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American Studies Department Course Descriptions Spring 2008 AmSt
150 America and the World
Course Description:This course examines formations of "America" in a global context, beginning with its emergence as a European colonial outpost imposed on indigenous peoples, to its assumption of the mantle of imperialism and militarism that continues on to the present day. We will survey major world-historical events in which the U.S. has played key roles as well as consider the impacts that other world cultures have had on the American social, political, cultural and economic fabric. Central to the organization of this course is a consideration of race, class and gender as crucial axes for the formation of "America." This
course draws from a diverse range of materials: art, literature,
music, film, historical/legal documents as well as theoretical texts.
Course Requirements: See Instructor Text(s): See Instructor AmSt
201 W/The American Experience: Institutions and Movements
AMST 201 SATISFIES PART OF THE HUMANITIES CORE REQUIREMENT (DH) Course Description: This interdisciplinary course examines diversity and changes in American values and lives in a historical context as manifested in social institutions and social movements. It introduces students to various types of primary materials (such as laws, court rulings, sermons, political manifestos, newspapers, etc.) and to different methods of reading and analyzing such materials. Using social and analytical categories such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality, the course examines several critical periods in US history as well as situates Hawaii in the context of American experience. The course fulfills a Manoa Core humanities requirement. Sections:
Sections
1 & 2 (writing intensive): Daniel Simon
Course Requirements: See Instructor Text(s):
AmSt
202 W/American Experience: Culture and the Arts
AMST 202 SATISFIES PART OF THE HUMANITIES CORE REQUIREMENT (DH) Course Description: This interdisciplinary course examines diversity and changes in American values and lives in a historical context as manifested in art and culture. It introduces students to various types of primary materials (such as poems, novels, films, photography, advertising, songs, etc.) and to different methods such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality, the course examines several critical periods in US history as well as situates Hawai‘i in the context of American experience. The course fulfills a Manoa Core humanities requirement.
Sections:
1 & 2 (writing intensive): Sean
Trundle
Additional Course Description: We generally think of culture and art as those things we consume as a leisure activity -- going to the movies, reading the Sunday paper, or watching a ball game. In contrast, this course will focus on culture and art as works, that is, as the end result of the productive processes of labor. The relationship of these works to the larger economic realities they are created in (be it slavery, plantation colonialism, or industrial capitalism), and how they are at times both shaped by those realities and created to critique them will be a major theme of this course. Course
requirements: Texts:
| Sections 3 (writing intensive): Njoroge Njoroge Course Description: This course will explore music, poetics and politics in the age of globalization. The approach is an interdisciplinary one, using critical theory, cultural studies, and history to trace the relations between musical styles and the politics of com modification in late capitalism. The rise of the “world music” genre, the internationalization of hip-hop, and the spread of downloadable digital music symbolize important phases of popular aesthetics in the global economy. This course interrogates popular culture, postmodernity, and globalization, and will survey some transformations of popular music and political economy in the 20th and 21st centuries, sonically mapping immigration and cultural flows over circuits of empire while paying close attention to the role of gender, race and class in the construction of identities and musical communities. We will examine a variety of musics including rock’n’roll, reggae, hip-hop, salsa, Afro-beat, “Desi-hop”/Bhangra, and the ‘narcocorridos’ of the U.S.-Mexican border. Course
Requirements: Text(s):
AmSt 211 W/Contemporary American Domestic Issues
