The Graduate Center
The City University of New York

COURSES -- Fall 2008

ASCP. 81000 - Introduction to American Studies: Histories & Methods GC: T, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Alcalay, [93103] Open to Ph.D. students only.

We will begin our explorations of the continent in the far reaches of time, through some essays by the geographer Carl Sauer ("Environment and Culture During the Last Deglaciation", "A Geographic Sketch of Early Man in America"), and proceed through various modes of interpretation: geographical, historical, political, bio & autobiographical, poetic & novelistic, with many interstices along the way.

The course will be constructed around intensive reading: there will be a set of common texts read by the whole class, accompanied by various sets of texts and sources classified in unusual ways. For example, in a category that might be called "ethnography" there could be a study of Native Americans in New England next to a study of poets on the Lower East Side. Students will choose one or several texts from each category and be expected to discuss them in class.

Our emphasis will be less on the subject of a book than its mode of presentation: is it about a particular group of people or place? What is the chronology it considers or takes into account? What is its relationship to primary sources? By creating clusters of apparently unrelated sources, we will emphasize study of the limitations and possibilities of methods and approaches that have been brought to bear on "American" "subjects."

A preliminary reading list will be ready by the end of this semester or the beginning of the summer. For more information, please contact Prof. Ammiel Alcalay (aaka@earthlink.net).

ASCP. 81500 - American Aesthetics GC: R, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Richardson, [93724] Cross listed with ENGL 80200.

Even before the moment of first arrival in the New World, John Winthrop offered his fellow passengers on the Arbella in delivering his lay sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity" (1630), a vision of their projected community as a body. His words fashioned a proleptic covenant with the God whose Providence could ensure him and his accidental congregation safe landing on the threatening shore.

For Winthrop and his hungry listeners, the body offered as "model" was that of Christ. Within this conception, all the many members were to imagine themselves performing throughout their lives and into the generations following them, if God's promise was to be kept on their "errand into the wilderness," the multifarious functions necessary to the ongoing life of the one great spiritual body described in Revelation. Doing so would fulfill their continuing part in the covenant secured with their successful anchorage. Thus the idea later described as the motto of the pointedly secular republic, E pluribus unum, had already been articulated in the theological motive that gave birth to this variety of "American" experience.

Of course, by the time the Founding Fathers of the republic gave what would become, literally, currency to the Latin phrase, Enlightenment values had begun to re-inflect the nature of God, the anthropomorphic image yielding somewhat to the more abstract Deistic notion of Godhead.

Still, the idea of active participation in the larger body, translated into "separate but equal," informed the population of the growing nation through the years of the secularizing impulses of the nineteenth century.

This translation was epitomized in the person and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who pronounced "the sentence [as] the unit of democracy." His vision was of a naturalized Pentecost wherein the Holy Spirit became identified with this intrinsically processual political principle, realized by him as an organism, ever renewing itself and being modified in a changing environment.

Through the rhetorical structures of his lectures and essays, the "model" of Christ's body was gradually refigured as the activity of "divinity"--divining, questioning, uncovering the evolving "method of nature" beneath the transient forms of appearance. "Man thinking" rather than "man inhabited by thought"--inhabited by ideas inherited from authority, scriptural or otherwise--was to recognize his participatory responsibility in "creation," describing for each generation "an original relation to the universe," a relation informed by developments in the different "sciences" as they precipitated out of natural history.

The Emersonian project has continued, translated into the 20th century in part through the work of William James and in part through the work of philosophers and poets whose attention to the sound of words demand that we reflect on our own thinking processes, divine what it is to mind, have a mind--Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Cavell, Stevens, Stein, Susan Howe, for example.

Recent work in neuroscience and in some areas of theory continues to investigate and illuminate the nature of these processes, examining how information becomes embodied, the nature of interpretation, feedback. What was once revealed through religious experience, strictly understood, is now considered an aspect of what William Connolly calls "neuropolitics."

Discussions through the semester will trace the trajectory sketched here and provide an appropriate context for examining issues underpinning the upcoming elections.

Requirements: Term paper and brief seminar presentation.

ASCP. 81500 - Asian Americans GC: R, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Min, [93728] Cross listed with SOC 82800.

The main objective of this course is to provide an overview of Asian American experiences by covering Asian Americans as a whole and major Asian ethnic groups separately.

Major Asian American groups to be covered separately are Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, South Asian, Korean, and Southeast Asian (Indo-Chinese).

General topics to be covered are immigration (history and contemporary trends), settlement patterns, socio-economic adjustment, family and gender issues, community organization, ethnicity (ethnic attachment, ethnic identity, and ethnic solidarity), and intergenerational transition.

