American Studies Courses

AMS 101: America: An Introduction (3 hours, 3 credits).
Classic interpretations of American culture through a broad interdisciplinary survey of the men and women, ideas, and events that have contributed to the American experience. The abiding ideas, values, and myths that have shaped the nation's arts, actions, and beliefs, drawing form painting, architecture, film, music, history, and literature. From seventeenth-century witchcraft to twentieth-century Witch Hunts, from General Washington to General Hospital, from the assembly line to assembler language, from Revere to Rambo.

AMS 150: Dance History: Twentieth-Century Survey (4 hours, 3 credits).
Concentrating on the "pioneers of modern dance" as well as on the experimental and avante garde using lectures, demonstrations, video, and film to illustrate examples of outstanding choreography. (Crosslisted with DAN 150)

AMS 209: Art and Society in America (4 hours, 4 credits).
Three hundred years of American art, studied as an expression of American life. (Crosslisted with ART 209)

AMS 210: American Philosophy (4 hours,4 credits).
A study of philosophy in America, including Puritanism, Empiricism, Idealism, and Pragmatism. (Crosslisted with PHL 210)

AMS 211: American Culture in Black and White (4 hours, 4 credits).
Mutual perceptions of Blacks and whites in 19th- and 20th-century America; how these perceptions were born and how they have changed. (Crosslisted with AFA 211)

AMS 212: Twentieth-Century America (4 hours, 4 credits).
An examination of select works that are landmarks in the development of 20th-century American culture. Authors will include Hemingway, Faulkner, Ellison, Wright, Miller, Mailer, and Beattie; Harrington, Freidan, and Galbraith.

AMS 214: America in the World (4 hours, 4 credits).
Cross-cultural perspectives on American values, arts, and events. What foreign observers have thought about the United States. How our experience has paralleled, or differed from, that of Europe since the eighteenth century. What the importance similarities, differences, and influences are between Western and Eastern cultures.

AMS 221: The American Dream (4 hours, 4 credits).
The hopes, the frustrations, and particularly the dreams of American society as observed by foreign and native commentators in the past and present. This course will attempt to assess not only the idealization of the American Dream, but also disillusionment with it as expressed by such writers as Franklin, Tocqueville, Emerson, Whitman, Henry Adams, and Norman Mailer.

AMS 222: The City in American Culture (4 hours, 4 credits).
Impressions and analyses (literary, social, historical, cinematic, and photographic) of the varied cultures, institutions, and environments which are the substance of American urban life. A course that posits few facile solutions to the urban crisis but knows which questions are to be asked and which myths must be demolished if cities are ever to become humane and pleasurable organisms rather than death- and profit-bound ones.

AMS 224: Religion in America (4 hours, 4 credits).
The main themes of religious developments--Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and others--in the context of American social and intellectual history.

AMS 230: American Film and American Myth (4 hours, 4 credits).
The American film and its relationship to American myth, society, and culture. (Crosslisted with CIN 230)

AMS 231: American Myths and Realities (4 hours, 4 credits).
American society chiefly in the 19th and 20th centuries, and its problems, including democracy in an industrial order, the city, class stratification, and racial conflict, as seen by such representatives realistic writers as Henry James, Dreiser, Veblen, William Dean Howells, and W.E.B. DuBois.

AMS 236: Music in American Life (4 hours, 4 credits).
The music-making and listening habits of the American people, examining the musical activities, the musicians, and the social setting. (Crosslisted with MUS 236)

AMS 237: American Musical Theater (3 hours, 3 credits).
A survey of American musical theater and its development from the second half of the nineteenth century to our own times. (Crosslisted with MUS 237)

AMS 239: The American Civil War (4 hours, 4 credits).
The course focuses on the civil and military aspects of the Civil War, including the events and issues leading up to the war, the struggle over the expansion of slavery, the Union's and the Confederacy's military strategies, and analysis of key battles. The course will examine the presidency of Lincoln and will explore major constitutional issues, such as the right of secession and the problems of maintaining civil liberties during a civil war. (Crosslisted with POL 239)

AMS 241: Popular Culture and Mass Society (4 hours, 4 credits).
Popular entertainment as the expression of American cultural values: television, radio, music, and sports; Westerns, detective stories, and soap operas. Functional analysis of entertainment as the myth and ritual of mass society. The problems of aesthetic standards in a culture dominated by commercialized taste. Relationships between popular entertainment and political values. Readings from Durkheim, Ellul, McLuhan, Nye, and Browne.

AMS 243: American Humor (4 hours, 4 credits).
Humor in America shares some characteristics found in all cultures, past and present, and sometimes has seemed peculiarly "native." This course traces the variety and development of American humor from colonial days to the present through literature, drama, art, cartoons, and film. Humor will be exhmined as psychological phenomenon, as philosophical outlook, and as intellectual history..

AMS 251: American Ideas (4 hours, 4 credits).
A major idea in American intellectual history will be examined from the perspective of two or more disciplines. This course will demonstrate the interdisciplinary method and philosophy of American Studies. Puritanism, Transcendentalism, the idea of Freedom, Social Darwinism, Freudianism, and Socialism are possible topics.

AMS 252: American Arts (4 hours, 4 credits).
A major artistic theme traced through two or more of the American arts. This course will demonstrate the interdisciplinary method and philosophy of American Studies. Realism and Romanticism, Functionalism and Formalism, Naturalism and the Genteel Tradition, and Organic Form are possible topics.

AMS 258: Vietnam and America, 1945-1975 (4 hours, 4 credits).
An examination of the history of American involvement in Vietnam, the experience of Americans and Vietnamese who fought the Second Indochina war on American society. For history majors and minors, this is designated as a United States history course. (social science) (Crosslisted with HST 258)

AMS 308: American Art Since 1945 (4 hours, 4 credits).
Development of American painting and sculpture since the end of World War II. (Crosslisted with ART 308)

AMS 311: The American Cultural Experience (4 hours, 4 credits).
Senior seminar for American Studies majors who will do independent research on a common theme of the American experience.

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Prepared by Catherine Lavender <lavender@postbox.csi.cuny.edu>
Last updated .