ENAM 802:
American Studies Colloquium I

• Summer Reading:
  • John Crunden,A Brief History of American Culture.
  • James Hunter, Culture Wars.
  • Neill Howe and Bill Strauss,13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?
  • Paul Fussell, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System.
  • John Berger, Ways of Seeing.
  • Neil Postman, Technopoly.
  • Raymond Williams, Keywords
  • HTML for Dummies (quick reference edition)
• Additional Texts:
  • Note: All texts are on reserve in Clemons.
  • Stephen J. Fjellman, Vinyl Leaves.
  • Miles Orvell, The Real Thing.
  • Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America; Transformations of Everyday Life.
  • Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth
  • Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America.

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• For Friday, choose the book from the summer reading you liked best. Identify an idea in the book that seems interesting, powerful, useful-- or all three. Write a brief but complete description of the idea as if you were explaining it to an intelligent peer who had not read the book. Also,read the entry for two of the following: Culture, Democracy History, or Nature. At the end of each of these definitions is a series of pointers to related terms; read those as well.

• John Crunden,A Brief History of American Culture.
• James Hunter, Culture Wars.
• Paul Fussell, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System.

• Neil Postman, Technopoly.
• Neill Howe and Bill Strauss,13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?
• John Berger, Ways of Seeing

• Hans Holbein the Younger,Map of the World (1515)
• William Bradford, Selection from Of Plymouth Plantation
• Captain John Smith,Selection from The History of Virginia.
• Cotton Mather,A General IntroductionandNehemius AmercanafromThe Magnalia Christi Americana.
• Ben Franklin, from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,pp.5-29, pp. 81-92 and Poor Richard Improved, 1758pp. 1295-1304.
• Thomas Jefferson, Draft of The Declaration of Independence. and Query 4pp. 142-149 and Query 19pp. 290-291, from Notes 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, and Letter XII: Distresses of a Frontier Man from Letters from an American Farmer

• 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

• Alexis deTocqueville, from Democracy in America 
   
  • * Origin of the Anglo-Americans and the Importance of their Origins in Relation to Their Future Condition, 
  • * The Necessity of Examining the Condition of the 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 than 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. 

• * Edgar Allen Poe,The Man of the Crowd,
• 8 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?

• Daniel Boorstin,The Americans: The National Experience.
• F.O. Matthiessen,American Renaissance
• Arthur M. Schlesinger,The Age of Jackson
• Gary Wills,The Gettysburg Address

ASLAB

• Geneology
  • * T. V. Reed,, Theory and Method in American/Cultural Studies: A Bibliographical Essay
  • * 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.
    ASLAB
  Note: Reading Days 10/05-10/08

ASLAB

• 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
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.

• Hypertexts extensions

• Miles Orvell, The Real Thing

Suggested: 
• 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)

• 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.

• Stephen Fjellman, Vinyl Leaves

Suggested:

• 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

• Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America: 1876-1915

Note: Classes end 12/06; Exams: 12/09-12/16

Vacation Reading: TBA.