Specific topics and theories to be covered include the following: the model minority thesis, pan-Asian ethnicity, multiracial Asian Americans, Asian Americans’ positioning in U.S. race relations, the effects of globalization on Asian immigration patterns, Asian Americans’ transnational ties, Asian Americans’ political development, Korean-Black conflicts, the effects of gender role changes on Asian immigrants’ marital conflicts, second-generation Asian Americans’ ethnic identity and socioeconomic attainment, and the effects of 9/11 on South Asian Americans.

Students will look at fresh data on Asian American experiences derived from 2000 U.S. Census and recent research findings.

Students will discuss major issues related to Asian American experiences and review a comprehensive literature on Asian American experiences. These components of the course will help doctoral students to decide dissertation topics related to Asian American experiences.

Second Edition of Asian Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issues, edited by Pyong Gap Min will be used as the major textbook. In addition, students will read four other books and about ten journal articles related to key issues and theses pertaining to Asian American experiences. .

ASCP. 81500 - Critical Perspectives in American Musical Theatre GC: T, 4:15-7:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Savran, [93729] Cross listed with THEA 82000.

American musical theatre has long been ignored, marginalized, or cordoned off by most theatre scholars and musicologists.

To all but legions of enthusiastic theatre-goers, musicals remain, in Gerald Mast’s pithy account, "essentially frivolous and silly diversions: lousy drama and lousy music." Because they represent the most category-defying theatrical form, they are especially adept at arousing the critical disdain and anxiety linked historically to middlebrow culture.

This course will be devoted to analyzing why musical theatre has been the only theatrical genre that could since the 1920s even begin to claim a place in popular culture. How and why has the American musical theatre been assigned a middlebrow position in the constantly changing cultural hierarchy in the US?

This course provides an analysis of the history and historiography of the musical, from Showboat (1927) to the works of Stephen Sondheim, with critical analyses of music, text, performance, and reception. New scholarship—on the sociology of culture, taste, orientalism, critical race theory, gender roles, and queer spectatorship—will be emphasized.

The class will focus both on the development of the genre, especially between Showboat (1927) and Gypsy (1959), and on individual musicals that have been especially adept at challenging generic boundaries, including Of Thee I Sing, Porgy and Bess, Pal Joey, Lady in the Dark, Oklahoma!, Street Scene, South Pacific, West Side Story, Hair, Follies, and Sunday in the Park with George.

Although scholarship on musical theatre has long been anecdotal and superficial, a new generation of scholars has emerged that is questioning the clichés and transforming the field. These include Andrea Most, D.A. Miller, Stacy Wolf, Raymond Knapp, Lauren Berlant, Kim Kowalke, and Steve Swayne.

We will frame our examination of this criticism with the work of theorists who have analyzed the history and sociology of popular and/or mass-cultural forms, including Theodor Adorno, Pierre Bourdieu, and Richard Middleton.

We will pay special attention to the musical’s relationship to other genres and media (including so-called straight theatre, opera, minstrelsy, vaudeville, jazz, musical modernism, and cinema), its role in consolidating American identities, its seemingly magical power to thrill and enrapture, and its status as a lightening rod for fears and anxieties swirling around cultural legitimation in the US.

ASCP. 81500 - Elections and Voting GC: M, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Tien, [93726] Cross listed with P SC 72420.

Who votes? Why do people vote? Why do people vote the way they do?

This course will focus on voting behavior and elections, particularly voting behavior in U.S. elections. We will examine major theories of voting and the evidence for these theories.

Specific topics to be covered include: psychological models of voting, spatial models of voting, belief systems, retrospective and prospective economic models of voting, partisan and issue voting, voter turnout and participation, the gender gap in voting, inequality and voting, race and electoral systems, and forecasting elections.

The course requirements include a major research paper.

ASCP. 81500 - Native Arts of North America GC: R, 9:30-11:30 a.m., Rm. 3416, 3 credits, Prof. Corbin, [93723] Cross listed with ART 70020. Open to Art History students only. Permission of Executive Officer required for all others.

This lecture course is an introductory survey of North American Indian and Eskimo art.

It covers the following art-producing areas: Northwest Coast; N.W. & S.W. Alaska; Southwest; Plains; Woodlands; and Contemporary Native American and Eskimo artists.

The course will cover both Pre-Colonial arts and Historic tribal arts through the late 20^th century.

A brief discussion of several Contemporary Native American and Eskimo Artists will come at the end of the course.

Course requirements: a ten-page research paper and a final exam. No auditors permitted.

Preliminary reading

Janet C. Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips, Native American Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 or later editions).

Christian F. Feest, Native Arts of North American (London: Thames & Hudson, 1992 edition or later).

