Instructor

Robert Perkinson

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)

• Stannard, David.  American Holocaust
• Zinn, Howard: A People’s History of American Empire

Instructor

Brian Dawson

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

Yilan Hu

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

Spencer Oshita

Course Description

Power, Rights, and Space in Modern and Postmodern America

French philosopher and Nobel laureate Albert Camus is credited with saying the apt phrase, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” We live in a world made up of spaces, but very few of those spaces go unpoliced.  Someone, somewhere, seems to always be rather attentive to what we do and don’t do in the spaces that make up our lives.  But why?  And who put them in charge? 

Investigating space means trying to understand how to exist in a world constantly beset by powerful people trying to control who we are and what we do.  This course explores the connections between that power and the rights we are supposed to have in the spaces that make up our lives.  To that end, we will begin with physical spaces, investigating the American educational system and the imperial and carceral states that have been built around us.  We will engage powerful and central texts concerning education, pedagogy, empire, and prisons while addressing both real and theoretical concerns.  But space isn’t always physical and neither are the systems of control and power that operate within them.  This course also turns toward investigating the institutions of memory, the body, identity, and epistemology to understand that even what we know and how we know it is also intimately wrapped up in systems of power and control.

Even as we analyze the important issues of addressing injustice and inequity across the sites of schools, prisons, courthouses, streets, or our own bodies, and tackling such topics as prison reform, immigration, disabilities, colonial occupation, criminal justice, public education, and more, the contemporary moment asks for more: it asks for solutions.  And while this course closes with a unit on the future as the final contemporary issue of the semester, the entire course will be structured around providing the students with the tools needed to engage in critical thinking and evalution, which are some of the best remedies for societal maladies of the worst variety.

AMST 211 is for anybody who has ever wondered about the world they live in, but is also, and perhaps more importanly, for anybody who has not.

[NOTE:  All interested students should attend the first day of the class.  Any questions or doubts about the course or its content will likely be addressed then.]

Required Text(s)

All readings will be provided to individuals via Slack, a mobile and desktop app available online and through the App Store and Google Play Store.  Two books, Writing Tools and The Death of Truth, will be available for purchase at the bookstore for those who might want or need to secure hard copies for those readings.

Instructor

Katherine Achacoso

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

Weekly reading responses
Zine + Essay
Final 

Required Text(s)

(select chapters will be scanned and available online on our Google Classroom)

• From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi, Haunani Kay Trask
• Na Wāhine Koa: Hawaiian Women for Sovereignty and Demilitarization, Edited by Noelani Goodyear Kaʻōpua, Moanikeʻala Akaka, Maxine Kahaulelio, Terrilee Kekoʻolani-Raymond,and Loretta Ritte
• Value of Hawaiʻi 2: Ancestral Roots and Oceanic Visions, Edited by. AikoYamashiro and Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua
• Women, Race and Class, Angela Davis
• Octaviaʻs Brood , Adrienne Maree Brown

Note: This class will be held online through synchronous and asynchronous classes.
*Monday will be held on Zoom at our scheduled time.
*Wednesday/Friday students will watch pre-recorded lectures and writing reading responses in our online Google classroom.

Instructor

Dennis M. Ogawa

Course Description

Japanese American life in Hawaii and American society at large. Historical and cultural heritage. Biographical portraits, changing family ties, ethnic lifestyle, male and female relations, local identity and the nature of island living.

Course Requirements

1. Oral Communication Assignments: 46%
2. Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii Paper: 8%
3. Quizzes: 6%
4. Two Tests: 20%
5. Final Examination: 20%

Required Text(s)

• Ogawa, Dennis.  Jan Ken Po
• Ogawa, Dennis.  Kodomo No Tame Ni
• Various handouts (online)

Instructor

Joyce Mariano

Course Description

This course broadens attention to the experiences and perspectives of Asian Americans through interrelated contexts of race, class, gender, policy, immigration, war, and citizenship.  We will work to understand how course materials highlight the dynamic dimensions of Asian America and the implications of how Asian America has been imagined both historically and today.

