AMST

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

from the cross-listed courses or two additional AMST courses and AMST 465. At least two the AMST electives must be at the 300-level or above. A cross-listed 300-level elective may be substituted upon approval by advisor. All courses must be passed with a grade of C- or higher. No more than one credit/no credit courses can be counted towards the major. No more than three courses can be taken in one department outside of American Studies.

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

using drawing as a creative tool to think, represent, and interpret the world and ourselves visually. We are not trying to produce masterpieces. Instead, we use drawing as a medium for critical observation and study, creative work for creative work’s sake, and expressive storytelling about places, spaces, and society. All our drawing is done without any measuring tools or straightedges. Instead, we sharpen our hand-eye coordination and learn to visually and spa- tially proportion the world around us. Our primary medium is watercolor. We draw objects, structures, social spaces, and natural scenery. If conditions allow, we will do some drawing sessions outside the classroom on-site. Along the way, we explore several traditions of drawing including: fine arts, architecture and urban sketching, food illustration, doodling, and map-making. Students gain skills in freehand line drawing, watercolor, visual abstraction, proportion/ geometry, texture/value, and page composition. Offered each semester/Makker.

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

of the world might think? This course explores American culture and identity through readings and films by American and Russian poets, novelists, and directors. From Red scares through the Cold War and Evil Empire all the way to the New Russians, twentieth-and twenty-first-century Americans and Russians have shared a deep mutual fascina- tion, and have often defined themselves via contrast with the forbidding, alluring Other. We will study travelogues, memoirs, novels, stories, and films by artists as diverse as John Steinbeck, Langston Hughes, Gary Shteyngart, Ellen Litman, and Aleksei Balabanov, using these works to refine our own understanding of American culture. All readings and discussions will be in English. Dually designated with RUSE 206. AMST 207 Baseball and America This class focuses on baseball and its relationship to American culture. For a long time, baseball has been the quintessential American game. In this class, we will examine the role(s) of technology, media, culture and nationalism in explaining the unique role of baseball to the American identify.

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

0005

Source

www.hws.edu

history of people of color matter to contemporary policy and social relationships? In this course, students analyze minority group relations including inter-group and intragroup dynamics, sources of prejudice and discrimination, social processes of conflict, segregation, assimilation, and accommodation. Minority-majority relations are viewed as a source of hierarchy, contention, and change, and the history and current context of our multigroup society are analyzed. Emphasis is placed on racial and ethnic groups in the United States. (Freeman, offered annually) AMST 213 Poverty and Place in Rural America This course centers on the study of place-based poverty in the United States with a focus on rural areas. The course examines the ways in which social and economic rewards are geo- graphically and racially stratified, asking “Who gets what, where and why?” This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying poverty by including geographic and humanistic dimensions. Course content will address theoretical and conceptual approaches to poverty, poverty and population measures, and explanations of geo- graphically concentrated poverty. Through novels and non-fictions texts students will discover lived experiences of the rural poor with particular attention to Black, Latinx, and American Indian peoples. Students will also critically examine popular representations of rurality and poverty in the U.S. Lastly, students will take a case study approach to evaluate or predict a poverty program’s structural and cultural impacts, including impacts on the poverty statuses of selected minority groups. This course counts as a Social Science core for the Environmental Studies major/minor. (Mauer, offered occasionally) AMST 215 Power, Privilege, and the Other in US Popular Music This course examines discourses of power and priv- ilege in US popular music from the later nineteenth century to the present day. Through non-technical analysis (no previous knowledge of music required) of a variety of musical styles, you will learn to identify ways in which music and performative gesture underscored, subverted, and sometimes transcended dominant cultural scripts and nar- ratives. The course is organized into four ) The “Other”: Primitive-Exotic in the Jazz Age of the 1920s; 2.) The Black Power(ed) and 1960s Soul; 3.) Gender, Sexuality, and Gangsta Rap; 4.) Performing Race; Performing Gender; moving the dial in contemporary popular music. Through focused engagement with these topics, you will learn to hear expressions of power and privilege that reside below the surface of specific musical works while developing skills that can be applied to other genres and style periods (Offered periodically)

Subject

AMST

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Credit unit

units

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

0005

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

0005

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

expressive cultures. Among the essential questions we will ask are: What different forms and sensibilities have Asian American writers and artists adopted in their work? How have these forms and sensibilities changed over time, and HWS.EDU/CATALOGUE 82 2023 - 2024 CATALOGUE