ASCP. 81500 - Readings in Black American Literary/Cultural Criticism GC: M, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Reid-Pharr, [93725] Cross listed with ENGL 80300 & WSCP 81000.

This seminar will introduce students to some of the more significant of recent critical and theoretical trends within the study of Black American literature and culture.

Participants in the seminar will be asked consistently to wrestle with the question of whether or not it is possible to produce a specifically black literary criticism.

In relation to this question we will read a number of authors who seriously challenge our ability to utilize race as a critical category. We will also, however, be equally concerned with understanding how one might best define what has come to be known as the Black American literary tradition.

Thus, the students who will be best served by this course are those who possess at least a basic knowledge of both nineteenth and twentieth century Black American writing.

Questions of "black" corporeality, gender and sexuality will figure prominently in the course. In particular, participants will be asked to think through the manner in which developments in Feminist Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Ethnic Studies and American Studies impact Black American literary and cultural critique.

Students will be asked to write several short papers during the course of the semester. They will also do at least one in class presentation.

Authors whom we will examine include, among others: Paul Gilroy, Candice Jenkins, Jacqueline Goldsby, Claudia Tate, Saidiya Hartman, Michelle Stephens, Madhu Dubey, and Daphne Brooks.

ASCP. 81500 - Social & Historical Roots of Mass Culture GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Ewen, [93727] Cross listed with SOC 76900.

The seminar explores the crossroads linking the rise of new media technologies, the development of a modern, global commercial society, and the emergence of a consumer culture.  

Relations between visual culture, language and social power will be of ongoing concern, as will changes in the meaning of truth, the physics of perception, and the changing character of public space and social interaction that have evolved in conjunction with the rise of a way of life that accelerates the intercommunication of human thought and experience without the necessity of physical presence. 

Throughout the course we will look at various media materials and aesthetic currents in relation to emerging cultural outlooks and significant social and historical changes. Historical junctures linking art, science, popular culture and the mass media will be explored as well. Areas of concern include the influence and meanings of visual eloquence, the power of words in print and speech, and the interactions between social structure, systems of classification, social psychology, and modernity.

Students are expected to produce three projects over the course of the semester. 

ASCP. 82000 - Colonial Independence/Latin America 18-19C GC: T, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3421, 3 credits, Prof. Manthorne, [93730] Cross listed with ART 77400. Permission of Art History Executive Officer required.

This course surveys the transition from Spanish- and Luso-American colonies into independent nation statues through the production of visual arts.

We analyze the central themes of People and Places as they were transformed in their diverse contexts across the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

As examples, we consider the role that portraiture played in representing the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs who ruled these vast territories in absentia and then measure them against the visual representation of Bolívar and others as heroes of Independence. The pictorial treatment of Indigenous peoples is also critical to examine before and after this historic divide. Maps and other representations of terrain in late colonial times are examined in relation to the secular representations of nature and landscape after the wars of independence.

Given that 2009 is the 150^th anniversary of Alexander von Humboldt’s death, special emphasis is given his Spanish American explorations (1799-1804) on the cusp on Independence, and to their impact on to the pictorial arts. Visits to the Hispanic Society of America and other collections will supplement class meetings.

Requirements: image-based midterm exam, final exam, and a short paper. Five (5) auditors permitted.

Preliminary Readings:

Ilona Katzew, "Stars in the Sea of the Church: The Indian in Eighteenth Century New Spanish Painting," in The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2006) pp.335-348.

Dawn Ades, "Independence and its Heroes," in Art in Latin America. The Modern Era, 1820-1980 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 27-039.

Information: kmanthorne@gc.cuny.edu

ASCP. 82000 - Early American Women's History 1607-1815 GC: R, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Berkin, [93734] Cross listed with HIST 75000 & WSCP 81000.

This course will examine the lives of American women – European, Indian, and African- from the colonial period to the antebellum era.

The readings and discussion will focus on demographic patterns, family structure, gendered division of labor and female work patterns, gender ideologies, legal status, and women’s religious experiences. Careful attention will be paid to regional, racial and class differences in shaping women’s lives.

We will discuss the central historiographical debates in the field as well as methodological problems in reconstructing women’s past.

Course Requirements: Students will write a 3-5 page critique of each week’s reading assignment. Students must be prepared to present their arguments regarding the reading in class discussion.

ASCP. 82000 - Film Noir in Context GC: W, 6:30-9:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Dickstein, [93733] Cross listed with ART 89600, ENGL 87400, FSCP 81000 & THEA 81500.

