Topics vary according to instructor.

This course studies modern racial protest expressed through African American narrative art from the 1930s to 1980s, focusing on Civil Rights, Black Power, Black Panthers, womanism, black gay/lesbian liberation movements, and black postmodernism. We begin our study with the most famous protest novel, Richard Wright's Native Son. Then we examine other narratives including works by Angelo Herndon, Ann Petry, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr.

This course explores the critical and the constructive dimensions of African American political thought from slavery to the present. We will assess the claims that black Americans have made upon the polity, how they have defined themselves, and how they have sought to redefine key terms of political life such as citizenship, equality, freedom, and power.

Analyzes selected works of literature by major Southern writers. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

Topics vary according to instructor. The goal of the course is to introduce students to interdisciplinary work in American Studies by juxtaposing works across disciplinary boundaries and from different methodological perspectives.

This course introduces students to American Studies, the interdisciplinary study of US culture. Students will be exposed to the three main categories of American Studies methods, historical analysis, close analysis, and fieldwork and to a broad variety of cultural forms, including films, photographs, music, sermons, journalism, fiction, speeches, court decisions, government documents, and web-based materials including social media sites.

This course explores the origins and impacts of American hip-hop as a cultural form in the last forty years, and maps the ways that a local subculture born of an urban underclass has risen to become arguably the dominant form of 21st-century global popular culture. While primarily focused on music, we will also explore how forms such as dance, visual art, film, and literature have influenced and been influenced by hip-hop style and culture.

This seminar course will introduce majors to various theories and methods for the practice of American Studies. The three goals of the seminars are (1) to make students aware of their own interpretive practices; (2) to equip them with information and conceptual tools they will need for advanced work in American Studies; and (3) to provide them with comparative approaches to the study of various aspects of the United States. Prerequisites: American Studies Major

An interdisciplinary introduction to the culture and history of Asians and Pacific Islanders in America. Examines ethnic communities such as Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Asian Indian, and Native Hawaiian, through themes such as immigration, labor, cultural production, war, assimilation, and politics. Texts are drawn from genres such as legal cases, short fiction, musicals, documentaries, visual art, and drama.

This seminar is intended to focus study, research, and discussion on a single period, topic, or issue, such as the Great Awakening, the Civil War, the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, or the 1960s. Topics vary.