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UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies

Module Descriptions

Culture Wars: Race, Class, Gender and Religion in the US

In this seminar, students will explore the concepts of race, class and gender as socio-historical and theoretical constructs from a multidisciplinary American Studies perspective. Through readings and discussions of seminal texts focusing on the intersection of race, class & gender, you will explore how identities are understood, imagined and contested within different historical periods. Your discussion will range from "Playing Indians" in the Revolutionary Era, blackface minstrelsy in the Jacksonian Era, the late 19th century "Chinese Exclusion Acts", Japanese internments during World War II, up to today's sweatshop workers and "Race Rebels" in urban USA.

American Studies Seminar

This module will respond to topical issues concerning the relationship between the United States and Ireland. Possible topics include: new patterns of migration and emigration, anti-Americanism and protests against the conduct of US Foreign Policy, Americanization of the Irish economy, the influence of popular American Culture in Ireland. The module will draw on research projects within the Institute and on visiting faculty and speakers.

America and Globalization

Prof. Liam Kennedy (Clinton Institute for American Studies)

This course will explore aspects of globalization with a particular focus on the role of the United States in the development and maintenance of a new global order. It covers key issues and debates: the transformation of state power and changing patterns of global governance; the global expansion of a market economy and issues of inequality; the globalization of media and communication; the emergence of transnational and postnational cultures; the makeup of the global city; and anti-globalization and new social movements.

Media and US Foreign Policy

Prof. Liam Kennedy (Clinton Institute for American Studies)

This course will focus on the roles of media in the making and representation of United States foreign policy. It introduces students to critical debates on the relationship between media, war and diplomacy and draws on scholarship from media studies and international affairs as well as primary media content. It covers arrange of media, including print journalism, photojournalism, television, cinema, and the internet. Historical coverage moves from WWII to the current 'war on terror' and considers throughout the connections between military and media technologies.

Hollywood Cinema

Tony Fitzmaurice  (School of Languages, Literature and Film Studies)

Hollywood dominates world cinema to such an extent that it has come to establish the definition of the medium itself. The Hollywood movie, in its international acceptance, has become a way of perceiving the world. Its representations of political possibilities, of gender, of ethical choice, heroism, romance, ambition and happiness, success and failure, continue to enchant mass audiences. The American style is also the closest thing to a truly international cinema.  Its particular formal and thematic paradigms are now accepted as universal. The course will critically examine those paradigms as they operated in the classical period, and on through the post-classical Hollywood of the late 1960s to the present day; from the old to the 'New Hollywood' to 'movie brats, inc'. An abiding theme throughout will be the possibility and limits of the popular film as a potentially dissident form, in relation to changing cultural and historical circumstances.

Text & Voice: African-American Literature

The oral tradition, as Gayl Jones observes, "offers [African American writers] continuity of voice as well as its liberation". However, the development of African American letters cannot be divorced from the need felt by generations of writers to deconstruct stereotypical representations of black people as buffoons, minstrel figures, and inferior beings. This created a dilemma for African American writers: how to represent black voices without questioning the African American's ability to master the English language. This course will examine how African American writers engage in the double exercise of acknowledging black oral traditions, while reinventing them, in order to pursue new modes of representing the black American experience.

Race & Ethnicity in American Fiction since 1970

This course identifies race and ethnicity as key themes in later twentieth-century American fiction, and examines the literary strategies employed to represent, theorise and problematize race and ethnicity in this period. Students will encounter texts from a range of American traditions, and will be encouraged to consider these in their specific historical and cultural contexts, and in relation to broader themes, including race and visual culture, representations of the body, language and subjectivity, historical narrative, postmodernism, and the politics of multiculturalism

The Logic of Metaphor: American Poetic Values

This module will trace the development of American poetry from Emerson’s Essays to the work of a selection of Modernist poets. It will begin by considering Emerson’s theories and practices his essays and poems. It will also seek to contextualise his work within the American Renaissance and, especially, in relation to the poetry of some of his contemporaries.
Our extended aim will be to define the features of the work of the poets who came to prominence in the 1920s. Seminars will focus on close readings of primary and critical material as we attempt to establish poetic values evident in the work of these poets.

American Theatre and Structure

This module will examine key texts from the history of twentieth-century American theatre. It will focus on the reading of plays as practical pieces of theatre craft, designed primarily for performance. Each play will be investigated for its possibilities of staging. (No previous experience of acting or directing is expected.)

The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam: Exploring Mind Language and Knowledge

This module examines the seminal contributions of contemporary American philosopher, Hilary Putnam, to recent trends in philosophy of mind, language and neo-pragmatism. The course will focus on key texts by Putnam that have shaped externalist theories of meaning, functionalist theories of mind, and neo-pragmatist approaches to truth and norms. The course will be divided into three sections.

• We shall examine Putnam's arguments against the prevailing theories of mind and language in the 1960's.
  
• Assess Putnam's role in establishing a new paradigm in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language.
  
• Finally, we shall examine Putnam's rejection of the very paradigms he helped to establish and his espousal of a neo-pragmatist approach.

Anglo American Musicology since 1945

Dr. Julian Horton (School of Music)

This course will provide an overview of significant developments in the practice and methodology of Anglo-American musicology since the Second-World War. Particular attention will be paid to the following areas: positivism, post-war historical musicology and textual methods; trends in theory and analysis, especially the American reception of Schoenberg and Schenker, concepts of post-tonal theory and musical semiology authenticity, performance practice and the work concept; the 'new' musicology and recent appropriations of postmodernism, feminism and gender studies. In addition emphasis will be placed on grasping practical research techniques, including bibliography, archival research and philology.