Catalog
American Studies
Professors Marcus Bruce (Religious Studies) and Rice-DeFosse (French and Francophone Studies, chair, winter and Short Term); Associate Professors Beasley (American Studies, chair, fall) and Chapman (Music); Assistant Professors Barnett (American Studies), Evans (Dance), Garrison (Psychology), and Shrout (Digital and Computational Studies)
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
The major in American studies requires ten courses and a senior thesis. The requirements are as follows:
1) Required courses:
AF/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
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/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/SO 270. Sociology of Gender.
GS/SO 340. Work, Family, and Social Inclusion.
GS/HS 327. Gendered Experiences in the Américas Borderlands.
GS/SO 340. Work, Family, and Social Inclusion.
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.
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.
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 391B. Presidential Campaign Rhetoric.
SOC 250. Privilege, Power, and Inequality.
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
AM/AN 112. Production and REproduction: Experimental Archaeology Lab.
This lab-based course provides an introduction to archaeology and inference. Students design individual experimental archaeology projects that include background research, hypothesis, test expectations, methods, intellectual merit, and broader impacts. During the course, students carry out their research, followed by a series of revisions and retesting. This hands-on course provides holistic engagement in research design, western-scientific methods, quantitative and qualitative analysis, interpretation, redesign, and connection to scholarly and general public interests. Recommended background: ANTH 103. Enrollment limited to 29. [L] [SR] Staff.AF/AM 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. Not open to students who have received credit for AA/AC 119 or AA/AM 119. Enrollment limited to 39. (Africana: Diaspora.) (Africana: Historical Perspective.) Normally offered every year. [AC] [HS] M. Beasley.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AM/AN 125. Critical Perspectives on Sport and Society.
This course explores the connections between sports and a broad range of anthropological concerns, including colonialism, resistance and domination, race, and gender. Students consider questions such as: Why do we play the sports we do? Why are sporting performances socially significant, and how have groups and political regimes used this significance to suit their needs? What can teams, players, and brands tell us about how we (and others) see the world? Addressing topics from cricket in the Caribbean to boxing in Chicago, students reappraise conventional sporting narratives and use sports to analyze the social and historical conditions in which they occur. In doing so, students think critically about their own sporting experiences and develop a deeper and subtler understanding of the ways that societies make sports and sports make societies. Enrollment limited to 39. [AC] [HS] J. Rubin.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AM/HI 141. Rise of the American Empire.
During the nineteenth century, the United States experienced one of the most dramatic political transformations in world history, rising from an imperiled post-revolutionary state to become a global empire. This course examines the diverse experiences of those who lived through this era of dizzying change and confronted the forces that shaped a restless nation: slavery, capitalism, patriarchy, expansionism, urbanization, industrialization, and total warfare. Whether fighting for recognition or resisting the encroaching state, they struggled over the very meaning of American nationhood. The outcome was ambiguous; its legacy is still being contested today. Not open to students who have received credit for AC/HI 141. Enrollment limited to 39. (History: Modern.) (History: United States.) [AC] [HS] A. Baker.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AMST 200. Introduction to American Studies.
This course introduces students to the different methods and perspectives of cultural studies within an American context. Students consider the separate evolution of American studies and cultural studies in the academy, and 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. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 35. [AC] [HS] M. Beasley.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AM/AN 203. Cultural and Creative Expressions of the American Indian.
This course examines Amercan Indian expression and settler colonialism in North American through a lens of Tribal Critical Theory and Critical Race Theory. The course establishes an understanding of settler-colonialism and its functions and impacts, including federal "Indian policy," the development of hegemonic control of all facets of American Indian society and its overreaches regarding tribal affiliation, racial tensions, land allocation, subsistence rights, and access, and their many intersects. Students consider dominant narratives, aided by critical theories, including hypotheses of the "peopling of the Americas," and the way in which the dominant hegemonic narrative has established regional histories and experiences of North American Indigenous/Native/First Nations people with persistent implications. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 39. Normally offered every semester. M. Cleveland.AMST 204. Native American Governance: Economies, Land, and Judicial Reforms.
The course examines the diversity of governing models that exist in Native American communities. Students consider the effects of settler colonialism and its ongoing implications for economic development, land ownership, and judicial reforms. Specifically, the course highlights organizational models of resistance constructed by Native American communities against mainstream American society. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 39. One-time offering. M. Cleveland.AM/AN 207. Race, Racism, and Redress.
