AMERICAN STUDIES (AMS)

Professor James M. Salem, Chairperson
Office: 101 ten Hoor Hall

AMS 150 is not open to juniors or seniors except by special permission. AMS 205 and AMS 206 are not open to seniors except by special permission.

AMS 100 Special Topics. One to three hours.

Selected American topics for lower-division undergraduate students offered by American studies faculty members or supervised teaching assistants. Recent examples include Bluegrass Music in America, Contemporary American Youth, The Hollywood Western, Wealth in America, Love American Style, Psychedelic America, Oliver Stone's America, The Boys of Summer, First Freedoms, Murder She Solved, Race, Class, and Gender in Science Fiction, Gay/Lesbian Images in Popular Culture, The World of Robert Heinlein, Homicide: Life on TV, The Many Lives of Frederick Douglass, Murder in Miami, American Youth Culure, Civil War in Fiction, The Dukes of Hazzard, Mythology of Star Wars, Ellison's Invisible Man, Rock and Global Culture, and Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full.

AMS 150 Introduction to American Culture: Arts and Values. Three hours.

Exploration of the relation between the arts — popular, folk, and elite — and American culture in four selected periods: Victorian America, the '20s and '30s, World War II and the Postwar Era, and the '60s. Class presentations and discussions revolve around novels, movies, slides, music, artifacts, and readings about the periods. This course, team-taught by all the members of the American studies faculty, is generally offered in the fall semester only.

AMS 151 Contemporary America. Three hours.

An analysis of the changing nature of American cultural values by examining the creative expression of the American people from the 1970s to the 1990. Students examine a variety of cultural "texts" selected from both elite and popular forms of expression in order to explore the values revealed, affirmed, disparaged, or altered by these works. Offered spring semester.

AMS 200 Special Topics. Three hours.

Selected American topics for lower-division undergraduate students offered by AMS faculty members or Americanists from related departments. Recent examples include Baseball in America, the Contemporary South, African-American Performance, Fields of Dreams, Popular Music in America, Southern Lives, Technology and Culture, The American Western, Lives in the Black South, The Asian American Experience, and The American Road.

AMS 201 Introduction to African-American Studies (same as AAST 201). Three hours.

AMS 205 American Lives. Three hours.

Lecture/discussion course focusing on individual American lives as they are expressed in the personal forms of autobiographies, oral histories, diaries, and letters in order to explore the ethnic, gender, class, and regional richness and diversity of the American experience. Offered fall semester.

AMS 206 American Character. Three hours.

Lecture/discussion class concerned with the question of an American national character. What are Americans like? Are there attitudes and values that are held in common? Major topics include individualism and the community, mobility and change, and materialism and the American Dream. Texts are drawn from classic American literature. Offered spring semester.

AMS 251 American Folklore. Three hours.

Survey and analysis of the processes, groups, and genres of folk culture in American life. Through ethnographic writing, film, and discussion, this course considers case studies of folktales, legends, humor, music, folk art, and custom as they function in folk groups.

AMS 270 Photography and American Culture. Three hours.

Investigation of the history of photography in America from 1839 to the present. Topics include the manner in which Americans and their varieties of experience have been recorded and defined through the works of photographers; the multiple social/economic uses of photography; the beginnings and evolution of the art-photography movement; and the medium's influences on how Americans have perceived the world.

AMS 271 Film and American Culture. Three hours.

Interdisciplinary investigation of American culture through motion pictures and film history. The emphasis is upon how this medium has influenced and reflected the needs, aspirations, and values of the American people.

AMS 279 Popular Music in America: Jazz and the American Popular Song. Three hours.

Interdisciplinary investigation of the American popular music tradition with a primary focus on the evolution of jazz, blues, and the popular song in the context of American culture. Technical musical skills and training are not required.

AMS 280 Popular Music in America: Rhythm and Blues and Rock. Three hours.

An interdisciplinary investigation of the American popular music tradition in its commercial rhythm and blues and rock and roll idioms. Emphasis is on the relationship between these unique forms of expression and American culture and character. Technical musical skills and training are not required.

Prerequisite for 300-level courses: 6 hours in the department or permission of the instructor.

AMS 300 Special Topics. Three hours.

Selected American topics for advanced undergraduate students, offered by Department of American Studies faculty members or Americanists from related departments. Examples: Jewish-American Literature, Mobility in America, The American Folk Revival, Jazz and Jazz Life, Lesbian and Gay Cultures, The American West, Divorce and Stepfamilies, American Hobo Subculture, Southern Iconoclasts, The Beatles Era, World War II — "The Good War," Interracial Intimacies, World War II and Modern Memory, Technology in American Culture, The Black Church, The Education of Southern Blacks, America between the Wars, and P.T. Barnum's America.

