American Studies Methods: Cultural Studi

The study of culture is at the heart of the humanities and social sciences. Each discipline outlines a specific way of defining culture, a specific set of research questions, and a specific way to collect and analyze evidence. Though it is an interdisciplinary formation, American Studies, too, is marked by specific ways of approaching the study of culture. In contemporary American Studies, this approach is rooted in historical materialism. This course serves as an introduction to the historical materialist study of culture. Our course of study is organized chronologically, and spans Brazil, England, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Jamaica, Peru, and the Soviet Union.

This is a reading intensive course. For each meeting, we will engage in a close reading and discussion of a major text in the historical materialist study of culture. We will discuss these texts with the following questions in mind: how does this text define culture? How does this text identify the significance of culture? What are the kinds of examples and evidence that the text draws on to support its argument? How does this text propose the study of culture? Students in the class are responsible for short papers that answer these questions. You will also select a specific cultural “text” and draw on our readings to build out a series of research questions.