Columbia University in the City of New York · Courses
AMST UN
7 courses with the subject AMST UN, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
AMST UN3930Topics in American Studies4
Please refer to the Center for American Studies website for course descriptions for each section. americanstudies.columbia.edu Fall 2026: AMST UN3930 Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment AMST 3930 001/12231 Th 2:10pm - 4:00pm 317 Hamilton Hall Casey Blake 4 13/18 AMST 3930 002/12232 M 6:10pm - 8:00pm 317 Hamilton Hall Benjamin Rosenberg 4 19/18
The course seeks to combine literary and historical approaches to investigate one of the most rapidly growing, increasingly influential, and, increasingly, critically recognized forms of American popular literature: the graphic novel. A historical overview of the medium’s development, complete with analysis of relevant broader institutional and cultural factors illuminating the development of American media culture more generally, will be complemented by study of a series of recent works illuminating the medium’s explosive maturation. Authors read include Eisner, Crumb, Spiegelman, Bechdel, Thompson, and Hernandez
The traditional role of the media in our democracy -- to support an informed electorate -- has been disrupted in the 21st century by technological change, transforming the delivery of information and opinion in radical ways. Partisanship has soared, along with a collapse of the shared fact base. In this course we examine the current state of political and election coverage, in counterpoint with iconic pieces of political reporting and media analysis that offer perspective and highlight turning points in the history of American journalism. With the shrinking role of the legacy news media and the explosion of new formats and platforms, the concept of "objectivity" has lost value. We explore the impact of novel news sources and styles of expression, the impact of algorithms that prioritize emotional engagement, the decline of trust in the media, and the scourge of misinformation. What is the future of independent journalism? And how are these profound changes in news consumption affecting the decisions that voters make?
AMST UN3941Democracy and De-Democratization, Theory and Practice: The American Case4.00
The concepts of democratic backsliding, regime cycles (between oligarchy and populism, democracy and dictatorship), hybrid regimes and reverse waves, were devised with regard to newly democratized and/or insufficiently institutionalized democratic regimes. Yet today even long consolidated, wealthy western democracies seem to be at risk. This course will focus on the case of the United States. While domestic and external threats to American constitutional democracy are not new, there is widespread concern today that both liberal constitutionalism and American democracy are at grave risk. Our inquiry will involve an in-depth study of the political theory and American politics literature on the relevant concepts and dynamics. In the first part of the course, we will discuss the basic concepts and theories regarding democracy, oligarchy, constitutionalism and regime cycles developed in classical and early modern political thought. The second part of the course will focus on the U.S., the oldest constitutional representative democracy and typically deemed the exemplar of a successfully consolidated democratic regime. We analyze the processes, dynamics, reversals and limits to democratization in the US focusing on key tipping points from the founding to the present. Our focus will be on four sets of factors and modes of explanation for the relevant shifts: constitutional, political, socio-cultural, and economic. We conclude with analysis of the contemporary conjuncture and current threats to American constitutional democracy
This seminar explores the intertwined histories of the Ottoman Empire and the United States during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through migration, mobility, and cultural exchange. It examines why diverse Ottoman subjects (Armenian, Greek, Turkish, Arab, Jewish, etc.) migrated to the United States and how they navigated life and contributed to the country’s evolving social and cultural fabric. Students will analyze migration experiences, community formations, and identity negotiations while considering how race, religion, class, and gender shaped the lives of transnational Ottoman communities in America. The course also investigates how Americans imagined the Ottoman world through missionary writings and journalism, and how Ottoman migrants themselves influenced these representations. Combining global and local perspectives, the seminar draws on historical, cultural, and sociological methods. Field-based learning, including visits to historic sites in New York City once home to Ottoman immigrant communities, complements classroom discussions
In the contemporary USA, free speech is often understood as a legal doctrine or a branch of Constitutional Law. But it can also be understood as a tradition, a way of life, part of American culture. In this seminar, we will explore the hypothesis that America’s free speech tradition has been shaped primarily by people who aren’t lawyers or lawmakers: by beatniks, pamphleteers, abolitionists, Red Power activists, queers, feminists and Free Lovers, poets, preachers, and hackers. People from all these groups have shaped America’s free speech tradition from the sixteenth century to the present day, although they’re usually omitted from Constitution-centered histories of free speech because they weren’t lawyers or parties to lawsuits. This course provides a transnational, cultural perspective on free speech history that decenters the First Amendment from its quasi-sacrosanct place in the historiography of American liberty. Instead of looking at legal arguments and decisions, we will survey the very wide range of social contexts in which struggles over free speech have taken place in American history, from the Pueblo Revolt in seventeenth-century New Mexico to the rise of MAGA in our own time. We’ll seek to understand how, starting in the twentieth century, “free speech” and “the First Amendment” became practically synonymous, with the result that most contemporary Americans know very little about the history of free expression in this country. And we’ll ask what (if anything) gives America’s four-hundred-year-old free speech tradition its unity and coherence
A year-long seminar for outstanding majors who want to conduct research -- or to design a creative project -- on any aspect of American history and culture. During the fall, students will clarify their research agenda or creative topic, sharpen their questions, locate their primary and secondary sources, and begin their project to be completed in the spring perhaps leading to departmental honors. See American Studies website for more details