Required Text(s)

• Carlos Bulosan, America is in the Heart: A Personal History
• Yasutaro Soga, Life Behind Barbed Wire: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawaii Issei
• Jane Jeong Trenka, The Language of Blood: A Memoir 

Instructor

Dennis Ogawa

Course Description

Examines WWII as a watershed in American and Hawaiʻi history and outlook from a humanities perspective.  Topics include: Pearl Harbor, American concentration camps and the question of war and peace.

Required Text(s)

Handouts to be posted on Laulima

Instructor

Kathleen Sands

Course Description

This course introduces students to Church-State jurisprudence in the United States, with particular attention to the difficulty of defining religion.  We begin by mastering constitutional concepts that underlie religion jurisprudence.  Then, by studying key Supreme Court cases, we gain perspective on the development and present state of the law.  In the final part of the course, students engage in a group project concerning on a case or controversy that highlights the limitations of, contradictions in, and prospects for “religion” as a constitutional concept.  Your final paper will be your own opinion on the issue presented by your group.

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Jonna Eagle

Course Description

What is the relationship between the waging and the imaging of war, between material violence and its cultural representation? How do popular media shape collective understandings and experiences of war? And how have these media been shaped by military projects and perspectives in turn? What are the ethical implications of consuming images of war and suffering as part of our daily lives—of looking upon such images, or alternately, of refusing to look or looking away?

In this course, we’ll explore these and other questions through the examination of a variety of media—including photographs and print journalism, documentaries and fiction films, television newscasts and reality shows, videogames and online video sharing sites—as they have shaped the experience and understanding of war in the modern era. Our focus will be on American culture in particular, as we move in roughly chronological order from the Civil War to the present, with individual units organized around specific historical conflicts and broader ethical concerns. Among the issues we’ll consider are: the status of war as a modern media spectacle; the cultural preoccupation with “authentic” war images alongside the equally persistent assertion that real war resides beyond or outside of representation; the emergence and development of the military-entertainment complex over the last century and the shifting roles and of the citizen and the soldier within it; and the ethical implications of consuming images of war and suffering at a remove from the material conditions of that suffering.

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Keiko Fukunishi

Course Description

Survey of Asian and Asian American representations in American film from the silent era to the present, with an emphasis on critical race studies, Orientalism, performance and spectatorship.  ACM majors: A-F only.  Pre: junior standing or consent.

Required Text(s)

Instructor

Brandy McDougall

Course Description

Examines indigenous practices born of and located in Indigenous places.  Analyzes how indigenous knowledge of place informs Indigeous culture, linguistic, intellectual, and political survivance and sovereignty, and resistance. 

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.

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Brandy McDougall

Course Description

Materials and methods for the study of American life and thought. AMST majors only.

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

James Kraft

Course Description

Conditions of labor major phases of American development; response of labor and community to changing work environment.  Capitalism, unionism, race, gender, law, etc. Emphasis on 20th century.

Course Requirements

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.

Required Text(s)

TBA

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Karen Kosasa

Course Description

This course focuses on the interpretive practices of museums and related institutions in the continental U.S., Hawai‘i, and other parts of the world. Museum exhibitions can become sites of public controversies and battles over the “politics of representation.” Individual viewers or whole communities may feel that a particular display undermines “traditional family values” or inappropriately challenges long-held beliefs about a nation’s history. Others may feel that a curator’s interpretive framework inadvertently denigrates a minority community or overlooks the importance of ethnic, racial, class, gender, or sexual differences. Thus, museum professionals must carefully consider and examine the ethical dimensions of their institutional practices. Through readings on a wide range of related subjects, brief lectures, discussions, field trips, and writing assignments, the class will engage with theoretical, historical, ethical, and practical issues. Students will develop skills to analyze interpretive programs as well as practice writing labels and developing didactic materials for visitors. The course is structured to weave back and forth between the study of three distinct but related activities: 1) the interpretation or representation of objects and phenomena by museum professionals, 2) the reception of the interpretative materials by museum visitors, and 3) the ethical implications of the interpretive materials produced by museums. Museums are dependent on staff members who combine strong conceptual, analytical, research, and writing skills, along with creative problem-solving abilities and a knowledge of the contemporary ethical issues facing the profession. Multiple opportunities to develop these skills and abilities will be available throughout the semester. Students who take this course may be inspired to work within museums in the future as professionals or volunteers; to develop projects as artists; or to participate in programs as informed visitors and patrons.

