Department: American Studies

Code Name Description
AMSTUD100 Introduction to Asian American Studies What is meant by the term Asian American? How have representations of Asian Americans influenced concepts of US citizenship and belonging? What are the social and political origins of the Asian American community? This course provides a critical intr...
AMSTUD105B Vietnamese American Cultural Studies What is the role of Vietnamese American cultural production in Asian America? How do we reckon with dominant narratives of gratitude and freedom, or seek alternative histories by centering diasporic memory? And what does the 'post'-war generation hav...
AMSTUD105Q Law and Popular Culture (Same as AMSTUD 105Q) This seminar focuses on the interface between two important subjects: law and popular culture. Before class, students will see a series of films or television shows relating to law, lawyers, and the legal system. There is also a...
AMSTUD106 Holy Hipsters: Spiritual Rebellion and Hip Consumerism in Postwar America This course sketches the history of the "hip" mode of spiritual rebellion from the 1950s Beat Generation to the "hipster witches" of today. In addition to explicating the socio-historical dynamics of spiritual dissent, this seminar will map the shift...
AMSTUD106A A.I.: Artificial Intelligence in Fiction From self-driving cars to bots that alter democratic elections, artificial intelligence is growing increasingly powerful and prevalent in our everyday lives. Literature has long been speculating about the techno-utopia¿and catastrophe¿that A.I. could...
AMSTUD107 Introduction to Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Introduction to interdisciplinary approaches to gender, sexuality, queer, trans, and feminist studies. Topics include social justice and feminist organizing, art and activism, feminist histories, the emergence of gender and sexuality studies in the a...
AMSTUD109 Militant Mischief: Radical Humor as Civil Disobedience in Postwar America It is Halloween, 1967. Thousands of hippies costumed as witches and warlocks encircle the US Pentagon to perform a mock exorcism in protest of the Vietnam War. It is 1968, and a contingent of feminists crash a beauty pageant, and allegedly burn their...
AMSTUD109Q American Road Trips "Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road." --Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957. From Jack Kerouac's On the Road to Cheryl Strayed's Wild, this course explores epic road trips of the twentieth century. Travel is a fundamenta...
AMSTUD110A The Development of the Southeast Asian American Communities: A comparative analysis This course will examine the establishment of the Cambodian, Hmong, and Vietnamese communities in the US. We will focus on the historical events that resulted in their immigration and arrival to the US as well as the similarities and differences in...
AMSTUD110C America and the World Economy Examination of contemporary US foreign economic policy. Areas studied: the changing role of the dollar; mechanism of international monetary management; recent crises in world markets including those in Europe and Asia; role of IMF, World Bank and W...
AMSTUD110D War and Peace in American Foreign Policy The causes of war in American foreign policy. Issues: international and domestic sources of war and peace; war and the American political system; war, intervention, and peace making in the post-Cold War period. Political Science majors taking this co...
AMSTUD111 Notes from the Underground: Alternative Media from Fanzines to Memes Beginning with Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense (1776), independent publishing has been an integral component of American popular culture. In this course, we will historicize the self-publishing revolutions that have shaped the twentieth century,...
AMSTUD114X Reading Comics The modern medium of comics throughout its 150 year history (mostly North American). The flexibility of the medium explored through the genres of humorous and dramatic comic strips, superheroes, undergrounds, independents, kids and comics, journalism...
AMSTUD115S Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence This course examines the past, present, and future of American espionage. Targeted at first years and sophomores, the class surveys key issues in the development of the U.S. Intelligence Community since World War II. Topics include covert action, int...
AMSTUD117R Christianity, Race, and Gender in 21st-century America As the largest religion practiced in the United States, Christianity not only shapes the private lives of a large number of Americans but also plays an important role in public discourse, policies, and debates. This course investigates Christianity's...
AMSTUD118 Critical Family History: Narratives of Identity and Difference This course examines family history as a site for understanding identity, power, and social difference in American society. Focusing in particular on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, we approach the family as an archive through which...
