Allen Ginsberg, 1985
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ABOUT AMERICAN STUDIES
Students may choose American Studies as an undergraduate major or a concentration. A minimum of 30 points is required to complete the major, 21 points to complete the concentration. Coursework for both consists of a combination of required courses (see degree requirements below) and an individualized program of study.
Although students generally declare their major or concentration in the spring of their sophomore year, you may want to take electives early on in areas that interest you but that will later connect with the American Studies major.
Introduction to American Studies (AMST W1010), required of all majors and concentrators and typically taken during sophomore year, is the first class that all potential majors should take. This course examines, through exploration of various genres of cultural expression, how Americans have understood and argued about American national identity.
Each student is assigned an academic advisor who monitors his or her progress through graduation. Advisors meet with their advisees at least twice a semester.
We encourage our students to study abroad and to take courses that examine America in an international context. With careful planning, you can both study abroad and fulfill all the American Studies requirements. You should consult with your advisor early on about how to integrate study abroad into your program, and you should keep in mind that syllabi from courses taken abroad must be reviewed by your advisor to determine whether they count toward American Studies requirements. For more information about study abroad programs, click here.
Any grade lower than a C minus cannot be counted towards a degree in American Studies. A grade of C minus can be counted only with the approval of the Director or Associate Director of the Center. Pass/fail courses will not count toward the major unless the course was taken before the student declared the major.
Students with a 3.6 minimum GPA in the major and an outstanding senior project will be considered for honors. By College policy, no more than 10% of majors are permitted to receive honors in a given year.
A major in American Studies can open doors to many careers as well as to graduate or professional school. A number of our students, for example, develop a thematic concentration centered on the media that can take them into journalism, publishing, and other related areas. An interdisciplinary major like American Studies, in combination with your general education through the Columbia Core Curriculum, can also lead to opportunities in non-profit organizations or public affairs. Over the last few years, our majors have gone on to graduate school, law and medical school, business, government and public-service organizations, as well as other post-college programs such as Teach-for-America. Click here to see what our alumni are doing now.
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DEGREE REQUIREMENTS
A minimum of 30 points is required to complete the major:
3 points: Introduction to American Studies: Major Themes in the American Experience (W1010)
8 points: Two Seminars in American Studies
6 points: Two American Studies Core courses. The following two courses are ordinarily required:
- Foundations of American Literature I: American Literature from the Puritans to the Civil War (ENGL W3267)
- U.S. Intellectual History, 1865-Present (HIST W3478)
9 points: Three courses drawn from at least two departments, one of which must be History.
4 points: Senior Research Project
The final requirement for the major in American Studies is completion of a Senior Essay, to be written in the spring of senior year. Alternatively, students may fulfill this requirement by taking an additional seminar where a major paper is required or by writing an independent essay under the supervision of a faculty member. Seniors who wish to do a senior research project are required to take the Senior Project Colloquium in the fall of the senior year.
Keep track of your courses and points - download the Major Planner (Microsoft Word).
A minimum of 21 points is required to complete the concentration:
3 points: Introduction to American Studies: Major Themes in the American Experience (W1010)
6 points: Two American Studies Core courses. The following two courses are ordinarily required:
- Foundations of American Literature I: American Literature from the Puritans to the Civil War (ENGL W3267)
- U.S. Intellectual History, 1865-Present (HIST W3478)
12 points: Four additional courses drawn from at least two departments, one of which must be History.
Keep track of your courses and points with the Concentration Planner (Class of 2011 and thereafter)
Seminars
Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, & Philip Roth
Professor Ross Posnock
Tuesday, 4:10-6:00 PM
These three major post-war American novelists are each challenging and
transgressive in their own way; they comprise a natural
grouping given their common preoccupations that grew out of high
personal regard. Bellow and Ellison were close friends and Roth was a
friend of Bellow's and a great admirer of Ellison's. Indeed, Roth's
The Human Stain is a sustained meditation upon and homage to Ellison's
Invisible Man. These shared concerns include a resistance to the
pressure to be representative of one's racial or ethnic group,
skepticism of the political and ideological uses of art, and
fascination with how an ethnic or racial outsider makes his way into
WASP American high culture. One does so by a process of initiation
that proceeds less by the sacrifice demanded by
assimilation and more by playing the "game" of "appropriation" in
which culture is conceived as public, open and accessible to anyone,
and culture goods are available to be enjoyed and re-worked for one's
own creative purposes. To apply: e-mail Professor Ross Posnock (rp2045@columbia.edu) with the subject heading "Bellow, Ellison, and Roth seminar." In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course. See ENGL W3715.
