American Studies
230 Hall of Graduate Studies, 432.1186
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Chair
John Mack Faragher (230 HGS, 432.1186, john.faragher@yale.edu)
Directors of Graduate Studies
Wai Chee Dimock [F] (230 HGS, 432.1186, wai.chee.dimock@yale.edu)
Matthew Jacobson [Sp] (230 HGS, 432.1186, matthew.jacobson@yale.edu)
Professors
Jean-Christophe Agnew (on leave), Jon Butler, Hazel Carby, Edward Cooke, Jr., John Demos, Michael Denning, Wai Chee Dimock, Kathryn Dudley, John Mack Faragher, Glenda Gilmore, Dolores Hayden, Jonathan Holloway (on leave), Matthew Jacobson, Charles Musser, Alexander Nemerov (on leave), Patricia Pessar (Adjunct), Michael Roemer (Adjunct), Stephen Skowronek, Robert Stepto, Harry Stout, John Szwed, John Harley Warner, Laura Wexler
Associate Professors
Amy Hungerford, Thomas Otten, Stephen Pitti (on leave [Sp])
Assistant Professors
Jennifer Baszile, Elizabeth Dillon, Mary Lui, Sanda Lwin, Diana Paulin, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Steven Stoll, Vron Ware, Kariann Yokota (on leave)
Lecturers
Wes Davis, Joseph Kip Kosek, David Musto, Priscilla Ybarra
Fields of Study
Fields include American literature, history, the arts and material culture, philosophy, cultural theory, and the social sciences.
Special Admissions Requirement
A writing sample of reasonable length is required with the application.
Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
During the first two years of study students are required to take twelve term courses; at least two of these each year must be in American Studies. The student's program will be decided in consultation with the adviser and the director of graduate studies. In each of the two years, the student should take at least one seminar devoted to research or requiring a substantial original paper, and must achieve two grades of Honors, with an average overall of High Pass. Students will be required to show either proficiency in one language tested in two successive stages, or proficiency in two languages each tested once. After completing both parts of the language requirement, a student should schedule the oral qualifying examinations in four fields, in the fifth term of study. Preparation, submission, and approval of the dissertation prospectus are normally completed by the end of the sixth term with a final deadline at the end of the seventh term. Students are admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. at the end of the third year, upon completion of all predissertation requirements, including the prospectus. Students in American Studies teach in the third and fourth years of study.
Combined Ph.D. Programs
American Studies and African American Studies
The American Studies Program also offers, in conjunction with the Department of African American Studies, a combined Ph.D. in American Studies and African American Studies. This combined degree is most appropriate for students who intend to concentrate in and write a dissertation on any aspect of African American history, literature, or culture in the United States and other parts of the Americas. For further details, see African American Studies.
American Studies and Film Studies
The Department of American Studies also offers, in conjunction with the Program in Film Studies, a joint Ph.D. in American Studies and Film Studies. For further details, see Film Studies. Applicants to the joint program must indicate on their application that they are applying both to Film Studies and to American Studies. All documentation within the application should include this information.
Master's Degrees
M.Phil. See Graduate School requirements.
M.A. (en route to the Ph.D.). The M.A. is granted upon the completion of six term courses (two grades must be Honors and the other four grades must average High Pass), and the successful completion of the first part of the language requirement. It can be petitioned for in the term following completion of the requirements.
Master's Degree Program. The basic requirements for this terminal degree are six term courses, including a special writing project, and the successful completion of the first stage of the language examination. The project involves the submission of substantial written work either in conjunction with one course or as a tutorial that substitutes for one course. Students must earn a grade of Honors in two of their courses and an average grade of High Pass in the others.
For further information, see the American Studies Web site: www.yale.edu/amstud.
Courses
AMST 622a and 623b, Working Group on Globalization and Culture. Michael Denning.
M 1.30–3.20
A continuing collective research project, a cultural studies “laboratory,” to be inaugurated in the fall of 2004, for which first- and second-year students receive course credit. Through regular meetings throughout the year, we develop a program of reading, collective and individual research, dialogues with invited speakers, and a Web journal where the work of the group is published. The general theme for the working group is culture and globalization, with three principal aspects: (a) 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; (b) 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; (c) 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.
AMST 643a, Theorizing the Racial Formation of the United States in the Late Twentieth Century. Paul Gilroy.
T 9.30–11.20
A designated core course for students in the joint Ph.D. program; also open to students in American Studies and Sociology. The interdisciplinary seminar includes readings from the fields of anthropology, critical legal studies, cultural studies, literary history, history, politics, and sociology. Also AFAM 505a, SOCY 644a.
AMST 649a, Readings in Latina/o History. Stephen Pitti.
W 1.30–3.20
A reading of historical works that focus on Latino communities in the United States. We focus particular attention on Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American communities, and we look at topics such as racial identity, border conflict, 1960s activism, patterns of residency and migration, transnationality and citizenship, labor struggles and class formation, and gender and sexuality. Readings bring together scholarship from several disciplines and emphasize both the critical importance of this developing field and its contemporary challenges. Also HIST 763a.
AMST 651b, Intersections in American Literature. Robert Stepto.
T 1.30–3.20
This seminar examines both nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American literary texts, and while students gain a comprehensive understanding of the breadth of the field, we focus on several key issues or “problems” central to the study of African American literary history. We read variously from slave narratives, autobiographies, poetry, novels, nonfiction essays, and anthologies, joining close readings of literary texts with the interdisciplinary contexts of history, cultural criticism and theory, and other art forms. Also AFAM 595b.
AMST 653au, Twentieth-Century African American Poetry. Elizabeth Alexander.
T 3.30–5.20
The African American practice of poetry between 1900 and 1960, especially of sonnets, ballads, sermonic, and blues poems. Poets studied include Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker, Robert Hayden. Also AFAM 596au.
AMST 673b, Theorizing “Black” and “Asian” Intersectionalities in the United States. Sanda Lwin, Diana Paulin.
Th 3.30–5.20
This graduate seminar approaches racial formation/racial representation through the comparative lens of Asian American and African American literary and cultural production. We read theoretical and primary texts from various fields, including performance studies, literary studies, psychoanalytic theory, cultural studies, gender studies, legal studies, and postcolonial studies, in order to construct a critical apparatus for understanding race relationally rather than as strictly defined categories of identity that have, traditionally, been studied in segregated disciplines. We interrogate conventional black/white paradigms of race by looking at intersectionalities that unsettle binaries. Authors/artists include Homi Bhaba, Judith Butler, W.E.B. Du Bois, David Eng, Franz Fanon, Kobena Mercer, José Munoz, Vijah Prashad, Mira Nair, Anna Deveare Smith, and Claudia Tate. Also AFAM 722b, ENGL 942b.
AMST 681a, American Queer Studies: Theorizing Race, Gender, Sexuality. Seth Silberman.
M 1.30–3.20
Study of interdisciplinary methodologies shaping the field of lesbian/gay studies and its attendant queer theory. Focus on key works in the field's discourse and sociological studies. Authors include Boyarin, Butler, de Lauretis, Foucault, Harper, Martin, Mercer, Rubin, Sedgwick. Also AFAM 753a, WGSS 746a.
AMST 700a, Introduction to the Historiography of the United States. John Mack Faragher.
TTh 10.30–12.20
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. Also HIST 700a.
AMST 701a, Race and Races in American Studies. Matthew Jacobson.
M 1.30–3.20
This reading-intensive seminar examines influential scholarship across the disciplines on “race” and racialized relations in American culture and society. Major topics include the cultural construction of race; race as both an instrument of oppression and an idiom of resistance in American politics; the centrality of race in literary, anthropological, and legal discourse; the racialization of U.S. foreign policy; “race mixing”; vicissitudes of “whiteness” in American political culture; and “race” in the realm of popular cultural representation. A lengthy review essay due at the end of the term gives students a chance to explore in depth the themes, periods, and methods that most interest them. Also AFAM 687a, HIST 751a.
AMST 706a, Readings in African American History to Emancipation. Jennifer Baszile.
Th 1.30–3.20
This seminar surveys classic and recent scholarship on the African diaspora in North America. Topics include regional and temporal varieties of slavery and freedom, gender, religion, race, work, resistance, and emancipation. Attention is given to urban and rural communities. Also AFAM 758a, HIST 708a.
AMST 709a, Research in Twentieth-Century American Political and Social History. Glenda Gilmore.
W 10.30–12.20
Projects chosen from the post-Civil War period, with emphasis on twentieth-century social and political history, broadly defined. Research seminar. Also AFAM 709a, HIST 736a.
AMST 710au, Autobiography in America. Robert Stepto.
