Undergraduate courses in American Studies

Dylan's reactions to and interactions with the 20th-century American experience. His music from its origins to his emergence as an American icon, and its influence on modern culture.

2 units, Aut (Obenzinger, H)

AMSTUD 101. American Fiction into Film: How Hollywood Scripts and Projects Black and White Relations

Movies and the fiction that inspires them; power dynamics behind production including historical events, artistic vision, politics, and racial stereotypes. What images of black and white does Hollywood produce to forge a national identity? How do films promote equality between the races? What is lost or gained in film adaptations of books? GER:EC-AmerCul

3-5 units, Win (Mesa, C)

AMSTUD 105. From Blues to Rap: Representing Music in African American Literature

The significance of music to African American literature and culture. Writers include James Baldwin, August Wilson, and Ralph Ellison. Texts include novels, short stories, plays, essays, musical and video clips, and online resources. Issues include assimilation, authenticity, the African American aesthetic, and music as protest. GER:EC-AmerCul

5 units, Win (Braggs, R)

AMSTUD 114N. Visions of the 1960s

(S,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to sophomores. Introduction to the ideas, sensibility, and, to a lesser degree, the politics of the American 60s. Topics: the early 60s vision of a beloved community; varieties of racial, generational, and feminist dissent; the meaning of the counterculture; and current interpretive perspectives on the 60s. Film, music, and articles and books. GER:DB-Hum, EC-AmerCul

5 units, Aut (Gillam, R)

AMSTUD 137. Jefferson in Paris

Thomas Jefferson's years in Paris (1784-1789). The historical, political, literary, aesthetic, domestic, romantic, and transformative aspects of the Paris sojourn, through an interdisciplinary approach to the facts and fictions Jefferson generated. Sources include letters, articles, books, histories, novels, and films.

3-5 units, Spr (Mesa, C)

AMSTUD 150. American Literature and Culture to 1855

(Same as ENGLISH 123.) Sources include histories, poetry, autobiography, captivity and slave narratives, drama, and fiction. Authors include Mather, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Franklin, Brockden Brown, Emerson, Douglass, Hawthorne, and Melville. GER:DB-Hum, EC-AmerCul

5 units, Win (Jones, G)

AMSTUD 160. Perspectives on American Identity

Required for American Studies majors. Changing interpretations of American identity and Americanness. GER:DB-Hum, EC-AmerCul

5 units, Win (Gillam, R)

AMSTUD 179. Introduction to American Law

(Same as LAWGEN 106, POLISCI 122.) For undergraduates. The structure of the American legal system including the courts; American legal culture; the legal profession and its social role; the scope and reach of the legal system; the background and impact of legal regulation; criminal justice; civil rights and civil liberties; and the relationship between the American legal system and American society in general. GER:DB-SocSci

3-5 units, Aut (Friedman, L)

AMSTUD 183. Border Crossings and American Identities

(Same as ANTHRO 146A.) How novelists, filmmakers, and poets perceive racial, ethnic, gender, sexual preference, and class borders in the context of a national discussion about the place of Americans in the world. How Anna Deavere Smith, Sherman Alexie, or Michael Moore consider redrawing such lines so that center and margin, or self and other, do not remain fixed and divided. How linguistic borderlines within multilingual literature by Caribbean, Arab, and Asian Americans function. Can Anzaldúa's conception of borderlands be constructed through the matrix of language, dreams, music, and cultural memories in these American narratives? Course includes examining one's own identity. GER:DB-Hum, EC-AmerCul

5 units, Aut (Duffey, C)

AMSTUD 184. Cityscapes of the Imaginary: The Urban World in Literature and Film

Experiences of the modernizing urban world through narratives of novelists, poets, and filmmakers who have charted the interior spaces of life in the city from historical, cultural, geographical, or transnational perspectives. Texts include: Zola's account of capitalist expansion in Second Empire Paris, The Delights of Ladies; Edward Said's diasporic Palestinian Cairo memoir, Out of Place; Sinan Anton's anti-imperialist poetry of Baghdad; Edwidge Danticat's Haitian New York and Port-au-Prince bicultural novel, The Dew Breaker; Pakistani British filmmaker Hanif Kureishi's vision of immigrant dislocation, My Son the Fanatic; and stories of Baltimore streets from the HBO series, Wire.

5 units, Spr (Duffey, C)

AMSTUD 185. American Studies Internship

Restricted to declared majors. Practical experience working in a field related to American Studies for six to ten weeks. Students make internship arrangements with a company or agency, under the guidance of a sponsoring faculty member, and with the consent of the director or a program coordinator of American Studies. Required paper focused on a topic related to the internship and the student's studies. May be repeated for credit.

1-3 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Fishkin, S), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)

AMSTUD 195. Individual Work

1-5 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)

AMSTUD 202. The History of American Families

The cultural, regional, and class diversity of family life in America from colonial times to present. Native American families encountered by English settlers, the Puritan family of colonial New England, and African American families in slavery and freedom. Diversity of family structures and traditions of immigrant groups to the U.S. in the 19th century from Asia, Mexico, and northern, southern and eastern Europe. Change in response to industrialization and urbanization in American life, including how diverse families approach work, gender roles, childrearing, sexuality, marriage and divorce. Frontiers of new reproductive technology and gay marriage in light of these histories.

5 units, Spr (Horn, M)

AMSTUD 203A. Children in American History

Children as a subject of historical inquiry. The experience of children, ideas about childhood, and policies and institutions for children from the late 18th century to the present. How were children perceived and cared for within families, and what was growing up like for children? Variations in childhood experience based on class, race, ethnicity, gender, and geographic location. Discourses on the nature of childhood developed by experts and society. How society defined its responsibility to children, and how it treated those dependent on public care or defined as social problems. GER:DB-SocSci

5 units, Win (Horn, M)

AMSTUD 214. The American 1960s: Thought, Protest, and Culture

The meaning of the American 60s emphasizing ideas, culture, protest, and the new sensibility that emerged. Topics: black protest, the new left, the counterculture, feminism, the new literature and journalism of the 60s, the role of the media in shaping dissent, and the legacy of 60s protest. Interpretive materials from film, music, articles, and books. GER:DB-Hum, EC-AmerCul

5 units, Aut (Gillam, R)

AMSTUD 250. Senior Research

Research and writing of senior honors thesis under the supervision of a faculty member. The final grade for the thesis is assigned by the chair based on the evaluations of the primary thesis adviser and a second reader appointed by the program. Prerequisite: consent of chair.

1-15 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)

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Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09

Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09

Alphabetical Index

Bulletin Archive

Undergraduate courses in American Studies