Spring 2016
Content
AFOLK 202 Section 001
Instructor:
Introduction to Folklore (ANTH/ENGL 202)
Gaddis, E.
MW 8:00 - 8:50
SPRING 2016
Maximum Enrollment: 80tot
Session:
al
Folklorists seek to understand how people interpret and make sense of the world. The study of folklore asks how, in a
world flooded with commercial and highly refined cultural products, people use those particular materials that they
themselves create and re-shape in order to express who they are, where they belong, and what they value. In this
course we will look at diverse forms (or “genres”) of folklore, including song, architecture, legend, and food. We will
consider how vernacular expressive culture is learned, what it does for people, and why these processes and products
persist through time and space. Students will be introduced to the discipline of Folklore’s central research methodology,
ethnography, and have an opportunity to practice that approach in individual and group research projects.
This course is cross-listed with ENGL/ANTH 202.
Note: Students enrolling in FOLK 202-001 are also required to enroll in one recitation section numbered FOLK 202-601
through FOLK 202-604.
AFOLK 202 Section 601
Instructor:
TA
AFOLK 202 Section 602
Instructor:
TA
AFOLK 202 Section 603
Instructor:
TA
AFOLK 202 Section 604
Instructor:
TA
AFOLK 340 Section 001
Instructor:
Hinson, G
Introduction to Folklore (ANTH/ENGL 202)
Maximum Enrollment: 20tot
al
Session:
Introduction to Folklore (ANTH/ENGL 202)
Maximum Enrollment: 20tot
al
Session:
Introduction to Folklore (ANTH/ENGL 202)
Maximum Enrollment: 20tot
al
Session:
Introduction to Folklore (ANTH/ENGL 202)
Maximum Enrollment: 20tot
al
Session:
Southern Culture (ANTH 340)
Maximum Enrollment: 15
Session:
3:30-4:20
R
SPRING 2016
5:00-5:50
R
SPRING 2016
8:00-8:50
F
SPRING 2016
10:10-11:00
F
SPRING 2016
TR 11:00-12:15
SPRING 2016
A journey into the worlds of Southern meaning, exploring aesthetics, faith, race, class, gender, and the politics of culture.
In this class, students explore culture through semester-long, group-based fieldwork projects.
AFOLK 375 Section 001
Instructor:
Ferris, M.
Food in American Culture (AMST 375)
Maximum Enrollment: 40
Session:
MW 1:25-2:15
SPRING 2016
Open seats are reserved for Juniors, Sophomores, and Freshmen.
"Cooking Up a Storm: Exploring Food in American Culture"
This course examines the cultural history and meaning of food in America. We will explore how food shapes national,
regional, and personal identity. We will consider how region, gender, ethnicity, class, race, religion, the media, global
politics, and corporate America affect the food we eat. We will discuss food as both a source of healing and a source of
conflict, and the ways in which it impacts community, from the American family to the ¿national family.¿ Students will
examine a variety of sources including cook books, recipes, journalism, film, literature, art, photography, and artifacts to
develop an understanding of food in American culture
AFOLK 487 Section 001
Instructor:
Sawin, P.
Everyday Stories (Engl 487)
Maximum Enrollment: 35tot
al
Session:
TR 9:30-10:45
SPRING 2016
To be human is to tell stories and to feel the pull of the stories others tell. These days we have almost limitless access to
stories offered in the highly produced, dramatized versions of TV and movies, yet other—personal and/or traditional—
narrative forms continue to fascinate. In daily informal communication we craft stories to recount and make sense of our
own experience. Traditional fairytales allow us to revel in the fanciful while exploring our fondest dreams or deepest
fears. Legends and rumors straddle the divide between the known and the uncertain, engaging us in a debate over what
to believe and what is believable. Some stories encapsulate what is unique about a particular time, place, person, or
culture. Others, found with variations in widely separated places and times, challenge us to consider the source of such
ubiquitous appeal. Through telling and listening to stories we share knowledge, figure out who we are and what we might
become, debate what really happened, stretch our imaginations, and internalize some cultural norms while challenging
others. We encounter these stories in daily face-to-face encounters, in their iteration and transformation in TV and film,
and, increasingly, shared through new social media. In this course we ask: What is the appeal of these three classic
kinds of stories: personal narratives, legends, and folktales? What makes a "good" story? What is “traditional” about
stories transformed so many times in so many contexts? Why do we come back time and again to familiar tropes and
patterns? What clues hint at implicit meanings not evident on the surface? Students will collect stories shared in person
or in mediated contexts and learn how to choose among and apply the most relevant theoretical perspectives to reveal
their evolving significance.
This course is cross-listed with ENGL 487.
AFOLK 490 Section 001
Instructor:
Berlinger, G.
Urban Folklore: Graffiti, Gods, and Gardens
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
MW 11:15-12:30
SPRING 2016
How can we understand the relationship between distinctive features of urban environments and the folk traditions and
expressive forms found in those settings? Through the lens of urban folklore and the work of academic and public sector
folklorists working in American cities, this course explores the impact of the urban setting on folk traditions: the creation of
communities around ethnicity, sexuality, and specialized interests; the ways in which space in the city is contested and
negotiated; the atmospheres in which traditions and customs juxtapose and blend; the customizing of mass culture; and
the processes through which cultural and religious geographies are mapped onto the city’s landscape. Students will
explore what anthropologists have termed cultural performances (Clifford Geertz) and social dramas (Victor Turner)
through case studies and community fieldwork. While cultural performances often take the form of regularly recurring
celebrations, commemorations, definitional ceremonies, or playful symbolic inversions, social dramas arise around flash
points or crises—racial violence, natural disasters, political upheavals—that concern the life of urban communities. We
will use our local cities as laboratories in which to examine how stories, children's games, community festivals, public art,
music, dance and other expressive forms enable city residents to interact with natural and built environments and
transform spaces into places that hold meaning. Students will conduct field research into an urban tradition and develop
skills in documentation, interviewing, ethnography, and interpretation.
AFOLK 560 Section 001
Instructor:
Ferris, B.
Southern Literature and the Oral Tradition
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
TR 8:00-9:15
SPRING 2016
Class will meet at:
Center for the Study of the American South
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
410 East Franklin Street, CB # 9127
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-9127
Graduate students enrolling in this course will also meet 9:30-10:30 on Tuesdays.
This course focuses on Southern writers and explores how they use oral traditions in their work. We will discuss the
nature of oral tradition and how its study can provide a methodology for understanding Southern literature. We will
consider how specific folklore genres such as folktales, sermons, and music are used by Southern writers, and we will
discuss how such genres provide structure for literary forms such as the novel and the short story.
The seminar begins by exploring the nature of folklore and how its study has been applied to both oral and written
literature. We will then consider examples of oral history and how they capture the southern voice. We will discuss how
nineteenth century slave narratives by Harriet Ann Jacobs and Frederick Douglass and works by Tennessee Williams and
Mark Twain deal with local color and black and white southern voices. After these readings, w
AFOLK 670 Section 001
Instructor:
Seidman, R.
Introduction to Oral History (HIST 670)
Maximum Enrollment: 7
W
3:35-6:05
Session:
FOLK 670 Introduction to Oral History (HIST 670). Introduces students to the uses of interviews in historical research.
Questions of ethics, interpretation, and the construction of memory will be explored, and interviewing skills will be
developed through field work.
AFOLK 860 Section 001
Instructor:
Hinson, G.
