Catalogue 2024-2025
American Studies Program
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Director: Lisa Gail Collins;
Steering Committee: Lisa Brawley (Urban Studies and Associate Dean of the Faculty ), Amy Chin (American Studies and Asian Studies), Lisa Gail Collins (Art), Eve Dunbar (English), Gordon Hallb (Art), Jonathon S. Kahnab (Religion), Erin McCloskey (Education), Molly S. McGlennen (English), Justin Patch (Music), Hiram Perezab (English), Allison Puglisiab (History), Tyrone Simpson, IIa (English), Mallory Whiteduck (Political Science).
Participating Faculty: April Beisawa (Anthropology), William Hoynesab (Sociology), Amitava Kumar (English), Candy Martinez (Latin American and Latinx Studies), Eréndira Rueda (Sociology), Ashanti Shihb (History), Luisa Valle (Art).
a On leave 2024/25, first semester
b On leave 2024/25, second semester
ab On leave 2024/25
American Studies is an interdisciplinary field defined both by its objects of study - the processes, places, and people that comprise the United States - and by a mode of inquiry that moves beyond the scope of a single disciplinary approach or critical methodology. American Studies majors develop a rich understanding of the complex histories that have resulted from the conflict and confluence of Indigenous, European, African, and Asian cultures throughout the Western Hemisphere, and explore U.S. nation-formation in relation to global flows of American cultural, economic and military power. An individually designed course of study, which is the hallmark of the program, allows students to forge multidisciplinary approaches to the particular issues that interest them.
The American Studies program offers both core program courses and cross-listed electives via the following inter-related rubrics:
The United States in a global context: the role of the United States outside of its national borders, the flow of peoples, ideas, goods and capital both within and beyond the United States; explorations of historic and contemporary diasporas; contexts and cultures of U.S. militarism and anti-militarism.
Spaces, places, and borders: explorations of particular places and processes of place-making in the U.S.; focus on borders and borderlands as contested geographical and figurative spaces of cultural, political, and economic exchange.
U.S. cultural formations: investigations of literary, visual, audio, and performance cultures, and their interaction; U.S. popular culture, music and media.
Identity, difference & power: the contest to extend the promises of abstract citizenship to the particular experiences of embodied subjects; shifting politics of U.S. immigration; explorations of the production, representation and experience of race and ethnicity in the U.S., including structural dimensions of race and racism; investigations of the intersections of race with gender, class, sexuality, and other systems of difference.
U.S. Intellectual traditions and their discontents: explorations of American religious, cultural and political thought; traditions of social and political protests; discourses of sovereignty, liberty, federalism, individualism, rights.
The program also offers a correlate sequence in Native American Studies which enables students to examine Indigenous cultures, politics, histories, and literatures, in a primarily North American context. Students electing the correlate sequence are trained in the methodology of Native American Studies as a means to critically assess colonial discourses, examine the many ways Native peoples have contributed to and shaped North American culture, and analyze and honor the autonomy and sovereignty of Indigenous nations, peoples, and thought.
The American Studies program values close faculty-student interaction. Courses utilize a range of collaborative learning strategies; mentored independent senior work is an integral component of the major.
Major
Correlate Sequence in Native American Studies
Approved Courses
American Studies: I. Introductory
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AMST 100 - Introduction to American Studies Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
An invitation to the welcoming and ever-evolving field of American Studies, an inclusive and expansive interdisciplinary area of inquiry that seeks to understand “the multiplicity of the social and cultural lives of people in–and in relation to–the United States, both past and present.”
Either AMST 100 or AMST 102 or AMST 105 will satisfy the 100-level core requirement of the American Studies major. Topics vary with expertise of the faculty teaching the course.
Topic for 2024/25b: People, Culture, Power, and Place. Centering the commitment to social justice and responding to lived experiences by way of curiosity and creativity, energy and engagement within the interdisciplinary field of American Studies, we explore a wide range of materials with a broad toolkit to deepen our understanding of the dynamic relations between people, culture, power, and place. Lisa Collins.
