Course Descriptions for Fall 2008
(As of 04/04/2008)

REMEMBER: ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED FOR THE FIRST WEEK IN ALL AMERICAN STUDIES COURSES. STUDENTS WILL BE DROPPED FROM CLASS FOR NON-ATTENDANCE.

10 - INTRO. TO AMERICAN STUDIES, Section 01: Work in America (4 units) - CC# 02003
TTh 12:30-02:00 160 Kroeber Instructors: K. Moran & M. Cohen
Sec. 101: CC# 02006 Tu 02:00-03:00, 259 Dwinelle
Sec. 102: CC# 02009 Tu 04:00-05:00, 183 Dwinelle
Sec. 103: CC# 02012 W 10:00-11:00, 179 Stanley
Sec. 104: CC# 02015 W 02:00-03:00, 228 Dwinelle

This course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of American Studies, taking “Work” as its central theme. We will explore the way historians, political economists, geographers, sociologists, writers and artists understand the meaning of work, the places where Americans work, and the stories we tell ourselves about our work lives. Specific topics will include the American class system, the psychology of work, labor history, the political economy of farm labor, places of work-- factories, offices and kitchens, and popular culture representations of work and everyday life.

“TIME” COURSES

101, Section 01 – The Harlem Renaissance (4 Units) - CC# 02030
MW 10:00-12:00 9 Evans Instructor: C. Palmer
This course explores the social, cultural, political and personal awakenings in the literature, art and music of the Negro Renaissance or the New Negro Movement, known as the Harlem Renaissance. This was a time (roughly 1918-1930) when, in the midst of legal segregation and increasing anti-black mob violence, black American writers, artists, philosophers, activists, and musicians, congregating in New York City's Harlem, reclaimed the right to represent themselves in a wide range of artistic forms and activist movements. This course will focus on the forces that led to this "renaissance" as well as those that fueled it. Primary texts for this course include Jean Toomer, Cane; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; George Schuyler, Black No More; Nella Larsen, Passing; poetry by Langston Hughes; and works by Claude McKay, Alain Locke, Mae Cowdery, Sterling Brown, Anne Spencer, Jessie Fauset and others.

American Studies C132B – American Intellectual History (4 units) - CC# 02057
MWF 10:00-11:00 390 Hearst Min Instructor: D.A. Hollinger
Also cross-listed as History C132B.

Sec. 101: CC# 02059 W 12:00-01:00, 321 Haviland
Sec. 102: CC# 02105 Th 01:00-02:00, 2523 Tolman
Sec. 103: CC# 02108 Th 10:00-11:00, 201 Giannini
Sec. 104: CC# 02111 F 09:00-10:00, 201 Giannini

This lecture course traces the work of leading American thinkers since the Civil War. The cast of characters includes Mark Twain, William James, W. E. B. Du Bois, Henry Adams, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Thorstein Veblen, Margaret Mead, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dewey, James Baldwin, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Betty Friedan, Thomas Kuhn, Richard Rorty, and Carl Sagan. Among the episodes addressed are Victorianism and the revolt against it, the decline of Protestant cultural hegemony, the emergence of an ethno-religiously diverse intelligentsia, and the debates over Darwinism, modernism, pragmatism, communism, postmodernism, feminism, racism, and multiculturalism. Readings include selections from Hollinger and Capper, The American Intellectual Tradition: A Sourcebook (5th edition, 2006). Midterm, 10-page paper, final exam.

American Studies 139AC - Civil Rights and Social Movements in U.S. History: Struggles for Racial Equality in Comparative Perspective, 1940-present (4 units) - CC# 02063
TTh 09:30-11:00 2060 VLSB Instructor: M. Brilliant
Also cross-listed as History C139C.

"Civil Rights and Social Movements in U.S. History" presents a top-down (political and legal history), bottom-up (social and cultural history), and comparative (by race and ethnicity as well as region) view of America's struggles for racial equality from roughly World War II until the present. Beginning with the onset of World War II, America experienced not a singular, unitary Civil Rights Movement - as is typically portrayed in standard textbook accounts and the collective memory - but rather a variety of contemporaneous civil rights and their related social movements. These movements, moreover, did not follow a tidy chronological-geographic trajectory from South to North to West, nor were their participants merely black and white. Instead, from their inception, America's civil rights movements unfolded both beyond the South and beyond black and white. "Civil Rights and Social Movements in U.S. History" endeavors to equip students with a greater appreciation for the complexity of America's civil rights and social movements history - a complexity that neither a black / white nor nonwhite / white framework adequately captures. Put another way, "Civil Rights and Social Movements in U.S. History" will examine how the problem of the color line - which W.E.B. DuBois deemed to be in 1903 the problem of the twentieth century - might better be viewed as a problem of color lines. If America's demographics are increasingly beyond black and white, if "the classic American dilemma has now become many dilemmas of race and ethnicity," as President Clinton put it in the late 1990s, if color lines now loom as the problem of the 21st century, then a course on America's civil rights and social movements past may very well offer a glimpse into America's civil rights and social movements present and future.

