American Studies Department Course Descriptions

Spring 2012

AMST 150: America and the World (FGB)

Instructor: Robert Perkinson

Section 1:MW, 12:30-1:20pm/ F, 1:30-2:20pm
Section 2: MW, 12:30-1:20pm/ F, 2:30-3:20pm
Section 3: MW, 12:30-1:20pm/ F, 12:30-1:20pm

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AMST 201: American Experience: Institutions and Movements (DH)
Writing Intensive

Instructor: Stacy Nojima
Section 1: MWF, 8:30-9:20am
Section 2: MWF, 9:30-10:20am

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 law, 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 U.S. history as well as situates Hawai'i in the context of American experience. This course fulfills a Manoa Core humanities requirement.

AMST 202: Culture and the Arts (DH)
Writing Intensive

Instructor: Sarah Smorol
Section 1: TR, 7:30-8:45am
Section 2: TR, 9:00-10:15am

This course is an exploration of the relationship between various art forms and diverse American cultural identities. Additionally, this course will encourage students to question the ways that we look at, or "see", Art by examining the "American Century" two-part exhibit of 2000. Art installations, futuristic films, architecture, and more will be examined in light of American social practices. Special attention will be paid to issues of gender, ethnicity, age, class, and sexuality.

AMST 211: Contemporary Domestic Issues (DS)
Writing Intensive

Instructor: Yu Jung Lee
Section 1: MWF 10:30-11:20am
Section 2: MWF 11:30-12:20pm

This course addresses the diversity of American cultural experiences and identities (both past and present) through the exploration of some common realities of everyday life: families, sports, food, youth culture, and the environment. Our aim is to understand, in a broadly historical context, the continuing importance of categories of identity- like race, class, gender, age, sexuality- while at the same time acknowledging how complex any American culture or identity actually is, including our own experiences. We'll conclude the class with a broadly reflective look at the issues of learning and encouraging changes and difference over the course of our own lives.

AMST 220: Introduction to Indigenous Studies (DH)
HAP Designation

Instructor: Brandy Nalani McDougall
Tues/Thurs 9-10:15, KUY 209

The lands that are now known as the United States and its territories have witnessed a long history of conquest against their indigenous peoples and ecologies. Many of the details of this violent conquest are either absent from most American history textbooks, or when they are explored, are often discussed in terms of "the distant American past." By and large, this constructed history has resulted in a relegation of native peoples to the primitive past and/or an ambivalence toward various native groups in terms of their efforts to redress injustices, both historic and contemporary, and to maintain their inherent sovereignty.
This interdisciplinary course aims to overturn these dominant constructions of history in order to explore contemporary issues of indigenous cultural identity, representation, sovereignty, and legal frameworks. For the purposes of this course, Indigenous Americans includes Native American tribes, Native Alaskans, and Native Pacific Islanders whose lands are U.S. territories (Kanaka Maoli, Chamorro, and Samoans) or freely associated with the United States (the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Republic of Belau). As a class, we will examine the varied experiences and situations of indigenous peoples in the United States, how indigeneity is framed by dominant American culture, and the complex ways in which Indigenous Americans are made to continuously negotiate between traditional and settler cultures as they struggle for their lands, their rights, and their futures.

AMST 250 American Film History (DH)

Instructor: Jonna Eagle

Section 1: MWF/9:30-10:20

Section 2: MW/9:30-10:20 F/10:30-11:20

Section 3: MW/9:30-10:20 F/11:30-12:20

This course surveys the social, cultural, and industrial history of American cinema from the origins of moving pictures to the present. We will view and discuss a wide range of films, including silent shorts and early melodramas; classical genre films of the studio era; Hollywood Renaissance films of the late 1960s and 1970s; action blockbusters of the 1980s and 1990s; and digital spectacles of today. Alongside historical accounts, we'll consider key critical approaches to film, including formal analysis, theories of authorship, and genre studies. Of particular interest will be the question of how film represents and constructs popular understandings of gender, race, and ethnicity. Over the course of the semester students will gain a knowledge of American film history, an understanding of film style, and a critical interdisciplinary approach to analyzing onscreen images.

