American Studies Program

Undergraduate Course Descriptions

AMST 150. Freshman Seminar:
Topics vary regularly for this course.  For current offerings, consult the American Studies listings in the course catalog. 

AMST 201. American Popular Culture and Modern America.
(Ger 4 A) Fall, Spring (3) McGovern, Phillips. This course introduces and examines forms of popular culture that emerged after 1865. It considers popular culture within the context of social, political, and economic changes in the US, such as migration, industrialization, technology, and globalization of capitalism.

AMST 202. Introduction to American Studies: Cinema and the Modernization of U.S. Culture.
(Ger 5) (A) Spring (4) Barnard. This introductory course uses the cinema to examine the social, cultural, and political upheaval of the inter-war period and to ask how film both reflected and participated in the "modernizing" of America.

AMST 203. Introduction to American Studies: American Medicine: A Social and Cultural History.
(Ger 4 A) Spring (4) Scholnick. An overview of Amrican medicine from the 18th century to the present. Subjects include the changing understanding of disease; the social role of the physician and society's response to such public health crises as cholera and AIDS.

AMST 235. Introduction to Material Culture.
Spring (3) Staff.  Landscapes, structures, and artifacts provide a wealth of evidence for interdisciplinary analysis.  Using methods and theories of art historians, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, and others, this introductory course examines the material world we live in.  Are you what you eat?  Do clothes make the man?  Why do we sit on chairs and not squat on floors?  Class time will be given to lectures, reading discussion, exercises in connoisseurship, and field trips to museums and historic houses.

AMST 341. Artists & Cultures.
(GER 4C) (S) Fall (3) S. Price This course will explore the artisitic ideas and activities of people in a variety of cultural settings.  Rather than focusing primarily on formal qualities (what art looks like in this or that society), it will examine the diverse ways that people think about art and artists, and the equally diverse roles that art can play in the economic, political, religious and social aspects of a cultural system.  Materials will range from Australian barkcloth paintings to Greek sculptures, from African masks to European films.

AMST 350. Topics in American Culture.
Fall, Spring (1-4, 1-4) Staff.. Selected topics in Study of American culture. The topics to be considered will be announced prior to the beginning of the semester. May be repeated for credit.

Topics for Fall 2004:

The Idea of Race, Fall (3) Blakey.This course follows the history of the concept of race in Western science and society. The course examines racist ideas in biological anthropology and cognate fields that are reflected in the broader society. This subject helps students understand the origins and manifestations of American racism, to develop an appreciation of ways in which culture can systematically influence scientific results, and to critically evaluate all theories of the interactions of biology and behavior. (Cross-listed with ANTH371 01).

Kennedy and Camelot. Fall (3) Brown. The Kennedy Assassination and the Myth of Camelot: through the close reading of selected primary and secondary sources, this course will examine the history, and subsequent mythologization , of the Kennedy administration and President's assassination. We will pay particular attention to the representation of these events in novels, films, an in American popular culture in general.

African American Religion. Fall (3) Fitzgerald. A historical survey of the Afro-American religious experience that will examine African antecedents, slave religion and the development of Black churches and religious organizations from the colonial period to the present. (Cross-listed with RELG 348 01)

AMST 370. America and Americans.
Fall (4) Fitzgerald, Weiss.. (Concentration Seminar) By exploring theoretical, methodological, and historical approaches to a range of cultural materials, students will critically engage with how American Studies and its related disciplinary fields have addressed the politics and culture of national identity in the U.S. (Non-concentrators may enroll with consent of the instructor).

AMST 402. Exploring the Afro-American Past.
Fall (3) R. Price.  A study of the commonalities and differences across Afro-America from the U.S. to Brazil.  Works in anthropology, history and literature will be used to explore the nature of historical consciousnes within the African diaspora and diverse ways of understanding and writing about Afro-American pasts.

AMST 410. Williamsburg Documentary Project.
Spring (3) In this course students will learn a variety of interdisciplinary methods e.g., oral history collection, archival research, material cultural analysis- for doing American studies research. They will then apply these methods practically to the study of Williamsburg in the 20th century. The thematic focus of the WDP for 2004-2005 is Entertaining Williamsburg. (Non-majors may enroll with consent of instructor).

AMST 412. Maroon Societies.
Fall (3) R. Price. An exploration of the African American communities created by escaped slaves throughout the Americas, from Brazil through the Caribbean and into the southern United States. Emphasis on the processes by which enslaved Africans from diverse societies created new cultures in the Americas, on the development of these societies through time, and on the present-day status of surviving maroon communities in Suriname, French Guiana, Jamaica, Colombia, and elsewhere. Cross-listed as ANTH 432 and HIST 432.

