1997-98 University Bulletin Entry for:

American History

See History


American Studies


Objectives


An interdisciplinary approach to the myths, values, symbols, institutions, and behavior of the peoples of the United States and to the questions raised by the influence of the United States in shaping the modern world. The American studies major is designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the history and major features of American civilization. Students anticipating careers in law, business, public policy, communications, education, journalism, teaching, and careers as professors of American studies, history, and literature have typically enrolled in the department. As a sponsor of programs in law, journalism, and film studies, the department welcomes students who seek active engagement with the contemporary world through firm grounding in a sound liberal arts education.


How to Become a Concentrator


Normally students will declare their concentration in their sophomore year. Students are expected to develop an individual plan of study by the end of their sophomore year. Several clusters of courses in the fields of film studies, the environment, family, race and ethnicity, journalism, and legal studies are available to satisfy elective requirements. Seniors wishing to earn departmental honors must write a senior thesis in a full-year course, AMST 99d, taken with one of the faculty members in the department. Special opportunities can be provided for supervised field work and internships. Many concentrators study abroad in their junior year to gain a cross-cultural perspective.


Faculty


Joyce Antler, Chair

Women's history. Social history.

John Carroll

Advertising and journalism.

Jacob Cohen

Culture and thought.

Mary Davis

Law and literature.

Thomas Doherty (Chair, Film Studies)

Film and culture.

Brian Donahue

American environmental studies.

Henry Felt

Documentary film.

Lawrence Fuchs

Ethnicity. Immigration history and policy. Family.

Richard Gaskins (Director, Legal Studies)

Law, social policy, and philosophy.

Eileen McNamara

Journalism, society, and politics.

Susan Moeller (Director, Journalism Program)

Media and culture.

Daniel Terris

Literature and intellectual history.

Stephen Whitfield

Modern political and cultural history.


Requirements for Concentration


A. AMST 10a (Foundations of American Civilization). Normally students will take 10a in their sophomore year and no later than the fall term of their junior year. Exceptions will be made by a student's advisor along with the approval of the chair.

B. AMST 100a (Classic Texts in the American Experience: Through the Civil War). Normally students will take 100a in their sophomore year and no later than their junior year. Students will not be permitted to take 100a in their senior year except in the most unusual circumstances, with the approval of the chair and the instructor.

C. Seven (7) semester courses in American studies, chosen either from within the department or from other departments, with departmental approval. At least one course of the seven must be an American history survey course, which must be pre-approved by the studentís advisor.

D. To be eligible for departmental honors, seniors must enroll in AMST 99d (Senior Research) with departmental approval and participate in a year-long honors colloquium. AMST 99d cannot be counted to satisfy any other departmental requirement.

E. Not more than two courses satisfying the concentration may be offered to further satisfy the requirements of a second major.

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


Courses of Instruction


(1-99) Primarily for Undergraduate Students


AMST 10a Foundations of American Civilization

[ cl4 ss SA ]

Study of the myths, symbols, values, heroes and rogues, character ideals, identities, masks, games, humor, languages, ideologies, and expressive styles that have constituted American culture. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Cohen

AMST 15a Writing for the Media

(Formerly ENG 9b)

[ wi ss ]

Signature of the instructor required. Core course for Journalism Program. This course may not be repeated for credit by students who have taken ENG 9b in previous years.

A workshop in writing for print media. Examines the fundamentals of newswriting and newsgathering, stressing elements of style, organization, and syntax. Issues of objectivity, point of view, and freedom of the press will be discussed. Weekly writing assignments will stress the writing of clear and concise copy. Usually offered every year.

Staff

AMST 20a Environmental Issues

[ cl14 cl16 ss ]

Social analysis of contemporary environmental issues, including American needs in energy, natural resources, food; physical and social limits to economic growth; the pace of technological change; ethics and public choices. Usually offered every year.

Staff

AMST 90a Independent Fieldwork

Signature of the instructor and the department chair required.

The equivalent of four full semester course credits. Students taking it will be expected to work out a detailed plan of study for one semester with the help of two faculty members. This plan is to be submitted to the department for its approval. Approval depends on the resources of the department to support the plan of the student as well as the competence of the student and excellence of the plan. Approval will be rare. Usually offered every year.

Staff

AMST 90b Independent Fieldwork

See AMST 90a for special notes and course description. Usually offered every year.

Staff

AMST 97a Readings in American Studies

Enrollment limited to juniors and seniors. Signature of the instructor required.

