American Capitalism (USA311H1S)

American Studies offers a powerful set of tools with which to study race, gender, sexuality or class in daily life. This course joins those to studies of large institutions or forces of economic power, such as corporations, global capitalism, global race, and empire. The class will draw methods and analytic approaches from across the field of American Studies to consider how we might develop a toolkit for thinking, researching, and writing about capitalist economic ideas as culturally embedded, regulated, and produced. We will explore perspectives offered by American Studies scholars trained in communications, science and technology studies, literature, anthropology, sociology, history, musicology, and visual studies, bridging both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Students will be introduced to classic texts as well as to more recent work that examines the social, cultural, environmental, gendered, and ethical aspects of economic life under U.S. capitalism.