AMST 301: Hip-hop & American Culture

Instructor: David Goldberg
T/R 10:30-11:45 a.m. Moore 119

Few can dispute the fact that Hip-hop culture has become the foundation of youth culture across the planet. Ranging from it's earliest introductions through art shows, documentaries and independent films to it's use as a vehicle of corporate marketing, this course looks at DJing, beat production, graffiti, breakdancing and rap from multiple perspectives. The course makes use of texts about hip-hop's various elements created by cultural practitioners and looks at the culture objectively from the vantage points of feminism, activism, sales and the underground. Particular attention is paid to Hip-hop's influence on other forms of cultural expression and on those forms that have influenced it.

AMST 310: Japanese Americans (DH)
O Focus

Instructor: Dennis Ogawa

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.

DH/OC 001 80019 HIG 110 F 11:30 - 12:20
DH/OC 002 80020 BusAd C103 F 11:30 - 12:20
DH/OC 003 80021 Holm 248 F 11:30 - 12:20
DH/OC 004 80090 KUY 308 F 11:30 - 12:20
DH/OC 005 80091 KUY 308 F 12:30 - 1:20
DH/OC 006 80015 Holm 248 F 12:30 - 1:20

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AMST 316: U.S. Women's History (DH)
(crosslisted with HIST 361 & WS 311)
O Focus

Instructor: Vernadette Gonzalez

This course explores the history of women's experience and gender in U.S. society. It will introduce students to the field of American women's history, emphasizing the importance of studying what is often missing in history books-the roles, experiences, and thoughts of women across the spectrum of American society. While we will be looking at some of ?the "great women" of American history, the course will focus more on the aspects of the general experiences of women and ?their political, social, cultural and familial relationships. Students will learn conceptual frameworks with which to understand the role and significance of gender in culture and society and gain a historical understanding of how concepts such as "women's rights" and "gender equity" have been defined and fought over by different groups of women.

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AMST 318: Asian America (DH)

Instructor: Pensri Ho

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AMST 319: America, Hawai'i, and World War II (DH)
WI, O, and E Focus

Instructor: Miguel Llora

This is an interdisciplinary exploration of WWII as a watershed in American and Hawai'i history and culture. Topics include (but are not limited to): Pearl Harbor, War in the Pacific, Japanese American Internment, Nanjing, and the dawn of the Atomic Age. Our mode of engagement is not to look at the events themselves but rather how they are remembered, forgotten, and mobilized in public history discourses. This class, therefore, will also provide you an introduction into the multifaceted arena of public history in America, Religion, and Law in the United States.

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AMST 325: Religion and the Law in the U.S. (DH)
(crosslisted with POL 325)
E Focus

Instructor: Kath Sands

This course explores the intersection of law and religion, with particular attention to the difficulty of defining religion. We begin by mastering the pertinent constitutional concepts, then analyze key church-state cases since the mid-twentieth century. In the last part of the course, student groups present a mock trial on a relevant church-state controversy of their own choosing. Sample controversies include the right to die, same-sex marriage, the sacred lands of indigenous people, religious challenges to the teaching of evolution in public schools, and the religious liberty of American Muslims. Religion & Law has an Ethics (E) focus, so it will engage ethical questions throughout. These ethical questions, however, will be public rather than personal or religious. Our ethical reflection will be guided by the religion clauses of the constitution, which raise fundamental questions about the scope of individual freedom and the role of government.

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AMST 334: Digital America (DH)

Instructor: David Goldberg

Section 1: T/R 9:00-10:15 a.m. Moore 119
Section 2: T/R 10:30-11:45 a.m. Moore 119

This course explores the landscape of the 21st century United States as it is being transformed by technologies developed in the entertainment, consumer, military, medical and economic sectors. Particular attention is paid to those expressions of US culture that have found new homes online despite the early optimism that saw the Net as a place of freedom. Issues of race, gender, class and violence are explored. This course draws on a range of source materials including theoretical texts, mainstream film, anime and artifacts from the cultures of the hacker and the DJ. Because of the constantly-evolving nature of online culture, historic and technological foundations will be supplemented by student-led original comtemporary research, observation and documentation.

