AMERICANSTUDIESCENTER
WARSAWUNIVERSITY
OŚRODEK STUDIÓW AMERYKAŃSKICH
UNIWERSYTET WARSZAWSKI
Courses TAUGHT IN SPRING 2010
D –WEEKDAY STUDIES
W – WEEKEND STUDIES
PL – TAUGHT IN POLISH
LECTURES
W 102 D, W
American History II
The central theme of this portion of the lecture is the rise of big business and its impact on how Americans lived, worked, and played. This development also transformed how Americans thought about the role of government in their society and laid the foundation for America’s emergence as a superpower after World War II. To a lesser extent, the topics of religion, sports, and popular culture (film, radio, and TV) will also be addressed.
W 104 D, W
History of American Literature - Part II
The lecture presents developments in American literature following the Civil War. It begins with the rise of realism and examines naturalism and local color fiction, focusing on their aesthetics as well as ideological sources and cultural contexts (Social Darwinism; pragmatism; the frontier thesis). The work of major figures such as Twain and James is discussed in some detail. After a look at social realist prose of the thirties (Steinbeck), we go on to examine key writers of Modernism, both poetry and prose (Stein, Pound, Eliot, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and others). The Harlem Renaissance is discussed (Locke, Hughes, Toomer, Hurston), followed by later developments in African American Literature (Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, Walker, Morrison). Major currents and schools in 20th century poetry are presented (e.g. the Beats; the confessionals; the New YorkSchool), as well as most important dramatists (O’Neill, Miller, Williams). Postmodernism is examined both as literary experimentation (Pynchon, Burroughs, Nabokov) and a trend in cultural and literary theory. Final weeks are devoted to the diversity in contemporary American writing (literature of various ethnic groups; key women writers since the 70s, etc.) and to critical controversies concerning the history of literature (canon construction; politics and aesthetics; multiculturalism, etc.).
W 107 D, W
American Thought
The purpose of this course is to give a general overview of American Thought: from Puritanism to Postmodernism. The main focus will be on American philosophy, but conceived in an accessible, non-technical way, and with an emphasis on its socio-political aspect. We will try to show that, despite strong European influences, American thought is unique and in no way reducible to philosopies that dominated the thought of the Old Continent. The series of lectures will start with Puritan Covenantal Theology, which formed the foundations of American political thinking; go through American Enlightenment and The Founding Fathers; continue through “Young America” of R. W. Emerson and H. D.Thoreau; explore the truly American philosophical invention that is Pragmatism; analyze the theoretical impact of the immigrants after 1945 (Arendt, Adorno, Leo Strauss); and finally tackle the issue of Postmodernism (Richard Rorty).
W 108 D, W
U. S. Economy
The goal is to familiarize participants with the current state and historical development of the American economy. The lecture intends to analyze both the economic processes along with their outcomes and the institutional/structural features of the US economy. To achieve this goal some basic economic concepts will be introduced to the student. Then, basic economic institutions will be analyzed in the changing historical perspective. The US economy - historically and today - will be put into an international comparative perspective. Sources of available economic/statistical data will be indicated and the ways they are gathered and published shown. Much emphasis will be put on finding and retrieving information from the internet sources.
PROSEMINARS
P 102 D, W
Proseminar: Remedial Writing
This is a make-up course for the students who did not get a passing grade for the pro-seminar in the first semester as well as for the students recommended for this course by their M.A. Supervisors. The course consists largely in the individualized work with the students to help them in upgrading their academic writing skills and mastering the basics of conducting research. The course will offer tutorial assistance for those students whom pro-seminar teachers consider in need of further assistance in preparing their thesis prospectuses. Emphasis will be put on individual needs of such students and work on specific skills which they require. Each student will be given individual attention and will work on their special needs in the first place, though the whole process will be coordinated with their MA thesis advisors. Basically, students may expect to work on the conceptual level and on the technical aspect of academic writing. The conceptual level involves: practicing such skills as critical thinking, thought organization, formulation of arguments and proving one's claims, thesis formulation, and expression of opinion. The technical level: notation, bibliography composition, paragraph formation, summarization of arguments. In the end it is expected that a hard working student will improve his/her academic research skills to the level required by the ASC standards or acceptable by the thesis supervisor (whichever is higher). Readings and tasks will be assigned independently according to individual needs of students.
US HISTORY
A 101D, W
The USA and World War II
The Second World War made the United States a global Superpower—at least until 1948. This course focuses on those elements of American internal and international situation, which caused USA to enter the war and enabled it to play a decisive role in the Allied victory. On the basis of American documents, press materials, and memoirs, typical attitudes of political and military elites will be discussed.
A 109 D
The USA and World War I
The course will examine the most important domestic and international problems faced by the American government and society in the years 1914-1921. We will discuss the question of neutrality (both formal and actual) of America in those years; the pro-ally and pro-German attitudes of American citizens; the causes of joining the war effort and the role of the USA in defeating the central powers. We will analyze Wilson’s program for ending the war, and building a mechanism of world security, as well as the causes and circumstances of his political defeat in the years 1919-1920.
