Courses

Fall 2007

"Education is a kind of continuing dialogue,
and a dialogue assumes,
in the nature of the case, different points of view"
Robert Hutchins (1899 - 1977)

AMST 103-01 Race in US Social Thought
TU/TR 10:10-11:40a, HUM 215-- Professor Duchess Harris
First Year Course only; first day attendance required

Syllabus (click here)

This course begins by exploring the political history of whiteness. Our point of departure will be David R. Roediger's newest text (2005), "Working Toward Whiteness, How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs." We will examine how "race" has been at the core of civic assimilation. We will interrogate Roediger's question, "What happens when we think of assimilation as Whitening as well as Americanizing" (pp 9-10). In other words, to become American one must "fight to be White." The core of this course will focus on post-1960 America and the Black, Brown, Red, and Yellow Power Movements. We will use autobiography and prison writings to examine the Black Power Movement; the American Indian Movement; Latino Militancy, and Asian American insurgency. We will end the course with an analysis of conservative people of color and their counterparts in the dominant culture, and their movement to resist identity politics in the 1990s and the turn of the 21st Century.

AMST 112-01 Intro to LGBTQ Studies
TU/TR 10:10-11:40a, MAIN 009 Professor Scott Morgensen
Cross-listed with WGSS 110-01

This course introduces the fields of LGBT and queer studies by examining how sexuality, race, and nation relate in the lives of people in the United States, which we read in relation to histories of colonialism and globalization. Course materials foreground scholarship, testimony, activist art, and social movements by LGBT, two-spirited, queer people of color, and by white anti-racist LGBT and queer people. Their stories offer a template through which all students may examine how everyday life is shaped by sexuality, race, and nation—both as power relations, and as spaces for creating new identity and action. Every year.

AMST 194-01 Race, Culture, and Social Movements: The 60's
TU/TR 1-2:30p HUM 112 --Professor Jane Rhodes
First day attendance required

Syllabus (click here)

The 1960s is often considered the pivotal era for social movements in the twentieth century as the post-World War II generation pushed for social, cultural, and political change. This course will take a broad view of this period - from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s - to consider the role of race as a catalyst and agent for activism. We will consider varying aspects of the Southern civil rights movement, including grassroots organizing and projects for self-defense. The course will then consider how civil rights morphed into black power and inspired Chicano, Native American, and Asian American activism, the women's movement, and gay liberation. In particular, we will look at how these social movements shaped American and global culture, and the intersections among them.

AMST 194-02 US and Global Economy
MWF 1:10 pm-2:10 pm HUM 215--Professor Karin San Juan
First day attendance required

US Racial Formations and the Global Economy develops an understanding of race in the United States as a complex and contradictory social category that has been shaped and organized by the historical expansion and ongoing crisis of the global capitalist economy. As the global economy reshapes the world, racial formations in the United States transform, but they do not disappear. What freedoms are ensured in a global free market? How have the opportunities of the Global North been shaped by the hardships of the Global South? What are the alternatives to the globalization of poverty? Can globalization work under democratic and/or socialist regimes? The course will provide one of the options for fulfilling the US Multiculturalism requirement for graduation, and it may also serve as one of the American Studies Department options for completion of the Certificate in Global Citizenship. The course will be open to sophomores and others who have taken the AMST introductory courses or their equivalent.

AMST 194-04 American Violence: A Cultural History of
MWF 9:40-10:40a MAIN 009--Professor Andrea Cremer
Cross-listed with HIST 194-01

Syllabus (click here)

This course deconstructs the discipline of military history in order to uncover the broad social and cultural implications of societies at war. Beginning with the military conquests of central America and the Southwest, students will analyze the ways in which economic and military pressures functioned to create boundaries of social belonging and structured new ethnic identities. Readings will be drawn from primary accounts of early American wars, scholarly articles, and historical monographs. The course will progress in a chronological order through the following conflicts: De Soto's Death March, the Pueblo Revolt, the Beaver Wars, Powhatan's Revolt, the Pequot War, King Phillip's War, the French and Indian War, and the American Revolution. In addition to major military conflicts, the course will also investigate the cultural impact of slave revolts and class-based rebellions (such as Bacon's Rebellion and Shay?s Rebellion). By investigating the cultural impact of warfare in American society, this course will reveal the ways in which violence creates new forms of government, racial identities, and gendered forms of political and social authority.

