Offered every Spring semester. Graduating AmericanStudies majors will complete an independentresearch project under the guidance of a AmericanStudies faculty member of their choosing.

View Available Sections for titles anddescriptions of Special Topics offered thissemester.

Taught in the fall semester, the course isconcerned with the establishment of AmericanLiterature as a school subject. Texts that haveachieved the status of classics of AmericanLiterature, such as Hawthorne's The ScarletLetter, Thoreau's Walden, and Mark Twain's TheAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, are read inthe context of the history and politics of theirachieving this status. Texts traditionallyexcluded from the canon of American literature, inparticular early Hispano- and FrancoAmericantexts, are considered in the context of theirrelative marginality to the project ofestablishing American Literature in the Americanacademy. Other-than-written materials, such asmodern cinematic representations of the period ofexploration and colonization of North America, aswell as British colonial portraits and historypaintings, are studied for how they reflect onclaims for the cultural independence of earlyNorth America. Other-than-North-Americanmaterials, such as late medieval and earlyRenaissance Flemish and French still lifes, aswell as the works of nineteenth-century Europeanromantic poets and prose writers, are sampledfor how they reflect on claims for the exceptionalcharacter of North American culture.

Taught in the spring semester, the course isconcerned with the establishment of AmericanStudies as a curriculum in post-World War IIAmerican colleges and universities. Readingsinclude a variety of written texts, includingthose not traditionally considered literary, aswell as a variety of other-than-writtenmaterials, including popular cultural ones, inaccordance with the original commitment ofAmerican Studies to curricular innovation. Introductions to the modern phenomena of race,gender, sexual orientation, generation, and classin the U.S. culture are included. Acomparatist perspective on the influence ofAmerican culture internationally and a review ofthe international American Studies movement inforeign universities is also introduced.

This course is a survey of African Americanliterature produced from the late 1700s to thepresent. It is designed to introduce students tothe key writers, texts, themes, conventions, andtropes that have shaped the African Americanliterary tradition. Authors studied may includeFrederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, RalphEllison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison andWalter Mosley. Counts for American Studies major,Black Studies minor, Communication and MediaStudies major, and Humanities distribution.

This course surveys African American authors fromthe Harlem Renaissance to the present. It isdesigned to expose students to the writers, texts,themes, and literary conventions that have shapedthe African American literary canon since theHarlem Renaissance. Authors studied in this courseinclude Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, RalphEllison, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and ToniMorrison. Counts for American Studies major, BlackStudies minor, Communication and Media Studiesmajor, and Humanities distribution.

Although this art history course sketches in theart of the early colonies, its main body begins atthe period of the American Revolution. Lecturesand discussion explore the changing significanceof the visual arts in American life and culturethrough the 1930s. Field trips to museums inWashington. This course is cross listed underAmerican Studies.

In this course, we will examine both overt andcovert forms of surveillance, control, andconfinement in historical and contemporarycontexts. We will consider less repressive formsof control, which are often invisible to us evenas they powerfully shape and define our lives, aswell as more repressive forms of state power. Ananthropological lens helps us consider the manyways that prisons and punishment are deeplyentrenched in U.S. culture, social life, and political-economy. We draw upon a variety oftheoretical frameworks, including Foucault,Marxism, critical race theory, disability studies,and others, each of which offers a unique way tomake sense of our course topics. Rather thanapproach the prison as a set of buildings andexperiences over there (apart fromun-incarcerated life), we ask how the samesocial processes that make prisons possible arewoven into many aspects of our social, cultural, political, and economic experiences. We will payparticular attention to the intersections of race,class, and gender with prisons /social controlthroughout U.S. history. Finally, we explore thecreative ways that people critique, resist, imagine, and organize for more liberatoryfutures.

View Available Sections for titles anddescriptions of Special Topics offered thissemester.

The social, economic, and political structure ofColonial America; the background and developmentof the American Revolution; and the interactionofsocial and political life during theConfederation, Constitutional, and Federalistperiods.

Although the course sketches in the art of theearly colonies, its main body begins at theperiodof the American Revolution. Lectures anddiscussion explore the changing significance ofthe visual arts in American life and culturethrough the 1930s. Field trips to museums inWashington.

This course examines the origin and developmentof the African American novel. We will begin withthe earliest novels and conclude with an analysisof contemporary novels by African Americanwriters. We will examine novels from multiplegenres and give careful attention to theintersection of race, gender, class andenvironment in representative novels of the 19th,20th, and 21st centuries.

The study of writing from an environmentalperspective is both an emerging field in literarycriticism and a rich tradition in Americanliterary history. What does it mean to be greenfrom a literary point of view? This courseexplores that question in looking at classic andcontemporary authors of American environmentalwriting, from Henry David Thoreau to Annie Dillardto recent examples of eco-criticism. Though theprimary focus is on nonfiction prose, thetraditional home of nature writing, the coursealso explores environmental perspectives inpoetry, fiction, and film as well ascross-disciplinary connections with the naturalsciences and social sciences.

Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca, Pere Jogues,Rowlandson, Marrant, Wheatley, Bradstreet,Franklin, Jefferson, Brockden Brown, Poe.

Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson.