AMST 423. The Museum in the United States.
(S) Fall (3) Wallach. This seminar will study specific museums while focusing on basic questions having to do with the social forces that gave rise to museums and the roles museums have played and continue to play in U.S. society.

AMST 434. Ethnographic History.
Fall (3) R. Price. Critical readings of recent works by anthropologists and historians, with an emphasis on cross-disciplinary theory and method. Cross-listed as ANTH 472 and HIST 474.

AMST 435. Studies in Material Culture.
(S) Spring (3) Staff. (Not offered 2004-2005) This interdisciplinary course introduces students to the study of architecture, artifacts, and material goods as cultural objects.

AMST 445. The Making of a Region: Southern Literature and Culture.
(AS) Spring (3) Staff. An interdisciplinary examination of nineteenth- and twentieth-century southern texts within the cultural context of self-conscious regionalism. Emphasis is on the interaction between literature and the social configurations of slavery, abolitionism, southern nationalism, racism, traditionalism, and the civil rights movement.

AMST 470. Topics in American Studies.
Topics vary regularly for this course.  For current offerings, consult course catalog.  The following entries describe some recently offered seminars.

Material life in African America.
Gundaker. This seminar explores the world of things that African Americans have made and made their own in what is now the United States. From the colonial era through the present. Topics include landscapes of enslavement and freedom, labor practices, architecture, foodways, objects, aesthetics, contexts of production and use, and the theories of material life, expression, and culture through which these topics are studied.

Literary History of Anglo-America.
Brown. This seminar will examine the literary history of England and its North American Colonies from the late century through the first decade of American Independence. Selected readings will include most major genres of English belletristic writing, as well as scientific, medical and other learned prose. This course will focus on the comparative dimensions of England and North American culture and on the problems of colonial and post-colonial cultural exchange. The seminar requires extensive readings in primary and secondary materials.

Writing and Reading Culture.
R. Price. Trends in Ethnography (and Ethnographic History), during the past two decades. Students will begin with a "classic monograph" go on to read about the "crisis" in representation as depicted in Clifford and Marcus, and then devoted themselves to a critical analysis of a range of more work.

Hollywood Genre Film.
Knight. This seminar will explore three or four Hollywood genres (most likely film noir, the musical, the western, and the "woman's film"). It will work to develop students' general attention to film form and the evolution of generic conventions within an understanding the social, historical, and aesthetic contexts of specific genres. This class will require between 3 and 4 hours of group screening time each week.

Collecting and Exhibiting Culture.
S. Price. The process of assembling material artifacts across cultural boundaries.  The course will examine the history of field collecting in different parts of the world, questions of cultural ownership, theories of acquisition and preservation used by museums and private collectors, and issues in the exhibiting of both objects and people. Readings will draw mainly on material from Canada, the U.S., Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe.

480. Independent Study.
Fall and Spring (2-3, 2-3) Staff. A program of extensive reading, writing and discussion in a special area of American Studies for the advanced student. Students accepted for this course will arrange their program of study with an appropriate faculty advisor. This course may be repeated for credit.

495. Honors.
Fall (3) Staff. Students admitted to Honors Study in American Studies will be enrolled in this course during both semesters of their senior year. Each candidate will be responsible for (a) formulating a program of study in consultation with a faculty advisor; (b) preparation and presentation by April 15 of an Honors essay; (c) satisfactory performance in a comprehensive oral examination which focuses on the subject matter of the Honors essay. Permission of the department chair is required.

496. Honors.
Spring (3) Staff. Students admitted to Honors Study in American Studies will be enrolled in this course during both semesters of their senior year. Each candidate will be responsible for (a) formulating a program of study in consultation with a faculty advisor; (b) preparation and presentation by April 15 of an Honors essay; (c) satisfactory performance in a comprehensive oral examination which focuses on the subject matter of the Honors essay. Permission of the department chair is required. For College provisions governing the Admission to Honors, see page 57.

498. Internship.
Fall and Spring (3,3) Staff. This course is designed to allow students to gain knowledge through experience in a setting relevant to the study of America. Students will be supervised by a faculty advisor. The internship includes readings in related areas of theory and research as assigned by the supervising faculty. Permission of the department chair is required. This course may be repeated for credit.