Independent readings, research, and writing on a subject of the student's interest, under the direction of a faculty advisor. Usually offered every year.

Staff

AMST 97b Readings in American Studies

See AMST 97a for special notes and course description. Usually offered every year.

Staff

AMST 99d Senior Research

Enrollment limited to seniors. Signature of the instructor and the department chair required. A library intensive course.

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

Staff


(100-199) For Both Undergraduate and Graduate Students


AMST 100a Classic Texts in the American Experience: Through the Civil War

[ wi ss ]

Preference given to American studies concentrators. Signature of the instructor required.

Various visions of America will be explored. Of special concern will be the ways the individual's inner life is conceived or expressed in relation to the new society and nation-building of the 18th and 19th centuries. Usually offered every year.

Staff

AMST 100b Classics in American Civilization: The Twentieth Century

[ ss ]

Signature of the instructor required.

Explores the common texture of American life--in work, families, social relations, regional settings, and politics. Attention will be paid to the influence of the democratic temper in mediating the competing claims of egalitarianism and individualism. Usually offered every year.

Staff

AMST 101a American Environmental History

[ ss ]

Provides an overview of the relationship between nature and culture in North America. We cover 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 contexts. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Donahue

AMST 103a The American Experience: Approaches to American Studies

[ ss ]

Students examine the many meanings of the American experience by exploring the sources, subjects, and methodologies used in the practice of American studies. In the classroom and on field trips, students use such resources as fiction and poetry, photography and painting, oral history and music, and architecture and the natural landscape to enlarge their knowledge and understanding of American history and contemporary society. Highly recommended for students intending to write theses and those considering graduate school. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Moeller

AMST 111a Images of the American West in Film and Culture

[ ss ]

Explores how motion picture images of the West have reflected and shaped American identities, ideologies, and mythologies. Through a variety of films--silent, ìclassic,î and ìrevisionistî--and supplementary readings, we examine the intertwined themes of progress, civilization, region, nation, democracy, race, gender, and violence. Will be offered in the fall of 1997.

Mr. Biel

AMST 112b American Film and Culture of the 1950s

[ ss ]

Traces the decline of classical Hollywood cinema and the impact of motion pictures on American culture in the 1950s, especially Hollywoodís representations of the Cold War. Students learn methods of cinematic analysis to conduct cultural historical inquiry. Usually offered every fourth year.

Mr. Doherty

AMST 113a American Film and Culture of the 1940s

(Formerly AMST 165b)

[ ss ]

This course may not be repeated for credit by students who have taken AMST 165b in previous years.

Examines the nature of classical Hollywood cinema and the impact of motion pictures on American culture in the 1940s, especially Hollywoodís representations of World War II. Students learn methods of cinematic analysis to conduct cultural historical inquiry. Usually offered every fourth year.

Mr. Doherty

AMST 113b American Film and Culture of the 1930s

(Formerly AMST 161b)

[ ss ]

This course may not be repeated for credit by students who have taken AMST 161b in previous years.

Traces the rise of Hollywood sound cinema and the impact of motion pictures on American culture in the 1930s, especially Hollywoodís representations of the Great Depression. Students learn methods of cinematic analysis to conduct cultural historical inquiry. Usually offered every fourth year.

Mr. Doherty

AMST 114a American Film and Culture of the 1920s

(Formerly AMST 155b)

[ cl13 ss ]

This course may not be repeated for credit by students who have taken AMST 155b in previous years.

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

Mr. Doherty

AMST 114b American Individualism

[ ss ]

Signature of the instructor required.

Through various major works, central dilemmas of the American experience will be examined: the ambition to transcend social and individual limitations and the tension between demands of self and the hunger for community. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Whitfield

AMST 118a Gender and the Professions

[ cl15 ss ]

Explores gender distinctions as a key element in the organization of professions, analyzing the connections among sex roles, occupational structure, and American social life. Topics include work culture(s) compatible with sexual harassment, pay equity, the "mommy" and "daddy" tracks, and dual-career families. Among the professions examined are law, medicine, teaching, social work, nursing, journalism, business, and the clergy. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Antler

AMST 120b Film Theory and Criticism

[ cl13 cl35 hum ss ]

Signature of the instructor required.

A course for students with some preliminary background in film studies, providing a forum not only to see and to interpret films but to master the ways films are seen and interpreted. Classic Hollywood cinema will be examined. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. Doherty

AMST 121a The American Jewish Woman: 1890-1990s

[ cl36 ss ]

Signature of the instructor required.

