Undergraduate Courses
See the Yale College Programs of Study

Graduate Courses
2008-2009

AMST 600a, American Scholars

 Dolores Hayden

“What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body. The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar, 1837

A half-century ago American studies was a movement; now it is an institution. But it remains an anomaly in the academy, with neither method nor discipline: a modest pro­gram, not a department, that immodestly claims the space between disciplines, beyond disciplines, and perhaps encompassing disciplines.

In the early days, American studies was imagined as a home for Emerson’s American scholar; these days Emerson’s scholar is apt to be eyed more skeptically. Nevertheless the philosophy of the street and the meaning of household life continue to be the top­ics of the time, and American studies remains an oddly Emersonian place for nurturing intellectuals.

To explore the various kinds of American scholars and American studies, the Ameri­can Scholars colloquium meets weekly on Thursday, 1:30–3:20. Each week, we ask a member of the American Studies faculty: What are the key works that shape your intel­lectual project? What works pose the crucial issues? What works engage what you would really know the meaning of? Each speaks briefly and leads a discussion of the works cho­sen. There is no writing assignment, and students receive a credit for participating. This course is mandatory for first-year American Studies graduate students. Others require permission from the American Studies director of graduate studies. TH 1:30–3:20

AMST 622a, Working Group on Globalization and Culture

 Michael Denning

The Working Group on Globalization and Culture is a continuing collective research project, a cultural studies “laboratory,” that has been running since the fall of 2003. The group is made up of graduate students and faculty from several disciplines. The working group meets regularly to discuss common readings, to develop collective and individual research projects, and to present that research publicly. The general theme for the work­ing group is globalization and culture, with three principal aspects: (1) the globalization of cultural industries and goods, and its consequences for patterns of everyday life as well as for forms of fiction, film, broadcasting, and music; (2) the trajectories of social move­ments and their relation to patterns of migration, the rise of global cities, the transforma­tion of labor processes, and forms of ethnic, class, and gender conflict; (3) the emergence of and debates within transnational social and cultural theory. The specific focus, proj­ects, and directions of the working group are determined by the interests, expertise, and ambitions of the members of the group, and change as its members change. There are a small number of openings for second-year graduate students. Students interested in participating should contact michael.denning@yale.edu. M 1:30–3:20

AMST 635a/WGSS 706a, Cultural Studies in the Americas

 Alicia Schmidt Camacho

A bilingual seminar with readings from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States devoted to culture, popular movements, and social theory. The course pairs cul­tural texts with theoretical readings and historical monographs. We consider questions of global political and economic transformations in the region; discourses and practices of migration and displacements; nationalism and transnational movements; processes of racial, gender, class, and sexual formation; and vernacular and official discourses of rights and justice. We address these themes through an examination of popular move­ments and expressive cultures, and mass media. Students need basic familiarity with the Spanish language to participate fully. TH 9:25–11:15

AMST 641a/AFAM 596a/ENGL 947au, African American Poets of the Modern Era

 Elizabeth Alexander

The African American practice of poetry between 1900 and the present, especially of son­nets, ballads, sermonic and blues poems. Poets studied include Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker, and Robert Hayden. T 1:30–3:20

AMST 643a/AFAM 505a, Theorizing Racial Formations

 Hazel Carby

A designated core course for students in the joint Ph.D. program; also open to students in American Studies and History. This interdisciplinary reading seminar focuses on new work that is challenging the temporal, theoretical, and spatial boundaries of the field. M 1:30–3:20

AMST 670b/ENGL 847b, Colonial and National: American Literature 1730–1830

 Michael Warner

Readings beginning with Jonathan Edwards and Ben Franklin, ending with the genera­tion of Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper, and Cath­erine Sedgwick. In between the course deals with evangelicalism, Revolutionary writing, the rise of African American public intellectuals, the differences among different varieties of nationalism, and the changing perspective from the Atlantic colonial world to the mainland nation. T 9:25–11:15

