Instructor

Robert Perkinson, Aurelia Prosi, Lilly Fisher, and Sarah Jung

Course Description

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Jeffrey Tripp (In Person and  one section available for Distance/Completely Online)

Course Description

This course examines formations of “America” in a global context, beginning with its emergence as a European colonial outpost imposed on indigenous peoples, to its emergence as an imperial and military power in the modern era. We will survey major world-historical events in which the U.S. has played key roles as well as consider the significant impacts that other world cultures have had on the American social, political, cultural and economic fabric (and vice versa). Central to the organization of this course is a consideration of race, class and gender as crucial axes for the formation of “America” and Americans.

Required Text(s)

• David Stannard: American Holocaust
• Zora Neale Hurston: Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”
• Art Spiegelman: Maus, Volumes 1 and 2

Instructor

Noelle Iati

Course Description

This course examines the development and mobilization of institutions and movements in American history, beginning with an exploration of how institutions are created or supported by the teaching and study of “America” itself. Beginning with the English colonization of North America, American institutions will be studied alongside movements to resist, reform, or abolish them, addressing issues such as slavery and abolitionism, capitalism and labor activism, and imperialism and anticolonial resistance. This course is intended to broaden students’ understandings of current issues through the study of how the push and pull between institutions and social movements over the course of American history has shaped the present. This course will ask students to engage with a variety of different sources that emphasize diverse methods for thinking about and studying American history and culture, including academic texts which challenge or expand prevailing historical perspectives; protest literature, petitions, and letters; and cultural sources such as poetry, photography, film, and even musical theater. American Experience: Institutions and Movements is a Writing Intensive course.

Required Text(s)

• Not required

Instructor

Kelly Guo

Course Description

If contemplation of any aspect of America must include a consideration of culture, so too must any study of American culture include a discussion of the arts.  Surveying a variety of cultures practiced by people (s) (with) in America, this course investigates just what may be talking about when we use such words as “America,” “culture,” or “art,” and how our ideas about these words have developed.

Largely focusing on the ways in which power, beauty and belonging have been constructed, contemplated and asserted through the arts, we will conclude the semester by asking the question of whether we might analyze and shape our own lives — as people living (with) in America — as we might a piece of art?

Required Text(s)

The following may be purchased at the UH Bookstore.

• Alexie, Sherman. Reservation Blues. New York: Grove Press, 2005.
• Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Vintage International Press, 2007 ed (any older edition acceptable).
• Yamashiro, Aiko and Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, eds. The Value of Hawai‘i 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014.

Instructors

Jocelyn Brody and Derek Rainey

Course Description

Current debates in the U.S. over individual rights and nationalism; civil rights, citizenship, and sovereignty; sexuality, law, and religion; economic, racial, and gender equality; public health and environmental justice. Writing emphasis, interdisciplinary perspectives.

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Brentley Sandlin

Course Description

This course centers a place-based and feminist praxis to interrogate contemporary American global issues. Specifically, it uses the lens of Hawaiʻi to explore the gendered influence of American foreign policies and empire in the Pacific and across the globe. In this course, we will read anti-colonial literature from Indigenous women and women of color on American militarism, environmental justice, decolonization, inter/nationalism, tourism and Indigenous sovereignty to track the contours of America’s far reaching influence on Indigenous lands. In doing so, this course is designed to critically examine contemporary American geographies through gendered narratives of resistance, decolonization, and Indigenous resurgence in Hawai’i.

Course Requirements

TBA

Required Text(s)

Instructor

Asalemo Crawford

Course Description

Will analyze examples from the visual and performing arts, including murals, digital art, film, poetry, and music, paying particular attention to the connections and influence upon social and political movements, both historically and today. A-F only

Course Requirements

TBA

Required Text(s)

Instructor

Sam Ikehara

Course Description

Explores experiences of Japanese Americans in Hawaiʻi and the U.S.: historical and cultural heritage, biographical portraits, changing family ties, ethnic lifeways, gender relations, local identity, and the future of island living. Emphasis: oral communication skills.

Course Requirements

TBA

Required Text(s)

Instructor

Sam Ikehara and Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

Course Description

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

William Temple

Course Description

Examination of design in American culture over the last century. Readings in industrial, graphic, interior, architectural, landscape, and user interface design used to study issues of gender, race, and class in the U.S. Open to all class standings.

