American Culture Course Offerings

• For the list of classes being offered for the current or upcoming term, please visit the Registrar's Office website.
• Term-specific descriptions for all LSA courses are available through the LSA Course Guide.
• A complete catalog of all American Culture courses is available through the LSA Bulletin. Please note that not every class will be taught every year.
• Students interested in proposing an independent study need to complete an independent study contract (PDF) in consultation with the faculty member of their choosing. The application deadline is the end of the first full week of classes in the term for which the student is applying.
• Information about how American Culture handles waitlists and requests for overrides can be obtained by clicking here.

 

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Featured Courses Fall 2009!

American Culture 205.001
Latina/o Religions and Cultures
Instructor: Daniel Ramirez

What do genuflecting Guadalupano pilgrims, Orisha-invoking santeros, Bible-toting evangélicos and tongues-speaking aleluyas have in common? What separates them from each other and the religious mainline? This course will examine the role of religion in the development of U.S. Latina/o identities, studying the complexity of contact between Christian and non-Christian (indigenous, African, etc.) traditions and practices in the expansive borderlands of the northernmost "nation" of Latin America, Latino U.S.A. Our interdisciplinary approach and close attention to issues of institutional power and social stratification and marginalization will prompt questions of race, gender and class, of the recovery of social history and of how the margins often shape the center. To borrow from historian Tom Tweed (Re-Telling U.S. Religious History, 1997), we will seek to re-sight, re-site, and re-cite the standard narratives of "American" religious history through the prism and experience of these linguistic and cultural minority populations. The new sightings of American religious topography will also include an exploration of the soundscapes of religious musical culture.

 

American Culture 353
Asians in American Film and Television
Instructor: Scott Kurashige

• How have the movies and TV shaped American conceptions of Asians?
• How were stereotypes of Asians as “coolies,” “savages,” “yellow peril,” “dragon ladies,” “gooks,” and “model minorities” created?
• What impact have these stereotypes had upon American wars, race relations, immigration policy, hate crimes, and Japanese American internment?
• Have features by Asian Hollywood stars like Bruce Lee and Margaret Cho served to breakdown stereotypes?
• How have independent filmmakers and media activists generated new and more complex conceptions of Asian American identity and culture?

These are some of the many questions we will explore in this course. Our investigation will survey the powerful impact that racialized images of Asians have had upon American history. Students will develop analytical tools to dissect and critique media representations of both Asia and Asian Americans.

Course Flyer: AMCULT 353 - Asians in American Film and Television, Fall 2009

 

American Culture 374
The Politics and Culture of the "Sixties"
Instructor: Matthew Countryman

Freedom Rides, Classic Rock, Motown, Vietnam, The Draft, Woodstock, Hippies, and The Great Society. The "Sixties" have a mythic quality in our political and cultural life. Debates over the 1960's and the history of that decade mirror the very essence of American culture. This is the decade of peace, optimism, cultural turbulence, despair, war, and frustration. It was a time when basic assumptions and institutions were challenged.

This course will explore the nature of American society through a look at the social and cultural movements of the 1960's. Specific attention will be paid to the relationship between political and cultural change during that decade as well as to changes in race relations and racial structures in the nation.

Course Flyer 1: AMCULT 374 - The "Sixties," Fall 2009
Course Flyer 2: AMCULT 374 - The "Sixties," Fall 2009

 

AMCULT 301.003
Sex and Sexuality in US Popular Culture
Instructor: Anthony Mora

This course will explore how changing ideas about sex, sexuality, and gender appeared in certain types of twentieth-century popular culture. As a group, the class will learn to interpret media, such as movies or television, as historical texts that provide insight into past notions about sex in the United States. To this end, the class will start with the assumption that media functions as mechanisms of socialization and as a venue for expressing popular concerns or beliefs about gender roles, same-sex desire, race and so forth. The class will uncover how the media represented historical issues such as courtship among heterosexuals, pornography, gay liberation, and birth control. At the same time, it will seek to uncover the voices of groups that the mainstream media have often omitted (or actively sought to silence) in discussions about sex. To that end, much of the course reading will draw from academics engaged in an assortment of overlapping fields. Students will be introduced to scholarship in race and ethnic studies, queer studies, feminist studies, and so forth.