Places available in honors course

There are still seats open in AMS 112 American Identities- Honors for fall. This will be an outstanding opportunity to work in a small-class setting with veteran AMS instructor Dr. Ray Pence. Click on the flyer for more.

AMS 550 in the summer- focus on sport

AMS majors will know that 550 is the capstone course in our program. AMS 550 provides every student with experience in doing research, and incorporates material on a particular theme depending on the instructor of the course. This summer, AMS 550 will be offered with the theme "Sports and American Culture," taught by Will Bishop. Since the fall section of AMS 550 is about full, if you are planning on graduating in 2010-11, you should seriously consider taking 550 in the summer. Click the flyer for details.

Study popular music this summer

More details on our summer offerings: doctoral student Pete Williams will be teaching AMS 100, which he calls the "popular music edition":

This course will introduce you to four major topics common to American Studies—nation, culture, difference, and power—as they relate to American popular music, past and present. Our studies of jazz, rap, country, rock, reggae, banda, punk, and other music will highlight the ways America is, and has always been, a continual negotiation among disparate voices, an interplay of dominant and marginal sounds that produces both harmony and discord. We’ll look at the many ways music plays into struggles over just what America is and just who is an American. You’ll be asked to participate through discussion, readings, short writing assignments, and a group project.

Click the flyer for more!

Chancellor Emeritus to teach for AMS

Chancellor Emeritus Robert Hemenway has joined the AMS faculty to offer a course this fall in Sport and Higher Education! Seating is extremely limited. Click the flyer for more.

New graduate course: US Ethnography

This new seminar on contemporary ethnographic research in the United States is open to all graduate students at KU. Ben Chappell, an anthropologist on the AMS faculty, has developed this course to help students prepare for their own field studies, write up completed research, or engage the ethnographic literature in an interdisciplinary project. Click the flyer for more.

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

AMS maintains a strong relationship with the program in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. This summer we will cross-list two courses taught by our graduate students in WGSS. Milton Wendland will offer Lesbian and Gay Cultures in the U.S. at the Edwards campus- click the flyer above for more. Back in Lawrence, Chris Robinson will offer Gender in American Popular Music. Chris says:

This course will examine the importance of, and the roles that gender, femininity and masculinity have played in shaping numerous aspects of 20th Century American popular music. We will study gender in relation to hip hop and rap, rock, country music, jazz, blues, and other genres. Central to this course will be how gender roles and perceptions are socially constructed and perpetuated in American culture. The intersectionality of race and gender will also play a central part in this course. This course will also place gender, masculinity and femininity in social and historical context. Power, politics and economics also play crucial roles in shaping the discourse surrounding musicians, their music, and American cultural conceptions of gender. This interdisciplinary course will draw on methods, disciplines and approaches including history, musicology, gender and race theory, English, African American Studies, Jazz Studies, semiotics and material culture studies.

Both courses are listed as AMS 344.

AMS rolling out new courses

Students and friends of AMS, be sure to check this space for announcements of new courses for the coming academic year.