Academic Catalog

American Studies (AMST)

AMST 1002.  Sing and Shout! The History of America in Song.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as MUSI 1002.) Develop an understanding of American people, history and culture through the study and singing of American folk songs. CA 1. CA 4.
  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities, CA4: Diversity & Multicultural  
AMST 1201.  Introduction to American Studies.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as HIST 1503.) What is an American? A multi-disciplinary inquiry into the diversity of American societies and cultures. CA 4.
  
Content Areas: CA4: Diversity & Multicultural  
Topics of Inquiry: TOI2: Cultural Dimen Human Exp, TOI3: Div, Equity, Soc Just  
AMST 1700.  Honors Core: American Landscapes.  (3 Credits)  
Real and imagined landscapes in the Americas as seen through the history of the land and its uses and through changing representations of those landscapes in art, literature, science, and popular culture. CA 1.
Open to freshmen and sophomores in the Honors Program.  
  
Grading Basis: Honors Credit  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities  
Topics of Inquiry: TOI2: Cultural Dimen Human Exp, TOI4: Environmental Literacy  
AMST 2200.  Literature and Culture of North America before 1800.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as ENGL 2200.) An examination of the early written and oral culture of the area that eventually became the United States. CA 1.
ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011.  
  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities  
AMST 2201.  Introduction to Asian American Studies.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as AAAS 2201.) A multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary introduction to major themes in Asian American Studies. Concepts of identity and community, migration and labor histories, Asians and the law, representations of Asians in visual and popular culture, gender issues, interracial and interethnic relations, and human rights. CA 1. CA 4.
  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities, CA4: Diversity & Multicultural  
Topics of Inquiry: TOI2: Cultural Dimen Human Exp, TOI3: Div, Equity, Soc Just  
AMST 2204.  Jewish Culture in American Film.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as CLCS 2204.) Representations of the diversity of Jewish culture (historical, religious, secular) in American film. Introduction to film analysis and interpretation. CA 1. CA 4.
  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities, CA4: Diversity & Multicultural  
AMST 2207.  Empire and U.S. Culture.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as ENGL 2207.) How the frontier and overseas ambitions have shaped U.S. institutions and culture. The impact of U.S. expansion on people outside its borders. These topics are explored through literary narratives and historical documents. CA 1. CA 4.
ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011.  
  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities, CA4: Diversity & Multicultural  
AMST 2274W.  Disability in American Literature and Culture.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as ENGL 2274W.) An interdisciplinary examination of the symbolic roles of disability and the social implications of those roles. CA 1. CA 4.
ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011.  
  
Skill Codes: COMP: Writing Competency  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities, CA4: Diversity & Multicultural  
AMST 2276.  American Utopias and Dystopias.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as ENGL 2276.) Interdisciplinary approaches to American utopian and dystopian literature of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. CA 1.
ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011.  
  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities  
Topics of Inquiry: TOI2: Cultural Dimen Human Exp, TOI5: Indiv Values Soc Inst  
AMST 2276W.  American Utopias and Dystopias.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as ENGL 2276W.) Interdisciplinary approaches to American utopian and dystopian literature of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. CA 1.
ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011.  
  
Skill Codes: COMP: Writing Competency  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities  
AMST 2400.  City and Community in Film.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as URBN 2400.) Aesthetics, history, and contemporary relevance of American films that feature the urban, suburban, and/or small town landscape as a major "character" shaping plot and story. Films read closely as texts that make meaning through a range of tools, including narrative, mise-en-scene, editing, camera work, and genre conventions. CA 1.
  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities  
Topics of Inquiry: TOI1: Creativity: Des,Expr,Inn, TOI2: Cultural Dimen Human Exp  
AMST 2550.  Crime, Policing, and Punishment in the United States.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as HIST 2550.) A survey of political, legal, and cultural development of the American criminal justice system and its social impact from the early republic to the present. Formerly offered as AMST/HIST 2810. CA 1.
  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities  
AMST 2993.  International Study.  (1-9 Credits)  
Special topics taken in an international study program. Consent of department head required, normally to be granted prior to the student's departure.
Department consent.  
May be repeated for a total of 12 credits  
AMST 3042.  Baseball and Society: Politics, Economics, Race and Gender.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as HDFS 3042.) Baseball in historical, political, sociological, and economic contexts. Topics may include: impact on individuals and families; racial discrimination and integration; labor relations; urbanization; roles of women; treatment of gay athletes; and implications of performance-enhancing drugs.
Open to juniors or higher.  
  
AMST 3082.  Critical Race Theory as Political Theory.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as POLS 3082.) Interdisciplinary scholarship on racial identity, legal decisions, and political action from the perspective of political science and political theory. Topics include interactions between states and social movements, the intersections of race, class, gender, and membership, and the problems with both post-racialism and identity politics.
Open to juniors or higher. Recommended preparation: POLS 1002.  
  
