Some Highlighted Academic Areas 

• Asian Pacific Studies Institute
• African & African American Studies
• Latino/a Studies
• Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies
• Cultural Anthropology
• Literature Program
• Program in the Study of Sexualities
  
• Women's Studies
• Asian & African Languages & Literatures

Spring 2010 Duke Courses:

English 90: Cabaret literature and performance, WF 10:05-11:20am

The Cotton Club in New York, the Chat Noir in Paris, the Carlton Club in Shanghai. . . these metropolitan venues were centers of nightlife and artistic activity in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This course investigates both how literature has represented such sites and how such spaces have been shaped by literature. In this vein, we will read a comparative selection of drama, poetry and prose focusing on American authors like Langston Hughes, Christopher Isherwood, and Claude McKay, but we will also consider writers from several other national traditions, including European modernist movements (Dada, Futurism, etc.) that used the cabaret as a primary means of expression. Our inquiry will also offer multiple opportunities to engage other aesthetic forms from the art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Georg Grosz to the films of Josef von Sternberg, Baz Lurhmann, and Zhang Yimou that attempt to display the historic worlds of cabaret.

States of Freedom: Performing Citizenship: English 173S, sec 5 and African and African American Studies 199S, sec6: MW 2:50-4:05

i'm gonna talk that freedom talk, let me see you walk that freedom walk, when yah gets ready, children please, a tell yah, got the news from a whispering tree ...
-Bob Marley

This course examines a wide range of cultural productions from different locations, including carnivals, music, film, literature, philosophy and other texts, in order to engage with the notion of freedom at the center of nation-state histories. Rather than assume that citizenship guarantees freedom and equality, this course investigates the ways in which citizenship is partial and incomplete-a process rather than a status. We will read work from the liberal tradition (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) as well as a number of essays that will help us define some of the major terms for the class. We then turn to alternative imaginings as they maneuver around and challenge official ideologies, often through unexpected venues (Wyclef Jean¹s lyrics, Christopher Cozier¹s art, etc.)

Questions we will ask during the course include: How is popular culture implicated in producing practices of unfreedoms, like homophobia, racism, sexism, classism even as it critiques undemocratic practices in the public sphere? What gets reproduced in rounds of discussions of freedoms, unfreedoms and power? What sorts of hopes are expressed in the carnivals of our existence? What sorts of freedoms imagined? Co-taught by an arts/humanities professor and a social science professor, we invite students from a wide range of backgrounds who might
have an interest in freedom and democracy.

2010 LATINO/A STUDIES COURSES! (latino.aas.duke.edu)

LSGS 100: Introduction to Latino/a Studies, MW 1:15-2:30
LSGS 150S: Latino/a Hip Hop taught by new PostDoc Associate Monika Gosin, TR 11:40-12:55 PM

LSGS 105S.02: MW 4:25-5:15: The Spanish Vein in Amercan Lit

In the past two decades, so-called Latino literature has flourished. Until the early1990's, however, literature written by Americans of Latin American heritage was almost unheard of; certainly not celebrated or marketed commercially by large publishers. This course will introduce students to the themes, styles, and subjects of U.S. authors whose
heritage is Latin American. Certain questions will be addressed. For instance, how do Latin American cultural traditions and historical concerns blend with U.S. publishers' marketing efforts and editorial influences to determine this distinctive writing. Does the Spanish language itself leave traces in the fabric of this literature? What exactly is Latino literature? Do Latino/a writers think about the predominant non-speaking Spanish readership in the U.S. and adjust the tenor and content of their stories accordingly for greater acceptability? We will read plays, poetry and novels by many authors including Nilo Cruz, Martin Espada, Ana Castillo, Oscar Hijuelos, Rudolfo Anaya and Rosario Ferre. No final exam. 

The City in South Asia: Contemporary Themes in the South Asian Urban Experience

AMES 195S ­ Special Topics, Cross-listed with ICS, Designations: W, R, CCI. South Asian cities are the site of various dichotomies which define the continent¹s experience of the 21st century.  For example, in India, changing economic structures, including the growth of the service industry, have contributed to the expansion of income, a new focus on leisure activities, and various urban renewal projects. Simultaneously, millions participate in the informal economy, squat on roadsides or live in slums, and lack access to basic sanitation and utilities.  How can we understand these apparently conflicting situations?

Spring 2010 UNC Courses:

Questions and inquiries may be directed to Dr. Tol Foster (tafoster@unc.edu) of the American Studies Department.

AMST 336 - American Indian Film: The Silver Screen in Red

Professor  Tol Foster        3:30 – 6:30 T        3:30 – 5:30 R
Manning 209
From the Lone Ranger and Tonto (1949) to Southpark’s Chief Runs With Premise (2003), and even before, American Indians and their stories have been a staple of the film and media industry.  But what happens to those familiar constructions of the Indian when American Indians and other indigenous people in settler-societies start to construct their own media through short and feature-length films, documentaries, and animations?  Through a large number of surprising films and locales – from a Cherokee science future (Hero) to apocalyptic aboriginal Australia (The Last Wave), from arid Texas (The Searchers) to a frozen river between New York and Canada (Frozen River), this course seeks to move along the contested terrain of film as it shifts from a medium with Indians to one by and for indigenous peoples. This large-format course meets five hours a week during evening hours to facilitate the viewing of numerous films in class with lectures and discussions that contextualize them to American Indian history and cultural studies.  Evaluation is determined through four response papers and a final exam.  Because of the nature of the class, attendance is mandatory.  Students from Duke, NCCU, NC-State and elsewhere within the inter-institutional framework are welcome to enroll via the following procedure: (http://regweb.unc.edu/students/interinstitutional.php)

AMST 390:002  Contemporary American Indian Poetry

Professor  Tol Foster            12:30 TR                          LG
304 (Wilson Library)
Poetry is the dominant form of cultural expression for American Indian people, and has been  throughout their history and across the continent.  One cannot fully understand the cultural heritage of American Indians without placing poetry at the center of that understanding, yet most people encounter American Indian culture through films, museum galleries, and prose, most particularly through novels.  This course restores poetry its rightful place in the center of American Indian cultural expression, not as a relic of the past, but as a vibrant contemporary form of expression. Through a focus on cultural events and American Indian history, as well as an attention to particular themes such as gender, class, tribal specificity, and global indigeneity we will trace the trends of contemporary indigenous communities through their poets, people such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Sherman Alexie, Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz, Roberta Hill, Heid Erdrich, Ester Berlin, and Luci Tapahonso, in the process becoming scholars of the field.  Following the lead of the poets we will consider issues of justice, cultural resurgence, feminism, mass culture, and the struggle to become fully human.  Each student will focus on one poet over the semester, creating a close reading, a book review, a presentation, and a research paper, as well as contributing responses to the readings.

Some Spring 2009 Duke Courses:

American Indian/Native American Literature (Taught by Jessi Bardill) 

While many modern and postmodern literatures provide an alternative approach to history, legal fictions, and moral mischief, this course will focus on the ways in which American Indian/Native American literature reimagines and retells older narratives.

Some Fall 2008 Duke Courses:

English 90AS: Slave Narrative & Science Fiction (Taught by Fred Moten)

LIT 20: Hispanic Caribbean Literature and Film: Nationhood, Colonialism, Racial and Sexual Politics (Taught by Beatriz Llenin-Figueroa)

DOCST190S: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of Native Food (Taught by Rayna Green)