AMSTUD120 The Rise of Digital Culture (Graduate students register for 220. COMM 120W is offered for 5 units, COMM 220 is offered for 4 units.From Snapchat to artificial intelligence, digital systems are reshaping our jobs, our democracies, our love lives, and even what it means to be hum...
AMSTUD120B Superhero Theory With their fantastic powers, mutable bodies, multiple identities, complicated histories, and visual dynamism, the American superhero has been a rich vehicle for fantasies (and anxieties) for 80+ years across multiple media: comics, film, animation, T...
AMSTUD122D Free Speech and Inclusion on Campus How do we balance norms of inclusion and respect with norms of free speech? This seminar course utilizes readings from sociology, political science, and legal/ethical reasoning to elucidate the larger structures and ideals that are at stake in the de...
AMSTUD123X Introduction to American Politics and Policy: In Defense of Democracy American democracy faces a series of unprecedented challenges. This course will identify the greatest areas of weakness in the American political system, make sense of the most pressing threats facing democracy, and contemplate how democracy can be s...
AMSTUD124A The American West The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North Am...
AMSTUD124B European and North African Visions of the American West This course is an interdisciplinary investigation of the rewriting of the American West in the Mediterranean context through the transnational lenses of filmmakers and artists of diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds, through primarily cinema, but...
AMSTUD125 Perspectives on American Journalism An examination of American journalism, focusing on how news is produced, distributed, and financially supported. Emphasis on current media controversies and puzzles, and on designing innovations in discovering and telling stories. (Graduate students...
AMSTUD125C The Lost Generation: American literature between the World Wars This course explores American literature between the World Wars, tracing how themes of trauma, loss, disillusion, and dislocation, as well as issues of race, gender, and class, engendered vibrant "modernist" literary experimentation in this era. Wri...
AMSTUD126 California Dreaming 'A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest,' writes Joan Didion, 'remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.' From the Gold Rush to Hollywood to Sil...
AMSTUD127 American Style and the Rhetoric of Fashion Focus on the visual culture of fashion, especially in an American context. Topics include: the representation of fashion in different visual media (prints, photographs, films, window displays, and digital images); the relationship of fashion to its h...
AMSTUD128 The American Look: Fashion and American Culture Course on fashion and its representation in various media that considers its place in US culture from the 19th century through the present. Close study of different categories of clothing, from dresses and suits to jeans and sneakers, addresses topic...
AMSTUD128B Back to the Future: Media, Art, and Politics in the 1980s (COMM 128 is offered for 5 units, COMM 228 is offered for 4 units. COMM 328 is offered for 3-5 units.)This seminar covers the intersection of politics, media and art in the U.S. from the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 to the fall of the Berlin Wall i...
AMSTUD129 Animation and the Animated Film The fantasy of an image coming to life is ancient, but not until the cinema was this fantasy actualized. The history of the movies begins with optical toys, and contemporary cinema is dominated by films that rely on computer animation. This course co...
AMSTUD12A Introduction to English III: Introduction to African American Literature In his bold study, What Was African American Literature?, Kenneth Warren defines African American literature as a late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century response to the nation's Jim Crow segregated order. But in the aftermath of the Jim Crow era a...
AMSTUD134 Museum Cultures: Material Representation in the Past and Present Students will open the "black box" of museums to consider the past and present roles of institutional collections, culminating in a student-curated exhibition. Today, museums assert their relevance as dynamic spaces for debate and learning. Coloniali...
AMSTUD134C The Western: Imagining the West in Fiction and Film The Wild West: a mythical place seared deep into the American imagination. Its familiar tropes lone riders on horseback, desert sunsets, saloon fights, train robberies echo through countless Western stories, novels, films, radio programs, and televis...
AMSTUD135 Deliberative Democracy and its Critics This course examines the theory and practice of deliberative democracy and engages both in a dialogue with critics. Can a democracy which emphasizes people thinking and talking together on the basis of good information be made practical in the modern...
