Aretha Franklin insists that rhythm and blues music is “the truth.” With Franklin’s profound theory as its anchor, this seminar explores how 1990s rhythm and blues music offers truth, metaphor, narrative, and history about African American life and culture. We will explore how canonical artists from the 1990s such as Mary J. Blige, Aaliyah, and Brandy as well as “girl groups” such as Total, Xscape, and SWV dramatically transformed American culture.
(Offered as AMST-328, EDST-328, and HIST-328 [US/TR/TS]) Children’s literature has a diversity problem. A 2018 study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that of more than 3000 children’s books published that year, roughly 50% featured main characters who were White. Only 10% featured Black characters, 7% featured Asian / Pacific Islander characters, and 5% featured Latinx characters.
(Offered as AMST-328, EDST-328, and HIST-328 [US/TR/TS]) Children’s literature has a diversity problem. A 2018 study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that of more than 3000 children’s books published that year, roughly 50% featured main characters who were White. Only 10% featured Black characters, 7% featured Asian / Pacific Islander characters, and 5% featured Latinx characters.
This course examines the history of BIPOC children, crime, and punishment in the United States. We survey historical and contemporary examples of the criminalization of indigenous, Black, Latinx, South Asian American, and immigrant children since the late-nineteenth century. Students have the opportunity to pursue a research project about BIPOC childhoods and punitive governance.
Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor del Moral.
(before 1800) This course starts with a simple premise: American Literature cannot be contained. Rather than a
In 2015 the Pew Research Center identified mixed-race Americans as “the cutting edge of social and demographic change in the US.” Prior to that, revisions to the United States Census in 2000 enabled the checking of multiple identity boxes, increasing the visibility of mixed-race people. Despite this recent recognition, the fact of mixed-race peoples in the Americas is nothing new. Since the Colonial period, laws governing citizenship, marriage and rights prohibited or punished miscegenation; yet, mixed-race people proliferated.
In this course, students will interrogate the precarious relationship between political and popular culture. As we study how politics has successfully deployed popular culture as an ideological tool, we will also consider how politics has overburdened popular culture as a vehicle of change. These broad issues will serve as our framework for analyzing black femininity, womanhood, and the efficacy of the word “feminism” in the post-Civil Rights era.
(Offered as AMST 115 and SOCI 215) The course is an interdisciplinary, historically organized study of American perceptions of and attitudes towards the human body in a variety of media, ranging from medical and legal documents to poetry and novels, the visual arts, film, and dance.
(Offered as AMST 115 and SOCI 215) The course is an interdisciplinary, historically organized study of American perceptions of and attitudes towards the human body in a variety of media, ranging from medical and legal documents to poetry and novels, the visual arts, film, and dance.
Spring semester. The Department.
How to handle overenrollment: null
Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: independent research, critical analysis, and extended writing.
