The Graduate Center
The City University of New York

COURSES -- FALL 2004     (Past courses: Spring 2004; Fall 2003; Spring 2003,  Fall 2002)

ASCP. 81000 - Introduction to American Studies: History & Methods GC: R, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Ammiel Alcalay, [47011] {Cross listed with ENGL 85000 & MALS 73200}

After an overview of the development of American Studies as a discipline, the course will focus on the interpretation and transmission of defining moments in North American life through a diverse range of sources. Beginning with the peopling of the continent itself, we will consider ways the narrative of the continent until and following European contact has been told (using the tools of the geographer, anthropologist, historian, biographer, novelist, poet, etc.).

These defining moments include crucial periods of narrative consolidation and reinterpretation: King Philip’s War; Indian Removal; the Civil War; imperial policies in Cuba and the Philippines; the Cold War; the American War in Vietnam; and U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

We will look at uniquely American forms (captivity and slave narratives; the western; noir novels; blues, jazz, country, rock), and trace their transformation as key elements mobilized in the creation of new identities and allegiances. We will pay close attention to the relationship between social and political struggles, and how those struggles have been inscribed or obscured in new versions of history and identity.

Throughout, a major concern will be the differences between institutionalized forms of knowledge and a poetics of experience that engages history and culture outside traditional academic categories, exemplified through texts such as The Souls of Black Folk or John Brown by W.E.B. DuBois; Willard Gibbs by Muriel Rukeyser; Call Me Ishmael by Charles Olson, or My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe.

Throughout, we will place ourselves in a regional framework whose scope is international (the African diaspora seen, for instance, through Robert Farris Thompson’s Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy). We will examine how the U. S. has been interpreted from elsewhere, as well as by immigrants or refugees (Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature; The Letters of Sacco & Vanzetti; Jose Marti, Cesare Pavese, or Hannah Arendt; Bosnian poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic).

While the reading list has not been finalized, the sources mentioned above should give some sense of the scope of the course; it will be run as a seminar with a semester project and class presentations. Inquiries can be directed to Ammiel Alcalay: aaka@earthlink.net (registered students will get a full bibliography several months before the semester)

ASCP. 81500-African-American English: Language in Culture GC: R, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Arthur Spears, [47756] {Cross listed with ANTH 77900 & LING 79300}

This course provides students with a basic understanding of African American English in African American culture and how the study of the language fits into the study of language generally.

The emphases will be on grammar and communicative practices and the difference between them and those of (1) other U.S. language varieties; and (2) creole languages of the Americas (e.g., Haitian "Kreyol," Jamaican "Patwa," and Guyanese or "Creolese").

There will also be analyses of the language with respect to (1) its social, political, and economic contexts; (2) ideologies of dominance; (3) its more prominent speech genres; and (4) its use in educational contexts.

ASCP. 81500 - American Politics GC: M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Charles Tien, [47761] {Cross listed with P SC 72300}

For information, contact ctien@hunter.cuny.edu

ASCP. 81500 - American Pulp: Symbol, Myth, and Genre, 1840-1980 GC: R, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Marc Dolan, [47758] {Cross listed with ENGL 85000}

 "I have always tried to please the multitude and satisfy the cultured." E.D.E.N. Southworth (1887)

In a society like the United States (which at least aspires to cultural democracy), how far apart are elite and popular writing? Are the well-wrought symbols of the avant garde all that different from the seemingly serendipitous myths of the most popular potboilers? And which of these parallel impulses gives us the greatest insight into the times that produce their texts? Is there a productive way for us to read works from both camps side by side?

This course will explore the blurred line between elite and popular writing in the United States from the antebellum period to the recent past by reading a series of paired texts from the dawn of the American mass market down to the golden age of paperback sales.

