Course Descriptions for Spring 2007
(As of 10/24/2006)

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

10 - INTRO. TO AMERICAN STUDIES, Section 01: Culture Wars (4 units) - CC# 02003
TTH 11:00-12:30 122 Wheeler Instructor: M. Cohen
Sec. 101, CC# 02006 W 12:00-01:00, 9 Evans
Sec. 102, CC# 02009 Th 08:00-09:00, 6 Evans

At the 1992 Republican National Convention, conservative politician Pat Buchanan declared: “My friends, this election is about … what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.” This belief that America is locked in an intractable, two-sided (liberal versus conservative) “Culture War” continues to dominate our national political and cultural life. Everything from daytime talk shows and the Oscars to the Supreme Court and Presidential Elections are today key battle fronts along the raging cultural wars, and there appears to be no end in sight. But why should something as immaterial, so unspecific, or something that is often so potentially frivolous as “culture” become the key site of political contest in our times? Why do terms like Society, Economy, Justice, Freedom or even War itself fail to carry such political weight in this day and age? Is culture simply that which keeps us entertained, or is it politics carried on by other means?

This class will consider the question of culture as a site of political and social conflict from the Civil War to the Culture War. We will consider how culture generates the basic stories we tell about ourselves, stories about heroes and villains that have shaped fundamental struggles over power and politics from the triumph of white supremacy after Reconstruction to the birth of Hip Hop in post-Civil Rights America. We will consider how representations of core social divisions such as race, class, religion, gender and sexuality contributed to competing visions of national identity and belonging. Other topics include: the making of “Un-Americanism” in the industrial era; literary rebellion from the Greenwich Village bohemians to the San Francisco Beatniks; the Scopes Trial and hayseed power in the Jazz Age; the social history of spin from propaganda to public relations; how the war in Vietnam gave birth to both the New Left and New Right; feminism and its backlash; and how competing visions of globalization shape what it means to be an American today. This class is designed to be a basic introduction to American Studies methodologies as well as a systematic history of cultural conflict in America since 1877.

10 - INTRO. TO AMERICAN STUDIES, Section 02: The United States & America (4 units) - CC# 02012
TTH 03:30-05:00 170 Barrows Instructor: R. Candida-Smith
Sec. 201, CC# 02015 W 03:00-04:00, 6 Evans
Sec. 202, CC# 02018 Th 08:00-09:00, 9 Evans

In the 1920s, the poet William Carlos Williams wrote, “I am a United Stateser. I do not want to call myself a United Stateser but what else am I?” The son of immigrants from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, Williams was well aware that anybody who lived in any of the forty-plus countries of the “New World” was American. He worried that citizens of the U.S. had lost track of who they really were, or could become, by confusing their nation with the whole of America.

In this introductory class to the study of American society and culture, we will examine the relationship of the United States to the rest of America. We will question what U.S. society shares with other American nations, what institutions and practices may be uniquely “United Stateser,” and how U.S. interaction with the rest of America has shaped the society we live in today. By the end of the term, we should have a better understanding of what it means to be both American and from the U.S. (continued on next page)

The course is interdisciplinary. In addition to historical readings and lectures examining different aspects of the United States role in America, we will look at films such as Salt of the Earth, Salvador, Farmingville, or The Motorcycle Diaries, read poetry and fiction by writers such as Williams, Pablo Neruda, Aurora Levins Morales, or Victoria Ocampo. We will also look into the role of music, television, and visual culture in the creation of cultural markets linking the United States with its American neighbors.

“TIME COURSES"

101, Section 01 – American Architecture in Depression and War, Section 01 (4 Units) – CC# 02030
TTH 12:30-02:00 155 Kroeber Instructor: A. Shanken
Sec. 101, CC# 02033 Tu 05:00-06:00, 258 Dwinelle
Sec. 102, CC# 02036 W 10:00-11:00, 2 Evans

The Great Depression and World War II are arguably the two most influential events for the development of the built environment in the 20th century. Not only did they alter the socio-economic and political landscape on which architecture and urban planning depend, but they also led to technological innovations and vital debates about the built environment. This course examines the 1930's and 1940's topically, studying the work of the New Deal, corporate responses to the Depression and war, the important connections between architecture and advertising, the role of the Museum of Modern Art in the promotion of Modernism, the concept of the ideal house, and key texts, theories, and projects from the period. Students can expect to have rich contact with primary materials from the period, to do original research, and to write several short papers plus a final exam.

