Courses

Courses by semester

Courses for Spring 2024

Complete Cornell University course descriptions are in the Courses of Study .

Course ID Title Offered
AMST1139 FWS: Topics in American Studies
The American Studies Program offers an interdisciplinary engagement with what America means in the United States and in a global context. Faculty encourage students to look at the histories and cultures of the changing United States as a question still in need of answering and as an experiment still in process, not as a dream fully realized. We use multiple perspectives and methodologies and require that students synthesize knowledge in ways that develop the skills needed for rigorous, complex analysis. Topics vary by section.

Full details for AMST 1139 - FWS: Topics in American Studies

Fall, Spring.
AMST1312 History of Rock Music
This course examines the development and cultural significance of rock music from its origins in blues, gospel, and Tin Pan Alley up to alternative rock and hip hop. The course concludes with the year 2000.

Full details for AMST 1312 - History of Rock Music

Spring.
AMST1500 Introduction to Africana Studies
At the inception of this department at Cornell University in 1969, the Africana Studies and Research Center became the birthplace of the field "Africana studies." Africana studies emphasizes comparative and interdisciplinary studies of Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and other diasporas. In this course, we will look at the diverse contours of the discipline. We will explore contexts ranging from modernity and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and plantation complex in the New World to processes of decolonization and globalization in the contemporary digital age. This course offers an introduction to the study of Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and other diasporas. This course will examine, through a range of disciplines, among them literature, history, politics, philosophy, the themes - including race/racism, the Middle Passage, sexuality, colonialism, and culture - that have dominated Africana Studies since its inception in the late-1960s. We will explore these issues in an attempt to understand how black lives have been shaped in a historical sense; and, of course, the effects of these issues in the contemporary moment. This course seeks to introduce these themes, investigate through one or more of the disciplines relevant to the question, and provide a broad understanding of the themes so as to enable the kind of intellectual reflection critical to Africana Studies.

Full details for AMST 1500 - Introduction to Africana Studies

Fall, Spring.
AMST1601 Indigenous Issues in Global Perspectives
This course attends to the contemporary issues, contexts and experiences of Indigenous peoples. Students will develop a substantive understanding of colonialism and engage in the parallels and differences of its histories, forms, and effects on Indigenous peoples globally. Contemporary Indigenous theorists, novelists, visual artists and historians have a prominent place in the course, highlighting sociocultural and environmental philosophies, critical responses to and forms of resistance toward neocolonial political and economic agendas and the fundamental concern for Indigenous self-determination, among other topics. We will not only examine the history of victimization of indigenous peoples through colonial oppression, but we will also study their response as agents of change in providing alternative paradigms and insights to humanity in the third millennium.

Full details for AMST 1601 - Indigenous Issues in Global Perspectives

Spring.
AMST1802 Introduction to Latinos in U.S. History
This course seeks a fuller recounting of U.S. history by remapping what we understand as "America." We will examine traditional themes in the teaching of U.S. history—territorial expansion and empire, migration and nation building, industrialization and labor, war and revolution, and citizenship and transnationalism—but we will examine this "American experience" in a broader hemispheric context and include as actors americanos of Spanish, Mexican, Caribbean, and Central/South American ancestries.

Full details for AMST 1802 - Introduction to Latinos in U.S. History

Spring.
AMST1986 Disasters! A History of Colonial Failures in the Atlantic World, 1450-1750
This course provides an overview of disastrous attempts at colonization in the Americas from ca. 1500 through ca. 1760. Over thirteen weeks, we will engage with the question of why some attempts at colonization failed and why some succeeded. We will also explore other early modern failures, from bankrupt monopoly trade companies to ill-fated buccaneer communities and entire cities destroyed by earthquakes and hurricanes. Exploring failures, rather than successes, will help students understand the contingent process of colonial expansion as well as the roles of Indigenous dispossession, African slavery, and inter-imperial trade networks to the success or failure of early modern colonies. Over the course of the semester, my lectures will cover broad themes in failed enterprises, while students will read several monographs and primary-source collections on specific disasters. Some central questions include: Why did some colonies fail and other thrived? What role did social factors like gender, race, and class play in colonial failures? What can we learn about colonialism and imperialism through a focus on when those processes ended in disasters?

Full details for AMST 1986 - Disasters! A History of Colonial Failures in the Atlantic World, 1450-1750

Spring.
AMST2000 Introduction to Visual Studies
This course provides an introduction to modes of vision and the historical impact of visual images, visual structures, and visual space on culture, communication, and politics. It examines all aspects of culture that communicate through visual means, including 20th-century visual technologies—photography, cinema, video, etc., and their historical corollaries. The production and consumption of images, objects, and events is studied in diverse cultures. Students develop the critical skills necessary to appreciate how the approaches that define visual studies complicate traditional models of defining and analyzing art objects.