AMSTUD135X Contemporary Islam & Muslims in the United States In this course, we will explore contemporary Islam and Muslims in a post-9/11, post-Trump United States. Following some brief grounding history in Week 1, we will use ethnographic studies and digital media content to understand the American Muslim ex...
AMSTUD137 The Dialogue of Democracy All forms of democracy require some kind of communication so people can be aware of issues and make decisions. This course looks at competing visions of what democracy should be and different notions of the role of dialogue in a democracy. Is it just...
AMSTUD139C American Literature and Social Justice How have American writers tried to expose and illuminate racism and sexism through fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, and poetry? How have they tried to focus our attention on discrimination and prejudice based on race, gender, ethnicity, clas...
AMSTUD140 Post-Roe America: Contemporary Feminisms in the United States Description TBA
AMSTUD141F Short Story to Big Screen This course will study the adaptation from short stories to films, with a particular eye toward the form and structure of each media and their relationship to each other. Students will read a variety of 20th and 21st century stories and watch their a...
AMSTUD141X Between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, JR.: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Freedom Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz) and Martin Luther King, Jr. are both icons of the twentieth-century civil rights and black freedom movements. Often characterized as polar opposites - one advocating armed self-defense and the other non-violence a...
AMSTUD142 The Literature of the Americas This course will focus on identifying moments of continuity and discontinuity in the literatures of the Americas, both in time and space. We will look at a wide-range of literatures of the Americas in comparative perspective, emphasizing continuities...
AMSTUD143A American Architecture A historically based understanding of what defines American architecture. What makes American architecture American, beginning with indigenous structures of pre-Columbian America. Materials, structure, and form in the changing American context. How t...
AMSTUD143X Starstuff: Space and the American Imagination Course on the history of twentieth and twenty-first century American images of space and how they shape conceptions of the universe. Covers representations made by scientists and artists, as well as scientific fiction films, TV, and other forms of po...
AMSTUD145 Silicon Valley Silicon Valley. The site and source of vibrant economic growth and technological innovation. A disruptive force in social, economic, and political systems. An interface between technology and academia, with the the quirky influence of the countercult...
AMSTUD146A Steinbeck Introduction to the work of an American writer, beloved by general readers, often reviled by critics, whose career spanned from the Great Depression through World War II to the social upheavals of the 1960s. Focus on the social and political contexts...
AMSTUD148 Los Angeles: A Cultural History This course traces a cultural history of Los Angeles from the early twentieth century to the present. Approaching popular representations of Los Angeles as our primary source, we discuss the ways that diverse groups of Angelenos have represented thei...
AMSTUD149 Scams, Hoaxes, and Cons From Herman Melville to Elizabeth Holmes, this course looks at the history of fakes and fraudsters in American culture, and how they continue to trick, unsettle, and fascinate us. How does a conman pick his mark? How does this relationship reinforce...
AMSTUD150 Introduction to English II: American Literature and Culture to 1855 In this course we'll explore the uncanny world--at once strange and strangely familiar - of early American literature and culture, as we read diverse works - including poetry, captivity and slave narratives, seduction novels, Native American oratory,...
AMSTUD150A Colonial and Revolutionary America (HISTORY 50A is 3 units. HISTORY 150A is 5 units) This course surveys early American history from the onset of English colonization of North America in the late sixteenth century through the American Revolution and the creation of the United States i...
AMSTUD150B Nineteenth Century America (Same as HISTORY 50B. 150B is 5 units; 50B is 3 units.) This course is a survey of nineteenth-century American history. Topics include: the legacy of the American Revolution; the invention of political parties; capitalist transformation and urbanizat...
AMSTUD150C The United States in the Twentieth Century (Same as HISTORY 50C. 50C is for 3 units; 150C is for 5 units.) 100 years ago, women and most African-Americans couldn't vote; automobiles were rare and computers didn't exist; and the U.S. was a minor power in a world dominated by European empires....
