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Bard College Catalogue 2009-2010
2009-2010
American Studies
http://americanstudies.bard.edu FacultyGeoffrey Sanborn (director)*, Amy Ansell, Elizabeth T. Antrim, Myra Young Armstead, Thurman Barker, Roger Berkowitz, Noah Chasin, Christian Ayne Crouch, Laurie Dahlberg, Yuval Elmelech**, Elizabeth Frank, Donna Ford Grover, Mark Lindeman, Christopher R. Lindner, Mark Lytle*, Diana H. Minsky, Joel Perlmann, John Pruitt, Julia Rosenbaum, Charles A. Walls, Tom Wolf
* on sabbatical, fall 2009
** on sabbatical, spring 2010 OverviewThe American Studies Program offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of culture and society in the United States. Students take courses in a wide range of fields with the aim of learning how to study this complex subject in a sensitive and responsible way. In the introductory course, students develop the ability to analyze a broad spectrum of texts (novels, autobiographies, newspapers, photographs, films, songs, buildings, websites, etc.); in the junior seminar and Senior Project, students identify and integrate relevant methodologies, creating modes of analysis appropriate to their topics. By graduation, students should have developed a base of knowledge about the past and present conditions of experience in the United States, as well as intellectual habits that will enable them to be aware of what surrounds them, wherever they are in the world.RequirementsBefore Moderation, students must take American Studies 101, Introduction to American Studies, or American Studies 102, Introduction to American Culture and Values, and at least two other courses focusing on the United States. After Moderation, they must take at least three more courses on the United States and at least two courses on non-U.S. national cultures. One post-Moderation course on the United States must be either a junior seminar or a junior tutorial. Every junior seminar or tutorial culminates in a 25- to 30-page paper in which students bring multiple analytical frameworks to bear on a subject of their choice. At least two of the students’ U.S.-focused courses must emphasize the period before 1900. In order to ensure a variety of perspectives on students’ work, both the Moderation and Senior Project boards must consist of faculty members drawn from more than one division.Introduction to American Studies
American Studies 101
An introduction to the field of American studies, defined both by the range of materials covered (essays, novels, autobiographies, photographs, historical documents, etc.) and by the questions asked about them, including: How have different Americans imagined what it means to be an American? What ideas about national history, patriotism, and moral character shape their visions of being American? How do they draw the boundaries that define who belongs within the nation and who gets excluded? Introduction to American Culture and Values
American Studies 102
Weighed down with the authority of custom, a national culture imposes a sense of obligation to all who belong to a society, but it affects groups and individuals differently. Students compare and contrast visions of American culture during the 19th and 20th centuries. Works by Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, W. E. B. DuBois, Georgia O’Keeffe, Ralph Ellison, Elvis Presley, and others are reviewed. American Popular Culture: 1950–2000
American Studies 220
cross-listed: gss, sre
This course explores the development of American popular culture following World War II. It examines how American pop culture has been and continues to be shaped by particular social and political forces, how it is diffused both nationally and internationally, and how it develops and supports particular ideas of what it means to be “American.” Topics in Sexual Identity
American Studies 334
cross-listed: gss, sre
Reading various texts and screening documentary media, students examine the consolidation of lesbian and gay identities in the years before 1969 (Stonewall), effects of the Stonewall Rebellion, divergence of lesbian and gay male subcultures in the 1970s, AIDS crisis and racialized lesbian feminisms of the 1980s, and new queer activism and subsequent commercialization of gay identity in the 1990s.
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