Full details for AMST 2000 - Introduction to Visual Studies

Spring.
AMST2001 The First American University
Educational historian Frederick Rudolph called Cornell University "the first American university," referring to its unique role as a coeducational, nonsectarian, land-grant institution with a broad curriculum and diverse student body. In this course, we will explore the history of Cornell, taking as our focus the pledge of Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White to found a university where "any person can find instruction in any study." The course will cover a wide range of topics and perspectives relating to the faculty, student body, evolution of campus, and important events and eras in Cornell history. Stories and vignettes will provide background on the current university and its administrative structure, campus traditions, and the names that adorn buildings and memorials throughout campus. Finally, the course will offer a forum for students to address questions on present-day aspects of the university.

Full details for AMST 2001 - The First American University

Spring.
AMST2023 Fighting for Our Lives: Black Women's Reproductive Health and Activism in Historical Perspective
This course centers Black women who have often described their reproductive health experiences as "fighting for our lives." While grounded in an exploration of Black women 's experiences in the US, this course also looks across the diaspora to issues of access, rights, and equity in reproductive health. Deeply inspired by the field of Black Feminist Health Science Studies, a field that advocates for the centrality of activism in healthcare and its importance for Black women's overall health and well-being, this course examines how issues of gender, race, class, ability, and power intersect to inform how reproductive health is conceptualized, practiced, and experienced. Ultimately, this course will yield a deeper understanding of how Black women have transformed existential and literal threats on their lives into a robust terrain of community-based activism and a movement for reproductive justice. We will read across a range of texts and genres from the historical and theoretical, to memoir and documentary. With what we learn together, we will craft contributions to public debates around healthcare issues impacting Black women.

Full details for AMST 2023 - Fighting for Our Lives: Black Women's Reproductive Health and Activism in Historical Perspective

Spring.
AMST2105 The American Musical
The musical is a distinct and significant form of American performance. This course will consider the origins, development, and internationalization of the American musical and will emphasize the interpenetration of the history of musical theatre with the history of the United States in the 20th century and beyond. We will investigate how political, social, and economic factors shape the production of important American musicals-and how, in turn, musicals shape expressions of personal identity and national ideology. Key texts include Oklahoma, Guys and Dolls, West Side Story, Hair, and Rent.

Full details for AMST 2105 - The American Musical

Spring.
AMST2152 (Im)migration and (Im)migrants: Then and Now
How are migration dynamics produced? How do states and communities respond to and shape complex migration processes? This course will draw on the United States as a case study, focusing on Latino immigrants. Latinos are by far the largest immigrant group in the U.S., representing about 50% of all immigrants. Additionally, the U.S. has historically received the largest number of immigrants in the world. The class will examine the main debates around migration in fields such as Latino studies, migration studies, and political science. We begin with a historical and contemporary survey of global and regional migration trends. Next, we will review theories explaining why people migrate and how countries manage migration processes. We then focus on the U.S. immigration apparatus, examining past and present changes, including migration public policies. Central to this class is the exploration of multiple systems of marginalization that shape the opportunities, material conditions, and lived experiences of immigrants in the U.S. We conclude with an exploration of historical and contemporary migrant-led forms of resistance, such as the Immigrant Rights Movement, and its linkages to other transnational struggles for social justice.

Full details for AMST 2152 - (Im)migration and (Im)migrants: Then and Now

Spring.
AMST2212 The U.S. Empire
What is the American empire? Is empire even the right word to describe U.S. power in the world today or in the past? If so, is the American empire formal or informal, and is the United States a reluctant superpower or a belligerent hegemon? When did the empire begin? And is it in decline today? In addressing these questions, this seminar will offer an in-depth look at key moments in the history of the United States and its foreign relations, ranging from the American revolutionary war and historians' debates about the founders' thinking in relation to empire; the "imperial moment" of 1898, when the United States acquired overseas colonies for the first time; the beginnings of the national security state in 1917 with the entry of the United States into the First World War; the "American Century", or the post-World War II years when the United States was the most powerful nation in the world; and the era of unipolarity after the end of the Cold War and which culminated in the Wars on Terror. Throughout, we will draw upon primary and secondary sources to examine the ideas and practices which have shaped U.S. foreign relations, including continental expansion, the frontier, imperial anticolonialism, the open door, covert operations, extraordinary rendition, police action, and more. Taking both a chronological and thematic approach, this class offers an examination of the past in order to understand some of the key issues facing the United States, and the world, today.