AMSTUD150X From Gold Rush to Google Bus: History of San Francisco This class will examine the history of San Francisco from Native American and colonial settlement through the present. Focus is on social, environmental, and political history, with the theme of power in the city. Topics include Native Americans, the...
AMSTUD151 Migration and Diaspora in American Art, 1800-Present This lecture course explores American art through the lens of immigration, exile, and diaspora. We will examine a wide range of work by immigrant artists and craftsmen, paying special attention to issues of race and ethnicity, assimilation, displacem...
AMSTUD152K Mixed-Race Politics and Culture Today, almost one-third of Americans identify with a racial/ethnic minority group, and more than 9 million Americans identify with multiple races. What are the implications of such diversity for American politics and culture? This course approaches i...
AMSTUD154 The History of Ideas in America, Part I (to 1900) (Same as HISTORY 54. 154 is 5 units; 54 is 3 units.) How Americans considered problems such as slavery, imperialism, and sectionalism. Topics include: the political legacies of revolution; biological ideas of race; the Second Great Awakening; science...
AMSTUD154B The History of Ideas in America, Part II This course explores intellectual life and culture in the United States during the twentieth century, examining the work and lives of social critics, essayists, artists, scientists, journalists, novelists, and sundry other thinkers. We will look at...
AMSTUD154D American Disaster How do we make sense of catastrophe? Who gets to write or make art about floods, fires, or environmental collapse? How do disaster and its depiction make visible or exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities? Beginning with the Jamestown co...
AMSTUD155 The White Supremacist Constitution: American Constitutional History This course addresses U.S. constitutional history from the post-Civil War Reconstruction period through the mid-20th century. Because of the breadth of the subject matter, the view will necessarily be partial. In particular we will take as our focus...
AMSTUD155F The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1830 to 1877 (History 55F is 3 units; History 155F is 5 units.)This course explores the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War. The Civil War profoundly impacted American life at national, sectional, and constitutional levels, and radically ch...
AMSTUD156H Women and Medicine in US History: Women as Patients, Healers and Doctors This course explores ideas about women's bodies in sickness and health, as well as women's encounters with lay and professional healers in the United States from the eighteenth century to the present. We begin with healthy women and explore ideas abo...
AMSTUD157P Solidarity and Racial Justice Is multiracial solidarity necessary to overcome oppression that disproportionately affects certain communities of color? What is frontline leadership and what role should people play if they are not part of frontline communities? In this course we wi...
AMSTUD159 James Baldwin & Twentieth Century Literature Black, gay and gifted, Baldwin was hailed as a "spokesman for the race", although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. This course examines his classic novels and essays as well his exciting work acros...
AMSTUD159B American Photography Since 1960 Since the publication of Robert Frank's THE AMERICANS (1958), many distinguished American photographers have emerged, creating a density and power of expression that arguably rivals and even surpasses the extraordinary achievements of earlier photogr...
AMSTUD15N Magic and Marvel: Theorizing Religion Through Popular Culture Though marginalized through terms like 'superstition' and 'witchcraft,' magic remained a ubiquitous feature of the United States sociocultural and religious landscape well beyond the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. From dream books to horseshoes to conjure,...
AMSTUD160 Perspectives on American Identity Required for American Studies majors. In this seminar we trace diverse and changing interpretations of American identity by exploring autobiographical, literary, and/or visual texts from the 18th through the 20th century in conversation with sociolo...
AMSTUD161 The Politics of Sex: Gender, Race, and Sex in Modern America This course explores the ways that individuals and movements for social and economic equality have redefined and contested gender and sexuality in the modern United States. Using a combination of primary and secondary sources, we will explore the int...
AMSTUD162 Selling the American Dream, Living the American Nightmare Description TBD
AMSTUD162B Campaigns, Voting, Media, and Elections (Graduate students enroll in COMM 262. COMM 162 is offered for 5 units, COMM 262 is offered for 4 units.) This course examines the theory and practice of American campaigns and elections. First, we will attempt to explain the behavior of the key play...