Priority given to first-year students and sophomores.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 102 - Introduction to Asian American Studies Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 102 ) Why are Asians in America? What does it feel like to be Asian in America? Who counts as Asian in the first place? Asian American scholar Victor Bascara argues that “we are here because you were there” referring to the long history of empire, militarization, and war that “brought” Asians to America. This introduction to Asian American Studies traces the logics of power that shape Asian migration, racialization, and resistance in America through the lens of empire. We focus on sites of encounter–the plantation, the internment camp, the military base, the interrogation room, the refugee camp, the orphanage, the spa, and the protest–where the meeting of bodies, labor, and ideologies can reveal how modes of difference-making emerge and endure within and across local contexts. Students engage in texts, archives, podcasts, film and poetry to understand how the experiences of Asians in America are tied to larger historical systems of power and the ways in which Asians have grappled with their experiences on their own terms. Amy Chin.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 105 - Introduction to Native American Studies Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course is a multi-and interdisciplinary introduction to the basic philosophies, ideologies, and methodologies of the discipline of Native American Studies. It acquaints students with the history, art, literature, sociology, linguistics, politics, and epistemology according to an indigenous perspective while utilizing principles stemming from vast and various Native North American belief systems and cultural frameworks. Through reading assignments, films, and discussions, we learn to objectively examine topics such as orality, sovereignty, stereotypes, humor, language, resistance, spirituality, activism, identity, tribal politics, and environment among others. Overall, we work to problematize historical, ethnographical, and literary representations of Native people as a means to assess and evaluate western discourses of domination; at the same time, we focus on the various ways Native people and nations, both in their traditional homelands and urban areas, have been and are triumphing over 500+ years of colonization through acts of survival and continuance. Either AMST 100 or AMST 102 or AMST 105 satisfies the 100-level core requirement of the American Studies major. Molly McGlennen.
Priority given to first-year students and sophomores.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 160 - Art and Storytelling
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 160 ) Stories and storytelling reside at the heart of human experience; they have the power to shape–and shift–our understandings, actions, and imaginations. How do artists, makers, and other cultural workers draw on the power of storytelling to deepen seeing and knowing and enable emergent stories and realities? Focusing on generative twentieth and twenty-first century creative projects in or in relation to the U.S., this first-year writing seminar–a community of practice and care–explores critical arts and acts of storytelling.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 170 - Introduction to Native American History
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 170 ) This course introduces students to the diverse experiences and histories of Indigenous peoples in North America since before European contact to the present moment. And course materials invite students to engage with many Indigenous voices and their perspectives on the past. The course focuses on the historical development of a U.S. Federal Indian policy and its ongoing impact on Native peoples. Students analyze the persistence, change, and adaption of Native cultures to historical and contemporary social conditions of the U.S. settler colonialism as well as individual and community efforts to maintain sovereignty in the 21st century. Since Indigenous peoples have their own culturally specific ideas and practices concerning gender and sexuality, students also examine the ways in which Indigenous ideas and practices around gender and sexuality have become sites of resistance to settler colonialism and an assertion of Indigenous identity, both in past and present. Students also investigate issues related to race, identity, and community by analyzing historical relations between African Americans and Native Americans across North America.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 177 - Special Topics Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ART 177 and URBS 177 ) Beginning with visual and written descriptions of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec Empire (today’s Mexico City), this course explores visual and discursive representations of American cities from the colonial encounter to the present. Interpretations of urban landscapes have shaped the practice of planners, builders, artists, and activists in cities across the Americas. By introducing students to philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s theory of urban space—as materially, socially, and symbolically produced—this seminar invites students to reflect critically on the role of writing, representing, and intervening in public space in giving meaning to the built environment of North and Latin American cities. Luisa Valle.