Full details for AMST 2212 - The U.S. Empire

Spring.
AMST2581 Environmental History
This lecture course serves as an introduction to the historical study of humanity's interrelationship with the natural world. Environmental history is a quickly evolving field, taking on increasing importance as the environment itself becomes increasingly important in world affairs. During this semester, we'll examine the sometimes unexpected ways in which "natural" forces have shaped human history (the role of germs, for instance, in the colonization of North America); the ways in which human beings have shaped the natural world (through agriculture, urbanization, and industrialization, as well as the formation of things like wildlife preserves); and the ways in which cultural, scientific, political, and philosophical attitudes toward the environment have changed over time. This is designed as an intensely interdisciplinary course: we'll view history through the lenses of ecology, literature, art, film, law, anthropology, and geography. Our focus will be on the United States, but, just as environmental pollutants cross borders, so too will this class, especially toward the end, when we attempt to put U.S. environmental history into a geopolitical context. This course is meant to be open to all, including non-majors and first-year students.

Full details for AMST 2581 - Environmental History

Spring.
AMST2635 A Haunted House Divided: The American Gothic Tradition in Nineteenth-Century Literature
This course looks at the American Gothic tradition as showing us the fissures in early American political life specifically around the issues of slavery and Native American land rights. While Gothic literature is often relegated to the role of entertainment, it also reveals the ways in which American culture was, as Toni Morrison writes in Playing in the Dark, "shaped by the presence of the racial other." The Gothic also offers a space through which to offer not just clever observations but scathing critiques by augmenting the sense of the monstrous underlying grand sentiments of American Exceptionalism.

Full details for AMST 2635 - A Haunted House Divided: The American Gothic Tradition in Nineteenth-Century Literature

Fall or Spring.
AMST2645 Race and Modern US History
This course surveys modern U.S. history, from Reconstruction to the contemporary period. It will examine how race has been the terrain on which competing ideas of the American nation have been contested. From struggles over citizenship rights to broader meanings of national belonging, we will explore how practices, ideas, and representations have shaped political, cultural, and social power. A key concern for this course is examining how groups and individuals have pursued racial justice from the late-nineteenth century to the present.

Full details for AMST 2645 - Race and Modern US History

Spring.
AMST2650 Introduction to African American Literature
This course will introduce students to African American literary traditions in the space that would become North America. From early freedom narratives and poetry to Hip-Hop and film, we will trace a range of artistic conventions and cultural movements while paying close attention to broader historical shifts in American life over the past three centuries. We'll read broadly: poetry, fiction, speculative fiction, newspapers, and the like. We will ask: How do authors create, define, and even exceed a tradition? What are some of the recurring themes and motifs within this tradition? Authors may include: Phillis Wheatley, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, and Eve Ewing. This course satisfies the Literatures of the Americas requirement for English majors.

Full details for AMST 2650 - Introduction to African American Literature

Fall or Spring.
AMST2660 Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong: Unlearning Native American History
One thing many Americans think they know is their Indians: Pocahontas, the First Thanksgiving, fighting cowboys, reservation poverty, and casino riches. Under our very noses, however, Native American history has evolved into one of the most exciting, dynamic, and contentious fields of inquiry into America's past. It is now safer to assume, as Comanche historian Paul Chaat Smith has pointed out, that everything you know about Indians is in fact wrong. Most people have much to "unlearn" about Native American history before true learning can take place. This course aims to achieve that end by (re)introducing students to key themes and trends in the history of North America's indigenous nations. Employing an issues-oriented approach, the course stresses the ongoing complexity of Native American societies' engagements with varieties of settler colonialism since 1492 and dedicates itself to a concerted program of myth-busting. As such, the course will provide numerous opportunities for students to develop their critical thinking and reading skills.

Full details for AMST 2660 - Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong: Unlearning Native American History

Spring.
AMST2710 America's Promise: Social and Political Context of American Education
This course is a blending of the Sociology of Education and Public Policy. Front and center in this course is the question of why consistent differential educational and economic outcomes exists in American society. We explore the broad sociological functions of schooling (socialization, sorting, caretaking, training) as well as local, state, and federal policies and court decisions.

