Course List
500. American Material Culture.
Fall (3) Staff.
This course uses a series of case studies to approach the material worlds of people in the United States, past and present. Studies vary but may focus on ethnic groups like the 19th century Pennsylvania Germans, the construction of regions such as Appalachia, the special circumstances of the Hmong and other refugees, the classification of objects as "folk" or "fine," and the alteration of landscapes or structured environments over time. Each case study serves the dual functions of illuminating the role of material life in making and maintaining American identities and of introducing an interdisciplinary array of methods, fields of inquiry, and theories that assist interpretation of artifacts and their contexts.
512. Maroon Societies.
Spring (3) Price, R.
An exploration of the African American Communities created by escaped slaves through-out 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 and French Guiana, Jamaica, Colombia, and elsewhere.
515. Artists & Cultures.
Fall (3) Price, S.
This course will explore the artistic 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.
518. Material Life in African America.
Fall (3) 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. [Cross-listed with ANTH 530]
523. The Museum in the United States.
Spring (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.
529. Exploring the Afro-American Past.
Fall (3) Price, RS.
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 consciousness within the African diaspora and diverse ways of understanding and writing about Afro-American pasts.
532. The Authority of the Word: Books, Culture and Society in Europe and the United States.
Spring (3) Staff.
This seminar examines the social history of ideas and of intellectuals in the West from the early modern era to the present from a new perspective: that of the new history of the book. Topics cover: the history of literacy and popular reading; printers as an artisan class; censorship, state power, and the control of knowledge; democratization and the expansion of the literary marketplace; the rise of authorship and mass publishing; gender and reading; and the future of books in an electronic age. Readings include primary and secondary sources from both sides of the Atlantic.
534. Ethnographic History.
Spring (3) Price, RS.
Critical readings of recent works by anthropologists and historians, with an emphasis on cross-disciplinary theory and method.
545. The Making of a Region: Southern Literature and Culture.
Spring (3) Donaldson.
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.
570. Topics in American Studies.
If there is no duplication of topic, may be repeated for credit.
Topics for Spring 2011:
Biocultural Anthropology. (3) Blakely.
Rethinking the Hudson River School. (3) Wallach. After a long series of blockbuster and quasi-blockbuster exhibitions beginning with the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "American Paradise"(1987) and ending with the Brooklyn Museum's "Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape" (2007), now is the perfect time to rethink the history of the Hudson River School and its offshoots. This course provides an opportunity to assess what has been learned over the past two decades and to explore the influence of new social formations, new cultural practices, and new technologies of vision on American landscape representation in the period 1800-1875.
Christianity and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America. (3) Barnes.
This course looks at the literary deployment of religious ideas in the dual service of abetting violence and furthering the ends of sentimental national unity. In a study that includes Charles Brockden Brown's gothic thriller of family murder, Wieland, Harriet Beecher Stowe's
influential Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the "cultural work" of radical abolitionist John Brown, we will seek to understand how aggression and
love come together to create a myth of America as an exceptionally empathetic nation. Although American Protestantism is the specific
focus, final research papers allow for a comparative study with other religious forms (e.g., Catholicism, Mormonism, Islam).
Black Odyssey. (3) Weiss.
This course explores the literary legacy of the Atlantic slave trade. Through historical accounts and literary forms we examine the economic
exigencies that drove the slave trade against the philosophy of the European Enlightenment. In this context we analyze the ways in which
language, cultural stereotype, repeating themes, and the narrative of conquest worked to deny the humanity of the African through the
suppression of their artistic expression. Our writers' retrace the pathways of the Golden Triangle to resist and revise the complex history
of the how the African slave became the key contributor to the "New" World's cultural bounty. Writers include: Oauladah Equiano, Harriet
Jacobs, Derek Walcott, Charles Johnson and Adrienne Kennedy
American Popular Cultures. (3) McGovern.
We trace the American histories of everyday peoples and their diversions, languages, art, material practices, and rituals across three
centuries. The course chiefly concerns the U.S. but draws upon comparative perspectives throughout. Areas include print and material culture; popular song; the culture industries and commercial media; revival and memory, social identity, gender and race; consumption;
transnational and global cultural flows.
Collecting the New World. (3) Webster
This seminar explores the visual culture of pre-Hispanic and colonial Latin America in order to examine Early Modern European collecting
practices and collections of New World artifacts and the ways that they participated in the construction of native identities. European and
indigenous patronage and collecting practices within colonial Latin America also will be examined.
581. Collecting and Exhibiting Culture.
Spring (3) Price, S.
This 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 the Americas, Africa, and Europe. [Cross-listed with ANTH 484]
582. Arts of the African Diaspora.
Fall (3) Price, S.
