AMST 6600a, American Scholars  Lisa Lowe

This required seminar for incoming first-year graduate students in the American Studies doctoral program focuses on varieties of scholarship and research methods employed in the field. The course aims to be both a history of the interdisciplinary American Studies field and an exploration of newer debates, approaches, and frameworks that engage and revise earlier objects, areas, historical timelines, methods, and periods. Beyond the narratives of United States exceptionalism, we engage American Studies scholarship that considers U.S. culture, history, and politics in relation to the histories of slavery, settler colonialism, capitalism, race, gender, sexuality, subcultures, war and empire. To explore the various kinds of approaches and projects, the seminar features visits from Yale scholars. Students will read 100 pages of visiting scholars’ work and collaborate on topical and thematic questions for discussion. Assignments include brief weekly writing assignments. This course is mandatory for first-year American Studies graduate students.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 6602b, Field Studies  Laura Barraclough

Students work with faculty to identify relevant field-specific literature (e.g., in preparation for oral examinations), formulate compelling research questions, explore appropriate interdisciplinary methods, and/or describe intended contributions to the field. On completion of the course, students are prepared to write competitive fellowship applications and to engage in full-time dissertation research (after their transition to candidacy).
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AMST 6605a or b, Pedagogy  Staff

Faculty members instruct their Teaching Fellows on the pedagogical methods for teaching specific subject matter.
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AMST 6612a / AFAM 5610a / ENGL 5761a / FREN 7610a, Caribbean Literary and Cultural Studies  Marlene Daut

This course examines eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writing (in translation, where applicable) by writers from the Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanophone islands that make up the Caribbean. Haitian independence in 1804 ushered in a vibrant and diverse print culture that included poetry, plays, newspapers, and historical writing. From the pages of La Gazette Royale d’Hayti (1811–1820), to the poems of Jean-Baptiste Romane (1807–1858), to the historical writings of Louis-Félix Boisrond-Tonnerre (1776–1806), to the operas of Juste Chanlatte (1766–1828), there arose a distinct nineteenth-century literary culture in Haiti. Beginning with national literary developments in Haiti, this course expands to consider writing from Barbados, Cuba, Trinidad, Jamaica, Antigua, and Bermuda. These writings, both fictional and non-fictional, help us to think about whether and/or how a coherent early Caribbean literary tradition developed across geographical, linguistic, national, and imperial lines.
W 9:25am-11:15am

AMST 6619a / ER&M 6520 / HSHM 7920a / WGSS 6620a, Enduring Conditions: Chronic Illness, Disability, Care, and Access  Kalindi Vora

This interdisciplinary course brings together scholarship on access and care that bridges concerns in the fields of disability studies and humanistic approaches to chronic illness. Scholarly texts are drawn from the fields of critical race and ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, anthropology and sociology of medicine, history, and feminist science and technology studies (fSTS). Seminar participants also engage with the arts and media as critical sites for understanding culture work bringing together knowledge in disability and chronic illness spaces. To embrace community-based research and knowledge sharing, the course features regular guest lectures from grassroots disability justice organizers and culture workers. The course is offered in a hybrid format. To consider what disability studies and work on chronic illness can build together, we explore the work of Moya Bailey, Aimi Hamraie, Jina B. Kim, Sami Schalk, Akemi Nishida, Ryan Cartwright, and Arthur Kleinman, among others. Permission of instructor is required. Undergraduates may also enroll with permission of instructor.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

AMST 6622a and AMST 6623b / CPLT 6220a, Working Group on Globalization and Culture  Staff

A continuing yearlong collective research project, a cultural studies “laboratory.” The group, drawing on several disciplines, meets regularly to discuss common readings, develop collective and individual research projects, and present that research publicly. The general theme for the working group is globalization and culture, with three principal aspects: (1) the globalization of cultural industries and goods, and its consequences for patterns of everyday life as well as for forms of fiction, film, broadcasting, and music; (2) the trajectories of social movements and their relation to patterns of migration, the rise of global cities, the transformation of labor processes, and forms of ethnic, class, and gender conflict; (3) the emergence of and debates within transnational social and cultural theory. The specific focus, projects, and directions of the working group are determined by the interests, expertise, and ambitions of the members of the group, and change as its members change. The working group is open to doctoral students in their second year and beyond. Graduate students interested in participating should contact michael.denning@yale.edu.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 6627b / ENGL 5820b / FILM 6020b / RLST 6600b, Media and Religion  John Peters and Kathryn Lofton