Full details for AMST 2710 - America's Promise: Social and Political Context of American Education

Spring.
AMST2790 Jewish Films and Filmmakers: Hollywood and Beyond
What does it mean to call a film is "Jewish"? Does it have to represent Jewish life? Does it have to feature characters identifiable as Jews? If artists who identify as Jews—actors, directors, screenwriters, composers—play significant roles in a film's production does that make it Jewish? Our primary point of entry into these questions will be Hollywood, from the industry's early silent films, through the period generally considered classical, down to the present day. We will also study films produced overseas, in countries that may include Israel, Egypt, France, Italy, and Germany. Our discussions will be enriched by contextual material drawn from film studies, cultural studies, Jewish studies, American studies, and other related fields. Students will be expected to view a significant number of films outside of class—an average of one per week—and engage with them through writing and in-class discussion. The directors, screenwriters, composers, and actors whose work we will study may include: Charlie Chaplin, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Billy Wilder, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Aviva Kempner, Joan Micklin Silver, the Marx Brothers, and the Coen Brothers.

Full details for AMST 2790 - Jewish Films and Filmmakers: Hollywood and Beyond

Spring.
AMST3112 Congress and the Legislative Process
The course will be a lecture course on Congress, introducing them to the political science literature on the topic and the major research questions and approaches. We will examine the development of the institution, including formal theories for congressional organization as well as historically and politically oriented accounts of rule changes, committee power, and party influence. We will also look at the determinants of legislative productivity and gridlock, approaches to measuring and analyzing congressional behavior, the changing role of the electoral connection, and the causes and consequences of polarization.

Full details for AMST 3112 - Congress and the Legislative Process

Spring.
AMST3131 The Nature, Functions, and Limits of Law
A general-education course to acquaint students with how our legal system pursues the goals of society. The course introduces students to various perspectives on the nature of law, what functions it ought to serve in society, and what it can and cannot accomplish. The course proceeds in the belief that such matters constitute a valuable and necessary part of a general education, not only for pre-law students but especially for students in other fields. Assigned readings comprise legal materials and also secondary sources on the legal process and the role of law in society. The classes include discussion and debate about current legal and social issues, including equality, safety, the environment, punishment, and autonomy.

Full details for AMST 3131 - The Nature, Functions, and Limits of Law

Spring.
AMST3161 The American Presidency
This course will explore and seek explanations for the performance of the 20-21st century presidency, focusing on its institutional and political development, recruitment process (nominations and elections), relationships to social groups, economic forces, and "political time."  We will also analyze the parameters of foreign & domestic policy making.

Full details for AMST 3161 - The American Presidency

Spring.
AMST3248 Finger Lakes and Beyond: Archaeology of the Native Northeast
This course provides a long-term overview of the indigenous peoples of Cornell's home region and their neighbors from an archaeological perspective.  Cornell students live and work in the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, or Six Nations Iroquois, and this class will help residents to understand the deep history of this place. We will examine long-term changes in material culture, settlement, subsistence, and trade; the founding of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy; indigenous responses to European and American colonization; the practicalities of doing indigenous-site archaeology in New York State; and contemporary indigenous perspectives on archaeology. Visits to local archaeological sites and museum collections will supplement classroom instruction.

Full details for AMST 3248 - Finger Lakes and Beyond: Archaeology of the Native Northeast

Spring.
AMST3380 Urban Inequality
This is a course on urban inequality in the United States. The first half of the semester will be dedicated to understanding the political, historical, and social determinants of inequality in America's cities. Politically and socially, cities face unique challenges. Municipalities lack much formal authority to resolve issues that arise within their borders, and their populations are highly heterogeneous in terms of ethnicity, race, and social class. In the second half of the course, we will investigate a number of contemporary facets of urban inequality in-depth, such as residential segregation, urban schooling, immigration, and suburban sprawl.

Full details for AMST 3380 - Urban Inequality

Fall.
AMST3463 Contemporary Television
This course considers issues, approaches, and complexities in the contemporary television landscape. As television has changed drastically over the past fifteen years, this course provides students with a deeper understanding of the changes in narratives, technologies, forms, and platforms that structure/restructure the televisual world. Students will grapple with how "new media" forms such as web-series and on-demand internet streaming services have changed primetime television. We will balance our look at television shows with nuanced readings about the televisual media industry. By watching, analyzing, and critiquing the powerful medium of television, students will situate their understanding within a broader consideration of the medium's regulation, production, distribution, and reception in the network and post-network era.