This course will satisfy "Time" as well as Area of Concentration Courses for students with Areas of Concentration in Urban studies, The Modern Period or World War II Culture.

101, Section 02 – The Atomic Age & Cold War Culture (4 Units) - CC# 02039
TTH 08:00-09:30 155 Kroeber Instructor: C. Palmer

The atomic bomb changed the world. In this course, we will examine the impact the development of the bomb, the decision to use it, and the nuclear arms race have had on American culture and society. The threat of nuclear annihilation, the rise of anti-Communist ideology, the development of a powerful military-industrial complex, the reliance on covert and proxy warfare, changing family dynamics, and postwar sexuality are among the topics to be considered. Our task in this class is to figure out how people use and respond to the rhetoric of progress and annihilation in the United States. We will study a variety of literary and visual media, and research scientific and political publications, aesthetic and artistic movements, and spectacular public events.

101AC, Section 01 – Antebellum America: The Advent of Mass Society (4 Units) - CC# 02042. NOTE: This class satisfies the A.S. "Time" requirement ONLY when taken with:
A.S. 198 (1 unit), Sec. 1, CC# 02117, Wed 1-2, 4 Evans or A.S. 198, Sec. 2, CC# 02120, Wed 3-4, 2 Evans
TTH 12:30-02:00 2050 VLSB Instructor: D. Henkin

Though the Civil War is often regarded as the Second American Revolution, as the decisive turning point in American history, many of the institutions, ideologies, and practices that make up modern society and culture in the U.S. emerged more gradually during the decades that preceded the War. To understand the origins of such contemporary phenomena as the mass media, corporate capitalism, wage labor, the two-party system, the Bible Belt, family values, and racism, we need to trace their evolution in the nineteenth century. This course examines half a century of life in the United States (roughly from the War of 1812 until the secession of the South), focusing on everyday life, popular culture, race relations, westward expansion, urbanization, class formation, religion, democratic political participation, sexuality, print culture, and competing claims to wealth and power. Assigned readings will consist largely of first-person narratives in which women and men of a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds try to negotiate and interpret a period of bewildering social change.

Course requirements include short papers, midterms, and a final exam. Students will also have the option of taking the course on writing-intensive basis. This course satisfies the pre-1900 requirement for A.S. majors and the American Cultures requirements.

"PLACE COURSES"

102, Section 01 – Environmental Justice Sites & Sacred Geography (4 Units) – CC# 02045
TTH 09:30-11:00 122 Wheeler Instructor: K. Biestman

The course explores the competing economic, spiritual, political, environmental, scientific and legal interests raised in protecting sacred spaces. Using the Native American model as reference, topics include comparative and cross-cultural analysis of environmental justice sites, sacred geography, and the treatment of human remains in museums.

C112B - American Cultural Landscapes, 1900 – Present (4 units) CC# 02057
Also listed as ED c169B; Geog c160B
TTH 11:00-12:30 112 Wurster Instructor: P: Groth
Sec. 101, CC# 02060 Tu 01:00-02:00, 172 Wurster
Sec. 102, CC# 02063 W 12:00-01:00, 801A Wurster
Sec. 103, CC# 02066 Th 10:00-11:00. 104 Wurster
Sec. 104, CC# 02069 Th 04:00-05:00, TBA
Sec. 105, CC# 02072 W 01:00-02:00, 801A 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.

C112F – The American Forest: Its Ecology, History, & Representation – (4 Units) CC# 02075
TTH 12:30-02:00 160 Kroeber Instructors: M. Lovell & J. McBride
Also cross-listed with ESPM c191, History of Art c189, & UGIS c136.

Sec. 101, CC# 02078 M 04:00-05:00, 104 Moffitt
Sec. 102, CC# 02081 M 05:00-06:00, 104 Moffitt
Sec. 103, CC# 02084 Tu 08:00-09:00, 104 Moffitt
Sec. 104, CC# 02087 Tu 09:00-10:00, 104 Moffitt

Looking at historical and at present-day forests, this course is designed to introduce students to both the scientific dimensions of forest environments and to the ways in which those environments have been seen, analyzed, utilized, and represented in this country since the seventeenth century. It investigates geographic facts, cultural value systems, the operation of forest ecosystems, the past and present uses of forest products, and the mechanisms by which photographers, artists, and writers have engaged the American forest imaginatively.
This course fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Arts & Literature, Historical Studies, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences. It is one of several courses sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation to encourage the development of courses in General Education that are conceptually interdisciplinary and team taught by faculty in Letters & Sciences and the Professional Schools and Colleges.