These pairings may include:

Walt Whitman, Franklin Evans (1842) w/ George Lippard, The Quaker City (1844)

E.D.E.N. Southworth, The Hidden Hand (1859) w/ Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)

Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood (1902-1903) w/ Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes (1914)

Valerie Taylor, The Girls in 3-B (1959) w/ Mary McCarthy, The Group (1963)

William Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959) w/ Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (1977)

We will probably also spend a week dipping into H. P. Lovecraft’s tales of the Chthlhu mythos, which may very well fall into their own separate category. Brief theoretical readings (from such writers as Freud, Barthes, Brook, Levi-Strauss, Jameson, and Eco) will also be assigned in order to provide us with a series of theoretical prisms through which to approach our readings.

All methodologies are, however, more than welcome in the course. In fact, if we are very lucky, the aggregate methodology of our discussions will be as unruly as the plots of the novels we are reading.

There are five course requirements:

(1) active participation in discussions; (2) a brief presentation with descriptive bibliography summarizing scholarship on a text and author that we are reading in common; (3) a descriptive bibliography in preparation for the final presentation and essay; (4) a final presentation of original scholarship on a relevant American text or texts that we are not reading in common; and (5) a 20-25-page final essay that treats your original scholarship in greater detail.

[Please note: Although this syllabus is tentative, registered students should probably try to start reading The Quaker City and The Hidden Hand over the summer in advance of the course. These initially serialized texts are quite long in book form; their authors were paid by the word.]

ASCP. 81500 - History of Religion from the Civil War to the Present GC: T, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Barbara Welter, [47759] {Cross listed with HIST 75400}

For information, contact bwelter@hunter.cuny.edu

ASCP. 81500 - History of American Labor GC: R, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Joshua Freeman, [47760] {Cross listed with HIST 75500}

This course will consider the history of work, workers, and the labor movement during the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics will include labor republicanism, craft unionism, racial discrimination in the workplace and the labor movement, the constitutive role of labor law, Fordism, labor radicalism, the rise of industrial unionism, and deindustrialization.

Readings will be largely in secondary works, including both recent and classic studies.

For a syllabus, e-mail Professor Freeman at JFreeman@gc.cuny.edu; he will send you one as soon as it is available.

ASCP. 81500 - Professions, Power, Portraits GC: T, 6:30-9:30 p.m., Rm. C-419, 3 credits, Prof. Caws, [47763] {Cross listed with ENGL 87300, THEA 81500 & WSCP 81000}

A study of the ways in which various professions and the worlds they represent are portrayed, with the kinds of power that work within their realm, and the types of personalities within them, in film, with a few sallies into a television series. The broadly or finely etched portraits and the actors who present them are of especial interest, as are the ways in which certain professions seem to summon certain kinds of beings, and how they change – or not. What kind of development can arise and be powerful in itself. An additional complication is the sort of actor as he or she determines the representation (e.g.William Hurt in Broadcast News and The Doctor).

If it is a question of series (Rocky I, II, etc., or the Forsythe Saga, to take 2 different types) or The West Wing, the issue of development will be a thorny one, or less so, depending on the creators.

A few biographies, if there is time, or scenes from them (The Young Mr. Lincoln, Francis Bacon, etc.) Among the films and the careers represented, in whatever order will seem to work best – this is only an indicative sampling, clearly, for there are many more possibilities, depending on the epoch. Whenever the "straight representation" and then a parody are available (for example, a Jesus film and The Life of Brian), we may think of both. NB. Not necessarily these films: this is just an indication. Depending on the interests of the seminar participants, others may be added.

On Point – the world of the ballerina, and a more recent one

Broadcast News; Up Close and Personal; Front Page – desk stuff and news reporting

Stevie; Sylvia; Tom and Viv—the poetic world
The Quiet American; The Third Man – the espionage world; M. Poirot, etc. – detective world

Bringing up Baby – world of collecting and museums

Is There a Doctor in the House? Dark Victory; Magnificent Obsession; The Doctor– the world of medicine

Blackboard Jungle; Dead Poets Society; The Affair – the world of education

Shakespeare in Love – biography, and the world of the dramatic writer

Days of Heaven – world of the farmer

Legal Eagles, To Kill a Mockingbird; Philadelphia -- the world of law

Old Man and the Sea; Moby Dick; Mutiny on the Bounty; Master and Commander-the sea and sailors