Full details for AMST 3463 - Contemporary Television

Spring.
AMST3616 Podcast, Radio, Gramophone: Literary Technologies of Sound
How can we account for the contemporary popularity of podcasts? In what ways do they build on, and break from, earlier forms of writing for the ear? In this class we will study innovative podcast fictions like Welcome to Night Vale, Forest 404, and Homecoming together with pathbreaking aural works of the 20th century, from The War of the Worlds to John Cage's Roaratorio and albums by the Firesign Theatre. We will consider the new opportunities and challenges of the podcasting medium, making our own recordings along the way. And we will look at well-known authors — from James Joyce and Dylan Thomas to Ursula Le Guin and Amiri Baraka — who experimented with then-new technologies like the gramophone, radio, audiotape, LP, headphones, the Walkman, and more. 

Full details for AMST 3616 - Podcast, Radio, Gramophone: Literary Technologies of Sound

Fall or Spring.
AMST3617 Cornell Hip-Hop Collective
This course is open to experienced rappers, beatmakers, and vocalists interested forging collaborative relationships with other students. Taking as a foundation hip-hop's relationship to social justice, each semester we will work together to plan and record an EP on a theme or keyword chosen as a group. We will construct and analyze playlists of inspirational material, identifying specific hip-hop compositional strategies for creating beats and rhymes on a theme, and will use these tools to create and workshop our own collaborative tracks in weekly meetings. Please contact the instructor to audition.  

Full details for AMST 3617 - Cornell Hip-Hop Collective

Fall, Spring.
AMST3629 After Nature: Art and Environmental Imagination
This course looks at what it means to make art in, of, and after nature, and asks how that art might contribute to shaping the world we live in. Tracing a trajectory from the collection and display of natural history specimens to views of European and American landscapes to contemporary artists who address ecological crises, the course offers both a history of landscape in western art and a study of environmental imagination. We will further explore how nature is represented on Cornell's campus, including in the Johnson Museum, the Lab of Ornithology and the Botanic Gardens. This course includes opportunities to creatively reflect on our personal relationship to nature through hands-on activities. Students from all disciplines are welcome to engage with themes including natural curiosities, parks and gardens, ideas of wilderness, the picturesque, environmental preservation, earth works, and the "post-natural."

Full details for AMST 3629 - After Nature: Art and Environmental Imagination

Spring.
AMST3632 U.S. Literature and the End of the American Century
What is (or was) American empire? This course examines U.S. literature from WWII to the early 21st century. This period has been termed the "American century" because of the U.S.'s dominant role in shaping global politics and culture, a dominance backed by military interventions abroad and the rise of the police state at home. How do the era's writers negotiate and challenge the police, military, and imperial powers of the U.S. state? We will place fiction, poetry, and essays in conversation with historical documents and policies, asking how literature has imagined an end to the American century.

Full details for AMST 3632 - U.S. Literature and the End of the American Century

Fall or Spring.
AMST3687 The US and the Middle East
This seminar examines the history of the United States' involvement with Middle East beginning with evangelical efforts in the 19th century and President Wilson's engagement with the colonial powers in the early 20th century during and after WWI. The discovery of vast Middle Eastern oil reserves and the retreat of the colonial powers from the region following WWII drew successive US administrations ever deeper into Middle Eastern politics. In due course the US became entrenched in the post-colonial political imagination as heir to the British and the French especially as it challenged the Soviet Union for influence in the region during the Cold War. And that only takes the story to the mid-1950s and the Eisenhower administration. Our discussions will be based on secondary readings and primary sources as we interrogate the tension between realist and idealist policies toward the Middle East and trace how these tensions play out in subsequent developments including the origins and trajectory of the US strategic alliances with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey and conflict with Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the two Gulf Wars.

Full details for AMST 3687 - The US and the Middle East

Spring.
AMST3752 Black Women and Material Culture
This course invites students to consider how Black women interacted with material objects and how these artifacts informed the contexts of their daily lives. the history of Black women as creators, consumers, and collectors of artifacts tells a story about American society, culture, and the contributions of Black women's labors and ideas to the production and meaning of material culture across time. From the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, Black women experienced layered relationships to artifacts, some of which they were forced to create under the system of chattel slavery and others they encountered through the prisms of desire and liberation. these varied contexts that inform Black women's connections to material and visual objects shape how they assign meaning to these artifacts and their cultural significance. Students will engage with course themes through research-based curatorial projects that introduce them to public history and digital history methods. The course will conclude with the development of a digital archive focused on curating the history of Black women's experiences with material culture.

Full details for AMST 3752 - Black Women and Material Culture

Spring.
AMST3785 Civil Disobedience
This course examines controversies in the theory and history of civil disobedience. Do citizens have obligations to obey unjust laws? Can law breaking ever be civil rather than criminal? Do disruptive protests endanger democracy or strengthen the rule of law? How do acts of protest influence public opinion and policy? How is the distinction between violence and nonviolence politically constructed and contested? We will study classical writings and contemporary scholarship in pursuit of answers to these questions and related debates concerning the rule of law, conscientious objection, the uses of civility and incivility, punishment and responsibility, as well as whistleblowing, direct action, strikes, sabotage, hacktivism, and rioting.

