Provisional University Bulletin (2026-2027)

• Major (BA)

The American Studies major takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of American identity and identities – the beliefs, values, ideas, and traditions that have animated American culture and been manifest in the country’s institutions, laws, history, and art (broadly defined).

The major seeks to provide students with an informed awareness of the ways in which American culture has shaped and been shaped by the lives, aspirations, thinking, and action of its own citizens and the citizens of other nations.

Particular disciplines and areas of focus within the major include History, Literature, Film, Religion, Politics, Journalism, Music, Women’s and Gender Studies, Legal Studies, and Environmental Studies.

Typically, students who major in American Studies anticipate careers in fields such as law, business, public service, education, journalism, and the entertainment industry.

The goal of the American Studies major is to encourage students to view America as a distinct culture – one that has been constructed over time by a series of deliberate actions and unplanned developments, and is composed of a diverse selection of peoples, experiences, traditions, and values.

Ideally, students will come to see American identity as something that must be actively assumed. They will see American culture as something worthy of deep interrogation. And they will be able to situate American culture within a global context, recognizing its indebtedness to and influence on some of the political, legal, artistic, and religious cultures found in other parts of the world.

The major consists of a two-semester sequence of courses that examine the history of American culture from the seventeenth century to the present. Students must also take at least one other course that is taught by a faculty member on the American Studies Committee and is designated as an “AMST” course (as opposed to a course that is cross-listed with the major, but is housed in a different department). The goal is to have students explore the construction and evolution of particular American ideas and identities across an extended period of time and within a variety of disciplines and genres.

In addition to these three courses, students take six elective courses from a list of approved classes that are either housed in the American Studies program or cross-listed with it.

Knowledge

Students completing the major in American Studies will be able to:

1. Identify and understand many of the most influential, widely regarded, ground-breaking, and pivotal texts in American cultural history.
2. Understand the historical roots of many of the contemporary issues, institutions, movements, and policies affecting life in the United States.
3. Situate American culture within a global context, recognizing its indebtedness to and influence on some of the political, legal, artistic, religious, and environmental cultures found in other parts of the world.
4. View America as a distinct culture – one that has been constructed over time by a series of deliberate actions and unplanned developments, and is composed of a diverse selection of peoples, experiences, traditions, and values.

Core Skills

The American Studies major emphasizes core skills in analysis, critical thinking, research, and communication. Within the major, students are challenged to:

1. Perform "close readings" of a variety of texts – identifying core ideas or arguments within the texts and recognizing the details, evidence, patterns, and forms that reflect or advance the ideas or arguments.
2. Develop clear, logical, substantiated, and convincing arguments and articulate those arguments in writing and in speech.
3. Recognize the difference between a primary and secondary source – and use each kind of source effectively and appropriately.
4. Conduct research utilizing both digital and analog resources.

Social Justice

The American Studies curriculum prepares students for lives of civic engagement, providing the knowledge and skills necessary to contribute to public debate, scholarship, and policy initiatives related to social justice in the modern world. The curriculum fosters an open climate for consideration of a full range of ideological, political, social, cultural, and religious perspectives about the United States in the world.

We take pride in our long tradition of faculty involvement in social and political life, refining ways in which scholarship and activism can be combined to improve the common good. American Studies faculty developed the idea for Brandeis’ Transitional Year Program, which served as a template for many other college programs. Our faculty have also been involved in many public service enterprises at the local, national, and global levels. Numerous American Studies courses, particularly those taught by the directors of the Environmental Studies Program, the Legal Studies Program, and the Journalism Program, incorporate experiential learning components, which directly connect learning to issues of social justice.

Upon Graduation

American Studies graduates go on to careers in a variety of fields, including journalism and communication; law and politics; government and public policy; film, television and the entertainment industry; advertising, public relations, business, and marketing. Majors often enter academic scholarship in a variety of fields, including but not limited to American Studies.

Normally, students declare their major in their sophomore year and complete the three required courses by the end of their junior year. Working with an American Studies adviser, students are urged to develop a coherent selection of electives tailored to their particular interests and gifts. Most majors take several courses that are taught by members of the American Studies Committee. Courses in other departments that satisfy American Studies elective requirements are listed below and are also listed on the American Studies website. Students who wish to be considered for honors in American Studies 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.

Maura Farrelly, Chair
Journalism, religion, colonial and early America, Gilded Age.

Thomas Doherty
Media and culture, twentieth century.

Affiliated Faculty

(contributing to the curriculum, advising and administration of the department or program)

Daniel Breen
(Legal Studies)

Leah Gordon
(Education)

Rosalind Kabrhel
(Legal Studies)

Jonathan Krasner
(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Neil Swidey
(Journalism)

Jerome Tharaud
(English)

1. At least one course in the American Studies cluster: AMST 30b, AMST 35a, AMST 36b, AMST 46b, AMST 50b, AMST 60a, AMST 66b, AMST 103b, AMST 106b, AMST 131b, AMST 136a, AMST 150a, AMST 177b, AMST 180b, AMST 188b, AMST/ED 120a, AMST/ED 121a, AMST/ENG 47a, AMST/ENG 138a, AMST/ENG 167b, AMST/JOUR 109b, AMST/JOUR 113a, AMST/JOUR 137b, AMST/LGLS 140b, AMST/LGLS 141b, AMST/MUS 35a, AMST/MUS 38a, AMST/MUS 39b, AMST/MUS 41a, and AMST/MUS 55a.
2. Two core courses in American culture, taken sequentially: AMST 100a and 100b.
3. Six additional courses from American Studies or from the cross-listed section below.
4. Foundational Literacies: As part of completing the American Studies major, students must:
   • Fulfill the writing intensive requirement by successfully completing: AMST 100a.
   • Fulfill the oral communication requirement by successfully completing: Any OC-designated course approved for the major.
   • Fulfill the digital literacy requirement by successfully completing: AMST 100b.
5. No course, whether required or elective, for which a student receives a grade below a C-minus or any course taken pass/fail may be counted toward the major.
6. To be eligible for honors, seniors must successfully complete AMST 99d (Senior Research) and participate in a year-long honors colloquium. AMST 99d does not satisfy other major requirements.
7. No more than two courses satisfying a second major or minor may be used to complete the American Studies major. Courses taught by American Studies faculty in Journalism, Legal Studies, Education, or Environmental Studies are exempted from this limit. Students should ask the American Studies Chair for a list of such faculty.

AMST 30b American Environmental History
[ ss wi ]

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 year.

AMST 35a Hollywood and American Culture
[ ss ]

This is an interdisciplinary course in Hollywood cinema and American culture that aims to do justice to both arenas. Students will learn the terms of filmic grammar, the meanings of visual style, and the contexts of Hollywood cinema from The Birth of a Nation (1915) to last weekend's top box office grosser. They will also master the major economic, social, and political realities that make up the American experience of the dominant medium of our time, the moving image, as purveyed by Hollywood. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 50b Religion in American Life
[ ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took AMST 167b in prior years.

Considers the historical influence of religious belief on various aspects of American political, cultural, legal, and economic life. Topics include the use and effectiveness of religious language in political rhetoric, from the American Revolution to the War in Iraq; the role that religious belief has played in galvanizing and frustrating various reform movements; and the debate over the proper role of religion in the public square. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 55a Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration in American Culture
[ 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.

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.

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.

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.

AMST 98a Independent Study

Usually offered every year.

AMST 98b Independent Study

Yields half-course credit.

Usually offered every year.

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.

AMST/ENG 6a The American Renaissance
[ hum ]

Explores the transformation of U.S. literary culture before the Civil War: transcendentalism, the romance, the slave narrative, domestic fiction, sensationalism, and their relation to the visual art and architecture of the period. Authors will include Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, Poe, Ridge, and Crafts. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/ENG 16b Mark Twain’s World

Read major works by Mark Twain alongside several of his contemporaries as a lens through which to view key currents of American and global modernity, including race, colonialism, democracy, and secularization. Topics include the critical debate over the depiction of race and slavery in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the role of humor in social and political change. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/ENG 47a Frontier Visions: The West in American Literature and Culture
[ hum oc ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 47a in prior years.

