American Studies Advance Course Information-Winter 2003

This information effective for Winter 2003. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

American Studies

[AMST-001] [AMST-080D] [AMST-100] [AMST-107A] [AMST-109B] [AMST-123X] [AMST-125E] [AMST-125G] [AMST-207]

1. America and Americans

Note: This syllabus from Fall 2001

Instructor: Yvette Huginnie
Office: Oakes 333
Phone: 459-2813
E-mail: huginnie@ucsc.edu
Office Hours: TBA & by appointment

Question: What have been the most significant events in U.S. society during the past five to ten years? And what do they have to do with this class?

Certainly, everyone in this class has her/his own answer to that question. For me, the most significant recent events include the LA Police Brutality/Rodney King verdict and subsequent LA revolt, the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy, the anti-Amendment 2 boycott, Propositions 187 and 209, and, most recently, the presidential election and discriminatory Florida voting practices.

Each of these events occurred within a specific historical context, a context which has to do with both "today" and "yesterday." For instance, today the United States is a highly urbanized nation. When did it become so? What were cities like, and who lived in them during the 1870s? 1930s? 1950s? 1980s? Did Americans of all classes, races, and ethnicities live in cities since the founding of the U.S.? When did some groups come, and when did some groups leave? And why? Are cities "desirable" places to live in the U.S.? Where did you grow up? How long has your family lived there? What does the history of cities in the United States have to do with the LA revolt of 1992?

This course will examine some of the major questions and dilemmas in U.S. society through four lens—race and culture/ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality, and politics. Among central questions to keep in mind throughout the course are:

In the readings, lectures, films, and discussions, we will examine the following themes both in the past and the present: social, cultural and economic patterns; interaction among different racial or cultural/ethnic groups; the experiences of working class peoples; and women and men's societal roles and experiences.

Readings include both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are letters, diaries, and other kinds of records written by people who actually experienced historical events we are studying. Scholars take these primary accounts and analyzed them and use them to support their interpretations of a historical event or period. Primary documents are portals into the beliefs and actions of the women and men whose actions and beliefs have made U.S. society. By studying primary documents (in conjunction with reading secondary works and attending lectures), you will begin to develop your own analytical skills and historically-informed interpretations.

It is crucial—as a student and a citizen—to learn to analyze closely and interpret information.

Readings:

The following books have been ordered at the Literary Guillotine (204 Locust St., 457-1195) and are available on 2-hour reserve in McHenry Library.

Requirements:

Your grade and narrative evaluation will directly reflect both the quality and quantity of assignments completed.

Everyone must complete the first response paper on Frankenburg. (See ** on Schedule.)

First Mini Assignment—Due September 27, in class

In 2–3 typewritten pages, compose your own primary document. You can answer the question: "What have been the most significant events in U.S. society during the past five years? and why? Or you can take one of the themes of the course and discuss what you remember from your high school years: labor and class relations, women and men's roles and experiences, race and cultural/ethnic relations, and sexuality. There are no right and wrong answers, and this assignment is not graded. This is an opportunity for you, as a citizen in the late twentieth century, to put down your thoughts, observations and beliefs. Please submit two copies and retain a third for yourself.

Class Schedule

I. Introduction

II. The Making and Remaking of U.S. Society

III. Conclusion

80D. Introduction to Chicana/o Studies: Contemporary Chicana/o and U.S. Latina/o Popular Cultures

This course explores the dynamic field of culture, from the Mona Lisa to Selena. It asks, What is "culture"? And what is the relationship of "cultural studies" to the study of contemporary Chicana/o and U.S. Latina/o popular cultures? In addressing these queries, we will trace the theoretical roots of cultural studies to current-day U.S. Latina/o studies. This course introduces students to the study of quotidian cultures-to the cultural practices and products that we may encounter in our everyday lives (such as fashion, film, music, and magazines). Above all, it scrutinizes the relationship of cultural practices and products to the production of meaning, to capitalism and consumption, and to critiques of capitalism and consumption.

