American Studies Fall 2009 Seminars

Application required. Forms are available from 415 Hamilton or from the American Studies website:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/amstudies/courses/intermediate.html
Contact Angela Darling: amd44@columbia.edu for more information.

Disability in American Life
Prof. Rachel Adams
Wed. 2:10-4:00
What historical, political, and social factors have given rise to the way we understand disability in contemporary American culture? How have philosophers, policy makers, authors and artists framed the political and ethical debates surrounding the status of disability?

How have imaginative representations in literature, film, and the visual arts contributed to and/or challenged those understandings?

Given that nearly every one of us will be disabled at some point in life, these questions could not be more important. This course seeks to address them by considering a broad array of texts, including philosophical debates about morality and ethics, history, and literary, filmic, and visual representations.

A Cultural History of Wall Street
Prof. Steve Fraser
Tues. 11:00-12:50
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.

History of the Supreme Court
(Judge Joseph A. Greenaway)
Wed. 4:10-6:00 pm
In this course we consider the origins of the Supreme Court, including how the framers of the Constitution envisioned the function and authority of the judicial branch of the federal government; the importance of judicial independence; and the Supreme Court?s role in the development of American democracy. We examine the lives and work of several individual justices to determine the role that perspective and life experiences have on judicial decision making. Issues considered include the evolution of the law governing civil rights, from the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Supreme Court?s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Readings range from the Federalist Papers to biographies of individual justices to relevant Supreme Court cases.

American Literature and Culture from 1850-Civil War
Prof. Andrew Delbanco (LISTED AS ENGL W3975)
Mon. 11:00-12:50
In this seminar we trace the growing crisis over slavery and disunion as the United States moved toward war against itself. Readings include fiction, poetry, memoirs, political discourse, and journalism by such authors as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriet Jacobs, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Abraham Lincoln, and Herman Melville. We consider the perspectives of slaves and slavemasters, North and South, men and women, committed partisans and neutral observers-- in an effort to understand what was at stake in the rising discord during the decade that preceded Civil War.

Gender History and American Film
Prof. Hilary Hallett
Tues. 2:10-4:00
Mandatory screening Mon. 8-10 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 had 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.