AMERICAN THOUGHT
B 101D
The American Political Tradition
The course examines the basic ideas guiding the development of political thinking in America from the colonial times through the Founding. The following sources of the American political tradition are identified and discussed: Puritanism, classical liberalism, the Whig science of politics, Republicanism, classical political economy, and the Enlightenment. The crucial question is to what extent they constitute a specific political tradition and how it differs from the European political tradition. As Americans are considered to be a political nation (in contrast to ethnic), their political tradition is absolutely crucial to their national identity. The course ends with the attempt to appraise the integrity of the American political tradition as challenged by some contemporary, postmodern developments.
B 107 D
American Political Thought, 1800-1945
The course analyzes important developments in the American political thought in the 19th and first half of the 20th century in the context of the whole American political tradition. It starts with a cursory glance at fundamental political ideas of the colonial and founding period and at de Tocqueville’s insights into the nature of American democracy. It goes on to discuss transcendentalism, Calhoun’s defense of the South and Lincoln’s understanding of the American “experiment,” early Afro-American political thought, social Darwinism, technocratic progressivism, pragmatism and FDR’s liberalism. The course also tries to answer the question of how all these developments have shaped contemporary American thinking about politics, culture and society. Students are exposed to a selection of primary sources and encouraged to analyze them critically.
B 123 W
The African-American Intellectual Tradition
This course examines theoretical and political writings of Black intellectuals in the U.S. from Frederick Douglass to Henry Louis Gates and Toni Morrison. We examine canonical essays by Johnson, Locke, Hurston, Wright, Ellison, Baldwin and others. The central theme of the course is the historical development of ideas concerning the concept of race, African-American identity and belonging; we will also look at Black readings of the White imagination. Emphasis will be placed on debates and controversies (eg. W.E.B. Du Bois’ challenge to Booker T. Washington; recent tensions between identity politics and “post-race” perspectives). We will also examine texts by leading women intellectuals from Anna Julia Cooper and Ida B. Wells-Barnett to Alice Walker and Audre Lorde, who brought problems of gender into focus, challenging both the racism of mainstream feminist views, and the sexist bias of the Black male tradition.
B 126 D, W
From Calvinism to Transcendentalism: Genealogies of American Romantic Thought
Following a canonical claim by Perry Miller about a link connecting Jonathan Edwards and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the course, which foregrounds history of ideas, aims at reconstructing the continuity of American thought from the seventeenth-century New England Congregationalism through the Bostonian version of romanticism. On the one hand, the religious and philosophical texts chosen for discussion will demonstrate a shift from the Calvinist dogma of total depravity to William E. Channing’s thesis of human “likeness to God” and Emersonian self-reliance, while on the other, they will show a significant common tendency to model the world as a figural “liber mundi” ready for interpretation. The reading list will include a number of major statements by Danforth, Williams, Anne Hutchinson, Cotton Mather, Stoddard, Edwards, Channing, Emerson, Bushnell, and Dana.
B 127 D, W
America’s Public Philosophy: The Triumph of Self-Improvement
Each year, Americans spend almost 10 billion dollars on self-improvement.Why? This course will explore the rise and triumph of therapeutic culture inAmerica. The course will be divided into two distinct units. The first unit will focus on the historical foundations of self-improvement as a publicphilosophy in America, whereas the second unit will examine the most popularproducts of the contemporary self-improvement industry. In particular,students will consider the ways in which the philosophy of self-improvementhas shaped American morality, faith, sexuality and democracy. Readings willrange from Benjamin Franklin to Oprah Winfrey.
AMERICAN LITERATURE
C 102 D
American Poetry after 1945
The course examines American poetry after World War II, focusing on poetic forms, contexts and occasions. We will discuss poets individually as well as in "groups," such as the Beats, Black Mountain Poets, New YorkSchool, Confessional Poets, Language Poets etc. Some of the questions the course may raise are: the shifting American "poetics"; "private" vs. "public" poetic voices; the crossing of "gender," "sexuality," and "race"; poetic manifestoes; poetry and rhetoric.
C 108 D, W
Postmodern American Literature from the Sixties to the Present
This course will start out by examining postmodern fiction by John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut with a view to investigate the postmodern decade (mid-sixties through the mid-seventies). These selected works of fiction will be discussed in the terms of John Barth’s concept of the literature of exhaustion/replenishment, Ihab Hassan’s theorization of the postmodern in terms of transcendence versus immanence, and other selected criticism (e.g., by Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes). In the second part of the course, more recent theories of the postmodern put forth by Jean-Francois Lyotard, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard and others will be taken up. These theoretical readings will be supplemented with selected fiction written in the 1980s and the 1990s.
C 110 D
A Survey of Twentieth Century Literary Theory
In this course we will examine a selection of essays in literary theory beginning with Russian Formalism and including New Criticism, psychoanalysis, Reader Response, structuralism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, feminism and queer theory. Theoretical readings will be supplemented with literary texts, which we will discuss in the light of the theoretical perspectives.