The Art of Ethnography (Anthro 860)
Maximum Enrollment: 12
Session:
TR 2:00-3:15
SPRING 2016
To many, the combination of the terms "art"--with its implications of creativity and aesthetic engagement--and
"ethnography"--the practice of engaged community study, with the end of deeper cultural understanding--might seem a bit
odd. But this layering speaks rather pointedly to the ways we'll approach ethnography in this graduate seminar, treating it
as more than mere process and skill, and as more than just research and writing. Ethnography--as a process based in
conversation and the search for shared understanding--is inherently creative. It's always a "making," an enacting that
begins with conversations in the "field," moves into domains of intimate sharing and mutual realization, and eventually
finds voice in various forms of artful representation. All these realms of enactment involve a host of choices that
ethnographers and their consultants creatively make throughout the course of their engagement. In the field, these
choices encompass such matters as with whom to speak; how to present oneself in that speaking; how and with whom to
craft bonds of collaboration; how to offer oneself as student, friend, and colleague; how to enact an ethic of caring and
equity; and how to measure one's emergent understanding. In crafting the representation, choices involve what to include
and what to leave out; when to give voice to consultants and when to speak for self; how to frame and how to order and
how to story. In these arenas of dialogue and subjective choice lies the art in ethnography.
This seminar invites students to journey from the classroom to the community to practice this art and to investigate the
complexities of community meaning. Over the course of the semester, we will both explore various fieldwork techniques
and wrestle with the entanglements of ethnographic representation. Since the only way to "learn" how to "do" this is to
actually enter the field, we will each be planning, conducting, and reporting on a semester-long field project; in so doing,
we'll craft collaborative partnerships with both our consultants in the community and our peers in the classroom.
AJWST 697 Section 001
Instructor:
Berlinger, G.
The Material Life of Jewish America
Maximum Enrollment: 15
Session:
3:00-5:30
W
SPRING 2016
This upper-level seminar examines how American Jews think about, interact with, animate, and display objects in
contemporary life—in the public realm, in cultural institutions, in religious spaces, and in the home. What makes an object
“Jewish”? And what is the role of the object’s maker or user in that process? Through the lens of material culture, we
examine how the creation, interpretation, consumption, re-purposing, and display of “Jewish” material culture reflect
notions of identity, historical experience, cultural condition, and social value. What are the individual and collective
narratives about ordinary and sacred artifacts of American Jewish life? What are the symbolic meanings of these
everyday and extraordinary objects? Aside from the significance of the objects themselves, what can we understand from
the actions of the objects’ users—how they eat, collect, arrange, wear, speak to, carry, kiss, or even bury their objects?
We will analyze ritual architecture, ceremonial objects, head coverings, clothing, jewelry, shoes, cookbooks, souvenirs,
food, and other expressions of material culture in the contexts of festivals, museums, sacred spaces, popular culture
venues, and domestic spaces. Drawing from the fields of folklore, anthropology, American Studies, Jewish studies,
religious studies, and museum studies, we will consider how makers and users of these materials negotiate the various
meanings of these objects within the domains of prayer, performance, entertainment, and exhibition, and how history,
memory, intention, and belief shape those meanings. This class includes field trips, guest speakers, and fieldwork-based
research.
AMST 061 Section 001
Instructor:
Willis, R.
First-Year Seminar: Navigating the World through
Maximum Enrollment: 24
Session:
MW 11:15-12:30
SPRING 2016
PREREQUISITES:
*First-year students only.
REGISTRATION PROCEDURES:
*First-year students who are not enrolled in a fall 2015 FYS will register online when their registration appointment begins.
*First-year students who enrolled in a Fall 2015 FYS will be able to enroll in a spring 2016 FYS beginning Monday,
November 16.
ABOUT THE SEMINAR:
This first year seminar is designed to better prepare students for future international travel, research, service, and work
opportunities while understanding the implications of national identity and action in a global environment. Using group
projects, collaborative field study, and individual proposal writing, we will explore a wide range of issues. Differences in
geography, politics, religion, culture, gender roles, and more will be considered as students intensely develop individual
plans for foreign travel, study, and work using readings, class exercises, documentary video and photography, and
interviews. There will be a special focus on transportation systems and other forms of infrastructure that impact navigating
places, people, and information. In addition, the class will have specialized access to professional resources to help
identify funding sources for travel. Students will be individually guided through the fellowship application process of
researching international travel opportunities and writing a competitive travel proposal and budget.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Rachel A. Willis is a Senior Fellow at the Global Research Institute and Associate Professor of American Studies and
Economics at UNC. She has won numerous awards including the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in
Teaching, the Student Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the Robert Sigmon Award for Service Learning. Her teaching
methods incorporate innovative field study, collaborative assignments and experiential learning through events and
programs outside of the classroom. Her research focuses broadly on access to work and in recent years have focused on
the impact of climate change on transportation infrastructure in port cities.
AMST 201 Section 001
Instructor:
Robinson, M.
Literary Approaches to American Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 30
Session:
TR 2:00-3:15
SPRING 2016
This course provides an overview of the interdisciplinary methods of American Studies and contemporary approaches to
the study of American society and culture, with an emphasis on literary works. In addition to a variety of short stories and
essays and one or two novels that cover the span of the twentieth century, our examination of American life will center on
four historical moments. In past semesters, we have covered such diverse subjects as the Spanish-American War and the
U.S. occupation of the Philippines; representations of marriage and consensual governance in Hollywood zombie movies
of the 1930s and 40s; the cultural impact of the Beat Generation and the commodification of “beatnik” culture; the AIDS
epidemic and gay and lesbian political activism in the 1980s; and representations of globalization and new religious
movements in late 20th century science fiction. Athletes and other human beings welcome.
AMST 202 Section 001
Instructor:
Kotch, S.
Historical Approaches to American Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
TR 2:00-3:15
SPRING 2016
This course invites you to explore American history and culture through the voices of those who lived it. Moving forward
from the slave era to the recent past, you will approach American history through narratives as expressed in oral histories,
original writing, photographs, music, and film. These narratives will introduce the human voice, and more broadly human
expression, into American history and allow you to explore its major problems, from issues of race, gender, class and
other identities; to the influence of memory and context on our understandings of our history; to the reliability of different
versions of the past and how to evaluate authenticity, reality, and truth—should it exist—in a historic context..
AMST 203 Section 001
Instructor:
Cobb, D.
Approaches to American Indian Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
MW 3:35-4:50
SPRING 2016
AMST 203 introduces students to the fundamentals of American Indian and Indigenous Studies—from theoretical
orientations and source materials to research methodologies and means of reporting. The course begins with an
exploration of the field’s origins and evolution. Then, throughout the semester, we will learn about the approaches
adopted by archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, literary scholars, and specialists in law. You will gain a critical
introduction to the questions asked by individuals working in these fields and to the “raw materials” of their various “ways
of knowing,” including ethnographic interviews, oral histories, archival materials, artifacts, maps, language, place, forms of
expressive culture, and material objects. Still more exciting, you will be learning directly from the outstanding American
Indian and Indigenous Studies faculty at the University of North Carolina and a few special guests. Rather than merely
listening to others talk, however, you will also apply the insights and techniques about which you are learning in the
context of a research project.
AMST 211 Section 001
Instructor:
Engelhardt, E.
Approaches to Southern Studies: The Literary and
Maximum Enrollment: 80
Session:
MW 8:00-8:50
SPRING 2016
In the past, to discuss the South, we would first define the borders of the region, and theorize about what makes the
South distinctive. The "old" map of the South traditionally referred to the eleven states of the former Confederacy, but
today, these rigid borders are more fluid. The South "is found wherever southern culture is found," existing "as a state of
mind both within and beyond its geographical boundaries." Beyond the question of what constitutes the South's borders,
a new vision of Southern Studies challenges conventional tropes of southern identity. The "new Southern Studies"
considers landmarks of southern identity other than the Civil War, Reconstruction, and barbecue. Rather than the old
white and black South, the "new Southern Studies" recognizes the diverse cultures and ethnicities of the South, whose
global influences have shaped the region in powerful ways for centuries.
