Admission & Financial Aid

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Regulations & Requirements

Regulations & Requirements

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Amherst College Courses

Amherst College Courses

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American Studies

Professors Couvares, Sánchez-Eppler; Associate Professors Brooks*, del Moral, Hayashi (Chair) and Schmalzbauer; Assistant Professor Vigil†; Lecturers Bergoffen and Mead; John J. McCloy Visiting Professor Odo; Visiting Instructor kumar.

*On leave 2016-17.

†On leave fall semester 2016-17.

The core premise of American Studies is disarmingly simple: no discipline or perspective can satisfactorily encompass the diversity and variation that have marked American society and culture from the very beginning. This premise invites majors to craft their own distinctive way of coming to terms with America. Some will favor sociological, historical or economic interpretations; others will be drawn to literary or visual modes of interpretation. However individual majors fashion their courses of study, each major engages with one or more of the department’s faculty in an ongoing discussion of what the study of American society entails. This discussion culminates in an interdisciplinary capstone project, of one or two semesters. The topic may emerge organically from the courses a major has selected or it may arise out of a passionate engagement with a work of fiction, a curiosity about a historical event, or a desire to understand the persistence of a social problem. Whatever the substantive focus, the capstone project affords majors the opportunity to reflect on what they have learned, refine their analytic and expository skills, and put all this to the test of making sense of some aspect of American society and culture.

The diversity of course selections available to majors ensures that they gain a heightened awareness of the history and present state of the peoples and social forces which constitute American society. Race, class, ethnicity and gender figure centrally in our courses, whether they are treated historically, sociologically or aesthetically. Our introductory course, focused on the Connecticut River Valley, and our requirement that all American Studies majors take a community-based learning course combine to challenge majors not only to study American culture and society but to be actively engaged citizens.

Major Program. American Studies majors are required to take ten courses plus a senior capstone project. The American Studies major includes two specific course requirements and eight other courses on American culture and society structured by some distribution and concentration requirements. These elective courses can be chosen, in close consultation with an advisor, from courses offered in many other departments in addition to American Studies.  The American Studies major offers enormous flexibility for interdisciplinary exploration coupled through its concentration requirement with an insistence on depth and focus.

Requirements. AMST 111 “Global Valley,” is required of all majors.  AMST 468, the research methods seminar, is the other specifically required course in the major. It is offered every spring semester and ideally should be taken during the junior year. Students planning to be abroad in the spring of their junior years should take this course as sophomores. All majors are also required to take one course that not only studies but engages with American society through a significant community-based learning component. AMST 221, “Building Community” is offered every spring semester and fulfills this requirement. With the approval of the student’s American Studies advisor the requirement can also be met by other community-based learning courses taught at Amherst or across the Five College consortium.

Students also take seven elective courses about American society and culture chosen, in consultation with an advisor, from courses offered in many other departments in addition to American Studies. At least three, and no more than four, of these courses should be in a single academic discipline or concentrated on a single theme. At least three of the seven courses should be devoted largely to the study of a period before the twentieth century.

In the first semester of their senior year all American Studies majors will enroll in AMST 498, a senior tutorial supporting independent research closely supervised by a faculty advisor. Students can use this course either to begin a full year interdisciplinary independent project, resulting in a senior thesis that can be considered for honors (enrolling in AMST 499 in the following semester); or they can use it to produce a one semester project—either a shorter essay or some other form of independent interdisciplinary research and production. The capstone project secures a comprehensive evaluation of each student’s achievement in the major.

Advising: In response to the range of the majors’ individual preferences and interest, departmental advisors are available for regular consultation. The advisor’s primary function is to aid the student in the definition and achievement of his or her own educational goals.

Capstone Project. In their senior year all American Studies majors will complete an interdisciplinary independent project closely supervised by a faculty advisor. Students may choose to enroll in AMST 498 or 499 to produce a senior thesis that would be considered for honors; or they can choose to enroll in AMST 496 to produce a one-semester project--either a shorter essay or some other form of independent interdisciplinary research and production. In both cases the capstone project serves as the grounds for a comprehensive evaluation of each student's achievement in the major.