Course Description: This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of contemporary American domestic issues within their historical contexts and in relation to American values and institutions. Such topics as politics, economics, civil rights, family life, the justice system, and the environment are discussed from various critical and contested perspectives ranging from race, gender, and class to quantitative description. The course fulfills a Manoa Core social science requirement. American Studies 211 is an interdisciplinary exploration of such current American domestic issues topics as politics, economics, civil rights, family life, the justice system, and the environment. Course Requirements: Regular attendance and class participation are a required component of the course. There are four 5-6 page papers due every 4 weeks as well as several short in-class writing assignments. Text(s):
AmSt
212 W/Contemp Am Global Issues
Course
Description: This
course is an interdisciplinary exploration of contemporary global
issues within their historical contexts and in relation to American
values and institutions. Such topics as international diplomacy,
economic development, national security, demographic change, and
environmental protection are discussed from various critical and
contested perspectives ranging from race, gender, and class to quantitative
description. Course Requirements:
Text(s):
AmSt
310 O/The Japanese-Americans: History, Culture, Lifestyles
Course Description: Study of Japanese American life in Hawaii and American society at large. Historical and cultural heritage. Biographical portraits, changing family ties, ethnic lifestyle, male and female relations, local identity and the nature of island living. Course Requirements:
Text(s): D. Ogawa, Jan Ken Po D. Ogawa, Kodomo No Tame Ni AmSt 318 Asian America: Survey-CANCELED (Cross listed w/ES 318 )
Course
Description: Surveys five Asian American ethnic groups--their
experiences, challenges, responses, contributions. Explores related
topics such as race, ethnicity, gender, "model minority,"
activism, their literature. AmSt 365 American Empire (crosslisted w/Hist 379)
Course Description: The United States since the time of its founding has been characterized by its ever-expanding sphere of influence. This influence has been exerted through both formal and informal mechanisms of economic, political and cultural control. This course explores the history of U.S. expansion by interrogating the changing meanings, contexts and consequences of American Empire. We will explore a number of critical themes including the way in which US capitalism provided both a material and ideological framework for expansion; the intersection of racial ideas with imperial ideologies; and the politics of consent and coercion within systems of imperial governance. Our goal is to examine the meaning of “imperialism” in the American context by looking at political debates, economic policies, racial ideologies and popular understandings of the role of the U.S. nation-state in the world Course Requirements: See Instructor Text(s):
AmSt 373 W/Filipino Am: Hist, Culture & Politics (Cross listed w/ES 373)
Course Description: An introduction to the study of Filipino Americans in the United States and the diaspora. The course pays special attention to labor migration, cultural production and community politics. Course Requirements: See Instructor Text(s): See Instructor AmSt
382 Junior Seminar
(Required course for undergraduate majors)
Course Description: This seminar, the second section in a sequence of two, focuses on contemporary interpretations of the American cultural history from the Civil War to the present. Similar to AmSt 381, the main objective of the course is twofold: 1) to become more familiar with the historical circumstances that shaped the United States as a socio-political entity, and 2) to learn to read and interpret these circumstances thoughtfully and critically. Course
Requirement: See Instructor
AmSt
411 O/Japanese Americans: Res Tpcs
Course
Description: Ethnic
identity and Japanese media. Comparative study of American, Asian
American and Japanese media as related to Japanese American ethnic
identity.
AmSt 431 American Labor History (Cross listed w/Hist 477)
Course
Description: American workers have had many faces:
the skilled artisan, the plantation slave, the female domestic,
the "white collar" employee and more. What have these workers
had in common? What kind of work did they perform and how has
it changed over time? How have they responded to changes in the
work environment? What role has government played in shaping that
environment? What problems do American workers face today? This
course explores these and similar questions. AmSt
432 Slavery: American History & Memory
(Crosslisted w/ HIST 473)
Course
Description: American
Studies 432 will explore the history of African American slavery
in the British North American colonies and the United States from
its early development to its abolition in 1865. It will also examine
the memory of slavery as conveyed in American literature and film
and its impact on the formation of American culture. The tolerance
of and great profit from Slavery by a society that claimed to
be committed to human freedom was America’s greatest contradiction.
