American Studies


American Studies 0150: Blacks in Cinema
3 credit hours

An overview of portrayals of blacks in cinema from its inception to the present, including developments from Hollywood, independent filmmakers, and experimental foreign films. The story of the race movies treated in-depth. Also, a look at contemporary trends, such as the independent black film movement in Africa and the United States.



American Studies 1001 (formerly C051): American Lives
3 credit hours

An introduction to American Studies through life stories presented by the individuals involved to give us insights into America. By looking closely at these American lives, students will meet people of various periods and backgrounds and become familiar with important developments, influential ideas, conflicting images, and realities in American society.



American Studies 1042 (formerly C062): Work in America
3 credit hours

A broad perspective of men and women at their jobs. Discusses the ways in which Americans have been told they can make it, looking at their actual experience at work and their prospects for the next decade or so. Writings by ordinary working people, commentaries by historians and sociologists of business and work, and several films are discussed.



American Studies 2061 (formerly 0086): American Music
3 credit hours

(Cross-Listings: Music Studies C086)

A survey of music in the United States from the psalmody of the Pilgrims and Puritans to the electronic and experimental music of the present. Presents examples of the chief types of music created in the various periods of the country's history, including vernacular music (folk hymnody, blackface minstrels, ragtime, blues, jazz, Tin Pan Alley, and Broadway musicals) and cultivated music (opera, symphonic, chamber, piano, and art song), in about equal proportions. No formal knowledge of music or music theory is required.



American Studies 2120 (formerly 0100): Topics in American Culture
3 credit hours

A special-topics course using special material and approaches to American Studies that are either experimental in nature or not yet a regular part of the curriculum.



American Studies 2120 (formerly 0100): Topics in American Culture: American English as Cultural Expression
3 credit hours

An understanding of American and Japanese values and ways of thinking by investigating the ways language is used in these cultures to accomplish social purposes. Using various theories from the study of language, the course will study metaphoric language and thinking, the cultural assumptions involved in the use of key words, and the forms of politeness and patterns of language used in literature. The approach is analytical and comparative; assignments will emphasize students' application of concepts to a body of language data.



American Studies 2120 (formerly 0100): Topics in American Culture: The Indians of the Americas
3 credit hours

(Cross-Listings: Anthropology 0313)

A survey of the historical layout of American Indian societies as they may have appeared in 1492 on the eve of cultural contact with invading and colonizing Europeans. Attention is given to Ice Age, ancient, precontact, and post-contact cultures. There is some emphasis on the formation of colonial America and the American political economy that formed out of conflict, syncretism, and accommodation. Special attention is given to the first contacts between specific Indian societies and Spanish, French, and English colonists. The Puritan religious and social experiment in New England; the Quaker experiment in Pennsylvania; the French missionaries among the Huron, Iroquois, and Mi'kmaq; war and the fur trade; the league of the Iroquois; the rise of mounted and militant plains societies; and the ghost dance religion are among the topics covered. Wars of Indian resistance and the native leaders who inspired them are also discussed. Attention is given to the political, economic, and social impact of Indian societies on Europeans and European culture.



American Studies 2120 (formerly 0100): Topics in American Culture: American Indians and Europe
3 credit hours

A tracing of the historical formation of Indian societies in the context of cultural contact with invading and colonizing Europeans. Attention is given to the mutual formation of a new American identity that formed out of conflict and accommodation. Special attention is given to the first cultural contacts between specific Indian societies and Spanish, French, and English colonists. The Puritan social experiment, the Quaker experiment in Pennsylvania, the French missionaries among the Huron, the fur trade, and the plains wars are among the topics covered. Attention is also given to the political, economic, and social impact of Indian societies on Europeans and on European culture. The unique features of Indian societies and cultures are ethnographically discussed.