“PLACE” COURSES

102, Section 01 - Indian Reservations as Place (4 units) – CC# 02033
TuTh 11:00-12:30 2 Evans Instructor: K. Biestman
The course explores the role of Indian Country in American history, law, economics, literature, popular culture, identity and imagination. The course addresses frontier cultural intersections and representations, dueling political, economic and spiritual philosophies, and tribal survivance. Specific analysis will be given to the built environment (Indian casinos, tourist destinations), landscapes (historic battlegrounds, sacred geography) and constructed realities/fictions (film, sports mascots).

C111E, Section 01 – Mysteries of the City (4 units) - CC# 02039
TTh 12:30-02:00 390 Hearst Min Instructor: S. Otter & D. Henkin
Also cross-listed as English C136 & History 100.

Sec. 101: CC# 02041 W 03:00-04:00, 5 Evans
Sec. 102: CC# 02114 W 04:00-05:00, 81 Evans
Sec. 103: CC# 02117 Tu 03:00-04:00, 7 Evans
Sec. 104: CC# 02120 Tu 04:00-05:00, 7 Evans
Sec. 105: CC# 02123 W 12:00-01:00, 2032 VLSB
Sec. 106: CC# 02126 Th 09:00-10:00, 2066 VLSB

Co-taught by a literary scholar and a historian, this course offers an interdisciplinary examination of how the American metropolis has been portrayed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in novels, short stories, poetry, journalism, essays, photography, and film. We will pay special attention to texts and images of New York, but we also will devote significant attention to four other cities (Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles) in different periods of American urban history. There will be two midterms and one final examination. All examinations will include both in-class and take-home components.

Book List: Child, L.: Letters from New York; Foster, G. : New York By Gaslight; Lippard, G.: Quaker City; Thompson, G.: Venus in Boston; Webb, F.: Garies and Their Friends; Riis, J.: How the Other Half Lives; Addams, J.: Twenty years at Hull-House; Levy: 920 O’Farrell Street; Norris, F.: McTeague; Johnson, J.: Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man; Hammett, D.: Maltese Falcon; Chandler, R.: Big Sleep; West, N.: Day of the Locus; Dick, P.: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; Delany, S.: Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

C112A – American Built Environment (4 units) - CC# 02042
TTh 11:00-12:30 112 Wurster Instructor: P. Groth
Also cross-listed as ED c169A, Geog c160A.
Sec. 101: CC# 02045 Tu 01:00-02:00, 104 Wurster
Sec. 102: CC# 02048 W 12:00-01:00, 801A Wurster
Sec. 103: CC# 02051 Th 10:00-11:00, 601A Wurster
Sec. 104: CC# 02054 Th 04:00-05:00, 104 Wurster

This course introduces ways of seeing and interpreting American histories and cultures, as revealed in everyday built surroundings: homes, highways, farms, factories, stores, recreation areas, small towns, city districts, and regions. The course encourages students to read landscapes as records of past and present social relations, and to speculate for themselves about cultural meaning.

Note that although this course deals with culture, and America, it does not deal equally with three different cultures. Thus, it does NOT satisfy the University’s American Cultures requirement.

This course satisfies the pre-1900 requirement for American Studies majors.

History 127AC – California (4 units) – CC# 39492
TTh 02:00-03:30 145 Dwinelle Instructor: K. Klein
The History of California from pre-European contact to the present, with emphasis on the diversity of cultures and the interplay of social, economic, and political developments.

This course satisfies the American Cultures requirement.

HONORS SEMINAR

H110, Section 01 – HONORS SEMINAR: Methods, Histories and Controversies (3 units)
TTh 09:30-11:00 106 Wheeler Instructor: D. Mcquade
This intensive honors reading seminar focuses on introducing you to the development of American Studies as a field of academic inquiry as well as to several of the important methodological approaches and theoretical debates and contested areas that characterize contemporary scholarship in American Studies.

Beginning with efforts to combine literary and historical perspectives on experience, scholarly inquiry in American Studies has expanded to include cultural studies, the study of popular culture, and the construction (and deconstruction) of such categories of analysis as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality and the body as well as, more recently, cross-cultural studies.

This seminar provides you with the opportunity to engage in a series of extended conversations — through concentrated reading, class discussions, and writing — aimed at enabling you to come to terms with the various “meanings” of America proposed in seminal scholarly works in American Studies.

