AMS 10: Introduction to American Studies
This course is based loosely on the theme of American communities. It takes as its premise two points: that spaces where people live together become sites of cultural change and that these sites can illustrate how individuals shape and are shaped by dominant culture. It also assumes that we can only understand the present culture we live in by examining the past and that navigating between these two sites is part of American Studies. To explore various U.S. communities, we will use an interdisciplinary approach. This means we will enlist a variety of sources, including historical fiction, autobiography, material culture, industrial design, music, architecture, photography, and film. We will use these tools to explore four moments in which community has been defined and contested in the United States. Along the way we will pay special attention to how “community” values and beliefs have been formed, changed, and challenged over time.
AMS 21: Objects and Everyday Life
In this class our goal is to uncover the cultural messages embedded in objects of our everyday lives. We’ll look together to discover the hidden values and beliefs expressed in the material possessions we own and are surrounded by in contemporary U.S. culture. Topics for conversation will include fashion, home decorating, technological devices, arts and crafts, food packaging, collectibles, landscapes, and second-hand collectors & Ebay addicts. You’ll have the opportunity to learn from lectures, read interesting object histories and fictional stories, and make your own connections between course materials and everyday life. If you enjoy reading novels, watching films, thinking critically, and making sense of the hidden cultures around you, this is the course for you.
AMS 125: Corporate Cultures
This class will explore the culture of corporations. Its premise is that corporations have sets of values and beliefs that they practice and promote, and that those values and beliefs impact both those who work within them and those who do not. In other words, corporate culture shapes American culture. This course is designed to explore why and how. It will allow students a good deal of creative freedom in selecting the particular areas they wish to explore. The goal is for students to end the course better able to understand the role that culture plays within the spaces we work, and how that impacts the items produced and the people who produce and purchase them. Specifically, the course will look at corporate culture in four ways: the “popular” culture of corporations (how corporations are viewed in the media and via their own PR machines), the evolution of corporate culture (how specific historical events shaped corporations as they are today), the realities of corporate culture (how specific corporations create cultures today and what impact those cultures have), and the specifics of corporate culture (how actual people you observe create and are created by their workplace’s values and beliefs).
AMS 155: Symbols and Rituals in American Life
Are we really what we eat? In this course we’ll explore what the things we eat and the ways we eat them say about us and our culture. Together we’ll look at the relationship between the practice of eating and the ways we think about identity, community, place, work, control, and foreignness. To do this we’ll get creative, using both readings from books and readings from objects, images, and the built environment. The course will culminate with group exhibitions where you’ll have the chance to pick your own topic, explore it visually and intellectually, and teach us all about an aspect of food culture in the United States.
AMS 158: Technology and the Modern American Body
Have you ever stopped to think about why you work out with fitness machines, eat “power” bars, and can’t leave home without your iPod? In this class we’ll explore the ways in which technology has shaped our ideas of “normal” bodies over the past hundred years. Among the tech-body issues and products we will explore are prosthetics, fitness machines, palms/pods/mini-technologies, cosmetic surgery, birth control, anti-depressants, Viagra, and cyberspace. Join us to take a closer look at these everyday body technologies and learn what they might reveal about the culture we live in. We’ll work through these questions, and others, through stimulating discussions, engaging readings, short papers, and a group research project.
AMS 160: Marketing and US Culture
This is a seminar, designed as a capstone course for seniors who are finishing their coursework in American Studies. Our primary question we will be asking throughout this quarter is “what is marketing?” This is a deceptively easy question—the answer could be “everything” or “nothing,” depending on one’s point of view. We’ll break down marketing, looking at it as a profession, an approach to branding and selling goods, a way of determining community, a key element of democracy, a form of therapy, and a method of early childhood development. We’ll look at how products, people, places (communities, universities), ethnicities, and even religions use forms of marketing to define themselves to themselves and to others. We’ll ask whether there is something uniquely American about marketing, and if so, what that might say about our relationship to products in modern life.
AMS 190a: Senior Thesis Workshop
Course goals and objectives:
- to create a cohesive support group that makes thesis writing possible and enjoyable
- to break down the component parts to writing a thesis into manageable units and to make those units as strong as possible
- to develop a manageable thesis plan and to ensure that you have the knowledge necessary to bring this plan to completion
- to write a clear prospectus that outlines your central question, contribution, and method