Courses

Instructor: Alexandra Rahr
Tuesdays, 2:00pm – 4:00pm; Enrollment Cap: 25 seats

In cities across America, statues of past heroes are being kicked off their pedestals. As the republic grapples with conflicting histories, this course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of American Studies by considering the politics, history, aesthetics, ideologies and geographies of public memorialization. We’ll also critically engage with current research on creative acts of public memory – both digital and material – which offer provocative ways to encounter our collective pasts. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Instructor: Leah Montange
Mondays, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm; Enrollment Cap: 60 seats

This course examines the politics, history and culture of the U.S. In doing so, it will ask the central questions: What is America? and who counts as American? This course concentrates on a series of moments in which different groups of Americans - such as women, African Americans, Indigenous people, immigrants, refugees, and workers - debated, struggled over, and changed the boundaries of who and what counts as American. We will draw from, analyze and contextualize a variety of primary source materials that make up defining moments in the contours of this debate, ranging from political, literary, and visual culture artifacts. Required for majors and minors, but open to all who meet pre-requisites. 

Instructor: Maya Harakawa
Fridays, 10:00am – 12:00pm; Enrollment Cap: American Studies (15 Seats)

This introductory course will survey the interrelated history of Blackness and artistic production in the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Canada. Starting in the eighteenth century with the advent of the transatlantic slave trade and covering up to Black Lives Matter movement, the course proceeds chronologically and considers the Black Art within its larger social context. By discussing the aesthetic qualities of artworks and the careers of Black artists alongside of the history of anti-Black racism in North America, we will explore both how the visual has been used as a tool of domination and how art can challenge or subvert racist ideologies. At the end of the course, students will be familiar with the primary figures, debates, and works of art that constitute the field. They will also be comfortable discussing the history anti-Black racism and its current manifestations. Topics include: the visual culture of slavery and abolition, hemispheric and transatlantic modernisms, the racial politics of "outsider" and "folk" art, the Black Arts Movement, and art and mass incarceration. 

Instructor: Leah Montange
Wednesdays, 2:00pm – 4:00pm; Enrollment Cap: 15 seats

This course examines the US’s patterns of welcoming, restricting, including, and excluding immigrants. In doing so, we will interrogate the relationship between immigration and American exceptionalism, nationalism, and empire. We will look at three periods in the US’s immigration history — 1870-1924; 1921-1965; 1965-present. We will examine each of these periods through the lenses of history, law, and cultural representation (novels, films). 

Instructor: James Conrad
Tuesdays, 1:00pm – 3:00pm; Enrollment Cap: American Studies (20 seats) 

Introduction to the rich and multi-linguistic literary traditions of the Caribbean and its diaspora, focusing on canonical texts of Caribbean literature. Texts not originally written in English are read in translation. 

Instructor: Leah Montange
Wednesdays, 1:00pm – 3:00pm (Tutorials: 3:00pm – 4:00pm / 4:00pm – 5:00pm); Enrollment Cap: 20 Seats 

This course explores a range of the many 'theories and methods' that have animated the interdisciplinary field of American Studies. Students will read and discuss texts that exemplify or explain a wide variety of theoretical orientations and their associated research methods, exploring how scholars use different approaches to illuminate different kinds of questions about American experience(s). By analyzing the methods, history and theories of American Studies, we'll trace the invention of the field. This course is required for majors, but is open to all who have met the prerequisites. 

Instructor: Alexandra Rahr
Thursdays, 2:00pm – 4:00pm; Enrollment Cap: 20 seats

Beyond picture postcard views of "amber fields of waving grain," and iconic vistas like the Grand Canyon, lie millions of other American environments. This class takes a close look at the cultures, politics and histories of some of those environments, and considers what they reveal about America's relationship to its ecologies and inhabitants. We'll examine bright green suburban laws and the ecologies of university campuses; California's Central Valley - which produces half of America's fruits and vegetables - and HGTV's home renovation industry; Thomas Jefferson's beloved farmers - "the chosen people of God" - and Black ecologies which are so often erased from the nation's agrarian history. Along the way, we'll consider how these micro-climates help us re-imagine the republic's future in the midst of the long emergency of climate change. 

Instructor: Leah Montange
Tuesdays, 2:00pm – 4:00pm; Enrollment Cap: 12 seats

The United States, as a global military, cultural and economic power, has always been a transnational space. In this class, students will read texts that emphasize the transnational dimensions of the US, learning about borders, global supply chains, food cultures, and the reach of the US military. In what ways does the United States and its people exceed their national boundaries? And in what ways are the United States and its people shaped by “elsewhere”?

Instructor: Uahikea Maile
Mondays, 9:00am – 11:00am; Enrollment Cap: American Studies (5 seats)

This seminar examines Indigenous politics through land. We explore transnational Indigenous politics by focusing on global struggles over land. The course considers how Indigenous land-based movements, connected across territories and oceans, are constituted through and cultivate relations between Indigenous peoples and their social ecologies and more-than-human existents. 

Instructor: Max Mishler
Thursdays, 11:00am – 1:00pm; Enrollment Cap: American Studies (22 seats)

The United States is home to five percent of the world’s population but twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners, including a disproportionate number of African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. This vast carceral archipelago generates significant profits for private corporations while exacerbating government deficits and wreaking havoc in those communities targeted by systematic policing and imprisonment. It has also provoked public and scholarly debates about the history, ethics, and function of incarceration in the United States. In this course, we will consider the rise of contemporary mass incarceration from an interdisciplinary perspective that draws upon history, sociology, and legal scholarship.