American Studies 2120 (formerly 0100): Topics in American Culture: American Political Culture
3 credit hours

A wide-ranging examination of American political culture. The religious right, the golden Rolodex, congressional big men, Melanesian big men, the revolving door, c-span and congressional melodrama, the capital catacombs, and the military industrial complex are some of the topics discussed. Informal political networks and the rule of man are contrasted with the formal rule of law in the American struggle for political power. Popular subcultural groups, such as working-class militia and survivalist associations, are compared with the extended clans of PACs, lobbyists, and bureaucratic staffers of powerful senior representatives and senators at the highest levels. Discussion will also focus on the historical political culture of the founding fathers, particularly the slave-owning among them, and on the lasting influence on the present of the Constitution as a culturally produced, sacred document.



American Studies 2120 (formerly 0100): Topics in American Culture: History of Modern American Business
3 credit hours

(Cross-Listings: History 2213 & Economics 3532)

An examination of the rise of the modern corporation from the Revolution to the present. Emphasis on the relationship of big business to American life and on the great organizers of the American economy, such as John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Alfred Sloan, and Henry Ford II. The relationship of government to business, the development of the corporation, the impact of the depression on American business, multinational corporations, and business practices will be discussed.



American Studies 2120 (formerly 0100): Topics in American Culture: The Political Culture of Popular Music
3 credit hours

An examination of the ways in which popular music has been used in America to articulate and support political ideologies and how that music often plays an integral role in the advancement of social and political causes. The course will focus primarily on the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on the urbanized folk music of the 1930s to the 1960s and on rock music from the 1950s to the present.



American Studies 2120 (formerly 0100): Topics in American Culture: Visions of America in the Media
3 credit hours

An exploration of the relationship between the image of America and the marketing and reception of American popular culture overseas, particularly in Japan and Europe. The course centers on themes such as youth culture and concerns about Americanization and specific culture industries, including television, motion pictures, and advertising.



American Studies 2041 (formerly 0102): Technology and American Culture
3 credit hours

An exploration of the way American values have shaped technology and of how technology has shaped American life, placing contemporary problems in a historical perspective. Technology has been called the dominant force in American civilization, a part of our everyday material lives, work, beliefs, and behavior. Materials are drawn from social history, literature, visual arts, film, advertising, and polemical prose.



American Studies 2051 (formerly 0103): American Places: Home, City, Region
3 credit hours

(Cross-Listings: GUS 2025)

An exploration of the importance of place in determining the character of American culture. A variety of materials, visual and textual, are used to examine the way our lives are shaped by the home, the design of the city, and the suburban and regional areas beyond the city. The extent to which places hold their identities in the face of mass culture and megalopolis is also explored.



American Studies 2011 (formerly 0104): The Arts in America
3 credit hours

An examination of the way being an artist in America has changed over the last hundred or more years through representative figures within an interdisciplinary context, including literature, photography, music, architecture, and painting. Themes include the effects of the arts on America, their importance as part of culture, and what different but simultaneous art forms have in common and how they influence each other. Among possible artists discussed are Whitman, Louis Sullivan, Charles Ives, Alfred Stiglitz, John Dos Passos, Frank Lloyd Wright, Norman Mailer, Robert Frank, John Cage, and Robert Venturi.



American Studies 0105: Ideal America: Reform, Revolution, and Utopia
3 credit hours

A look at the various efforts to reform American life. Since the Puritans came to America in 1619, reform has been a major theme of American life. John Winthrop believed he was establishing the heavenly city on earth. For the next 350 years, reformers have looked at American life and, finding that it failed to live up to Winthrop's dream, have attempted to change it. Some of these individuals demanded a radical break with the past, while others believed that minor changes would revitalize the society. Topics discussed include the origins of American reform, the antislavery movement, utopians, progressivism, American socialists, American liberalism, and opponents of reform.



American Studies 3032 (formerly 0106): Literature and Political Change
3 credit hours

A study of the major texts, fiction and nonfiction, that had a significant impact on public discourse and on the culture of the United States. The social and historical contexts of the texts will be discussed, and the major issues?for example, efforts to define freedom and democracy, the status of the individual, and the role of the larger community?will be stressed.



