ENAM 803: American Studies Seminar S02

ENAM 803: The 1930s

Last updated: 01/11/02

Texts:

Terry A. Cooney, Balancing Acts: American Thought and Culture in the1930s.(R)
Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds.(r)
Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory.
William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America.
Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century. (R)
T.H. Watkins, The Great Depression: America in the 1930s.(R)
Richard Guy Wilson, The Machine Age in America. (R)

Objectives

Calendar of Meetings:

1/16: Organization and Introduction

Preview The 1930s
Site Evaluation
General Resources:

1/21: Public Memory

Reading:

Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory

01/28: The Great Depression

NOTE: No class meeting Friday, 02/02

T.H. Watkins, The Great Depression: America in the 1930s(R)

Recommended:

Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s.
Frederick Lewis Allen, Since Yesterday: The Nineteen-Thirties in America.
Daniel Aaron, The Strenuous Decade.
Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return: A Narrative of Ideas.
Malcolm Cowley, The Dream of the Golden Mountain: Remembering the 1930s.
Arthur Ekirch, Jr., Ideologies and Utopias: The Impact of the New Deal on American Thought.
Harvey Green, The Uncertainty of Everyday Life.
Frederick Hoffman, The 1920s.
Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R.
W. F. Leuchtenberg, Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.
R.S. and Robert S. Lynd, The Historical Setting, Traditional Ways of Spending Leisure, Inventions Remaking Leisure, The Organization of Leisure, and The Dominance of Getting a Living from Middletown: A Study in American Culture.
Robert H. Lynd, Middletown Faces Both Ways, from Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts.

Howard Odum, Exploring the Region: The Anthropologists
Howard Odum, The Middle States and Their "Middle West."
Howard Odum, Problems and Strategy of Regional Development Towards National Reintegration.
John Crowe Ransom, A Statement of Principlesfrom I'll Take My Stand.
John Crowe Ransom, The South --Old or New?

C. Vann Woodward, The Irony of Southern History from The Burden of Southern History.
Constance Rourke, Corn Cobs Twist Your Hair,from American Humor: A Study of the National Character.
Constance Rourke, The Gamecock in the Wilderness from American Humor: A Study of the National Character.
Henry F. May, The End of American Innocence.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, jr., The Coming of the New Deal.
David A. Shannon, ed., The Great Depression.
Howard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergance of Civil Rights as a National Issue.
Studs Terkel, Hard Times.
Susan Ware, Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s.
Robert Zieger, American Workers, American Unions, 1929-1985.

Suggested:
Anthony Bailey, America Lost and Found
Robert Bendiner, Just Around the Corner: A Highly Selective History of the Thirties.
The New Deal #1
The New Deal #2
Yahoo:
LOC American Life Histories 1936-1940

02/04: Thirties Culture I:

Reading:
Terry Cooney, Balancing Acts (R).

Terry Cooney, Challenge and Persistence, New Deals and Old, and Popular Culture and the Dance of Values from Balancing Acts: American Thought and Character in the 1930s

Recommended:

Lawrence Levine, The Folklore of Industrial Socity: Popular Culture and Its Audiences
Lawrence Levine American Culture and the Great Depression
Lawrence Levine, Progress and Nostalgia: The Self-Image of the 1920s
Malcolm Cowley, A Farewell to the 1930s

02/11: Thirties Culture II:

Reading:

Warren Susman, History and the American Intellectual: Uses of a Usable Past
Warren Susman, The Thirties.
Warren Susman, Culture Heroes: Ford, Barton and Ruth
Lawrence Levine, Jazz and American Culture
Daniel Czitrom, The Ethereal Hearth from Media and the American Mind.
Ian Gordon, The Comic Book: Comics as an Independent Commodity 1936-1945
Ian Gordon,Envisioning Consumer Culture: 'Gasoline Alley' and 'Winnie Winkle'
Gary Engle, What Makes Superman So Darned American?

Comics of the 1930s
Film

Frank Diller, Mammy Dearest: The Depiction of African-American House Servants in "The Birth of a Nation," "Gone with the Wind," and "The Song of the South."
Umberto Eco, Casablanca: or, The Cliches are Having a Ball
Mary Halnon, Capra, Smith and Doe: Filming the American Hero
Mary Halnon, American Picture Palaces
AS@UVAHome of the Screwball
Illustration

Fortune Magazine
Vanity Fair
The Saturday Evening Post

Recommended:

John Kouwenhoven, "Stone, Steel and Jazz," from Made in America.

