AAS 267, African American Literature, is a survey course that will take us from the early days of enslavement to the present. We will read, analyze, and discuss literary texts written by African Americans, paying particular attention to the political, historical and social context that informs these texts.

Welcome to Africana Folklore. This course explores the oral, customary and material folklore of Africans and their descendants in the Americas and the Caribbean. We will use readings and films to examine various ways West African folklore was transmitted to and survived in the New World, and how Africans in the Americas created new oral, customary and material traditions. We will compare and contrast fictional and historical folk characters from Africa, the Northern and Southern American hemispheres, with a special focus on the English, Spanish and French-speaking Caribbean. We will examine some of the customs and practices that continue to exist in those regions and how all have contributed to global culture. In addition to required readings, there will also be weekly writing exercises. This course is designed to help prepare you for further academic study in general, and African, African-American and Caribbean studies, specifically. It will introduce you to the various disciplines that inform the study of people of African descent worldwide.

Examines in detail the works of several American authors. Through close readings of poetry, novels, or plays, subject addresses such issues as literary influence, cultural diversity, and the writer's career. Topic: American Women Authors. This subject, crosslisted in Literature and Women's Studies, examines a range of American women authors from the seventeenth century to the present. It aims to introduce a number of literary genres and styles- the captivity narrative, slave novel, sensational, sentimental, realistic, and postmodern fiction- and also to address significant historical events in American women's history: Puritanism, the American Revolution, industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth century, the Harlem Renaissance, World War II, the 60s civil rights movements. A primary focus will be themes studied and understood through the lens of gender: war, violence, and sexual exploitation (Keller, Rowlandson, Rowson); the relationship between women and religion (Rowlandson, Rowson, Stowe); labor, poverty, and working conditions for women (Fern, Davis, Wharton); captivity and slavery (Rowlandson, Jacobs); class struggle (Fern, Davis, Wharton, Larsen); race and identity (Keller, Jacobs, Larsen, Morrison); feminist revisions of history (Stowe, Morrison, Keller); and the myth of the fallen woman (take your pick). Essays and inclass reports will focus more particularly on specific writers and themes and will stress the skills of close reading, annotation, research, and uses of multimedia where appropriate. A classroom electronic archive has been developed for this course and will be available as a resource for images and other media materials.

This course provides a basic history of American social, economic, and political development from the colonial period through the Civil War. It examines the colonial heritages of Spanish and British America; the American Revolution and its impact; the establishment and growth of the new nation; and the Civil War, its background, character, and impact. Readings include writings of the period by J. Winthrop, T. Paine, T. Jefferson, J. Madison, W. H. Garrison, G. Fitzhugh, H. B. Stowe, and A. Lincoln.

This course will be a thematic exploration of culture and transformation in two distinct non-US and non-European areas. We will discuss the meanings of culture and ways cultures are studied and portrayed. We will explore the major drivers for cultural change in the modern world such as colonization, modernization, development, and globalization. We will use two case studies to examine important themes related to cultural transformation such as gender, race and ethnic relations, religion, nationalism, power relations, cultural encounter, and constructions of tradition and modernity.

Welcome to The Heritage of Imperialism. This course offers an examination of the thought, structure, operation and results of imperialism in human history generally, and in the 19th/21st centuries in particular.

We will use readings and films to examine European/American imperialism in the non-white areas of the world: the role of the Industrial Revolution; the imposition of Western European institutions on indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, North/South America; colonialism; attempts by these people to reestablish autonomous sociological and cultural system

Provides an introduction to legal and institutional arrangements for the establishment, transfer, and control over property under US and selected comparative systems including India and South Africa. Situates the debate about property in the context of international development and planning. Examines the relationship to the use of land by individuals, entities, communities, and the State through "private" and "public" regulation. Emphasis on efficient resource use, institutional, entitlement, and cultural approaches to property, distribution, and other social aspects, and the relationship between property, culture, and democracy. This course is designed to offer an advanced introduction to key legal issues that arise in the area of property and land-use in American law, with a comparative focus on the laws of India and South Africa. The focus of the course is not on law itself, but on the policy implications of various rules, doctrines and practices which are covered in great detail. Legal rules regulating property are among the most fundamental to American, and most other, economies and societies. The main focus is on American property and land use law due to its prominence in international development policy and practice as a model, though substantial comparative legal materials are also introduced from selected non-western countries such as India and South Africa.

