American
Studies Courses
Upcoming Courses: SPRING 2010 FALL 2010 SPRING 2011
Past Courses: FALL 2009 SPRING 2009 SUMMER 2009 FALL 2008 SPRING 2008 FALL 2007 SPRING
2007 FALL 2006 2005-2006
LECTURE COURSES
Introduction to American Studies (AMST W1010; 3 points)
Professors Casey Blake and Maura Spiegel
Monday, Wednesday 11:00–12:15
Discussion section required. An introduction to fundamental themes and debates that span four centuries of American culture. Beginning with Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, we will explore themes such as the question of national character, immigration, assimilation and the color line, opportunity and the pursuit of property, self-making, meritocracy, consumerism, Americans at work and leisure, American religion and spiritual life, educational ideals, and Americans at war. A partial list of authors includes: John Winthrop, Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, R. W. Emerson, H.D. Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln, W.E. B. DuBois, Andrew Carnegie, Horatio Alger, Theodore Roosevelt, John Dewey, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Thorstein Veblen, Nella Larsen, and Gish Jen. Conducted as a lecture/discussion, with weekly sections.
SEMINARS
Equity in Higher Education (AMST W3931; 4 points)
Monday, 4:10–6:00
Professors Roger Lehecka (Lehecka@columbia.edu)
and Andrew Delbanco (ad19@columbia.edu)
In this seminar, we will examine the roles colleges and universities play in American society, the differential access to those institutions available to high school students based on family background and income, ethnicity, and other characteristics, the causes and consequences of this differential access, and some attempts to make the system more equitable. Readings and class meetings will include a study of the following subjects historically and in the 21st century: the wide variety of American institutions of higher education, financial aid policies (locally and nationally), affirmative action, and the role of the high school in helping students attend college. Students in the seminar will be required to spend at least four hours each week as volunteers at the Double Discovery Center (DDC) in addition to completing assigned reading, participating in seminar discussions, and completing written assignments. DDC is an on-campus program that helps New York City high school students who lack many of the resources they need to attend college and to become more successful in gaining admission and finding financial aid. The seminar will integrate its students' first-hand experiences with readings and class discussions.
Application procedures: Students interested in taking this seminar must contact Professor Lehecka (lehecka@columbia.edu) to arrange an interview, preferably in November, but certainly before the beginning of the spring semester.
The New York Intellectuals (AMST W3931; 4 points)
Professor Adam Kirsch (adam.kirsch@hotmail.com)
Wednesday 2:10–4:00
From the 1930s through the 1970s, the group of writers known as the New York Intellectuals--many, though not all of them, first generation American Jews--created a new style of intellectual discourse in America: politically radical but independent of party dogmas, committed to experiment and complexity in literature, and highly personal even when dealing with abstract issues. In this seminar we will read the major works, in several genres, of the leading New York Intellectuals, including Hannah Arendt, Clement Greenberg, Richard Hofstadter, Irving Howe, Delmore Schwartz, Susan Sontag and Lionel Trilling; and discuss some of the central themes and debates that energized their work, including Communism and anti-Communism, the relation of the avant-garde to the mass audience, the promise of American liberalism, and the influence of Jewishness on the intellectual's vocation.
Application procedures: To enroll in this seminar students must attend the first day of class and get approval from the instructor.
Race, Poverty, and American Criminal Justice (AMST W3931; 4 points)
Professor Cathleen Price (cip1@columbia.edu)
Thursday 2:10–4:00
This course will examine the influence of race and poverty in the American system of confronting the challenge of crime. Students will explore some history, including the various purposes of having an organized criminal justice system within a community; the principles behind the manner in which crimes are defined; and the utility of punishment. Our focus will be on the social, political and economic effects of the administration of our criminal justice system, with emphatic examination of the role of conscious and unconscious racism, as well as community biases against the poor. Students will examine the larger implications for a community and culture that are presented by these pernicious features. We will reflect on the fairness of our past and present American system of confronting crime, and consider the possibilities of future reform. Readings will include historical texts, analytical reports, some biography, and a few legal materials. We will also watch documentary films which illuminate the issues and problems.
Application procedures: To enroll in this seminar students must attend the first day of class and get approval from the instructor.
American Culture and Politics in the 1930s (AMST–HIST W4435; 4 points)
Professor Casey Blake (cb460@columbia.edu)
Tuesday 11:00–12:50
A seminar on cultural and political responses to the Great Depression in the United States. Students will read works by historians of the period, as well as examine novels, photographs, films, music, advertisements, and other works of the period. Topics to be considered include: the achievements and limitations of the New Deal; the leftward shift of artists and intellectuals; documentary, social-realist literature, folk music, public art, and theater; the politics of federal arts programs; and the left-liberal “little magazines” of the period
NOTE: Application required. Contact Eleanore Kaye (emk2114@columbia.edu).
Senior Research Seminar (AMST W3990; 4 points)
Professor Casey Blake (cb460@columbia.edu)
Class meets first Thursday 6:10–8:00, individual meetings thereafter
A seminar devoted to the research and writing, under the instructor's supervision, of a substantial paper on a topic in American studies.
NOTE: Open to American Studies seniors only.