AMS 301 The African-American Experience (same as AAST 301). Three hours.

An interdisciplinary investigation of the complexities of the African-American experience in American culture. The course explores important comparative questions about race and gender relations, the American education system, and the human condition.

AMS 331 Writer and Artist in American Culture. Three hours.

Examination of the changing social and cultural background of American writers and artists during the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics will include the definition of the developing role of the artist in American culture, an assessment of the American and European influences on artists, and an appraisal of the influence of artists on American culture. Painting, literature, music, photography, and architecture are among the arts examined.

AMS 332 Popular Culture in America. Three hours.

The evolution of American popular culture since the late 18th century, considering the subject in its broad historical overview, defining and examining the origins of terms (popular culture, mass culture, elite culture, consumer society, culture producers, and culture consumers) and focusing in depth on historical examples that illuminate the content, forms, and functions of the popular culture of specific class, age, gender, and ethnic groups. Various media (theatre, movies, magazines, radio, television) and popular phenomena (manners, fashion, advertising, sport) are analyzed.

AMS 340 Women in the South. Three hours.

Examination of the cultural concepts, myths, and experiences of black and white Southern women from a variety of economic and social backgrounds. Special attention is given to the interaction of race, class, and gender in Southern women's lives. Texts include historical studies, autobiographies, biographies, oral histories, and novels written by and about women in the 19th- and 20th-century South.

AMS 350 The American Musical Theatre (same as TH 350). Three hours.

Prerequisite for 400-level courses: 12 hours in the department or permission of the instructor.

AMS 400 Internship. One to three hours.

Prerequisite: Permission of the departmental chairperson.

Offered pass/fail. An internship opportunity that combines independent study and practical fieldwork experience focusing on a particular problem or topic related to American culture and experience. Examples are internships in archival fieldwork, material culture fieldwork, museum management, and sound recordings, and internship with Alabama Heritage magazine. Credits earned in this course are not applicable to the major or minor in American studies.

AMS 403 Research Methods: American Studies and American Culture. Three hours.

Prerequisite: Sponsorship of a faculty member.

Internship opportunity that combines guided and independent study with on- or off-campus research experience involving a particular methodological approach to American culture and experience. Examples are social science methods, oral history, and original manuscript research.

AMS 405:406 Directed Study. One to three hours each semester.

Prerequisite: Sponsorship of a faculty member.

AMS 485 American Experience, 1620-1865. Three hours.

Prerequisites: AMS 150, AMS 205, and AMS 206 (concurrent registration acceptable), or permission of instructor.

An exploration of the formative years of the American cultural experience, from early European encounters with the New World to the attainment of continental nationhood. The course will draw upon insights from many disciplines and will include several kinds of cultural evidence (for example: literature, art, and photography; religious, political, and social thought and behavior; economic, technological, and geographical development) as well as consideration of recent major synthetic works of cultural scholarship. Topics covered include the growth of colonial societies; the Revolutionary movement and the political foundations of the American republic; the Market Revolution and the rise of middle-class culture; the antebellum South and the emerging West; and the origins and evolution of American cultural diversity. Offered fall semester.

AMS 486 American Experience, 1865-1960. Three hours.

Prerequisites: AMS 150, AMS 205, and AMS 206 (concurrent registration acceptable), or permission of instructor.

An exploration of the development of American cultural experience since 1865, focusing on the major material forces and intellectual currents that helped to shape American attitudes, assumptions, institutions, behavior, and values. The course will draw upon insights from many disciplines and will include several kinds of cultural evidence (for example: literature, art, and photography; religious, political, and social thought and behavior; economic, technological, and geographical development) as well as consideration of recent major synthetic works of cultural scholarship. Topics addressed and readings assigned are chosen to enlarge awareness of the transformation of America to a diverse, metropolitan, industrial society. These will include the relationship between nature and the city, the industrial revolution and changes in the workplace, immigration, changing class and gender relationships, the rise of leisure, and the development and triumph of modern corporate/consumer culture. Offered spring semester.

AMS 491 American Period Seminar. Three hours.

In-depth study of a particular period or era in American historical experience. Recent examples include the Ragtime Era, the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, the Season of 1954-55, the '60s, Contemporary America, the Romantic Revolutionaries (1905-14), the Postwar Era, American Avant Garde, the South and '30s Expression, the Civil Rights Movement, the '50s, the American '20s, and America between the Wars.

AMS 492 American Topic Seminar. Three hours.

Study of special topics within the American cultural experience. Recent examples include American Thought, Sports in American Life, American Perspectives on the Environment, Women in America, the Civil Rights Movement, the Picture Press, Music and Ethnicity, the Politics of Culture, Regionalism, the Changing American Family, Homelessness in America, American Autobiography, American Monuments, Southern Popular Culture, Politics and Culture, and Historical Memory.