Recent events in the United States and around the globe have prompted a re-examination of the role of race in contemporary life. Since its inception, anthropology has been concerned with questions of human origins, diversity, and community. In this course, students examine the origins of racial thought, its transformation over time, and the ways race and intersecting identifications shape everyday life. Through ethnographies of global cultures, students explore how race takes form and meaning in different contexts. Throughout, they learn how to think critically about their own identities and beliefs and engage with strategies for redress. Enrollment limited to 29. (Africana: Introductory Sequence.) Normally offered every year. [AC] [HS] J. Lyon.INDC 210. Technology in U.S. History.
Surveys the development, distribution, and use of technology in the United States drawing on primary and secondary source material. Subjects treated include racialized and gendered divisions of labor, militarism and colonial dispossession, and the ecological consequences of technological change. Cross-listed in American studies, gender and sexuality studies, and history. Enrollment limited to 29. (History: United States.) R. Herzig.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
INDC 211. U.S. Environmental 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 Native Americans' 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 studies, environmental studies, and history. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 39. (History: Modern.) (History: United States.) [AC] [HS] J. Hall.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AM/AN 222. Archaeology and Colonial Entanglements in North America.
An introduction to the archaeology of North America throughout the past 20,000 years and earlier. Students examine current archaeological hypotheses of the "peopling of the Americas," and construct the most likely model based on their command of the literature and an independent critical analysis supporting their own hypothesis. Students review and reconcile the archaeological past with indigenous concepts such as oral histories and origin stories, challenging and expanding their world view to include non-Western concepts. The course applies critical theory perspectives, including indigenous-feminist and postcolonial theories, to assess the colonial process that archaeology has at times unwittingly imposed on North American native peoples. Not open to students who have received credit for ANTH 222. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 39. [AC] [HS] Staff.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AF/AM 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. Enrollment limited to 29. (Africana: Gender.) C. Shepard.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
INDC 236. Race Matters: Tobacco in North America.
This course explores race and the history of tobacco in North America. With a primary focus on the intersection of tobacco capitalism and African American history, the course introduces students to the impact of tobacco on the formation of racial ideologies and lived experiences through a consideration of economic, cultural, political, and epidemiological history. Cross-listed in Africana, American studies, and history. Recommended background: at least one course in Africana, African American history, American studies, or gender and sexuality studies. Enrollment limited to 29. (History: United States.) M. Plastas.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AM/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, or 235. Not open to students who have received credit for AMST 240I or FRE 240I. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 25. [W2] [AC] [HS] M. Rice-DeFosse.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AMST 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, or 235. Not open to students who have received credit for AM/FR 240I or FRE 240I. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 25. [W2] [HS] M. Rice-DeFosse.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AM/HI 244. Native American History.
A survey of Native American peoples from the centuries just before 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 Indigenous American writers. Not open to students who have received credit for AC/HI 244. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 39. (History: Early Modern.) (History: Modern.) (History: United States.) [AC] [HS] J. Hall.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AM/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. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 25. (English: Post-1800.) (English: Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) [AC] [HS] T. Pickens.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 Africana, American studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Prerequisite(s): AFR 100, AMST 200, or GSS 100, and one other course in Africana, American studies, or gender and sexuality studies. Enrollment limited to 39. Staff.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AM/HI 264. A People's History of American Capitalism.
Capitalism has been a powerful engine of prosperity and disruption from the founding of the United States to the present day, but its advantages and disadvantages have not been shared equally by those whose fortunes it has indelibly shaped. Tracing more than two centuries of development and growth, this course emphasizes the social dimensions of economic transformation, centering race, gender, and ethnicity as categories integral to understanding capitalism as both a productive and destructive force in American history. Not open to students who have received credit for HIST 264. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 29. (History: Modern.) (History: United States.) Normally offered every year. [AC] [HS] A. Baker.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 commodification of human bodies and body parts; racial, colonial, and gendered disparities in science and medicine; and the emergence of new forms of biological citizenship. Cross-listed in Africana, American studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Recommended background: course work in biology and/or gender and sexuality studies. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 29. R. Herzig.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AM/RE 270. Religion and American Visual Culture.
A study of the constitutive role of visual culture in the formation of American religious traditions and the influence of religious experience on American art and mass culture. Moving from the colonial period to the present, this course examines the symbiotic relationship between American visual culture and religion in painting, photography, illustrated media, mass-produced objects, memorials, architecture, and decorative items. Not open to students who have received credit for REL 270. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 39. [AC] M. Bruce.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AM/RE 272. Islam in the Americas.
