This course is an introduction to the American Studies. The course uses life stories – oral histories, memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies – to explore the public and private worlds of Americans. By looking closely at a number of American Lives, students will become familiar with the day-to-day lives of different people from different places, groups, and backgrounds. They will learn how the economy and politics, art and commerce, and ideas about race, class, and gender shaped individual lives and outlooks and how these people, in turn, shaped the world around them. In the end, students will see that there is not, and never has been, one America – but that America is the product of conflicting notions of self and community played out over and over again.Note: Offered at Temple University Japan only.