100. Key Concepts in American Studies

Course Description:

Key Concepts in American Studies is a course for majors only. The course has as its principal focus the refinement of students' expository and critical writing skills. Brief writing projects, frequently assigned, are carefully reviewed by course assistants, who are willing to work closely with students on their writing skills. Reading for the course is confined to a slender class reader containing a handful of notable essays on history, the social construction of reality, and popular culture. The essays are studied carefully and form the basis for the writing assignments. Evaluation will be based on attendance, preparation, participation, and written work. There will be no formal examinations.

The required reading will include selected book chapters and articles collected in a Course Reader (CR). A list of additional secondary materials (a few of which have been placed on reserve) appears below.

Reading and Class Schedule

F Jan 4	Introduction
M Jan 7	Some Terms and Theory	(CR: 2–57)
W Jan 9	Some Terms and Theory
F Jan 11	Minstrelsy	(CR: 59–129)
M Jan 14	Minstrelsy
W Jan 16	Spirituals	(CR: 131–36)
F Jan 18	Spirituals
M Jan 21	Holiday
W Jan 23	Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
F Jan 25	Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
M Jan 28	Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
W Jan 30	Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs	(CR: 137–213)
F Feb 1	Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs
M Feb 4	Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs
W Feb 6	Jackson, Ramona
F Feb 8	Jackson, Ramona
M Feb 11	Jackson, Ramona	(First Essay Due)
W Feb 13	Kasson, Amusing the Million
F Feb 15	Kasson, Amusing the Million
M Feb 18	Holiday
W Feb 20	Kasson, Amusing the Million
F Feb 22	Wister, The Virginian	(CR: 215–57)
M Feb 25	Wister, The Virginian
W Feb 27	Wister, The Virginian
F Mar 1	Baum, The Wizard of Oz	(CR: 259–78)
M Mar 4	Baum, The Wizard of Oz
W Mar 6	"Birth of a Nation"	(CR: 279–307)
F Mar 8	"Birth of a Nation"
M Mar 11	"Birth of a Nation"
W Mar 13	Conclusion	(Final Essay Due)

Recommended Reading (*indicates on reserve at McHenry)

M.M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (1981). Important essays on language, literature and culture, with an emphasis on the primacy of context over text, and on the multiplicity of meaning. Valued especially for its deployment of such notions as chronotope, dialogism and heteroglossia.

John Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture (1976). A standard work. Useful.

______, The Six-Gun Mystique (1971). Venerable study of Westerns and their reception.

James H. Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues (1972). Overview by a respected scholar.

John Fiske, Reading the Popular (1989). A readable introductory text with lots of interesting examples.

______, Understanding Popular Culture (1989). Ditto.

Richard Wightman Fox and T.J.Jackson Lears (eds.), Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History 1880–1980 (1983). Very useful introduction by Lears, followed by essays on a host of kindred topics.

Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious (1981). Argues that political context, however much repressed and concealed, is central to the meaning of literary texts. Dense; assumes familiarity with related theoretical works. A celebrated contribution by an American Marxist.

Neil Harris, Humbug: the Art of P.T. Barnum (1973). The best biography, with useful attention to the framing context of Barnum's career.

Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (1988). Influential, eye-opening study of the transition from shared to hierarchical culture during the late 19th century in America, with Shakespearean theater as a leading illustration.

Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (1993). Excellent study of class, racial and sexual politics at the middle of the 19th century. Penetrating.

*Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson (eds.), Rethinking Popular Culture (1991). Thorough, scholarly introduction to the field, with wide-ranging essays by influential figures in several disciplines.

Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of Mass Media (1986). Marxist analysis, arguing that it is the "irreducible responsibility" of the press "to continually recreate a view of reality supportive of existing social and economic class power."

David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991). Important study of racism among white workers in the 19th century, with a chapter on "Minstrelsy and White Working Class Formation before the Civil War."

Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (1990). A meticulous analysis of the spread of the ideology of white racial superiority in the popular culture of the 19th century.

Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 2nd ed. (1983). A solid general history.

*Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (1995). A clear, readable overview of leading approaches, with special attention to the Frankfurt School, structuralism, semiology, Marxism, feminism, and postmodernism. A good place to start.

Robert C. Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America (1974). Solid historical narrative.

Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction 1790–1860 (1985). Essays on Cooper, Stowe, and other popular writers, designed to illustrate that popular texts work to form and reinforce contemporary constructions of social reality.

Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (1977). A classic, with illuminating brief chapters on leading terms (e.g., culture, ideology, base and superstructure, mediation, hegemony, structures of feeling). Indispensable.

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109B. Science Fiction in Multicultural America:
Black Speculative Fiction

Instructor: Catherine Ramírez
e-mail: cathysue@ucsc.edu

Course Description:

Since the early twentieth century, images of and references to space, science, and technology have permeated much African American cultural production, from W.E.B. Du Bois' 1920 short story "The Comet," to the futuristic sounds of Deltron 3030. In particular, black cultural workers have transformed science fiction-traditionally a "pulp" genre directed to and consumed by white, male adolescents-into a politicized space for the examination of fictions of science (especially those related to race and gender). Via post-colonial and feminist theory, this course studies twentieth- and twenty-first century speculative fiction of the African diaspora. Of particular concern is the relationship of African Americans and other New World peoples to the discourses of modernity, humanism, and rationalism. This is a genre studies course that probes black speculative fiction as "sci-fi," "fantasy," "Afrofuturism," and "cyberpunk." Above all, it interrogates it as a viable medium for the articulation of oppositional histories and ontological alternatives in the New World.

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123X. American Indian History in the Twentieth Century

Course Description: This course is a survey of the history of the Native peoples of the United States from 1900 to the present. Emphasis will be placed on Indian/white relations and the continuing development of federal Indian policy and its impact. Attention will also be given to the persistence, change, and adaptation of Native cultures to historical and contemporary social conditions as well as individual and community efforts to maintain sovereignty and cultural identity.

Required Texts

Assignments, Grading, and Expectations

This course will consist of lectures, readings, discussions, critical film viewing, and written assignments. Grading will be based on one written paper, two in-class exams (a midterm and final), and class participation.

Lectures and Reading Assignments

Week 1. Reading Assignments: Hurtado & Iverson ch. 1; Ortiz article; Nabokov Introduction

Week 9. Reading Assignment: Hurtado & Iverson Ch. 14, Nabokov Ch. 18, Bray Article

125E. Jazz Cultures

Course Description:

This course explores the social and cultural significance of jazz in the United States and, to a lesser extent, the world. We will spend some of our time charting the history of the music itself, but our primary focus will involve coming to terms with what jazz represents beyond the music. We will discuss the social and cultural forces that have produced different jazz styles while examining the various ways that social conflicts and ideals have been projected onto this music. We will explore the critical debates about this music and explore the ways that jazz and its practitioners have been represented in various media. In doing so, we will consider the role of jazz in broader conversations about race, culture, gender and sexuality, politics, modernity, and other issues. Assignments include active participation in class discussions and several short written assignments. A prior familiarity with jazz music itself is helpful, but is not required.

125G. African-American Life in the City

Course Description:

This course examines the social/cultural history and social/cultural spaces of three black urban communities: Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City. Focusing primarily on the mid to late twentieth century, this course will explore black life through historical and sociological sources, musical forms, fiction, and everyday culture. We will examine the 1940s for all three cities, and we will return to Los Angeles and New York in the late 1960s–1980s to explore the reasons for, and consequences of, urban unrest and deindustrialization.

Along with a selected readings packet, likely full-length texts for this course will include:

207. The Politics of Popular Music

Course Description:

This graduate seminar engages some of the critical theoretical and methodological issues raised in contemporary studies of popular music. What, for example, is the relationship between music and its sociopolitical and historical context? What role does music play in the formation, articulation, and/or disruption of identities? How should we understand the relationship between the music business and the audience that consumes the final product? We will explore these questions and others while reading texts that range across disciplines and fields (ethnomusicology, cultural studies, philosophy, literary studies, etc.) and musical genres (rap, opera, jazz, salsa, rock and roll, "world," etc.). Assignments will include active participation in all class discussions, a few short presentations, and a short writing assignment based on original research. Students need not have a technical knowledge of music to take this course.