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

William Temple

Course Description

Investigates design in contemporary American culture. Graphic, industrial, urban, and user-interface design practices are situated within broader social and economic forces. Modes of design practice, production, and consumption studied as reflection of American society today. Open to all class standings. A-F only.

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Rachel Hong

Course Description

Survey of Asian and Asian American representations in American film and television from the silent era to the present, with an emphasis on Orientalism and multiculturalism, as well as performance and spectatorship. SCA majors: A-F only. Pre: junior standing or consent. (Cross-listed as CINE 352)

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Jonna Eagle

Course Description

Introductory history of American cinema from the silent to the digital era, with an emphasis on criticism, genre and style, as well as cultural and sociopolitical context.

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Ava Ladner

Course Description

Focus on various aspects of Trans* identities, biographies, cultural productions, and communities. It also addresses issues on racism, medical intervention, dating, societal condemnation, mental health, and incarceration. Junior standing or hig

Course Requirements

TBA

Instructor

Jonna Eagle

Course Description

Examination of the history and significance of melodrama as a dominant mode of American cultural production from the early republic to the present, with a focus on issues of race, gender, and national identity.

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Jennifer Burris

Course Description

Studies the interpretive strategies and methods used by museums to communicate with visitors in museums, art galleries, historic sites, parks, and related places. Considers how interpretations contribute to cultural knowledge. Repeatable one time. Pre: consent.

Required Text(s)

Instructor

Ava Ladner

Course Description

Sports as reflected in literature, films, and TV.

Required Text(s)

Instructor

Youngoh Jung

Course Description

Capstone course for American studies students to undertake a major research-based project. AMST majors only. Pre: consent.

Course Requirements

TBA

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Aurelia Prosi, Lilly Fisher & Sarah Jung

Course Description

Introduction to different types of college level writing and information literacy with a focus on American culture and society.

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Jeffrey Tripp

Course Description

This course examines formations of “America” in a global context, beginning with its emergence as a European colonial outpost imposed on indigenous peoples, to its emergence as an imperial and military power in the modern era. We will survey major world-historical events in which the U.S. has played key roles as well as consider the significant impacts that other world cultures have had on the American social, political, cultural and economic fabric (and vice versa). Central to the organization of this course is a consideration of race, class and gender as crucial axes for the formation of “America” and Americans.

Required Text(s)

• Zora Neale Hurston: Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”
• Spiegelman, Art.  Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale
• Spiegelman, Art.  Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale
• Stannard, David.  American Holocaust

Instructor

Noelle Iati

Course Description

Institutions & Movements utilizes multiple fields of study that include History, Indigenous/Native Studies, and Black/African American Studies. We encourage students to critically investigate and interrogate the development, mobilization, and history of “America,” Race and Racism in the United States, and Racist Power. Students explore key terms and definitions for BIOLOGY, ETHNICITY, BODY, CULTURE, BEHAVIOR, COLOR, WHITE, BLACK, INDIGENOUS, CLASS, SPACE, GENDER, SEXUALITY, MILITARISM, CAPITALISM, and SETTLER COLONIALISM. Through these key terms, students expand their comprehension of the historical to contextualize the present and interrogate institutional power and the collective resistance to that power.

Required Text(s)

• Arvin, Maile. Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawaiʻi and Oceania. Duke University Press, 2019.
• Kendi, Ibram X. How To Be An Antiracist. One World, 2019.
• Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Haymarket Books, 2016.
• **All books are available at Revolution Books: 2626 King St #201, Honolulu, 96826
• **Additional readings will be posted on the course website

Instructor

Kelly Guo

Course Description

If contemplation of any aspect of America must include a consideration of culture, so too must any study of American culture include a discussion of the arts.  Surveying a variety of cultures practiced by people (s) (with) in America, this course investigates just what may be talking about when we use such words as “America,” “culture,” or “art,” and how our ideas about these words have developed.

Largely focusing on the ways in which power, beauty and belonging have been constructed, contemplated and asserted through the arts, we will conclude the semester by asking the question of whether we might analyze and shape our own lives — as people living (with) in America — as we might a piece of art?

Required Text(s)

The following may be purchased at the UH Bookstore.