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AMST 350: Culture and Arts in America: Survey (DH, OC)

Instructor: Sean Trundle

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AMST 373: Fil Am: History, Culture & the Arts(DS)

Instructor: Roderick Labrador

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AMST 382: Junior Seminar (DH)
Majors and Minors Only

Instructor: Jonna Eagle

M: 12:30-3:00

This course is the second half of a two-semester seminar; this semester, we focus on American cultural origins and development from the early twentieth century to the present, with emphasis on questions of citizenship and belonging. We will consider how the study of citizenship and belonging illuminates key terms and critical frameworks of American Studies, including questions of empire; of nation and transnation; of the marking and maintenance of borders; of identity, performance, and the body; and of the interconnected histories of gender, sexuality, race, class and ethnicity. Among the questions we will consider are: how has membership in the national body been established and policed? How has national identity been imagined in relation to categories of race, gender and sexuality? How have understandings of family provided both a foundation for and a challenge to the inclusions and exclusions of citizenship? How have experiences of individual identity reinforced or renegotiated the terms and stakes of belonging?

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AMST 411: Japanese American: research topics (DH, OC)
O Focus

Instructor: Dennis Ogawa

Monday 2:30 - 5:00 p.m. Moore 228

This course examines ethnic identity and Japanese media.

AMST 431: History of American Workers (DH)

Instructor: J. Kraft

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AMST 432: Slavery and Freedom (DH)

Instructor: M. Daniel

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AMST 436: Gender, Justice, and Law (DS)

Instructor: S. Hippensteele

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AMST 440: Race & Racism (DH)
(crosslisted w/ HIST 476)
W (Writing Intensive)

Instructor: Rob Vaughan, PhD
Section 1: Wed 12:30-3:00 PM 328 Moore Hall
Section 2: Wed 03:00-6:00 PM 328 Moore Hall

AMST 440 is an interdisciplinary look at racial ideas and ideologies, and their effects throughout US history.

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AMST 453: Culture, Society, & Literature (DL, WI)
(Writing Intensive)

Instructor: Sean Trundle

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AMST 456: Art of the United States (DH)
(crosslisted with Art 472)
Writing Intensive

Instructor: Joseph Stanton

This writing-intensive course will examine the development of the visual arts in America from colonial to contemporary periods.
Joseph Stanton, jstanton@hawaii.edu

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AMST 461: America's World Role (DS, WI)
Writing Intensive

Instructor: Jeffrey Tripp
Wednesday 12:30-3:00 p.m.

This course is an interdisciplinary exploration and examination of America's role in modern world affairs against the background of history, perceptions, and values. Contemporary American issues and attitudes are considered within their historical contexts. War, American Empire, economics, and the evolution of American values are covered in the course. These are approached from a variety of critical and contested perspectives and are assessed with reference to the diversity of American beliefs and values. The primary reading materials are recently published books.

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AMST 481: Senior Research Seminar
Majors Only
Writing Intensive

Instructor: Brandy Nalani McDougall
Thurs 12-2:30 pm, Moore 323

AMST 481 is the capstone course for American Studies majors.
With the close support of the instructor, UH librarians, and other faculty advisors,
students will have the opportunity to design an original research project, become an expert in their focused area of interest, formulate a convincing argument, and write an article-length essay. Above all, the course will allow students to spread their intellectual wings, to think imaginatively and creatively, and to explore an engaging topic in depth. Unlike research seminars in other departments, students are welcome to deal with topics and methods from across the humanitiesand social sciences, from film analysis to ethnography to archival research.
The course will begin with discussions on effective research and writing, but the bulk of the semester will be devoted to the individual student projects which the students have already proposed in their AMST 480 courses. Students will evaluate sources,discuss research approaches, share excerpts, edit writing, and assess structure and progress. By the end of the semester, each student will produce a polished research paper, one she (or he) may consider for publication or can use as a writing sample for graduate school or job applications.