Full details for AMST 3785 - Civil Disobedience

Spring.
AMST3820 Poetry and Poetics of the Americas
As globalization draws the Americas ever closer together, reshaping our sense of a common and uncommon American culture, what claims might be made for a distinctive, diverse poetry and poetics of the America? How might we characterize its dominant forms and alternative practices? What shared influences, affiliations, concerns and approaches might we find and what differences emerge? Ranging across North and South America, Central America and the Caribbean, this course will place in conversation such figures as Poe, Stein, Eliot, Pound, Williams, Neruda, Vallejo, Borges, Parra, Césaire, Walcott, Bolaño, Espada, Waldrop, Vicuña, Hong, and Rankine.

Full details for AMST 3820 - Poetry and Poetics of the Americas

Spring.
AMST3885 Race and War in History: Workers, Soldiers, Prisoners, Activists
Across twentieth-century history, race and war have been dynamic forces in shaping economic organization and everyday livelihoods. This course will approach labor and working-class history, through a focus on global war as well as 'wars at home.' Racial and warfare events often intersect—in the histories of presidents and activists, business leaders and industrial workers, CIA agents and police, soldiers and prisoners, American laborers abroad and non-Americans migrating stateside. In this course, we'll consider how race and war have been linked—from the rise of Jim Crow and U.S. empire in the 1890s, to the WWII 'Greatest Generation' and its diverse workplaces, to Vietnam and the civil rights movement, to the Iraq wars and immigrant workers, to debates about what has been called a 'military-industrial complex' and a 'prison-industrial complex'.

Full details for AMST 3885 - Race and War in History: Workers, Soldiers, Prisoners, Activists

Spring.
AMST3911 Science in American Politics
This course reviews the changing relations between science, technology, and the state in America, focusing on the period from 1960 to the present. We will explore science-intensive policy controversies. We will also look at how science and technology are used in different institutional settings, such as Congress, the court system, and regulatory agencies. Among other issues, we will examine the tension between the concept of science as an autonomous system for producing knowledge and the concept of science as entangled with interest groups.

Full details for AMST 3911 - Science in American Politics

Spring.
AMST3980 Independent Research
Affords opportunities for students to carry out independent research under appropriate supervision. Each student is expected to review pertinent literature, prepare a project outline, conduct the research, and prepare a report. Topic and credit hours TBD as arranged between faculty and student.

Full details for AMST 3980 - Independent Research

Fall, Spring.
AMST3990 Readings in American Studies
Individualized readings for junior and senior students. Topics, requirements, and credit hours will be determined in consultation between the student and the supervising faculty member.

Full details for AMST 3990 - Readings in American Studies

Fall, Spring.
AMST4021 American Conservative Thought
American conservative thought rests on assumptions that are strikingly different from those made by mainstream American liberals.  However, conservative thinkers are themselves committed to principles that are both quite varied and sometimes contradictory.  This course examines the assumptions upon which rest the libertarian, market/economic, and cultural/traditional strains of American conservatism and asks whether the tensions between them weaken or strengthen conservative thought as an alternative to mainstream liberalism.

Full details for AMST 4021 - American Conservative Thought

Spring.
AMST4023 Black and Indigenous Histories
What does it mean to be Black and Indigenous? For much of United States history, at least, to be Black and Indigenous was a legal if not social impossibility. Even as societies around the world have embraced the pluralism of multiraciality Black-Indigenous peoples have found themselves largely absent from both historical and contemporary conversations surrounding blackness and indigeneity. This course does the important work of excavating the histories of Black and Indigenous peoples in the Americas. We will do so by examining case studies alongside the writing and artwork of Black-Indigenous figures in order to understand more about the relationships, politics, and meanings of Black-Indigenous identity.

Full details for AMST 4023 - Black and Indigenous Histories

Spring.
AMST4109 The Practice and Theory of Public History: Slavery and Self-Emancipation in US History
This course will offer students the opportunity to both study and shape the ways in which US public culture attempts to remember and forget some of the most contentious aspects of American history: racialized slavery, Black resistance to it, and the legacy of both.

