Racial Formation and Performance Professor Adria L. Imada
ES399 – University of Oregon Ethnic Studies
CRN 15524, 4 credits Office: 307 McKenzie Hall
Fall 2004 (541) 346-0905
103 Peterson Hall Office Hours: Wednesday
Tuesday & Thursday 2:00 – 3:20 PM 12:30 – 2:00 PM or by appt.
How has the category of race been constructed through performance and displays of the body in the United States? This course considers the history of racial formation through a range of performances, whether self-displays or coerced displays, such as world’s fairs, minstrelsy, film, and tourist performances. We will pay particular attention to how racialized subjects use performance to deconstruct dominant ideologies of racial and cultural difference in the U.S. and engage in various forms of social and political mobilization.
READINGS
Readings will be accessible through UO library electronic reserves:
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/acs_svc/reserve-index.html
Occasionally students will access articles directly from websites, as indicated in course schedule.
COURSE EVALUATION
Class participation (20%): This grade will be based on attendance and active participation in class discussion. Attendance at every class is mandatory and each student must prepare materials for the day. If you miss class due to an emergency, I expect to be notified by e-mail or telephone. Two discussion questions or comments about each set of readings are to be posted on class discussion board by noon before class (log in at https://blackboard.uoregon.edu/)
Two Papers (20% each): 4- 5 pp on an assigned topic
Reading Quiz (10%)
Group Research Project and class presentation (30%) – Students will collaborate in small groups to examine a site or text where race and performance converge. Each group must submit a one-page research proposal (topic to be approved by instructor). Groups will present their research in class, and submit a ten to twelve-page research paper by Monday, December 6, 2004.
COURSE POLICIES
All work submitted in this course must be your own and original. The use of sources (ideas, quotations, paraphrases) must be properly acknowledged and documented. Any student who is found guilty of cheating, plagiarism, or any other form of academic dishonesty will receive a failing grade for that assignment. You are expected to be familiar with the University of Oregon’s policy on academic honesty. These guidelines are provided at: http://studentlife.uoregon.edu/judicial/conduct/sai.htm
If you have a documented disability and anticipate needing accommodations in this course, please make arrangements to meet with me soon. Please bring a notification letter from Disability Services outlining your approved accommodations.
No incompletes will be given in this course. Late papers will receive one-half letter grade deduction for each day they are submitted past the due date, and instructor may refuse to grade papers well beyond the deadline. Instructor reserves the right to make copies of student examinations and papers.
WEEK 1
9/28 Tu Introduction
9/30 Th Screening: “The Couple in the Cage: a Guatinaui Odyssey” (1993, 31 min.)
Z.S. Strother, “Display of the Body Hottentot,” in Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business (1999), 1-61.
WEEK 2
10/5 Tu Blackface minstrelsy
Screening: Selections from “Bamboozled” (Spike Lee, 2000)
David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991), 95-131.
10/7 Th Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks (1967), 105-140.
WEEK 3
10/12 Tu World’s Fairs
Robert Rydell, Fair America: World’s Fairs in the United States (2000),
1-71.
10/14 Th Screening: “Bontoc Eulogy” (Marlon E. Fuentes, 56 min.)
Mia Blumentritt, “Bontoc Eulogy, History and the Craft of Memory: An Extended Conversation with Marlon E. Fuentes,” Amerasia Journal 24: 3 (1998), 75-90.
Group research proposal (1 page) due in class
WEEK 4
10/19 Tu Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows
Richard Slotkin, “The White City and the Wild West: Buffalo Bill and the Mythic Space of American History, 1880-1917," (1992), 63-87.
10/21 Th Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (1998), 128 – 153.
Paper #1 (5 pp) due in class
WEEK 5
10/26 Tu Orientalism
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (1978), 31-73.
10/28 Th Screening: excerpts of “Flower Drum Song” (1961, 133 min.)
Robert G. Lee, chapter 5, “The Cold War Origins of the Model Minority Myth,” in Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (1999), 145- 179
WEEK 6
11/2 Tu The Color of Whiteness
Screening: selections from “Blue Crush” (2002)
Annie Gilbert Coleman, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Skiing,” in Sports Matters: Race, Recreation, and Culture (2002), 141- 167.
Articles on surfer Bethany Hamilton
11/4 Th Commercial Circuits and Show Business
Screening: “Aunty Betty” (2000; 21 min.)
Adria L. Imada, “Hawaiians on Tour: Hula Circuits Through the American Empire,” American Quarterly (March 2004), 111-149.
Reading Quiz
WEEK 7
11/9 Tu Screening: “Forbidden City, U.S.A.” (1989, 56 min.)
Robin D.G. Kelley, Introduction, “Writing Black Working-Class History from Way, Way Below,” and Chapter 2, “We Are Not What We Seem,” in Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (1994), 1- 53.
11/11 Th Cultural Activism
Music: Sudden Rush: “Ku`e!”
George Lipsitz, “But Is it Political? Self-Activity and the State,” in Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place (1994), 137-156.
Andrew Weintraub, "Jawaiian and Local Cultural Identity in Hawai`i," in Sound Alliances: Indigenous Peoples, Cultural Politics and Popular Music in the Pacific, (1998): 78-88.
WEEK 8
11/16 Tu Screening: excerpts of Merrie Monarch hula festival
Momiala Kamahele, “Ilio`ulaokalani: Defending Native Hawaiian Culture,” 38-65.
11/18 Th Fusions and Borrowings
George Lipsitz, “It’s all Wrong, but It’s All Right: Creative Misunderstanding in Intercultural Communication,” in Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place (1994), 159 – 170.
Vijay Prishad, “Kung Fusion: Organize the ‘Hood Under I-Ching Banners,” in Everybody was Kung-Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity, (2001) 126-149.
“Rap, Rage, REDvolution,” Village Voice, April 20, 2004
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0416/veran.php
WEEK 9
11/23 Tu Race and Parody
“Da Ali G Show” (2004), “Malibu’s Most Wanted” (2003)
“Ali G for Real,” Vanity Fair, August 2004
“You Can’t Possibly Be Serious,” USA Today, July 22, 2004 (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20040722/en_usatoday/youcantpossiblybeserious)
Paper #2 (4-5 pp) due in class
11/25 Th Thanksgiving Vacation; no class
WEEK 10
11/30 Tu Group Project Presentations
12/2 Th Beau Sia, A Knight without Armor II, The Revenge (1998)
Jewel, A Knight Without Armor (1998)
10-12 pp. group papers due no later than Monday, December 6, 2004 at 12:00 PM in my box in Ethnic Studies, 201 McKenzie Hall.