Spring 2024
CHLA 210C : Introduction to Gender & Global Inequalities MWF at 10:00-10:50
Maya Gonzalez
CHLA 213B: Apocalypse and Extinction Dr. Nadia Bou Ali MW at 14:00-15:15
Nadia Bou Ali
214C : World Turned Upside Down Dr. Maria Sanazaro TR at 14:00-15:15
Maria Sanazaro
When the world turns upside down, the values, assumptions, and expectations that underpin 'normal' life snap into focus. The image of the world turned upside downhas accordingly encapsulated experiences of social, political, and environmental upheaval from antiquity to the present. The starting point of much dystopian and utopian genre fiction, the world turned upside down is also a common trope of social critique. As the feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir posited regarding gender, or as the literary theorist Edward Said posited regarding colonialism, oppressors often represent the worlds of those they dominate as direct inversions of their own. At the same time, the figure of the upside-down world can illuminate the truth behind dominant narratives from the perspective of the subjugated. We’ll reflect on upside-down worlds in philosophy, Critical Theory, literature, film, and popular music, from the cave of Plato’s "Allegory" to the world of “the Tethered” in Jordan Peele’s 2019 film Us. From the vantage point of worlds turned on their heads, we’ll ask what makes a world appear right side up.
AMST 215 Intro. To American Studies 2 sections by Rana Bahghdadi
Rana Baghdadi
The course offers a broad ranging introduction to American cultural history and contemporary popular culture within the context of specific lenses including gender, race, class, consumer culture and racial identity. The course examines what celebrity means, and what it means to be a fan or part of a large fandom with common beliefs, desires and fears, and which engages in participatory cultural and literary production. The course is an interdisciplinary endeavor to understand the nuances of celebrity, celebrity influence, fandom, fannish behavior, and fannish literary and cultural production. Students will not only read history but also engage in contemporary theory, literature, film and politics. AMST 215 Introduction to American Studies fulfills a requirement for the minor in American Studies offered by the Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR).
English 209/AMST 275AO: Survey of American Literature
Sirene Harb
This course is a survey of American Literature from 1492 to the present through the exploration of canonical as well as non-canonical voices/texts. Some of the topics that will be discussed in the course include, but are not limited to, American identity and individualism, American Exceptionalism, the cult of true womanhood and domesticity, Realism and Regionalism, and projections of racial and ethnic identity.
English 226/AMST 275AY TR 2-3:15 by Sirene Harb
This course focuses on the analysis of contemporary American texts and explores recent/current trends in American Literature, such as Absurdism, Minimalism, and Feminism. It also examines the manner in which writers with diverse backgrounds responded to or appropriated language and voice as part of their efforts to offer alternative expressions of the American experience. Special emphasis will be given to the study of American identity, multiculturalism, race, gender, ethnicity and class.
English 305S/Arabic 315C: American Literature and Culture. Latin America, al-Andalus and the Arab World
Robert Myers
This is a graduate seminar focusing on novels, films, poetry, historical chronicles, essays, plays and visual texts from Latin America, especially those produced in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although these texts will be viewed from various critical perspectives including post-colonial; feminist; theories of translation, world literature and comparative literature; and political, historical and translation studies, particular attention will be devoted to tracing formal and thematic continuities of literary and artistic styles from the Arab world through al-Andalus and the Iberian peninsula to Latin America. This course will serve as a complement to the international conference on “Continuities: Latin America, al-Andalus and the Arab World” that will take place at AUB in March 2024.
Fall 2023-24
English 209/AMST 275AO: Survey of American Literature
Sirene Harb
This course is a survey of American Literature from 1492 to the present through the exploration of canonical as well as non-canonical voices/texts. Some of the topics that will be discussed in the course include, but are not limited to, American identity and individualism, American Exceptionalism, the cult of true womanhood and domesticity, Realism and Regionalism, and projections of racial and ethnic identity.
English 226/AMST 275AY: Contemporary American Literature
Sirene Harb
This course focuses on the analysis of contemporary American texts and explores recent/current trends in American Literature, such as Absurdism, Minimalism, and Feminism. It also examines the manner in which writers with diverse backgrounds responded to or appropriated language and voice as part of their efforts to offer alternative expressions of the American experience. Special emphasis will be given to the study of American identity, multiculturalism, race, gender, ethnicity and class.