Kathernine Lawrie, Cookie-Cutter Or Connoisseur?
Genre Theory and John Ford's 'Stagecoach'
Lawrence Levine, Hollywood's Washington: Film Images of National Politics During the Great Deparession
Robert Sklar, The Making of Cultural Myths: Walt Disney and Frank Capra
Vivian Sobchack, "Surge and Splendor:" A Phenomenology of the Hollywood Historical Epic

Suggested:
Daniel Aaron and Robert Bendiner, eds., The Strenuous Decade: A Social and Intellectual Record of the 1930s.
Martha Banta, Taylored Lives: Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor, Veblen, and Ford.
Arthur Asa Berger, The Comic Stripped American.
Alan Jenkins, The Thirties.
Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940.
Richard Pell, Radical Visions and American Dreams.
Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts.
Daniel Singal, The War Within: From Victorian to Moderninst Thought in the South, 1919-1945..
Harold Stearns, ed., America Now: An Inquiry into Civilization in the United States.
Harold Stearns, Rediscovering America.
Warren Susman, ed., Culture as Commitment.
Cecelia Tichi, from Shifting Gears
Huey P. Long, Every Man a King.
Brown, Modernism
Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy.
Voices from the Dustbowl
Soda Fountain
Warren J. Belasco, Toward a Culinary Common Denomiator: The Rise of Howard Johnsons, 1925-1940
Joseph Irrante, The Road to Autopia: The Automobile and the Spatial Transformation of American Culture.
Alfred Haworth Jones, The Search for a Usable Past in the New Deal Era
John Kouwenhoven, Stone, Steel, and Jazz,fromMade in America
John Kouwenhoven, What is Vernacular?
Peter J. Kuznick, Losing the World of Tomorrow: The Battle over the Presentation of Science at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
ALSO:
Popular Fiction:
James D. Hart, The Popular Book.
Hervey Allen, Anthony Adverse.
Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth.
Ellen Glasgow, Vein of Iron.
James Hilton, Lost Horizon.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone With The Wind.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling.
Kenneth Roberts, Northwest Passage.
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.
Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River.
Stark Young, So Red the Rose.

Popular Nonfiction:
Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday.
James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America.
Charles and Mary Beard, The Rise of American Civilization.
Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England.
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Stuart Chase, Mexico: A Study of Two Cultures.
Charles Hearn, The American Dream in the Great Depression.
Douglas Southall Freeman, R.E.Lee.
John Gunther, Inside Europe.
Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin.
Film:
Andrew Bergman, We're in the Money: Depression America and Its Films
Robert Sklar, Movie Made America: A Social History of American Movies.
Melvin Ely, The Adventures of Amos and Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon.
Its a Wonderful Life
The Wizard of Oz
Modern Times
The Maltese Falcon
Gone With the Wind
Song of the South
Stagecoach
Sullivan's Travels
It Happened One Night
Green Pastures

Peter Stanfield, An Octaroon in the Kindling: American Vernacular and Blackface Minstrelsy in 1930s Hollywood
Radio:
Eric Barnouw, A Tower and Babel.
Eric Barnouw, The Golden Web.
Marilyn Boemer, The Children's Hour.
Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression.
Frank Buxton, The Big Broadcast: 1920-1950.
John Dunning, Tune in Yesterday.
Melvin Ely, The Adventures of Amos 'n' Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon.
Jim Harmon, The Great Radio Heroes.
Amy Henderson, On the Air.
Library of Congress, Radio Broadcasts in the Library of Congress, 1920-1941.
J. Fred MacDonald, Don't Touch That Dial.
Smithsonian Old Time Radio Series (Comedy, Science Fiction, History, Showbiz Teams, Detectives, Childrens' Radio, etc.)
James Thurber, Soapland in The Best of Me.
Margaret T. McFadden, 'America's Boyfriend who Can't Get a Date:' Gender, Race, and the Cultural Work of the Jack Benny Program, 1932-1936.
AS@UVA: On the Air
Comics:
Comics Scholarship Annotated Bibliograhies
Bibliography of Comics Reprints
Little Orphan Annie
Robert H. Abell and David M. White, eds., The Funnies: An American Idiom.
RPI Comics Resource Page
Stephen Becker, Comic Art in America.
Richard Fitzgerald, Art and Politics: Cartoonists of the Masses and Liberator.
Ian Gordon, Comic Strips and Consumer Culture: 1890-1945
Dick Lupoff and Don Thompson, All in Color for a Dime.
Rick Marschall, ed., The Komplete Kolor Krazy Kat.
David M. White and Robert Abel: The Funnies: An American Idiom.
William Murrell, A History of American Graphic Humor.
Coulton Waugh, The Comics.

Photography:
Margaret Bourke-White, You Have Seen Their Faces.
Walker Evans, et al.
Jack Hurley, Portrait of a Decade; Roy Stryker and the Development of Documentary Photography in the 1930s.
Hank O'Neal, A Vision Shared: A Classic Portrait of America and Its People, 1935-1945.
William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America.
Music:

Henry Cowell, ed., American Composers on American Music.
Woody Guthrie, Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People.
P. Oliver,, M. Harrison, and W. Balcom, The New Grove: Gospel, Blues and Jazz With Spirtuals and Ragtime.

