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Aug 31, 2024
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Course Catalog 2023-2024 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Comparative American Studies Major
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Note(s) on Requirements
- Majors are strongly encouraged to complete at least one 300-level CAST course prior to enrolling in CAST 500 .
Declaring the Major
Students wishing to declare a comparative American studies major should meet with a potential advisor on the CAS faculty (may include courtesy faculty) or the department chair. In consultation with the advisor and using the Planning Document for CAS Majors , students will propose a program of study for review by the chair.
Cross-Referenced Courses and Petition Process
As Comparative American Studies is an inter- and multi-disciplinary field, we encourage students to take courses in other departments that can enhance and deepen their studies in the major/minor. Many courses in History, English, Sociology, and Politics, for example can be counted, and a comprehensive list can be found here. This resource indicates which concentration and methodological areas courses count for, and should be consulted carefully as students plan their course schedules. If a student is enrolled in or completed a course with substantial American Studies content that is not listed in the resource, they can petition to apply the class toward their major or minor. The process involves filling out the form found here as well as providing a syllabus to the department chair. Students should bear in mind that these requests are not always granted, so if they have any questions about particular courses, they should seek to resolve them before enrolling in the class or well before they complete it. Petitions should be filed no later than the end of the term after which they student has completed the class they wish to count. Honors in Comparative American Studies
Senior comparative American studies majors may conduct independent, original research or a creative project through the Honors Program in Comparative American Studies. Consideration for admission to the honors program takes place during the second semester of the junior year, by invitation of the department faculty or by self-nomination. Honors students must enroll in CAST 501 /502 CAST Senior Honors II (both semesters) and are exempt from the Research Seminar (CAST 500 ) requirement.
Students accepted for honors must normally have a 3.00 GPA in the college and a 3.25 major average at the beginning of the second semester of the junior year. They must have completed the following by the start of their senior year:
See the handbook for more detailed information about the honors program.
Detailed Major Requirements
Comparative American Studies Major Course Lists
Cultural Studies and Theory Courses
Return to the methodological breadth summary.
- AAST 101 - Introduction to Africana Studies
- AAST 171 / JAZZ 290 / MHST 290 - Introduction to African American Music I
- AAST 172 / JAZZ 291 / MHST 291 - Introduction to African American Music II
- AAST 234 - Africana Popular Culture
- AAST 248 - Resistance and Voice: Literature of the African Diaspora
- AAST 249 - Afrofuturism and Black Speculative Fiction: Black to the Future
- AAST 261 - Framing Blackness: African Americans and Film in The United States, 1915 to the Present
- AAST 263 / ENGL 263 - Black English and Voice: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
- AAST 264 / THEA 264 - African American Drama
- CAST 106 - The History of Rock: Race, Class, Gender, Place
- CAST 212 - Queer(ing) Media
- CAST 215 - Minor Feelings: An Introduction to Affect Studies
- CAST 217 - Transgender Literature: Transition, Narrative, and Desire
- CAST 229 - How We Look: Visualizing U.S. Identities
- CAST 245 - Asian American Experiments in Life Writing
- CAST 265 - Arab and Muslim American Studies
- CAST 284 - Disability and Queer Community Health in a Time of Pandemic
- CAST 309 - Performing America
- CAST 312 - Cultures of Surveillance
- CAST 313 - Archives and Affects
- CAST 315 - Brown TV
- CAST 317 - Transgender Cultural Studies
- CAST 319 - Sexual “Absences”
- CAST 382 - Afro-Asian America: Intraminority Connections in Historical Perspective
- CAST 416 - Taste the Nation: Culture, Consumption, and American Identities
- CMPL 347 / GSFS 347 - Sophistications: Queer Postwar New York-Paris Connections
- CMPL 365 / HISP 365 / JWST 365 - Love and Death: Jewish Literature and Culture of the Americas
- ENGL 104 - Supervidere: Surveillance Cultures of the American Canon
- ENGL 223 - Meaning and Being
- ENGL 253 / GSFS 253 - Pens and Needles: Gender and Media in Early America
- ENGL 254 - Nineteenth-Century New York: Writing the Modern City
- ENGL 258 - August Wilson: The Century Cycle
- ENGL 260 - Black Humor and Irony: Modern Literary Experiments
- ENGL 267 - Ethnic Experiments
- ENGL 277 / THEA 277 - American Drama
- ENGL 293 - Acquired Taste: Literature and Colonial American Foodways
- ENGL 330 - Modernist Chicago: Urban Literature and Sociology
- ENGL 343 - American Gothic
- ENGL 357 - Inventing America: Histories of the Book, Archive, and Empire
- ENGL 360 - The End: Globalization and Literature
- ENVS 219 - Climate Change
- ENVS 230 - Environmental Justice and Local Knowledge
- GSFS 204 / WRCM 205 - Rhetorics of Gender Non-Conformity
- GSFS 335 - Queering Prison Abolition and Transformative Justice
- MHST 222 - Hip-Hop History and Analysis
- WRCM 310 - Indigenous Rhetorics: Native American Narratives of Survivance
Concentration Area
Return to the summary of requirements.
