ENAM 483:
Introduction to American Studies

• Summer Reading:
  • Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree.
  • Neil Howe and Bill Strauss, 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Fail?
  • Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
  • Paul Fussell, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System.
  • Neil Postman, Technopoly.
• Additional Texts:
  • Wendy Griswold, Cultures and Societies in a Changing World.
  • Raymond Williams, Keywords.
  • HTML 4 for Dummies: Quick Reference

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• Wednesday: General Objectives of the American Studies Program and this course.
• Friday: Tour of AS@UVA
  Look for one interesting thing on the site and one thing that provokes a question; bring both to class on Friday.
• For Monday, 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 description of the idea as if you were explaining it to an intelligent peer who has not read the book.

• Monday: Williams, Keywords
  • Read the section on Culture and follow out two of the realted terms (listed at the end of the section) as far as you can.
  • Plumbdesign Visual Thesaurus
• Wednesday: Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree.
• Friday: Postman, Technopoly.

• Monday: Howe and Straus, 13th Gen.
• Wednesday: Fussell, Class.
• Friday: Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

• Monday:Classic Paradigms I: Cultural Maps and Master Narratives 
  • Hans Holbein the Younger, Map of the World (1515)
  • William Bradford, from Of Plymouth Plantation
  • Captain John Smith, from The History of Virginia.
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Maypole of Merrymountand Roger Malvin's Burial 
  • Cotton Mather, Book I and Nehemius Amercana from Magnalia Christi Americana.
  • Ben Franklin, from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,pp.5-29, 81-92 and Poor Richard Improved, 1758pp. 1295-1304.
  • Thomas Jefferson, Draft of The Declaration of Independence.andQuery 4 andQuery 19, from Notes on the State of Virginia.
  • James Madison, The Federalist #10 and #51
  Recommended: 
  • Sacvan Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the American Self.
  • Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience.
  • Michael Kammen, People of Paradox.
  • Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness.
  Suggested: 
  • Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted.
  • David Potter, People of Plenty.

• Monday
  • George Washington, Farewell Address.
  • Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur,Letter III: What is an American?, and Letter IX: Description of Charlestownfrom Letters from an American Farmer.
  • Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle. 
• Wednesday: Note: Professor James Ceaser of the Government Department will be our visitor today. The chapters from de Tocqueville that are individually linked below are those that he will focus on in class.
  • Alexis deTocqueville,
    Volume I:
    Democracy in America

  Suggested:

  James Ceaser, Reconstructing America: The Symbol of America in Modern Thought.

• Friday
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Democratic Vistas.
  • Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History.
  • Andrew Carnegie, from The Gospel of Wealth 
  • Thorstein Veblen, Industrial Exemption and Conservatism,from The Theory of the Leisure Class
  • Henry Adams,Chicagoand The Dynamo and the Virgin,from The Education of Henry Adams.

• George Santayana, Materialism and Idealism in American Life,from Character and Opinion in the United States.
• Constance Rourke, Corn Cobs Twist Your Hairand The Gamecock in the Wildernessfrom Native American Humor.
• John Crowe Ransome, A Statement of Principlesfrom I'll Take My Stand
• Reinhold Neibuhr, Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going?fromIrony in American History.
• Henry Nash Smith, The Agricultural West in LiteraturefromSleepy Hollow, 1844 from The Machine in the Garden.
• Henry Nash Smith, Can American Studies Develop a Method.
• Leo Marx, American Studies: A Defense of an Unscientific Method.

Monday: Professor Richard Wilson will meet us at the Bayly Museum promptly at 9 a.m. to explore the upcoming exhibit, Singular Visions: Folk Art from Charlottesville Collections.

Reading: American Studies and Folk Art

• Richard Guy Wilson, Contemporary American Folk Art: Charming Junk or Art with a Capital A?
• William Ferris, Folk Art and the American South.
• Alice Rae Yelen, "Self-Taught Artists: Who They Are"

Suggested:

• Howard Finster: Man of Visions
• Erastus Salisbury Field, Monument to the Federal Republic

Wednesday: Generational Conflict:

Reading: (Choose any 2)