AMST 222-01 Imagining the American West
MWF 10:50-11:50a MAIN 011--Professor Lynn Hudson
Cross-listed with HIST 222-01

Fantasies about the U.S. West have proven resilient and profitable. From Zane Grey's novels to John Wayne movies to Disneyland's California theme park, ideas about the West dominate U.S. popular culture and have for over a century. This class examines the myths that have circulated about the West alongside what has been called new western history in an attempt to make sense of western Americans and the societies they created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beginning with notions of the frontier we will consider the historiography that challenges our thinking about a region that has defied simple constructions. To help complicate our notion of the West, we will also study a wide array of primary documents including but not limited to: diaries of Black cowboys, speeches by leaders of the anti-Chinese movement, and letters written by "forty-niners" in the gold fields.

AMST 250-01 Race, Place and Space
MWF 10:50-11:50a HUM 112
Professor Karin Aguilar-San Juan
Cross-listed with GEOG 250-01; first day attendance required

How do U.S. racial categories become grounded in place and space? In this seminar, we will examine race at various levels of spatial scale: from the racialization of the U.S. nation-state to U.S. cities and suburbs; and from prisons, reservations, and ethnic enclaves to the human body. As a point of departure, we will look for and analyze race and related social categories in places around the Twin Cities. By putting familiar ideas about race and ethnicity in a sociospatial framework, we will develop a specialized vocabulary for explaining how race, place, and space are connected. This course requires prior exposure to at least one of the following areas: American Studies, human geography, sociology of race/ethnicity, or urban studies.

AMST 294-01 Racial Concepts/Theories
MWF 3:30-4:30p HUM 216 --Professor Karin San Juan
First day attendance required

This course explores and evaluates theories and concepts related to contemporary US racial formations. We will ask three basic questions: 1) What is ?race?? 2) Where do racial differences and inequalities come from? 3) What is racial justice? Different frames will help us think about and understand race: ethnicity and assimilation; class and labor migration; gender/sexuality; and globalization/neoliberalism. Sessions will be lecture-based with active weekly discussion groups. Assignments will be writing and reading intensive. This course is designed with sophomores in mind. The introductory level AS course or its equivalent is a prerequisite.

AMST 294-02 Locating US Latino Studies
MWF 2:20-03:20p
HUM 112--Professor Galo Gonzalez
First day attendance required; cross-listed with HISP 308-01

By 2003, individuals of Latin American descent living in the United States numbered approximately 38 million, constituting the country’s largest “minority” group. In this course, we will study the interdisciplinary field of contemporary U.S. Latino Studies that has emerged in response to this growing population. Here we will trace the fundamental questions and concerns within Latina/o Studies, ranging from the field's activist origins in the Chicano and Puerto Rican movements of the 1960s and 70s to its current emphasis on pan-Latino, comparative, and “new Latino” avenues of inquiry. For example, what is a U.S. Latina/o? What is U.S. Latina/o Studies, and how is it different from (and similar to) Latin American Studies? Where does U.S. Latina/o Studies “belong” in institutions of higher learning? In addition to these questions regarding the academic location of U.S. Latina/o Studies, in this class you will learn to describe the main demographic features of the various U.S. Latino communities and compare each group’s unique (im)migration history, settlement patterns, and transnational activities. Finally, we will devote a significant portion of the course to a broader discussion of U.S. Latina/o identity as it relates to questions of class, race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and national origins.

