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.

Iconic American sites such as Monticello, Walden Pond, and our network of national parks have inspired generations of Americans. But displacement is just as much a part of our national identity. In this class we will analyze fiction, journalism, film, paintings, photographs and other elements of visual culture that document the stories of Indigenous dispossession, housing discrimination, Japanese internment, redlining, gentrification, and homelessness. 

This class examines the history of voluntary, coerced, and forced migration in the U.S., tracing the paths of migrating groups and their impact on urban, suburban, and rural landscapes. We'll dig for cultural clues to changing attitudes about migration over time. Photographs, videos, books, movies, government records, poems, podcasts, paintings, comic strips, museums, manifestos: you name it, we'll analyze it for this class.

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.

An elective course for students in the Asian Pacific American Studies minor. Students will work with an APAS core faculty member to support the student's own research. Topics vary, and must be approved by the APAS Director. 

An elective course for American Studies majors who have completed AMST 3001-3002. Students will work with an American Studies faculty member to support the student's own research. Topics vary, and must be approved by the Program Director. Prerequisite: AMST 3001, 3002, Instructor Consent.

Students spend the fall semester of their 4th years working closely with a faculty advisor to conduct research and begin writing their Distinguished Majors Program (DMP) thesis.

This workshop is for American Studies majors who have been admitted to the DMP program. Students will discuss the progress of their own and each other's papers, with particular attention to the research and writing processes. At the instructor's discretion, students will also read key works in the field of American Studies. Prerequisites: admission to DMP.

New Course in the subject of American Studies.