American Studies (AMST)

AMST 10100 Introduction to American Studies (3 Credit Hours)

This course explores the rich and varied field of American Studies, a field dedicated to understanding America's diverse cultures and the ways American national identity has been constructed and contested differently over time. Through lectures, readings, and discussion, we will consider questions such as: How have ideas about race, gender, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, and class shaped the making and meaning of America and Americans, and how have they evolved? What are the dominant myths and values that Americans seem to share? How has the American Dream been defined, and by whom? As a class we will consider the ways in which concepts of America and American are performed and how they have changed over time, across space, and within particular social, cultural, and political contexts. Assignments emphasize critical analysis of texts; requirements include papers, a midterm, and a final.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 12100 Introduction to American Studies Discussion (0 Credit Hours)

This course introduces the interdisciplinary field of American Studies, emphasizing key texts and methods for critically understanding what "America" means (and to whom), and what it means to be American. How have ideas about race, gender, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, and class shaped the making and meaning of America and Americans? What are the dominant myths and values that Americans seem to share? What is the American Dream? In particular, this class considers the ways in which concepts of America and American are performed: how notions of citizenship and national identity are constructed through particular acts and actions, from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to watching football, going shopping, marching on Washington, and touring America's National Parks.

AMST 13184 History University Seminar (3 Credit Hours)

An introduction to the seminar method of instruction that explores the major methodologies of the historical discipline and which accents the organization and expression of arguments suggested by readings in historical topics.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: USEM - University Seminar, WKHI - Core History

Students in the Holy Cross College or St. Mary's College colleges may not enroll.

AMST 20100 Introduction to American Studies (3 Credit Hours)

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 20601 The Black Body (3 Credit Hours)

How is race embodied and how are bodies racialized? How do gender, sexuality, class, size, perceived beauty, and ability mutually influence embodiment? This course considers anthropological and historical studies of the body, with a critical focus on Blackness. We investigate how Black human bodies are othered, valued, dehumanized, and experienced, across time and space, with a particular focus on the United States. Euro-American philosophies have constructed Black people as transgressive, in a variety of ways, and all these ideas have been inscribed on and through their physical bodies. This normative discourse shapes how Black people interact with the social world, so we will discuss, challenge, and critique these narratives and also consider how the body can be used as a site of resistance. We will engage topics like athletic training, bodily modification and perceptions of beauty, biomedical technologies, labor, disability, and illness, through texts like academic writing, music, podcasts, essays, news media, and social media. Overall, this class demonstrates how bodies are key sites for understanding politics, power, social hierarchies, economics, and social change in our contemporary world.

AMST 22100 Introduction to American Studies Discussion (0 Credit Hours)

Intro to American Studies discussion section.

AMST 30101 Baseball in America (3 Credit Hours)

Baseball is one of the most enduringly popular and significant cultural activities in the United States. Since the late 19th century, baseball has occupied an important place for those wishing to define and understand "America." Who has been allowed to play on what terms? How have events from baseball's past been remembered and re-imagined? What is considered scandalous and why (and who decides)? How has success in baseball been defined and redefined? Centering baseball as an industry and a cultural practice, this course will cover topics that include the political, economic, and social development of professional baseball in the United States; the rise of organized baseball industry and Major League Baseball; and globalization in professional baseball. Readings for this course will include chapters from texts that include Rob Rucks's How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game (2011), Adrian Burgos's Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (2007), Daniel Gilbert's Expanding the Strike Zone: Baseball in the Age of Free Agency (2013), Robert Elias's How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad (2010), and Michael Butterworth's Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity: The National Pastime and American Identity During the War on Terror (2010). Coursework may include response papers, primary source analysis, and a final project.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30102 Integration in the US & Europe (3 Credit Hours)

This class examines the social, spatial and intellectual history of "integration" in the United States and Europe, from the publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract (1762) up to the so-called "global revolutions" of 1968. Students will gain a comprehensive introduction to how peasants, (im) migrants, people of color, and other disempowered populations negotiated confraternity and inclusion - despite tenacious subjugation and exclusion - within and across Western nation-states and colonial possessions. Related topics range from "Indian removal" to religious persecution; from absolutist monarchies to gender discrimination; and from legalized slavery to histories of genocide. Our seminar, eclectic in scope and method, will put particular emphasis on transnational histories of social movements and cultural transformations. In addition to four short writing assignments (4 - 5 pages, double-spaced) connecting two or more course readings, students will develop a final paper (7 - 8 pages, double-spaced) based on cumulative sources, including texts such as: Alexander Pushkin's The Moor of Peter the Great (1837), Maya Jasanoff's The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World (2017), Todd Tucker's Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan (2004), and Winston Churchill's "United States of Europe" speech (1946). No prior background in American or European history is either required or assumed.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30103 Critical Refugee Studies (3 Credit Hours)

The United Nations estimates that an unprecedented 71 million people around the world have been forced to flee from their respective homes. Among them are nearly 26 million refugees, half of whom are under the age of 18. Media and social science scholarship represent refugees as passive recipients of western aid and avoid critical examination of the global and historical conditions that create "refugees." This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of critical refugee studies (CRS) to re-conceptualize the refugee not as a problem to be solved but as a site of social and political critiques. CRS illuminates the processes of colonization, war, and displacement. This course examines militarism and migration as well as refugee voices written in their own words. We will assess a variety of sources, including oral history, ethnography, art, graphic novels, and interdisciplinary scholarship from humanities and social science.

AMST 30104 Data Feminism (3 Credit Hours)

Feminism isn't only about women, nor is feminism only for women. Feminism is about power - about who has it and who doesn't. And in today's world, data is power. Data can be used to create communities, advance research, and expose injustice. But data can also be used to discriminate, marginalize, and surveil. This course will draw intersectional feminist theory and activism to identify models for challenging existing power differentials in data science, with the aim of using data science methods and tools to work towards justice. Class meetings will be split between discussions of theoretical readings and explorations of data science tools and methods (such as Tableau, RStudio, and Python). Those readings may include chapters from texts that include Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein's Data Feminism (2020), Virginia Eubanks's Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor (2018), Ruha Benjamin's Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019), and Sasha Costanza-Chock's Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need (2020). This course will also examine the data advocacy and activism work undertaken by groups like Our Data Bodies, Data for Black Lives, the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, and Chicago-based Citizens Police Data Project. Over the course of the semester, students will develop original research projects that use data to intervene in issues of inequality and injustice. This course is not about gaining mastery of particular data science tools or methods, therefore familiarity with statistical analysis or data science tools (R, RStudio, Python, etc.) is NOT a prerequisite for this course.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30105 Sustainable America (3 Credit Hours)

This CAD course looks back to 1850, when urban industrial America began, and looks forward to 2050, when Notre Dame promises to be carbon neutral, to critically engage competing visions of individual, communal, and ecological flourishing. It focuses on economic, racial, and environmental justice as students explore how US political culture, the discipline of American Studies, and Catholic social teaching have clashed and converged and Americans proposed varying solutions to poverty, racism, and environmental degradation. After an introduction to American Studies, we turn to visions of the good life in foundational US political documents (the Declaration, the Constitution, and Inaugural Addresses) and in Catholic tradition (scriptural passages, theological essays, and papal encyclicals, from Rerum Novarum to Laudato Si'). Then the course's three main sections consider, in turn, economic equity, racial justice, and environmental restoration. Each section includes a "faith in action" case study and concludes with an "integrative essay" that puts Catholic social teaching into conversation with American Studies scholarship. In the final class session, Learning Groups present their synthesis of the course material, and, during the exam period, each student submits a final integrative essay that focuses on one of the issues—poverty, racism, or environmental degradation—and identifies what American Studies might learn from the Catholic Tradition and what the Catholic Tradition might learn from American Studies.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKCD-Core Cathol & Disciplines, WKHI - Core History

AMST 30106 Gender and Popular Culture (3 Credit Hours)

This course will explore how popular culture, constructed through as well as against folk and high cultures, operates at the intersection of gender with race, class, sexuality, and nationality in the United States. Approaching gender and popular culture from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, we will consider how culture in its commodified form has helped construct gendered identities, communities, and power structures in the United States. For example, we will examine how popular media texts may influence ideas about gender and how fans may transform and use mass culture texts for different purposes. Along the way, we will consider popular culture's ideological potential in relation to gender justice. Do negative representations harm the cause of women's and/or minority rights? What do the rise of the Internet and social media activism mean for the intersections of popular culture and social justice? Assignments include mini essays, a multimedia essay, and a final creative project accompanied by an analytical paper.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

Enrollment limited to students in the American Studies department.

AMST 30107 History of the Book Since the American Revolution (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines the nineteenth and twentieth century histories of print and cultural manufacturing in the U.S., with special attention given to readers, writers, media producers, and distribution. By tracing how literature, broadly defined, has influenced the shape and reshaping of modern life, our primary goal for the semester will be to better understand the role and impact of intellectual transmission on civil society, formal politics, and cultural standards. Related topics we will investigate include the development and growth of American children's literature; the history of racial and ethnic authorship; the rise of industrial publishing; national and transnational censorship; and legacies of "master" communicators to mass audiences (e.g. Franklin Roosevelt with radio, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan with television, and Donald Trump with Twitter). Course readings and film screenings will range from William Llloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, Matthew Rubery's The Untold Story of the Talking Book, Catherine Fisk's Writing for Hire: Unions, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, Capote, and The Social Network.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

AMST 30108 History of American Capitalism (3 Credit Hours)

This course offers a broad thematic overview of the history of capitalism from the early sixteenth century up to the late 1980s. As a discussion-based seminar, we will devote most of our conversations to discovering, analyzing and reflecting on the transformation of the U.S. from a newly-independent British colony, to the most influential economic power in the world. Topics and themes we will consider include: the rise of early modern transnational capitalism, European imperialism and trade, and indigenous dispossession after 1492; science and technological transformations; social and economic thought; slavery and servitude, broadly construed; and characteristics of prosperity, wealth, and economic flux. Our readings and viewings will be a mix of scholarly and primary sources, including an abundance of canonical literary and artistic material, such as novels, visual art, and film excerpts (e.g. Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879), Aaron Douglas's Building More Stately Mansions (1944), and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (1920)). Over the course of the semester, students will draw upon this eclectic combination of sources to synthesize the dominant historical dimensions of capitalism in and beyond the U.S. via four short essays (4 - 5 pages, double-spaced-between 1,100 and 1,400 words), and a final paper (10 - 12 pages, double-spaced) based on cumulative texts.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment limited to students in the American Studies department.

AMST 30109 Sport and Big Data (3 Credit Hours)

Sport is one of the most enduringly popular and significant cultural activities in the United States. Data has always been a central part of professional sport in the US, from Henry Chadwick's invention of the baseball box score in the 1850s to the National Football League's use of Wonderlic test scores to evaluate players. This course focuses on the intersecting structures of power and identity that shape how we make sense of the "datification" of professional sport. By focusing on the cultural significance of sport data, this course will put the datafication of sport in historical context and trace the ways the datafication of sport has impacted athletes, fans, media, and other stakeholders in the sport industry. The course will also delve into the technology systems used to collect and analyze sport data, from the TrackMan and PITCHf/x systems used in Major League Baseball to the National Football League's Next Gen Stats partnership to emerging computer vision and artificial intelligence research methods. Readings for this course will draw on texts like Christopher Phillips' Scouting and Scoring: How We Know What We Know About Baseball (2019), Ruha Benjamin's Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life (2019), and Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2004). Class meetings will be split between discussions of conceptual readings and applied work with sport data and technology systems. Coursework may include response papers, hands-on work with data, and a final project. Familiarity with statistical analysis, data science, or computer science tools and methods is NOT a prerequisite for this course.

AMST 30111 Disability at Notre Dame (3 Credit Hours)

Disability has long been constructed as the opposite of higher education. Universities are places that valorize, even demand, physical and intellectual ability. Disability, in turn, is often seen as something that does not fit within a university context, a problem that must be fixed. This antithetical relationship between disability and the university is rooted in history—eugenical curriculums, research programs that study disabled people—but it continues today. Despite a growing focus on diversity in university admissions and populations, disabled students enter higher education at a lower rate than non-disabled students and are less likely to graduate. In addition, universities perpetuate cultures of ableism in both faculty and students by prioritizing ability, perfection, and achievement. This course interrogates the relationship between disability and higher education with a special focus on our university, Notre Dame. Students will be introduced to fundamental principles in disability studies; explore the place of disability in higher education; and, drawing on scholarship in critical university studies, consider intersections between ableism, racism, and sexism in university contexts. Students will also think and learn about what inclusive and accessible education might look like. The course will conclude with a student-driven project designed to increase access, inclusiveness, and awareness about ableism and disability at Notre Dame.

AMST 30112 Witnessing the Sixties (3 Credit Hours)

The purpose of this interdisciplinary course is twofold: to examine the social context and cultural change of the sixties and to explore the various journalistic and aesthetic representations of events, movements, and transformations. We will focus on the manner in which each writer or artist witnessed the sixties and explore fresh styles of writing and cultural expression, such as the new journalism popularized by Tom Wolfe and the music/lyrics performed by Bob Dylan. Major topics for consideration include the counterculture and the movement--a combination of civil rights and anti-war protests.

Prerequisites: AMST 10100 or AMST 20100

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30113 Sports and the Environment (3 Credit Hours)

With help from athletes such as Billie Jean King, Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James, Serena Williams, and Megan Rapinoe, Americans are growing accustomed to thinking about sports as embedded in the politics of gender, class, race, sexuality, and the nation. Consider the variety of places where sports happen, however, and the ways we develop and consume those places, and it becomes apparent that sports are also environmental in significant and complex ways. This course will examine the environmental politics of sports from conservation to climate change through the lenses of history and cultural studies. Course content will range from 19th century hunting, Indigenous surfing, and BASE jumping, to pick-up basketball, pro stadiums, and Notre Dame Athletics. Topical sections include outdoor sports and conservation, mountain sports and public land use, parks and recreation, stadiums and environmental justice, sports and climate change, and sustainability in the NCAA. Course requirements include regular reading and discussion, midterm and final essays, and a research project on a topic of the student's choice.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30114 Indigenous Self-Representation (3 Credit Hours)

How does our understanding of early American literature change when we take account of the rich archive produced by the original inhabitants of North America? To answer this question, students will read a range of Indigenous narratives, beginning with a reinterpretation of Pocahontas and proceeding to explore self-representation in Native writing from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. This will include non-alphabetic "texts" such woven baskets, sermons, autobiographies, poetry, and novels. The course concludes with the work of Simon Pokagon, a member of the Pokagon Potawatomi Indians whose traditional homeland encompasses the current location of the University of Notre Dame. Central topics to be discussed are the role of Indigenous peoples in the formation of early American literature, the complex relationship between Native writers and Christianity, and various Indigenous critiques of and alternatives to settler colonialism.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in American Studies.

AMST 30115 Podcast America: Now hear this! It's time to hear great American Stories (3 Credit Hours)

THIS CLASS HAS NO ASSIGNED READINGS! That's right, there is no reading for this class. Instead, you'll learn how millions of Americans are coming to know their history, their science, their neighbors, their sexuality, their art and so much more and you'll do it all through listening to some of the most engaging (and some of the least engaging too) podcasts available. We'll take a look at primary sources that collaborate and dispel some of what we're hearing and we'll think about the integral ways that podcasts are shaping our nation and our national interests. We'll even delve into how podcasts in other lands celebrate and eviscerate America, Americans, and Americanism. Double up on your homework and your workout as you listen your way into exciting and engaging topics that we'll explore in class using the methodologies of the best scholarship in American Studies, History, and Education, Schooling, and Society. This class is for all of those who love American Studies, great stories, researching and discovering, and can't wait to get their headphones on and delve into the best stories we as a society know how to tell.

AMST 30116 American Ruins (3 Credit Hours)

American ruins are increasingly visible today, from images of urban decay and piles of debris in Detroit and Gary to movies and novels (The Book of Eli, The Road) depicting post-apocalyptic "ruinscapes" of abandoned towns, derelict factories, crumbling monuments, and deserted shopping malls, variously populated by zombies, vampires, and survivalists. Ruins typical signify "disaster," "failure," "defeat," and "the past." Why, then, in a nation that has repeatedly defined itself in terms of promise, progress, and success-the American Dream-are visions of ruin, real and imagined, so prevalent today? This class explores the history and meaning of American ruins, relating contemporary fascination with ruins ("ruin porn") to currently held attitudes about modernity, technology, citizenship, consumerism, the rule of law, and the environment. Course materials include novels, films, and photographs; coursework includes fieldtrips (to Detroit and Gary), essays, and discussion.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

Enrollment limited to students in the American Studies department.

AMST 30117 American Conspiracies (3 Credit Hours)

This course will explore modern conspiracy theories in and about the United States, discovering what they tell us about American culture and politics. The "truth" we will be seeking will not necessarily be whether secret forces have ever conspired or currently conspire to influence specific world events, but what conspiracy theorizing can tell us about modern American identities, communities, and social hierarchies including race, gender, class, religion, and national origin. In other words, we will take theories of conspiracy seriously as vernacular narratives that contribute to collective identity formation, produce powerful symbolic systems for ordering and inverting hierarchies, and help communities negotiate differences of identity and background. Beginning with the Cold War and moving on to the War on Terror, we will discuss why some theories gain preeminence in certain historical contexts and among different social groups. In addition, we will interrogate the role the label "conspiracy theory" plays within contemporary dynamics of knowledge/power. What types of knowledge are respected and acceptable and what types are stigmatized and mocked, and why? This is a writing-intensive course requiring over 20-pages of written work, including 3 small writing assignments, a series of graded and ungraded assignments leading to a major research paper, and an original research paper.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30118 Adapting Oz (3 Credit Hours)

In 1900, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published. Often discussed as a quintessentially American fairytale, this children's novel and the fantasy world in which it takes place has spawned a wealth of sequels, revisions, and adaptations across a multitude of media platforms--from print sequels and revisions to films, serial television shows, cartoons, games, and Broadway shows. This course will investigate not only the cultural significance of Baum's fantasy world within American culture, but also the theoretical concept of adaptation. Looking closely at multiple iterations of Oz across different platforms, we will discuss questions such as: what is the cultural significance of Oz? what does it mean to adapt a text? how does a story change when it moves from page, to stage, to screen, and back again? Why is it important to examine these changes? What roles do historical/cultural context and audiences play in adaptation? For students of film and media, American culture, and literature this course will provide an opportunity to explore critical concepts of culture and myth, examine the relationship between popular culture and identity, and develop and practice skills in formal analysis.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

AMST 30119 The Asian American Experience (3 Credit Hours)

This class will survey the various historical and contemporary dimensions of Asian American experiences including immigration & integration, family & community dynamics, ethnic/gender/class identity, as well as transnational and diasporic experiences. We will explore contemporary and historical issues of racism, the model minority myth, inter-generational relationships, and the educational experiences of Asian Americans. To accomplish this, our class will pose such questions as: Who is Asian American? How did racism create Chinatown? Is there an Asian advantage? Coursework includes essays based on topics of your choice, presentations, and a creative narrative.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSS - Core Social Science

AMST 30122 Storytelling and Sport (3 Credit Hours)

This course is about telling great, factual stories within the realm of human endeavor we call sport. That is, you will read and write substantial nonfiction narratives, and your main subject of inquiry will be near-at-hand happenings in sport, play, and performance. You can call it longform sportswriting, literary journalism, creative nonfiction, or anything in between—and, indeed, this course will ask you to interrogate the boundaries between subgenres in the literature of fact. Through your ethical efforts in research, exploration, and storytelling, you will seek to define and describe real-world truth through the art of the longform essay. With guidance, you will look for potential stories locally—on campus, or nearby—request access and permission to tell those stories, and gather material en route to crafting meaningful narratives. Together, we will ask fundamental questions about the time-honored act of storytelling and explore the history of the "longform" narrative form. What impact—culturally, socially, politically—can a well-told story have? We will build personal toolkits for writing nonfiction while reading and discussing exemplary essays. We will ask big questions about the role of sport and play in culture, mindful of local significance: What is the relationship between play and identity, for instance? How do conceptions of race, class, or gender find expression (or deconstruction) in sport? How does socioeconomic division affect access to sport and play in America? Most fundamentally, in this course, we will write and share our work with others. This course requires the completion of a substantial writing project, among other assignments, and you should be prepared to spend time with real people and your writing subjects outside of class time, and often according to their schedules.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30123 Journalism and Society (3 Credit Hours)

This course is a conceptual immersion into the role of journalism in America as a catalyst for social, political, economic and cultural change. Students will learn the role and value of a free press, examine the principles of reporting and consider the evolving impact of social media and digital technology on the field today

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30125 Race and Technologies of Surveillance (3 Credit Hours)

The United States has a long history of using its most cutting-edge science and technology to discriminate, marginalize, oppress, and surveil. The poorhouse and scientific charity of an earlier era have been replaced by digital tracking and automated decision-making systems like facial recognition and risk prediction algorithms. This course focuses on how automated systems are tasked with making life-and-death choices: which neighborhoods get policed, which families get food, who has housing, and who remains homeless. This course will examine black box tools used in K-12 education, social services, and the criminal justice system to better understand how these technologies reinforce and worsen existing structural inequalities and systems of oppression. Class meetings will be split between discussions of conceptual readings and applied work with technology systems. Readings for this course will draw on texts that include Safiya Noble's Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (2018), Virginia Eubanks' Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor (2018), Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein's Data Feminism (2020), and Meredith Broussard's Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World (2019). This course will also examine the advocacy and activism work undertaken by groups like Our Data Bodies, Data 4 Black Lives, Algorithmic Justice League, Auditing Algorithms, Big Brother Watch, and Chicago-based Citizens Police Data Project. Coursework may include response papers, hands-on work, and a final project. Familiarity with statistical analysis, data science, or computer science tools and methods is NOT a prerequisite for this course.

AMST 30126 Captives & Slaves in the New World (3 Credit Hours)

This interdisciplinary course will foreground the lives of the enslaved in colonial America and the Caribbean (inc. Haiti). We will consider indigenous Native-American and West African practices pertaining to enslavement and captivity, as well as the development of hereditary slavery in the colonies. Throughout, we will maintain a focus on understanding the lived experience of individuals who were captured/enslaved, with special emphasis on gender and material culture.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30128 Protest: American Cultures of Dissent (3 Credit Hours)

What roles do protest and dissent play in the making of America? Focusing especially on cultures of dissent including activist art, civil disobedience, radical action, and various cultures of struggle, dissent, and refusal, this course examines the practices, politics, technologies, and theories guiding America's foundational history of protest. Class includes lectures, discussion, essay assignments, and field trips.

AMST 30129 Notre Dame and America (3 Credit Hours)

In this course, we will interpret Notre Dame-an institution often defined as America's only truly national University-from the perspective of American studies. Notre Dame--much like America--can be defined and understood in multiple ways: as a physical location, as social and institutional world, and as an imaginary. We will explore Notre Dame from its pre-history as the homeland of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, to its founding as a missionary outpost of the European Catholic Church, through its evolution during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through its present profile as a top-tier research university and the nation's premier Catholic educational institution. We will focus not only on obvious subjects such as Catholicism and football but also on as other key topices and themes in American studies that intersect with Notre Dame's story in the past and present. This course is designed to fulfill the History and CAD requirements.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKCD-Core Cathol & Disciplines, WKHI - Core History

AMST 30130 Sexuality and Modern American Thought (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines the ways Americans have thought about sexuality from the late nineteenth century to the present. Understandings of sexuality underwent tremendous changes as Americans grappled with a more urban, capitalist, and technological social order. Sexualities became more diverse, creating tensions and fractures. This course focuses on the role of intellectuals and institutions in imagining various modes of sexual life. Major themes of the course include liberation and social control, the religious against the secular, and “normativity” as contrasted with “deviance.” We will examine the rise and fall of the Victorian order, the popularity of psychoanalysis, the invention of sexology (the scientific study of sex), religion’s complex relationship to sexuality, movements for sexual rights, and identity politics. Readings will come from several disciplinary perspectives, including psychology, biology, history, sociology, and religious studies.

AMST 30131 Digital Literatures: Computing, Culture, & Creativity (3 Credit Hours)

This course offers an entwined introduction to digital literatures and the history of computing. Our approach to both subjects is animated by one common question: how might we imagine the world otherwise? As we explore a range of digital literary works, including hypertext narratives, interactive fictions, poetry robots, video games, and net art, we’ll also examine what these artifacts reveal about the social life of computing technologies. By studying how computing and network technologies have developed over time, as well as how they work, we’ll consider what kind of technological future we want, and how to build it. Indeed at the heart of this course is an exercise in creative world-building that will require us to move beyond bright-eyed optimism and paralyzing pessimism both toward an up-close, critical examination of the technologies and platforms that shape our lives together.

