ENAM 802: American Studies Colloquium I

• Summer Reading: *
• John Berger, Ways of Seeing.
• John Crunden,A Brief History of American Culture.
• Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree.
• Neill Howe and Bill Strauss,13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?
• James Hunter,Culture Wars.
• Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone.
• Raymond Williams,Keywords.
• New Texts:
  • Stephen J. Fjellman,Vinyl Leaves.
  • Michael Kammen,Mystic Chords of Memory
  • Leo Marx,The Machine in the Garden.
  • Miles Orvell,The Real Thing.
  • Henry Nash Smith,Virgin Land.
  • Alan Trachtenberg,The Incorporation of America.
    * all texts are on reserve in Clemons

General Statement of Purpose:

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Calendar of Meetings

8/30:Organization and Introduction 
• Raymond Williams,Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society.
• Begin working onHTML Tutorial
• Subscribe toH-AMSTDY, and one other listserve fromH-NET

9/04:Summer Reading I 
• John Crunden,A Brief History of American Culture.
• James Hunter,Culture Wars.
• Ian Howe,13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Fail?
• .AS Lab

9/11:Summer Reading II: 
• Robert D. Putnam,Bowling Alone
• Thomas Friedman,The Lexus and the Olive Tree
• John Berger,Ways of Seeing.
• AS Lab

9/18: American Studies: Getting the Lay of the Land I   
• Geneology
  • Gene Wise,"Paradigm Dramas" in American Studies: A Cultural and Institutional History of the Movement.
  • Gene Wise,From 'American Studies' to 'American Culture Studies.'
  • Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr.,A New Context for a New American Studies?
  • Allen F. Davis,The Politics of American Studies.
  • Gerald Graff, The Promise of American Literature Studies
  • Henry Giroux, David Shumway, Paul Smith, and James Sosnoski,The Need for Cultural Studies: Resisting Intellectuals and Oppositional Public Spheres
  • Sacvan Berkovitch, The Problem of Ideology in American Literary History
  • Linda Kerber,Diversity and the Transformation of American Studies.
  • Philip Fisher,The New American Studies: From Myths to Rhetorics
  • George Lipsitz,Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and American Studies
  • Elaine Tyler May,"The Radical Roots of American Studies"

• Not Everybody's Myth and Symbol: 
  • Henry Nash Smith,Can American Studies Develop a Method?
  • Leo Marx,American Studies A Defense of an Unscientific Method.
  • Frederick Lewis Dekker,Disassembling the Machine in the Garden.
  • Bruce Kucklich,Myth and Symbol in American Studies
  • Donald Pease,Visionary Compacts and the Cold War Consensus.
  • Brian Atteberry,American Studies: A Not So Unscientific Method"
  • Paul Lauter, The Literatures of America: A Comparative Discipline
  • Jay Mechling, An American Culture Grid, With Texts
  • Ian Finseth,Prefaceto the Hypertext Edition of Virgin Land.

  9/25:Getting the Lay of the Land II

• The Social Sciences and the New Historicism
  • Peter Berger, Society as Drama
  • Dominick LaCapra,Intellectual History and its Ways
  • Janice Radway, American Studies Reader Theory and the Literary Text
  • R. Gordon Kelly,The Social Construction of Reality: Implications for the Future Direction of American Studies
  • David Pace,Structuralism in History and the Social Sciences
  • John G. Blair,Structuralism, American Studies, and the Humanities
  • L.F. Place, et al,The Object as Subject: The Role of Museums and Material Culture Collections in American Studies
  • Thomas J. Schlereth,Mirrors of the Past: Historical Photography and American History
  • Clifford Geertz,Thick Description
  • Clifford Geertz,Ideology as a Cultural System
  • Peter Burke,The New History: Its Past and Future
  • Robert Sklar,American Studies and the Realities of America
  • David Simpson,Literary Criticism and the Return to History
  • Robert Darnton,The Great Cat Massacre in the rue Severain