American Studies 2071 (formerly 0108): The Immigrant Experience in America
3 credit hours

A TUJ course focusing on the history of Asian immigration and the cultures of Asian Americans in the United States, with special emphasis on the settling of Japanese America. Readings from history, literature, and sociology and viewings of film and video present issues of assimilation; the dynamic of acceptance and exclusion; the establishment of ethnicity; and the diverse experiences and perspectives of the issei, nisei, and sansei generations.



American Studies 3071 (formerly R112): African American Experiences
3 credit hours

A summary of historical, social, political, and cultural developments related to the African American experience in the United States. Various themes, such as the enslavement, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Harlem renaissance, Garveyism, the great migration, the Great Depression and labor unions, the New Deal and the WPA, African American involvement in the nation's wars, civil rights, black power, and the black arts movement and Black Panthers, are examined in an interdisciplinary context.



American Studies 3096 (formerly W118): The American Woman: Visions and Revisions
3 credit hours

(Cross-Listings: Cross-listing: Women's Studies 3096)

An examination of images and roles of women in American culture. Using fiction, poetry, and autobiography, we develop an understanding of stereotypes and myths and we relate these images to the real-life experiences of American women. The readings include all classes and many ethnic groups, and focus primarily on the twentieth century.



American Studies 3031 (formerly 0124): Political Protest and Culture in the 60's
3 credit hours

Many see the 1960s as a time America fell apart?drugs, sex, anti-Americanism, and the loss of the work ethic. Yet the 60's produced the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam War Movement, Vatican II, and the Counterculture. And then there was the music! Martin Luther King, the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe, and the astronauts?fame and untimely death. What was it like when America still had hope? How did it change us as a society? and not change us? Why are so many still so angry about all that or miss it!



American Studies 3012 (formerly 0126): Documentary Film and American Society
3 credit hours

An examination of the place of documentary films within American culture, beginning with the early efforts of Robert Flaherty and continuing to the present. Topics include the documentary of the 1930s and the New Deal, the evolution of documentary styles, the social power of documentary film, the subject in documentary, and the self-conscious documentary.



American Studies 3061 (formerly 0127): Mass Media and American Popular Culture
3 credit hours

(Cross-Listings: History 1007 & JPRA 0352)

An exploration of the role of media in the development of American popular culture, with particular emphasis on the cultural transformations brought about by the mass media after 1880. Historical analysis will demonstrate the profound shift in media roles within the past century, from media expressions of popular culture before 1880 to the media as generators of popular culture after that point. A by-product of this analysis will be the formulation of a critical definition of the mass media in terms of a specific relationship between the media and the audience.



American Studies 3022 (formerly 0130): Architecture, Urban Design, and American Culture
3 credit hours

An examination of the changing nature of the American city from colonial days to the present. Important themes in this course include the ways that changes in the economic base, in transportation, and in energy use altered the basic structure and spatial geography of cities; the roles of race and ethnicity in shaping the ways that residents adjusted to urban life; the problems of crime and housing; and the functions of politics and reformers in influencing the development of the modern city. Furthermore, we will compare regional differences in these processes and explore the city in American thought.



American Studies 2063 (formerly 0133): American Culture Abroad: Japan
3 credit hours

(Cross-Listings: Anthropology 0272 & Asian Studies 0255)

An examination of the versions and varieties of American life that have become a part of Japanese society and culture. We see a tremendous curiosity for things American in Japanese daily life, but how has American culture taken shape in Japan? What kinds of transformations, reformulations, and reinventions have taken place? We will review Japanese adoptions and adaptations of American language, settings, architecture and design, foods and restaurants, clothing and fashions, popular films, television and advertising, and even holidays. Students will review and critically evaluate such films as The Japanese Version, Mr. Baseball, Black Rain, The Barbarian and the Geisha, Tokyo Pop, and The Colonel Comes to Japan.



American Studies 3075 (formerly R134): The Literature of American Slavery
3 credit hours

(Cross-Listings: African American Studies 2134)

Slaves, slave owners, and abolitionists, men and women, perceived slavery in distinctive ways and recorded those perceptions in songs and poems, folk tales, autobiographical narratives and novels, speeches and tracts, travel accounts, journals, diaries, and letters. Through an examination of this rich oral and written literature, such themes as the character of slave culture, the relations between slaves and masters, the oppression of women under slavery, and the connection between abolitionism and feminism are explored. Lectures provide historical background and a context in which to read the selections.