• Gene Wise, "Paradign Dramas" in American Studies: A Cultural and Institutional History of the Movement
• Frederick Lewis Dekker, Disassembling the Machine in the Garden.
• Bruce Kuklich, Myth and Symbol in American Studies
• R. Gordon Kelly, The Social Construction of Reality: Implications for the Future Direction of American Studies
• Nina Baym, Melodramas of Beset Manhood
• Phillip Fisher, The New American Studies.
• Peter Burke, The New History: Its Past and Future

Friday: Searching for a New Synthesis:

Reading: Choose any 2

• Laurence Buell, Are We Post American Studies?
• Jay Mechling, An American Culture Grid, With Texts.
• Clifford Geertz, Thick Description.
• Roland Barthes, Wrestling
• Jane Caputi, IBM's Charlie Chaplin: A Case Study
• Robert Darnton, Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Severin. 
• McCrea Adams, Advertising Characters: The Pantheon of Consumerism
• Gary Engle, What Makes Superman So Darned American?
• bell hooks, Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister?
• Roland Marchand, Visions of Classlessness, Quests for Dominion: American Popular Culture, 1945-1960.
• Michael Parenti, Class and Virtue.
• Andrew Wernick, Vehicles for Myth: The Shifting Image of the Modern Car.

• Gender Bibliographies
• John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture.
• Frederick Jameson, Postmodernism or the Logic of Late Industrial Capitalism.
• Kenneth Lynn, The Regressive Historiansfrom The Airline to Seattle
• Russel Reising, The Unusable Past: Theory and the Study of American Literature.
• Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860.
• Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 1780-1950.
• Gene Wise, Paradigm Dramas in American Studies: A Cultural and Institutional History of the Movement.

• Wednesday: Professor Phoebe Crisman of the Architecture School: American Studies and Urbanism.

  Reading:

  Rem Koolhaas, Whatever Happened to Urbanism?

  Suggested:

  The Meaning of "Likeness:" Portrait-Painting in an 18th C. Consumer Society.

  Cary Carson, Material Culture History: The Scholarship Nobody Knows.

  Jules David Prown, Style as Evidence.

  Dell Upton, White and Black Landscapes in 18th Century Virginia.

• Monday: Professor Scott Saul of the English Department: American Studies and Popular Music.

  Reading:

  Craig Werner, from A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America.

  • Part I
  • Part II
  • Part III
  • Part IV
  • Part V

Suggested:
• The Robert Johnson Notebooks.
• Woody Guthrie: This Man is my Myth, This Man is your Myth.

• Wednesday: Professor John Sullivan of the English Department.

  American Culture and Mass Media: The Example of Radio

  Reading:

  • John Sullivan, Topsy and Eva Play Vaudeville
    • Instructions: Go to the Uncle Tom's Cabin site, click on Interpret Mode, then click on Professor Sullivan's essay.
  • OTR #1
  • OTR #2

  Recommended: 

  • AS@UVA 1930s Radio site.
    • (includes a complete day of radio from WJSV, Washington, D.C., an Amos 'n' Andy project, another on Superman, and more.
  • Daniel Chandler,Semiotics for Beginners.
  • Daniel Chandler, Cultivation Theory
  • Daniel Chandler, Notes on the Construction of Reality in TV News Programmes
  • Daniel Chandler, The 'Grammar' of Television and Film
  • Daniel Chandler, An Introduction to Genre Theory
  • The Radio Hall of Fame
  • American rhetorical history with classic speeches by speaker, title, controversy/movement plus chronological listing 
  • Detroit News Living History Project 
  • Civic Journalism Movement 
  • Making a living with an American Studies degree 
  • What History professors do in their spare time 
  • Mass Communications Bibliography of Print Resources

  Suggested: 

  • Robert C. Allen, ed., Channels of Discourse: Television and Contemporary Criticism.
  • Daniel Boorstin, The Image.
  • Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images : The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture.
  • Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen, Channels of Desire : Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness.
  • T. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace : Antimoderism and the Transformation of American culture, 1880-1920
  • Thomas Pyncheon, The Crying of Lot 49.
  • Warren Sussman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century.
  • Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market,
  • The CSPAN HomePage
  • The American Communications Association HomePage.
  • The Media and Communications Studies Page by Daniel Chandler at the University of Wales.
  • Brown University's Modern Culture and Media Program.

• Monday: Professor Richard Guy Wilson of Architectural History: American Studies and American Architecture.