This course traces the history and sociology of Islam in North and South America, from West African traditions in Brazil and Syrian immigration via Ellis Island and Buenos Aires, to the story of Malcolm X during the civil rights era, to the 2000s and the rise of millennial pop culture. Students explore the stories of Muslims in the Americas as a lens for understanding larger research questions in American cultural studies, political science, sociology, and comparative law. Enrollment limited to 39. (Africana: Diaspora.) (Africana: Historical Perspective.) A. Akhtar.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
INDC 273. US Immigration: From the "Uprooted" to the Rise of the Immigration Regime.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" encapsulates the belief that the United States is a nation of immigrants, yet that can be an oversimplification of a deeply complex issue. This course explores the various reasons people migrate, acculturate, and what it means to be an "American" and an immigrant. Students review immigration records to examine how issues of poverty, sexual orientation, gender, race, and political affiliation affected how people "breathe free" and navigated the US immigration regime from the late-nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Course reinstated beginning Fall 2022. Not open to students who have received credit for INDS 301D. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 29. (History: Modern.) (History: United States.) [AC] [HS] E. Bernardino.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AM/EN 281. Arab American Poetry.
This course offers students an introduction to Arab American poetry from the early works of Khalil Gibran to the present. The course develops an appreciation of Arab American poetic forms, craft, voice, and vision within a transnational and diasporic framework. Surveying the poems and critical work of an expansive array of poets such as Lauren Camp, Hayan Charara, Suheir Hammad, Marwa Helal, Mohja Kahf, Philip Metres, Naomi Shihab Nye, Deema Shehabi, students examine the complex, personal, communal, national, cultural, historical, political, and religious realities that manifest themselves at home and elsewhere in the Arab American literary imagination. Prerequisite(s): one course in Africana, American studies, English, or gender and sexuality studies. Enrollment limited to 25. (English: Race, Ethnicity, or Diasporic Literature.) [W2] T. Pickens.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AM/PT 287. American Political Economy.
The United States of America is the richest country in the world, but it is also deeply and increasingly unequal. This course approaches the American economy as a field of power. Students investigate the political thought traditions that animate the ideologies and institutions at the heart of the U.S. market economy. They confront the central role of transatlantic slavery in the historical construction of the American polity and the American economy alike, and the contemporary reverberations thereof. Finally, they examine phenomena such as the radical right, the progressive movement, rural underdevelopment, the declining American middle class, welfare reform, and competition for global economic dominance. Enrollment limited to 29. (Politics: Institutional Politics.) (Politics: Political Economy.) One-time offering. A. Grahame.AM/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. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 29. (Africana: Introductory Sequence.) (Art and Visual Culture: Race, Sexuality, Gender.) [W2] [AC] E. Rand.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AM/HI 299. White Supremacy: An American History.
Shaped by early conflicts with native populations and the expansion of African slavery, ideologies of white supremacy have been powerful sociopolitical forces in the making of the United States. At the same time, the concept of "whiteness" has been unstable throughout the nation’s history. It has been challenged by immigration patterns and changing ideas about race, ethnicity, and citizenship. Covering more than three hundred years, this course examines the meaning of whiteness in America and considers the historical and ongoing struggles of those excluded from its privileges. Recommended background: AM/HI 141; HIST 140, 142. Not open to students who have received credit for AMST 299 or HIST 299. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 29. (Africana: Historical Perspective.) (History: Early Modern.) (History: Modern.) (History: United States.) [AC] [HS] A. Baker.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AMST 299. White Supremacy: An American History.
Shaped by early conflicts with native populations and the expansion of African slavery, ideologies of white supremacy have been powerful sociopolitical forces in the making of the United States. At the same time, the concept of "whiteness" has been unstable throughout the nation’s history. It has been challenged by immigration patterns and changing ideas about race, ethnicity, and citizenship. Covering more than three hundred years, this course examines the meaning of whiteness in America and considers the historical and ongoing struggles of those excluded from its privileges. Recommended background: AM/HI 141; HIST 140, 142. Not open to students who have received credit for AM/HI 299 or HIST 299. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 29. (Africana: Historical Perspective.) (History: Early Modern.) (History: Modern.) (History: United States.) [AC] [HS] A. Baker.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
INDC 301G. Black Resistance from the Civil War to Civil Rights.