AMST 3265W.  American Studies Methods.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as ENGL 3265W.) Interdisciplinary research and writing centered on a specific topic in U.S. culture. An introduction and overview of research methods in American Studies.
ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher.  
May be repeated for credit  
Skill Codes: COMP: Writing Competency  
AMST 3267W.  Race and the Scientific Imagination.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as ENGL 3267W.) How racism has been both reproduced and contradicted in the scientific imagination. Scientific texts and imaginative literature that explore the reparation of past harms and imagine new futures. CA 1. CA 4.
ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.  
  
Skill Codes: COMP: Writing Competency  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities, CA4: Diversity & Multicultural  
AMST 3281.  Internship.  (1-6 Credits)  
No more than eight credits may be earned in a single placement, and no more than three credits may be counted towards completion of requirements for the American Studies major. Students taking this course will be assigned a grade of S (satisfactory) or U (unsatisfactory). May be repeated for credit.
Open to juniors or higher.  
May be repeated for a total of 8 credits  
AMST 3440.  Visual Culture of the United States, 19th Century.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as ARTH 3440.) An exploration of how visual culture in the long 19th century contributed to the formation of the United States.
Open to sophomores or higher.  
  
AMST 3440W.  Visual Culture of the United States, 19th Century.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as ARTH 3440W.) An exploration of how visual culture in the long 19th century contributed to the formation of the United States.
ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher.  
  
Skill Codes: COMP: Writing Competency  
AMST 3502.  Colonial America: Native Americans, Slaves, and Settlers, 1492-1760.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as HIST 3502.) The legacy of Columbus, creative survival of native Americans in the face of disease and warfare, religious utopianism and the profit motive in colonization. The growth of a distinctive Anglo-American political culture, gender and family relations, and the entrenchment of a racial caste system.
  
AMST 3502W.  Colonial America: Native Americans, Slaves, and Settlers, 1492-1760.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as HIST 3502W.) The legacy of Columbus, creative survival of native Americans in the face of disease and warfare, religious utopianism and the profit motive in colonization. The growth of a distinctive Anglo-American political culture, gender and family relations, and the entrenchment of a racial caste system.
ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher.  
  
Skill Codes: COMP: Writing Competency  
AMST 3531.  Japanese Americans and World War II.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as HIST 3531.) The events leading to martial law and executive order 9066, the wartime experience of Japanese Americans, and national consequences. CA 1. CA 4.
  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities, CA4: Diversity & Multicultural  
AMST 3542E.  New England Environmental History.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as HIST 3542E.) Interdisciplinary history of New England's terrestrial and marine environmental change. Links among land, sea, and human natural resource use and management, including precontact patterns, colonial impacts, agricultural decline, industrial pollution, overfishing, re-forestation, and the rise of eco-tourism.
Recommended preparation: ENGL 1010 or 1011 or 2011 or 3800.  
  
Skill Codes: COMP: Environmental Literacy  
Topics of Inquiry: TOI2: Cultural Dimen Human Exp, TOI4: Environmental Literacy  
AMST 3544.  Atlantic Voyages: European Maritime Expansion, 1400-1650.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as HIST 3544.) Late medieval and early modern European expansion into the Atlantic and Indian oceans, with particular attention to European, Asian, African, and American contexts within which that expansion took place. Topics include the transatlantic slave trade; technology adoption and adaptation; convergence of trade, racial ideology, imperial expansion, and imperial identity construction; piracy and settlement; historiographical legacies and later imperialism; and decolonization of contemporary understandings.
  
AMST 3568.  Hip Hop, Politics and Youth Culture in America.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as HIST 3568.) History of hip-hop, its musical antecedents and its role in popular culture. Race, class, and gender are examined as well as hip-hop's role in popular political discourse.
  
AMST 3570.  History and Theory of Digital Art.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as ARTH 3570.) Investigates forms of digital and Internet art and the mostly forgotten histories of the technologies behind them. Forms and themes to be explored include games/gaming, surveillance art, cyberfeminism, data visualization, and crowdsourced art. CA 1. CA 4.
ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to sophomores or higher.  
  
Content Areas: CA1: Arts & Humanities, CA4: Diversity & Multicultural  
AMST 3699.  Independent Study.  (1-6 Credits)  
Supervised reading and writing on a subject of special interest to the student. May be repeated for credit with a change of topic.
Open to juniors or higher.  
May be repeated for credit  
AMST 3807.  Constitutional Rights and Liberties.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as POLS 3807.) The role of the Supreme Court in interpreting the Bill of Rights. Topics include freedoms of speech and religion, criminal due process, and equal protection.
Open to juniors or higher.  
  
AMST 3822.  Law and Popular Culture.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as POLS 3822.) Exploration of themes in the study of law and courts by contrasting scholarly work against representations of such themes in movies, televisions, and other media of popular culture.
Open to juniors or higher.  
  
AMST 3822W.  Law and Popular Culture.  (3 Credits)  
(Also offered as POLS 3822W.) Exploration of themes in the study of law and courts by contrasting scholarly work against representations of such themes in movies, televisions, and other media of popular culture.
ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher.  
  
Skill Codes: COMP: Writing Competency  
AMST 4897.  Honors Thesis.  (1-3 Credits)  
Open to juniors or higher.  
  
Grading Basis: Honors Credit