Media and religion are devices of information and agencies of order. This course proceeds from the possible synonymy of its organizing terms, using as a form of weekly debate the relationship between media and religion. Readings think about how religion and media generate meanings about human doings and their relations with ecological and economic systems while also being constitutive parts of those systems. Students develop projects that allow them to explore a relationship between concept and subject in humanistic study.
M 3:30pm-5:20pm

AMST 6630b / HSAR 6529b / RLST 8190b, Museums and Religion: The Politics of Preservation and Display  Sally Promey

This interdisciplinary seminar focuses on the tangled relations of religion and museums, historically and in the present. What does it mean to “exhibit religion” in the institutional context of the museum? What practices of display might one encounter for this subject? What kinds of museums most frequently invite religious display? How is religion suited (or not) for museum exhibition and museum education? Enrollment is by permission of the instructor; qualified undergraduates are not only welcome but also encouraged to join us. There are no set prerequisites, but, assuming available seats, permission is granted on the basis of response to three questions: Why do you wish to take this course? What relevant educational or professional background/experience do you bring to the course? How does the course help you to meet your own intellectual, artistic, or career aspirations?
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 6636a / HSAR 6526a, Art and Extraction  Jennifer Raab

This graduate seminar examines the relationship of art with extraction: as visual representation and material condition, as shaping political consensus or giving form to dissent, as imagining land and geological time, and as naturalizing—or revealing—the violences of settler-colonialism and racial capitalism. We think about gold, silver, oil, and water, about mines, mills, rocks, and rivers, about empire and enslavement, about golden myth and toxic dust. Classes often revolve around works of art and visual culture held in Yale collections and museums. Instructor permission required.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 6655b, Labor and Technology Studies  Julian Posada

This seminar is structured as a laboratory for the study of labor and technology, focusing on recent transformations driven by the digital economy. We draw from several disciplines to analyze readings, conduct scholarly reviews, develop research projects, and discuss various aspects of the academic profession. The topics and discussions are informed by the background and interests of each cohort of students, complementing the instructor’s ongoing research in three areas: the gig economy and the use of labor platforms both locally and internationally, the impacts of artificial intelligence on work and broader policy and governance, and the effects of digital infrastructures on workers and their communities. Permission of the instructor is required to enroll in this seminar. Undergraduates may enroll with the instructor’s permission.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 7705a / HIST 7304a / RLST 7050a, Readings in Religion and American Society  Tisa Wenger and Jamil Drake

This seminar explores intersections of religion and society in North American history from the colonial period to the present as well as methodological problems important to their study. The course is designed to give graduate students a working knowledge of the field by examining key historiographical trends and influential approaches in recent years. It is not a specialized research seminar, but it does require a basic understanding of historiography. We think together about the sources, conversation partners, methods, and key interventions of each text we read.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 7720b / RLST 6980b, Variety and Standardization  Sally Promey and Jamil Drake

Variety and standardization number among Western modernity’s favorite binaries, fully entangled with another sibling set of “dualities”: religion and secularization. In the United States, the process of “nationing” citizens (to use Tony Bennett’s term) has taken the shape and motto of a linear movement from variety to standardization: e pluribus unum, out of many one. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the US Constitution’s stated commitment to free exercise and nonestablishment, religion invites us to explore the relationship and tension between variety and standardization in American sociopolitical life. On the one hand, religion is a site that not only accommodates but also generates a variety of diverse identities, communities, ideals, epistemes, and practices. On the other hand, religion is a site that enforces standardization and encourages adherence and conformity to authorized ideals, knowledges, behaviors, and institutions. Under pressure of these “opposing” rubrics, variety and standardization are co-constitutive in configuring and managing racial, class, gender/sexual, and national as well as religious differences. This graduate seminar explores religion within the interstices of variety and standardization and at their intersections. Guest experts in the field(s) have been invited to present their work. Given the professors’ geography of expertise, the in-class course content most closely examines variety and standardization in the context of the United States. Other geographical/chronological interest and expertise is welcome and encouraged in student projects, course readings, and class discussion.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 7725a / ER&M 6525, Writing the Academic Journal Article  Albert Laguna

