The Program in American Studies offers an interdisciplinary study of the United States and the many ways to interpret the American experience. The program explores the themes, trends and patterns that characterize the American past and present using multiple perspectives and methodologies. You create your own path through the major, which includes courses in history, politics, popular culture, visual studies, law, literature, race and ethnic studies, etc.

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Derrick R. Spires

Associate Professor

Klarman Hall
250 Goldwin Smith Hall
drs385@cornell.edu

Education

Vanderbilt University, Ph.D.

Departments and programs

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Stephen Vider

Associate Professor

Publications

Book

The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity After World War II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021)

Articles

"Public Disclosures of Private Realities: HIV/AIDS and the Domestic Archive,” Public Historian 41 no. 2 (2019), 163-189

“Clinical Activism in Community-based Practice: The Case of LGBT Affirmative Care at the Eromin Center, Philadelphia, 1973–1984," with David S. Byers and Emil Smith, American Psychologist 74, no. 8 (2019), 868-881.

“Lesbian and Gay Marriage and Romantic Adjustment in the 1950s and 1960s United States,” Gender & History 29, no. 3 (2017), 693-715

“The Ultimate Extension of Gay Community’: Communal Living and Gay Liberation in the 1970s,” Gender & History 27, no. 3 (2015), 865-881

“‘Oh Hell, May, Why Don't You People Have a Cookbook?’: Camp Humor and Gay Domesticity,” American Quarterly 65, no. 4 (2013): 877-904 (Winner of the Crompton-Noll Award, GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association, January 2015)

“Sanford Versus Steinberg: Black Sitcoms, Jewish Writers, and the 1970s Ethnic Revival,” Transition 105 (2011): 21-29

Book Chapters

“What Happened to the Functional Family?: Defining and Defending Alternative Households Before and Beyond Same-Sex Marriage,” Intimate States: Gender, Sexuality, and Governance in Modern U.S. History, edited by Margot Canaday, Nancy F. Cott, and Robert O. Self (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021)

“Domesticity,” Routledge History of American Sexuality, edited by Kevin P. Murphy, Jason Ruiz, and David Serlin (New York: Routledge, 2019)

“Consumerism,” Routledge History of Queer America, edited by Don Romesburg (New York: Routledge, 2018), 344-358

“’Nobody’s Goddamn Business But My Own’: Leonard Frey and the Politics of Jewish and Gay Visibility in the 1970s,” in The Boys in the Band: Flashpoints of Cinema, History, and Queer Politics, edited by Matt Bell (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016), 190-215

Exhibition Catalogues

Co-author, Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York, with Donald Albrecht, Skira Rizzoli and the Museum of the City of New York, 2016 (Finalist, 2017 Lambda Literary Award, LGBTQ Nonfiction)

“The Makings of Home,” essay in exhibition catalogue for On the Domestic Front: Scenes of Everyday Queer Life, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, NY, curated by James Saslow, August to October 2015

Klarman Hall
McGraw Hall
svider@cornell.edu

Education

  • Ph.D., Harvard University, History of American Civilization
  • M.A., Harvard University, English
  • B.A., Yale University, English and Psychology

Departments and programs

Links

Keywords

Post WWII US History; Public History; LGBTQ Studies

Peter Rich

Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Sociology

Klarman Hall
Martha van Rensselaer Hall 1302B
peter.rich@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

Links

Mary Woods

Professor

Klarman Hall
mnw5@cornell.edu
607/255-6416

Departments and programs

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Christopher Wildeman

Professor of Policy Analysis and Management

Klarman Hall
christopher.wildeman@cornell.edu

Education

  • B.A. Philosophy, Sociology, and Spanish, Dickinson College (2002)
  • M.A., Sociology and Demography, Princeton University (2006)
  • Ph.D., Sociology and Demography, Princeton University (2008)

Departments and programs

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Karim-Aly Kassam

International Professor of Environmental and Indigenous Studies

Klarman Hall
122 Fernow Hall
karim-aly.kassam@cornell.edu
607/255-9757

Education

  • Ph.D. (Natural Resource Policy and Management with concentrations in Socio-Anthropology and Community Sociology) Cornell University, USA
  • M.Sc. (Social Policy and Planning in Developing Countries) London School of Economics, UK
  • M.Phil. (Islamic Studies) University of Cambridge, UK
  • B.A. (Economics) University of Calgary, Canada

Departments and programs

Links

Adrienne Bitar

Lecturer

Publications

Diet and the Disease of Civilization.  Rutgers University Press, 2018.  

“The Paleo Diet and the American Weight Loss Utopia, 1975-2014.” Utopian Studies. Vol. 25, No. 2, (Spring 2015): 101-124.

“For the Starving, Eat ‘Local’ Isn’t an Option.” Wall Street Journal, 3 Dec. 2013, p. A15.

“Romancing the Dude Ranch, 1926-1947.” Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 4, (Winter 2012): 437-461.

“Magic Metabolisms of Competitive Eating.” Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways in a Changing World. Routledge, 2011. 

Klarman Hall
McGraw Hall
arj67@cornell.edu

Education

Ph.D., Stanford University, Modern Thought and Literature.

B.A., UC Berkeley, American Studies. 

