American Studies (AMERSTD)
AMERSTD 10 Introduction to American Studies 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall, spring and summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 to 4 hours of lecture and zero to 1 hour of discussion per week.
American culture and cultural change, with attention to the multicultural basis of American society and emphasis on the need for multiple methods of analysis. The course will consistently draw on the arts, material culture, and various fields affecting cultural production and meaning. Those areas include literature, film, history, architecture, history of art, religion, music, engineering, environmental studies, anthropology, politics, economics, law, and medicine. This course may include discussion sections depending on available funding. Some versions of this course need four in-class contact hours because of the extensive use of media.
Students will receive no credit for American Studies 10 after completing American Studies 10AC. A deficient grade in American Studies 10 may be removed by taking American Studies 10AC. Formerly known as Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Studies 10.
AMERSTD 10AC Introduction to American Studies 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Lecture and 1 hour of Discussion per week for 15 weeks.
American culture and cultural change, with attention to the multicultural basis of American society and emphasis on the need for multiple methods of analysis. The course will consistently draw on the arts, material culture, and various fields affecting cultural production and meaning. Those areas include literature, film, history, architecture, history of art, religion, music, engineering, environmental studies, anthropology, politics, economics, law, and medicine.
Satisfies the American Cultures requirement
Students will receive no credit for 10AC after taking 10 or Undergraduate and Interdisciplinary Studies 10. A deficient grade in American Studies 10 or Interdisciplinary Studies 10 may be removed by taking American Studies 10AC.
AMERSTD C10/L & S C40T Introduction to American Studies: Hollywood: the Place, the Industry, the Fantasy 4 Units
Department: American Studies; Letters and Science
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Lecture and 1 hour of Discussion per week for 15 weeks.
This course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of American Studies, taking the "Hollywood Dream Factory" as the central theme. Focusing on both parts of that phrase, the course will proceed along a double path. We will examine the historical and geographical development of the motion picture industry from the rise of the studio system to the "new" entertainment economy of the 1980's and we will examine ways Hollywood is represented in literature and film.
Instructor: Moran
AMERSTD 24 Freshman Seminar 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 1 hour of Seminar per week for 15 weeks.
The Freshman Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 freshmen.
Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD 98 Directed Group Study 1 - 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Offered for pass/not pass grade only.
Hours and format: Group meetings to be arranged.
Prerequisites: Open only to freshmen and sophomores. Consent of instructor.
Written proposal must be approved by sponsoring faculty. Seminars for the group study of selected topics, which will vary from year to year. Topics may be initiated by students.
Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD 99 Supervised Independent Study and Research 1 - 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Offered for pass/not pass grade only.
Hours and format: 1 to 4 hour of Independent study per week for 15 weeks.
Prerequisites: Restricted to freshmen and sophomores; consent of instructor.
Independent study and research by arrangement with faculty.
Course may be repeated for credit. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes. Enrollment is restricted; see the Introduction to Courses and Curricula section of this catalog.
AMERSTD 101 Examining U.S. Cultures in Time 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall, spring and summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 to 4 hours of Lecture and Zero to 1 hour of Discussion per week for 15 weeks. 7.5 hours of Lecture per week for 6 weeks.
This course examines how U.S. cultures are constructed, reinforced, and changed, and how those cultures act simultaneously at a given time. To help students develop skills in cultural analysis, lectures will contrast various methods and perspectives as they apply to the study of a particular year or decade. Topics will vary from semester to semester. This course may include discussion sections depending on available funding. Some versions of this course need four in-class contact hours because of the extensive use of media.
Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD 101AC Examining U.S. Cultures in Time 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall, spring and summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 to 4 hours of Lecture and Zero to 1 hour of Discussion per week for 15 weeks. 5.5 hours of Lecture per week for 8 weeks. 7.5 hours of Lecture per week for 6 weeks.
This course examines how U.S. cultures are constructed, reinforced, and changed, and how those cultures act simultaneously at a given time. To help students develop skills in cultural analysis, lectures will contrast various methods and perspectives as they apply to the study of a particular year or decade. Topics will vary from semester to semester.
Satisfies the American Cultures requirement
Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD 102 Examining U.S. Cultures in Place 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall, spring and summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 to 4 hours of Lecture and Zero to 1 hour of Discussion per week for 15 weeks. 7.5 hours of Lecture per week for 6 weeks.
This course examines how U.S. cultures are constructed, reinforced, and changed--particularly in reference to place and material culture. Qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis drawn from several disciplines will help students develop skills in cultural interpretation. Case studies may focus on a neighborhood, a city, or a region. Topics will vary from semester to semester. This course may include discussion sections depending on available funding. Some versions of this course need four in-class contact hours because of the extensive use of media.
Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD 110 Special Topics in American Studies 3 or 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall, spring and summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 to 4 hours of Lecture per week for 15 weeks. 6 to 8 hours of Lecture per week for 8 weeks. 7.5 to 10 hours of Lecture per week for 6 weeks.
This course is designed primarily to allow faculty to develop focused interdisciplinary courses which address specific issues, themes, or problems in American society. Topics vary from semester to semester. Students should consult the department's webpage for current offerings before the start of the semester.
Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD H110 Honors Seminar: Special Topics in American Studies 3 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall, spring and summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 to 4 hours of Seminar per week for 15 weeks. 6 to 8 hours of Seminar per week for 8 weeks. 7.5 to 10 hours of Seminar per week for 6 weeks.
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor may be required.
This course is designed to introduce honors students (those who have achieved a minimum overall GPA of 3.3) to the history and theory of American studies as an interdisciplinary field and to explore current themes, debates, and researh problems in American studies.
Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD C111A/ARCH C174 Architecture in Depression and War 4 Units
Department: American Studies; Architecture
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Spring and summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 to 4 hours of Lecture and Zero to 1 hour of Discussion per week for 15 weeks. 7.5 hours of Lecture and Zero to 2.5 hours of Discussion per week for 6 weeks.
The Great Depression and World War II are arguably the two most influential events for the development of the built environment in the 20th century. Not only did they alter the socio-economic and political landscape on which architecture and urban planning depend, but they also led to technological innovations and vital debates about the built environment. This course examines the 1930's and 1940's topically, studying the work of the New Deal, corporate responses to the Depression and war, the important connections between architecture and advertising, the role of the Museum of Modern Art in the promotion of Modernism, the concept of the ideal house, and key tests, theories, and projects from the period.
Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes. Instructor: Shanken
AMERSTD C111E/ENGLISH C136 Topics in American Studies 4 Units
Department: American Studies; English
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Lecture per week for 15 weeks.
A course on the intellectual, cultural, historical, and social backgrounds to American literature. Topics will vary from semester to semester. Students should consult the department's "Announcement of Classes" for current offerings well before the start of the semester.
Course may be repeated for credit with different topic and consent of instructor. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD C112A/ENV DES C169A/GEOG C160A American Cultural Landscapes, 1600 to 1900 4 Units
Department: American Studies; Environmental Design; Geography
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Fall
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Lecture and 1 hour of Discussion per week for 15 weeks.
Introduces ways of seeing and interpreting American histories and cultures, as revealed in everyday built surroundings-- houses, highways, farms, factories, stores, recreation areas, small towns, city districts, and regions. Encourages students to read landscapes as records of past and present social relations and to speculate for themselves about cultural meaning.
Instructor: Groth
AMERSTD C112B/ENV DES C169B/GEOG C160B American Cultural Landscapes, 1900 to Present 4 Units
Department: American Studies; Environmental Design; Geography
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Lecture and 1 hour of Discussion per week for 15 weeks.
Introduces ways of seeing and interpreting American histories and cultures, as revealed in everyday built surroundings--homes, highways, farms, factories, stores, recreation areas, small towns, city districts, and regions. Encourages students to read landscapes as records of past and present social relations, and to speculate for themselves about cultural meaning.
Instructor: Groth
AMERSTD C112F/ESPM C191/HISTART C189/UGIS C136 The American Forest: Its Ecology, History, and Representation 4 Units
Department: American Studies; Environ Sci, Policy, and Management; History of Art; Undergrad Interdisciplinary Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Lecture and 1 hour of Discussion per week for 15 weeks.
The American forest will be examined in terms of its ecology, history, and representations in paintings, photographs, and literary essays. This examination seeks to understand the American forest in its scientific and economic parameters, as well as the historic, social, and ideological dimensions which have contributed to the evolution of our present attitudes toward the forest.
Instructors: Lovell, McBride
AMERSTD C115/FILM C115 The American Detective in Fiction, Film, and Television 4 Units
Department: American Studies; Film and Media
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 7.5 hours of Lecture per week for 8 weeks.
This course considers how the American detective is represented in fiction, fil, and popular culture. We will examine how representations of the American detective are affected by diverse historican and socio-cultural factors, including the ideology of American individualism, paradigms of investigation and ordered knowledge, and competing discourses of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. After a brief consideration of early American detectives and detectives in the classic American hardboiled tradition, we will focus on many detectives from traditionally understudied groups, including female detectives, African American detectives, Chicana detectives, Asian American detectives, Native American detectives, and gay and lesbian detectives. This course may be used as an elective in the American Studies major.
Instructor: Dresner
AMERSTD C117/ISF C117/MASSCOM C117 American Television 4 Units
Department: American Studies; Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj; Mass Communications
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 6 hours of Lecture per week for 8 weeks.
This course offers an interdisciplinary survey of various theoretical and methodological approaches to the social, cultural and political dimensions of American television. Selected readings and viewings will be used to examine the production, reception, and content of television programming. The focus for summer 1994 will be "prime time after 1980," including such shows as HILL STREET BLUES, DALLAS, THE COSBY SHOW, STAR TREK; THE NEXT GENERATION, and TWIN PEAKS. This course satisfies part of the core requirement for the Interdisciplinary Studies Field major, and may be used as an elective in both the American Studies major and the Mass Communications major.
Course may be repeated if focus is different. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD 118AC/ISF 118AC/MASSCOM 118AC American Popular Culture 4 Units
Department: American Studies; Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj; Mass Communications
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 7.5 hours of Lecture per week for 6 weeks.
An interdisciplinary approach to American popular culture, focusing on the social, economic, commercial, political, and historical construction of popular culture and American identities.This course will satisfy part of the core requirement for the American Studies major.
Satisfies the American Cultures requirement
Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD C118/ISF C118/MEDIAST C118 American Popular Culture 4 Units
Department: American Studies; Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj; Media Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 7.5 hours of Lecture per week for 6 weeks.
An interdisciplinary approach to American popular culture, focusing on the social, economic, commercial, political, and historical construction of popular culture and American identities. This course will satisfy part of the core requirement for the American Studies major.
Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD C120/ISF C120 Immigration and American Culture 4 Units
Department: American Studies; Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: Fifty-2 hours of lecture and 8 hours of field trips, to be offered during 6- or 8 week session.
In this course, we will discuss the "immigrant" as both the subject and the object of representation in U.S. literature and culture. We will discuss the works of Jewish American, Asian American, and Chicano authors, and examine the effects of such factors as country of origin, gender, race/ethnicity, social class, and religion on the construction of "American identity." This course may be used as an elective in the American studies major or may be used to fulfill the 100A or 100B requirement in the interdisciplinary studies filed major.
Satisfies the American Cultures requirement
Instructor: Camargo
AMERSTD 121 Photography in America 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: Fifty-2 hours of lecture and 8 hours of field trips, to be offered during 6- or 8-week sessions.
The topic of this course is the history of photography in the United States, from the introduction of the medium in 1839 to the present decade. We will consider the medium chronologically as well as thematically, focusing on the following kinds of issues: the photograph as document and as fine art, the "language" and intentionality" of photography, work and image in photographically illustrated media, the social role of the photograph, photography and gender. This course may be used as an elective in the American studies major.
Instructor: Graham
AMERSTD C125/ISF C125/MEDIAST C125 American Media and Global Politics 3 Units
Department: American Studies; Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj; Media Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5.5 hours of Lecture per week for 8 weeks. 7.5 hours of Lecture per week for 6 weeks.
Public opinion about world events is largely shaped today by the mass media. How accurate is such coverage in the light of historical analysis? To what extent do systemic sources of bias or distortion affect our understanding of history? To approach these questions, we will analyze the role of the media in several specific case studies.
AMERSTD 130Y Tribal Sovereignty 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will explore the unique legal status of Indian tribes and reservation lands in the United States, including analyses of treaties, the trust relationship, and the evolution of federal Indian law and policy. Students will examine the impace of such economic development ventures as mineral resource extraction and gaming on tribal sovereignty and culture. The rights of Indian individuals and groups to exercise freedom of religion will be analyzed in the context of sacred lands, repatriation of skeletal remains, and the use of peyote as sacrament.
