American Studies

Christine Palmer

Associate Director - American Studies

Christine Palmer holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. She also completed a Master’s in Anthropology at UC Berkeley and an AB in Romance Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. Palmer’s research and teaching focus on the interplay between race, visual culture, literature, and cultural memory in twentieth-century popular and mass culture.

Recent course offerings include: The Teen Age; The Good Life; Going Nuclear! (co-taught with Mark Brilliant, History and American Studies); American Media and Culture since WWII; James Baldwin’s America, 1953-74; The Future Then: Imagining American Tomorrows; “I’ll Be There for You”: Friendship in America (co-taught with Sarah Gold McBride, American Studies); Love, American Style; Explosive Ideologies: American Culture in the Atomic Age; At Home in America (co-taught with Kathleen Moran, American Studies); Harlem Renaissance (co-taught with Bryan Wagner, English); Frontiers in American History and Culture (co-taught with Mark Brilliant, History and American Studies); Standing in a Crooked Room Speaking God’s Language: Memory, Creation, and Fiction (honors seminar); Everyday America; The Teen Age; America, Song by Song (co-taught with Greil Marcus and Kathleen Moran, American Studies); America at Play; and Rebels and Revolutionaries (honors seminar).

Summer 2024 course offerings: Harlem Renaissance (co-taught with Bryan Wagner, English)

Fall 2024 course offerings: Going Nuclear! (co-taught with Mark Brilliant, History and American Studies) and Listening to America (co-taught with David Miller, Music and American Studies)

Future course offerings will include: Culture and Society in Classical Hollywood Cinema (co-taught with Bryan Wagner, English).