AMST 30132 American Antiracisms (3 Credit Hours)

In 2023, it is difficult to avoid the language of antiracism, and harder still to discern its politics. Is racism a matter of structure or intention? Culture or economics? What does racial justice look like? And what exactly are those structures anyways? Moving from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the George Floyd Uprisings of 2020, this course introduces students to the history behind a freighted term. We will read classic and contemporary texts of antiracism, tracking how American activists, politicians, artists, and scholars wrestled with these questions in the twilight years of the welfare state, mass industry, and securely waged employment.

AMST 30133 Buddhism in America (3 Credit Hours)

This course traces the history of Buddhism in the United States since the nineteenth century. After considering the history of Asian immigrants who brought Buddhism with them and American-born converts who embraced it here, we take some steps toward a cultural history of Buddhism in the US since 1945, analyzing the tradition's influence on other faiths and on politics, activism, fiction, poetry, painting, video art, film, music, architecture, martial arts, how-to literature, psychology, and medicine.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30134 Neoliberalism and the American University (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines the recent history of the American university. It asks how the last four decades of political-economic restructuring often described as “neoliberalism” – skyrocketing personal debt, privatization of public goods, and more – have reshaped its social function and institutional structure, its labor struggles and relation to local communities. Through readings in critical university studies, ethnic studies, and American literature, we will build a conceptual vocabulary to critically engage these transformations and, in the process, ask fundamental questions about the modern university: what it is, who it is for, and what it might yet be.

AMST 30135 Off the Wall: Post WWII American Art (3 Credit Hours)

The 1950s, we're told, were America's "best" years: an idyllic era of suburban family togetherness, television shows like Leave it to Beaver, Disneyland (which opened in Anaheim in 1955), and really big cars. Magazine publisher Henry Luce and other mid-century American power-brokers promoted the postwar US on hegemonic terms: as a unified nation defined by a liberal political economy and by the expectations and desires of middle-class citizens united by the shared goals of upward social mobility and consumerism (white collar jobs, home ownership), college educations, family/suburban lifestyles, etc. This was called the "consensus model" of American identity. Not surprisingly, this ideal of America and these normative expectations about "being" American created a number of tensions in post-World War II America. First, the goals themselves were unattainable for some Americans due to the nation's persistent habits of racism, sexism, class preference, and homophobia. Second, some Americans felt restricted and restrained by expectations of middle-class conformity, among other things. This led to a number of counter-hegemonic cultural expressions: from art that came off the wall to artists who went on the road. This course examines those American artists and their rebellions, from artists like Jackson Pollock—who took his paintings "off the wall" and made them on the floor—to writers like Jack Kerouac, whose novel On the Road was published in 1957. It surveys American art from the Great Depression of the 1930s through the early 1970s, looking at art styles and movements including Regionalism, Abstract Expressionism, Beat, Funk, Pop, Minimalism, Conceptual art, Psychedelia, Earthworks, Feminist art, and the Black Art Movement. Themes include the "triumph of American painting" after World War II, links between art and politics, the development of postwar art theory, and intersections between the avant-garde, popular culture, and consumer culture. A special "Elvis Day" examines post-World War II youth culture and counter-hegemonic rebellion.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30136 Media Entrepreneurship (3 Credit Hours)

A generation ago, students interested in media were likely journalism, broadcasting, or FTT majors aspiring to work full-time for big TV networks or newspapers. Today, that’s not usually true. Digital tools have blown open what it means to create and consume media. Whether you see yourself as a creative, a community organizer, an entrepreneur, or an influencer, you no longer have to launch your content through established channels, hoping to someday catch your big break. You could manage a YouTube channel with thousands of subscribers from your dorm room. Some of you probably already do. But how do you monetize such ventures? How do you turn a cool hobby or vision into a side hustle or career? In Media Entrepreneurship, we’ll explore how you can combine your passion, skills, and awareness of social needs to capitalize on the media's exciting new frontier. You’ll gain the knowledge, tools, and confidence to see creating your own digital media startup as a realistic possibility. And it’s not just about you. When you hear the phrase “media entrepreneur,” you might think of a tech bro pitching an idea to venture capitalists on Shark Tank. But, at its best, media entrepreneurship is an act of service. It’s about identifying community needs, building trust with audiences, and expanding whose voices we hear as a society. In this course, you’ll practice conceiving of a media project and working with a team to create a startup business plan.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30139 American Weird (3 Credit Hours)

This course provides an intense look at the weirdness at the heart of American culture. From the recent HBO series Lovecraft Country to Edgar Allan Poe, cosmic horror, alien artifacts, and a profound unease is at the heart of our weird tales. In contemporary American culture, the weird has become a powerful tool for representing the legacies of racial violence through generic tropes. Throughout the semester, we will study the "new weird" in contemporary American culture, but also what the rock critic Griel Marcus has called "the old, weird America" that it refers to, reaching back to the pulp fiction of the Weird Tales and the gothic residues of the nineteenth century. Creative and critical assignments.

AMST 30141 Native American Literature (3 Credit Hours)

Native Americans have long been trapped in a betwixt and between state, caught by the forces of past and present, tradition and assimilation, romanticization and caricature. Yet through it all, Native voices have continued to speak of the Indian experience with great power and eloquence. This course will introduce Native American literature as a distinctive contribution to American and world literature. We will examine a wide range of expressive culture from the last century, including novels, poetry, graphic stories, children's literature, film, digital media, autobiographies, performances of oral literature, and music. Through the passion, creativity, and humor of Indian authors, we will learn something of the historical experience of Native men and women, and how they have reacted to massacres and mascots, racism and reservations, poverty and political oppression. Above all, we will try to understand how indigenous authors have used literature to engage crucial issues of race and culture in the United States that continue to influence their lives: identity, self-discovery, the centrality of place, cultural survival, and the healing power of language and spirituality. Class discussions will incorporate literary, historical, and ethnographic perspectives of Native expressive culture and the agency of authors as artists and activists vis-à-vis the wider American literary tradition. Authors include Sherman Alexie, Nicholas Black Elk, Louise Erdrich, D'Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, Linda Hogan, Winona LaDuke, and Leonard Peltier.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30142 Latino Muralism (3 Credit Hours)

This class investigates the murals in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, the city's neighborhood most closely identified with Latinos and Latinidad. Students will explore the cultural, historical, and social contexts that give rise to muralism and will examine the murals themselves over the course of several trips to the city. Our research will contribute to an exciting new digital humanities project that is building a mobile app and website devoted to the murals, so students' work will directly impact what the public knows about muralism in the city. Students will also gain training in digital humanities, including such skills as app development, geolocation, 3-D modeling, and data mining.

AMST 30143 Fashioning Identities in Colonial America (3 Credit Hours)

Did Puritans really only wear black and white, or did they wear fashionable lace, silk ribbons and bright colors? Did early settlers wash their bodies to get clean? What role did fashion play in the making of the American Revolution? And how did slaves and Native Americans adorn their bodies? This course will address such questions by focusing on dress and material culture. We will consider the role of dress in the construction of colonial identities, and examine the ways that bodies operated as sites for negotiating class and ethnic encounters.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

Enrollment limited to students in the American Studies department.

AMST 30144 Multiculturalism in American Literature (3 Credit Hours)

In 1975, the African-American writer Ishmael Reed put culture at the center of politics: “If I have you revering my art, behaving like me and adopting my psychology, then I’ve got you. If I’ve got your head, I’ve got you.” Confronted with the whiteness of U.S. publishing and school curricula, Reed and his peers saw literature as a key front in this broader struggle over the making and unmaking of American identity. Yet the question of literature’s contribution to the struggle elicited stark disagreement. Would it counter racial stereotype with accurate representation or refuse the burden of racial representativeness? Would it lay claim to the American nation on behalf of the racially minoritized, or throw in with different political horizons? Would it address the white reader unfamiliar with the realities of racial oppression, or the non-white reader seeking a different relation to histories already lived? These disagreements would only intensify in the following decades as the call for multicultural representation became increasingly institutionalized – with syllabi and publishing undergoing modest diversification, and universities framing racial difference as a strategic asset. Moving from the late 20th century to the present, our course attends to how these political ambitions and desires informed the writing, publishing, and teaching of American literature by writers of color. It asks how these authors not only engaged in activism by literary means, but also reckoned with the artistic and political dilemmas that attended this doubled pursuit. To this end, the bulk of our readings will draw from literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, including authors like Gloria Anzaldua, Paul Beatty, Maxine Hong Kingston, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Wendy Trevino.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

AMST 30145 Immigrant America (3 Credit Hours)

Nearly one in four people is an immigrant or child of immigrants in the United States. This course critically examines what it means to be an immigrant or child of immigrants through interdisciplinary sources, including memoirs, blogs, art, and popular journalism. Since the liberalization of immigration policy in 1965, immigrants from Latin America and Asia are becoming an increasing and emergent demographic of American society. In major American cities such as Los Angeles and New York, they comprise over 50% of the population. This course focuses on how immigrants and the children of immigrants experience the United States. How are immigrants changing the US racial and ethnic structure? How do their experiences differ, given varying legal statuses? How is the second generation becoming American? We will explore these questions through family, media representation, religion, education, dating, and sexuality. Students will participate in a service-learning opportunity related to migration and social justice and learn skills in quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Service learning will be 2-3 hours outside of class each week.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSS - Core Social Science

AMST 30146 Persuasion, Commentary and Criticism (3 Credit Hours)

This course will consider the roles of persuasion, commentary, and criticism in contemporary American culture and will explore the techniques of these forms of expression. Students will prepare and discuss their own writing assignments, including opinion columns, editorials, and critical reviews of performances or books. Ethics and responsibilities in contemporary American journalism in expression of opinions also will be explored. Assignments will serve as the examinations in this course, which is taught by a political columnist for the South Bend Tribune who also serves as host of public affairs programs on WNIT-TV, Public Broadcasting. Open to American Studies majors and Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy minors by permission. Other applicants must submit writing samples for review.

AMST 30147 America's Culture Wars (3 Credit Hours)

Why are Americans so divided today? What explains the fracture? Why do Americans seem to live in different worlds? Why do we see reality in such divergent ways? This course suggests we can find answers to these pressing questions in the so-called Culture Wars of the late twentieth century. In the wake of the social movements of the 1960s, Americans attempted to push culture in very different directions. Some wanted to continue a cultural revolution, whereas others sought to check the brakes on this project. As a result of the push and pull, a range of intense disputes took place in political, legal, and cultural realms. This course considers a wide range of cultural flashpoints: the rise of the religious right, the advent of queer theory, the growth of radical feminism, and the birth of critical race theory. It looks at debates over censorship and art, public mores and sexuality, gender and race, academic curriculum and decolonization. We study some of the period’s most provocative films, pieces of art, music videos, and public demonstrations. It studies events such as the AIDS crisis, the Rodney King Riots, Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and the Anita Hill hearings. It attempts to bring together a wide range of voices – conservative, liberal, secular, religious, radical, and mainstream. In the end, we will speculate if the Culture War is still raging, and how we as Americans might find commonalities in our differences, in the name of reviving our own democratic traditions.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30148 Early America Today (3 Credit Hours)

Whether it is controversies about the removal of statues, bans on teaching the New York Times’s The 1619 Project, critiques of the musical Hamilton, or originalist interpretations of the United States Constitution, early America seems to have gained new prominence in debates about the present-day United States. But why does this period—which spans four centuries from approximately 1450 to 1850—hold such meaning today? And what does this history have to teach us about our present moment? In this class, we will learn about the vast, diverse, and complex world of early America and use this knowledge to better understand current issues and events. Like Americans today, early Americans dealt with pandemics, racial injustice, political corruption, and income inequality. They adapted to changing markets, globalization, and climate change. What do their experiences have to teach us about navigating these issues in our own time

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30150 Decolonizing Gaming: Critical Engagement Through Design and Play (3 Credit Hours)

This course aims to change the way you think not only about the way that we play games, but also about the way that video games teach their players to behave within their digital worlds. This course will encourage students to reflect on and utilize their lived experiences as players, and utilize these experiences to locate themselves within their analysis and writing as well as their design practices. This course will undertake an intensive, interdisciplinary focus on the history of video game development, representation in video games, and the languages that digital games work in as well as decolonial theory and diverse theories of design. This class will engage with a variety of scholarly texts, video games, media posts, videos, and design exercises, in order to illustrate the ways in which video games have shaped the ways we play, think, and behave within their spaces. Students will be required to write and design around these lessons and address and push back against the problematic behaviors and colonial narratives around violence, race, gender, sexuality, and relationship to the land that these gamic languages and lessons have created.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

AMST 30151 Catching Lives: The Writing of Profiles and Biographies (3 Credit Hours)

In a new book about her work as longtime obituary writer for the Economist, Ann Wroe dubs the task "catching lives": i.e., capturing and conveying the crucial elements that illuminate a subject's personality, behavior, motivation, and even their soul. We will explore journalistic techniques, along with ethical and even moral considerations, in the writing of lives, both the living and the dead, in formal biographies, in informal profiles, in obituaries, and in appreciations. From current books such as His Name Is George Floyd and Elon Musk and Going Infinite, to the pithy profiles of contemporary figures written on deadline in the wake of news events, how do life-writers — who must be part detective, part psychoanalyst, part historian, and part gossip-trawler, but always fair and thorough — go about their work?

AMST 30152 Art in America (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines American visual and material cultures from the pre-colonial era to the present day. Providing a broad, historical account and considering a variety of media from paintings and sculptures to quilts, photographs, world's fairs, and fashion styles, this survey explores American art within the context of cultural, social, economic, political, and philosophical developments. In particular, it considers the role that American art has played in the formation of national identity and understandings of class, race, gender, and ethnicity.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30153 Drugs in American Life and Death (3 Credit Hours)

This course explores the history, meanings, myths, and realities associated with narcotics in the United States. We will consider, for example, the fascinating history of cocaine as it went from miracle drug and panacea (as well as the active ingredient in Coca-Cola) in the early twentieth century to elite party drug in the 1970s to public health threat in the 1980s and 1990s. Through this example and many others, including marijuana’s dramatic shift from illegal to legal substance, we will pay special attention to drugs and social difference, exploring the ways that American ideas about narcotics relate to such matters as race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, citizenship, and nation.

AMST 30154 Disability in American History and Culture (3 Credit Hours)

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 26% of Americans (about 61 million people) have a disability—a physical, intellectual, sensory, or self-care impediment that affects major life activities. This course considers this population, their stories and experiences, as well as how disability—as a social, cultural, legal, and political construct—has shaped the nation and its history. A particular focus of the course will be on disability and social justice. Throughout American history, and still today, disabled people have been excluded from basic civil rights, such as voting, marrying, holding property, and living independently. This course will examine how these restrictions developed and changed over time as well as how disabled people have fought for greater access and equality. Coursework may include response papers, primary source analysis, and a final project.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30157 Queer Mediascapes (3 Credit Hours)

From early silent films to contemporary video games, media have not only been informed by but have actively shaped our culture, including how we think about sexual and gender minorities, who have always been present in screen cultures. This course examines GLBT/Queer representational practices across a wide variety of media forms. It will cover foundational understandings of both queer studies and media studies in order to provide students with the necessary tools to engage with a diverse array of media texts, including texts such as Life is Strange, The Last of Us series, The L Word, and RuPaul’s Drag Race. Students will discuss and write about both primary sources and theoretical works that ask them to consider the politics of representation as well as the promises and perils of self-representation. This class will feature blog posts, lectures, class discussion, class activities, presentations, and frequent writing assignments to develop critical thinking and compositional skills.

AMST 30158 Myth, Magic, and Eurasia (3 Credit Hours)

Why do we tell stories? Myths and legends can help us understand what the people who created them have valued at different places and times. These texts have been interpreted as vessels of national identity, points of access to divine truth, indices of level of civilizational development, and pedagogical tools. They have also inspired some of the most compelling works of art ever produced. Students in this course will learn more about some of the many cultures of Eurasia, the world’s largest continent, spanning West Asia (the Middle East), Central Asia, and Eastern Europe, from these cultures' perspectives. They will read about what role Raven played in the creation of the world, learn the secret of the legendary Simorgh, and watch the tragic love story between a forest spirit and a human. They will consider the links between ancient folklore and contemporary fantasy. They will also have the opportunity to think about the role these stories play in the cultures that produced them and in their own lives. This class is co-taught by two scholars with different backgrounds: a historian of West Asia and the United States and a specialist in the literature of Russia and the former Soviet Union. In this class, students will learn how scholars in different disciplines (including not just literature and history but also folklore and anthropology) might approach the same works very differently and learn how to articulate their own scholarly positions. Assignments include a folklore collection, an in-class presentation on one of the cultures studied, and a creative adaptation of a myth. Students will also be graded on class participation and given weekly online reading quizzes.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

AMST 30159 Critical Internet Geographies (3 Credit Hours)

In 1996, John Perry Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyperspace" framed "the frontiers of Cyberspace" as an apolitical, borderless space where "our identities have no bodies." The invention of the World Wide Web and the continued evolution of internet technologies have drastically changed the norms for communication and community formation. However, internet technologies and platforms have also amplified and magnified deeply-embedded structures of discrimination and oppression. From the Ku Klux Klan's creation of the Aryan Nations Liberty Net in the 1980s to the 21st-century #GamerGate campaign's targeted harassment of women in the video game industry. At the same time, internet technologies and platforms have supported and facilitated the work of activists, advocates, and grassroots organizers. This course moves beyond techno-optimism to critically examine the historical, cultural, social, and political significance of "the internet," from alternate internet histories to contemporary debates around regulation and access. Class meetings will be split between discussions of conceptual readings and applied work with internet technology systems. Readings for this course will draw on texts that include Janet Abbate's Inventing the Internet (1999), Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White's Race After the Internet (2012), Safiya Umoja Noble's Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (2018), Charlton McIlwain's Black Software: The Internet and Racial Justice, From the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter (2020), Marisa Elena Duarte's Network Sovereignty: Building the Internet Across Indian Country (2017), Jessie Daniels's Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights (2009), Andre Brock Jr.'s Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures (2020), and edited collections Race in Cyberspace (Routledge, 2010) and #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice (MIT Press, 2020). Coursework may include response papers, hands-on work, and a final project. Familiarity with data science or computer science tools and methods is NOT a prerequisite for this course.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30160 America in the 20th Century (3 Credit Hours)

The field of American Studies takes as its central concern the tension between the ideals and institutions that unite us as a nation, and the diversity of identities, perspectives, and experiences that make that unity so difficult to achieve. This course examines how those tensions have played out in 20th century American history, with a focus on domestic politics and the production of culture, particularly music. The course also examines how those tensions have been reflected in the writing of American history itself. Taking a cue from the 1619 Project that re-conceptualized American history by placing the institution of slavery at its center, we will explore what 20th century U.S. history looks like when we move traditionally marginalized voices to the fore, and focus explicitly on the relationship between racialized power and the production of culture. Through the Blues and folk music to Elvis, girl groups, Chicano rock, disco, and hip hop, this blends historical perspectives and method with approaches from American studies to rethink 20th century history as well as the making of that history. Assignments will include extensive reading, midterm and final essay exams, and three short papers/projects. Classes will include some lectures as well as a significant amount of discussion.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30161 Football in America (3 Credit Hours)

Football is one of the most enduringly popular and significant cultural activities in the United States. Since the late 19th century, football has occupied an important place for those wishing to define and understand "America." And Notre Dame football plays a central role in that story, with larger-than-life figures and stories, from Knute Rockne's "Win one for the Gipper" line to the 'Four Horsemen' backfield that led the program to a second national championship in 1924. The mythic proportions of the University's football program cast a long shadow on the institution's history, cultural significance, and traditions. This course focuses on Notre Dame football history as an entry point into larger questions about the cultural, historical, and social significance of football in the U.S. Who has been allowed to play on what terms? How have events from Notre Dame football's past been remembered and re-imagined? How has success in Notre Dame football been defined and redefined? In particular, the course will focus on how Notre Dame football became a touchstone for Catholic communities and institutions across the country navigating the fraught terrain of immigration, whiteness, and religious practice. This course will take up those questions through significant engagement with University Archive collections related to Notre Dame football, working toward increased levels of description and access for these materials. This course will include hands-on work with metadata, encoding and markup, digitization, and digital preservation/access through a collaboration with the University Archives and the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship. Readings for this course will include chapters from texts such as Murray Sperber's Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football (1993), TriStar Pictures' Rudy (1993), Steve Delsohn's Talking Irish: The Oral History of Notre Dame Football (2001), Jerry Barca's Unbeatable: Notre Dame's 1988 Championship and the Last Great College Football Season (2014), David Roediger's Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White (2005), David Roediger's The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991), and Noel Ignatiev's How the Irish Became White (1995). Class meetings will be split between discussions of conceptual readings and applied work with library and information science technologies and systems. Coursework may include response papers, hands-on work with data, and a final project. Familiarity with archival methods, library/information science, data science, or computer science tools and methods is NOT a prerequisite for this course.

AMST 30162 Latinx Representation in Hollywood (3 Credit Hours)

This course will survey the history of representations of Latinos in American cinema from the silent era to the present. We will examine how stereotypes associated with Latinos have been produced, reinforced, and challenged in American films - from greasers and Latin lovers to gangsters, kingpins, and border crossers. We will explore the fascinating contradiction that, despite a long history of misrepresentation and under representation, Latinos have made significant contributions to Hollywood and independent cinema. We will also examine the rise of Latino directors in recent years and their drive to reframe the Latino image for American audiences. Screenings will range from the silent epic Martyrs of the Alamo (1915) to more recent films such as Maria Full of Grace (2004). Our interdisciplinary approach to the subject will draw upon readings from history, film theory and criticism, and ethnic/American studies. Students will take a midterm exam and make class presentations.

Corequisites: AMST 31162

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30163 Epidemics in America (3 Credit Hours)

For over a year now, our lives have been transformed by COVID-19, the coronavirus disease now causing a pandemic. As we navigate this crisis and work to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe, it may feel like we are treading in uncharted territory. But epidemics, even pandemics, have a long history in America and have integrally informed the American experience. In this course, we will examine health and disease in America from the pre-colonial period to the present, paying particular attention to how epidemics - smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, Spanish influenza, AIDS, and more - have shaped American history and culture. Epidemics are cultural as well as biological events, influencing everything from governmental policy and market relations to ideas about race, gender, class, disability, family, community, and citizenship. By engaging with a wide variety of historical and contemporary texts - newspapers, literature, medical journals, cultural artifacts, government documents, among others - we will see how epidemics have been forces of incredible cultural and historical change, shaping the nation today. Coursework includes response papers, primary source analysis, and a final project.

AMST 30165 The Vietnam War and American Catholics (3 Credit Hours)

How did the most divisive war in American History shape the nation's biggest church community? This course explores Catholics as both supporters and detractors of the Vietnam War. American Catholics wished to see America defeat Communism but, importantly, the power of faith motivated many to criticize the state's escalation of the conflict. Students will explore the tensions and transformations of this important moment in American life. Lectures and classroom discussions will address decolonization, the global and national nature of American Catholicism, the power of the liberal state, conscientious objection, the "Spirit of the Sixties," sacramental protests, the rise of human rights, geopolitics, and the Cold War. Course readings will include the latest scholarship, but also primary sources like poems, films, songs, letters, prayers, newspaper articles, and art. Students will have access to the rich materials of Catholic peace activists found in the University of Notre Dame Archives.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKCD-Core Cathol & Disciplines, WKHI - Core History

AMST 30166 Magazine Writing (3 Credit Hours)

This course will examine various forms of magazine journalism, from the direct presentation of information to narrative journalism to the art of the first-person essay. The class, requiring students to complete a variety of written assignments while performing in a workshop setting, will emphasize those storytelling techniques essential to writing for publication.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30169 Race and American Popular Culture (3 Credit Hours)

While it is a notoriously difficult concept to define, “race” is undoubtedly a powerful signifier in American life. Focusing on the twentieth century to the present, this course examines the ways in which racial ideas and knowledges are formed, negotiated, circulated, and resisted in the arenas of American popular culture. From Jack Johnson becoming the first Black heavyweight champion of the world on December 28, 1908, to contemporary cultural politics of performance and appropriation, this course will ask how popular culture actively shapes—rather than merely reflects—American ideas about race and ethnicity. A key aim of the class is to go beyond looking for “good” and “bad” pop culture texts to explore the structural, organizational, and systematic underpinning ideologies of racism and antiracism. By closely engaging with a diverse set of theoretical, historical, and primary texts, students will learn to approach and analyze popular culture with a critical and reflective eye.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30170 Laboring Women in Early America (3 Credit Hours)

What did shopping, tavern-keeping, and midwifery have in common in early America? They could all be considered legitimate forms of women's and girls' labors both inside and outside of the home. We will consider work that was skilled or unskilled, free or enslaved, and paid or unpaid, and how changing definitions of "women's work" helped to shape boundaries of race and class. Servants were restricted from marrying and procreating while the value of enslaved women resided in both their work and their reproductive potential. Hence this course will also consider the dual facets of women's labor in work and their laboring in childbirth.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

Enrollment limited to students in the American Studies department.