T 1.30–3.20
At least a dozen North American autobiographies are studied, mostly from the “American Renaissance” to the present. Discussion of various autobiographical forms and strategies as well as of various experiences of American selfhood and citizenship. Slave narratives, spiritual autobiographies, immigrant narratives, autobiographies of childhood or adolescence, relations between autobiography and class, region, or occupation. Also AFAM 588au.
AMST 715b, Readings in Nineteenth-Century American History, 1820–1877. David Blight.
W 1.30–3.20
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. Also AFAM 761b, HIST 715b.
AMST 717a, Readings in Twentieth-Century American Political and Social History. Jennifer Klein.
T 1.30–3.20
Readings in American social and political history from the late nineteenth century to the present, with an emphasis on political economy. Major topics include the changing relationship between the state, economy, and community over time; the role of social movements of the left and right in political, social, and economic transformations; definitions and boundaries of citizenship; development of social policy, labor policy and politics, and the “New Deal Order”; American's rural and urban economies in regional, national, and international context. Also HIST 735a.
AMST 731b, Methods and Practices in U.S. Cultural History. Matthew Jacobson.
M 1.30–3.20
This reading-intensive seminar examines the cultural turn in the discipline of history over the past several decades, and the rise of cultural history as a subfield in its own right. What precisely is meant by terms like “culture,” “subculture,” “dominant culture,” “cultures of resistance,” and “cultural hegemony”? And where do such concepts get us in our investigations of U.S. history? What is their explanatory power? Readings sample a wide range of methods and philosophical approaches within the field, arranged across a variety of periods and thematic topics: nationalism, consumption, empire, class formation and labor, radicalism, gender arrangements, cultural production, and genre. Students produce a significant historiographical essay by term's end, either treating the literature on a given topic, or analyzing a particular cultural theorist (e.g., Gramsci, Hall, Spivak) and his/her influence on contemporary historiography. Also HIST 780b.
AMST 735b, Readings in Southern History since 1865. Glenda Gilmore.
W 10.30–12.20
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. Also AFAM 721b, HIST 731b.
AMST 745b, Interraciality and Hybridity. Naomi Pabst.
T 1.30–3.20
Examination of interracial and black subjectivity as represented within a variety of postemancipation literary and critical tests. Topics include interracial genealogies, the emerging rubric of “critical mixed race studies,” and theories of difference and hybridity. Identification and analysis of long-standing debates on race mixing in the realms of legal classification, census taking, grassroots movements, the discursive, the ideological, and the popular. Also AFAM 807b.
AMST 746a, Ethnographic Writing and Representation. Kathryn Dudley.
W 1.30–3.20
This course examines the representational practices that inform the doing and making of ethnography, broadly construed as the depiction of social life in the past and present. We consider classic and contemporary approaches to ethnography as a literary form as well as explore precedents and possibilities in the visual and performing arts. Also ANTH 593a.
AMST 763bu, The Anthropology of Sound. John Szwed.
T 1.30–3.20
The socially mediated nature of sound, and the cultural consequences of technologies of sound transmission, modification, and recording. Topics include the pre- and post-industrial soundscapes; audio ethnography; the art of noise; synesthesia; problems of originality and plagiarism (covers, sampling, mixing, machine music, etc.); world music; audio imperialism and terrorism; musical utopias; imaginary soundscapes. Also ANTH 587bu.
AMST 768b, Asian American History and Historiography. Mary Lui.
M 1.30–3.20
This reading and discussion seminar examines new trends in Asian American history through a selection of recently published texts and other “classics” from 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 and considers its evolving relationship to “mainstream” American history. Also HIST 768b.
AMST 777a, Research Seminar in U.S. International and Transnational Histories. Seth Fein.
M 11.30–1.20
Reading seminar that examines interdisciplinary approaches to the study of “culture” in relations between, within, and among the United States and other nations (mainly since 1900). Discussions and papers focus on comparing methodologies, using theory, doing research, writing history. Topics include globalization, Americanization, transnationalism, and hybridity; gender, national identity, international relations, and state formation; imperialism, postcolonialism, hegemony, and resistance; mass culture, political economy, foreign policy, and postmodernity. Also HIST 758a.
AMST 786a, American Women's History. Joanne Meyerowitz.
Th 3.30–5.20
Selected topics in American/U.S. women's and gender history. Themes include concepts of womanhood and manhood; gendered hierarchies of citizenship and labor; class, racial/ethnic, and regional differences; and women's participation in religion, politics, social reform, and women's rights movements. Readings, writing assignments, and classroom discussions emphasize recent historical literature, historiographic trends and debates, and theoretical and methodological approaches. Also HIST 744a.
