AMST 1010: American Identities (fall 2025)
Monday and Wednesday, 2:25-3:30
Room: Boylan 3156
Instructor: Justin Gallagher
Email: [email protected]
Office Hours: Monday, 11:45-1:45, or by appointment
Image via Wikimedia: Aliza Nisenbaum, “La Talaverita, Sunday Morning NY Times” (2016), oil on linen, 68 x 88 inches, collection of the artist (courtesy T293 Gallery, Rome and Mary Mary, Glasgow)
Description
This course is an introduction to American Studies through issues and questions of identity. What is identity? How are our identities formed, and how do they function? What does it mean to be “American?” Who can and cannot claim that identity, and on what terms? How do American identities shape factors such as class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and language, and how are they shaped by those factors?
This semester, we will seek answers to these questions across academic disciplines, and in a wide range of source material, including legal documents, legislation, poetry, film, artwork, and music. Rather than settle on a final definition of either “America” or “identity,” we will explore both as products of on-going dialogue, debate, and change, all shaped by aspects of cultural difference and social power.
Goals
I hope that by the end of the term, you’re able to explain much of what is at stake in how we think about American identity; that you can describe various theories of identity as they’re used in cultural studies; that you can map the political, cultural, and social forces that form American identities, and that you’re able to apply analytic and theoretical frameworks to the interpretation of cultural texts.
Required Materials
You can find links to most of the course readings on the digital version of the syllabus on Blackboard. Those readings that aren’t linked on the syllabus will be posted in the Course Readings section of Blackboard.
You must bring a copy of the reading, something to write with, and paper to class every day.
You will also need to activate your CUNY New York Times account with these instructions.
Unless otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This course website contains copyrighted materials available only for your personal, noncommercial educational and scholarly use. This site is used in accordance with the fair use provision, Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act where allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Every effort has been made to provide attribution of copyrighted content. If you wish to use any copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain expressed permission from the copyright owner. If you are the owner of any copyrighted material that appears on this site and believe the use of any such material does not constitute “fair use”, please contact Professor Justin Gallagher to have the content removed, if proven necessary.
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