D. Mills.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
INDC s37. Afrofuturism and the Black Speculative Imagination: A Study of Octavia Butler.
Of the 1969 moonwalk, George Clinton said that once man defied gravity, all bets were off. The music mogul later went on to defy gravity by "funk-ifying" the world. Yet Clinton's ideas are not without precedent in African American culture. In this course, students examine the aesthetic that came to be known as Afrofuturism as an outlet for African American literary and artistic expression. Students focus on the work of Octavia Butler and her volcanic influence, fame, and talent. Since her work dovetails with Clinton's anti-gravity stance and forms a locus for black speculative fiction in particular and speculative fiction in general, they study a selection of her novels, short fiction, and own words as well as secondary critical and theoretical material. Cross-listed in African American studies, American cultural studies, English, and women and gender studies. Prerequisite(s): one course in African American studies, American cultural studies, or English. Recommended background: course work in the natural sciences. Not open to students who have received credit for AA/EN 259. Enrollment limited to 30. T. Pickens.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
INDC s38. Cannibalism as an Eating Disorder in the Conquest of America.
Christopher Columbus coined the word cannibal during his first voyage to the American continent. The word and the concept have been used ever since to situate the Other, people to be conquered or worthy of destruction. This course explores historical texts of the conquest that describe cannibalism and challenge the practice's very existence among Caribs, Aztecs, Incas, and enslaved Africans. Students explore the related concept of the manhunt, the use by the state of modern and ancient technologies of persecution against individuals and groups it has determined to eliminate. All readings are in English. Cross-listed in African American studies, American cultural studies, Latin American studies, and Spanish. Prerequisite(s): one 200-level Spanish course above SPAN 205. Recommended background: course work in African American studies, American cultural studies, anthropology, history, literature, or women and gender studies. B. Fra-Molinero.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
ACS s50. Independent Study.
Students, in consultation with a faculty advisor, individually design and plan a course of study or research not offered in the curriculum. Course work includes a reflective component, evaluation, and completion of an agreed-upon product. Sponsorship by a faculty member in the program/department, a course prospectus, and permission of the chair are required. Students may register for no more than one independent study during a Short Term. Normally offered every year. Staff.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)