• Alexie, Sherman. Reservation Blues. New York: Grove Press, 2005.
• Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Vintage International Press, 2007 ed (any older edition acceptable).
• Yamashiro, Aiko and Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, eds. The Value of Hawai‘i 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014

Instructors

Jocelyn Brody

Course Description

Required Text(s)

Instructor

Brentley Sandlin

Course Description

Instructor

G. S. Gushiken

Course Description

Instructor

Noelle Kahanu

Course Description

Instructor

Brian Dawson

Course Description

Instructor

Sam Ikehara

Course Description

Instructor

Mari Yoshihara

Course Description

Instructor

Joyce Mariano

Course Description

Instructor

Youngoh Jung

Course Description

Examines WWII as a watershed in American and Hawaiʻi history and culture. Topics include: Pearl Harbor, Japanese American internment, sex and racial tensions, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and the dawn of the Atomic Age.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Rachel Hong

Course Description

Survey of Asian and Asian American representations in American film and television from the silent era to the present, with an emphasis on Orientalism and multiculturalism, as well as performance and spectatorship.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Joyce Mariano

Course Description

An introduction to the study of Filipino Americans in the U.S. and the diaspora. The course pays special attention to labor migration, cultural production and community politics.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Sam Ikehara

Course Description

Overview of methods and methodologies for conducting interdisciplinary research and writing in the field of American Studies. AMST majors only.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Jeffrey Tripp

Course Description

History of American architecture in terms of style, techniques, and symbolic meaning.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Elizabeth Colwill

Course Description

Examines the history of slavery, race, and abolition in the Americas from a comparative, global perspective, and traces the legacy of slavery in the post-emancipation societies of the New World.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Ava Ladner

Course Description

Focus on various aspects of Trans* identities, biographies, cultural productions, and communities. It also addresses issues on racism, medical intervention, dating, societal condemnation, mental health, and incarceration. Junior standing or higher. (Cross-listed as WGSS 493)

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Njoroge Njoroge

Course Description

Racial ideas and ideologies, and their effects throughout American history.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Robert Perkinson

Course Description

Examination of mass mobilization in U.S. history from the Revolution forward, including abolitionism, feminism, civil rights, labor, and more. Concludes with analysis of various community organizing efforts today.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Ava Ladner

Course Description

Sports as reflected in literature, films, and TV.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Jeffrey Tripp

Course Description

Directed readings and research for majors. Pre: consent.Junior standing or consent.

Instructor

Mari Yoshihara

Course Description

Required Text(s)

Instructor

Brandy McDougall

Course Description

AMST 650 is designed for Ph.D. students to reinforce and deepen content knowledge in the general field of  American Studies and in specialized subfields within American Studies.  By the time that Ph.D. students begin their dissertations, students are expected to have engaged at a sophisticated level with the major themes, problems, and interdisciplinary methods of the field of American Studies, and to have developed specializations in two subfields that will serve as their professional teaching and research fields.

AMST 650, offered each semester with variable content, aims to provide students with a defined pathway toward field mastery, and thus to facilitate progress to degree.  To prepare for the qualifying examination, students read 40-50 texts in their major field, and in each of two subfields under the supervision of a faculty member.  Each of the three fields requires intensive preparation.  By consequence, advanced Ph.D. students will be permitted to register for this course, with different content, up to three times (up to 9 credits)–each with a separate field adviser.

AMST 650 involves substantial intellectual content and regular meetings with a faculty member, receives a letter grade, and counts toward the 45-credits required for the Ph.D. It requires the approval and signature of the supervising instructor and the graduate chair prior to receipt of the CRN.

To register

• Obtain the 650 Form and the Ph.D Qualifying Exam Fields Approval Form from the graduate coordinator or the AMST website;
• Obtain the consent of professor who will supervise the field, in person or via email;
• Consult with the supervising professor concerning the specific texts and writing assignments required for completion of AMST 650 in that field.
• Complete the forms, and obtain first the professor’s, and then the graduate chair’s signatures;
• Give the forms to the graduate coordinator, who will provide the CRN needed to register for one or more 650s.

