Courses ofInstruction
American Studies
Core Faculty
Elizabeth Belanger, American Studies
Kirin Makker, American Studies
S. Ani Mukherji, American Studies
Anna Creadick, English and Creative Writing
Alex Black, English and Creative Writing
Kendralin Freeman, Sociology
Kristen Welsh, Russian Area Studies
Michelle Martin-Baron, Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectional Justice
Whitney Mauer, Environmental Studies
Affiliated Faculty
Jeffery Anderson, Anthropology
Rebecca Burditt, Media and Society
Laura Free, History
Christopher Hatch, Theater
DeWayne Lucas, Political Science
James Sutton, Sociology
Angelique Szymanek, Art and Architecture
Katherine Walker, Music
Christine Woodworth, Theater
Tasked to think about the familiar in an unfamiliar way, American Studies students are creative problem solvers, storytellers, educators, and activists. Our majors are known for a unique skill set within the liberal arts. They take information from disparate sources, evaluate and understand it, and weave it together to make sense of America. They work to make the invisible visible and amplify access for those unheard. They train in multiple critical approaches to interpret American culture, politics, and society from an interdisciplinary point of view.
Explore Pathways through the major and minor (PDF).
Transfer credit for courses taken at other institutions for either the major or minor, excepting HWS-sponsored abroad programs, are considered on a case-by-case basis. Students must petition the department for these courses to count towards the American Studies degree. Petition forms for transfer courses can be downloaded here.
Mission Statement
The American Studies program combines critical social sciences and humanities approaches to interpret U.S. culture, politics, and society from an interdisciplinary point of view. It is dedicated to developing a deep knowledge of the U.S within cultural, social, and political contexts, as well as generating theoretical and analytical insights that help us better understand problems of difference and power in the US in a global context.
Offerings
American Studies Major (BA)
interdisciplinary, 11 courses
Learning Objectives:
- Critically synthesize, analyze, and interpret a wide range of evidence of U.S. beliefs and practices – attending to patterns, absences, and interpretative strategies.
- Describe how power and difference (race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, citizenship) have interacted at specific moments in time to shape subjectivities, groups, and a wide variety of political, economic, and cultural institutions.
- Communicate effectively about the histories and cultures of the United States in a range of communicative forms, demonstrating the ability to formulate a well-organized argument supported by evidence and an demonstrating an awareness of audience.
- Conduct independent research in US history and life using appropriate methods and protocols.
Requirements:
AMST 101, 201; two courses from the American Studies Foundations group; four AMST electives and two electives from the cross-listed courses or two additional AMST courses and AMST 465. At least two the AMST electives must be at the 300-level or above. A cross-listed 300-level elective may be substituted upon approval by advisor. All courses must be passed with a grade of C- or higher. No more than one credit/no credit courses can be counted towards the major. No more than three courses can be taken in one department outside of American Studies.
American Studies Minor
interdisciplinary, 5 courses
Requirements:
AMST 101; one Foundations course; two AMST electives, one of which must be at the 300 level or above, and one cross listed elective or AMST course. A cross-listed 300-level elective may be substituted upon approval by advisor. All courses must be passed with a grade of C- or higher. No more than one credit/no credit courses can be counted towards the minor. No more than two courses can be taken in one department outside of American Studies.
Foundations Courses
Majors must take two foundations courses. Students may propose to count a course not listed with a solid rationale and the advisor's permission. Minors must take at least one foundations course.
AFS 150 Foundations Africana Studies
AFS 180 The Black Atlantic
ARCH 110 Introduction to Architectural Studies
ANTH 110 Intro to Cultural Anthropology
ECON 120 Contemporary Issues
ECON 122 Economics of Caring
ECON 160 Principles of Economics
ENV 101 Sustainable Communities
ENV 110 Topics in Environmental Studies: Sense of Place
ENG 115 Literature and Social Movements
ENG 152 American Revolutions
ENG 165 Introduction to African American Literature
GSIJ 100 Intro to Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectional Justice
POL 110 Introduction to American Politics
HIST 111 Topics in Introduction to American History
LGBT 101 Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Studies
MDSC 100 Introduction to Media and Society
MUSC 100 Introduction to Music Literature
PHIL 152 Continuing Issues: Philosophy & Feminism
PHIL 162 Ethics Civic Engagement
REL 109 Imagining American Religion(s)
SJSP 100 Foundations of Social Justice
SOC 100 Introduction to Sociology
GSIJ 100 Introduction to Women's Studies
Course Descriptions
AMST 101 Topics in American Studies These introductory courses in American Studies engage questions central to the field by focusing on how questions of power and difference shape tensions and contradictions in American culture. Students will examine American paradoxes such as the "American Dream," freedom and equality, immigration and reconstruction as well as infrastructures like consumer culture, the urban built environment, and national borders through an interdisciplinary lens. The courses also introduce students to American Studies methods through a close interdisciplinary analysis of a variety of cultural artifacts such as popular fiction, leisure, music, architecture, performance, propaganda and social practices. Readings are drawn from a range of sources including politics, history, popular culture, literature, media studies, and contemporary theory. Specific topics will vary based on the instructor. Offered each semester.