In this gateway course to the study of the American South, students will examine southern cultural identity, recognizing
the contributions of all its people, including men and women of American Indian, African, Latino, Asian, and European
descent. Students will consider the region in all its complexity through a multi-disciplinary conversation about the
American South that considers art, archaeology, architecture, cultural tourism, ecology, folklife, foodways, geography,
history, language, literature, material culture, myth and manners, music, politics, religion, values, and more. Throughout
the semester, students will meet and work with scholars from our university community who study the region from a
variety of disciplines and perspectives.
Course assignments will expose students to the unsurpassed resources of UNC's Southern Historical Collection,
Southern Folklife Collection, the North Carolina Collection, and the Southern Oral History Program, as well as southern
collections at UNC's Ackland Museum of Art, and other cultural and historical institutions in the region. Students will be
encouraged to explore local cultural "repositories," to taste the flavors of southern foodways, and to attend regional art
happenings, lectures, literary readings, musical performances, and folklife events.
AMST 211 Section 601
Instructor:
TA
AMST 211 Section 602
Instructor:
TA
AMST 211 Section 603
Instructor:
TA
AMST 211 Section 604
Instructor:
TA
Approaches to Southern Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
Approaches to Southern Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
Approaches to Southern Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
Approaches to Southern Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
8:00-8:50
F
SPRING 2016
10:10-11:00
F
SPRING 2016
11:15-12:05
F
SPRING 2016
12:30-1:45
R
SPRING 2016
AMST 220 Section 001
Instructor:
Holland
On the Question of Animals: Contemporary Animal
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
MW 3:35-4:50
SPRING 2016
What is it about animals that so intrigue us? What are our ethical responsibilities to other animal species on this planet?
What do we truly know about dogs, horses or cats? Why should we care? This course is an introduction to the discipline
of "Animal Studies" in American Studies work. This course defines the “literary” very broadly and will also include readings
in philosophy (morals/ethics), history and critical theory. We will read work from dog and horse trainers, get an inside look
at the workings of North Carolina barn culture and explore the history of the American racetrack. We will read works by
Temple Grandin (animal science), Donna Haraway (feminist theory), Arthur Bradford (short story), Bill Barich (sports
writer), Kathy Rudy (gender studies), Katherine Mooney (historian), Cary Wolfe (posthumanism) and Peter Singer (animal
advocacy), among others.
AMST 233 Section 001
Instructor:
Cobb, D.
Native American History: The West (HIST 233)
Maximum Enrollment: 80
Session:
MW 1:25-2:15
SPRING 2016
AMST/HIST 233 explores the lifeways and historical experiences of the many and diverse peoples indigenous to North
America’s trans-Mississippi West. My goal is to make unfamiliar the familiar story of declension and defeat. We will begin
by investigating the peopling of this space through stories of creation, migration, evolution, and change. We will then
focus on the multifaceted encounters between Natives and newcomers from the sixteenth through the late nineteenth
centuries. While not shying away from colonialism’s punishing consequences, we will attend closely to stories of
innovation, resistance, adaption, and survival. Readings this semester include Josh Reid’s The Sea is My Country,
Jennifer Denetdale’s Reclaiming Dine History, Pekka Hamalainen’s The Comanche Empire, and Colin Calloway’s “Our
Hearts Fell to the Ground.” Through the accumulation of new knowledge about Native people, students will gain an
appreciation for the diversity and durability of indigenous lifeways and come to realize that the past is not past. Whether
we realize it or not, we live it everyday.
AMST 233 Section 601
Instructor:
TA
AMST 233 Section 602
Instructor:
TA
AMST 233 Section 603
Instructor:
TA
AMST 233 Section 604
Instructor:
TA
Native American History: The West
Maximum Enrollment: 10
Session:
Native American History: The West
Maximum Enrollment: 10
Session:
Native American History: The West
Maximum Enrollment: 10
Session:
Native American History: The West
Maximum Enrollment: 10
Session:
9:05-9:55
F
SPRING 2016
10:10-11:00
F
SPRING 2016
12:30-1:45
R
SPRING 2016
5:00-6:15
R
SPRING 2016
AMST 284 Section 001
Instructor:
Herman, B.
Visual Culture
Maximum Enrollment: 100
Session:
TR 3:30-4:45
SPRING 2016
We live in a time and place that is saturated with images. We cannot walk down the street, turn on a television, log onto
the internet, open a book, order a meal, text a friend without an unrelenting barrage of images. There are so many images
that we encounter in every waking moment of every day that we tend not to think of them, letting the visual world wash
over us without reflection or criticism. Of course, if we tried to account for every visual moment and every visual element,
we’d all be crazy. Thus, not only do we live in a visual world, we constantly edit it through a process of selective
awareness and cultivated blindness. Visual Culture investigates the ways in which we express and grasp meaning
through images. We cross boundaries looking at objects ranging from the fine arts to advertising to film to comics to
websites and much more. This course provides the critical tools to scrutinize, navigate, and understand the visual worlds
we inhabit.
AMST 285 Section 001
Instructor:
Willis, R.
AMST 340 Section 001
Instructor:
Bauer, Brooke
Access to Work in America (ECON 285)
Maximum Enrollment: 24
Session:
American Indian Art and Material Culture through
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
3:35-6:25
M
SPRING 2016
MWF 3:35-4:25
SPRING 2016
This course examines American Indian art and material culture through interdisciplinary perspectives. Throughout the
course students will gain a greater understanding of the role that the arts play in the social, cultural, and political life of
American Indian peoples. This course will also explore a number of questions: What is the relationship between art and
American Indian identities? How have Native artists negotiated various markets and audiences for their works? Over the
course of the term students will read, discuss, and write about a number of objects and texts. In addition to articles and
book chapters we will read
·
·
·
·
·
Arthur Amiotte, Transformation and Continuity in Lakota Culture: The Collages of Arthur Amiotte,
1988-2014 (Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2014).
Janet Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips, Native North American Art, Second Edition (Oxford: Oxford
University Press 2015).
Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum (New York: Harper Collins, 2005).
Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (New York
Oxford University Press, 2010).
Brian Bibby, Precious Cargo: California Indian Cradle Baskets and Childbirth Traditions (Berkley:
Heyday Books, 2004).
AMST 350H Section 001
Instructor:
Allen, B.
Main Street Carolina
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
TR 3:30-4:45
SPRING 2016
This course has several interlocking goals: (1) to develop a deeper understanding of the history of everyday life in North
Carolina, and, by extension, in the American South over the last 125 years; (2) to develop a deeper understanding of the
evolution of urban space in N.C., and, by extension in the U.S., especially in the years between 1880 and 1930; (3) to
develop skills in the use of archival materials in the above; (4) to explore the use of digital technologies for identifying,
collecting, organizing, interpreting, representing, and sharing the history of everyday life; (5) to apply the principles of
project-based learning to digital history.
The materials we will use in our historical research will be, for the most part, “primary” documents—that is, documents
created at the same time as the people/places/events they document: city directories, newspapers, maps, census
enumerations, photographs, and postcards. The course is also designed as a laboratory for using digital history and
public humanities projects designed to document and illuminate important cultural and social dimensions of the
experience of N.C. downtowns in the early decades of the 20th century.
Early in the semester, each student will “adopt” a town or city in N.C., whose downtown will become the focus of a
semester-long research and digital publication project. Using material from the North Carolina Collection and digital
resources, including city directories, contemporaneous newspapers, local histories, photographs, and postcards, students
will build an area of the course website devoted to the history of the downtown of their adopted community, particularly as
the downtown developed between 1890 and 1920.