AMST 215 Introduction to American Studies: Deconstructing Fandom History, Culture and Practice
Rana Baghdadi
The course offers a broad ranging introduction to American cultural history and contemporary popular culture within the context of specific lenses including gender, race, class, consumer culture and racial identity. The course examines what celebrity means, and what it means to be a fan or part of a large fandom with common beliefs, desires and fears, and which engages in participatory cultural and literary production. The course is an interdisciplinary endeavor to understand the nuances of celebrity, celebrity influence, fandom, fannish behavior, and fannish literary and cultural production. Students will not only read history but also engage in contemporary theory, literature, film and politics. AMST 215 Introduction to American Studies fulfills a requirement for the minor in American Studies offered by the Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR).
Spring 2023
English 209/AMST 275AO: Survey of American Literature
Sirene Harb
This course is a survey of American Literature from 1492 to the present through the exploration of canonical as well as non-canonical voices/texts. Some of the topics that will be discussed in the course include, but are not limited to, American identity and individualism, American Exceptionalism, the cult of true womanhood and domesticity, Realism and Regionalism, and projections of racial and ethnic identity.
English 226/AMST 275AY: Contemporary American Literature
Sirene Harb
This course focuses on the analysis of contemporary American texts and
explores recent/current trends in American Literature, such as Absurdism,
Minimalism, and Feminism. It also examines the manner in which writers with
diverse backgrounds responded to or appropriated language and voice as part of
their efforts to offer alternative expressions of the American experience. Special emphasis will be
given to the study of American identity, multiculturalism, race, gender,
ethnicity and class.
AMST 215 Introduction to American Studies: Deconstructing Fandom History, Culture and Practice
Rana Baghdadi
The course offers a broad ranging introduction to American cultural history and contemporary popular culture within the context of specific lenses including gender, race, class, consumer culture and racial identity. The course examines what celebrity means, and what it means to be a fan or part of a large fandom with common beliefs, desires and fears, and which engages in participatory cultural and literary production. The course is an interdisciplinary endeavor to understand the nuances of celebrity, celebrity influence, fandom, fannish behavior, and fannish literary and cultural production. Students will not only read history but also engage in contemporary theory, literature, film and politics. AMST 215 Introduction to American Studies fulfills a requirement for the minor in American Studies offered by the Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR).
Fall 2022-23
AMST 215 Introduction to American Studies: Deconstructing Fandom History, Culture and Practice
Rana Baghdadi
The course offers a broad ranging introduction to American cultural history and contemporary popular culture within the context of specific lenses including gender, race, class, consumer culture and racial identity. The course examines what celebrity means, and what it means to be a fan or part of a large fandom with common beliefs, desires and fears, and which engages in participatory cultural and literary production. The course is an interdisciplinary endeavor to understand the nuances of celebrity, celebrity influence, fandom, fannish behavior, and fannish literary and cultural production. Students will not only read history but also engage in contemporary theory, literature, film and politics. AMST 215 Introduction to American Studies fulfills a requirement for the minor in American Studies offered by the Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR).
ENG 216 / AMST 275M Modern American Drama
Robert Myers
In this course students will read many of the most significant plays of the 20th century, including ones by Williams, Miller, O'Neill, Hansberry, Wilson and others. The focus in the course will be both on the creation of new forms of theater in the U.S. in the 20th century and on the ways in which theatrical works manifest key dilemmas in modern and contemporary American society associated with race, social class, capitalism, changing gender roles, sexuality, and family dynamics.
English 209/AMST 275AO: Survey of American Literature
Sirene Harb
This course is a survey of American Literature from 1492 to the present through the exploration of canonical as well as non-canonical voices/texts. Some of the topics that will be discussed in the course include, but are not limited to, American identity and individualism, American Exceptionalism, the cult of true womanhood and domesticity, Realism and Regionalism, and projections of racial and ethnic identity.
Summer 2022
AMST 215 Introduction to American Studies: Deconstructing Fandom History, Culture and Practice
Rana Baghdadi
Monday through Thursday 12:00 PM - 1:15 PM
The course offers a broad ranging introduction to American cultural history and contemporary popular culture within the context of specific lenses including gender, race, class, consumer culture and racial identity. The course examines what celebrity means, and what it means to be a fan or part of a large fandom with common beliefs, desires and fears, and which engages in participatory cultural and literary production. The course is an interdisciplinary endeavor to understand the nuances of celebrity, celebrity influence, fandom, fannish behavior, and fannish literary and cultural production. Students will not only read history but also engage in contemporary theory, literature, film and politics. AMST 215 Introduction to American Studies fulfills a requirement for the minor in American Studies offered by the Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR). Non-American Studies minors may use this course to fulfill Bachelor of Arts requirements or fulfill humanities requirements. The course also serves as preparation for other courses such as American Studies, American Literature, and American History.
