Course Descriptions, Spring 2006

AMST Course Descriptions

Spring 2006

AMST 6I:  Cultures of Dissent: Radical Social Thought in America

Section 1:  Jay Garcia
9:30 TR, GM 212
This course examines radical social thought in American history, focusing in particular on examples from leftist and collectivist traditions since 1880.
The readings offer opportunities to analyze dissenting perspectives on dominant political, economic and social arrangements during different historical moments. A central aim of the course involves identifying the social and cultural visions that animated radical movements by exploring uses
of language, imagery and rhetorical styles. Among the topics the course will address are feminism, African American radical thought, anti-fascism and forms of internationalism. The course content (speeches, novels, short stories, songs, films, among other forms) emphasizes the wide range of sources that offers historical insights into traditions of radical thought in
American society.

AMST 6I:  The Family and Social Change in America

Section  2:  Robert Allen

3:00-5:30 W; GM 210

This course uses changes in the American family over the past century as a way of understanding larger processes of social change.  Through original research, reading, and discussion, we will consider how changes in the family as a social institution reflect and contribute to other social and cultural changes occuring in the U.S. across the 20^th century.  We will examine changing notions of romance, marriage and divorce, parenting, fatherhood, motherhood, and childhood. 

The course is organized as a project-based learning experience.  Each student will engage in a semester-long exploration of the last three generations of his/her family.  Students will use archival resources (census records, marriage and death certificates, estate records, military service records, immigration records), oral history interviews with family members, family letters and photographs, and other materials to learn more about “where they came from” in both a literal and a figurative sense.  They will explore the relationship between the life events of their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents and the larger historical contexts of those events (migration, economic upheavals, wars, etc.).

The project will also entail designing and making a “family album” drawn from this research.  The album (which may be a scrapbook, video, multimedia work, set of historical narratives, or other medium) will represent each student’s effort to link his/her family’s history with larger currents in American history of the 20^th century.

In addition to the family album, each student will prepare a brief (15 minute) PowerPoint presentation drawn from his/her research.  These will be presented to the class as a whole at the end of the semester, with families invited to attend.

Class reading and discussion will focus on how the institutions of family: marriage, parenthood, maternity, paternity, adoption, divorce, etc.—have changed over the past 200 years or so.

You will document your research project in an electronic journal.  This will also be a place for you to link our reading and class discussion to the particularities of your family’s history.

This seminar welcomes all first-year students.  Because of the availability of archival resources in the area (the North Carolina Collection at UNC, as well as the State Archives in Raleigh), students with family roots in North Carolina might find the course’s project particularly rewarding.  No prior knowledge of family history is required.  Students will be asked to begin work on their projects over the semester break by collecting and copying family records and photographs and interviewing family members.

The course’s project-based structure is particularly well-suited to students with a strong desire to learn more about their family history who are willing to engage in an independent, long-term, unpredictable research undertaking.  The course structure and goals reward self-motivation, resourcefulness, initiative, persistence, and imagination.  

This course will meet once each week: Wednesdays 3:00-5:30 p.m.  It is essential that all students have this time period free on their calendars each week of the semester.

AMST 20:  Introduction to American Studies

Section 1:  Joy Kasson

11 MWF, 103 BI

This course traces major themes in American culture as viewed through history, literature, art, film, music, politics, and popular culture, from the American Revolution to the present.  It is not a comprehensive survey but rather an examination of the ways in which history and the arts interrelate as the present emerges from the past.  Topics include American diversity, the natural environment, the rise of the cities, social criticism, the cultural impact of war.  Readings consist of primary sources: poetry, fiction, and autobiography, and each unit will include the work of an artist or photographer.  Lecture and discussion.

AMST 35H:  Defining America

Section 1: Professor John Kasson

Section 2: Professor Timothy Marr.

