AMERICAN STUDIES AND ETHNICITY
COURSE OFFERINGS
FALL 2008

ARLT 100g: Mexican American Places in Literature and Film
Prof. Laura Pulido
This course explores the ever-changing geography of the Mexican American population in the United States and how it is represented in stories and films. We will focus on a few key places, including the creation of the US southwest, the border, cities, rural areas, and emerging geographies. The course will include a consideration of how space is produced, the role it plays in our lives, and explore the nature of Chicana/o cultural production, in addition of examining
particular places.

AMST 101g: Race and Class in Los Angeles
Prof. George Sanchez
This course examines the importance of race in relation to major political, economic, gender, social, cultural and economic issues in historical and contemporary Los Angeles. Throughout the course, theories will be introduced that are used in the academy to study the development of urban regions, the social construction of race, how power works, and the dynamics of inequality. We will use and question these theories to help us analyze particular topics in Los Angeles, including residential segregation, urban redevelopment, suburbanization, immigration and assimilation, cultural interaction, income inequality, and economic policies. We will examine these topics and how they are shaped and influenced by race, class, and gender.

AMST 200m: Introduction to American Studies and Ethnicity
Prof. John Carlos Rowe
We will study the "new" American Studies, including what it adapts from traditional American Studies and Ethnic Studies, as well as its effort to understand comparatively the many different societies of the Western Hemisphere. The historical focus of the course will be from the 1930s
to the present, which is usually understood as the period in which American Studies develops as an academic discipline, but we will look back as far as the sixteenth century to understand how contact between European colonizers and Amerindian peoples shapes the discipline. The principal focus of the course will be on "theories" of American Studies, including selections from John Carlos Rowe's The New American Studies, Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic, Lisa Lowe's Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics, and essays by several others in a "course reader." We will also consider several creative works as "new" histories and theories, including John Neihardt and Nick Black Elk's Black Elk Speaks (1932), José Clemente Orozco's frescoes at Darmouth College, The Epic of American Civilization (1932-1934), Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men (1980), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), and Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street (1989). Term paper, midterm, final.

AMST 220: The Making of Asian America
Prof. Janelle Wong
This course is a historical, social, and cultural analysis of (East, South, and Southeast) Asians in the United States. Themes examined include immigration, race and gender relations, ethnic culture, community and identity. This class is designed to be an exciting and challenging introduction to the field of Asian American Studies. Studying Asian Americans means that we examine the concept of race and racial dynamics in the United States and the Americas more broadly. Regardless of whether you identify as Asian American or Pacific Islander, you will be challenged to examine how social identities and their constructed meanings have impacted your life and the lives of others. Asian American Studies is an interdisciplinary field that was born out of the 1960’s social movements for social justice. The main objectives of this course are 1) To gain an overview of Asian American and Pacific Islander history, community, and contemporary issues from a range of perspectives and 2) To critically analyze social structures in the U.S. and elsewhere.

AMST 252g Black Social Movements in the U.S.:
Prof. Robin Kelly
This course examines black social movements for freedom, justice, equality, and self-determination. Beginning with Reconstruction, movements include labor, civil rights, radical feminism, socialism, reparations, Black Nationalism, prisoners' rights, and Hip Hop.

AMST 274gm: Exploring Ethnicity through Film
Prof. Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond
This course explores the complexities of race/ethnicity in the Americas through analyses of films. Taking a comparative approach to the cinematic construction of race and ethnicity, we will ask questions including: How is ethnicity shaped? How does one become ethnic? What is at stake in claims and visual representations about ethnicity? What politics surround ethnic representations and performances? How is "common sense" about ethnicity and race constructed in different American contexts?

AMST 285: African American Popular Culture
Prof. Judith Jackson Fossett
This course examines history of popular cultural forms such as literature, music, dance, theatre, and visual arts produced by and about African Americans.

