Blowback : the Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Second Edition)
History 372 / American Cultural History since 1865
“We’re off to see the Wizard”
Spring 2011 • University of Puget Sound
General Info
Instructor: Doug Sackman • Office: Wyatt 138 email:
phone: x3913 • Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays: 1.15-2.15pm
(I am also available to meet with you at other times; just email me for an appointment)
webpage: http://www.pugetsound.edu/faculty-sites/doug-sackman/
Introduction
The title of this course raises a thick, tangled set of questions—an unruly garden springing from the roots of the United States as a nation that proclaims as its motto “e pluribus unum” (out of many, one). Is there now or has there ever been one American culture? Variations on this question have been asked over and over again—at least since Hector St. John de Crevecoeur asked “What is this new man, the American?”—and a variety of different answers have been put forward over time. A new scholarly enterprise was born after World War II—an interdisciplinary field combining history, literature and other disciplines called American Studies—in order to search for “the American mind” or the “American character.” In more recent decades, many American Studies scholars have abandoned the quest to find the American character as at once quixotic and misguided, and have instead embraced the idea that America has always encompassed many cultures at any given period—even though they may identify an ascendant, dominant or “hegemonic” culture in a particular period, they acknowledge that even these have been contested and alternative cultures have always existed at the margins of and often in tension or conversation with some purported “mainstream” American culture.
The search for American culture—however it is conducted and whatever discoveries are made—begs a further question, what is culture? What are we looking for? “Culture” is a complicated term, with a surprising history of its own. Until well into the 19th century, only the elite were thought to have culture, and it was often conceived of as a close relative of “civilization.” With the advent of modern, relativistic anthropology in the early 20th century (following the work of Franz Boas and others), “culture” gained a new, democratizing definition—everyone was understood to have a or live in a “culture,” which the anthropologists thought of as a way of life expressed in daily rituals and behavior, material objects, laws, stories and legends and so on. Many other terms have been used to describe different types of culture, including the important distinctions between “high” and “low” culture (or highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow culture); between “mass culture” and “folk culture”; between “mainstream culture” and “ethnic culture.” Culture has been combined with modifiers to reflect the diversity of the American scene, so that we talk about black, white, Asian American, Latino, and [insert others] culture; about women’s and men’s culture; about Southern culture or Western culture; about youth culture or surf culture. Some Americans have even self-consciously tried to create and live within what they called a counterculture.
It may be useful at the outset of the course to look at a “taxonomy” of the different phenomena American cultural historians have had in mind when they explore culture.[1] These include, among others, seeing culture as:
a. a form or style of artistic expression (e.g. the blues in music or Abstract Expressionism in art)
b. as any social or institutional sphere in which collective forms of meaning are made, enforced, and contested. This definition can point us to museums, publishing houses, amusement parks, or a film studio, and, more broadly, any group of people in a place that generate their own values, rules of behavior, and collective symbols.
c. as a common set of beliefs, customs, values, and rituals (this is the “anthropological” concept of culture).
d. as a semiotic or discursive system—the collection of signs, symbols and stories that constitute “discourses” and which shape meaning and ultimately experience, identity and our sense of reality and truth
e. as transnational or global circulation (i.e. something that travels across borders with people and their goods). This conceptualization of culture points to the interplay between immigrant cultures and the nation state, and the nation as an “imagined community” and other communities with which it has exchanges and “conversations”.
Whatever “culture” cultural historians are looking at or for, and however they conceive of it, they are generally concerned with different kinds of phenomena that other kinds of historians (such as political or economic historians, though there often has been an overlap[2]). Cultural historians tend to be concerned with language, identity, and representations. They see historical significance the acts of meaning-making as they occur in daily life and through media of all kinds. They are interested in subjective experience, in ideas and values, and in the power of symbols. They explore how the circulation of ideas and symbols through various media both reflect and shape culture. In the wake of the work of the influential theorist Marshall McLuhan, they consider how the “medium is the message.” One way of thinking about this famous formulation for our purposes is this: is our culture(s) what we are as America and Americans, and if so, just how?
At some point, we also need to bracket off discussion and debates about definitions of “culture”, and look at manifestations of the thing itself. As T.S. Eliot wrote in his poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,”:
“Do not ask ‘what is it?’
Let us go and make our visit.”
Themes and Format
Regrettably, it is not possible to visit all aspects and facets of America culture since 1865 (going just with definition “a” of culture above, one could devote an entire course to the history of popular music in America—or even a particular genre, such as jazz or punk rock or hip hop). Obviously, we will not be able to map all of American culture/s from 1865-present, though participants will be able to explore some areas of interest beyond what is currently represented on the syllabus through their presentations, final paper and their work in teams designing our day’s work for four of our sessions over the term. Students will thus be creating part of the syllabus and the course itself.
