American Studies :: Catalog

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American Studies

Department of
American Studies

Courses of Study:
Major (BA)

American studies is an interdisciplinary field devoted to the study of all things American. An inquiry into the many varieties of American culture, past and present, the major seeks to provide students with a historical perspective on the United States and an educated awareness of the ways in which the nation has shaped the lives of its citizens as well as people around the world. The curriculum embraces a wide range of cultural expressions, including literature, film, music, art, architecture, and digital media. Typically, students who enroll anticipate careers in fields such as law, business, public service, education, journalism, and the entertainment industry. As the sponsor of programs in legal studies and journalism, the department aims to provide a broad background to those areas and welcomes students who seek active engagement with the contemporary world through a firm grounding in a sound liberal arts education.

Normally, students declare their major in their sophomore year and complete the three required courses (see below) by the end of their junior year. Working with a departmental adviser, students are urged to develop a coherent selection of electives tailored to their particular interests and gifts. Because of the close working relationship between the department and its resident programs, American studies majors often take several departmental courses that also satisfy the requirements of their program. Courses in other departments that satisfy American studies elective requirements are listed below and are also listed on the departmental Web site. Students who wish to be considered for departmental honors must write a senior thesis in a full-year course (AMST 99d). Special opportunities are available for supervised internships (AMST 92a), one-on-one readings courses (AMST 97a,b), and individually directed research courses (AMST 98a,b). Majors are encouraged to gain a valuable cross-cultural perspective on America by studying abroad in their junior year.

Stephen Whitfield, Chair
Modern political and cultural history.

Joyce Antler, Undergraduate Advising Head (on leave 2008-2009)
Women's history. Social history.

Jacob Cohen
Culture, politics, and thought.

Shilpa Davé
Race and ethnicity. Asian-American studies. Gender and popular culture.

Thomas Doherty
Media and culture.

Brian Donahue
Environmental studies.

Maura Farrelly (Director, Journalism Program)
Journalism. Religion.

Richard Gaskins (Director, Legal Studies; Director, Social Justice and Social Policy) (on leave spring 2009)
Law. Social policy. Philosophy.

Laura Goldin
Environmental studies.

A. Normally students take AMST 10a (Foundations of American Civilization) in their sophomore year and no later than the spring term of their junior year.

B. Normally students will take AMST 100a (Classic Texts in the American Culture to 1900) in their sophomore year or no later than their junior year.

C. After completing 100a, with a minimal grade of C-, students must take AMST 100b (Twentieth-Century American Culture), normally in their junior or senior year.

D. Six semester courses in American studies, chosen either from within the department or from other departments, with departmental approval.

E. To be eligible for departmental honors, seniors must enroll in AMST 99d (Senior Research) and participate in a year-long honors colloquium. AMST 99d does not satisfy other departmental requirements.

F. No more than two courses satisfying a second major may be offered to complete the American studies major.

G. No course, whether required or elective, for which a student receives a grade below C- may be counted toward the major.

Courses of Instruction

(1-99) Primarily for Undergraduate Students

AMST 10a Foundations of American Civilization
[ ss ]
Interpretations of the meaning of the myths, symbols, values, heroes and rogues, character ideals, identities, masks, games, humor, languages, expressive repertoire, and ideologies that are exhibited in the social, political, economic, and cultural history of the United States. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Cohen

AMST 20a Environmental Issues
[ ss ]
An interdisciplinary overview of major environmental challenges facing humanity, including population growth; food production; limited supplies of energy, water, and other resources; climate change; loss of biodiversity; and waste disposal and pollution. Students examine these problems critically and evaluate different ways of thinking about their causes and solutions. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Donahue

AMST 92a Internship in American Studies
Off-campus work experience in conjunction with a reading course with a member of the department. Requires reading and writing assignments drawing upon and amplifying the internship experience. Only one internship course may be submitted in satisfaction of the department's elective requirements. Usually offered every year.
Staff

AMST 97a Readings in American Studies
Enrollment limited to juniors and seniors.
Independent readings, research, and writing on a subject of the student's interest, under the direction of a faculty adviser. Usually offered every year.
Staff

AMST 97b Readings in American Studies
Enrollment limited to juniors and seniors.
Independent readings, research, and writing on a subject of the student's interest, under the direction of a faculty adviser. Usually offered every year.
Staff

AMST 98a Independent Study
Usually offered every year.
Staff

AMST 98b Independent Study
Usually offered every year.
Staff

AMST 99d Senior Research
Seniors who are candidates for degrees with departmental honors should register for this course and, under the direction of a faculty adviser, prepare a thesis. In addition to regular meetings with a faculty adviser, seniors will participate in an honors colloquium, a seminar group bringing together the honors candidates and members of the American studies faculty. Usually offered every year.
Staff