  Reading:

  • William B. Rhoads, The Colonial Revival and American Nationalism
  • Richard Guy Wilson, et al,The Making of Virginia Architecture, Ch. 3.
  • Richard Murray, Dianne H. Pilgrim, and Richard Guy Wilson, The American Renaissance," Ch. 1 and Ch. 3

  Recommended: 

  • The World's Columbian Exposition 
  • Philadelphia's Fairmont Water Works, 1800-1860 
  • City Beautiful: The 1901 Plan for Washington, D.C. 
  • Mary Halnon, Crossing the River: Race, Geography, and the Federal Government in Anacostia 
  • Mary Halnon, Some Enchanted Evenings: American Picture Palaces
  • Elizabeth Semancik, Backcountry Building Ways: Border Origins of Cabin and Cowpen
  • Uncle Tom's Houses: Domestic Architecture 1840-1870 
  • Emily Zimmerman, The Chrysler Building
  • Janet Haven, Hoover Dam
  • John Barans, The 1939 New York World's Fair

  Suggested: 

  • Richard Guy Wilson, ed., Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village.
  • Richard Guy Wilson, The Conflagration and the Making of the New' University,in Ed. Gaynor, ed., Arise and Build.
  • A Centennial Commemoration of the 1895 Rotunda Fire.
  • Peter Gibian, The Art of Being Off-Center:Shopping Center Spaces and Spectacles.
  • Frederick Jameson, Postmodernism: or the Logic of Late Industrial Capitalism.
  • Joan Kron, The Semiotics of Home Decor.
  • John A Kouwenhoven, Stone, Steel, and Jazz,from Made in America.
  • Temple of Liberty: Building the Capitol for a New Nation.
  • Barbara Allen and Linda Frese, Reconstituting the Vanished:Gender, Memory, and Placemaking in the Delta South
  • Elizabeth Edwards Harris, Housing the War-Time Workers: Experimenting with an Ideal
  • A Digital Archive of American Architecture
  • Reuben Rainey, A WorldWideWeb Multimedia Archive for the Study of the History of American Landscape Architecture
  • John Baeder, Diners.
  • Chester H. Liebs, Main Street to Miracle Mile: American Roadside Architecture.
  • J. C. Andrews, The Well Built Elephant and Other Roadside Attractions.
  • Lois A. Craig, The Federal Presence: Architecture, Politics, and Symbols in United States Government Building.
  • John A.Jakle, The Gas Station in America.
  • James Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape.
  • Alan Trachtenberg, Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol.
  • Sam Bass Warner, Jr., The Urban Wilderness.
  • Richard Guy Wilson, The Making of Virginia Architecture.
  • Richard Guy Wilson,, The Machine Age in America 1918-1941.
  • Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House.
  • ArtSource: Electronic Resources in Architecture.
  • Government/Politics HomePage.

• Wednesday

  Discussion.

• Friday

  Discussion

• Monday: Professor Deborah McDowell of the English Department: American Studies, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender.

  Reading

  Spike Lee, Four Little Girls (Video on Reserve in Clemons)

• Wednesday: Professor Stephen Railton of the English Department.

  Reading: American Studies and Popular Fiction.

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin Chapters 20, 25, 26, 27.
  • Using the search function on the Uncle Tom's Cabin site, search for Topsy and try to make sense of what you find.

  Suggested: 

  • Rosemary Jann, Sherlock Holmes Codes the Social Body
  • Earle Labor, Jack London's Symbolic Wilderness: Four Versions
  • Christopher Looby, George Thompson's "Romance of the Real:" Transgression and Taboo in American Sensation Fiction
  • Janice Radway, The Ideal Romance from Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, Pt. I and Pt. II
  • Wendy W. Walters, Limited Options: Strategic Maneuverings in Himes's Harlem
  • Little Women.
  • Dime NOvels and Penny Dreadfuls
  • Dime Novels from LOC
  • James D. Hart, The Popular Book.
  • John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance : Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture.
  • Michael Denning, Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America.
  • Glenwood Irons, ed., Gender, Language, and Myth : Essays on Popular Narrative.
  • Hans Robert Jauss,Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,from Toward an Aesthetics of Reception.
  • Mark McWilliams, With Lee in Virginia.
  • Frank Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes.
  • Russel B. Nye, The Unembarrased Muse
  • Stephen Railton, Authorship and Audience: Literary Performance in the American Renaissance.
  • John Luther Long, Madam Butterfly.
  • Jane Tompkins,Masterpiece Theatre: The Politics of Hawhtorne's Literary Reputation,andBut is it any Good? : The Institutionalization of Literary Valuefrom Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860.
  • Popular Culture Page at Bowling Green State University.