AMSTUD163 Land Use: Planning for Sustainable Cities Through case studies with a focus on the San Francisco Bay Area, guest speakers, selective readings and interactive assignments, this survey course seeks to demystify the concept of land use for the non-city planner. This introductory course will rev...
AMSTUD163 Queer America This class explores queer art, photography and politics in the United States since 1930. Our approach will be grounded in close attention to the history and visual representation of sexual minorities in particular historical moments and social contex...
AMSTUD165 History of Higher Education in the U.S. Major periods of evolution, particularly since the mid-19th century. Premise: insights into contemporary higher education can be obtained through its antecedents, particularly regarding issues of governance, mission, access, curriculum, and the chang...
AMSTUD167 Censorship in American Art This course examines the art history of censorship in the United States. Paying special attention to the suppression of queer, Black and Latinx visual and performance art, including efforts to vandalize works and defund institutions, students will ex...
AMSTUD168D American Prophet: The Inner Life and Global Vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was the 20th-century's best-known African-American leader, but the religious roots of his charismatic leadership are far less widely known. The documents assembled and published by Stanford's King Research and Education Inst...
AMSTUD169 Race and Ethnicity in Urban California The course is part of an ongoing research project that examines the consequences of longterm social, economic, and political changes in ethnic and race relations in in urban California. The required readings, discussions, and service learning compone...
AMSTUD169B Race and Ethnicity in Urban California: Research Seminar This course is part of an ongoing research project that examines the consequences of social, demographic, economic, and political changes in ethnic and race relations in in urban California. Students taking this course will construct will investigat...
AMSTUD16N Stop the Steal: January 6 as a case study into American Religion and Politics This course examines the January 6 storming of the US Capitol as a way to study and understanding religion and politics in contemporary America.
AMSTUD177 Contemporary Novel in U.S. Perspective This course investigates a selection of novels from 2001 to the present, either authored in the United States or strongly and meaningfully received here by critics and gatekeepers. In the absence of a fixed academic canon or acknowledged tradition o...
AMSTUD177B Contemporary American Short Stories An exploration of the power and diversity of the American short story ranging from the 1970s to the present day. By examining short stories historically, critically, and above all as art objects, students will learn how to read, interpret, critique,...
AMSTUD179A Crime and Punishment in America This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the way crime has been defined and punished in the United States. Recent social movements such as the Movement for Black Lives have drawn attention to the problem of mass incarceration and officer-...
AMSTUD183 Re-Imagining American Borders Borders of all kinds in this America have been tight for a long time, and the four years of the Trump regime have shown new violent dangers in such divisions in race, ethnicity, gender and class in this country. In the inordinately difficult years o...
AMSTUD185 American Studies Internship Restricted to declared majors. Practical experience working in a field related to American Studies for six to ten weeks. Students make internship arrangements with a company or agency, under the guidance of a sponsoring faculty member, and with the...
AMSTUD186D Asian American Art This lecture course explores the work of artists, craftspeople, and laborers of Asian descent from 1850-present. Rather than a discrete identity category, we approach 'Asian American' as an expansive, relational term that encompasses heterogenous ex...
AMSTUD187 Zora Neale Hurston An exploration of the life, times, and works of Zora Neale Hurston, who died in obscurity in 1960 despite having published more books than any other African American woman. We will encounter the diversity of Hurston's interests across a range of medi...
AMSTUD18A Jazz History: Bebop to Present, 1940-Present Modern jazz styles from Bebop to the current scene. Emphasis is on the significant artists of each style.
AMSTUD18B Jazz History: Bebop to Present, 1940-Present Modern jazz styles from Bebop to the current scene. Emphasis is on the significant artists of each style.