Explores more than two centuries of literary and visual culture about the American West, including the frontier myth, Indian captivity narratives, frontier humor, dime novel and Hollywood westerns, the Native American Renaissance, and western regionalism. Authors include Black Hawk, Cather, Doig, Silko, Turner, and Twain. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/MUS 35a Rock, Country, and Hip-Hop: History of American Popular Music
[ ca oc ]

Formerly offered as MUS 35a.

Examines the historical context, stylistic development, and cultural significance of rock and roll and other closely related genres, spanning the 1950s through the present. Close attention is paid to how political and social changes have interacted with technological innovations through commercial music to challenge, affirm and shape ideas of race, gender, class and sexuality in the United States. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/MUS 39b Protest Through Song: Music that Shaped America
[ ca oc ss ]

Open to music majors and non-majors.

Examines 20th and 21st century protest music to better understand the complex relationships between music and social movements. Through class discussions, reading, writing, and listening assignments, and a final performance students will discover how social, cultural, and economic protest songs helped shape American culture. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/MUS 55a Music in Film: Hearing American Cinema
[ ca oc ]

Formerly offered as MUS 55a.

Examines the aesthetics and the history of music in film. Through lecture, class discussions, screenings, and readings, the course teaches students how to critically read image, script, and music as an integrated cultural text, ultimately helping one understand and appreciate the progression of film and sound technology from the 1890s to the present. Usually offered every third year.

AMST 100a Foundations of American Culture
[ ss wi ]

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 fall.

AMST 100b Twentieth-Century American Culture
[ dl 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 spring.

AMST 103b Advertising and the Media
[ ss ]

Combines a historical and contemporary analysis of advertising's role in developing and sustaining consumer culture in America with a practical analysis of the relationship between advertising and the news media in the United States. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 106b Food and Farming in America
[ ss wi ]

Yields four semester-hour credits towards rate of work and graduation.

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.

AMST 121a The American Jewish Woman: 1890-Present
[ 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.

AMST 129a From American Movie Musicals to Music Videos
[ ss ]

Examines the spectacle of song and dance in movie musicals and music videos, beginning with the earliest talking pictures in the late 1920's and continuing to the present. Particular emphasis will be on technological change, race, gender and the commodification of culture, among other topics. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 131b News on Screen
[ ss ]

An interdisciplinary course exploring how journalistic practice is mediated by 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.

AMST 135a Photography and American Culture
[ ss ]

Looks at how photography has (and has not) shaped understanding of certain key themes and issues in American history and culture-and how American history and culture have (and have not) done the same to photography. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 136a Planet Hollywood: American Cinema in Global Perspective
[ hum ss ]

Examines the global reach of Hollywood cinema as an art, business, and purveyor of American values, tracking how Hollywood has absorbed foreign influences and how other nations have adapted and resisted the Hollywood juggernaut. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 149a The Future as History
[ ss ]

What does art have to say about the future? What new ways of conceiving of, and caring for, the future have literary and visual texts devised over the past two centuries? In exploring the art of the future of the past two centuries, you will read sci-fi & fantasy by authors like Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, N.K. Jemisin, and Ursula Le Guin, as well as texts like Invisible Man and Velvet Goldmine that set the future not in worlds to come but in the narrative potential of the present and times gone by. By attending to alternative temporalities and their genres—queer, spectral, cyborg, planetary, and many more—we will engage topics of major importance like reparations, environmental catastrophe, and liberation theology. By the end of the semester, we will develop a new understanding of time and its relation to history. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 150a The History of Childhood and Youth in America
[ ss ]

Examines history, cultural ideas, and policies about childhood and youth, as well as children's literature, television, and other media for children and youth. Includes an archival-based project on the student movement in the 1960s. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 166b American Political Satire
[ ss ]

Political satire has a rich history as a tool of dissent in America, and has taken many forms, from magazine cartoons to song parodies to television comedy. Today, satirists are part of a national debate over censorship, political correctness, and jokes that 'go too far,' and some critics wonder if satire has been weaponized by the alt-right. In this class, we will explore different types of political satire in the United States, including digital and newspaper cartoons, stand-up comedy, tweets and memes, podcasts, and television shows like Saturday Night Live, from the 19th to the 21st centuries. We will share examples of Presidential satire leading up to the November election. And we will discuss the following questions: Can political satire produce social change? Does it function as entertainment or activism? How has political satire evolved over time? Usually offered every fourth year.

AMST 170a The Paranoid Style in American Culture
[ ss ]

From the Salem witch trials to QAnon, fears of cabals and conspiracies have darkened the American imagination. Course offers a historical overview, along with close attention to novels by Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick and Don DeLillo, and such films as The Manchurian Candidate and Chinatown. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 177b True Crime and American Culture_
[ ss ]

Explores a series of enduringly fascinating cases from the true crime files of American culture. Our crime scene investigations range from 1692 Salem to 1994 Brentwood; our line-up includes witches, outlaws, kidnappers, gangsters, murderers, and serial killers; and our evidence is drawn from literature, film, and television. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 180b Topics in the History of American Education
[ deis-us ss ]

Examines major themes in the history of American education, including the development of schools; changing ideas about education; the quest for equity and inclusion; the place of religion; the role of the media, and efforts at reform, privatization, and corporatization. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/ED 120a History of Higher Education in the U.S.
[ deis-us ss ]

Explores the history of higher education in the United States from the nation's formation to the present. Readings outline the competing purposes Americans envisioned for colleges and universities, as well as student life, institutional access, and visions of the relationship between excellence and equity. The course explores patterns of inclusion and exclusion based on race, class, ethnicity, religion, and gender and how universities served as sites where class was produced and contested. Students explore the post-World War II democratization of American higher education, the politics of college admissions, and recent movements to make college more affordable. The course also raises questions about the power universities came to hold as centers of knowledge-making networks and universities as sites of political activism. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/ED 121a Education and Equity in Modern American History
[ deis-us ss ]

Focusing on educational inequities related to race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status, this course examines twentieth century American efforts to make schools more equal, and in the process to make the social, economic, and racial order more just and fair. The course focuses on the ways Americans have addressed three core questions: What is educational equity? What is the relationship between school desegregation and equalization? Can equal schools create an equal society? By exploring how Americans thought about and sought to institutionalize their answers to these questions, the course investigates the promise and pitfalls of treating schooling as an egalitarian tool. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/ENG 116b American Culture Across the Disciplines
[ hum ]

Explores the latest research on American culture by Brandeis faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Each week a different faculty member will join us to discuss their latest book or article, the questions that animate their research, and the archives, methodologies, and theories they use to answer them. Usually offered every fourth year.

AMST/ENG 138a Race, Region, and Religion in the Twentieth-Century South
[ deis-us hum wi ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 38b in prior years.

Twentieth century fiction of the American South. Racial conflict, regional identity, religion, and modernization in fiction from both sides of the racial divide and from both sides of the gender line. Texts by Chestnutt, Faulkner, Warren, O'Connor, Gaines, McCarthy, and Ellison. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/ENG 146a Reading the American Revolution
[ dl hum ]

Explores the role of emerging literary forms and media in catalyzing, shaping, and remembering the American Revolution. Covers revolutionary pamphlets, oratory, the constitutional ratification debates, seduction novels, poetry, and plays. Includes authors Foster, Franklin, Jefferson, Paine, Publius, Tyler, and Wheatley. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/ENG 154b Spirit Worlds: Religion and Early American Literature
[ hum ]

Explores how the religious imagination shaped literary expression in colonial America and the early United States, and how early American religion is represented in contemporary culture. Authors may include Ann Bradstreet, Charles Brockden Brown, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Arthur Miller, and Nat Turner. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/ENG 167b Writing the Nation: James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison
[ deis-us hum ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 57b in prior years.

An in-depth study of three major American authors of the twentieth century. Highlights the contributions of each author to the American literary canon and to its diversity. Explores how these novelists narrate cross-racial, cross-gendered, cross-regional, and cross-cultural contact and conflict in the United States. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/JOUR 109b Reinventing Journalism on the Local Level
[ dl ss wi ]

Prerequisite: JOUR 101a is strongly recommended.

This fast-paced, experiential course examines media innovation at work, from digital storytelling to data visualization, at both start-up and legacy media outlets. Students will then put what they learn into action: reporting and producing multimedia news stories and participating in weekly workshops to sharpen their work so it can be published in a respected, professional local-news outlet. Students will be required to travel to Brookline for this course (BranVan provided). Students may use this course, in combination with JOUR 89A, to fulfill the JOUR minor’s internship requirement (instead of completing an outside internship). Usually offered every year.

AMST/JOUR 113a Long-form Journalism: Storytelling for Magazines and Podcasts
[ dl oc ss ]

What makes for a great story? This course will examine the hallmarks of successful narrative nonfiction, in both written and audio form. Students will analyze award-winning magazine stories as well as reporting-based podcasts that have injected new energy and financial success into the journalism world. They will learn story structure and techniques to capture and hold the audience's attention. And they will learn by doing, producing their own podcasts and written pieces. This course fulfills the Reporting requirement of the Journalism minor. Usually offered every year.

AMST/JOUR 137b Journalism in Modern America
[ ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took AMST 137b in prior years.

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.

AMST/LGLS 140b Investigating Justice
[ deis-us ss wi ]

Prerequisite: LGLS 10a or FYS 12a.

Examines methods used by journalists and other investigators in addressing injustices within criminal and civil legal systems. Problems include wrongful convictions, civil rights, privacy protection, and ethical conflicts. Research methods and reporting techniques enhance skills in interviewing, writing, and oral presentation. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/LGLS 141b Juvenile Justice: From Cradle to Custody
[ deis-us djw ss ]

After an overview of the basics of juvenile justice in the United States, this course examines the realities and remedies for the cradle-to-prison pipeline, analyzing this pattern from the perspectives of law, society, and economics, tracing the child's experience along that path, and exploring creative public solutions. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/LGLS 188b Louis Brandeis: Law, Business and Politics
[ 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.

HIST 161b American Political History
[ deis-us ss ]

Development of American party politics, the legal system, and government. Special attention paid to the social and cultural determinants of party politics, and economic and social policymaking. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 30b American Environmental History
[ ss wi ]

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 year.

AMST 35a Hollywood and American Culture
[ ss ]

This is an interdisciplinary course in Hollywood cinema and American culture that aims to do justice to both arenas. Students will learn the terms of filmic grammar, the meanings of visual style, and the contexts of Hollywood cinema from The Birth of a Nation (1915) to last weekend's top box office grosser. They will also master the major economic, social, and political realities that make up the American experience of the dominant medium of our time, the moving image, as purveyed by Hollywood. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 50b Religion in American Life
[ ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took AMST 167b in prior years.

Considers the historical influence of religious belief on various aspects of American political, cultural, legal, and economic life. Topics include the use and effectiveness of religious language in political rhetoric, from the American Revolution to the War in Iraq; the role that religious belief has played in galvanizing and frustrating various reform movements; and the debate over the proper role of religion in the public square. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 103b Advertising and the Media
[ ss ]

Combines a historical and contemporary analysis of advertising's role in developing and sustaining consumer culture in America with a practical analysis of the relationship between advertising and the news media in the United States. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 106b Food and Farming in America
[ ss wi ]

Yields four semester-hour credits towards rate of work and graduation.

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.

AMST 131b News on Screen
[ ss ]

An interdisciplinary course exploring how journalistic practice is mediated by 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.

AMST 136a Planet Hollywood: American Cinema in Global Perspective
[ hum ss ]

Examines the global reach of Hollywood cinema as an art, business, and purveyor of American values, tracking how Hollywood has absorbed foreign influences and how other nations have adapted and resisted the Hollywood juggernaut. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 150a The History of Childhood and Youth in America
[ ss ]

Examines history, cultural ideas, and policies about childhood and youth, as well as children's literature, television, and other media for children and youth. Includes an archival-based project on the student movement in the 1960s. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 177b True Crime and American Culture_
[ ss ]

Explores a series of enduringly fascinating cases from the true crime files of American culture. Our crime scene investigations range from 1692 Salem to 1994 Brentwood; our line-up includes witches, outlaws, kidnappers, gangsters, murderers, and serial killers; and our evidence is drawn from literature, film, and television. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 180b Topics in the History of American Education
[ deis-us ss ]

Examines major themes in the history of American education, including the development of schools; changing ideas about education; the quest for equity and inclusion; the place of religion; the role of the media, and efforts at reform, privatization, and corporatization. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/ED 120a History of Higher Education in the U.S.
[ deis-us ss ]

Explores the history of higher education in the United States from the nation's formation to the present. Readings outline the competing purposes Americans envisioned for colleges and universities, as well as student life, institutional access, and visions of the relationship between excellence and equity. The course explores patterns of inclusion and exclusion based on race, class, ethnicity, religion, and gender and how universities served as sites where class was produced and contested. Students explore the post-World War II democratization of American higher education, the politics of college admissions, and recent movements to make college more affordable. The course also raises questions about the power universities came to hold as centers of knowledge-making networks and universities as sites of political activism. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/ED 121a Education and Equity in Modern American History
[ deis-us ss ]

Focusing on educational inequities related to race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status, this course examines twentieth century American efforts to make schools more equal, and in the process to make the social, economic, and racial order more just and fair. The course focuses on the ways Americans have addressed three core questions: What is educational equity? What is the relationship between school desegregation and equalization? Can equal schools create an equal society? By exploring how Americans thought about and sought to institutionalize their answers to these questions, the course investigates the promise and pitfalls of treating schooling as an egalitarian tool. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/ENG 47a Frontier Visions: The West in American Literature and Culture
[ hum oc ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 47a in prior years.

Explores more than two centuries of literary and visual culture about the American West, including the frontier myth, Indian captivity narratives, frontier humor, dime novel and Hollywood westerns, the Native American Renaissance, and western regionalism. Authors include Black Hawk, Cather, Doig, Silko, Turner, and Twain. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/ENG 138a Race, Region, and Religion in the Twentieth-Century South
[ deis-us hum wi ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 38b in prior years.

Twentieth century fiction of the American South. Racial conflict, regional identity, religion, and modernization in fiction from both sides of the racial divide and from both sides of the gender line. Texts by Chestnutt, Faulkner, Warren, O'Connor, Gaines, McCarthy, and Ellison. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/ENG 167b Writing the Nation: James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison
[ deis-us hum ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 57b in prior years.

An in-depth study of three major American authors of the twentieth century. Highlights the contributions of each author to the American literary canon and to its diversity. Explores how these novelists narrate cross-racial, cross-gendered, cross-regional, and cross-cultural contact and conflict in the United States. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/JOUR 109b Reinventing Journalism on the Local Level
[ dl ss wi ]

Prerequisite: JOUR 101a is strongly recommended.

This fast-paced, experiential course examines media innovation at work, from digital storytelling to data visualization, at both start-up and legacy media outlets. Students will then put what they learn into action: reporting and producing multimedia news stories and participating in weekly workshops to sharpen their work so it can be published in a respected, professional local-news outlet. Students will be required to travel to Brookline for this course (BranVan provided). Students may use this course, in combination with JOUR 89A, to fulfill the JOUR minor’s internship requirement (instead of completing an outside internship). Usually offered every year.

AMST/JOUR 113a Long-form Journalism: Storytelling for Magazines and Podcasts
[ dl oc ss ]

What makes for a great story? This course will examine the hallmarks of successful narrative nonfiction, in both written and audio form. Students will analyze award-winning magazine stories as well as reporting-based podcasts that have injected new energy and financial success into the journalism world. They will learn story structure and techniques to capture and hold the audience's attention. And they will learn by doing, producing their own podcasts and written pieces. This course fulfills the Reporting requirement of the Journalism minor. Usually offered every year.

AMST/JOUR 137b Journalism in Modern America
[ ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took AMST 137b in prior years.

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.

AMST/LGLS 140b Investigating Justice
[ deis-us ss wi ]

Prerequisite: LGLS 10a or FYS 12a.