GRADUATE COURSE
U.S. Higher Education (ENGL G6631; 4 points)
Professor Andrew Delbanco
Monday 6:10–8:00
Prerequisites: permission of the instructor. This is a course in American intellectual and cultural history focused on issues in higher education. The aim of the course is to deepen historical understanding of the institutions to which today's graduate students plan to devote their professional lives as faculty members and academic citizens. Topics include the origins of the American college and university in the colonial period, the rise of the research university in the 19th century, the invention and evolution of the "Humanities," the principles and practice of admission and financial aid since World War II, the risks and opportunities of today's "on-line" entrepreneurial university, the "pre-history" of the so-called culture wars, and the effects of the current financial crisis on higher education. From time to time, visiting speakers will join us for discussion of these and other issues.
LECTURE COURSES
Foundations of American Literature (ENGL 3267; 3 points)
Professor Andrew Delbanco
Note: This course satisfies one of the core course requirements for American Studies
Introduction to American thought and expression from the first English settlements to the eve of the Civil War. Writers include the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Herman Melville. Themes include the rise of an American national consciousness, the transformation of religion, ideas of nature and democracy, debates over immigration, race, and slavery. The course proceeds through a combination of lecture and discussion—with the aim of deepening our understanding of the origins and development of literature and culture in the United States. In addition to the two lectures, a weekly discussion section is an integral and required part of the course for all students.
SEMINARS
History of the Supreme Court (AMST W3930; 4 points)
Judge Joseph Greenaway
In this course we consider the origins of the Supreme Court, including how the framers of the Constitution envisioned the function and authority of the judicial branch of the federal government; the importance of judicial independence; and the Supreme Court’s role in the development of American democracy. We examine the lives and work of several individual justices to determine the role that perspective and life experiences have on judicial decision making. Issues considered include the evolution of the law governing civil rights, from the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Readings range from the Federalist Papers to biographies of individual justices to relevant Supreme Court cases.
Gender History and American Film (AMST W3930; 4 points)
Professor Hilary Hallett
This seminar explores the history of American gender in the last one hundred years through American film. Motion pictures have played a unique role in shaping and reflecting new ideals and images of womanhood and manhood in the modern United States. Throughout the twentieth century, movies and their stars have had a complex relationship to transformations affecting the lives of American men and women. We will examine motion pictures and movie stars as primary sources that, when juxtaposed with other kinds of historical evidence, indicate changes in the gendering of work, leisure, sexuality, family life, and politics. Additionally, we will consider how the changing institutional history of American film production during the twentieth century connected to the gendered images it sold. For much of the period under review, Hollywood used specific genres to target particular audiences and movies were not afforded the protection of free speech. This made films and movie stars peculiarly reflective of, and vulnerable to, the nation’s changing fantasies and fears regarding sexuality and gender roles. Students will write several short papers and complete a research project on a film of their choice.
Race, Poverty, and American Criminal Justice
Cathleen Price
This course will examine the influence of race and poverty in the American system of confronting the challenge of crime. Students will explore some history, including the various purposes of having an organized criminal justice system within a community; the principles behind the manner in which crimes are defined; and the utility of punishment. Our focus will be on the social, political and economic effects of the administration of our criminal justice system, with emphatic examination of the role of conscious and unconscious racism, as well as community biases against the poor. Students will examine the larger implications for a community and culture that are presented by these pernicious features. We will reflect on the fairness of our past and present American system of confronting crime, and consider the possibilities of future reform. Readings will include historical texts, analytical reports, some biography, and a few legal materials. We will also watch documentary films which illuminate the issues and problems.
Hispanic New York
Roosevelt Montás and Claudio Remeseira
New York City contains a wide spectrum of immigrants from all over Latin America and the Caribbean, including a large number of artists, writers, and intellectuals. Because of this rich diversity, New York is both one of the leading Hispanic cities in the U.S. and a pivotal node of Latin American culture. This seminar is a survey of the cultural heritage that sustains this diversity. It explores the history and the demographic evolution of New York's Latino and Latin American population, its racial, ethnic, and religious make-up, and its long-standing tradition in arts, music, and literature. Readings include fiction, non-fiction, and poetry originally written both in English and Spanish (English translations are provided for students who don't read Spanish). The course also analyzes the connections between New York's Hispanic cultural tradition and the broader U.S. culture, as well as New York's place in the Spanish-American intellectual world. Finally, the seminar addresses some of the most pressing sociological issues related to the immigration flow from Latin America and the increasingly decisive role played by Latinos in New York politics.
Equity in Higher Education
Roger
Lehecka and Andrew Delbanco
In this seminar, we will examine the roles colleges and universities play in American society, the differential access to those institutions available to high school students based on family background and income, ethnicity, and other characteristics, the causes and consequences of this differential access, and some attempts to make the system more equitable. Readings and class meetings will include a study of the following subjects historically and in the 21st century: the wide variety of American institutions of higher education, financial aid policies (locally and nationally), affirmative action, and the role of the high school in helping students attend college. Students in the seminar will be required to spend at least four hours each week as volunteers at the Double Discovery Center (DDC) in addition to completing assigned reading, participating in seminar discussions, and completing written assignments. DDC is an on-campus program that helps New York City high school students who lack many of the resources they need to attend college and to become more successful in gaining admission and finding financial aid. The seminar will integrate its students' first-hand experiences with readings and class discussions. Note: An interview is required for admission to this course.
