AMER230

This course examines the role of psychoactive and psychotropic drugs in American society in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Students will examine the impact of drugs and various prohibition efforts on the American political and economic system and the nation’s racial order and its urban and suburban spaces. Students will also examine how drugs have shaped American entertainment from Hollywood movies to experimental film, art, and popular music from Jazz to Hip Hop to Electronic Dance Music (EDM). Students will examine the role of drugs in shaping various social, religious and cultural movements like Alcoholics Anonymous to the Jim Jones cult to the Haight-Ashbury “hippies.” The course will also pay close attention to the role drugs played in US foreign relations and the rise to a new global capitalism and mass incarceration in the late 20th century.