TITLE OF COURSE: Introduction to American Civilization
2nd year English Minors
Fall Semester 2016-2017
Instructor: Dana Mihăilescu ()
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course is designed as an introduction to American Civilization. It aims to provide the students with a framework for their future study of American literature, culture and society. The course is thematically structured following a loose chronology from the earliest European accounts of the New World to the present. Using a combined diachronic and synchronic perspective it focuses on major aspects of American civilization shedding light on cultural paradigms such as Puritanism, frontier, transcendentalism, feminism, multiculturalism, and globalization. The readings span a wide range of cultural diversities, including racial, gender, sexual and regional differences.
I. Introduction
II. Exploration Encounters. Modes of Appropriating the New World
- Columbus’ Diario (Heath I pp. 117-128)
- Tzvetan Todorov, “Columbus as Interpreter” from The Conquest of America (Course pack)
- Captain John Smith, A Description of New England (EAR, pp. 10-12); The General History of Virginia (EAR pp. 392-402)
[Videos: Columbus and U.S. / African-Americans on Columbus]
III. Puritan Intellectual and Social Life and the Great Awakening
- William Bradford Of Plymouth Plantation (EAR pp. 188-210)
- John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (EAR pp. 14-24)
- Anne Bradstreet, “The Prologue (EAR pp. 211-3), “The Flesh and the Spirit” (pp. 220-2), “To My Dear and Loving Husband” (p. 223)
- Edward Morgan, “Husband and Wife” in The Puritan Family (Course pack)
The Great Awakening:
- Jonathan Edwards: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (EAR pp. 311-324)
- Phyllis Wheatley “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield” (EAR pp. 340-42)
[Videos: Salem Witch Trials, The Puritan Family]
IV. Articulating the American Dream in Colonial America and Beyond. Facets of American Identity
- Benjamin Franklin The Autobiography (EAR pp. 61-115)
- Jean de Crevecoeur “What Is an American?” (EAR pp. 116-29)
- Joseph Addison, From Cato (1713) (Prologue, Act 1, Act 2) (
[Video: Biography of Benjamin Franklin]
V. The Enlightenment and the American Revolution
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense (EAR pp. 692-703)
- Thomas Jefferson “The Declaration of Independence” (EAR pp. 688-91)
- Philip Freneau “The Indian Burying Ground” (EAR pp. 516-23), “George the Third’s Soliloquy” (EAR pp. 677-79)
[Video: The Boston Massacre. America, The Story of Us]
VI. The Frontier and the Indian in American Culture
- Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (EAR pp. 434-68)
- William Apess (Pequot) “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man” (Heath I pp. 1868-72)
- Clarence King “The Newtys of Pike” (NCAR, pp. 73-9)
- Frederick Jackson Turner “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (NCAR, pp. 80-85)
[Video: Flatboatmen of the Frontier / Ohio Valley River, 1770-1810]
VII. Slavery and Jim Crow Laws in American Culture and History
- Olaudah Equiano The Life of Olaudah Equiano (EAR pp. 648-53)
- Frederick Douglass “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (Heath I pp. 1818-37)
- Olney, James. “‘I Was Born’: Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature.” Callaloo 20 (Winter 1984): 46-73.
- Abraham Lincoln,“Emancipation Proclamation”, “Gettysburg Address” (Urofsky pp. 160-63)
- George Fitzhugh “Negro Slavery” (NCAR pp. 310-14)
Videos: Adrian Tapia’s A Modern Look on American Minstrelsy; Minstrel Show Blackface Sand Dance
VIII. Intellectual Traditions and Utopian Communities
- Ralph Waldo Emerson “Self Reliance” (Heath Anthology vol. 2, 1622-1638)
- Henry David Thoreau “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” (NCAR pp. 112-19)
- John Humphrey Noyes “The Oneida Community (NCAR pp. 218-21)
IX. Features of 19th and 20th C. U.S. Foreign Policyand Corresponding U.S. Views on Immigrants
- Horace M. Kallen “Democracy vs. the Melting Pot: A Study of American Nationality (1915)”; Randolphe Bourne. “Trans-national America (1916).” Theories of Ethnicity. A Classical Reader. Ed. Werner Sollors. NY: NY U. Press, 1996. 67-108. (course pack)
- John O’Sullivan “The Great Nation of Futurity” (NCAR pp. 6-10)
- Carl Schurz “Manifest Destiny” (NCAR 26-31)
- Woodrow Wilson “Fourteen Points Speech” (Urofsky 306-309)
- Henry R. Luce “The American Century” (TCAR pp. 431-39)
X. Features of U.S. Domestic Policy in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Cultural and Political Responses to the Challenges of Industrial Society, Progressive and Socialist Agendas
- People’s Party Platform (Urofsky, 180-84)
- Upton Sinclair The Jungle (TCAR pp. 58-60)
- William James “Pragmatism” (TCAR pp. 24-9)
- George Packer, “Where Have All the Workers Gone?.” New Yorker. 25 February 2014. 6 May 2014.