Past Courses
LECTURE COURSES
US Intellectual History 1865-Present (HIST S3478; 3 points)
Professor Casey Blake
Note: This course satisfies one of the core course requirements for American Studies
This course examines major themes in U.S. intellectual history since the Civil War. Among other topics, we will examine the public role of intellectuals; the modern liberal-progressive tradition and its radical and conservative critics; the uneasy status of religion in a secular culture; cultural radicalism and feminism; critiques of corporate capitalism and consumer culture; the response of intellectuals to hot and cold wars, the Great Depression, and the upheavals of the 1960's.
American Civilization to Civil War (HIST BC1401; 3 points)
Professor Herbert Sloan
Note: This course satisfies one of the core course requirements for American Studies
The major theological and social concerns of 17th-century English colonists; the political and ideological process of defining an American; the social and economic forces that shaped a distinctive national identity; the nature of the regional conflicts that culminated in civil war.
SEMINARS
American Studies Senior Project Colloquium (AMST W3920; 3 points)
Professors Casey Blake; Jenna Feltey Alden, Sarah Klock
This course is for American Studies majors planning to complete senior projects in the spring of their senior year. The course is designed to help students clarify their research agenda, sharpen their questions, and locate their primary and secondary sources. Through class discussions, research trips, and a "workshop" peer review process, each member of the course will enter spring semester with a completed 5-8 page prospectus and bibliography that will provide an excellent foundation for the work of actually writing the senior essay. It will meet every other week at a convenient time for the participants, and it is strongly recommended, though not required, for everyone planning to write a senior essay.
Topics in American Studies: Seminars (AMST W3930)
History of the Supreme Court (4 points)
Judge Joseph Greenaway
In this course we consider the origins of the Supreme Court, including how the framers of the Constitution envisioned the function and authority of the judicial branch of the federal government; the importance of judicial independence; and the Supreme Court’s role in the development of American democracy. We examine the lives and work of several individual justices to determine the role that perspective and life experiences have on judicial decision making. Issues considered include the evolution of the law governing civil rights, from the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Readings range from the Federalist Papers to biographies of individual justices to relevant Supreme Court cases.
Topics in American Studies: Seminars (AMST W3930)
Disability in American Life (4 points)
Professor Rachel Adams
What historical, political, and social factors have given rise to the way we understand disability in contemporary American culture? How have philosophers, policy makers, authors and artists framed the political and ethical debates surrounding the status of disability? How have imaginative representations in literature, film, and the visual arts contributed to and/or challenged those understandings? Given that nearly every one of us will be disabled at some point in life, these questions could not be more important. This course seeks to address them by considering a broad array of texts, including philosophical debates about morality and ethics, history, and literary, filmic, and visual representations.
Topics in American Studies: Seminars (AMST W3930)
A Cultural History of Wall Street (4 points)
Professor Steven Fraser
This course will examine the impact of Wall Street on American life from the time of the American Revolution through the dot.com boom of the 1990s, its collapse at the turn of the millennium, and the current financial meltdown. Class discussions and readings will range widely to explore the ways the Street has been integrated into the country’s economic, political, and cultural affairs, and examine how Americans have handled their fundamental ambivalence about whether the Street has been a force for good or evil. We will focus on some of the principal iconic representations of the Street as they have appeared in cartoons, political tracts, movies, economic treatises, sermons, novels, histories, and other cultural artifacts.
Topics in American Studies: Seminars (AMST W3930)
Gender History and American Film (4 points)
Professor Hilary Hallett
This seminar explores the history of American gender in the last one hundred years through American film. Motion pictures have played a unique role in shaping and reflecting new ideals and images of womanhood and manhood in the modern United States. Throughout the twentieth century, movies and their stars have had a complex relationship to transformations affecting the lives of American men and women. We will examine motion pictures and movie stars as primary sources that, when juxtaposed with other kinds of historical evidence, indicate changes in the gendering of work, leisure, sexuality, family life, and politics. Additionally, we will consider how the changing institutional history of American film production during the twentieth century connected to the gendered images it sold. For much of the period under review, Hollywood used specific genres to target particular audiences and movies were not afforded the protection of free speech. This made films and movie stars peculiarly reflective of, and vulnerable to, the nation’s changing fantasies and fears regarding sexuality and gender roles. Students will write several short papers and complete a research project on a film of their choice.
American Literature and Culture from 1850-Civil War (ENGL W3975; 4 points)
Professor Andrew Delbanco
In this seminar we trace the growing crisis over slavery and disunion as the United States moved toward war against itself. Readings include fiction, poetry, memoirs, political discourse, and journalism by such authors as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriet Jacobs, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Abraham Lincoln, and Herman Melville. We consider the perspectives of slaves and slavemasters, North and South, men and women, committed partisans and neutral observers-- in an effort to understand what was at stake in the rising discord during the decade that preceded Civil War.
LECTURE COURSE
U.S. Intellectual History 1865–Present (HIST S3478; 3 points)
Professor Casey Blake
M & W 1–4:10 p.m.
Note: This course satisfies one of the core course requirements for American Studies
This course examines major themes in U.S. intellectual history since the Civil War. Among other topics, we will examine the public role of intellectuals; the modern liberal-progressive tradition and its radical and conservative critics; the uneasy status of religion in a secular culture; cultural radicalism and feminism; critiques of corporate capitalism and consumer culture; the response of intellectuals to hot and cold wars, the Great Depression, and the upheavals of the 1960's.