This course explores the history of the ideal of personal freedom with an eye towards contemporary debates over the pros and cons of the regulatory state. The first part of the course surveys the sociological and theological sources of the concepts of freedom and civil society, and introduces liberty's leading relatives or competitors: property, equality, community, and republicanism. The second part consists of a series of case studies in the rise of modern liberty and libertarianism: the abolition of slavery, the struggle for religious freedom, and the twentieth-century American civil liberties movement. In the last part of the course, we take up debates over the role of libertarianism vs. the regulatory state in a variety of contexts: counter-terrorism, health care, the financial markets, and the Internet.

This course uses readings and discussions to focus on a series of short-term events that shed light on American politics, culture, and social organization. It emphasizes finding ways to make sense of these complicated, highly traumatic events, and on using them to understand larger processes of change in American history. The class also gives students experience with primary documentation research through a term paper assignment.

Intensive study of a range of texts by a single author or by a limited group of authors whose achievements are mutually illuminating. Some attention to narrative theory, and biographical and cultural backgrounds. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic: Joyce's Ulysses and Its Legacy.

Intensive study of a range of texts by a single author or by a limited group of authors whose achievements are mutually illuminating. Some attention to narrative theory, and biographical and cultural backgrounds. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic: Joyce's Ulysses and Its Legacy. This seminar looks at two bestselling nineteenth-century American authors whose works made the subject of slavery popular among mainstream readers. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain have subsequently become canonized and reviled, embraced and banned by individuals and groups at both ends of the political and cultural spectrum and everywhere in between.

This art history video looks at Joseph Mallord William Turner" "Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On" from 1840. Oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.Senior Contributing AuthorsP. Scott Corbett, Ventura CollegeVolker Janssen, California State University, FullertonJohn M. Lund, Keene State CollegeTodd Pfannestiel, Clarion UniversityPaul Vickery, Oral Roberts UniversitySylvie Waskiewicz

This class is a survey course in United States History to 1865. You will find links to the lecture outlines on the menu above. Each lecture covers a key topic in US History. There is no need to purchase any course material. We will be using an online textbook, The American Yawp. I’ve posted a link on the tool bar above. If you would like a hard copy of the textbook, you can purchase a copy directly from Stanford University Press.

U.S. History is designed for a two-semester American history sequence. It is traditional in coverage, following a roughly chronological outline, and using a balanced approach that includes political, economic, social, and cultural developments. At the same time, the book includes a number of innovative and interactive features designed to enhance student learning. Instructors can also customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Analyze the role slavery played in the history and economy of the British Empire
Explain the effects of the 1739 Stono Rebellion and the 1741 New York Conspiracy Trials
Describe the consumer revolution and its effect on the life of the colonial gentry and other settlers

This course surveys the increasing interaction between communities, as the barrier of distance succumbed to both curiosity and new transport technologies. It explores Western Europe and the United States' rise to world dominance, as well as the great divergence in material, political, and technological development between Western Europe and East Asia post–1750, and its impact on the rest of the world. It examines a series of evolving relationships, including human beings and their physical environment; religious and political systems; and sub-groups within communities, sorted by race, class, and gender. It introduces historical and other interpretive methodologies using both primary and secondary source materials.

Studies the relation between imaginative texts and the culture surrounding them. Emphasizes ways in which imaginative works absorb, reflect, and conflict with reigning attitudes and world views. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Fall: Ethical Interpretation. Topic for Spring: Women Reading, Women Writing.