Message from Peggy Shaffer, director of American Studies. Please note
especially the radio-connected capstone.
Judi
--------------

As you prepare for spring registration this week, please feel free to
contact me to discuss your schedules.  To see the complete list of
courses offered spring semester that will satistfy the AMS major and
minor go to the AMS web site (http://www.muohio.edu/AmericanStudies)
click on current students and then click on fall 2004 registration.  In
addition, a brochure will be available in the programs office in  120
MacMillan.  I would like to draw your attention to the following
courses which might be of interest.

AMS 301  Practice in American Studies (3)  "American Society and
Brown v Board of Education, the Legacy of Civil Rights" M 4:00-6:40
Mary Frederickson
Specific focus of this course will be the Brown v Board of Education
case resulting in the integration of public schools.  Students will
explore the multiple ways in which responses to the Brown decision
shaped contemporary American culture and the continuing challenge  Brown
poses to the American system of education.  This course is
designed to offer opportunities for collaborative and interactive
learning that link students and faculty in the university with
communities and constituencies outside the university. Focusing on a
specific theme, issue, or ongoing project, students will explore
notions of public culture through some form of applied study and
research. Drawing from a range of approaches to interactive learning
such as service learning, field research, experiential learning, and
applied research, the course encourages critical self-awareness,
civic engagement, public service, and social stewardship. Examples of
selected topics include Rural Life Field Study, Digital Media, Oral
History, Public Spaces, and the Transformation of Public Culture.
Regardless of the particular topic, the course stresses critical
reflection and action.  Course goals include learning how to relate
intellectual concepts and personal learning to everyday experiences  and
the needs of diverse communities beyond the classroom, how to use
critical thinking and research skills to assess community issues, and
how to address, respond to, and engage with outside communities and
constituencies.

AMS 302  U.S. and the World (3) TR 11:00-11:50   Andrew Cayton
This course will focus on the development of cultural and national
identities through discussions of the personal interactions of
variety of Americans with peoples in other nations.  Traditionally,
American Studies courses about Americans abroad concentrate on their
efforts to overcome their provinciality.  The usual narrative (built
around novels by James, Twain, and others) traces the maturing of
individual Americans as a microcosm of the coming of age of the
United States as a whole.  In this course, we will read memoirs,
diaries and letters as well as fiction, much of it about rather than  by
Americans.  The title of the course has two meanings: others
encountering Americans and Americans encountering others.  Our goal  is
to reconstruct a sense of a dynamic global conversation about
identity in a period when nation, race, class, and gender were moving
to the forefront of popular consciousness, when questions of identity
suddenly mattered in ways they never had before.  What did it mean to
be a citizen of a particular nation?  What was the relationship if  any
between place and identity?  How did Americans and others
construct narratives of identity?

AMS 401 Senior Capstone in American Studies (4) "This American Life"  R
2:00-4:40 Peggy Shaffer
Topic of focus "This American Life":  Building on and learning from  the
example of National Public Radio's successful program, "This
American Life," we will consider and develop research projects
documenting some aspect of American Life  through oral history,
music, and story telling presented as a radio documentary project.  This
course is a colloquium in which students undertake and complete  a
research or creative project in an area of American cultural
studies. Emphasis is on the collaborative selection and design of
issues for discussion as well as on sharing the process of project
development. Required for American studies majors and minors.
Prerequisite: AMS 101, 201, nine additional hours of American
studies-related course work, or permission of instructor.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Peggy Shaffer

--
Marguerite S. Shaffer
Director of American Studies
Miami University
Oxford, OH  45056
(513) 529-7527
(513) 529-5333
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