AMST 201 Methods of American Studies This class introduces American Studies as a scholarly field, and investigates how American Studies scholars, think, argue, research and write. Beginning with the history of American Studies, students read "classical" works and identify the major intellectual and methodological questions of the field. Course materials include American Studies scholarship across the 20th century, including the "myth and symbol' school; literary and feminist critiques; material and popular culture; questions of border, empire, and nation; and critical race studies. Students will also practice the archival and other research techniques underlying interdisciplinary research, and explore the limitations and benefits of the different tools we can use to study the U.S. (Staff, offered annually)
AMST 202 Drawing for Study and Storytelling This course introduces students to the habits and approaches of using drawing as a creative tool to think, represent, and interpret the world and ourselves visually. We are not trying to produce masterpieces. Instead, we use drawing as a medium for critical observation and study, creative work for creative work's sake, and expressive storytelling about places, spaces, and society. All our drawing is done without any measuring tools or straightedges. Instead, we sharpen our hand-eye coordination and learn to visually and spatially proportion the world around us. Our primary medium is watercolor. We draw objects, structures, social spaces, and natural scenery. If conditions allow, we will do some drawing sessions outside the classroom on-site. Along the way, we explore several traditions of drawing including: fine arts, architecture and urban sketching, food illustration, doodling, and map-making. Students gain skills in freehand line drawing, watercolor, visual abstraction, proportion/geometry, texture/value, and page composition. Offered each semester/Makker.
AMST 206 America Through Russian Eyes How do you define America? Does your definition mesh with what the rest of the world might think? This course explores American culture and identity through readings and films by American and Russian poets, novelists, and directors. From Red scares through the Cold War and Evil Empire all the way to the New Russians, twentieth-and twenty-first-century Americans and Russians have shared a deep mutual fascination, and have often defined themselves via contrast with the forbidding, alluring Other. We will study travelogues, memoirs, novels, stories, and films by artists as diverse as John Steinbeck, Langston Hughes, Gary Shteyngart, Ellen Litman, and Aleksei Balabanov, using these works to refine our own understanding of American culture. All readings and discussions will be in English. Dually designated with RUSE 206.
AMST 207 Baseball and America This class focuses on baseball and its relationship to American culture. For a long time, baseball has been the quintessential American game. In this class, we will examine the role(s) of technology, media, culture and nationalism in explaining the unique role of baseball to the American identify.