AMST 30171 The Digital Newsroom (3 Credit Hours)

Building on the skills acquired in Fundamentals of Journalism, this practicum course is centered around students preparing stories, photos and videos for The Observer, the university's independent, student-run newspaper. Students will acquire real-world experience in reporting, writing, and using their digital journalism skills by covering live news events on campus and in the surrounding community. Pre-requisite: Fundamentals of Journalism.

Prerequisites: JED 30100

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30172 The Engaged Journalist: Connecting Communities Across Divides (3 Credit Hours)

This course delves into the evolving practice of engaged journalism in the U.S., equipping students with skills to close gaps between journalists and the communities they serve. Students will examine standout examples of engaged journalism in the U.S., highlighting how leading newsrooms build trust, prioritize community input, and make journalism relevant to diverse audiences. Students will explore engagement as more than audience metrics — focusing instead on inclusive reporting, collaborative storytelling, and trust-building. Through case studies from some of the nation’s best storytellers and investigative journalists, students will learn techniques for involving community voices in creation, from story selection to distribution, enhancing journalism’s accessibility and relevance. As a classroom, we will discuss the ethical challenges journalists face when interviewing people who have experienced trauma or harm. Students will analyze case studies, identifying best practices and key strategies that deepen audience connections. We will apply these practices through assignments, learning to design and implement engagement-focused reporting through community listening exercises and collaborative story creation. This hands-on approach allows students to create audience-centered journalism that bridges gaps between newsrooms and the public and explores what it means to do journalism as a public service. By semester’s end, students will leave with actionable strategies for fostering sustainable, community-centered journalism and ways to integrate these practices into their budding careers.

AMST 30173 Video Games and the American West (3 Credit Hours)

Video Games of the American West will utilize digital games as the primary case studies to examine the modern cultural image, understanding of, and interaction with the "space" of the American West. This class will provide historical understandings of the vast, varied, and often mythologized history of the American West, as well as its place as a cite of continued colonial narratives and hegemonic imagery in contemporary popular media such as film, television, and video games. Through the close-playing of a variety of Western games including installations from the Call of Juarez series, Red Dead Redemption, series, Horizon, series, and many others, students will be asked to apply their knowledge of the historical and contemporary understandings and employments of the West as a physical space and a cultural space to the visual and mechanical recreations of it within the digital realm of video games.

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in American Studies.

AMST 30174 American Wilderness (3 Credit Hours)

What does it mean to be American? Wilderness, as an idea, a set of places, and a political process, is a big part of the answer. Writers, historians, painters, photographers, and politicians have described American landscapes as wild from colonization into the 21st century to great effect. Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold famously anchor the history of popular environmental thought. But wilderness is not simple. Because places are constantly constructed and reconstructed through culture as well as politics, wilderness has taken shape in concert with relationships of gender, class, race, and nation. National parks protected distinctively American landscapes starting in 1872 by removing the Native American peoples who inhabited them, and the 1964 Wilderness Act built from that legacy. Today Congress has designated about 5% of the United States (over half in Alaska) as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, and arguments over the protection of public land continue to divide local and national communities. This class will explore how the idea of wilderness, the places associated with it, and the politics surrounding both have developed from the 19th century to today. It will examine how wilderness has underscored our national identity but largely failed to recognize the diversity of American society and culture. Along the way we will discuss literature, history, visual culture, politics, and popular media, and explore historical relationships between wilderness and art, outdoor recreation, public land management, and consumer culture.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30176 AIDS, Art, America (3 Credit Hours)

How has the HIV/AIDS crisis shaped U.S. political culture, public health, and artistic production since coming to public attention in the early 1980s? In this course, we explore the history of the AIDS crisis, including medical, religious, and moral constructions of the epidemic that arose amid heated culture wars debates over gender and sexuality. We look at competing strategies to define and combat the epidemic, from Christian Right leaders who have described AIDS as a divine punishment to public health workers and religious leaders who championed comprehensive AIDS education. We will be especially attuned to grassroots activism that emerged from the communities most affected by the AIDS crisis, including LGBT communities. We explore how AIDS activists drew upon the lessons of feminist, queer, and Black civil rights movements to fight for political and medical resources for people with AIDS. And we will see how art became central to these efforts by exploring how feminist and queer activists and other people with AIDS produced a vast (and still growing) archive of cultural production, including visual and performance art, film, and literary work, through which they processed the grief and trauma of this crisis while forging new political and artistic visions.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

AMST 30177 The Ideas that Made America (3 Credit Hours)

America, at its core, is an idea. The lands that became America have been imagined and in certain ways and constantly reimagined. The history of the ideas that made America is less a lesson in philosophy and more about a series of clashes between contending visions: Democracy vs. Republicanism; Free vs. Slave; Christian vs. Secular; Individual vs. Society; and Universal vs. Particular. This course traces a long arc from the Puritans to the Culture Wars to understand the ideas Americans draw upon to comprehend the world and act in it.Lectures and discussions will consider the notions of equality, democracy, pluralism, religious freedom, and the tensions between contending visions for America. Readings for this course will include autobiographies, speeches, sermons, canonical texts, lyrics, novels, newspaper articles, and poetry.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30178 Public Affairs Reporting (3 Credit Hours)

This course builds on and hones skills learned in Fundamentals of Journalism by cultivating students' abilities to develop story ideas, gather information, conduct interviews, and then write and edit articles under deadline pressure. It introduces students to "beat" reporting, allowing them to cover a variety of newsworthy subjects and events. Students will be expected to conduct in-depth reporting and interview multiple sources to write four or five stories suitable for print, digital or broadcast media. Coursework will include reading, watching and discussing historic and contemporary reporting to learn about the evolution of the industry, professional ethics, and best practices.

AMST 30179 Religion and Politics in America (3 Credit Hours)

“On my arrival in the United States,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America (1835), “the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention.” This course is an introduction to the history of religion in the United States from the pre-colonial period to the present, with special attention to its interplay with politics, law, and governance. Taking stock of the broad range of religious traditions that Americans have practiced, we will move chronologically through US history and explore rich primary sources like films, diaries, novels, art, sermons, and court records to help us make sense of religion’s evolving role in American politics and society. Along the way, we will delve into questions of religious pluralism and its challenges; conversion and religious experience; the legal history of the First Amendment’s religion clauses; civil religion; immigration; anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism; religion, slavery, and the civil rights movement; the shifting identities of religious “insiders” and “outsiders” in American life; the “culture wars”; and secularization, among other topics.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30180 Native American Histories and Cultures in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (3 Credit Hours)

America is Indian Country! Our identity is tied to both real American Indian people and romanticized ideas about them. Anglo Americans liked to play Indian but they also claimed a right to places, land, and water. All of this presented a variety of problems for Native Americans over time. This course examines Native Americans and their constant adaptation and survival from European contact through the 20th century, as well as Anglo America's cooption of Native resources, traditions, and images. It explores themes of Native American creation, treaties, education, sovereignty, culture, literature, humor, art, and activism. We will address national issues but also recognize their are over 500 distinct cultural and linguistic groups who are the indigenous people of the modern United States. Questions we will explore include why Native people are sovereign but also U.S. Citizens, why Indian mascots are such a hot issue, and how Native people have come to run so many Casinos. This course is the history and culture course that brings the first Americans together with the rest of America.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30182 Sports Media (3 Credit Hours)

This course is a practical and conceptual immersion into the world of contemporary sports journalism. Students will learn how to write and report for multiple journalism platforms, including newspapers, magazines and digital media. Students will practice a variety of reporting techniques and study writing styles ranging from features to news articles to profiles, while also taking a rigorous look at the legal, ethical and cultural issues surrounding the intersection of media, sports and society. In addition, students will gain hands-on sports writing experience by preparing articles for the university's independent, student-run newspaper, The Observer.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30183 Applied Multimedia for Journalists (3 Credit Hours)

Applied Multimedia for Journalists - The main focus of this course is that students will learn how to shoot and edit videos. It will briefly touch on how to produce audio stories and podcasts. Students will also study the legal and ethical issues surrounding the use, creation and publication of digital media. The use of drones and the legal issues surrounding them will also be discussed.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30184 The Civil Rights Movement & the Globe (3 Credit Hours)

This course will examine the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in global contexts. From the 1920s to the 1990s, Black Americans' activism, organizing, and political efforts shaped their relationship with the Black Diaspora and U.S. Foreign Affairs. This class will cover an array of topics and historical moments such as Communism and the Red Scare, WWII, the Cold War, the formation of the United Nations, African Independents Movements, and Apartheid. We will study various activists, scholars, celebrities, and Black travelers whose movements around the world transformed how they viewed the United States' treatment of its Black citizens. By the end of this semester, students will know how Black Americans understood civil and human rights on U.S. soil and abroad.

AMST 30185 LGBTQ American History (3 Credit Hours)

How have LGBTQ people shaped modern America? And how has modern America shaped LGBTQ lives and experiences? In the popular imagination, the Stonewall Riots often mark the beginning of the modern gay rights movement and a turning point in the visibility and cultural acceptance of LGBTQ people. In this course, we will think about the longer and wider histories of LGBTQ people in the United States, tracking their cultural and political histories from the late 19th century to the historical present. We will also discuss theoretical approaches to studying the history of sexuality, including how sexual and gender categories (and people’s experiences of them) have changed over time and how they intersect with histories of race, class, religion, and region. In true American studies fashion, we will think with a wide range of primary texts—spanning across music, political zines, photography, film, law, and historical newspapers—and read interdisciplinary scholarship ranging from classics in LGBTQ history to more recent works that expand our archive of LGBTQ studies. Students will also pursue a historical research project on a topic of their own choosing, bringing their own interests and insights to the class.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30186 Indigenous Cinema (3 Credit Hours)

This course will examine the global field of Indigenous Cinema. This class will utilize screenings of Indigenous film along with accompanying lecture, reading, and discussion, to examine the ways in which Indigenous filmmakers, actors, and communities are subverting genre and decolonizing the industry to tell and reclaim Indigenous stories and make room for Indigenous futures.

Corequisites: AMST 31186

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

AMST 30187 Gender and Medicine in America (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines gender and medicine in America from the colonial era to the present. We will explore how gender has shaped medical ideas and practices and how women have participated in health care as providers, consumers, patients, and reformers. We will pay particular attention to how gender has intersected with race, class, ethnicity, and ability to affect health outcomes and highlight the experiences of black, Native, immigrant, working-class, and disabled women.

AMST 30188 Sport and Media (3 Credit Hours)

From the Olympics to Formula 1, sports are a central part of global culture and everyday life. Our experiences of sport, however, are largely shaped—and often even constructed—by media. Rather than simply presenting sports, media play an active role in producing the values, identities, emotions, and conflicts we associate with sport. This course examines the historical roots and current conditions of the convergence of corporate sport and corporate media. We will analyze how media—from early 20th-century newsreels to live Twitch streams—do more than distribute sports content; they shape its cultural meanings and social impact. Centering sport media as both an industry and a cultural practice, we will explore how it intersects with issues of gender, race/ethnicity, labor, nationalism, and globalization. By analyzing the forces shaping sport media production and the meanings audiences make of them, we will consider the ways sport media production and consumption might be reimagined. Assignments in the course include a variety of reflection and application projects, as well as larger research project.

AMST 30189 Civil Rights in America (3 Credit Hours)

This course explores the Black Freedom Struggle from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Power and into Black Lives Matter. How have African Americans mobilized to secure recognition of human dignity from the American Political system? How did the Freedom Struggle shape American culture? By studying the Civil Rights Movement in America, this class opens up conversation on the central issues of American history: race, racism, rights, and freedom.

AMST 30190 Religion in America (3 Credit Hours)

This course introduces students to the history of religion in the lands that became the United States. it focuses on how diverse peoples imagined and transformed the landscape, interacted with one another at different sites, and moved within and across borders. It is divided into two main sections. We begin --and end--by asking: How should we tell the story of religion in America? To help students clarify their thinking and provide them with a wide variety of intriguing sources, the next two sections introduce different ways to tell that story--by chronology or theme. Section one provides an historical overview, telling the story of U.S. religion by tracing chronological shifts, and we turn in the next section to explore a series of theses drawing on varied sources from multiple groups and historical periods. The topics we discuss in that section include gender, sexuality, science, class, race, ethnicity, violence, politics, pluralism, and law. Along the way, students plan and write a research paper on a topic of their choice and present their findings to the class. At the end, we circle back to the questions we posted at the start-how do we tell the story of U.S. religion?-as we write our own narrative on the last day of class.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30191 Black Geographies: Power and Difference in the Americas and Beyond (3 Credit Hours)

This course explores the emerging sub field of Black geographies through an American studies framework. Black activists and artists as well as scholars in geography, Africana studies, anthropology, history, and many other fields have begun to use Black geographic theory as an analytic: to think critically about Black space making practices, to recover hidden and suppressed histories, to reorient Black folks relationship to the environment, and to grapple with the ways power is shaped differently at various scales in various places. In this course, we will examine the development of Black geographies as a school of thought in field geography. We examine its relationship to the field of Black Studies through Black Feminist Thought, the Black Radical Tradition, and Black ecologies. And finally, we will think carefully and critically about the way Black spaces and places are produced in the Americas (and slightly beyond) to understand how the Americas have been underwritten socially, culturally, economically, and politically by Black geographies.

AMST 30192 Sports and American Culture (3 Credit Hours)

Sports play a big role in American culture. From pick up soccer and the Baraka Bouts to fantasy football and the Olympics, sports articulate American identities, priorities, aspirations, and concerns. They reflect our dominant values but also highlight our divisions and serve as a means to question those values. Athletes, organizers, spectators, fans, and the media all have a stake. This course will examine sport's role in American society and culture thematically, covering the late 19th century to present and paying special attention to sport as a physical performance (including issues of danger, drugs, disability, spectatorship, and fandom), sport as an expression of identity (the construction of race, gender, class, community, and nation), sport as a form of labor (with issues of power and control, safety, and amateurism), and sport as a cultural narrative (how do writers, historians, and the media attach meaning to it?). We will examine history, journalism, documentary film, and television coverage; topics will range from Victorian bicyclists and early college football to Muhammad Ali. Requirements include reading and regular discussion, a variety of short analytical papers, and a culminating project in which students will choose one course theme to analyze through a topic of their own choice.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30193 Malls of America: Consumption, Culture, and Capital (3 Credit Hours)

In the 20th century, the “Mall” was an indelible component of the American Dream. It was a social, economic, and cultural space that signified American prosperity alongside automobile and home ownership. However, in the 21 st century, the mall is no longer the center of conspicuous consumption in the US. Instead, it has become a site of fiscal crisis, it has been dislodged from the cultural imagination, and it has firmly been replaced by Amazon and Instacart as the premier intermediaries of consumption. While its physical “ruins “have become a dystopic reminder of decline, stagnation, and obsolesce illustrating what happens when capital is injected and then forcibly extracted from the landscape. This course will examine the complex relationship between the “Mall” and American culture through popular culture, print media, digital media, planning and zoning ordinances, retail practices, and technological innovation. From the Mall of America in Minneapolis to The Grove in Los Angeles to The Galleria in Houston, the “Mall” will serve as an entry point to think about America at its current moment. Central to this course will be understanding the roles that technology, consumer culture, and capital accumulation and dispossession play in contemporary US culture.

AMST 30194 Transnational America (3 Credit Hours)

What does American Studies have to do with the rest of the world? A lot. The movement of people, ideas, and products across our national borders have influenced both the United States and the world around us. (Think immigration, commerce, study abroad programs, cultural fads like belly dance and gangnam style, but also, imperialism, terrorism, and drones.) In this course, we will explore both the presence of the world in the United States and the presence of the United States in the world, with a focus on the politics of culture. How have Americans imagined the world and how have non-Americans imagined the United States? Is there such a thing as "cultural imperialism" or "Americanization" and how does it work? How has culture influenced U.S. foreign policy and how have U.S. foreign policy makers and non-governmental groups sought to influence culture, both within the United States and elsewhere? The course has a chronological emphasis, beginning with the Spanish-Cuban-American war (1898) and U.S. imperialism in the Pacific, going on to the post-WWI "Wilsonian Moment", WWII, "the American Century" and the Cold War, and the War on Terror. Even more important, however, is its thematic emphasis on the connections between culture and policy. Requirements include discussion, reading responses, and a final research-based paper.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30195 Local Reporting (3 Credit Hours)

What role does a local reporter play in their community? How does the unique nature of a small community impact the journalism profession? Local reporters are the backbone of journalism, an unsung majority holding up a field on minimal resources and stretched for time. Oftentimes, local reporters are the only members of the public present at government meetings where decisions are made that impact everyone in a municipality. This class is meant to prepare you for the work required to be a reporter in a small community. This class will revolve around consuming, understanding, and producing local journalism. Students will write local news stories, read examples of good local reporting, and interact with local and regional journalists. Students will learn to understand their unique local audience, and how to interpret the importance of news for that audience and through their lens. Note: the only required text for this course will be a subscription to a local newspaper.

AMST 30197 Public Art & Memory in America (3 Credit Hours)

Public art is a major facet of modern and contemporary American culture and is often controversial: in the 1980s, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was criticized by some for being "anti-American," in the 1990s, the Smithsonian cancelled an exhibit on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima after certain members of Congress said it was not "patriotically correct," in the 2000s, the design and construction of the National September 11 Memorial (dedicated in New York in 2011) was beset by protests. This course examines the politics and aesthetics of public art in America from the perspectives of its producers and audiences. What is public art? Why is it made? Who is it for? How and why does it embody tensions in American culture and society regarding identity, authority, and taste? Specific topics to be explored include American memorials and remembrance rituals, the development of the public art "industry," community art projects (such as murals), national arts programs and policies, landscape architecture, tourism, museums, and national fairs. Our objectives are to recognize how public art shapes and directs local and national understandings of history and memory, self and society, in the United States. Course includes field trips; students will develop their own "Wiki Public Art" pages.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30200 Apocalypse Now: Reading End-of-the-World Narratives in American Literature (3 Credit Hours)

The world is ending, and, surprisingly, has ended multiple times throughout history. Terrible events have occurred, and are occurring as we move through climate change, the Covid pandemic, and international wars. Yet, in the moment of apocalypse that, as James Berger notes, “burns away layers of habits of perception,” our perception is made anew and we begin to create new histories, narratives, and futures through the debris of trauma. This course will look into literary and cinematic representations of apocalypse that reflect, annihilate, revolutionize, or reconfigure the economic, social, demographic changes in US society. We will begin by discussing how (post)apocalyptic narratives reinforce the traditional binaries of Global North and South, self and other, by illustrating contact with the non-white race – both physical and psychological - as “the End.” We will then move on to see how other writers like Toni Morrison and Gloria Anzaldua rework this genre as they revisit the traumatic sites of history to identify the cultural symptoms and allow the unmourned ghosts to speak.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30201 Haunting in American Literature (3 Credit Hours)

Description: In this course, we will examine writers who engage ghosts, haunting, and the supernatural to explore how oppressive systems of power, though pervasive, are rendered imperceptible due to their historical persistence. We will unpack how writers engage with ghosts and the supernatural to interrogate issues of power, gender, race, sexuality, and class. We will critically examine what these classed, gendered, and raced intersections reveal to us about American culture, ideology, history, identity, and future trajectories. We will interrogate, reflect, and deconstruct how writers affirm, challenge, and negotiate identity and conceptualize American society through their engagement with ghosts.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

AMST 30203 Black American Horror Aesthetics in Literature and Film (3 Credit Hours)

Considering the contemporary rise in the aesthetics of the genre of black horror, this course will explore literary and artistic horror(s) that black artists examine in America. We will work to study how black horror reminds us of the power of crafting narratives in America. We will be watching numerous horror films and shows and reading numerous literary authors. We will be reading and working with authors like: Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, and many others. A close observation of this genre will allow us to question what constitutes horror and how is it connected to the humanities, law, and elements of science as well? This course is designed to help you build sound critical arguments and analysis by writing multiple genres of essays like a narrative essay, a close analysis essay, a podcast essay, and a final research essay.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30204 Novels of American Naturalism (3 Credit Hours)

In this course we will undertake a comparative survey of the materialisms of twentieth-century American naturalist novels, tracing a trajectory from turn-of-the-century texts by Frank Norris and Stephen Crane, to the neo-naturalist fiction of a few decades later that operated alongside developments in modernist literary form (Gertrude Stein, Ann Petry, John Steinbeck), and concluding with a look at its postwar resurgence in the novels of authors such as Don DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy. We will also discuss the return to these novels in recent films including There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men. Students will be asked to write one short formal analysis and two mid-length papers, in addition to regular discussion assignments.

AMST 30205 In Search of the Great American Novel (3 Credit Hours)

In this course, we will discuss debates surrounding the “Great American Novel,” including examples on and off the syllabus. Why don’t we begin with Moby-Dick or The Last of the Mohicans, you might ask? Why The Sound and the Fury and not Absalom, Absalom!; and, for that matter, where is Henry James on this syllabus? Does the Great American Novel have to be a hefty tome, or can it be shortish? Does it have to engage with lofty ideals or can it be thoroughly ensconced in everyday life? Is it national, anti-national, or regional? How does it approach the problems of universality? This course will offer a broad examination of novels that might contend for the title of the Great American Novel, while also taking a thorough look at each individual example. As a result, the course will be a mixture of lecture and seminar discussion, with an attention to how books were historically received as well as how they resonate (or don’t) in the present moment. We’ll be reading some books that have long been considered Great American Novels—Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Invisible Man, and Beloved, for example—as well as books that might cause us to reconsider the very idea of a Great American Novel in the first place.

AMST 30206 In Some Glamorous Country: The New York School Poets (3 Credit Hours)

In this course, we will deploy critical and creative modes of inquiry as we undertake a survey of mid- to late twentieth-century American poetry arising from New York City, which in the postwar period became a nexus of literary and artistic experimentation. It is within this geographic and historical framework that the New York School of Poets coalesced around the core figures of Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Barbara Guest, and James Schuyler. Focusing on this dynamic array of poets as well as their precursors (e.g., Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, Federico García Lorca), fellow travelers (e.g., Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Frank Lima), and subsequent "generations" of New York poets (e.g., Joe Brainard, Bernadette Mayer, John Yau), we will consider how lines of affinity and intimacy as well as the cultural reverberations of the city drew together writers so diverse in outlook and method that Ashbery remarked, "our program is the absence of any program." In this light, to figure out what it means to be part of the this anti-programmatic community, we will explore how the New York School intersected with the Beats, the Black Arts Movement, the Boston and San Francisco Renaissances, the Nuyorican Movement, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry—prompting us to consider how the concept of an avant-garde becomes, in this period, a ramifying network of friends, lovers, and intellectual rivals engaged in aesthetic cross-pollination. Our undertaking will be attentive to the intermedial dialogue between these poets and New York painters (e.g., Willem de Kooning, Fairfield Porter, Jane Freilicher), methods of collaboration, the influence of postmodern theory, and how race, gender, sexuality, and place shaped what has been cited as one of the most enduringly influential bodies of literature in the postwar world. Assignments will engage students' critical and creative talents.

AMST 30207 Gender & Sexuality in American Drama (3 Credit Hours)

Ever since Nora Helmer walked out on her husband and slammed the door in Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play A Doll's House, modern drama has been closely connected with the struggles to redefine gender and sexuality that have shaped the twentieth and twenty-first century. In this course, we will look at how this story plays out on the American stage, as we examine the works of American playwrights who have participated in the many long-running debates about gender and sexuality in modern and contemporary America. We will read both canonical American playwrights - Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Lorraine Hansberry, etc. - and a variety of contemporary American playwrights, including but not necessarily limited to Maria Irene Fornes, Tony Kushner, Sara Ruhl, and Susan Lori-Parks.