Instructor: Biestman
AMERSTD 131Y Native American Indian Literatures 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course considers several novels, short stories, and autobiographical essays by contemporary Native American Indians. A general historical context will be provided with an introduction to trickster stories and oral performance in translation. The lectures and discussions will focus on the comparative themes of tribal experiences in diverse tribal cultures with a critical review of the traces of traditional oral narratives in contemporary fiction. Comparative worldviews, landscapes, and the identities of authors and characters will be considered in the course.
Instructor: Vizenor
AMERSTD C132B/HISTORY C132B Intellectual History of the United States since 1865 4 Units
Department: American Studies; History
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Lecture and 1 hour of Discussion per week for 15 weeks.
In this course we will be discussing key developments in U.S. thought since the middle of the nineteenth century, roughly beginning with the reception of Darwin. The broader story told in the class weaves together in the history of science and engineering, the arts and popular culture, philosophy, and education. Our goal is to trace how ideas, whether they are dominant, challenging, or look back, have affected the ways in which Americans live together. We will look at how intellectual life has empowered and expanded the capacity of Americans to understand their world and achieve goals more effectively. We will also consider how intellectual theories have contributed to inequality and injustice.
Students will receive no credit for C132B after taking 132B.
AMERSTD 132Y Native American Indian Autobiographies 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course considers several autobiographies written by Native American Indians. The lectures, discussions, and required books focus on various cultural themes and theories of autobiography; a comparative review of diverse tribal experiences and narratives. Theories of cultural simulations and literary forms of representation in autobiographical literature will receive general attention in the course. Students will be required to participate in class discussions and complete two hours review papers and a final examination.
Instructor: Vizenor
AMERSTD 133Y Native America Today 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course focuses on the history and culture of American Indians in the past hundred years and, in particular, the strategies that have enabled them to survive as tribes and individuals. The course will begin with an overview of Native American history and a review of anthropological perspectives on cultural change. This will be followed by an exploration of the issues of identity and tradition in various facets of contemporary Native life, including cultural revival movements, the role of women, people of mixed descent, and contemporary art and literature. An emphasis on participation and small group discussions, and exposure to a wide variety of written and visual materials will give students a chance to develop insights and skills for responding to cultural diversity.
Instructor: Roscoe
AMERSTD C134/AFRICAM C134 Information Technology and Society 4 Units
Department: American Studies; African American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Lecture per week for 15 weeks.
This course assesses the role of information technology in the digitalization of society by focusing on the deployment of e-government, e-commerce, e-learning, the digital city, telecommuting, virtual communities, internet time, the virtual office, and the geography of cyber space. The course will also discuss the role of information technology in the governance and economic development of society.
Instructor: Laguerre
AMERSTD 134Y American Painting at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks.
This course proposes to use the extraordinary local collections, particularly of the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd collection of American art, to introduce students to the tradition of painting in America and to the types of intellectual problems with which current scholars of this are are engaged. All sessions will take place in the galleries in front of the paintings at the deYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Topics will include 17th and 18th century painting, 19th century genre painting, folk painting, landscape painting, still life, and 20th century painting.
Instructor: Lowell
AMERSTD 135Y The Beats in San Francisco 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will briefly review some of the major works by those poets and writers of the "Beat Generation" most closely connected with San Francisco and the Bay Area, and also some of the works by "East Coast Beats" where it is directly relevant either to the San Francisco Bay Area or to an understanding of the phenomenon of the Beat Generation itself. The poets and writers covered will include Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Whalen, and Michael McGlure. We will pay some close attention to the interplay of Beat Generation writing with music, painting, film, and popular culture. Audio and video tapes of some of the principals will be available for viewing and listening.
Instructor: Loewinshon
AMERSTD 136Y A Sense of Place: Four American Worlds 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course invites students to consider the implications of "place" in American writing. That is "place" as not simply literal topography or locale but geography of mind, a myth, a body of association, and legend. To which end we shall be discussing four key modern American works, two novels, a book of poetry, and a story-cycle.
Instructor: Lee
AMERSTD 137Y Changing Media in American Society 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
American news and entertainment reach people around the globe. This course is an opportunity for critical study of these institutions on their home ground, using the resources of the Graduate School of Journalism. The course mixes the perspective of an American historian and a veteran reporter. We draw on our broadcasting and computer facilities to allow new comers to see how American journalists shape the flow of informnation. We focus on the way this profession is building new audiences and losing others. The goal of this course is to bring outsiders into the debate that now rages about the accomplishment and purpose of American media.
Instructors: Goldstein, Leonard
AMERSTD 138Y Advertising and the Culture of Consumption: Gender and Race in Commercial Representations of the Self 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will offer several perspectives on the role advertising has played in determining various expressions of American self-identity, with special emphasis on analyzing corporate representations of the self presented of--and directed to-- African Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The course will complicate commercial representations of African Americans and Native Americans by comparing and contrasting these corporately manufactured identities with individualized voices of racial photography, painting, and music of the period. The lectures and discussions will constitute a subtext throughout the course.
Instructor: McQuade
AMERSTD 139AC/HISTORY C139C Civil Rights and Social Movements in U.S. History 4 Units
Department: American Studies; History
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall, spring and summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Lecture and 1 hour of Discussion per week for 15 weeks. 5.5 hours of Lecture and 2 hours of Discussion per week for 8 weeks. 7.5 hours of Lecture and 2 hours of Discussion per week for 6 weeks.
Beginning with the onset of World War II, America experienced not a sigular,unitary Civil Rights Movement -- as is typically portrayed in standard textbood accounts and the collective memory -- but rather a variety of contemporaneous civil rights and their related social movements. This course explores the history, presenting a top-down (political and legal history), bottom-up (social and cultural history), and comparative (by race and ethnicity as well as region) view of America's struggles for racial equality from roughly World War II until the present.
Satisfies the American Cultures requirement
AMERSTD 139Y The Western Film 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of lecture plus 3 hours of viewing time per week for th5 hours of lecture plus 3 hours of viewing time per week for 3 weeks. ree weeks.
This is a course on the western in American film and literature. We will watch six classic western films, including the and and we will read several important pieces of western literature. We will discuss such issues as the myth of the frontier, the meaning of western landscapes, the American debate about law and order, masculinity, and the nature of cowboy life, etc.
Instructor: Hutson
AMERSTD 140Y American Film Noir 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of lecture plus 3 hours of viewing time per week for th5 hours of lecture plus 3 hours of viewing time per week for 3 weeks. ree weeks.