From antebellum slavery through twentieth-century struggles for civil rights, black Americans have resisted political violence, economic marginalization, and second-class citizenship using strategies ranging from respectability to radicalism. Engaging with both historical and modern scholarship, literary sources, and other primary documents, this course explores the diverse tactics and ideologies of these resistance movements. By considering the complexities and contradictions of black resistance in American history and conducting source-based research, students develop a deep understanding of the black freedom struggle and reflect on the ways that these legacies continue to shape present-day struggles for racial justice. Cross-listed in Africana, American studies, and history. Enrollment limited to 15. (Africana: Historical Perspective.) (History: Early Modern.) (History: United States.) [W2] Normally offered every year. [AC] [HS] A. Baker.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 seminar examines the intersections of gender with Black racial and ethnic identities as they have been and are constructed, expressed, and lived throughout the anglophone and francophone African/Black diaspora. The course not only pays special attention to U.S. women and the movements where they lead or participate; but it also devotes substantial consideration to African, Caribbean, Canadian, European, and Australian women of African descent. 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 Black women’s histories; activism; resistance; and cultural, intellectual, and theoretical productions, as well as digital literacy. Cross-listed in Africana, American studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Prerequisite(s): one course offered by the Program in Africana, the Program in American Studies, or the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Enrollment limited to 15. (Africana: Diaspora.) (Africana: Gender.) (Africana: Historical Perspective.) [AC] S. Houchins.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
INDC 305. Art, Power, and Politics.
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 Africana, American studies, and anthropology. Prerequisite(s): one course in Africana, American studies, anthropology, art and visual culture, or gender and sexuality studies. Enrollment limited to 15. [AC] [HS] J. Rubin.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AMST 340. Inquiry and Knowledge as Social Justice: Indigenous and Decolonizing Frameworks.
American studies offers reflexive and critical analysis of the world around us, particularly in a broadly defined context of "America." This Indigenous studies course focuses on decolonizing knowledge, knowledge production, and unsettling the dominant structures that define research, process, and outcomes. Employing Indigneous-queer frameworks, this course develops students' understanding and application of research as a critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive undertaking accessible to a range of interdisciplinary inquiry. Recommended background: AM/AN 222. Only open to juniors and seniors. Enrollment limited to 15. Normally offered every year. [AC] [SR] K. Barnett.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 facilitating conversations on topics of humanistic inquiry with the community at large. Digital studies provide unconventional ways to engage communities 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 Africana, American studies, digital and computational studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Enrollment limited to 15. (Digital and Computational Studies: Critical Digital Studies.) (Digital and Computational Studies: Computational Creativity and Art Praxis.) (Digital and Computational Studies: Digital Community Engagement Praxis.) [AC] [CP] M. Beasley.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AM/GS 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. Enrollment limited to 15. M. Beasley.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AM/ES 354. Bodies of Land: The Creation of Indigeneity in Film.
This course explores the representation and roles of Indigenous peoples in film, the creation and maintenance of the settler-colonial imagination, the inseparable links between Indigneous bodies and land, and the roles of environment and landscape. This is an Indigenous studies course, centering Native American, First Nations, and Indigenous interests, perspectives, and identities. The course relies on various genres of films; "classics," independent, Hollywood blockbuster, and documentary, created by a range of filmmakers from various backgrounds and identities. Students become well-versed in the topic and impacts of settler-colonialism, develop critical thinking, and explore methods of analysis that will allow them to apply methodological skills related to film review, analysis, and writing. Enrollment limited to 15. Normally offered every year. [AC] [HS] K. Barnett.AMST 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.AM/PY 372. Racial and Ethnic Identity Development.
This course is designed to develop students' understanding of how individuals from different backgrounds come to define themselves in terms of race or ethnicity. Students explore theories that explain how racial/ethnic identity develops among individuals from Caucasian, African American, Asian, Hispanic, immigrant, and mixed-race backgrounds. They also consider the role that others play in the identity development process and how identity relates to important life outcomes. As a final project, students are given the opportunity to analyze their own experience by applying course material to their own life through the creation of an autobiography. Prerequisite(s): any 200-level psychology course. Not open to students who have received credit for PSYC 372. Enrollment limited to 19. (Psychology: IDEA.) [HS] K. Aronson.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AM/PY 377. Psychology of Oppression and Liberation.