LECTURE COURSES
Introduction to American Studies
Casey
Blake and Maura Spiegel
M & W 11–12:15
T 7-10 (screening)
Inquiry into the values and cultural expressions of the people of the United States. Through an examination of literature, history, social thought, and the arts--with a special emphasis on film--we will explore how modern Americans have understood and argued about their country's promise and perils. Lecture, discussion sections, and weekly film screenings.
Location: 517 Hamilton
Foundations of American Literature
Andrew
Delbanco
M & W 10:35–11:50
Introduction to American thought and expression from the first English settlements to the eve of the Civil War. Writers include the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Herman Melville. Themes include the rise of an American national consciousness, the transformation of religion, ideas of nature and democracy, debates over immigration, race, and slavery. The course proceeds through a combination of lecture and discussion—with the aim of deepening our understanding of the origins and development of literature and culture in the United States. In addition to the two lectures, a weekly discussion section is an integral and required part of the course for all students. Click here for the course syllabus.
Location: 516 Hamilton
SEMINAR
COURSES
APPLICATION REQUIRED for all American Studies seminars: SEMINAR
APPLICATION FORM.
Food and American Life
Sarah Phillips and Rachel Adams
W 2:10–4
This course employs a cross-disciplinary perspective to blend examinations of food’s materiality (production and distribution) with its many meanings and functions (social, cultural, and aesthetic). Using a place-based approach, it integrates these broader themes with class visits to New York locations and with a class project on food at Columbia University (where it comes from, who prepares it, where it goes). Specific topics include early American foodways; farm industrialization and agribusiness externalities (environmental costs, labor issues); food processing and branding; gender and ethnicity; the supermarket; race, class, and inequities of access; health and nutrition; food stamps; organic shopping and dining; campus activism; and the overarching cultural significance of food (literary, visual, and filmic representations). Enrolled students must be able to attend 3 or 4 field trips, the dates for which will not be known far in advance, and to attend the public talks of 2 prominent guest speakers.
Location: 402 Hamilton
Equity in Higher Education
Roger
Lehecka and Andrew Delbanco
M 4:10–6
In this seminar, we will examine the roles colleges and universities play in American society, the differential access to those institutions available to high school students based on family background and income, ethnicity, and other characteristics, the causes and consequences of this differential access, and some attempts to make the system more equitable. Readings and class meetings will include a study of the following subjects historically and in the 21st century: the wide variety of American institutions of higher education, financial aid policies (locally and nationally), affirmative action, and the role of the high school in helping students attend college. Students in the seminar will be required to spend at least four hours each week as volunteers at the Double Discovery Center (DDC) in addition to completing assigned reading, participating in seminar discussions, and completing written assignments. DDC is an on-campus program that helps New York City high school students who lack many of the resources they need to attend college and to become more successful in gaining admission and finding financial aid. The seminar will integrate its students' first-hand experiences with readings and class discussions. Note: An interview is required for admission to this course.
Location: 401 Hamilton
Hispanic New York
Roosevelt Montás and Claudio Remeseira
W 4:10–6
New York City contains a wide spectrum of immigrants from all over Latin America and the Caribbean, including a large number of artists, writers, and intellectuals. Because of this rich diversity, New York is both one of the leading Hispanic cities in the U.S. and a pivotal node of Latin American culture. This seminar is a survey of the cultural heritage that sustains this diversity. It explores the history and the demographic evolution of New York's Latino and Latin American population, its racial, ethnic, and religious make-up, and its long-standing tradition in arts, music, and literature. Readings include fiction, non-fiction, and poetry originally written both in English and Spanish (English translations are provided for students who don't read Spanish). The course also analyzes the connections between New York's Hispanic cultural tradition and the broader U.S. culture, as well as New York's place in the Spanish-American intellectual world. Finally, the seminar addresses some of the most pressing sociological issues related to the immigration flow from Latin America and the increasingly decisive role played by Latinos in New York politics.
Location: 401 Hamilton
Race, Poverty, and American Criminal Justice
Cathleen Price
T 4:10–6
This course will examine the influence of race and poverty in the American system of confronting the challenge of crime. Students will explore some history, including the various purposes of having an organized criminal justice system within a community; the principles behind the manner in which crimes are defined; and the utility of punishment. Our focus will be on the social, political and economic effects of the administration of our criminal justice system, with emphatic examination of the role of conscious and unconscious racism, as well as community biases against the poor. Students will examine the larger implications for a community and culture that are presented by these pernicious features. We will reflect on the fairness of our past and present American system of confronting crime, and consider the possibilities of future reform. Readings will include historical texts, analytical reports, some biography, and a few legal materials.
We will also watch documentary films which illuminate the issues and problems.
Senior Research Seminar
John Summers
F 1:10-3
A seminar devoted to the research and writing, under the instructor's supervision, of a substantial paper on a topic in American studies. Class discussions include issues in research, interpretation, and writing. No application required.