Film Noir is considered a distinctively American Film genre. A selective survey, this course will sample the ganster picture and the pre-noir hard boiled dective film, and then study some prime post World War II examples of film noir proper. Noir themes include a pervasive cultural corruption, the femme fatale, mysteriously disabled and doomed protagonists, the dark city, etc.
Instructor: Griffin
AMERSTD 141Y San Francisco and the Bay Area: The View from the Street 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of lecture per week for 3 weeks plus field trips. 5 hours of lecture per week for 3 weeks plus field trips.
This is an urban field geography course which will provide a basic overview of Bay Area geography and history. The course will consist of half day field trips to San Francisco and Oakland. We will observe buildings, landmarks, streetscapes, signs, people on the street, etc. in order to understand the forces at work in creating a city. We will cover a broad spectrum of issues, including employment, property development, political power, race, social movements, class structure, popular entertainment.
Instructor: Walker
AMERSTD 142Y Community Development in the Bay Area 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of lecture per week for 3 weeks plus field trips. 5 hours of lecture per week for 3 weeks plus field trips.
This course will provide students with opportunites to discuss and observe in action the most recent theories and practices pertaining to community development in the urban United States. Readings and discussion will be rooted in field trips and interviews with community activists, executive staff and nonprofits, professional planners and designers in the Bay Area. Students will have opportunities to take their own field trips and conduct interviews based on their own interests.
Instructor: Morris
AMERSTD C152/NATAMST C152 Native American Literature 4 Units
Department: American Studies; Native American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall, spring and summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Lecture per week for 15 weeks. 7.5 hours of Lecture per week for 6 weeks.
Prerequisites: 151 is recommended but not required.
An analysis of the written and oral tradition developed by Native Americans. Emphasis will be placed on a multifaceted approach (aesthetic, linguistic, psychological, historical, and cultural) in examining American Indian literature.
AMERSTD C168/NATAMST C166 Native American Novelists 1 Unit
Department: American Studies; Native American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
Native American Indian literature is a distinctive collection of fiction, poetry, autobiographical narratives, and oral stories in translation. This course will provide a general literary and historical context of this distinctive literature, consider narrative subjects and themes, and focus on critical readings of contemporary novels by Native American Indian authors.
Instructor: Vizenor
AMERSTD C171/LD ARCH C171 The American Designed Landscape Since 1850 3 Units
Department: American Studies; Landscape Architecture
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Lecture per week for 15 weeks.
This course surveys the history of American landscape architecture since 1850 in four realms: 1) urban open spaces--that is squares, plazas, parks, and recreation systems; 2) urban and suburban design; 3) regional and environmental planning; 4) gardens. The course will review the cultural and social contexts which have shaped and informed landscape architecture in the United States since the advent of the public parks movement, as well as, the aesthetic precepts, environmental concerns, horticultural practices, and technological innovations of American landscapes. Students will complete a midterm, final, and a research assignment.
Instructor: Mozingo
AMERSTD C172/UGBA C172 History of American Business 3 Units
Department: American Studies; Undergrad. Business Administration
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Lecture per week for 15 weeks.
This course will examine selected aspects of the history of American business. Included will be discussions of the evolution of the large corporation, the development of modern managerial techniques, and the changing relationship of business, government, and labor.
Instructor: Rosen
AMERSTD 178AC Race and Ethnicity in American Culture: Film, Music, and Advertising 3 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 15 hours of lecture/discussion per week for 3 weeks.
This course will examine the politics of racial representation and expression in popular music as well as film and advertising. This course combines 180C, 184I, and 188F.
Satisfies the American Cultures requirement
Students will receive no credit for 178AC after taking 179AC, 180C, 184I, and 188F.
AMERSTD 179AC Representing Race and Ethnicity in American Culture 3 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 15 hours of Lecture and 1 hour of Discussion per week for 3 weeks.
This course offers students a unified course experience that examines the politics of visual representation and ways of "seeing" race and ethnicity in the U.S. in a comparative way. This course satisfies the American Cultures requirement by combining the following 1-unit courses: American Studies 180C - The Politics of Adverstising in the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Representation; American Studies 181B - Writing Narratives of Race and Gender: Photography and Art;and American Studies 184I - Race and American Film.
Satisfies the American Cultures requirement
Students will receive no credit or partial credit for 179AC after taking 180C, 181B, or 184I.
AMERSTD 180A Advertising America 1 - 2 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 to 10 hours of lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will discuss contemporary advertising as a commercial practice, as social ideology, and as art/collectibles. Looking at both print and television advertising, we will examine how ads code meaning, how they address audiences, and how they represent identity and construct social norms.
Formerly known as 126.
AMERSTD 180B Advertising and the Culture of Consumption: Gender and Race in Commercial Representations of the Self 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will offer several perspectives on the role advertising has played in determining various expressions of American self-identity, with special emphasis on analyzing corporate representations of the self presented of--and directed to--African Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The course will complicate commercial representations of African Americans and Native Americans by comparing and contrasting these corporately manufactured identities with individualized voices of racial photography, painting, and music of the period. The lectures and discussions will be designed to build comparatively and incrementally. Gender issues will constitute a subtext throughout the course.
Formerly known as 138.
AMERSTD 180C The Politics of Advertising in the United States: Race, Ethnicity and Representation 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will address the birth of advertising culture in the U.S., focusing on the specific ways that early advertising used images of Natives to connect products to values associated with nature, authenticity, and masculinity. We will then talk about the use of plantations and African Americans to both sell products and re-imagine the U.S. as a nation. Finally, we will look at the "Golden Age" of advertising (1950-1980) to talk about the way that middle class Euro-American values came to define the American Dream.
AMERSTD 181A American Painting at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of lecture per week, plus field trips.
This course proposes to use the extraordinary local collections, particularly of the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd collection of American art, to introduce students to the tradition of painting in America and to the types of intellectual problems with which current scholars of this art are engaged. All sessions will take place in the galleries in front of the paintings at the deYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Topics will include 17th- and 18th-century painting, 19th-century genre painting, folk painting, landscape painting, still life, and 20th-century painting.
Formerly known as 134.
AMERSTD 181B Visual Culture in American Society: Photography and Art 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course aims to uncover the long history between race, gender, nation, and the visual. Our particular concern is how visual culture produces meanings about African American, Native American, and women's bodies. What do visual narratives tell us about national identity? Through the specific lenses of visual art and photography, we will ask how do racial bodies become gendered bodies? How have racial meanings and the visual modalities employed to express them changed over time?
