Courses

Thursday, 10:00am - 12:00pm

Instructor: Rick Halpern

This course explores the rise of capitalism – understood not simply as an economic system but as a political and cultural one as well. It aims to acquaint students with the more important socio-economic changes of the past 600 years with an eye towards informing the way they think about problems of the present time: globalization, growing disparities of wealth, and the exploitation of natural resources. It seeks to foster a critical approach to the way in which the world is organized. A dual mission stands at its centre: it utilizes a focus on capitalism as a tool of scholarly understanding of the way the world has evolved, and it assists students in developing a critique of capitalism as a system.

Check out the course trailer here.

Tuesday, 2:00pm - 4:00pm 

Instructor: Leah Montange

This course examines the history, culture, and politics of the U.S. through an engagement with primarily original source materials including speeches, manifestos, songs, essays, paintings, films and more. 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, 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 longstanding debates about citizenship, nationhood, and empire. Required for majors and minors, but open to all who meet pre-requisites.

Monday, 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Instructor: Alexandra Rahr

As statues are kicked off their pedestals all around the world, this class reckons with the legacy and future of public memory cultures. We’ll consider the history, geography, aesthetics, bureaucracy, ecologies, and ideologies of both local and U.S. American memorials. And we’ll examine the birth, life, death, and afterlives of both conventional monuments and emerging forms of material and digital alt-memorialization.

Thursday, 2:00 pm- 4:00 pm

Instructor: TBA

What is U.S. democracy? As our neighbor to the south lurches toward another presidential election, U.S. Democracy seems to be at a crossroads. For some Americans, the very survival of democracy is on the ballot. In this seminar, we will examine key periods of U.S. history where Americans defined and contested the meaning of U.S. democracy—periods in which some struggled to expand U.S. democracy while others fought to restrict it.

Wednesday, 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Instructor: Leah Montange

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 attempt to approach this theme interdisciplinary, by engaging both scholarly works written by historians and social scientists, as well as watching films and reading personal narratives and literary works created by immigrants to America.  For the first half of the course, we will cover the broad arc of immigration and immigration policy making from the 19th through 21st centuries.  In the second half of the course, we will study four immigrations to the US: Vietnamese, Haitian, El Salvadoran, and Filipino/a/x. In doing so, we will unpack major concepts and themes in the study of immigration in the Americas, including integration, exclusion, criminalization, asylum, labour, racialization, gender, nationalism, and transnationalism.

Thursday, 10:00 am - 12:00pm 

Instructor: Rick Halpern 

This course explores the 1930s on a number of interconnected levels, prompting students to link the economic, political, and cultural planes of Americans’ lived experience in an informed way. It starts with the impact of the 1929 Crash, looking at the ways this reshaped values, and conceptions of race and gender, and also allowed unprecedented critiques and organizational forms to emerge. It then considers local and federal responses to economic catastrophe, emphasizing the emergence of regulatory mechanisms that further reshaped social relations. With this foundation in place, the course turns to consider three forms of artistic production in which the social dynamics of the age found powerful echo: FSA photography and WPA murals; experimental literature; and cinema.

Wednesday, 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Instructor: Leah Montange

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, emphasizing the “transnational turn” and the relationship between American Studies and ethnic studies. Students will gain exposure to key thinkers and frameworks that American Studies scholars draw upon, ranging from the myth and symbol school and the Birmingham School to queer theory and critiques of settler colonialism. This course is required for majors, but is open to all who have met the prerequisites.

Tuesday, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm 

Instructor: Jason Lau

This course explores the dynamic interplay between Asian and American technological cultures, focusing on how digital interfaces and technological innovations serve as conduits for cultural exchange and adaptation across the Pacific. Through the lens of 'technological cultures'—a concept highlighting technology as both a product of and a catalyst for global cultural change—the course delves into how design and technology practices from both regions influence and reshape each other, leading to significant technological and cultural shifts. The seminar highlights the implications of these exchanges for understanding shifts in American cultural norms, economic strategies, and social dynamics, cultivating a comprehensive view of a composite technological culture that spans diverse regions.

Tuesday, 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm 

Instructor: Leah Montange

The United States, as a global military, cultural and economic power, has always been a transnational space. Money, people, goods, and culture all transcend its borders, but not evenly.  There are power relations involved. In this course, we investigate how US spaces are shaped by the power-laden, asymmetrical, transnational movement of money, people, goods, and culture through an investigation of one region: Southern California. We begin with readings that help us understand how transnational forces and lives shape landscapes and sites in Southern California, with a decided emphasis on four themes: the US military’s visible and invisible presence; the US-Mexico border as a site for circulation; the logistics industry that coordinates global trade through the region; and transnational cultural production. We then travel together to San Diego and Los Angeles during the February Reading Week. The heart of the field trip is to experience and analyze spaces that had been shaped through transnational forces and lives, including visits to the US-Mexico Border, the Port of Los Angeles, and ethnic enclaves undergoing gentrification processes.  We then reconvene in Toronto to create and present final projects that combine students’ experiences with research to delve into one aspect of Transnational America. 

This course involves a week-long international field trip costing students $200 plus their own discretionary spending. Scholarships are available. Enrollment is limited. Students who would like to register for the course, including those who join a wait list, should email Professor Montange:  leah.motange@utoronto.ca 

Monday, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm 

Instructor: Alexandra Rahr

It's no secret that populism is resurgent in many parts of the global West, or that this revival often features unabashed demagogues trumpeting a politics of exclusion. But what do these terms mean, precisely, and what cultures and histories inform them? This class will examine the figure of the demagogue and the ideology of populism, in the context of U.S. America. We'll consider how appeals to ‘the people’ mobilize rage and resentment, dig into populism's progressive Black roots and interrogate the techniques which pit the 'average American' against putatively corrupt institutions and privileged elites. Along the way, we'll read a range historical and contemporary populist texts, from Alexander Hamilton's letters railing against demagoguery, to Occupy Wall Street's aspirational post-capitalist tweets, to the National Rifle Association's TV show 'Armed and Fabulous' and contemporary country music's 'pickup truck' populism.