AMERICAN CIVILIZATION COURSES
SPRING 2008
What Does A Woman Want? - 21097 - AMCV 0150F - S01
Instructor: Beverley Haviland (P)
This course is an introduction to psychoanalysis and its vexed and productive relationships to women and feminism. Freud asked his famous question: "What does a woman want?" after years of clinical practice and theoretical speculation. Woman's desire remained a mystery to him, but the attempt to solve it has given rise to a rethinking of human sexuality, of gender, of social structures, and of creativity. We will read foundational texts by Freud and by feminist disciples and critics of psychoanalysis theories. The literary texts will be read as critiques of theoretical positions, as well as examples of particular historical constructions of gender. The course is broadly interdisciplinary and explores the boundaries and intersections of different disciplinary practices and frameworks.
10:30 am - 11:50 am |
TR |
Partridge Hall 104 |
Latina Popular Culture: Mujeres in Art, Performance, and Print - 21105 - AMCV 0190B - S01
Instructors: Felicia Isabel Salinas (P)
This course looks at Chicana/Latina expressive culture from the 1940s to the present. Students will analyze Chicana/Latina subjectivity, identity, and consumption through paintings, popular novels, film, music, and magazines.
8:30 am - 9:50 am |
MW |
190 Hope Street 102 |
Technology and Material Culture in America: The Urban Built Environment - 20915 - AMCV 1520 - S01
Instructor: Patrick M. Malone (P)
A slide-illustrated lecture course that examines the development of the urban landscape. Covers American building practices and the effects of human-made structures on our culture. Examines technological and behavioral aspects of architectural design and urban development. Topics include housing, factories, commercial buildings, city plans, transportation networks, water systems, bridges, parks, and waterfronts. At least one field trip. A companion course to AC 153.
2:00 pm - 2:50 pm |
MWF |
Salomon Center 001 |
Making America: Twentieth-Century U.S. Immigrant/Ethnic Literature - 20917 - AMCV 1611A - S01
Instructor: Richard Alan Meckel (P)
Examines the literature of first and second generation immigrant/ethnic writers from 1900 to the 1970's. Attempts to place the individual works (primarily novels) in their literary and sociocultural contexts, examining them as conscious works of creative literature written within and against creative to contemporary debates on such immigrant/ethnic concerns as acculturation, generational conflict, immigrant materialism and entrepreneurialism, intermarriage, labor exploitation, nativism, and changing gender roles and family organization.
2:30 pm - 3:50 pm |
TR |
Wilson Hall 205 |
Instructor: Beverly Haviland (P)
The problem of representing traumatic experience has been raised by philosophers, artists, and survivors. This course compares three historical situations by reading histories, memoirs, fictions, poems; viewing photographs and film; and analyzing the material cultural artifacts such as memorials and museums. Readings will include Freud, Fanon; Harriet Jacobs, Primo Levi, Toni Morrison and "Maus" by Art Spi Gelman.
2:30 pm - 3:50 pm |
TR |
Wilson Hall 301 |
Color Me Cool: A Survey of Contemporary Graphic Novels - 21154 - AMCV 1611V - S01
Instructor: Ralph E. Rodriguez (P)
This course surveys a variety of comic books and graphic novels, both mainstream and independent. The emphasis, however, will be on the independent graphic novel. Students will also read history and criticism to understand better the context from which the books emerge and to grasp more firmly their visual and textual aesthetics.
1:00 pm - 1:50 pm |
MWF |
List Art Center 120 |
Asian Americans and Popular Culture - 21173 - AMCV 1611W - S01
Instructor: Robert George Lee (P)
From the Fu Manchu to Lucy Liu, Asian Americans have long been the objects of loathing, terror and desire, in American popular culture. This course looks Asian Americans in popular literature, music, theater, film and television as subjects, producers and consumers.
9:00 am - 10:20 am |
TR |
|
Barus & Holley 159 |
Growing Up in America - 24974 - AMCV 1612C - S01
Instructor: Barton L. St. Armand (P)
This course will consider American narratives of adolescence and coming of age from the nineteenth century to the present. We will examine the archetypal aspects of coming to grips with maturity and the world, class and gender roles, and the invention of "adolescence" as a new psychological category. International perspectives will be provided by reading some British and Japanese works. Authors covered will include Dickens, Melville, Twain, Alcott, Kerouac, Hemingway, Baldwin, Mishima and Tan, among others. Lectures, class discussions and student reports.