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 their often conflicted identities. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Antler

AMST 123b Women in American History: 1865 to the Present

[ cl36 ss ]

A historical and cultural survey of the female experience in the United States with emphasis on issues of education, work, domestic ideology, sexuality, male-female relations, race, class, politics, war, the media, feminism, and antifeminism. Usually offered every year.

Ms. Antler

AMST 124b American Love and Marriage

[ cl11 ss ]

Signature of the instructor required.

Ideas and behavior relating to love and marriage are used as lenses to view broader social patterns such as family organization, generational conflict, and the creation of professional and national identity. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Antler

AMST 128b History as Theater

[ cl42 ss ]

Combining two disciplines in an unusual way, the course aims to put history on the stage, creating a history of the present tense through the public witnessing of theater. After a study of the traditions and techniques of documentary drama, the class will construct its own documentary drama based on a particular episode in our national life. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Antler

AMST 130b Television in America

[ ss ]

An interdisciplinary course with three main lines of discussion and investigation: an aesthetic inquiry into the meaning of television style and genre; a historical consideration of the medium and its role in American life; and a technological study of televisual communication. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. Doherty

AMST 131b News on Screen

[ ss ]

This course on moving image reportage will trace the history of news on screen from the silent cinema to the age of cable. Motion picture documentaries, newsreels, screen magazines, network news reports, televised events, and broadcast journalism will be the occasion for an inquiry into journalistic practice in the media of film and television. Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Doherty

AMST 132b International Affairs and the American Media

[ ss ]

This course will analyze and assess United States media coverage of major international events, personalities, and perspectives. The course is designed to introduce students to the international events over the past three decades as they have been interpreted by American journalists and media instructors and to challenge students to evaluate the limitations and biases of this reportage. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Moeller

AMST 135b The History and Principles of Photojournalism

[ cl35 ss ]

Signature of the instructor required.

The course is designed to introduce students to U.S. history as it has been recorded by photojournalists and to challenge students to evaluate the limitations and biases of this history in images. The course will analyze the major personalities, policies, institutions, and the technological advances in photojournalism since the mid-19th century, and will examine these within the context of historical changes in American society, government, and the media itself. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Moeller

AMST 137b Journalism in Modern America

[ ss ]

Signature of the instructor required. Core course for Journalism Program.

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 and in contemporary terms. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Whitfield

AMST 138b Reporting Contemporary America

[ wi ss ]

Signature of the instructor required. Core course for Journalism Program.

Course links theory and history to the working craft of journalism. Examines the process of reporting for newspapers, magazines, radio, and television in the context of understanding the history, traditions, conventions, and practices of American journalism. Includes a reporting laboratory in which students practice reporting and writing for publications in standard journalistic formats. Usually offered every year.

Ms. Moeller

AMST 139b Reporting on Gender, Race, and Culture

[ cl7 ss ]

Signature of the instructor required.

An examination of the news media's relationship to demographic and cultural change, and of how journalistic ideologies influence the coverage of women and various ethnic and cultural groups. Usually offered in odd years.

Staff

AMST 140b The Asian-American Experience

[ ss ]

Enrollment limited to 25.

An examination of the political, economic, social, and familial adaptation of Asian-Americans to American society from the mid-19th century to the present. Patterns of acculturation will be analyzed in relation to many factors in American society in addition to the composition, size, skills, and cultural values of the newcomers and the progeny. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Fuchs

AMST 143a War and the American Imagination

[ ss ]

Enrollment limited to 30.

Explores how American culture and society--as investigated through novels, plays, poetry, photography, painting, television, and film--mediate wartime experiences. The concentration will be on the American "art of war" from the Civil War to the present. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Moeller

AMST 149a On the Edge of History

[ ss ]

Examines how visionaries, novelists, historians, social scientists, and futurologists have imagined and predicted America's future and what those adumbrations tell us about our life today, tomorrow, and yesterday, when the predictions were made. Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Cohen

AMST 150b The Family in the United States

[ cl11 ss SA ]

Enrollment limited to 25.

Characteristics and consequences of family life seen in biological, cross-cultural, and historical perspectives. Also, an analysis of the impact of American culture on Irish, Italian, Jewish, Asian, and African-American families. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Fuchs

AMST 160a U.S. Immigration History, Policy, and Law

[ cl18 ss ]

Enrollment limited to 16.