AMERSTD 182A American Journeys 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course examines the nature, function and status in contemporary American culture of a central metaphor and belief in American experience: human life as a journey to the west, to the east, or to nowhere. We will study the nature and extent of this motif in recent American culture (including its expression in literature, music, and popular idioms) as well as situate our discussions within the context of historical expressions of the American journey as cyclical, eschatological, or as a journey to oblivion. Drawing on selections from, among others, Walt Whitman, Josiah Royce, James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac, and Maya Angelou, we will discuss the notion of journey in terms of possibility, nostalgia, nectar, cynicism, self-deception, and disappointment. Students will be encouraged to consider--and write about--their own relation to this expressive tradition in American cultural history.
Formerly known as 125.
AMERSTD 182B Chinatown in History and in American Imagination 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
Chinatown occupies a permanent space in major North American cities. This space occupies a special place in the imagination of white U.S. and Canadian settlers, inspiring curiosity and fear and provoking missionary zeal and racial antagonism. Chinatown has emerged variously as an exotic Oriental city, guilded ghetto, slum, and metaphor for intrigue and corruption. We will explore the images and realities of Chinatown in history and in American imagination (represented by literature and films).
Formerly known as 156.
AMERSTD 182C Community Development in the Bay Area 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks.
This course will provide students with opportunites to discuss and observe in action the most recent theories and practices pertaining to community development in the urban United States. Readings and discussion will be rooted in field trips and interviews with community activists, executive staff and nonprofits, professional planners and designers in the Bay Area. Students will have opportunities to take their own field trips and conduct interviews based on their own interests.
Formerly known as 142.
AMERSTD 182D Island of History: Angel Island, California 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks.
This course will explore the history of California in terms of Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. The island will be the central reference point and illustration for many of the changes that have taken place in the demographics, environment, and politics of California. Beginning with the earliest inhabitants, students will follow the fortunes and misfortunes of the diverse peoples who have come to call themselves Californians. The course will examine specifically the culture and lifestyle of the Coast Miwok Indians, the period of Spanish colonial and Mission administrations, and the later displacement of Spanish-speaking Californios by Anglos as California became a state of the U.S. Students will also consider the impact of national affairs on the island and California as it became in turn a military base and recruitment center for the Civil War and Indian campaigns and then an immigration station. It was as an immigration station that Angel Island had the most profound effect on individual lives and for which the island is now known. Finally, students will focus on Chinese exclusion and immigration.
Formerly known as 158.
AMERSTD 182E San Francisco and the Bay Area: The View from the Street 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus field trips for 3 weeks.
This is an urban field geography course which will provide a basic overview of Bay Area geography and history. The course will consist of half day field trips to San Francisco and Oakland. We will observe buildings, landmarks, streetscapes, signs, people on the street, etc. in order to understand the forces at work in creating a city. We will cover a broad spectrum of issues, including employment, property development, political power, race, social movements, class structure, popular entertainment.
Formerly known as 141.
AMERSTD 182F San Francisco Chinatown 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of lecture per week plus a field trip for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus a field trip for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus a field trip for 3 weeks. 5 hours of lecture per week plus a field trip for 3 weeks.
San Francisco Chinatown: Oriental city? Gilded ghetto? Or just Old Gold Mountain and home base to its Chinese American residents? This course aims to go against and beyond the gilded facade and exotic mystery of San Francisco's leading tourist attraction by taking an inside look at the history and culture of a complex community constantly in flux. We will review the socioeconomic and political conditions that shaped the formation and development of San Francisco's Chinatown and the lives of its people from the community's beginnings in the 1850's to the present day. In the process, we will also examine how distinct social institutions and Chinatown culture developed in response to life in America, particularly to immigration policies, the anti-Chinese movement, acculturation and assimilation forces, new gender roles and relationships, and U.S.-China politics. There will be an opportunity to learn about San Francisco Chinatown first-hand as the instructor, who is a native of that community, will take the class on a field trip.
Formerly known as 159.
AMERSTD 182G Alcatraz: Conquest, Containment, and Contestation 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
Against the backcloth of Alcatraz, we will explore historical and contemporary iterations of power brought to life by questions of memory, punishment, and liberation.
AMERSTD 183A American Autobiographies 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will examine samples from several autobiographical "traditions." We will also consider a number of questions about the nature of autobiography, about the act of "writing oneself." We will devote the largest part of the course to a close reading of two major American autobiographies, at least one of which will be from the second half of the 20th century. Students in the course will write weekly and be given the opportunity to experiment with beginning to create their own autobiographies.
Formerly known as 148.
AMERSTD 183B The Beats in San Francisco 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will briefly review some of the major works by those poets and writers of the "Beat Generation" most closely connected with San Francisco and the Bay Area, and also some of the works by "East Coast Beats" where it is directly relevant either to the San Francisco Bay Area or to an understanding of the phenomenon of the Beat Generation itself. The poets and writers covered will include Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Whalen, and Michael McClure. We will pay some close attention to the interplay of Beat Generation writing with music, painting, film, and popular culture. Audio and video tapes of some of the principals will be available for viewing and listening.
Formerly known as 135.
AMERSTD 183C The Fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
We will read and to discover Fitzgerald's key obsessions, elations, and stylistic strategies. We will then inch through what there is of , to speculate what he might have done had he lived to complete it. At the end of the course, each student will write a scene that fills in part of the unfinished section of , accompanied by a five-page essay explaining how that scene is informed by the semester's reading.
Formerly known as 150.
AMERSTD 183D Three African American Classics 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will give close attention to three works which have been essential to the making of an African American literary tradition: Frederick Douglass's (1845), Zora Neale Hurston's (1937), and Alice Walker's (1982). It would help if students also read Richard Wright's story (1945). In addition to attending to the literary-cultural context of these works, we will explore other writing by these authors and develop comparisons with other African American literature.
Formerly known as 149.
AMERSTD 183E The Woman's Frontier 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
Westward expansion and the frontier experience have long assumed a mythical status as formative events in the annals of American culture, providing Americans with a collective cultural history and space for fantasy. Within this story there has been little room for women: westward expansion has been encoded as a male activity, and the American West has served a proving ground for the definition of American manhood. However, recent research on frontier women's history has shown that white and non-white women were present on all frontiers and in all phases of American expansion to the West. Moreover, white, literate women wrote copiously in, on, and about western frontiers--in letters and diaries, travel and settlement narratives, reminiscences and autobiographies, poems, stories, and novels. Reading from a diversity of women's texts, we will explore gender together with race and class in order to understand the women's frontier. This course will roughly follow a chronological line from the 1830s into the first decades of the 20th century.