AMST 301: America, the Frontier, and the New West
Prof. Thomas Gustafson
This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of American political, cultural and social life with a particular emphasis on the Western United States as a region. We will explore the history, culture, and contemporary status of the U.S. West as a critical region for American politics and society. Topics to be covered will include the issue of conquest of the region, immigration and racial dynamics, cowboys and other icons of the region, music and culture, politics and the role of the federal government, and the growth of tourism in the West. The course will explore these topics through the various lenses of several disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. This course fulfills General Education requirements under Category 1: Western Cultures and Traditions.

AMST 320: Social Construction of Race and Citizenship
Prof. Ricardo Ramirez
This course provides a comparative perspective on the social construction of race and citizenship. Social, economic and political experiences of selected groups in the U.S. are examined.

AMST 350: Junior Seminar in American Studies and Political Imagination
Prof. David Roman
This course is an advanced study in interdisciplinary theories and methods for analyzing race and ethnicity in the United States, including a comparative study of topics such as inequality, gender, and class.

AMST 378: Asian American History
Prof. Lon Kurashige
This course addresses major themes in Asian American history from the 19th to the late 20th century. A series of questions structure the course. Why, when, and how did various Asian peoples come to the United States and Hawaii? How have Americans perceived them and their descendants? To what extent, have immigrant and American-born Asians been incorporated into mainstream culture and institutions? How have they shaped their own destinies? These questions will be discussed through readings, films, written assignments, and an internet forum with university students in Japan.

AMST 448: Chicano and Latino Literature
Prof. Teresa McKenna
This course is designed to give the student an opportunity to study the commonalities and differences of the literatures produced by Chicano/a and Latino/a writers in the United States. The term Latino/a has been used inclusively to identify a population that many assume is homogenous. This is far from true. In fact, this group of people is characterized by a number of profound differences in history, culture and the literature that has been produced by them. In this course we will examine these differences while at the same time will explore the commonalities between Chicanos, Cuban Americans, and other Latino cultural groups. We will pay special attention to issues concerning the construction of race in these communities and in the United States in general, as well as the complexity of representations of gender and sexuality. All of these issues will intersect in each one of the texts we will read. This course will be conducted as a seminar course. Students will be expected to read and discuss the material each week and will lead at least one discussion during the semester. Students will analyze, read, write and discuss about literature and culture. Each one of these participatory tasks is essential to this course and will be the basis on which the student can be successful at learning in this seminar environment.

AMST 466m: The Psychology of African Americans
Prof. Stan Huey
This course provides an introduction to the study of health, mental health, and social behavior among African Americans. This course will address issues such as: culture, race and contemporary psychological theories; stereotyping and racial bias effects; social problems and African Americans; ethnic disparities in health and mental health; and psychological interventions with African Americans

AMST 492: Research Methods in American Studies and Ethnicity
Prof. Macarena Gómez-Barris
This class allows you the opportunity to conduct your own research, while working closely with Professor Gómez-Barris in a dynamic seminar like environment! Through AMST 49, students will create and finish a research proposal, while also learning methods for completing a senior honors thesis in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. We will work on becoming original scholars towards creating interdisciplinary knowledge around topics of the student’s own choosing, particularly on American society and culture. Past topics have included everything from a focus on popular culture, to state violence, to inter-ethnic relations.

AMST 499: Tales of Murder in America
Prof. Karen Halttunen
This research seminar will focus, not on crimes of murder per se, but on tales of murder in America, the stories that are told about the crime after it has come to light. In our own contemporary consumer culture, we tend to assume that tales of murder get told primarily for their “entertainment value.” But that explanation begs more questions than it answers: why should we find entertainment value in events that generate such fear and suffering? Tales of murder are employed for a wide range of purposes: to address the problem of evil in human nature, explore urgent social issues and advance political agendas, foment unrest or reinforce the status quo, promote agendas of inequality, police the boundaries between the “normal” and the “deviant,” and more. We will spend the first half of this course examining tales of murder in America, dating from the 17th through the 20th century, through assigned readings, and discussing what sorts of cultural work they perform. During the second half of the course, students will write research papers on topics of their own choosing, that address in depth the questions raised in the seminar.