Students must also fulfill a concentration area requirement with a minimum of 4 courses.
Within the concentration, students create an individual focus area on a topic, theme, or question. Students select classes that address their interests within a framework of course offerings designed to build conceptual and practical skills.
Concentrations in the Comparative American Studies represent distinct conceptual and scholarly directions within the field. They are:
- Identity and Diversity
- Examines categories of race, indigeneity, class, gender, sexuality, and/or ability
- Examines diversity within a single category, through categories like race, class, gender, sexuality and ability
- Uses theoretical concepts that emphasize a comparative understanding of social and cultural formation, like “racialized sexualities” or “racial formation”
- Globalization, Transnationalism, and Nation
- Uses the concepts of globalization and transnationalism to examine social and cultural diversity in the United States
- Situates U.S. in a global context through analysis of concepts such as empire or diaspora
- Explores the relationship of transnational social and cultural formations to state power and nationalism in relationship to the United States
- Histories and Practices of Social Change
- Evaluates pedagogy, research, and cultural production as catalysts for social change
- Examines race, class, gender, sexuality, indigeneity, ability and nation in relationship to efforts to affect social change
- Considers histories and strategies of particular social movements
Identity and Diversity Courses
Return to the concentration area summary.
- AAST 101 - Introduction to Africana Studies
- AAST 122 - Caribbean Survey: Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic: Indigenous to 1898
- AAST 123 - Caribbean Survey: Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic: 1898-1986
- AAST 171 / JAZZ 290 / MHST 290 - Introduction to African American Music I
- AAST 172 / JAZZ 291 / MHST 291 - Introduction to African American Music II
- AAST 202 - African American History Since 1865
- AAST 219 - Freedom Movements: Civil Rights and Black Power
- AAST 220 - Doin’ Time: A History of Black Incarceration
- AAST 228 - Katrina and Black Freedom Struggle
- AAST 231 - African American Politics
- AAST 234 - Africana Popular Culture
- AAST 248 - Resistance and Voice: Literature of the African Diaspora
- AAST 249 - Afrofuturism and Black Speculative Fiction: Black to the Future
- AAST 261 - Framing Blackness: African Americans and Film in The United States, 1915 to the Present
- AAST 263 / ENGL 263 - Black English and Voice: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
- AAST 264 / THEA 264 - African American Drama
- AAST 285 - African American Women’s History
- AAST 302 - Marxism and the Black Radical Tradition
- AAST 357 - Empire and Resistance in the Caribbean
- ANTH 227 - Medical Anthropology
- ANTH 416 - Race, Racism, and Human Variation in Global Perspective
- CAST 106 - The History of Rock: Race, Class, Gender, Place
- CAST 201 - Latinas/os in Comparative Perspective
- CAST 207 - Introduction to Queer Studies
- CAST 208 - Which American Life?