AMST 208 Race and Ethnic Relations What is race? What is ethnicity? Has race always existed? Why should the history of people of color matter to contemporary policy and social relationships? In this course, students analyze minority group relations including inter-group and intragroup dynamics, sources of prejudice and discrimination, social processes of conflict, segregation, assimilation, and accommodation. Minority-majority relations are viewed as a source of hierarchy, contention, and change, and the history and current context of our multigroup society are analyzed. Emphasis is placed on racial and ethnic groups in the United States. (Freeman, offered annually)
AMST 213 Poverty and Place in Rural America This course centers on the study of place-based poverty in the United States with a focus on rural areas. The course examines the ways in which social and economic rewards are geographically and racially stratified, asking "Who gets what, where and why?" This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying poverty by including geographic and humanistic dimensions. Course content will address theoretical and conceptual approaches to poverty, poverty and population measures, and explanations of geographically concentrated poverty. Through novels and non-fictions texts students will discover lived experiences of the rural poor with particular attention to Black, Latinx, and American Indian peoples. Students will also critically examine popular representations of rurality and poverty in the U.S. Lastly, students will take a case study approach to evaluate or predict a poverty program's structural and cultural impacts, including impacts on the poverty statuses of selected minority groups. This course counts as a Social Science core for the Environmental Studies major/minor. (Mauer, offered occasionally)
AMST 215 Power, Privilege, and the Other in US Popular Music This course examines discourses of power and privilege in US popular music from the later nineteenth century to the present day. Through non-technical analysis (no previous knowledge of music required) of a variety of musical styles, you will learn to identify ways in which music and performative gesture underscored, subverted, and sometimes transcended dominant cultural scripts and narratives. The course is organized into four units: 1.) The "Other": Primitive-Exotic in the Jazz Age of the 1920s; 2.) The Black Power(ed) and 1960s Soul; 3.) Gender, Sexuality, and Gangsta Rap; 4.) Performing Race; Performing Gender; moving the dial in contemporary popular music. Through focused engagement with these topics, you will learn to hear expressions of power and privilege that reside below the surface of specific musical works while developing skills that can be applied to other genres and style periods (Offered periodically)
AMST 221 Immigrant Arts: Intro to Asian American Cultures This course explores the history of Asian American expressive cultures. Among the essential questions we will ask are: What different forms and sensibilities have Asian American writers and artists adopted in their work? How have these forms and sensibilities changed over time, and why? What can we discern of the relationship between culture, politics, and society? How have the experiences and representations of Asian American existence been mediated by class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship? And finally, how can we trace a cultural history of Asian Americans through the interpretation of novels, poetry, short stories, music, paintings, photography, sequential art, films, popular genre fiction, and cookbooks? Students will use and interdisciplinary framework to answer these questions, combining the insights of critical race theory, cultural studies, literary scholarship, and history.
AMST 223 Inequalities Inequality is a fundamental aspect of social structure but we, as individuals, frequently find it simple to justify without investigating its history. Despite the adoption of the rhetoric of equal rights and democratic values, inequality thrives in the United States. Our placement in Geneva, NY allows us, as sociologists, a unique opportunity to observe these systems of inequality within our city and relate them to broader patterns in the nation as a whole. This course is designed to give students a foundational knowledge in sociological theory of inequality stemming from Marx, Weber, and DuBois and continuing through contemporary theories of intersectionality. These perspectives will then be used to understand inequality in social class, race, gender, sexualities, and in the global arena. (Freeman, offered annually)
AMST 237 Environmental Justice in Indian Country American Indians have since 'time immemorial' had an immediate relationship to the natural world and their physical surroundings. Many native peoples are rooted to place. This course explores American Indian relationships to nature and eco-political responses to contemporary environmental issues. Beginning with the history of American Indian political relationships with the U. S. federal government, we will consider the various and complex ways in which this history has affected and continues to affect American Indian ecology, agricultural land use, natural resource conservation, urban pollution, and modem environmental movements. Topics may include: resource use; land claims; sacred and ecologically unique places; hunting and fishing rights; food and agriculture; and traditional ecological knowledge. Students in this course will be introduced to the writings and ideas of Indigenous scholars and activists such as Vine Deloria, Jr.
AMST 260 Who Am I: A Critical Family History of Race, Class, Gender and Opportunity “In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage – to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness." ~Alex Haley. Over the past 20 years, family history has experienced a remarkable upsurge in interest. From TV shows that ask, "Who do you think you are?" to the popularity of DNA testing, individuals in America and beyond have engaged in personal journeys of discovery, seeking to find stories from their past. While research into family history can be personal, the research journey forces investigators to come in contact with the major forces that have shaped American life: immigration, changes in labor and social life, urbanization and suburbanization, and military conflicts and political upheavals. This course asks students to connect their individual lives and their ancestors' history to larger social and political contexts, paying particular attention to how issues of racism, classism, sexism and other structural inequalities shape individual opportunity. Through a close examination of past lives and journeys, students are guided to reflect on how their ancestors' experiences (and their own) are shaped by social and historical context. This course defines "family" and "ancestor" in broad terms and allows students to pursue research into the lives of not only blood relatives but into any individual the student feels is part of their family.
AMST 270 Storytelling with Data: Quantitative Tools for the Humanities Americans are increasingly confronted with data – sports statistics, crime maps, text mining of presidential tweets. What does all this data tell us about America? What does it hide? What tools and ways of thinking help us to better understand it? This course will introduce students to the instruments and techniques useful for quantitative research in the humanities. Students will learn a range of tools which will help them apply a critical lens for understanding and evaluating what data can bring to study of American life including statistics, text analysis, geospatial analysis, and data visualization. Topics relevant to social justice, social change, civic engagement, and social action such as race, sexuality, gender, and class will be highlighted through in-class conversations and research projects. Offered bi-annually.