AMST 30209 Literature of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age (3 Credit Hours)

This new course highlights literary works written in the 40 years after the American Civil War, spanning the Reconstruction era and the Gilded Age. The era's fiction was remarkably innovative, and writers from the U.S. took their place on a global stage in a way rarely seen before. We will explore the riches, reading major novels by Henry James (Portrait of a Lady), Mark Twain (Huckleberry Finn), Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage), Kate Chopin (The Awakening), Charles Chesnutt (The Marrow of Tradition), Simon Pokagon (Queen of the Woods), and Edith Wharton (The House of Mirth). Short stories by Sarah Orne Jewett ("A White Heron") and Charlotte Perkins Gilman ("The Yellow Wallpaper") will round things out. The end of the Civil War produced abiding conflicts over race and questions about the future of American democracy, which we will consider in works by Walt Whitman (Democratic Vistas and selected poetry), along with selections from the postbellum writings of Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells-Barnett's anti-lynching journalism. This volatile period of territorial expansion, income inequality, domestic political and racial conflict, large-scale immigration, and rising international influence transformed the United States from a largely homogeneous and agrarian society to a version of what it is today. We are living in what is sometimes described as a "Second Gilded Age," while Reconstruction has become the subject of renewed attention in connection with the persistence of racial injustice. The historical context, and its parallels with the present, will provide an animating framework for our close readings of the literature. There will be around 25 pages of writing, with specific assignments at the beginning of the semester. Participation - possibly including an oral report - will also factor in the final grade.

AMST 30210 Early American Horror Stories (3 Credit Hours)

Proposing a broad definition of "horror," this course features authors often associated with grisly topics, such as Hawthorne and Poe, yet it also highlights nonfiction accounts of horrific experience, such as those by Mary Rowlandson and Harriet Jacobs. The course also explores terrifying imagery in the sermons of Jonathan Edwards and the Civil War poetry of Whitman. Ultimately, this course invites us to query the effectiveness of horror, fear, and the like as literary techniques. Why do we enjoy these texts (or not)? What is their effectiveness on readers' engagement and authors' persuasiveness? Moreover, what do these authors suggest as the sources of horror, and how do we address them as literary critics?

AMST 30213 "Remembering the Ladies": Literatures of Reform and Revolution in Early America (3 Credit Hours)

"...and by the way, in the new Code of Laws ... I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors." - Abigail Adams, Letter to her husband, John, March 31, 1776 In this course we will consider the ways in which women writers shaped social, political, and religious dialogue from the British colonial period to the 21st century in North America. Taking up Abigail Adams' charge to "Remember the Ladies," we will ask how American women writers took up the mantle for social change, adapting and inventing literary tools to fit their reforming interests. We will explore a variety of genres from personal poetry to political declarations, considering how women writers over the course of three centuries both unsettled and reenforced systems of social hierarchy and inequality, applying the questions these reformers asked to our own present-day experiences. Throughout our reading, writing, and class discussions, we will continually return to the guiding questions of the course: In what ways do women writers complicate, dismantle, or otherwise reinscribe systems of inequality in early America? And what can we, in our twenty-first-century context, learn from them?

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30214 Sense of Place in American Lit (3 Credit Hours)

For the last five centuries, American literatures have reflected diverse and changing relationships between people and their environment. Scholars in human geography and other fields call this a sense of place, our "sixth sense." In some instances, sense of place is so strong, so deeply imbued with meaning, that it becomes a part of individual or cultural identity, such as one's childhood home, famous historical landmarks, fictional landscapes, and even Notre Dame's campus. This course explores the many ways American writers have represented senses of place - and senses of being displaced, or of placelessness - in literary prose. What does it mean to belong to a place? How does connection to place impact specific literary traditions? What is our responsibility to place, and how might notions of place help us understand diverse people and cultures? We'll consider these questions throughout the term in class discussions and in formal papers, and students will explore their own sense of place in regular informal writing assignments.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30223 Multiethnic Literatures of Chicago (3 Credit Hours)

Lifelong Chicago resident Gwendolyn Brooks once said of her Bronzeville home, "If you wanted a poem, you had only to look out of a window." This "life in the raw" that inspired the Pulitzer-winning poet has also spoken to generations of Chicago writers and poets. What can the writing of Chicago, a place proud of its diversity but dogged by inequities, tell us about race and citizenship in the U.S.? And what does it even mean to talk about the literature(s) of a city? We'll tackle these big questions as we learn about the 1893 World Fair; the Chicago Renaissance; the Great Migration; The Black Arts Movement; the Latino Arts Movement; and Chicago's contemporary literary scene. Through discussion, several short writing assignments, and a longer, research essay, we'll sharpen our analytical and writing skills and seek to become empathetic but also critical readers of Chicago's writers of color.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30224 Keeping it Real-ism: Constructing Reality in U.S. Fiction (3 Credit Hours)

What does it mean when we label something - an experience, a story, a work of art - as "real" or "realistic"? How do we evaluate the correspondence between reality and fiction? Literary realism has often been associated with a steadfast and often unimaginative faithfulness to reality. In this course, we will read realism differently. Studying the evolution of literary realism, we will consider how writers and their narratives struggle to reflect their fidelity to the real-world and art-world. What happens when narrative worlds cannot be reduced to or "pin down" reality? We will focus on the creative and imaginative, often experimental, capacity of literary realism that works to defamiliarize, multiply, or challenge constructed realities. Humans, as Gertrude Stein wrote, "are interested in two things. They are interested in reality and interested in telling about it." This course will take up the study of American literary realism to trace how these two interests intersect in how we construct representations of reality. We will consider different forms of realism, from social realism, naturalism, and magical realism to realism in philosophy, pop-culture, film and television, and videogames.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30244 Citizenship and the American Novel (3 Credit Hours)

This course will explore how civic life has been represented in classic American fiction. We will take up questions of form and style as they relate to distinctive visions of US citizenship in Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables (1851), Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Henry Adams's Democracy: An American Romance (1880), Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906), Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952), and Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker (1995). Several of these novels are quite long, so be prepared to do a good amount of reading. Course requirements include regular attendance and consistent high-quality participation; presentations and/or group work; and a mix of short and longer writing assignments totaling around 25 page

AMST 30247 "How Fully Can We Feel in the Doing": Labor in American Literature (3 Credit Hours)

In this course, we will examine the role of labor in American literature from the decades before the Civil War to the late 20th century through the critical lens of Audre Lorde's theorization of the erotic. Through this theorization, Lorde identifies the intimate and varying relationships to power that are revealed when gender identity, race, sexuality, and class intersect with labor in U.S. American culture. We will critically examine what these classed, gendered, and raced aspects of labor reveal about American culture, ideology, identity, and future trajectories. We will interrogate, reflect, and deconstruct how writers affirm, challenge, and negotiate identity and conceptualize American society through representations of labor.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30249 American Modernisms (3 Credit Hours)

Discussions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century literary and cultural movement of Modernism often center on those qualities of the movement described in the work of early Modernist literary critics, such as Harry Levin or Edmund Wilson. Such examinations emphasize the Modern movement's experiments in form, structure, linguistic representation, characterization, etc., while paying much less attention to the role of the Modernist movement in the larger context of a given culture. In this course, we will explore the significance of the Modern movement from the perspective of American culture, as well as the manner and meaning of American literary participation in the movement. To that end, we will consider not only the work of authors generally accepted as Modernists, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein; we will also consider the role of authors such as Sherwood Anderson and Waldo Frank, of the early Chicago Renaissance (1910 - 1925), and a number of authors from the Harlem Renaissance. We will examine the work of these authors not only in the context of Modernism, but also as it relates to many issues of the day, including progressivism, primitivism, race and ethnicity, immigration, cosmopolitanism vs. regionalism, and the importance of the vernacular, in addition to the question of "Americanness" and its importance to an understanding of American literature during this time. Considering these different vantage points in American literary Modernism, we will try to imagine the contours of "American Modernisms," and draw some conclusions about their significance within the larger Modernist context. In so doing, we'll seek to arrive at a more comprehensive, more nuanced perspective on the meaning of the Modern in American literature and culture. Course texts: Edith Wharton, Age of Innocence; Willa Cather, O Pioneers!; Sherwood Anderson, Dark Laughter; Waldo Frank, Holiday; Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie; Ernest Hemingway, Torrents of Spring; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Gertrude Stein, Three Lives; Jessie Fauset, Plum Bun; Jean Toomer, Cane; William Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom! Course Requirements: Two 10-page essays, one mini-presentation, one larger presentation

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30250 American Prophets: U.S. Poetry and Social Protest (3 Credit Hours)

American poets have long used their poetry to speak truth to power, writing against war, racialized injustice, gender and income inequality, and the climate crisis. Figuring themselves as spokespoets for the nation, many see this kind of writing as prophetic work. But what is the nature of prophecy in American poetry? What do prophetic poets sound like, and what kind of poems do they write? How do we know a prophet when we hear one? In this course, students will explore the various traditions of prophetic poetry in the U.S., applying theories from the Black prophetic tradition, Jewish and feminist criticism, and others. Readings include American poets from the nineteenth century through the present day, including: Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, Kaveh Akbar, and others. At the end of the semester, students will research social protest poetry relating to a cause of their choice, and propose an addition to the syllabus, arguing for their own definition of what makes an American poet a prophet.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30255 American Migrant Communities (3 Credit Hours)

In this class, we will explore various American migrant communities. Along with Sui Sin Far's Mrs. Spring Fragrance, we will begin with W.E.B. DuBois's classic sociological and literary text, The Souls of Black Folk, initiating the semester with a provocative and urgent question: Should we consider the European colonists the paradigmatic bearers of American identity, or rather the people whose labor and/or land was used to build the United States? By pursuing this question, we will explore the many facets and difficulties of American identity. We will end the semester with Janet Campbell Hale's Women on the Run. Thus, rather than positioning American Indians at the beginning of American history - and thus repeating the myth of their disappearance - we will end with an exploration of what it means to survive, renew, and flourish in contemporary America, a question made particularly poignant and potent in Hale's novel.The various migrant communities we will explore are: African Americans, Chinese Americans, Caribbean Americans, Filipino Americans, Anglo Americans, Southern Americans, "Okies," Armenian Americans, Mexican Americans, Dominican Americans, and American Indians. While this is by no means exhaustive, it gives us an idea of the diversity of peoples who find themselves in the demonym "American" - and what it means to navigate this identity as a migrant. What are the benefits and pitfalls of migration? What should one's relationship be to assimilation? What does migration do to the idea of homeland? As you can see, we will also tackle tough political issues while keeping in mind the role of literature in creating identities: national, local, ethnic, and racial (and that's just the beginning). Although we will be working chronologically through the 20th Century, our progress will be atypical. Our circuitous route through the literature in this class will be a literary journey that echoes the various movements of people in the American 20th Century. Potential course texts include: Mrs. Spring Fragrance, Sui sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton); Bread Givers, Anzia Yezierska; Quicksand, Nella Larsen; Whose Names Are Unknown, Sanora Babb; My Name is Aram, William Saroyan; Migration (series of paintings), Jacob Lawrence; America Is in the Heart, Carlos Bulosan; Maude Martha, Gwendolyn Brooks; ...y no se lo tragó la tierra, Tomás Rivera; The Rain God, Arturo Islas; How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez; Women on the Run, Janet Campbell Hale.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30271 American Literary Traditions I (3 Credit Hours)

Introduction to American literature from its beginnings through the Civil War, emphasizing important figures, literary forms, and cultural movements.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30272 American Lit Traditions II (3 Credit Hours)

In this course, we will study landmark literary works published in the United States from 1865 to the present. Reading closely, we will track fundamental tensions in the history of this nation and its literatures, including tradition/change, inclusion/exclusion, and unity/diversity. Proceeding from an understanding of US literature as multiracial and polyvocal, our historically grounded units will bring us through major developments including Reconstruction, realism and naturalism, modernism, midcentury social movements, postmodern narrative innovations, and contemporary engagements with the past that never really goes away. We will read novels, short stories, poems, and essays, and we'll also attend to popular music and other forms of art and media that influence US literature. Texts will include works by Charles Chesnutt, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry James, Jack London, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, Jennifer Egan, and many others.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30279 Sound, Popular Music, and American Literature (3 Credit Hours)

US literature and popular music between the mid-19th century and the end of World War II. This interdisciplinary course will incorporate methods from performance studies, sound studies, and musicology in addition to literary criticism. We will read key works of American prose (as well as some poetry) from the period's principal literary movements, including realism, naturalism, modernism, and multimedia documentary. We will also listen to musical works--Broadway tunes and blues songs, spirituals and symphonies. We'll pay particular attention to how segregation and other racial politics, changing roles for women, and the mass production of commodities influenced the art of this period. Texts will include writing by Stephen Crane, W.E.B. Du Bois, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, Harriet Jacobs, and Edith Wharton, as well as music by George M. Cohan, George Gershwin, Scott Joplin, Paul Robeson, and Bessie Smith. Course requirements will include two argumentative essays, several shorter writing assignments, regular online reading responses, and active class participation.

AMST 30288 The Stage Where It Happens: Dramatizing the American Revolution from Propaganda Plays to Hamilton (3 Credit Hours)

Historian Joanne Freeman calls Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton a piece of "revolutionary theater." Freeman's characterization suggests two ideas: (1) that Hamilton represents a milestone and turning point in theater as a form and (2) that Hamilton is part of an identifiable body of drama dealing with the American Revolution. While these two ideas may seem contradictory, this course works with the hypothesis that both are true. Beginning with the pamphlet plays of the 1770s and ending with Hamilton, this course explores plays and musicals that dramatize the figures and events of the American Revolution. What histories do these pieces stage, and what do they omit? What are some commonalities in the plays' content, structure, and characterization, and how has this tradition of theater evolved from the tragedies of Mercy Otis Warren to the postmodern comedy of Will Eno, or from the traditional "Broadway" sound of 1776 to the hip-hop of Hamilton?

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

AMST 30289 Literature and Environment: The End of Nature? (3 Credit Hours)

For the last five centuries, American literatures have consistently drawn from and reacted to the continent's diverse, dynamic environments. Today, however, "nature" and all that we associate with it seem fundamentally different. This course examines the tradition of United States nonfiction nature writing in light of what Bill McKibben calls the "end of nature, - or the end of nature as we know it. We'll begin with an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of the environmental humanities, and then students will encounter some of the most significant literary voices associated with nineteenth- and twentieth-century environmentalism. After the midterm, we'll turn to more contemporary literary nonfiction and the wicked problems of the late twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. For example, what does "nature" look like today, especially from the lens of a university with a national and global reach? What does environmentalism look like in the face of widespread human migration, globalization, and climatic instability, and how do ideas of race, class, ethnicity, and gender become entangled in environmental thinking? What can nature writing offer us in the Anthropocene? Students will consider such questions throughout the term, both in class discussions and in written assignments.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30294 Cast Out! Identity, Belonging, and Religious Difference in American Literature (3 Credit Hours)

Many places of worship hang a sign of invitation: All Are Welcome! But what happens when an aspect of an individual's identity or beliefs comes into conflict with their religious community? Which differences are tolerated, and which are shunned? Who belongs, and who is cast out? From Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories to Kendrick Lamar's hip hop albums, the American literary imagination has long been interested in examining the conflicts between identity - race, gender, sexuality, class, and disability - and religion. Together we will read a variety of American literature, including poetry, science-fiction, drama, and literary essays, paying attention to religious outcasts, misfits, and minoritized peoples as they search for belonging within established communities, or attempt to forge new spaces for themselves. Readings will include James Baldwin, N. Scott Momaday, Tony Kushner, Octavia Butler, more contemporary writing by Molly McCully Brown and R.O. Kwon, as well as music, film, and podcasts.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30295 In a Glamorous Country: The New York School Poets (3 Credit Hours)

In this course, we will deploy critical and creative modes of inquiry as we undertake a survey of mid- to late-twentieth-century American poetry arising from New York City, which in the postwar period became a nexus of literary and artistic experimentation. It is within this geographic and historical framework that the New York School of Poets coalesced around the core figures of Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Barbara Guest, and James Schuyler. Focusing on this dynamic array of poets as well as their precursors (e.g., Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, Federico García Lorca), fellow travelers (e.g., Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Frank Lima), and subsequent "generations" of New York poets (e.g., Joe Brainard, Bernadette Mayer, John Yau), we will consider how lines of affinity and intimacy, as well as the cultural reverberations of the city,drew together writers so diverse in outlook and method that Ashbery remarked, "our program is the absence of any program." In this light, to figure out what it means to be part of this anti-programmatic community, we will explore how the New York School intersected with the Beats, the Black Arts Movement, the Boston and San Francisco Renaissances, the Nuyorican Movement, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry - prompting us to consider how the concept of an avant-garde becomes, in this period, a ramifying network of friends, lovers, and intellectual rivals engaged in aesthetic cross-pollination. Our undertaking will be attentive to the intermedial dialogue between these poets and New York painters (e.g., Willem de Kooning, Fairfield Porter, Jane Freilicher), methods of collaboration, the influence of postmodern theory, and how race, gender, sexuality, and place shaped what has been cited as one of the most enduringly influential bodies of literature in the postwar world. Assignments will engage students' critical and creative talents.

AMST 30296 Indigenous Self-Representation in Early American Literature: From Pocahontas to Simon Pokagon (3 Credit Hours)

AMST 30300 Frames of History: Latinx History through Graphic Novels (3 Credit Hours)

The legacy of comics is ever present in society today. Many graphic novels are present in culture today, from various streaming services to box office sensations and flops to superheroes. For decades, graphic novels have provided critiques of environmental pollution, racism, the urban crisis, xenophobia, and authoritarianism. From rewriting the history of Texas to advocating for labor rights for Latina domestic workers, Latina/o creators have turned to graphic novels as a medium for documenting and disseminating their history. This course offers a broad overview of and introduction to the production of Latina/o History through Graphic Novels. The course will balance a thematic approach of central themes throughout Latina/o History, such as migration, labor, and social movements, and the methodology and terminology of reading comics. Once the center point of culture wars, graphic narratives are increasingly accepted today as forms that cultivate sophisticated types of verbal-visual literacy that actively critique forms of knowledge and contemporary policies and offer alternative forms of history. This class will explore how Latina/o graphic narratives have long been an essential source of cultural expression and central to the Latina/o communities documenting their history on their terms. From revisionist accounts to biographies of leaders to instilling superpowers to child migrants and domestic workers, graphic novels offer a compelling perspective into complementary historical narratives.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30301 Global Catholicism (3 Credit Hours)

Global Catholicism will explore the past, present, and future of the Catholic Church from a variety of perspectives. The largest and oldest transnational organization in the world, the Catholic Church also embodies the people of God and the Body of Christ. It therefore lends itself to analysis from many academic disciplines, and, in this course, priority will be given to insights from theology and history, though with reference to other fields such as art history, literature, and the social sciences. Besides exploring the university’s art and archival collections, readings thus will include a novel, a memoir, primary sources both historical and theological, as well as analyses of pertinent issues and episodes that feature historical, theological, sociological, and anthropological approaches. There will also be a visit to Chicago’s Catholic parishes that reflect the Church’s global reach. Besides participation and engagement in class meetings, course requirements include regular brief responses to assigned readings, several group oral reports, and a mid-term and final exam. In addition, students will also prepare a final project that will seek to draw upon historical and theological reasoning to address a contemporary issue of importance for the Catholic Church, proposing a response to the issue from the perspective of a church leader (for example, a bishop, head of religious congregation, Catholic university president, etc.)

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKCD-Core Cathol & Disciplines, WKHI - Core History

AMST 30302 American Feminist Thought (3 Credit Hours)

This course traces American feminism from the margins of democratic thought in the eighteenth century to the center of modern political discourse and culture. Drawing on primary sources and recent scholarly work, we will investigate how the goals and meaning of feminism have changed over time, as well as how the boundaries drawn around who could and could not claim the title of "feminist" have shifted. We will approach feminism as an argument--not a received truth--responsive to contemporary historical developments and marked by divisions of race, class, sexual orientation, age, and religion. Course readings are organized around major turning points in the American feminist movement and chart significant continuities and contradictions that have animated each new wave, including questions of gender difference, economic dependence, reproductive rights, marriage, subjectivity, and citizenship.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30303 Picturing America: Photography in American History (3 Credit Hours)

This course explores the history of photography in America, and the history of America in photography. Beginning with the medium's introduction in 1839, we consider the many ways in which photographic images have been used (and abused) to advance arguments, demarcate social boundaries, define racial and ethnic types, document poverty and injustice, and capture conflict. This course is also about looking and seeing, and how to look and see. The images we will consider in their context come first as a form of beguiling transport to a moment in time—a scene, a person, a place that is more immediate than any painting, drawing, or description. But they also invite work. The picture is not just a view, it is also, we will work to understand, a point of view that we will work to explore, examine, and, as best we can, to inhabit as we reconstruct and recreate the points of view and assumptions that helped to make them. This course invites students to see how US history shaped the development of photographic styles and technologies and how photography, photographers, and photographs have changed the course of US history.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30311 The History of Energy in Modern American Life (3 Credit Hours)

This course will offer students a rigorous and lively encounter with multiple energy sources and their manifold effects on American society, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.Recent political developments in the US offer plenty of reasons for a course of this sort, one that can contextualize contemporary debates over energy-related matters such as global warming,national security, federal regulation, and sustainability in broad sweeps of change over time. Yet The primary goal of this course will be to provide a history of energy on its own terms. One Cannot grasp the complexities and entanglements of modern life in its entirety without first coming to terms with the ways humans demand, consume, and interact with energy - and in turn,the ways it shapes and reshapes our social structures, realigns our lived and material infrastructures, and even dictates cultural values and trends.We will interrogate these values and structural outcomes with the help of path-breaking scholarship - books and articles about coal, petroleum, electricity, and nuclear energy that not only chart their development over time, but also reveal the ways in which, at key junctures in the nation's past, they forged new patterns of labor and race relations, corporate and community growth, state governance and land-use policy, gender and religion, regional growth andAmerica's global reach. Moving from the Civil War to the present, from the oil patches ofwestern Pennsylvania and West Texas to American petroleum sites in the Middle East - from the electrification of east-coast cities in the late nineteenth century to the damming of western rivers for hydropower in the early-twentieth, this course will give students the opportunity to ponder past and present energy systems within prisms of vast societal impact.

Corequisites: HIST 32800

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30313 U.S. Gilded Age and Progressive Era (3 Credit Hours)

This course offers an introduction to the history of the United States from Reconstruction through the First World War with particular emphasis on the social, cultural, and intellectual formations of the period. The United States made a dramatic transition in these years: from a predominantly agrarian and rural society to an urban, industrial society and imperial, world power. It is also said that in this period, a new, national, and distinctly modern culture emerged. We will test the merits of this claim and attempt to understand how Americans grappled with these broad transformations by examining the history of social formations, including class, race, and gender, together with the history of cultural formations - American popular culture, the adaptations of bourgeois culture, and the creation of mass culture. In reading sources such as short stories, poetry, political speeches, and novels, and analyzing photography, film, advertising, and architecture, we will explore the making of a modern America.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30317 Sport, America & the World (3 Credit Hours)

This course explores the history of American sport in global context. American football was one of a number of sports (including soccer, rugby and various "football" games) that emerged from common roots. Ice hockey began as a Canadian sport but grew popular in parts of the United States by fusing Canadian talent and management with American capital. Basketball was invented in Massachusetts by a foreign-born educator who viewed physical education as a religious calling, and his creation grew internationally, with the international game developing important differences from the American game. Since the time of sporting goods baron Albert Spalding, businessmen and politicians have used sport to try to market specific products, the American way of life, or a diplomatic agenda. Alone among the industrial nations, the United States developed a talent-development system centered on schools and colleges, with distinctive results - both for the athletes, and for higher education. This course will consider these and other issues.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30318 Law and Religion in US History (3 Credit Hours)

This course focuses on the historical tension between Americans' support for religious liberty under law and their belief that religious faith was essential to the success of the Republic. It will examine both official legal discourse, such as judges' rulings and popular understandings of the law as expressed in speeches and letters. Religious faith has taken many forms in the United States and so have the debates over its proper relation to the state Americans argued over how to define religious liberty. They argued over which religion best suited a republic. Some said God had made certain people inferior to citizenship, while others shot back that God had made all people equally capable. One man's piety was another man's oppression. One woman's equality was another woman's blasphemy.. We will look at the colonial background and the founders' concerns, the 19th century and its myriad of reform movements and state building, religion's role in legal thought and education, the Scopes Monkey Trial, pacifism during time of war, the Civil Rights movement and its opposition, and the rise of the New Right. Discussion will be the primary mode of instruction. In addition to a mid-term and final, there will be short writing assignments and an essay.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30321 American Environmental History (3 Credit Hours)

This course is an introduction to the new field of environmental history. While many people think "The Environment" suddenly became important with the first "Earth Day" in 1970 (or a few years earlier), environmental issues have in fact long been of central importance. In recent decades historians have begun actively to explore the past sensibilities of various groups toward their surroundings and fellow creatures. They have also increasingly paid attention to the ways environmental factors have affected history. This course will range widely, from world history to the story of a single river, from arguments about climate change to the significance of pink flamingos, and will survey a number of types of history including cultural, demographic, religious, and animal.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30324 History of the American West (3 Credit Hours)

Few American regions have generated as many cultural narratives, myths, and icons as the American West. Exploring conflicts and conquests alongside Western culture and the creation of the mythic West, we will examine the West through the multiple perspectives of the many peoples who have lived there. Using novels, histories, first-hand accounts, art, and film, we will trace the history and culture of the West. While discussing the evolution of the West's regional identity, we'll explore topics like episodes of violence and conquest, the creation of the US-Mexico border, the rise of national parks and tourism, and the West Coast's counterculture. In this course, we will investigate how violent frontier battles and brutal discrimination became tamed and commodified to sell the West to Americans through fashion, film, and tourism. This course is open to all students; no previous knowledge of the topic is required.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30325 US Foreign Policy in Cold War (3 Credit Hours)

This course covers the main developments in American foreign relations from the Spanish-American War in 1898 through World War II. It traces the emergence of the United States as a major world power and examines in some detail how the United States became involved in the two world wars. A recurring theme will be the major traditions in America foreign policy and the ways in which these traditions influenced policy makers in the early years of the "American Century."