We will also take advantage of the Digital Innovation Lab’s ambitious public humanities project, “Digital Loray,” which
documents the 102-year history of Gastonia, N.C.’s Loray Mill, one of the largest in the South, and its surrounding mill
village.
In addition, we will “excavate” Charlotte as a New South City as it was in 1911. Each student will be assigned four
households appearing in the 1911 city directory and on the 1911 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps of Charlotte. Using
census enumerations, newspapers, and other materials, these households will be traced back to the beginning of the
post-Civil War period and forward through 1940. Throughout the semester, we will be discussing and sharing the
journeys (literally and figurative) these families took across the latter part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th
century.
AMST 375 Section 001
Instructor:
Ferris, M.
Food in American Culture (FOLK 375)
Maximum Enrollment: 40
Session:
MW 1:25-2:15
SPRING 2016
Open seats are reserved for Juniors, Sophomores, and Freshmen.
“Cooking Up a Storm: Exploring Food in Amercian Culture”
This course examines the cultural history and meaning of food in America. We will explore how food shapes national,
regional, and personal identity. We will consider how region, gender, ethnicity, class, race, religion, the media, global
politics, and corporate America affect the food we eat. We will discuss food as both a source of healing and a source of
conflict, and the ways in which it impacts community, from the American family to the “national family.” Students will
examine a variety of sources including cook books, recipes, journalism, film, literature, art, photography, and artifacts to
develop an understanding of food in American culture.
AMST 390 Section 001
Instructor:
Frey, B.
Seminar in Am. Studies: America’s Threatened
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
MWF 2:30-3:20
SPRING 2016
This course provides an introduction to the phenomenon of language shift, endangerment, and revitalization,
predominantly in the United States. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the rich tapestry of minority languages
spoken in this country began to change, tending toward a shift to English. This has led many indigenous languages to the
brink of extinction, and to the loss of the heritage languages of many immigrant communities as well. This course
examines the social and historical motivations for this trend, and explores critical thinking skills for analyzing the
phenomenon of language shift.
AMST 398 Section 001
Instructor:
Shackelford, A
Service Learning in America
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
3:30-6:20
T
SPRING 2016
This seminar investigates the history of the arts as instruments of social change in America. Over the course of the
semester we will explore how the arts provide a medium to process, respond, and draw attention to injustices and
suffering. A large portion of this class will be student engagement in an arts-based service-learning project. Students will
also attend a number of arts performances around campus and work with visiting artists as part of Carolina Performing
Arts. This course can serve as a gateway class for the Arts in Public Service Fellows program, part of the Buckley Public
Service Scholars.
“Enrollment is by instructor permission only; students interested in enrolling should contact Dr. Aaron Shackelford
([email protected]).”
AMST 410 Section 001
Instructor:
Engelhardt, E.
Senior Seminar in Southern Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
MW 3:35-4:50
SPRING 2016
How do we construct research in southern studies today? What methods do we adopt, modify, and innovate to write about
the experiences of living in the past, present, or future of the US South? How can recent scholarship help us organize and
analyze our own research projects? Whether we study the imagined souths of media and culture, global US souths of
social and economic capital, ecological souths of field and city, or queer-raced-gendered souths in liminal spaces, we as
writers about and students of this place must make decisions about how to proceed.
Reading and discussion in this seminar explore strategies for today’s southern studies. Then, from diverse disciplinary
and interdisciplinary locations, we will choose methods for our own scholarship as we apply what we have learned to data
gathered by the parallel Carolina Cooks/Carolina Eats course. The final project in the class will model southern studies'
methodologies to write about North Carolina, the state's foodways, and complementary projects developed by course
participants.
AMST 420 Section 001
Instructor:
Holland, S.
Theories in American Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 15
Session:
9:05-11:55
W
SPRING 2016
This course will move through prevalent theories in American studies to familiarize students with theoretical concepts and
to ascertain both the advantages and pitfalls of theoretical landscapes. Students will become familiar with critical race
(postcoloniality and settler-colonialism, for example), feminist, "queer" theories, historical materialism, political economy,
postcolonialism, and bio-power.
AMST 483 Section 001
Instructor:
Robinson, M.
Seeing the USA: Visual Arts and American Culture
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
3:30-6:20
R
SPRING 2016
This course will tentatively consider the filmmaker as “public intellectual,” an individual whose skillful
orchestration of narrative techniques and formal elements generate compelling critiques of American society.
We will examine works by a range of contemporary filmmakers that may include Spike Lee, Wayne Wang,
Todd Haynes, Robert Rodriguez, Lars von Trier, Sarah Polley and others. No previous experience in film
studies is required, but you will be expected to develop or expand your knowledge of film techniques,
grammar, history and theory, and to draw on the terminology of film studies in your written work and short
exams. In addition to reading a very limited selection of essays and interviews, and students are expected to
watch two films outside of class most weeks during the semester. If you are curious or passionate about
cinema, I invite you to take this course!
AMST 498 Section 001
Instructor:
Ferris, M.
Special Topic: Carolina Cooks, Carolina Eats
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
MW 3:35-4:50
SPRING 2016
Carolina Cooks, Carolina Eats: North Carolina Food & Culture: An exploration of the history, culture, and contemporary
politics of food in North Carolina as a lens onto national and global food issues
AMST 701 Section 001
Instructor:
Allen, B.
Interdisciplinary Research Methods
Maximum Enrollment: 12
Session:
5:30-8:20
T
SPRING 2016
In this graduate seminar, we will map the methodological landscape of American Studies as it is practiced today. We will
take up the approaches that inform the work of our diverse American Studies faculty, among them: textual analysis (of
written, visual, and aural texts), ethnography, critical theory, folklore, historical analysis, media and film studies, legal
and policy studies. And we will consider how these and other approaches are brought to bear upon complex cultural
phenomena, among them: race, gender, indigeneity, place, performance, and material culture. We will also explore
approaches and perspectives on American Studies that extend its reach beyond the academy: oral history, digital
humanities, and public humanities, among them.
Our work will be organized around weekly reading and discussion of exemplary journal articles and book chapters and
conversations with American Studies scholars. Participants will undertake a project that demonstrates how a particular
method/approach can be applied to a cultural phenomenon of particular interest/relevance.
This course welcomes the participation of graduate students from all disciplinary orientations at UNC and area
universities, independent scholars, and UNC staff.
AMST 840 Section 001
Instructor:
Kotch, S.
Digital Humanities/Digital American Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 10
Session:
3:30-6:20
T
SPRING 2016
In this interdisciplinary, collaborative, and student-driven graduate course, we will explore the implications of the
application of digital technologies to the materials, questions, practices, and potential of humanities scholarship,
particularly as they grow out of and relate to enduring topics in American Studies scholarship and community
engagement: place, memory, identity, mobility, and the transformation/preservation of cultural practices and value. This is
a convergence point for scholars and practitioners in a number of historically inflected fields in the humanities and social
sciences (public history, Southern Studies, geography, folklore, American Indian Studies, African-American Studies,
among them) as well as in library/information science, archives, historic preservation, and museum studies.
AMST
Section
Instructor:
Maximum Enrollment:
CHER 102 Section 001
Instructor:
Frey, B.
Session:
Elementary Cherokee II
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
MWF 12:20-1:10
SPRING 2016
This course expands on skills from Cherokee 101. We will begin reading longer texts in the Cherokee syllabary and learn
to produce more complex narrative structures. Students will move toward discussing others around them, with an eye
toward discussing the general world. Prerequisite is Cherokee 101 or permission of instructor.
