The Graduate Center
The City University of New York
COURSES
– SPRING 2010
ASCP. 81500 - American
Political Thought GC: R, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits,
Prof. Ruth O'Brien,
[10871] Cross listed with P SC 82901 & WSCP 81000.
ASCP.
81500 - American Politics GC: T, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3
credits, Prof. David Jones, [10870] Cross listed with P SC 72000.
ASCP. 81500 - The
Autobiographical Turn in Postwar American Writing, 1940-80
GC: T, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Morris Dickstein,
[10863] Cross listed with ENGL 75400.
This
course will examine the uses of autobiography by postwar writers such as Mary
McCarthy, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Elie
Wiesel, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, John
Updike, and Norman Mailer.
We will explore these writers’ recasting of their own experience in works of
fiction and poetry as well as in supposedly factual yet artfully constructed
memoirs and essays.
The course will contrast the introspective and confessional turn in American
writing with the greater social emphasis of so much writing in the 1930s.
Broader themes will include the pervasive impact of Freud and psychoanalysis,
along with the shock of the Holocaust;
the renewed influence of autobiographical modernists of the 1920s,
especially Fitzgerald and Hemingway; the effects of rising economic
prosperity and consumer culture; the emergence of Beat writing and a bohemian
counterculture in the 1950s, along with a wider youth culture; the cultural
revolutions of the sixties, including the decline of sexual inhibition, the
attack on puritanism and censorship, and the
convergence of the personal and the political; the appearance of new forms of
confessional poetry and first-person journalism; and the emergence of
feminism and identity politics.
Background readings may include the work of social critics of the period,
such as Friedan, Whyte, Riesman, and Marcuse.
Besides weekly readings, course requirements will include an oral report and
a 15-page term paper.
ASCP. 81500 - Contemporary
Multicultural American Fiction & Memoir
GC: F, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Neal Tolchin, [10864] Cross listed with ENGL 85000.
From
N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968) to Toni
Morrison's Beloved (1988), Oscar Hijuelos's Mambo
Kings Play Songs of Love (1989), Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies (1999) and Junot Diaz’s The
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008), all of
which also won the Pulitzer, the neglected fields of Native American, African
American, Asian American, and Hispanic/Latino American literature have
gradually drawn the attention of scholars and are now often taught together
under the rubric Multicultural American Literature.
In contemporary Native American fiction, Leslie Silko's
Ceremony and Louise Erdrich's Love
Medicine are regarded as key texts.
In Hispanic/Latino American fiction, Rudolfo
Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima
is seen as a foundational text for Mexican American fiction; Jimmy
Santiago Baca’s memoir A Place to Stand
recounts his transformation from an illiterate felon into a poet while in
prison.
Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman
Warrior put Asian American literature on the map as an academic area of
study; more recently Fay Ng's Bone
and Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker
have attracted the interest of scholars in this field.
African
American readings may include authors Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, and
Walter Mosley.
This
course will be run as a seminar, with oral reports and a research paper
required.
A
good historical introduction to this field is Ronald Takaki's
A Different Mirror: A History of
Multicultural America.
ASCP. 81500 - “Revolution
& the World”: The Cultural Geography of the Early American Novel
GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Duncan Faherty, [10865] Cross listed with ENGL 85000
In
her introduction to the revised edition of Revolution and the Word (2004), Cathy Davidson notes that the
word “postcolonial” does not appear in the original edition (1986) of that
seminal work “even though the creation of a culture in the wake of a
revolution is its primary subject.” The shift in critical perspective
registered in Davidson’s remark is the starting point for this course.
Approaching early American fiction both transatlantically
and transhemispherically, we will consider the ways
in which the trajectory of U.S. cultural history was driven by the complex
circumstances of colonialism. By moving beyond our proclivity to imagine
national cultural as a closed system, we will consider how early “American”
novels situate their renderings of U.S. exceptionalism
within global networks of exchange. We will read a broad range of texts,
including works (written by post-revolutionary Americans) focused on North
Africa, South America, the Caribbean, Spain, India, Antarctica, and the South
Pacific.