AMST 680b/AFAM 719b/SOCY 654b, Race, Racism, and Social Theory

 Alondra Nelson

In this seminar we examine some of the ways in which “race” and its inextricably linked correlate “racism” have been defined, delineated, and critiqued by social theorists. Bear­ing in mind that some regard the idea of race as always signaling notions of inferiority and superiority, while others regard it as a sign of shared history and collective identity, we consult a range of opinions as to what race is and how perceptions of racial difference shape the social world. Our inquiry into the concepts of race and racism proceeds along several tracks. We consider the interplay of race with class, gender, and sexuality and the consequences of this “intersectionality” for how racism is deployed and experienced. We consider how race operates as a valence of social stratification and how the concept is taken up in the social sciences as an underlying assumption of qualitative scholarship and as a central variable of quantitative work. In addition, we turn our attention to explana­tions of how race and racism are reflected in the structure of institutions, in the formation of the nation-state, in the dynamics of political processes, and through the dissemination of cultural representations. Readings include Ahmed, Gilroy, Alcoff, Ferreira da Silva, and Stoler. T 2:30–4:20

AMST 681b/DRAM 386/ENGL 931b, American Drama to 1914

 Marc Robinson

Topics include the European inheritance, theater and nation-building, melodrama and the rise of realism, popular and non-literary forms. Readings in Tyler, Dunlap, Aiken, Boucicault, Daly, Herne, Belasco, and others. TH 9:25–11:15

AMST 700a/HIST 700a, Introduction to the Historiography of the United States

 John Mack Faragher

Readings and discussion of a scholarly work on U.S. history from the settlement era to the present. Members of the department faculty visit the class on a rotating basis. T/TH 9–10:15

AMST 705b/HIST 720b/RLST 705b, Readings in Religion and American History, 1600–1990

 Harry Stout

This introductory graduate readings course assesses interrelations between religion and American society from 1600 to 1990. Concentration on religion’s successes and failures in shaping American society from the Puritans to modern neoconservative fundamental­ism. Readings in primary and secondary sources; development of bibliographical skills. M 9:25–11:15

AMST 709b/AFAM 709b/HIST 736b/WGSS 736b, Research in Twentieth-Century United States Political and Social History

 Glenda Gilmore

Projects chosen from the post-Civil War period, with emphasis on twentieth-century social and political history, broadly defined. Research seminar. W 1:30–3:20

AMST 715b/AFAM 764b/HIST 715b, Readings in Nineteenth-Century American History, 1820–1877

 David Blight

This course explores recent trends and historiography on several problems through the middle of the nineteenth century: sectionalism; expansion; slavery and the Old South; northern society and reform movements; Civil War causation; the meaning of the Con­federacy; why the North won the Civil War; the political, constitutional, and social meanings of emancipation and Reconstruction; violence in Reconstruction society; the relationships between social/cultural and military/political history; problems in histori­cal memory; the tension between narrative and analytical history writing; and the ways in which race and gender have reshaped research and interpretive agendas. W 7–8:50 PM

.AMST 719b, Crisis in Islam

 Zareena Grewal

In official and unofficial discourses in the U.S., diagnoses of Islam’s various “crises” are ubiquitous and Muslim “hearts and minds” are viewed as the “other” front in the War on Terror. Since 9/11, the U.S. State Department has made the reform of Islam an explicit national interest, pouring billions of dollars into USAID projects in Muslim-majority countries, initiating curriculum development programs for madrasas in South Asia, and establishing the Arabic Radio Sawa and the satellite TV station Al-Hurra to propagate the U.S. administration’s political views as well as what it terms a “liberal” strain of Islam. Muslim Americans are also consumed by debates about the “crisis” of Islam, a crisis of religious authority in which the nature and rapidity of change in the measures of author­ity are felt to be too difficult to assimilate. This course maps out the various and deeply politically charged contemporary debates about the “crisis of Islam” and the question of Islamic reform through an examination of official U.S. policy, transnational pulp Islamic literature, fatwas and essays authored by internationally renowned Muslim jurists and scholars, and historical and ethnographic works that take up the category of crisis as an interpretive device. T 3:30–3:20

AMST 720a/AFAM 721a/HIST 731a, Readings in Southern History since 1865

 Glenda Gilmore

The course revisits traditional themes in southern historiography, matching classics of southern U.S. history with recent work. The course expands the definition of “south­erner,” challenges the narratives and periodization of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement, and brings theories on the construction of gender and race into dialogue with southern history. The readings place the U.S. South in a global discourse of white supremacy, imperialism, Communism, fascism, and Pan-Africanism. The course requires book reviews and an historiographical paper that reviews an issue in southern history and suggests opportunities for future research on the topic. TH 3:30–5:20

AMST 721b/HIST 721b/RLST 525b, Research Seminar in United States History

 Jon Butler

Students may write on any aspect of U.S. history in any century; emphasis is on the completion of an article-length essay in U.S. history based on original research. Essays might stand on their own or preview Ph.D. dissertation research. M 9:25–11:15

AMST 730b/AFAM 693b/ HIST 709b, The Black Intellectual since 1941

Jonathan Holloway

This course examines the post-1941 African American history of ideas and the histories of those who produced them. Multiple methodological approaches are considered for what they reveal and conceal about race and other attendant constructions during the long civil rights movement. TH 1:30–3:20

AMST 732b/HIST 783b, Material Culture in Historical Research Kariann Yokota

The material objects people produce and consume provide rich texts for historical analy­sis. This seminar explores how the cultural meanings of objects have been analyzed and understood from various perspectives. Readings are interdisciplinary including works by historians, anthropologists, cultural theorists, sociologists, postcolonial scholars, writers, museum curators, and archaeologists. Topics of discussion include the role of material culture in the formation of national, ethnic, gender, and class identities. W 3:30–5:20

AMST 734a/HSAR 734a, American Art in the Democratic Age, 1830–1860

Alexander Nemerov

How did democracy and capitalism affect American visual culture of the mid-nineteenth century? How did artists portray the market revolution and the place of art within it? What was the relation between American art of that period and kitsch? Is there a poetic complexity to kitsch, or is it truly a nullity? Considering questions like these, we reassess the cultural significance of painters such as William Sidney Mount and sculptors such as Hiram Powers. Period writers such as Hawthorne, Melville, Douglass, and Poe provide some guidance. W 1:30–3:20

AMST 737a/HSAR 737a, Craft and Design in Post-World War II America

 Edward Cooke, Jr.

In the two decades following World War II, economic prosperity and cultural optimism led to the golden age of American industrial design and the expansion of craft education programs in the universities. The term “designer/craftsman” was a respected label. Yet, by the 1970s, crafts, design, and art were three separate spheres. This seminar draws on period writings and artifactual examination to explore the interconnections of craft and design in the 1950s, their subsequent fragmentation, and recent attempts to build con­nections. W 3:30–5:20

AMST 738a/HIST 738a, Readings in Western and Frontier History

 John Mack Faragher, George Miles

Taught with George Miles, curator of Yale’s extensive collection of Western Americana at the Beinecke. Meets at the Beinecke. Emphasis on research methods and the use of pri­mary evidence to construct historical arguments. The goal of the seminar is the research and writing of an original and publishable historical essay using primary materials at Yale. W 9:25–11:15

AMST 739a/HIST 739a, Readings in American Indian History

 Alyssa Mt. Pleasant

Conceived as an introduction to the historiography of Native America, this seminar pays particular attention to the development of ethnohistorical inquiry, “new Indian history,” and current debates within the field. The course aims to provide broad chronological cov­erage from European contact through the twentieth century. There is similar emphasis on geographic breadth (within the political boundaries of the modern United States). Read­ings include recent publications and classic texts. The final project is an historiographical essay developing a fine-grained analysis of scholarship about a particular tribe or nation, region, theme, or period in American Indian history. Th 2:30–4:20

AMST 750a/ANTH 521a, Cultures of Work

 Kathryn Dudley

Focusing on ethnographic studies of work in America and elsewhere, this course exam­ines the cultural processes through which capitalist forms of production and consump­tion give rise to the subjectivities and knowledges that inhabit conditions of modernity, globalization, and neoliberalism. W 1:30–3:20

AMST 768b/HIST 768b, Asian American History and Historiography

 Mary Lui

This reading and discussion seminar examines Asian American history through a selec­tion of recently published texts and established works that have significantly shaped the field. Major topics include the racial formation of Asian Americans in U.S. culture, politics, and law; U.S. imperialism; U.S. capitalist development and Asian labor migra­tion; and transnational and local ethnic community formations. The class considers both the political and academic roots of the field as well as its evolving relationship to “main­stream” American history. T 9:25–11:15

AMST 775a/HIST 757a, Culture in U.S. International and Transnational Histories

 Seth Fein

Reading seminar that crosses disciplinary, national, and historiographical borders to explore the history of the United States outside the United States and the history of other nations within the United States (mainly since 1900). Work focuses on comparing meth­ods, using theory, doing research, writing history. Themes include empire, imperialism, and postcolonialism; Americanization, globalization, and mass culture; nationalism, nationality, and transnationalism. T 7–8:50 P.M.

