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Course Listing for AMERICAN STUDIES - Spring 2024 (ALL: 01/22/2024 - 05/10/2024)
Class
No.		 Course ID Title Credits Type Instructor(s) Days:Times Location Permission
Required		 Dist Qtr
2888 AMST-202-01 Early America 1.00 LEC Wickman,Thomas M. MWF: 10:00AM-10:50AM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 10 Waitlist available: Y Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: HIST-201-01
  NOTE: 10 seats reserved for AMST majors.
  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.
2913 AMST-203-01 Conflcts & Cultures Am Society 1.00 LEC Nebolon,Juliet M. MW: 10:00AM-11:15AM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 19 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  NOTE: 16 seats reserved for first year students, 3 for sophomores.
  NOTE: AMST majors: if you are a rising junior or senior and have not yet taken AMST 203, please contact the professor to be enrolled in this course.
  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.
2914 AMST-203-02 Conflcts & Cultures Am Society 1.00 LEC Nebolon,Juliet M. MW: 11:30AM-12:45PM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 19 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  NOTE: 16 seats reserved for first year students, 3 for sophomores.
  NOTE: AMST majors: if you are a rising junior or senior and have not yet taken AMST 203, please contact the professor to be enrolled in this course.
  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.
2278 AMST-220-02 Possible Earths 1.00 SEM Wickman,Thomas M. MWF: 12:00PM-12:50PM TBA GLB2  
  Enrollment limited to 9 Waitlist available: Y Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: HIST-220-02
  NOTE: 2 seats reserved for first-year students, 5 for sophomores, and 2 for juniors.
  This seminar examines environmental thinking across histories and cultures in order to retrieve sources of hope and wisdom for a planetary future. Reading and discussion will foreground current humanity's vast inheritance when it comes to ways of existing in community with and knowing a living planet. Students will look critically at how texts, images, objects, and practices are historical evidence of the many ways humans have imagined natural communities and acted within them.
3172 AMST-228-01 Scandals in American Sports 1.00 LEC Marston,Steven B. MW: 1:30PM-2:45PM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 25 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  Sports have long generated public debate on a variety of issues, from the ethics of competition to the spending of money on events like the Olympics and World Cup. This is never truer than in moments of scandal. In this course, students will address sports scandals in United States history, with a focus on what they can teach us about the culture and politics of a given era. In the process, students will consider the racial, class, and gender dynamics surrounding the ethics of sports. From baseball's "Black Sox" of the 1910s to the "doping" episodes of recent decades, we will continue to ask a question that is both social and personal: What is right and wrong?
3191 AMST-255-01 Dancing for the Camera 1.00 LEC Pappas,Rebecca K. M: 1:30PM-4:10PM TBA ART  
  Enrollment limited to 18 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: FILM-255-01, THDN-255-01
  Dancing for the Camera 1897-2025 examines the history of dance created for the camera, from early film through Hollywood musicals, Bollywood, TikTok, and Instagram as well as posing questions about the future of the form. The course focuses on becoming critical viewers while watching film, reading scholarly texts, writing papers, and creating our own screendance as a mode of historical inquiry. The course fulfills the theater and dance history requirements for Theater and Dance Majors.
1308 AMST-301-01 AmStud Seminar 1.00 SEM Gac,Scott M: 1:30PM-4:10PM TBA WEB  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  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.
2916 AMST-314-01 Global Radicalism 1.00 SEM Heatherton,Christina TR: 10:50AM-12:05PM TBA GLB2  
  Enrollment limited to 19 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: HRST-314-01
  In the early twentieth century, struggles against racism, capitalism, and colonialism, encircled the globe. From Irish republicanism in Dublin, Bolshevism in Moscow, revolution in Mexico City, to anti-lynching crusades in Birmingham, these movements represented the largest waves of rebellion sustained by the global economy. This seminar offers an overview of these struggles and spaces. Through examination of primary and secondary sources, students will consider radical social movements from distinct yet overlapping traditions. We will discuss how radicals confronted issues of racism, gender, and nationalism in their revolutionary theories. Taking a uniquely spatial approach, we will observe how geographies of accumulation emerged alongside sites of global resistance. Throughout we will consider these debates' contemporary relevance, observing how global radicalism might be charted in our present world.
2912 AMST-316-01 Freedom & Confinement 1.00 SEM Wyss,Hilary E. TR: 1:30PM-2:45PM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: ENGL-316-01
  Even as America defines itself as "the land of the free," narratives of confinement have a prominent place in our national literature. In this class we will begin to explore this conundrum, focusing our attention on early American texts in which confinement operates as a structuring principle. We will explore ideas of imprisonment and captivity from colonial America through the nineteenth century, looking at such texts as criminal narratives compiled by ministers and others, captivity narratives, slave narratives, prison writing, and early American novels, among other texts. Along the way we will touch on issues of race and gender as well as institutions of confinement including slavery, prisons and even schools in early America, using appropriate theoretical models to frame our conversations.
2911 AMST-318-01 Literacy and Literature 1.00 LEC Hager,Christopher MW: 10:00AM-11:15AM TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  Also cross-referenced with EDUC Cross-listing: ENGL-318-01
  Literature is produced and consumed by literate people. Nothing could be more obvious. But how do the different ways writers and readers become literate influence the ways they write and read? How have writers depicted the process of acquiring literacy and imagined its importance? In this course, we will examine the nature of literacy and the roles texts play in the development of literacy. With a focus on the United States from the 18th century to the 20th, we will study schoolbooks, texts for young readers, and representations of literacy in literary works ranging from slave narratives to novels to films. We also will study theories of literacy from philosophical, cognitive, and educational perspectives. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written between 1700-1900. This course is research intensive.
