History 430
Special Topics: U.S. Cultural History
Spring, 2009
John Bloom, Professor
Class Section, Time, and Room
History 430-01 Wednesday 6:30-9:15 DHC 206
Contact Information
Office: 335 Wright Phone: X1216 email:
Office hours: Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 11:00-11:50 and by appointment.
This course will cover the very dynamic and wide ranging topic of cultural history in the United States. The class is designed to introduce you to some of the different approaches and topics studied in cultural history, along with some of the more general themes and periods that cultural historians have identified. We will begin with the concept of culture itself, examining some different theoretical approaches to its study. We will then move on chronologically, beginning with colonial era North America, and moving on through the 19th and 20th centuries. I will be focusing primarily upon popular culture topics, however the work that you do on your independent papers may cover other topics as well, including novels, poetry, children’s fiction, religion, or music, to name just a few. Throughout, we will look at American cultural history as multifaceted, complex, and never monolithic.
Books (in alphabetical order by author):
Joe Austin and Michael Nevin Willard, Generations of Youth: Youth Cultures and History in Twentieth Century America.
Amy Farrell, Yours in Sisterhood: Ms. Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism.
Elliott Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America.
Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York.
Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America.
Articles (available under “Course Documents” on Blackboard):
Sacvan Bercovitch, “The Typology of America’s Mission.”
Ramon Gutierrez, “Honor Ideology, Marriage Negotiation, and Class-Gender Domination in New Mexico, 1690-1846.”
Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies.”
Robin Kelly, “‘We Are Not What We Seem.’”
Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description.”
Lawrence Levine, “Folklore of Industrial Society.”
Lawrence Levine, “William Shakespeare and the American People.”
George Lipsitz, “‘The Meaning of Memory.”
Janice Radway, “What’s in a Name?”
Assignments:
There will be no exams in this class, but there will be quite a bit of writing. Every student will have to write four two to three page reaction papers. These will deal with topics related to the readings and a primary document tied to each. There are a total of eleven reaction papers assigned, so you may choose which ones to write about, although everyone must do the first paper! Graduate students will also have to conduct a report and do a presentation on an additional book. I have listed the books and weeks for each presentation on the syllabus, and will hand out a sign-up sheet at the beginning of the semester. The reports and presentations are worth 100 points total. In addition to these assignments, all students will conduct original research of their own. This will be in the form of a paper due at the end of the semester (on the day of the final exam). For undergraduates, papers should be 7-9 pages, and for graduate students, they should be 15-20 pages. In addition, all students will be required to turn in a paper proposal, with annotated bibliography, during the early portion of the semester.
Participation:
Participation is a significant portion of your grade, and it consists of two parts. One is attendance, and the other is classroom discussion. You begin the semester with 35 points. If you attend every class, but never really contribute anything, this is what you will receive for your final participation grade. There will be many opportunities throughout the semester, such as extra presentations, special classroom discussions, short response papers to articles, and reports about campus events, that will allow you to accumulate participation points. I will count all points that you earn even if they add up to more than 50. Note that, with the exception of final paper presentations, I will not accept any participation assignments after the last regular day of class before finals week, Wednesday, April 22. Students may also earn six participation points for presenting the week’s reaction paper topic.
Grading:
Presentations/
Book Report (Graduate
Students only)100 points
Four Reaction Papers:25 points each/100 points total.
Paper Proposal:25 points.
Final Paper:125 points.
Participation:50 points.
Total: 300 Points Undergraduate
400 Points Graduate
Grading breakdown:
Undergraduate
A 300-279 A- 278-270B+ 269-261B 260-249B- 248-240
C+ 239-231C 230-210D 209-180F 179 and below
Graduate
A 400-372A- 371-360B+ 359-348B 347-332B- 331-320
C+ 319-308 C 307-280D 279 -240F 239 and below
Plagiarism
When you use another person’s work and imply that it is your own, without giving credit in the form of citations or quotation marks, you have committed plagiarism. Examples of plagiarism would be copying text from a printed source without citing that source, purchasing a paper off of a web site and handing it in as if it were your own, or cutting material off of the internet, and then pasting it into the body of your paper without using quotation marks or changing the wording of the text, and citing the source. Just as with a traffic violation, ignorance is not an excuse when committing plagiarism. Thus, it does not matter whether you know you have committed it or not, if you have plagiarized, you are guilty of committing plagiarism. If I find that you have plagiarized, you will receive no points for the assignment, which will be a grade of “F.” If the incident of plagiarism is particularly severe, you will fail the course. You will also fail the course if you are caught engaging in a flagrant act of academic dishonesty, such as turning in a paper written by another person.
Other Matters
- Please make sure that you have provided the university with an email address that you check regularly so that I can get in touch with you if I need to.
- Please keep abreast of campus emergencies or closings. Unless campus is closed, all paper due dates are as they have been written on the syllabus. If campus is closed on the day that a paper is due, it will be due the next day that we meet.
Schedule:
Week 1: Defining Culture.
1/14: Introductions.
Week 2: Defining Culture (cont.).
1/21:Read Hall and Geertz.