• Friday: Discussion

• Monday: Professor John Bunch of the Education School: American Studies and Photography.
  Reading
  • Thomas J. Schlereth,Mirrors of the Past: Historical Photography and History, from Artifacts and the American Past.
  • America and Lewis Hine -- video (C)
  • Miles Orvell,A Hieroglyphic World: The Furnishing of Identity in Victorian Culture and Photography and the Artifice of Realism from The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940.
  Suggested: 
  • Carl Fleischhauer, et al, eds., Documenting America 1935-1943.
  • Ansel Adams, The American Wilderness,ed. by Andrea G. Stillman.
  • AS@UVA 
  • Documenting the 1930s
  • Walker Evans et al 
  • Photography andVirgin Land 
  • David Sapir, Fixing Shadows: Still Photography 
  • Richard Avedon, In the American West.
  • Margaret Bourke White, The Photographs of Margaret Bourke-White ed. by Sean Callahan.
  • Walker Evans, American Photographs, ed. by Lincoln Kirstein.
  • Robert Mapplethorpe, Mapplethorpe.
  • Susan Sonntag, On Photography.
  • Maren Stange, Symbols of Ideal Life: Social Documentary Photography in America, 1890-1950.
  • Alan Trachtenberg, Photography as History
  • Photography Collection of the Farm Security Administration.
  • WPA: American Slave Narratives 
  • The Art of the American Daguerreotype.
  • University of Deleware Symposium on Photography and Society.
• Wednesday: Professor Walter Korte of English/Drama: American Studies and Film.

  Reading

  • King's Row (Videodisk on Reserve in Clemons)
  • Michael Walker, King's Row

• Friday: Discussion

• Monday: Professor Brian Balogh of the History Department.

  Reading

  • James Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic, 1991), pp. 3-29; 42-51; 90-132; 161-196; 272-287. (R)
  • The Religious Right," in Professor Balogh's View From Here site.

• Monday: Professor Craig Barton of the Architecture School.

  Reading

  • Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History
  • Craig Barton, Duality and Invisibility: Race and Memory in the Urbanism of the American South.
  • Mabel O. WilsonBetween Rooms 307: Spaces of Memory at the National Civil Rights Museum.

• Wednesday: Professor Ben Ray of the Religion Department: American Studies and Religious Studies.

  Reading:

  • Salem Witch Trials Research Archive. Please read the (short) "Overview" and "Introduction."
  • Press Archives: 3 (short) articles.
  • Go to the Transcription of the Court Records and look up the case of Bridget Bishop. Read the documents bundled together as Case Bridget Bishop Executed, June 10, 1692.
  • Notable People: student biography of Bridget Bishop
  • Historical Maps:
    • Map of Witchcraft Accusations, February 29 - March 31, 1692
    • Province of Mass Bay 1692 Regional Accusations Map
  • Marketing Salem today.
  • Search Google for Salem Witch Trials

• Friday: Discussion

  Reading

  TBA

Note: Classes end 12/07

• Monday: We will meet with Professor Charles Perdue in his offices in the Basement of Brooks Hall.

  Reading

  • Robert Cantlwell, Feasts of Unnaming,in R. Baron and N.R.Spitzer, eds., Public Folklore.
  • Stephen J. Fjellman, Conclusion:Theses on Disney from Vinyl Leaves
  • Robert H. Lavenda, Festivals and the Creation of Public Culture: Whose Voice(s)? in Karp, Kreamer, and Lavine, eds. Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture.

  Suggested: 

  • Benjamin Filene, Setting the Stage: Identifying an American Folk Music Heritage, 1900-1930.
  • Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum.
  • T. Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance : A Cultural History of Advertising in America.
  • T. Jackson Lears, Packaging the Folk: Tradition and Amnesia in American Advertising, 1880-1940.
  • Charles Perdue, Weevils in the Wheat : Interviews with Virginia Ex-slaves.

• Wednesday: Professor Heather Warren of the Religion Department will be the visitor.

  Reading

  TBA

  Reading
• Friday: TBA

TBA