Approaches to American Cultural Studies/Lit 6856


Professor Stephanie A. Smith /ssmith@ufl.edu
Summer B 2002
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ssmith

Description
American "Cultural" Studies and American Studies--what is meant by these terms? As Janice Radway, president of the American Studies Association asked in 1998, "what's in a name?"
--is the name a determining factor in the shape of a discipline?

This course is designed to be an exploration of various ways in which scholars have answered, and continue to answers Radway's question. Therefore, the course will present these dynamic fields not as stable, absolute entities, but rather as a set of shifting practices that have been produced through multiple interdisciplinary conversations involving history, critical race studies, feminism, sociology, ethnic studies, queer theory, etc.The readings will be divided into a series of thematic sets, tba. These divisions represent a loose organization, and are in no way meant to limit our understanding of how categories of cultural experience are always in simultaneous operation.

Requirements:

  • response papers
  • abstract
  • paper (talk)


    • Research and Reading Links