Reaction Paper #1 Due – Remember that everyone has to do this paper!
Week 3: Colonial Cultures and Their Influences.
1/28: Read Bercovitch and Gutierrez.
Primary Materials: Jonathan Winthrop and Cabeza de Vaca.
Reaction Paper #2 Due.
Week 4: Early Popular Culture.
2/ 4:Meet in Library.
Read Levine, “Folklore of Industrial Society,” and
“William Shakespeare and the American People.”
Paper Prospectus Due.
Week 5:Modern Society and the Crisis of Victorian Culture.
2/11:Read Gorn, The Manly Art.
Presentation for Robert Allen, Horrible Prettiness.
Primary Material: articles collected in Library on Feb. 4.
Reaction Paper #3 Due.
Week 6: Gender, Ethnicity, Class, and Culture during the Progressive Era
2/18:Read chapters by Victoria Getis (21-35), Jay Mechling (36-49),
and Mary E. Odem (50-64) inGenerations of Youth.
Presentation for George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American.
Week 7: Early Popular Film and the Rise of Commercial Culture.
2/25: Read Peiss, Cheap Amusements.
Presentation for Robin Kelley, Race Rebels.
Primary Material: Birth of a Nation (film available in its entirety on Google Videos for free).
Reaction Paper #4 Due.
Week 8: Spring Break
3/4: Spring Break.
Week 9: Depression Era Utopianism and the Post-World War II Triumph of Commercial Culture.
3/11:Read Robin Kelly, “‘We Are Not What We Seem’”; also read
Linda Espana-Maram (118-135) in GOY.
Presentation: Michael Denning, The Cultural Front.
Primary Materials: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series.
Reaction Paper #5 Due.
Week 10: Cold War America and the Rise of Television.
3/18:Read, Spigel, Make Room for TV.
Read Lipsitz, “The Meaning of Memory
Presentation: Cotten Seiler, Republic of Drivers.
Primary Material: The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy. Also read Newton Minnow’s “Vast Wasteland” speech.
Reaction Paper #6 Due.
Week 11: Cold War America, “consensus,” and the Rise of Youth Culture.
3/25: Sears (173-186), and Bailey(187-204) in GOY.
Presentation: Elayne Tyler May, Homeward Bound.
Primary Material: The Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane,
The Beatles, Credence Clearwater Revival, Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan (not on Blackboard – you’ll need to gather these on your own).
Reaction Paper #7 Due.
Week 12: Late 20th Century Protest, and the “Culture of Opposition.”
4/1:Read Kelly (136-156) in GOY.
Read Chavez (205-222); and Rangel (223-239) in GOY.
Presentation: Phillip Deloria, Playing Indian.
Primary Material: the murals of San Francisco’s Mission District
Reaction Paper #8 Due.
Week 13: The Challenge of Second Wave Feminism.
4/8:Read Farrell, Yours in Sisterhood, 1-48.
Presentation: Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers.
Primary Material: Redstockings’ protest of Miss America and
the manifesto against consumerism by Ellen Willis
Reaction Paper #9 Due.
Week 14: The “Culture Wars” in the Late 20th Century.
4/15:Read Farrell, Yours in Sisterhood, remainder of book.
Presentation: George Lipsitz, Time Passages.
Primary Material: Pat Buchanan’s Speech to the 1992 Republican National Convention.
Reaction Paper #10 Due.
Week 15: American culture and transnational culture in the era of
globalization.
4/22: Read Wei (311-326); and Bright (412-426) in GOY.
Also read Janice Radway, “What’s in a Name.”
Primary Material:
Reaction Paper #11 Due.
Final Paper due on the date of the final exam, likely to be Wednesday night, April 27. For graduating seniors and graduate students, I would be happy to take your papers early in order to make sure that your grades are in on time.
In addition to the regular work done this semester, students will do a report on one of the following dozen books. Some have become what one might call “classics” in American cultural history, while others are relatively new. Each explores a theme in U.S. cultural history, and each applies a cultural formulation or theory to its study. Graduate students must write a three page report about the book that is the subject of their reading. These reports must 1) explain the topic of the book and the sources that the author draws upon; 2) explain the way that the author defines and understands the importance of culture to history; and 3) discuss the conclusions that the author draws, along with your own reactions to the book as a whole. Graduate students will also be responsible for reporting upon the book that they read. For the cases when there is more than one student signed up to read a book, students may present the book as a team. Presentations need not be dry recitations of the book to the class, but may involve any level of creativity, technology, or other innovations that a student feels would be fruitful to a learning experience. For example, instead of providing a direct overview of a book, students may instead wish to present a topic related to the book, and explain how the book and its findings or perspective relate to the topic. This topic may be related to paper topics, and can draw upon primary documents that we have been introduced to in the library.
February 11: Robert Allen, Horrible Prettiness
February 18: George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American
February 25: Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class
March 11: Michael Denning, The Cultural Front
March 18: Cotten Seiler, Republic of Drivers
March 25: Elayne Tyler May, Homeward Bound
April 1: Phillip Deloria, Playing Indian
April 8: Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers
April 15: George Lipsitz, Time Passages
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