(100-199) For Both Undergraduate and Graduate Students

AMST 100a Classic Texts in American Culture to 1900
[ ss wi ]
Priority given to American studies majors.
This is the core seminar for American studies majors; a text-based course tracing the American experience from the earliest colonizations through the nineteenth century. Usually offered every semester.
Staff

AMST 100b Twentieth-Century American Culture
[ ss ]
Prerequisite: AMST 100a.
The democratization of taste and the extension of mass media are among the distinguishing features of American culture in the twentieth century. Through a variety of genres and forms of expression, in high culture and the popular arts, this course traces the historical development of a national style that came to exercise formidable influence abroad as well. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

AMST 101a American Environmental History
[ ss ]
Provides an overview of the relationship between nature and culture in North America. Covers Native Americans, the European invasion, the development of a market system of resource extraction and consumption, the impact of industrialization, and environmentalist responses. Current environmental issues are placed in historical context. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Donahue

AMST 102a Women, the Environment, and Social Justice
[ ss oc ]
Focuses on the profound and unique roles women have played in preserving and enhancing the natural environment and protecting human health. Students explore a wide range of environmental issues from the perspective of women and examine how women have been a driving force in key efforts to improve our environment. Also further explores the legal, ethical, and social issues embodied in environmental racism and classism. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Goldin

AMST 104b Boston and Its Suburbs: Environment and History
[ ss ]
Advanced seminar follows the development of the cultural landscape of Boston, Waltham, and the western suburbs from glacial retreat to urban sprawl. Employs ecology and history to better understand and address contemporary environmental issues. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Donahue

AMST 105a The Eastern Forest: Paleoecology to Policy
[ ss wi ]
Can we make sustainable use of the Eastern Forest of North America while protecting biological diversity and ecological integrity? Explores the forest's ecological development, the impact of human cultures, attitudes toward the forest, and our mixed record of abuse and stewardship. Includes extensive fieldwork. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Donahue

AMST 106b Food and Farming in America
[ ss ]
American food is abundant and cheap. Yet many eat poorly, and some argue that our agriculture may be unhealthy and unsustainable. Explores the history of American farming and diet and the prospects for a healthy food system. Includes extensive fieldwork. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Donahue

AMST 111a Images of the American West in Film and Culture
[ ss ]
Explores how motion picture images of the West have reflected and shaped American identities, ideologies, and mythologies. Through a variety of films--silent, "classic," and "revisionist"--and supplementary readings, examines the intertwined themes of progress, civilization, region, nation, democracy, race, gender, and violence. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

AMST 112b American Film and Culture of the 1950s
[ ss ]
Traces the decline of classical Hollywood cinema and the impact of motion pictures on American culture in the 1950s, especially Hollywood's representations of the Cold War. Students learn methods of cinematic analysis to conduct cultural historical inquiry. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

AMST 113a American Film and Culture of the 1940s
[ ss ]
Examines the nature of classical Hollywood cinema and the impact of motion pictures on American culture in the 1940s, especially Hollywood's representations of World War II. Students learn methods of cinematic analysis to conduct cultural historical inquiry. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

AMST 113b American Film and Culture of the 1930s
[ ss ]
Traces the rise of Hollywood sound cinema and the impact of motion pictures on American culture in the 1930s, especially Hollywood's representations of the Great Depression. Students learn methods of cinematic analysis to conduct cultural historical inquiry. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

AMST 114a American Film and Culture of the 1920s
[ ss ]
Traces the rise and fall of silent Hollywood cinema and the impact of motion pictures on American culture in the 1920s, especially Hollywood's role in the revolution in morals and manners. Students learn methods of cinematic analysis to conduct cultural historical inquiry. All films are screened with a music score or live piano accompaniment. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

AMST 118a Gender and the Professions
[ ss ]
Explores gender distinctions as a key element in the organization of professions, analyzing the connections among sex roles, occupational structure, and American social life. Topics include work culture, pay equity, the "mommy" and "daddy" tracks, sexual discrimination and harassment, and dual-career families. Among the professions examined are law, medicine, teaching, social work, nursing, journalism, business, and politics. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Antler

AMST 121a The American Jewish Woman: 1890-1990s
[ ss ]
Surveys the experiences of American Jewish women in work, politics, religion, family life, the arts, and American culture generally over the last 100 years, examining how the dual heritage of female and Jewish "otherness" shaped often-conflicted identities. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Antler

AMST 123b Women in American History: 1865 to the Present
[ ss ]
A historical and cultural survey of the female experience in the United States, with emphasis on issues of education, work, domestic ideology, sexuality, male-female relations, race, class, politics, war, the media, feminism, and antifeminism. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Antler