Course Requirements

• In-class: Learning Log Entries
• Three 1-2 page: Interpretive Exhibition Texts
• Four 2 page papers: Response Papers, Interpretive Exhibition Critiques
• One 3 page Critical Paper (plus rewrite of this paper)
• One 1 page Peer Review of critical paper
• One 1/2 page Final Project Proposal Final Project: Development of an exhibition proposal, narrative tour, research paper or related project. This project must be well researched and related to the class material. Students are expected to submit a written proposal to initiate the project and make an oral presentation

Required Text(s)

• Luke, Timothy. Museum Politics: Power Plays at the Exhibition. 
• Serrell, Beverly. Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach. 
• Course Reader. (Instructions for purchasing the reader will be given in class.)

Instructor

Kathleen Sands

Course Description

Examines religious and ethical conflicts about sexuality and gender nonconformity in contemporary America. Students gain knowledge, practical wisdom, and communication skills to negotiate moral disagreement in a pluralistic society. Pre: junior standing or consent.

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Fabio Lopez-Lazaro

Course Description

This survey introduces students to historians’ understanding of maritime enterprises, including the evolution of maritime exploration, transoceanic colonization, and shipping trade networks. It emphasizes introducing students to current scholarly investigations of the interactions between ocean-going colonists, merchants, imperialists, and pirates at key moments in time (the ancient and medieval Indian Ocean, Pacific, and Mediterranean contexts; the early modern Americas and the Caribbean; and the modern international law pertaining to maritime disputes). The focus of the course is on how the Americas have been shaped by maritime networks and maritime predation (piracy and privateering) since the 1400s. We read original narratives, including eyewitness accounts, and place them within the context examined by a selection of recent scholarship drawn from archaeology, history, and law.

Course Requirements

There are two modalities for completing course assignments:

Research essay mode
Class Participation (in-class and LAULIMA discussion board posts) – 10%
Research Essay (min. eight pages) – 20%
Pop quizzes (4) – 20%
First Half-Semester Exam – 30%
Second Half-Semester Exam: 20%

Annotated bibliography mode
Class Participation (in-class and LAULIMA discussion board posts) – 10%
Annotated bibliography (oral presentation and written report) – 20%
Pop quizzes (4) – 20%
First Half-Semester Exam – 20%
Second Half-Semester Exam: 30%

Required Text(s)

Most of the readings are scholarly journal articles that will be made available in digital copies on LAULIMA. In addition students will be reading selections from the following:

Primary sources:

• Alexander Exquemelin, The Buccaneers of America (1684; Dover, 2000 edition)
• Captain Johnson (D. Defoe), A General History of the Pyrates (1725) (FREE for UH students, online at our library’s Eighteenth Century Collection)

Secondary sources:

• Bruce Elleman et al., eds., Piracy and Maritime Crime: Historical and Modern Case Studies (Naval War College Press) [FREE online at http://www.virginia.edu]
• C. R. Pennell, Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader (New York University Press)

Instructor

Robert Perkinson

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)

• Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African
• Spiegelman, Art.  Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale
• Spiegelman, Art.  Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale
• Stannard, David.  American Holocaust

Instructor

TBA

Course Description

TBA

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

TBA

Course Description

TBA

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructors

TBA

Course Description

TBA

Instructor

TBA

Course Description

Instructor

Brandy McDougall

Course Description

The lands that are now the United States and its territories have witnessed a long history of conquest against their Indigenous peoples.  Many of the details of this violent conquest are either absent from most American history textbooks, or when they are exploded, they are often discussed in terms of “the distant American past.”  By and large, this constructed history has resulted in a relegation of native peoples to the primitive past and/or an ambivalence toward various native groups in terms of their efforts to redress injustices, both historic and contemporary, and to maintain their inherent sovereignty.

