RESULTS:College of Arts & Sciences, Easter Semester 2024

African and African American Studies

An introduction to how historical and contemporary analyses of cultural, political, and social forces in America, the Atlantic world (Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean), and Africa have influenced the experiences of people of color. To illuminate those life experiences, the course employs the concept of race (as a theoretical, historical, and critical category), historiography, social analysis, and cultural critique.
This course interrogates representations of blackness in American popular culture. Using an interdisciplinary lens that considers the social, political, cultural, and historical realities that inform popular culture, students investigate how blackness is constructed and its implications.
This course encompasses both the established history of the southern African region c. 1500-2004 and recent historiographical developments. As a result of this dual focus, the course highlights the production of southern African history, considering how, for whom, and why that history has been written. Topics include: the environment in history; the creation and interactions of racial groups; the mineral revolution and capitalist development; white domination, segregation, and apartheid; and political and popular resistance to these oppressive racial regimes. The course ends with the transition to majority rule, the role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the democratic future of South Africa.
A survey of the major topics and issues in African-American history from 1865 to the present: the era of emancipation, the turn-of-the-century nadir of race relations, black participation in both world wars, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and various dimensions of contemporary black life. The course will also explore some of the historiographical themes that have catalyzed current scholarship and will analyze diverse theories about the black experience in America.
An exploration of the Southern past from the earliest English settlements to the establishment of the Confederate States of America. This course charts the development of distinctive Southern political, economic, and social structures, examines the role of chattel slavery in shaping the region, and analyzes the causes of the war for Southern independence.
An exploration of the Southern past from the earliest English settlements to the establishment of the Confederate States of America. This course charts the development of distinctive Southern political, economic, and social structures, examines the role of chattel slavery in shaping the region, and analyzes the causes of the war for Southern independence.
An exploration of the importance of slavery to the development of higher education in the United States through a close study of the history of the University of the South, its antebellum roots in the slaveholding South, and the continuing impact of the legacies of slavery and racial injustice on its development. The course also examines campus monuments and memorials that shape collective memories and identities at Sewanee and considers the ethical questions of how universities may seek justice and reconciliation in light of their historic and long-unaddressed connections to slavery.
Jazz has been called "America's Classical Music" and the United States' greatest musical export. Jazz is at once an improvisatory yet timeless art. This course presents a chronological survey of its major styles and artists, from African acculturation in the New World to the present. Topics include the roots of jazz, the New Orleans masters, jazz in the 20's, Big Band, Bebop, Post-Bop styles, Avant-garde, Fusion, recent developments, and jazz vocalists. Through listening assignments and attendance at live performances, students learn to identify jazz styles and instrumentation.
This course examines Supreme Court cases related to equality: by situating cases within varying theories of constitutional interpretation, and by assessing the socio-political implications of those decisions. Civil rights are specific governmental provisions to secure individual entitlements, as exemplified by the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws." Claims centering on race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability are examined, along with other claims of equality arising from the Fifteenth Amendment's prohibition of voting discrimination. The course emphasizes, above all, the political role of the judiciary. This course may not be taken by students who have taken POLS 332.
This course focuses on important African-American writers whose unique perspectives challenge us to think about questions of justice, equality and difference, morality, and rule. Readings begin in the nineteenth century (Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington) and proceed into the late twentieth century with selections from authors such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, James Baldwin, Shelby Steele, Cornel West, and Toni Morrison.

American Studies

An introduction to how historical and contemporary analyses of cultural, political, and social forces in America, the Atlantic world (Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean), and Africa have influenced the experiences of people of color. To illuminate those life experiences, the course employs the concept of race (as a theoretical, historical, and critical category), historiography, social analysis, and cultural critique.
This course interrogates representations of blackness in American popular culture. Using an interdisciplinary lens that considers the social, political, cultural, and historical realities that inform popular culture, students investigate how blackness is constructed and its implications.
Reading and discussion of significant texts from various disciplines including important theoretical analyses of American cultural and intellectual life.
This seminar is designed to prepare and guide senior American Studies majors in the preparation of their senior theses. Weekly class meetings will be devoted to various topics related to their projects, including theoretical and practical problems of research, interpretation, analysis, and writing. Students will prepare regular written and oral submissions, and read and critique each other's work. They will deliver a final oral presentation on their completed project.
A survey of painting, sculpture, and architecture in the United States from the Colonial period to 1913, with an emphasis on the relationship between American and European art and artists. Other topics considered include the development of art institutions in this country, in particular art museums and academies.
Slavery and its legacy, systemic racism, have been subjects for American writers, for more than two centuries. Revealing a yawning gap between American ideals and practices, they continue to tell us something vital about our country. This course examines representations of slavery and racism in major texts such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, Citizen by Claudia Rankine, and I Can’t Think About the Trees Without the Blood by Tiana Clark.
A study of the major dramatic works of Tennessee Williams, as well as his poetry and fiction. The course also examines Williams' life and his impact on twentieth-century American literature and theatre.
Like Abraham Lincoln’s announcement of “a new birth of freedom” in the Gettysburg Address, the American literature covered in English 378 struggles to articulate, then problematize, American freedom in the era surrounding the Civil War and emancipation. What is freedom? To whom does it extend? What are its blessings and its costs? Nobody has ever thought more profoundly about these issues than the American writers who emerged before, during, and after the war America fought with itself: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, Charles Chesnutt, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others.
A study of fiction by James, Hemingway, Cather, Wright, Faulkner, Ellison, Petry and others.
A study of the American environmental imagination. Readings include both literary fiction and nonfiction.