AMST 798b, The Culture of the Gilded Age. Cynthia Russett.
Th 1.30–3.20
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. Also HIST 726b.
AMST 802b, Readings in Early National American History. Joanne Freeman.
T 1.30–3.20
This seminar is 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 a national culture, and the evolution of political cultures. Also HIST 703b.
AMST 812bu, American Documentary Film and Photography. Charles Musser, Laura Wexler.
T 3.30–5.20, screenings M 7 p.m.
Examination of a series of historical moments in which documentary plays a significant cultural role. Topics include the relationship between photographic and cinematic practices and theories generated by makers and critics; filmic constructions of gender, race, class, and national identity in the twentieth century; and changing conceptions of photographic truth. Also FILM 722bu, WGSS 780bu.
AMST 813au, Contemporary Documentary Film and Video. Charles Musser.
M 7–10.30
Examination of documentary and related nonfiction forms in the last three decades. Issues include film truth, performance, ethics, race and gender, and the filmmaker as participant-observer. Filmmakers include Frederick Wiseman, William Greaves, Chris Choy, Errol Morris, Lourdes Portillo, Trin T. Minh-Ha, Sue Friedrich, and Marlon Riggs. Also FILM 724au.
AMST 814a, Historical Methods in Film Study. Charles Musser.
Th 1.30–3.20
Engages a range of historiographical issues in film studies, including the roles of technology, exhibition, and spectatorship as well as topics such as intermediality and intertextuality. A range of methodological approaches are considered. Particular attention is given to the interaction between scholars and archives. Also FILM 603a.
AMST 823a, Identities: Aspects of American and European Social and Cultural History. John Demos, Jay Winter.
W 1.30–3.20
This seminar addresses the historical literature surrounding problems of identities, defined in a host of ways—racial, gendered, ethnic, regional, national, psychological, and age-related. Both American and European scholarship is considered. Also HIST 974a.
AMST 825b, Readings on Early American History. John Demos.
T 1.30–3.20
Reading and discussion of the scholarly literature. Also HIST 704b.
AMST 839a, Readings in North American Environmental History. Steven Stoll.
W 10.30–12.20
Introduction to the essential scholarship of North American environmental history. The seminar assumes no previous course work, and students with a wide variety of backgrounds are welcome. We read books and articles with an eye to exploring the different themes, theories, and methods that have shaped environmental history. Our goal is to evaluate these works while trying to discover ways in which each approach might be helpful to our own work. At the same time, we use readings and discussions to think about the more general process of conceiving, conducting, and writing historical research. Subjects include colonialism, capitalism, American Indians, conservation, ecology, and environmentalism. Also HIST 742a.
AMST 880a, The Grounding of Modern Medicine. John Harley Warner.
M 1.30–3.20
An introductory exploration of the shaping of modern medical culture, focusing on the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Readings engage recent historiography. Themes include struggles over the place and meanings of “science,” and the intersection of lay and professional understandings of the body; shifting conceptions of purity and danger in the social and physical environments, with attention to region, gender, class, ethnicity, race, and religion; orthodox and alternative professional identities and consumer expectations in the medical marketplace; the role of imperialist ventures and European impulses in fashioning American biomedicine and public health; the medicalization of American society; antimodernist currents; and the ethical, epistemological, and aesthetic choices that were constitutive of medical modernity. A reading seminar that may be taken as a research seminar with permission of the instructor. Also HIST 926a, HSHM 733a.
AMST 914b, Built Environments and the Politics of Place. Dolores Hayden.
W 9.30–11.20
Call it the built environment, the vernacular, everyday architecture, everyday urbanism, or the cultural landscape—the material world of built and natural places is intricately bound up with social life. This is a seminar on American built environments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, emphasizing research methods in landscape history and urban history as well as narrative and visual strategies for interpreting spaces and places. In addition to publication, the role of scholarship as part of public history, preservation, urban design, and architectural design is discussed. Prerequisite for architecture graduate students: 912a, American Cultural Landscapes, or equivalent course work. A research paper of approximately 20–30 pages is required. Enrollment is limited to twelve. Also ARCH 914b.
AMST 918au, American Cultural Landscapes: An Introduction to the History of the Built Environment in the United States. Dolores Hayden.