AMERSTD 184A African Americans and the Media 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
Examines the role of U.S. media in constructing racial stereotypes, identities, and understandings of African Americans. Students will examine media coverage of the Rodney King incident, the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, the O.J. Simpson trial, and the Million Man March. Visual representations from "Birth of a Nation" to "Amos 'n Andy" to "The Cosby Show" will be critiqued; black publications and independent black filmmakers will be examined. The goal of the course is to give students a critical understanding of how the media support or challenge social constructions of race in the United States.
Formerly known as 166.
AMERSTD 184B American Film Noir 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
Film Noir is considered a distinctly American Film genre. A selective survey, this course will sample the gangster picture and the pre-noir hard boiled detective film, and then study some prime post World War II examples of film noir proper. Noir themes include: a pervasive cultural corruption, the femme fatale, mysteriously disabled and doomed protagonists, the dark city, etc.
Formerly known as 140.
AMERSTD 184C Asians and the Cinema 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
From to An introduction to the intersection of image and identity in the depiction of, and by, Asian Americans in film and video. This course seeks to contextualize the independent Asian American media arts field in relation to the mainstream commercial film industry and within the social, political, and cultural movements of the 20th century, providing critical tools for the understanding of ethnicity in American film. Lectures, readings, and discussion will be supplemented by guided screenings of diverse films and videotapes: narrative, documentary, and experimental. Film and video titles include: and .
Formerly known as 124.
AMERSTD 184D The Celluloid Sixties 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of lecture and 3 hours of plenary session per week for 3 weeks.
This course interweaves an analysis of mainstream Hollywood films with significant political, social, and cultural issues of the 1960's. Among the topics considered are the civil rights movement and racial identity; sex and gender relationships; youth culture and the generation gap; the Vietnam war and anti-war protest. Lectures, discussions, and screenings will focus on relevant films, such as and Reading assignments will be compiled in a course reader. For background, students may read Edward P. Morgan, .
Formerly known as 153.
AMERSTD 184E Changing Media in American Society 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
American news and entertainment reach people around the globe. This course is an opportunity for critical study of these institutions on their home ground, using the resources of the Graduate School of Journalism. The course mixes the perspective of an American historian and a veteran reporter. We draw on our broadcasting and computer facilities to allow newcomers to see how American journalists shape the flow of information. We focus on the way this profession is building new audiences and losing others. The goal of this course is to bring outsiders into the debate that now rages about the accomplishment and purpose of American media.
Formerly known as 137.
AMERSTD 184F Murder and the Media 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
We will investigate why the U.S. media are fascinated with murder. Covering a range of topics from "going postal" and women who murder their children, this course will consider the way murder serves as social commentary and ironic entertainment in the mass media. If the murderer has become America's favorite anti-hero, then what does that say about Americans? Answering this question will be the primary goal of the class. Readings in a course reader. For background, students may read and watch the movie
Formerly known as 165.
AMERSTD 184G Nature and the Media 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course explores representations of nature, crossing media boundaries to examine nature writing, TV, film, and advertising. We will discuss the characteristics and constraints of these various media constructions of nature, paying attention in particular to the ways in which all representations of nature serve as reflections of human culture. Considerations of gender, politics, and economics will be included in our analysis of media texts.
Formerly known as 163.
AMERSTD 184H The Western Film 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This is a course on the western in American film and literature. We will watch six classic western films, including the and and we will read several important pieces of western literature. We will discuss such issues as the myth of the frontier, the meaning of western landscapes, the American debate about law and order, masculinity, and the nature of cowboy life, etc.
Formerly known as 139.
AMERSTD 184I Race and American Film 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course uses film to investigate the central role of race in American culture and history from the late 1800s to the present. We will consider the ways in which film has represented the history of race and racial formations in the U.S. Other topics include the histories of whiteness and ethnicity, representations of race and nation, blackface minstrelsy in the movies, westerns and representations of American Indians on film, borderlands and immigration, and the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality.
AMERSTD 185A American Studies on the Internet 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
Students in this course will learn skills for doing research on the Internet, with particular emphasis on resources available through the World Wide Web. Taught in a computer lab and taking a broadly international approach to "American Studies," the course will provide hands-on experience with locating, searching and evaluating information for specific research projects. Students will collaborate on compiling an annotated index of online American Studies resources. NOTE: Students enrolling in this class should have a basic working knowledge of how to use both e-mail and a Web browser such as Netscape; students without this experience will be at a serious disadvantage. The course is also intended for individuals with a serious interest in American Studies. Due to the nature of the class, there is no required reading, but a list of recommended books and articles will be made available. The final exam will require each student to research a topic in American Studies, selected by the instructor, and report on his or her findings with a set of "bookmarks" (Internet addresses) and a brief summary of what was found. The exam will be conducted in class and turned in on floppy disk.
Formerly known as 128.
AMERSTD 186A Indians of California 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will examine and survey the culture and history of the Indians of California. The first half will focus on the unique culture, art, economy, cosmology, and spirituality of the California Indians. The reaction response and resistance of the tribes of California to a succession of invasions will be analyzed, with an emphasis on Indian perceptions of these events. The course will end with a look at contemporary survival of tribes and the renaissance of their traditions.
Formerly known as 143.
AMERSTD 186B Native American Autobiographies 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course considers several autobiographies written by Native Americans. The lectures, discussions, and required books focus on various cultural themes and theories of autobiography; a comparative review of diverse tribal experiences and narratives. Theories of cultural simulations and literary forms of representation in autobiographical literature will receive general attention in the course. Students will be required to participate in class discussions and complete two short review papers and a final examination.
Formerly known as 132.
AMERSTD 186C Native American Literature 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course is designed to acquaint the student with contemporary literary and cultural issues in Native America. Our discussions will focus on the Native American novel as an opportunity for self-representation and cultural resistance. We will read three of the most influential writers in Native America: N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor.
Formerly known as 154.
AMERSTD C186E/NATAMST C169 Native American Philosophies 1 Unit
Department: American Studies; Native American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course is a comparative discussion of Native American Indian philosophies, distinctive worldviews, and interpretations of sacred and secular ceremonies and stories. The Ghost Dance and other revitalization movements will be studied.