An exploration of artistic creativity in the African diaspora-song, dance, folktales, painting, ceramics, architecture, textile arts, woodcarving, and other media. Consideration of tradition and art history, the articulation of aesthetic ideas, cross-fertilization among different forms and media, the role of gender, the uses of art in social life, kinds of meaning, the nature of artistic creativity, and continuities with artistic ideas and form in African societies. Readings will draw on materials from Africa, North and South America, and the Caribbean.
583. The Material Culture of Early America: Artifacts as Design and as Commodities.
Spring (3) Staff.
As groundwork for the interpretation of objects in museum exhibits, historic house museums, and a variety of scholarly studies, this course introduces techniques for visual analysis of artifacts and ideas about relationships between design, technology, production, and marketing of consumer goods. Students explore various theoretical approaches to the analysis of material culture, develop critical bibliographical skills, and learn to phrase questions (artistic, technological, economic, functional, social, and cultural) about objects. They explore a wide range of sources that may illuminate the questions, and they develop designs for research projects that may answer them.
584. The Material Culture of America: Focus on Decorative Arts.
Spring (3) Staff.
How do we describe the objects with which Americans have furnished their domestic and public buildings? What do they tell us about how American lived and what they thought about themselves, others, and their various worlds? From the time of the earliest seventeenth-century settlements until the present day, the decorative arts in America have both been closely tied to European heritage and to the colonies and nation. This course concentrates on artifacts made or used in America and explores issues of design, production, and distribution in relation to the changing American experience.
590. Writing and Reading Culture.
Spring (3) Price, R.S.
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 devote themselves to a critical analysis of a range of more recent work.
602. American Culture Through the Lenses of the Social Sciences.
Fall (3) Staff.
This seminar introduces students to seminal social theories of social organization, individual and society, cultures, stratification, and social change. Emphasis will be on interdisciplinary theory-building in the social sciences.
603. Problems in Literature and Society.
Fall (3) Staff.
This semester's topic will be "The Cultures of Intimacy." The seminar will explore intimate relations as a dynamic source of social and cultural reproduction and resistance in the late 19C and early 20C US, particularly as it was manifested in discourses of family life, social obligation, and subjectivity. Emphasis will be on close interpretive engagement with culturally complex materials.
605. Practicum in American Material Culture.
Spring (3-6) Gundaker.
The practicum requires permission of the instructor prior to enrollment and may be taken for 3 or 6 credits, depending upon the student’s overall course of study. The practicum combines an individual learning experience in one area of material culture study with bibliographic research and participation in group discussion. The focus of the practicum is an internship or hands-on project supervised by a specialist or curator. Suggested topics include vernacular architecture, decorative arts, landscape, conservation and restoration, ethnographic and archeological fieldwork, and instruction in a mode of material production. Ideally the chosen topic should relate to the student’s long-term professional plans. During the course of the semester students develop a bibliographic essay on their specialty. They also join other practicum participants in a weekly discussion designed to relate practical learning to broader issues of material culture theory and research.
661. Introduction to American Studies.
Fall (3) Gundaker.
This course, which is the first half of a year-long introduction to American Studies required of all incoming students, considers interdisciplinary practices and approaches to the study of American culture, introduces a range of research models, and examines American Studies as a field. Topics and approaches will vary depending on the instructor, but the course will introduce students to them as theoretical, historical, and practical problems through a range of primary and secondary materials. The final product of the course will be a paper that defines a compelling research problem within the field of American Studies, explains its significance, and reviews how other scholars have addressed it.
662. Introduction to Research in American Studies.
Spring (3) McGovern.
This research seminar, which is the second part of the required introductory sequence in American Studies, helps students gain tools for research in three categories: theory, approaches to content, and practices, procedures and vocabularies within and between disciplines. Students will encounter and discuss exemplary texts particularly rich in method. Students will be expected to produce a paper that will comprise an important element of either the master’s thesis or (in the case of Ph.D.-only students) of a comprehensive exam field or possible dissertation topic. Graded Pass/Fail.
690. Directed Research.
Fall and Spring (3,3) Various Faculty.
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. Permission of the program chair is required. This course may be repeated for credit if there is no duplication of topic.
695. Independent Research.
Fall and Spring (3,3) McGovern.
Research for the M.A. thesis. Maximum of six credits.
700. Thesis.
Fall and Spring (3,3) McGovern.
Directed study for Master’s thesis. This course may be repeated.
790. Directed Research.
Fall and Spring (3,3) Various Faculty.
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. Permission of the program chair is required. This course may be repeated for credit if there is no duplication of topic.
795. Independent Research.
Fall and Spring (3,3) McGovern.
Research for the Ph.D. dissertation. Maximum of twelve credits.
800. Dissertation.
Fall and Spring (3,3) McGovern.
Directed study for Doctoral dissertation. This course may be repeated.