This course will explore the style, sensibility, and historical context of film noir. After tracing its origins in German expressionism, French "poetic realism," American crime movies, the hard-boiled fiction of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain, and the cinematography and narrative structure of Citizen Kane, we will examine some of the key films noirs of the period between John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon of 1941 and Welles’s Touch of Evil in 1958.

These will include such works as Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, Out of the Past, Detour, Shadow of a Doubt, In a Lonely Place, Gun Crazy, The Killers, DOA, Ace in the Hole, The Big Heat, and Kiss Me Deadly.

We’ll explore the visual style of film noir, the importance of the urban setting, the portrayal of women as lure, trophy, and betrayer, and the decisive social impact or World War II and the cold war. We’ll also examine the role played by French critics in defining and revaluing this style, and touch upon its influence on French directors like Melville (Second Breath), Truffaut (Shoot the Piano Player), and Chabrol (La Femme Infidele, Le Boucher).

Finally, we’ll look at the post-1970s noir revival in America in such films as Chinatown, Blade Runner, Body Heat, and Red Rock West.

Readings will include materials on the historical background of this style, key critical and theoretical texts on film noir by Paul Scrader, Carlos Clarens, James Naremore, Alain Silver and others, and the work of some hard-boiled fiction by writers such as Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, David Goodis, and Patricia Highsmith.

Each student will be expected to deliver one oral report and to write a 15-page research paper.

ASCP. 82000 - Gilded Age/Progressive Era GC: M, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Kessner, [93735] Cross listed with HIST 75300.

ASCP. 82000 - Hudson River School Revisited GC: M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 3421, 3 credits, Prof. Manthorne, [93731] Cross listed with ART 87300. Permission of Art History Executive Officer required.

The seminar is intended to culminate in an exhibition, planned to open in Summer 2009, as part of the Hudson Quattrocentenary.

Students will participate in all phases of the exhibit, and contribute to the accompanying publication. American landscape art known as the Hudson River School surprisingly has generated no single, comprehensive study, nor has it been the subject of a serious exhibition for over 20 years. 2009, the 400^th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s ‘discovery’ of the river that now bears his name, offers an opportunity to rethink this group of painters.

This seminar aims to survey the existing literature as the launch pad for developing new directions and strategies for studying landscape art created in our region.

During the fall we will make excursions to sites where the painters lived and worked as a complement to library and museum research.

We interrogate women’s appreciation of nature as a counterpart to the usual emphasis on the Hudson River ‘men’, the role of transport routes and tourism in the expansion of painting, and the significance of an artist painting in her/his own backyard.

Five (5) auditors are permitted.

Preliminary readings:

American Paradise. The World of the Hudson River School. Intro by John K. Howat. NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987.

Information: kmanthorne@gc.cuny.edu

ASCP. 82000 - Race, Slavery in 19-Century American Literature GC: F, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Reynolds, [93732] Cross listed with ENGL 75100.

Slavery, the greatest injustice in American history, gave rise to compelling literary works and occupies a central position in American cultural studies.

For Emerson and Thoreau, slavery not only contradicted the nation’s ideals but also raised profound questions about ethics and individual responsibility.

Whitman tried to mend the social divisions caused by slavery through all-embracing poetry.

Melville probed the psychological and metaphysical ambiguities of what he described as "the knot" of slavery.

Other pre-Civil War authors who explored slavery’s many dimensions included John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Lydia Maria Child.

Slavery produced the nineteenth century’s most popular novel, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as well as powerful autobiographies and novels by African Americans.

This seminar considers the full range literary treatments of slavery in the context of nineteenth-century racial attitudes, religious and reform movements, and developments in economics and politics. Arguments against and for slavery are represented by the writings of reformers and orators.

Mark Twain’s novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Pudd’nhead Wilson provide literary codas in their retrospective portrayals of slavery.

Along with exploring primary texts, the course traces developments in race-related literary criticism and theory.

A term paper and an oral report are required.

ASCP. 82000 - The Civil Rights Movement GC: W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 2-4 credits, Prof. Taylor, [93736] Cross listed with HIST 75700.

ASCP. 89000 - Dissertation Workshop GC: T, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 0 credits, Prof. Burke, [93104] Prerequisite: Permission of American Studies Certificate Program Coordinator. Open to level 2 and 3 students only.

Students prepare and read each others' work (including drafts of the dissertation prospectus), as well as discuss the job market and the academic profession.

Level 2 students writing prospecti, and Level 3 students at any stage in the dissertation process, are welcome to register for the class, but the permission of the program coordinator is required for registration.

(Past courses:  Spring 2008; Fall 2007; Spring 2007; Fall 2006; Spring 2006; Fall 2005; Spring 2005; Fall 2004; Spring 2004; Fall 2003; Spring 2003,  Fall 2002)

 

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