AMST 101
America: The Nation and Its Discontents Fall 2023 (also offered Spring 2024)
Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
This is not the current course catalog

This course introduces students to the capacious and extraordinarily varied interdisciplinary field of American Studies. First institutionalized in the mid-twentieth century, American Studies once bridged literature and history in an attempt to discover a singular American identity. Over 80 years later, many American Studies scholars reject this exceptionalizing rhetoric, working instead to understand how genocide, enslavement, colonization, and militarism/war are foundational to the formation of the U.S. nation-state, and how marginalized and minoritized peoples have survived through, rebelled against, and created new visions for collectivity, relationality, and community. In this course, students will be introduced to the dynamic ways American Studies work links to ethnic studies; women, gender, and sexuality studies; literary studies, political science; critical geography; critical media studies; disability studies; history; anthropology; sociology; art; and more. We will anchor this array of approaches by examining beliefs, practices, places, and migrations that have shaped and been shaped by the U.S., and we will pay particular attention to the people who labor for, have been racialized by, and who think critically about “America.” Through close reading; discussions; and analyses of music, art, and film, we will collectively reckon with the questions of who and what makes “America” — hemispherically, transnationally, globally. In the process, students will be encouraged to co-create a learning experience rooted in praxis, political consciousness, intersectionality, and mutual support.