Location: 401 Hamilton
LECTURE
COURSES
U.S. Intellectual History 1865-Present (HIST W3478) Gender History & American Film (AMST W3930 sec. 2) Introduction to the Supreme Court (AMST W3930 sec. 1) The Sixties (AMST W3930 sec. 3) America Through Sight and Sound (AMHS 4574) Senior Project Colloquium (AMST W3920) GRADUATE SEMINAR
COURSES American Cultural Criticism (AMST G7020)
AMST
W1010y Introduction to American Studies: Themes in the American Experience
(3
points) Section
1. The Problem of Class in American Literature and Culture Section
2. Hispanic New York Section
3. The Sixties Section
4. Equity in American Higher Education Section
1 SPRING
2008 AMST
W3920x Introduction to American Studies: Colloquium on Theory and Method.
3 points. Section
1. History of the U.S. Supreme Court: Major Cases Section
2. War and American Values Section
3. Twentieth Century United States Intellectual History FALL
2007 Section
1. Equity in American Higher Education Section
2. The First Amendment: Speech, Religion, and the Constitution AMST
W3990y Senior Research Project Seminar. 4 points. Casey
Blake Art
Spiegelman AMST
W3920x Introduction to American Studies: Colloquium on Theory and Method.
3 points. AMST
W3930x Topics in American Studies (Seminar). 4 points.
Section
1. Hispanic New York Section
2. Blacks and Jews ENGL
W3267x Foundations of American Literature I: From the Puritans to the Civil
War. 3 points. HIST
W3478x U.S. Intellectual History 1865 to the Present. 3
points. W3930x
Topics in American Studies (Seminar)
4 points American
Cultural Criticism (C. Blake) W3997x
Supervised Individual Research 1-4 points For students who want to do independent study of topics not
covered by normal program offerings or for senior American Studies majors
working on the Senior Honors Project independent of W3990y. The student
must find a faculty sponsor and work out a plan of study; a copy of this
plan should be submitted to the program director. This link will bring you to a partial list of courses approved
for American Studies for Fall 2005. If you are interested in a course that
is not on this list, do not discount it. Contact the American Studies office
(amd44@columbia.edu) and provide the course
name and description. Spring
2006 W1010y
Introduction to American Studies. 3 points.
(Maura Spiegel) W3931y
Topics in American Studies (Seminar). 4 points.
Section
1. War and American Values (Andrew Delbanco) Section
2. Philip Roth's Roth, who had been in dialogue with Ellison in the early
60s, when they served on a panel together, devotes a recent major novel,
"The Human Stain" (2000) to issues of race, passing, individualism,
and art that constitutes an extended conversation with Ellison's 1952
masterpiece "Invisible Man." Reading these novels together will
show how Ellison and Roth found an alternative to the sacrifices of assimilation
in the notion of appropriation. W3998y
Supervised Individual Research [1 - 4 points] W3990y
Senior Honors Research Project Seminar
[4 points]
Casey Blake
M & W 11-12:15
This course examines major themes in the history of thought and culture in the United States since the late nineteenth century. Among other topics, we will consider the modern liberal-progressive tradition and its radical and conservative critics; the uneasy status of religion in a secular intellectual culture; cultural radicalism and feminism; consumer culture and its interpreters; the implications of American ethno-racial pluralism for national identity; the responses of intellectuals to hot and cold wars, the Great Depression, and the upheavals of the 1960s; and the contemporary “culture wars.”
In addition, course readings and lectures will introduce students to ongoing debates about the public role and responsibilities of intellectuals as a distinct social group. American intellectuals have long struggled to define their vocation as inquirers and critics. In the process, they have sought to understand how that vocation might best respond to the demands of a broader public sphere. Their efforts to balance intellectual integrity with civic engagement provide an opportunity to reflect on your own experiences as students and interpreters of the United States and its culture.
SEMINAR
COURSES
APPLICATION REQUIRED for all American Studies seminars. SEMINAR
APPLICATION FORM.
Although the seminar application deadline has passed, applications will still be considered.
Hilary Hallett
Tu 2:10–4; M 8–10 (screening)
This seminar explores the history of American gender in the last one hundred years through American film. Motion pictures have played a unique role in shaping and
reflecting new ideals and images of womanhood and manhood in the modern United States. Throughout the twentieth century, movies and their stars have borne a complex relationship to transformations affecting the lives of American men and women. We will examine motion pictures and movie stars as primary sources that, when juxtaposed with other kinds of historical evidence, indicate changes in the gendering of work, leisure, sexuality, family life, and politics. Additionally, we will consider how the changing institutional history of American film production during the twentieth century connected to the gendered images it sold. For much of the period under review, Hollywood used specific genres to target particular audiences and movies were not afforded the protection of free speech. This made films and movie stars peculiarly reflective of, and vulnerable to, the nation’s changing fantasies and fears regarding sexuality and gender roles. Students will write several short papers and complete a research project on a film of their choice. Please note: A weekly class screening of a film is required for seminarians.
Hon. Joseph Greenaway, US District Judge
W 4:10–6
In this course we will consider the origins of the Supreme Court, including how the framers of the Constitution envisioned the function and authority of the judicial branch of the federal government; the importance of judicial independence; and the Supreme Court’s role in the development of American democracy. We will examine the lives and work of several individual justices to determine the role that perspective and life experiences have on judicial decision making. Issues to be considered include the evolution of the law governing civil rights, from the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Readings will range from the Federalist Papers to biographies of individual justices to relevant Supreme Court cases.