Graduate students are often told that publishing a journal article is a crucial part of their professional development. This course helps students get it done. Students come to class with a piece of writing—seminar paper, dissertation chapter—that we workshop as a group throughout the course of the term. In addition to personalized feedback, we also have broader discussions about the nuts and bolts of this genre of academic writing: organizing your argument, revision, clarity, framing interventions, etc. We complement this structured approach to writing with discussions aimed at demystifying the process by which an article gets published—the art of selecting the right journal, how to read and respond to reader reports, and general timelines. The goal is for all students to submit their article to the journal of their choice by the end of the term. Students are required to have a piece of writing ready to workshop into an article at the very beginning of the class. Students interested in the course should contact the instructor at albert.laguna@yale.edu.
T 9:25am-11:15am

AMST 7740a / FILM 6810a / WGSS 741a, The Photographic Memory Workshop  Laura Wexler

This seminar considers landmark examples of photography’s cultural work in producing, cementing and erasing individual and collective memory.  Topics to be considered include but are not confined to “memory, post-memory and counter-memory”; “the biopolitics of images”; “the visuality of violence”; “photography’s place and space”; and the “potential history of photography.” Students are invited to develop and present their own case studies on topics of interest. Readings encompass: The Unseen Truth by Sarah Lewis; Camera Geologica by Siobhan Angus; The Unintended by Monica Huerta; Race Stories by Maurice Berger; Through a Native Lens by Nicole Dawn Strathman; When a Photograph is Home by Leigh Raiford; From These Roots by Tamara Lanier; and Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography by Ariella Azoulay, Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas, Leigh Raiford, and Laura Wexler. Guest lectures and travel to exhibitions are anticipated.
T 9:25am-11:15am

AMST 7741a / HIST 7400a, Indians and Empires  Ned Blackhawk

This course explores recent scholarship on Indian-imperial relations throughout North American colonial spheres from roughly 1500 to 1900. It examines indigenous responses to Spanish, Dutch, French, English, and lastly American and Canadian colonialism and interrogates commonplace periodization and geographic and conceptual approaches to American historiography. It concludes with an examination of American Indian political history, contextualizing it within larger assessments of Indian-imperial and Indian-state relations.
W 9:25am-11:15am

AMST 7746b / ANTH 6803b, Ethnographic Writing  Kathryn Dudley

This course explores the practice of ethnographic analysis, writing, and representation. Through our reading of contemporary ethnographies and theoretical work on ethnographic fieldwork in anthropological and interdisciplinary research, we explore key approaches to intersubjective encounters, including phenomenological anthropology, relational psychoanalysis, affect studies, and the new materialisms. Our inquiries coalesce around the poetics and politics of what it means to sense and sensationalize co-present subjectivities, temporalities, and ontologies in multispecies worlds and global economies. This is a core anthropology graduate program course; others admitted only by permission of the instructor.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 7752a / PLSC 8120a, American Progressivism and Its Critics  Stephen Skowronek

The progressive reform tradition in American politics. The tradition’s conceptual underpinnings, social supports, practical manifestations in policy and in new governmental arrangements, and conservative critics. Emphasis on the origins of progressivism in the early decades of the twentieth century, with attention to latter-day manifestations and to changes in the progressive impulse over time.
M 3:30pm-5:20pm

AMST 7768b / ER&M 6680b / HIST 7500b, Asian American History and Historiography  Mary Lui

This reading and discussion seminar examines Asian American history through a selection of recently published texts and established works that have significantly shaped the field. Major topics include the racial formation of Asian Americans in U.S. culture, politics, and law; U.S. imperialism; U.S. capitalist development and Asian labor migration; and transnational and local ethnic community formations. The class considers both the political and academic roots of the field as well as its evolving relationship to “mainstream” American history.
T 9:25am-11:15am

AMST 7771a / AFAM 7771a, Affect Theory  Tav Nyong'o

This graduate seminar traces the emergence of affect, sense, feeling, and mood as critical keywords in American studies. Particular attention is paid to the manner in which queer theorists such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Lauren Berlant, Ann Cvetkovich, Heather Love, Jennifer Doyle, Jonathan Flatley, and José Esteban Muñoz developed the concept in what has been called “the affective turn” in queer and feminist aesthetics. The philosophical basis of affect theory in the writings of Spinoza, Heidegger, and Deleuze forms the core of the seminar. We also look to an alternate genealogy for affect politics in the writings of Bergson and Deleuze on fabulation. We consider the psychoanalytic take on affect, in particular, the object relations school of Klein and Winnicott, and we read critics who contrast affect theory with trauma theory. Marxist contributions to affect theory include readings from Virno (on humor), Hardt and Negri (on affective labor), and Ranciere (on the distribution of the sensible). The writings of Jasbir Puar and Brian Massumi on the affective politics of contemporary war, empire, and societies of control are also  considered, as are writings by Fred Moten, Saidiya Hartman, and Frank Wilderson on optimism and pessimism as moods/modalities of black studies.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 7783a / FILM 7830a, The Historical Documentary  Charles Musser