Examines methods used by journalists and other investigators in addressing injustices within criminal and civil legal systems. Problems include wrongful convictions, civil rights, privacy protection, and ethical conflicts. Research methods and reporting techniques enhance skills in interviewing, writing, and oral presentation. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/LGLS 141b Juvenile Justice: From Cradle to Custody
[ deis-us djw ss ]

After an overview of the basics of juvenile justice in the United States, this course examines the realities and remedies for the cradle-to-prison pipeline, analyzing this pattern from the perspectives of law, society, and economics, tracing the child's experience along that path, and exploring creative public solutions. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/LGLS 188b Louis Brandeis: Law, Business and Politics
[ 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.

AMST/MUS 35a Rock, Country, and Hip-Hop: History of American Popular Music
[ ca oc ]

Formerly offered as MUS 35a.

Examines the historical context, stylistic development, and cultural significance of rock and roll and other closely related genres, spanning the 1950s through the present. Close attention is paid to how political and social changes have interacted with technological innovations through commercial music to challenge, affirm and shape ideas of race, gender, class and sexuality in the United States. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/MUS 39b Protest Through Song: Music that Shaped America
[ ca oc ss ]

Open to music majors and non-majors.

Examines 20th and 21st century protest music to better understand the complex relationships between music and social movements. Through class discussions, reading, writing, and listening assignments, and a final performance students will discover how social, cultural, and economic protest songs helped shape American culture. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/MUS 55a Music in Film: Hearing American Cinema
[ ca oc ]

Formerly offered as MUS 55a.

Examines the aesthetics and the history of music in film. Through lecture, class discussions, screenings, and readings, the course teaches students how to critically read image, script, and music as an integrated cultural text, ultimately helping one understand and appreciate the progression of film and sound technology from the 1890s to the present. Usually offered every third year.

AAAS 5a Introduction to African and African American Studies
[ deis-us dl ss ]

An interdisciplinary introduction to major topics in African and African American studies. Provides fundamental insights into Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas through approaches and techniques of social science and the humanities. Usually offered every year.

AAAS 79b African American Literature of the Twentieth Century
[ hum ss wi ]

An introduction to the essential themes, aesthetic concerns, and textual strategies that characterize African American writing of this century. Examines those influences that have shaped the poetry, fiction, and prose nonfiction of representative writers. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 155b Hip Hop History and Culture
[ ss ]

Examines the history of hip hop culture, in the broader context of U.S., African American and African diaspora history, from the 1960s to the present. Explores key developments, debates and themes shaping hip hop's evolution and contemporary global significance. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS/WGS 136a Black Feminist Thought
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Formerly offered as AAAS 136a.

Critical examination of the historical, political, economic, and ideological factors that have shaped the lives of African-American women in the United States. Analyzing foundation theoretical texts, fiction, and film over two centuries, this class seeks to understand black women's writing and political activism in the U.S. Usually offered every second year.

AAPI/ENG 22b Asian American Literature
[ deis-us hum ]

With its focus on a major and enduring racial formation in the U.S., this course covers a wide range of literary expressions of Asian American subjectivities forged in various flashpoints of American history, from the early days of Chinese “coolie” labor in the late nineteenth century to the contemporary moment of refugee migration. Along the way, we will learn about structures of violence that have manifested into exclusion laws, internment camps, devastating wars, and refugee displacements. Usually offered every fourth year.

AAPI/ENG 115a The Asian American Memoir
[ deis-us ]

The recent flourishing of the memoir genre in Asian American literature coincides with the increased visibility and participation of Asian Americans in U.S. culture and politics. This course examines how the memoir has found primacy as a literary genre for articulating Asian American political subjects over a century. We will query what it means to craft selfhood as a racial minority—complicated by class, gender and sexual identities—while navigating the gaps between private memories and national history. We will learn about flashpoints in the turbulent history of migration and wars between the U.S. and various Asian countries over the twentieth century through intimate accounts of lived experiences. We will study how various authors manage the intractable issue of unreliability in memory work while responding to the pressure of speaking for their communities. Above all, we will appreciate how, by articulating themselves, each author also theorizes America and their fraught relationship to it. Usually offered every third year.

AAPI/ENG 142a Vietnam War Representations
[ djw hum ]

Fifty years after it ended, the war in Vietnam seems marked for collective forgetting. Yet the war fundamentally changed the histories of Vietnam and the U.S. through the Cold War to the present day. Taking a transnational approach, this course will examine various understandings of the war through major U.S., Vietnamese, and Vietnamese diasporic literary texts and films from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. All course materials are in English. Usually offered every third year.

AAPI/HIS 163a Asian American History
[ deis-us dl ss ]

Provides students an introduction to the history and study of Asian persons in the United States from the mid-19th century to the present, with a focus on how their presence has shaped American institutions, society, and culture. We ask: How does our narrative of the United States shift when we center the experiences of Asian Americans—a group largely excluded or invisibilized in discussions of our nation’s collective past? How does studying Asian Americans push us to think about race and inequality beyond a Black-white binary? How does understanding anti-Asian racism inform our understanding of the US as a gatekeeping nation, at the same time the nation’s leaders purport it to be a melting pot and nation of immigrants? How do global politics and US imperial ventures into Asia—from formal colonial rule in the 19th century to US-waged wars and military interventions abroad in the 20th century—create waves of displaced peoples who are pushed towards America’s shores? Key themes and major events covered in this course include Orientalism, migrant labor, nativism and xenophobia, Chinese exclusion, US colonial empire, Japanese internment, the Cold War, refugees, the Asian American movement, anti-Asian violence and the murder of Vincent Chin, Asian/Black relations and the 1992 LA uprising, religion, islamophobia, the Global War on Terror, and much more. Usually offered every second year.

AAPI/HIS 171a The United States in the Pacific World
[ deis-us djw ss ]

How have U.S. imperial ventures—cultural, military, political, and economic—reconfigured local societies and geographies? What are the afterlives of those ventures and how have they reverberated between American society and the Pacific World? To answer these questions, this course explores the history of American incursion into places such as China, Hawai’i, the Philippines, Guam, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Sāmoa from the nineteenth century to present. We explore issues such as militarism and empire, labor and commerce, race and inequality, intimacy and sex, as well as migration, culture, and identity both in and across the Pacific Ocean. In focusing on the lasting legacies and human consequences of this contact, this course will allow students to: (1) think critically about US power (or what many scholars have called US empire) in the world, (2) deepen their understandings of the multiracial history and character of the United States, and (3) place the American experience within a larger global context. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/ENG 48a American Immigrant Narratives
[ deis-us hum wi ]

With its essential role in U.S. society and history, immigration figures prominently in the American literary canon. This course traverses varied immigrant tales of twentieth-century and contemporary United States, set in the frontier of westward expansion, the Golden West, and the Eastern Seaboard. Some classics of this vast cultural corpus will anchor our critical inquiries into subject and nation formation, citizenship, and marginalization under powerful political forces both at home and abroad. By probing the complex aesthetic modes and narrative strategies in these and other texts, we will investigate deeply felt impacts of ever-shifting American cultural politics shaping immigrant experiences. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/ENG 167b Writing the Nation: James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison
[ deis-us hum ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 57b in prior years.

An in-depth study of three major American authors of the twentieth century. Highlights the contributions of each author to the American literary canon and to its diversity. Explores how these novelists narrate cross-racial, cross-gendered, cross-regional, and cross-cultural contact and conflict in the United States. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/JOUR 109b Reinventing Journalism on the Local Level
[ dl ss wi ]

Prerequisite: JOUR 101a is strongly recommended.

This fast-paced, experiential course examines media innovation at work, from digital storytelling to data visualization, at both start-up and legacy media outlets. Students will then put what they learn into action: reporting and producing multimedia news stories and participating in weekly workshops to sharpen their work so it can be published in a respected, professional local-news outlet. Students will be required to travel to Brookline for this course (BranVan provided). Students may use this course, in combination with JOUR 89A, to fulfill the JOUR minor’s internship requirement (instead of completing an outside internship). Usually offered every year.