Departmental Honors. All majors must complete the requirements outlined above. Recommendations for Latin Honors are made on the basis of the year-long senior essay produced in AMST 498 and 499.

Evaluation. There is no single moment of comprehensive evaluation in the American Studies major. The Department believes that fulfillment of the course requirements, combined with the production of a capstone project, provides adequate grounds for the fair assessment of a major’s achievement.

For related courses, see offerings in the study of America in the Departments of Art and the History of Art; Black Studies; Economics; English; Environmental Studies; History; Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought; Political Science; Religion; Sociology; Theater and Dance; and Women's and Gender Studies.

111 Global Valley

Drawing on a wide range of primary materials, and taking advantage of the ease of visiting the sites of many of the topics we study, this course offers an introduction to American Studies through an exploration of the Connecticut River Valley that stresses both the fascination of detailed local history and the economic, political, social, and cultural networks that tie this place to the world. Topics may include conflicts and accommodations between Native peoples and English settlers; changing uses of land and resources; seventeenth-century witchcraft trials; the American Revolution and Shays rebellion; religious revivalism of the Great Awakening; abolitionist and other nineteenth- century reform movements; tourism and the scenic including Thomas Cole's famous painting of the oxbow; immigration, industrialization and deindustrialization, especially in the cities of Holyoke and Springfield; educational institutions and innovations; the cold war, the reach of the "military industrial complex" into local educational institutions, and "the bunker"; the sanctuary movement; feminist and gay activism; present environmental, mass incarceration, and other social equity issues; and of course, Emily Dickinson's poetry.

Limited to 20 students per section. Admission by consent of the instructor.  Fall semester.  Professors Couvares and Sánchez-Eppler.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2023, Fall 2024

112 The City: New York

This course will explore the imagined and conflicted experience of urban life in the United States through study of the country's first metropolis: New York. Drawing on primary materials--maps, memoirs, film, poetry, fiction, census data, the natural and the built environment--and a selection of secondary sources, we will encounter moments in the life of the city from the 17th into the 21th century.

Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2016-17. 

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2015

165 An Introduction to U.S. Latino/a History, 1848--Present

(See HIST 165)

201 Native American Life: Past and Present

Through a focus on Native American traditional lifeways and the contemporary efforts by Native Peoples to revitalize these practices, students will learn to think critically about decolonization, the complexities of contemporary tribal economies and politics, and the complex ways that indigenous peoples globally are working to create sustainable futures for their communities. These key themes will be built upon and reinforced each week as students explore multiple aspects of Native American life, including food ways and plant medicines, residential/boarding schools, traditional spiritual practices, repatriation, and protection of sacred sites and heritage landscapes.

Through a series of weekly written response papers and collaborative projects, students will consider how traditional ecological knowledge and other critical cultural information are transmitted through oral tradition and storytelling. They will also examine each topic through scholarly writing from social sciences and humanities disciplines. Students will then be asked to integrate these forms of knowledge and consider how they complement each other, how and why they might differ from one another, and how best to address situations in which these diverse forms of knowledge conflict with each other. Students will demonstrate their understanding of the course material and the integration of knowledge through a mid-term and final exam. Throughout the semester, students will also learn through hands-on community engagement, including the construction of a birch bark canoe. During the last week of class we will be putting the canoe into the river--a culmination of collaborative work and hands-on experience with revitalization of traditional knowledge and practices in a contemporary setting.

Key readings for the course include: The Island of the Anishinaabeg: Thunderers and Water Monsters in the Traditional Ojibwe Life-world by Theresa Smith, Our Knowledge Is Not Primitive: Decolonizing Botanical Anishinaabe Teachings by Wendy Makoons Geniuz, and The Common Pot by Lisa Brooks. Students will also be assigned readings from a number of scholarly journals, including Ethnohistory, Canadian Journal of Native Studies, Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Transcultural Psychiatry, and the Journal of Ethnobiology.

Omitted 2016-17.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2019, Spring 2020, January 2021, January 2022, Spring 2022

205 Whose Game? Sports in America

This course explores the social and cultural history of sports in American society, focusing on the unique histories of sports such as hunting, soccer, basketball and football and, in particular, their relation to issues of race, ethnicity, and gender. Course materials will include a range of primary and secondary materials: archival photographs, academic monographs and journal articles, documentary films, legal documents, poetry and paintings. The course is discussion-based and includes short writing assignments, collaborative work, and a final exam.