Second six-week course.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
American Studies: II. Intermediate
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AMST 203 - These American Lives: New Journalisms Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 203 ) This course examines the various forms of journalism that report on the complexity of contemporary American lives. In the past I have said that this course, in a plain sense, is an investigation into American society. And, of course, that a part of the aim of the course is to acquire the basic craft of journalistic practice. The other main aim of the course has been that we examine different models of writing, especially in longform, that have defined and changed the norms of reportage in our culture. But in honor of the decisive contributions to American life made over the last several years by the previous president, I want to make #fakenews also a focus of our course. How do we pay attention to, how do we produce, and how do we give compelling form to facts? Amitava Kumar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 207 - Commercialized Childhoods
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 207 ) This course examines features of childhoods in the U.S. at different times and across different social contexts. The primary aims of the course are 1) to examine how we’ve come to the contemporary understanding of American childhood as a distinctive life phase and cultural construct, by reference to historical and cross-cultural examples, and 2) to recognize the diversity of childhoods that exist and the economic, geographical, political, and cultural factors that shape those experiences. Specific themes in the course examine the challenges of studying children; the social construction of childhood (how childhoods are constructed by a number of social forces, economic interests, technological determinants, cultural phenomena, discourses, etc.); processes of contemporary globalization and commodification of childhoods (children’s roles as consumers, as producers, and debates about children’s rights); as well as the intersecting dynamics of age, social class, race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in particular experiences of childhood.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 208 - Demilitarizing the Pacific
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 208 ) The Pacific euphemistically called “America’s Lake” has been a site of US empire building and Indigenous and Asian resistance against US military expansion. This course examines demilitarization movements in the Pacific through visual and material culture. We analyze historical and ongoing processes of military basing, nuclear testing, tourism, sex work and logistics industries among others to better understand the relationship between demilitarization and decolonization in the Pacific. Through different forms of visual representation and material objects, this course engages oceanic indigenous voices, island feminism, bomb survivor narratives and global demilitarization activism. Students grapple with how militarism becomes invisible in American daily life, the colonial foundations in which this invisibility is produced through American and Asian imperialisms, and how demilitarization movements are reimagining what genuine security and safety can look in our world without militarism as a governing ideology.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 213 - Indigenous Environmental Activism Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 213 and ENST 213 ) This intensive seeks to foster a community of students dedicated to learning about Indigenous environmental activism. We read publications, watch films, and listen to interviews that highlight the work of Indigenous activists, scholars, and scientists. Students must be willing and able to invest 3-5 hours a week on this intensive. An hour of that time is spent monitoring news sources for recent events and discussing them with others in this learning community. This is not a traditional course, so students with existing knowledge of Indigenous activism or ways of knowing are best prepared for this intensive. April Beisaw.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 214 - History of American Jazz Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as MUSI 214 ) An investigation of the whole range of jazz history, from its beginning around the turn of the century to the present day. Among the figures to be examined are: Scott Joplin, “Jelly Roll” Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie, Thomas “Fats” Waller, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Miles Davis. Justin Patch.
Prerequisite(s): One unit in one of the following: music, studies in American history, art, or literature; or permission of the instructor.
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AMST 215 - Global Indigenous Film Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 215 and MEDS 215 ) This intensive acquaints students with some of the documentary, experimental, and narrative films/videos of indigenous filmmakers from North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Screenings include films by Rachel Perkins, Tracey Moffatt, Sherman Alexie, Victor Masayesva, Alanis Obamsawin, and Zacharias Kunuk. Discussions of films engage the notion of visual sovereignty, and the use of film/video to document indigenous lives and concerns, and to reframe stories told about them and to tell new stories. Colleen Cohen.
First six-week course.
One 2-hour period plus outside screenings.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 216 - Language Revitalization Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 216 and LALS 216 ) This Intensive focuses on language revitalization and documentation efforts of endangered languages, and also of languages that are undervalued or discriminated against by majority populations. Students can develop their own project, or work with the instructor in an ongoing digital humanities project that focuses on Mesoamerican languages. David Tavarez.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 90-minute period.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 217 - Studies in Popular Music
1 unit(s)
A topics course focusing on the study of popular music.
Recommended: One unit in either Music, Sociology, or Anthropology.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 219 - Queer of Color Critique
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 219 and ENGL 219 ) “Queer of Color Critique” is a form of cultural criticism modeled on lessons learned from woman of color feminism, poststructuralism, and materialist and other forms of analysis. As Roderick Ferguson defines it, “Queer of color analysis…interrogates social formations as the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class with particular interest in how those formations correspond with and diverge from nationalist ideals and practices.” This course considers what interventions the construction “queer of color” makes possible for queertheory, LGBT scholarship and activism, and different models of ethnic studies.We assess the value and limitations of queer theory’s “subjectless critique” (in other words, its rejection of identity as a “fixed referent”) in doing cultural and political work. What kind of complications (or contradictions) does the notion “queer of color” present for subjectless critique? How might queer of color critique inform political organizing? Particular attention will be devoted to how “queer” travels. Toward this end, students determine what conflicts are presently shaping debates around sexuality in their own communities and consider how these debates may be linked to different regional, national or transnational politics. Throughout the semester, we evaluate what “queer” means and what kind of work it enables. Is it an identity or an anti-identity? A verb, a noun, or an adjective? A heuristic device, a counterpublic, a form of political mobilization or perhaps even a kind of literacy?