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

with data – sports statistics, crime maps, text mining of presidential tweets. What does all this data tell us about America? What does it hide? What tools and ways of thinking help us to better understand it? This course will intro- duce students to the instruments and techniques useful for quantitative research in the humanities. Students will learn a range of tools which will help them apply a critical lens for understanding and evaluating what data can bring to study of American life including statistics, text analysis, geospatial analysis, and data visualization. Topics relevant to social justice, social change, civic engagement, and social action such as race, sexuality, gender, and class will be highlighted through in-class conversations and research projects. Offered bi-annually. AMST 301 Cultural Theory and Popular Culture This course introduces cultural studies as a major area of contempo- rary theory which has reshaped the way we think and write about literature. Critical cultural studies, historicism, and reader-response theory have expanded understandings of literary meaning to include production and reception of those texts as well as their ideological content and consequences. Students read theoretical essays by such think- ers as Marx, Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault, White, Butler, and Baudrillard, as well as examples of scholars applying these ideas to the study of literature and other cultural forms. Students will then become the critics, applying these theories to the contemporary literary, material and popular culture “texts” that surround them – stories, poems, film, photographs, toys, fashion, sports, and music. Dually designated as ENG 301. HWS.EDU/CATALOGUE 83 2023 - 2024 CATALOGUE

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

0005

Source

www.hws.edu

HWS.EDU/CATALOGUE 211 2023 - 2024 CATALOGUE

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

dents in an interdisciplinary art and activism project called the Womb Chair Speaks (www.wombchairspeaks.net) through an intimate seminar, centered on discussion and hands-on learning. The research for the project draws from the fields of art history, architectural history, medicine, women’s studies, and studio art. Begun in 2018 at HWS by Professor Kirin Makker and two students Ainsley Rhodes `19 and Abbey Frederick `20, the project employs feminist theory and methods of inquiry to examine sexism and racism in the fields of architecture and medicine. The course is composed of two main experiences to underscore two methods of research and productive inquiry. First, students will read and discuss a series of written pieces related to the project including white masculinity in architectural education and practice, women’s craft history in the domestic arts, women’s healthcare, social art practice, and spatial agency. Second, in the spirit of other craftivist projects, students will be working actively on the Womb Chair Speaks project, embroidery and sewing, sharing out knowledge and practicing the theories of community building and resistance examined in class. The project is purposefully perpetual; the chair is not meant to be finished, offering students direct participation in an ongoing, process-oriented activist art project. No sewing experience is required.

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

0005

Source

www.hws.edu

Debutante’s Handbook (Shteyngart, 2002), a new generation of Russians writing in English arrived on the American literary scene. The course introduces this diverse group of writers and the giants, Nabokov and Brodsky, from whose shadow they emerged. The writers share a first language (Russian), a language of composition (English), and a path through global space (Russia or Soviet Union to United States). Readings cover a range of literary genres (novel, including the graphic novel; short story; autobiography; memoir) and will be supplemented by author interviews and critical literature. The readings supply multiple models for constructing, or re-constructing, identity (linguistic, na- tional, ethnic). We will consider questions of intertextuality (Reyn, Ulinich, Shteyngart), the diasporic intimacy of the Russian-Jewish-American immigrant community (Litman, Vapnyar, Fishman), the alienation experienced by immigrant HWS.EDU/CATALOGUE 84 2023 - 2024 CATALOGUE

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

of American Studies: the techniques, concerns and practical issues of engaged scholars. Through examining a series of controversial public humanities projects students will explore community cultural development How do commu- nities make decisions about what is worth saving, worth remember and why? How do these narratives and memo- ries shape and transform common understandings of community? In turn, how do common understandings dictate the usage and extent of a community’s control over its neighborhood? Struggles over the meaning and usage of community serve as a catalyst for conversations about how historical narrative is crafted in places often overlooked by conventional histories. Students will also be introduced to the work of public scholars in the fields of commu- nity cultural development historic preservation and museum studies, and examine the contexts – public policy and economics – that shape the work of non-profit cultural organizations. (Belanger, offered spring semester every other year) AMST 465 Senior Seminar This seminar is the capstone course for the Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies. It is a chance for the student to reflect on the skills and knowledge that they have gained as a student of American Studies, and then hone some skills and deepen their knowledge by completing a substantial research project. (Offered annually) HWS.EDU/CATALOGUE 85 2023 - 2024 CATALOGUE

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

2023-2024

Source

www.hws.edu

Subject

AMST

Type

course

Edition

0005

Source

www.hws.edu