1:00 pm - 2:20 pm |
TR |
Bio Med Center 291 |
Cities of Sound: Place and History in American Pop Music - 25091 - AMCV 1612D - S01
Instructors: Samuel Zipp (P)
This course investigates the relationship between popular music and cities. We will look at a number of case studies from the history of music in the twentieth century. We will try to tease out the ways that certain places produce or influence certain sounds and the ways that musicians reflect on the places they come from in their music. Accordingly, we will consider both the social and cultural history of particular cities and regions¿New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago, New York, Washington DC, and others¿and aesthetic and cultural analyses of various forms of music¿including blues, jazz, punk, hip-hop, and others. A good portion of this class will involve a group research project on a particular city and musical genre. Each group will present the results of their work to their classmates and each student will prepare a final paper on one musical document from the city their group chooses.
9:00 am - 9:50 am |
MWF |
Barus & Holley 157 |
The Teen Age: Youth, Society and Culture in Early Cold War America - 22820 - AMCV 1700D - S01
Instructgor: Richard Alan Meckel (P)
An interdisciplinary and multimedia exploration of the experiences, culture, and representation of youth in the United States from the end of World War II through the beginning of the Vietnam War. Limited to American Civilization concentrators.
3:00 pm - 5:20 pm |
W |
Wilson Hall 109A |
African American History, 1876 to the Present - 22819 - AMCV 1740 - S01
Instructor: James T. Campbell (P)
Examines the history of African Americans from the end of Reconstruction to the present. Topics include: the retreat from Reconstruction and the coming of Jim Crow; Booker T. Washington and his critics; migration and the rise of urban ghettoes; the Harlem Renaissance; the Civil Rights movement; the "War on Poverty"; and the contemporary welfare debate.
11:00 am - 11:50 am |
MWF |
Smith-Buonanno Hall G18 |
China in the American Imagination - 25122 - AMCV 1900K - S01
Instructor: Robert George Lee (P)
Since Columbus, China has occupied a special place in the way America has been imagined and in the ways Americans have imagined their place in the world. This seminar will explore the relationship between China and America from Columbus to the present. While politics and diplomacy play an important role, the emphasis will be on trade, immigration and culture.
3:00 pm - 5:20 pm |
M |
Wilson Hall 203 |
Alien-nation: Latina/o Im/migration in Comparative Perspective - 21178 - AMCV 1903B - S01
Instructor: Matthew J. Garcia (P)
Explores how Latina/o immigration to the United States has reshaped the meaning of "America" over the last hundred years. We will study Latina/os in comparison to other im/migrants and examine how US immigration policy has created a nation partly composed of "alien" residents, some citizens, others not, who have constructed alternative notions of belonging.
3:00 pm - 5:20 pm |
M |
Wilson Hall 103 |
Herman Melville, Walt Whitman and the American Scene - 21563 - AMCV 1903D - S01
Instructor: Barton L. St. Armand (P)
This course explores the works of two American authors who represent contrasting areas of "dark" and "light" American Narration and the shifting American culture of their time.
3:00 pm - 5:20 pm |
F |
Smith-Buonanno Hall 207 |
Oral History and Community Memory - 25057 - AMCV 1903G - S01
Instructor: Anne M. Valk (P)
Students in this seminar will conduct oral history interviews and archival research to create an audio and visual history of one Providence neighborhood. Collected materials will be prepared for public presentation as a walking tour and web site.
4:00 pm - 6:20 pm |
T |
Sayles Hall 005 |
Instructor: Helene Quanquin (P)
This course looks at the first wave of American feminism, from the 1830s to the 1920s, as a movement that affected both the private and public lives of women AND men. Relying on sources such as letters, autobiographies, and diaries, we consider the ways African American and white feminists and anti-feminists thought about marriage, motherhood and fatherhood, woman suffrage, women's rights, and gender relations. Finally, the course also examines the legacy of first-wave feminism and its meaning in contemporary American society.
4:00 pm - 6:20 pm |
T |
Sayles Hall 105 |
Dangerous Minds: Intellectuals and the Little Magazine, 1934-2008 - 25273 - AMCV 1903J - S01
Instructor: Mark Greif (P)
"Little Magazines" such as Partisan Review, The Baffler, and McSweeneys have attempted and sometimes succeeded in effecting literary, cultural, and political transformations. We will study their origins, production, and history.
4:00 pm - 6:20 pm |
T |
Sayles Hall 105 |
Gender and Freedom in the Age of Emancipation - 25275 - AMCV 1903K - S01
Instructor: Leslie Brown (P)
This course explores how slaves' liberation created new dilemmas and possibilities for African men and women. The course also explores gender within and across race.
3:00 pm - 5:20 pm |
W |
Wilson Hall 103 |