The Front Line – the point of view of the bodyguard; Upstairs Downstairs;


The Servant – of domestic service

The Notebooks of Anna Magdalena Bach; Clara and Robert Schumann; Hilary and Jackie; etc. – the world of music

The West Wing; Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; The Maltese Falcon; All the President’s Men-- the world of politics and government
     Parody: Wag the Dog; Dr. Strangelove

Rocky, etc. –the world of prizefighting
     Parody: Movie Movie

The Last Emperor; I Claudius; etc. -- royalty

Readings from such writers as John Berger, Krakauer, Roland Barthes, Eisenstein, Tom Gunning, the Mast and Cohen reader, James Monaco, Bordwell, Bluestone, Molly Haskell, Andrew Sarris, and the French cubist Blaise Cendrars, the surrealist Robert Desnos, etc. etc.

Mary Ann Caws, Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature, and member of the Film Studies Certificate Program Faculty cawsma@aol.com

ASCP. 81500 - Social & Historical Roots of Mass Culture H: W, 5:30-7:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Robert Ewen, [47762] {Cross listed with SOC 76900}

The seminar explores the crossroads between the rise of the mass media, the development of a modern, global commercial society, and the emergence of a consumer society.

Relations between visual culture, language and social power will be an ongoing concern, as will changes in the meaning of truth, the physics of perception, and the character of public life and public interaction that have evolved alongside the rise of a modern media system.

Throughout the course we will examine media artifacts and aesthetic currents in relation to distinct cultural outlooks and important social and/or 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 language, the power of words in print and speech, the relationship between structure, taxonomy, social psychology, and modernity.

Students will produce three illustrated essays or media projects in response to issues raised by readings and discussions. They will also make presentations to the seminar. Work coming out of this seminar will be submitted to the MFA/IMA student publication, Eat and Run.

Instructor’s permission required.   Information/permission: drstu@bway.net

ASCP. 81500 - The Afro-American Abroad GC: R, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Robert Reid-Pharr, [47757] {Cross listed with ENGL 75700 & WSCP 81000}

There are three primary goals for this seminar.  First, students will be introduced to the works of major and minor 20^th Century Black American novelists who spent significant portions of their careers abroad.  Richard Wright, Chester Himes, Charlene Hatcher Polite, Claude McKay and others will be considered. 

Second, we will ask how Black American intellectuals have conceptualized both travel and exile in their writing.  Here we will be particularly concerned with the manner in which the writing of U.S. blacks dovetails the work of writers from the Anglophone Caribbean. 

Finally, with a heavy does of secondary readings to aid them, students will be asked to place Black American writing in the context of new developments in literary and cultural studies that center around the concepts of globalism and transnationalism. 

One class presentation, a short paper and a long research paper are required.  

ASCP. 82000 - American Silent Stars: The Other "System" GC: M, 11:45 a.m.-2:45 p.m., Rm. C-419, 3 credits, Prof. Marc Dolan, [47770] {Cross listed with THEA 81500}

This course explores the ways in which the stars of American silent film constructed their own "system" for making movies that in many ways subverted the narrative and stylistic strictures of contemporary studio production.

Central importance will be given, of course, to the formation of United Artists, the avenue through which many star-produced features of the late silent era reached the public. Attention will also be given, however, to the relationships stars developed—even within the studio system—with preferred scenarists, directors, designers, co-stars, and even cinematographers.

Weekly screenings and discussions will include the films of the United Artists group (Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith), the Keystone comedians (Mack Sennett, Mable Normand, Fatty Arbuckle, Charlie Chase), "star directors" (Lois Weber, Erich von Stroheim), and star performers of the silent era (Clara Bow, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino), as well as the films of figures like Greta Garbo and Allan Dwan who were able to find a place within both the star-dominated films of the silent era and the sound-era studio products that superseded them.