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30327 Interwar U.S.A.: Society and Culture, 1919-1939 (3 Credit Hours)

This course considers U.S. history from the "Jazz Age" through the depression decade. Drawing on secondary literature and primary sources including novels, films, and non-fiction writing, we will focus especially on the social and cultural dimensions of consumerism, the rise of industrial unionism, religious fundamentalism, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, prohibition, immigration restriction, and the Great Depression and New Deal. we will consider the U.S. role in the world through a period often characterized as one of American isolationism; understanding of capitalism between the roaring 20s and the descent into economic depression; and intellectual though and the participation of artists and intellectuals in public life.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30330 Moby-Dick and 19th Century America (3 Credit Hours)

"I but put that brow before you," Herman Melville wrote in his 1851 novel, Moby-Dick, "read it if you can." Melville was describing the brow of the mighty sperm whale, but his words apply equally to his mighty book. In this seminar, we can and will read Moby-Dick, Melville's maddening masterpiece. We will read Moby-Dick as an invitation into its multiple historical contexts in the 19th-century American and wider worlds. We will explore the world of whaling and the age of sail, the ecological and imaginary expanses of the 19th-century ocean, the intellectual and literary culture of the "American Renaissance," and a nation on a collision course with itself over slavery and empire.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKHI - Core History

AMST 30331 U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction, 1848-77 (3 Credit Hours)

Through intensive reading and writing students will explore the social and cultural history of America's most costly war. We will focus on various topics as they relate to the war: antebellum origins, religion, gender, Lincoln's reasons for waging war, dead bodies, freedmen's families, black soldiers, and the uses of war memory. This will not be a guns-and-generals-smell-the-smoke course, though knowledge of military matters can be helpful. We will ask and try to answer who really "won" and "lost" the war.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30332 Crime, Heredity, and Insanity in American History (3 Credit Hours)

The 19th century witnessed a transformation in the understanding of the origins of criminal behavior in the United States. For many, a religious emphasis on humankind as sinful gave way to a belief in its inherent goodness. But if humans were naturally good, how could their evil actions be explained? Drawing on studies done here and abroad, American doctors, preachers, and lawyers debated whether environment, heredity, or free will determined the actions of the criminal. By the early 20th century, lawyers and doctors had largely succeeded in medicalizing criminality. Psychiatrists treated criminals as patients; judges invoked hereditary eugenics in sentencing criminals. Science, not sin, had apparently become the preferred mode of explanation for the origins of crime. But was this a better explanation than what had come before?

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30334 Boxing in America: History and Practice (3 Credit Hours)

In this course, we will study the history of boxing in the United States and learn a great deal about the craft of boxing, what commentators have called "the sweet science." The class will do so in conventional and innovative ways. The course will explore the story of boxing in America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It will start in England and colonial America, move to places like nineteenth-century New York, New Orleans, and the California mining camps where boxing was transformed from a gambling pursuit among the working class into a mass spectator sport, examine the time when boxing became ascendant in America, and end in the late twentieth century when boxing was entangled with urban decay and changing race politics. The story of boxing is the story of America. The class will look at the rise of cities, mass migration, changing understandings of gender, race, and class, urban history, and the fortunes and misfortunes of postwar American culture.

Corequisites: HIST 22606

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30344 US History to 1877 (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines the history of the lands that became the United States from the era of Columbus to the end of Reconstruction in 1877. During this period, a variety of monumental events occurred: Native-European contact; the development of the British colonies; the War of Independence; the rise and fall of slavery; and the Civil War. How and why did these changes happen? What were the turning points and who were the key figures behind them? To answer these questions, this course will examine pre-Reconstruction American history through a variety of lenses including religion, race and ethnicity, war, politics, and intellectual developments. Topics receiving special attention include relations between settlers and natives, Puritanism and the Great Awakening, the American Revolution and formation of the nation, the role of slavery in American life, and the Civil War.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30362 Labor in America since 1945 (3 Credit Hours)

This course explores the relationships among and between workers, employers, government policymakers, unions, and social movements since the end of World War II, as well as the ways in which those relationships have shaped and been shaped by American politics and culture more broadly. The United States emerged from the Second World War as the globe's unequaled economic and political power, and its citizens parlayed that preeminence into a long postwar economic boom that created, however imperfectly, the first truly mass middle-class society in world history. At the heart of that new society was the American labor movement, whose leaders and members ensured that at least some of the heady postwar profits made it into the wallets of workers and their families - and not just the wallets of union members, as working Americans generally experienced great improvement in wages, benefits, and economic opportunity during the quarter-century ending in 1970. During those same years, civil rights activists challenged the historic workplace discrimination that kept African Americans at the bottom of the labor market, confronting the racism of employers, unions, and the government, and inspiring others, primarily Mexican-Americans and women, to broaden the push for equality at the workplace. Since that time, however, Americans have experienced a transformation in the workplace -- an erosion of manufacturing and the massive growth of service and government work; a rapid decline in number of union members and power of organized labor; and unresolved conflicts over affirmative action to redress centuries of racial and gender discrimination. Meanwhile, income inequality and wealth disparities have grown every year over the past three decades. What accounts for the decline of organized labor since 1970, and why have the people of the mythic land of milk and honey experienced declining upward mobility and widening gaps between the rich and everyone else? Are these phenomena linked? What has the decline of the labor movement meant for workers specifically, and the American economy and politics more broadly? How and why have popular perceptions of unions changed over time? What has been the relationship of organized labor to the civil rights movement, feminism, modern conservatism, and the fortunes of individual freedom more broadly? What is globalization, and what has been its impact upon American workers? Through an exploration of historical scholarship, memoirs, polemical writings, and films, this course will try to answer these questions and many others. It will also address the prospects for working people and labor unions in the twenty-first century. This course satisfies the university history requirement and is open to all students; no previous knowledge of the topic is required.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30364 American Empires (3 Credit Hours)

This course is an introduction to colonial American history, from the first contact between Native Americans and European settlers, through the rise of what Thomas Jefferson called the American "Empire of Liberty." Approached through the lens of empires, the class provides a foundation for thinking about the emergence of the United States as a multi-ethnic nation and its ongoing global connections. Students will explore the missionary work of Jesuits and fur trappers in New France, the emergence of plantation-based slavery in the Caribbean and American South, Spanish imperial ambitions in the Southwest, Native American empires in the Great Plains, and the Westward expansion of the United States as a young nation. Less emphasis will be placed on memorizing facts and figures, and more attention will be given to identifying change over time related to social, political, religious, economic, and cultural themes. Students will ask and develop answers to questions like: What was new about the "New World" for both Europeans and Native Americans? How did Native Americans shape the course of European colonization? How did imperial rivalries and conflicts contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolution? When Jefferson referred to the United States as an "empire of liberty," what did he mean? Was the new nation an empire? Through the consultation of primary source material and in-class discussion, you will practice thinking historically. Students will be evaluated on class participation, a group timeline and podcast, in addition to a short midterm paper and final exam.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30373 The American Revolution (3 Credit Hours)

When speaking of the American Revolution, many writers reach for a comment made by John Adams in 1818 that, "[T]he Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. . ." Whether this assertion is true historically or not, it still does not adequately describe what that revolution was. The American Revolution obviously had its political elements, primarily the formation of the United States. To reach its political goals, military means were necessary. Without a successful War for Independence, there would have been no revolution. To leave matters there, however, would be insufficient. A fuller understanding of the revolution would need to address how it affected the whole spectrum of American life. It would consider the revolution as a social movement that challenged the political and social hierarchies of the day. It would also ask how the revolution affected those who were not white males, especially women, slaves, and Native Americans. Without considering the possible negative implications of the revolution, any telling would be incomplete. This class will take up these challenges and attempt to make a full-orbed presentation of the events surrounding the American Revolution. It will introduce students both to elites and to those whom the popular narrative glosses over. It will attempt to count the losses, as well as the gains, which flowed from the move to independence from Britain. Finally, it will attempt to describe the many changes through this period, which resulted, not only in a new political nation, but in a new society and culture--changes that in varying degrees are still with us today and of which contemporary Americans are the inheritors.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

Enrollment limited to students in the American Studies department.

AMST 30375 The American Constitution (3 Credit Hours)

"The Constitution holds a unique place in American law and political culture. Not only is it the basis of the federal government, it provides the framework for political debates about all manner of controversial issues in modern America. Today, there is much talk of a "constitutional crisis" in the United States. What does this mean? How can a history help us make sense of the Constitution and of our politics? This course explores the historical context in which the American Constitution was framed, ratified, and amended over time. Together, we will ask and answer the questions of how and why it was written the way it was; how and why it gained legitimacy; and how it was put into practice and interpreted over time. The class will introduce students to central historical problems, which include: Is the American Constitution democratic? Did the Constitution codify slavery into law? Is originalism a useful and valid way to interpret the Constitution? Course readings will consist primarily of primary source material, though students will also read historical interpretations of the Constitution and the process of forming, amending, and interpreting it. The discussion-based class will empower students to think historically about the American Constitution by interpreting primary source material, building arguments about causes and effects of particular constitutional points, and intervening in scholarly dialogues about the founding and its legacy. Students will be evaluated primarily based on class participation, a short primary source analysis, a role-play activity, and a final paper. "

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30388 Gender at Work in US History (3 Credit Hours)

Gender has been fundamental to the organization of nearly all human societies, but what gender has meant in terms of identity, opportunity, and economic activity has varied widely across time and space. This course will explore gender at work in US history, taking a chronological approach to show gender's evolution and ongoing intersections with class, race, age, religion, region, and sexuality from 1776 to the near present. The term "gender at work" expresses a double meaning here -- first, it connotes that this is a labor history course, with an emphasis on the ways gender has operated at the workplace; second, it suggests the ubiquity of gender in shaping Americans' lives, experiences, and imaginations not only at the workplace, but also in formal politics, informal communities, and every space in between. By exploring the ways gender has been both omnipresent and contingent throughout US history, students should better understand -- and perhaps act upon -- seemingly intractable contemporary conundrums involving questions of equal opportunity and pay, household division of labor, work-life balance, and the proper relationships among employers, workers, households, and government.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30393 Consuming America (3 Credit Hours)

This course traces the development of consumer society in the United States from the colonial era through the late twentieth century. It asks how Americans came to define the "good life" as one marked by material abundance and how transformations in buying and selling have shaped American culture, politics, and national identity. One of our aims will be to develop a usable historical definition of consumer society and to evaluate when such a society emerged in the United States. We will examine the role that consumption has played in defining and policing ideals of gender, race, sexuality, and class. We will also consider how Americans have used consumer practices and spaces to advance political claims and notions of citizenship. The course is organized around key turning points in American consumer capitalism: the consumer boom of the eighteenth century; the market revolution and feminization of consumption; the birth of the department store; the rise of mass consumption and commercial leisure; the development of modern advertising and sales; the spread of chain stores and shopping malls; and the globalization of American consumer culture. In addition to recent scholarship and text-based primary sources, we will analyze artifacts of consumer culture, such as advertisements, catalogs, product labels, broadsides, film, and television.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30402 Black Politics in Multiracial America (3 Credit Hours)

This course undertakes a broad examination of black politics in multiracial America. Racial issues have provoked crises in American politics; changes in racial status have prompted American political institutions to operate in distinctive ways. The course examines the interface of black politics with and within the American political system. How successful have blacks been as they attempted to penetrate the electoral system in the post civil rights era. What conflicts and controversies have arisen as African Americans have sought to integrate the American system of power. Now that the laws have been changed to permit limited integration, should African Americans integrate politically, that is should they attempt to 'deracialize' their political appeals and strategy, with an effort to "crossover politically;" are some approaches such as those of President Barack Obama "not black enough?" What internal political challenges do African Americans face; some such as the increasing importance of class and socioeconomic factors, as well as gender and sexuality may reshape the definition of the black community. What intellectual challenges and strategic choices are they facing as the American population has grown increasingly multiracial. Finally, in light of these demographic changes in American life and American politics, how stable will past patterns of political participation, and political organizations and institutions of African American politics remain.

AMST 30403 Global Hispaniola: Empire to Exodus (3 Credit Hours)

Images of Hispañiola conjure up extreme contrasts. Romantic, sun-drenched beaches, heroic exploration and discovery, quaint relics, tourists, and happy-go-lucky natives merge in pleasing portraits of one side of the island. Rebellion and revolution, chaos and neglect coalesce menacingly at the other end. This course interrogates the taken-for-granted narrative of the antimony between the Dominican Republic versus Haiti and opens possibilities of recognizing the shared histories, politics, economies, and traditions of the two societies. In the first part of the semester, we examine how Spain’s neglected, undeveloped colony became a rising economic power, while the wealthiest “Pearl of the Antilles,” once freed of slavery and French colonial rule, confronted relentless depletion of its human and material resources. In the second part of the semester, we study the causes of the massive exodus from both countries over the past century. We focus on unanticipated consequences of diaspora, including the inspiration for those “outside” to transcend the borders dividing the “inside” of the island. We learn about innovative formations of transnational communities that span multiple sites linked by constant circulation of digital messages, videos and money, and the comings and goings of people, politicians, and spirits. We appreciate examples of the dynamic, expressive cultures of diasporan Haitians and Dominicans in prose, poetry, film, music, visual arts, and, last but never least, cuisine.

AMST 30404 Central American Narratives in the United States (3 Credit Hours)

Despite the growing presence of Central Americans in the United States in the last four decades, Central America and its people have occupied a paradoxical presence in the popular U.S. imaginary. As noted by literary scholar Yajaira Padilla, they are hypervisible as “threatening guerillas,” undocumented migrants, domestic workers, and “gang-bangers,” yet their lived experiences remain illegible in the dominant culture. This course traces the literary and cultural narratives of Central American experience within and in relation to the United States. We read fiction, poetry, film, literary nonfiction, theater, performance art, and music alongside literary and cultural studies scholarship. We begin by anchoring ourselves in key scholarship of U.S. Central American literary and cultural studies and the travel narratives of those who “witnessed” Central America in the mid 19th century. We fast-forward to writers from the U.S. and Central America who witnessed and experienced the effects of U.S. imperialism in the region, from the making of the Panama Canal to Cold War-era military interventions. We then focus on the creative narratives of Central American diasporas from the 1990s to the present. We cover works by and about Central Americans from El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Panama, as well as Garífuna and Maya territories.

AMST 30405 The Cutting Edge in Latino Studies Research: Perspectives from Notre Dame (3 Credit Hours)

Notre Dame has been an incubator for state-of-the-art research in the interdisciplinary field of Latino Studies for several decades. This seminar delves deeply into newer research produced by scholars affiliated with the Institute for Latino Studies, the unit on campus that has fostered much of this work. Each week we will read recent research from an ILS-affiliated scholar and, most weeks, meet with the scholars themselves to discuss their research trajectories and current areas of research. Students will read and respond to research in a wide array of fields, prepare questions for visiting scholars, interview them in class, and respond to selected works in writing.

AMST 30406 Race/Ethnicity and American Politics (3 Credit Hours)

This course introduces students to the dynamics of the social and historical construction of race and ethnicity in American political life. The course explores the following core questions: What are race and ethnicity? What are the best ways to think about the impact of race and ethnicity on American citizens? What is the history of racial and ethnic formation in American political life? How do race and ethnicity link up with other identities animating political actions like gender and class? What role do American political institutions the Congress, presidency, judiciary, state and local governments, etc. play in constructing and maintaining these identity categories? Can these institutions ever be used to overcome the points of division in American society?

AMST 30407 The American Presidency (3 Credit Hours)

This course provides a political science perspective on the American presidency, covering the design elements of the office, fundamental features of presidential elections, the power of the presidency, and more.

AMST 30416 Ballads to Hip-Hop: Race, Music, and American Latinos (3 Credit Hours)

This course is designed to introduce students to important historical and stylistic musical developments as part of the cultural experience of ethnic Mexicans in the United States. To this end, we examine both music-making and performance as aesthetic dialects of the social texture of "everyday life". We will cover various styles and genres, including corridos (the Mexican ballad form), Chicano rock 'n- roll and hip-hop, jazz, and contemporary folk-derived styles (i.e. Banda, Pasito Duranguense, Norteño) with attention to their historical, political, and musical significance. In order we achieve our aims, the course is organized along two axes: one chronological, the other conceptual - neither complete. The chronological portion will allow us to survey the various genres, styles, and ensembles of ethnic Mexican musical production. We dovetail this effort with a focus on important themes and concepts, identity, race, gender, migration, hybridity, that pertain to the present and historical social conditions of this community. Our approach, such that we are dealing with music-cultures, is at once anthropological and ethnomusicological, yet we are guided more broadly, by the paradigm of cultural studies, as we interrogate the expressive terrain where history, language, performance, and social bodies intersect.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30419 Constitutional Law (3 Credit Hours)

This course introduces the basic themes of the American constitution, its historical development, and debates in constitutional politics. The course employs a variety of instructional methods including Socratic method lectures, class debates, and moot court exercises in which students play the role of lawyers and justices arguing a Supreme Court case. Students will explore the social and political struggles that have defined the allocation of constitutional power, including debates over presidential war-powers, states' rights, judicial supremacy, federal power to enforce civil rights, and the recent healthcare controversy.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSS - Core Social Science

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30428 U.S. Foreign Policy (3 Credit Hours)

The United States is the most powerful state in the world today. Its actions are important not just for US citizens, but they also affect whether others go to war, whether they will win their wars, whether they receive economic aid, whether they will go broke, or whether they will starve. What determines US foreign policy? What is the national interest? When do we go to war? Would you send US soldiers into war? If so, into which wars and for what reasons? How do our economic policies affect others? Does trade help or hurt the US economy and its citizens? We first study several theories about foreign policy. We then examine the US foreign policy process, including the President, Congress, the bureaucracy, the media, and public opinion. To see how this all works, we turn to the history of US foreign policy, from Washington's farewell address through the World Wars and the Cold War to the Gulf War. We then study several major issue areas, including weapons of mass destruction, trade and economics, and the environment. Finally, we develop and debate forecasts and strategies for the future.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSS - Core Social Science

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30431 Race and Ethnicity in American Politics (3 Credit Hours)

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30434 Public Opinion and Political Behavior (3 Credit Hours)

A principle tenet underlying democratic governance is the belief that public opinion or the "will of the people" should dictate governmental behavior. To the extent this belief is a realistic consideration, difficult questions remain concerning the capacity for citizens to develop reasoned opinions and how to conceptualize and measure opinion. This course explores the foundations of political and social attitudes and the methodology used to observe what people think about politics.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30435 Landscapes of Urban Education (3 Credit Hours)

This seminar course explores the intersection of the physical realities of urban environments, race, and education and will be a question based seminar. As a group we will work to answer a cluster of questions surrounding the course topic in a systematic, interdisciplinary format. Questions may include: How does the physical landscape/structure of schools matter to urban education? How does the high concentration of poverty and racial segregation impact curriculum, school culture, and neighborhood? How do early childhood programming, college preparatory programs, and after school programs factor into the landscape of urban education? What are "best practices" involved with teaching in urban environments? The final question we will work on as a group will be: What are the implications of what we know about race and urban landscapes in propelling positive micro and macro level change for our educational system? This course demands a high level of class participation and student initiative.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

Enrollment limited to students in the American Studies department.

AMST 30453 History of American Education: Race, Class, Gender and Politics (3 Credit Hours)

American Education mirrors American society with myriad challenges, successes, and ideologies. This course will look at how political struggles over race, language, gender, and class have all played out in the battle over American schools, schools that ultimately hold the literal future of America. This course will explore the History of Education in American from the late 1865 to the present and will have special emphasis on segregated schools in the 19th century and today. The course will also look closely at the very best programs re-shaping American education such as The Alliance for Catholic Education and KIPP. The course will look at education from Kindergarten all the way through graduate programs as we study how our institutions have formed and how they form and transform our society.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30454 Creating Citizens: History Education in America (3 Credit Hours)

This course is not for the faint of heart, but will explore the feint, adept, and deft use of Civics and History courses to try and create one ideal American narrative in K-12 classrooms. History in American K-12 classrooms and beyond is always political! Historical thinking is also supposed to be an active way of learning and establishing new ideas when there are new pieces of information or additional epistemologies not a passive regurgitation of facts. Join this class to struggle with how a more representative curriculum might help foster better-rounded citizens and broader critical thinking skills. Historical narratives created and true are installed in American curricula to create ‘good citizens,’ but who determines what ‘good’ is and who and what ‘citizens’ are is an ever-changing pantheon of characters seeking god-like power over the nation’s past, with aspirations of helping shape and control the nation’s future. This course examines how historical events are molded and taught in curricula in different eras and shows the evolution of textbooks and curriculum firsthand. Students explore how early textbooks think of Native peoples as "Noble Savages" and how that ‘nobility’ disappears in later texts. We’ll have the opportunity to study the re-shaping of ethnic identities in the United States History curriculum and how the Cold War not only re-configures the size and orientation of the maps in our history books but also how the stories of other nations and their forms of government become commonplace slurs as a way to whip up righteousness for US policies in the Cold War and to quash rising ideologies connected to labor movements and those other nations simultaneously. We’ll examine the rise and righteousness of both sides of the current debate over Critical Race Theory in the K-12 classroom and so much more. You will have the opportunity to explore additional historical narratives of Native peoples and many different groups who immigrants by choice, force, and forced annexations and their representations in curricula. This course recognizes the privileges that race, class, and gender has played in creating the historical narrative for K-12 classrooms through the study of the groups who make decisions about what civics and historical lessons are taught to students in American schools in different eras. This course will have writing and research elements go through multiple drafts and the final version of student works is not just academic in nature but is to demonstrate that you can utilize your knowledge and understanding for the good, to in essence show ‘what you are fighting for’ in the parlance of all at Notre Dame working to bring academic thinking to the forefront for the common good. This course will require critical thinking, creative solutions and ideas on curricular philosophy, great classroom participation, a willingness to do original historical research, and a tremendous desire to share.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30459 Urban Politics (3 Credit Hours)

This course introduces students to major actors, institutions, processes, and policies of sub-state governments in the United States. Through an intensive comparative examination of historical and contemporary politics in city governments, we will gain an understanding of municipal government and its role within the larger contexts of state and national government.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30460 Introduction to Latino Studies (3 Credit Hours)

This course will examine the Latino experience in the United States, including the historical, cultural, and political foundations of Latino life. We will approach these topics comparatively, thus attention will be given to the various experiences of a multiplicity of Latino groups in the United States. This course has an optional community-engaged learning component with La Casa de Amistad.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History, WKSS - Core Social Science

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30463 Latinos in the Future of America: Building Transformative Leadership (3 Credit Hours)

This course will examine the opportunities and challenges facing Latino communities today as they simultaneously transform and are transformed by their continuing growth in U.S. society. Through a careful examination of the biographies of leaders in Latino communities, we will examine what role they have each played in empowering Latino communities to advance in business, arts, education, community organizing, entertainment, medicine, religion, law, academia, politics, and other areas. The course will coincide with the Transformative Latino Leadership Speaker Series sponsored by the Arthur Foundation through the Institute for Latino Studies. Students in the class will have the opportunity to interact with invited leaders in several setting including the classroom, meals, receptions, and university-wide events. The primary course requirement is a research essay about the life and career of a chosen leader.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30467 History of American Indian Education: Sociology, Race, Class, Gender, and Schooling (3 Credit Hours)

Work on a real-world project that can impact Native American education in the present while learning the history that shaped the modern era. Native American Education is deeply intertwined with American history, education, and policy. The current American government is seriously investigating the past uses of education as a tool for assimilation (and worse) in Native American communities. In 2022 the Pope went to Canada and apologized for the role the Church played in the residential boarding schools, and the Subcommittee on Native American issues for the USCCB is investigating the same here in the United States. This course blends primary source historical work with active and engaging projects with Native communities to engage students in both history and historical thought to do consulting and problem-solving that will help shape real policy in the present day! This class promises to be like no other course you’ve had and get you working with others in truly collaborative manners very quickly in the semester. Not in ESS? Write me and see what accommodations we can make!