Departments and programs

Andrew Moisey

Assistant Professor

Klarman Hall
438 McGraw Hall
am2798@cornell.edu

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

Departments and programs

Sara Warner

Associate Professor

Klarman Hall
229 Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
slw42@cornell.edu
607/254-2727

Departments and programs

Links

Keywords

dramatic literature; performance studies; theories of gender and sexuality; queer performance and culture; second wave feminism 

Sofia A. Villenas

Associate Professor

Publications

Books (Edited)

2010 (co-edited with E. Murillo Jr., R. Trinidad Galvan, C. Martinez, J. Muñoz, and M. Machado-Casas) (2010).  Handbook of Latinos and education: Theory, research and practice. NY: Routledge and Taylor Francis Group.

2006 (co-edited with D. Delgado Bernal, C.A. Elenes and F. Godinez). Chicana/Latina education in everyday life:  Feminista perspectives on pedagogy and epistemology.  Albany:  State University of New York Press.  

1999 (co-edited with L. Parker, and D. Deyhle)  Race is ... race isn’t:  Critical race theory and qualitative studies in education.  Boulder, CO:  Westview Press.

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

2020. (with Carolina Osorio Gil). Latinx cultural programming as public pedagogy: Mobilizing cultura (culture) in a small town community in Upstate New York. In J. Hurtig and C. Chernoff (Eds.), Contested Spaces of Teaching and Learning: Practitioner Ethnographies of Adult Education in the United States. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

2019. The anthropology of education and contributions to critical race studies. Equity and Excellence in Education, 52(1), 68-74. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2019.1632758.

2019. Pedagogies of being with: Witnessing, testimonio and critical love in everyday social movement. QSE: International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 39(2), 151-166.

2014. Thinking Latina/o education with and from Chicana/Latina feminist cultural studies: Emerging pathways, decolonial possibilities. In A. Darder & R.D. Torres (Eds.), Latinos and education: A critical reader. New York, NY: Routledge. Originally published in Zeus Leonardo (Ed.), Handbook of Cultural Politics in Education. Sense Publishers (2010).

2013. The legacy of Derrick Bell and Latino/a education: A critical race testimonio. Urrieta Jr., Luis and Sofia Villenas. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 16(4), 514-535.

2013. Race talk and school equity in local print media: The discursive flexibility of whiteness and the promise of race conscious talk. Villenas, Sofia and Sophia L. Angeles. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34(4), 510-530.

2012. Pedagogies from nepantla: Testimonio, Chicana/Latina feminisms and teacher education classrooms. Prieto, Linda and Sofia Villenas. Equity & Excellence in Education, 45(3), 411-429.

2011. Critical ethnographies of education in the Latino/a diaspora. Villenas, Sofia and Douglas E. Foley. In R. Valencia (Ed.), Chicano school failure and success:  Past, present and future, 3rd edition.  New York and London:  Routledge and Falmer.

2007. Diaspora and the anthropology of Latino education: Challenges, affinities, and intersections. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 38(4), pp. 419-425. Reprinted in Roland Sintos Coloma (Ed.) Postcolonial challenges in education. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishers, 2009.

2006. Latina feminist postcolonialities:  Perspectives on Un/tracking educational actors’ interventions.  International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(5), pp. 659-672.

2006. Pedagogical moments in the borderlands:  Latina mothers and daughters teaching and learning.  In D. Delgado Bernal, C.A. Elenes, F. Godinez and S. Villenas (eds.), Chicana/Latina education in everyday life:  Feminista perspectives on pedagogy and epistemology (pp. 147-159).  Albany:  State University of New York Press.

2005. Between the telling and the told:  Latina mothers negotiating education in new borderlands.  In J. Phillion, M. F. He, and M. Connelly (Eds.), Narrative and experience in multicultural education (pp. 71-91).  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage.

2002. Reinventing educación in new Latino communities: Pedagogies of change and continuity in North Carolina.  In S. Wortham, E., Murillo Jr., and E. Hamann (Eds.), Education in the new Latino Diaspora:  Policy and the politics of identity (pp. 17-35).  Westport, CT:  Ablex Publishing.

2002. This ethnography called my back:  Writings of the exotic gaze, “othering” Latina, and recuperating Xicanisma.  In E. St. Pierre and W. Pillow (Eds.), Working the ruins:  Poststructural feminist theory and methods in education (pp. 74-95).  New York:  Routledge.

2001. To valerse por si misma (be self-reliant) between race, capitalism, and patriarchy:  Latina mother/daughter pedagogies in North Carolina.  Villenas, Sofia and Melissa Moreno. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 14(5), pp. 671-687.

2001. Latina mothers and small-town racisms:  Creating narratives of dignity and moral education in North Carolina.  Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 32(1), pp. 3-28.

2000. Other encounters:  Dances with whiteness in multicultural education. Richardson, Troy and Sofia Villenas. Educational Theory, 50 (2), pp. 255-273.

1999. Critical race theory and ethnographies challenging the stereotypes: Latino families, schooling, resilience and resistance.  Villenas, Sofia and Donna Deyhle. Curriculum Inquiry, 29 (4), pp. 413-445. 1996

1996. The colonizer/colonized Chicana ethnographer: Identity, marginalization, and co-optation in the field.  Harvard Educational Review, 66(4), pp. 711-731. Reprinted in 2010, 2000, and 1998 in various edited collections.

Klarman Hall
226 McGraw Hall
svillenas@cornell.edu
607/288-3037

Departments and programs

Keywords

education, critical race studies, public pedagogy, Latin@/x diaspora, women of color/decolonial feminisms, narrative

 

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