Limited to 30 students.  Preference given to American Studies majors and first-year students.  Spring semester.  Professor Hayashi.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023

210 American Jewish Keywords

This course will use selected keywords to examine how the Jewish experience has been conceived, narrated, and remembered in American society. Keywords do not present static definitions, but illuminate a shared vocabulary of meaning. Therefore, we will approach each keyword as a point of departure for examining the complexity of American Jewish experience. Course questions include: Why do the terms “mobility” and “success” continue to resonate for American Jews in the twenty-first century? What has motivated individuals to claim a “marginal” or “mainstream” status? When do members of the community act like “menschen” or “brothers” to others? To what degree does New York’s "Lower East Side" exemplify as well as simplify American Jewish experience? Students will engage with a range of materials, including fiction, memoir, film, historical documents, and photography; readings will include selections of literary criticism, ethnic and racial studies, social history, and sociology.

Limited to 18 students. Omitted 2016-17. Lecturer Bergoffen.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2024

215 The Embodied Self in American Culture and Society

"The Embodied Self" in American Culture and Society is an interdisciplinary, historically organized study of American perceptions of and attitudes towards the human body in a variety of media, ranging from medical and legal documents to poetry and novels, the visual arts , film, and dance. Among the topics to be discussed are the physical performance of gender; the social construction of the ideal male and female body; health reform movements; athletic achievement as an instrumentalization of the body; commercialization of physical beauty in the fitness and fashion industries; eating disorders as cultural phenomena; the interminable abortion controversy; the equally interminable conflict over pornography and the limits of free speech; and adaptations to the possibility of serious illness and to the certainty of death.

Limited to 25 students. Spring semester.  Professors Couvares, K. Sanchez-Eppler and Lecturer Bergoffen. 

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Spring 2015, Spring 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2020

217 Religion, Democracy, and American Culture  

The United States has inscribed the separation of church and state into its constitutional order, and yet Americans have for two centuries been more deeply committed to religious faith and practice than any other people in the Western world. This course endeavors to explore that paradox. Topics addressed include the changing meanings of "the city on a hill"; the varieties of millennial belief and utopian community; the relationship between religion, ethnicity, and gender; religious political activism, including abolition, prohibition, anti-war and anti-abortion movements; and the limits of religious tolerance from movements against Catholics and Mormons to recent warnings of a "clash of civilizations" with Muslim cultures.

Limited to 25 students per section. Omitted 2016-17. Professors Couvares and Sánchez-Eppler.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2023

221 Building Community

This course investigates the practice and ideal of community in America both on a national and a local level, asking students to engage in specific projects aimed at strengthening the public sphere and fostering community life. We will consider the nature and limits of democracy, the meaning of belonging, the experience of stigma and exclusion, the concepts of civic responsibility and public discourse, and the conflict and compromises inherent in political advocacy. This course will pay particular attention to the struggles of often-marginalized groups to build healthy and just communities. Coursework will include contemporary and historical case studies, literary depictions, and more theoretical readings, as well as observation of a range of community building efforts at the local level:  from grassroots organizing to town government.

Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Lecturer Mead.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, January 2022, Spring 2022, Spring 2023

224 The Neo-Western

From the advertising copy and backdrop of truck ads to the democratic rhetoric of politicians, the West as a place of national mythology still permeates American culture. In this course, we will analyze the evolution of the West as a prominent site of American myth and the contemporary representations of it in literature and film, the Neo-Westerns. Students will read works by authors such as Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy, Sherman Alexi and Percival Everett, as well as view recent popular films by Ang Lee, Clint Eastwood, and John Sayles. The course will also include readings in history, as well as other disciplines, to contextualize the creative works and to gauge how the myth of the West compares to its reality and how truly revisionist its most current representations are.

Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2016-17. Professor Hayashi.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Spring 2019, Spring 2020

226 Isles of Asian America

This course focuses on discrete locations, both real and imaginary, of the Asian American experience. Using an interdisciplinary praxis, we will explore the evolution of Asian American places—from Hawaii, Angel Island, Chinatowns, and Relocation Centers to suburbia, Internet sites and the cinema.  This course is intended as a mid-level Asian American Studies course and course readings will focus on recent scholarship in Asian American Studies. The course is discussion-based and includes short writing assignments, independent research, and group assignments.

 Limited to 20 students. Preference given to American Studies majors and Five College APA certificate students.  Omitted 2016-17.  Professor Hayashi.

2023-24: Not offered

230 Performing Race, Racism, and Racialization

In Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates says “race is the child of racism, not the father.”  How might this view help reshape our understanding of race and identity? In the United States, how does racism generate the ways that we think of ourselves as white, or of color, or as individuals for whom race somehow does not matter?  Is our racial identification a permanent marker, or is it a process?  And how does this all manifest in our rooted and routed lives, in the ways we perform our social identities with one another and across the worlds between us?  In this course we dive into theories and embodied realities of race, racism, and racializing processes that continually reshape us.  We will trace some of the histories through which race became and continues to be an organizing principle of contemporary society.  We will explore how race intersects with gender, class, sexuality, religious affiliation, and other similar identifiers.  We will read both established and emerging scholarship to understand key terms such as decoloniality, intersectionality, ideology, hegemony, power, and discourse.  Coates also reminds us that “racism is a visceral experience [and that] the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.”  We will therefore strive to weave multiple disciplines to learn new understandings, through working with performances and multimedia texts, but always grounded in lived and embodied knowledges.  This course provides a pathway toward advanced courses in American Studies but is open to all.

Limited to 18 students.  Spring semester. Visiting Instructor Kumar.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2017

240 Rethinking Pocahontas: An Introduction to Native American Studies

From Longfellow's Hiawatha and D.H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature to Disney's Pocahontas and James Cameron's Avatar, representations of the indigenous as "Other" have greatly shaped cultural production in America as vehicles for defining the nation and the self. This interdisciplinary course introduces students to the broad field of Native American Studies, engaging a range of texts from law to policy to history and literature as well as music and aesthetics. Film and literary texts in particular will provide primary grounding for our inquiries. By keeping popular culture, representation, and the nature of historical narrative in mind, we will consider the often mutually constitutive relationship between American identity and Indian identity as we pose the following questions: How have imaginings of a national space and national culture by Americans been shaped by a history marked by conquest and reconciliation with indigenous peoples? And, how has the creation of a national American literary tradition often defined itself as both apart from and yet indebted to Native American cultural traditions? This course also considers how categories like race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion have contributed to discussions of citizenship and identity, and changed over time with particular attention to specific Native American individuals and tribal nations. Students will be able to design their own final research project that may focus on either a historically contingent or contemporary issue related to Native American people in the United States.

Limited to 20 students.  Spring semester.  Professor Vigil.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2023

260 Latino Migration:  Labor, Lifestyle and Legality

(Offered as AMST 260 and SOCI 260.)  Whereas capital, culture, and commerce flow freely in contemporary capitalism, labor does not.  Walls--physical, legal and cultural--aim to keep certain people in and “others” out.  In this course we explore the sociological forces behind cross-border labor flows and the parallel reality of immigrant life.  We focus specifically on the experience of Latinos in the United States.  We pay special attention to the linkages between the demand and supply of Latino immigrant labor, social constructions of (il)legality, and the oft-overlooked privileged lifestyles that immigration supports.  While this course has a deep theoretical rooting, we use daily immigrant life as the lens through which to explore migration. 

Limited to 25 students.  Omitted 2016-17.  Professor Schmalzbauer.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Spring 2016, Fall 2017

265 Unequal Childhoods:  Race, Class and Gender in the United States

(See SOCI 265)

274 Native American Literature:  Decolonizing Intellectual Traditions

(See ENGL 274)

280 When Corn Mother Meets King Corn:  Cultural Studies of the Americas

(Offered as AMST 280 and ENGL 273.)  In Penobscot author Joseph Nicolar's 1893 narrative, the Corn Mother proclaims, "I am young in age and I am tender, yet my strength is great and I shall be felt all over the world, because I owe my existence to the beautiful plant of the earth." In contrast, according to one Iowa farmer, from the 2007 documentary "King Corn," "We aren't growing quality. We're growing crap." This course aims to unpack depictions like these in order to probe the ways that corn has changed in its significance within the Americas. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, students will be introduced to critical theories and methodologies from American Studies as they study corn's shifting role, across distinct times and places, as a nourishing provider, cultural transformer, commodity, icon, and symbol.

