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AmCS Multidisciplinary Courses
Approved Spring 2007 Courses
Approved Fall 2006 Courses
Approved Spring 2006 Courses
- L98 4210 AMCS--Tale of Two Cities: Form and Urban Form and Society in Chicago and St. Louis
This interdisciplinary course will explore the changing forms of urban life in Chicago and St. Louis from the early nineteenth century through the present. Drawing on methods and sources employed by historians, geographers, planners, and designers, we will trace the ways urban spaces were produced, used, adapted, destroyed, replaced, and invested with multiple meanings. We will map the dynamic relationship between social life and the built environment, considering thematic links between topics including labor and housing, manufacturing and gender, public space and ethnic identity. Team taught by Margaret Garb (History) and Paula Lupkin (Architecture).
- L98 4231 AMCS--Religion and the Public Sphere in Early America
Introduced by Jürgen Habermas as a mediating structure between private life and the state, the concept of the public sphere seems at first to be antithetical to religion, dependent as it is upon reason, liberalism, and secular time. Consequently, scholars have considered evangelicalism and the public sphere independently. This course challenges this presentist separation in order to ask how religious rhetorics and practices shaped such formative features of the public sphere as privacy, print circulation, literary culture, and oral performance. We begin with Puritan theocracy and the oppositional practices of Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams, followed by the Restoration's challenges to colonial identity and structures of authority that culminated with the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692. Turning to the eighteenth century, we examine how a media-oriented culture of evangelical revivalism transformed the sermon, the conversion narrative, the missionary tract, and other religious genres. Reading Anglo women and African American authors such as Sarah Edwards, Olaudah Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, and John Marrant-alongside more traditional figures like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and Franklin-we examine how religion has functioned historically to produce counterpublics or alternate public spheres for historically oppressed groups. Taught by Sarah Rivett, English and American Culture Studies.
- L98 4261 AMCS--Politics of the Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement resulted in possible the most significant events in American politics in the 20th century-the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Understanding the civil rights movement requires close insight into Congress, the presidency, the Supreme Court, public opinion and the media, interest groups and insurgency, and the party system. In turn, this landmark legislation helped to shape American politics as we experience it today. Taught by Gary Miller, Political Science.
- L98 4289 AMCS--Neighborhoods, Schools, and Social Inequality
A major purpose of the course is to study the research and policy literature related to neighborhoods, schools and the corresponding opportunity structure in urban America. The course will be informed by theoretical models drawn from economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, education and law. A major focus is to gain greater understanding of the experiences and opportunity structure(s) of urban dwellers, in general, and urban youth, in particular. While major emphasis will be placed on data derived from the interface of urban environments and the corresponding institutions within them, the generational experiences of various ethnic groups will complement the course foci. Taught by Carol Camp Yeakey, Education and American Culture Studies, and Director of the Center on Urban Research and Policy.
- L98 466 AMCS--American Indian Societies, Cultures, and Values
This three-unit interdisciplinary course will survey several major themes in the history and modern evolution of American Indian societies, cultures, values, and laws. The course will be divided into several parts, the first of which will examine indigenous societies and cultures before the arrival of Europeans on this continent. Consideration will be given to native worldviews, languages, beliefs, music, and art. The second part of the course will explore the history of American Indians and Indian nations in the United States and their treatment by the U.S. This part will examine the fluctuating policies of the federal government and the evolution of Indian societies during various periods of resistance, survival, and renewal. The third part of the course will examine modern Indian governments, legal systems, and the status of Indian nations as sovereign political entities within the U.S. Subtopics will include the governmental powers of Indian nations over their reservations, treaty-based rights to land, water, wildlife and other natural resources, the cultural and intellectual property rights of Indians, and comparative and international perspectives. The final part of the course will consider the social, political, and economic status of American Indians in the twenty-first century. Particular attention will be given to models of effective leadership, economic development, and community organization in Indian country. Team taught by faculty in Law, Social Work and Arts & Sciences schools.
- L98 476 AMCS--The City in American Arts and Popular Culture
Using visual media-painting, prints and illustration, film and animation-along with studies of vaudeville, and other forms of popular and mass entertainment, this seminar will analyze the presence of the city as a theme that registers a range of cultural attitudes toward the modern. Through close readings of visual and verbal texts, we will consider such issues as the relationship between work and leisure, and between high culture and popular arts. We'll look at critiques and celebrations as well as at how the popular arts help the ordinary man and women to negotiate the challenges of the new mechanized and overscaled urban environment. Taught by Angela Miller, Art History.
