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Course Listing for AMERICAN STUDIES - Spring 2020 (ALL: 01/21/2020 - 05/08/2020)
Class
No.		 Course ID Title Credits Type Instructor(s) Days:Times Location Permission
Required		 Dist Qtr
2601 AMST-202-01 Early America 1.00 LEC Wickman, Thomas TR: 2:55PM-4:10PM SH - N215 Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 25 Waitlist available: Y
    Cross-listing: HIST-201-01
  This course introduces students to major developments in the political, economic, and social history of North America from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. We will study indigenous sovereignty, encounters between Europeans and Native Americans, the founding of European colonies, the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, the Seven Years' War, the American Revolution, the spread of human enslavement, the War of 1812, Indian removal policy, U.S. wars with Native nations, westward expansion, the U.S.-Mexican War, abolitionism, and the Civil War. Students will be challenged to imagine American history within Atlantic and global contexts and to comprehend the expansiveness of Native American homelands and the shifting nature of North American borderlands.
1006 AMST-203-01 Conflcts & Cultures Am Society 1.00 LEC Nebolon, Juliet TR: 1:30PM-2:45PM 115V - 106 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 19 Waitlist available: Y
  NOTE: 10 seats reserved for first year students. 7 seats reserved for sophomores.
  Focusing on a key decade in American life—the 1890s, for example, or the 1850s—this course will examine the dynamics of race, class, gender, and ethnicity as forces that have shaped, and been shaped by, American culture. How did various groups define themselves at particular historical moments? How did they interact with each other and with American society? Why did some groups achieve hegemony and not others, and what were—and are—the implications of these dynamics for our understanding of American culture? By examining both interpretive and primary documents—novels, autobiographies, works of art, and popular culture—we will consider these and other questions concerning the production of American culture.
2518 AMST-203-02 Conflcts & Cultures Am Society 1.00 LEC Wickman, Thomas MWF: 10:00AM-10:50AM SH - N215 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 19 Waitlist available: Y
  NOTE: All seats reserved for first year students.
  Focusing on a key decade in American life—the 1890s, for example, or the 1850s—this course will examine the dynamics of race, class, gender, and ethnicity as forces that have shaped, and been shaped by, American culture. How did various groups define themselves at particular historical moments? How did they interact with each other and with American society? Why did some groups achieve hegemony and not others, and what were—and are—the implications of these dynamics for our understanding of American culture? By examining both interpretive and primary documents—novels, autobiographies, works of art, and popular culture—we will consider these and other questions concerning the production of American culture.
2754 AMST-269-01 The 1960s 1.00 LEC Marston, Steven TR: 2:55PM-4:10PM CT - 105 Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 35 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: HIST-269-01
  The 1960s were watershed years in modern American history. Major areas of U.S. life – politics, foreign policy, culture, race, gender, the economy – experienced monumental shifts that irrevocably altered the nation. This class examines the social, cultural and political history of “the sixties.” Major course themes include: the Cold War; the civil rights movement and Black Power; the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement; the rise of both the New Left and the New Right; the counterculture and cultural change. In addition, the course studies the emergence of second-wave feminism and anti-feminism; the shift from a liberal, Keynesian political-economic order to a conservative, neoliberal era; the international history of the sixties; and the ways that ideas of “the sixties” are used and remembered in contemporary U.S. society, culture and politics.
2483 AMST-282-01 Contemp Native American Lit 1.00 LEC Wyss, Hilary TR: 9:25AM-10:40AM 115V - 106 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 29 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: ENGL-282-01
  Indigenous writers have used fiction, autobiography, and poetry to explore what it means to be a Native person today, whether that is in an urban context or on a reservation. From poetry to historical fiction to dystopian futurist science fiction, Native writers celebrate the resistance and survival that has shaped their lives and communities despite a history of colonization. In this course we will examine a selection of works by Native American writers from across the United States and Canada, using these works to gain insight into the ongoing cultural experience of Native people.
