American Studies Summer Courses

American Studies is offering the following courses during Summer Sessions 1 and 2. Questions? Contact 5-7718.

SUMMER SESSION 1:

AMST-A202 11538 U.S. Arts and Media TOPIC: Pregnancy and Visual
Culture: A History of Childbirth Practices and their Visual Representations 3 cr. A & H MTWRF, 1:10-2:25 Shira Segal

How is pregnancy and childbirth visually grappled with in our culture?
What do representations of pregnancy and childbirth reveal about cultural attitudes, social expectations and individual experiences of reproduction? The aim of this course is to provide an in-depth exploration of visual representations of pregnancy and childbirth as they are informed by particular childbirth practices in the United States. From pregnant and birthing images found in photography and television to those in painting, sculpture and film, this class will examine how these images reflect, reinforce or revolutionize cultural anxieties surrounding the maternal body. Situated in the context of medicalization and midwifery, childbirth and it accompanying images will be explicated by contrasting themes: birth in the hospital versus the home, medical knowledge versus bodily knowledge, fetal imagining and fragmentation of the mother versus mother-centered discourses, and technocratic versus natural or holistic models of the body. Class material and discussions will be driven by three basic questions: 1) How is pregnancy and childbirth visually grappled with in our culture?

2) What aesthetic choices, visual themes and theoretical problems arise from the visual subject of childbirth? and 3) How might these image texts reflect, reinforce or revolutionize cultural anxieties surrounding the pregnant/birthing/maternal body? The goal of this class is to offer insight into the social and medical discourses of the body that shape the treatment of women and their partners in the hospital birth setting, and to offer an alternative.

SUMMER SESSION 2:
AMST-A201 11537 U.S. Movements and Institutions TOPIC : Cultural Paranoia and the Contemporary Hollywood Misdirection Film 3 cr. A & H MTWRF, 2:30-3:20 Film screenings: T, 7:00-10:00 pm Seth Friedman

Since the early 1990s, there has been a spate of Hollywood films such as The Sixth Sense (1999), The Usual Suspects (1995), and Fight Club (1999), which are renowned for their surprise endings. All these films possess a similar narrative structure; they each contain a revelation that encourages spectators to reinterpret retrospectively all that has come before. Although these films can be identified as belonging to other pre-existing industrially recognized genres, this class will take the approach that they are more appropriately categorized as constituents of the "misdirection" genre. This is because the narrative revelation is the most consistently referenced feature whenever people speak or write about these films, regardless of the ways that the studios package them. This class will investigate the reasons why this long-standing narrative mode has proliferated in the U.S. over the past two decades. It is significant that some U.S. audiences have been drawn to films that demand greater interpretive work than what is typically needed to decipher the standard Hollywood fare. To address this apparent paradox, we will examine the socio-cultural and industrial conditions that have made misdirection films attractive to both Hollywood producers and some U.S. audiences over approximately the past twenty years. We will attempt to determine why an audience for these films has recently formed. Specifically, we will address why films containing narratives that suggest that the "truth" is being concealed from view have become so appealing to a significant segment of U.S. spectators. We will focus on questions such as the following: What relationship do films and other forms of media have to the culture in which they are produced and consumed? What can the popularity of contemporary misdirection films tell us about the acceptability of different modes of interpretation in the U.S. since the early 1990s? How do communities form from specific interpretive practices? What can these films tell us about contemporary racial and gender politics in the U.S.? What connection do these films have to the development of new home-viewing technologies, the rise of the Internet, and other recent changes impacting the U.S. media industries? To help us respond to these questions, we will read selections from a variety of disciplines such as Anthropology, Film and Media Studies, History, Literary Studies, and Political Science.

Films will likely include the following: Arlington Road (1999), Fight Club (1999), Jacob's Ladder (1990), Magnolia (1999), Memento (2000), Mulholland Drive (2001), Psycho (1960), The Shining (1980), The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), and The Usual Suspects (1995).

Sean McGuire
Administrative Manager
American Studies Program
Ballantine Hall 521
Phone: (812) 855-7748
Fax: (812) 855-0001
http://www.indiana.edu/~amst/