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30468 American Politics (3 Credit Hours)

This course surveys the basic institutions and practices of American politics. The goal of the course is to gain a more systematic understanding of American politics that will help you become better informed and more articulate. The course examines the institutional and constitutional framework of American politics and identifies the key ideas needed to understand politics today. The reading and writing assignments have been designed not only to inform you, but also to help develop your analytic and research skills. The themes of the course include the logic and consequences of the separation of powers, the build-in biases of institutions and procedures, the origins and consequence of political reforms, and recent changes in American politics in the 21st century. This semester we will emphasize the significance of the upcoming 2016 elections, and the course will include election-related assignments. Although the course counts toward the Political Science major and will prepare prospective majors for further study of American politics, its primary aim is to introduce students of all backgrounds and interests to the information, ideas, and academic skills that will enable them to understand American politics better and help them become more thoughtful and responsible citizens.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSS - Core Social Science

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30480 US National Security Policymaking (3 Credit Hours)

This course serves as a gateway for subsequent coursework in international security. It is a required course in the Notre Dame International Security Center's undergraduate certificate program requirements, but it is also appropriate for, and open to, any Notre Dame students interested in U.S. national security policymaking. It will begin with an account of the history and development of U.S. national security policy from the Founding through the present. Next, it examines the current state of the primary institutions involved in U.S. national security policymaking. Finally, it explores the tools and instruments of military statecraft as applied by the United States. The course culminates with a simulation exercise in which students will role-play key participants in the U.S. national security policymaking process. At a minimum, that students will gain from it the analytical tools, historical knowledge, and current-events background to become more informed citizens, particularly with respect to important national debates about when and how our country should use military force. At a maximum, the course may lead some students to become interested enough in the topic to pursue a career in either the practice or the study of U.S. national security policy. The current draft version of the syllabus is posted at https://www3.nd.edu/~dlindley/handouts/ND_NDISC_cert_gateway_syl.pdf.

AMST 30500 Race and Ethnicity in the United States: Social Constructs with Real World Consequences (3 Credit Hours)

Race is often thought of as a biological characteristic of individuals. Yet research consistently demonstrates that race, rather than a biological reality, is a social reality. This course will introduce you to how to think sociologically about race and racism. We will explore the origins of race, and the theoretical and empirical analysis of race, ethnicity, and immigration. We will also examine patterns of racial/ethnic inequality in a variety of domains including education, income and wealth, criminal justice, media, and health. Throughout the course we will view race through an intersectional lens, emphasizing the interplay between social categories such as race, ethnicity, gender, and social class. We will also discuss immigration patterns and how they affect race and ethnic relations. While we will talk about historical and global processes and patterns, most of the class will focus on racial and ethnic stratification in contemporary U.S. society (post-1960s).

AMST 30501 Social Consequences of Mass Incarceration (3 Credit Hours)

Given the dramatic rise in mass incarceration over the last 50 years, understanding the spillover consequences of this uniquely American phenomenon has become increasingly important as a growing number of families now have direct experience with imprisonment. This course will provide a broad overview of the ripple effects of mass imprisonment on family life and how it shapes opportunity and structures disadvantage for communities, families, and especially children. This will be done through 1) exposure to mixed-media portrayals of imprisonment’s effects on family and community life and 2) the close analysis of empirical research on the spillover and intergenerational consequences of incarceration across a range of outcomes. With the concentration of imprisonment falling among poor, minority families, much of the readings in this course will focus on family life in urban communities of color, however, we will spend a little time exploring broader accounts, including those of rural communities and encourage students to consider impacts for families exposed to incarceration due to white-collar crimes.

AMST 30502 Hip Hop Public Health (3 Credit Hours)

This course delves into the intersections of art, culture, and public health, particularly Hip Hop as a form of public health knowledge acquisition. Through an examination of various texts, archives, and research methods such as ethnography, autobiography, and social and oral history, students will explore how different forms of creative and cultural expression force us to reimagine what health justice looks like, feels like, and sounds like. Students will also reflect on Hip Hop and its presence in everyday life, from questions about narrative medicine to its use in public health campaigns.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKIN - Core Integration

AMST 30503 Where is Sociology in U.S. School Reforms? (3 Credit Hours)

This course aims to challenge our assumptions about which education as an institution in the United States is predicated and ask some fundamental questions about the relationship between education and society. Why does everyone go to school? Why do some students seem to learn more and “get ahead” than others? What factors shape how schools are run and organized, and what curricular materials are taught? How do schools help to maintain our capitalist system, and how do the factors of race, class, and gender affect the educational experiences of students within schools and classrooms? How can schools become more effective? What interventions have worked to improve schools? These are among the questions we will consider this semester. A primary focus of this course will be on the effects of schools and classrooms on educational outcomes. We will cover topics in the sociology of education related to school effects, sector effects, tracking and ability grouping, and classroom and teacher effects. We will look at the structure, practices, content, and outcomes of schooling, primarily in the light of their relationships to the wider society in which schools are situated. As part of the course, we will also consider the social and organizational context of contemporary education reforms in the United States—particularly test-based accountability for schools, teachers, and students—and place these reforms in a more global perspective.

AMST 30504 Race and Activism (3 Credit Hours)

Throughout much of American history, individuals have organized and acted collectively to advance interests based on a common racial or ethnic identity. In some instances, groups have organized in an attempt to overcome discrimination and to stake a claim to rights and privileges enjoyed by majority group members. In other cases, members of the majority group have organized to restrict opportunities for the minority and to protect an advantaged position. We will consider the causes and consequences of both progressive and conservative social movements--such as the civil rights movement, the Ku Klux Klan, and the contemporary alt-right—giving particular attention to how theories of social movements help us to understand episodes of race-based collective action.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSS - Core Social Science

AMST 30505 Decarbonizing Catholicism and the Common Good (3 Credit Hours)

How has the use of fossil fuels for heat, energy, and raw material shaped contemporary Christian ethics and social teachings? Has the Catholic pursuit of virtue and the common good driven climate change? Is there a need to “decarbonize” Christian concepts, cultures, and communities? While the concept of decarbonization is most commonly applied to technology, policy, and the economy, what would a “decarbonized” vision of human flourishing and the common good look like? In this course, we will generate responses to these questions by examining the extent to which fossil fuels have shaped Catholic concepts of moral virtue, human dignity, and the common good in the modern world, as well as how Catholic moral and social teachings can inform a just transformation of energy systems. In recent years, scholars from multiple disciplines have argued that there is a two-way influence between the material properties of things, like coal and oil, and human values and cultural ways of life. These dynamics are the object of our study in this course. In addition to engaging with developments in history, we will also explore emerging models of non-carbon intensive human flourishing and the common good as well as the virtues and practices needed to sustain them. Throughout the course, each student will conduct a case study of one moral virtue or Catholic social principle both to examine how it has been “carbonized” and to develop an argument about whether or how it should be “decarbonized.” This course in energy and environmental studies engages with perspectives drawn from history, environmental/climate studies, ethics, theological studies, philosophy, and cultural anthropology. There are no required prerequisites.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30516 Unequal America (3 Credit Hours)

Although America is the world's richest nation, it has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income in the industrialized world. In this course, we will examine why this is so. In particular, we will examine the following questions: What social forces create inequality in society? Is inequality inevitable? Is there such a thing as "social class"? Who gets ahead and why? Why is race/ethnicity and gender still related to social status, wealth, and income? Does America have a "ruling elite?" Who are "the poor" and what explains their poverty? Are there social policies that can create more equality in American society -- and is that what Americans really want?

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30518 Inner City America: Decoding (3 Credit Hours)

Most Americans think of the "inner city" as a place of misery, danger, and despair. Why do most American cities have racially segregated areas dominated by concentrated poverty? What are the lives of inner city residents like? Why do the legal, political, economic, and educational institutions that serve these communities struggle so mightily to improve the lives of inner city residents? In this course, we will address all of these questions by viewing all five seasons of The Wire, David Simon's epic tale of life in inner city Baltimore. Sociological theory and research will serve as powerful tools to help students "decode" The Wire, and better understand of the social forces that create and sustain inner city poverty, violence, and disorder. (Sophomores, Juniors & Seniors Only)

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30519 Social Inequality & American Education (3 Credit Hours)

Many have claimed that the American educational system is the "great equalizer among men." In other words, the educational system gives everyone a chance to prosper in American society regardless of their social origins. In this course, we will explore the validity of this claim. Do schools help make American society more equal by reducing the importance of class, race, and gender as sources of inequality, or do schools simply reinforce existing inequalities and reproduce pre-existing social relations? Topics covered in the course include: unequal resources among schools, sorting practices of students within schools, parents' role in determining student outcomes, the role of schooling in determining labor market outcomes for individuals, and the use of educational programs as a remedy for poverty.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSS - Core Social Science

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30603 Global Indigenous Politics: Indigeneity, Property, and Cultural Appropriation (3 Credit Hours)

AMST 30604 American Adventurism in the Muslim World (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines US engagement in hotspots across the Muslim world before and after 9/11. In particular focus are nations in South Asia and the Middle East: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq. We will also look at US relations with important Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as policies toward Israel-Palestine and the Bosnian War in Europe. US engagement abroad takes many forms, including public diplomacy, trade, sanctions, alliances, covert operations, financial and military aid, and direct military intervention. What are the drivers of American decision-making in the region? Why is there so much anti-American sentiment in Muslim societies? Does peace depend on a critical reassessment of US foreign policy or the reform of a radical Islamist theology? Do certain interpretations of religion make conflict inevitable, or is it possible to attain reasonable outcomes even when dealing with extremists? Through a blend of history, investigative journalism, case studies, opinion polls, literature, and film, this course broadens our perspectives on some of America's longest wars in the Muslim world.

AMST 30605 "Charlie Don't Surf" and Other Stories from Southeast Asia (3 Credit Hours)

In Apocalypse Now (1979), a single phrase marks an iconic enemy and creates a chain of associations that separate Western Selves from Eastern Others. The story behind the phrase, "Charlie don't surf," is one of many complex narratives characterizing the Southeast Asian region that call for further critical understanding. This course is an anthropological journey through Southeast Asia, a region rich in cultural diversity, linguistic complexity and archaeological significance. Including the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar (Burma), students can explore the ecological, historical, and socio-cultural patterns of this ethnographic region through analyses of its societies and institutions. With a holistic approach to the cultural influences that characterize Southeast Asia, we will chart the region's indigenous, social, political, economic, artistic and religious formations over time. The course offers a broad overview of the historical factors affecting the region, including the impact of Indian, Islamic, Chinese, and European exchange, colonization, and violence. These transregional influences provide a window from which to view contemporary issues in the cultural politics and economics of Southeast Asia. The course provides an overview of the major cultural features of the region to enable students to gain a better understanding of the current developments within the region and the lives of Southeast Asians. Overall, we will contribute to the development of anthropological ideas about Asia while also providing a means to organize and analyze Asian ethnographic perspectives.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSS - Core Social Science

AMST 30606 Drop It Like It's Hot: Pop Art through Screen Printing (3 Credit Hours)

This course is an introduction to screen printing and will focus on the emergence and development of the Pop Art Movement. The Pop Art movement brought forward a critique of popular culture, consumerism, mass-production, and the deconstruction of images in everyday life. The class will explore predominant silkscreen artists and their contribution to the Pop Art movement. Students will create projects using photographic stencil-making techniques with an encouragement experiment, explore color, and develop individual ideas.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

AMST 30607 Martial Arts & Popular Culture (3 Credit Hours)

This course enlists the martial arts to explore themes from history, philosophy, anthropology, aesthetic theory, media studies, and sports as embodied practice. By merging multiple dimensions of historical identity, artistic expression, and cultural practice, martial arts have a unique ability to access the human imagination. From Hong Kong cinemas, to MMA pay-per-view events, to online video games, martial arts are intertwined with global popular culture. This course synthesizes the global transmission of martial arts through an interdisciplinary approach to the anthropological history of symbolically violent media. By tracking the proliferation of the martial arts in popular media, from Yip Man film sequels, to muay thai youtube clips, to karate supply catalogues and dojo iconography, the cultural lives of these arts are revealed. We will examine these cultural expressions in a range of styles including gōngfu styles in China, jujitsu in Japan, kali/escrima in the Philippines, pencak silat in Indonesia, and savate in France. In this way, the course crafts informative linkages between the cultural variations of martial arts and their global influence in popular consciousness.

AMST 30614 The Indigenous Southwest (3 Credit Hours)

This course seeks to explore connections between environment and culture change by introducing students to the diversity of cultures living in the Southwest. We begin by learning about indigenous people living in the Southwest today including the Pueblo peoples (e.g., Hopi, Zuni, Santa Clara, Cochiti, Acoma), Navajo, Ute, and Tohono O’odham using ethnography and contemporary native histories. We will then travel back in time to learn about the complex histories of these people, particularly the ancestral Pueblo, to places like Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, the Rio Grande, the Mimbres Valley, and the Phoenix Basin. Our explorations will cover from the earliest Paleoindians (11,500 years ago) to the 13th century Migrations to European contact, the establishment of Spanish Missions, and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680-1692. We will then bring this discussion full circle to today. Along the way, we will explore the impact of large-scale, long-term processes such as the adoption of agriculture, village formation, religious change, migration, and warfare on the rich historical landscape of the Southwest.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Students cannot enroll who have a major in American Studies.

AMST 30623 The Culture of College (3 Credit Hours)

What is college? How do students experience it? How is it structured? How does it contribute to the development of adulthood or, possibly, to the extension of childhood? How do different types of colleges differ, and how does higher education vary around the world? We’ll investigate the goals of college, student life, learning, athletics, entertainment, social and racial inequality, gender and sexuality, mental health and wellbeing, drawing on published research, our own experiences, and our own research findings.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30635 Black Ethnographers (3 Credit Hours)

What is ethnography, broadly defined? How is a scholar's ethnographic product shaped by their racialized experience? This course will reference texts over time and across academic disciplines to consider genre, style, audience, and purpose when engaging with this research method. We will read, listen to, and watch works to think through the various ways that Black intellectuals have used ethnography to make sense of our everyday social worlds.

AMST 30636 Exploring Anthropology Through Science Fiction (3 Credit Hours)

Anthropology is a social science with a holistic perspective on the human condition. It attempts to understand any aspect of humanity in the broadest sense anywhere and anytime. Anthropological perspectives can be used to speculate on what it meant to be human in the distant past, or what it may mean in the far distant future. While we cannot travel into the past, future, or an alternative universe to visit other societies or contact alien civilizations, we can imagine what those trips would be like. In our own culture, science fiction has moved from a fringe literature to an essential part of modern art and entertainment because it allows us to imagine alternate realities, and to speculate about the past, present and future as way to learn about ourselves and others. This class will introduce you to the basic principles of anthropology as a social science using science fiction text and video to illustrate various anthropological principles. You will learn how to critically evaluate anthropology's diverse applications and how they are reflected in popular culture (sometimes accurately and sometimes not). You will also sharpen your writing skills by using anthropological principles to critique science fiction.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSS - Core Social Science

AMST 30637 Making Science Matter: Anthropological Approaches to Meaningful Research Design (3 Credit Hours)

This graduate level seminar will explore the philosophical, theoretical, and ethical underpinnings for inclusive and collaborative practices in anthropology, particularly research that combines approaches from more than one anthropological subfield. Taking a global approach, students will examine a wide range of case studies in community-based and collaborative anthropology, aiming to identify best practices and develop skills which students can then apply to their own projects. Attention will be paid to the importance of context, including geography, colonial histories and decolonization, war and conflict, economy, and environment, that shape engaged approaches to working for and serving communities instead of working on or studying communities with an extractive approach.

AMST 30701 Media & Presidential Elections (3 Credit Hours)

As the brouhaha over Howard Dean's "yell" illustrates, media have come to play a key role in the coverage of presidential elections. This course examines how print and broadcast media have functioned in U.S. elections since the way we choose a president was first established. After a brief overview of changing relationships between journalists and presidential candidates in the 19th century, we will focus on elections since the 1920s, when radio first broadcast election updates. We will analyze how candidates have used radio, television, and the Internet to construct images of themselves and their platforms, and how journalists have become an active force in representing the political process. Rather than see electronic media as neutral or objective, we will assess the narrative strategies and visual and verbal codes by which media present politics to us, the voters.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30702 South Bend Stories (3 Credit Hours)

In “South Bend Stories” students will produce reported narratives across a variety of nonfiction genres, including prose writing and documentary filmmaking. This course draws its inspiration and subject matter from the city of South Bend and the greater Michiana region, as you will work with classmates and community partners to tell stories of local interest and significance. Topics may include close-up looks at a wide range of ideas—family, sport, education, history, etc.—but the ultimate goal is to describe real-world truth at the “felt-life level,” revealing something of what it means to be alive in this particular time and place. We wish to highlight the daily lives, cultural events, natural and built spaces, and social issues of South Bend. Projects are collaborative, with students working in teams. With guidance, you will look for stories, request access and permission to tell those stories, and gather material en route to crafting meaningful narratives. Each group will produce several different stories, though subjects and forms will often converse with one another. For instance, storytelling teams may create short moving-image documentaries, works of prose journalism, photo essays, audio narratives, creative nonfiction essays, or more avant-garde documentary projects, etc. The class will interrogate the boundaries between subgenres of these factual artforms. Students will decide which types of stories they will produce. Telling others’ stories is a profoundly ethical act. It is also a creative process that allows us to grow as individuals and as a community. This challenging process demands your respect and your time as a media-maker. The class will regularly engage in discussions about media ethics and accountability, in the traditions of journalism and documentary filmmaking courses. Students must be prepared to use resources to travel beyond campus and engage with people who are not students and may not be affiliated with the university. Additionally, you must act ethically as a storyteller and collaborator. Further, you must solve a range of challenges—conceptual, logistical, and narratological—while being prepared to spend time with your subjects outside of class time and often according to others’ schedules.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30703 History of Television (3 Credit Hours)

Television has been widely available in the United States for only half a century, yet already it has become a key means through which we understand our culture. Our course examines this vital medium from three perspectives. First, we will look at the industrial, economic and technological forces that have shaped U.S. television since its inception. These factors help explain how U.S. television adopted the format of advertiser-supported broadcast networks and why this format is changing today. Second, we will explore television's role in American social and political life: how TV has represented cultural changes in the areas of gender, class, race and ethnicity. Third, we will discuss specific narrative and visual strategies that characterize program formats. Throughout the semester we will demonstrate how television and U.S. culture mutually influence one another, as television both constructs our view of the world and is affected by social and cultural forces within the U.S.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30704 Art, Gender, and Indigeneity in the Americas (3 Credit Hours)

In this course, we will engage with the academic fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies, Performance Studies, and Gender Studies. Inspired by groundbreaking work of Indigenous scholars, artists, and activists, we will explore how the body has constituted (and continues to constitute) a site for Indigenous peoples to explore gender identities and gendered community roles. Throughout the course, we will engage with cultural productions by Indigenous peoples in various media, including literature, music, theatre, public performance, and film to learn about the fight of Indigenous peoples to reclaim sovereignty over their own bodies. Using this survey of Indigenous ideas about gender as a frame of reference, students will critically explore their own ideas and beliefs. The course’s geographic focus is the Americas, from the Canadian Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of the South American mainland.

AMST 30705 Sport and the Cold War (3 Credit Hours)

This course aims to accomplish the following: 1) to develop students' understanding of the Cold War and its major political developments; 2) to develop students' understanding of the ways sports and society influence and reflect political developments; 3) to see sports programs as a reflection of the nation-states in which they develop, and to use athletic traditions in different nations to develop students' understanding of different societies; 4) to improve students' ability to use contemporary periodical sources in historical research; and 5) to improve students' analytical reading and writing skills through readings, exams, and a paper.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30706 William Faulkner and the Bible: Modernism, Metaphysics, and Prophecy (3 Credit Hours)

Though William Faulkner is one of the most significant and critically scrutinized novelists of the 20th century, both the author and his work remain shrouded in mystery. How did this seemingly provincial writer from the rural American South, with almost no formal education, come to be one of the most internationally influential, acclaimed, and debated writers of the 20th century? Why do his morbid and exhaustingly difficult stories continue to inspire critical interest with each new generation of readers? What questions and concerns animated his radically experimental imagination? Of all the mysteries that continue to haunt this vast critical legacy, there is perhaps none more intractable than the matter of religion. Though Faulkner's novels are charged with biblical references and elaborate Christian symbolism there is no scholarly consensus as to the significance and function of these disorienting and often grotesque biblical allusions, or even whether the fiction is grappling with any distinctly religious questions or concerns. Though some theologically minded critics, such as Thomas Merton, have heralded Faulkner’s fiction as biblically prophetic, there are others who interpret his work as fundamentally secular, deeply critical of religion, and even nihilistic. This course will explore the matter of Faulkner and religion by focusing on the influence of the Christian and Hebrew scriptures on several short stories, public addresses, and major works. The course will not only provide an opportunity for deep reflection on the relationship between theology and literature—metaphysics and modernism—but also the opportunity to engage one of the most enduring, challenging, and rewarding novelists of the 20th century.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

AMST 30734 Home/Homelessness in US Cinema (3 Credit Hours)

If, as John David Rhodes argues, “the detached single family home is one of the most powerful metonymic signifiers of American cultural life – of the dreams of privacy, enclosure, freedom, autonomy, independence, stability, and prosperity that animate national life in the United States,” that is not to say that then home in American cinema is by no means a simple or stable construct, but is, if anything, represented most often as troubled, precarious, invaded, porous, unstable, or out of reach. This class considers meanings of home in American cinema by looking at films that confront the problem of how to live in a home, offer alternate structures, and show the fantasy of home to be out of reach. The class will analyze films about unhoused figures during the Depression, housing shortages during World War II, the rise of modern homelessness in the 1980s, and contemporary precarity. We will consider fantasies of home related to family, class status, age, and race. We will consider the roles of banks, landlords, gentrification, and other institutions and structural causes of home insecurity and homelessness. Students will read various theories and histories of housing and homelessness to frame understanding of films. Students will write weekly one page reflections, an 8-10 page paper, and a 15 minute conference presentation.

Corequisites: AMST 31734

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30737 The Hyphenated American (3 Credit Hours)

Contemporary U.S. theater ought to value equity, diversity, and inclusion by more consistently producing works that reflect its culturally complex society. This course is designed to introduce students to theatrical texts by contemporary Latinx, African-American, Asian-American, and Native American playwrights. Many of these playwrights' works engage with a variety of cultural experiences that complicate definitions of U.S. society. This course will examine the trajectory of culturally inclusive U.S. theater from the late 20th century to the present. The course will also consider how U.S. regional theaters work toward greater equity by including diverse voices. Students will be expected to read plays and analyze them using methods provided. The course aims to provide students with tools for reflection to develop their own analytical and creative responses to contemporary U.S. theater.

AMST 30761 Prisons and Policing in the US (3 Credit Hours)

Scholars and activists use the concept of the "carceral state" to describe the official, government use of policing, surveillance, and mass imprisonment to exercise control over society. This course examines the histories, cultures, politics, and economics of prisons and policing in the United States, in order to determine how the U.S. carceral state has been a factor in the social construction of race, gender, and citizenship. We will study the genealogy of the U.S. carceral state -- beginning with the surveillance embedded in the earliest practices of slavery and settler colonialism, tracing its development through the 19th and early 20th centuries, and concluding with the rise of the modern prison industrial complex. We will then focus on contemporary U.S. prisons, policing, and surveillance, using case studies including the "war on drugs," immigrant detention, sex-crime regulation, and police violence. Finally, we will consider alternatives to prisons and policing, as we learn about academic research and activist movements working to end state and police violence, abolish prisons, and create opportunities for restorative justice. Over the course of the semester, students will learn about the historical development and ongoing maintenance of the carceral state, using an intersectional framework that highlights the ways in which prisons and policing have both shaped, and been shaped by, race, gender, citizenship, and economics. Along the way, students will ask and address such questions as: How does the U.S. carceral state function as a tool for social control? What histories, policies, and ideologies underlie the carceral state? How have individuals and organizations worked to transform or abolish the carceral state? How have art and cultural production been used to normalize and/or critique the carceral state? And can we imagine a world without prisons or police?

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 30763 Transformative Justice (1 Credit Hour)

As calls to defund police and abolish prisons have gone mainstream in the United States, many who encounter those demands struggle to imagine alternatives to our punitive criminal legal system, especially when it comes to violent crime. This one-credit course serves as a hands-on introduction to transformative justice -- a feminist political framework for responding to violence without relying on punishment, incarceration, or policing. We will learn about the history and philosophy of transformative justice (TJ) as it has developed in Black, immigrant, and Indigenous communities over many generations. We will read theoretical works, case studies, and personal narratives from scholars, practitioners, and community organizers seeking to solve the problem of violence without creating more violence. Most importantly, we will cultivate skills to build restorative and transformative responses to violence, abuse, and harm in our own relationships and communities. Our virtual class sessions will include a mix of discussion and activities, with an emphasis on collaboration and skill-building

AMST 30801 Islam and Feminism (3 Credit Hours)

What is Islam? What is Feminism? On their own, these two terms are debated enough. But what about their intersections? This interdisciplinary seminar will explore the complex, contested, and evolving relationship between Islam and Feminism through an intersectional, historically grounded, and power-conscious approach. We will trace historical shifts in gender norms within Muslim-majority societies, examine how diverse Muslim beliefs and practices intersect with contemporary rights debates, and study the important roles Muslim women have played in the history of transnational feminism. We will learn about contested readings of Islam’s key religious texts, the impact of colonialism and imperialism, and cultural hybridization on the so-called "Muslim woman question" This will be our opportunity to read pioneering works by Muslim women and queer authors and watch and discuss the coolest Muslim- and POC-led TV series in recent memory, This is Lady Parts.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30802 Feminist and Queer Prison Studies (3 Credit Hours)

Antiracist and decolonial feminist scholars and activists have long understood that sites of confinement--such as the prison, the asylum, and the detention center--produce and police genders and sexualities. This seminar introduces students to feminist, queer, and trans work in the field of critical prison studies, exploring gender and sexuality at shifting intersections with racism, ableism, militarism, capitalism, and the state. Our readings will integrate the work of free-world academics with theory, research, art, and personal narrative produced by prisoners and survivors. While we will read and discuss a variety of texts, our study will center Black, im/migrant, and Indigenous feminist scholarship and organizing in movements for abolition and transformative justice. Class activities will emphasize collaboration and skill-building.

AMST 30803 Research and Writing for Social Change (3 Credit Hours)

This course invites students to explore the ways writing can develop our moral imagination about what poverty is and what our world could be without poverty. We will read and write intensively in a wide variety of genres and modes--memoir, podcasts, letters, poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, and more. Class will include active participation from students through rhetorical analysis of published texts and workshopping of peer writing to create a portfolio of diverse expressions, insights, and arguments about poverty and injustice. Students will have the opportunity to meet experienced writers and advocates who write for social change. We will seek inspiration and insight through community-engaged and campus speakers and events that will prompt us to complicate and elevate our understanding of why poverty exists and what we can do now and throughout our lives to make change. Introduction to Poverty Studies or an equivalent course is desired but not required.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30804 New Readings in Transgender Studies (3 Credit Hours)

In this seminar, students will engage with texts published within the last five years in the field of transgender studies. Along with academic writing, we will work with literature, memoir, film, and popular culture. Together, these texts expand our shared understanding of what trans* means; pose challenging questions about Western transgender studies and its canon; and link the field of transgender studies with global movements for justice. Students will have opportunities for collaboration and community engagement, and to create their own theory and creative work.

AMST 30806 Love & Sex at ND, 1972-2022 (3 Credit Hours)

Parietals, ResLife, and SYRs. ND’s Vagina Monologues and the “Gay? Fine By Me!” t-shirt campaign. Controversies over risqué dorm revues. 30+ years of queer student groups (forbidden, unofficial, and official) and the question of what is allowable at a Catholic university. ND’s never-quite-adopted “nondiscrimination policy.” These, and a host of other customs, traditions, events, and scandals comprise the history of love and sex, sexualities, and genders affecting Notre Dame’s undergraduate students. Today most of this history has been forgotten, misremembered, even mythologized. This seminar will continue the barely begun project of retrieving this history, focused on the fifty years after ND became coeducational in 1972. Each student in this research seminar will work as both historian and informal archivist. Because relatively little has been published on this aspect of ND history, our class’s central texts must be primary sources. We will rely especially on old articles from the Observer, Scholastic, The Dome Yearbook, Irish Rover, and other ND student publications. Each student—acting as historian—will use these and other available sources to research and write one or more short, informative essays that uncover, analyze, and explain an important piece of ND’s past. Each student—acting as archivist—will also help build a “love and sex at ND” archival database for current and future researchers. Finally, each student will learn best practices for gathering and processing oral histories and then, using those practices, interview a current or past member of the Notre Dame community who might have useful memories or perspectives for the student’s research area. Most important, this project depends on today’s Notre Dame students applying their own experiences and ideas to their historical research and analysis. This is a student-directed project, written by and for today’s undergraduates with all their varying, generationally specific viewpoints. The larger purpose of this course is to give students the opportunity and tools to ask historical questions and argue about the answers, as all historians do, as they write this history for themselves.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30812 Rethinking Crime and Justice: Explorations from the Inside Out (3 Credit Hours)

What are the causes and costs of criminal behavior? How are people and communities affected by incarceration? How can we make our criminal justice system as good as it can be for all stakeholders? This course brings together students from both sides of the prison wall to explore issues including why people commit crime, what prisons are for, realities of prison life and reentry, effects of victimization, and restorative justice perspectives. This course follows the Inside-Out model of prison exchange now well established across the United States. It provides an opportunity for "inside students" (at the Westville Correctional Facility) and "outside students" (from Notre Dame) to learn with and from each other and to break new ground together. Notre Dame students travel to Westville each week of the semester for dialogue with students at the facility, who have read the same relevant texts. Together they examine myths and realities related to crime and to punishment, explore the effects of criminal justice policy, and develop ideas for responding more effectively to crime in our communities.

AMST 30823 Philosophies of Conflict and Conflict Transformation (3 Credit Hours)

Revolutionary Violence vs. Revolutionary Non-Violence in the Black Lives Matter Uprisings of 2020. Is violent resistance and destructive populist uprising in response to injustice and structural violence ever justified? The apparent effectiveness of violent rebellion in the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020 suggests that the answer is "yes". How do these developments compare and contrast to the debates surrounding violent vs nonviolent rebellion during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement? This course explores answers to these questions by examining the conflicts surrounding the Movement for Black Lives over the last decade, taking examples from the Civil Rights movement as cases for comparison. We will examine the background theories and ethical frameworks by which activists and practitioners conceptualize, implement, and justify - and argue with one another about - the necessities and limits of violent vs. nonviolent action, and re-examine the roles that rebellion can play (and has played) in transforming injustice and structural violence, and conceptualizing and pursuing liberation. What does the peace studies concept of "conflict transformation" have to contribute to these understandings and debates? We will consider challenges posed by rioting, property destruction and "looting," and the risks and possibilities of avoiding backlash responses of state repression and counter-organizing. Readings include Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's From Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation, Angela Davis's Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Danielle Allen's Talking to Strangers, Charles Cobb's This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get you Killed, as well as works by Audrey Lorde, James Baldwin, Eddie Glaude, Cornel West, Martin King, Stokely Carmicheal (Kwame Ture), Frantz Fanon, Barbara Deming, David Cortright, and John Paul Lederach.

AMST 30824 Structural & Cultural Violence (3 Credit Hours)

This course offers an in-depth analysis of the roles of structural and cultural violence in peace studies. Unit 1 (conceptual/theoretical) explores field-formative debates over the nature, basis, and viability of "structural violence" and "cultural violence" as analytical concepts, asking how they have shaped (or failed to, but perhaps ought to shape) the field of peace studies. We will examine their critical appropriations of early critical theory, and assess comparable theoretical approaches such as reflexive sociology (Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant), post-structural analysis (Michel Foucault), and later critical theory (Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth) while asking what advantages, if any, lenses of structural and cultural violence have vis-à-vis these resources for peace analysis and peacebuilding, and where they need to be supplemented. Unit 2 (cases/agents) studies cases in which some version of these analytical lenses have been deployed for purposes of peace analysis and peacebuilding. We examine recent uses of these lenses to examine poverty, global development, and global health in building peace (e.g. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Paul Farmer, Peter Uvin), religious/cultural identity (Veena Das), and race, class, and gender (Joshua Price on incarceration and prison abolition in the U.S; Alex Mikulich and Laurie Cassidy on white complicity in hyper incarceration).

AMST 30851 Social Justice and Action: Native American and Indigenous Insights (3 Credit Hours)

This course explores Native American and Indigenous political, cultural, and social action with a strong focus on social justice. Native communities in the United States and Canada are actively working towards cultural and political resurgence as a way to protect traditional cultural practices and also to provide future generations with a sense of Native identity and pride. Foregrounding the navigation of ongoing structures of colonialism (or settler colonialism), we will explore Indigenous political thought, land-based knowledge, and contemporary political mobilizations such as Standing Rock, Bears Ears, and Mauna Kea.

AMST 30901 Afrolatinidades (3-4 Credit Hours)

This course centers Blackness within latinidad. In it, students will learn about the history of Blackness inLatin America, and how that history continues to shape the experiences of AfroLatina/os in the US today. We will approach Blackness from a transhemispheric perspective, payingattention to how it is erased through the discourses of mestizaje and latinidad. We will analyze literary and cultural works by AfroLatina/os with roots in Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panamá, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Perú. This is a CBL course and students will volunteer at La Casa de Amistad once a week. Open to non-Spanish majors who are fluent in Spanish or are Spanish heritage speakers.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture

AMST 30902 Race, Class, and Justice from The Field to the Table (3 Credit Hours)

Food access, equity and justice should be of great importance to everyone. Consistently there has been political, economic, geographic and flawed distribution supply chains within the domestic food system. This interdisciplinary course will utilize digital humanities tools and platforms for students to express their research interests. We will analyze the impact that human actions have on foodways, or the social, cultural, and economic practices of producing and consuming food in relation to race, equity and access, historically and currently. We will explore alternative courses of action toward viable, ethical, and antiracist solutions to questions about sustainable farming, global economic inequality, and hunger. Throughout the semester, participants will use the lens of race and ethnicity to study and discuss how these two concepts affect access to agricultural land, foodstuffs /foodways, environmental justice and nature.

AMST 30903 Readings in Trans Studies (3 Credit Hours)

AMST 30904 Food Movement Voices of Change (3 Credit Hours)

This course will focus on exercises, research and reading from a diverse range of historical and current influential environmental writings from philosophers, economists, environmentalists, theologians, political scientists, naturalists, and practitioners. Learners will analyze the impact that human actions have on the natural world–particularly through foodways, or the social, cultural, and economic practices of producing and consuming food. This course will also explore how our understanding of race/ethnicity, nature, and the environment influences human choices around food. And it offers alternative courses of action toward viable, ethical, and antiracist solutions to questions about sustainable farming, global economic inequality, and world hunger. Throughout the semester, participants will use the lens of race and ethnicity to study and discuss how these two concepts affect access to agricultural land, foodstuffs/ foodways, environmental justice and nature. A fundamental objective will be to create podcasts focused on student’s engagement with the course themes.

AMST 30905 Global Indigeneity (3 Credit Hours)

In 2007, after decades of organizing on the part of indigenous activists, the United Nations issued a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Declaration was the result of years of work by people from particular communities--each with its own history, culture, language, and home--who decided to call themselves, and work together as, Indigenous people. This creative step allowed indigenous peoples to work collectively for justice on a global scale, rather than individually and in confrontation with single states. This class explores the concept, and reality, of Indigeneity in both historical and contemporary perspective: we will consider the many shared struggles and opportunities of indigenous peoples around the globe today and the ways that similar (or distinct) histories have led to similar (or distinct) present realities.

AMST 30906 Religion, Education, & Democracy: Generational Responsibility for the American Proposition (3 Credit Hours)

This is a course in the philosophy of education. The goal of the course is to produce a philosophy of education that engenders in the current generation of students (i.e., you) responsibility for what has been called the “American proposition.” The notion of “America” is distinct from the United States of America, but is often conflated with and conveyed by the latter. It sits at the intersection of religion, education, and democracy, an intersection at which the atrophy of each is seen by many to be caused by the values of the other. With the discipline of education as its platform and Catholicism, among other voices, as a particular conversation partner, the course examines historical, contemporaneous, and ecclesial resources, including notions of the common good, humanism, and ecological thinking, to ask, among other questions: Are religion, education, and democracy commensurable or incommensurable in such ways as to facilitate social coherence in the 21st century? If not, what accounts for decades, if not centuries, of robust educational systems designed to bolster democratic and religious institutions alike?

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKCD-Core Cathol & Disciplines

AMST 30907 Huey's Healthcare: Humor and Healing in The Boondocks (3 Credit Hours)

What does it mean when some of the sharpest insights about health justice come packaged in punchlines? Through satire, the hit-series The Boondocks elevates overlooked aspects of health and material security, transforming systemic failures into resonate comedic sequences. Through engagement with The Boondocks, this course explores the use of humor and other forms of cultural expression to challenge and reimagine our current healthcare practices. Additionally, this course examines how film, video, photography, drawing, and interactive media function as an archive of community health knowledge — ethnographic resources that illuminate the complexities of our social world. Students will explore pressing health issues as well as engage core readings in cultural studies and visual anthropology to develop analytic approaches that extend beyond summaries and plot descriptions. By emphasizing these interpretive skills, students will learn to extract health discourses from different cultural forms, recognizing how seemingly disparate texts — from academic articles to animated satire — collectively participate in broader conversations about well-being, justice, and community care.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKIN - Core Integration, WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 30911 Slavery in Global History (3 Credit Hours)

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to major themes in the global history of slavery with a specific focus on the location of slavery in the making of the modern world bringing together histories from the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Ocean worlds. The course will focus upon these themes through literature, economics, and politics. In addition, the course will also introduce students to recent museum exhibitions, art exhibitions, digital history projects, films, and documentary compilations that all together have transformed how the global history of slavery is understood.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30912 Irish in America (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines the origins of Irish migration, the history of Irish people and their descendants in America, and the connections and interactions between the Irish at home and abroad. The principal themes are the process of migration and settlement, labor and class, race and gender, religion, politics, nationalism and, encompassing all of these, the evolution of ethnic identity. This course will work closely with the extensive Irish studies collections of Hesburgh Library to provide students with hands-on experience researching and curating historical objects and primary sources related to the history of the Irish in America.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30913 U.S.-China Relations (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines the most important bilateral relationship in the world today. It begins with an overview of the major historic episodes in U.S.-China relations, then, adopting a theme-based approach, it examines the relationship among important topics in the contemporary bilateral relationship across the overlapping political, economic and security spheres. The course will stress the importance of perceptions in policymaking, and use student presentations and a crisis simulation to allow students to understand the problem from various perspectives.

AMST 30916 Indigenous Education: Models and Movements (3 Credit Hours)

What is the ongoing impact of Native American boarding schools for survivors, their descendants, and Indigenous communities as a whole? How are schools in Indian Country today revitalizing culture, language, and traditions? These are the types of questions this course will investigate as we explore the history of Indigenous education, the modern Native schooling experience, and the links that connect them. With a special emphasis on providing opportunities to interact directly with Indigenous educators in the local Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, Native American Catholic schools, and numerous other spaces, this course is guided through listening to and learning from authentic stories and distinct perspectives. Additionally, our academic inquiry will prioritize theories and frameworks formed by Indigenous scholars such as survivance, storywork, resurgent education, and decolonial theory.

AMST 30917 Love and Violence: Religion, Civil Disobedience and Nonviolent Resistance (3 Credit Hours)

This course explores the ways in which religious ethicists, social critics, and activists have employed conceptions of love and violence for the purposes of criticizing and resisting oppressive political conditions, and for radically transforming existing social arrangements. We begin by exploring the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau concerning the moral status of civil disobedience in the context of the U.S. abolitionist struggle, with particular attention to the influence of the Bhagavad-Gita upon their thinking. We will examine the ways that both Thoreau's writings and the Gita influenced Mahatma Gandhi on questions of non-violent civil disobedience, Gandhi's exploration of the power of non-violence in light of the Sermon on the Mount from the Christian New Testament, and his correspondence with the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. We will investigate how this entire mosaic of influences came to inform Martin Luther King, Jr.'s work and the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. during the 1960s, Malcolm X, and the black power movement. We will engage critical perspectives on these thinkers and ideas, such as criticisms of Gandhi by George Orwell and Arundhati Roy, Frantz Fanon's claims that colonialism is an essentially violent phenomenon that requires an essentially violent response, Malcolm's criticisms of Martin, arguments against pacifism on the basis of political realism by Max Weber. We conclude by brief examination of principled vs. strategic and revolutionary forms of non-violence in the work of Gene Sharp.

AMST 30918 Religion in International and Global Relations (3 Credit Hours)

What is the relation between religion and conflict in international and global relations? What is the relation between religion, violence, and the practices of peacebuilding, locally and globally? How can we understand the role of religion in diplomacy? Why do we need to think about religion's role in Western colonialism, orientalism, and Islamohobia (or racialized anti-Muslim oppression) in order to understand religion in contemporary international affairs? What does religion have to do with political ideology? The so-called resurgence of religion to global politics, conventionally dating back to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, challenged the secularist myopia that informed policy makers and theorists of international relations, but it took the events of September 11, 2001 to fully catalyze a process of rethinking the role of religion, on both the levels of theory and practice, within the contexts of international relations. Both theorists and practitioners in the arenas of international relations are trying to decipher how to theorize religion into the existing explanatory paradigms of realism, liberalism, and constructivism. The course will examine these conversations, dating back to Westphalia of 1648 and the historical role of religion in the construction of the international system of nation-states. Driven by case studies and avoiding simplistic accounts of religious traditions, the course will introduce the students to religion and international relation theory, the practices of peacebuilding, diplomacy, development, and the study of ethnonationalism.

AMST 30922 US Housing and Social Justice (3 Credit Hours)

This course will follow the evolution of housing in the context of American Urbanism over the last hundred years and explore not only the methods employed to discriminate against minority communities, but also how these policies have ended up failing the suburban and rural communities they were intended to privilege. Consequently, the outcomes are not only ongoing racial injustice but also a nationwide affordable housing crisis and crumbling infrastructure. The course will be broken down into three parts. We will explore the history and evolution of housing segregation; the current results of decades of racist policies and actions; as well as potential ideas to reverse the inequities in housing to create a stronger future for all communities. No existing knowledge of architecture or urbanism is required.

AMST 30923 Public Pedagogies (3 Credit Hours)

Discussions about curriculum and pedagogy in education have, for the most part, been limited an limiting, exploring curriculum as a written plan of study (often handed down by the state or a district) and pedagogy as the mere equivalence of teacher instruction. Using some foundational and contemporary theories in education combined with those with ideas from public pedagogy and cultural studies, the intent of this course it to broaden and complexify our understandings of curriculum and pedagogy - what they are, what they entail, where and by whom they are enacted, and mostly, what they "do" in education when conceived in more broader terms.

AMST 30926 Islam and Global Affairs (3 Credit Hours)

Is Islam a religion or political ideology? Where do Muslims live? What do they look like? Do all Muslims want to live according to the Sharia? Is the Clash of Civilizations real? Can Muslims share the planet with non-Muslims in permanent peace? Do Muslims have anything akin to Catholic Social Teaching? If you are interested in these kinds of questions, you need to take this course. A journey through the scripture and scholarly traditions of Islam, the course engages multiple overlapping and intersecting themes of relevance to global affairs, including geography and demographics; governance and political thought; international relations and organizations; civil society and social teachings; knowledge and education; ecology and climate change; migration and identity; human rights and dignity; war and peace; and development and progress. We will also look at contemporary debates surrounding Islam and religious freedom. The course provides a snapshot of the "Muslim world" in the heartlands where Islam originated, where it thrives in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, and in places where Muslims live as influential minorities in Europe and North America, based on the latest available data and representative case studies. Designed as survey course with ample time for discussion, students with no prior exposure to Islam are welcome alongside more advanced students who wish to bring their knowledge of Islamic thought into conversation with the conditions of the contemporary world. graduate students with an interest in Religion may enroll with instructor permission.

AMST 30927 Diversity in Young Adult Literature (3 Credit Hours)

n this course, we will challenge the single story/ies U.S. schools and curricula have told about books, characters, and cultural groups by focusing on literature by and about people from various populations that have been traditionally underrepresented in the United States. We will discuss young adult literature from parallel cultures (including possible works by and about African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino/as, Native Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, and other ethnic groups), as well as literature by and about populations traditionally defined by class, religion, ability, gender and sexuality. Course participants will investigate theoretical perspectives, issues, controversies, and educational implications for these texts, including race and racism, whiteness and privilege (in society and in the educational system), and critical literacy. As an extension of the course, we will also examine the young adult literature market and how contemporary media may reinforce or resist the stereotypes, labels, and single stories associated with these cultures. Possible texts include All American Boys, American Born Chinese (graphic novel), a Jacqueline Woodson novel, Openly Straight, a canonical text like To Kill a Mockingbird, Every Day, and several choice options, including a Classic/Newberry text, one text representing a non-abled bodied protagonist, and one contemporary text.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature

AMST 30930 American Evangelicals and Global Affairs (3 Credit Hours)

Since the end of the Cold War, American Evangelicals' political influence has increased significantly. For example, Christian Zionist have continued to contribute meaningfully to American political support for the state of Israel. Additionally, to improve human dignity, Evangelicals have established schools and promoted literacy, built clinics and dispensaries, promoted agricultural development and distributed food aid, created orphanages, and propagated values about the inherent worth of all persons. Twenty-five to thirty percent of the US population is neo-evangelical and another five to ten percent adheres to some form of evangelical theology. That means that 100 million Americans are in one way or another tied to evangelical theology and they seem to pray, think, vote, and lobby as a coalition. This course will examine the rise of American Evangelicalism and explore matters deemed important to Evangelicals: social and political affairs, global engagement, participation in public affairs, international affairs, support of Israel, political and economic development. More generally, this course offers a compelling account of Evangelicals' influence on America's role in the world. Students will learn how to engage more thoughtfully and productively with this influential religious group - a group that has been called political kingmakers! Students will also learn about the largest protestant denomination in the world - Southern Baptists - from the professor, who was a former Southern Baptist Minister and church planter.

AMST 30931 American Advntrsm Muslim World (3 Credit Hours)

AMST 30950 BLM: Violence vs. Nonviolence (3 Credit Hours)

Is violent resistance and destructive populist uprising in response to injustice and structural violence ever justified? The apparent effectiveness of violent rebellion in the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020 suggests that the answer is "yes." How do these developments compare and contrast to the debates surrounding violent vs nonviolent rebellion during the U.S. Civil Rights and Black Power Movements? How should the oppressed respond to their oppressors - conceptualize, fight for, and deploy power? What is the difference between rebellion and social movement, and how do their differences affect prospects for transforming systemically unjust and structurally violent conditions? This course explores answers to these questions by examining the conflicts surrounding the Movement for Black Lives over the last decade, while examining examples from the Civil Rights movement as cases for comparison. We will examine the background theories and ethical frameworks by which activists and practitioners conceptualize, implement, and justify - and argue with one another about - the necessities and limits of violent vs. nonviolent action and re-examine the roles that rebellion can play (and has played) in transforming injustice and structural violence, as well as in conceptualizing and pursuing liberation. What does the peace studies concept of "conflict transformation" have to contribute to these understandings and debates? We will consider challenges posed by rioting, property destruction and "looting," and the risks and possibilities of avoiding so-called "backlash" responses of state repression and counter-protest. Readings include works by: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Omar Wasow, Angela Davis, Danielle Allen, Cornel West, James Baldwin, Eddie Glaude, Martin King, Stokely Carmicheal (Kwame Ture), Frantz Fanon, and Barbara Deming.