MTW 10.30–11.20, section T 5–6
This lecture course deals with the cultural landscape from 1800 to the present, surveying the economic, political, social, and aesthetic choices behind the creation of built environments in the United States. This cultural landscape has evolved through decisions about the use of land and natural resources, the planning of towns, the development of transportation and infrastructure, and the promotion of various building types and architectural styles. After a brief review of Native American and colonial settlement patterns, the first part of the course deals with traditional towns and large cities between 1800 and 1920. The second part deals with the peripheral growth from 1920 to 2000 that has transformed downtowns and shaped diffuse metropolitan regions. Weekly writing assignments and one term paper. Two lectures and one discussion section per week; Professor Hayden teaches the graduate section. Also ARCH 912a.
AMST 921a, Ralph Ellison in Context. Robert Stepto.
W 1.30–3.20
This seminar pursues close readings of Ralph Ellison's essays, short fiction, and novels, Invisible Man and Juneteenth. The “in context” component of the seminar involves working from the Benston and Sundquist volumes on Ellison to discern a portrait of the modernist African America Ellison investigated, with at least Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Romare Bearden also in view. The texts include Ellison, The Collected Essays, Flying Home and Other Stories, Invisible Man, and Juneteenth; K. Benston, Speaking for You; E. Sundquist, Cultural Contexts for Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man; A. Nadel, Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon. Also AFAM 563au, ENGL 921a.
AMST 922b, Gender, Territory, and Space. Dolores Hayden.
W 9.30–11.20
The seminar explores gender and territory as they affect women's and men's everyday experiences of built environments and the city. We consider how gender (along with race, class, age, and sexual orientation) affects the design and use of a range of spaces from the most private to the most public. The main focus is on the United States from the late nineteenth century to the present, but we also look at other countries for examples of built projects fostering full citizenship and integration into urban life, or for practices of spatial segregation that deny basic civil rights. Readings are drawn from architecture, history, gender studies, and geography, and include Ryan, Women in Public; Hayden, Redesigning the American Dream; Forsyth on Noho (lesbian and gay gentrification); Rothschild, ed., Design and Feminism: Re-Visioning Spaces, Places, and Everyday Things; and Rendell, ed., Gender, Space, Architecture. Participants develop papers. Also ARCH 922b.
AMST 923a, Suburbs and the Culture of Sprawl. Dolores Hayden.
T 1.30–3.20
In 2000, more Americans lived in suburbs than rural areas and central cities combined. The seminar explores the changing meanings of “city”and “suburb” in the American metropolitan landscape before considering definitions of sprawl. Examining architecture and land use, we survey seven suburban configurations: the “borderlands” of the 1820s, the picturesque enclaves of the 1840s, the dense streetcar suburbs of the late nineteenth century, the mail-order house boom of the 1920s, the mass-produced bedroom communities of the 1950s, the mall-centered “edge cities” along highways, and the rural fringes of the 1980s and 1990s. A research paper of approximately 20–30 pages is required. Enrollment is limited to twelve. Also ARCH 925a.
AMST 927a, Literary Genres and World Cultures. Wai Chee Dimock.
T 10.30–12.20
This course uses the concept of “genre” as an entry point to the dynamic interactions between the local and the global, between the persistence of words and the transformative forces of migration, translation, and hybridization. The history of genres is, in this sense, a history of the diverse cultures of humankind. We read clusters of texts in this light: Homer's Odyssey with Derek Walcott's play of the same title, Walcott's Omeros, and Wole Soyinka's “The Eye of the Cyclops”; Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe with J. M. Coetzee's Foe, Coetzee's 2003 Nobel Lecture, Walcott's “The Castaway,” “Crusoe's Island,” “Crusoe's Journal,” “The Figure of Crusoe,” as well as “The Adventures of Lo Bun Sun” in Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men; Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter with Maryse Condé's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, and Bharati Mukherjee's The Holder of the World. Doing so, we explore the inflections wrought by local cultures on generic terms such as “drama,” “epic,” “novel,” and “lyric.” Also CPLT 525a, ENGL 985a.
AMST 928a, Fredric Jameson: The Poetics of Social Forms. Nigel Alderman.
W 10.30–12.20
This course examines the work of Fredric Jameson from his earliest forays into method to his revision of narrative theories to his mapping of periods and systems. By so doing, we cover virtually all the major theoretical and philosophical models of the postwar period as well as a range of cultural works including medieval romance, nineteenth-century novel, modernist poetry, postmodern architecture, film, and music. Also CPLT 518a, ENGL 987a.
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