XI. Feminism in American Culture. Struggles and Shifts from 19th c. to 1960s
- Seneca Falls Declaration (Urofsky pp. 114-16)
- Sarah Margaret Fuller “Woman in the Nineteenth Century” (NCAR pp. 222-25)
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman “Are Women Human Beings?” (TCAR pp. 20-23)
- J. Robyn Goodman,“The Women’s Suffragist Movement through the Eyes of Life Magazine Cartoons,” Comics and Ideology. Eds. Matthew P. McAllister, Edward H. Sewell Jr., and Ian Gordon. New York: Peter Lang, 2001 (pp. 39-67)
- Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (Bode pp. 231-35)
XII. The Battle for Civil Rights: Political, Cultural and Legal Fronts
- Booker T. Washington “The Atlanta Exposition Address” (NCAR pp. 410-13)
- W.E.B. Du Bois The Souls of Black Folk (TCAR pp. 10-14)
- Poets of the Harlem Renaissance (TCAR pp. 226-31)
- Martin Luther King Jr. “I Have a Dream” (Urofsky pp. 465-69)
- Leigh Raiford. “Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory.” History and Theory 48 (December 2009): 112-129.
Video: The Untold Story of Emmett Till(2001)
XIII. Post War American Decades, Multiculturalism, Cultural Representations of Difference and the Challenge of Globalization. From Tranquility through Turmoil to Narcissism and Conservatism
- David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Renel Denney The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character, rev. ed. 1953 (Bode, pp. 216-221);
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy “Inaugural Address” (Bode, pp. 248-50)
- Norman Mailer The Armies of the Night (Bode, pp. 265-69)
- Newsweek Magazine “Year of the Yuppie” (Bode pp. 296-302)
- Allan Bloom The Closing of the American Mind (Bode, pp. 314-21)
XIV. Final written exam
BIBLIOGRAPHY
An Early American Reader, edited by J.A. Leo Lemay (EAR) to be found at theAmerican Studies Library (Room 4) & BCU
A Nineteenth Century American Reader, edited by Thomas M. Inge (NCAR) to be found at theAmerican Studies Library & BCU
ATwentieth Century American Reader, eds. Jake lane & Maurice O’Sullivan (TCAR) to be found at theAmerican Studies Library & BCU
American Perspectives, ed. By Carl Bode, (Bode) to be found at theAmerican Studies Library & BCU
Basic Readings in U.S. Democracy, ed. Melvin I. Urofsky (Urofsky) to be found at BCU
Course pack to be found at theAmerican Studies Library
The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vols. I & II, first edition, (Heath) to be found at the American Studies Library
REQUIREMENTS
Students are expected to attend a minimum of 50% of the lectures (7 out of 14). I have assigned a list of compulsory readings for every lecture; excepting the first, every such list includes a number of underlined texts that students must read on a weekly basis. The rest of the texts will be presented and discussed in your seminar classes.By the end of the semester, every student is expected to have read all the texts included in this syllabus.
Grade assessment:
Seminar grade – 50% of final grade
Final written exam – 50% of final grade (In order to calculate the average between the seminar grade and final exam grade, the minimum grade in the final written exam must be 5.)
Bonus participation points during our course meetings – 10% of final grade.
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