"American Visions" is a freshman-level survey course offered by the Department of History as part of Butler University's core curriculum. The course is built around three primary contextual considerations: high culture, popular culture, and community culture. The high culture approach is designed to introduce students to major systems of thought that have flourished in American history. The popular cultural approach explores how the ideas of high culture are developed, recorded, transmitted, and popularized for mass audiences. The community culture approach is takes advantage of Butler University's urban location in Indianapolis (Indiana) by using the resources of the city to illustrate themes of urbanism and urban populations. The course normally begins with topics in geography that suggest differing patterns of land use; this is followed by a study of styles of architecture commonly found in those areas. The next step is the assignment of individual projects. Students are asked to select an artifact of the colonial or revolutionary period and to perform three tasks: describe its physical features; discuss the underlying idea or ideas that its creator was seeking to express; and assess the ways these ideas fit within the larger context of the course. Upon completion of the project, students are required to give 5-minute oral reports and present a three- to five-page paper as a validation of the effort the student has provided. A syllabus describing the student project is provided. (JMC)