C 115 W
African American Literature
This course will introduce students to major writers and themes in African American literature, starting with slave narratives and focusing mainly on fiction, although some poetry and drama may also be read. The course will examine important themes in African American writing such as racial identity, legitimization, and self-presentation. We will consider the ways in which black writers have forged a special black aesthetic. Literature of the Harlem Renaissance, a vital flowering of black writing and art, will be an important section of the course, as well as more recent products of black feminism.
C 131 D
Approaching Jewishness in American Literature
The course looks at Jewishness in American literature in the 20th century. We will start with pre-war accounts of immigration and end with a novel published in 2006 but the main focus will be on the second half of the 20th century. We will discuss the issues of assimilation and acculturation, the relation between Judaism and Jewishness, remembering the Shoah but also analyze gender and sexuality in the context of Jewishness, and Black-Jewish relations. Apart from literary works (e.g. by Henry James, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anzia Yezierska, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick, T. Cooper), we will consider a number of filmic representations (e.g. Sophie’s Choice, Funny Girl, Annie Hall, Angels in America).
C 134 W
New England Women Writers, 1860-1920
A starting point for this course has been provided Richard Brodhead’s claim that all major New England writers of the second half of the 19th century owed their model of narrative fiction to Nathaniel Hawtorne. The course, focusing on the work of such women writers as Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, and several others, provides a significant supplement to Broadhead’s choice of men writers (Howells and William James). The cultural context of readings of particular texts by New England women is the socio-economic crisis of the region after the Civil War.
C 145D
Masculinities in Literary Modernism
The course explores the constructions of masculinities in literature within Anglo-American modernism. We will try to pay attention to the intersections of gender with other social categories (class, race, ethnicity, sexuality) to see how hegemonic and marginalized masculinities are represented in literature. The syllabus includes essential Masculinity Studies texts (Connell, Boyarin, Mosse) and modernist fiction and poetry (e.g. Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Barnes, Hughes, Cullen, Stein, Loy, T.S. Eliot, Pound,). What is at stake here is to understand how gender and especially masculinity functioned within modernism and how it was re-produced in different literary genres and locations.
ART AND CULTURE
D 108 D, W
Classical Hollywood Cinema as an American Phenomenon
The course begins with the definition of the term “classical Hollywood cinema” and goes on to examine some theoretical approaches (zero style cinema, Andre Bazin’s definition of the term, Bordwell’s theory). Later we will investigate some historical data. The course will also examine Hollywood stylistics and how they reflected social and cultural values. Even though, from the very beginning of its existence film has been treated in the United States as pure entertainment, it caused public discussions expressing protests and approval of films even on the federal level. Part of the course will be devoted to close analysis of films.
D 111 W
American Media
This course presents a panorama of American media: from print media to electronic media and the Internet. We will undertake content analysis, study the form in which current news is disseminated, look at the relations between government agencies and the media, and discuss the issue of objectivity and bias. Detailed analysis will concern media coverage of electoral campaigns and elections, the coverage of political controversies such as Watergate, the Clinton impeachment procedure, or the debate over the election results in Florida in 2000.
D126D, W
African American Film
The work of such directors as Julie Dash, Isaac Julien, Melvin Van Peebles, Spike Lee and John Singleton will serve as grounds for the discussion of the processes of claiming Black subjectivity, (re)configuring African American identity, and challenging the (aesthetic, political) norms of classical Hollywood cinema. Our analysis of specific films situated in the context of African American history and culture will focus on such issues as: deconstruction of racial stereotypes, Black politics, the Black aesthetic, the interconnections between gender, sexuality and race, African American icons (in music, film, sports, popular culture), the benefits and risks attending the entry of Black culture into mainstream American culture and our position as white audience.
D 127 W
Aspects of Popular Culture
The course focuses on various phenomena from the domain of contemporary American popular culture, such as popular music (rock, hip-hop), television (reality shows, talk shows), journalism (news, docu-dramas) or self-help culture. Moreover, students will become acquainted with basic terminology (popular culture, mass culture, elite culture, hip, square, cool) and issues such as: the specificity of American popular culture in the times of globalization and the relationship between high and pop. Student will also acquire the knowledge of the methods which can be used for analyzing culture texts.
D 143 D
Photographs about America
This course is by no means a survey of the history of American photography. Rather it examines the various ways in which photographs reflect American values and attitudes, as well as some of the major shifts in American consciousness. We will examine anthropological photographs and popular images of Native Americans, and look at how W.E.DuBois' photographs of Blacks were part of his thinking on the "double-consciousness". This course also reviews the tradition of the landscape photography of the West as dramatizing certain shifts in the attitudes of American intellectuals toward the myth of Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism. The syllabus also includes the examination of some of the photographs of the Civil War as undermining the ideological discourse of the Union. We will also look at how in the era of liberal consensus of 1950s American photojournalism, after its heyday in 1930s, became increasingly abstract and private, but then recovered its urgency and validity during the civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam war. Finally, we will read some of the recent criticism on the photographs of nuclear explosions and the rise of the so-called "spectator democracy."