AMST Course Descriptions

This is an overview of courses that are offered through the American Studies program.  Not every course is taught every year, and there are occasional special courses offered.  Consult the most recent Course Catalog for current course listings.

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,  1914 - 1945.
(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 204. The American Way of War.
 Fall (3) Brown. This course will examine the social and cultural history of Americans at war from the latter part of the 17th century to the present. Course readings will concentrate on primary sources: fiction, memoirs, and historical accounts drawn from three centuries of American experiences in combat.

AMST 205. Sexuality in America.
 Fall (4) Meyer. The course will introduce students to the study of American culture through history, popular culture, multiple media, and scientific literature concerned with sexualities in America. The course will also show how normative sexualities are articulated distinctly depending on race, class, ethnicity, immigrant status, and other factors related to specific American communities.

AMST 206. Black Popular Culture in the Americas: From the Folk to the New Hip Hop.
(GER 4C, 5) Spring (4) Phillips. Course compares black culture from the early 20th c. folk practices to 21st c. Hip Hop in the US and the Caribbean. It considers these expressions in political, social, and economic contexts. Course materials include literature, film, music, and art.

AMST 240. The History of Modern Dance. 
 (GER 5) Spring (3) Glenn. An introduction through films and lectures to the field of modern dance, which is rooted in American culture, with emphasis on the stylistic approach and aesthetic of the artists who have contributed to its development in the twentieth century. (Cross listed with DANC 220)

AMST 241. History of American Vernacular Dance.
(GER 5) Fall (3) Glenn. An introduction through films and lectures to dance in U.S. popular culture with an emphasis on its development from roots in African dance to the vernacular forms of tap, ballroom, and jazz by examining the movement styles found in concert jazz, musical theatre, and popular social dances. (Cross listedwith DANC 230)

AMST 271. American Popular Music.
(GER 4A) Spring (4) Staff. This course treats the traditions of vernacular musics in the United States, specifically those commonly known as religious, popular, folk, jazz, rock, and country. It will survey the literature of these musics’ expression and consider questions of cultural meaning. (Cross listed with MUSC 171)

AMST 273. Jazz.
(GER 4A, GER 5) Fall (4) Scales. A survey of jazz from its origins to the present, focusing on the most influential improvisers and composers. Issues of race, class, and gender will arise as we examine the attitudes of listeners, jazz musicians and promoters. (Cross listed with MUSC 273)

AMST 275W. University Seminar. 
Fall and Spring (4) Staff. A reading-, writing-, and discussion-intensive seminar. Topics vary by semester and by instructor. Restricted to transfer students and co-enrolled students Students receiving a grade of “C-” or better in the seminar will have satisfied the lower-division writing requirement. This course does not fulfill the Freshman Seminar requirement.

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. (Cross listed with ANTH 364)

343. American Ethnic Literature and Culture.
(GER 5) Fall (3) Weiss. The course aims to increase students’ understanding of the rich complexity of American life by studying multi-ethnic American literature and culture. We will explore some of the theoretical problems associated with race and ethnicity. For the most part, however, we will work outward from certain key texts, pursuing the questions that emerge in and from them. We will consider such matters as the evolution of immigration law, the problems of identity and dual identity, and the question of assimilation versus cultural separatism. We will also emphasize the achievement of these texts as literary documents that need to be understood as responding to local cultural practices even as they speak more broadly to Americans as a whole.

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 2009:

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 ANTH 371).

Music and Film. Fall (4) Preston. An introduction to the world of sound and music as utilized in film. Materials introduced chronologically, with units on late 19th-century musical theater, music of “silent” films, early sound films (1930s), the studio system, compilation scores, electronic techniques, reintroduction of orchestral scores (1970s), and developments since the 1980s. Course content is primarily non-technical, but students should be familiar with film-studies and music-studies terms and concepts.

Introduction to African American History. Fall (3) Allegro. A survey of African American history from the colonial period to the present. The course divides at emancipation. (Cross listed with BLST 306 and AMST 350)

AMST 370. Major Seminar: America and Americans.
Fall (4) Fitzgerald, Weiss. Prerequisite: AMST 201, 202, 203, 204, or consent of instructor. 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 421. Nineteenth-Century American Art.
Fall (4) Wallach. A study of major movements—Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, and figures Allston, Cole, Church, Eakins, omer,  Sargent, Whistler, Cassatt—focusing on issues of iconography, representation, and historical context.

AMST 422. Twentieth-Century American Art.
Fall (4) Wallach. Consent of instructor required. A study of major movements including Regionalism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop and figures Sloan, Sheeler, O’Keefe, Benton, Pollock, and Warhol focusing on such issues as modernism, abstraction and representation, and problems of historical context.

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 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 the course catalog.

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.

495/496. 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.

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 [[kawulf, department chair]] is required. This course may be repeated for credit.