10 MWF; PE 203

All enrollees meet together on Mondays 10:00-10:50 and Wednesdays 10:00-10:50, and divide into separate sections for the Friday meeting, 10:00-10:50, in
classrooms to be assigned. (American Studies 35H counts towards one of
three perspectives: GC/BA Aesthetic, Philosophical, or Historical).

*SOPHOMORES, JUNIORS, AND SENIORS MAY ENROLL; FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS REQUIRE PERMISSION FROM THE INSTRUCTORS.* "Defining America II" offers an exciting and unusual educational opportunity.  Where else can you work closely with two professors in a single course as you study defining events and writings from America’s emergence as a major industrial power to the present?  This course unites Professor Timothy Marr (American Studies and English), who has taught and written extensively about American literature and culture in a global perspective, and John Kasson (History and American Studies), a cultural historian with deep interests in literature, popular culture, and the visual arts.  Together they will lead a thoroughly interdisciplinary course focusing on a series of defining and controversial historical events:  the rise of Chicago and  the Haymarket Affair of 1886; the “New South” and  the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906; Margaret Sanger, women’s rights, and struggles surrounding the legalization of birth control beginning around 1914;  the internment of Japanese citizens during the Second World War; Disneyland and the rise of the Sunbelt in the 1950s; Vietnam and the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968; and the attacks of September 11, 2001 and contemporary concerns over terrorism and homeland security.  Linking all these events will be such issues as:  order and violence; patriotism and aliens; transformations in expressive media from regional print culture to global virtual networks; the contested elaborations of civil rights from the 14th amendment to the Patriot Act; and the expansion of national power from the aftermath of the Civil War to the status of sole superpower.

Typically, both sections of the course meet together on Mondays and Wednesdays for lectures (in which both instructors will be present and frequently teach together), and separate into two sections on Fridays to discuss common readings for the course.

AMST 40: Approaches to American Studies

Section 1:  Jay Garcia

 12:30 TR, MU 204
An introduction to methods and materials in the interdisciplinary study of American society, including theoretical influences upon research in American
Studies. The course explores interpretive practices within the field by focusing on three different historical moments and considering a range of literary and visual artifacts. The course examines the effects of the Spanish-American War on the domestic scene, cultural criticism of the 1910s, and narratives about migration and dislocation from the 1990s. Throughout the course we will investigate relevant international contexts for understanding developments and changes in American culture and consider scholarship on ”race” and racialized relations in American society.

AMST 53:  Mamas and Matriarchs:  A Social History of Jewish Women in America

Section 1:  Marcie Cohen Ferris

TR 2-3:15, 204 MU

This course will examine the history and culture of Jewish women in America from their arrival in New Amsterdam in 1654 to the present day.  We will explore how gender shaped Jewish women's experiences of immigration, assimilation, religious observance, home, work, motherhood, family, and feminism.  The course will also investigate how factors such as region, race, class, country of origin, and religious denomination influenced the lives of Jewish women in America, and in turn, how Jewish women have shaped the national expression of American Judaism. Texts and discussions consider how these factors have created an American Jewish women's history that is distinctive from men's.  Students will examine a variety of historical sources and artifacts. The central goal of the course is to integrate Jewish women into the American past, and thus, fundamentally transform American Jewish history in that process.

AMST 63:  Digital Photography

Section 1:  Bill Bamberger

6-8:30 R, MU 204

Theory and practice of documentary photography.  Students will complete a documentary photographic study of a community outside the university. Covers the documentary tradition and classic documentary books while emphasizing photographs produced by students in the course. 

Instructor permission required.

Students must have a 35 mm film or digital camera.

AMST 64:  Access to Work

Section 1:  Rachel Willis

11 TR; PE 311

“A lot of men have a B.A., some have a M.A., a few even a Ph.D.  But what they all want is a J.O.B.”  Fats Domino

This junior level seminar is focused on understanding the systemic and individual factors affecting access to work in America.  We will investigate American work values through a combination of on-campus research as well as field study.  We will emphasize discussion, fieldwork, interviews, and multimedia documentation throughout the course.  Basic labor economic principles will be taught so that students are able to focus on critical factors affecting work access for individuals and workers in specific occupations.  These include gender, race, age, disability, transportation, international competition, technological progress, educational institutions, public policy and structural change in labor markets.   