• Marxism, Postructuralism, and Postmodernism
  • Michael Denning,The Special American Conditions: Marxism and American Studies
  • Elaine Taylor May, The Radical Roots of American Studies
  • Roland Marchand,The Parable of the Democracy of Goods
  • Forum on Peter Novick'sThat Noble Dream:Gordon,Hexter,Hollinger,McGill,Novick,andRoss.
  • T. J. Jackson Lears,The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities
  • Roland Marchand, Visions of Classlessness, Quests for Dominion: American Popular Culture, 1945-1960
  • Amy Kaplan,Left Alone America: The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture
  • Frederick Jameson,The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
  • Jacques Lacan,Preface and Seminar on The Purloined Letter
  • Roland Barthes,Myth Today,Striptease,Toys,Wrestling,from Mythologies.
  • Umberto Eco, Casablanca, or, The Cliches are Having a Ball
  • George H. Lewis,From Common Dullness to Fleeting Wonder: The Manipulation of Cultural Meaning the the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Saga
  • Andrew Wernick,Vehicles for Myth: The Shifting Image of the Modern Car
  • Joan Kron,The Semiotics of Home Decor
  • Jane Caputi,IBM's Charlie Chaplin: A Case Study
  • Peter Giblan,The Art of Being Off-Center: Shopping Center Spaces and Spectacles

• Gender, Race, Ethnicity
  • Grace Hale, Producing the Ground of Difference from Making Whiteness
  • Eric Lott, White Like Me: Racial Cross Dressing and the Construction of American Whiteness.
  • Linda Gordon, What's New in Feminist Studies?
  • Richard Ruland,Art and a Better America
  • Elizabeth Fox-Genovese,Between Individualism and Fragmentation: American Culture and the New Literary Studies of Race and Gender.
  • Nina Baym,Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors
  • Houston A. Baker, jr.,Figurations for a New American Literary History
  • Diane Barthel,A Gentleman and a Consumer
  • bell hooks,Madonna: Soul Sister or Plantation Mistress
  • Sandra Gubar,What Ails Feminist Criticism?
  • Harper,Black Men and the Aids EpidemicfromEloquence and Epitaph: Aids, Homophobia, and the Problematics of the Black Masculinity
  • Kevin J. Mumford,Homosex Changes: Race, Cultural Geography, and the Emergence of the Gay
  • Mary Helen Washington,What Happens to American Studies If You Put African American Studies at the Center?
  • Joyce Joyce,The Black Canon
  • David Johnson and Scott Johnson, Border Secrets
  Suggested:
• Christopher P. Wilson,Containing Multitudes: Realism, Historicism, American Studies.

10/2:Classic Paradigms I: In the Beginning. 
• Hans Holbein the Younger,Map of the World (1515)
• William Bradford,SelectionfromOf Plymouth Plantation
• Captain John Smith,SelectionfromThe History of Virginia.
• Cotton Mather,A General IntroductionandNehemius AmercanafromThe Magnalia Christi Americana.
• Ben Franklin, fromThe Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,pp.5-29, pp. 81-92 andPoor Richard Improved, 1758pp. 1295-1304.
• Thomas Jefferson,Draft of The Declaration of Independence.andQuery 4pp. 142-149 andQuery 19pp. 290-291, fromNotes on the State of Virginia.
• James Madison,The Federalist #10
• George Washington,Farewell Address.
• Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur,Letter III: What is an American?,Letter IX: Description of Charles-Town, andLetter XII: Distresses of a Frontier ManfromLetters from an American Farmer
• ASLAB
Suggested: 
• Sacvan Bercovitch,The Puritan Origins of the American Self.
• Daniel Boorstin,The Americans: The Colonial Experience.
• Oscar Handlin,The Uprooted.
• Howard Mumford Jones,O Strange New World
• Michael Kammen,The Machine that Would Run by Itself: The Constitution in American Culture.
• Perry Miller,Errand into the Wilderness.
• David Potter,People of Plenty.
• Ernest Lee Tuveson,Redeemer Nation.
• Gary Wills,Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence

10/09: Classic Paradigms II: The Middle Ground 

 
• Alexis deTocqueville, from Democracy in America 
   
  • Origin of the Anglo-Americans and the Importance of their Origins in Relation to Thier Future Condition, 
  • The Necessity of Examining the Condition of hte States Before That of the Union at Large, 
  • The Federal Constitution,
  • Liberty of the Press in the United States, 
  • Government of Democracy in the United States
  • Main Causes Tending to Maintain a Democratic Republic in the United States,
  • The Present and Probably Future condition of the Three Races that Inhabit the Territory of the United States, 
    Influence of Democracy on the Action of Intellect in The United States, 
  • Philosophical Method of The Americans
  • Of the Principal Source of Belief Among Democratic Nations
  • Why the Americans Show More General Aptitude and Taste for General Ideas that their Forefathers, The English,
  • Why the Americans have never been so Eager as the French for General Ideas in Political Affairs,
  • How Equality Suggests to the Americans the Indefinite Perfectibility of Man,
  • In What Spirit the Americans Cultivate the Arts,
  • Literary Characteristics of Democratic Times, 
  • How American Democracy has Modified the English Language, 
  • Why Democratic Nations show a More Ardent and Enduring Love for Equality than Liberty, 
  • Of Individualism in Democratic Countries, 
  • Of the Uses which Americans make of Public Associations, 
  • Of the Taste for Physical Well-being in America
  • What Causes Almost All Americans to Follow an Industrial Calling, 
  • How an Aristocracy may be Created by Manufacures, 
  • How Customs are Softened as Social Conditions become more Equal, 
  • Influence of Democracy on the Family,
  • How Americans Understand the Equality of the Sexes, 
  • Of Honour in the United States and in Democratic Communities, 
  • Why Democratic Nations Naturally Desire Peace and Democratic Armies War,
  • Why the Idea of Democratic Peoples about Government Naturally Favors the Concentration of Political Power,
  • What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations have to Fear, 
  • General Survey of the Subject. 
  • ASLAB

10/16: The Middle Ground (continued)   
• Noah Webster,PrefacetoThe American Dictionary of the English Language
• Edgar Allen Poe,The Man of the Crowd,and The Man That Was All Used Up,
• Ralph Waldo Emerson,The American Scholar
• Nathaniel Hawthorne,The Maypole of Merrymount
• Nathaniel Hawthorne,Roger Malvin's Burial
• Nathaniel Hawthorne,My Kinsman, Major Molineaux
• Abraham Lincoln,The Gettysburg Address.
• Abraham Lincoln,Second Inaugural Address.
• Walt Whitman, fromDemocratic Vistas.
• Walt Whitman,The Eighteenth Presidency
• Jacob Riis,IntroductionandGenesis of the Tenementfrom How the Other Half Lives.
• William Graham Sumner,SelectionfromWhat the Social Classes Owe Each Other
• Frederick Jackson Turner,The Significance of the Frontier in American History.
• Thorstein Veblen,Industrial Exemption and ConservatismfromThe Theory of the Leisure Classes
• Andrew Carnegie,Wealth
• George Santayana,Materialism and Idealism in American LifefromCharacter and Opinion in the United States.
• Henry Adams, Chicago and The Dynamo and the Virgin, fromThe Education of Henry Adams.
•  V.L. Parrington, The Chief Stewards of Theocracy and The Contributions of Independency fromMain Currents in American ThoughtVol. I(C)
•  William Carlos Williams, Voyage of the Mayflower and The May-Pole at Maerry Mount fromIn the American Grain
• Constance Rourke,Corncobs Twist Your Hairand The Gamecock of the WildernessfromAmerican Humor
• John Crowe Ransom,A Statement of Principles
• Lionel Trilling,Reality in America
• Reinhold Niebuhr,Where Have We Been? Where are We Going?
• AS Lab
Suggested: 
• Daniel Boorstin,The Americans: The National Experience.
• F.O. Matthiessen,American Renaissance
• Arthur M. Schlesinger,The Age of Jackson
• Gary Wills,The Gettysburg Address