- L98 5631 AMCS--Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry: The Agency of Things--A Workshop of Material Culture
"The Agency of Things" will be a semester-long engagement with the ways in which the study of material culture contributes to our understanding of history, aesthetics, and social practice. We will explore problems in fields such as art, architecture, science, technology, the theater, and the history of the book. The workshop will consist of two components: the discussion of a set of core texts in material culture and the presentation of works in progress by Mellon postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and advanced graduate students. The workshop can be taken as a course for credit by advanced undergraduates and graduate students, or it may be audited. Team taught by Profesors Snyder, Wice, Wisinoski, and Zwicker.
Sample Descriptions of Previously-Offered AmCS Multidisciplinary Courses
The Age of Lincoln: America in the 1850s
Iver Bernstein, History; Wayne Fields, English
This seminar is an interdisciplinary examination of the culture and politics of America in the critical watershed decade before the Civil War. The course explores how a range of writers, some avowedly "literary," others more decidely "political," advanced their versions of America in the larger culture, at a time when all things American-democracy, religious destiny and nationality itself-were becoming profoundly problematic. The Lincoln-Douglas debates; Stowe´s "Uncle Tom´s Cabin"; Walt Whitman´s "Leaves of Grass"; Douglass´ Autobiographies; the writings of the Transcendentalists; novels and short stories by Melville, Hawthorne, Williams Wells Brown, Harriet Wilson; pro-slavery screeds, apocalyptic anticipations of the future, Mormon/anti-Mormon and Catholic/anti-Catholic controversies; anxieties over race, gender and sexuality, are some of the materials and concerns to be taken up, in the context of the titanic struggles of the decade: the Conflict and Compromise of 1850, Kansas, Dred Scott, John Brown´s Raids, and the Great Secession Winter.
Race, Ethnicity and Culture: Qualitative Inquiry in Urban Education
Garrett Duncan, Education, African and African-American Studies
Drawing on traditional and recent advances in the field of qualitative studies, this course is the first of a series to examine ethnographic research at the intersecting and overlapping points of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and culture. The emphasis in this course is on how these concepts are constructed both in day-to-day life of real people and educational institutions in urban settings.
A Tale of Two Cities: Urban Form and Society in Chicago and St. Louis
Margaret Garb, History; Paula Lupkin, Architecture
This interdisciplinary course will explore the changing forms of urban life in Chicago and St. Louis from the early nineteenth century through the present. Drawing on methods and sources employed by historians, geographers, planners, and designers, we will trace the ways urban spaces were produced, used, adapted, destroyed, replaced, and invested with multiple meanings. We will map the dynamic relationship between social life and the built environment, considering thematic links between topics including labor and housing, manufacturing and gender, public space and ethnic identity.
Gender, Culture and Identity in America
Andrea Friedman, History; Vivian Pollak, English
This course examines how culture functions as an arena for women´s articulation of identity within a specific historical and national context. We will focus on four women who are important for understanding nineteenth and twentieth century "popular" and "high" culture in America: Charlotte Cushman (theater), Mae West (theater and film), Sylvia Plath (poetry and prose), and Gwendolyn Brooks (poetry and prose). The course will use an interdisciplinary approach and employ feminist theory, including theories of gender performativity. We will explore the ways in which gender intersects with other socially constructed categories of American identity such as race, class, and sexuality, from about 1835-2000.
Topics in American Culture Studies: Mark Twain - Humor and Politics in 19th Century America
Wayne Fields, English/AmCS
Mark Twain's unique status as a writer who has become a cultural icon cannot be explained merely in terms of literary gifts and aesthetic achievement. He is America's best-known author in large part because of his engagement with issues central to our institutions and political practice. The "southwestern" humorists who profoundly influenced his work used humor as a basis for political commentary and cultural criticism, a tradition to which Twain's own satirical treatment of everything from Congress to juries belongs. This course will examine both the literary achievement of Mark Twain and the ways in which his writings provide a critique - built over a lifetime - of American culture, probing the central issues of our politics (domestic and international) and our complicated relationships to one another.
Sample Descriptions of Previously-Offered AmCS Extradepartmental Courses
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Certificate Requirements