Beginning with the earliest travels of corn and her stories in the Americas, students will learn about the rich histories, traditions, narratives, and uses of "maize" from indigenous communities and nations, as well as its subsequent proliferation and adaptation throughout the world. In addition to literary and historical sources students will engage with a wide variety of texts (from material culture to popular entertainment, public policy and genetics) in order to deepen their understanding of cultural, political, environmental, and economic changes that have characterized life in the Americas.

Limited to 25 students.  Omitted 2016-17.  Professors Brooks and Vigil.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2013, Spring 2019

302 Globalization, Inequality and Social Change

(Offered as AMST 302 and SOCI 302.)  This course is an in-depth exploration of the increasing global interconnectedness of economic, political, and social processes, what many have come to call “globalization.” We begin by developing a sociological critique of the relationship between inequality, post-World War II global capitalism, and the neoliberal ideology that underlies it.  We do this through study of the major institutions and actors that endorse and perpetuate global capitalism. We then explore case studies which critically examine how contemporary globalization is playing out in daily life via experiences of labor, consumption, family and community.  We dedicate the last part of the course to investigating diverse examples of grassroots resistance to the current capitalist order.  As we strive to achieve a complex analysis of globalization, we will be challenged to grapple seriously with issues of power and social justice and to reflect on our own social positions within an increasingly intricate global web.  In accordance, we will focus throughout the course on how intersections of race, class, gender and citizenship influence the human experience of globalization. 

Limited to 20 students.  Spring semester.  Professor Schmalzbauer.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Spring 2017, Spring 2018

305 Gender, Migration and Power:  Latinos in the Americas

(Offered as AMST 305 and SOCI 305.)  In this course we draw from sociology, anthropology, and geography to explore the gendered dynamics and experiences of Latino migration to the United States. We begin by situating gendered patterns of migration in the context of contemporary globalization and relating them to social constructions of gender. Next we look at experiences of settlement, analyzing the role of women’s and men’s networks in the process of migration, especially in terms of employment and survival strategies. We also analyze how specific contexts of reception influence the gender experience of settlement. For example, how does migration to rural areas differ from migration to traditional urban migration hubs, and how does gender influence that difference?  We then look at Latino family formation, paying special attention to the experiences of transnational mothers and fathers, those who have left children behind in their home countries in the process of migration. Finally, we explore the relationship between migration and sexuality.

Limited to 20 students.  Fall semester.  Professor Schmalzbauer.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018

311 Race and Nation: The History of Hispaniola

(Offered as AMST 311 and BLST 361 [CLA]).  The course will survey nineteenth- and twentieth-century histories of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the two nations that share the island of Hispaniola. Despite the emergence of distinct national identities in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, their histories are deeply intertwined. We survey the history of Hispaniola in three moments. We begin with the Haitian Revolution. What was the legacy of the Haitian Revolution for Hispaniola in the nineteenth century? We examine the history of abolition, independence, empire, and the peasantry. Second, in the early twentieth century, the United States intervened and occupied both nations. What is the history of U.S. Empire and its military occupations and wars in Hispaniola? We focus on the rise of dictatorships and authoritarianism as a legacy of U.S. intervention. Third, working-class Haitians and Dominicans share a long history of migration to other Caribbean islands and the United States. Migration patterns were shaped by domestic economies and neoliberal policies. How have the histories of Dominican and Haitian migration to the United States developed over the twentieth century? The study of Hispaniola provides us the opportunity to explore the history of revolution, state-building, citizenship, US empire, national identities, and migration.

Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2016-17. Professor del Moral.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2016

315 Race and U.S. Empire: 1898 in the Caribbean and the Pacific

Despite the dominant historical narrative of U.S. “exceptionalism,” imperial practices are at the heart of U.S. history and the formation of an American colonial state. In this course, we survey the emergence of U.S. Empire in the Pacific and Caribbean at the turn of the century (1890s-1910s). In the mid-nineteenth century, the United States was emerging as an empire, as the Spanish Empire was contracting and the British Empire was expanding. The formation of the United States as an empire, therefore, was shaped by competing international actors and great historical change. We examine the history of four turn-of-the-century U.S. territories in the Pacific and Caribbean: Hawaii, the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Class readings and lectures privilege the perspective of colonial peoples. We highlight the multiple ways colonial societies negotiated U.S. colonial practices. Colonial responses to U.S. imperialism were varied, ranging from radical nationalism, autonomism, and annexation. Throughout the course, we pay particular attention to how racial ideologies informed colonial practices.

Limited to 20 students.  Fall semester.  Professor del Moral.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2016

316 Afro-Latinos

(Offered as AMST 316 and BLST 331 [US]).  Who is an “Afro-Latino”? Are they Latinos or are they Black? Afro-Latinos are African-descended peoples from Latin America and the Caribbean who reside in the United States. In this course, a focus on Afro-Latinos allows us to study the history of racial ideologies and racial formation in the Americas.

We take a multi-layered approach to the study of modern Afro-Latino history (late nineteenth century to the twentieth century). First, the history of Afro-Latinos has been shaped by the historical relationship between race and nation in Latin America. Therefore, we look closely at the varied histories of African-descended peoples in Latin American countries. Second, the historical relationship between the United States and Latin America has shaped the experience of Afro-Latinos who reside in the U.S. The long history of U.S. economic dominance and military interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean generated an equally long history of Latin American migration to the U.S. In the twentieth century black migrants came from nations that promoted myths of racial democracy to a nation that practiced racial segregation and violence. Afro-Latino migrants experienced racial segregation and violence in the U.S. in ways similar to but different than other Latinos and African Americans. Therefore, third, we examine the history of Afro-Latinos in relation to Latinos in the U.S. The history of Latinos is at the core of U.S. continental expansion, labor practices, and exclusionary citizenship. The category “Latino” has also been shaped by racial hierarchies. The relatively new category of “Afro-Latino” allows us to examine a history that has been silenced within the broader categories of “Latino” or “African American.”

In this course, we examine how Afro-Latinos maneuvered between different racial contexts in Latin American nations and the United States. It is a history that highlights the competing and conflicting racial ideologies that have shaped the Americas.

Limited to 20 students.  Omitted 2016-17.  Professor del Moral.

 

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2021

317 Puerto Rican Migration

Migration is an experience shared by most Caribbean communities. In this course, we study Puerto Rican migration in the twentieth-century. In 1898, the United States invaded and occupied the island as part of its expansion into the Caribbean region during the Cuban War of Independence. Since then, Puerto Rico has remained a colonial territory of the United States. We will discuss the historical patterns of migration that emerged as a result of this century-long colonial relationship. Through the case study of Puerto Rican migration, we will engage broad topics, including empire, colonialism, labor radicalism, patriarchy, language, and cultural identities. The course is organized in four units.

First, we discuss the 1898 war, the U.S. occupation, and the early migration of Puerto Rican workers to Hawaii, an American territory in the Pacific. We also examine the migration of radicals and workers to the United States, a history connected to the great migration of black Caribbean radicals to the northeast. Second, the 1940s to the 1960s marks the “great migration” of industrial and agricultural workers to the United States. Some made a permanent move to the mainland, while others, like Mexican braceros, travelled for short work contracts. Third, we examine the return migration of the 1970s, which was shaped by the great cultural production and radical politics of the New York and Chicago communities. Finally, we move to the 1990s and beyond. By then, the greater Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States was firmly established in different regions of the mainland. These different communities began to receive a new generation of workers, civil servants, and professionals in numbers that rivaled the great mid-century experience. Today, more Puerto Ricans live on the mainland than the island.