ANTH 61b Language in American Life
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Examines both language-in-use and ideas about language varieties in the United States from an anthropological perspective. Explores how language-in-use emerges from and builds relationships, social hierarchies, professional authority, religious experience, dimensions of identity such as gender and race, and more. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 159a Museums and Public Memory
[ oc ss ]

Explores the social and political organization of public memory, including museums, cultural villages, and memorial sites. Who has the right to determine the content and form of such institutions? Working with local community members, students will develop a collaborative exhibition project. Usually offered every second year.

ED 161b Religious Education in America
[ hum oc ]

No principle stands more sacred in American public education than separation of Church and state. Public schools pride themselves as neutral playing fields when it comes to matters of religion. But this position belies a more complicated history. American public schools were initially founded by protestant leaders concerned with an influx of non-protestant immigrants during the middle of the 19th century. Indeed, despite lip service to ideas like separation of Church and state, American educational leaders long saw schools as a vehicle for promoting a Protestant inflected American culture. This course begins from the premise that American education and American religion have always existed in relationship. Religious groups have sometimes tried to use the public schools as vehicles to advance their religion, sometimes, they have created supplemental schools, and sometimes they have created whole parallel school systems. But in all cases, education and religion in America are intertwined. This course asks when education is religious and when religion is educational. It examines a series of case studies drawn from different faith communities including Judaism, Evangelical Christianity, Catholicism, and Islam. Usually offered every second year.

ED 170a Race, Power, and Urban Education
[ deis-us oc ss wi ]

Examines the nature of urban schools, their links to the social and political context, and the perspectives of the people who inhabit them. Explores the historical development of urban schools; the social, economic, and personal hardships facing urban students; and challenges of urban school reform. Usually offered every year.

ENG 15b Black Joy
[ deis-us hum ]

Explores the exuberant and sometimes strained relationship between black people
and joy. In addition to literature, we will encounter various performances and perspectives that approach joy from multitude of perspectives, including minstrelsy, meditation, nature writing, ancestral remembrance, and the erotics of eating well and feeling good. Usually offered every year.

ENG 27b Classic Hollywood Cinema
[ hum ]

A critical examination of the history of mainstream U.S. cinema from the 1930s to the present. Focuses on major developments in film content and form, the rise and fall of the studio and star system, the changing nature of spectatorship, and the social context of film production and reception. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 30a Introduction to Graphic Novels
[ hum ]

Introduces students to the genre conventions and theoretical context necessary for the critical study of graphic novels. In particular, we examine single-author graphic novels that trouble the border between fiction and nonfiction--memoirs, graphic reportage, and speculative histories. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 46b American Gothic Romantic Fiction
[ hum wi ]

American Gothic and romantic fiction from Charles Brockden Brown to Cormac McCarthy. Texts by Brown, Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, O'Connor, Warren, and McCarthy. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 50b American Independent Film
[ hum ]

Explores non-studio filmmaking in the United States. Defines an indie aesthetic and alternative methods of financing, producing, and distributing films. Special attention given to adaptations of major film genres, such as noir thrillers, domestic comedy, and horror. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 102a Ghosts of Race
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Examines ghost stories and films from across the African Diasporic. Our discussions will consider a range of phenomena, from ancestral visitations and paranormal ethnography to haunted plantation tours. We will do so in order to highlight a variety of pressing themes within Black film and literatures, including trauma, memory, and xenophobia. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 116a Operation Shylock: Responding to Antisemitism in English and American Literature

Considers the theme of antisemitism in English and American literature: Does Judaism pose a challenge to non-Jewish literary culture? Is it an opportunity for asserting an allegedly enlightened nationalism? Does it help or hinder literary quality? How do Jewish writers treat this theme? What issues about intersectionality does the topic of antisemitism bring up, especially with respect to queer and Black literature? Usually offered every fourth year.

ENG 128a Race and US Cinema
[ deis-us hum ]

Explores the central role film plays in the construction and policing of racialized identities in the US. We will focus primarily, but not exclusively, on the Black/white binarism. The course is structured as a survey. US cinema originates in the white depiction of Blacks or in the white deployment of blackface, and racialized bodies continue to serve as a ubiquitous (if frequently unacknowledged) source of fascination and anxiety in contemporary cinema. We will begin with early 'whitewashing' films and D.W. Griffith's foundational epic, The Birth of a Nation, and conclude with new queer Black cinema and contemporary Black filmmakers. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 142a Blackness and Horror
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Cannot be taken by students who previously took ENG 42a.

Examines the tense and transformative place that blackness has within the horror tradition, beginning with the late nineteenth century and moving into the present. In addition to documentaries and critical texts, we will analyze literature, films, and various aspects of material culture that explore the relationship between blackness and horror. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 147a Film Noir
[ hum ]

A study of classics of the genre (The Killers, The Maltese Falcon, Touch of Evil) as well as more recent variations (Chinatown, Bladerunner). Readings include source fiction (Hemingway, Hammett) and essays in criticism and theory. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 166b The Promise of Poetry: Whitman, Dickinson, and Others
[ hum wi ]

Poetry of Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, and Melville, with representative poems of Whittier, Bryant, Longfellow, Poe, Sigourney, and Tuckerman. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 175b Getting Behind in Black Gay Men's Literatures
[ deis-us hum ]

Examines black queer men’s sexualities in the field of twentieth and twenty-first century American literatures. Our focus on “getting behind” draws together topics that we will explore throughout term. These include varying attitudes that black queer writers have toward cruising and intimacy; falling behind the times; and falling behind at work, or in life, because of certain sexual pursuits. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 177a Hitchcock's Movies
[ hum ]

A study of thirteen films covering the whole trajectory of Hitchcock's career, as well as interviews and critical responses. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 180a The Modern American Short Story
[ hum ]

Close study of American short-fiction masterworks. Students read as writers write, discussing solutions to narrative obstacles, examining the consequences of alternate points of view. Studies words and syntax to understand and articulate how technical decisions have moral and emotional weight. Usually offered every third year.

ENVS 108b Land Conservation in History, Policy, and Practice
[ ss ]

Explores land conservation in the context of the environmental and climate movements, focusing on both North America and international conservation work. It examines and critiques historical and contemporary approaches to conservation by a range of non-profit, private sector, and government actors. Usually offered every second year.

FA 56a American Art
[ ca deis-us ]

A survey of American painting from the colonial period to the early twentieth-century. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 50b Race and America: Perspectives on United States History, Origins to the Present
[ dl ss ]

Investigates U.S. history in a wider world, from its origins to the present, starting with the premise that American History itself is a construct of modern empire. Only by investigating the roots of power and resistance can we understand the forces that deeply influence our world as we live it today. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 132a The Stuff of Dreams: Consumerism in the Modern U.S.
[ ss ]

This lecture and discussion course explores the evolution of consumer life in the 20th century U.S. – how it has shaped American culture and politics, and how it has been shaped by them in turn. Tracking changes in mass production, marketing, and mass media, we will ask how Americans’ lives changed as they adopted new ways of consuming goods, food, clothing, housing, transportation, entertainment, and culture. We will also explore historical perspectives on consumerism, considering both celebratory and critical perspectives on its social and environmental impacts. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 144b Native North America
[ deis-us ss ]

Explores the history of peoples Indigenous to Turtle Island, or the lands known today as the United States. Over five hundred years, settlers carried out an invasion of the Native Old World, a place in which diverse Indigenous people developed robust civilizations and dealt with complex geopolitical rivalries. Contrary to settler assumptions, however, Indigenous peoples did not disappear in the face of European encroachment, nor did they consolidate into a singular stereotyped Indian figure. For this reason, our course will trace the diverse evolutions of distinct Indigenous societies as a result of their ordeals with colonization. In short, we will encounter the many Native New Worlds that emerged and endure today. Usually offered every year.

HIST 153b Slavery and the American Civil War: #1619 Project
[ deis-us dl ss ]

A hard look at American slavery from the Middle Passage to Mass Incarceration, plus an investigation into the Civil War through the lens of Black self-emancipation. Uses the tools and insights from #1619 Project. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 158b Social History of the Confederate States of America
[ deis-us dl ss ]

An examination of the brief life of the southern Confederacy, emphasizing regional, racial, class, and gender conflicts within the would-be new nation. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 160a American Legal History I
[ deis-us ss ]

Surveys American legal development from colonial settlement to the Civil War. Major issues include law as an instrument of revolution, capitalism and contract, invention of the police, family law, slavery law, and the Civil War as a constitutional crisis. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 160b American Legal History II
[ deis-us ss ]

Survey of American legal development from 1865 to the present. Major topics include constitutionalism and racial inequality, the legal response to industrialization, progressivism and the transformation of liberalism, the rise of the administrative state, and rights-based movements for social justice. Usually offered every year.