Instructor:
Introduction to Folklore (ANTH/ENGL 202)
Gaddis, E.
MW 8:00 - 8:50
SPRING 2016
Maximum Enrollment: 80tot
Session:
al
Folklorists seek to understand how people interpret and make sense of the world. The study of folklore asks how, in a
world flooded with commercial and highly refined cultural products, people use those particular materials that they
themselves create and re-shape in order to express who they are, where they belong, and what they value. In this
course we will look at diverse forms (or “genres”) of folklore, including song, architecture, legend, and food. We will
consider how vernacular expressive culture is learned, what it does for people, and why these processes and products
persist through time and space. Students will be introduced to the discipline of Folklore’s central research methodology,
ethnography, and have an opportunity to practice that approach in individual and group research projects.
This course is cross-listed with ENGL/ANTH 202.
Note: Students enrolling in FOLK 202-001 are also required to enroll in one recitation section numbered FOLK 202-601
through FOLK 202-604.
AFOLK 202 Section 601
Instructor:
TA
AFOLK 202 Section 602
Instructor:
TA
AFOLK 202 Section 603
Instructor:
TA
AFOLK 202 Section 604
Instructor:
TA
AFOLK 340 Section 001
Instructor:
Hinson, G
Introduction to Folklore (ANTH/ENGL 202)
Maximum Enrollment: 20tot
al
Session:
Introduction to Folklore (ANTH/ENGL 202)
Maximum Enrollment: 20tot
al
Session:
Introduction to Folklore (ANTH/ENGL 202)
Maximum Enrollment: 20tot
al
Session:
Introduction to Folklore (ANTH/ENGL 202)
Maximum Enrollment: 20tot
al
Session:
Southern Culture (ANTH 340)
Maximum Enrollment: 15
Session:
3:30-4:20
R
SPRING 2016
5:00-5:50
R
SPRING 2016
8:00-8:50
F
SPRING 2016
10:10-11:00
F
SPRING 2016
TR 11:00-12:15
SPRING 2016
A journey into the worlds of Southern meaning, exploring aesthetics, faith, race, class, gender, and the politics of culture.
In this class, students explore culture through semester-long, group-based fieldwork projects.
AFOLK 375 Section 001
Instructor:
Ferris, M.
Food in American Culture (AMST 375)
Maximum Enrollment: 40
Session:
MW 1:25-2:15
SPRING 2016
Open seats are reserved for Juniors, Sophomores, and Freshmen.
"Cooking Up a Storm: Exploring Food in American Culture"
This course examines the cultural history and meaning of food in America. We will explore how food shapes national,
regional, and personal identity. We will consider how region, gender, ethnicity, class, race, religion, the media, global
politics, and corporate America affect the food we eat. We will discuss food as both a source of healing and a source of
conflict, and the ways in which it impacts community, from the American family to the ¿national family.¿ Students will
examine a variety of sources including cook books, recipes, journalism, film, literature, art, photography, and artifacts to
develop an understanding of food in American culture
AFOLK 487 Section 001
Instructor:
Sawin, P.
Everyday Stories (Engl 487)
Maximum Enrollment: 35tot
al
Session:
TR 9:30-10:45
SPRING 2016
To be human is to tell stories and to feel the pull of the stories others tell. These days we have almost limitless access to
stories offered in the highly produced, dramatized versions of TV and movies, yet other—personal and/or traditional—
narrative forms continue to fascinate. In daily informal communication we craft stories to recount and make sense of our
own experience. Traditional fairytales allow us to revel in the fanciful while exploring our fondest dreams or deepest
fears. Legends and rumors straddle the divide between the known and the uncertain, engaging us in a debate over what
to believe and what is believable. Some stories encapsulate what is unique about a particular time, place, person, or
culture. Others, found with variations in widely separated places and times, challenge us to consider the source of such
ubiquitous appeal. Through telling and listening to stories we share knowledge, figure out who we are and what we might
become, debate what really happened, stretch our imaginations, and internalize some cultural norms while challenging
others. We encounter these stories in daily face-to-face encounters, in their iteration and transformation in TV and film,
and, increasingly, shared through new social media. In this course we ask: What is the appeal of these three classic
kinds of stories: personal narratives, legends, and folktales? What makes a "good" story? What is “traditional” about
stories transformed so many times in so many contexts? Why do we come back time and again to familiar tropes and
patterns? What clues hint at implicit meanings not evident on the surface? Students will collect stories shared in person
or in mediated contexts and learn how to choose among and apply the most relevant theoretical perspectives to reveal
their evolving significance.
This course is cross-listed with ENGL 487.
AFOLK 490 Section 001
Instructor:
Berlinger, G.
Urban Folklore: Graffiti, Gods, and Gardens
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
MW 11:15-12:30
SPRING 2016
How can we understand the relationship between distinctive features of urban environments and the folk traditions and
expressive forms found in those settings? Through the lens of urban folklore and the work of academic and public sector
folklorists working in American cities, this course explores the impact of the urban setting on folk traditions: the creation of
communities around ethnicity, sexuality, and specialized interests; the ways in which space in the city is contested and
negotiated; the atmospheres in which traditions and customs juxtapose and blend; the customizing of mass culture; and
the processes through which cultural and religious geographies are mapped onto the city’s landscape. Students will
explore what anthropologists have termed cultural performances (Clifford Geertz) and social dramas (Victor Turner)
through case studies and community fieldwork. While cultural performances often take the form of regularly recurring
celebrations, commemorations, definitional ceremonies, or playful symbolic inversions, social dramas arise around flash
points or crises—racial violence, natural disasters, political upheavals—that concern the life of urban communities. We
will use our local cities as laboratories in which to examine how stories, children's games, community festivals, public art,
music, dance and other expressive forms enable city residents to interact with natural and built environments and
transform spaces into places that hold meaning. Students will conduct field research into an urban tradition and develop
skills in documentation, interviewing, ethnography, and interpretation.
AFOLK 560 Section 001
Instructor:
Ferris, B.
Southern Literature and the Oral Tradition
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
TR 8:00-9:15
SPRING 2016
Class will meet at:
Center for the Study of the American South
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
410 East Franklin Street, CB # 9127
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-9127
Graduate students enrolling in this course will also meet 9:30-10:30 on Tuesdays.
This course focuses on Southern writers and explores how they use oral traditions in their work. We will discuss the
nature of oral tradition and how its study can provide a methodology for understanding Southern literature. We will
consider how specific folklore genres such as folktales, sermons, and music are used by Southern writers, and we will
discuss how such genres provide structure for literary forms such as the novel and the short story.
The seminar begins by exploring the nature of folklore and how its study has been applied to both oral and written
literature. We will then consider examples of oral history and how they capture the southern voice. We will discuss how
nineteenth century slave narratives by Harriet Ann Jacobs and Frederick Douglass and works by Tennessee Williams and
Mark Twain deal with local color and black and white southern voices. After these readings, w
AFOLK 670 Section 001
Instructor:
Seidman, R.
Introduction to Oral History (HIST 670)
Maximum Enrollment: 7
W
3:35-6:05
Session:
FOLK 670 Introduction to Oral History (HIST 670). Introduces students to the uses of interviews in historical research.
Questions of ethics, interpretation, and the construction of memory will be explored, and interviewing skills will be
developed through field work.
AFOLK 860 Section 001
Instructor:
Hinson, G.