- CAST 210 - Sanctuary, Solidarity, and Latina/o/x Practices of Accompaniment
- CAST 212 - Queer(ing) Media
- CAST 215 - Minor Feelings: An Introduction to Affect Studies
- CAST 217 - Transgender Literature: Transition, Narrative, and Desire
- CAST 232 - History of Race in American Cities and Suburbs
- CAST 256 - Immigration in U.S. History
- CAST 260 - Asian American History
- CAST 270 - Latina/o History
- CAST 302 - American Agricultures
- CAST 309 - Performing America
- CAST 311 - Militarization of American Daily Life
- CAST 312 - Cultures of Surveillance
- CAST 313 - Archives and Affects
- CAST 315 - Brown TV
- CAST 317 - Transgender Cultural Studies
- CAST 318 - American Orientalism
- CAST 319 - Sexual “Absences”
- CAST 335 - Latinx Oral Histories
- CAST 339 - Indigenous Activism, Environmental Justice, and the State
- CAST 382 - Afro-Asian America: Intraminority Connections in Historical Perspective
- CAST 385 - Indigenous Nations, Treaty Rights, and the Great Lakes
- CAST 403 - Queer Trauma Narratives
- CAST 405 - Age of Fracture: The United States since 1973
- CAST 411 - Seminar: Ethnic and Racial Minority Mental Health
- CAST 416 - Taste the Nation: Culture, Consumption, and American Identities
- CAST 427 - Borderlands
- CMPL 347 / GSFS 347 - Sophistications: Queer Postwar New York-Paris Connections
- CMPL 365 / HISP 365 / JWST 365 - Love and Death: Jewish Literature and Culture of the Americas
- DANC 214 - Moving into Community
- ENGL 223 - Meaning and Being
- ENGL 253 / GSFS 253 - Pens and Needles: Gender and Media in Early America
- ENGL 258 - August Wilson: The Century Cycle
- ENGL 260 - Black Humor and Irony: Modern Literary Experiments
- ENGL 261 - Constructing the Subject: African American Women and Auto/Biography
- ENGL 293 - Acquired Taste: Literature and Colonial American Foodways
- ENGL 330 - Modernist Chicago: Urban Literature and Sociology
- ENGL 357 - Inventing America: Histories of the Book, Archive, and Empire
- ENGL 360 - The End: Globalization and Literature
- ENGL 379 - Welfare Queens and Tiger Moms: Narratives of the Maternal
- ENVS 230 - Environmental Justice and Local Knowledge
- GSFS 335 - Queering Prison Abolition and Transformative Justice
- HIST 227 - The History and Practice of Whiteness in the United States
- HIST 285 - American Indians: Pre-Columbus to the Present
- HIST 305 - Research Methods in Black Women’s Intellectual History
- HIST 376 - Westworlds: Research Seminar in Western History
- HIST 493 - Repairing the Past: Readings in Historical Justice
- MHST 222 - Hip-Hop History and Analysis
- POLT 281 - Interest Groups and American Democracy
- POLT 282 - Politics of Inequality in the United States
- POLT 370 - Race in Congress
- PSYC 310 - Advanced Methods in Racism and Asian American Mental Health
- PSYC 311 - Advanced Methods in Diversity Science
- PSYC 412 - Seminar in Asian American Psychology
- RELG 209 - The Bible in American Politics
- RELG 358 / JWST 358 - Religious Outsiders and the American State
- SOCI 203 / GSFS 203 - Sociology of Sexualities
- WRCM 205 / GSFS 204 - Rhetorics of Gender Non-Conformity
- WRCM 310 - Indigenous Rhetorics: Native American Narratives of Survivance
Globalization, Transnationalism, and Nation Courses
Return to the concentration area summary.
- AAST 101 - Introduction to Africana Studies
- AAST 122 - Caribbean Survey: Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic: Indigenous to 1898
- AAST 123 - Caribbean Survey: Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic: 1898-1986
- AAST 227 - Saint Domingue/Haiti in the Atlantic World
- AAST 248 - Resistance and Voice: Literature of the African Diaspora
- AAST 249 - Afrofuturism and Black Speculative Fiction: Black to the Future
- AAST 302 - Marxism and the Black Radical Tradition
- AAST 357 - Empire and Resistance in the Caribbean
- ANTH 416 - Race, Racism, and Human Variation in Global Perspective
- CAST 201 - Latinas/os in Comparative Perspective
- CAST 207 - Introduction to Queer Studies
- CAST 210 - Sanctuary, Solidarity, and Latina/o/x Practices of Accompaniment
- CAST 256 - Immigration in U.S. History
- CAST 260 - Asian American History
- CAST 270 - Latina/o History
- CAST 318 - American Orientalism
- CAST 335 - Latinx Oral Histories
- CAST 339 - Indigenous Activism, Environmental Justice, and the State
- CAST 385 - Indigenous Nations, Treaty Rights, and the Great Lakes
- CAST 427 - Borderlands
- ENGL 254 - Nineteenth-Century New York: Writing the Modern City
- ENGL 293 - Acquired Taste: Literature and Colonial American Foodways
- ENGL 357 - Inventing America: Histories of the Book, Archive, and Empire
- ENGL 360 - The End: Globalization and Literature
- ENGL 379 - Welfare Queens and Tiger Moms: Narratives of the Maternal
- POLT 228 - U.S. Foreign Policy
Histories and Practices of Social Change Courses
Return to the concentration area summary.