Possible texts include: the anonymously published History of Constantius & Pulchera, Unca Eliza Winkfield’s The
Female American, J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer, Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, Charles Brockden Brown’s Jane
Talbot, Sally Wood’s Ferdinand and Elimra: A Russian Story, James Fenimore
Cooper’s The Crater, Rebecca Rush’s
Kelroy,
Herman Melville’s The Encantadas, Lenora Sansay’s
Secret History, or The Horrors of St.
Domingo, Edgar Allan Poe’s The
Narrative of Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Royall Tyler’s The Algerine Captive, Peter Markoe’s The Algerine Spy in Pennsylvania, Martha Meredith Read’s Margaretta; or, The Intricacies of the Heart,
Isaac Mitchell’s The Asylum, James
Butler’s Fortune's Foot-ball; or, The Adventures of Mercutio,
Washington Irving’s The Alhambra,
Martin Delany’s Blake, or the Huts of
America, and Susannah Rowson’s Slaves in Algiers.
Course requirements include class participation, a brief oral presentation,
and a final paper.
N.B. Seminar participants should read the new edition of Davidson's Revolution and the Word (2004) before
the first meeting.
ASCP. 81500 - History
of Public Art in the United States GC: F, 9:30-11:30 a.m., Rm.
TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Harriet Senie, [10861] Cross
listed with ART 77300.
This
survey will consider various paradigms of public art since the nation’s
beginnings to the present. It will consider the development of murals
as well as sculpture (from memorial statues to abstract structures), urban
and landscape design solutions, and social practice or intervention.
The overarching question of (how) are criteria for public art distinct from
museum or gallery art will be discussed in terms of patronage, site, audience
response and/or participation as well as definitions of the public sphere.
There will be visits to public and private commissioning agencies to consider
the dynamics of contemporary patronage practice.
Up to 5 auditors permitted. Auditors will be required to do one
assignment.
Preliminary Reading Harriet F. Senie
and Sally Webster, eds. Critical Issues in Public Art (Smithsonian,
1998); Cameron Cartiere and Shelly Willis, eds. The
Practice of Public Art (Routledge, 2008)
ASCP. 81500 - Jazz
& Pop: A Fusion Interpretation of America’s “Classical” Music
GC: T, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Gary Giddins, [10
245] Cross listed with MUS 86600. Open to Ph.D. students only.
ASCP.
81500 - Print, Politics, and Public Culture in the Atlantic World
GC: T, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Martin Burke,
[10867] Cross listed with HIST 71900.
ASCP. 81500 - Questions
of Genre in US Music GC: R, 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3
credits, Prof. Stephen Blum, [10869]
Cross listed with MUS 83100.
The
study of musical genres is a major concern of ethnomusicologists, music
historians and music theorists alike.
Concentrating on music of the U.S., the seminar attempts a systematic
treatment of approaches to description and analysis of genres through the
perspectives of music historians, social historians, sociologists,
ethnographers, biographers and others involved in production, distribution
and criticism of music.
In addition to reading and listening assignments, students are required to
write a research paper on an approved topic.
Open only to doctoral students; not available to auditors.
ASCP.
81500 - Sociology of Sports GC: T, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA,
3 credits, Prof. William Kornblum, [10872] Cross
listed with SOC 86903.
ASCP. 81500 - The
Western Gaze GC: F, 11:45 a.m.-2:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits,
Prof. Marc Dolan, [10866] Cross listed with ART 89600, FSCP 81000 & THEA
81500.
This course will examine the rise, fall, and
perhaps second rise of one of the most popular American narrative genres of
the 20th century: the Western.
The course will begin with an examination of the parallel development during
the nineteenth century of the Western as a visual genre in landscape painting
and as a narrative genre in popular fiction.
These two nineteenth-century traditions both influenced early silent
film in the U.S., as the American film industry moved to California from the
East Coast and the West became more a site of myth than honest memory.
In studying what followed this transition, central consideration will
obviously be given to the genre’s (re-)construction of both American manhood
and American foreign policy, but we will also give consideration to the
Western as a purely aesthetic genre—particularly in relation to landscape,
where one may speak in both media of something like a “Western gaze.”
To encourage this more aesthetic approach, specific assignments and class
sessions will be structured around shooting locations. We will begin with a session on New York
and New Jersey (the original West of American cinema), then move to the
then-fresh California settings of such early independent efforts as The
Squaw Man and The Battle of Elderbush Gulch),
then to such favored silent settings as Newhall (Hell’s Hinges) and
Chatsworth (The Iron Horse).