Using film, literature, and scholarship, this interdisciplinary course aims to overturn these dominant constructions of history in order to explore contemporary issues of Indigenous cultural identity, representation, sovereignty, and legal frameworks.  For the purposes of this course, Indigenous Americans includes Native American tribes, Alaskan Natives, and Native Pacific and Atlantic Islanders whose lands are U.S. states, territories, or “freely associated” within the U.S.  We will examine the varied experiences and situations of Indigenous peoples in the United States, how indigeneity is framed dominant American culture, and the complex ways in which Indigenous Americans are made to continuously negotiate between traditional and settler cultures as they struggle for their lands, their rights, and their futures.

Instructor

Dennis Ogawa

Course Description

Japanese American life in Hawaii and American society at large. Historical and cultural heritage. Biographical portraits, changing family ties, ethnic lifestyle, male and female relations, local identity and the nature of island living.

Course Requirements

• Oral Communication Assignments: 46%
• Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii Paper: 8%
• Quizzes: 6%
• Two Tests: 20%
• Final Examination: 20%

Required Text(s)

• Ogawa, Dennis.  Jan Ken Po
• Ogawa, Dennis.  Kodomo No Tame Ni
• Various handouts (online)

Instructor

Elizabeth Colwill

Course Description

Instructor

Joyce Mariano

Course Description

This course broadens attention to the experiences and perspectives of Asian Americans through interrelated contexts of race, class, gender, policy, immigration, war, and citizenship.  We will work to understand how course materials highlight the dynamic dimensions of Asian America and the implications of how Asian America has been imagined both historically and today.

Required Text(s)

• Carlos Bulosan, America is in the Heart: A Personal History
• Yasutaro Soga, Life Behind Barbed Wire: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawaii Issei
• Jane Jeong Trenka, The Language of Blood: A Memoir 

Instructor

Dennis Ogawa

Course Description

Examines WWII as a watershed in American and Hawai‘i 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.

Required Text(s)

• Handouts to be posted on Laulima

Instructor

Jonna Eagle

Course Description

What is the relationship between the waging and the imaging of war, between material violence and its cultural representation? How do popular media shape collective understandings and experiences of war? And how have these media been shaped by military projects and perspectives in turn? What are the ethical implications of consuming images of war and suffering as part of our daily lives—of looking upon such images, or alternately, of refusing to look or looking away?

In this course, we’ll explore these and other questions through the examination of a variety of media—including photographs and print journalism, documentaries and fiction films, television newscasts and reality shows, videogames and online video sharing sites—as they have shaped the experience and understanding of war in the modern era. Our focus will be on American culture in particular, as we move in roughly chronological order from the Civil War to the present, with individual units organized around specific historical conflicts and broader ethical concerns. Among the issues we’ll consider are: the status of war as a modern media spectacle; the cultural preoccupation with “authentic” war images alongside the equally persistent assertion that real war resides beyond or outside of representation; the emergence and development of the military-entertainment complex over the last century and the shifting roles and of the citizen and the soldier within it; and the ethical implications of consuming images of war and suffering at a remove from the material conditions of that suffering.

Instructor

Will 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. (Alt. years)

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Jeff Tripp

Course Description

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

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

F. Zelko

Course Description

Survey history of the complex relations between American societies and diverse U.S. ecosystems, from European contact and colonization to the present.

Instructor

Robert Perkinson

Course Description

History of American crime and punishment from 18th century to the present. Topics: changing crime patterns, evolving punishment methods, penal reform movements, convict resistance, growth of prison industrial complex, racism, class, and gender. Pre: junior standing or consent.

Instructor

Njoroge Njoroge

Course Description

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

Required Text(s)

TBA

Course Requirements

TBA

Instructor

Elizabeth Colwill

Course Description

This seminar foregrounds the writings, voices, and cultures of Pacific Islander, Indigenous, and U.S. women of color in the last half century.  We’ll cross boundaries of nation and genre as we examine the intersections of ethnicity, race, and class; slavery, colonialism, and migration; and sexuality and gender that have shaped women’s experiences and modes of creative expression. Tapping a range of genres–fiction, short stories, film, comedy, theater, spoken word, and dance–we’ll examine narrative modes as acts of identity formation, community creation, political resistance, and historical imagination.  