The Art of Ethnography (Anthro 860)
Maximum Enrollment: 12
Session:
TR 2:00-3:15
SPRING 2016
To many, the combination of the terms "art"--with its implications of creativity and aesthetic engagement--and
"ethnography"--the practice of engaged community study, with the end of deeper cultural understanding--might seem a bit
odd. But this layering speaks rather pointedly to the ways we'll approach ethnography in this graduate seminar, treating it
as more than mere process and skill, and as more than just research and writing. Ethnography--as a process based in
conversation and the search for shared understanding--is inherently creative. It's always a "making," an enacting that
begins with conversations in the "field," moves into domains of intimate sharing and mutual realization, and eventually
finds voice in various forms of artful representation. All these realms of enactment involve a host of choices that
ethnographers and their consultants creatively make throughout the course of their engagement. In the field, these
choices encompass such matters as with whom to speak; how to present oneself in that speaking; how and with whom to
craft bonds of collaboration; how to offer oneself as student, friend, and colleague; how to enact an ethic of caring and
equity; and how to measure one's emergent understanding. In crafting the representation, choices involve what to include
and what to leave out; when to give voice to consultants and when to speak for self; how to frame and how to order and
how to story. In these arenas of dialogue and subjective choice lies the art in ethnography.
This seminar invites students to journey from the classroom to the community to practice this art and to investigate the
complexities of community meaning. Over the course of the semester, we will both explore various fieldwork techniques
and wrestle with the entanglements of ethnographic representation. Since the only way to "learn" how to "do" this is to
actually enter the field, we will each be planning, conducting, and reporting on a semester-long field project; in so doing,
we'll craft collaborative partnerships with both our consultants in the community and our peers in the classroom.
AJWST 697 Section 001
Instructor:
Berlinger, G.
The Material Life of Jewish America
Maximum Enrollment: 15
Session:
3:00-5:30
W
SPRING 2016
This upper-level seminar examines how American Jews think about, interact with, animate, and display objects in
contemporary life—in the public realm, in cultural institutions, in religious spaces, and in the home. What makes an object
“Jewish”? And what is the role of the object’s maker or user in that process? Through the lens of material culture, we
examine how the creation, interpretation, consumption, re-purposing, and display of “Jewish” material culture reflect
notions of identity, historical experience, cultural condition, and social value. What are the individual and collective
narratives about ordinary and sacred artifacts of American Jewish life? What are the symbolic meanings of these
everyday and extraordinary objects? Aside from the significance of the objects themselves, what can we understand from
the actions of the objects’ users—how they eat, collect, arrange, wear, speak to, carry, kiss, or even bury their objects?
We will analyze ritual architecture, ceremonial objects, head coverings, clothing, jewelry, shoes, cookbooks, souvenirs,
food, and other expressions of material culture in the contexts of festivals, museums, sacred spaces, popular culture
venues, and domestic spaces. Drawing from the fields of folklore, anthropology, American Studies, Jewish studies,
religious studies, and museum studies, we will consider how makers and users of these materials negotiate the various
meanings of these objects within the domains of prayer, performance, entertainment, and exhibition, and how history,
memory, intention, and belief shape those meanings. This class includes field trips, guest speakers, and fieldwork-based
research.
AMST 061 Section 001
Instructor:
Willis, R.
First-Year Seminar: Navigating the World through
Maximum Enrollment: 24
Session:
MW 11:15-12:30
SPRING 2016
PREREQUISITES:
*First-year students only.
REGISTRATION PROCEDURES:
*First-year students who are not enrolled in a fall 2015 FYS will register online when their registration appointment begins.
*First-year students who enrolled in a Fall 2015 FYS will be able to enroll in a spring 2016 FYS beginning Monday,
November 16.
ABOUT THE SEMINAR:
This first year seminar is designed to better prepare students for future international travel, research, service, and work
opportunities while understanding the implications of national identity and action in a global environment. Using group
projects, collaborative field study, and individual proposal writing, we will explore a wide range of issues. Differences in
geography, politics, religion, culture, gender roles, and more will be considered as students intensely develop individual
plans for foreign travel, study, and work using readings, class exercises, documentary video and photography, and
interviews. There will be a special focus on transportation systems and other forms of infrastructure that impact navigating
places, people, and information. In addition, the class will have specialized access to professional resources to help
identify funding sources for travel. Students will be individually guided through the fellowship application process of
researching international travel opportunities and writing a competitive travel proposal and budget.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Rachel A. Willis is a Senior Fellow at the Global Research Institute and Associate Professor of American Studies and
Economics at UNC. She has won numerous awards including the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in
Teaching, the Student Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the Robert Sigmon Award for Service Learning. Her teaching
methods incorporate innovative field study, collaborative assignments and experiential learning through events and
programs outside of the classroom. Her research focuses broadly on access to work and in recent years have focused on
the impact of climate change on transportation infrastructure in port cities.
AMST 201 Section 001
Instructor:
Robinson, M.
Literary Approaches to American Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 30
Session:
TR 2:00-3:15
SPRING 2016
This course provides an overview of the interdisciplinary methods of American Studies and contemporary approaches to
the study of American society and culture, with an emphasis on literary works. In addition to a variety of short stories and
essays and one or two novels that cover the span of the twentieth century, our examination of American life will center on
four historical moments. In past semesters, we have covered such diverse subjects as the Spanish-American War and the
U.S. occupation of the Philippines; representations of marriage and consensual governance in Hollywood zombie movies
of the 1930s and 40s; the cultural impact of the Beat Generation and the commodification of “beatnik” culture; the AIDS
epidemic and gay and lesbian political activism in the 1980s; and representations of globalization and new religious
movements in late 20th century science fiction. Athletes and other human beings welcome.
AMST 202 Section 001
Instructor:
Kotch, S.
Historical Approaches to American Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
TR 2:00-3:15
SPRING 2016
This course invites you to explore American history and culture through the voices of those who lived it. Moving forward
from the slave era to the recent past, you will approach American history through narratives as expressed in oral histories,
original writing, photographs, music, and film. These narratives will introduce the human voice, and more broadly human
expression, into American history and allow you to explore its major problems, from issues of race, gender, class and
other identities; to the influence of memory and context on our understandings of our history; to the reliability of different
versions of the past and how to evaluate authenticity, reality, and truth—should it exist—in a historic context..
AMST 203 Section 001
Instructor:
Cobb, D.
Approaches to American Indian Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
MW 3:35-4:50
SPRING 2016
AMST 203 introduces students to the fundamentals of American Indian and Indigenous Studies—from theoretical
orientations and source materials to research methodologies and means of reporting. The course begins with an
exploration of the field’s origins and evolution. Then, throughout the semester, we will learn about the approaches
adopted by archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, literary scholars, and specialists in law. You will gain a critical
introduction to the questions asked by individuals working in these fields and to the “raw materials” of their various “ways
of knowing,” including ethnographic interviews, oral histories, archival materials, artifacts, maps, language, place, forms of
expressive culture, and material objects. Still more exciting, you will be learning directly from the outstanding American
Indian and Indigenous Studies faculty at the University of North Carolina and a few special guests. Rather than merely
listening to others talk, however, you will also apply the insights and techniques about which you are learning in the
context of a research project.
AMST 211 Section 001
Instructor:
Engelhardt, E.
Approaches to Southern Studies: The Literary and
Maximum Enrollment: 80
Session:
MW 8:00-8:50
SPRING 2016
In the past, to discuss the South, we would first define the borders of the region, and theorize about what makes the
South distinctive. The "old" map of the South traditionally referred to the eleven states of the former Confederacy, but
today, these rigid borders are more fluid. The South "is found wherever southern culture is found," existing "as a state of
mind both within and beyond its geographical boundaries." Beyond the question of what constitutes the South's borders,
a new vision of Southern Studies challenges conventional tropes of southern identity. The "new Southern Studies"
considers landmarks of southern identity other than the Civil War, Reconstruction, and barbecue. Rather than the old
white and black South, the "new Southern Studies" recognizes the diverse cultures and ethnicities of the South, whose
global influences have shaped the region in powerful ways for centuries.
