L98 AMCS 3060
Current Affairs and Critical Issues in American Culture
This course explores the current affairs in American Culture through the lens of media and news!
Through this course, students will learn about the media, read the news from all possible angles, and pick current news stories to analyze in depth. By comparing past and present news, students will telescope back in time to see when similar news events happened, how they were covered in their time, and how the current issue can be seen in this much longer historical narrative. Because current affairs are ever-changing, the list of topics will largely depend on what is happening at the moment. Some potential topics include: The Presidental transfer of power, Government bureaucracy or the “Deep State,” Immigration, #MeToo, Authoritarianism in America, Gender anxieties in the Trump age, America’s role on the global stage, Healthcare, and pop culture scandals!
Michelle DeLair is excited about this course because it offers the students the opportunity to take multiple sides of an issue seriously, see it in perspective, and develop both a historical mindset and some media savvy, thereby hopefully offering us some historical Xanax as they process it all together. She calls this her “sneaky history” class because it seems like it is about current affairs, but that is just our starting point of entry that leads us to dig deeper and then to travel back in time, before returning to the present moment with new insights.
