The United States is the most powerful player on the international scene today, and is unlikely to relinquish that position any time soon. Understanding how and why this condition arose, and what it means for world affairs today, is our concern in this course. The emphasis is on U.S. policymaking over the past century, with due attention to the international and domestic political context in which decisions were made. Issues to be explored include the tension between isolationism and interventionism and between unilateralism and multilateralism; the emergence of the U.S. as a...

This course takes a cultural approach to connected histories and more contemporary developments of (post)colonial national identity formations, U.S. empire, and globalization during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the lenses of gender, race, and appearance. We will examine visual and performative cultural arenas such as beauty pageants, advertising, mass media, film, and video and investigate how discourses of racial and gendered aesthetics functioned in structuring and maintaining colonial forces and empire.

Hiphop is a global phenomenon that influences social life far beyond the music and entertainment industries. Yet beyond descriptions and critiques of its mass appeal, few have considered hip-hop's development of standards and evaluations across all artistic areas and culture. Moreover, the consequences of an audience trained in the changing standards of hip-hop and charged with upholding them, has not been thoroughly explored. This course provides a critical examination of hip-hop in the US and its role as a cultural, political and artistic resource for youth. It will explore the...