American Studies (AMST-GA)

Topics course in Critical Theory offered by core faculty member.

A colloquium in American Studies taught by a core faculty member.

A seminar in American Studies taught by a core faculty member.

This course seeks to provide students with a critical vocabulary through which to theorize sexuality in an intersectional and transnational frame. We will do so by reading recent work within queer and/or critical race studies that situates sexual practices, desires, and subjectivities as constitutive of formations of race, gender, nation, indigeneity, globalization and diaspora. We will focus in particular on key thematics that currently animate some of the most innovative work in field of queer studies today: indigeneity, empire, and diaspora; state violence and sexual/racial citizenship; aesthetics, visuality, and alternative archives.

The dissertation proposal workshop is restricted to doctoral students and only taken upon successful completion of at least one field exam in preparation for defending their dissertation proposal.

Restricted to doctoral students taking their first or second field exam.

This seminar will offer a broad survey of the history of urban and suburban development since the mid-nineteenth century. It will look at some of the major movements, in planning and in architecture, and will examine several schools of thought associated with urbanism over that period of time. Urban forms will include streetcar, suburbs, high-density cores, garden cities, greenbelt towns, planned communities, urban gentrification, edge cities, ghettoes and barrios, historical preservations, the suburban subdivision, gated community, and neo-traditional development. Close attention will be given to the relationship between these urban forms and modes of industrial production, transportation, and communication.

This seminar is an examination of changing attitudes toward work and labor, and it is designed to give students an overview of labor history and the sociology of work. The course covers patterns of agrarian, industrial, and post-industrial production, gendered and racialized segmentation of labor, and the record of worker organization. Its historical scope runs from colonial/Indigenous agriculture to the digital labor landscape of today, and the overarching framework is one in which work is utilized as a medium of power (and counter-power) in society. Primary readings are the central learning material, but students are encouraged to make connections to real life events and experiences in today’s world of work.

You can buy one, sell one, borrow one, trade one, or become one. This course uses ethnography, social theory, and literature to analyze the commodity as we explore the proposition that the twenty-first century is a time of heightened commodity production. As we examine the ways people become like objects—and vice versa—we will pay special attention to the way commodification proceeds in urban contexts.

Topics course in American Studies offered by a core faculty member.

Topics course in Urban Studies offered by core faculty member.

Topics course in American Studies offered by core faculty member.

Introductory analysis of topics central to the six fields offered by the program.

A seminar in American Studies taught by a core faculty member.

This course examines the practice and theory of research methods that are commonly used in social and cultural analysis. Through an experiential approach to a variety of methods, we will consider not only how research is conducted, but also how particular methods generate knowledge about social life. Rather than seeking a singular method through which we can fully ‘know’ the social world, we will concentrate on the unique perspectives that different methodologies contribute. In order to gain a comparative perspective on a variety of methods, the course is organized as an exploration of some features of the modern landscape of work. The readings span the era of industrialization and the transition to post-industrial employment.

Restricted ordinarily to matriculated doctoral candidates. Independent study.

This course circles around the questions, (1) what is critique and (2) what can critical writing be and do? Over the course of the semester, we will read a wide range of texts that self-consciously ask how to write about what we are thinking and writing about while we are thinking and writing. Our readings will be drawn from a number of disciplines and interdisciplines, but we will also range beyond the university “proper” to engage -- and also practice -- more public forms of communicating scholarly research. This workshop-style class offers students a chance to reflect on the kinds of critical writing that speaks to them and also affords a chance to develop their own writerly voices in tandem with their research interests.

Topics course in American Studies offered by core faculty member.