2365 AMST-284-01 Food and American Culture 1.00 LEC Miller, Karen TR: 2:55PM-4:10PM SH - N129 Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 25 Waitlist available: N
  What we eat and how we eat reflect more than basic physical needs, and food has long played influential roles in defining and representing American culture, identities, and nationalism. Our course will begin by examining the history of the Thanksgiving feast and conclude with contemporary movements in organic and farm-to-table eating. As we explore foods' implications for Americanism, gender, class, and age, our topics of study will include defining edibles and non-edibles, immigrant influences, food and technology, American farming, diet fads, school lunches and gardens, hunger in America and food regulations. Our class will work with the nearby Billings Forge community to learn more about food's roles in family life and social reforms, including urban renewal.
1405 AMST-301-01 AmStud Seminar 1.00 SEM Gac, Scott M: 6:30PM-9:10PM SH - T121 WEB  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  This course, required for American Studies majors and ordinarily taken in the sophomore or junior year, examines central methods in the field. Situated on a theme, such as race or popular culture, seminar participants engage in archival, spatial, public humanities, and transnational approaches to the American experience.
2598 AMST-303-01 Basketball & Global Culture(s) 1.00 SEM Marston, Steven TR: 1:30PM-2:45PM SH - N128 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: Y
    Cross-listing: HIST-303-01
  This seminar follows basketball "around the world" in order to trace how culture moves. Beginning with the game's roots in the 19th-century U.S., students will analyze how basketball was subsequently shared, adopted, and adapted to a variety of settings on every continent of the globe. Throughout, attention will remain on politics: that is, basketball's role within larger struggles around power, identity, and (inter)nationalism. It will become clear that, far from "just a game," basketball is a key cultural practice through which people and groups have come to understand themselves for over a century.
2603 AMST-320-01 Place in the Native Northeast 1.00 SEM Wickman, Thomas M: 1:15PM-3:55PM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 9 Waitlist available: Y
    Cross-listing: HIST-311-01
  NOTE: This course will meet at 10 Constitution Plaza in downtown Hartford. Transportation will be provided. Questions: contact instructor.
  The coasts, rivers, fields, hills, villages, and cities of present-day Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia have been home for indigenous families, communities, and nations through numerous environmental, political, and economic transformations. Students will learn about the ways that Native nations of the Northeast, from Pequots to Mi'kmaqs, have adapted, recreated, and reaffirmed a deep connectedness to their homelands and territories, from the fifteenth century to the present. Fields trips to local sites and archives will facilitate original historical research. Primary sources to be assigned include autobiographies, travel narratives, war histories, maps, Native American stories, and dictionaries of indigenous place names, and secondary source readings will cover major themes in Native American studies, with special emphasis on sense of place.
2634 AMST-329-01 Viewing The Wire 1.00 SEM Conway, Nicholas F: 1:15PM-3:55PM SH - N128 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  Also cross-referenced with FILM
  Through analysis and dissection of David Simon's The Wire, this course seeks to equip students with the tools necessary to examine our postmodern society. The Wire seamlessly juxtaposes aesthetics with socio-economic issues, offering up a powerful lens for investigating our surroundings. Whether issues of unregulated free market capitalism, the bureaucracy of our school systems, politics of the media, false notions of equal opportunity, devaluation of human life, or a failed war on drugs, The Wire addresses the complexities of American urban life. Through a socio-political and cultural reading of the five individual seasons, students will be able to explore a multitude of contemporary problems.
1186 AMST-399-01 Independent Study 1.00 - 2.00 IND Staff, Trinity TBA TBA Y  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  Submission of the special registration form, available in the Registrar's Office, and the approval of the instructor are required for enrollment.
