Institute for American Thought

AMST Course offerings Fall 2010

AMST-A 301 THE QUESTION OF AMERICAN IDENTITY (3 CR.)
29731 3:00P-4:15P Tuesday, Thursday ET 310 Kevin Coleman
This course explores the question of "American identity" through photographs. We begin with an intensive history of American photography, reading classic essays by Walker Evans and Walter Benjamin. We then delve into visual representations of the Mexican American War, frontier exploration, and Native Americans. From there, we examine several iconic images-like the Times Square Kiss and the Flag Raising at Iwo Jima-that have come to serve as resources for critical reflection and signposts for collective memory. Finally, we probe how the techniques and materials of modern architecture were developed for the military and how postwar domesticity became a weapon. For more information, contact Kevin Coleman at kecolema@indiana.edu.

AMST-A 303 TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES: BEAT GENERATION (3 CR.)
5777 12:00P-01:15P Monday, Wednesday IT 267 John Gosney
Get hip and be cool with "The Beat Generation". Explore a uniquely American literary and cultural movement that sought to defy societal rules in an explosive mixture of music, literature and art. Setting precedents the hippies of the 1960’s would later follow, the "Beats" were the original American rebels. Go "on the road" as you take a semester-length virtual road trip across America, a mind-expanding journey into emotion, sensation, music, art and the philosophy of experience. Dig it!

AMST-A303 TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES: ORGANIZING FOR SOCIAL ACTION (3 CR.)
4868 9:30A-12:00P Friday ES 0016 Tom Marvin
In this course we will study the social movements of the past and meet the activists who are working for social justice today. We will learn about the history of American activism from Revolutionary days to the present in order to understand how mass organizations are created and how they can be used to realize the American ideals of liberty, equality, justice, peace, and opportunity. Originally designed as the centerpiece for the first year of the Sam Masarachia Scholars Program, this seminar is now open to all who are interested in social action organizing, especially with regard to labor, seniors, and communities. This will be a "traveling seminar," moving beyond the classroom to engage the community. At several points during the semester we will meet at the site of a labor, senior, or other community organization, hosted by a representative of that organization. For more information, contact Tom Marvin at tmarvin1@iupui.edu.

AMST-A303 TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES: BANANA HISTORY (3 CR.)
31270 12:00P-1:15P Tuesday, Thursday IT 155 Kevin Coleman
This course on the history of the humble banana connects the production of this agricultural commodity in Latin American with its consumption in the United States. The course will be a laboratory of sorts. You will critically comment upon the secondary literature, including histories of the industry written in the 1910s and recent studies. You will also dissect primary source material, ranging from an important collection of letters written over a one hundred year period by the United Fruit Company’s management to company photographs, advertising jingles, cookbooks, TV commercials, and Donald Duck cartoons. Assignments include three four-page papers and a twelve-page research paper in which you formulate your own perspective on this transnational chapter of our past. For more information, contact Kevin Coleman at kecolema@indiana.edu.

AMST-A303 TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES: FROM FREE SPEECH TO HATE SPEECH (3 CR.)
31002 1:30P-2:45P Tuesday, Thursday ARR Vicky Woeste
This course traces the development of free speech in the United States from the colonial through the modern period. It considers the invocation of the right to free speech by individual citizens, groups, and corporations. The course examines government’s attempts to limit free speech in order to suppress political dissent; government also censored newspapers, books, and films in order to police public morals. We then trace how respect for free speech has limited attempts to prevent or silence harmful speech aimed at individuals or groups on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation. Such limits on hate speech generate a tension with the free speech tradition, a tension that infuses-and prolongs-contemporary debates.

AMST-A303 TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES: MUSIC AND DECORATIVE ARTS (3 CR.)
29058 This course will be taught entirely online Sara Hook
This course considers music and decorative arts as reflections of the American experience and as windows into the historical events that shaped the development of the nation. We will devote several weeks of the course to studying all types of American music - classical, folk, jazz, Big Band and traditional-and learn more about Indiana’s rich history in the recording industry. Then we will look at decorative arts as expressed through the furnishings, pottery, textiles, glassware and household items produced and used in the United States. The focus of the course will be on Colonial America through 1945.

AMST-A 497 OVERSEAS STUDY, DERBY, UK
AMST-A 499 SR AMERICAN STUDIES TUTORIAL
AMST-B 497 OVERSEAS STUDY, NEWCASTLE, UK
AMST-G 753 INDEPENDENT STUDY