Threshold concepts and critical debates in Women’s Studies, Literary Studies, and American Studies illuminate our study of prison literature (Hulihua IV); sci fi (Octavia Butler); essays and poetry (Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Mitsuye Yamada, Tillie Olsen, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Brandy Nālani McDougall); short stories (Sarah Lau, Fae Myenne Ng and Edwidge Danticat); novels (Joy Kogawa and Linda Hogan); as well as documentary film and comedy. We’ll focus on the relationships between writers and readers, memory and trauma, genre and technique as we explore the artistry and impact of women’s literature and performances.

Instructor

Jonna Eagle

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

Readings and research on American social and intellectual history. Repeatable one time. Pre: graduate standing and consent. (Cross-listed as HIST 639B).

Required Text(s)

TBA

Instructor

Jonna Eagle

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

Ralph Kam

Course Description

The course serves as a basic introduction to the field of historic preservation.  Students will be introduced to the language of the field, will come to understand key concepts and assumptions and will become familiar with the overall background of the subject.  Emphasis will be placed on the history of historic preservation in the U.S. and in other countries, on basic theoretical precepts and on current practice. Subjects include the role of house museums in historic preservation, historic districts and their regulation, architectural and other resource surveys, the National Register program, historic preservation law, the relationship of preservation to planning, the economics of preservation and landscape and rural preservation. Historic preservation, as students will come to realize, is a many-faceted subject, touching upon art, social values, economics and law.  However, the discipline remains strongly tied to architecture and planning; and these core interests will continue to take priority in the course.

Course Requirements

The course combines lectures and in-class discussions that build a knowledge base intended to support your completion of a Preservation Research Project.  Students will be expected to attend class sessions and participate in discussions and question periods. Weekly reading assignments will serve as a basis for classroom discussions; so students are expected to come to class prepared. Participation in classroom discussions will constitute a significant portion of your class grade.  This course also includes a Mid-Term Term Exam and a Research Project, which will serve as a Final Exam.  The Research Project may be a draft of a National Register nomination OR a 10-12 page Research Paper on a Preservation Site or Issue of your choice.  The grading will be based on the following:

1. Participation 30%
2. Mid-term Exam 30%
3. Research Project (with Preservation) 40%

Required Text(s)

1. William J. Murtagh, Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America, Revised ed., New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997. [original edition (Sterling Publishing/Main Street) may be used].

2. Robert E. Stipe, A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the 21st Century, Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2003.

3. A Course Reader is also required and is available either for download or purchase at Marketing and Publications Services (MAPs), Curriculum Research & Development Group.  A copy will also be available for download on laulima.

Supplemental Texts (not required for purchase)

1. Robert E. Stipe and Antoinette J. Lee, The American Mosaic: Preserving a Nation’s Heritage, Washington, D.C.: US/ICOMOS, 1987.

2. National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of Interior, Respectful Rehabilitation, Washington, D.C., 1982 [now out of print, available in on-line edition through NPS, Heritage Programs]

Instructor

Karen Kosasa

Course Description

This class is designed to introduce students to a range of theoretical, historical, and practical issues important to the study of museums and related places (art galleries, historic sites, aquariums, and parks). Museums are knowledge-producing institutions that orchestrate the experiences of visitors through the collection and organization of exhibition materials. Students will utilize theories and methodologies from a wide range of fields (museology, art history, anthropology, geography, cultural studies, literary criticism) to analyze the links between the function and practices of museums and the production of cultural knowledge, especially by privileged social groups. In the past, successful exhibits effaced all evidence of the pedagogical objectives and efforts of their makers. Hence, museums appeared to simply present and not interpret what they exhibited and their institutional authority allowed their interpretations to be accepted as “universal truths.”

In recent years, museums have undergone significant changes. Along with shifts in the study of collections, design of exhibitions, and educational programming, museums are rethinking their relationship and obligations to the communities represented in their collections. According to Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, museums are moving from being “sites of authority” to becoming “sites of mutuality.” Many are actively soliciting the views and needs of social groups previously ignored or considered unimportant. Some have actively or inadvertently challenged widely-held social practices and beliefs. In these instances, they have been at the frontlines of “culture wars,” becoming embattled sites over the role of public institutions, government funding, and diverse viewpoints. This course will examine these recent shifts and some of the theoretical and pragmatic issues that underlie them—the politics of representation, the importance of visual practices/culture, and legal and ethical problems concerning access to and ownership of cultural objects and collections.