Todd Gitlin
M 2:10–4, M 6–8 (screening)
"The Sixties" have dwindled into reputation, slogan, and myth. But were they anything else in the first place? The effort in this seminar will be to recover that period both from the outside (via history, analyses of demographic, social, political, and economic trends) and the inside (personal reminiscence, music, film, and television), with attention to penetrating accounts from movements, counter-movements, and establishment alike. Among the topics: civil rights, affluence, television, youth culture, celebrity, the university boom, Vietnam, the Cold War, party politics, feminism, and gays. Film and TV footage will supplement class discussion. Please note: A weekly class screening of a film is required for seminarians.
Steven Mintz
Th 2:10–4 pm
This course uses audio and visual evidence to explore major themes in American history from early colonization through Reconstruction. Major themes include visual perceptions of the early American landscape and its transformation; contested representations of African Americans, Native Americans, and Mexicans as expressed through visual imagery; shifting attitudes toward childhood, death, the family, and gender as revealed through art and material artifacts; the visual history of slavery, the sectional crisis, the Civil War, and Reconstruction; the evolution of African American, Irish, and Mexican American musical traditions to 1877 and what their songs reveal about these peoples’ lives and values; and the construction, transmission, and contestation of historical memory in popular audio and visual media.
No application necessary. Interested students should attend the first day of class and the roster will be determined from there.
Rachel Adams, Tamara Mann, Penny Vlagopoulos
This 1-point course is for American Studies majors planning to complete senior projects in the spring of 2009. The course is designed to help students clarify their research agenda, sharpen their questions, and locate their primary and secondary sources. Through class discussions, research trips, and a "workshop" peer review process, each member of the course will enter spring semester with a completed 5-8 page prospectus and bibliography that will provide an excellent foundation for the work of actually writing the senior
essay. The colloquium will meet every other week at a convenient time for the
participants, and it is strongly recommended, though not required, for everyone planning to write a senior essay.
APPLICATION REQUIRED for all American Studies seminars. SEMINAR
APPLICATION FORM.
Although the seminar application deadline has passed, applications will still be considered.
Casey Blake and Ross Posnock
W 4:10-6
A graduate colloquium on the history of American cultural criticism since the early nineteenth century. Themes to be considered include the search for indigenous forms of artistic expression appropriate to a democratic society; the consequences of urbanism and corporate industrialization for American culture and values; the implications of ethno-racial diversity for American culture and national identity; tensions between “popular” or “mass” culture, the avant-garde, and “high” culture; the shift from a modernist to a postmodernist sensibility; and the public role of the critic in the United States.
Cultural criticism is a difficult genre to define with precision, since it often overlaps with autobiography, journalism, and academic scholarship. Much of the cultural criticism written in the last century has concerned itself with new developments in the arts, literature, and the media. The best cultural critics have refused to examine such trends in isolation; instead, they have always tried to interpret “culture” in relation to “society” or “politics,” exploring the connections between changing forms of expression and American social structure, power relations, and ideology. As a result, cultural criticism often entails social criticism--that is to say a critical inquiry into American social institutions. Moreover, American cultural critics have long sought to identify the values and meanings that define their country’s moral identity. They have written explicitly as public moralists, and their work has illuminated our understanding
of the possibilities and limitations of the nation’s civic and moral traditions. Critics have called upon their fellow citizens to reconsider their most cherished beliefs or to live up to values they profess to hold dear. The cultural criticism they have written has thus served as a spur to self-criticism, both for its authors and for American culture as a whole.
Andrew Delbanco & Maura Spiegel
M & W 1:10-2:25
Discussion
Section required
An introduction to fundamental themes and debates that span four centuries
of American culture. Beginning with Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy
in America, we will explore themes such as the question of national
character, immigration, assimilation and the color line, opportunity and
the pursuit of property, self-making, meritocracy, consumerism, Americans
at work and leisure, American religion and spiritual life, educational ideals,
and Americans at war. A partial list of authors includes: John Winthrop,
Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, R.
W. Emerson, H.D. Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln, W.E. B. DuBois, Andrew Carnegie,
Horatio Alger, Theodore Roosevelt, John Dewey, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Upton
Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Thorstein Veblen, Nella Larsen, and Gish Jen.
Conducted as a lecture/discussion, with weekly sections.
ENGL W4593y
The American Novel from the Revolution to the Civil War
(3
points)
Ezra Tawil
Tu & Th 1:10-2:25
Discussion
Section required
"The American Novel, from the Revolution to the Civil War." A
history of the novel form in America from the period of the Revolution to
the crisis of the Civil War. We'll look at a broad range of novels including
various sub-genres like the gothic novel, seduction novel, historical fiction,
frontier novel, and novel of reform. The course begins with the first spate
of novels following the Revolution (when American literature charged itself
with the task of writing a new national culture into existence), moves through
the period of the 1820s (when historical fiction turned to the past in order
to resolve crises in the present), and culminates the decade of the 1850s
(when American Literature attained its capital L and produced the first
acknowledged American masterworks). Throughout the course, we will examine
the formal and stylistic properties of the American novel, while keeping
our focus on the novel's relationship to historical events surrounding national
formation, class conflict, slavery, and the "Indian problem."
Readings will include novels by Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet
Beecher Stowe, James Fenimore Cooper, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Charles
Brockden Brown, Hannah Webster Foster, and Susannah Rowson.
Important note: In addition to two lectures per week, all students are required
to enroll in one of two discussion sections. Section times are to be scheduled,
but will likely take place on Fridays.
