Courses in American Studies

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to United States history from the 12th century to the mid-19th century. Students will gain a more developed understanding of American history by examining the interactions among diverse cultures and people; the formation and use of power structures and institutions throughout the colonial, Revolutionary and antebellum eras; and the processes behind the "Americanization" of the North American continent. Central to this course is a comparison between two interpretations of American history: a Whiggish, or great American history, and the more conflict-centered Progressive interpretation. Not only will students gain a general knowledge of this time period, they also will understand the ways in which the past can be contextualized. Students are expected to understand both the factual basis of American history as well as the general interpretive frameworks underlying historical arguments. This course counts toward the American Studies history requirement for the major. This course is the same as HIST 101D. No prerequisite.

This course is a thematic survey of the United States from the end of the Civil War to the present. Students will examine the transformation of the United States from a rural, largely Protestant society into a powerful and culturally diverse urban/industrial nation. Topics will include constitutional developments, the formation of a national economy, urbanization and immigration. The course also will discuss political changes, the secularization of public culture, the formation of the welfare state, World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War as well as suburbanization, the civil rights movement, women's and gay rights, and the late 20th-century conservative politics movement and religious revival. This course counts toward the American Studies history requirement for the major. This course is the same as HIST 102D. No prerequisite.

This course introduces students to the principles of American studies through the exploration of American history and culture during the 1900's. We will explore the nature of American society in this critical period through the study of the race relations, women and gender, music and youth culture. Guest lectures, films and student presentations complement the course and students will be asked to engage actively in its development. Open only to first-year and sophomore students. Juniors need permission of instructor. No prerequisite. Offered every year.

This course presents an overview of painting, sculpture and architecture from colonial times to 1900. It frames the development of American art and architecture within a broad sociohistorical context and addresses many of the issues pertinent to American studies. The following questions, among others, will be addressed in the course: Does American culture have a single, identifiable character? How have Americans reconciled their uneasy relationship with European culture? How have American political values, such as freedom, liberty and democracy, informed the cultural expression of the 18th and 19th centuries? This course is the same as ARHS 227D. This course must be taken as ARHS 227D to count towards the fine arts requirement. This counts as an intermediate-level course for the art history major and satisfies the modern art major requirement. Prerequisite: ARHS 111, AMST 109 or equivalent. Offered every other year.

The most fascinating thing about jazz is its vitality. Jazz remains today what it has been since its inception: an art form of intense personal expression in the context of collaborative improvisation. This course is a social and stylistic investigation of the history of jazz, from its African American origins up to the present. Progressing chronologically, students will investigate through a variety of sources the main jazz styles and musicians and their development and influence upon the jazz scene. Prerequisite: MUSC 101 or placement by exam. This course is the same as MUSC 302D. Offered every other year.

This course will introduce students to the major theoretical writings about education--Dewey, Kozol, Ravitch and Freire. We will inquire about the "global achievement gap" and "cultural literacy" and interview teachers from a broad range of educational backgrounds--public, private, parochial, charter. The seminar will meet weekly, and students will engage during the week in Moodle discussions about issues raised in the reading. Students also will have a high school experience in Cleveland, with an introductory day during October break and a 10-day residency in early January. Credit only for attending all components of the course. Prerequisite: junior standing and permission of instructor.

America is the great, ongoing experiment of modernity, a nation thoroughly structured by all that is considered new in the Western world: liberal democracy, science, technology, industry and capitalism. The colonization of America by Europe led to our nation's status as a laboratory for political, social and artistic theories which otherwise may never have been attempted. More and more nations are looking at the U.S. with ambivalence. As recent history has shown, America is not just a European obsession. U.S. ties to Europe have weakened in the last few decades, and the U.S. now finds itself in a more multilateral geopolitical environment. The Sept. 11 attacks were a brutal awakening for many Americans to the hostility that exists in parts of the world, not only against U.S. foreign policy but against the identity of the American people. Is such hostility related to the European ambivalence toward America, or is it a new phenomenon, with separate historical and intellectual roots? This course will be conducted as a seminar. Each week, we will examine texts and films that center on a particular theme of European-American intellectual relations, the emerging complicated relationship between Islam and America, and the longstanding tension with Latin America. Among the texts of European writers included in the seminar are works by Alexis de Tocqueville, Jean Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir and Bernard-Henri Lévy. The texts of Middle Eastern writers include works by Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Sayyid Qutb; among the Latin American authors are Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. We also will view and discuss several films by directors such as Wim Wenders, Aki Kaurismäki, Jean-Luc Godard and Charlie Chaplin. This course can count toward the major in French (modern languages or area studies) under certain conditions to be arranged with Professor Guiney. This course counts as an elective in political science. No prerequisite.

The relationship between religion and popular culture in America is multifaceted. It includes religious themes in popular culture popular cultural portrayals of American religions the use of popular cultural forms as vehicles for the expression of religious values and the celebration of religious emotions and the embrace of cultural expressions as forms of religious devotion. This course will explore all these facets of the relationship, looking at a cross-section of Hollywood films, television shows, and music videos, various subgenres of popular music, sports, news media and cyber culture. Our study will be guided by the reading of academic texts on the topic, viewing of videos and images, and listening to samples of music from several genres. Previous studies in American and/or religious studies will be beneficial. No prerequisite. Offered every other year.

This course will explore specific problems in American art and architecture. Topics include Modernism and the Great Depression, World War II and Abstract Expressionism and the relationship between art and politics broadly speaking. When possible, students will utilize regional museum collections. Assignments will include seminar reports, class discussion and a research paper. This counts as an advanced course for the Art History major. This course is the same as ARHS 378D. This course must be taken as ARHS 378D to count towards the fine arts requirement. Prerequisite: ARHS 111, 227D, AMST 109 or equivalent. Offered every other year.

Digital copying and internet file-sharing have given rise to a heated national debate over the ownership of art and ideas. On the one hand, we have the film and recording industries aggressively protecting and enlarging their holdings; on the other, we have a range of open-source initiatives, not just in software but in cultural production generally (as with, for example, scholars, scientists, and artists who post their work for free on the internet). The particulars of this contest are new, but its roots are very old, going back at least to the seventeenth-century, when publishers and governments first attempted to strike a balance between private incentive and the public good. Students in this seminar will trace the history of such attempts from their beginnings into the present; special emphasis will fall on how the founding generation in the United States imagined the circulation of knowledge. Through this history, students will become familiar with the several frames of reference within which this cultural debate has been held; they will thus explore the philosophical, economic, legal, and ethical issues that surround what has come to be called "intellectual property." Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Offered every two or three years.

Individual study is an exceptional opportunity available to junior or senior majors who find that the ordinary course offerings at Kenyon do not meet their needs for the major. Individual study may be taken only for .5 unit of credit. Students must have the prior approval of the department chair in order to apply to enroll in an individual study. The student must present a detailed reading list and syllabus, including a schedule of assignments/projects and due dates, to the American studies faculty member with whom they choose to work. The faculty member who agrees to supervise and direct the individual study will confirm the syllabus and schedule in writing to the director of the program. The student project must culminate in a public presentation. The overall evaluation is a combination of student self-evaluation and faculty assessment of the student’s performance, both of which will be reported to the department chair along with the final grade assigned in the course. Because students must enroll for individual studies by the end of the seventh class day of each semester, they should begin discussion of the proposed individual study preferably the semester before, so that there is time to devise the proposal and seek departmental approval before the registrar’s deadline.

The Honors Program in American studies entails a two-semester sequence of independent work integral to the elective-study program in the major, taken during the senior year. Permission of instructor and department chair required.

See the description for AMST 497Y.