A session on the backlot-focused Westerns of the
early sound era will also focus on the Western musical (Destry
Rides Again and Roy Rogers’ Utah).
Next we will turn to the postwar return to location shooting, in angsty Tuscon (Winchester
‘73/Red River/3:10 to Yuma) and sparsely peopled Moab (My
Darling Clementine/Once upon a Time in the West).
After a brief consideration of the late 60s vogue for antiheroic Durango (Butch
Cassisy & the Sundance Kid/The Wild
Bunch), we will consider the so-called anti-Westerns of the post-Vietnam
era, so many of them shot in the presumptively elegiac Northwest, including
Oregon (Paint Your Wagon/Dead Man) and Montana (Heaven’s
Gate/The Ballad of Little Jo), even British Columbia (McCabe
and Mrs. Miller/The Grey Fox) and Alberta (Unforgiven).
Readings will be drawn from: John Cawelti, The
Six-Gun Mystique; David Lusted, The Western; Scott Simmon, The Invention of the Western Film; Richard
Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation; and Janet
Walker, ed., Westerns: Films through History.
There are three requirements for this course: (1) active participation in
discussions, including periodic reports on individualized viewing
assignments; (2) a brief presentation of original scholarship on some aspect
of the Western that we have not considered in depth in this course, to be
given late in the semester and (3) a 20-25-page seminar paper that treats
that original scholarship in greater detail.
ASCP. 81500 - Urban
History of the US, 1840-1940 GC: R, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3
credits, Prof. Thomas Kessner, [10868] Cross listed with HIST 75200.
ASCP.
82000 - America in the1830's: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
GC: T, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Marc Dolan,
[10244] Cross listed with ENGL 75100. Open to Ph.D. students only.
“Liberty
and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”--Daniel Webster, 27 January
1830.
The United States has never been a homogeneous, coherent entity, but did
anyone even think that it was until the 1830s?
This was the decade during which such “internal improvements” as canals and
railways first started to make commerce and circulation between the nation’s
regions a commonplace occurrence, as well as the decade during which the
McCormack reaper first made large-scale commercial farming possible.
It was the decade during which the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts,
reached their peak capacity, as well as the decade during which the
United States suffered its first truly national economic depression.
Throughout the decade, as Joseph Smith, Charles Grandison
Finney, and others worked hard to forge uniquely American forms of religion,
touring minstrel shows, tract societies, and a dozen widely circulated
national magazines simultaneously helped establish the nation’s first
intraregional demotic culture, a culture that wasn’t dependent on England or
Europe for its origins but drew much of its power from allegedly “feminine”
sources.
It was the decade of Jackson’s Indian Removal Act and the best known writings
of William Apess, the decade of the Nat Turner
rebellion and the best appeals of David Walker, the decade that saw the high
tide of both the Davy Crockett almanacs and the Hudson River School in
painting.
It was a seemingly arbitrary segment of just ten years that nevertheless
moved from de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
to Emerson’s Nature and then back as if by a rip current to Cooper’s The
American Democrat.
The debates about what an American was that dominated this decade would not
be settled for at least a generation (if ever), but the fact that those
debates were waged in the first place is an indication of how pivotal this
era was.
This course will examine some, but obviously not all, of these
transformations and will feature in-class visits from faculty members of the
American Studies Certificate Program based in the Art History, English, History, Music, and Theatre doctoral programs.
Most of our work will be with primary rather than secondary sources.
Course requirements include class participation, an oral presentation of
original scholarship on U. S. life during the period, and a final paper that
expands on the presentation.
ASCP. 82000 - 20th
Century Photography GC: T, 9:30-11:30 a.m., Rm. TBA, 3
credits, Prof. Geoffrey
Batchen, [10876] Cross listed with
ART 79000.
The
appeal of photography as an object of study is precisely that there is no aspect
of modern life—from birth to death, from sex to war, from atoms to planets,
from commerce to art—that is not entirely infiltrated and mediated by
practices of photography of one kind or another.
