AMST 302(F) American Utopias (Junior Seminar)
"The world is now too dangerous for anything less than Utopia," wrote Buckminster Fuller in the wake of WWII. Since the nation's founding Americans have aspired toward a "promised land" or "good life" just beyond the reach of the real world. This junior seminar will focus on utopian thinking, social practices and expressive arts. Reading in the fields of religion, literature, art, urban planning, music, education, film and sociology, we will consider the needs that give rise to utopian visions and the strategies people have used to realize these imagined worlds. How may we account for the failures and successes of such experiments? Among other topics, we will look at the nation-long history of millenarianism, culminating in Tim LaHaye's Left Behind novels, best-selling Christian literature of the rapture and apocalypse. The class will take trips to sites of historical utopian communities and contemporary intentional communities. Authors include Marx, Ann Lee, Thoreau, Wells-Barnett, Bellamy, Gilman, Garvey, Fuller, Samuel Delaney, David Harvey and Touré.
Format: seminar. Evaluation will be based up class participation and written assignments (including two 5-page papers and one 10- to 12-page final essay).
Prerequisites: American Studies 201. Enrollment limited to Junior American Studies majors and to those American Studies majors will be or have been away during their Junior year.
Hour: CLEGHORN

Not offered 2007-2008
AMST 302 Asian American Writing and the Visual Arts (Same as English 388) (Junior Seminar) *
This course examines the interaction of Asian American writing and the visual arts in a range of works: graphic novels by Henry Kiyama, Mine Okubo, and Adrian Tomine; art criticism by John Yau; collaborative projects between poets and visual artists (e.g., Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Kiki Smith, John Yau and Thomas Nozkowski); ekphrastic poetry; poetry "inspired by" paintings; video work (Theresa H. Cha); new digital poetry and poetics (by Brian Kim Stefans).
Format: seminar. Requirements: two papers, short assignments, class participation.
No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 19). Preference given to American Studies majors.

WANG