AMST 124b American Love and Marriage
[ ss ]
Ideas and behavior relating to love and marriage are used as lenses to view broader social patterns such as family organization, generational conflict, and the creation of professional and national identity. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Antler

AMST 127b Women and American Popular Culture
[ ss ]
Examines women's diverse representations and participation in the popular culture of the United States. Using historical studies, advertising, film, television, music, and literature, discusses how constructions of race, gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion have shaped women's encounters with popular and mass culture. Topics include women and modernity, leisure and work, women's roles in the rise of consumer culture and relation to technology, representations of sexuality, and the impact of feminism. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Dave

AMST 130b Television and American Culture
[ ss ]
An interdisciplinary course with three main lines of discussion and investigation: an aesthetic inquiry into the meaning of television style and genre; a historical consideration of the medium and its role in American life; and a technological study of televisual communication. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Doherty

AMST 131b News on Screen
[ ss ]
An interdisciplinary course exploring how journalistic practice is mediated by the moving image--cinematic, televisual, and digital. The historical survey will span material from the late-nineteenth-century "actualities" of Thomas Edison and the Lumiere Brothers to the viral environment of the World Wide Web, a rich tradition that includes newsreels, expeditionary films, screen magazines, combat reports, government information films, news broadcasts, live telecasts, television documentaries, amateur video, and the myriad blogs, vlogs, and webcasts of the digital age. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Doherty

AMST 132b International Affairs and the American Media
[ ss ]
Examines and assesses American media coverage of major international events and perspectives, with special emphasis on the Middle East. In addition to analyzing the political, economic, cultural, and tactical factors that influence coverage, students will be challenged to consider the extent to which the American media has influenced their own understanding of the crisis in the Middle East and the relationship the United States has with that part of the world. Students will engage in online chats with students in the Middle East, and they will write and edit their own television news pieces about developments in the region. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Farrelly

AMST 134b The New Media in America
[ ss ]
Analyzes the adaptation of new media in American society and culture. Examines the ways Americans have thought about and utilized new methods of mass communication in the twentieth century. Usually offered every year.
Staff

AMST 135b Radio in American Culture
[ ss ]
Explores the cultural history of radio: the broadcast industry, legislation and regulation, and programming from 1920 to the present. Topics include news, advertising, serial drama, comedy, wartime radio, religion, race, Top 40, and sports/talk radio, using both texts and program recordings. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

AMST 137b Journalism in Twentieth-Century America
[ ss ]
Examines what journalists have done, how their enterprise has in fact conformed with their ideals, and what some of the consequences have been for the republic historically. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Whitfield

AMST 139b Reporting on Gender, Race, and Culture
[ ss ]
Examines the news media's relationship to demographic and cultural change, and the influence of journalistic ideologies on the coverage of women and various ethnic and cultural groups. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

AMST 140b The Asian-American Experience
[ oc ss ]
Examines the political, economic, social, and contemporary issues related to Asians in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Topics include patterns of immigration and settlement, and individual, family, and community formation explored through history, literature, personal essays, films, and other popular media sources. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Dave

AMST 141b The Native American Experience
[ ss ]
Survey of Native American history and culture with focus on the social, political, and economic changes experienced by Native Americans as a result of their interactions with European explorers, traders, and colonists. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

AMST 142b Love, Law, and Labor: Asian American Women and Literature
[ ss ]
Explores the intersection of ethnicity, race, class, gender, and sexualities in the lives and literatures of diverse Asian American women. Discusses the historical, social, political, and economic forces shaping those lives and how they are reflected in literature. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Dave

AMST 144b Signs of Imagination: Gender and Race in Mass Media
[ ss ]
Examines how men and women are represented and represent themselves in American popular culture. Discusses the cultural contexts of the terms "femininity" and "masculinity" and various examples of the visibility and marketability of these terms today. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Dave

AMST 149a On the Edge of History
[ ss ]
Examines how visionaries, novelists, historians, social scientists, and futurologists in America from 1888 to the present have imagined and predicted America's future and what those adumbrations--correct and incorrect--tell us about our life today, tomorrow, and yesterday, when the predictions were made. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Cohen

AMST 150a The History of Childhood and Youth in America
[ ss ]
Examines cultural ideas and policies about childhood and youth, as well as child-rearing and parenting strategies, child-saving, socialization, delinquency, children's literature, television, and other media for children and youth. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Antler

AMST 155a American Individualism
[ ss ]
Examines the central dilemmas of the American experience through various major works. Topics include the ambition to transcend social and personal limitations and the tension between demands of self and the hunger for community. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Whitfield

AMST 156b America in the World
[ ss ]
Examines how the United States has interacted with the rest of the world, especially Europe, as a promise, as a dream, as a cultural projection. Focuses less on the flow of people than on the flow of ideas, less on the instruments of foreign policy than on the institutions that have promoted visions of democracy, individual autonomy, power, and abundance. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Whitfield