Instructor: Vizenor
AMERSTD C186H/NATAMST C168 Museums and Sacred Sites 1 Unit
Department: American Studies; Native American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course considers the experiences, interpretations, and protections of Native American Indian cultural resources in museums and sacred sites. Creation stories, sacred geography, and ceremonies will be compared.
Instructor: Biestman
AMERSTD C186I/NATAMST C171 Native American Poetry 1 Unit
Department: American Studies; Native American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will give an in-depth analysis to a selection of contemporary Native American Indian poetry. The issues of voice, cultural traditions, and sense of place, memory, imagery, and humor will be the focus of lectures.
Instructor: Lee
AMERSTD C186J/NATAMST C174 Imagining the Other 1 Unit
Department: American Studies; Native American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
European images of the exotic existed long before 1492. After Columbus, they were applied to people of the Americas who were thus turned into objects of fear and desire. While these images were modified over the centuries, basic elements of positive, and negative stereotyping connected with notions of race, gender, and environmental conditioning have persisted to the present day. This class will study a selection of European and North American literary texts from the late 18th century to the present, focusing on the discourse of culture, alterity, and identity as well as, on such aspects as the Romantic idealization of "natural man," savagism, natural nobility, communicational boundaries, and forms of cultural hybridity.
AMERSTD 186D Native American Novelists 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
Native American literature is a distinctive collection of fiction, poetry, autobiography, and oral narratives in translation. This course will provide a general historical context of native literature and consider three important novels: by N. Scott Momaday, by Leslie Silko, and by James Welch. Students may read the critical anthology by Gerald Vizenor in preparation for the course.
Formerly known as 168.
AMERSTD 186E Native American Philosophies 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
A comparative study of Native American philosophies. The interpretations of distinctive worldviews in native communities, cultural contact, and concepts of nature and wilderness. A comparative consideration of subsistence and landuse by natives and colonists. The course will also consider origin stories, comparative religions, vision quests, shamanism, and various healing practices. The Ghost Dance and other revitalization movements will be briefly discussed. The lecture approach will be textual and comparative, with some attention to the problems of translation and the representations of native experiences. Students should read by Carl Hammerschlag in preparation for the course.
Formerly known as 155.
AMERSTD 186F Native America Today 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course focuses on the history and culture of American Indians in the past hundred years and, in particular, the strategies that have enabled them to survive as tribes and individuals. The course will begin with an overview of Native American history and a review of anthropological perspectives on cultural change. This will be followed by an exploration of the issues of identity and tradition in various facets of contemporary Native life, including cultural revival movements, the role of women, people of mixed descent, and contemporary art and literature. An emphasis on participation and small group discussions, and exposure to a wide variety of written and visual materials will give students a chance to develop insights and skills for responding to cultural diversity.
Formerly known as 133.
AMERSTD 186G Tribal Sovereignty 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will explore the unique legal status of Indian tribes and reservation lands in the United States, including analyses of treaties, the trust relationship, and the evolution of federal Indian law and policy. Students will examine the impact of such economic development ventures as mineral resource extraction and gaming on tribal sovereignty and culture. The rights of Indian individuals and groups to exercise freedom of religion will be analyzed in the context of sacred lands, repatriation of skeletal remains, and the use of peyote as sacrament.
Formerly known as 130.
AMERSTD 187A California Contemporary Immigration 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course identifies issues and patterns of contemporary immigration related to California's social, demographic, and economic structure. It will provide a framework of migration theories and U.S. immigration admission and restriction policies, then will examine resettlement patterns, economic strategies in the marketplace, and the reconstruction of self within diverse social networks. Finally, we will discuss emerging restrictive state and federal immigrant legislation. The approach will be comparative, integrative, and global-historical.
Formerly known as 151.
AMERSTD 187B European Images of America 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course examines European images of America in the areas of political theory, social theory, literature, music, philosophy, pop culture, and art. European intellectuals and artists have been drawn to American culture since the inception of the Republic. This course will indicate contradictions and ambiguities in that attraction. Critiques are displaced by admiration for a dynamic and multicultural society and vice versa. This course will examine the powerful dialectical links which have been obtained between European and American intellectual and cultural life.
Formerly known as 167.
AMERSTD 187C In Search of America 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
American society is fragmented, divided, and often polarized. Race, class, and at times culture serve as boundaries which separate and reinforce distinctions, creating many different Americas within the U.S. How one sees America tends to be intimately related to the environment in which one lives, the social status and class one occupies, and the historical experience of the individual or the group with which one identifies. Yet, there are also forces which bind Americans together and which have produced a culture that transcends various forms of difference to create a common American identity. This course will explore the nature of those forces that divide and unite the peoples of the U.S. Through literature, film, and social science, we will attempt to identify the ingredients of the glue that holds this society together and gives the concept of America meaning.
Formerly known as 144.
AMERSTD 187D Narratives of Justice 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of lecture and 3 hours of plenary session per week for 3 weeks.
Law is commonly viewed as the human reflection of natural law, as what police and judges do, or as a form of politics. This course will explore law as a narrative form. The murder trial of the Native American Whitehawk, the American legal response to racial discrimination, and the recent murder trial of O.J. Simpson will illustrate this method of analysis. While the student will be exposed to a wide spectrum of American legal thought, no legal knowledge or training is required.
Formerly known as 160.
AMERSTD 188A Caribbean Arts and Cultures: The Carnival 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
The Caribbean is a region rich in traditions of performance and music. This course will consider one of the most popular celebrations, the carnival, focusing on the Trinidad Carnival, calypso, and the Mardi Gras celebrations of New Orleans. Students will consider how the carnival has been sustained and reinvented over the centuries by its participants and the role of carnival in subverting or reinforcing identities and relationships of power.
Formerly known as 147.
AMERSTD 188B Walt Disney's America 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
In this course, we will look at the way American society has been both reflected and constructed in the animated films of Walt Disney. We will talk about individual Disney texts as expressions of specific historical moments and as fantasies about more general cultural anxieties.
Formerly known as 146.
AMERSTD 188C Food Culture in America 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
In the course we will explore the social history, political economy and "aesthetics" of eating in America. We will discuss the foods Americans consume, how and when they eat, and how they communicate about food. We will also consider the specific food culture of Berkeley, and explore the rise of the so-called Berkeley "gourmet ghetto."
Formerly known as 123.
