American Studies 10 Love, American Style
- day and time TTh 9:30-11
- location 102 Wurster
- instructor C. Palmer
- 4 Units
- Class # 23547
101: W 4-5, 285 Cory
102: Th 4-5, 242 Hearst Gym
102: Th 4-5, 242 Hearst Gym
On the Private Dancer album in 1984, Tina Turner asked, “What’s love got to do, got to do with it?”—a question that rose to the top of the US Billboard Hot 100. This course proposes to take the reverberations of Turner’s question seriously as a means of approaching the study of American culture and history. We will consider how love has been depicted and deployed in the service of: romance and its concomitant lust and attachment; arguments about sex and sexuality; domestic labor and family organization; friendship; ethnic, racial, and generational differences; the wedding industry; consumer culture; ritualized behavior; and the built environment. By focusing on love as a theory, a fantasy, a place, an event, and a media construct, this course provides an introduction to and a “toolkit” for the interdisciplinary study of American culture.