AMST 160a U.S. Immigration History and Policy
[ ss ]
Examines the economic, political, and ideological factors underlying immigration policy in U.S. history, especially since 1965. Analysis of contemporary immigration, refugee and asylum issues, and problems of immigrant acculturation today. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

AMST 163b The Sixties: Continuity and Change in American Culture
[ ss ]
Analyzes alleged changes in the character structure, social usages, governing myths and ideas, artistic sensibility, and major institutions of America during the 1960s. What were the principal causes and occasions for the change? Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Cohen

AMST 167b The Cultural Work of Religion in America
[ ss ]
Examines the roles of religion in the adaptation of ethnic and racial cultures to one another in the United States and to the mainstream American culture. Topics include the ways in which Americans used their religious institutions to assimilate newcomers and to contain those they defined as the "other," the religions of immigrants, and the responses of immigrants and Americans to religious pluralism. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

AMST 168b American Religious History
[ ss wi ]
Charts the origins and development of the various--and primarily Judeo-Christian--religious movements that have shaped and been shaped by the American experience. Topics include the origins of the "Bible Belt," the religious debate over slavery, the black church in America, the social gospel, and the difference between fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Farrelly

AMST 169a Ethnicity, Immigration, and Race in the United States
[ ss ]
Provides an introductory overview of the study of race, ethnicity, and culture in the United States. Focuses on the historical, sociological, and political movements that affected the arrival and settlement of African, Asian, European, American Indian, and Latino populations in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Utilizing theoretical and discursive perspectives, compares and explores the experiences of these groups in the United States in relation to issues of immigration, population relocations, government and civil legislation, ethnic identity, gender and family relations, class, and community. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Dave

AMST 170a The Idea of Conspiracy in American Culture
[ ss ]
Considers the "paranoid style" in America's political and popular culture and in recent American literature. Topics include allegations of "conspiracy" in connection with the Sacco and Vanzetti, Hiss, and Rosenberg cases; antisemitism and anti-Catholicism; and Watergate and Irangate. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Cohen

AMST 175a Violence (and Nonviolence) in American Culture
[ ss ]
Studies the use of terror and violence by citizens and governments in the domestic history of the United States. What are the occasions and causes of violence? How is it imagined, portrayed, and explained in literature? Is there anything peculiarly American about violence in America--nonviolence and pacifism? Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Cohen

AMST 180b Topics in the History of American Education
[ ss ]
Examines major themes in the history of American education, including changing ideas about children, childrearing, and adolescence; development of schools; the politics of education; education and individual life history. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Antler

AMST 183b Sports and American Culture
[ ss ]
Studies how organized sports have reflected changes in the American cultural, social, and economic scene, and how they have reflected and shaped the moral codes, personal values, character, style, myths, attachments, sense of work and play, fantasy, and reality of fans and athletes. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Cohen

AMST 185b The Culture of the Cold War
[ ss ]
Addresses American political culture from the end of World War II until the revival of liberal movements and radical criticism. Focuses on the specter of totalitarianism, the "end of ideology," McCarthyism, the crisis of civil liberties, and the strains on the pluralistic consensus in an era of anti-Communism. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Whitfield

AMST 186a Topics in Ethics, Justice, and Public Life
[ ss ]
Introduces a significant international ethics or social justice theme and prepares students to integrate academic and community work during an internship. Special attention is given to comparative issues between the United States and other nations and regions. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

AMST 187a The Legal Boundaries of Public and Private Life
[ ss ]
Confrontations of public interest and personal rights across three episodes in American cultural history: post-Civil War race relations; progressive-era economic regulation; and contemporary civil liberties, especially sexual and reproductive privacy. Critical legal decisions examined in social and political context. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Gaskins

AMST 188b Justice Brandeis and Progressive Jurisprudence
[ ss ]
Brandeis's legal career serves as model and guide for exploring the ideals and anxieties of American legal culture throughout the twentieth century. Focuses on how legal values evolve in response to new technologies, corporate capitalism, and threats to personal liberty. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Gaskins

AMST 189a Legal Foundations of American Capitalism
[ ss ]
Surveys core legal institutions of property, contracts, and corporations. Examines how law promotes and restrains the development of capitalism and market society in America, from the era of mass production through the age of global trade and digital commerce. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Gaskins

AMST 191b Greening Campus and Community: Improving Environmental Sustainability at Brandeis and Beyond
[ oc ss ]
In this hands-on course, students design and implement environmental sustainability initiatives to benefit the campus and the local community. Students analyze the environmental impact of human activities within the existing legal, political, and social structure; learn basic research strategies for auditing and assessing the effect of these activities; and contribute to the overall understanding of the environmental impact of the Brandeis community on its surroundings. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Goldin