This course looks at the historical documentary as a method for carrying out historical work in the public humanities. It investigates the evolving discourse sand resonances within such topics as the Vietnam War, the Holocaust, and African American history. It is concerned with the relationship of documentary to traditional scholarly written histories as well as the history of the genre and what is often called the “archival turn.”
T 3:30pm-5:20pm, M 7pm-10pm

AMST 7789a, Social Theory of the City  Laura Barraclough

This graduate readings course considers how scholars from a variety of social science disciplines have conceptualized the city, focusing on the relationships between processes of urbanization, the material forms of urban space, and power relations. Students examine the historiography of urban theory, including both classical and contemporary approaches. Readings draw from theoretical formations including but not limited to urban ecology, political economy, political ecology, neoliberal urbanism, critical race studies, critical Indigenous studies and settler colonial studies, feminism, queer theory, and more. A primary aim is to trouble the spatial, temporal, and conceptual bounds of what qualifies as the “urban,” and to consider how distinct ways of imagining the city can and do support a range of political agendas and social movements.
W 9:25am-11:15am

AMST 7796b / AFAM 7196b / HIST 8130b, Slave Systems in World History  Edward Rugemer

Slavery has been a protean institution in world history, with pre-historic origins and nearly countless manifestations across time and place. This readings course explores the history of slavery over the longue duree, moving through time from the ancient world through the nineteenth century with readings on some of the major slave systems in world history. One goal of the course is to situate the well-known slave systems of the Americas within a broader historical context. Student writing includes a historiographical essay on one of the major slave systems discussed in the course.
W 9:25am-11:15am

AMST 8805a / HSAR 6720a / RLST 6990a / WGSS 7779a, Sensational Materialities: Sensory Cultures in History, Theory, and Method  Sally Promey

This interdisciplinary seminar explores the sensory and material histories of (often religious) images, objects, buildings, and performances as well as the potential for the senses to spark contention in material practice. While course content focuses on United States things and religions (given the professor’s areas of expertise and academic appointments), the course also considers broader geographical and categorical parameters so as to invite intellectual engagement with the most challenging and decisive developments in relevant fields, including recent literatures on material agencies. The goal is to investigate possibilities for scholarly examination of a robust human sensorium of sound, taste, touch, scent, and sight—and even “sixth senses”—the points where the senses meet material things (and vice versa) in life and practice. Topics include the cultural construction of the senses and sensory hierarchies; investigation of the sensory capacities of things; and specific episodes of sensory contention in and among various religious traditions. In addition, the course invites thinking beyond the “Western” five senses to other locations and historical possibilities for identifying the dynamics of sensing human bodies in religious practices, experience, and ideas. Course is by permission of instructor; qualified undergraduates are welcome. In order to request permission, please email the professor (sally.promey@yale.edu) with responses to the following questions: (1) Why are you interested in taking this seminar?; (2) what educational, intellectual, artistic, or other experiences do you bring to the seminar’s subjects?; (3) how does the content of this course relate to your own career and/or personal aspirations?
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 8808a / FILM 6310a / WGSS 6310a, Media, Embodiment, and the Senses  Neta Alexander

This graduate seminar examines the intersections of critical disability studies and media theory to challenge conventional understandings of communication, technology, and culture. Through critical engagement with contemporary film, media, art, and design, this course explores how all technology functions as “assistive” technology and interrogates the pervasive idealization of able-bodiedness. Readings, screenings, discussions, and practice-based assignments encourage students to rethink normative assumptions about the body, ability, and accessibility, moving beyond audio-visual approaches to media.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

AMST 8832a / FILM 7350a, Documentary Film Workshop  Charles Musser

This workshop in audiovisual scholarship explores ways to present research through the moving image. Students work within a Public Humanities framework to make a documentary that draws on their disciplinary fields of study. Designed to fulfill requirements for the M.A. with a concentration in Public Humanities.
W 3:30pm-6:20pm, T 7pm-9pm