Equity in Higher Education
Professor Roger Lehecka
Wednesday, 11:00 AM-12:50 PM
In this seminar we examine the roles colleges and universities play in American society; the differential
access high school students have to college based on family background and income, ethnicity, and
other characteristics; the causes and consequences of this differential access; and some attempts to
make access more equitable. Readings and class meetings cover the following subjects historically and
in the 21st century: the variety of American institutions of higher education; admission and financial
aid policies at selective and less selective, private and public, colleges; affirmative action and race-
conscious admissions; what “merit” means in college admissions; and the role of the high school in
helping students attend college. Students in the seminar are 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
needed to succeed in college and to be successful in gaining admission and finding financial aid. The
seminar integrates students' first-hand experiences with readings and class discussions. Admission
by interview only. Please email Professor Lehecka (lehecka@columbia.edu) to set up an interview by April 10th.
Museums, Memory and Public Culture
Professor Valerie Paley
Thursday, 4:10-6:00 PM
Americans are living through a boom in museum attendance and museum construction that recalls the creation of cultural institutions at the end of the nineteenth century. Believing that culture could enrich the nation’s cities as it had the great European capitals, American civic leaders created museums that would soon rank among the best in the world. This seminar will explore the transformation of cultural institutions in the United States and consider the continuing contemporary debates on the practices and public role of museums. How do museums—both large and small—serve the needs of the local communities in which they are located and the private interests of their founders? How have history museums in particular shaped debates about public memory and national heritage? In addition to exploring the historical evolution of such institutions, we will examine the theory and practice of exhibitions and education in museums, with an emphasis on institutions in New York. The seminar will host conversations with speakers representing different aspects of public culture and feature a hands-on analysis of a current exhibition redesign plan at a local museum. Attend first class for instructor permission.
Freedom and Citizenship In the United States
Professor Roosevelt Montás
Monday, 4:10-6:00 PM
Freedom and Citizenship in the United States will examine the historical development of ideas of freedom and citizenship in the American context. The course will focus exclusively on primary texts, and the order
of readings will be roughly chronological. The first weeks of the course will be dedicated to reading and
discussing foundational texts in Western political history that frame the 17th century founding of the American
colonies. The rest of the course will situate the American case in this historical development, beginning with
an examination of the Puritan migration to New England, and continuing with the study of major documents
surrounding the Revolution, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, and
contemporary debates about the meaning of American citizenship. In addition to the classroom requirements,
students will be expected to volunteer a minimum of four hours a week with the Double Discovery Center
(DDC), in connection to the Freedom and Citizenship Project, which DDC conducts in partnership with the
American Studies Program. To apply, submit your application to Prof. Montás at rm63@columbia.edu no
later than April 10, 2013.
The Supreme Court in American History
Professor Benjamin Rosenberg
Monday 6:10-8:00 PM
As Tocqueville observed “scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.” As a consequence, the Supreme Court of the United States has
been at the center of many of the most significant developments in American history. It has played significant roles in, for example, (1) the creation of the young republic and the achievement of a balance between states and the federal government, (2) race relations including the institution of slavery, (3) the rights of workers, (4) civil rights, and (5) elections. This seminar will explore the Supreme Court’s role in United States history by examining its decisions on key issues throughout its history. Attend first class for instructor permission.
U.S. Intellectual History
Professor Casey Blake
Monday and Wednesday 2:40-3:55 PM
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 ina 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 1960s. As part of the course, students will also attend the "Armory Show at 100" exhibition at the New York Historical Society. This course is required for American Studies majors and concentrators. See HIST W3478.
American Studies Senior Project Colloquium
Professor Casey Blake
This course is for American studies majors planning to complete senior projects in the spring. The course is designed to help students clarify their research agenda, sharpen their questions, and locate their primary and secondary sources. Through class discussions 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 is required for everyone planning to do a senior research project.This course is only open to American Studies Senior Majors.
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Seminars
Race, Poverty and American Criminal Justice
Professor Cathleen Price
Thursday, 11:00 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
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.
Food and American Culture
Professor Rachel Adams
Wednesday, 2:10-4:00 p.m.
Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are," wrote the 19th century French epicure Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. While this may seem like a straightforward equation, it is anything but. This course investigates Brillat-Savarin´s dictum by examining the varied ways food is produced, prepared, and consumed in the United States. Beginning with what seem to be highly individualized and embodied questions of taste, we will expand outward to consider how food shapes personal, regional, national, and global identities. We will treat cookbooks and recipes, diet guides, works of art, and food television as cultural texts that can provide insight into the meaning of food and eating. We will also study issues of hunger, poverty, and food justice, the gendering of food preparation and consumption, questions of eating and body image, and restaurant culture. In addition to reading and writing assignments, this course will also include an experiential component, which will give students opportunities to volunteer in a soup kitchen or food pantry, work on an urban farm, and enjoy some of the culinary delights of New York City.
A Cultural History of Wall Street
Professor Steven Fraser
Wednesday, 11:00 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
This seminar examines the impact of Wall Street on American life from the American Revolution through the dot.com boom of the 1990s, its collapse at the turn of the millennium, and the current financial meltdown. Discussions and readings explore the ways the Street has been integrated into the country’s economic, political, and cultural life, and examine how Americans have handled their ambivalence about whether the Street has been a force for good or evil. We 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.
Languages of America
Professor John McWhorter
Tuesday, 11:00 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
The United States, often thought of as a nation where since its origins all foreign languages spoken by immigrants have withered away upon exposure to English, has actually always harbored a complex mixture of languages and dialects. This course will examine the history of language in America, including the robust role of German in colonial times and beyond (once as commonly heard in America as Spanish); creole languages such as Gullah, Louisiana Creole French and Hawaiian �Pidgin� English; Black English including its history and present; Native American languages and modern efforts to preserve them; and the history of Asian languages in modern America, including Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Hmong. The course also serves, in ancillary fashion, as an introduction to the variety among languages of the world and to a scientific perspective on human language.
Immigrant New York
Professor Rebecca Kobrin
Thursday, 2:10-4:00 p.m.
For the past century and a half, New York City has been the first home of millions of
immigrants to the United States. This course will compare immigrants' encounter with New
York at the dawn of the twentieth century with contemporary issues, organizations, and
debates shaping immigrant life in New York City. As a service learning course, each
student will be required to work 2-4 hours/week in the Riverside Language Center or
programs for immigrants run by Community Impact.
Hollywood´s Countercultural Cinema: Movies of the 1970s
Professor
Maura Spiegel
Monday, 2:10-4:00 p.m.
Dominated by outcasts and anti-heroes, movies of the 1970s freshly engaged the conversation about what American society is and should be. A new generation of maverick American auteurs (including Coppola, Altman, Kubrick, Ashby, Lumet, Pakula and Scorcese) saved Hollywood from financial collapse by channeling and giving voice to the frenetic activities of the previous decade -while also speaking directly into the moment. They tackled previously taboo subjects; challenged traditional narrative expectations; revised Classic Hollywood film genres, and engaged race and gender in new ways. Originally considered a "lost generation," the filmmakers of the 1970s are now recognized as having produced a turning point in American filmmaking. Through close-readings of some of the decade´s greatest works, and through readings in film, cultural and social theory, this course will examine the role of movies in American discourse. What do movies do for and to us? What prisms cloud the windows they offer on a by-gone era? What does the current viewer "hear" in film from the past that wasn´t heard then? Can we speak of different "styles of heroism" in film eras? Do current movies (and HBO series) pursue different strategies for engaging the present? How has the viewer changed, and how is the context of viewing different today?
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Lecture Course
Foundations of American Literature
Professor Andrew Delbanco
Mon. & Wed. 10:10-11-25 am; An additional hour of discussion section to be arranged.
Note: This course counts as an American Studies core course.
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. Required for American Studies majors.
The American Graphic Novel
Jeremy Dauber with Paul Levitz, former president of DC Comics
Tues. & Thurs. 11:40-12:55
The course seeks to combine literary and historical approaches to investigate one of the most rapidly growing and increasingly influential genres of American popular (and, increasingly, critically recognized) literature: the graphic novel. A historical overview of the genre’s development, along with analysis of relevant broader institutional and cultural factors illuminating the development of American media culture more generally, will be complemented by study of a series of works that illuminates artistic approaches taken within the genre to the classic themes of the American experience: politics, ethnicity, sexuality, and America’s place in the broader world, among other themes. Authors read include Eisner, Crumb, Spiegelman, Bechdel, Sacco, Thompson, and Hernandez.
