American Studies

Postmodernism is a philosophical-cultural movement of the late twentieth century that permeated many fields. This course defines postmodernism and discusses its characteristics, focusing on postmodernism in art and culture, literature, philosophy and history.  

The course discusses the following materials: 

1) The Beatles' "The Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" and other musical songs and albums;  

2) John Barth's "The Lost in the Funhouse" and other postmodernist stories;  

3) Jacques Derrida's philosphical notion of Deconstruction, plus theories based on deconstruction;  

4) Holocaust films (e.g. "The Shoah" and "Schindler's List") and literature;  

5) Dinh Q. Le's installation art;  

6) Yoko Ono's experimental art;  

7) American films such as "The Truman Show" & "Edward Scissorhands";  

8) Others. 

This course is to help the students to

Understand concepts and theories of political parties in the United States.

Understand the various functions of political parties in the United States.

Understand and explain how partisan polarization has contributed to the crisis of democracy and the crisis of governance in the United States.

Analyze how partisan polarization in the United States would affect Sino-US relations.

The United States is one of the most important countries in the western world. Its domestic partisan politics have global implications, affecting the Sino-US relationship. This course is intended to give an overview of the scholarly works and popular debates about political parties in the United States. Topics include the theories and the development of party system in the United States, party organization, the role of parties in mobilizing voters, party and governance, partisan polarization, parties and foreign policies, and party politics and Sino-US relations.

This course introduces a variety of texts across disciplines-history, philosophy, cultural studies, literature etc.-in order to understand how American culture interacts with and shapes the world we live in. Many of the important social and cultural movements and trends since World War II, which have contributed to the reshaping of the contours of American culture-- American exceptionalism, consumerism, globalization and mass culture, muticulturalism, ecoculturalism--are examined from various perspectives, both synchronically and diachronically. 

This course offers a productive and student-centered entry point to studying, understanding, and appreciating the American cultural mosaic through the (hi)stories that Americans have been telling themselves in an ongoing process of defining who they are—and, who they are not—vis-à-vis other cultural communities. It is through these narrative (hi)stories that first contact is often made not only with American identities, values, and mores, but also historical events and/or eras, ideological fault lines, and social (in)equalities. The course advances students’ understanding of specific American eras, historical contexts, locales, themes, issues, and fault lines through popular cultural "texts," ranging from literary texts and music to film, television, and video games.

The course analyses selected American literary works from the mid-17th century to today. The texts include fiction, poetry, traditional autobiographies as well as hybrid forms. Discussions will focus on aspects such as "truth", gender, race, ethnicity and morals.

This course explores the fluctuating significance of racial slavery for the development of American and African American literary tradition. It departs from investigation of the idea that particular approaches to selfhood, writing, and freedom arose from the institution of slavery and in particular grew with the slaves’ forced exclusion from literacy and their distinctive relationship with Christianity. Using Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a central point of reference, students look at the development of abolitionist reading publics and the role of imaginative literature in bringing about the demise of slavery. That controversial text also provides a means to consider the relationship of sentimentalism to suffering and identification as well as the problems arising from the simultaneous erasure and re-inscription of racial categories, as oppression and as emancipation. When formal slavery ended, new literary habits emerged in response to the memory of it and the need imaginatively to revisit the slave past as a means to grasp what the emergent world of civic and political freedoms might mean and involve. Other issues covered include the disputed place of imaginative writing in the educational bodies that were created for ex-slaves and their descendants, the issues of genre, gender, and polyvocality in abolitionist texts, the problems of representation that arose in the plantation’s litany of extremity and suffering, and the contemporary significance of slavery in the culture of African American particularity.

The course examines the significance of cultural heritage and cultural memory in the United States in historical and contemporary perspectives. It centers on questions about identity, nationalism, politics, and commercialism, how history has been represented in for example monuments, museums, commemorations, political debates, and popular culture, as well as the conflicts that regularly occur in the United States around questions of cultural memory and heritage.

Cuba, the "Pearl of the Antilles" had long been the heartpiece of imperial aspirations. One of the last Spanish colonies after the revolutions in South and Central America, it played a defining role in Spanish imperial identity. Meanwhile in the US, intellectuals had argued all throughout the 19th century that the island was a natural extension to the Nation, and should be conquered as a logical conclusion to the Monroe Doctrine. When after the war of 1898 the island came into American hands, Spain fell into a deep crisis of identity. The United States though took its first steps into the arena of colonial world politics, in turn becoming an empire. All the while, the Cuban’s desire for independence became a mere footnote in the aftermath. The colonial and imperial struggles had another dimension to them: Gender. A common propaganda theme in the US depicted the Spaniards as raping Cuba. While Theodore Roosevelt and his "Rough Riders" came to define the ideal American masculinity after the war, Spaniards questioned if they were still manly enough to belong to the club of civilized European nations. This seminar will follow three objectives: First, understanding the importance of Cuba to Spain and the United States before the war of 1898, as well as the events leading up to the war. Second, comparing the ascent of the American Empire with the decline of the Spanish Empire. Third, introducing the analytical category of gender as a tool to understanding geopolitical conflicts in the age of colonialism.

This course explores the relationship between the natural world and United States culture, considering specifically the visual expression of that relationship: How have Americans imagined “nature” and represented it? How have concepts of land and landscape shaped perceptions about social order, identity, and sustainability? The course provides both a historical framework for thinking about these questions as well as a contemporary perspective, particularly in the context of a potential new era known as the “Anthropocene.” 

This course provides students with an introduction to the anthropological study of the USA, incorporating perspectives on a variety of topics and regions, and referring to research carried out at a range of historical moments. It provides a grounding in key debates. It shows how ethnographic work carried out in the US has influenced the discipline of anthropology. The course takes a (self)-critical look at what area-based foci of study do. Those teaching the course draw from rich ethnographies and from their own fieldwork experiences in the US.