Limited to 20 students.  Omitted 2016-17.  Professor del Moral.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2015

320 Red/Black Literature: At the Crossroads of Native American and African American Literary Histories

Throughout this class we will consider the "crossroads," marked by an X, as a visual and symbolic point of intersection with undefined meaning and the potential for fateful outcomes. Reading literary and historical texts students will consider how the crossroads X carries specific meanings for an Afro-Native literary tradition. We will bring Scott Lyons's theory of the X mark, as the signature Native people placed on treaties, to issues of coercion and consent in African American literature and history. Thus, this class focuses on texts that speak in a triple voice, inflected by echoes of a Native American oral tradition, flashes of African American vernacular culture, and forms and techniques adapted from various models of modern Western literature. Students will read literary works as well as primary and secondary historical sources that point to the sometimes powerful and also fraught intersections of Black and Indian histories in the United States from the nineteenth century to the decades following the Civil Rights and Black and Red Power movements. Topics of particular attention include land and politics, history and identity, and gender and sexuality. We will also focus on themes of race, place, family, and belonging. Some of the authors featured in this course are Tiya Miles, Craig Womack, Lauret Savoy, LeAnne Howe, and Michael Dorris. In addition to active participation in seminar discussions students will write a series of short papers in response to the readings and conduct short research assignments.

Spring semester.  Professor Vigil.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2017, Fall 2018

322 A History of the Native Book

This course examines the exciting intersection of critical fields of inquiry, including Native American History, American History, Book History, and Literary Studies. Students will immerse themselves in materials written by Native American authors from the seventeenth century to the present by doing archival research in the Kim-Wait/Pablo Eisenberg Collection at the College. Working in small groups and individually, students will be able to practice and hone research and writing skills. In particular, students will be expected to complete a semester-long research project based on books from the collection to produce new understandings about the significance of Native authorship, publishing, and writing practices as framed by their specific historical circumstances. In addition to producing a final research paper, students will work in research groups to create entries to curate their own digital exhibition as a class. This exhibition will also be accessible to the public to showcase what the class learned about Native book history. Students will spend an additional half hour each week in a required weekly meeting in the archives.

Limited to 20 students.  Omitted 2016-17.  Professor Vigil.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2015

326 Immigration and the New Latino Second Generation

(Offered as AMST 326 and SOCI 326.)  This course focuses on Latino immigrant youth and the children of Latino immigrants who are coming of age in the contemporary United States, what social scientists have termed the “new second generation.” Currently this generation is the fastest growing demographic of children under 18 years of age. The majority of youth in the “new second generation” are Latino.

Drawing on sociological and anthropological texts, fiction and memoir, we will explore the social factors, historical legacies and policies that in large part shape the lived experiences of Latino youth. We begin by laying a historical and theoretical base for the course, exploring the notions of assimilation and transnationalism. We then move into an exploration of the intersecting contexts of inequality which contextualize daily life for the new second generation. Specifically we investigate how social class, race, gender, and “illegality” intersect with generation to shape the struggles, opportunities, identities and aspirations of Latino youth.

Requisite: Previous course(s) in Sociology, Anthropology, American Studies, Black Studies or Latin American History. Limited to 18 students. Omitted 2016-17.  Professor Schmalzbauer.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2015, Fall 2017, Spring 2021

330 Making Asians:  Asian American in Literature and Law

This course examines the construction of Asian American identity from the late 1800s to the present day by examining literary texts and legal texts and how they have shaped definitions of distinct Asian ethnicities and panethnic identities. We will explore how Asians in America have been defined in the law and literary arts and how work in these distinct spheres of American life—law and literature—have been in conversation.  We will focus on such issues as immigration, citizenship, and civil rights and their relation to Asian American identity. Readings will include fiction, drama, poetry, literary criticism, legal cases, legal codes and statutes, legal studies and history, and ethnic studies.  Coursework will include essays, oral presentations, and a research project.