1423 AMST-425-01 Museums,Vis Cult&Crit Theory 1.00 SEM Miller, Karen R: 6:30PM-9:10PM SH - N128  
  Enrollment limited to 7 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: AMST-825-01
  This course aims to examine the issues brought up in key theoretical readings by applying their insights to case studies, particularly cases of museum exhibitions and programs. Issues to be addressed include: reproduction and spectacle; gender and display; ethnicity, 'primitivism,' and race; and sexuality, sexual practice, and censorship. Case studies will vary each year and will range from exhibitions focusing on consumption, to ethnicity and race (such as the Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Pequot Museum), and sexuality (The Museum of Sex; the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibitions). Each class will combine theoretical readings with considerations of museum practice. By the end of the semester, students shall be able to analyze exhibitions using both the tools of postmodern theory and practical observation and history. This course fulfills the public humanities approach. This course meets the Public Humanities method requirement.
2575 AMST-427-01 Sci Fi in the Archives 1.00 SEM Mrozowski, Daniel R: 6:30PM-9:10PM 115V - 103 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 8 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: AMST-827-01, ENGL-827-01
  NOTE: If you are interested in registering for this course, please contact Professor Mrozowski for a PIN.
  With the aid of the Loftus E. Becker collection in the Watkinson, this course will explore science fiction as an essential map of our post-war American empire. Fueled by dystopian and utopian impulses, artists like Ursula K. Le Guin and Ted Chiang evolved the genre from technological triumphalism into a devastating critique of a culture invested in weapons of mass destruction, alienating digitalization, and environmental collapse. While we read canonical works of post-1945 American science fiction for their aesthetic elements and ideological functions, we'll also map the genre's tangled publishing history and material traces via archival work at the Watkinson. This course meets the Archival method requirement.
2629 AMST-430-01 Death and Dying in the US 1.00 SEM Soto, Gabriella M: 6:30PM-9:10PM SH - N128 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: AMST-830-01
  Death is an inevitable aspect of life, but practices of death and mourning vary culturally. How do we die in the United States? What is a "good death"? This course explores the many dimensions of death and dying in the United States from the evolving conceptions life-saving medicine to the alternative funeral industry and cultural alienation from dead bodies. It covers the inequities of death investigation and the social ramifications of the "CSI effect." Students learn about recent key milestones in the politicization of death such as the AIDS crisis, the passing of the North American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and the mass disappearances of undocumented migrants crossing the US-Mexico border.
2486 AMST-459-01 Orphans and Others in Am Lit 1.00 SEM Wyss, Hilary W: 6:30PM-9:10PM 115V - 103 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 10 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: AMST-859-01, ENGL-859-01
  From cross-dressing sailors and adventurers to castaways and runaways, early American literature is filled with narratives of reinvention—sometimes by choice, often by necessity. In this course we will look at the peril and promise of such reinvention as various figures reimagine their relation to a social order organized by family lineage and paternal descent. For some the Americas (at least theoretically) presented a world of new possibilities while for others this was a dangerous and isolating place. Our readings will include novels, autobiographical narratives, confessions, and other literary accounts. This seminar is research-intensive.
1187 AMST-466-01 Teaching Assistantship 0.50 - 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  Submission of the special registration form, available in the Registrar’s Office, and the approval of the instructor are required for enrollment.
2527 AMST-479-01 Revolutionary Generations 1.00 SEM Mrozowski, Daniel M: 6:30PM-9:10PM 115V - 106 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 8 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: AMST-879-01, ENGL-879-01
  NOTE: If you are interested in registering for this course, please contact Professor Mrozowski for a PIN.
  NOTE: Students who have taken English 377 for credit cannot take the new Revolutionary Generations course for credit
  Hannah Arendt suggested that the United States failed to remember its revolutionary tradition because it failed to talk about it. This course will recover those memories by reading the texts that founded the American rebellion, the intense arguments made in the aftermath of independence, and the passionate creative works produced in the wake of revolution. We will look beyond the context of New England to consider the roles played by Africa and the Caribbean in the cultural imagination, and we will trace how social class, race, and gender inflected the constitution of American identities in a post-1776 world. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written between 1700-1900. This course is research-intensive.
