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.

NOTE: ALL SEATS ARE RESERVED FOR FIRST YEAR STUDENTS PARTICIPATING IN THE PATHWAYS PROGRAM. This course examines three moments in American history — the Great Depression of the 1930s, the social and economic "malaise" of the 1970s, and the Great Recession of the early-21st-century — and delves into how writers, filmmakers, and musicians responded to these crises with trenchant diagnoses of their world and radical visions of how it might be transformed. In the 1930s, we will turn to such artists as Tillie Olsen, Richard Wright, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Chaplin; in the 1970s, to such artists as Ursula LeGuin, Toni Morrison, Martin Scorcese, and the musicians behind the genres of soul and punk; and in the late-2000s, to such artists as Eugene Lim, Jordan Peele, Kendrick Lamar, and Janelle Monáe. Throughout, we will be attentive to the mainstream of American political discourse and to the ideas of social movements of the time so that we can assess the relationship between art and politics.

Credit Restrictions

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.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills