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AMERICAN STUDIES GRADUATE COURSE DESCRIPTIONS - SPRING 2008 510.001 Folklore & Expressive Culture MWF 3:00 – 3:50 MH 107 Trujillo Also offered as AMST 310.001. See course description above. 520.001 Critical Natural Histories R 2:00 – 4:30 ORTG 313 Kosek At a moment when the liberal West is presented as the inevitable victor in a global clash of civilizations and the free market is proclaimed as the culmination of natural economic evolution, when national boundaries are restricted in the name of environmental conservation and the sanctity of the heterosexual marital contract is enforced with redoubled zeal, it is clear that discourses on human progress make insistent and troubling recourse to narratives of nature. Taken as an ontological foundation for myriad claims of social difference, nature serves as the generative terrain from which such essential truths emerge. But at the same time that planetary ecologies appear most vulnerable and threatened, arguments about natural essence in the social realm appear more dangerous than ever. How may we challenge such assertions while acknowledging at the same time the powerful role that ideas and practices of nature play in effecting their authority? Through what theoretical lenses can we study most productively the intimate relations between the making of modern individuals and the remaking of modern natures? What might we learn by closely juxtaposing naturalizing discourses on human history with historicist discourses on the natural world? It is with these questions in mind that this course will explore the possibility of a critical return to "natural history" as both an object of anthropological inquiry and a conceptual tool. This course will explore the traffic between social formations of the natural and the naturalization of social forms of exclusions, hierarchy and difference. Drawing of key texts from Foucault, Hiedigger, Benjamin and others as well as from classic works in natural philosophy and natural history including Linnaeus, Lamarck, and Darwin. These classic texts will be put in conversation contemporary ethnographies and political histories that explore the traffic between nature, culture and history. 530.009 Sex, Race & Citizenship TR 4:00 – 5:15 MH 113 Brandzel Also offered as AMST 330.009. See course description above. 550.001 Decolonizing Culture & Racial Identity W 4:00 – 6:30 ORTG 217 Singer The course is a seminar that will attempt to expose how racist discourses remain visibly entangled with social inequalities in our society. How do we question normalcy in a useful dialogue about race and how it functions beyond the usual platitudes. Students will be asked to look beyond the hierarchies and institutions of racial division and begin to theorize about the status, politics and practices that impact specific cultural communities. 550.010 Race & the Law in Am. History R 4:00 – 6:30 DSH 327 Gómez Also offered at AMST 350.010. See course description above. 556.001 Native American Lit, Art & History W 2:00 – 4:30 ORTG 313 Vizenor This graduate seminar considers selected Native American Indian novels, poetry, history, and contemporary paintings and works of art. The seminar is an invitation to discuss the interrelated, comparative literature, art, and situational historical events. 558.001 The Latino/a Subject in Film T 2:30 – 5:00 CERIA 365 Meléndez
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