The American news media occupy a complex role in the life of the nation: at once a constitutionally protected feature of democracy and a product of free enterprise. With an eye to the 2012 presidential election, this class will explore the transformation of the media from the heyday of the great 20th century news organizations to the triumph of Twitter. How have the disruption of the mainstream media and the rise of radically decentralized sources of information affected the political discourse and the decisions Americans make? We'll look back at the Grey Lady, Walter Cronkite and Watergate, and into the future, where favored news purveyors are raw rather than mediated, hot rather than cool, personal rather than formal, targeted rather than broad, passionate rather than neutral. We'll have visits from media players and prognosticators, examine where journalistic standards are going, and assess the impact of news sources from Fox News to the latest hashtag.

The seminar explores the reception and influence of Shakespeare from 1776 to the present. Readings include poems, stories, plays, and essays by a broad range of writers, including: Irving, Emerson, Maungwudaus, Aldridge, Bacon, Hawthorne, Lincoln, Melville, Lowell, Dickinson, Whitman, James, Twain, Booth, Addams, Keller, Hughes, Berryman, Thurber, Ransom, McCarthy, Plath, Mori, Ozick, and Smiley. Requirements include an in-class presentation and a term paper.

This seminar explores the history of American gender in the last one hundred years through American film. Motion pictures have played a unique role in shaping and reflecting new ideals and images of womanhood and manhood in the modern United States. Throughout the twentieth century, movies and their stars have born a complex relationship to transformations affecting the lives of American men and women. We will examine motion pictures and movie stars as primary sources that, when juxtaposed with other kinds of historical evidence, indicate changes in the gendering of work, leisure, sexuality, family life, and politics. Additionally, we will consider how the changing institutional history of American film production during the twentieth century connected to the gendered images it sold. For much of the period under review, Hollywood used specific genres to target particular audiences and movies were not afforded the protection of free speech. This made films and movie stars peculiarly reflective of, and vulnerable to, the nation's changing fantasies and fears regarding sexuality and gender roles. Students will write several short papers and complete a research project on a film of their choice.

Freedom and Citizenship in the United States will examine the historical development of ideas of freedom and citizenship in the American context. We will examine texts that treat of issues like the rights and responsibilities of membership in a political association, the nature and limits of the power of the collective over the individual, and the norms of exclusion and inclusion that define a body politic. The course will focus exclusively on primary texts, and the order of readings will be roughly chronological, emphasizing the historical development of the concepts of citizenship, nation, and American identity. The first weeks the course will be dedicated to reading and discussing major texts in Western political history that frame the 17th century founding of the American colonies. The rest of the course will situate the American case in this historical development, beginning with an examination of the Puritan migration to New England and the early communities they formed, and continuing with the study of major documents surrounding the Revolution, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, and contemporary debates about the meaning of American citizenship. In addition to the classroom requirements, students will be expected to volunteer a minimum of 4 hours a week with the Double Discovery Center (DDC), in connection to the Freedom and Citizenship Project which DDC conducts in partnership with the American Studies Program.

Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are," wrote the nineteenth-century French epicure Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. While this may seem like a straightforward equation, it is anything but. This course investigates Brillat-Savarin´s dictum by examining the varied ways food is produced, prepared, and consumed in the United States. Beginning with what seem to be highly individualized and embodied questions of taste, we will expand outward to consider how food shapes personal, regional, national, and global identities. We will treat cookbooks and recipes, diet guides, works of art, and food television as cultural texts that can provide insight into the meaning of food and eating. We will also study issues of hunger, poverty, and food justice, the gendering of food preparation and consumption, questions of eating and body image, and restaurant culture. In addition to reading and writing assignments, this course will also include an experiential component, which will give students opportunities to volunteer in a soup kitchen or food pantry, work on an urban farm, and enjoy some of the culinary delights of New York City.

Dominated by outcasts and anti-heroes, movies of the 1970s freshly engaged the conversation about what American society is and should be. A new generation of maverick American auteurs (including Coppola, Altman, Kubrick, Ashby, Lumet, Pakula and Scorcese) saved Hollywood from financial collapse by channeling and giving voice to the frenetic activities of the previous decade -while also speaking directly into the moment. They tackled previously taboo subjects; challenged traditional narrative expectations; revised Classic Hollywood film genres, and engaged race and gender in new ways. Originally considered a "lost generation," the filmmakers of the 1970s are now recognized as having produced a turning point in American filmmaking. Through close-readings of some of the decade´s greatest works, and through readings in film, cultural and social theory, this course will examine the role of movies in American discourse. What do movies do for and to us? What prisms cloud the windows they offer on a by-gone era? What does the current viewer "hear" in film from the past that wasn´t heard then? Can we speak of different "styles of heroism" in film eras? Do current movies (and HBO series) pursue different strategies for engaging the present? How has the viewer changed, and how is the context of viewing different today?

This course will examine the impact of Wall Street on American life from the time of the American Revolution through the dot.com boom of the 1990s, its collapse at the turn of the millennium, and the current financial meltdown. Class discussions and readings will range widely to explore the ways the Street has been integrated into the country's economic, political, and cultural affairs, and examine how Americans have handled their fundamental ambivalence about whether the Street has been a force for good or evil. We will focus on some of the principal iconic representations of the Street as they have appeared in cartoons, political tracts, movies, economic treatises, sermons, novels, histories, and other cultural artifacts.

The United States, often thought of as a nation where since its origins all foreign languages spoken by immigrants have withered away upon exposure to English, has actually always harbored a complex mixture of languages and dialects. This course will examine the history of language in America, including the robust role of German in colonial times and beyond (once as commonly heard in America as Spanish); creole languages such as Gullah, Louisiana Creole French and Hawaiian "Pidgin" English; Black English including its history and present; Native American languages and modern efforts to preserve them; and the history of Asian languages in modern America, including Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Hmong. The course also serves, in ancillary fashion, as an introduction to the variety among languages of the world and to a scientific perspective on human language.

For the past century and a half, New York City has been the first home of millions of immigrants to the United States. This course will compare immigrants' encounter with New York at the dawn of the twentieth century with contemporary issues, organizations, and debates shaping immigrant life in New York City. This is a service learning course. Each student will be required to work 2-4 hours/week in the Riverside Language Center or in programs for immigrants run by Community Impact.

This course will examine the influence of race and poverty in the American system of confronting the challenge of crime. Students will explore some history, including the various purposes of having an organized criminal justice system within a community; the principles behind the manner in which crimes are defined; and the utility of punishment. Our focus will be on the social, political and economic effects of the administration of our criminal justice system, with emphatic examination of the role of conscious and unconscious racism, as well as community biases against the poor. Students will examine the larger implications for a community and culture that are presented by these pernicious features. We will reflect on the fairness of our past and present American system of confronting crime, and consider the possibilities of future reform. Readings will include historical texts, analytical reports, some biography, and a few legal materials. We will also watch documentary films which illuminate the issues and problems.