SENIOR THESIS SEMINARS

SENIOR THESIS SEMINARS: Students will meet in a seminar, which will help them research and write their senior theses.

191, Section 01 – SENIOR SEMINAR (4 Units) – CC# 02075
Th 10:00-12:00 45 Evans Instructor: C. Palmer

191, Section 02 – SENIOR SEMINAR (4 Units) – CC# 02078
Tu 02:00-04:00 35 Evans Instructor: K. Biestman

H195 – SENIOR HONORS SEMINAR (4 Units) – CC# (see Faculty Advisor)
Th 02:00-04:00 72 Evans Instructor: C. Palmer

***NOTE: In order to receive honors in American Studies, a student must have an overall GPA of 3.51, and a GPA of 3.65 for all courses taken in completion of the major (upper and lower division). Students should discuss with their major faculty adviser the preparation of a bibliography and a brief description of their proposed honors thesis and their eligibility to enroll in honors, based on GPA, the semester before they plan to enroll in H195. They also must secure a faculty adviser from an appropriate field who will agree to direct the honors thesis (the "honors thesis adviser"). THE FACULTY ADVISER’S AGREEMENT MUST BE SUBMITTED TO COURSE INSTRUCTOR NO LATER THAN THE 2ND WEEK OF CLASSES.

SPECIAL COURSES OF INTEREST TO A.S. STUDENTS

NOTE: Upper Division courses can be used for Areas of Concentration, when appropriate.

American Studies C134- Information Technology & Society- (4 units) – CC# 02060
M 02:00-05:00 140 Barrow Instructor: M. Laguerre
Also cross-listed as African American Studies C134.

This course assesses the role of information technology in the digitization of society by focusing on the deployment of e-government, telecommuting practices in Silicon Valley, the organization of the virtual office, the ramifications of the digital divide,, gender and the Internet, and privacy, security and surveillance. It examines how IT has contributed to the mobility of agents, tools, and social structure. It discusses the role of information technology in the governance and transformation of the American and Canadian metropolises with a specific focus on the social production of the digital neighborhood. It explains the phenomenon of virtual migration, the rise of digital diasporas, and how IT is a conduit through which the globalization process is deployed.

African American Studies 142AC- Race and American Film - (4 units) – CC# 00656
MW 02:00-04:00 102 Moffitt Instructor: M. Cohen
Sec. 101: CC# 00659 M 06:00-08:00, 101 Moffitt

This course uses film to investigate the central role of race in American culture and history. The course spans the 20th century, covering (among other topics) Jim Crow in silent film, Hollywood westerns and melodramas, independent film and experimental cinema. This class will concentrate on the history of African Americans in film, but we will also watch movies that consider how the overlapping histories of whiteness and ethnicity, American Indians, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, the “Third World,” “Multiculturalism” and Globalization have been represented through film. Themes covered include representing race and nation; white supremacy and the making of whiteness; the borderlands; passing and miscegenation; the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality.

American Studies C174 - Visual Autobiography- (4 units) – CC# 02066
TTh 09:30-12:30 300 Wheeler Instructor: H. Wong
Also Cross-listed as English C143V, UGIS C135, and Visual Studies C185A.

INSTRUCTOR APPROVAL REQUIRED. To be considered for admission, you must submit an application form by 4pm Tuesday April 22nd to 322 Wheeler. All students must check further information by going to english.berkeley.edu and select English C143V concerning required writing sample.

While visual and literary studies have been seen as historically separate disciplines, we will study those forms of self-representation that defy disciplinary boundaries, what we are calling "visual autobiography." Visual autobiography encompasses a wide range of self-representations and self-narrations: conventional books in which images are integral to the whole, rather than mere supplementation or illustration; pictographic (picture-writing) ledger books; photo-biographies; artists' books (individually handmade textual art objects); story quilts; electronic personal narratives; and other visual modes, what W.J.T. Mitchell refers to as "imagetexts" (in forms ranging from "textual pictures" to "pictorial texts").

In addition to reading theory and verbal/visual texts and to looking at autobiographical images, students will both "look"/"read" and "make"/"write" as a more complete and reciprocal method of interpreting personal experience and the history, culture, and community that shape it. As part of the studio emphasis, student work will be presented and discussed regularly in the form of in-class critiques; these will be supplemented with written assignments and exercises. Students will read a variety of primary and secondary materials; participate in class discussions, exercises, and critiques; keep a visual/verbal journal; and produce three assigned projects and a final project. At the end of the semester there will be a public showing/reading/performance of student work.

In addition to books, expect to spend at least $100.00 on art supplies.
This is a transdisciplinary studio course that fulfills the American Cultures requirement.

