Spring 2010 Course Offerings
ANE 599 American Contexts of Witchcraft
Monday, 4:10P-6:40P, L. Carroll
This course focuses on the figure of the witch and on representations of witchcraft in American contexts, ranging from the seventeenth century to the present. Course materials include legal documents, fiction, poetry, plays, visual artifacts, film, and essays. Central questions in the seminar address the ways in which witchcraft and witches serve as outsider images, reinforcing, extending, or resisting powerful social and cultural discourses, particularly those of gender, race and class. The course will also examine how witchcraft poses epistemological problems for those who seek to shape the narrative of the witch: witch hunters, prosecutors, apologists, and historians. The readings offer complex constructions of the witch as threat, enigma, healer – a nexus of unknowable powers. As well the course materials provide a range of institutional, public, private and personal responses to witch figures. The witch, considered in these ways, serves as a lens through which we might view some historical and contemporary ways of making knowledge. Monday, 4:10-6:40 PM, Luther 208, L. Carroll
ANE 610 Creating New England II
Tuesday, 4:10P-6:40P, A. Cameron
The second part of the required core sequence, this course continues the examination of New England regional identity from the mid-19th century to the present. Topics include: the colonial revival; New England's working class and ethnic heritage; nostalgia; the regional revival of the 1920s and 30s; and regional identity and consumer culture.
ANE 650 Top of the World: America in the Arctic
Wednesday, 4:10P-6:40P, P. Erikson
BLENDED COURSE- Online and onsite meetings.
This course will explore how Arctic regions and the idea of "the North" have been central to American society since the 18th century. This course will consider some of the major historic events and cultural processes that have defined the American relationship to Arctic and Sub-Arctic peoples and landscapes. We will consider the diverse ways that Americans have experienced the Arctic from military officers to miners, from sealers to sailors, and from painters to pilots. Readings and films will address topics such as: Alaskan statehood and the Gold Rush, the geographic race for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, "strategic" military interests, popular representations of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic, and contemporary implications of climate change. Students will work collaboratively with images from the Osher Map Library to produce an online exhibit. There will be at least six onsite class meetings. Wednesday, 4:10-6:40PM, LUTH 208 P. Erikson. Course Poster & Syllabus Abstract
ANE 652 Native American Cultures of New England
Wednesday, 7:00P-9:30P, N. Hamilton
Native American cultures in New England on the eve of European contact, the course focuses on topics such as Native social and political patterns, land usage, subsistence strategies, material culture, dress, status, languages, world views, myths, rituals, and written oral traditions, and cosmologies. Particular attention will be paid to the construction of Native identities in the past as well as the present. Wednesday, 7:00-9:30PM, LUTH 208, N, Hamilton.
ANE 658 Visual Culture of 20th Century America
Thursday, 4:10P-6:40P, D. Cassidy
This course will look at the production and explosion of visual images in 20th-century America. Students will examine varied image types (advertising, film, painting, prints, photography, public art, television, and video) and how these images shape knowledge, experience, and culture. Topics include the spectacle of city; images that sell; the meanings of abstract art; and documentary photography and surveillance. Thursday, 4:10-6:40PM, LUTH 208, D. Cassidy.
ANE 685 Reading and Research
Open to advanced students with exceptional records in the program, this course offers opportunities for reading and research under the direction of a faculty member. The approval of the ANES Curriculum Committee is required. This course may be taken only once.
ANE 687 Internship
Open to qualified students with exceptional records in the program; required for students in the Public Culture and History track. Internships are by application to the ANES Curriculum Committee. Participating organizations include: Portland Museum of Art, Old York Historical Society, Pejepscot Historical Society, and Maine Historical Society.
ANE 690 Project
Completion of a two-semester project that may be an independent project or that may combine independent study and work in a historical society, a museum, a cultural organization, or other public or private institution. In consultation with an advisor, the student defines and develops the project in relation to his or her particular interest in American and New England Studies.
ANE 695 Thesis
The product of original research, the thesis should embody an interdisciplinary combination of approaches and/or materials.
PPM Muskie School Course Descriptions
For students in the Public History and Culture Track, see the Muskie School of Public Service's course descriptions in non-profit management.
