AMST 1201: Introduction to American Studies

AMST / MUSI 1002:  Sing and Shout!  The History of the United States in Song

AMST/ENGL 2274W:  Disability in American Literature and Culture

The term “freaks,” like so many other derogatory epithets, has come to have a two-fold meaning. Originally meant pejoratively, the word freak has been reclaimed by many within the disabled community as a badge of difference, as a mark of one’s identity, and as an indication of being extraordinary. In this course we will explore the ways in which the extraordinary body has been used culturally to help reinforce ideas of normality. We will ask how disability has been enfolded in depictions of various “others,” including African Americans, women and children. We will also consider how ideas of disability continue to evolve, and how our quest for perfection shapes everyone’s future.  In the process we will also be engaging a variety of theoretical questions that have material consequences on social policy, and the lives of people affected by those policies.

AMST / ARTH 3440W: Nineteenth Century American Art

This class examines the art of the long-nineteenth century with particular emphasis in how the visual culture of the period constructed concepts of nation, power, identity, citizenship, capitalism, and religion. This upper-level art history course investigates how ideas such as the United States, enslavement, the President, marriage, the Civil War, family, freedom, citizen, the West, native, and immigrant, formed through the paintings, prints, housewares, clothes, architecture, and photographs of the period. Finally, as a class we will question what exactly is “American” about “American Art” and whether the frame of “American Art” works as an artistic, intellectual, and ideological category.