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Kimberly Hamlin: Courses

AMS 101: Defining the American Dream

AMS 101 introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of American life and culture by focusing on the theme of the theme of the “American Dream.” How have notions of the American Dream changed from colonial times to today? Why? What cultural, political, social, economic, and other forces prompted these changes? To what extent is the American Dream a reality for people living in the United States? How do notions of the American Dream impact public culture, politics, and peoples’ engagement in their communities and in government? And, finally, how can understanding the concept of the American Dream help us better understand American culture as a whole, as well as current social and political debates?

AMS 301: Reform and Radicalism in Ohio

AMS 301 introduces students to the practice of American Studies with an emphasis on public history and memory. This class explores reform and radicalism in Ohio, focusing on the abolition movement, the Underground Railroad, and the temperance movement -- each of which had a significant presence in nineteenth-century Ohio. This class will study both the history of these movements and the ways in which they are remembered (or not remembered) today. As a final project, students will use local archives to create their own exhibition on the person, place, or event of their choice.

HST/AMS 392: Sex and Gender in American Culture

This interdisciplinary course invites students to explore how gender roles, sexual norms, attitudes, and behaviors have changed over time. Beginning with European (and Disney) perceptions of Pocahontas and ending with a discussion of “Girls Gone Wild,” this class highlights the individual and cultural forces that shape, challenge, and redefine our ideas about sex and gender.

HST 770/710: Gender and U.S. History: Theory and Practice

Since feminists inaugurated the field of women’s history in the 1960s and 1970s it has gone through many changes – from boldly inserting women’s experiences into the historical narrative to, more recently, using gender analyses to deconstruct the standard narrative and redefine race, class, the body, sexuality, and foreign affairs, to name a few. This graduate colloquium introduces students to the history of the field and explores the variety of ways in which historians incorporate gendered analyses into their work.

Women in America

This course explores women’s experiences in America from the 1848 Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention to the present from an interdisciplinary perspective. We pay particular attention to the development of feminist movements and to the ways in which main themes in American history, such as capitalism, military conflict, progress, democracy, and religion, change when we look at America from the perspectives of women. We also study how ideas about gender – what it means to be male or female – change over time. To more fully understand the history and experiences of women in America, discussions of race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender, and sexual orientation are central to this course.

America Debates Darwin

When Charles Darwin unveiled his theory of organic evolution by natural selection in the Origin of Species (1859), Americans were on the verge of Civil War and not paying much attention to scientific publications. After the Civil War ended, however, Americans began discussing evolutionary theory in earnest and we are still debating it, nearly 150 years later. This interdisciplinary course will explore what is at stake in evolutionary debates from both historic and modern perspectives. Because evolutionary theory prompted widespread changes in so many areas of thought – from biology to sociology to psychology to feminism to literature-- this class will explore evolution through a variety of disciplines.