AMST 470 - Topics in American Studies

The Cultural Politics of Art Fall (3), Gundaker Exploration of the cultural and political world of art as experienced by artists, museum visitors, gallery owners, teachers, collectors, curators, critics, and charlatans.

Women and Gender in the Early Modern Atlantic World. Fall (3), Wulf This seminar examines the experience of women and the political and economic representation of ideas about gender around the early modern (1500-1800) Atlantic World.

Mobility Fall (3), Lelievre This seminar will explore movement and mobility across the Americas as both empirical phenomena and as analytical categories from an array of established and emergent interdisciplinary perspectives. Themes will include, among others, quotidian practices of movement, migration, tourism, and pilgrimage.

Black Atlantic Literature Fall (3), Reid-Pharr In this seminar we will follow the lead of Paul Gilroy in The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness in which he argues that slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade stand at the center of modern culture and society. Specifically, we will ask whether it is possible to imagine a “black Atlantic” literature that exists outside national political and cultural traditions. In addition to Gilroy, we will read: Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism; Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination; Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth; Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory; Leonora Sansay, Secret History; or, The Horrors of Santo Domingo; Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Herman Melville, Benito Cereno; Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: Journeys Along the Atlantic Slave Route; Caryl Phillips, Dancing in the Dark; Charles Johnson, Middle Passage; Chris Abani, Graceland. In addition to a research paper, students will be required to write and deliver a formal class presentation.