Spring 2022
CVSP 212 Modern & Contemporary World Theatre / AMST 275BA American Studies
Robert Myers
Mondays & Wednesdays 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM
In this course we will examine various modern and contemporary theatre traditions, beginning with plays written by Chekhov and Ibsen in the late 19th century and including contemporary works by Federico Garcia-Lorca, Wole Soyinka, Harold Pinter and Michael Frayn. As we read and analyze modern and contemporary plays from a number of traditions--British, Russian, North American, African, Norwegian, Arabic, etc.--in both written and visual form, we will pay particular attention to the ways in which theatrical forms in the late 19th and 20th century have crossed cultural boundaries and in so doing created new modes of theatrical expression.
ENGL 209 Survey of American Literature / AMST 275AO American Studies
Sirene Harb
Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
This course is a survey of American Literature from 1492 to the present through the exploration of canonical as well as non-canonical voices/texts. Some of the topics that will be discussed in the course include, but are not limited to, American identity and individualism, American Exceptionalism, the cult of true womanhood and domesticity, Realism and Regionalism, and projections of racial and ethnic identity.
ENGL 226 Contemporary American Literature / AMST 275AY American Studies
Sirene Harb
Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM
This course focuses on the analysis of contemporary American texts and explores recent/current trends in American Literature, such as Absurdism, Minimalism, and Feminism. It also examines the manner in which writers with diverse backgrounds responded to or appropriated language and voice as part of their efforts to offer alternative expressions of the American experience. Special emphasis will be given to the study of American identity, multiculturalism, race, gender, ethnicity and class.
ENGL 241D Trans. Lit. Illness and Madness / AMST 275M American Studies
Adam John Waterman
Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:00 PM - 12:15 PM
A course featuring networks of literary texts emerging from different locales with an emphasis on historical contexts of migration, diaspora and crisis.
ENGL 224 Early American Literature / AMST 275M American Studies
Adam John Waterman
Tuesdays & Thursdays 3:30 PM - 4:45 PM
A course that covers pre-twentieth-century American literature, with particular emphasis on relationships between form and culural context. Readings may vary from term to term.
Fall 2021-22
ENG 216 Modern American Drama / AMST 275M American Studies
Robert Myers
Mondays & Wednesdays 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM
In this course we will examine various plays written by American authors in the 20th century. We will begin with canonical works from the first half of the century such as The Glass Menagerie, Death of a Salesman and Long Day's Journey Into Night. We will also read more recent works such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and True West that employ techniques from the European avant-garde and the theatre of the absurd. In addition to analyzing the various forms and idioms that modern American playwrights have used, we will also focus on theatrical representations and critiques of American mythologies and themes related to ethnicity, gender, class and sexuality in Execution of Justice, Raisin in the Sun, True West and Joe Turner's Come and Gone
MCOM 225 Intro to Photojournalism / AMST 275M American Studies
George Azar
This course covers the history of Photojournalism and its place within the wider field of photography and society at large. Students will learn of the related fields of Documentary Photography and Street Photography. The course will also explore photography's early and modern masters with a particular focus on the social and political impact of their work on American society and the world.
ENGL Intro to American Studies / AMST215 American Studies
Suzanne Enzerink
Tuesdays & Thursdays
This course will explore the many connections between sex, gender and revolution through a mix of theory, law, film, television, literary fiction, poetry, podcast and other visual and digital media used in revolutionary protests. Area focus will be both on the United States and the Middle East, beginning with historical roots but with a firm focus on the present. Crucial to the course will be an understanding of how sex, gender, and intersectionality have been historically and geographically situated, and how gender-based activism has become intertwined with various other kinds of social justice groups that advocate for sustainable and equal futures such as environmental movements and anti-imperial movements.