AMST 780a/HIST 776a, Class and Capitalism in Twentieth-Century U.S.

 Jennifer Klein

Readings course on class formation, labor, and political economy in twentieth-century U.S.; how regionalism, race, and class power shaped development of American capital­ism. Reconsiders relationship between economic structure and American politics and political ideologies; relationship between global and domestic political economy. Read­ings include primary texts and secondary literature (social, intellectual, and political history; geography). TH 1:30–3:20

AMST 785a/HIST 729a, Research on Postwar American Social and Cultural History

 George Chauncey

Students conduct archival research and write original essays on post-World War II American social and cultural history. Readings include journal articles that might serve as models for student research projects. T 1:30–3:20

 AMST 790a/HIST 790a, Narrative and Other Histories

 John Demos

An exploration through readings and discussion of the recent “literary turn” in historical scholarship. Readings include history, fiction, and some theory. In addition, a month-long practicum focuses on writings by course participants. W 7–8:50 p.m.

AMST 794b/HIST 794b, Consumer Culture in Historical Perspective

 Jean-Christophe Agnew

A reading-intensive seminar that explores recent work in the history, sociology, anthro­pology, and material culture of consumer societies with special attention to the United States. Two questions frame the readings: First, to what extent and in what ways does the recent outpouring of empirical and theoretical work alter our understanding of the history of consumer society and consumer culture? And second, to what extent and in what ways does this altered understanding of consumption recast our accounts of other historical developments, including globalism and capitalism, revolution and countercul­ture, nationalism and citizenship, class structure and racial formation, gender and sexual constructs, family organization and ritual practice, the built environment and geography of social life; body projects, emotion-work, and the production of experiential commodi­ties; performance and personhood. T 1:30–3:20

AMST 798a/HIST 726a, The Culture of the Gilded Age

 Cynthia Russett

Although the politics of the Gilded Age may seem somewhat jejune (who today has lively memories of Chester A. Arthur or James Garfield?), its society and culture were undergoing dramatic and challenging developments. Industrialization and urbanization brought new immigrants to our shores; labor unions grew and flexed their muscle in a series of major strikes. In the world of thought the impact of Darwinism was still being absorbed, especially in the new academic disciplines of the social sciences: soci­ology, economics, and psychology. Some important names from the period: William James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Henry George, Andrew Carnegie, W.E.B. Dubois, Jane Addams, Edward Bellamy, Samuel Gompers (and, of course, many more). Research seminar. W 2:30–4:20

AMST 801a/HIST 789a, U.S. Intellectual Formations in the Twentieth Century

Jean-Christophe Agnew

A comparative and transnational inquiry into the widely different social types of intel­lectuals and intellectual life (schools, disciplines, networks, communities, social worlds, cultural fronts, etc.) that emerged during the twentieth century and into the ideas these formations produced and promoted to frame agendas in politics, science, social science, and the arts. Among the ideas and ideologies to be explored contextually in this read­ing-intensive seminar: social progressivism, eugenics, and sexology; racial liberalism, orientalism, and a hemispheric black imaginary; laborism, existentialism, and Catholic personalism; exceptionalism, universalism, and cosmopolitanism; modernization the­ory, market fundamentalism, and neoconservatism. Special attention is given to local, national, and transnational affiliations among intellectuals and to the role of the warfare (and welfare) state in their nurture or their restraint. W 9:25–11:15

AMST 803a/HIST 703a, Readings in Early National America

 Joanne Freeman

An introduction to the early national period and its scholarship, exploring major themes such as nationalism, national identity, the influence of the frontier, the structure of soci­ety, questions of race and gender, the creation of a national politics and culture, and the evolution of political cultures. T 7–8:50 PM

.AMST 814a/FILM 603a, Historical Methods in Film Study

 Charles Musser

A range of historiographic issues in film studies, including the roles of technology, exhibi­tion, and spectatorship. Topics include intermediality and intertextuality. Consideration of a range of methodological approaches through a focus on international early cinema and American race cinema of the silent period. Particular attention to the interaction between scholars and archives. TH 1:30–3:20, screenings W 7 PM

AMST 821bu/FILM 727bu, D. A. Pennebaker and Contemporary Documentary

Charles Musser

Exploring the work of one of America’s foremost documentary filmmakers, spanning a period of more than fifty years. Extensive viewing and analysis of his films and those of his collaborators, including Shirley Clarke, Robert Drew, James Lipscomb, Richard Leacock, Jean-Luc Godard, Nick Doob, Frazer Pennebaker, and Chris Hegedus. Films include Day Break Express, Skyscraper, Jane, Don’t Look Back, Monterey Pops, One P. M., Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, The War Room, Startup.com, and Al Franken: God Spoke. T 1:30–3:20, screenings M 7 Pm