Its efforts to rationalize this contradiction gave rise to the
racial theories that came to characterize U.S. society. The social,
political, and economic power of slavery and its advocates played
a major role in shaping American society and slavery’s memory
continues as a significant aspect of its legacy. This course will
discuss and define slavery’s continuing impact on America
and Americans. Text(s): AmSt 436 E/Gender, Justice and Law (Crosslisted w/ WS 436 and POLS 436)
Course
Description: Past and
present roles of women in American political and legal institutions;
common law, judicial decisions, and federal and state legislation
affecting women of various socioeconomic groups. Course Requirements: See Instructor Texts: A required reader will be available for sale at the BWI Campus Copy Center. AmSt 438 Asian Women (Crosslisted w/WS 462 and POLS 372)
Course Content: Who are "Asian Women"? Does the image of Asian women as helpless victims of patriarchal domination accurately reflect their lives? Or, are they active agents who negotiate with, and even challenge gender, racial, and class oppressions? How have US interventions in Asia—war, military bases, American cultural and economic domination, feminist reformist interventions, etc.-- shaped the lives of Asian women? How have Asian women shaped our lives in the US? This course will present an interdisciplinary look at how the lives of Asian women have been constructed by various domestic and international forces - including gender, race, sexuality, colonialism/imperialism. Drawing on various perspectives developed in feminist/gender studies, colonial and post-colonial studies, cultural studies and Asian studies, we will examine Asian women's lives within the historical context of Asia-Us/West relations. Students will be encouraged to question culturally pervasive stereotypes of Asian women (i.e., exotic/Oriental geisha girl, docile and silent daughters and mothers, factory workers with nimble fingers, etc), to critically re-examine problematic consequences of US/Western interventions in Asia, and to reconsider multiple possibilities of resistance to material and cultural oppressions Asian women face. We will also examine the politics and polemics of Western feminist interventions in Asian societies and reexamine the notion of "global sisterhood" from critical perspective. In addition to readings and class discussions, we will see films that shed critical light on Asian women as historical and political agents. Course
Requirements: See Instructor AmSt
440 Race & Racism in America
Course Description: This interdisciplinary course examines the history and development of the idea of race and the continuing legacy and relevance of racial ideologies in contemporary society. W.E.B. DuBois famously suggested that “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line.” This course will interrogate this idea critically and examine the role of race and racism in the making of the modern world. Beginning with an examination of the early operations of racial “othering” and the development of the concept of “ethnicity” we will trace these socio-cultural practices to modern times through the development of capitalism, European expansion, the conquest of the Americas, the Atlantic slave trade and the rise of the nation-state. We will examine the reconfigurations of race and ethnic identity through the recent geopolitical and economic transformations associated with globalization, postcoloniality and “post-modernity.” Finally, the course will also explore more recent expositions of “raciology” such as DNA mapping and the human genome project. Course Requirements: Students will be required to complete two 5-6 page response papers (30%), and one 10-12 page final research paper (35%). (All papers are to be formatted in 12-point font, Times New Roman and double-spaced). In addition each student will be required to select a topic or area from the syllabus and do an in class presentation for 10-15 minutes (10%). This course is an advanced discussion seminar, students will be expected to attend class regularly and come prepared to discuss the assigned materials. Hence attendance and participation will make up a full 25% of your grade.Prerequisite: Upper division undergraduate or graduate standing. Text(s): Cesaire, Aime, Discourse on Colonialism Lindqvist, Sven, Exterminate All the Brutes All other readings will be available in the Course Reader AmSt
445 Racism, American Culture & Film/Media: African Americans
in Film
Course Description: This course will explore the images of African Americans in film, from the silent film era through the present, set in the context of African American history and culture. Although it will concentrate on the presentation of black people and black themes in major motion pictures, it will also briefly survey television programming and documentary films. Study will include the development of Hollywood films dealing with the African American experience, the underground black cinema, the film careers of black actors and directors, as well as the evolution of racial issues and attitudes in film. Course Requirements: See Instructor Text(s): AmSt 451 Popular Culture -CANCELED
Course
Description: This course is a
broad-scale survey of the "other American Culture"--not
the high culture of classic literature and the fine arts but the
popular culture of mass entertainment, communal recreations, vulgar
media, and "low life." Topics might include: vaudeville