This is also the problem
of photographic history as a discipline: how do you develop a coherent and
effective method of analysis for an entity that is so ubiquitous and various?
How can you speak with equal intelligence about the photograph as a thing,
and about what any particular photograph is of? How can you identify the
meaning of such a photograph when that meaning is largely determined by its
context, a context that is always shifting and is therefore itself hard to
define?
Photography's refusal to stay put makes it a problematic medium to study in
an art history program; it is by its very nature an interdisciplinary beast
and never simply an ‘art.'
This course aims to examine these questions through a close study of the
history of photography in the twentieth century as it develops within a
number of specific thematics, from the advent of
the First World War through to the present.
The class’s structure will allow for individual sessions to combine a formal,
illustrated presentation with some time left for a discussion of particular
images and texts. Taken as a whole, the class will look at photography as a
cultural phenomenon as much as an art form, critically studying the various
discursive arenas which this medium has helped to foster and redefine over
the past century.
Auditors allowed
Preliminary Reading *
Joan Fontcuberta, ‘Revisiting the Histories of
Photography,’ Photography: Crisis of History (Barcelona: Actar, 2004), 6-17.
ASCP. 82000 - Afro-American
Literature During a Turbulent Period: The 1960s GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m.,
Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Jerry Watts, [10878] Cross listed with ENGL 75600
& WSCP 81000.
The 1960s was a decade of change, tension and
introspection for all Americans, but particularly for black Americans. In effect, the 1960s saw black Americans
obtain the status as full legal citizens of the United States (i.e., the
right to vote).
For many blacks, particularly black Southerners, it was a period of enormous
hopefulness.
Yet, the 1960s also saw the rise of black anger and despair in response to
the deeply entrenched racial inequalities that were not eased by newly
obtained legal rights. Blacks, particularly those in the North and West came
to the realization that legal equality that was then being marketed to blacks
as "freedom" had very limited impact on the quality of their
lives. After all, blacks in the North
and West had long possessed legal equality and yet they remained second-class
citizens.
We will read texts that speak to the various strains of thought arising from
black America. The readings should
include essays by James Baldwin, political speeches by Martin King as well as
the speeches and writings from Black Power advocates ala Malcolm X and Amiri Baraka.
We will read works from the Black Arts Movement ala Amiri
Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Larry Neal.
Debates over "black aesthetics," the proper audience for black
writing, the influence (or lack of influence) of Africa; tensions between
masculinity and black female subordination; and the legitimacy of open
homophobia will also be addressed.
ASCP. 82000 - Sweet
Fortunes: Sugar, Race, Art & Patronage in the Americas, 1750-1950 GC: R,
6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. GSUC3421, 3 credits, Prof. Katherine Manthorne,
[10875] Cross listed with ART 77300.
Major
artworks produced across the Americas, from Copley’s Watson and the Shark (1778),
Homer’s Gulf Stream (1899), and O’Keeffe’s Pineapple Bud (1940)
to Oller’s Hacienda Aurora (1899), Enrique’s
Abduction of the Mulatas (1938) and Lam’s The
Jungle (1943) share a common root. They owe their subject and iconography
to the trade between the US, Africa, and the Caribbean.
Vessels left the US carrying rum and other commodities to trade for African
slaves, headed for the West Indies to exchange human cargo for sugar and
molasses so necessary to the American economy. By 1860 Brooklyn was the sugar
refining capital of the world. With the Spanish American War (1898), NYC
became the de-facto capital of the growing Caribbean Empire.
Lectures move chronologically from colonial through modern, analyzing visual
culture – including fine and decorative arts and their patrons-- in the
context of these global trade and hemispheric relations.
Our trans-American scope (over the national) corresponds to recent
developments in the field.
Students take a mid-term and final exam and conduct research on a single
object or individual that culminates in an abstract, annotated bibliography,
and a short (7-8 page) paper. It prepares
students for orals in modern American or Latin American art, and relates to
the upcoming exhibition Nueva York (collaboration N-YHS & El Museo del Barrio).
Auditors by permission of the instructor.
Preliminary Readings: Albert Boime, “Blacks
in Shark-Infested Waters: Visual Encodings of Racism in Copley and Homer,”
Smithsonian Studies in American Art, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter, 1989): 19-47
Katherine Manthorne, “Plantation Pictures Across
the Americas,” Nepantla: Views from South
2(2001): 317-53.
