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Course Descriptions for Spring 2010
(As of 10/14/2009)
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
MW 10:00-12:00 390 Hearst Instructor: K. Moran & M. Cohen
Sec. 101, CC# 02006 M 01:00-02:00, 101 Wheeler
Sec. 102, CC# 02009 M 03:00-04:00, 179 Stanley
Sec. 103, CC# 02012 Tu 10:00-11:00, 101 Wheeler
Sec. 104, CC# 02015 W 09:00-10:00, 50 Barrows
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 – California Dreaming: The Making and Unmaking of California from WWII through the Tax Revolt (4 Units) – CC# 02036
M 02:00-05:00 104 GPB Instructor: M. Brilliant
Description TBA
101, Section 02 – The Atomic Age (4 Units) – CC# 02039
MW 12:00-02:00 3106 Etcheverry Instructor: C. Palmer
The atomic bomb changed the world. In this course, we will examine how the development of the bomb, the decision to use it, and the nuclear arms race have influenced 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.
American Studies C111A– American Architecture in Depression and War (3 Units) – 02084 This course is cross-listed with Architecture C174.
TTh 03:30 – 05:00 101 Wurster Instructor: A. Shanken
Sec. 101, CC# 02087 Th 01:00- 02:00, 179 Stanley
Sec. 102, CC# 02090 W 03:00-04:00, 179 Stanley
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 and one longer research paper.
"PLACE” COURSES
102, Section 01 – Staging the American City: A Cultural History of Broadway (4 Units) – CC# 02054
This course is cross-listed with History 100 and Theater 125.
TTH 03:30-05:00 145 Dwinelle Instructor: D. Henkin & S. Steen
This course weaves together two stories that are ordinarily told separately: the history of popular theatrical productions in the United States and the history of American urban life. Both stories focus on New York, and on the meaning of Broadway - as a place, an institution, and a cultural symbol. What does the history of Broadway from 1800 to the present teach us about popular culture, big city living, racial and ethnic identity, mass spectacle, and everyday life in modern America? Requirements include regular attendance, timely completion of reading assignments, two midterms, and one cumulative final examination.
102, Section 02 – The California City: San Francisco and Los Angeles (4 Units) – CC# 02057
This course is cross-listed with Geography 125.
TTH 02:00-03:30 141 McCone Instructor: K. Moran/R. Walker
Sec. 201, CC# 02060 M 11:00- 12:00, 135 McCone
Sec. 202, CC# 02063 Tu 11:00-12:00, 135 McCone
Sec. 203, CC# 02066 Th 09:00-10:00, 135 McCone
Sec. 204, CC# 02069 Th 11:00-12:00, 135 McCone
The American city, palimpsest of a nation. It all comes together in the modern metropolis: economy, society, politics, culture, and geography. The focus this semester is L.A. and San Francisco.
C112B - American Cultural Landscapes, 1900 – Present (4 units) CC# 02093
Also listed as ED c169B; Geog c160B
TTH 11:00-12:30 112 Wurster Instructor: P. Groth
Sec. 101, CC# 02096 Tu 01:00-02:00, 170 Wurster
Sec. 102, CC# 02099 W 12:00-01:00, 170 Wurster
Sec. 103, CC# 02102 Th 10:00-11:00, 104 Wurster
Sec. 104, CC# 02105 Th 04:00-05:00, 104 Wurster
Sec. 105, CC# 02108 Th 03:00-04:00, 601A 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.
American Studies C171 – The American Designed Landscape Since 1850 (3 Units) – CC# 02111
This course is cross-listed with Landscape Architecture C171, sec 1.
TBA Instructor: L. Mozingo
This course surveys the history of American designed landscapes 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.
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# 02126
M 10:00-12:00 51 Evans Instructor: K. Biestman
191, Section 02 – SENIOR SEMINAR (4 Units) – CC# 02129
M 02:00-04:00 35 Evans Instructor: K. Biestman
191, Section 03 – SENIOR SEMINAR (4 Units) – CC# 02132
Th 10:00-12:00 2038 VLSB Instructor: C. Palmer
H195 – SENIOR HONORS SEMINAR (4 Units) – CC#(see below)
W 02:00-04:00 2523 Tolman 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. Students who have a scheduling conflict must contact the instructor before classes begin.
HONORS SEMINARS
American Studies H110 – Honors Seminar: American Avant-Gardes (3 Units) - 02078
W 03:00-06:00 3105 Etcheverry Instructor: S. Saul
Faculty Advisor approval needed. In this seminar, we will be examining several attempts—New York Dada, the Popular Front of the 1930s, the Beats, the feminist performance artists and punks of the 1970s—to realize an avant-garde culture in the U.S. These avant-garde communities, while interrogating the very concept of the "avant-garde," generally promised both new ways of living and new ways of imagining—that is to say, both new forms of social life (café culture, labor organizing, low-rent communes) and new genres of expression (immediately archaic almanacs, discontinuously plotted films, one-minute rants, graphic novels).
The goal of the course is to assess the promise of these alternative communities and their modes of expression. In particular, we will be returning to five sets of issues: the poetics of subculture—how people write themselves in or out of a subculture of protest, often by redefining the limits of intelligibility and noise; the modernization of sex—the embrace of new ideals of companionship and sexual candor on the one hand, and the lures of secrecy, fetishism, and domination on the other; the relationship between the bohemian's refusal of a "regular job" and cultures of work and leisure, labor militancy and consumerism, the taboos of race and class, and the rewards and penalties, as well as the means and methods, for breaking them, and the tension between the authority of the artist and the authority of the state.
Tentative book list: William Carlos Williams, Imaginations Tillie Olson, Yonnondio: From the Thirties
Djuna Barnes, Ladies Almanack Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo
SPECIAL COURSES OF INTEREST TO A.S. STUDENTS
NOTE: Upper Division courses may be used for Areas of Concentration, when appropriate.
African American 142AC – Race and American Film (4 Units) – CC# 00620
MW 02:00-04:00 2 Leconte Instructor: M. Cohen
Sec. 101, CC# 00623 TBA
This course uses film to investigate the central role of race in American culture and history from the late 19th to early 21st century. 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; Jim Crow and white supremacy in early Hollywood; genre, gender and racial ideology, borderlands and immigration; passing and miscegenation; the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. Films include: Birth of a Nation, The Jazz Singer, Salt of the Earth, Imitation of Life, The Godfather and Do the Right Thing.
English 132 – American Novel (4 Units) – CC# 28259
MWF 11:00-12:00 3 Leconte Instructor: B. Wagner
Sec. 101, CC# 28262 F 11:00-12:00, 243 Dwinelle
Sec. 102, CC# 28265 F 11:00-12:00, 205 Dwinelle
Sec. 103, CC# 28268 F 11:00-12:00, 242 Dwinelle
A survey of major novels written in the United States between the end of slavery and the start of the Civil Rights Movement. Two essays, midterm, and final exam.
English 135AC – Race and Performance in the 20th Century (4 Units) – CC# 28280
TTH 12:30-02:00 390 Hearst Min Instructor: S. Saul
“Race is not only real, but also illusory. Not only is it common sense; it is also common nonsense. Not only does it establish our identity; it also denies us our identity." — Howard Winant
"Each society demands of its members a certain amount of acting. The ability to present, represent, and act what one actually is." — Hannah Arendt
This course is two courses wrapped up in one. First, it offers a selected history of major innovations in American popular culture of the last hundred years — from the origins of the American culture industries in blackface minstrelsy, ragtime, and jazz to the development of the Hollywood studio system, rock 'n' roll, soul music, and the "New Hollywood".
Second, it tells that first very large story through America's unique history of crossracial and crossethnic interplay. Why, we might ask, is the story of the US so often told through stories of interracial dependency or conflict, whether it's the story of American colonists dressing up as Indians at the Boston Tea Party, Little Eva blessing Uncle Tom, or Elvis or Eminem borrowing from the 'other side of the tracks'? Following this line of inquiry, we will trace America's history through the development of structures of inequity and opportunity that define our social history, and through the development of complicated race-inflected stories of camaraderie, rivalry, beset virtue, and desire that often define our national fantasy life.
History 125B – Soul Power: African-American History 1861-1980 (4 Units) – CC# 39522
TTH 09:30-11:00 106 Stanley Instructor: W. Martin
This course will examine the history of African Americans and ethno-racial relations from the Civil War and Emancipation (1861-1865) to the modern African American Freedom Struggle (1954-1972). Social, cultural, economic, and political developments will be emphasized. Topics to be covered include: Black Reconstruction; Black Life and Labor in the New South; Leadership; Class; Gender; Jim Crow; Migration; Urbanization; War and Social Change; the Harlem Renaissance; Civil Rights; and Black Power. Possible texts: W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery; Jacqueline Royster, Ida B. Wells; James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man ; Waldo Martin, Brown v. Board of Education; The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Assata Shakur, Assata. There will be two exams -- a mid-term and a final -- and perhaps one research essay.
History 130B – The United States and International Relations (4 Units) – CC# 39525
TTH 12:30-02:00 106 Stanley Instructor: D. Sargent
Sec. 101, CC# 39528 M 08:00-09:00, 54 Barrows
Sec. 102, CC# 39531 M 10:00-11:00, 54 Barrows
Sec. 103, CC# 39534 Th 08:00-09:00, 41 Evans
Sec. 104, CC# 39537 Th 02:00-03:00, 55 Evans
Sec. 105, CC# 39540 F 02:00-03:00, 103 Wheeler
Sec. 106, CC#39543 F 12:00-01:00, 78 Barrows
History 130B will explore U.S. diplomatic, strategic, and military interactions with the external world since the foundation of the American Republic. As a parallel objective, it will explore, from an American perspective, the evolution of international relations since the eighteenth century. Although the course will be historical in method, the course will introduce students to the conceptual vocabulary of international relations theory. Topics covered will include territorial expansion, the nineteenth century origins of American internationalism, imperialism, the twentieth century’s world wars, the Cold War, and the search for a constructive foreign policy after 1991. Students will be asked to consider how historical knowledge and reasoning might usefully inform the making of U.S. foreign policy in the future. A parallel course, History 130A, “The United States and Globalization,” (to be offered in 2010-211) will explore the economic, social, and cultural dimensions of U.S. global interactions.
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