HIST 161b American Political History
[ deis-us ss ]

Development of American party politics, the legal system, and government. Special attention paid to the social and cultural determinants of party politics, and economic and social policymaking. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 164a Recent American History since 1945
[ ss ]

American politics, economics, and culture underwent profound transformations in the late twentieth century. Examines the period's turmoil, looking especially at origins and legacies. Readings include novels, memoirs, key political and social documents, and film and music excerpts. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 168b America in the Progressive Era: 1890-1920
[ deis-us ss ]

Surveys social and political history during the pivotal decades when America became a "modern" society and nation-state. Topics include populism, racial segregation, social science and public policy, the Roosevelt and Wilson administrations, environmental conservation, and the domestic impact of World War I. Usually offered every fourth year.

HIST 196a American Political Thought: From the 1950s to the Present
[ ss ]

Covers the New Left of the 1960s, its rejection of the outlook of the 1950s, the efforts of liberals to save the New Left agenda in the New Politics of the 1970s, and the reaction against the New Left in the neoconservative movement. Usually offered every second year.

HIST/JOUR 163a The Road to September 11th and Beyond: History and Media
[ djw oc ss ]

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center ushered in two U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and drained the U.S. Treasury of at least $8 trillion. 9/11 radically changed the dynamics between the U.S. and the Middle East, along with those between the press and military and government officials. Co-taught by a historian of modern Middle East and a journalist who extensively covered these events, this course aims to give students a fresh lens for examining the history and the aftermath of this crucial event from both a Middle Eastern and American perspective. Usually offered every second year.

HS 104b American Health Care
[ ss ]

Examines and critically analyzes the United States healthcare system, emphasizing the major trends and issues that have led to the current sense of "crisis." In addition to providing a historical perspective, this course will establish a context for analyzing the current, varied approaches to health care reform. Usually offered every year.

HS 110a Labor, Work, and Inequality
[ ss ]

Examines what economic and social factors drive inequality in terms of conditions at work, from wages to discrimination to worker voice, and how these conditions are connected to business decisions, government policies, union and worker advocacy, and worker norms and beliefs. Usually offered every year.

JOUR 45a Sports Journalism and Innovation
[ ss wi ]

Innovative journalists have found new, impactful ways to cover sports. In this course, students will practice the skills needed to craft meaningful stories across platforms, examine the role of the sportswriter in modern culture, and discuss how the sports media industry has evolved to include new niches and business models. Usually offered every second year.

JOUR 104a Political Packaging in America
[ ss ]

Examines the history of political marketing, image making in presidential campaigns, the relationship between news and ads, and the growth of public-policy advertising by special-interest groups to influence legislation. Usually offered every fourth year.

JOUR 107b Media and Public Policy
[ ss wi ]

Examines the intersection of the media and politics, the ways in which each influences the other, and the consequences of that intersection for a democracy. Through analytic texts, handouts, and contemporaneous newspaper and magazine articles, explores the relationship between policy decisions and public discourse. Usually offered every second year.

JOUR 110b Ethics in Journalism
[ deis-us ss wi ]

Should reporters ever misrepresent themselves? Is it ever acceptable to break the law in pursuit of a story? What kind of news footage is too graphic to share? By wrestling with difficult decisions in journalism, this course is designed to strengthen students’ critical thinking and news judgment. Usually offered every year.

JOUR 112b Social Journalism: The Art of Engaging Audiences
[ dl ss wi ]

Students will learn how to use social media storytelling to develop their own voices, sharpen their reporting skills, and reach new communities and platforms. They will also learn the art of tracking and building audiences through engagement tools and will critique the work of professionals and colleagues. Usually offered every second year.

JOUR 114b Arts Journalism, Pop Culture, and Digital Innovation
[ ss wi ]

How do journalists cover the arts in a world of ever-expanding online options, and where artists are increasingly telling their own stories through social media? This course explores the evolution of arts and entertainment coverage, from its earliest days to its current digital incarnation. Students will develop skills using new tools and innovative approaches to deliver meaningful pop culture coverage and cultural criticism. Usually offered every second year.

JOUR 120a The Culture of Journalism
[ ss ]

Examines the social, cultural, political and economic influences on the practice of journalism. In particular, the course will explore the generational debates around identity, advocacy, and digital disruption that newsrooms around the country are grappling with today, providing the background and concepts for a critical analysis of the contemporary American press. Counts toward History/Culture requirement for Journalism minor. Usually offered every second year.

JOUR 132b Covering the World: International Reporting and Global Affairs
[ ss ]

Explores the evolution of reporting on international affairs and other cultures for an American audience, and how the work of overseas correspondents shapes foreign policy and public opinion. It will examine the challenges facing journalists working in foreign countries and the ethical, cultural, technological, and political factors that influence the U.S. media's coverage of global affairs. Usually offered every second year.

LGLS 10a Introduction to Law
[ oc ss ]

Surveys the nature, process, and institutions of law: the reasoning of lawyers and judges, the interplay of cases and policies, the impact of history and culture, and the ideals of justice and responsibility in a global context. Usually offered every fall.

LGLS 114a American Health Care: Law and Policy
[ ss ]

Closed to first-year students.

Focuses on individual rights, highlights how our laws and policies affect American health care. Traces the evolution of the doctor-patient relationship; explores access issues, including whether health care is or should be a fundamental right; assesses the quality of care and the impact of malpractice; and examines the cost of having (or not having) adequate health insurance. Concludes with options and prospects for meaningful reform. Usually offered every year.
Sarah Curi

LGLS 116b Civil Rights and Civil Liberties: Constitutional Debates
[ ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who successfully completed POL 116b or LGLS/POL 116b previously.

The history and politics of civil liberties and civil rights in the United States, with emphasis on the period from World War I to the present. Emphasis on freedom of speech, religion, abortion, privacy, racial discrimination, and affirmative action. Readings from Supreme Court cases and influential works by historians and political philosophers. Usually offered every year.

LGLS 122b Indigenous Rights, Environmental Justice, and Federal Indian Law
[ ss wi ]

Provides a look at the intersection of indigenous rights, environmental justice, and federal Indian law. You will learn essential tools of legal reasoning and argument. Through in-class discussion, cases, and reading you will learn about conflicts over land use, climate change, and sovereignty. The course will be organized into weekly case studies where we will study contemporary and historical conflicts including: the Dakota Access pipeline, relocation due to sea level rise, fishing rights and dam removal, water rights in the face of drought, uranium mining, and Native Nation regulation of oil and gas extraction on reservation lands. Usually offered every second year.

LGLS 132b Environmental Law and Policy
[ oc ss wi ]

Provides a basic survey of environmental law. You will learn essential tools of legal reasoning and argument. Through in-class discussion, cases, and reading on environmental history and ethics, we will cover a range of environmental issues, including: climate change, water rights, the Keystone XL pipeline, our national parks and monuments, and much more. You will reflect on the tradeoffs, contradictions, and inequities baked into our core environmental laws, and think about ways to apply those laws in more equitable ways. Usually offered every year.

LGLS 134b Workers' Rights in the United States
[ deis-us ss ]

Explores the rights and laws governing workers as individuals and as a group in the context of the history of labor and workers in the United States since the 18th century. The course focuses on the history and changing rights of free laborers, men, women and children, though it addresses the fact of enslaved workers in the US before 1865. Enslaved workers, and the aftermath of slavery and racism, has continued to affect the development of conditions for workers in the US until the present day. We will take a particular interest in labor and workers’ rights history and cases from Massachusetts, which has had a significant place in the story from 19th century mills and factories through contemporary workers’ struggles on college campuses - including at Brandeis.

