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Course Info for AMST - 210 - 01, Spring 2023
Class number: 2429 Title: Doing Culture Department: American Studies
Career: Undergraduate Component: Lecture Session: Regular
Instructor's Permission Required: No Grading Basis: Regular Units: 1.00
Enrollment limited to 25 Current enrollment: 18 Available seats: 7
Start date: Wednesday, January 25, 2023 End date: Friday, May 12, 2023 Mode of Instruction: In Person
Schedule: TR: 10:50AM-12:05PM, LIB - 181 Instructor(s): Baldwin, Davarian
Prerequisite(s): None
Distribution Requirement: Meets Humanities Requirement
Course Description:
Culture is not something we simply consume, inhabit or even create. Culture is serious business: pun both intended and upended. We have a dynamic relationship with the world around us and in this class we will use culture, both elite and popular, to help bridge the gap between what we do here in the “ivory tower” and how we live out there in the “real world,” hopefully changing both in the process. Here we will not take culture for granted but engage culture as a method, a tool by which to engage, analyze and critique both historical narratives and contemporary events. In this course, street life, advertisements, popular media, and clothing are interrogated as archives of dynamic meaning, arenas of social interaction, acts of personal pleasure, and sites of struggle. We will also explore what happens when a diversity of forces converge at the intersection of commerce and culture. Present day notions of popular culture, and topics such as authenticity and selling out, will be interrogated both socially and historically.