In an early section students will briefly look at the history of museums in Western Europe, especially the emergence of large exhibition halls in the nineteenth century which offered new state-sanctioned forms of entertainment and education to lower- and middle-class visitors. In another section it will review issues pertinent to museums and colonial history in Hawai‘i, and efforts to consider the “Host Culture” and Native Hawaiian views on museums, collections, and the growth of cultural tourism. Finally, students will consider pragmatic issues concerning museum governance, management, planning, ethics, and public policy. While this class will focus most of its attention on museums in Western Europe and the United States, it will also examine institutions and cultural centers in other geographic locations.

Instructor

Karen Kosasa

Course Description

Work of museums and professionals (registrars, collections managers, conservators, curators ad others) in the care of collections, interpretive studies of museum displays and collections and field trips.  Pre: 683 (or concurrent) or consent.

Instructor

Karen Kosasa

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.

Instructor

Jonna Eagle

Course Description

This course takes up affect as a way of understanding the power of media to shape and orchestrate collective feelings, movements, and identities. We will survey foundational works in affect studies by scholars such as Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, Ann Cvetkovich, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Brian Massumi, Silvan Tomkins, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, alongside a wide range of historical and contemporary media, including novels, television, music, film, and social media. We will focus on media as a conduit of both affect and power, asking after the kinds of feelings and affinities it works to condition. Of particular interest will be questions of race, gender, and nation, and the work of public feeling in shaping the emotional, social, and political worlds we inhabit.

The course will build on work we did in AMST 632: Mass Media last year, though will also offer an opportunity for students who have not yet taken a media studies course at the graduate level to orient to media as an object of study. Students working on or contemplating exam fields in the areas of cultural studies, cultural theory, media studies, popular culture, and related topics may find the course of particular use. The course will also be listed as an International Cultural Studies Program elective.

Instructor

jeffrey Tripp

Course Description

The Practicum/Internship is the final requirement for the Certificate in Historic Preservation. It is restricted to “majors” in the Historic Preservation Program and is generally taken as the last course in the sequence of required courses for the certificate, although students may be enrolled simultaneously for the Practicum/Internship and other courses in the program. Students not enrolled in the program may take the Practicum/Internship as part of their other studies, with the permission of the Director, although this is not encouraged.

To enroll in AmSt 695, you must submit a practicum/internship topic and proposal to the Director for approval. Upon receipt of approval, the student will be given a special approval code for registration.

The Practicum/Internship is intended to advance the student’s knowledge of the field and to research areas of special interest. Since the project is meant to be of a practical character, students are encouraged especially to take advantage of work-related opportunities in the field. Past Practica/Internships, for example, have included research reports carried out for Cultural Resource Management firms, studies conducted for non-profit organizations, research and exhibits undertaken for museums, and results of ongoing advocacy projects. Students should view the Practicum/Internship as an opportunity to explore areas they have never had an opportunity to consider, and to build on and consolidate projects in which they have had prior involvement.

Course Requirements

• The practicum should seek to apply general preservation theory to the student’s specific discipline.
• Internships must be taken with an organizational entity such as a public or private agency or an architectural or planning firm which is involved in some aspect of preservation.
• Selection of internship program and affiliated organization or agency must be approved by the director.

• Internship activities shall involve exploration and application of knowledge gained in course work of the Historic Preservation Certificate Program.

• Students are expected to devote between 8-10 hours per week to the internship plus a biweekly meeting with the faculty member in charge, alternating with a biweekly meeting with the contact of the sponsoring entity.

• The individual shall record the process undertaken.

• At the completion of the internship, the student shall submit a copy of the internship report or project to complete the practicum to the Director.

• The practicum may be taken at any time after the completion of American Studies 675 (628/421/410). It may be undertaken during the academic year or during summer.

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.