WUSTL Course Listings Login with WUSTL Key
Search Results: Help Display: Open + Closed     Just Open     Just Closed View: Regular     Condensed     Expanded
1 course found.
AMERICAN CULTURE STUDIES (U89)  (Dept. Info)Continuing & Professional Studies  (Policies)
U89 AMCS 478AAmerican Folklore in Context3.0 Units
Description:For the last several election cycles, candidates and supporters from across the political spectrum have invoked "the real American." But what does it mean to be authentically American? A simple answer might be that they are "us." A more complex one requires that we dive into American folklore. The scholarly field of Folklore may be defined loosely as exploring what we say, what we do, and what we believe. Following this schema, this course will probe the question of what it means to be "American folk" by examining how folklore informs and shapes the world around us and our everyday lives. More particularly, we ask how race and ethnicity, class and gender are encoded and contested through folk expression. Beginning with the question "who are the folk," we will look at classic and contemporary texts in folklore studies to explore how our food, our stories, our daily rituals, and our music, to name a few, interweave to create a complex, multilayered, and uniquely American folk. Readings pair specific genres with different theoretical approaches and include on jokes, urban legends, folktales, foodways, music, and material culture. Crucially, we seek to trouble popular notions of folklore as "antiquities" to question how the lens of Folklore studies may reveal how American culture not only consists of folklore but is constructed by it as folk forms are deployed in contemporary contexts, from Slenderman to Snopes to modern slave auctions. The course will entail several small collection projects to give students an understanding of the work a folklorist does in the field and how folklore is coproduced within a community, and a longer research project. This course satisfies the Humanities requirement for the M.A. Program in American Culture Studies.
Attributes:
Instruction Type:Classroom instruction Grade Options:CPA Tuition:$2,220.00 Fees:
Course Type:HomeSame As:U98 5478Frequency:None / History
Label

Home/Ident

A course may be either a “Home” course or an “Ident” course.

A “Home” course is a course that is created, maintained and “owned” by one academic department (aka the “Home” department). The “Home” department is primarily responsible for the decision making and logistical support for the course and instructor.

An “Ident” course is the exact same course as the “Home” (i.e. same instructor, same class time, etc), but is simply being offered to students through another department for purposes of registering under a different department and course number.

Students should, whenever possible, register for their courses under the department number toward which they intend to count the course. For example, an AFAS major should register for the course "Africa: Peoples and Cultures" under its Ident number, L90 306B, whereas an Anthropology major should register for the same course under its Home number, L48 306B.

Grade Options
C=Credit (letter grade)
P=Pass/Fail
A=Audit
U=Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
S=Special Audit
Q=ME Q (Medical School)

Please note: not all grade options assigned to a course are available to all students, based on prime school and/or division. Please contact the student support services area in your school or program with questions.


No section found for FL2024.