At the beginning we will spend several weeks reading and discussing the origins and development of American work values. Throughout the term students will be reading a series of worker interview by Studs Terkel as well as an edited more recent collection entitled GIG.  Each student will select an occupation or industry for an original in-class multi-media presentation project.  Based on their research, students will prepare for, conduct, and transcribe three audio or video recorded interviews of workers in a similar field.  Their work will lead to the development of an essay about access to work in the selected employment field and the creation of a multimedia presentation.  The final product will focus on how access to employment in the field is determined as well as the differences in job characteristics that Adam Smith identified more than two centuries ago.  These include: “the disagreeableness, the cost of learning required skills, fluctuations in employment, the amount of trust needed, and the chances of success” as they relate to a job.  These presentations will be presented in class and archived in a digital website.  The final exam will be on the course readings, lectures, and class presentations.

AMST 69: Mating and Marriage in America

Section 1:  Tim Marr
1 MWF; MU 204
This seminar is an interdisciplinary examination of the cultural politics of the married condition from colonial times to the present. Examining developments in legal discourse, the history of sexuality, and the sociology of gender roles provides a critical definition of American marriage as a contested cultural institution.  The readings explore how ideology and custom influence the intimacy of interpersonal relations. Readings include both recent scholarly studies on courtship, family, and divorce in the United States as well as literary expressions and those from art, film, music, and popular culture. Themes that the course examines include courtship and romance; marital power and the egalitarian ideal; the challenge to monogamy from divorce and extramarital cohabitations; as well as debates over interracial marriage and same-sex unions.

AMST 75:  Cooking Up a Storm:  Exploring Food in American Culture
Section 1:  Marcie C. Ferris
TR 11-12:15, 204 MU
This course will examine the history and meaning of food in American culture, and will explore the ways in which food shapes national, regional, and personal identity.  We will investigate how factors such as gender, ethnicity, class, race, religious beliefs, the media, global politics, and corporate America affect the food we eat.  We will discuss food as both a source of healing and a source of conflict, and the ways in which it impacts community.  Students will examine a variety of sources including cook books, recipes, oral histories, film, and artifacts to develop an understanding of food in American culture.

AMST 80:  Documenting Communities
Section 1:  Rachel Willis
12:30 TR, PE 306
Community can refer to a group of people who reside together in the same locality or under the same government.  Alternatively it can reflect group members with common interests, identity, or ownership, finally communities can be defined as collections of individuals who are bound together by natural will and a set of shared ideas and ideals. Aristotle argues that community is not so much about unity as it is about harmony. This senior level seminar will cover the definition and documentation of communities within North Carolina through study, experience, and practice. The analysis of documentaries, field study to various communities, and readings will be used to identify the formation and identity of communities within the region.

Students will be expected to undertake a group project on documentation of communities within the Triangle using images, video, sound, and research during the first part of the semester.  A second project, an individual documentary on a smaller community in the media of the student’s choice, will be presented to the class as part of the final examination.   There are no prerequisites for the course although preference will be given to majors and minors in American Studies and upper division students.  Training in digital technologies is not expected, but will be offered as part of the course.  Students are expected to have access to a CCI computer or its equivalent.  

 AMST 80:  Literature of the Americas

Section 2:  Maria DeGuzman

12:30 TR, GL 302

An examination of U.S.-Latin American political, social, and cultural interaction, drawing on a multidisciplined analysis of representative texts from both the United States and Latin America, selected from a variety of genres.  Readings and class sections in both English and Spanish.