American Studies 2107 (formerly R136): Asian American Experiences
3 credit hours

(Cross-Listings: Asian Studies 2107 & History 2107)

An introduction to the varied historical and contemporary experiences of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and South Asian immigrants and their descendants in the United States. Explores economic, social, political, and cultural developments, beginning with the arrival of the Chinese in the 1830s and ending with the experiences of Asian American immigrants and their communities today.



American Studies W140: Radicalism in the United States
3 credit hours

A study of the issues and traditions in the history of radical thought and behavior. Emphasizing the twentieth century, the course focuses on major social contexts and ideologies, such as anarchism, militant unionism, socialism, and communism?each of which has had a long and vibrant history in the United States?as well as less-structured but no less fundamental theories of social change.



American Studies 2096 (formerly 0152/W152): Asian Diaspora
3 credit hours

(Cross-Listings: Asian Studies 2097 & History 0111/W111)

An examination of the social experiences and cultures of South Asians, Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, and Japanese who have journeyed to far-flung lands and the terms that can be employed to analyze their experiences and culture. Spurred by pressures of colonialism, economic change, nationalism, political repression, and war, as well as individual needs and adventurism, Asians have migrated from their homelands to new regions of the world?within Asia and into North America, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Europe. In considering Asian diasporas, familiar terms, such as Asia, American, community, and nation, are called into question by the multiplicity of experiences and identities of those who have ventured out from eastern regions of the globe.



American Studies 3074 (formerly 0154): Introduction to Asian American Literature
3 credit hours

A survey of Asian American literature from its conception in the nineteenth century to its most recent developments. The course includes a close reading and critical analysis of prose, poetry, and plays from writers such as Sui Sin Far, Carlos Bulosan, Toshio Mori, Mary Paik Lee, Frank Chin, Bharati Mukherjee, Amy Tan, and Sara Suleri. Principally, the course identifies its subject matter as complex and eloquent cultural expressions reflecting unique, as well as ubiquitous, national experiences.



American Studies 2217 (formerly 0156): The Vietnam War
3 credit hours

(Cross-Listings: Asian Studies 2217 & History 2217)

An attempt to probe in-depth one of the most significant and controversial episodes of recent American history. The course looks at the history of Vietnam since the nineteenth century, with equal emphasis on the first and second Indochina wars. Includes the impact of the war on the domestic and international scenes and its multiple legacies. Also includes the impact of television and film and guest speakers from the period.



American Studies 3120 (formerly 0200): Topics in American Culture
3 credit hours

A special-topics course presenting material and approaches to American Studies that are either experimental in nature or not yet a regular part of the curriculum.



American Studies 4097 (formerly W393): Senior Seminar in American Studies
3 credit hours

Prerequisite: Senior American Studies major or written permission of instructor for other advanced undergraduates

A single topic is explored in an interdisciplinary context in this the capstone class required of all American Studies majors. Open to others with permission of instructor. Topics will vary. Students are expected to write a major paper. Note, this is a Capstone W course. Special authorization is required for all students.



American Studies 4097 (formerly W393): Senior Seminar in American Studies: America on Film
3 credit hours

Prerequisite: Senior American Studies major or written permission of instructor for other advanced undergraduates

An investigation of the role of film in American culture. Film's role as a reflection of current American culture, with all of its ideological, political, and social blemishes, is explored in-depth, with an emphasis on how the vast myth-making power of film has given reinforcement, and occasionally birth, to such legendary American archetypes as the gangster, the cowboy, the war hero, and others. Film's influence on the deconstruction of these same mythologies is also addressed. Note, this is a Capstone W course. Special authorization is required for all students.



Note:
Please note: the information contained in these course descriptions is subject to change, and individual courses may be added or deleted as necessary. If you wish to know what specific courses are being offered in a given term, please see the current course schedule.