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 222 - The Politics of Borders
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 222 and LALS 222 ) This course interrogates the normative construction of nation-state borders and the meaning of nation-state borders. We do so from the United States/Mexico border, and utilize a comparative approach, relating Latinx Studies to critical Indigenous feminist perspectives. While focused mainly on the United States landmass the course also critically foregrounds Native/Indigenous land and sovereignty to reconceptualize the United States as a settler colonial, imperial state. Utilizing the knowledges of Latinx and Indigenous thinkers, students trace the construction of modern borders and productively reframe assumptions around immigration/migration, citizenship, nationalism and indigenismo/Indigeneity.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 231 - Native American Literature
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 231 ) This course examines Indigenous North American literatures from a Native American Studies perspective. Native American literature is particularly vast and diverse, representing over 500 Indigenous nations in the northern hemisphere, and written/spoken in both Indigenous languages and languages of conquest (English, Spanish, French). Because of this range of written and oral traditions, our goals for the class are to complicate our understanding of “texts,” to examine the origins of and evolution of tribal literatures (fiction, poetry, non fiction, graphic novel, etc.), and to comprehend the various theoretical debates that have created and nurtured a robust field of Native American literary criticism. A Native American Studies framework acknowledges Indigenous literatures as the cultural and creative labor of Native peoples on behalf of their respective Nations or communities, as well as how the literatures are necessarily entangled with the on-going legacy of settler colonialism. Authors include William Apess, Luther Standing Bear, Pauline Johnson, Mourning Dove, Gerald Vizenor, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko, Louise Erdrich, Wendy Rose, Thomas King, Beth Brant, Kimberly Blaeser, and Tommy Pico, among other Native theorists, performance and fine artists, and filmmakers.
This course satisfies the REGS requirement for the English major.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 232 - Asian American Women’s Oral History
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 232 ) This course examines the methodology of oral history as employed by Asian American women and oral histories of Asian American women. It expands what we understand to be traditional oral history to include, testimonies, political speeches, speaking tours, lullabies, pop music and podcasting. We use sound and story as an object to study subaltern methods of capturing and articulating these stories. Students are able to conduct an oral history project of their own that is digitally archived in the library. It also accompanies a class reading list we collectively build to strengthen the Asian American subject guide at the Vassar library.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 233 - Museums, Collections, Ethics
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 233 ) Collecting Native American objects and human remains was once justified as a way to preserve vanishing cultures. Instead of vanishing, Native Americans organized and asked that their ancestors be returned, along with their sacred objects. Initially, museums fought against the loss of collections and scientists fought against the loss of data. Governments stepped in and wrote regulations to manage claims, dictating the rights of all parties. Thirty years after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) repatriation remains a controversial issue and few are satisfied with the process. This course examines the development of American museums and the ethics of collecting cultures to anchor our study of repatriation. Perspectives of anthropology, art, history, law, museum studies, Native American studies, philosophy, and religion are considered. Recent U.S. cases are contrasted with repatriation cases in other parts of the world, for repatriation is not just a Native American issue.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 235 - Picturing Transnational Indigenous Sovereignty in the Americas Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 235 ) This course examines identities, memories, and social movements of and by Indigenous peoples depicted through film and video in Turtle Island and Abya Yala (North and Latin America). Students learn about visual representations, Indigenous sovereignty, and Indigenous futures by juxtaposing Indigenous communities past and present struggles. They also critically analyze the different actors, such as nation-states, non-profit organizations, individuals, and collectives, that produce dramas, independent films, and documentaries.