AMSTUD195 Individual Work No Description Set
AMSTUD198 American Studies Pre-Honors Seminar Recommended for American Studies Juniors planning to apply to the honors program
AMSTUD199A American Studies Honors Seminar *Enrollment Required for American Studies Honors students in their senior year.
AMSTUD199B American Studies Honors Seminar *Required for all American Studies honors students
AMSTUD199C American Studies Honors Seminar *Required for American Studies honors students
AMSTUD1B Media, Culture, and Society The institutions and practices of mass media, including television, film, radio, and digital media, and their role in shaping culture and social life. The media's shifting relationships to politics, commerce, and identity.
AMSTUD200J Doing Oral History Students explore exemplary historical works based on oral histories and develop a range of practical skills while completing their own interviews. Topics include oral history and narrative theory, interview techniques, transcript preparation, and dig...
AMSTUD200R Doing Community History: Asian Americans and the Pandemic Students utilize a community-engaged oral history methodology to produce short video documentaries focused on Asian Americans in the Covid-19 pandemic. In producing these collaborative digital history projects, students learn to evaluate the ways soc...
AMSTUD201 History of Education in the United States How education came to its current forms and functions, from the colonial experience to the present. Focus is on the 19th-century invention of the common school system, 20th-century emergence of progressive education reform, and the developments since...
AMSTUD207B Biography and History Designed along the lines of the PBS series, "In the Actor's Workshop," students will meet weekly with some of the leading literary biographers writing today. Included this spring will be "New Yorker" staff writer Judith Thurman -- whose biography of...
AMSTUD215 Understanding Jews This discussion-based course will give students an opportunity to explore the constellation of religious, ethnic, national, cultural, artistic, spiritual, and political forces that shape Jewish life in the 21st century. Drawing on historical documen...
AMSTUD231X Learning Religion: How People Acquire Religious Commitments This course will examine how people learn religion outside of school, and in conversation with popular cultural texts and practices. Taking a broad social-constructivist approach to the variety of ways people learn, this course will explore how peopl...
AMSTUD241 Black Religion in America Since Africans arrived on North American shores, their religious cultures have anchored them to the traditions of their originating homelands; offered outlets for communal innovation; and structured their responses to the everyday realities of life i...
AMSTUD246 Constructing Race and Religion in America This seminar focuses on the interrelationships between social constructions of race and social interpretations of religion in America. How have assumptions about race shaped religious worldviews? How have religious beliefs shaped racial attitudes? Ho...
AMSTUD250 Senior Research Research and writing of senior honors thesis under the supervision of a faculty member. The final grade for the thesis is assigned by the chair based on the evaluations of the primary thesis adviser and a second reader appointed by the program. Prere...
AMSTUD250J Baldwin and Hansberry: The Myriad Meanings of Love This course looks at major dramatic works by James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry. Both of these queer black writers had prophetic things to say about the world-historical significance of major dramas on the 20th Century including civil rights, revol...
AMSTUD251C The American Enlightenment The eighteenth century saw the rise of many exciting new political, religious, and scientific theories about human happiness, perfectibility, and progress that today we call "the Enlightenment." Most people associate the Enlightenment with Europe, bu...
AMSTUD251J American Slavery and Its Afterlives How did the institution of American slavery come to an end? The story is more complex than most people know. This course examines the rival forces that fostered slavery's simultaneous contraction in the North and expansion in the South between 1776 a...
AMSTUD253F Thinking the American Revolution No period in American history has generated as much creative political thinking as the era of the American Revolution. This course explores the origins and development of that thought from the onset of the dispute between Great Britain and its Americ...
AMSTUD256 Black Contemporary Filmmakers Despite the systemic inequalities of the Hollywood system, there is a robust, stylistically diverse cohort of African-American writer/directors at work, including Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay, and Ryan Coogler. Jenkins' films (Moonlight, If Beale Stre...
AMSTUD256A Horror Comics This seminar will explore the vast array of horror comics. How does horror work in comics, as distinct from prose and cinema? How and why are non-moving images scary? The different narrational strategies of short stories, self-contained works, and co...