AMST 839b/HIST 743b, Readings in Environmental History

 Paul Sabin

Readings and discussion of key works in environmental history, predominantly drawing from U.S. historiography. The course explores and compares different explanations for historical environmental change, including ecological, economic, political, cultural, and social interpretations. TH 9:25–11:15

AMST 861b/ARCH 914b, Built Environments and the Politics of Place

 Dolores Hayden

Call it the built environment, the vernacular, everyday architecture, or the cultural land­scape, the material world of built and natural places is intricately bound up with social and political life. This seminar introduces research methods involving the built environ­ment. It includes readings from urban and suburban history, geography, anthropology, and architecture as well as readings on narrative and graphic strategies for representing spaces and places. Participants present papers; chapters from longer projects are wel­come. Limited enrollment. M 9:25–11:15

AMST 863b/WGSS 699b, Feminist Visual Theory

 Laura Wexler

An exploration of the history of ideas about the gaze with specific reference to the power relations of gender, race, and class in American visual culture. T 3:30–5:20

AMST 866b/HIST 775b/WGSS 712b, Readings in the History of Sexuality

 George Chauncey

Selected topics in the history of sexuality. Emphasis on key theoretical works and recent historical literature. M 1:30-3:20

AMST 884b/HIST 925b/HSHM 740b, The Cultures of American Medicine since 1800

 John Harley Warner

Reading and discussion of recent scholarly literature on medicine in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States. Themes include the moral, social, political, aesthetic, and epistemological grounding of orthodox and alternative cultural authority; the role of the marketplace in shaping professional identities and patient expectations; gender, ethnicity, race, religion, class, and region in the construction and management of ill­ness and in the production and circulation of medical beliefs; interplay between lay and professional understandings of the body; nationalism, citizenship, and colonialism; and representations of medical institutions, practitioners, and practices in visual media, including film. May be taken as a research seminar with permission of the instructor. T 1:30–3:20

AMST 885a/ENGL 849a, Genres and Media of American Literature

 Wai Chee Dimock

A survey of the varieties of American literature, poetry as well as prose, with equal atten­tion to well-defined genres (science fiction and detective fiction) and to idiosyncratic works hard to classify (Walden and Moby-Dick). Authors include Mary Rowlandson, Washington Irving, Poe, Melville, Thoreau, Whitman, Henry James, Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, Raymond Chandler, Gloria Anzaldua, Octavia Butler. W 1:30–3:20

AMST 900, Independent Research

AMST 901, Directed Reading

AMST 902a and b, Prospectus Workshop

 DGS

Upon completion of course work, students are required to participate in at least one term of the prospectus workshop, ideally the semester before the prospectus colloquium is held. Open to all students in the program and joint departments, the workshop serves as a forum for discussing the selection of a dissertation topic, refining a project’s scope, organizing research materials, and evaluating work in progress. The workshop meets once a month. M 12–1:30

AMST 903a/HIST 746a, Public Humanities

 Matthew Jacobson

What is the relationship between knowledge produced in the university and the circula­tion of ideas among a broader public, between academic expertise on the one hand and non-professionalized ways of knowing and thinking on the other? What is possible? This seminar provides an introduction to various institutional relations and to the modes of inquiry, interpretation, and presentation by which practitioners in the humanities seek to invigorate the flow of information and ideas among a public more broadly conceived than the academy, its classrooms, and its exclusive readership of specialists. Topics may include public history, museum studies, oral and community history, public art, docu­mentary film and photography, public writing and educational outreach, and the socially conscious performing arts. In addition to core readings and discussions, the seminar includes presentations by several practitioners who are currently engaged in different aspects of the Public Humanities. A highly flexible term project—including possibili­ties for an internship with a regional museum, archive, gallery, or media outlet—allows students to explore the substantive and logistical challenges of public intellectual work in the genre or form that most interests them. Participants also collaborate in developing and beginning to organize a Public Humanities program of installations and events to be held during the following academic year. Required for the Master’s Degree in Public Humanities. M 9:25–11:15

AMST 904, Practicum in Public Humanities

AMST 905, Master’s Project in Public Humanities