AMST 301 Cultural Theory and Popular Culture This course introduces cultural studies as a major area of contemporary theory which has reshaped the way we think and write about literature. Critical cultural studies, historicism, and reader-response theory have expanded understandings of literary meaning to include production and reception of those texts as well as their ideological content and consequences. Students read theoretical essays by such thinkers as Marx, Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault, White, Butler, and Baudrillard, as well as examples of scholars applying these ideas to the study of literature and other cultural forms. Students will then become the critics, applying these theories to the contemporary literary, material and popular culture "texts" that surround them – stories, poems, film, photographs, toys, fashion, sports, and music. Dually designated as ENG 301.
AMST 303 Disability and Sexuality What is the relationship between sexuality and disability? How did we come to know and feel what we think we know and feel about these intersecting realms of knowledge and lived experience? Cultural ideals of beauty, youth, fitness, strength, sex appeal, social skill, mental acuity, and-most elusive-"health" all rely on norms of able bodiedness and heterosexuality, as well as middle-class whiteness. We will thus approach disability and sexuality not as fixed or singular categories, but as fluid, historically shifting, culturally-specific formations that intersect with race, class, gender, and nation. How do some bodies, minds, and psyches as well as sexual acts, desires, relationships, and identities come to be seen as deviant and others as normal? What are the national and transnational conditions or relations of power that form the context for these processes? Which cultural institutions have historically disciplined disabled, queer, and gender-non-conforming subjects? What legacies of resistance might we find in various forms of art and cultural production; in feminist and queer coalitions, activism and social movements for disability, racial and economic justice; and in scholarship including LGBT and Disability Studies? Where can we look for models of queer kinship, care collectives, and "alternative" familial and community structures based on practices of interdependence? We will approach these questions through a range of critical essays, books, films, artwork, and community engagement, working together to queer and crip - or further trouble - contemporary epistemologies of sexuality and disability. Dual designated as AMST 303. (Formerly WMST 303)
AMST 312 Critical Space Theory and Practice This course introduces students to Critical Space Theory and Practice, an interdisciplinary field that combines scholarship in cultural geography, feminist theory, sociology, anthropology, American studies, and architectural theory. We examine the ways that space – whether DIY, designed by an "expert" or virtual – is never neutral and thus has the ability to exclude, oppress, and/or perpetuate social hierarchies. We explore ideas and approaches to making space from the fields of public art, social theory, and community activism. Finally, we learn methods and creative approaches for making space that have the potential to be culturally inclusive, charged with political resistance, and spark social change. Offered annually, Makker.
AMST 314 The Art of Memoir How can a lived life be transformed into literature? What forms has life-writing taken in the past? Why is memoir one of the most popular literary forms today? Through lecture, discussion, readings, and criticism, this class explores a wide array of memoirs, such as graphic/illustrated memoir, confessional, portrait, or memoir-in-essay. Alongside the works themselves, we study theoretical concepts important to life-writing such as memory, subjectivity, confession, narrative, and affect. In addition to substantial critical papers, students will try their hands at some creative exercises in order to consider how memoirs function internally, as well as in the context of a broader literary landscape. Dual designated as ENG 314. (Staff, offered occasionally)
AMST 330 Digital Humanities The term "digital humanities" has a plethora of different definitions, ranging from the idea of fusing digital tools to perform traditional humanities work; studying modes of new media as objects of humanistic inquiry; and a new culture and ethos of collaboration. In this course we will be using the tools of digital technologies to extend our inquiry into the cultural productions of the United States. Through a mix of seminar discussions, hands-on tutorials, and project-based work, this course will provide students with theoretical and practical foundations for working in the Digital Humanities, covering topics such as digitization, encoding, analysis, and visualization. The centerpiece of this class will be a digital humanities project: students will do their own original research into nineteenth century dime novels to make an on-line exhibit for our library. Creating this project will teach students the skills of humanities scholars-research, writing and analyzing, and will let them put this knowledge to work. No technical background is required.