C171: The American Designed Landscape Since 1850 (3 units) – CC# 02090
TTH 12:30-02:00 101 Wurster Instructor: L. Mozingo
Also cross-listed with Landscape Architecture c171

This course surveys the history of American landscape architecture since 1850 including the rise of the public parks movement, the development of park systems, the establishment of the national parks, the landscape of the Progressive Era, suburbs, and the modernist landscape. The survey encompasses urban open spaces, conservation landscapes, urban design, environmental planning, and gardens. It reviews the cultural and social contexts which have shaped and informed landscape architecture in the United States since the advent of the public parks movement, as well as the aesthetic precepts, environmental concerns, horticultural practices, and technological innovations of American landscapes.

History 126B: The West in United States History (4 Units) – CC# 39636
MWF 10:00-11:00 102 MOFFITT Instructor: M. Brilliant

This course surveys the history of the American West since 1845. We will pay particular heed to the history and historiography surrounding those aspects of the West that are typically associated with the region's distinctiveness as both a shifting region on the national map and a potent metaphor in the national imagination. These include: a cultural history propagated in film and literature in which the region occupies center stage in the drama of America's development as a democratic society; an ethnoracial history that consists of a complex, multiracial (as opposed to biracial) pattern of race relations; an environmental history shaped by a scarcity of water amidst an abundance of extractive resources; an urban history characterized by the nation's highest concentration of urbanization and an approach to metropolitan development that shaped that of the rest of the nation; and a political history shaped by an especially pervasive federal government presence in the region's development along with being a national bellwether for both liberal action and conservative reaction. Throughout the course, we will reflect on whether claims about the West's distinctiveness are in fact regionally and analytically distinctive, or whether its time, as some historians have recently declared, to abandon the history of the American West as a historical sub-field.

HONORS SEMINAR
(See American Studies Faculty Advisors, if interested)

H110, Section 01 – HONORS SEMINAR: Special Topics in American Studies (3 units) – See American Studies Advisor for CC#.
M 02:00-05:00 203 Wheeler Instructor: K. Moran

This seminar is intended to provide a brief introduction to the history of American Studies as a field and to some methodological approaches that define contemporary American Studies scholarship. Most of the reading will be assigned by the students, who will lead discussions about central issues and debates in their own areas of concentration.

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# 02102
Tu 12:00-02:00 115 Kroeber Instructor: C. Palmer

191, Section 02 – SENIOR SEMINAR (4 Units) – CC# 02105
Th 02:00-04:00 B51 Hildebrand Instructor: C. Palmer

191, Section 04 – SENIOR SEMINAR (4 Units) – CC# 02111
W 04:00-06:00 5 Evans Instructor: M. Foletta

H195 – SENIOR HONORS SEMINAR (4 Units) – CC# (see below)
Th 02:00-04:00 5 Evans Instructor: K. Biestman

***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.

OTHER AMERICAN STUDIES COURSES

American Studies 110 – Schooling America: Education in the United States in Historical Perspective (4 Units) – CC# 02048
W 02:00-05:00 151 Barrows Instructor: M. Brilliant

Most Americans have a long history of being schooled but a lean understanding of the history of schooling. They possess extensive personal experience in schools, but limited historical knowledge about schools. Yet, few (if any) institutions occupy a more formative and fraught place in American public life. This course - a discussion seminar - will explore major topics and themes in the history of education in the United States, focusing on public schooling at the K-12 level. Topics to be tackled include: the origins of public school systems during the half century or so after the American Revolution; the evolution of public school systems in response to the transformations wrought by immigration, industrialization, and geopolitics; the recurring culture wars over curricular content; the efficacy of public education at promoting (or precluding) socioeconomic mobility; and the sociolegal struggles over desegregation and school finance equalization. These historical topics, in turn, raise broader, philosophical themes, which this course will also address, including: the conflicting aims of public education in a socially diverse, politically liberal, and economically capitalistic society; the competing educational rights claims of students, their parents, and the state; and the appropriateness (and ability) of schools to serve as vehicles for social change and equal opportunity.

American Studies c172 – Business in Its Historical Environment (3 Units) – CC# 02093
MW 11:00-12:30 C230 Cheit Instructor: C. Rosen
This course is cross-listed with UGBA c172.