1188 AMST-490-01 Research Assistantship 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
2614 AMST-496-01 US Empire Asia/PacificWars 1.00 SEM Nebolon, Juliet W: 1:15PM-3:55PM MECC - 260 GLB2  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  Also cross-referenced with INTS Cross-listing: AMST-896-01
  U.S. military involvement in Asia and the Pacific Islands has impacted the experiences of Asian and Pacific Islander communities and their diaspora since the late nineteenth century. In this seminar, students study the history of the Asia/Pacific wars and investigate the consequences of U.S. militarism, empire, and settler colonialism in Asia and the Pacific Islands via individual research projects. Together we will examine historical narratives, government documents, and cultural texts (films, literature, musicals) to understand how U.S. wars in the Asia/Pacific region have informed notions of race, indigeneity, gender, and empire both at home and abroad. The course brings together scholarship from the fields of American Studies, Asian American Studies, Pacific Indigenous Studies, and East Asian Studies.
1149 AMST-499-01 Senior Thesis Part 2 2.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  Submission of the special registration form, available in the Registrar's Office, and the approval of the thesis adviser and the director, are required for each semester of this year-long thesis. (The two course credits are considered pending in Part I of the thesis; they will be awarded with the completion of Part II.)
2675 AMST-801-01 Approaches to American Studies 1.00 LEC Soto, Gabriella W: 6:30PM-9:30PM SH - T121  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  This seminar, which is required of all American Studies graduate students, examines a variety of approaches to the field. Readings may include several “classic” texts of 18th- and 19th-century American culture and several key works of American studies scholarship from the formative period of the field after World War II, as well as more recent contributions to the study of the United States. Topics will include changing ideas about the content, production, and consumption of American culture; patterns of ethnic identification and definition; the construction of categories like “race” and “gender”; and the bearing of class, race, gender, and sexuality on individuals’ participation in American society and culture. Undergraduates who wish to enroll in this course must obtain permission of their adviser and the instructor. This course meets the Spatial methods requirement.
1422 AMST-825-01 Museums,Vis Cult&Crit Theory 1.00 SEM Miller, Karen R: 6:30PM-9:10PM SH - N128  
  Enrollment limited to 8 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: AMST-425-01
  This course aims to examine the issues brought up in key theoretical readings by applying their insights to case studies, particularly cases of museum exhibitions and programs. Issues to be addressed include: reproduction and spectacle; gender and display; ethnicity, 'primitivism,' and race; and sexuality, sexual practice, and censorship. Case studies will vary each year and will range from exhibitions focusing on consumption, to ethnicity and race (such as the Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Pequot Museum), and sexuality (The Museum of Sex; the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibitions). Each class will combine theoretical readings with considerations of museum practice. By the end of the semester, students shall be able to analyze exhibitions using both the tools of postmodern theory and practical observation and history. This course fulfills the public humanities approach. This course meets the Public Humanities method requirement.
2576 AMST-827-01 Sci Fi in the Archives 1.00 SEM Mrozowski, Daniel R: 6:30PM-9:10PM 115V - 103 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 7 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: AMST-427-01, ENGL-827-01
  NOTE: If you are interested in registering for this course, please contact Professor Mrozowski for a PIN.
  With the aid of the Loftus E. Becker collection in the Watkinson, this course will explore science fiction as an essential map of our post-war American empire. Fueled by dystopian and utopian impulses, artists like Ursula K. Le Guin and Ted Chiang evolved the genre from technological triumphalism into a devastating critique of a culture invested in weapons of mass destruction, alienating digitalization, and environmental collapse. While we read canonical works of post-1945 American science fiction for their aesthetic elements and ideological functions, we'll also map the genre's tangled publishing history and material traces via archival work at the Watkinson. This course meets the Archival method requirement.
2628 AMST-830-01 Death and Dying in the US 1.00 SEM Soto, Gabriella M: 6:30PM-9:10PM SH - N128 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: AMST-430-01
  Death is an inevitable aspect of life, but practices of death and mourning vary culturally. How do we die in the United States? What is a "good death"? This course explores the many dimensions of death and dying in the United States from the evolving conceptions life-saving medicine to the alternative funeral industry and cultural alienation from dead bodies. It covers the inequities of death investigation and the social ramifications of the "CSI effect." Students learn about recent key milestones in the politicization of death such as the AIDS crisis, the passing of the North American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and the mass disappearances of undocumented migrants crossing the US-Mexico border.