2538 AMST-320-01 Place in the Native Northeast 1.00 SEM Wickman,Thomas M. M: 1:30PM-4:10PM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 7 Waitlist available: Y Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: HIST-311-01
  NOTE: 7 seats reserved for AMST majors.
  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.
2924 AMST-323-01 Grounded Ways of Knowing 1.00 LEC Heatherton,Christina TR: 1:30PM-2:45PM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 25 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: HRST-323-01
  Renowned popular educator Paulo Freire once warned of teaching with false impartiality, treating societies under study as if one was not also a "participant in it." He sought to challenge the divides separating spaces of learning from the process of learning itself. In this seminar, we will consider the questions Freire sought to ask and answer. By engaging texts in American Studies and Human Rights we will interrogate the spatial, epistemological, and social divides between the places in which we learn and the spaces we inhabit to do so. Through readings and discussion, we will consider how we might observe, engage, and challenge those divides. Students will produce a final project that interrogates these divisions as well as the many ways they might be transgressed.
2687 AMST-344-01 The 1980s 1.00 LEC Marston,Steven B. TR: 2:55PM-4:10PM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 25 Waitlist available: Y Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: HIST-344-01
  When we think of the 1980s, certain things might come to mind: synthesizer music, action movie heroes, bright clothes, side ponytails, and other pop-culture markers. Yet the decade also featured a number of crucial developments and conflicts, from the Cold War to the War on Drugs, that set much of the foundation for American life today. This course will address the U.S. in the 1980s through a wide lens, surveying popular culture, global interactions, and political struggles related to race, class, gender, sexuality, and religion. In the process, students will learn how a "gnarly" decade featured ongoing struggle over the conditions, and meanings, of the American nation.
1144 AMST-399-01 Independent Study 1.00 - 2.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  Submission of the special registration form, available in the Registrar's Office, and the approval of the instructor are required for enrollment.
2989 AMST-446-01 Communities in/of Practice 1.00 SEM Guzman,Amanda J. R: 6:30PM-9:00PM TBA SOC  
  Enrollment limited to 7 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: AMST-846-01, ANTH-446-01
  NOTE: 7 seats for ANTH, 7 for AMST and 5 Graduate Studies.
  What is the ethical role of research in our contemporary society? How can research implicate and impact broader publics beyond academic stakeholders through mutually beneficial partnerships? This course critically interrogates the relationship between the researcher and the researched; and explores the broader, more creative possibilities of scholarly practice beyond traditional forms of writing. Students will acquire experience and fluency with a wide variety of digital humanities platforms as they gain new understandings of best practices for developing storytelling of community value and relevance. Students will also engage both with diverse case-studies of public engaged scholarship as well as collaborate directly with current practitioners actively applying their academic research towards timely social issues.
2899 AMST-459-01 Orphans and Others in Am Lit 1.00 SEM Wyss,Hilary E. T: 6:30PM-9:00PM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 5 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    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.
2970 AMST-463-01 US Empire Asia/PacificWars 1.00 SEM Nebolon,Juliet M. W: 1:30PM-4:10PM TBA GLB2  
  Enrollment limited to 12 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: AMST-863-01
  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.
1145 AMST-466-01 Teaching Assistantship 0.50 - 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  Submission of the special registration form, available online, and the approval of the instructor are required for enrollment. Guidelines are available in the College Bulletin. (0.5 - 1 course credit)
1146 AMST-490-01 Research Assistantship 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  This course is designed to provide students with the opportunity to undertake substantial research work with a faculty member. Students need to complete a special registration form, available online, and have it signed by the supervising instructor.
3014 AMST-499-01 Senior Thesis Part 2 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  This course is the second part of a two semester, two credit thesis. Submission of the special registration form and the approval of the thesis adviser and the director are required for enrollment. The registration form is required for each semester of this year-long thesis.
3161 AMST-846-01 Communities in/of Practice 1.00 SEM Guzman,Amanda J. R: 6:30PM-9:00PM TBA SOC  
  Enrollment limited to 5 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: AMST-446-01, ANTH-446-01
  NOTE: 7 seats for ANTH, 7 for AMST and 5 Graduate Studies.
  What is the ethical role of research in our contemporary society? How can research implicate and impact broader publics beyond academic stakeholders through mutually beneficial partnerships? This course critically interrogates the relationship between the researcher and the researched; and explores the broader, more creative possibilities of scholarly practice beyond traditional forms of writing. Students will acquire experience and fluency with a wide variety of digital humanities platforms as they gain new understandings of best practices for developing storytelling of community value and relevance. Students will also engage both with diverse case-studies of public engaged scholarship as well as collaborate directly with current practitioners actively applying their academic research towards timely social issues.
2898 AMST-859-01 Orphans and Others in Am Lit 1.00 SEM Wyss,Hilary E. T: 6:30PM-9:00PM TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 2 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    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.
2971 AMST-863-01 US Empire Asia/PacificWars 1.00 SEM Nebolon,Juliet M. W: 1:30PM-4:10PM TBA GLB2  
  Enrollment limited to 3 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
    Cross-listing: AMST-463-01
  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.
1239 AMST-894-01 Museums and Communities Intern 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  Matriculated American studies students have the opportunity to engage in an 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.
1240 AMST-940-01 Independent Study 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  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.
1124 AMST-953-01 Research Project 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  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.
1125 AMST-954-01 Thesis Part I 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  (The two course credits are considered pending in Part I of the thesis; they will be awarded with the completion of Part II.)
1127 AMST-955-01 Thesis Part II 1.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  (Continuation of American Studies 954.)
1226 AMST-956-01 Thesis 2.00 IND TBA TBA TBA Y HUM  
  Enrollment limited to 15 Waitlist available: N Mode of Instruction: In Person  
  (Completion of two course credits in one semester).