Full details for AMST 4109 - The Practice and Theory of Public History: Slavery and Self-Emancipation in US History

Spring.
AMST4111 The Historical Geography of Black America
This course provides students with a challenging and interdisciplinary examination of race and space in North American history. It engages public history and critical geographic study through the lens of African Diasporic place-making from the early national period to the present day. How did Afro-descendant people in North America come to know the landscape and fashion communities around wilderness, swamps, urban cores and other "undesirable" areas? What material elements of black spaces came to define what is meant by slums and ghettos? This course illustrates how ongoing struggles that Black communities face with displacement and gentrification are part of a long history that developed alongside territorial expansion and nation building that charted uneven paths to prosperity based on race, gender, and class. This course is timely given that there are about 1,912 sites listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places Database as having significance to "Black" heritage and will help students develop their facilities for assigning meaning to these identified sites and what place these spaces have in the understanding of American history.

Full details for AMST 4111 - The Historical Geography of Black America

Spring.
AMST4218 History of the United States Senate
This course will offer students an opportunity to view the process of shaping national debates from the perspective of the United States Senate. The modern Senate will serve as the point of reference for an inquiry into the development of the institution's powers under the Constitution during the past 200 years. Class readings, lectures and discussions will focus on the themes of continuity and change, the role of individual senators, and the institutional evolution of the Senate. In addition to general class reading and written examinations, each student will write a short paper and participate in an oral presentation.

Full details for AMST 4218 - History of the United States Senate

Fall, Spring.
AMST4283 Latino Politics as Racial Politics
What are the social, policy, and political needs of the diverse Latino community? This seminar delves into the politics of resistance and solidarity of Latinxs/Hispanics in North America, with a primary focus on the U.S. political system. We commence by examining conceptual categorizations and definitions of the Latina/o/x population, pondering whether Latin@s should be regarded as a racial or ethnic group. Then, we follow with a historical survey of Latino migration to the U.S. and analyze how interlocking systems of oppression shape the material conditions and lived experiences of Latin@/x people. Ultimately, we conclude by analyzing Latino collective action to understand how they organize at the local, national, and transnational levels to confront systems of inequality. The class takes a relational approach, focusing on political and ethnoracial relations and their effects on U.S. political institutions and public policy. Themes we will explore encompass (im)migration, interethnic/racial relations, neoliberalism, mass incarceration and settler colonialism, and social movement's effects on policy outcomes.

Full details for AMST 4283 - Latino Politics as Racial Politics

Fall.
AMST4521 Gender, Memory, and History in Twentieth Century Fiction
This seminar will investigate the narrative uses of history and memory in US fiction, focusing particularly on the impact of gender on these representations. How do US writers use history in their fiction, and to what ends? What are the effects on drawing on received historical narratives? What challenges does the attempt to represent a historical event pose for a writer of fiction and how might the author negotiate those challenges? Is History a gendered category and, if so, would "male" and "female" and "trans" histories be narrated differently? We will look at the effects of constructing one's own history to fill a void in the received historical narrative, exploring the relationship between history (or History) and memory as well as the fictional representations of that relationship.

Full details for AMST 4521 - Gender, Memory, and History in Twentieth Century Fiction

Fall.
AMST4674 Dispossession, Truth, and Reconciliation
The dispossession of Indigenous nations by Europeans represents the foundation of the past five centuries of North American history. Yet the truth of that history remains cloaked behind various Western legal-religious justifications for the dispossession of lndigenous American populations by Europeans (i.e., terra nullius, the Doctrine of Discovery, the right of conquest, and Manifest Destiny). Through analysis of primary texts and up-to-date historical and legal scholarship, students in this course will unpack these still-thriving tropes of settler-colonial justification for dispossession, assess the true impact of the taking of Indigenous lands, and explore prospects for meaningful reconciliation in the present.

Full details for AMST 4674 - Dispossession, Truth, and Reconciliation

Spring.
AMST4681 Cages and Creativity: Arts in Incarceration
This course explores the increasing presence of all the arts in prisons throughout the country and examines the increasing scholarship surrounding arts programs and their efficacy for incarcerated persons. The course uses video's, archival material, reading material and in-person or Zoom interviews to investigate how and why art is taught in prisons. The course will also look at art produced by incarcerated artists as well as art by those who are still practicing after going home. And finally, the course will explore the increasing scholarship around the impact practicing the arts while incarcerated has on recidivism rates and preparation for re-entry.

Full details for AMST 4681 - Cages and Creativity: Arts in Incarceration

Fall, Spring.
AMST4683 Disturbing Settlement - Engaged
How have land and its inhabitants been transformed through processes of settlement? How might alternatives to settlement persist and be reactivated in ecologies profoundly shaped by capitalism and colonialism? In this course, students will work with a community partner to develop a research-based design project that explores how a specific plant or animal has been affected by processes of settler colonial capitalism. Students will conduct in-depth interviews with community partners and regularly consult with them as they work to articulate a problem and create a design concept in response. Final projects will be grounded in ethnographic research, but students will be also encouraged to brainstorm outside the realm of the possible or the practical to engage in imaginations of alternatives.