The course will incorporate voices and histories of workers from a variety of backgrounds in the United States, who have worked for rights, recognition, and better conditions. Bringing comparative perspectives, there will also be units studying legal paradigms from Jewish law about on the working day, paid breaks and commuting time, to round out perspectives on the long-standing issues facing workers and employers across the globe and across cultures. Usually offered every second year.

LGLS 138b Science on Trial
[ qr ss ]

Surveys the procedures and analytic methods by which scientific data enter into litigation and regulation/policy making. Introduces basic tools of risk analysis and legal rules of evidence. Case studies of tobacco litigation and regulation; use of DNA and other forensic evidence in the criminal justice system; the Woburn ground-water contamination case; and other topics to be selected, such as genetics in the courtroom, court-ordered Cesarean sections, polygraph testing, alternative medicine, and genetically modified foods. Usually offered every second year.

LGLS 145b Building the Massachusetts Constitution
[ ss ]

Explores the process of compromise and negotiation leading to the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, the world's oldest operative written constitution. Students learn innovative digital literacy methods by simulating the real-time process of law-building, using techniques developed by Oxford University researchers. Usually offered every second year.

MUS 32b Elements of Jazz
[ ca ]

Open to music majors and non-majors.

Examines the development of Jazz styles from the origins of Jazz in the late 1800's through today's Jazz masters. Early Jazz, Swing, Bebop, Cool, the year 1959, and Avant Garde are some of the styles we will be examining through recordings, videos, and in-class performances by local jazz musicians. The emphasis will be on learning how to listen to the various layers of the music and recognize specific stylistic techniques. Usually offered every third year.

MUS 58a Jazz History and American Culture
[ ca deis-us ]

An introductory survey to the history of jazz and the music's resonance in American cultural history. The course will outline key innovators and historical developments, as well as explore the music's social and political resonance. Certain units of the course will proceed via chronological history, while others will offer thematic examinations of how contemporary artists have used the music to respond to a variety of contemporary discourses. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 162a American Judaism
[ hum ss wi ]

American Judaism from the earliest settlement to the present, with particular emphasis on the various streams of American Judaism. Judaism's place in American religion and comparisons to Judaism in other countries. Usually offered every year.

NEJS 162b It Couldn't Happen Here: American Antisemitism in Historical Perspective
[ hum ]

A close examination of three American anti-Semitic episodes: U.S. Grant's expulsion of the Jews during the Civil War, the Leo Frank case, and the publication of Henry Ford's The International Jew. What do these episodes teach us about anti-semitic prejudice, about Jews, and about America as a whole? Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 164a Judaism Confronts America
[ hum wi ]

Examines, through a close reading of selected primary sources, central issues and tensions in American Jewish life, paying attention to their historical background and to issues of Jewish law. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 164b Sociology of the American Jewish Community
[ dl ss ]

A survey exploring the demographics, social dynamics, needs, and interests of the contemporary American Jewish community. Draws on social science texts, statistical studies, and qualitative research. Usually offered every year. Usually offered every year.

NEJS 169b From Sunday Schools to Birthright: History of American Jewish Education
[ hum ]

Empowers students to articulate a reality-based, transformative vision of Jewish education that is grounded in an appreciation for the history and sociology of American Jewish education. It will familiarize students with and contextualize the present Jewish educational landscape, through the use of historical case studies and current research, encouraging students to view the field from an evolutionary perspective. The seminar will address Jewish education in all its forms, including formal and informal settings (e.g., schools, camps, youth groups, educational tourism). Usually offered every third year.

NEJS 181a Jews on Screen: From "Cohen's Fire Sale" to the Coen Brothers
[ hum ]

Open to all students.

Survey course focusing on moving images of Jews and Jewish life in fiction and factual films. Includes early Russian and American silents, home movies of European Jews, Yiddish feature films, Israeli cinema, independent films, and Hollywood classics. Usually offered every second year.

POL 14b Introduction to American Government
[ ss ]

Open to first-year students.

Analysis of American political institutions: Congress, the presidency, Supreme Court, bureaucracy, political parties, pressure groups, and problems of governmental decision making in relation to specific areas of public policy. Usually offered every year.

POL 101a Political Parties and Interest Groups
[ ss ]

Examines the role and organization of political parties and interest groups in the American political system. Emphasis on developments with regard to the democracy-enhancing and democracy-subverting aspects of both organizations, particularly in a highly polarized environment. Usually offered every year.

POL 105a Elections in America
[ ss ]

Examines modern campaigns and elections to the United States presidency and Congress. Topics include the role of elections in democracy; electoral institutions and their impact on outcomes; recent presidential and congressional elections; voter participation and vote choice; the impact of money on campaigns; the role of the mass media; and reform proposals to address deficiencies in American electoral democracy. Usually offered every year.

POL 108a Seminar: The Police and Social Movements in American Politics
[ deis-us ss wi ]

Analyses American mass political movements, their interaction with police, and their influences on American politics. Topics include the relationship between social movements and various political institutions. Explore various theories with case studies of specific political movements. Usually offered every third year.

POL 111a The American Congress
[ oc ss ]

The structure and behavior of the Congress. Emphasis on the way member incentives for reelection, power on Capitol Hill, and good public policy shape Congress. Usually offered every second year.

POL 113b Seminar: The New Politics of Presidential Power
[ ss ]

The Trump administration has embarked on an ambitious initiative to significantly increase the formal and informal power of the American presidency. This course will examine the emerging literature on the ongoing reconstruction of this branch of government, with an emphasis on enforcement policies (e.g., criminal justice and immigration) and soft power techniques (e.g., persuasion and coercion through legal and cultural interventions), as well as Supreme Court rulings that affirm or constrain some of these practices. We will consider the theoretical, constitutional, and historical origins of this branch of government, and the more orthodox "modern" presidency of the 20th and 21st centuries to distinguish what are genuinely new and what are enhanced strategies and tactics. Usually offered every year.

POL 116b Civil Liberties and Constitutional Interpretation
[ deis-us ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who successfully completed LGLS 116b previously.

The history, politics, and theory of civil liberties and civil rights in the United States, with emphasis on the role of constitutional interpretation. Focus on speech, religion, affirmative action, policing, and prisoner rights. Readings from Supreme Court cases and legal/political philosophers. Usually offered every year.

POL 120b Seminar: The Politics of Policymaking
[ ss ]

Examines the connection between politics and policymaking to identify the political determinants of public policy. Emphasis on the ways that American institutions, long-term political trends, and political actors interact to influence policy outcomes. Case studies across a wide range of policy areas (such as health care, tax policy, immigration, and abortion policy) used to illuminate key themes. Usually offered every year.

POL 160a The War on Global Terrorism
[ dl ss ]

Intended for juniors and seniors, but open to all students.

Explores how the 9/11 attacks changed the lives of Americans. Surveys the build-up of Al Qaeda leading up to the 9/11 attacks, discusses why the attacks were not prevented, and outlines the reorganization of the American state in the wake of the passage of the USA PATRIOT ACT of 2001 and subsequent amendments. Students are additionally given an introduction to Jihadist doctrines and the tactics of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS), as well as various theories about the root causes of terrorism. Usually offered every second year.

POL 161b Good Neighbor or Imperial Power: The Contested Evolution of US-Latin American Relations
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Studies the ambivalent and complex relationship between the U.S. and Latin America, focusing on how the exploitative dimension of this relationship has shaped societies across the region, and on how Latin American development can be beneficial for the U.S. Usually offered every year.

POL 168b American Foreign Policy
[ ss ]

Overview of America's foreign policy since 1945. Topics include the Cold War era, the economic competitiveness of the United States, the role of the United States in selected world regions, the role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy, the U.S. participation in the United Nations, post-Cold War foreign policy, and the making and implementing of foreign policy. Usually offered every year.

POL 173a Seminar: U.S. Foreign Economic Policy
[ oc ss wi ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or above.

Addresses the politics of  foreign economic policy in the United States, with special attention to the political institutions and domestic actors involved in formulating policies toward trade, the dollar, and foreign aid. Usually offered every second year.

POL/WGS 125a Gender in American Politics
[ deis-us ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took POL 125a in prior years.