ASCP. 82000 - Colonial
and Federal American Literature GC: W, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm.
TBA, 3 credits, Prof. David Reynolds, [10877] Cross listed with ENGL 75000
This course covers the formative phase of American literature, from early writings
of exploration through Puritanism to the American Enlightenment.
Among the topics considered are encounters between European settlers and
ethnic “others” in writings of exploration and settlement; the culture,
theology, aesthetics of Puritanism; the evolution of American religion;
African Americans and slavery; women’s writings; shifting definitions of
nationhood ; literary self-fashioning in journals and autobiographies;
revolutionary writings that fueled separation from England; and the rise of
American poetry and fiction.
We examine the entire range of early American writings, canonical and noncanonical, with full ethnic and gender representation
as well as consideration of transnational and postcolonial themes.
Among the writers considered are Anne Bradstreet, John Winthrop, William
Bradford, Cotton Mather, Edward Taylor, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheately, Thomas
Jefferson, St. Jean de Crèvecouer, John and Abigail
Adams, Olaudah Equiano,
Britton Hammon, and Charles Brocken Brown.
Active participation in class discussion is encouraged. A 15-page term paper
is required.
ASCP. 82000 - Immigration:
Europe and the US: Comparative Perspectives GC: R, 4:15-6:15
p.m., Rm. TBA, 2-4 credits, Profs. Alba/Foner,
[10882] Cross listed with SOC 85902.
ASCP. 82000 - Spanish-American
Colonial Literature: Chronicling the Encounter GC: T,
6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Raquel Chang-Rodriguez, [10883]
Cross listed with SPAN 76200
The
course will study a diverse group of testimonies related to the early contact
period and beyond. Generally grouped under the label “crónicas de Indias,” they will
include letters, histories, “relaciones” and
chronicles produced by authors of diverse
backgrounds and ethnicity (Las Casas, Cortés, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Guaman Poma de Ayala, Catalina de Erauso).
The works will be analyzed from various critical vantage points in order to
understand their meaning in the shared culture and history of Europe and the
Americas.
The discussions will include:
1) how these texts became literature;
2) the polemics about the indigenous population;
3) the shifting positions of the writing subject;
4) the role of the eye-witness;
5) the indigenous perception of the encounter;
6) gender issues.
Class discussions will be illustrated with images and communication
facilitated through Blackboard.
List of texts available in the Certificate Programs Office (Room 5109).
ASCP. 82000 - The
Post-60's Musical GC: W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, Prof.
Elizabeth Wollman, 3 credits, [10884] Cross listed
with THEA 86100
The American stage musical has always enjoyed populist
appeal and an ability to reflect the changing sociocultural
moods of the nation.
In recent decades, the musical has undergone a number of monumental changes
as a result of economic, technological, social, and aesthetic developments,
all of which have affected the demands of a changing audience.
While the American musical is not dead (despite frequent insistences to the
contrary), it is most certainly very different than it was a half-century
ago.
This course is designed for graduate students who seek greater understanding
of the American commercial theater industry, the cultural life of New York
City, and the changing cultural moods of the country as reflected in the
American stage musical in the decades since World War II.
Sessions will be devoted to the examination of some of the more important
developments that have affected the stage musical in the past half-century.
Topics for discussion include economics, advertising and marketing, theater
technology, the importance of location and of space, trends in theater
spectacle, the influence of contemporary popular music, the relationship of
the American stage musical to the mass media, and the musical’s reflection of
race, class, and gender.
ASCP. 82000 - The
US & Cold War Foreign Policy GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm.
TBA, 3 credits, Prof. K. C. Johnson, [10879] Cross listed with HIST 74900.
ASCP.
82000 - US Culture, Politics & Society, 1928-72 GC: M,
2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. David Nasaw,
[10880] Cross listed with HIST 75400.
(Past courses: Fall 2009; Spring 2009; Fall 2008; Spring 2008; Fall 2007; Spring 2007; Fall 2006; Spring 2006; Fall 2005; Spring 2005; Fall 2004; Spring 2004; Fall 2003; Spring 2003, Fall 2002)