An intro to the broad field of Native Studies, this class focuses on themes of representation and erasure. We read Indigenous scholars and draw from current events, pop culture, and historical narrative to explore complex relationships between historical and contemporary issues that Indigenous peoples face in the US. We examine the foundations of Native representations and their connections to critical issues in Native communities.

This course examines the relationship between Latinx and Indigenous communities and the environment from a sociocultural, anthropological and historical perspective.Texts encompass the fields of history, anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, and often require thinking and analysis that questions understandings of land, development, race, science, health, and wellness on a state, local, and international level.

This class explores the political connections between race, gender, and music. The course considers questions of representation, the practice and politics of listening, the political and economic modes of production, and racial formation. In order to explore these topics, this version of the course is broken into three thematic sections: Sound, Score, and Structure. The course is taught intersectionally, meaning we will deal with issues of race, gender, sexuality, labor, and national identity. 

This course provides an introduction to film studies through an examination of American film throughout the 20th & 21st centuries. We will learn basic film techniques for visual analysis, and consider the social, economic, and historical forces that have shaped the production, distribution & reception of film in the US Examples will be drawn from various genres: melodrama, horror, sci-fi, musical, Westerns, war films, documentary, animation, etc.

In the 1930s, many people employed in the German film industry whose lives were threatened by Nazism took refuge in Hollywood. This course examines the contributions exiled directors, writers, actors, and others made in genres ranging from comedy and melodrama to film noir. In addition to indicting fascism and reflecting on the trauma of forced migration these films often turned a critical eye on the U.S..

This course offers a fast-paced history of popular music in the United States since 1970.  Instead of following a chronological time-line of a half a century, the course is organized around the sounds and stories of seven major genres: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip hop, dance music, and pop.  We will pay particular attention to the shifting meanings of these genres over time, to how they change, collude, collide, and create continuity in both sound and community.  

Topics vary according to instructor.

New Course in the subject of American Studies

In the US, Vietnam signifies not a country but a lasting syndrome that haunts American politics and society, from foreign policy to popular culture. But what of the millions of Southeast Asian refugees the War created? What are the lasting legacies of the Vietnam War for Southeast Asian diasporic communities? We will examine literature and film (fictional and documentary) made by and about Americans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and Hmong.

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.