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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
A historical examination of 300 years of sport in America as an important expression of culture, conflict, and meaning. Special attention is devoted to the ways in which contemporary sports provide a window into politics, economics, racial and ethnic relations, class formation, and gender identity. Students analyze the ways in which Americans have played, watched, and understood sports and will focus on some of the recurrent cultural values, trends, and symbolism associated with American athletes and public life. (Fulfills social sciences requirement.) D. Nathan
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4.00 Credits
Explores the history of jazz music, often referred to as the only truly American art form, focusing in particular on the rich interaction among many diverse cultures, classes, ethnicities and geographically distant peoples which produced the emergence of jazz in the first decade of the twentieth century. Examines the combinations of African, African-American, European, Latin-American and American folk influences that emerged in different eras to produce what is now considered to be "American Classical Music." Students will develop the ability to listen effectively and deeply and understand what they hear in the context of style and history, becoming familiar with the most important jazz creations, and understanding how they relate to American culture and history. (Designated a Cultural Diversity course; fulfills humanities requirement.) L. Rosengarten
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3.00 - 4.00 Credits
Exploration of the development of distinctive regional cultures in the United States. Using a broadly based interdisciplinary approach, these courses focus on the interaction between people and their environments, the way people develop attachments to their own regions, and the tensions between regional and national cultures. (The course may be repeated for credit with a different topic.) A. The Hudson River 4 An introduction to the history, literature, and art of the Hudson River Valley. The Hudson River is considered as an environmental entity, an economic and political concern, and especially as a cultural symbol. The course considers four centuries of American experience on the Hudson, but focuses on the nineteenth century, when the Hudson had its greatest influence on regional and national culture. (Fulfills social sciences requirement.) G. Pfitzer B. The West 4 An examination of the mythic, historical, and contemporary West, western heroes and themes and what they reveal about American values and culture. Using film, literature, social and intellectual histories and the arts, the course considers discrepancies in the images and realities of western exploration and settlement. After considering the colonial period, the course then explores nineteenth century conflicts over property, natural preservation, mineral and water claims, and the rights of native Americans and concludes with an examination of contemporary images and issues. (Fulfills social sciences requirement.) The Department C. The South 3 An exploration of the development of the distinctive culture of the southern region of the United States. The course examines myths and legends of the Old South including those surrounding the origins of the plantation system, southern womanhood and the development of the slave and free communities of the region in the antebellum period. Topics include the myths and legends of the New South, the legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the imposition of segregation, modernization of agriculture and industry, and the migration of African Americans northward. The course culminates in a study of the civil rights movement, and recent demographic, economic, and political changes. (Fulfills social sciences requirement.) W. Grady-Willis D. New England 3 A study of the growth and development of regional culture in the northeastern United States from the eighteenth century to the present. Beginning with a consideration of the heritage of the Puritan settlers, the course proceeds to an examination of the Revolutionary experience, the industrial revolution, the New England Renaissance of the nineteenth century, and the transforming impact of immigration and migration on the region's population. It ends with a study of the literature, politics, and economy of New England in the twentieth century. (Fulfills social sciences requirement.) M. Lynn
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3.00 - 4.00 Credits
Interdisciplinary examinations of critical themes in the development of American culture and American life. (The course may be repeated for credit with focus on a different theme.) A. Civil Rights in Twentieth-Century United States 3 An examination of the interactions of individuals, groups, institutions and agencies seeking to achieve, enforce, or dismiss those civil rights guarantees contained primarily in the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution of the United States and in subsequent twentieth century legislation. Although a major focus of the course is on the attempts of women and African-Americans to secure full civil rights protections, students are encouraged to investigate civil rights issues that range beyond these two groups. The course uses a variety of materials including legislative histories, autobiographies, executive orders, judicial decisions, biographies, histories of specific aspects of the civil rights struggle, journalistic accounts, documentary films, works of fiction, and oral histories. (Fulfills social sciences requirement.) W. Grady-Willis B. The Machine in the Garden 3 An introduction to the relations between agricultural industrialization and the American pastoral ideal. In the early twentieth century, the longstanding association of American identity with an agrarian paradise was challenged, reconfigured, and/or redirected by newly emerging discourses in sociology, domestic and industrial labor, eugenics, and advertising, among others. At the same time, rural life was radically altered as many small family farms gave way to agribusiness. This course traces these shifts, focusing primarily on the transformative period between 1900 and 1945, and considers efforts to retain the notion of an American Arcadia in the face of the Machine Age. (Fulfills social sciences requirement.) G. Pfitzer, J. Casey C. African-American Experience, 1860s-1980s 3 A study of the African-American experience, 1860s-1980s. Using both primary and secondary source material, the course examines the critical issues and period relevant to the African-American struggle toward freedom and equality. Topics include slavery, emancipation, and Reconstruction; the woman's era; the age of Jim Crow and the new Negro; the civil rights movement; and the post-reform period. Sources include narratives, documents, photographs, and films. (Designated a Cultural Diversity