Department of American Studies

Laura Rigal

Associate Professor of American Studies and English
PhD Stanford University (1989, English)
318 English-Philosophy Building
(319) 335-2922
laura-rigal@uiowa.edu

Research Interests

American Literature and Culture, 1750-1850; early national visual art; early American science; the representational technologies of industrialization; beautiful poetry; the cultural production of race, class, and sexuality during the American Enlightenment; Native American history and culture, 1700-1812.

Curriculum Vitae

Courses Taught

8:005 Intro to English Major: Theory and Practice

8:98 Honors Proseminar
- Literature of Seduction in Age of Revolution

8:135 Topics in American Literature
-Gothic America

8:141 Literature and Culture of America before 1800
-Am I That Name?: Writing, Revolution, and the Emergence of a National Subject
-New World Narratives: Literary Culture and Colonial Geographies

8:250 Graduate Reading Course
The Feeling State: Citizenship, Affect, and Text, 1776-1855

8:270 Introduction to Cultural Studies

8:340 Topics in American Literature and Culture

8:418 Bodies Politic

45:260:002/8:465:002 Seminar: History, Literature & American Culture
-Romancing Nature: Art and Ideology in Anglo-America, 1754-1865
-Work, Labor and Literature, 1776-1900

45:90 Seminar in American Cultural Studies
-U.S. Imperialism and American Culture, 1776-1900
-Reading the West
-Race, Class, Gender, and the American West

45:150 Topics in American Cultural Studies
Race, Gender, and Sexuality on the American Frontier

45:175 Revolution in American Culture

45:180 Theory and Practice of Cultural Studies
-Subcultures, Semiotics, and Everyday Life

45:200 Theory and Practice of American Studies I

45:250 Seminar: Topics in American Studies
-The Culture of Nature

45:258 Seminar Technology and American Culture

45:295 Book Studies Proseminar
-Book History, Queer Theory, and the Public Sphere: Reading Michael Warner

45:299 American Studies Proseminar
-Reading Benjamin's The Arcades Project