AMST 30954 Dancing in the Street: Music and Social Change in the USA (3 Credit Hours)

In 1964, when Martha Reeves sang, "Calling out around the world/Are you ready for a brand new beat?/Summer's here and the time is right/For dancing in the street," was she beckoning listeners to join a party or the civil rights struggle? Or both? From spirituals sung by enslaved workers to protest anthems shouted at union rallies, music has provided the soundtrack to social justice causes throughout American History. Whether performed by rank-and-file reformers or famous recording artists -- from Frank Sinatra to Nina Simone to Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, and beyond -- popular music has accompanied and sometimes fueled transformations in American politics, culture, and social life. In this course students will explore American popular music in its many forms -- blues, country, jazz, folk, rock, punk, disco, hip hop, tejano, and more -- to understand its power and limits as both a force for social change and a window into major themes of the American experience.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30975 Health, Medicine and American Culture (3 Credit Hours)

Health and medicine have long been intertwined with cultural factors. This course will interrogate pressing bioethical questions: such as the treatment of mental illness, patient confidentiality, physician-assisted death, and women's and LGBTQ access to health care through literature and culture over the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Long before the emergence of bioethics as a field of scholarly inquiry, American writers were investigating these issues. They were also paying attention to the social and political factors that shaped health care, such as minoritized populations' entrance into the medical professions, health disparities, and the effects of contagious outbreaks on society. In this course, we will explore literary texts and films that portray illness and health care alongside non-fictional sources that take up similar questions. Moving from Walt Whitman's writings about his nursing in Civil War hospitals to contemporary narratives of contagion, this course will take up critiques of racism in public health; questions of gender, sexuality, and illness; and the politics of disability. How do early debates within the medical profession speak to twenty-first-century concerns about the future of healthcare? The course will involve short writing assignments and class discussion. Prior training in the humanities is not required.

AMST 30980 Stories of Power and Diversity: Inside Museums, Archives, and Collecting (1 Credit Hour)

What do the paintings and sculptures in museums and the manuscripts and antique books in archives tell us about our collective past? What do they tell us about how value, importance, and worth have been ascribed across time? As users of these cultural collections, how might we address inequities and silences within them? The first half of this 1-credit course provides a lightning introduction to the history of cultural collecting and its many issues. Through the Zoom window students will apply a critical gaze to the collections held in our campus repositories - the Snite Museum of Art, Rare Books and Special Collections and University Archives - and in museums and archives beyond the Notre Dame campus. In the second half of the course, students will create a single online exhibition around the theme of diversity using our campus collections. This exhibition will be published on the Hesburgh Library's Digital Exhibitions and Collections page and students will be given curatorial credit for their work. The course schedule will begin with seminar-style meetings and move to individual work, one-on-one sessions with instructors, peer review and project evaluation.

AMST 30991 Borders and Bridges: U.S. Latinx Literary and Cultural Production (3 Credit Hours)

What is a border? Who inhabits the borderlands? What function does the border play in the construction of a national or cultural identity? How do we bridge communities? How are borders represented, established, and challenged in the works of US Latino/a writers? These are some of the questions that this course will address within the context of US Latino/a literature and culture. Most of the course will focus on two geographical areas that we tend to associate with these concepts: the traditional US-Mexico border and the lesser studied Caribbean. Students will watch films and read literary works by Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, Dominican-American, and Cuban-American authors in order to gain a deeper understanding of how borders and borderlands inform contemporary discourse and culture. This course has a Community-Engagement Learning (CEL) requirement. Students are expected to sign up for tutoring at La Casa de Amistad once a week for 2 hours. The course will be taught in Spanish and is open to advanced non-majors. This course is for undergraduate students only.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture

AMST 30992 American Slavery (3 Credit Hours)

This course provides an introduction to the history of American slavery. After examining the origins and transformation of Atlantic world slavery, the courses focuses particularly upon slavery in the United States. Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the United States grew into the largest slaveholding society in the modern world. U.S. slavery's growth was driven forward by massive global economic transformations and territorial conquest. Yet, in the face of unprecedented violence, enslaved people themselves brought about the end of slavery and transformed the meaning of freedom in the United States. This course focuses upon this history from the perspective of enslaved people themselves with particular attention to struggles for freedom. Through an examination of this history and its legacies, the course will introduce students to histories of resistance.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 30993 U.S. Civil Rights in History and Law (3 Credit Hours)

Civil Rights in the US is a living tradition that students can both understand and engage with. This course traces the non-linear, contested and ongoing history of Civil Rights in the US from the founding period to the present. It employs the perspectives of a lawyer and historian to illustrate how: the Civil War and the end of slavery made Civil Rights in the US possible, international human rights and Civil Rights in the US have interacted over time; the complicated relationship between the definition of Civil Rights and the realization of these rights played out over time, and the tensions between the federal government and the states continue to shape Civil Rights down to the present. The course is structured around three key historical periods in which Civil Rights in the US developed and the divisive legacy of these periods of possibility: The Founding and Constitutional period 1776-1790, Civil War and Reconstruction, 1863-1883 and the Civil Rights Era 1945-1991. Through an examination of social movements, Supreme Court cases, and congressional action the course illustrates how the meaning of citizenship and civil rights, who constituted a citizen, and what institutions—state and local government, private individuals, and so on—posed the biggest threat to equal treatment under the law changed over time. Finally, the course provides opportunities for students to actively participate in the US Civil Rights tradition.

AMST 30994 American Hate: White Radicalism, Religion and Domestic Terror in Contemporary America (3 Credit Hours)

Incidents of hate-driven political violence and domestic terrorism have increased in the United States in recent years and are the highest they have been in decades. Non-partisan studies show this upsurge in violence has been driven primarily by white-supremacist, anti-Muslim, and anti-government extremism. What are the causes of this upsurge in extremism and political violence? What is its impact upon contemporary society, religion, and politics? What do the categories and practices of peacebuilding have to offer for purposes of constructive and transformational responses to such violence and its causes? This course explores answers to these questions. It examines how the causes and conditions of the upsurge in extremist politics and political violence relate to racism, nationalism, xenophobia, and the political weaponizing of American religion. We will explore such factors as the role of ethno-nationalism in the wide-spread Evangelical Christian embrace of QAnon conspiracy theories and political organizing, the merging of Catholic and Orthodox Christian "traditionalism" with political authoritarianism (e.g. especially as modeled by contemporary Hungary, Poland, and Russia), the so-called "Alt-Right" organizing and activism (e.g. the "Unite the Right" marches and rallies in Charlottesville), the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capital, the relation of the so-called "Gun Lobby" to increased militance of political rhetoric and organizing, militia organizing and participation in political violence and terrorism, and invocations of a looming "civil war" as the inevitable result of deep and persistent political polarization in the U.S. Readings will include Janelle Wong's Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change; Kristen Kobes Du Mez's From Jesus to John Wayne; Cynthia Miller-Idriss' Hate in the Homeland; Barbara Walters' How Civil Wars Start; Sarah Riccardi-Swartz's Between Heaven and Russia; and Ryan Busse's Gun Fight, among others.

AMST 30995 Race Locales: Race, Space, and Place in the U.S. (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines the socio-histories, movement, and settlement patterns of racial minorities in the U.S. The course will focus on how race and racial imaginaries shape the movement and settlement of racial minorities. It will include deep examinations of these mobility patterns and how they are constructed and articulated through laws, policies, and social arrangements. Special attention will be paid to the racialization of the United States, American-ness as whiteness, and the consequences for the social and physical landscape. And finally, the course will consider how the racial construction of the U.S. is manifested and buttressed through the built environment and the consequences.

AMST 31162 Latinx Representation in Hollywood Lab (0 Credit Hours)

This film lab will be used to show fillms from the Latinos in American Films course.

Prerequisites: (AMST 30162 (may be taken concurrently) or ILS 30005 (may be taken concurrently) or FTT 30162 (may be taken concurrently))

AMST 31186 Indigenous Cinema Lab (0 Credit Hours)

This lab is co-requisite of the the Indigenous Cineman course

Prerequisites: (AMST 30186 (may be taken concurrently) or FTT 30186 (may be taken concurrently) or ANTH 30186 (may be taken concurrently))

AMST 31734 Home/Homelessness USCinema Lab (0 Credit Hours)

This is the lab for AMST 30734 Home/Homelessness in US Cinema

Corequisites: AMST 30734

AMST 32129 Notre Dame and America Discussion Section (0 Credit Hours)

Discussion section meets every Friday for Notre Dame and America course

AMST 32334 Boxing in America Tutorial (0 Credit Hours)

This course is the tutorial section to the Boxing in America course AMST 30334

Corequisites: AMST 30334

AMST 34104 Native American History and Traditions (3 Credit Hours)

The course aims to broaden students' understanding of the history, culture, and contemporary situations of Native Americans. The course uses historical, literary, and anthropological analysis to explore American Indian life and culture. It also examines the contemporary legal and social institutions that affect Native American life.

AMST 34105 War, Terrorism, and Violence in Media (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines violence and terror as inherent structural components of contemporary politics and media.

AMST 34109 Young America (2 Credit Hours)

La Jeune Amerique explores American history and the current cultural perceptions of historical events and figures from the American and French perspectives.

AMST 34110 Arts and Media (2 Credit Hours)

Arts et medias explores the cultural impacts of new technologies such as radio, film, talkies, and colored film, using both past and contemporary examples from the United States and United Kingdom.

AMST 34114 Irish Presence in America (2.5,3 Credit Hours)

This module will address the influence and effect of the Irish diaspora in America and explore the input, contribution, and impact of the enormous Irish community there. Some 35.5 million people in America claim Irish descent. The time period under review begins with the mass emigration caused by the Great Famine in Ireland in 1845 and the assimilation and influence of this diaspora on American culture. It will analyse the reaction of the Irish-Americans to the rising nationalist movement in Ireland from 1890 to 1922. Moving to second wave emigration in the 1950s, lectures will discuss how the strength of the Irish community grew in postwar America to become a recognisable force politically, socially, and culturally. The current status of the Irish in America will also be considered.

AMST 34622 Irish-America: Culture & Society (3 Credit Hours)

This module will address the influence and effect of the Irish diaspora in America and explore the input, contribution and impact of the enormous Irish community there. Some 35.5 million people in America claim Irish descent. The time period under review begins with the mass emigration caused by the Great Famine in Ireland in 1845 and the assimilation and influence of this diaspora on American culture. It will analyse the reaction of the Irish-Americans to the rising nationalist movement in Ireland from 1890 to 1922. Moving to 'second wave' emigration in the 1950s, lectures will discuss how the strength of the Irish community grew in Post-War America to become a recognisable force politically, socially and culturally. The current status of the Irish in America will also be considered. A number of academic field trips related to the module content will be organised throughout the trimester.

AMST 34901 America Contemporanea (3 Credit Hours)

The course provides a broad vision of the history of the 20th century in Latin America, focusing on both the common elements and the diversity of experiences that can be found in the different historical processes that have marked the continent. Special emphasis will be placed on the cultural aspects of social and political processes that were significant during the 20th century, approaching them from analytical perspectives of race, class, and gender. The general contents of the course include the emergence of new political actors at the turn of the century, revolutions, the rise of populism, the influence of the United States, the role of the Catholic Church on the continent, military dictatorships and the construction of post-dictatorship historical memories in Latin America. The course will address the history of Contemporary Latin America through group discussions of academic texts and analysis of sources.

AMST 34920 Independent Study Abroad-Rome (3 Credit Hours)

Study to research the housing situation for migrants and refugees when they arrive to Italy. The project will take up form in a final paper and portfolio of certain Church properties that handle and aid migrants and refugees in Rome.

AMST 40326 African-American Resistance (3 Credit Hours)

Through a close examination of twelve historical events, we will study African American resistance in the United States from the 17th century through the 20th century. We will employ a case study method and seek to categorize and characterize the wide variety of African American resistance. Our study will include the politics of confrontation and civil disobedience, polarization of arts, transformation of race relations, the tragedies and triumphs of Reconstruction, interracial violence, black political and institutional responses to racism and violence, the Harlem Renaissance, Jazz, Blues, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Students will be confronted with conflicting bodies of evidence and challenged to analyze these issues and arrive at conclusions. Music and film will supplement classroom discussions.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 40613 LGBT in the 20th-Century USA (3 Credit Hours)

This course covers the varied experience of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (and other gender-fluid) Americans over the course of the twentieth century. As much as possible, it will focus on the voices of LGBT people themselves, in the context of the changing meanings of what it was to claim those identities. To do this we will draw on primary sources--art, music, film, literature, interviews and oral histories, memoirs and autobiographies, plays, films. The focus will be on the ways people understood who they were--and what homosexual/ gay/ lesbian/ queer/ transsexual/ transgender/ et al identities meant to them--and how these identities changed over the course of the twentieth century, using a wide variety of primary sources and relevant disciplinary frameworks.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History

AMST 40701 Sinatra (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines the career and image of Frank Sinatra. As an entertainer who worked in numerous media - radio, the music industry, television, cinema, and live performance - Sinatra provides a lens through which to examine American 20th century media. Moreover, as an iconic figure, Sinatra enables an explanation of masculinity, American identity, ethnic identity, race, liberalism, and more. Sinatra will be paired with various other performers, especially Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, and Gene Kelly, to consider his star image comparatively. Sinatra will be situated within discourses on Italian immigration, urbanism, the Depression, prohibition and war. Students will listen to Sinatra music and radio programs, watch Sinatra films and TV shows, and read a wide range of materials - including contemporary accounts of Sinatra performances, analyses of his career and meaning, essays and articles about the star system, recording technology, film genre, acting styles, the mob, and more. Throughout, we will consider what model of American masculinity Sinatra embodies, ranging from early concerns that his female fans and lack of military service rendered him effeminate to his image as family man, and later incarnation as playboy. We will consider what Sinatra means today through an analyses of his entertainment heirs, like George Clooney; parodies, like Joe Piscopo's; the use of his music in film soundtracks and advertising; and in performances like the Twyla Thorpe "Come Fly With Me." This is an undergraduate course. Graduate students who take it will have additional readings and meetings, and they will have different written assignments. All students should be able to attend the lab, which will consist of film screenings.

Corequisites: AMST 41701

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 41701 Sinatra Lab (0 Credit Hours)

Certain films will be viewed for further discussion in class.

Corequisites: AMST 40701

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 43142 Death in America (3 Credit Hours)

The Senior Seminar is designed as a culminating experience for American Studies majors, an opportunity to hone the skills, methods, and interests acquired in previous American Studies classes and direct them toward a specific and significant research project. Readings and assignments explore themes in the field of American Studies. Requirements include seminar-style discussions of course readings, a final research paper of 20-25 pages (or the equivalent), and a presentation of that project in class. This Senior Seminar focuses on changing cultural understandings of death, dying, and mourning in modern and contemporary America. Examining different visual, material, and media cultures, it explores topics such as: permanent and temporary memorials (like crosses erected at the sites of roadside fatalities, "ghost bikes" left at the scenes of pedestrian fatalities, and "dead-man" t-shirts worn at funerals), funeral practices and cemeteries (including traditional cemeteries, virtual cemeteries, "green" cemeteries, and Living Monuments), death related humor (too soon?), dark tourism (visiting sites of tragic and traumatic death), death-related rituals (Day of the Dead), dead bodies and sensational exhibitions like Body Worlds, Deadheads, death metal, and forensic-based TV shows like CSI and Bones. Our objectives are to consider what death means in America today on cultural terms. Course includes field trips.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

Enrollment limited to students in the American Studies department.

AMST 43144 Humor and Power (3 Credit Hours)

How many American Studies seniors does it take to analyze a joke? By studying humor seriously in its historical and sociocultural contexts, this senior seminar will introduce students to critical approaches to humor and power in the United States. Instead of taking humor and laughter for granted as self-evident phenomena, we will consider how practices of humor might intersect with structural hierarchies, including those of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and religion. Students will engage with a wide variety of sources, including primary documents such as films and political cartoons, theories of humor, and critical scholarship on key American texts of humor. We will also explore vernacular theories about the value of having "a sense of humor" and explore how entire groups of people have historically been excluded from this category. The senior seminar is designed to be a culminating experience for American Studies.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 43145 Sports and Recreation (3 Credit Hours)

Sports and recreation are a huge part of American life. What we do for fun reflects who we are and what we aspire to be as individuals, as members of a group or subculture, and as a nation. Amusement parks, city parks, national parks, stadiums, and sports fields shape the built and natural world around us; sports media, outdoor recreation, and tourism represent billion-dollar industries and influence American politics and culture. Because sports and recreation foster community and identity, they also become sites of conflict. As a result, they provide a useful lens for examining major themes and questions integral to the field of American Studies. Just as Introduction to American Studies served as your gateway to the major, this seminar will be the culminating experience. Readings and assignments will explore research and scholarship examining sports and recreation in the context of American Studies as a field, and students will develop research projects on a topic of their own choice. Requirements will include seminar-style discussions of assigned readings, a final research project of 20-25 pages, and an oral presentation of that project in class, as well as some smaller writing assignments.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 43151 Religion and Irreligion (3 Credit Hours)

Religion-and challenges to religion-are everywhere in the American cultural landscape, and in recent years American Studies scholars have expressed renewed interest in studying how religious and secular forces have made competing claims on the national imagination. In the early decades of the discipline, American Studies scholars highlighted the Puritan "errand into the wilderness" and the spiritual impact on U.S. culture. That began to change as new theoretical perspectives-poststructuralism, postmodernism, and postcolonial theory-combined with increasing attention to race, class, and gender. That shift, which led to an emphasis on power relations more than meaning making, nudged the study of religion to the disciplinary margins. Yet the situation changed again especially after 9/11, as religion's enduring significance in daily life and public culture seemed hard to deny. This senior seminar begins by tracing the history of American Studies, focusing on the ways scholars have studied religion. That discussion of diverse sources, methods, and themes will provide an angle of vision on the field, while other readings will prepare students to do their own research on a topic of their choice. There are lots of choices. it could mean exploring the religious history of your hometown. It might mean focusing on a particular religious traditon-from Catholicism in politics to Buddhism in popular culture-or analyzing challenges to religion-from feminist criticism within churches to affirmations of the atheism.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 43155 Notre Dame and America (3 Credit Hours)

In this course, we will interpret Notre Dame-an institution often defined as America's only truly national University-from the perspective of American studies. Notre Dame--much like America--can be defined and understood in multiple ways: as a physical location, as social and institutional world, and as an imaginary. We will explore Notre Dame from its pre-history as the homeland of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, to its founding as a missionary outpost of the European Catholic Church, through its evolution during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through its present profile as a top-tier research university and the nation's premier Catholic educational institution. We will focus not only on obvious subjects such as Catholicism and football but also on as other key topics and themes in American studies that intersect with Notre Dame's story in the past and present. This course is designed to fulfill the History and CAD requirements.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

Enrollment is limited to students with a program in American Studies.

AMST 43156 Drugs in American Life & Death (3 Credit Hours)

Mind-altering substances have various, often conflicting meanings in American history and culture. This senior seminar explores the history, meanings, myths, and realities associated with narcotics in the United States. We will pay special attention to drugs and social difference, exploring the ways that American ideas about narcotics relate to such matters as race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, citizenship, and nation. Students will conduct original research into a chosen aspect of drugs in America.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 43157 Race and Racism (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines key issues and methodological approaches in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. Students choose to write a 20-25 page paper or to develop a seminar project based on their interests.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 43158 American Microstudies (3 Credit Hours)

This research seminar asks students to practice American Studies on a "micro" scale. Students will be introduced to the method of microhistory. Microhistory looks at a single person, object, place, or event and asks big questions. It takes a single and specific unit of analysis and connects it with much wider and broader contexts. Thinking micro is in fact an ambitious attempt to rewrite the macro. The historian Linda Gordon studied an abduction of orphans by vigilantes in 1903 to write a wider history about early twentieth century immigration, race, and the American West. Timothy Gilfoyle wrote the story of a single pick pocket (thief) to illuminate the inner workings of the nineteenth century urban underworld. Jim Murphy rewrote the history of the American Revolution by writing about the event from the perspective of a boy. Microhistory is a way of asking big questions in small spaces. Students, in consultation with the instructor, will write a microhistory of the topic of their choosing. After consulting key studies that use this method, and canvassing the articles that lay out how to think like a micro scholar, students will practice it for themselves.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

AMST 43166 Gender and Material Culture (3 Credit Hours)

This interdisciplinary Seminar will use the lens of material culture to explore the intersections between gender, race, class. Material culture--the study of things and their meanings--offers a wide ranging and interdisciplinary set of methods for analyzing how objects become gendered, and in turn, how objects construct gender. The emphasis will be on objects used in North America (eg. the pink pussy hat of 2016), and the sources and methodologies will include surviving objects, archives, printed matter, and visual sources. Students will work on research papers that will allow them to explore objects and themes of particular relevance to their own research interests and fields of study.

AMST 43703 Camp (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines theories and practices of camp. Camp has been described as a sensibility, an aesthetics, a mode of performance, and a mode of spectatorship and consumption. Camp embraces artifice, exaggeration, theatricality, and irony. Initially described as exclusively a gay male practice, theorists have since analyzed forms of “straight” camp, feminist camp, lesbian camp, Black camp, and more. What is camp? To whom does camp belong, and how do different demographics use it? Does camp have a politics? How has the meaning and import of camp changed over time? Is camp still necessary? This interdisciplinary seminar will read essays and books on camp by Susan Sontag, Jack Babuscio, Richard Dyer, Pamela Robertson, Barbara Brickman, Quinn Miller, AJ Christian, and many others. We will consider camp in literary texts by Oscar Wilde, Christopher Isherwood, and Jacqueline Susann. We will consider camp in painting and photography, including historical styles such as Mannerism, and contemporary artists such as Cindy Sherman, Barkley Hendricks, and others. We will consider camp in relation to drag. We will consider camp films by Douglas Sirk and Busby Berkeley, films starring Mae West and Joan Crawford; and certain genres such as the musical and horror; camp TV such as Bewitched; and camp stars such as Lady Gaga and Beyonce. Students from all disciplines are welcome; no prior knowledge of camp is expected.

AMST 45903 American Studies/ND Institute for Global Investing Writing Internship (3 Credit Hours)

This is an academic internship that will place the selected applicant as a writer for the NDIGI (Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing). The student intern will write articles for the NDIGI website, as well as for the other NDIGI communication channels: e-newsletter, various reports and social media. Some of the topics will include "people profiles," and coverage of NDIGI events and programs. This is a collaboration between the NIGI and the Department of American Studies that will provide a unique professional experience to the right candidate. Must be an American Studies major.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 46920 Directed Readings (1-3 Credit Hours)

Directed readings taught by individual faculty members. Permission required.

Course may be repeated.

AMST 47909 The Senior Thesis: Theory, Method, and Composition (3 Credit Hours)

The Senior Thesis Capstone provides a culminating experience for American Studies majors who are writing a Senior Thesis. It is only offered during fall semesters and should be followed in the spring by 3 credit hours of AMST 47910 Senior Thesis Writing with the thesis advisor. This course encourages students to think about how their coursework fits together as a whole and gives them an opportunity to put what they've learned as American Studies majors into practice. In this course students will be expected to demonstrate significant progress towards their senior thesis, a year-long experience developed with a faculty advisor that aspires to make an original contribution to the field. Class readings and discussions will address current issues and themes in the field of American Studies as well as how student theses will develop, support, or revise those themes. During the semester students will work on refining a topic and developing a supporting bibliography, conducting a significant amount of research (whether in libraries or in the field), situating their research among relevant secondary sources, writing an abstract or prospectus to guide further research and writing in the spring, and planning the project's final form (paper, exhibit, documentary, etc.). Specific expectations for each project/student will be developed in consultation with the course instructor and the student's thesis advisor. It is expected that each student meet at least twice with their thesis advisor during the semester. This course will be graded on a Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory basis.

Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.

AMST 47910 Senior Thesis Writing (3 Credit Hours)

This course is a 3 credit hour independent writing course for students working on a senior thesis. It follows the Senior Thesis Capstone course and is taken in the spring semester with the student's primary thesis advisor. During the semester students complete their research, refine their project's argument and form, and develop a final draft of their thesis. The advisor meets regularly with their thesis students throughout the semester to evaluate each student's progress and review preliminary drafts. Students are expected to finish their final thesis by the first week of April, and to present their thesis at the American Studies Celebration of Undergraduate Research in late April. Final theses will be evaluated by the student's primary advisor as well as their secondary advisor. The student's course grade is based on these two evaluations (which will be given equal weight) as well as their presentation and the progress they demonstrated throughout the semester.

Enrollment is limited to students with a major in American Studies.