course; fulfills social sciences requirement.) W. Grady-Willis, J. Woodfork I. Popular Culture 4 A topical examination of the cultural-historical process of the creation, dissemination, and consumption of mass or popular culture and analysis of popular culture as a defining characteristic of Americans. Specific focus will be upon the evolution of modern electronic forms of communication in the twentieth century, and the interrelationships between the popular and elite and folk culture will be explored. Illustrative topics include: popular genre literature, mass movements, celebrities and heroes, and film, radio, and television. D. Nathan J. Diversity in the United States 3 An examination of the ways in which people in the United States try to reconcile the realities of cultural difference with preconceived notions of a unified America and American identity. Students will learn about the United States as a complex, heterogeneous society that has been profoundly shaped by both the connections and conflict implicit in its multicultural heritage. Students will also address interrelationships and tensions that characterize a culturally diverse democracy by examining how accepted cultural traditions intersect with contested themes such as race, the family, adoption, gender, sexuality, and education. (Fulfills social sciences requirement; designated as a Cultural Diversity course.) J. Woodfork
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3.00 Credits
Internship opportunity for students whose academic and cocurricular work has prepared them for professional work related to the major. With faculty sponsorship and department approval, students may design internships at museums and historical societies, newspapers, radio and television stations, museums and historical societies, newspapers, radio and television stations, planning and architectural firms, schools, government agencies, and other appropriate sites. No more than three semester hours may count toward the major. Prerequisite: two courses in American studies. Must be taken S/U. Note: 300-level courses in American Studies are not ordinarily open to first-year students except by permission of the instructor.
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3.00 Credits
An interdisciplinary examination of whiteness in U.S. culture and history. Explores the racial construction of whiteness, focusing on its changing legal, political, aesthetic and cultural definitions over four centuries of American experience, with special emphasis on the concept of whiteness in contemporary ethnographic studies, memoirs and essays. Students will examine the relationship between whiteness and other components of identity. The nature of white privilege and the conditions of access to whiteness will be investigated. J. Woodfork
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4.00 Credits
Assesses and puts in historical context global perspectives on and representations of the U.S., its citizens and culture. Employing an interdisciplinary methodology, student will consider how the U.S. appeared to Europeans in the 18th century and how others since then have made sense of this country, with an emphasis on the 20th century and the post-9/11 cultural moment. Students will examine themes including the preferred national narrative of the U.S. as a place of freedom, opportunity, democracy, and multicultural pluralism; and different forms of anti-Americanism. (Designated a non-Western culture course.) D. Nathan
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3.00 Credits
Examination and analysis of the role and status of women in the economy, particularly the paid work force, from the colonial era to the present. Topics considered are: the perceptions and the realities of women's participation in the work force, "women's work," and working women's conscious efforts to improve their economic status. A variety of sources provide insights into the myths and realities of working women's experiences; the impact of technology on women's work; the demands of family on working women; the socialization of women's work; legislation and working women's status; the influence of class, race, and ethnicity on women workers and women's work; the job segregation of women; and women workers and the organized women's movement. The Department
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3.00 Credits
Examines the development and materialization of Black American feminist thoughts within historical, social, political, and cultural contexts. Interdisciplinary in focus, it surveys feminist politics and theories through films, popular culture, manifestos, literary texts, and theoretical and historical essays. In addition, the course will address how the concepts of black feminism and black womanhood overlap and diverge in accordance with the modes of representation used to articulate them. (Designated a Cultural Diversity course.) W. Grady-Willis
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3.00 Credits
Examination of specific cultural periods, each of which has had a particular significance for the development of American culture. The course will explore the major social, political, economic, intellectual, and aesthetic issues of the period, using the resources of literature, history, music, art, government, sociology, and popular culture. (The course may be repeated for credit with a different period.) A. 1920s 3 An intensive examination of the "roaring twenties," with special attention to the impact of class, race, and gender on the development of American culture in the period. The course focuses on a series of controversies illuminating some of the conflicting forces at work in American society, including debates over immigration, Prohibition, evolution, sexuality, and the role of women in society. It will examine some of the major intellectual, social, and cultural issues of the era. M. Lynn, D. Nathan B. 1950s 3 An interdisciplinary analysis of the decade of the 1950s in America. Using a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, including fiction, film, music, biography, autobiography, poetry, sociology, drama, and social criticism, the course explores the distinctive culture of this decade. It focuses on the ways different groups of Americans experienced the period, studying conformity and consumerism, the beatniks, rock and roll, and the silent generation, as well as the roots of the protest movements and the counterculture of the 1960s. M. Lynn C. 1960s 3 A consideration of the major events of the 1960s, including the New Frontier, the Cuban missile crisis, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the sexual and gender revolutions, the rise of rock and roll, the counterculture, the moon landing and other landmarks of the decade. The course considers not only what happened during those climactic years, but why such events were so important to American development, and how perceptions about the 1960s have changed over time. G. Pfitzer
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