In this gateway course to the study of the American South, students will examine southern cultural identity, recognizing
the contributions of all its people, including men and women of American Indian, African, Latino, Asian, and European
descent. Students will consider the region in all its complexity through a multi-disciplinary conversation about the
American South that considers art, archaeology, architecture, cultural tourism, ecology, folklife, foodways, geography,
history, language, literature, material culture, myth and manners, music, politics, religion, values, and more. Throughout
the semester, students will meet and work with scholars from our university community who study the region from a
variety of disciplines and perspectives.
Course assignments will expose students to the unsurpassed resources of UNC's Southern Historical Collection,
Southern Folklife Collection, the North Carolina Collection, and the Southern Oral History Program, as well as southern
collections at UNC's Ackland Museum of Art, and other cultural and historical institutions in the region. Students will be
encouraged to explore local cultural "repositories," to taste the flavors of southern foodways, and to attend regional art
happenings, lectures, literary readings, musical performances, and folklife events.
AMST 211 Section 601
Instructor:
TA
AMST 211 Section 602
Instructor:
TA
AMST 211 Section 603
Instructor:
TA
AMST 211 Section 604
Instructor:
TA
Approaches to Southern Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
Approaches to Southern Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
Approaches to Southern Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
Approaches to Southern Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
8:00-8:50
F
SPRING 2016
10:10-11:00
F
SPRING 2016
11:15-12:05
F
SPRING 2016
12:30-1:45
R
SPRING 2016
AMST 220 Section 001
Instructor:
Holland
On the Question of Animals: Contemporary Animal
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
MW 3:35-4:50
SPRING 2016
What is it about animals that so intrigue us? What are our ethical responsibilities to other animal species on this planet?
What do we truly know about dogs, horses or cats? Why should we care? This course is an introduction to the discipline
of "Animal Studies" in American Studies work. This course defines the “literary” very broadly and will also include readings
in philosophy (morals/ethics), history and critical theory. We will read work from dog and horse trainers, get an inside look
at the workings of North Carolina barn culture and explore the history of the American racetrack. We will read works by
Temple Grandin (animal science), Donna Haraway (feminist theory), Arthur Bradford (short story), Bill Barich (sports
writer), Kathy Rudy (gender studies), Katherine Mooney (historian), Cary Wolfe (posthumanism) and Peter Singer (animal
advocacy), among others.
AMST 233 Section 001
Instructor:
Cobb, D.
Native American History: The West (HIST 233)
Maximum Enrollment: 80
Session:
MW 1:25-2:15
SPRING 2016
AMST/HIST 233 explores the lifeways and historical experiences of the many and diverse peoples indigenous to North
America’s trans-Mississippi West. My goal is to make unfamiliar the familiar story of declension and defeat. We will begin
by investigating the peopling of this space through stories of creation, migration, evolution, and change. We will then
focus on the multifaceted encounters between Natives and newcomers from the sixteenth through the late nineteenth
centuries. While not shying away from colonialism’s punishing consequences, we will attend closely to stories of
innovation, resistance, adaption, and survival. Readings this semester include Josh Reid’s The Sea is My Country,
Jennifer Denetdale’s Reclaiming Dine History, Pekka Hamalainen’s The Comanche Empire, and Colin Calloway’s “Our
Hearts Fell to the Ground.” Through the accumulation of new knowledge about Native people, students will gain an
appreciation for the diversity and durability of indigenous lifeways and come to realize that the past is not past. Whether
we realize it or not, we live it everyday.
AMST 233 Section 601
Instructor:
TA
AMST 233 Section 602
Instructor:
TA
AMST 233 Section 603
Instructor:
TA
AMST 233 Section 604
Instructor:
TA
Native American History: The West
Maximum Enrollment: 10
Session:
Native American History: The West
Maximum Enrollment: 10
Session:
Native American History: The West
Maximum Enrollment: 10
Session:
Native American History: The West
Maximum Enrollment: 10
Session:
9:05-9:55
F
SPRING 2016
10:10-11:00
F
SPRING 2016
12:30-1:45
R
SPRING 2016
5:00-6:15
R
SPRING 2016
AMST 284 Section 001
Instructor:
Herman, B.
Visual Culture
Maximum Enrollment: 100
Session:
TR 3:30-4:45
SPRING 2016
We live in a time and place that is saturated with images. We cannot walk down the street, turn on a television, log onto
the internet, open a book, order a meal, text a friend without an unrelenting barrage of images. There are so many images
that we encounter in every waking moment of every day that we tend not to think of them, letting the visual world wash
over us without reflection or criticism. Of course, if we tried to account for every visual moment and every visual element,
we’d all be crazy. Thus, not only do we live in a visual world, we constantly edit it through a process of selective
awareness and cultivated blindness. Visual Culture investigates the ways in which we express and grasp meaning
through images. We cross boundaries looking at objects ranging from the fine arts to advertising to film to comics to
websites and much more. This course provides the critical tools to scrutinize, navigate, and understand the visual worlds
we inhabit.
AMST 285 Section 001
Instructor:
Willis, R.
AMST 340 Section 001
Instructor:
Bauer, Brooke
Access to Work in America (ECON 285)
Maximum Enrollment: 24
Session:
American Indian Art and Material Culture through
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
3:35-6:25
M
SPRING 2016
MWF 3:35-4:25
SPRING 2016
This course examines American Indian art and material culture through interdisciplinary perspectives. Throughout the
course students will gain a greater understanding of the role that the arts play in the social, cultural, and political life of
American Indian peoples. This course will also explore a number of questions: What is the relationship between art and
American Indian identities? How have Native artists negotiated various markets and audiences for their works? Over the
course of the term students will read, discuss, and write about a number of objects and texts. In addition to articles and
book chapters we will read
·
·
·
·
·
Arthur Amiotte, Transformation and Continuity in Lakota Culture: The Collages of Arthur Amiotte,
1988-2014 (Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2014).
Janet Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips, Native North American Art, Second Edition (Oxford: Oxford
University Press 2015).
Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum (New York: Harper Collins, 2005).
Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (New York
Oxford University Press, 2010).
Brian Bibby, Precious Cargo: California Indian Cradle Baskets and Childbirth Traditions (Berkley:
Heyday Books, 2004).
AMST 350H Section 001
Instructor:
Allen, B.
Main Street Carolina
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
TR 3:30-4:45
SPRING 2016
This course has several interlocking goals: (1) to develop a deeper understanding of the history of everyday life in North
Carolina, and, by extension, in the American South over the last 125 years; (2) to develop a deeper understanding of the
evolution of urban space in N.C., and, by extension in the U.S., especially in the years between 1880 and 1930; (3) to
develop skills in the use of archival materials in the above; (4) to explore the use of digital technologies for identifying,
collecting, organizing, interpreting, representing, and sharing the history of everyday life; (5) to apply the principles of
project-based learning to digital history.
The materials we will use in our historical research will be, for the most part, “primary” documents—that is, documents
created at the same time as the people/places/events they document: city directories, newspapers, maps, census
enumerations, photographs, and postcards. The course is also designed as a laboratory for using digital history and
public humanities projects designed to document and illuminate important cultural and social dimensions of the
experience of N.C. downtowns in the early decades of the 20th century.
Early in the semester, each student will “adopt” a town or city in N.C., whose downtown will become the focus of a
semester-long research and digital publication project. Using material from the North Carolina Collection and digital
resources, including city directories, contemporaneous newspapers, local histories, photographs, and postcards, students
will build an area of the course website devoted to the history of the downtown of their adopted community, particularly as
the downtown developed between 1890 and 1920.
