Spring 2024 Course Listings – American Studies

AMS 151: America and the World

Dr. Edward Tang
MWF 10:00-10:50

A broad survey of American culture formed by global, national, and regional influences. The first section, “World,” looks at the United States as a product and shaper of international movements, ideas, and cultures from 1500 to the present. The second section, “Nation,” examines the creation of a distinctly American identity between 1790 and 1890 that ultimately incorporated and reflected global issues. The third section, “Regions,” focuses on the South and other regions as contributors to and consequences of national and global interactions. Team taught by the entire AMS faculty, lectures will include topics on film, music, literature, art, sports, and other cultural artifacts. Offered spring semester.

AMS 203-001: Southern Studies

Thomas Carey

MWF 9:00-9:50 am

This discussion-based course introduces students to major texts and interdisciplinary methodologies in the field of Southern Studies. Traversing epochs from before the Civil War until after the Civil Rights Movement, we will scrutinize the interplay between course materials (autobiographies, fictional texts, historical accounts, and films) and major political, cultural, and social forces influencing the region and the nation.

AMS 203-002: Southern Studies

Thomas Carey

MWF 11:00-11:50 am

AMS 207-001: Intro to Latinx Studies

Dr. Michael Innis-Jimenez

TR 11:00-12:15 pm

This course introduces students to the range of issues and analytical approaches that form the foundation of Latinx studies. By tracing the history of the Latinx concept in relation to key elements of life, such as time, space, identity, community, power, language, nation, and rights, students will develop understandings of the particular ways in which Latinx studies takes shape. Focus for the course will be on the largest Latino groups in the U.S.: those of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban and Dominican descent.

AMS 231-001: Contemporary America

Dr. Jeffrey Melton

MWF 1:00-1:50 am

This course explores American contemporary culture (late 1970s to early 2020s). The primary focus will be the 2000s, with the last quarter of the 20th-C providing essential context.

Students—together and individually—will choose themes and topics and determine specific content for most of the course. The course will establish key methods for studying American culture for students to apply to their preferred topics of critical interest. We will consider significant and persistent patterns in American culture and work to synthesize connections over time, contexts, and mediums.

Students will also need to justify why they are allowing the mullet back into the American scene.

AMS 323-001: Into the Wild

Dr. Jeffrey Melton

MWF 11:00-11:50 am

This course will examine our complex and passionate relationship with “nature.” Students will consider the varying ways that nature has been imagined over time and examine the American relationship with nature through the lenses of various forms of creative expression and popular culture. The course will focus on concepts of nature as vital to American cultural identity, forever tied to the American pursuit of happiness.

AMS 341-001: American African Art

Dr. Stacy Morgan

TR 12:30-1:45 pm

This course will examine ways in which African American art has reflected, shaped & challenged such important historical currents as the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the Civil Rights & Black Power movements, and contemporary identity politics. Equally important, the course will evaluate the contributions of selected artists in relation to such key art movements as Neoclassicism, Modernism, Social Realism, Abstraction, Postmodernism & Conceptual Art.

AMS 422-001: Popular Culture in America