Limited to 18 students.  Fall semester.  Professor Hayashi.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2016, Spring 2019

350 American Origins

(See ENGL 350)

358 Indigenous American Epics

(See ENGL 458)

371 Race and Revolution in Cuban History

(Offered as AMST 371 and BLST 371 [C/LA].)  Race and revolution are at the heart of Cuban history. As the slave-based plantation economy expanded in nineteenth-century Cuba, enslaved and free black Cubans looked to Haiti as an example of black liberation. Inspired by the Haitian Revolution, in 1812 free black José Antonio Aponte organized an island-wide rebellion to free Cuba from slavery and Spanish rule. When Cuban elites called for independence from Spain in 1868, they relied on enslaved and free blacks for military support and promised gradual abolition in return. The concept of “racelessness” in a Free Cuba powerfully shaped the national identities that emerged during the 1895 War of Independence. In 1912, black veterans organized the Partido Independiente de Color (PIC, Independent Party of People of Color) and demanded that the state recognize the equal rights of black Cubans. The government responded by accusing the PIC of launching a “race war” and massacred thousands of PIC members and other black Cubans. The abolition of racial inequality was a central goal of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. The new revolutionary state invested heavily in social policies designed to promote racial equity. In the United States, white Cuban émigrés reproduced the racial hierarchies of pre-revolutionary Cuba, while subsequent Afro-Cuban immigrants challenged racism in the diaspora. Since the Special Period of the early 1990s, economic liberalization polices have widened economic disparities on the island, threatening the revolutionary goal of equality for all Cubans.

Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor del Moral.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2017

372 Race and Public History/Memory

This seminar focuses on two major events in nineteenth century American history: the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the U.S.-inspired overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. We examine attitudes and actions leading to these momentous events, their impact on the target populations and American society, as well as subsequent efforts to obtain apologies from the U.S. government. Amazingly, these efforts succeeded in 2011-12 and 1993, respectively. The Congress has issued apologies only five times in its entire history–the three others were for slavery, treatment of Native Americans and forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. Throughout, we analyze the memory-making involved, largely through the lens of public history venues such as museums, documentaries, historic landmarks, websites, and others. Some familiarity with Asian American history will be assumed.

Limited to 18 students.  Fall semester.  McCloy Visiting Professor Odo.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020

374 WWII and Japanese Americans

(Offered as AMST 374 and HIST 374 [US]).  In the largest incidence of forced removal in American history, the U.S. incarcerated 120,000 people of Japanese descent during WWII, two-thirds of whom were American citizens. Preceded by half a century of organized racism, the attack on Pearl Harbor provided justification for imprisonment of an entire ethnic group solely on the basis of affiliation by “blood.” At the same time, Japanese Americans served in the U.S. military with extraordinary distinction, earning recognition in the 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team in Europe as the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in American military history. Thousands more served in the Military Intelligence Service using their knowledge of the Japanese language as a “secret weapon” against the Japanese Empire. We will examine the historical background leading to these events and Japanese American resistance to official actions including the cases of Yasui, Hirabayashi, Korematsu, and Endo which reached the U.S. Supreme Court. We will also explore the imposition of the draft upon men behind barbed wire and those who became draft resisters. We will also trace the post-war rise of movements to gain redress, successful with President Reagan’s signing of HR 442 in 1988, and the extraordinary rise of memorials and museums commemorating incarceration and memory-making.

Limited to 18 students.  Spring semester.  McCloy Visiting Professor Odo.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022

390, 490 Special Topics

Fall and spring semesters.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

468 Research Methods in American Culture

This course is designed to provide American Studies juniors (and others) with a methodological grounding in the discipline and an opportunity to conduct research on a topic of their own choosing. We will engage a wide range of materials and methodologies in this course in order to grasp the broad interdisciplinarity of the field of American Studies. Through short written exercises addressing a variety of documents including manuscripts, journals, census records, images and printed books, students will gauge the utility of various methodological approaches to determine which are most useful for their own independent work. The major requirement of this course is a research presentation that will be presented in a public forum at the end of the semester.

Limited to 15 students.  Open to juniors and seniors as a research seminar; first- and second-year students admitted only under special circumstances.  Spring semester.  Professor Hayashi.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2025

496 Capstone Project

A one-semester project--either a shorter essay or some other form of independent interdisciplinary research and production. The capstone project serves as the grounds for a comprehensive evaluation of each student's achievement in the major.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

498, 499 Senior Departmental Honors

Spring semester.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2025