Spring 2021
ENG 258F / AMST 275AS Feminism in Ethnic American Literature
Sirene Harb
Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Focusing on fiction, memoirs, essays, and poetry, this course explores works penned by US women writers of Middle Eastern, Asian, and African descent. We will analyze how these writers shape a feminist consciousness through their choice of themes and characters; we will also examine how their writing reflects the complex relations between gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and class. In our exploration of these issues, we will probe individual and collective experiences and how they relate to gendered configurations of power, voice, and language.
CVSP 212 / AMST 275AT Modern & Contemporary World Theatre
Robert Myers
Tuesdays & Thursdays 5:00-6:15 PM
In this course we will examine various modern and contemporary theatre traditions, beginning with plays written by Chekhov and Ibsen in the late 19th century and including contemporary works by Federico Garcia-Lorca, Wole Soyinka, Harold Pinter and Michael Frayn. As we read and analyze modern and contemporary plays from a number of traditions--British, Russian, North American, African, Norwegian, Arabic, etc.--in both written and visual form, we will pay particular attention to the ways in which theatrical forms in the late 19th and 20th century have crossed cultural boundaries and in so doing created new modes of theatrical expression.
AMST 275AU Gender, Sex, Revolution
Suzanne Enzerink
Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Visions for truly equitable futures have always depended on legal equality for all. As American activist Fannie Lou Hamer noted, “ain't nobody free until everybody's free." In practice, pushes for such legal equality in recent memory have cohered around gender, sex, race and their intersections. As most nations legally defined themselves in terms of (white) heterosexual reproduction, those existing outside of this space have fought hard to be recognized both legally and socially. Revolution, then, is inherently indistinguishable from fierce advocacy for gender and sexual equality and freedom, a fact readily seen today in uprisings as diverse as those in the United States and Lebanon.
This course will explore the many connections between sex, gender and revolution through a mix of theory, law, film, television, literary fiction, poetry, podcast and other visual and digital media used in revolutionary protests. Area focus will be both on the United States and the Middle East, beginning with historical roots but with a firm focus on the present. Crucial to the course will be an understanding of how sex, gender, and intersectionality have been historically and geographically situated, and how gender-based activism has become intertwined with various other kinds of social justice groups that advocate for sustainable and equal futures such as environmental movements and anti-imperial movements.
Fall 2020
ENG 216 / AMST 275M Modern American Drama
Robert Myers
Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM | Nicely 321
In this course students will read many of the most significant plays of the 20th century, including ones by Williams, Miller, O'Neill, Hansberry, Wilson and others. The focus in the course will be both on the creation of new forms of theater in the U.S. in the 20th century and on the ways in which theatrical works manifest key dilemmas in modern and contemporary American society associated with race, social class, capitalism, changing gender roles, sexuality, and family dynamics.
AMST 215 / HIST 278A Introduction to American Studies
Suzanne Enzerink
Mondays & Wednesdays 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM | Nicely 410
This class introduces students to transnational understandings of both the contemporary United States and contemporary American Studies post-9/11. What do the cultural, economic, and political landscape of the U.S. look like, and how did they get to be this way? This is not a history course; it is not intended to give you an exhaustive overview of the development of the country known as “the United States." You will not be quizzed on dates or laws. Rather, by assessing a wide variety of sources—from television shows to podcasts to news reports to historical documents to scholarly writing—you will acquire targeted knowledge that illuminates how social and political debates today are shaped by longer transnational processes.
The course is organized around three assignments: an object analysis, a group media project, and a final book review that will allow you to explore your own area of interest within contemporary American Studies. As such, you will acquire soft skills specifically geared towards future careers or education paths. Via Skype, we will also connect with leading American Studies-scholars in the US.
MCOM230 / AMST 275AR Screening Crises
Suzanne Enzerink
Mondays & Wednesdays 3:30 PM - 4:45 PM | Nicely 327
Thematically-oriented around films that highlight capitalism as productive of inequalities on both local (rich vs poor within national contexts) and global scales (Global North vs. Global South), this course sets out to introduce students to transnational film culture and illuminate how categories of difference—such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and nationality—can both be reproduced and challenged through film. Throughout, we will alternate between theoretical explorations of keywords in film analysis, close readings of the primary texts themselves, and readings about (the economics of) an increasingly global film industry. We will also look at the divergent potential of narrative film and documentary film in representing these subjects.