Provides an overview of the many ways that gender and sex shape American politics. While the primary focus of this course is on women's roles in the American political system as activists, citizens, candidates, and elected officials, we also think more expansively about how gender, gender identity, and gender-expression interact with politics, policy, and political behavior. Covers historical context and contemporary developments in women's political activity. Usually offered every second year.

THA 66a The American Drama since 1945
[ ca ]

Examines the major plays and playwrights representing styles from social realism to avant-garde performance groups and the theater of images. Usually offered every second year.

THA 123a American Musical Theater
[ ca ]

Analyzes American musicals in their historical contexts: students learn how to analyze the structure and score of musicals, and develop a vocabulary for examining the visual dimensions of productions. Attention will be given to production histories. Usually offered every year.

WGS 112a Queer Indigenous Gothic
[ hum ]

Centers the haunting, monstrous, and spectral as critical lenses through which to read entanglements of queerness, Indigeneity, and resilience/resistance in the face of settler colonialism. We begin with horror/gothic theory’s recent upturning by Indigenous writers and creatives. Then, we move to bridge this with Indigenous Feminisms and especially Queer Indigenous Studies. We will, together, examine how Native authors and artists queer the Gothic mode to expose the violent mythologies of settler permanence and Indigenous death. We engage with literary texts, visual media, and cultural theory to explore how horror tropes (monstrosity, possession, reanimation, haunting, and the like) are transfigured into arguments for survivance, kinship, and spectral justice. Consequently, we will interrogate the aesthetic and political regimes of the Gothic not merely as a Euro-American genre, but as an unsettling and unsettled space of decolonial critique. In short, we explore questions like what does it mean to haunt back? How does horror become a mode of refusal, resurgence, and reparation for queer Indigenous life? And how does Indigenous horror’s unsettling of the Gothic mode reveal its settler colonial epistemology? Special one-time offering, fall 2025.

AMST 30b American Environmental History
[ ss wi ]

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 year.

AMST 100a Foundations of American Culture
[ ss wi ]

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 fall.

AMST 106b Food and Farming in America
[ ss wi ]

Yields four semester-hour credits towards rate of work and graduation.

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.

AAAS/WGS 136a Black Feminist Thought
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Formerly offered as AAAS 136a.

Critical examination of the historical, political, economic, and ideological factors that have shaped the lives of African-American women in the United States. Analyzing foundation theoretical texts, fiction, and film over two centuries, this class seeks to understand black women's writing and political activism in the U.S. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/ENG 47a Frontier Visions: The West in American Literature and Culture
[ hum oc ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 47a in prior years.

Explores more than two centuries of literary and visual culture about the American West, including the frontier myth, Indian captivity narratives, frontier humor, dime novel and Hollywood westerns, the Native American Renaissance, and western regionalism. Authors include Black Hawk, Cather, Doig, Silko, Turner, and Twain. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/JOUR 113a Long-form Journalism: Storytelling for Magazines and Podcasts
[ dl oc ss ]

What makes for a great story? This course will examine the hallmarks of successful narrative nonfiction, in both written and audio form. Students will analyze award-winning magazine stories as well as reporting-based podcasts that have injected new energy and financial success into the journalism world. They will learn story structure and techniques to capture and hold the audience's attention. And they will learn by doing, producing their own podcasts and written pieces. This course fulfills the Reporting requirement of the Journalism minor. Usually offered every year.

AMST/MUS 35a Rock, Country, and Hip-Hop: History of American Popular Music
[ ca oc ]

Formerly offered as MUS 35a.

Examines the historical context, stylistic development, and cultural significance of rock and roll and other closely related genres, spanning the 1950s through the present. Close attention is paid to how political and social changes have interacted with technological innovations through commercial music to challenge, affirm and shape ideas of race, gender, class and sexuality in the United States. Usually offered every third year.

AMST/MUS 39b Protest Through Song: Music that Shaped America
[ ca oc ss ]

Open to music majors and non-majors.

Examines 20th and 21st century protest music to better understand the complex relationships between music and social movements. Through class discussions, reading, writing, and listening assignments, and a final performance students will discover how social, cultural, and economic protest songs helped shape American culture. Usually offered every second year.

AMST/MUS 55a Music in Film: Hearing American Cinema
[ ca oc ]

Formerly offered as MUS 55a.

Examines the aesthetics and the history of music in film. Through lecture, class discussions, screenings, and readings, the course teaches students how to critically read image, script, and music as an integrated cultural text, ultimately helping one understand and appreciate the progression of film and sound technology from the 1890s to the present. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 61b Language in American Life
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Examines both language-in-use and ideas about language varieties in the United States from an anthropological perspective. Explores how language-in-use emerges from and builds relationships, social hierarchies, professional authority, religious experience, dimensions of identity such as gender and race, and more. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 159a Museums and Public Memory
[ oc ss ]

Explores the social and political organization of public memory, including museums, cultural villages, and memorial sites. Who has the right to determine the content and form of such institutions? Working with local community members, students will develop a collaborative exhibition project. Usually offered every second year.

ED 161b Religious Education in America
[ hum oc ]

No principle stands more sacred in American public education than separation of Church and state. Public schools pride themselves as neutral playing fields when it comes to matters of religion. But this position belies a more complicated history. American public schools were initially founded by protestant leaders concerned with an influx of non-protestant immigrants during the middle of the 19th century. Indeed, despite lip service to ideas like separation of Church and state, American educational leaders long saw schools as a vehicle for promoting a Protestant inflected American culture. This course begins from the premise that American education and American religion have always existed in relationship. Religious groups have sometimes tried to use the public schools as vehicles to advance their religion, sometimes, they have created supplemental schools, and sometimes they have created whole parallel school systems. But in all cases, education and religion in America are intertwined. This course asks when education is religious and when religion is educational. It examines a series of case studies drawn from different faith communities including Judaism, Evangelical Christianity, Catholicism, and Islam. Usually offered every second year.

ED 170a Race, Power, and Urban Education
[ deis-us oc ss wi ]

Examines the nature of urban schools, their links to the social and political context, and the perspectives of the people who inhabit them. Explores the historical development of urban schools; the social, economic, and personal hardships facing urban students; and challenges of urban school reform. Usually offered every year.

LGLS 10a Introduction to Law
[ oc ss ]

Surveys the nature, process, and institutions of law: the reasoning of lawyers and judges, the interplay of cases and policies, the impact of history and culture, and the ideals of justice and responsibility in a global context. Usually offered every fall.

LGLS 132b Environmental Law and Policy
[ oc ss wi ]

Provides a basic survey of environmental law. You will learn essential tools of legal reasoning and argument. Through in-class discussion, cases, and reading on environmental history and ethics, we will cover a range of environmental issues, including: climate change, water rights, the Keystone XL pipeline, our national parks and monuments, and much more. You will reflect on the tradeoffs, contradictions, and inequities baked into our core environmental laws, and think about ways to apply those laws in more equitable ways. Usually offered every year.

POL 111a The American Congress
[ oc ss ]

The structure and behavior of the Congress. Emphasis on the way member incentives for reelection, power on Capitol Hill, and good public policy shape Congress. Usually offered every second year.

POL 161b Good Neighbor or Imperial Power: The Contested Evolution of US-Latin American Relations
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Studies the ambivalent and complex relationship between the U.S. and Latin America, focusing on how the exploitative dimension of this relationship has shaped societies across the region, and on how Latin American development can be beneficial for the U.S. Usually offered every year.

POL 173a Seminar: U.S. Foreign Economic Policy
[ oc ss wi ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or above.

Addresses the politics of  foreign economic policy in the United States, with special attention to the political institutions and domestic actors involved in formulating policies toward trade, the dollar, and foreign aid. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 100b Twentieth-Century American Culture
[ dl 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 spring.

AMST/JOUR 113a Long-form Journalism: Storytelling for Magazines and Podcasts
[ dl oc ss ]

What makes for a great story? This course will examine the hallmarks of successful narrative nonfiction, in both written and audio form. Students will analyze award-winning magazine stories as well as reporting-based podcasts that have injected new energy and financial success into the journalism world. They will learn story structure and techniques to capture and hold the audience's attention. And they will learn by doing, producing their own podcasts and written pieces. This course fulfills the Reporting requirement of the Journalism minor. Usually offered every year.