Instructor

M. W. Cadora

Course Description

History and theory of museums and related institutions (art galleries, historic houses, zoos, parks). Relationship between museums, collections, and communities. Introduction to governance, planning, legal, and ethical concerns.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

J. M. Sommer

Course Description

This class covers the “nuts and bolts” of running museums, galleries, and related institutions. It provides an overview of the responsibilities of museum professionals (registrars, collections managers, conservators, curators, etc.) in the care of collections and interpretive studies of museum displays. Includes on-site visits to institutions, to meet with collections professionals, for a deeper look at museum professionals’ duties and the challenges they face. Pre: 683 (or concurrent) or consent.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Noelle Kahanu

Course Description

This course is designed as the final requirement for the Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies. It is generally taken as the last course in the sequence of required courses for the certificate, although students may be enrolled simultaneously in the Practicum/Internship and other courses in the program. This course is restricted to “majors” in the Museums Studies Graduate Certificate Program.

The Practicum/Internship is intended to advance the student’s knowledge of the field of museum work and to provide an opportunity to research areas of special interest. Since the course is meant to be of a practical character, students are encouraged to take advantage of work-related opportunities in museums and related places (art galleries, historic sites, parks, zoos, aquariums, festivals, etc.). Students should consider new areas of exploration, or build on and consolidate projects in which they have had prior involvement. The Practicum/Internship may include research reports for non-profit organizations, research projects for museum exhibits or collections, or other similar activities.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

Instructor

Jonna Eagle

Course Description

Affect is a term both slippery and ubiquitous, one that has become central to investigations of power and resistance both in cultural studies and beyond. The study of affect can be a messy undertaking: as a field, affect studies encompasses a diverse range of theoretical and methodological trajectories. Nonetheless, affect and public feeling have been generative concepts for considering both the hegemonic power of media and the resistant, fugitive, or utopic possibilities it may harbor or express. These are some of the issues we’ll grapple with in this class, as we survey foundational works in affect studies alongside historical and contemporary case studies investigating both particular modes of feeling (including happiness, depression, paranoia, and shame) and particular forms of media (including film, television, and sonic and social media). Across the semester, we’ll focus on the power of media as it shapes our collective and individual lives: the kinds of feelings and affinities, movements and identities, it works to condition (or to frustrate); and the overt and insidious ways it animates the emotional, social, and political worlds we inhabit.

Course Requirements

• TBA

Required Text(s)

• TBA

American Studies 699V is a directed reading/directed research course. Such courses are not intended as routine alternatives to regular course offerings but rather as opportunities to explore themes and topics that are not covered in any available course within the American Studies Department or other departments within the University.

A directed reading/research 699 will be counted as a course towards an American Studies degree only if it carries 3 credits.

Students must first discuss with the graduate chairperson what is to be studied and with whom as well as justify why a 699 is the only feasible alternative.

Master and doctoral students are limited to three (3) credits to count towards their degree.

To enroll in a 699, you must obtain the consent of a particular professor with an expertise on the topic you wish to pursue. This professor may be in American Studies or in any department. Within a week after registration, you must submit to the department office a one-page account of the work to be done. This account must contain the following:

• The theme or topic to be explored
• The nature of the work to be done
• Grade Options (letter grade or CR/NC)
• Justification as to why 699 is the only feasible alternative
• The list of books to be read (if a directed reading course)
• The number of credits to be awarded
• The basis upon which the credits are to be awarded–a paper, exam, etc.
• Include information on the frequency of student/professor meetings.

This one-page account must be signed by you, the professor, and the graduate chair and submitted to the American Studies Department Office (Moore 324). Without it, you will lose the right to have your directed work count towards your degree. Procedure for Registration: You may obtain appropriate forms/approvals from the American Studies Department office (Moore 324) or download these forms.

Directed Reading Consent Form
Directed Reading Approval Form

Before registering for a Thesis 700 (for Plan A students only), the student must have completed and obtained an approved thesis committee approved/thesis topic/proposal progress form from Graduate Division.

If the above have not been submitted and approved by Graduate Division, the CRN for AmSt 700 WILL NOT BE ISSUED. Please see graduate chair (in Moore 324) one month prior to registration to process the necessary forms.

NOTE

Master’s Plan A students MUST register in 700 in the semester they plan to graduate.

Before a doctoral student can register for a Dissertation 800 course, the student must have achieved the following:

• Passed the written and oral qualifying examination
• Received approval of doctoral committee/dissertation topic/proposal
• Passed the oral comprehensive examination

The CRN for AmSt 800 WILL NOT BE ISSUED unless all the above have been completed.

NOTE

Doctoral students MUST register in 800 in the semester they plan to graduate.