American Studies: Visions, Revisions, Contestations - MA Seminar 1

Master's seminars

At least B2+ English language competence

Basic knowledge of American social life and history

Classroom

The first semester of the seminar will offer an overview of major schools of thought, approaches, and concepts developed within the field of American Studies.

The first semester of the seminar will offer an overview of major schools of thought, approaches, and concepts developed within he field of American Studies. These include: the myth and symbol school, American exceptionalism, new American Studies, and transnational American Studies. The seminar will prepare students for the critical reading and understanding of cultural, social, and media phenomena in U.S. American culture, past and present. The readings and discussions in the seminar will provide contexts for the development of American Studies. The key concepts introduced during the seminar will include those of nation, identity, diaspora, empire, citizenship, resistance and emancipation, collective memory, etc. The knowledge gleaned from the assigned texts and in-class discussions will prepare students to draft outlines of their MA projects, choose the theoretical tools and ask informed research questions.

John Storey, ed. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader. Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.

Chris Barker. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. 2nd ed. Sage Publications, 2005.

John Hartley, Robert E. Pearson, with Eva Vieth, eds. American Cultural Studies: A Reader. Oxford University Press USA, 2000.

Jessica Munns and Gita Rajan, eds. A Cultural Studies Reader: History, Theory, Practice. Longman, 1995.

Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler, eds. Keywords for American Cultural Studies. NYP, 2007.

John Carlos Rowe, The Cultural Politics of New American Studies. Open Humanities Press, 2012.

John Carlos Rowe, ed. Post-nationalist American Studies.Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Simon During, The Cultural Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Routlege, 1999.

Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. Harvard University Press, 1950.

Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. Oxford University Press, 1964.

Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. HarperCollins, 1993.

Knowledge:

- Students deepen their knowledge of key approaches to the critical study of American culture and society

- Students identify major schools, research methods, techniques and critical tools in American Studies and Cultural Studies

- Students situate those schools in a larger socio-historical and political context

Expertise:

- Students organize their research project, choose a topic and research problem, formulate questions, decide on a critical approach and key concepts

- Students assess the state of research and select sources relevant for their project

Social Skills

- Students understand the significance of continuous education for personal and professional development

-Students understand the ethical principles of their academic work and apply them in their professional work

In class discussions students acquire skills of expressing their thoughts in a clear, coherent, logical and precise manner, with the use of language which is correct grammatically, lexically and phonetically.

Attendance and participation, short written assignments, group projects, preparation and in-class presentation of the MA project proposal

By the end of the 1st semester, students will have chosen a research area, the topic, the MA project outline (chapter-by-chapter breakdown), the working bibliography (MLA/Chicago)

3 absences allowed