Spring 2025
COURSES
Roosevelt Montás & Maura Spiegel
UN1010 SEC. 001 - M, W 1:10-2:25 PM
[Fulfills AMST Core Requirement]
This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the values and cultural expressions of the people of the United States since the late nineteenth century. We will examine a variety of works in literature, history, cultural and social criticism, music, the visual arts and the built environment with an eye to understanding how Americans of different backgrounds, living at different times and in different locations, have understood and argued about the meaning and significance of American national identity. Our goal is to make connections between different genres of expression and consider how different cultural forms have served as opportunities to ponder the meaning of modern life in the United States. Lectures and readings will give particular attention to the sites—real and imagined--where Americans have identified the promise and perils of American life.
Andrew Delbanco, Roger Lehecka
AMST3931UN Sec.002 T 2:10 - 4:00 PM
In this seminar we examine the roles colleges and universities play in American society; the differential access high school students have to college based on family background and income, ethnicity, and other characteristics; the causes and consequences of this differential access; and some attempts to make access more equitable. Readings and class meetings cover the following subjects historically and in the 21 st century: the variety of American institutions of higher education; admission and financial aid policies at selective and less selective, private and public, colleges; affirmative action and race-conscious admissions; what "merit" means in college admissions; and the role of the high school in helping students attend college. Students in the seminar are required to spend at least four hours each week as volunteers at the Double Discovery Center (DDC) in addition to completing assigned reading, participating in seminar discussions, and completing written assignments. DDC is an on-campus program that helps New York City high school students who lack many of the resources needed to succeed in college and to be successful in gaining admission and finding financial aid. The seminar integrates students' first-hand experiences with readings and class discussions. Download application here and submit to [email protected]
Roosevelt Montás
AMST 3931UN Sec.001 W 10:10-12:00 PM
Pre-Civil War debates about the abolition of slavery were also debates about the nature of the American nation and the place of race in the construction of American citizenship. This seminar will consider the lives and works of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln in the larger context of an emerging American nation. The course will focus largely on the contrasting ways in which they approached the national crises of the 1850s and, in the case of Douglass, the complexities of post-emancipation politics. We will also consider the relevance of each thinker to contemporary debates about American identity. The seminar will focus exclusively on primary texts. No pre registration, join waitlist.
Valerie Paley
AMST3931UN Sec.004 W 4:10 - 6:00 PM
This seminar explores the transformation of cultural institutions in the United States and considers the continuing contemporary debates on the practices and public role of museums. In addition to exploring this historical evolution, we will examine the theory and practice of museum curation and education, with an emphasis on institutions in New York. The seminar will host conversations with speakers representing different aspects of public culture and feature a hands-on analysis with a working team of professionals engaged in a current exhibition at a local museum.
Lynne Breslin
AMST 3931UN Sec. 003 W 12:10-2:00 PM
Using an interdisciplinary approach, this seminar will explore the formation of identity in two great American cities: New York and San Francisco in the 20th and early 21st century. We will focus on the power of the city to appropriate space to produce distinct social, political, economic and cultural landscapes. We will ask: How do we understand a city? How is the city experienced? New York and San Francisco will be situated in the seeming contradiction of global pressures and local formations. We will identify those official and informal spaces, the spaces of consumption, production, celebration and memory.
Jeremy Dauber
AMST 3939UN Sec. 001 - T 10:10-12:00 PM
This course attempts to provide an introduction to the changing cultural, political, technological and social trends of the 1980s in America – a seminal and transformative decade in American history – through an examination of its popular culture in literature, music, theater, television, film, and other associated media. Through close examination of primary sources, we will focus on the changing representations of race, gender, and class in American society, as well as investigating the effects of changing media of cultural production and their role in emerging literary and cultural styles.
Cathleen Price
AMST 3931UN Sec. 005 - R 4:10-6:00 PM
This course will examine the influence of race and poverty in the American system of confronting the challenge of crime. Our focus will be on the social, political and economic effects of the administration of our criminal justice system, with emphatic examination of the role of conscious and unconscious racism, as well as community biases against the poor. We will reflect on the fairness of our past and present American system of confronting crime and consider the possibilities of future reform. Readings will include historical texts, analytical reports, some biography and a few legal materials. We will also watch documentary films which illuminate the issues and problems.
CROSS-LISTED COURSES
Casey Blake
HIST 2478 Lecture - T, R 1:10-2:25 PM
This course examines major themes in U.S. intellectual history since the Civil War. Among other topics, we will examine the public role of intellectuals; the modern liberal-progressive tradition and its radical and conservative critics; the uneasy status of religion in a secular culture; cultural radicalism and feminism; critiques of corporate capitalism and consumer culture; the response of intellectuals to hot and cold wars, the Great Depression, and the upheavals of the 1960s.
Hilary Hallett
HIST 2565 Lecture - T, R 11:40-12:55 PM
This lecture explores major topics in modern American history through an examination of the American film industry and some of its most popular films and stars. It begins with the emergence of “Hollywood” as an industry and a place in the wake of WWI and ends with the rise of the so-called ‘New Hollywood’ in the 1970s and its treatment of the 1960s and the Vietnam War. For much of this period, Hollywood’s films were not protected free speech, making movies and stars peculiarly reflective of, and vulnerable to, changes in broader cultural and political dynamics. Students will become familiar with Hollywood’s institutional history over this half-century in order to understand the forces, both internal and external, that have shaped the presentation of what Americans do and don’t see on screens and to become skilled interpreters of American history at the movies.