We will also take advantage of the Digital Innovation Lab’s ambitious public humanities project, “Digital Loray,” which
documents the 102-year history of Gastonia, N.C.’s Loray Mill, one of the largest in the South, and its surrounding mill
village.
In addition, we will “excavate” Charlotte as a New South City as it was in 1911. Each student will be assigned four
households appearing in the 1911 city directory and on the 1911 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps of Charlotte. Using
census enumerations, newspapers, and other materials, these households will be traced back to the beginning of the
post-Civil War period and forward through 1940. Throughout the semester, we will be discussing and sharing the
journeys (literally and figurative) these families took across the latter part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th
century.
AMST 375 Section 001
Instructor:
Ferris, M.
Food in American Culture (FOLK 375)
Maximum Enrollment: 40
Session:
MW 1:25-2:15
SPRING 2016
Open seats are reserved for Juniors, Sophomores, and Freshmen.
“Cooking Up a Storm: Exploring Food in Amercian Culture”
This course examines the cultural history and meaning of food in America. We will explore how food shapes national,
regional, and personal identity. We will consider how region, gender, ethnicity, class, race, religion, the media, global
politics, and corporate America affect the food we eat. We will discuss food as both a source of healing and a source of
conflict, and the ways in which it impacts community, from the American family to the “national family.” Students will
examine a variety of sources including cook books, recipes, journalism, film, literature, art, photography, and artifacts to
develop an understanding of food in American culture.
AMST 390 Section 001
Instructor:
Frey, B.
Seminar in Am. Studies: America’s Threatened
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
MWF 2:30-3:20
SPRING 2016
This course provides an introduction to the phenomenon of language shift, endangerment, and revitalization,
predominantly in the United States. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the rich tapestry of minority languages
spoken in this country began to change, tending toward a shift to English. This has led many indigenous languages to the
brink of extinction, and to the loss of the heritage languages of many immigrant communities as well. This course
examines the social and historical motivations for this trend, and explores critical thinking skills for analyzing the
phenomenon of language shift.
AMST 398 Section 001
Instructor:
Shackelford, A
Service Learning in America
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
3:30-6:20
T
SPRING 2016
This seminar investigates the history of the arts as instruments of social change in America. Over the course of the
semester we will explore how the arts provide a medium to process, respond, and draw attention to injustices and
suffering. A large portion of this class will be student engagement in an arts-based service-learning project. Students will
also attend a number of arts performances around campus and work with visiting artists as part of Carolina Performing
Arts. This course can serve as a gateway class for the Arts in Public Service Fellows program, part of the Buckley Public
Service Scholars.
“Enrollment is by instructor permission only; students interested in enrolling should contact Dr. Aaron Shackelford
([email protected]).”
AMST 410 Section 001
Instructor:
Engelhardt, E.
Senior Seminar in Southern Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
MW 3:35-4:50
SPRING 2016
How do we construct research in southern studies today? What methods do we adopt, modify, and innovate to write about
the experiences of living in the past, present, or future of the US South? How can recent scholarship help us organize and
analyze our own research projects? Whether we study the imagined souths of media and culture, global US souths of
social and economic capital, ecological souths of field and city, or queer-raced-gendered souths in liminal spaces, we as
writers about and students of this place must make decisions about how to proceed.
Reading and discussion in this seminar explore strategies for today’s southern studies. Then, from diverse disciplinary
and interdisciplinary locations, we will choose methods for our own scholarship as we apply what we have learned to data
gathered by the parallel Carolina Cooks/Carolina Eats course. The final project in the class will model southern studies'
methodologies to write about North Carolina, the state's foodways, and complementary projects developed by course
participants.
AMST 420 Section 001
Instructor:
Holland, S.
Theories in American Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 15
Session:
9:05-11:55
W
SPRING 2016
This course will move through prevalent theories in American studies to familiarize students with theoretical concepts and
to ascertain both the advantages and pitfalls of theoretical landscapes. Students will become familiar with critical race
(postcoloniality and settler-colonialism, for example), feminist, "queer" theories, historical materialism, political economy,
postcolonialism, and bio-power.
AMST 483 Section 001
Instructor:
Robinson, M.
Seeing the USA: Visual Arts and American Culture
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
3:30-6:20
R
SPRING 2016
This course will tentatively consider the filmmaker as “public intellectual,” an individual whose skillful
orchestration of narrative techniques and formal elements generate compelling critiques of American society.
We will examine works by a range of contemporary filmmakers that may include Spike Lee, Wayne Wang,
Todd Haynes, Robert Rodriguez, Lars von Trier, Sarah Polley and others. No previous experience in film
studies is required, but you will be expected to develop or expand your knowledge of film techniques,
grammar, history and theory, and to draw on the terminology of film studies in your written work and short
exams. In addition to reading a very limited selection of essays and interviews, and students are expected to
watch two films outside of class most weeks during the semester. If you are curious or passionate about
cinema, I invite you to take this course!
AMST 498 Section 001
Instructor:
Ferris, M.
Special Topic: Carolina Cooks, Carolina Eats
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Session:
MW 3:35-4:50
SPRING 2016
Carolina Cooks, Carolina Eats: North Carolina Food & Culture: An exploration of the history, culture, and contemporary
politics of food in North Carolina as a lens onto national and global food issues
AMST 701 Section 001
Instructor:
Allen, B.
Interdisciplinary Research Methods
Maximum Enrollment: 12
Session:
5:30-8:20
T
SPRING 2016
In this graduate seminar, we will map the methodological landscape of American Studies as it is practiced today. We will
take up the approaches that inform the work of our diverse American Studies faculty, among them: textual analysis (of
written, visual, and aural texts), ethnography, critical theory, folklore, historical analysis, media and film studies, legal
and policy studies. And we will consider how these and other approaches are brought to bear upon complex cultural
phenomena, among them: race, gender, indigeneity, place, performance, and material culture. We will also explore
approaches and perspectives on American Studies that extend its reach beyond the academy: oral history, digital
humanities, and public humanities, among them.
Our work will be organized around weekly reading and discussion of exemplary journal articles and book chapters and
conversations with American Studies scholars. Participants will undertake a project that demonstrates how a particular
method/approach can be applied to a cultural phenomenon of particular interest/relevance.
This course welcomes the participation of graduate students from all disciplinary orientations at UNC and area
universities, independent scholars, and UNC staff.
AMST 840 Section 001
Instructor:
Kotch, S.
Digital Humanities/Digital American Studies
Maximum Enrollment: 10
Session:
3:30-6:20
T
SPRING 2016
In this interdisciplinary, collaborative, and student-driven graduate course, we will explore the implications of the
application of digital technologies to the materials, questions, practices, and potential of humanities scholarship,
particularly as they grow out of and relate to enduring topics in American Studies scholarship and community
engagement: place, memory, identity, mobility, and the transformation/preservation of cultural practices and value. This is
a convergence point for scholars and practitioners in a number of historically inflected fields in the humanities and social
sciences (public history, Southern Studies, geography, folklore, American Indian Studies, African-American Studies,
among them) as well as in library/information science, archives, historic preservation, and museum studies.
AMST
Section
Instructor:
Maximum Enrollment:
CHER 102 Section 001
Instructor:
Frey, B.
Session:
Elementary Cherokee II
Maximum Enrollment: 25
Session:
MWF 12:20-1:10
SPRING 2016
This course expands on skills from Cherokee 101. We will begin reading longer texts in the Cherokee syllabary and learn
to produce more complex narrative structures. Students will move toward discussing others around them, with an eye
toward discussing the general world. Prerequisite is Cherokee 101 or permission of instructor.