ENG 225 / AMST 275AK Modern American Literature (1900-1960)
Robert Myers
Tuesdays & Thursdays 11 AM – 12:15 PM | Nicely 318
In this course we will examine various novels, films, plays and stories written and created by American authors in the 20th century. We will begin with two canonical texts from the first third of the century, A Farewell to Arms, by Hemingway, and The Great Gatsby, by Fitzgerald. We will screen a film version, directed by Martin Scorsese, of Edith Wharton’s novel Age of Innocence, which was written in 1920 but set in the late 19th century. We will also read an excerpt of the novel. We will read Steinbeck’s Depression-era classic Of Mice and Men; Richard Wright’s explication of racial and political divides in 1930s Chicago, Native Son; and As I Lay Dying, by Faulkner, about the rural American South in the early 20th century. We will view a film version, with Halle Berry, of Zora Neale Hurston’s novel about a black town in Florida, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and the film Patton, written by Francis Ford Coppola, and read Tennessee Williams’ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. We will also read poetic texts by T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost and Gwendolyn Brooks and essays and stories by Salinger, Baldwin, Ellison, O’Connor and others. In addition to analyzing the various genres, forms and idioms that American writers and artists used between 1900 and 1970, we will also focus on the ways in which literature and culture provide a window into specific historical moments—e.g. World War I, the Jazz Age, the Depression, etc.—and significant issues in American culture—e.g. urbanization, racial discrimination, disparities in wealth, gender relations, etc.
ENG 222 Literature and Cultural Studies / AMST 275AQ Environmentalism and Limits to American Studies
Adam John Waterman
Tuesdays & Thursdays 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM
In this course we will approach the history and legacies of American Studies through a consideration of environmentalism and climate crisis, their relationship to the history of resource capture and extraction, the theft and enclosure of Indigenous lands, and the history of race and human capital in labor. Taking as axiomatic Jason Moore's argument that human-driven climate change begins with the advent of capitalist industrialism, we will look to the formation and plunder of the Americas as part of a global project of wealth production integral to the emergence of industry as a vehicle for the generation of surplus-value. Moreover, we will look to the ways in which the reorganization of old growth landscapes—the engineering of rivers and dredging of canals, the creation of railroads and their impact on human, animal, and plant species—allowed for the expansion of capital through the intensification of resource extraction, while contributing to the accumulation of atmospheric carbon and the acceleration of climate change. As a course taught between American Studies and English, we will also look to these processes, these infrastructures and their environmental traces, as forms of inscription, composing an uncommon type of writing that tells a particular story about the land, as well as the geophysicalities that transcend nations and states, continents and peoples.
Spring 2020
ENGL 209 / AMST 275AO Survey of American Literature
Sirene Harb
Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM | Nicely 318
This course is a survey of American Literature from 1492 to the present through the exploration of canonical as well as non-canonical voices/texts. Some of the topics that will be discussed in the course include, but are not limited to, American identity and individualism, American Exceptionalism, the cult of true womanhood and domesticity, Realism and Regionalism, and projections of racial and ethnic identity.
ENGL 250 / AMST 275AP Poetry Writing
Marilyn HackerTuesdays & Thursdays 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | Nicely 103
With the freedom to choose the way in which we flex our imaginative and expressive muscles, students will have the opportunity to write and discuss poems with a wide range of forms and content. It is important to recognize that critical writing is creative, too. Throughout the course, students will read and write about several modern and contemporary poets, and have the opportunity to experiment with poetry translation.
AMST 215 / HIST 278A - 2 Introduction to American Studies
Suzanne Enzerink
Tuesdays & Thursdays 3:30 PM - 4:45 PM | Nicely 327
This class introduces students to transnational understandings of both the contemporary United States and contemporary American Studies post-9/11. What do the cultural, economic, and political landscape of the U.S. look like, and how did they get to be this way? This is not a history course; it is not intended to give you an exhaustive overview of the development of the country known as “the United States.” You will not be quizzed on dates or laws. Rather, by assessing a wide variety of sources—from television shows to podcasts to news reports to historical documents to scholarly writing—you will acquire targeted knowledge that illuminates how social and political debates today are shaped by longer transnational processes.
The course is organized around three assignments: an object analysis, a group media project, and a final book review that will allow you to explore your own area of interest within contemporary American Studies. As such, you will acquire soft skills specifically geared towards future careers or education paths. Via Skype, we will also connect with leading American Studies-scholars in the US.
