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Certificate Requirements
The Certificate in American Culture Studies is available to all students pursuing the Ph.D. in AmCS-affiliated Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (GSAS) departments who satisfy the following requirements in course work and faculty advising:
- Complete a total of 18 credit units in coursework outside the student's home (Ph.D.) department, including
- Graduate seminar (3 credits): Introduction to American Culture Studies (AmCS 645)
- Multidisciplinary courses (6 credits): Two additional graduate courses on American topics (400-level or above) specifically designed in multidisciplinary terms. These are often team-taught by faculty representing two different departments. Other courses taught by a single faculty member but providing a multidisciplinary approach to American topics will be certified as courses satisfying this requirement by the faculty chair of the AmCS graduate program.
- Extradepartmental courses (9 credits): Three graduate courses on American topics (400-level or above) in different disciplines outside the home department.
- Consult with an AmCS faculty advisor outside the home department, in addition to the student's principal Ph.D. advisor.
- Complete a Ph.D. dissertation, with the AmCS advisor serving as one of the "outside" readers on the oral-defense committee.
Coursework
Introduction to American Culture Studies (AmCS 645)
This course offers an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of American culture, for graduate students in various departments of Arts and Sciences and other schools. We will study the history, theories, and methods of the academic field first known around 1950 as American Studies and more recently called American Culture Studies at Washington University and elsewhere. Overall, the course aims to explore the means of relating or integrating the historical, literary, art-historical, popular-culture, and social-scientific study of American life, and to explore the problems inherent in this project. The course takes the form of an intensive seminar, requiring commitment to weekly readings, informed discussion, and critical writing.
Fall 2008
REDISCOVERING THE CHILD: PROBLEM-SOLVING WORKSHOPS IN AN URBAN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
L98 416 AMCS
This service-learning experience allows students to bring their knowledge and passion about their fields of study to elementary students at the Adams School in the city of St. Louis. Students will spend the first half of the semester together in studio classes on campus to learn the creative process of synthesizing variables. They will discuss readings and attend guest faculty lectures that expand their base of knowledge for designing curricular workshops for the children. Guest lectures will include faculty from various disciplines throughout the University, as well as the principal of the Adams School. Each student will work with the professor individually and in their team, as well as seeking advice from a faculty of their major discipline who will review their curricular plan. This particular academic weave will help students prepare the curriculum for the problem-solving, interdisciplinary workshops at Adams School. During the last half of the semester students move on-site to Adams School to teach small groups of children after school for 1.5 hours (students will be teaching only on a Tuesday or Thursday during the same class time). This course seeks students from all disciplines and schools.
AS:> SS
01 TuTh 3:00p-5:30p XXXII TBA Lorberbaum
MODELING THE SECOND WORLD WAR
L98 4735 AMCS
Models and simulations of trends, events, institutions, and processes are useful tools for historians and social scientists. They can illustrate complex interactions between individuals and groups, map broad political and social trends, and possibly predict the outcome of specific events. Students in this course will choose an aspect of the geographic, political, diplomatic, military, economic, or social history of the Second World War to research and model through computer simulation, multi-media presentations, or a role play exercise. These models and simulations will be based on primary sources from the period. Students with a background in relevant course work, multi-media technologies, or computer modeling are encouraged to enroll. Please note that this is NOT a course in designing war games. Graduate students may enroll for 4 units; all others must enroll for 3 units.
FA:> SSP
01 M 2:30p-5:30p XXXII Bennett, Parsons
WANDERLUST: AN EXPLORATION OF TRAVEL IN AMERICAN CULTURE
L98 5480 AMCS
Long before the advent of the supersonic jet and Expedia.com, Americans were driven to wander by an all consuming passion for travel. Pilgrimage and discovery narratives were widely popular in the 19th century, and contributed to the ideal of America as a mobile and self-determined society, while souvenir-hunting and grand touring became fashionable pastimes of a growing middle class. Many of our own ideas about travel- and indeed, much of its allure- can be traced back to earlier periods and practices, images and ideas. In this course, we will explore travel in American culture during the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on the rich visual, print and material culture associated with the traveler and traveling (guidebooks, travel narratives, advertisements, photos, paintings, souvenirs, etc.). Our exploration will take us far and wide, from popular tourist destinations ( Niagara Falls and the Catskills) to what once seemed far flung destinations ( Brazil, Japan, the Middle East, and Hawaii) to a World's Fair, to our own backyards. Our apporach will be multi-disciplinary and hands-on, as we seek to understand American wanderlust through the study of cultural artifacts.
01 W 6:30p-9:00p XXXII Kolk
Sample Descriptions of Previously-Offered AmCS Multidisciplinary Courses
The Age of Lincoln: America in the 1850s
Iver Bernstein, History; Wayne Fields, English
This seminar is an interdisciplinary examination of the culture and politics of America in the critical watershed decade before the Civil War. The course explores how a range of writers, some avowedly "literary," others more decidely "political," advanced their versions of America in the larger culture, at a time when all things American-democracy, religious destiny and nationality itself-were becoming profoundly problematic. The Lincoln-Douglas debates; Stowe´s "Uncle Tom´s Cabin"; Walt Whitman´s "Leaves of Grass"; Douglass´ Autobiographies; the writings of the Transcendentalists; novels and short stories by Melville, Hawthorne, Williams Wells Brown, Harriet Wilson; pro-slavery screeds, apocalyptic anticipations of the future, Mormon/anti-Mormon and Catholic/anti-Catholic controversies; anxieties over race, gender and sexuality, are some of the materials and concerns to be taken up, in the context of the titanic struggles of the decade: the Conflict and Compromise of 1850, Kansas, Dred Scott, John Brown´s Raids, and the Great Secession Winter.
Gender, Culture and Identity in America
Andrea Friedman, History; Vivian Pollak, English
This course examines how culture functions as an arena for women´s articulation of identity within a specific historical and national context. We will focus on four women who are important for understanding nineteenth and twentieth century "popular" and "high" culture in America: Charlotte Cushman (theater), Mae West (theater and film), Sylvia Plath (poetry and prose), and Gwendolyn Brooks (poetry and prose). The course will use an interdisciplinary approach and employ feminist theory, including theories of gender performativity. We will explore the ways in which gender intersects with other socially constructed categories of American identity such as race, class, and sexuality, from about 1835-2000.
Topics in American Culture Studies: Mark Twain - Humor and Politics in 19th Century America
Wayne Fields, English/AmCS
Mark Twain's unique status as a writer who has become a cultural icon cannot be explained merely in terms of literary gifts and aesthetic achievement. He is America's best-known author in large part because of his engagement with issues central to our institutions and political practice. The "southwestern" humorists who profoundly influenced his work used humor as a basis for political commentary and cultural criticism, a tradition to which Twain's own satirical treatment of everything from Congress to juries belongs. This course will examine both the literary achievement of Mark Twain and the ways in which his writings provide a critique - built over a lifetime - of American culture, probing the central issues of our politics (domestic and international) and our complicated relationships to one another.
Samples of Previously-Offered Courses
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Certificate Requirements