APPLICATION REQUIRED for all American Studies seminars. SEMINAR
APPLICATION FORM.
Ross Posnock
W 4:10-6
Roosevelt Montas & Claudio Remeseira
New
York City contains a wide spectrum of immigrants from all over Latin America
and the Caribbean, including a large number of artists, writers, and intellectuals.
Because of this rich diversity, New York is both one of the leading Hispanic
cities in the U.S. and a pivotal node of Latin American culture. This
seminar is a survey of the cultural heritage that sustains this diversity.
It explores the history and the demographic evolution of New York's Latino
and Latin American population, its racial, ethnic, and religious make-up,
and its long-standing tradition in arts, music, and literature. Readings
include fiction, non-fiction, and poetry originally written both in English
and Spanish (English translations are provided for students who don't
read Spanish). The course also analyzes the connections between New York's
Hispanic cultural tradition and the broader U.S. culture, as well as New
York's place in the Spanish-American intellectual world. Finally, the
seminar addresses some of the most pressing sociological issues related
to the immigration flow from Latin America and the increasingly decisive
role played by Latinos in New York politics.
Todd Gitlin
"The Sixties"
have dwindled into reputation, slogan, and myth. But were they anything
else in the first place? The effort in this seminar will be to recover
that period both from the outside (via history, analyses of demographic,
social, political, and economic trends) and the inside (personal reminiscence,
music, film, and television), with attention to penetrating accounts from
movements, counter-movements, and establishment alike. Among the topics:
civil rights, affluence, television, youth culture, celebrity, the university
boom, Vietnam, the Cold War, party politics, feminism, and gays. Film
and TV footage will supplement class discussion.
Roger Lehecka & Andrew Delbanco
In this seminar, we will examine the roles colleges and universities play
in American society, the differential access to those institutions available
to high school students based on family background and income, ethnicity,
and other characteristics, the causes and consequences of this differential
access, and some attempts to make the system more equitable. Readings
and class meetings will include a study of the following subjects historically
and in the 21st century: the wide variety of American institutions of
higher education, financial aid policies (locally and nationally), affirmative
action, and the role of the high school in helping students attend college.
Students in the seminar will be required to spend at least four hours
each week as volunteers at the Double Discovery Center (DDC) in addition
to completing assigned reading, participating in seminar discussions,
and completing written assignments. DDC is an on-campus program that helps
New York City high school students who lack many of the resources they
need to attend college and to become more successful in gaining admission
and finding financial aid. The seminar will integrate its students' first-hand
experiences with readings and class discussions.
AMST W3990y SENIOR RESEARCH PROJECT SEMINAR (4 points)
Casey Blake
M 11-12:50
A seminar devoted to the
research and writing, under the instructor's supervision, of a substantial
paper on a topic in American studies. Class discussions include issues
in research, interpretation, and writing.
Section
2
Roosevelt Montas
M 4:10-6
A seminar devoted to the
research and writing, under the instructor's supervision, of a substantial
paper on a topic in American studies. Class discussions include issues
in research, interpretation, and writing.
The above link will take you to a partial list of
courses approved for American Studies for Spring 2008. BUT If you
are interested in a course that is not on this list, do not discount it.
Contact the American Studies office (amd44@columbia.edu) and provide the course
name and description, and the course will be reviewed for possible approval.
Fall 2007
— LECTURE
COURSES
Rachel Adams
Tu 2:10-4
Application required. SEMINAR
APPLICATION FORM.
The Honorable Judge Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr.,
United States District Court, District of New Jersey
W 4:10-6
Andrew Delbanco
In this seminar,
we will consider the politics, experience, and aftermath of war—focusing
on how Americans have debated the morality of war, justified or protested
the act of warmaking, and come
to terms with the pain and sacrifice war brings. Beginning with the Revolutionary
War, we will observe the emergence of heroes and villains and the post-war
debates over what the nation owes its veterans. We will study how the
stated aims of the great war of the nineteenth-century, the Civil War,
shifted on both sides of the conflict, and, in the twentieth century,
how two world wars and the Vietnam War shocked and transformed American
society.
Shannan Clark
This seminar examines
major currents of thought on politics, society, and culture in the United
States during the twentieth century. It surveys authors from across the
ideological spectrum, with consideration given to the development of the
modern American liberal tradition as well as to both radical and conservative
critiques of liberalism. Specific topics include the implications of American
ethno-racial pluralism for national identity; the emergence of feminism;
consumer culture and its various interpretations; the ambiguous role of
religion in a secular intellectual culture; the responses of intellectuals
to wars and other national crises, such as the Great Depression and the
upheavals of the 1960s; and the evolution of thinking about work and class.
Note: This class meets 1 AMST core requirement or 1 AMST seminar
requirement (but not both)
— RELATED COURSES
The above link will take you to a partial list of
courses approved for American Studies for Fall 2007. BUT If you
are interested in a course that is not on this list, do not discount it.
Contact the American Studies office (amd44@columbia.edu) and provide the course
name and description, and the course will be reviewed for possible approval.
2006-2007
— LECTURE
COURSES
AMST W1010y Introduction to American Studies: Major Themes in the American
Experience. 3 points.
Andrew Delbanco and Maura Spiegel
M & W 1:10-2:25
ENGL W3268y
Foundations of American Literature II: American Literature from Civil War
to 1945. 3 points.
