Course Descriptions

 

Undergraduate Course Offerings Fall 2008

(updated on a rolling basis)

AMS 3310-02:American Women Between the World Wars: Are We in Kansas Anymore?
Instructor: Margaret E. Wright-Cleveland
DIF 310

Between World War I and World War II, America met Scarlett and Melanie, Dorothy and the Wicked Witch, Catherine, Bessie Smith, and Rosie the Riveter. American women gained the right to vote, learned to build jets and fly them, and played professional baseball. By reading novels and magazines of the period; examining artwork, advertisements, and music; and considering industry statistics and contemporary responses to women?s achievements, students will gain a more complete understanding of women?s lives during the first half of the 20th Century. But, be forewarned: as women?s lives are defined, so are men?s. The interaction with images and expectations of women in the past will instigate comment on definitions of maleness in the past as well. Understanding history?s use of images will enable students to more fully examine and critique the images and expectations of women and men they find in their own world, seeing both how such images helped shape who we are today and how we have diverged from their examples.

AMS 3310-01 & 03: Crime Narratives and the American Cultural Identity
Instructor: Jeff Bennett

O.J. Simpson's 1994 arrest received more U.S. media coverage than the massacre of 800,000 people in Rwanda, the cease-fires in the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland, and the historic Republican takeover of Congress- combined. Currently, network television is host to over a dozen hour-long crime dramas including three Law and Order?s and three C.S.I.?s (four if you count that dumb Navy one). The original Law and Order is currently in its nineteenth season, outlasting five presidential administrations and three presidents. The last two films to win the Academy Award for Best Picture were both violent crime-narratives. Strangely enough, all the previous examples have occurred during a period of historically low crime-rates in the United States.

What are possible explanations for this cultural infatuation with the narrative of crime? How does the crime narrative correspond to American society and its cultural needs, fears, and attitudes? This course will examine the public fascination with the narrative of crime and its place within the American cultural identity. We will read texts both fictional and non-fictional, view films and television programs both fictional and non-fictional, study famous cases and the presentation of those cases in the media, and examine both historical and critical scholarly studies.

AMS 3810-01: Underground Music in America, 1980-present
Instructor: Micah Vandegrift

Underground Music in America focuses upon the musical heritage that grew from the Punk traditions in the late seventies. Often overlooked as naïve ignorance and teenage emotionalism, this music has had lasting effects on the ideals of youth and sub-cultures. For example, The “"Do It Yourself"” ethos of those who crafted this music has become a cultural phenomenon inspiring many. The underground nature of this scene utilizes the cultural framework of American character, freedom of speech, class mobility, community, and more to develop and challenge established traditions, artistic and social. Click here for a video introduction to Underground Music in America.

AMS 3810-02: The Modern American Haunting
Instructor: Jackie Attaway

This course will discuss the idea of “"the haunt" in modern American culture. Focusing on the emerging music genre called “"New Weird America" and American avant-garde literature; this class will provoke questions concerning the aspects of haunting in American art, literature, music, and film. Course themes include: existence between life and death; being “"haunted by the past"; cognition, spectrality, and time; inheritance of violence.

 

Undergraduate Course Offerings Summer B 2008

AMS3310-01

Personalized Religion:  The Search for Spiritual Satisfaction in American Popular Culture

Summer B:  MTWR 11am-12:45pm

Mara Ginnane

 

In the twentieth century, the American spirit of religious rebellion initiated by the country’s Protestant founders has reached a new extreme. Typified by the “seeker” culture of “open-minded” spiritual searching, personalized religiosity exemplifies the deeply spiritual nature of the American pursuit of happiness. Intensifying in the 1920s, American distrust of institutions forced  religious sentiment onto previously secular domains  as traditional religions began to be increasingly altered, appropriated, and complicated by individual interpretation. This class will examine popular perception of this phenomenon through novels, critical essays, film, and music. We will use Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises to frame the problem of religion in modern America and proceed to explore topics such as Terry Tempest Williams’ experience of Mormonism and eco-feminism, Leslie Marmon Silko’s presentation of Native American spirituality, American appropriation of Eastern religions, popular Catholicism in America, and New Age spirituality.

 

AMS3310-02

“The American Dream”

Summer B:  MTWR 1-2:45pm

Jason M. Gibson

 

This course addresses the historical and cultural renderings of the “American Dream.”  Particular emphasis is placed on the way in which the “American Dream” has evolved over time in response to major historical events such as war, economic hardship, economic boom, and cultural revolution.  The course dialectic is rooted in the following questions:  How is the Dream constructed?  Is the Dream achievable? Who has access to the Dream?  Who is excluded from the Dream? Does the Dream have currency in a post 9/11 world?  Through a variety of genres and media such as the novel, news (print and television), nonfiction, television/film, and the fine and performing arts the course will attempt to provide answers to these questions demonstrating the centrality of the “American Dream” to the greater American identity.  Representative texts include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), and Sherman Alexi’s  Tonto & Lone Ranger Fist-Fight in Heaven (1993).

 

AMS3810-01

Underground Music in America, 1980-present

Summer B:  MTWR 11am-12:45pm

Micah Vandegrift

 

Underground Music in America focuses upon the musical heritage that grew from the Punk traditions in the late seventies. Often overlooked as naïve ignorance and teenage emotionalism, this music has had lasting effects on the ideals of youth and sub-cultures. For example, The “Do It Yourself” ethos of those who crafted this music has become a cultural phenomenon inspiring many. The underground nature of this scene utilizes the cultural framework of American character, freedom of speech, class mobility, community, and more to develop and challenge established traditions, artistic and social.

 

AMS 3810-02

The Modern American Haunting

Summer B:  MTWR 9:30-10:45am

Jackie Attaway

 

This course will discuss the idea of “the haunt” in modern American culture. Focusing on the emerging music genre called “New Weird America” and American avant-garde literature; this class will provoke questions concerning the aspects of haunting in American art, literature, music, and film. Course themes include: existence between life and death; being “haunted by the past”; cognition, spectrality, and time; inheritance of violence.