This course addresses several questions: How has the discourse around Indigeneity transformed from the 20th century to the 21st century? How does the nation-state inform certain Indigenous representations? How can we think about Indigeneity in terms of self-performativity, autonomy, and solidarity instead of authenticity? How do Indigenous communities challenge authenticity and self-represent themselves through visual mediums, which they often seek to decolonize? Candy Martinez.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 236 - Native North America
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 236 ) Native Americans have been in North America for at least the last 10,000 years. From the earliest archaeological record we can see how they farmed in the scorching desert, hunted in the frozen tundra, and traded resources over thousands of miles. From the more recent record, we can see how homelands relate to reservation lands and how lifeways changed but culture persists. Now, indigenous archaeologists and community archaeology programs are changing how archaeology is done, who it is done by and for, and what questions are asked of the past. This course surveys the archaeology of two distinct geographical culture areas, the Southwest and the Northeast. This contrast allows us to examine how knowledge of the past is constructed by archaeologists, museum professionals, descendant communities, and public interest.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 239 - Feeling the Present: Affect and Emotion in Contemporary Social Life Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 239 ) Contrary to the Enlightenment vision of a society comprised of rational, self-contained individuals, feelings, moods, and affects in fact play a primary role in contemporary social life, affecting most everything from consumer behavior to political beliefs to the health of the economy. This course examines not only how feelings and moods are profoundly collective but also why and how these collective emotions have come to matter in contemporary culture, politics, and economy. In analysis of current and classic scholarship in the sociology of emotions, affect studies, and psychoanalysis - as well as film and popular culture - we attend to the ways in which anxiety, depression, hope, fear, rage, and other moods figure into everyday life, work, social movements, and other key sites. We consider topics including: mental health and the pharmaceutical industry; neoliberalism and financialization; the #metoo and Black Lives Matter movements; Trumpism and resurgent nationalisms globally; and emotion and social media among other topics addressed. Readings include work by Sara Ahmed, Zygmunt Bauman, Lauren Berlant, Ann Cvetkovitch, Jennifer Doyle, Sigmund Freud, Arlie Hochschild, Jack Katz, Pankaj Mishra, Fred Moten, José Munoz, Amber Musser, Sianne Ngai, and Kathleen Stewart. John Andrews.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 241 - Asian American Women and Gender History
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 241 and HIST 241 ) This course focuses on Asian American women as key historical actors and the use of gender analysis to re-examine major themes in Asian American history: immigration, labor, communtiy formation, cultural representations, feminist political organizing, sexuality, and marriage and family life. We also touch on the “queering” of Asian American history, as well as ideas of masculinity and the intersections of sexuality and racialization for Asian American men. Course materials emphasie Asian American women’s voices and include memoirs, poetry, film, oral histories, and artwork in addition to traditional academic texts. Students explore different types of archives and methodologies to evelop a final reserch project of their choice.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 248 - The Book in America
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 248 ) This course examines the history and influence of books and printing in American society from earliest times to the present. We touch on a range of topics, including the place of books in the colonial era and the new republic, the spread of printing technologies in the 19th century, the emergence of large publishing houses and rising rates of literacy, the role of libraries, bookstores, and book clubs, modernist publishing, the rise of the paperback, the work of private presses, artist’s books, and the effect of recent technologies on reading. Along the way we consider questions relating to the production, dissemination, and reception of texts. The Archives & Special Collections Library serves as a laboratory for the course. Guest speakers and one or more field trips enhance our study of key topics.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 250 - Empire as a Way of Life Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
What is empire? How has it shaped the global world order? And the everyday lives of working people? Is the idea and reality of America possible without it? This question posed by historian William Appleman Williams in 1980 remains both prescient and critical in our current moment. This course examines how US empire has become “a way of life” in organizing American society since the mid 19th century. We examine the formations and consequences of American imperialism, colonization, slavery, capitalism, nation-building, and globalization through multidisciplinary texts and methods. Students gain theoretical tools to better understand key terms like ideology, culture, hegemony, and discourse in how they shape changing definitions of class, indigeneity, race, ethnicity, dis/ability, gender and sexuality in America. This course is open to all students and also is a core requirement of American Studies majors and enables students to go on to complete advanced work in the program. Amy Chin.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 251 - Introduction to American Art Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 251 ) How can we encounter the histories of America in works of art? Why should we care about encountering them? This course explores such questions by surveying some of the most compelling paintings, sculptures, photographs, prints, and decorative arts produced in the United States—from the first encounters between indigenous peoples of this continent to New York City’s Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. Whenever possible, course meetings are held at the Loeb Art Center, and an optional class trip to New York City art museums will be organized. In these class lectures and discussions, our goal is to articulate together how works of art from the past shape and construct our sense of American history, and how art continues to matter today.