Films to be studied, whole or in part, may include: Where Are My Children? (1916); Intolerance (1916); Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916); The Immigrant (1917), including cut footage; Stella Maris (1918); Blind Husbands (1919); One Week (1920); The Kid (1921), including cut footage; Tess of the Storm Country (1922, although we will discuss Pickford’s 1914 version too); Safety Last! (1923); The Thief of Bagdad (1924); Sherlock Jr. (1924); The Son of the Sheik (1926); Flesh and the Devil (1926); It (1927); Sadie Thompson (1928); Queen Kelly (1929)

Required reading: Jeanine Basinger, Silent Stars (Wesleyan U P–-ISBN # 0819564516); Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915 (U Cal Press—ISBN #0520085345); Paula Marantz Cohen, Silent Film and the Triumph of American Myth (Oxford U P—ISBN #019514094X); Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature, 1915-1928 (U Cal Press—ISBN # 0520085353) Individual students will read supplemental texts on specific figures from the silent era in preparation for in-class presentations.

There are four requirements for this course: 1) active participation in discussions; (2) a ten-to-fifteen-minute presentation with descriptive bibliography, which should summarize the spectrum of scholarship on a specific assigned figure in the development of American silent film, to be given at a time that will be scheduled at our 30 August meeting; (3) a brief presentation of original scholarship on a figure or figures in American silent film, to be given on 6 or 13 December and (4) a 20-25-page seminar paper that treats your original scholarship in greater detail, due 20 December. Information: mdolan@gc.cuny.edu

Syllabus & reading list available in Certificate Programs Office, Rm 5109.

ASCP. 82000 - America, The Cold War and Beyond GC: W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. John Patrick Diggins, [47768] {Cross listed with HIST 75600}

Professor Diggins’ course is titled "America from 1945 to the End of the Cold War: Liberal Ideals and Conservative Realities." It deals with the fate of the older New Deal Liberalism in the complacent era of Eisenhower and the activist era of Reagan.

It also explores the question how the cold war came to an end, and who should take credit for it. In addition to studying party politics and international relations, the course will deal with social and economic philosophy, race and ethnicity, feminism and women’s history, literature, drama, and cultural criticism.

Among the texts to be examined are Gary Wills, Nixon Agonistes, John Patrick Diggins, The Proud Decades, William Keylor, A World of Nations, Brownlee and Graham, eds. The Reagan Presidency, James Miller, Democracy is in the Streets, Geoffrey Hodgson, More Equal Than Others, Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissisms, Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory, Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How The Modern American Women’s Movement Changed America, Ralph Ellison, The Collected Essays, Allen Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind.

ASCP. 82000 - America from 1607-1783 GC: M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Carol Berkin, [47767] {Cross listed with HIST 75000}

This course examines the world of the mainland English colonies in the 17th and 18^th centuries. Its reading list will introduce students to some of the major themes, historiographical debates, and subject areas within a large and rich field of scholarship.

Topics will include: cultural encounters between English settlers and Native America societies; immigration patterns in the 17th century and the development of distinctive regional economies and cultures; the emergence of African slavery; formal and popular religious institutions; political culture in the Chesapeake and the middle colonies; women’s experiences; and the origins of the American revolution.

Students will be required to write a 3-5 page critique of the book they select to read each week. In addition to providing me with a basis for evaluating your performance in the class, these papers will: focus your discussion in class; serve as excellent review material for your written and oral exams; and give you experience in a process you engage in later in your career as you review for journals, serve as commentators on panels, and prepare to teach your own classes.

Course syllabus available in the History office, Room 5111. Information: cberkin@nyc.rr.com

ASCP. 82000 - American Landscape Painting GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Sally Webster, [47765] {Cross listed with ART 77100}

This course will begin with a discussion of colonial landskips, maps and topographical views and their importance for the construction of the American landscape tradition. 

Following which there will be a review of the aesthetics and ideology of the Hudson River School, the contested history of luminism, the role of survey photographs in the defining of the American West, the influence of the Barbizon School and French Impressionism after the Civil War, and the emergence of tonalism and the aesthetic of George Innes at the end of the century.

