Course Goals

- Learn how to think like an American Studies scholar

- Create a classroom community that fosters intellectual growth based on respect and civility

- Develop critical speaking, viewing, reading, thinking, note-taking, and library research skills that are applicable to life both within and outside of the university

- Question "common sense" or "dominant" understandings of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, class, and popular culture

Essential Questions

- What does it mean "to think like an American Studies scholar"?

- What evidence indicates that identities are socially constructed?

- How do identities constitute lived realities and shared communities?

- How do prejudice and institutional discrimination shape certain individuals and groups life chances and impact their access to resources, rights, and privileges?

- To whom do the rights and freedoms outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States belong? 

- Do Americans have a responsibility to "exercise" their rights and freedoms? Should they push for greater liberties? 

- How have Americans, through social movements, affected political change – what were their goals, strategies, successes, and failures? 

- Is American history a history of social progress? Is social progress inevitable?

- How does popular culture shape and reflect American cultural ideals and values?

- How do popular representations of a group affect how members of that group see themselves and how others see them?

- How are popular representations of a group related to the group's access to political representation – to quote Richard Dyer, "to their right to the rights [America] claims to ensure its citizens"?