- AAST 101 - Introduction to Africana Studies
- AAST 122 - Caribbean Survey: Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic: Indigenous to 1898
- AAST 123 - Caribbean Survey: Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic: 1898-1986
- AAST 171 / JAZZ 290 / MHST 290 - Introduction to African American Music I
- AAST 172 / JAZZ 291 / MHST 291 - Introduction to African American Music II
- AAST 202 - African American History Since 1865
- AAST 219 - Freedom Movements: Civil Rights and Black Power
- AAST 220 - Doin’ Time: A History of Black Incarceration
- AAST 227 - Saint Domingue/Haiti in the Atlantic World
- AAST 228 - Katrina and Black Freedom Struggle
- AAST 231 - African American Politics
- AAST 248 - Resistance and Voice: Literature of the African Diaspora
- AAST 263 / ENGL 263 - Black English and Voice: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
- AAST 302 - Marxism and the Black Radical Tradition
- AAST 357 - Empire and Resistance in the Caribbean
- ANTH 227 - Medical Anthropology
- ANTH 416 - Race, Racism, and Human Variation in Global Perspective
- CAST 106 - The History of Rock: Race, Class, Gender, Place
- CAST 201 - Latinas/os in Comparative Perspective
- CAST 207 - Introduction to Queer Studies
- CAST 208 - Which American Life?
- CAST 212 - Queer(ing) Media
- CAST 215 - Minor Feelings: An Introduction to Affect Studies
- CAST 232 - History of Race in American Cities and Suburbs
- CAST 256 - Immigration in U.S. History
- CAST 260 - Asian American History
- CAST 270 - Latina/o History
- CAST 284 - Disability and Queer Community Health in a Time of Pandemic
- CAST 302 - American Agricultures
- CAST 309 - Performing America
- CAST 311 - Militarization of American Daily Life
- CAST 318 - American Orientalism
- CAST 319 - Sexual “Absences”
- CAST 335 - Latinx Oral Histories
- CAST 339 - Indigenous Activism, Environmental Justice, and the State
- CAST 382 - Afro-Asian America: Intraminority Connections in Historical Perspective
- CAST 385 - Indigenous Nations, Treaty Rights, and the Great Lakes
- CAST 403 - Queer Trauma Narratives
- CAST 405 - Age of Fracture: The United States since 1973
- ECON 430 - Economics of Poverty and Income Distribution
- ENGL 293 - Acquired Taste: Literature and Colonial American Foodways
- ENVS 219 - Climate Change
- ENVS 230 - Environmental Justice and Local Knowledge
- GSFS 335 - Queering Prison Abolition and Transformative Justice
- HIST 214 - Oberlin Oral History: Community-Based Learning & Research Practicum
- HIST 227 - The History and Practice of Whiteness in the United States
- HIST 238 - Slavery in the U.S.
- HIST 285 - American Indians: Pre-Columbus to the Present
- HIST 305 - Research Methods in Black Women’s Intellectual History
- HIST 407 - Civil War Era
- HIST 493 - Repairing the Past: Readings in Historical Justice
- MHST 222 - Hip-Hop History and Analysis
- POLT 116 - The Theory and Practice of Contemporary Left Politics
- POLT 219 - Work, Workers, and Trade Unions in Advanced Capitalist Societies
- POLT 281 - Interest Groups and American Democracy
- POLT 282 - Politics of Inequality in the United States
- POLT 284 - The American Right
- POLT 315 - Seminar: Future of Organized Labor
- POLT 370 - Race in Congress
- RELG 209 - The Bible in American Politics
- RELG 358 / JWST 358 - Religious Outsiders and the American State
- SOCI 241 - American Urbanism
- SOCI 314 - Unequal Educations
- WRCM 205 / GSFS 204 - Rhetorics of Gender Non-Conformity
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