Amanda Claybaugh
Tu & Th 2:40-3:55
Application required. SEMINAR
APPLICATION FORM.
Andrew Delbanco and
Roger Lehecka
M 4:10-6
In this seminar we will examine the roles colleges and universities play
in American society; the differential access to those institutions available
to high school students based on family background and income, ethnicity,
and other characteristics; the causes and consequences of this differential
access; and some attempts to make the system more equitable. Readings
and class meetings will include a study of the following subjects historically
and in the 21st century: the wide variety of American institutions of
higher education; financial aid policies, locally and nationally; affirmative
action; the role of the high school in helping students attend college,
with special attention to how this works in New York City. Students in
the seminar will be required to spend at least four hours each week as
volunteers at the East Harlem Tutorial Program (EHTP) in addition to completing
assigned reading, participating in seminar discussions and completing
written assignments. EHTP is trying to help New York City high school
students who lack many of the resources they need to attend college become
more successful in gaining admission and finding financial aid. The seminar
will integrate its students' first-hand experience with readings and class
discussions.
Robert Amdur
The First Amendment
has generated a larger scholarly literature, a larger popular literature,
and more discussion at all levels of society than any other part of the
Constitution. This seminar will examine the history and philosophical
foundations of the speech and religion clauses, along with the Supreme
Court's most important First Amendment decisions. How has the Court balanced
the rights protected by the First Amendment against values such as public
order, morality, equality, and national security?
Section
3. American Cultural Criticism
Casey Blake
Examines major interpreters
of American culture from the late nineteenth century to the present. Themes
include the search for indigenous forms of artistic expression; rise of
a consumer culture; religious critics of secularism; ethno-racial pluralism
and cosmopolitanism; "mass" culture, the avant-garde, and "high"
culture; shift from modernism to postmodernism; and the public role of
the critic.
F 11-12:50
A seminar devoted to the research
and writing, under the instructor's supervision, of a substantial paper
on a topic in American studies. Class discussions of issues in research,
interpretation, and writing.
AMST G4120y Comics Marching into the Canon. 3 points.
Th 6:10-8
There has been a very recent
sea-change in how comics are perceived in America, from the "crime
against American children" decried by educators at the beginning of
the 20th century through the comic book burnings and Senate Hearings of
the early 1950s to the current celebration of the form as museum art, as
the new Literature, as the site of academic inquiry (like, say, this seminar).
It's a Faustian Deal, dragging comics out of their gutter and into the salon.
Using the Masters of American Comics shows as a point of departure and as
a point for contention, this course will study the 15 cartoonists exhibited
in their historical context, as well as analyzing the work of other artists
in their extended circles. (Despite the sociological and historical "through-line"
of this seminar, primary focus will be placed on the aesthetic and formal
achievements of these artists.)
Application procedure: E-mail Angela Darling (amd44@columbia.edu)
with the subject line "Comics Seminar" by Friday, November 10,
and include your name, year of study, school, major / department, relevant
course background, and reasons for wanting to take the course.
Art Spiegelman is one of the world’s best-known graphic
artists and the recipient of multiple awards and fellowships, including
a Guggenheim fellowship and a nomination for the National Book Critics Circle
Award. In 1992, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his renowned comic-book Maus
A Survivor’s Tale, which recasts the Holocaust as an animal fable.
With his wife Françoise Mouly, he co-founded the acclaimed avant-garde
comics magazine RAW and continues a distinguished career publishing in The
New Yorker and many other periodicals. His latest book is In the Shadow
of No Towers.
Fall 2006
Rachel Adams
Tu 2:10-4
Application required. APPLICATION
FORM.
Roosevelt Montas and
Claudio Remeseira
Ross Posnock
We will be reading works
by Mailer, Bellow, Malamud, Ellison, Roth, Baraka, Baldwin, Hannah Arendt,
Frantz Fanon, and others that dramatize the postwar literary representation
of blacks and Jews. The fraught, tension filled relation between "the
most unalike of America's historic undesirables," as Roth says in
The Human Stain, is the source of compelling literature rich in sociological,
cultural and psychoanalytic implications.
Andrew Delbanco
M & W 10:35-11:50
Casey Blake
Tu & Th 1:10-2:25
In addition, course
readings and lectures will introduce students to ongoing debates about the
public role and responsibilities of intellectuals as a distinct social group.
American intellectuals have long struggled to define their vocation as inquirers
and critics. In the process, they have sought to understand how that vocation
might best respond to the demands of a broader public sphere. Their efforts
to balance intellectual integrity with civic engagement provide an opportunity
to reflect on your own experiences as students and interpreters of the United
States and its culture.
Application
required.
In our contemporary moment of globalization, it
is sometimes said that national boundaries are eroding.
However, a basic assumption of this course is that borders have
become more, rather than less, important in our time.
This is particularly true of
Fall 2005
Application required.
This course will examine Roth
in the context of major developments in American culture starting in the
late 1950s when he published hsi first book "Goodbye,
We will read all of the texts above as well as W. T. Lhamon's "Deliberate
Speed," a synoptic cultural history of the 50s.
Related Courses
Spring
2006
The above link will take you to a list of Spring 2006 courses,
drawn from a wide variety of departments and programs, that have been approved
for American Studies majors and concentrators; the list also specifies which
American Studies requirements such courses fulfill.