AMST 8835a / HIST 7200a, Research in Recent U.S. History  Regina Kunzel and Joanne Meyerowitz

Students conduct research in primary sources and write original essays on post-1945 U.S. history. Readings include scholarly articles that might serve as models for students’ research projects.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 8867b / AFAM 7152b / HIST 8902b / HSHM 7610b, Researching and Writing Medicine, Health, and Empire  Carolyn Roberts

This small graduate seminar is for students currently engaged in research and writing projects that touch on issues related to health, medicine, science, or the body in the context of slavery, colonialism, or neocolonialism.  Students will explore their relationship to the craft of writing, their identity as “authors,” the politics of the archive, the methodological and evidentiary challenges in their work, and tools that will level up their research organization and management skills.  The course provides graduate students with a balance of support and independence as they further their research and writing projects.  Graduate students in any discipline are warmly invited to participate in a compassion-based research community that prioritizes values of deep listening, presence, and care
F 9:25am-11:15am

AMST 9000a or b, Independent Research  Staff

For those students who are interested in pursuing an independent study or directed reading.
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AMST 9001a or b, Directed Reading  Staff

Arrangement with faculty for those students who are interested in pursuing directed reading course.
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AMST 9002b, Prospectus Workshop  Daniel HoSang

Upon completion of course work, students are required to participate in at least one term of the prospectus workshop, ideally the term before the prospectus colloquium is held. Open to all students in the program and joint departments, the workshop serves as a forum for discussing the selection of a dissertation topic, refining a project’s scope, organizing research materials, identifying appropriate methods and theoretical frameworks, and evaluating work in progress. Additional topics include finding intellectual communities, preparing for academic conferences, and balancing the demands of teaching and research. The workshop meets six times during the semester.
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

AMST 9003b / HIST 7260b / PHUM 9003b, Introduction to Public Humanities  Karin Roffman

What is the relationship between knowledge produced in the university and the circulation of ideas among a broader public, between academic expertise on the one hand and nonprofessionalized ways of knowing and thinking on the other? What is possible? This seminar provides an introduction to various institutional relations and to the modes of inquiry, interpretation, and presentation by which practitioners in the humanities seek to invigorate the flow of information and ideas among a public more broadly conceived than the academy, its classrooms, and its exclusive readership of specialists. Topics include public history, museum studies, oral and community history, public art, documentary film and photography, public writing and educational outreach, the socially conscious performing arts, and fundraising. In addition to core readings and discussions, the seminar includes presentations by several practitioners who are currently engaged in different aspects of the Public Humanities. With the help of Yale faculty and affiliated institutions, participants collaborate in developing and executing a Public Humanities project of their own definition and design. Possibilities might include, but are not limited to, an exhibit or installation, a documentary, a set of walking tours, a website, a documents collection for use in public schools.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 9004a or b / PHUM 9004a or b, Practicum  Karin Roffman

Public Humanities students are required to complete a one-term internship with one of our partnered affiliates (to be approved by the Public Humanities DGS or assistant DGS) for practical experience in the field. Potential internships include in-house opportunities at the Beinecke Library, Sterling Memorial Library, or one of Yale’s museums, or work at a regional or national institution such as a media outlet, museum, or historical society. In lieu of the internship, students may choose to complete a “micro-credential.” Micro-credentials are structured as workshop series (3–5 daylong meetings over the course of a year) rather than as term courses, and include revolving offerings in topics such as oral history, collections and curation, writing for exhibits, podcast production, website design, scriptwriting from the archive, or grant writing for public intellectual work.
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AMST 9005a or b / PHUM 9005a or b, Public Humanities Capstone Project  Karin Roffman

The coursework and practicum/micro-credential lead to a significant project to be approved by the DGS or assistant DGS (an exhibition, documentary, research paper, etc.) and to be presented in a public forum on its completion.
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AMST 9010a or b, American Studies Professionalization Workshop  Staff

This seminar is designed for advanced Ph.D. candidates who are going on the job market. Students draft and revise three full rounds of the five standard genres of job market materials: job letter, CV, dissertation abstract, teaching portfolio, and diversity statement. Students also participate in mock interviewing skills, developing a job talk, and preparing applications for postdoctoral fellowships. Graded Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.
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