Though the course readings themselves are varied, there will be a particular focus on the rise and spread of “consumer culture”—and how it has been received and contested—from the early 20th century to the present. We will also attend to the construction of gendered, racial, and class-based identities over time, and to the relationship between culture and other aspects of American history (including politics).
Major themes of the course include:
1. The Rise and Transformation of Consumer Culture as Contested Embodiment of the American Dream
2. Race, Gender, and Class Identity in relation to Cultural Production and Reception
3. The Constitutive Role of Media in Forming and Reforming American Identities
Participants in the course will extend the range of topics explored through their in-class presentations and through their team-led seminar day. The fact that participants will bring their own interests to the table to enrich the course reflects its general orientation.
Indeed, the course is meant to be a collaborative investigation. Class time will be devoted largely to discussions of the readings and other texts and the issues they touch upon. I’ve designed the course to give u a range of opportunities to participate in the class and contribute to its content and character. Of course, you are encouraged to actively engage with discussions, raising questions, making points and otherwise contributing to the flow of the conversation. Note that the reading load for this course is heavy and in a few cases involves material that is quite dense. The readings for the course are extensive, and essential. Your reactions to the content, ideas and evidence presented in the reading will be crucial to what we do in class. Doing the reading in time for class is thus critical to the success of the course.
In reading selections, you will find it useful to take notes and write down particular questions you might have or topics you would like to discuss. As a student, I found that underlining or highlighting passages, while helpful, was not the best way to prepare me to participate in class discussions. I started to take notes on a separate sheet of paper (or on my computer), listing the relevant page number on the left and then some idea or quote that I found interesting next to it. In class, then, I could use this as an index of my ideas, and then point to a particular passage as a basis for a question or to present my perspective on a particular issue. You may find that developing a note-taking system will work for you. Please bring the readings to class on the day for which they are assigned. If you do not do the readings, you will get little out of the class. If you do the readings, but have nothing to say about them, then the class as a whole will suffer. The more you get involved, the more you will get out of the class, and the more exciting, engaging, and successful the class will be as whole.
Readings and Texts:
1. T.J. Jackson Lears, Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920
2. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940
3. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
4. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
5. Susan Douglas, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild
6. A variety of articles and documents posted on Moodle
7. Films will be regularly screened on Tuesdays; discussion of the film will usually take place on the following Thursdays. The films will be treated as important primary texts in the class, and “read” in their cultural and historical context. The films will be considered as embodiments and shapers of popular culture, as well as significant commentaries upon American culture.
Course Requirements
1. Participation, Attendance, Short Papers. This category includes reading, attendance, participation in discussions and several short papers and a document gathering assignment. Students can participate in class by making points and connections, raising questions, listening and responding to the comments of other students, and otherwise engaging with the flow of the discussion.
Short writing assignments, which will not be given a letter grade but will be assigned a number from 0-4 that assesses their general quality, include:
a. 5 1-2-page Discussion Papers (explained below)
b. 4 film discussion papers (explained below)
c. 1 document gathering assignment (explained in the syllabus schedule)
A variety of other short assignments for class preparation may also be required. Active listening as well asking questions and making comments are integral parts of class participation. Regular attendance is expected (more than three unexcused absences will begin to severely impact your participation grade, and further absences will eventually lead to a withdrawal from class). (25%)
2. In class Presentation. A short (7-10 minute) in-class presentation, on a topic related to US Cultural History since 1865. Examples of what you might select include, but are not limited to, a particular cultural artifact (e.g. a painting, a song, a novel, a building, etc), an “artist” (broadly construed) who is significant in some way (e.g. Louis Armstrong, Louis Sullivan, Ice Cube, Jackson Pollock, Elvis Presley, Walt Disney, etc.), an artistic genre (e.g. Grunge, or Realism), some aspect of a medium (such as television, radio, mass circulation magazines, the internet), an event understood culturally (such as the Scopes Trial), or a significant or revealing American icon, symbol, or celebrity.
Guidelines for the presentation will be distributed, and students should select a topic by the end of the second week of classes. Presentations will then be scheduled on days throughout the term. (5%)
3. Interpretive essay I: a 5-7 page paper due in Week 7; guidelines will be distributed. (21%)
4. Interpretive essay II, a 5-7 page paper due in Week 12; guidelines will be distributed. (21%)
5. Final Project: research essay. A 7-10 page paper on a topic relevant to the course, making use of both primary and secondary sources. A prospectus for your final project is due in week 13 and the final project is due Wednesday of Finals Week. Guidelines will be distributed after week 9. (25%)
6. Team led class session. Working in teams, students will plan and lead one day of the seminar. Each team will select a topic for their day related to American cultural history in a particular period, select appropriate scholarly readings and documents, and lead the class session. (3%)
Note on Quiz Possibilities: depending on the quality of class discussions and the collective sense of how thoroughly and completely the reading is being done, we may need to add quizzes or other assignments to the course itinerary (in which case, the percentage weight of some of the above categories will be reduced to make room for the quizzes, etc).