FALL BREAK: 10/21-10/24

10/25: Henry Nash Smith    
• Virgin Land 
• Virgin Land Hypertextual Extensions 

(MA96-98) 
• Federal Statutes: The Public Lands 
• Photogr aphy and Virgin Land 
• Bloody Kansas 
• Hamlin Garland, The Lion's Paw 
• Slavery in Virgin Land 
• Buffalo Bill 
• Walt Whitman's Virgin Land 
• Daniel Boone 
• Kit Carson 
• The West in Silent Films.
• The Domestic Frontier: The West in Women's Personal Narratives 
• West to the Garden: Early Versions of the Myth of the American Garden 
• Comic Anti-Heroes in Southwestern Humor 
• The Yeoman and the Cracker 
• Romancing the Indian: Sentimentalizing and Demonizing in Cooper and Twain 
• Mormonism in the Garden.
• Utopian Communities in America.
• Caribean Slave Empire
• The Scalp Hunters
• Leatherstocking: Symbol and Myth
• The Mountain Men
• Frederick Law Olmsted in the Yosemite Valley
• AS Lab
Suggested: 
• Robert Berkhofer,The White Mans' Indian.
• Frank Prucha,Americanizing the American Indian.
• Richard Slotkin,Regeneration Through Violence.
• Tompkins, Jane P.West of Everything : The Inner Life of Westerns.

10/30:Leo Marx,The Machine in the Garden. 
Suggested: 
• Gary Cross,Technology and American Society : A History.
• Thomas Parke Hughes, American Genesis : A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm,1870-1970.
• Lewis Mumford,Technics and Civilization
• Cecelia Tichi, Shifting Gears :Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America.

11/06: Allen Trachtenberg,The Incorporation of America. 
 

11/13: Miles Orvell The Real Thing,  pp. xv-239

• Lawrence H. Levine,William Shakespeare in America,fromShakespeare in America. 
• Tom Gunning,Tracing the Individual Body: Photography, Detectives, and Early Cinemain Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz, eds., Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (C)
• Ben Singer,Modernity, Hyperstimulus, and the Rise of Popular Sensationalism,in Charney and Schwartz. (C)
• Erika D. Rappaport,'A New Era of Shopping;' The Promotion of Women's Pleasure in London's West End, 1909-1914in Charney and Schwartz. (C)
• Alexandra Keller,Disseminations of Modernity: Representation and Consumer Desire in Early Mail-Order Catalogsin Charney and Schwartz. (C)
• Miriam Bratu Hansen,America, Paris, the Alps: Kracauer (and Benjamin) on Cinema and Modernity,in Charney and Schwartz. (C)
• AS Lab

• Walter Benjamin, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
• Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America.
• Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum. 
• T. J. Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance : A Cultural History of Advertising in America. 
• Susan Sonntag, On Photography. 
• Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market
• Alan Trachtenberg, Brooklyn Bridge: Symbol and Fact.
• Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs.

• ASLAB

• The World's Columbian Exposition. 
• John Cawelti,America on Display: The Worlds' Fairs of 1876, 1893, 1933,in F. Jaher, ed.,The Age of Industrialism in America.
• Sigfried Gideon,Mechanization Takes Command.
• John Higham,Strangers in the Land.
• Oscar Handlin,The Uprooted.
• Howard Mumford Jones,The Age of Engergy.
• Neil Harris,Grand Illusions : Chicago's World's Fair of 1893
• T.J. Jackson Lears and Richard W. Fox, eds.,The Culture of Consumption.
• David Noble,America by Design.
• Alan Trachtenberg,Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol.
• Sam Bass Warner,The Urban Wilderness.
• Mike Wallace,Mickey Mouse History

Vacation Reading: Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory.