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What is American Studies? The Program in American Studies offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the society and cultures of the United States. American Studies majors critically examine the changing narratives and practices of American life in a curriculum that emphasizes both historical breadth and theoretical depth. Majors work closely with American Studies faculty, choosing the right combination of courses that will prepare them to write a uniquely interdisciplinary senior thesis. |
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First Person America In These Hard Times: A National Competition Submission deadline: June 30, 2009 Announcing... A national competition seeking the best videos, photographs, and stories describing how individuals, families and communities are managing during these hard times. One of the unexpected outcomes of the Great Depression was a decade of creative outpouring that covered the U.S. map. Under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), thousands of artists fanned across the country documenting the experiences of everyday Americans as they worked to maintain their families, their communities, and their way of life in the face of a national economic crisis. Now, as Americans are again experiencing financial hardship and uncertainty, First Person Arts invites artists to document how this generation of Americans is coping. Inspired by the artists of the WPA, who documented the experiences of Americans in every part of the country, First Person Arts is asking artists to help craft the first draft of the history of our era by capturing, in photographs, on video, or in writing, the stories of America and its people during these difficult times. Our goal is to gather stories from all 50 states. Artists: We are looking for short memoirs and essays, documentary films, and photographs that depict Americans from all walks of life. We are especially interested in stories that are unique to your family, your community, your town, your region — that capture the idiosyncratic things that are happening where you live — the slices of life that, taken together, will give us a First Person picture of America in 2009 — the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. Guidelines: Writing submissions — up to 2,500 words. Submission deadline: June 30, 2009 Finalists in each category (writing, film, and photography) will be featured on the First Person Arts website and at the First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art, November 4-8, 2009. First place winners in each genre will be invited to Philadelphia to participate in the festival. A $500 cash prize will be awarded to the best story overall. Entry Fee: $10 Women and Work: Building Solidarity with America's Vulnerable Workers Mon, June 15, 7pm - 9pm Co-sponsored by the Barnard Center for Research on Women. This public event will take place during the East Coast Regional Meeting of the National Domestic Workers Alliance at Barnard College and will feature a video presentation of women leaders across the country who are raising their voices to support the work being done on behalf of domestic workers in this country. There will be over 100 domestic worker organizers in attendance, along with feminist scholars, activists, legislators, and other allies. For the past 5 years, domestic workers have come together across communities to organize for dignity and respect, and demand the passage of a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in New York State, including notice of termination, severance pay, sick days and holidays, and an annual cost of living wage increase. In the wake of the economic crisis, the conditions facing domestic workers have worsened. Facing alarming rates of lay-offs, cut wages and extended hours, without notice, severance pay or any safety net, now more than ever - domestic workers need a bill of rights. This event will raise awareness about the organizing work domestic workers are doing and will be an opportunity to support women workers at all ends of the economic spectrum. Narrative Medicine Rounds: Oliver Sacks June 03, 2009 from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm EDT The Armand Hammer building is located on 168th Street at Ft. Washington Ave. and is the home the Hammer Health Sciences Center and the Long Library. Contact: For further information regarding this event, please contact Narrative Medicine Program by sending email tosd2030@columbia.edu or by calling 212-305-4975. Neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks, author of Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, A Leg to Stand On and Musicophilia, gives the final Narrative Medicine Rounds for 2008-2009. From motor cars, to chess sets, to people in fanciful headdress, to images of Kermit the Frog, visual hallucinations in people going blind are not born of memory, but are new inventions of the visual brain. Dubbed the "poet laureate of medicine" by the New York Times, Dr. Sacks will speak on the topic of his next book: hallucinations and the life of the visual brain. "In general [the subject of my work] appears to be illness or injury, but my subject as a physician is really survival and resilience." — Dr. Oliver Sacks Narrative Medicine Rounds are lectures or readings presented by scholars, clinicians, or writers engaged in work at the interface between narrative and health care. Rounds are held on the first Wednesday of each month from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at the Columbia University Medical Center campus, followed by a reception. Rounds are free and open to the public. Students, staff, faculty, patients, friends, and interested others are warmly welcome to join us. The Rounds are presented by the Program in Narrative Medicine and MBS Vox/Commonhealth. Please visit the Web site for more information. Oliver Sacks was born in London, England into a family of physicians and scientists. He earned his medical degree at Oxford University (Queen's College), and did his residencies and fellowship work at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco and at UCLA. Since 1965, he has lived in New York, where he is a practicing neurologist. In 2007, Sacks was appointed the first Columbia University Artist, and he is also a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center. In 1966, Sacks encountered an extraordinary group of patients at a chronic care hospital in the Bronx. They were deeply parkinsonian survivors of the 1916-27 pandemic of encephalitic lethargica, and they were virtually unable to move or speak. Sacks was able to bring them back to life with an experimental drug, L-dopa, and he later wrote about them in his book Awakenings. (The book in turn inspired the play "A Kind of Alaska" by Harold Pinter and the Oscar-nominated feature film "Awakenings.") Sacks is also known for his collections of case histories, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars, in which he describes patients struggling to adapt to and live with conditions ranging from Tourette's syndrome to autism, parkinsonism, musical hallucination, epilepsy, phantom limb syndrome, schizophrenia, retardation, and Alzheimer's disease.Sacks' work regularly appears in the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, as well as various medical journals. His most recent book is Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, and he is currently at work on a book about the visual brain. |