Seminars
Journalism, Democracy and the Digital Revolution
Professor Caroline Miller
Wed. 2:10-4:00
The American news media occupy a complex role in the life of the nation: at once a constitutionally
protected feature of democracy and a product of free enterprise. With an eye to the 2012 presidential
election, this class will explore the transformation of the media from the heyday of the great 20th
century news organizations to the triumph of Twitter. How have the disruption of the mainstream
media and the rise of radically decentralized sources of information affected the political discourse
and the decisions Americans make? We’ll look back at the Grey Lady, Walter Cronkite and Watergate,
and into the future, where favored news purveyors are raw rather than mediated, hot rather than
cool, personal rather than formal, targeted rather than broad, passionate rather than neutral. We’ll
have visits from media players and prognosticators, examine where journalistic standards are going,
and assess the impact of news sources from Fox News to the latest hashtag. Attend first class for
instructor permission.
Equity in Higher Education
Professors Roger Lehecka and Andrew Delbanco
Mon. 2:10-4:00
In this seminar we examine the roles colleges and universities play in American society; the differential
access high school students have to college based on family background and income, ethnicity, and
other characteristics; the causes and consequences of this differential access; and some attempts to
make access more equitable. Readings and class meetings cover the following subjects historically and
in the 21st century: the variety of American institutions of higher education; admission and financial
aid policies at selective and less selective, private and public, colleges; affirmative action and race-
conscious admissions; what “merit” means in college admissions; and the role of the high school in
helping students attend college. Students in the seminar are 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
needed to succeed in college and to be successful in gaining admission and finding financial aid. The
seminar integrates students' first-hand experiences with readings and class discussions. Admission
by interview only. Email lehecka@columbia.edu by April 10 to arrange interview. Students who
express interest after that date will be considered only if space is available.
Shakespeare in America
Professor James Shapiro
Tues. 9:00-10:50
The seminar explores the reception and influence of Shakespeare in the United States from 1776 to
the present. Readings include poems, stories, plays, and essays by a broad range of writers, including: Irving, Emerson, Maungwudaus, Aldridge, Bacon, Hawthorne, Lincoln, Melville, Lowell, Dickinson,
Whitman, James, Twain, Booth, Addams, Keller, Hughes, Berryman, Thurber, Ransom, McCarthy,
Plath, Mori, Ozick, and Smiley. Requirements include an in-class presentation and a term paper.
To apply, email Professor Shapiro at js73@columbia.edu with subject “Shakespeare in
America Seminar” - include a paragraph explaining the reasons for wanting to take the course and what
preparation you have to bring to the seminar. Include name, school, major, year of study. Deadline
April 13, 2012.
Gender History and American Film
Professor Hilary Hallett
Thurs. 11:00-12:50
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 20th century, movies and their stars have had a complex
relationship to transformations affecting the lives of Americans. This seminar examines 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. We will consider how the changing institutional
history of American film production during the 20th 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. Attend first class
for instructor permission.
Freedom and Citizenship In the United States
Professor Roosevelt Montás
Tues. 4:10-6:00
Freedom and Citizenship in the United States will examine the historical development of ideas of freedom and citizenship in the American context. The course will focus exclusively on primary texts, and the order
of readings will be roughly chronological. The first weeks of the course will be dedicated to reading and
discussing foundational texts in Western political history that frame the 17th century founding of the American
colonies. The rest of the course will situate the American case in this historical development, beginning with
an examination of the Puritan migration to New England, and continuing with the study of major documents
surrounding the Revolution, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, and
contemporary debates about the meaning of American citizenship. In addition to the classroom requirements,
students will be expected to volunteer a minimum of four hours a week with the Double Discovery Center
(DDC), in connection to the Freedom and Citizenship Project, which DDC conducts in partnership with the
American Studies Program. To apply, submit your application to Prof. Montás at rm63@columbia.edu no
later than April 10, 2012.