AMST 275AI U.S. Politics on America's Big & Small Screens
Samar Temsah
Tuesdays & Thursdays 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM | Nicely 318
Primarily thought of as a source of entertainment for both domestic and international audiences, film and Television have been used to teach people about the political world around them as well. Not a traditional film course nor a course about politics, this course, however, focuses on the last 25 years while investigating various tendencies in popular culture representations of politics and political life in the U.S. on how these representations reinforce that political culture itself.
AMST 215 / HIST 278A - 1 Introduction to American Studies
Samar Temsah
Tuesdays & Thursdays 9:30-10:45 AM | Nicely 411
“What is America/an American?" We survey cultural encounters between the U.S. and others. The investigation starts with the colonial juxtaposition of Europeans, Native Americans and Africans leading up to subsequent encounters with Latinos, Asians and Arabs. Although cultural fictions and cultural exclusions, where the U.S. & its cultural producers have identified identities and ideologies in contrast to or in interaction with other nations and cultures, have helped sustain unity among many Americans, sub-national and transnational identities have continually called this unity into question. We examine encounters/accounts of the idea of "America" and notions of what it means/it takes to be an “American" as they have evolved over time within the framework of themes that have been considered molding agents of the “American" identity."
AMST 265G / PSPA 220 Globalization and Culture
Danyel Reiche
Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM | Nicely 323
This course offers a critical exploration of the cultural dynamics of globalization and the politics of the globalization of culture. It also addresses the spread of (and reaction to) American popular culture abroad and the impact of globalization on American culture and identity.
AMST 265D / PSPA 288K Politics of Sports
Danyel Reiche
Fridays 2:00 PM - 4:30 PM | Nicely 107
This course focuses on issues around sport and nationality. It is within the architecture of international sports that countries compete with each other. To be eligible to compete for any given country in the Olympic Games and in almost all international sporting events, players must hold citizenship in that country. There are a few exceptions such as rugby, which only requires proof of at least three years residency to be eligible to play for the national team. If the residence criteria in rugby spread to other sports, Palestinians living in Lebanon without citizenship could represent Lebanon internationally. However, in a globalized world, national allegiance is becoming more and more a fluid concept.
Looking at the eligibility criteria of international sporting federations (IF) will be the main emphasis of the class. Topics include Lebanon's sporting boycott of Israel, Qatar's motives behind hosting the FIFA World Cup 2022, and sports betting regulations in the United States. Students are expected to give a class presentation reviewing the press coverage of a topic at the intersection of sport and politics.
MCOM204-2 From Telegraph to Twitter
Suzanne Enzerink
Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM | Nicely 103
What does it mean to study media historically? The answer lies in examining media not just as a series of technological developments but rather as the practices, networks, and communities that form around them. This class will introduce students to the field and to the practice of media history. While the study of the media has often focused on the new and the innovative—from now until the future—this course is an opportunity to dig into the past in order to consider how media have shaped societies and how societies, in turn, have determined what media are in the first place.
At various historical moments, how have different media arranged or facilitated communication, imagination, and conceptions of identity and belonging? Such a question requires that we contextualize the media as structures that grow out of specific technological, economic, cultural, and political circumstances. Looking at case studies spanning from North American and the Middle East to Europe and East Asia, we will attempt to construct a global history of media, attending to the particularities of individual contexts that we study.
Fall 2019
AMST 275 / PSPA 251 Politics and Government: USA
Danyel Reiche
Tuesdays & Thursdays 2-3:15 PM | NICELY 416
This class reflects on the role of the U.S. in the world. The United States is the most powerful country in the world. Some authors argue that emerging countries like China are in the process of taking the place of the U.S. For this course, we will be focusing on two books. The author of Is the American Century Over, Joseph Nye, argues that the American century is far from over and its military, economic, and soft power capabilities will continue to outstrip those of its closest rivals for decades to come. The authors of How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, paint a different picture and argue that the United States under Trump is on the verge of collapse.
In addition to the books, newspaper articles on current events in U.S. politics will be analyzed during the semester in the form of “press reviews". We will discuss these diverging arguments during the semester in order to conclude together whether the “American century" is approaching its end. The professor has also invited a guest from the U.S. embassy.
