Faculty Profile
Amy Farrell
Professor of American Studies and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies; James Hope Caldwell Memorial Chair (1991)
Contact Information
Denny Hall
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Bio
Amy E. Farrell is the James Hopes Caldwell Memorial Chair and Professor of American Studies and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at °µÍø½ûÇø. Her research focuses on representations of gender and feminism in popular culture, the history and representation of the body and fatness, the history of second wave feminism, and girlhood studies. She is the author of Yours in Sisterhood: Ms. Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism (University of North Carolina Press, 1998) and Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture (New York University Press, 2011), as well as the editor of The Contemporary Reader of Gender and Fat Studies (Routledge, 2023). Her newest book, on the history of the Girl Scouts in the USA, is forthcoming from the University of North Carolina Press in 2025. A frequent media commentator, Farrell has appeared on the Colbert Report and shared her research on national popular media, including Bitch, the New Yorker, Psychology Today, NPR, and CNN. From 2019-2020 she served as an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow, in 2021-22 as a Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and in 2023 she was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Research Grant.
Education
- B.A., Ohio University, 1985
- M.A., University of Minnesota, 1988
- Ph.D., 1991
Awards
- Dickinson Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2005-06
2026-2027 Academic Year
Fall 2026
WGSS 200 Feminist Pract, Writing & Rsrc
Building upon the key concepts and modes of inquire introduced in the WGSS Introductory course, WGSS 200 deepens students’ understanding of how feminist perspectives on power, experience, and inequality uniquely shape how scholars approach research questions, writing practices, methods and knowledge production. Approaches may include feminist approaches to memoir, oral histories, grassroots and online activism, blogging, visual culture, ethnography, archival research, space, art, literary analysis, and policy studies.Prerequisite: 100 or 208, which can be taken concurrently.
AMST 202 Workshop in Cultural Analysis
This intensive writing workshop focuses on theoretical approaches to the interpretation of social and cultural materials. The course provides an early exposure to theories and methods that will be returned to in upper level departmental courses. Intended to develop independent skills in analysis of primary texts and documents.Prerequisite: Any AMST course or permission of instructor.
AMST 401 Research and Methods in Am St
This integrative seminar focuses on the theory and methods of cultural analysis and interdisciplinary study. Students examine the origins, history, and current state of American studies, discuss relevant questions, and, in research projects, apply techniques of interdisciplinary study to a topic of their choosing.
Prerequisite: 303, Senior American studies major, or permission of the instructor.
Spring 2027
AMST 101 American Childhood
Cross-listed with WGSS 202-01.
Drawing from history, literature and art, this course will explore the changing meanings of childhood in the United States, from the 19th century through the present. We will pay particular attention to the ways that concepts of the "child" and "childhood innocence" change dramatically dependent upon time period, gender, race, and class.
WGSS 202 American Childhood
Cross-listed with AMST 101-01.
Drawing from history, literature and art, this course will explore the changing meanings of childhood in the United States, from the 19th century through the present. We will pay particular attention to the ways that concepts of the "child" and "childhood innocence" change dramatically dependent upon time period, gender, race, and class.
AMST 303 Memory and Memorization
Who gets to tell stories about the past? Why does it matter? How do institutions-from national parks to museums to libraries, archives, and publishers-shape how we remember and what we remember? Drawing from compelling case studies (such as the erection and dismantling of Civil War monuments; the Congressional sculpture of three suffragists, known disparagingly as "the women in the bathtub"; the contemporary removal of signage connected to enslavement and LGBTQ histories); site visits (such as to the Army Heritage Trail at the Army Heritage and Educational Center); and theoretical and conceptual discussions about memory, the active processes of remembering and forgetting, struggles over meaning, and the significance of memory to the present and the future. We will read deeply, encountering scholars such as Tiya Miles, Saidiya Hartman, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Stuart Hall, and Raymond Williams. This seminar course develops majors' knowledge of various theoretical approaches and research methods informing American Studies. The course will develop research skills and require a significant writing project, bridging the 200-level core courses (201 and 202) and the senior seminar sequence (401 and 402). This also serves as a Writing Intensive course in the major.