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or a 100-level American Studies course, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 254 - Memory and Justice in Latin America and North America Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 254 ) This course seeks to understand the social and political movements of feminist Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities through frameworks of cultural memory, collective trauma, and collective healing. Students compare, contrast, and link the inequalities in countries in North America (United States and Canada) and Latin America. Students in the class consider the discourse of memory and the various actors who influence and defy accounts of nation-state led narratives. This course validates individual and collective forms of witnessing atrocities but also seeks to complicate notions of witnessing. Besides privileging testimonies of events, it also considers what it means for generations not directly impacted by catastrophic events to remember, reflect, and be affected by the past. Students contextualize histories and memories through a lens that questions the role of race, class, gender, sexuality, and age. Candy Martinez.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 262 - Native American Women
1 unit(s)
(Same as WFQS 262 ) In an effort to subjugate indigenous nations, colonizing and Christianizing enterprises in the Americas included the implicit understanding that subduing Native American women through rape and murder maintained imperial hierarchies of gender and power; this was necessary to eradicate Native people’s traditional egalitarian societies and uphold the colonial agenda. Needless to say, Native women’s stories and histories have been inaccurately portrayed, often tainted with nostalgia and delivered through a lens of western patriarchy and discourses of domination. Through class readings and writing assignments, discussions and films, this course examines Native women’s lives by considering the intersections of gender and race through indigenous frameworks. We expose Native women’s various cultural worldviews in order to reveal and assess the importance of indigenous women’s voices to national and global issues such as sexual violence, environmentalism, and health. The class also takes into consideration the shortcomings of western feminisms in relation to the realities of Native women and Native people’s sovereignty in general. Areas of particular importance to this course are indigenous women’s urban experience, Haudenosaunee influence on early U.S. suffragists, indigenous women in the creative arts, third-gender/two-spiritedness, and Native women’s traditional and contemporary roles as cultural carriers.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 264 - Apocalypse Now: Finding Agency and Hope in a Deteriorating World
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENST 264 ) The course is an exploration of how humans must confront the challenges of global climate change and the collateral hazards associated with it, e.g., the climate refugee crisis, the spread of new diseases that may be worsened by climate change, the disruption of governmental and other institutions, etc., not with dread or denial, but with a sense of hope and the realization that these are challenges that may be ameliorated if we move swiftly to confront them. The course does not shy away from taking a hard look at both the enormity of the problem of climate change and the little time left we have to do something about it. But its focus is on climate resilience and how humans have always been able to adapt to such problems and what we must do today to both adapt to them and to mitigate their effects.
Prerequisite(s): Any First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 265 - Decolonizing the Exhibition: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Indigenous Art
1 unit(s)
This course consists of two areas of inquiry: the study of the impact and importance of Indigenous art from a Native American Studies perspective and the research and exhibition of Inuit works on paper from the Edward J. Guarino Collection at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. We begin by exploring Indigenous art through culturally and tribally specific perspectives in order to challenge the ethnographic lens that has traditionally examined and catalogued Native artists. Through a Native American Studies framework, we approach Indigenous art not through western categories of artifact or craft, but as artworks that stress the continuance of Indigenous peoples in direct conversation with the non-Indigenous world. From this understanding, the class constructs an exhibition to be installed in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at the end of the semester. Students research and interpret Inuit works from the collection, design the exhibition installation, write the exhibition catalogue and create the accompanying website.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 266 - Art, Urgency, and Everyday Life in the United States Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 266 and ART 266 ) What is this thing called socially-engaged, social practice, activist, and/or community-centered art? Where does it come from, who makes it, who is it for, how does it work, and what can it do? What are some of the ways this interdisciplinary practice–often woven within struggles for justice and healing–is defined and deployed? And how might its success be assessed? Dwelling together on these questions by way of dynamic case studies, we consider how a range of U.S. based creators are grappling with urgent issues of our time. Lisa Collins.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 or coursework in Africana Studies, American Studies, Women, Feminist, and Queer Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 267 - Topics in Gender, Media, Culture Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This topics course focuses on gender as it plays out in any number of forms of culture and media. Various texts help elucidate how gender is constructed, represented, and consumed, with important interventions derived from feminist theory, queer theory, media and cultural studies.
