Global Arc

Over the past three and a half centuries Jewish immigrants have described America both as "the promised land" and "the land of impurity." This course examines these conflicting descriptions as it explores developments in Jewish life in America from the mid seventeenth century through the late twentieth century.

In this seminar, we will explore the relationship between race, racism and politics throughout twentieth-century America. Topics will include segregation; immigration and assimilation; the role of racial politics in World War II and the Cold War; the civil rights movement and white massive resistance; Black Power and the white backlash; and contemporary politics up to the election of Barack Obama.

This seminar will explore how we negotiate the distance between ourselves and others through text messages. Texts sustain an ambient intimacy that is increasingly redefining borders that range from the interpersonal--via anonymous mental health support--to the international--via reporting platforms for immigrant communities. What technical and social expectations of privacy do we operate with when sending a point-to-point message? How do novelists incorporate text messages into works of fiction? What does it mean that Frank Ocean can sing, "you text nothing like you look"?

This seminar will explore the many meanings of suburbia in modern American history. First, we will examine the onset of the urban crisis and the attendant rise of suburbia as an attractive alternative for many. We will then focus on the ways in which the movement to suburbs intersected with the civil rights movement. Finally, we will examine how a diverse array of social and political movements of the postwar era -- from liberal causes like feminism and environmentalism to the mobilization of modern conservatism -- sprang from suburbia.

This seminar explores how writers and artists--alongside scientists and activists--have shaped American environmental thought from 1980 to today. The seminar asks: How do different media convey the causes and potential solutions to environmental challenges, ranging from biodiversity loss and food insecurity to pollution and climate change? What new art forms are needed to envision sustainable and just futures? Course materials include popular science writing, graphic narrative, speculative fiction, animation art, documentary film, and data visualization along with research from anthropology, ecology, history, literary studies, and philosophy.

An examination, first, of the place of slavery and opposition to slavery in the framing and ratification of the Constitution in 1787-88, and, second, of how the constitutional politics surrounding slavery led to the Civil War and Emancipation.

Song. Dance. Man. Woman. These are the basic components of the Broadway musical theatre. How have musical theatre artists, composers, lyricists, librettists, directors, choreographers, and designers worked with these building blocks to create this quintessentially American form of art and entertainment? This course will explore conventional and resistant performances of gender and sexuality in the Broadway musical since the 1940s. Why are musicals structured by love and romance?

A study of a distinctive new genre that is eminently American, distinctively modernist, and brazenly vulgar. Louche as the subject is, writers were able more directly to engage issues of social inequality (racial, sexual, economic) along with changing notions of gender construction. Such fiction continues today, but its appeal for cinema has been tremendous, and we will focus on the ways adaptation modified popular formulas.

This course examines America through the lens of its images. Pictures created by Americans of all stripes in all periods have been integral to the shaping of American history, culture, and identity. By examining a wide range of image types--from the fine arts and photography to the built environment, scientific illustration, film, and digital media--and by considering these images in terms of their historical, political, social, intellectual, and global contexts, "American Images" will offer both a sweeping and a detailed portrait of America through the rich, sometimes strange history of its art and visual culture.

This course investigates the history of popular entertainments in the United States from the colonial era to the present. Moving briskly among some of the myriad sites, sounds and spectacles that have captivated diverse American audiences, this course tracks how entertainment genres, venues, personalities and phenomena have shaped U.S. culture in enduring and significant ways. This course examines how U.S. entertainment--as simultaneously industrial operation and cultural production--has mapped routes of social encounter, mobility and resistance, while also serving as a platform for individual expression and imaginative escape.