# Reinterpreting the “sacred texts” of America (The Declaration of Independence, The Declaration of Sentiments; the speeches of Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, John Wannuaucon Quinney, Chief Red Jacket, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, etc.)

1. Nature and nation: “Old” and “New Americanist” ideas of the land and the mission
2. The intellectual history of women: discussing Puritan subversion, separate spheres, women’s history, citizenship, and the gender of individualism
3. The “pictorial turn”
4. Visual culture versus art history
5. The social construction of the visual and the visual construction of the social in American culture
6. Gender and visual representation (empowerment and disempowerment of vision)
7. Race and visual representation (empowerment and disempowerment of vision)
8. US women religious leaders and their impact
9. Racial tokenism in the visual arts: television and film
10. Black market commodities and their necessity in American commerce
11. The “American Dream” vs. American socio-reality
12. Major religions that are still recognized as cults
13. Women’s depection in mass media and and its role in female emancipation.
14. Marginilization of American women in religious movements

Althen, Gary (with Doran Amanda and Szmania Susan), American Ways, 2nd Edition, Intercultural Press, 2003. Ehrenreich, Barbara, Bait and Switch: The Futile Pursuit of the American Dream. Holt, 2005. Ehrenreich, Barbara, Nickel and Dimed. Holt, 2001. Rothstein, Bo, Social Traps and the Problem of Trust (Theories of Institutional Design). Cambridge University Press, 2005. McFarlane, C. K., ed., Readings in Intellectual History: The American Tradition. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. Hollinger, David A., and Charles Capper, ed., The American Intellectual Tradition, I−II. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Pease, Donald E., ed., National Identities and Post-Americanist Narratives. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994. Schlosser, Eric, Fast Food Nation. Penguin Books, 2002. Harley, Gail M., Emma Curtis Hopkins: Forgotten Founder of New Thought. Syracuse UP, 2002. Macionis, John, Social Problems (4th edition). Prentice Hall, 2009. Kerber, Linda K., No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies. Women and the Obligations of Citizenship. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. Kerber, Linda K., Towards an Intellectual History of Women. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1997. Kerber, Linda K., Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1980. Kerber, Linda K., Alice Kessler-Harris and Kathryn Kish Sklar, U. S. History as Women’s History. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1995. Kerber, Linda K., and Jane Sherron de Hart, Women’s America. Refocusing the Past. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. Mooney, Linda, D. Knox, and C. Schacht, Understanding Social Problems (7th edition). Wadsworth, 2010. Maddox, Lucy, ed., Locating American Studies. The Evolution of a Discipline. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. Baker Eddy, Mary, Manual of the Mother Church (The First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts). IndyPublish, 2007. Machin, David, and Theo van Leeuwen, Global Media Discourse. Routledge, 2007 Horwitz, Richard P., ed., The American Studies Anthology. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2001. Phillip, Rayner, Peter Wall, Stephan Kruger, Media Studies: The Essential Resource. Routledge, 2004 Kephart, William, and W. Zellner, Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Lifestyles, 5th ed. St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Kornblum, William, and J. Julian, Social Problems (13th edition). Prentice Hall, 2008.