An examination of the economic, political, and ideological factors underlying immigration policy in U.S. history, especially since 1965. Analysis of contemporary immigration, refugee and asylum issues, and of problems of immigrant acculturation today. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Fuchs

AMST 163b The Sixties: Continuity and Change in American Culture

[ ss ]

Analysis of alleged changes in the character structure, social usages, governing myths and ideas, artistic sensibility, and major institutions of America during the 1960s. What were the principal causes and occasions for the change? Usually offered in even years.

Mr. Cohen

AMST 169a Ethnicity and Race in the United States

[ cl10 ss ]

Enrollment limited to 16.

Consideration of the experience of Native Americans, Euro-Americans, African-Americans, Latino-Americans, and Asian-Americans and distinctive patterns of racial and ethnic American pluralism. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Fuchs

AMST 170a The Idea of Conspiracy in American Culture

[ cl21 ss ]

Consideration of the "paranoid style" in America's political culture and in recent American literature. Topics include allegations of "conspiracy" in connection with the Sacco and Vanzetti, Hiss, and Rosenberg cases; anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism; Watergate and Irangate. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Cohen

AMST 175a Violence in American Life

[ cl6 ss SA ]

Studies of the use of terror and violence by citizens and governments in the domestic history of the United States. What are the occasions and causes of violence? How is it imagined, portrayed, and explained in literature? Is there anything peculiarly American about violence in America? Usually offered every year.

Mr. Cohen

AMST 180b Topics in the History of American Education

[ ss ]

Examines major themes in the history of American education, including: changing ideas about children, childrearing, and adolescence; development of schools; the politics of education; education and individual life history. Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Antler

AMST 183b Sports and American Culture

[ ss ]

How organized sports have reflected changes in the American cultural, social, and economic scene, and how they have reflected and shaped the moral codes, personal values, character, style, myths, attachments, sense of work and play, fantasy, and reality of fans and athletes. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. Cohen

AMST 185b The Culture of the Cold War

[ ss ]

Signature of the instructor required.

The seminar addresses American political culture from the end of World War II until the revival of liberal movements and radical criticism. Attention will be paid to the specter of totalitarianism, the "end of ideology," the crisis of civil liberties, and the strains on the pluralistic consensus in an era of anti-communism. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Whitfield

AMST 187a The Legal Boundaries of Public and Private Life

[ cl44 ss ]

Signature of the Legal Studies Program administrator required.

Confrontations of public interest and personal rights across three episodes in American cultural history: post-Civil War race relations, progressive-era economic regulation, and contemporary civil liberties, especially sexual and reproductive privacy. Critical legal decisions examined in social and political context. Usually offered in even years.

Mr.Gaskins

AMST 188b Justice Brandeis and Progressive Jurisprudence

[ cl20 ss ]

Enrollment limited to 25.

Brandeis's legal career serves as model and guide for exploring the ideals and anxieties of American legal culture across the 20th century. Focus on how legal values evolve in response to new technologies, corporate capitalism, and threats to personal liberty. Usually offered in odd years.

Mr. Gaskins

AMST 191b Environmental Research Workshop

[ ss ]

Signature of the instructor required.

A research course designed for seniors and juniors who are interested in the analysis of contemporary environmental problems and the public actions appropriate to that analysis. Usually offered in odd years.

Staff

AMST 196d Film Workshop: Recording America

[ ss ]

Does not participate in preenrollment. Signature of the instructor required. Admission by consent of the instructor on the basis of an interview. It is preferred that students concurrently take an American studies course.

The training of students in audiovisual production to explore aspects of American urban society. Production format will include video, slide, tape, and audio. Students should be prepared to create a documentary during this course. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Felt

AMST 199b American Character in Crosscultural Perspective: Seminar

[ ss ]

Signature of the instructor required.

A critical review and evaluation of various approaches to the problematic concept of "national character." Special emphasis on how "American character" has been said to contrast with the character of other nations/cultures: Japan, China, India, Mexico, Australia, France, Russia, Canada. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the summer of 1991.

Mr. Cohen


Cross-Listed Courses


HSSW 104b

American Health Care: A System in Crisis

LGLS 10a

Introduction to Law

LGLS 114a

American Health Care: Law and Policy

LGLS 120a

Sex Discrimination and the Law

LGLS 121b

Law and Social Welfare: Citizen Rights and Government Responsibilities

LGLS 126b

Marriage, Divorce, and Parenthood

LGLS 127b

Law and Letters in American Culture

LGLS 129b

Law, Technology, and Innovation

LGLS 132b

Environmental Law and Policy

LGLS 137a

Libel and Defamation, Privacy and Publicity

PHIL 74b

Foundations of American Pragmatism