(3 cr.)

Tu/Th 5:30 - 6:45 p.m.

This is the gateway course into the interdisciplinary American
Studies undergraduate curriculum.  Using movies and music, novels
and news broadcasts, essays and blogs, students will compare ideas
about citizenship, national identity, and the social contract in the
broader Americas, focusing on the most basic building blocks of
culture and the formal terms of membership in civil society.  What
we want to figure out is who we are, and to whom do we offer our
political, cultural and moral loyalties as democratic citizens.  Our
explorations will rotate around the concept of identity: What makes
us "Americans"?  How do we define "America"?  How does national
identity compete with, or relate to, other forms of identity, like
social status or class, religious association, gender and sexuality,
and racial or cultural description?