This course examines how psychology continues to uphold the interests of those in power (e.g., ruling/owning class), thus reproducing systems of oppressions (e.g., white supremacy). The course also explores how psychology might be transformed in order to realize people’s liberatory potential. Topics include the ways that psychology has been dehumanized (as Martín-Baró says, psychology "erases the very real thing of life that make up what we are as human beings"); how to embed human experiences within the historical, sociopolitical, and economic context; and how to place psychology in the service of human liberation, especially for those who have hitherto been ignored or relegated to the margins of consideration. Recommended background: PSYC 261 or 262. Only open to juniors and seniors Enrollment limited to 15. (Psychology: IDEA.) Y. Garrison.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
AMST 382. Latinx Film.
This course introduces students to the field of Latinx studies through the lens of Latinx representations in United States film. By analyzing various films that feature Latinx characters, actors, and stories, students learn about the diversity of the Latinx population in the United States and develop an understanding of the key sociopolitical issues Latinx individuals face. Through the medium of film, themes such as immigration, gender, ethnicity and race, and the policing of Brown bodies gives students a more nuanced understanding of the largest growing minority population in the United States while also providing them the terms and skills necessary for audiovisual analysis. Taught in English. Cross-listed in American studies, Hispanic studies, and Latin American and Latinx studies. Only open to juniors and seniors. Recommended background: AM/AN 207, AMST 200, HISP 228, LL/PT 208, or RFSS 120. Not open to students who have received credit for HISP 382, INDS 382, or LALS 382. Enrollment limited to 15. [AC] L. Fernandez.Concentrations
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
INDC 382. Latinx Film.
This course introduces students to the field of Latinx studies through the lens of Latinx representations in United States film. By analyzing various films that feature Latinx characters, actors, and stories, students learn about the diversity of the Latinx population in the United States and develop an understanding of the key sociopolitical issues Latinx individuals face. Through the medium of film, themes such as immigration, gender, ethnicity and race, and the policing of Brown bodies gives students a more nuanced understanding of the largest growing minority population in the United States while also providing them the terms and skills necessary for audiovisual analysis. Taught in English. Cross-listed in American studies, Hispanic studies, and Latin American and Latinx studies. Only open to juniors and seniors. Recommended background: AM/AN 207, AMST 200, HISP 228, LL/PT 208, or RFSS 120. Not open to students who have received credit for AMST 382, HISP 382, or LALS 382. Enrollment limited to 15. [AC] L. Fernandez.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
AMST 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 AMST 457 in the fall semester. Majors writing an honors thesis register for both AMST 457 and 458. [W3] Normally offered every year. Staff.AMST 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 AMST 458 in the winter semester. Majors writing an honors thesis register for both AMST 457 and 458. [W3] Normally offered every year. Staff.AM/HI s23. The Revolutionary Era from the Bottom Up: A Social History of the American Revolution.
Patriotic narratives associated with the birth of the republic are deeply ingrained within the American political identity. Recently, the hit Broadway musical Hamilton brought the production’s namesake and the familiar cast of Founding Fathers back to the center stage of American pop culture. The contributions of political elites merit popular and scholarly attention, of course, but should we also consider the experiences, perspectives, and contributions of those outside centers of formal political power? This course asks students to examine the ways African Americans, Native Americans, women, loyalists, common farmers, and urban artisans experienced and contributed to the Revolutionary era. Open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 30. [AC] Staff.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. This course is taught in English.. Cross-listed in Africana, American studies, Hispanic studies, and Latin American and Latinx studies. Recommended background: course work in Africana, American studies, anthropology, gender and sexuality studies, history, or literature. Enrollment limited to 30. B. Fra-Molinero.ConcentrationsInterdisciplinary Programs
This course is referenced by the following General Education Concentrations
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)
INDC s41. Black Genealogies.
This course introduces students to the issues, politics, and the methodologies of Black genealogy. It begins and centers exploration with Africana texts and films that represent lineages of people of the Black Atlantic. It augments these texts with cookery books and historical texts about diasporic arts and crafts. Recommended background: coursework in Africana, American studies, gender and sexuality studies, or American or African histories or literatures. Crosslisted in Africana, American studies, and English. New course beginning Short Term 2022. Enrollment limited to 30. Normally offered every year. S. Houchins.Interdisciplinary Programs
This course counts toward the following Interdisciplinary Program(s)