Full details for AMST 4683 - Disturbing Settlement - Engaged

Spring.
AMST4994 Honors Essay Tutorial II
To graduate with honors, AMST majors must complete a senior thesis under the supervision of an AMST faculty member and defend that thesis orally before a committee. Students interested in the honors program should consult the AMST Director of Undergraduate Study during the junior year and submit an honors application by May 1 of the junior year.

Full details for AMST 4994 - Honors Essay Tutorial II

Offered on demand.
AMST5710 America's Promise: Social and Political Context of American Education
Examines the goals, roles, inputs, and outcomes of schooling in American society, and the policy environment in which schools operate. Analyzes controversies and tensions (e.g., equity, market forces, state control) surrounding public education at local, state, and federal levels. Includes current and historical, urban, and rural issues and problems.

Full details for AMST 5710 - America's Promise: Social and Political Context of American Education

Spring.
AMST6109 The Practice and Theory of Public History: Slavery and Self-Emancipation in US History
This course will offer students the opportunity to both study and shape the ways in which US public culture attempts to remember and forget some of the most contentious aspects of American history: racialized slavery, Black resistance to it, and the legacy of both.

Full details for AMST 6109 - The Practice and Theory of Public History: Slavery and Self-Emancipation in US History

Spring.
AMST6111 The Historical Geography of Black America
This course provides students with a challenging and interdisciplinary examination of race and space in North American history. It engages public history and critical geographic study through the lens of African Diasporic place-making from the early national period to the present day. How did Afro-descendant people in North America come to know the landscape and fashion communities around wilderness, swamps, urban cores and other "undesirable" areas? What material elements of black spaces came to define what is meant by slums and ghettos? This course illustrates how ongoing struggles that Black communities face with displacement and gentrification are part of a long history that developed alongside territorial expansion and nation building that charted uneven paths to prosperity based on race, gender, and class. This course is timely given that there are about 1,912 sites listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places Database as having significance to "Black" heritage and will help students develop their facilities for assigning meaning to these identified sites and what place these spaces have in the understanding of American history.

Full details for AMST 6111 - The Historical Geography of Black America

Spring.
AMST6248 Finger Lakes and Beyond: Archaeology of the Native Northeast
This course provides a long-term overview of the indigenous peoples of Cornell's home region and their neighbors from an archaeological perspective.  Cornell students live and work in the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, or Six Nations Iroquois, and this class will help residents to understand the deep history of this place. We will examine long-term changes in material culture, settlement, subsistence, and trade; the founding of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy; indigenous responses to European and American colonization; the practicalities of doing indigenous-site archaeology in New York State; and contemporary indigenous perspectives on archaeology. Visits to local archaeological sites and museum collections will supplement classroom instruction.

Full details for AMST 6248 - Finger Lakes and Beyond: Archaeology of the Native Northeast

Spring.
AMST6674 Dispossession, Truth, and Reconciliation
The dispossession of Indigenous nations by Europeans represents the foundation of the past five centuries of North American history. Yet the truth of that history remains cloaked behind various Western legal-religious justifications for the dispossession of lndigenous American populations by Europeans (i.e., terra nullius, the Doctrine of Discovery, the right of conquest, and Manifest Destiny). Through analysis of primary texts and up-to-date historical and legal scholarship, students in this course will unpack these still-thriving tropes of settler-colonial justification for dispossession, assess the true impact of the taking of Indigenous lands, and explore prospects for meaningful reconciliation in the present.

Full details for AMST 6674 - Dispossession, Truth, and Reconciliation

Spring.
AMST6683 Disturbing Settlement - Engaged
How have land and its inhabitants been transformed through processes of settlement? How might alternatives to settlement persist and be reactivated in ecologies profoundly shaped by capitalism and colonialism? In this course, students will work with a community partner to develop a research-based design project that explores how a specific plant or animal has been affected by processes of settler colonial capitalism. Students will conduct in-depth interviews with community partners and regularly consult with them as they work to articulate a problem and create a design concept in response. Final projects will be grounded in ethnographic research, but students will be also encouraged to brainstorm outside the realm of the possible or the practical to engage in imaginations of alternatives.

Full details for AMST 6683 - Disturbing Settlement - Engaged

Spring.
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