 AMST 150:  Telling Our Stories: Poetry and the Historical Imagination
Section 1:  Natasha Trethewey
3:30-6:00 W; MU 204
Uncovering personal and community stories through poetic storytelling. Students engage with poetry about places, cultures, and personal pasts through readings and their own writing. Fieldwork based research is strongly recommended. Students turn experiences into verse. Course may involve group field trips.

Students will be expected to write a poem each week. Professor will respond to the poems and students will continue to polish throughout the semester. One dozen poems will be completed by the end of the semester. Students will also write 2-3 page process essays about each poem completed during the semester. Several review essays about books studied in class will also be required.

Students will learn to reflect on and improve their work as writers though peer critique in class, professor critique in writing each week, and through multiple re-writes. Students will learn about the uses of writing in the disciplines they are studying through exploration of the poetic muse as a means of documenting non-fiction human stories such as the stories of the 2005 Katrina flood in Mississippi.

AMST 200:  Interpreting American Culture

Section 1:  Robert Allen

T 3:30 – 6:00, MU 222

This graduate-level course is designed to introduce students from other disciplines to American Studies as a field of inquiry and as a scholarly discipline as it has developed in the post-World War II era.  Growing out of an impulse to identify a distinctively “American” culture and to distinguish the American “experience” from European history and ways of thinking, American Studies has since developed into a diverse, reflexive, dynamic, and sometimes contentious field of scholarship.  Once viewed as the love-child of literature and intellectual history, American Studies scholarship now also encompasses (historical and contemporary) work on popular culture; the natural and built environment; ethnography; race; ethnicity; gender and sexuality; material culture; and international, trans-national, and intra-national cultural and social exchange and conflict. We will, in effect, be addressing what American studies has been, what it is today, and what directions it might take.  We will read and discuss some of the foundational works in American Studies as well as more contemporary works that would resituate the project of American Studies in relation to changing notions of nation, identity, and culture. 

What continues to characterize American Studies is its commitment to interdisciplinarity and its engagement with a wide range of cultural products and processes.  This course will invite students to examine selected texts and practices in that spirit, and, in the process, to expand their own disciplinary horizons. 

In this offering of the course, I plan to open up our discussions to participation by graduate students abroad who are working on aspects of American culture.  In addition to having a weekly “face-to-face” class discussion, I plan for us to carry on an extended conversation using Blackboard with a small group of MA and Ph.D. students in American literature and history at other universities around the world.

Beyond the set reading for the course, each student will be encouraged to read more deeply in an area of American Studies scholarship that is most congruent with his/her “home” disciplinary interests (literature, history, religious studies, cultural studies, etc.), developing a bibliography of key works, which can be shared with the on-campus participants as well as our “virtual” colleagues. 

The final project for the course will be a critical essay, in which these key works will be put into conversation with each other and related to the foci, themes, and controversies of American Studies as a discipline.

The course is open to graduate students from any discipline and does not require any prior course work in American Studies.

AMST 260:  Jane Addams’s Books

Section 1; Robert Cantwell

 4-7 p.m. W, GL 321

Jane Addams’s Books,” intended for first and second year graduate students, explores the discursive of world of one of the late 19^th century’s most influential and best-read women, Jane Addams, founder of Hull House. From her earlier explorations in her father’s home lending-library, to her religious, philosophical and political explorations in college and during her tenure at Hull-House, to the work of contemporaries upon whom she exercised an important personal and intellectual influence, Jane Addams’s reading approaches, in Arnold’s expression, “the best that had been thought and said” in the 19^th century and forms the background of her extraordinary experiment in social democracy. Through a selection of readings in and of the most important of Addams’s books, including works by Ruskin, Carlyle, Lincoln, Tolstoy, Mazzini, Dewey and James, as well as her own /Twenty Years at Hull House/, this course will attempt to reconstruct the imaginative, moral, philosophical and rhetorical milieu in which her literary, social, and practical project came to fruition.