This is an undergraduate elective in the history of American business. Its purpose is to enable you to put into historical perspective the various organizational, economic, social, and environmental challenges U.S. businesses face today. How has American business gotten to where it is today? What can we learn from the past that can help us better understand the structure of business at the dawn of the 21st century and the problems and opportunities corporate that managers face? Topics covered will include: the problems of technological innovation during the industrial revolution; the government’s role in the industrial revolution; the cultural crisis stimulated by industrialization; the market forces, entrepreneurship, and management strategies behind the rise of the modern industrial corporation; advertising and the rise of the twentieth century’s economy and culture of mass consumption; the 1929 stock market crash; business in the Great Depression; unionization and the management of labor after World War II; the government’s role in business growth and economic, social, and environmental regulation; the postwar golden age of American business and the rise and impact of bureaucratic forms of corporate organization; the structural and managerial factors behind the loss of American competitiveness in the 1970s and 80s and the revival of competitiveness in the 90s; the globalization of American business; and the evolving dynamic of management’s attempt to cope with internal growth and the imperatives of international competition.

COURSES OFFERED BY A.S. AFFILIATED FACULTY
Upper Division courses can be used for Areas of Concentration, when appropriate.

L & S 40B – The History of American Popular Culture (3 Units) – CC# 51839
TTH 03:30-05:00 155 Donner Lab Instructor: K. Moran

One way to understand the social history of the United States is to think about the ways Americans told their stories, represented and imagined the past, and expressed their identities in the popular culture they created and consumed. In this course we will focus on some of the main forms of American popular culture from the1890's to 1940 including historical romances, dime novels, magazines, early cinema, Tin Pan Alley comic books and amusement parks. We will end the course looking at classic Hollywood movies. Throughout the course, we will be analyzing the way that social and political changes resulting from the rise of consumerism and modern industrial practices were reflected, expressed, and contested in the kinds of entertainments that shaped the everyday world of Americans.

English 130B – American Literature: 1800-1865 (4 Units) – CC# 28318
TTH 11:00-12:30 70 Evans Instructor: S. Otter

Reading Poe, Longfellow, Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, Jacobs, Fern, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson, we will pay particular attention to literary form and technique, to social and political context, and to the ideological formations and transformations during the antebellum period. We will be concerned with issues of "self" (the search for transcendence and the entanglement in relations); sexuality; landscape; the Puritan legacy; the nature and role of the emotions; the efforts to reform the American character; the democratic experiment; and the struggles over the rights and roles of women, African Americans, and Native Americans in the expanding nation. Two midterms and one final examination will be required.

English 130C – American Literature: 1865-1900 (4 Units) – CC# 28321
MW 03:00-04:00 3 Leconte Instructor: B. Wagner
Sec. 101, CC# 28324 F 03:00-04:00, 223 Dwinelle
Sec. 102, CC# 28327 F 03:00-04:00, 109 Dwinelle
Sec. 103, CC# 28330 F 03:00-04:00, 229 Dwinelle

A survey in United States literature from the Civil War to the beginning of the twentieth century. The course pays special attention to matters of violence, urban life, and social reform as they were refracted within an increasingly stratified public sphere. There will be one midterm, one final exam, and two short papers. There will also be a course reader of poetry, short stories, and journalism.

Book List: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Walt Whitman, Complete Poems; Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron-Mills; Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems; Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn; William Dean Howells, Hazard of New Fortunes; Charles Chesnutt, Marrow of Tradition; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Stephen Crane, Great Short Works

English 131 – American Poetry (4 Units) – CC# 28333
TTH 12:30-02:00 10 Evans Instructor: R. Haas

A survey of American Poetry from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, with special attention to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, the early 20th century modernists, poets of the Depression era, poets of the post-WWII era such as the Beats, and--if we can get there--trends in contemporary poetry.

English 150, Section 06 – Sexuality & Antebellum Women’s Writing (4 Units) – See Professor for CC#
TTH 11:00-12:30 204 Wheeler Instructor: D. Beam

This course will look at a wide variety of materials and topics with an emphasis on nineteenth-century American women‚s literary and political treatments of chastity, autoeroticism, marriage, interracial sex, sexual identity, and romantic friendship. We will examine the role of women in creating, contesting, and sustaining sexual ideologies and their use of varying literary forms to do so. Along with contemporary theory on the history of sexuality, we’ll look at antebellum hygienic tracts and medical theories of reproduction and sex, sensation literature by women, feminist utopian fiction and the diaries of women in utopian communities, an unpublished novel manuscript with hermaphrodite narrator, fictional and medical treatments of dreams, and fictional and epistolary treatments of interracial marriage. We’ll look as well at comparative treatments of sexuality, women’s rights, and marriage in selected men’s writing, including the textual courtships of Poe with women poets.

This course satisfies the pre-1900 requirement for A.S. majors.

Possible booklist: Fuller, M. The Essential Margaret Fuller; Howe, J. W. The Hermaphrodite; Sweat, M. Ethel‚s Love-Life; Hawthorne, N. The Blithedale Romance; Stoddard, E. The Morgesons; Spofford, H. The Amber Gods and Other Stories; Alcott, L. Alternative Alcott; Walker, C. American Women Poets of the Nineteenth-Century; Gaul, T., ed., To Marry an Indian; Dickinson, A. What Answer?; Fogarty, R., ed., Desire and Duty at Oneida: Tirzah Miller‚s Intimate Memoir.

History 121B – The American Revolution (4 Units) – CC# 39621
MWF 01:00-02:00 160 Dwinelle Instructor: M. Foletta

The thirty years surrounding the Declaration of Independence remain the seminal moment within America's past. During this short span of time Americans redefined their relationship with the British empire, constructed a new and largely original form of government, and began the process of defining themselves as a people. In this course we will examine the imperial crisis of the 1760s and 1770s, the war for independence, the social, economic, and cultural changes of the revolutionary era, and the political innovations culminating in the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Formal course requirements include a short paper (5 pages), a longer paper (8-10 pages), a midterm, and a final.

This course satisfies the pre-1900 requirement for A.S. majors.

History 125A – The History of Black People & Race Relations, 1550-1861 – CC# 39633
TTH 09:30-11:00 182 Dwinelle Instructor: W. Martin

The course will survey African American history from the African background to the outbreak of the Civil War. The origins and development of Afro-American society, culture and politics will be explored from the perspective of African-Americans themselves: slave and free, North and South. We will begin by examining the cultural and demographic background of African-born slaves and the system of the Atlantic slave trade. We will then consider the expansion of racial slavery and the emergence of the "free Negro" class. The development of the black family, black communities, and black institutions (i.e., church, school, press) will also be traced. Other issues to be discussed include the American Revolution and slavery, New World slave systems, slave resistance, and abolitionism. Throughout, the enduring dilemma of race relations functions as a central theme.

History 135 - American Indian History: Precontact to the Present (4 Units) – CC# 39645
TTH 11:00-12:30 156 Dwinelle Instructor: J. Spear

The purpose of this course is to provide an introductory interpretation of the varied historical experiences of many nations native to North America from the first migrations of peoples into the continent until the present. Among the specific topics that will be covered are: origins and cultural development; the impact of European contact and conquest; assimilation, acculturation, and adaptation; the development and implementation of U.S. federal policies towards Indian peoples; native resistance and activism; definitions and practices of sovereignty; and cultural attitudes towards Indians in American society. We will seek to assess both the impact of colonialism and its consequences upon Indian peoples as well as their responses. That is, we will treat Native Americans not as victims but as historical, political, economic, and cultural actors who resourcefully adjusted, resisted, and accommodated to the changing realities of life in North America during the last five hundred years.

Sociology 125 – Urban Sociology (4 Units) – CC# 81810
MWF 11:00-12:00 170 Barrows Instructor: C. Fischer

This course is an introduction to urban sociology. Part 1 will be an overview of the field, organized around a textbook, and touching on topics such as the rise of cities, urban infrastructure, third world urbanization, and rural-urban differences. Part 2 will cover several advanced topics in the field, such as urban politics, neighborhoods, immigrant ghettoes, and gated communities. Part 3 will treat a few public policy issues, such as crime, homelessness, and planning. Class discussions will be a regular part of the schedule. A few sessions will be devoted to films. The readings will PROBABLY be Palen, The Urban World, 7th Ed.; Kefalas, Working Class Heroes; Klinenberg, Heat Wave; and a number of articles, both in a printed reader and an online reader.

Students will be graded on 3 short exams; a take-home final exam; a short research project and paper; and participation in discussions. Students will be responsible on the exams for the material covered in the readings and in class, including the films and student discussions.