AMST 333 Other American Studies There are many ways to think about "America." This course examines forms of studying the United States beyond the academic field of American Studies. We will interrogate different methods of sustained intellectual inquiry about the United States that implicitly critique, widen, or offer alternatives to the academic field of American Studies. These include zines, cookbooks, food journalism, podcasts, graphic storytelling, travel guides, maps, and documentary photography. We will pay attention both to different approaches to research and to different ways to engage audiences. Students will be asked to complete a final research project that takes up one of these approaches to illuminate some aspect of US life. (Mukherji)
AMST 349 Gender, Space and Narrative Reparation: The Womb Chair Speaks Project This course engages students in an interdisciplinary art and activism project called the Womb Chair Speaks (www.wombchairspeaks.net) through an intimate seminar, centered on discussion and hands-on learning. The research for the project draws from the fields of art history, architectural history, medicine, women's studies, and studio art. Begun in 2018 at HWS by Professor Kirin Makker and two students Ainsley Rhodes `19 and Abbey Frederick `20, the project employs feminist theory and methods of inquiry to examine sexism and racism in the fields of architecture and medicine. The course is composed of two main experiences to underscore two methods of research and productive inquiry. First, students will read and discuss a series of written pieces related to the project including white masculinity in architectural education and practice, women's craft history in the domestic arts, women's healthcare, social art practice, and spatial agency. Second, in the spirit of other craftivist projects, students will be working actively on the Womb Chair Speaks project, embroidery and sewing, sharing out knowledge and practicing the theories of community building and resistance examined in class. The project is purposefully perpetual; the chair is not meant to be finished, offering students direct participation in an ongoing, process-oriented activist art project. No sewing experience is required. Offered annually (Makker)
AMST 351 Archives of American Literature Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that "language is the archives of history." This course will explore early American history through literature. In addition to reading historical fiction, autobiography, epic poetry, and other genres that revisit and revise the past, we will investigate how researchers come to know it. In other words, we will study the theory and practice of archives. What do these literary examinations of the country's past say about its present? How is the historical record created and preserved for, and how will it be accessed in, the future? Who and what gets left out, and why does it matter? Our authors, who may include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Lydia Marie Child, and Pauline Hopkins, will use writing to reckon with the past. And so will we.
AMST 353 Alienation and lntimacy: Russian-American Writers With the grand commercial success of The Russian Debutante's Handbook (Shteyngart, 2002), a new generation of Russians writing in English arrived on the American literary scene. The course introduces this diverse group of writers and the giants, Nabokov and Brodsky, from whose shadow they emerged. The writers share a first language (Russian), a language of composition (English), and a path through global space (Russia or Soviet Union to United States). Readings cover a range of literary genres (novel, including the graphic novel; short story; autobiography; memoir) and will be supplemented by author interviews and critical literature. The readings supply multiple models for constructing, or re-constructing, identity (linguistic, national, ethnic). We will consider questions of intertextuality (Reyn, Ulinich, Shteyngart), the diasporic intimacy of the Russian-Jewish-American immigrant community (Litman, Vapnyar, Fishman), the alienation experienced by immigrant characters and writers (Akhtiorskaya, Shteyngart, Gmshin), and the process of telling, retelling, or eliding the Soviet past (Brodsky, Gorokhova, Fishman, Nabokov, Shteyngart). The course is designed to improve students’ critical reading, writing, and literary analysis skills, and introduce them to literature of the Russian diaspora in the U.S. and to one facet of the literature of the American immigrant experience. (Welsh, offered every three years)
AMST 360 Debating Community: Controversies in the Public Humanities This courses focuses on the public work of American Studies: the techniques, concerns and practical issues of engaged scholars. Through examining a series of controversial public humanities projects students will explore community cultural development How do communities make decisions about what is worth saving, worth remember and why? How do these narratives and memories shape and transform common understandings of community? In turn, how do common understandings dictate the usage and extent of a community's control over its neighborhood? Struggles over the meaning and usage of community serve as a catalyst for conversations about how historical narrative is crafted in places often overlooked by conventional histories. Students will also be introduced to the work of public scholars in the fields of community cultural development historic preservation and museum studies, and examine the contexts – public policy and economics – that shape the work of non-profit cultural organizations. (Belanger, offered spring semester every other year)
AMST 465 Senior Seminar This seminar is the capstone course for the Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies. It is a chance for the student to reflect on the skills and knowledge that they have gained as a student of American Studies, and then hone some skills and deepen their knowledge by completing a substantial research project. (Offered annually)