AMST 294-03 Native America: Contact, Conflict, Accom
MWF 1:10-2:10p OLRI 101--Professor Andrea Cremer
Cross-listed with HIST 294-06

Syllabus (click here)

This approaches the history of indigenous North America from the Age of Exploration through the nineteenth century. The chronology of the course brings students directly into a time of traumatic and dynamic political and cultural change among Native Americans. Combining close study of European and Native American source materials, students will be challenged not only to reconstruct the narrative of early American history with a view to the experience of Native American peoples, but also will confront important historiographical problems related to source reliability, interdisciplinarity and colonial and postcolonial theory. Rather than teach events of colonial American and United States history that also include American Indian experiences, this course attempts to approach the development of diverse North American cultures and societies from the perspective of the continent?s indigenous peoples. Prior to the start of the course, students will be required to read Vine Deloria's classic work, Custer Died for Your Sins. This additional assignment aims to immediately introduce students to the major problems that scholars approach in the study of American Indian history and culture.

AMST 294-04 Asian American History
MWF 2:20-03:20p MAIN 001--Professor Peter Rachleff
Cross-listed with HIST 294- 09

Asians -- immigrants from China, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, India, and the Hmong people -- and their children and grandchildren have long been central participants in U.S. history. Their experiences have included: the mid-19th century and the California gold rush, the building of the transcontinental railroad, the composition of a labor force for Hawaiian plantations and the construction of "Chinatowns" in major cities; the Chinese exclusion movement of the late 19th century and the incorporation of the Philippines into a new U.S. empire; the definition of Asians as non-white and ineligible for citizenship in the early 20th century; the dispossession and internment of Japanese immigrants and their children during WWII; and the complex receptions accorded Southeast Asian and South Asian immigrants after the Hart-Cellar immigration "reform" act of 1965. Have they been "Orientals," permanent others, as historian Robert Lee argues, "impossible subjects," never quite accepted as citizens, as historian Mae Ngai argues, or a "model minority"? How useful is it to use the category "Asian-American" when exploring these experiences? What relationships have specific groups of Asian immigrants and their descendants had with each other or with people of color, African Americans, Latinos, and African immigrants? What are the relationships between the treatment and representations of Asian-Americans generated by the dominant culture, on the one hand, and the subjectivity, agency and self-representation manifested by Asian-Americans themselves, on the other? This topics course will explore these and related questions within an historical framework. This course is designed with experienced students (experience in Asian-American Studies, American Studies, History, Sociology) in mind, but open to all with an interest given a conversation with the instructor. There will be a relatively heavy reading load, a use of primary documents as well as secondary studies, an expectation of student participation in class discussions, and the assignment of several papers of moderate length.

AMST 334-01 Cultural Studies and the Media
MWF 10:50-11:50a HUM 113
Professor Leola Johnson
Cross-listed with HMCS 234-01

An overview of contemporary approaches to media as culture, a determining as well as determined sphere in which people make sense of the world, particularly in terms of ethnicity, gender, identity, and social inequality. Students develop tools for analyzing media texts and accounts of audience responses derived from the international field of cultural studies and from the social theory on which it draws. Analysis emphasizes specificity of media texts, including advertisements, films, news reports, and television shows. Experience in cooperative discussion, research, and publication.

AMST 370-01 Understand/Confront Racism
M 7-10p OLRI 243--Professor Kendrick Brown
Cross-listed with PSYC 370-01

An examination of the social psychological factors associated with race prejudice and racism, particularly in the United States. Focusing on the psychological theories proposed to understand racism, this course investigates the causes and consequences of racism at the individual, interpersonal, institutional and cultural levels of society. Special attention will be given to exploring interventions to reduce racism. Culture and Context course. Prerequisites: Psychology 100, Psychology 200 or Psychology 201, and at least one intermediate course or permission of the instructor.

AMST 400-01 Sr Sem: The American Dream
TR 2:45-4:15p HUM 215--Professor Duchess Harris
First day attendance required

syllabus (click here)
Senior Seminar web page

The senior capstone is required of all majors who meet college criteria are encouraged to conduct an honors project in conjunction with their Senior Capstone.

Note: There is no sole means or single methodology by which one can study race and ethnicity. Ethnic studies is a vibrant field marked by extraordinary intellectual variety and methodological diversity. Scholarship and teaching in the field of ethnic studies is especially vibrant thanks to the contributions of various departments, disciplines, methodologies, and intellectual traditions.