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AMST 500: Master's Plan B/C Studies

Instructor: Robert Perkinson

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AMST 602: Patterns of American Culture

Instructor: Vernadette Gonzalez

This seminar examines the culture, society and politics of post-bellum America, with paying attention to the expansion of U.S. global power, and its relationship to the changing meanings and lived realities of race, class and gender both domestically and abroad. The course will discuss race relations during and after Reconstruction; U.S. imperialism and its raced and gendered ideologies and institutions; the emergence of industrial capitalism and the new constituents it produces; the women's movement and changing relations of gender; immigration, exclusion, nativism; the emergence of the US as a global military power during World War II; the Cold War and its discontents; post-industrial society, urban restructuring and Civil rights.

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AMST 611: Asian America

Instructor: Mari Yoshihara

This course explores Asian American identity formation with a particular focus on occupational/professional culture. We will discuss scholarship that examines a variety of occupations/professions held by Asian Americans, immigrants, and transnational subjects-ranging from cannery workers, taxi drivers, domestic workers, and manicurists to nurses, flight attendants, fashion designers, and musicians-to see how the nature of labor and its place in the economy and culture shape individual and collective identity. Discussions will center around how occupation/profession relates to other social categories such as race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and sexuality in shaping cultural identities as well as political agenda for groups under study. By foregrounding occupations/professions as a category of analysis, the course problematizes and complicates the privileging of race in Asian American studies scholarship.

The course has a heavy research component in addition to the critical discussion of readings. Students will conduct a group research project on Asian Americans/immigrants in a selected occupational/professional group in Hawai'i today. Through historical and ethnographic research, students will produce a collective report on the culture of the group as well as specific issues the group faces. The report will be posted online.

AMST 643: Critical Traditions in America

Instructor: David Stannard
Monday 3:30-6:00pm

 

This course focuses on various resistance movements in American history. During the Spring Semester of 2012 it will cover the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, focusing especially on the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and the Antiwar Movement.

Only ten days apart, in early May of 1954, two momentous events occurred that, at the time, appeared to have nothing in common-the crushing defeat of the French military at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, and the finding of the US Supreme Court that racially segregated public schools are prohibited by the Constitution. A dozen years later the conflict in Southeast Asia had become America's war: nearly 400,000 US troops were in Vietnam, while outside the White House protestors chanted "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Meanwhile, the Civil Rights Movement was becoming a struggle for Black Power: during that same summer of 1966 riots broke out in Chicago, Cleveland, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and forty more American cities. Martin Luther King, Jr. was only the most prominent among many who saw the war abroad and racial oppression at home as innately linked in their fundamental immorality. Less than a decade later it was over-the US had lost the war in Vietnam and the struggle for civil rights was once again being fought largely in the courts.

What had happened, and why? Using documentary film and a wide range of reading, this course will explore those questions. In the process we also will examine activism on a variety of related social and cultural fronts, including the rise of radical feminism, the struggle for gay rights, the Counterculture and more-along with the connections among these activities and literature, film, music, media, and social thought.

Course Requirements: See Instructor

Texts: See Instructor

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AMST 645: Historic Preservation
(cross-listed as: ANTH 645)

Instructor: William Chapman

M: 3:30-6:00pm

This course serves graduate students in the Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation program and students in Anthropology, Geography, History, Planning, Architecture, Tourism and any other field with an emphasis on Cultural Heritage Management and Historic Preservation. It also serves students in the Applied Archaeology and Anthropology programs in the Department of Anthropology. The focus of the course is federal, state and local historic preservation laws and their impacts on the protection and recording of historic and cultural sites. A major component will be the existing series of federal laws and Hawai'i State laws pertaining to cultural resource management. The course will also discuss case law, particularly zoning and land-use laws, as they impact historic preservation in Hawai'i and elsewhere.