Topic for 2024/25b: Visibility Matters? Gender and Representation in U.S. Media. (Same as WFQS 267 ) The fight for greater visibility and representation has been central to gender liberatory movements in the United States, but some feminist, queer, and trans scholars and activists have raised doubts about the idea that more representation equals more liberation. This notion seems especially fraught, for example, in the context of trans liberation today—we are at a peak for trans representation in popular media in the United States at the same time that anti-trans legislation and violence has skyrocketed. This course investigates the importance, limits, and possible risks of visibility and representation in popular media (broadly construed to include film, television, literature, news, advertising, and social media). We ask questions like: what is the relationship between visibility, representation, and liberation? What kinds of public visibility or media representation are liberatory, and what kinds are not? What alternatives are being proposed that augment or replace the goal of visibility? Rachel Silverbloom.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 271 - Native American Visual Sovereignty Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as POLI 271 ) This course studies the ways in which Native American visual culture asserts and affirms Indigenous political sovereignty. With a focus on visualities, including painting, printmaking, performance art, street art, film and television, we examine the multiple ways Native artists claim political power for themselves on and for their territories and nations. Leaning on Native American scholars such as Scott Richard Lyones and Michelle Rahaja, we examine Native American sovereignty as a ‘doing’ rather than a ‘being,’ as well as a process that can be defined artistically and kinesthetically. We consider the spectrum of “high” and “low” arts, looking at – for example – paintings that might hang in a national gallery and graffiti that might be tagged on an abandoned building. While it is tempting to consider this an “artwork of resistance” or “activist art,” in the case of Native American artists the attention paid to sovereignty is the resistance itself. In this course, we ask: How do Native American creative practices speak to sovereignty in ways that differ from what we might call traditional or standard forms of politics? And, how are Native American visual sovereignties tied to decolonial discourses? In addition to this being a co-taught class environment, we aim to offer a variety of perspectives by including guest speakers and visits. Molly McGlennen, Mallory Whiteduck.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
AMST 273 - Critical Ethnic Studies Curricula for Secondary Schools Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 273 and EDUC 273 ) In this intensive, Vassar students work with the professor on developing curricula for a new Grades 9-14 AAPI Digital Textbook that is being produced and published by UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center. The larger textbook uses AAPI history and experiences as a lens to understand American history, emphasize understanding the world through multiple perspectives, and demonstrate the ability to collaborate and resolve conflicts across many facets of difference and diversity towards shared goals for the common good. Chapters in the textbook are organized around the four foundational themes: Global Capitalism and Migration; Empire and War; Community Foundations and Activism; Race, Power and Identity. Our group is tasked with developing accompanying lesson plans and activities for the chapter on Chinese garment workers in New York. As well, we consider developing curricula for a similar nascent project on SWANA studies for high schoolers. Students are expected to travel to NYC for meetings with the historians writing the chapter. Maria Hantzopoulos.
Individual conferences with the instructor.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 274 - Reading and Writing American Memoir
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 274 ) On the first page of Heavy: An American Memoir, Kiese Laymon writes, “I did not want to write about us. I wanted to write an American memoir. I wanted to write a lie.” This course asks students to consider what it means to write an American memoir, particularly from perspectives historically excluded from mainstream publishing and prestigious literary journals. Keeping Laymon’s words in mind, we might ask how marginalized voices engage the presumed transparency of the memoir form to render lies (or mythologies) that arguably consolidate the US as a nation. How does the American memoir write from and to the nation?
This course centers students’ voices. We learn about memoir (and memory) from reading selected memoirs and criticism, but also from our own life writing, which we share in a workshop setting. Our reading selections provide us with a variety of models for transforming memory into story, including the braided essay, lyric forms, flash, the hermit crab essay, and epistolary, among others. Authors may include Kiese Laymon, Deborah Miranda, Melissa Febos, Doris Cheng, Bich Minh Nguyen, and Hilton Als, among others.
Two hours every other week.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 276 - How to Write a Black Memoir
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 276 and ENGL 276 ) This intensive is an exercise in critical reading and creative writing. I would like students to read the work of a particular memoirist and develop their own sense of what the writer has accomplished and achieved. I would then invite the writer for a zoom presentation wherein the writer teaches a “skill” or technique that begets good life writing. Students perform that technique in class and revise/refine what they have written and submit the piece in the class to follow. The goal is for the student to write an autobiographical narrative of at least 20 pages in length.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor and 200-level courses in English/Africana Studies/American Studies.
One 3-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 290 - Community-Engaged Learning Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission of the director required.
Course Format: INT -
AMST 298 - Independent Study Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission of the director required.
Course Format: OTH
American Studies: III. Advanced
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