PROGRAM IN AMERICAN STUDIES

This course aims to provide a "how-to" of American Studies from an integrative, multiracial, and socio-cultural perspective. Taking U.S. American cultures as a site for testing classic and contemporary theories about how society works, this seminar in American Studies serves to introduce resources and techniques for interdisciplinary research.

Co-listed with Political Science 390-0-26

Bad news is what Americans are experiencing as a result of corporate media mergers that took place in the closing years of the last century. Today major companies control much of what people read, hear, and see. As many firms passed from largely family-owned to publicly traded companies, the pressure for profit from Wall Street has led to cutbacks in the size of news divisions and a change in news story values that have "softened" the types of news that people see on television. This course will begin with an examination of the monetary forces that are driving the news industry away from its primary mission of information. Critics, of whom the professor is one, contend that the drive for increasing profits is coming at the expense of both the quality and quantity of news that appear on television and radio, newspapers and magazines, and the Internet. The ever-diminishing number of news providers is also threatening democracy by limiting the number of voices that can be heard in our society.

What are viruses? Are they living or dead? How does news media affect their influence on the world? And why do we say news "goes viral?" Designed for Medill and non-Medill students alike, The Viral Underclass will study how viruses intersect with race, sexuality, disability, economics and the news media. Historically and contemporarily, the course will look at how actual viruses and infectious diseases (such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Hepatitis C and the novel coronavirus) have been covered in the global press. We will consider how certain groups of humans have been depicted as viruses themselves, such as how Jewish/disabled/queer/Roma people were described by the German and US press circa WW II; how African Americans were described in the US press circa Jim Crow; and how Muslim, Mexican and migrant people are described in press and social media now. We will also consider why popular news "goes viral." Students will work in research groups to study viruses and virality in the news throughout the term. Syllabus and books will be posted the week before class; for now, please plan to watch the film "Parasite" the week before. (Cross listed for Medill Journalism, Gender and Sexuality Studies, American Studies and African American Studies).

Co-listed with African American Studies 380-0-20

In this course, we explore how people move within and between categories of race and gender in the United States, with particular attention to the role of law in the formation and policing of those boundaries. In addition to conventional legal texts, we will draw upon literature, social theory, and cultural ephemera. Readings will include work by Nella Larsen, Charles Chesnutt, Allyson Hobbs, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Talia Mae Bettcher, Toby Beauchamp, and others.  

Co-listed with Environmental Policy and Culture 390

From earthquakes to hurricanes, fires to floods, we tend to think of natural disasters as spontaneous occurrences. The word disaster originates in the idea of being born under an unlucky constellation or struck down by an uncaring universe. When homes are flooded or crops are destroyed, we see the natural world encroaching on lives and livelihoods in seemingly unpredictable and certainly unwanted ways. But are these disasters truly a product of nature? In this class, we will engage with the complex history of natural disasters: how people experience and rationalize these events, how communities respond to them, and how the causes of disaster are explained by various stakeholders, from victims to insurance companies. By the end of the quarter, students will have developed historical, cultural, and theoretical tools for understanding the nature of the natural disaster.

Co-listed with Humanities 325-4 and Environmental Policy and Culture 390

When was the last time you hiked without a smartphone? What can playing video games teach us about interacting with nature? If you didn’t post a picture of a tree in the forest, did you really see it? In this course, digital humanities theory and practice are taught through the lens of environmental studies and political ecology, using cyborg theory to explore how the relationship between humans and the natural world is increasingly shaped by and mediated through digital technologies. This course explores theoretical concepts like connective memory, our relationship to social media and mobile photography, and digital colonialism, grounding them in tangible examples of digital humanities projects. This course will primarily use seminar style discussion with some lecture and workshops.

Co-listed with Asian American Studies 303

In this course, we will explore the evolving ways in which the Middle East is visually represented in the United States from the mid-twentieth century to the present, post-9/11 era. Through discussing film, television, and photographic journalism alongside critical works of cultural analysis, we will work through how cultural objects come to function as salient social and political texts that pervade U.S. publics and how they deploy issues of race, gender and sexuality. We will begin with foundational theoretical texts that will shape our readings of representations of Southwest Asia/North Africa throughout the course. The majority of the term will then revolve around cultural objects and critical texts that shape meanings of Southwest Asia/North Africa in the United States. We will then end with a look at ways in which Southwest Asians/North Africans in the diaspora use visual culture to counter these monolithic representations.

Combined with Asian American Studies 320-0-1

Both Asian American and Asian immigrant activism in the United States has been critical to resistance against systems of racial oppression in this country and its transnational, imperial connections abroad. This course is meant to provide students with a greater understanding of Asian diasporas in the United States and strategies of activist resistance from the beginning of the twentieth century into the present. Special attention will be paid to the role of student activism—both Asian American and Asian immigrant—as well as the role of historical and ethnographic methodologies in studying such paths for change. As a final project, students will create their own digital zines that discuss some aspect of Asian American activism that is rooted in scholarship but still accessible to the larger community.