American Studies Summer Institute 2008 Courses

American Studies is offering a number of 3-week long courses this summer (July 28-Aug 15). Many are one-unit classes, although American Studies 179AC combines three of the one-unit classes and satisfies the American Cultures requirement (in 3 weeks!). Depending on your Area of Concentration, these classes may work for your Area. (Remember you need at least 6 classes and at least 20 units in your Area.)

American Studies 179AC- Representing Race and Ethnicity in American Culture- (3 units) – CC# 11320
MW 1-2, 3-5:30; TTh 12-2:30, 3-5:30 60 Evans Instructor: K. Moran, L. Raiford, M. Cohen
Sec. 101: CC# 11309 M 01:00-02:00, 201 Wheeler

Fifteen hours of lecture and one hour of discussion per week for three weeks. This course offers students a unified course experience that examines the politics of visual representation and ways of "seeing" race and ethnicity in the U.S. in a comparative way. This course satisfies the American Cultures requirement by combining the following 1-unit courses: American Studies 180C -
The Politics of Advertising in the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Representation; American Studies 181B - Writing Narratives of Race and Gender: Photography and Art;and American Studies 184I - Race and American Film. Students will receive no credit or partial credit for 179AC after taking 180C, 181B, or 184I.

American Studies 180C – The Politics of Advertising in the United States: Race, Ethnicity and Representation- (1 unit) – CC# 11310
MW 03:00-05:30 60 Evans Instructor: K. Moran
Five hours of lecture per week for three weeks. This course will address the birth of advertising culture in the U.S., focusing on
the specific ways that early advertising used images of Natives to connect products to values associated with nature, authenticity, and masculinity. We will then talk about the use of plantations and African Americans to both sell products and re-imagine the U.S. as a nation. Finally, we will look at the "Golden Age" of advertising (1950-1980) to talk about the way that middle class Euro-American values came to define the American Dream.

American Studies 181B- Writing Narratives of Race and Gender- (1 unit) – CC# 11315
TTh 12:00-02:30 9 Evans Instructor: L. Raiford
Five hours of lecture per week for three weeks. This course aims to uncover the long history between race, gender, nation, and the visual. Our particular concern is how visual culture produces meanings about African American, Native American, and women's bodies. What do visual narratives tell us about national identity? Through the specific lenses of visual art and photography, we will
ask how do racial bodies become gendered bodies? How have racial meanings and the visual modalities employed to express them changed over time?

American Studies 184I- Race and American Film- (1 unit) – CC# 11308
TTh 03:00-05:30 180 Tan Instructor: M. Cohen
Five hours of lecture per week for three weeks. This course uses film to investigate the central role of race in American culture and history from the late 1800s to the present. We will consider the ways in which film has represented the history of race and racial formations in the U.S. Other topics include the histories of whiteness and ethnicity, representations of race and nation, blackface minstrelsy in the movies, westerns and representations of American Indians on film, borderlands and immigration, and the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality.

American Studies 188C- Food Culture in America- (1 unit) – CC# 11325
Sat. 10:00-03:00 180 Tan Instructor: K. Moran
Five hours of lecture per week for three weeks. In the course we will explore the social history, political economy and "aesthetics" of eating in America. We will discuss the foods Americans consume, how and when they eat, and how they communicate about
food. We will also consider the specific food culture of Berkeley, and explore the rise of the so-called Berkeley "gourmet ghetto.

American Studies 188D- San Francisco Detectives- (1 unit) – CC# 11330
MW 12:00-02:30 2 Evans Instructor: R. Hutson
Five hours of lecture per week for three weeks. San Francisco, since Dashiell Hamett's <The Maltese Falcon>, has been used as a setting for detective fiction, as if its fog, hills, and valleys, and its spirit of freedom could serve as a rich environment for generating the secrets that a detective has to expose. The narrative of detection must construct, as theorists observe, the narrative of
the crime. This course will consider narrative theories of detective stories. Students will read <The Maltese Falcon,> and writers such as Joe Gores and Marcia Muller. Three detective films, <The Maltese Falcon,> <Vertigo,> and <Bullett,> will be screened, and students will take the Maltese Falcon tour in San Francisco.

Other American Studies Summer 2008 Courses

A.S. C125, Section 01 – American Media and Global Politics (3 units) - CC# 11305
MTTh 10:00-12:30 56 Barrows Instructor: G. Wren
Also cross-listed as Mass Communications C125 and ISF

Public opinion about world events is largely shaped today by the mass media. How accurate is such coverage in the light of historical analysis? To what extent do systemic sources of bias or distortion affect our understanding of history? To approach these questions, we will analyze the role of the media in several specific case studies.