American Studies Program
Interdisciplinary Clusters in
American Studies
Community Based Studies
The Community-Based Studies cluster is for students who wish to deepen their understanding of a particular US institution or issue, and/or who are interested in social movements, social activism, community organizing, and/or civic engagement, by taking classes that entail substantial work in, with and for a particular community or community-based agency. Students interested in the Community-based cluster will, in consultation with their advisor, substitute two required courses from an existing AMER cluster (e.g. Health, Environment and Society, Issues in US Education) with two community-based classes relevant to that cluster, selected from the list below. Students may substitute one supervised, credit-bearing internship if the supervisor is an American Studies faculty affiliate; internships supervised by non AMER Tufts faculty may be approved for the cluster with approval from the student’s advisor and the Director.
*Note that some of the courses on the list below will count for this cluster only if their class project entails a substantial community-based project. These are marked by an asterisk. Other courses may not be available to all AMER students. These are listed separately below as “limited access courses”. Students are advised to pay close attention to the qualifying notes attached to such courses.
For specific questions regarding this cluster, please see Deborah Pacini Hernandez.
Requirements for the Community Based Studies cluster
| AMER 131 | Active Citizenship in an Urban Community |
| AMER 141* | Innovative Social Enterprises |
| AMER 183 | Urban Borderlands |
| ANTH 149 | Anthropology in Action |
| ANTH 186 | Architecture of Utopia |
| CD 143 | Homelessness in America |
| ELS 101* | Entrepreneurship and Business Planning: American Entrepreneurship |
| EN 37* | CEE Transportation Systems |
| EXP-0044-F | Science Education Elementary Partnerships |
| EXP-0053-CF | Producing Films for Social Change |
| SOC 111 | Social Change and Community Organizing |
| SOC 130 | Wealth, Poverty & Inequality |
| SPN 191 | Spanish in the Community |
| Various | Senior projects and independent study |
Limited Access Courses
| CD 130 | Fieldwork with Young Children (permission) |
| CH 180 | Community Health Internship |
| CH 181 | Community Health Internship Seminar |
| CH 182 | Community Health Education: Theory and Practice |
| EXP-0041-S | Education for Active Citizenship (Note: limited to CPS Scholars) |
| EXP-0049-S | Experimenting with Philanthropy (by application) |
| SOC 102 | Qualitative Methods in Action (available only to double majors with Sociology) |