AM 376 - topics in American Culture

Institution:

Skidmore College

Subject:

Description:

Interdisciplinary seminars exploring a substantial aspect of the development of American culture. These courses involve in-depth analysis using the resources and techniques of several different disciplines and require a major research paper. (The course may be repeated for credit with a different topic.) B. City 3 An examination of the growth and impact of urban life on American culture. Using fiction, film, histories, sociological studies and material culture, the course examines the relation between the perceptions of urban life and the actualities of that experience. By focusing on how varying reactions to the urban experience result from economic, ethnic, or gender differences, the course explores such topics as: the effect of industrialization, the waves of rural migration and overseas immigration, the concentrations of wealth and poverty, the impact of architecture, and the parks and planning movements. D. Nathan C. America on the Couch 3 A consideration of selected topics in the fields of cultural studies and psychohistory. Through interdisciplinary materials, students will explore the rich literature of psychohistorical interpretation, attempting to understand personal motivation, emotional character, and abnormal behavior in both prominent American figures and in the nation at large. Topics include conversion theory in the Salem witchcraft trials, infantilism and paternal authority in the age of Jackson, sentimental regression in the Civil War era, George Custer and the schizophrenic personality, neurasthenia in Victorian America, paranoia in the Nixon years, and narcissism in the "me" decade of the 1970s. G. Pfitzer D. Religion 4 An examination of the institutions of religion and the roles religion has played in the development of American society, from the seventeenth century to the present. Beginning with a study of the Puritan "city on a hill," proceeding to the Great Awakening, the Revolutionary separation of church and state and designation of religious toleration, the course will continue to explore the development of an increasingly diverse society of belief and unbelief. Using a variety of interdisciplinary sources, the course focuses on nineteenth century nativist attacks on Catholicism, the role of religion in the slave community, revivalism, fundamentalism, the social gospel, and contemporary controversies over evolution, prayer in the public schools, and the impact of race, gender, and class. M. Lynn E. Disorderly Women 3 An examination of women characterized by the larger society as unruly, disruptive, radical, militant, unfeminine, or just generally disorderly, and what this characterization reveals about American society. The course will consider types of women as well as the experience of individual, so-called disorderly, women in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States. Questions will include: What defines women as disorderly in specific times and places; how do women deviate from the roles and behavior expected of all women; what has motivated disorderly women, from their perspectives, to act as they have, and what has been the psychic cost The central focus is on "disorderly women" as actors within and upon their society and on the responses of that larger society to their actions. The Department

Credits:

3.00 - 4.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.skidmore.edu/

Phone Number:

(518) 580-5000

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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