AMERSTD 188D San Francisco Detectives 1 - 2 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 to 10 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
In this course, we will consider various theories of detective narratives, discuss the origins of the genre, and focus specifically on the meaning of San Francisco as the scene of the crime. Students will read and works by San Francisco writers Marcia Muller and Stephen Greenleaf. We will also study five detective films: and
Formerly known as 164.
AMERSTD 188E Sports: A Lens on American Culture 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course explores the nature and motives of societal structures and practices to illuminate the intersections and reciprocal influences of society and sports. The central framework of this course draws on Bourdieu's notion that the "space of sports...is inserted into a universe of practices and consumptions themselves structured and constituted as a system." This framework underlies our exploration of the ways that the playing field has been socially constructed and bounded as specific kinds of de-realized, ritualized, specular, performance spaces.
Formerly known as 122.
AMERSTD 188F American Popular Music 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will examine the politics of racial representation and expression in American popular music. Topics will include blackface minstrelsy, jazz and the blues, and contemporary music such as reggae, salsa, and rap.
Students will receive no credit for 188F after taking 178AC.
AMERSTD 188G American Popular Culture: Shopping and American Consumerism 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
In this course, we will discuss the meaning of shopping in American culture by analyzing films and popular literature as well as theories about consumerism.
AMERSTD 188H Contemporary Asian American Culture 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course explores changing representations of Asian Americans in film within the historical context of immigration, community formation, racism, and Asian American political activism. We will begin with a brief overview of persistent cinematic stereotypes of Chinese Americans as "perpetual foreigners" and transition to the creation of a panethnic Asian American activist movement in the late 60s. Finally, we will examine the impact of globalization on cinematic representations of Asian Americans.
AMERSTD 188I American Indians and Pop Culture 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course examines the ways in which American Indians draw upon specific aesthetics to produce culture and political critique through pop culture, as well as the ways in which popular culture contructs "Indianness" as a form of protest or expression of social power.
AMERSTD 188J Comic Book Nation: Comic Books, Superheroes, and American Popular Culture 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
This course will introduce students to the history, aesthetics, and mythology of the American comic book from the Great Depression to the present. Over the course of three weeks, this class will consider the invention of the superhero in the Depression and WWII era, its evolution in the atomic age, the new reluctant heroes of the 1960s, and the postmodern anti-hero, through to their current manifestations. Other topics include the emergence of the graphic novel in the 1980s.
AMERSTD 188K American Horrors: Monsters in U.S. Cinema and Literature 1 Unit
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Term course may be offered: Summer
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 5 hours of Lecture per week for 3 weeks.
Film scholar Frank McConell wrote, "Each era chooses the monster it deserves and projects," which is to say that sources of fright are not universal but contingent, culturally and temporally specific. This course will study the changing face of horror in the U.S., from the nineteenth century to the present. Students will begin with Freud's theory of the uncanny - a model which will inform our examinations of various monsters depicted in literature, cinema, television, graphic fiction, and music.
AMERSTD 189 Research and Writing in American Studies 1 - 3 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 1 to 3 hour of Seminar per week for 15 weeks.
Prerequisites: Intended for American studies majors.
This course is designed to encourage research skills, critical thinking, and effective writing. An intensive reading and research seminar, the course will assist students in the development of skills fundamental to advanced research in the humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies. In addition to examining some topics in current American studies scholarship, students will conduct semester-long research projects. The effort entails identification of research topics, cultivation of interdisciplinary methodologies, compilation of annotated bibliographies, and completion of a literature review, which may serve as the first portion of the American studies senior thesis. The course is strongly recommended for those who have been out of touch with the conventions of academic research and writing or who might wish to pursue a graduate degree in the future.
Course may be repeated for credit. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD 190 Senior Thesis 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: Individual meeting with thesis adviser.
All American Studies majors must satisfy the senior thesis requirement. Three options are available:AS 190-Senior Thesis, AS 191-Senior Seminar, or students may (with prior Faculty Advisor approval) enroll in an upper division seminar appropriate to their concentration for which they write a substantial research paper. Students planning to enroll in AS 190 must complete the "Thesis Proposal/Adviser Agreement" (available in the departmental office) prior to the semester in which the thesis is written.
AMERSTD 191 Senior Seminar 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 4 hours of Seminar per week for 15 weeks.
Prerequisites: Declared majors with senior standing.
Students will meet in seminar and will be required to write individual research papers based on the general themes or issues of the seminar. The particular themes/issues will be outlined on the American Studies Course List provided each semester by the American Studies office.
AMERSTD H195 Honors Thesis 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Letter grade.
Hours and format: 3 hours of Seminar per week for 15 weeks.
Prerequisites: Senior-standing major in American studies; completion of 101 and 102, 3.51 overall GPA, and 3.65 GPA for classes in the major.
This is a required course for students wishing to graduate with honors in American studies. Entails writing a bachelor's thesis pertaining to the student's individual area of concentration within the American studies major. The completed thesis will be read by the thesis supervisor and one other faculty member.
AMERSTD 198 Directed Group Study for Advanced Undergraduates 1 - 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Offered for pass/not pass grade only.
Hours and format: 1 to 4 hour of Directed group study per week for 15 weeks.
Prerequisites: Regulations set by College of Letters and Science.
Seminars for the group study of selected topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses. Topics will vary from semester to semester. Students must have completed 60 units in order to be eligible to enroll.
Course may be repeated for credit as topic varies. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes. Enrollment is restricted; see the Introduction to Courses and Curricula section of this catalog.
AMERSTD 199 Supervised Independent Study and Research for Upper Division Majors 1 - 4 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Undergraduate
Terms course may be offered: Fall, spring and summer
Grading: Offered for pass/not pass grade only.
Hours and format: individual conferences
Directed individual study on special topics approved by an American studies faculty member. Enrollment restrictions apply; see the Introduction to Courses and Curricula section of this catalog.
Course may be repeated for credit as texts vary. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
AMERSTD 300 Teaching Interdisciplinary American Studies 2 Units
Department: American Studies
Course level: Professional course for teachers or prospective teachers
Terms course may be offered: Fall and spring
Grading: Offered for satisfactory/unsatisfactory grade only.
Hours and format: 2 hours of Seminar per week for 15 weeks.
This course will introduce graduate students to a number of techniques and theories used in teaching at the university level. In particular, it will focus on the challenges of teaching interdisciplinary American studies courses that rely on a range of materials and methodological approaches drawn from multiple disciplines and that address students who come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds.
Course may be repeated for credit. Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
Print this page.
The PDF will include all information unique to this page.
All pages in Academic Catalog.