The Holocaust and American Culture
Professor Rebecca Kobrin
Thurs. 11:00-12:50
When the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. opened in 1993, people asked why a ?European? catastrophe was being memorialized alongside shrines to Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. One answer is that in the years since World War II, the experience and memory of the Holocaust have deeply shaped American culture. The course explores how Nazism and the Holocaust have been understood, interpreted and constructed by American scholars and the larger American society since the 1930s. This course considers how American scholars and laymen saw these phenomena through the analysis of different types of sources that lay bare the numerous conflicting perspectives on this regime and its policies present in American society. We will examine documentary films, television shows, memoirs, survivor testimonies, as well as legal documents and other scholarly and popular representations of the Holocaust. This course highlights how the codification of the Holocaust as a specific historical epoch and Nazism as a movement changed America in the following ways: by engendering a distrust of the masses among liberal intellectuals; by promoting civil liberties and religious toleration; by encouraging a view of the Soviet Union as equivalent to Nazi Germany; by making the imperatives of protecting human rights and stopping genocide central to foreign policy; and by providing a new focus for American Jewish identity. Contact the History Department for more information.
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Lecture Course
Introduction to American Studies (AMST W1010; 3 points)
Professors Casey Blake and Maura Spiegel
Monday & Wednesday 2:40-3:55 p.m.
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 discussion sections.
Seminars
Race, Poverty, and American Criminal Justice
Professor 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.
Disability, Embodiment, and Social Justice
Professor Rachel Adams
What does it mean to be disabled in America? This condition affecting individual bodies than as a social,
environmental, and historical phenomenon. We will
investigate the role of culture in shaping and reflecting
on 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. In addition to our consideration
of cultural representations, an experiential learning
requirement will also give students the opportunity to
work closely with an organization dedicated to serving
the needs of people with disabilities. This seminar is open to registration.
A Cultural History of Wall Street
Professor Steven Fraser
This seminar examines the impact of Wall Street on American life from the American Revolution through the dot.com boom of the 1990s, its collapse at the turn of the millennium, and the current financial meltdown. Discussions and readings explore the ways the Street has been integrated into the country’s economic, political, and cultural life, and examine how Americans have handled their ambivalence about whether the Street has been a force for good or evil. We 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.
The Languages of America
Professor John McWhorter
The United States, often thought of as a nation where since its origins all foreign languages spoken by immigrants have withered away upon exposure to English, has actually always harbored a complex mixture of languages and dialects. This course will examine the history of language in America, including the robust role of German in colonial times and beyond (once as commonly heard in America as Spanish); creole languages such as Gullah, Louisiana Creole French and Hawaiian "Pidginï" English; Black English including its history and present; Native American languages and modern efforts to preserve them; and the history of Asian languages in modern America, including Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Hmong. The course also serves, in ancillary fashion, as an introduction to the variety among languages of the world and to a scientific perspective on human language.
Transmedia
Professor Paul Levitz
Transmedia, widely regarded as the future of entertainment, raises crucial
questions about how an individual creator’s role changes as the creative project
grows. Translation from one medium to another becomes a more tightly controlled
form of storytelling where creators must navigate between the desire to add
excitement and the threat of diluting impact. In today’s entertainment industry,
properties like Batman become simultaneously films, cartoons, video games, online
webisodes, and re-appear in multiple versions beyond their original expression
(comics, in this example)—all with the aim of enlarging their commercial potential,
and connecting with many audiences. Increasingly, writers and creators are being
enlisted to build these variations even before the first incarnation of the project is
released. This course will explore transmedia in the present, and speculate about
its future. It will also explore its history as exemplified by such works as L. Frank
Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We will examine the tensions between creative
and commercial goals, and between contradictory audiences. Guest speakers will
include writers, artists, and people involved in projects ranging across the media,
including Broadway adaptations. Readings and viewings will include primary
sources (novels, graphic novels, films, etc.), criticism and theory, and intellectual
property law. Students will be expected to compose 2 response papers and either
give a presentation on a transmedia property of their choice or write a research
paper.
Post-wars: The Cultural Consequences of Modern American Wars
Professor Hilary Hallett
War is an engine of change like no other. This interdisciplinary seminar aims to take the measure of war?s impact on American culture by examining the costs and consequences of its aftermath in particular historical moments, beginning with the Civil War and concluding with the ?War on Terror.? The class will consider how cultural production reflects war?s making and remaking of family structures and gender roles, racial categories, federal policies and public discourse about the constitution of national identity in the wake of conflicts involving deadly force.
Research Seminar in American Studies (AMST W3990 section 001; 4 points; call number 79696)
Professor Andrew Delbanco
A seminar devoted to the research and writing, under the instructor's supervision, of a substantial paper on a topic in American studies. Open to American Studies students only.
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