This course examines key prose fiction of theGilded Age of American literary history, andculture (roughly 1878 - 1901). Careful attentionwill be given to various treatments of BigBusiness,' industrialization, urbanization,regionalism and social inequality in the work ofMark Twain, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, FrancesE.W. Harper, Charles Chestnutt, and others.

This interdisciplinary course examines theliterature and intellectual thought of the HarlemRenaissance, a period in African American historythat covers, roughly, the 1920s and 1930s. Thiscourse will offer more than a cursory introductionto a cultural movement. Instead, students willstudy key figures and texts at length, includingthe works of Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes,Alain Locke and Zora Neale Hurston. By the end ofthe course, students should be able to explain thedifferent conceptualizations of the blackaesthetic that were prevalent during thismovement, and articulate how the confluence ofrace, class and gender have impacted literaryproductions of the period.

The course will concentrate on the novels ofFaulkner as exemplifying modernism.

Although pre-Columbian North America did not seethe rising and falling of states that unifiedpeople through a single language or economy, itis extraordinarily rich in histories. Thearchaeology of North America aims to understandthe diversity of histories lived by peoples fromthe Atlantic to Alaska, from the Plains to theBayou, from nomadic hunting and gathering groupsto large-scale horticulturalists. We will explorethe human experience on the continent north ofMexico from the first footsteps on the continentto the impact of European contact to therelationship between archaeologists and AmericanIndians today. By the end of this course, youwill have an understanding of the history ofarchaeology in North America and the diverseprehistoric Native American cultures. You willhave a good handle on the issues faced by andmethods utilized in reconstructing pastsettlement patterns, subsistence strategies,religious practices and social and politicalorganization.

There's something about Heart Of Darkness --neither the most readable nor the most teachableof books, even of Conrad's books. And there'ssomething about Conrad, too, a native Pole forwhom English was a third language, a thirdlanguage that he evidently spoke so poorly thatwhen conversing with his American literary friendHenry James they both reverted to what was forboth of them a second language: French. Thecourse tries to explore what it is that hasattracted so many white male Anglophoneintellectuals -- and prompted the condemnation ofone African writer, the mockery of one blackrapper, and perhaps, the rivalry of a prominent,brown, novelist -- over the more than hundredyears now since the original publication of Heartof Darkness in 1899 in England in Blackwood'sMagazine. Class texts include Conrad'snovella, Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Tupac'sTUPAcalypse Now, Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!(which contains a prominent allusion to Heart ofDarkness), Chinua Achebe's essays, V.S. Naipul's ABend in the River, a sampling of the blizzard ofjournalistic quotations of the novel's title andof its most famous, four-word, speech, plus sometheorizings of race and gender that might shedlight on why the book has managed to appeal sostrongly to a relatively homogenous cohort ofreaders and adaptors.

View Available Sections for titles anddescriptions of Special Topics offered thissemester.

An agreement between a sponsoring faculty and astudent letting the student study a topic ofinterest not offered at WC. 45 hours are requiredper credit.

This course, required for the major, is offeredevery Fall semester. The course will include areview of American Studies' institutionalbackground, in particular the nativist origins ofAmerican Studies at Yale and the more genteelnationalist consolidations established by thepost-war Harvard American Civilization Program.Specific topics and readings will vary yearly butwill always be chosen from among 1.) those thathelped establish the cross-disciplinaryfoundations of American Studies; 2.) severaltexts, both literary and social-scientific, thathave become iconic in the discipline; and 3.)texts critical of the chauvinist tendenciesinherent in the origins of the discipline.Students in the seminar will be encouraged todevelop independent research projects that canmature into Senior Capstone Experiences. AmericanStudies majors will take the American StudiesSeminar in the first semester of their senioryears to give them a running start into the SeniorCapstone Experience (AMS SCE) that they willcomplete in the spring semester. Because the curriculum for the course will changeyearly, American Studies majors may take AMStwice, and because the focus of the course will beon how to develop and execute research papers, itshould be of interest to students facing a seniorthesis SCE in other humanities and social sciencemajors as well. The course will either be taughtby the Director of American Studies or beteam-taught by the Chair of American Studies andanother American Studies faculty member.

This seminar examines interactions among native,European, and African peoples during the initialcenturies of North American colonization.Situating the American colonies within a broaderAtlantic World and offering a comparativeapproach, the course investigates processes ofcultural conflict, exchange, adaption, andtransformation. One year in introductory sequencein history required.

In this seminar, students will study the works ofToni Morrison, the first African American and thesecond American woman to receive the Nobel Prizein Literature. Students will examine importantmotifs, tropes and themes of Morrison's novels(The Bluest Eye, Beloved and Jazz, to name afew), along with some of her notable criticalessays. By the conclusion of this course,students should be well versed in Morrison'swritings and have a basic understanding ofcontemporary critical practices used to interprether work.

A learning contract is developed prior toenrollment in an internship. Evaluation of studentperformance is completed by the faculty mentorbased on the fulfillment of the contract terms andwritten evaluation by the internship sitesupervisor. Students must work at least 45 hoursfor each internship credit and be enrolled in thecourse prior to beginning work. Graded A-F orPass/Fail.

View Available Sections for titles anddescriptions of Special Topics offered thissemester.