American Studies

Session I  (June 3 - June 28, 2013)

AMST 220 -Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan

Maria San Filippo, Visiting Lecturer in American Studies

In what is often called American cinema’s “golden age”, the late 1960s through the 1970s, commercialism and creativity joined forces to produce artistically innovative, socially engaged works that revitalized Hollywood. We’ll study films that interpreted the decades’ contested topical issues (the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, feminism, Watergate, LGBT liberation) by considering the aesthetic trends, cultural influences, economic factors, and industrial and technological determinants that combined to make possible this period’s vital filmmaking. Screenings will likely include All the President’s Men, Annie Hall, Bonnie & Clyde, The Conversation, Girlfriends, Killer of Sheep, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Midnight Cowboy, Shampoo, and Taxi Driver.

Meeting times: M,W (1:30 - 5:20)

Location: Collins Cinema

Credit: 1.0 unit (4 sem. hrs.)

Tuition: $2,300

Registration Fee: $50 (non-refundable)

Session II  (July 1 - July 26)

AMST 290 - LBGT Liberation and American Pop Culture

Maria San Filippo, Visiting Lecturer in American Studies

Beginning with the 1960s-1970s Stonewall-era liberation movement and continuing to the present, this course explores the diversity and intensity of approaches that LGBT artists and authors have used to represent themselves, the movement for LGBT civil rights, and the issues and experiences of gender and sexual nonconformity. Topics to be addressed include LGBT activism in/as art, documenting personal and community histories, appropriating and revising mainstream images, queer aesthetics/sensibilities, and intersections with race, class, and national identity.  WGST credit designation.

Meeting times: M, T, Th (1-3:30)

Location: FND 121

Credit: 1.0 unit (4 sem. hrs.)

Tuition: $2,300

Registration Fee: $50 (non-refundable)