AMSTUD256E The American Civil War: The Lived Experience What was it like to live in the United States during the Civil War? This course uses the lenses of racial/ethnic identity, gender, class, and geography (among others) to explore the breadth of human experience during this singular moment in American...
AMSTUD259C The Civil Rights Movement in American History and Memory This course examines the origins, conduct, and complex legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as the continuing struggle over how the movement should be remembered and represented. Topics examined include: the NAACP legal campaign against se...
AMSTUD260P American Protest Movements, Past and Present (History 260P is an undergraduate course offered for 5 units; History 360P is a graduate course offered for 4-5 units.) Societal change comes only when individuals and groups speak out, perseverantly, against prevailing norms. This course examines th...
AMSTUD261A Black Aliveness Based on Kevin Quashie's 2021 book "Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being," this seminar will explore moments of possibility, love, and being in works of literature and art. With Quashie as our guide, we will look closely at poems, stories, photogra...
AMSTUD261W Introduction to Asian American History This course provides an introduction to the field of Asian American history. Tracing this history between the arrival of the first wave of Asian immigrants to the US in the mid-nineteenth century and the present, we foreground the voices and personal...
AMSTUD262B The Roots of Gendered Labor: Women and Work in American History This class will explore the long, tangled history of women's labor in North America. Beginning with gendered labor practices among Native Americans, West Africans, and Europeans in the seventeenth century, this class will proceed thematically and chr...
AMSTUD264 History of Prisons and Immigration Detention This course will explore the history of the growing prison and immigration detention systems in the United States. They will pay particular attention to how they developed and how they affect different populations.
AMSTUD269B Becoming Modern: American Literature 1880-1920 Looking at the generation before the 'Lost Generation,' this course explores a period in which 'modernistic' techniques and representations were unfolding from the jangling dissonances, the jarring juxtapositions, and the tumbling orthodoxies that ac...
AMSTUD276 The Social Life of Neighborhoods How do neighborhoods come to be? How and why do they change? What is the role of power, money, race, immigration, segregation, culture, government, and other forces? In this course, students will interrogate these questions using literatures from soc...
AMSTUD27Q Fashion and Photography Preference to sophomores. Seminar on the history of 20th and 21st century fashion photographs, with a focus on American examples. Topics include: the relationship of fashion and photography to modernity; interplay between mass consumption and luxury;...
AMSTUD281 Asian Religions in America; Asian American Religions This course will analyze both the reception in America of Asian religions (i.e. of Buddhism in the 19th century), and the development in America of Asian American religious traditions.
AMSTUD284 Material Metonymy: Ceramics and Asian America This course explores the rich history and contemporary state of ceramic production by Asian American/diasporic makers. It is also about the way history, culture, and emotion are carried by process, technique, and materials. Taught by an art historian...
AMSTUD290 Movies and Methods: The Films Of Vincente Minnelli Working at MGM, the most opulent of Hollywood studios, Vincente Minnelli epitomized the studio system, and yet his films remain idiosyncratic, distinct, and personal. He is thus a curious figure within the history of auteurist study. Minnelli's work...
AMSTUD4 The Sociology of Music This course examines music - its production, its consumption, and it contested role in society - from a distinctly sociological lens. Why do we prefer certain songs, artists, and musical genres over others? How do we 'use' music to signal group membe...
AMSTUD41Q Madwomen and Madmen: Gender and the History of Mental Illness in the U.S. This seminar explores the ways that gender and historical context shaped the experience and treatment of mental illness in U.S. history. What is the relationship between historically constructed ideas of femininity and masculinity and madness? Why ha...
AMSTUD42Q Black & White Race Relations in American Fiction & Film Movies and the fiction that inspires them; power dynamics behind production including historical events, artistic vision, politics, and racial stereotypes. What images of black and white does Hollywood produce to forge a national identity? How do fil...