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AMST 646: Adv Tpcs: Social/Cult/Intell (American History)

Instructor: R. Rapson

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AMST 676: Recording Historic Resources

Instructor: William Chapman

T: 3:30-6:00

The course familiarizes students with the basic techniques used in the recording and evaluation of historic buildings and other cultural features. Emphasis is on field survey methods, the compilation of inventories, and evaluations of significance and/or integrity. Students will become familiar with State of Hawai`i's own survey and registration process, with both inventories and methodologies for field surveys of cultural resources in other states and countries, and will also be introduced to the requirements of the National Register of Historic Places Program of the federal government. There will be further introductions to basic architectural and other historic resource descriptive terminology, methods of researching the history and contexts of historic properties, and some training in the preparation of site plans.

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AMST 685: Museums and Education
(cross-listed as: EDCS 685)

Instructor: Karen K. Kosasa
Tuesdays, 3:30-6:00 p.m./Moore 328

In this class students will examine the educational role of museums by looking at a constellation of related topics: theories of learning in museums, museum education and outreach programming, American museum policy and directives, community engagement and collaboration, visitor studies, and the growth of online learning and digital initiatives. Students will also explore the relevance of "critical pedagogy" for developing museum exhibits and programs, for providing insights on how museums can contribute towards building a more equitable and participatory society, and for assessing how they have served as "institutions of public service and education." Site visits to museums (as a class and on an individual basis) are required for this course. Students will choose a final research topic relevant to the course material with the approval of the instructor.

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Section: (1) See Instructor William Chapman

 

 

 

 

OUTREACH COLLEGE COURSES

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AMST 201: American Experience: Institutions & Movements (DH)
Writing Intensive

Instructor: Valerie Lo
January 17-March 24, 2012
Section 231, CRN 3194, Outreach/Extension, Online

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 legal documents, court rulings, journals, political manifestoes, newspaper, blogs, 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 United States history and situates Hawai'i within the context of the American experience. The course fulfills a Manoa Core humanities requirement.

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AMST 301: Hip Hop and American Culture

Instructor: Johanna Almiron
EVENING, Section, 131, CRN 3193: Tuesdays, 5:30- 9:40pm
ONLINE, Section 231, CRN 3180
January 17- March 24

This interdisciplinary course surveys the culture of hip-hop music from its genesis to contemporary form. Students will examine various materials and will analyze the development of hip hop culture in relation to social institutions such as race, class, gender and sexuality. The first unit will address the fundamental form of hip hop-- the four elements of deejay, MC, breakdancer and graffiti. This section enters the discussion on hip hop's origin, and the historical and social context of the birthplace of hip hop, the South Bronx, NY. The second unit engages hip hop as social, political and cultural discourse addressing topics such as community mobilization, the cultural reference and retention of African diasporic and Caribbean expression, political consciousness, feminism, misogyny and masculinity. Finally, the third unit will address the most current manifestations of hip hop culture and its progression as a consumer-capitalist phenomenon. This unit will analyze how hip hop's global cross-over reach has effected the form, style and content of hip hop, in general. We will conclude the course by addressing topics such as anti-imperialism, popular representation in mainstream media, and the contested canonization of hip hop in elite institutions such as the contemporary art world and the academe. During the Spring extension semester 2011, there will be two distinct sections available to students, an online course (Laulima) and evening course that meets on Tuesday evenings. Please email almiron@hawaii.edu if you have any questions or concerns.

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AMST 353: Indigenous Topographies
Writing Intensive, Section 231, CRN 3196

Instructor: Karyn Wells
Online

This class will explore how Indigenous knowledges, languages, and cultures have sustained the continuance of Indigenous place on Turtle Island. We will also examine the cultural processes of British and U.S. imperialism that supported/s dispossession and continued occupation of Indigenous land. Through this interrogation, we will consider how Indigenous Peoples speak to imperial strategies to ensure Indigenous survivance.

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