2487 AMST-859-01 Orphans and Others in Am Lit 1.00 SEM Wyss, Hilary W: 6:30PM-9:10PM 115V - 103 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 5 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: AMST-459-01, ENGL-859-01
  From cross-dressing sailors and adventurers to castaways and runaways, early American literature is filled with narratives of reinvention—sometimes by choice, often by necessity. In this course we will look at the peril and promise of such reinvention as various figures reimagine their relation to a social order organized by family lineage and paternal descent. For some the Americas (at least theoretically) presented a world of new possibilities while for others this was a dangerous and isolating place. Our readings will include novels, autobiographical narratives, confessions, and other literary accounts. This seminar is research-intensive.
2523 AMST-879-01 Revolutionary Generations 1.00 SEM Mrozowski, Daniel M: 6:30PM-9:10PM 115V - 106 HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 7 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: AMST-479-01, ENGL-879-01
  NOTE: If you are interested in registering for this course, please contact Professor Mrozowski for a PIN.
  Hannah Arendt suggested that the United States failed to remember its revolutionary tradition because it failed to talk about it. This course will recover those memories by reading the texts that founded the American rebellion, the intense arguments made in the aftermath of independence, and the passionate creative works produced in the wake of revolution. We will look beyond the context of New England to consider the roles played by Africa and the Caribbean in the cultural imagination, and we will trace how social class, race, and gender inflected the constitution of American identities in a post-1776 world. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written between 1700-1900. This course is research-intensive.
1298 AMST-894-01 Museums and Communities Intern 1.00 IND Staff, Trinity TBA TBA  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  Matriculated American studies students have the opportunity to engage in an academic internship at an area museum or archive for credit toward the American studies degree. Interested students should contact the Office of Graduate Studies for more information.
2615 AMST-896-01 US Empire Asia/PacificWars 1.00 SEM Nebolon, Juliet W: 1:15PM-3:55PM MECC - 260 GLB2  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
    Cross-listing: AMST-496-01
  U.S. military involvement in Asia and the Pacific Islands has impacted the experiences of Asian and Pacific Islander communities and their diaspora since the late nineteenth century. In this seminar, students study the history of the Asia/Pacific wars and investigate the consequences of U.S. militarism, empire, and settler colonialism in Asia and the Pacific Islands via individual research projects. Together we will examine historical narratives, government documents, and cultural texts (films, literature, musicals) to understand how U.S. wars in the Asia/Pacific region have informed notions of race, indigeneity, gender, and empire both at home and abroad. The course brings together scholarship from the fields of American Studies, Asian American Studies, Pacific Indigenous Studies, and East Asian Studies.
1299 AMST-940-01 Independent Study 1.00 IND Staff, Trinity TBA TBA Y  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  Selected topics in special areas are available by arrangement with the instructor and written approval of the graduate adviser and program director. Contact the Office of Graduate Studies for the special approval form.
1164 AMST-953-01 Research Project 1.00 IND Staff, Trinity TBA TBA Y  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  Under the guidance of a faculty member, graduate students may do an independent research project on a topic in American studies. Written approval of the graduate adviser and the program director are required. Contact the Office of Graduate Studies for the special approval form.
1165 AMST-954-01 Thesis Part I 1.00 IND Staff, Trinity TBA TBA Y  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  (The two course credits are considered pending in Part I of the thesis; they will be awarded with the completion of Part II.)
1167 AMST-955-01 Thesis Part II 1.00 IND Staff, Trinity TBA TBA Y  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  (Continuation of American Studies 954.)
1274 AMST-956-01 Thesis 2.00 IND Staff, Trinity TBA TBA Y  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N
  (Completion of two course credits in one semester).