AMSTUD43Q Body Politics: Health Activism in Modern America ¿Medicare for All¿ has become a rallying cry for those calling for reform of the American health care system. But this slogan is only the most recent political expression of the conviction that health care ought to be a right and not a privilege, par...
AMSTUD43X Starstuff: Space and the American Imagination (Same as AMSTUD 143X. Students who wish to take it for 5 units, register for AMSTUD 143X.) Course on the history of twentieth and twenty-first century American images of space and how they shape conceptions of the universe. Covers representations mad...
AMSTUD46N American Moderns: Hemingway, Hurston, Faulkner, & Fitzgerald While Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were flirting with the expatriate avant-garde in Europe, Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner were performing anthropological field-work in the local cultures of the American South. We will read four...
AMSTUD51Q Comparative Fictions of Ethnicity Explorations of how literature can represent in complex and compelling ways issues of difference--how they appear, are debated, or silenced. Specific attention on learning how to read critically in ways that lead one to appreciate the power of litera...
AMSTUD54 The History of Ideas in America, Part I (to 1900) (Same as HISTORY 154. 54 is 3 units; 154 is 5 units.) How Americans considered problems such as slavery, imperialism, and sectionalism. Topics include: the political legacies of revolution; biological ideas of race; the Second Great Awakening; scienc...
AMSTUD54B The History of Ideas in America, Part II This course explores intellectual life and culture in the United States during the twentieth century, examining the work and lives of social critics, essayists, artists, scientists, journalists, novelists, and sundry other thinkers. We will look at...
AMSTUD55F The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1830 to 1877 (History 55F is 3 units; History 155F is 5 units.)This course explores the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War. The Civil War profoundly impacted American life at national, sectional, and constitutional levels, and radically ch...
AMSTUD57Q 10 American Photographs Preference to sophomores. "The humor, the sadness, the EVERYTHING-ness and American-ness of these pictures!" wrote Jack Kerouac of photographer Robert Frank's iconic collection, The Americans. This seminar takes Kerouac's enthusiasm and applies it to...
AMSTUD61N The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson assumed many roles during his life-- Founding Father, revolutionary, and author of the Declaration of Independence; natural scientist, inventor, and political theorist; slaveholder, founder of a major political party, and President o...
AMSTUD63N The Feminist Critique: The History and Politics of Gender Equality This course explores the long history of ideas about gender and equality. Each week we read, dissect, compare, and critique a set of primary historical documents (political and literary) from around the world, moving from the 15th century to the pres...
AMSTUD68N Mark Twain and American Culture Preference to freshmen. Mark Twain defined the rhythms of our prose and the contours of our moral map. He recognized our extravagant promise and stunning failures, our comic foibles and  tragic flaws. He is viewed as the most American of American aut...
AMSTUD73 Mexican Migration to the United States (History 73 is 3 units; History 173 is 5 units.) This course is an introduction to the history of Mexican migration to the United States. Barraged with anti-immigrant rhetoric and calls for bigger walls and more restrictive laws, few people in the Un...
AMSTUD75N American Short Stories How and why did the short story take root and flourish in an American context? Early works of classic American literature read alongside stories by women and minority writers, stretching from the early nineteenth century to the contemporary period.
AMSTUD91 Exploring American Religious History This course will trace how contemporary beliefs and practices connect to historical trends in the American religious landscape.
AMSTUD91A Asian American Autobiography/W This is a dual purpose class: a writing workshop in which you will generate autobiographical vignettes/essays as well as a reading seminar featuring prose from a wide range of contemporary Asian-American writers. Some of the many questions we will co...
AMSTUD96 Signal to Noise: The Sounds of American Culture Inundated by images and associated with the meteoric rise of such media as film and photography, the past century has long been considered a predominantly visual era. Yet, sound offers alternative sensory platforms for understanding American culture...
AMSTUD99 American Studies Capstone Development Workshop Optional workshop for American Studies senior to develop a capstone project.