AMST 215 / HIST 278A Introduction to American Studies
Samar Temsah
Tuesdays & Thursdays 9:30-10:45 AM | NICELY 210
“What is America/an American?" We survey cultural encounters between the U.S. and others. The investigation starts with the colonial juxtaposition of Europeans, Native Americans and Africans leading up to subsequent encounters with Latinos, Asians and Arabs. Although cultural fictions and cultural exclusions, where the U.S. & its cultural producers have identified identities and ideologies in contrast to or in interaction with other nations and cultures, have helped sustain unity among many Americans, sub-national and transnational identities have continually called this unity into question. We examine encounters/accounts of the idea of "America" and notions of what it means/it takes to be an “American" as they have evolved over time within the framework of themes that have been considered molding agents of the “American" identity."
AMST 275 AF Introduction to American Popular Culture & Theories
Samar Temsah
Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:30-1:45 PM | NICELY 327
Love it or hate it, over the past few decades American popular culture has risen as an inescapable force penetrating most aspects of both Americans and other people's lives. In an attempt to understand the relationship between the “American" culture and the “popular", we look at popular representations of the American culture using theories within popular culture and critical tools. Within the American culture, we mainly consider the re/presentation of factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, counterculture, subcultures/youth and ideology by and in popular culture and we study primary texts, such as TV series, film, documentaries, popular music, sports, fashion, artwork and magazines with forays into other types of pop culture like news media, toys, graffiti, social media, phone apps, brochures, holidays, advertisements and websites.
AMST 265D / PSPA 288K Politics of Sports
Danyel Reiche
Wednesdays 3:30-6:00 PM | NICELY 212
This course focuses on issues around sport and nationality. It is within the architecture of international sports that countries compete with each other. To be eligible to compete for any given country in the Olympic Games and in almost all international sporting events, players must hold citizenship in that country. There are a few exceptions such as rugby, which only requires proof of at least three years residency to be eligible to play for the national team. If the residence criteria in rugby spread to other sports, Palestinians living in Lebanon without citizenship could represent Lebanon internationally. However, in a globalized world, national allegiance is becoming more and more a fluid concept.
Looking at the eligibility criteria of international sporting federations (IF) will be the main emphasis of the class. Topics include Lebanon's sporting boycott of Israel, Qatar's motives behind hosting the FIFA World Cup 2022, and sports betting regulations in the United States. Students are expected to give a class presentation reviewing the press coverage of a topic at the intersection of sport and politics.
AMST 265F / MCOM 290Q Screening American Crises
Suzanne Enzerink
Tuesdays & Thursdays 3:30-4:45 PM | NICELY 210
What place does film have in addressing some of the most pressing issues facing us in the 21st century? What is the relationship between politics and aesthetics? How do stagings or representations of violence and disaster rework, challenge, or complicate our understanding of them?
Organized thematically, this course introduces students to representations of pressing social issues across a variety of media, with a focus on the United States and its role in the world. Topics include climate change, terrorism, economic collapse, violence against women, and the refugee crisis. We will focus on narrative cinema and documentary film, but also look at how longform journalism, creative nonfiction, and scholarly writing have represented these delicate and urgent subjects. Students will consider the ways in which fictional landscapes refract deeply-rooted anxieties about race, class, gender, and national belonging.
AMST 275AM / ENGL 218 Poetry
Marilyn Hacker
Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:00-12:15 PM | NICELY 103
The virtual hegemony of “free verse” in contemporary poetry in English has produced a generation of student readers and writers to whom the underpinnings of poetry are often foreign. And yet, these linguistic and formal structures are among the primary pleasures of poetry for readers and writers alike, from the first memorized nursery-rhyme to the tenth re-reading of John Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” or Adrienne Rich’s “Atlas of the Difficult World.” Students will examine and assimilate different metrical and formal strategies in the writing and reading of poems in a variety of forms and freedoms. Students will also each do a class presentation and a paper on a book by an individual contemporary poet whose work is relevant to what we’ve been discussing in its uses and transformations of prosodic forms.
CVSP 212 Modern & Contemporary World Theatre
Robert Myers
Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:00-12:15 PM | NICELY 414
In this course we will examine various modern theatre traditions, beginning with plays written by Chekhov and Ibsen in the late 19th century and including contemporary works by Federico Garcia-Lorca, Wole Soyinka and Bertolt Brecht. As we read and analyze modern and contemporary plays from a number of traditions (European, Russian, African, etc.) in both written and visual form, we will pay particular attention to the ways in which theatrical forms in the 20th century have crossed cultural boundaries and in so doing created new modes of theatrical expression.