Charles Schwartz, Gershwin, His Life and Music.
George T. Simon, The Big Bands.
Swing Dance
Nicholas Tawa, Serenading the Eagle: American Musical Life 1925-1945.
Film:

Kenneth Cameron, America on Film : Hollywood and American History.
Philip Davies, ed., Representing and Imagining America.
Michael Pitts, Hollywood and American History.
Eugene Rostow, Born to Lose: The Gangster Film in America.
Welsh Arts Council, Selling Dreams: British and American Film Posters 1890-1976.
Other:
David Nasaw, from Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements, Pt. 1, Pt.2, and Pt. 3

02/18: The American Writer and the Great Depression
Reading:
Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds, pp. 239-406.
- Selected Fiction of the Thirties:
  - Sherwood Anderson, Death in the Woods
  - Erskine Caldwell, Saturday Afternoon
  - John Dos Passos, Charley Anderson from The Big Money
  - Caroline Gordon, Old Red
  - William Faulkner, Was and A Rose for Emily
  - Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilamanjaro
  - Zora Neale Hurston, Chapters I and II from Their Eyes Were Watching God
  - John Steinbeck, Chapter 21 from The Grapes of Wrath
  - Eudora Welty, A Worn Path and Powerhouse
  - Thomas Wolfe, The Lost Boy.
  - Richard Wright, Big Boy Leaves Home
  - Sarah White, ed., Blue Plate Special: An Anthology of Thirties Prose
    Read two or three selections; your choice.
  - Recommended:
    Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left.
    Ralph Bogardus and Fred Hobson, eds., Literature at the Barricades: The American Writer in the 1930s.
    Alfred Kazin, Starting Out in the Thirties.
    Richard King, A Southern Renaissance: The Cultural Awakening of the American South.
    Jerre Mangione, The Dream and the Deal: The Federal Writers Project.
    Joseph North, ed., New Masses: An Anthology of the Rebel Thirties.
    Rita James Simon, ed., As We Saw the Thirties: Essays on Social and Political Movements of a Decade.
    Harvey Swados, ed., The American Writer and the Great Depression.
    Cecelia Tichi, Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America.
  - Suggested:
    Louis Adamic, My America.
    James Agee and Walker Evans, Let us Now Praise Famous Men.
    American Stuff: An Anthologyof Prose and Verse by Members of the Federal Writers' Project.
    Nathan Asch, The Road: In Search of America.
    John Dos Passos, U.S.A.
    James T. Farrell, Studs Lonigan.
    William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom.
    William Faulkner, The Hamlet.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald, TheLast Tycoon.
    Upton Sinclair, ed., The Cry for Justice.
    John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.
    Nathaniel West, Miss Lonely Hearts.
    Nathaniel West, The Day of the Locust.
    Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel.
    Edmund Wilson, American Earthquake: A Documentary of the Twenties and Thirties.
    Richard Wright, Native Son.
    Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children.
02/25:Searching for the Real Thing
- Reading:
  - William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America pp. 1-63, 141-237.
  - AS@UVA, Documenting the 1930s
  - Kathleen Hogan, Pare Lorentz
  - Kay Davis, Social Welfare and Visual Politics: The Story of Survey Graphic
  - Nicole Huffman, New Frontiers in American Documentary Film
  - James Guimond, Signs of Hard Times from American Photography and the American Dream, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2
  - Lawrence Levine, The Historian and the Icon: Photography and the History of the American People in the 1930s and 1940s
- Suggested:
- Miles Orvell, The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940.

03/04: The Machine Age: Art, Architecture and Design.

Richard Guy Wilson, et al, The Machine Age in America. (R)
Recommended:
David Gebhard, The Moderne in the U.S., 1920-1941
John A. Jakle, The American Gasoline Station: 1920-1970

03/18:

Reading:
Richard Guy Wilson et al, The Machine Age in America. (R)

Recommended:
Charles C. Alexander, Here the Country Lies: Nationalism and the Arts in 20th Century America.

Jonathan Harris, Federal Art and National Culture: The Politics of Identity in New Deal America

Martin Grief, Depression Modern: The Thirties Style in America.
Janet Kardon, ed., Craft in the Machine Age.
Richard McKinzie, The New Deal for Artists.
Karal Ann Marling, Wall-to-Wall America.
Jeffry L. Meikle, Twentieth_Century Limited: Industrial Design in America, 1925-1939.
Walter D. Teague, Design This Day.
Allen Trachtenberg, Brooklyn Bridge.

Suggested:

Sue Bridewell Beckham, Depression Post Office Murals and Southen Culture.
Norman Bel Geddes, Magic Motorways.
Lorraine B. Diehl, The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station.
James J. Flink, The Automobile Age.

03/25: The 1930s Project.

04/01:Workshop I: Project Design

Proposal, rationale, and annotated bibliography

04/08:Workshop II:

04/15: Workshop III:

04/22: Workshop IV:

04/29: Workshop V:

05/03-05/10: Final Examinations

NOTE: Projects due 05/10

To Do (Before beginning of Summer Session, June 10)

Revise and upgrade your section of YP
Revise AM803 projects.
Thesis proposal: Brief description, rationale, bibliography with at lest 5 annotated entries, project calendar.
Prepare job folders for hand-over.
Prepare resume and portfolio; include both descriptions of the kinds of jobs you are targeting and description of your qualifications.