Summer 2008 Institute 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# 11308
MW 1-2, 3-5:30; TTh 12-2:30, 3-5:30 60 Evans Instructor: K. Moran, L. Raiford, M. Cohen
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 considi ther 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.