and burlesque, dime novels and competitive sports, theme parks,
soap operas, dance halls, fads and crazes, Gothic romances, TV
sitcoms, mating rituals, popular songs, social games, comic books,
movie-going, science fiction, and others. Methodological perspectives
will be drawn from social psychology, cultural anthropology, micro
sociology, and comparative esthetics. AmSt 452 W/Twenties & Thirties
Course
Description: Novelists, painters, poets, jazz musicians as
examples of culture of the 1920s and 1930s in America. AmSt 456 W/Arts in the United States (Cross listed with Art 472)
Course Description: This course will examine the development of the visual arts in America from colonial to contemporary periods. Course
Requirements: There will be two tests, fourteen one-page comments,
and a final paper. AmSt
457 E/W/Museum Interpretations
(Cross listed with Art 481)
Course Description: Exhibits of objects, animals, plants, and ephemera are of increasing interest to more than museum professionals. Media analysts, scholars of culture, and education specialists analyze the multiple ways visitors to museums, aquariums, nature parks, and even shopping malls interact with displays and make sense of their experiences. Creators of exhibits must continually find ways to make complex ideas and contextual material accessible and compelling. This course focuses on the interpretive practices of museums and related institutions. On the one hand, students will study the methods of communication employed by museums by examining wall texts, labels, brochures, and exhibition designs. On the other, they will consider how the very format and content of exhibitions and interpretive materials affect visitor experiences and contribute to the “production of knowledge” within a society. Exhibitions can become sites of public controversies and battles over the “politics of representation.” Individual viewers or whole communities may feel that a particular display undermines “ traditional family values” or inappropriately challenges long-held beliefs about a nation’s history. Others may feel that a curator’s interpretive framework inadvertently denigrates a minority community or overlooks the importance of ethnic, racial, class, gender, or sexual differences. Thus, museum professionals must carefully consider and examine the ethical dimensions of their institutional practices. For instance, how do their exhibitions and interpretive materials reflect contemporary discussions on the inclusion of multicultural perspectives or the presentation of indigenous sacred objects? During the semester, students will look at exhibits in Hawai‘i, the continental U.S., and other parts of the world. Through readings on a wide range of related subjects, brief lectures, discussions, field-trips, and writing assignments, the class will engage with theoretical, historical, ethical, and practical issues. Students will observe interpretive programs in local museums as well as analyze the methods employed by museum professionals to involve and assist visitors. Students will also conceive and develop models for interpretive programs including labels and other information systems. The instructors will work with students to develop content and methods of writing appropriate to museum exhibits, and students will be asked to submit drafts and revisions of selected assignments. Museums are dependent on staff members who combine strong conceptual, analytical, research, and writing skills, along with creative problem-solving abilities and a knowledge of the contemporary ethical issues facing the profession. Multiple opportunities to develop these skills and abilities will be available throughout the semester. Students who take this course may be inspired to work within museums in the future as professionals or volunteers; to develop projects as artists; or to participate in programs as informed visitors and patrons. Finally, the course is structured to weave back and forth between the study of three distinct but related activities: 1) the interpretation or representation of objects and phenomena by museum professionals, 2) the reception of the interpretative materials by museum visitors, and 3) the ethical implications of the interpretive materials produced by museums or encountered by viewers especially as they contribute to the reproduction or contestation of cultural knowledge in a society. Course
Requirements: Prerequisite:
Consent of Instructor AmSt 458 Film in American Culture
Course
Description: An
interdisciplinary survey of film as an expression of American culture,
explored through broad underlying themes such as sex, violence,
heroism, drama, and visual effects. Particular attention will be
paid to determining what precise elements of narrative, acting and
cinematography make an American film specifically American. We will
watch a variety of clips based on the themes, and students will
curate their own "micro film festivals" over the course
of the semester AmSt
459 W/Sports in America
Course Description: The course will examine representations of American sports in various cultural forms, especially literature and film. Social and aesthetic issues of athletic performance and spectatorship will be studied in both fictional and nonfictional contexts. A variety of sports will be discussed. Course Requirements: Students will be expected to attend class regularly, participate | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