There will be a final exam and weekly required review essays of contemporary and modern literature beginning with Thomas Cole’s "Essay on American Scenery" (1835), Asher B. Durand’s "Letters on Landscape Painting" (1855), and George Inness’ "A Painter on Painting" (1878), along with more recent studies by Barbara Novak, Alan Wallach, Albert Boime, William Truettner, Angela Miller, John Davis, Rebecca Bedell, and others. 

Auditors permitted.

ASCP. 82000 - History of American Theatre: A Century of Protest GC: M, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Alisa Solomon, [47771] {Cross listed with THEA 86100}

This course will examine how American social movements have employed theater as an instrument of social change. Looking at a range of plays and performances addressing women, workers, war, racial justice, and sexuality, we will attend to political and aesthetic questions of form, function, audience, and artistic and historical context.

While understanding the role of such works in their own times will be paramount, we’ll juxtapose suffragist agit-prop to feminist and lesbian-feminist agit-prop of the 1970s; labor union plays of the 1930s to the Living Theatre’s efforts in Pittsburgh; Living Newspaper plays about sexually transmitted diseases to early plays about AIDS; and so on. In doing so, we will focus on dramatic strategies and their relationships to political goals.

Of course we will consider how and when dramaturgical experimentation can itself be a political gesture. Thus we will range far beyond agit-prop and include poetic dramatists such as James Baldwin, Adrienne Kennedy, and Maria Irene Fornes.

The course will be run as a seminar and will require a presentation, two short papers and one major research project.

ASCP. 82000 - Place, Politics & American Empire GC: T, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Neil Smith, [47764] {Cross listed with ANTH 81300}

For information, contact nsmith@gc.cuny.edu

ASCP. 82000 - The American Renaissance GC: M, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. David Reynolds, [47766] {Cross listed with ENGL 75100}

The three decades between 1835 and 1865 are arguably the richest period in American literary history. This period saw the dazzling innovations in philosophy, literary style, and social criticism brought about by Emerson and Thoreau; the metaphysical depth and cultural breadth represented by the novels of Melville and Hawthorne; the breathtaking poetic experimentation of Whitman and Dickinson; and the psychological and artistic achievement of Edgar Allan Poe.

The issues of race and chattel slavery were powerfully depicted by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Class conflict was dramatized in popular novels by George Lippard and George Thompson, and women’s issues in the fiction of Sara Parton and others.

In addition to reading these authors, we shall discuss key theoretical and critical approaches to their writings. An oral report and a 15-page term paper are required.

See Also

HIST. 70200 - Clio Wired: The Challenge of New Media in History GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. David Jaffee, [47323]

New media is changing the way we research, write, present, and teach about the past. Students will explore theoretical and historical issues as well as learn hands-on skills in digital history.

We will examine critically historical databases, online scholarship, virtual exhibitions, historical simulations, and others. More importantly, we will consider issues such as the future of historical narrative in cyberspace, the role of multimedia in conveying historical understanding, the future of historical communities, the possibilities of the new media classroom, and the challenge of digital scholarship.

Texts will include works by Barbara Stafford, Roy Rosenzweig, Edward Ayers, Lev Manovich, Robert Darnton. Students will be asked to develop a proposal for a new media historical presentation.

 

MUS. 86200 - New Currents in American Music Studies GC: R, 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Rm. 3491, 3 credits, Prof. Ellie Hisama, [47098]

This seminar will explore recent scholarship on American music, paying particular attention to popular music, jazz, ethnic musics of urban America, and twentieth-century composition.

We will consider new perspectives on established topics in American music such as ultra-modernism and the array of approaches to more recent areas such as popular music studies. Critical and interdisciplinary methods that reflect upon the roles of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, politics, and nation in the production and reception of American music will form the basis of our discussions.

Readings by Averill, Brackett, Kelley, Lewis, Mockus, Oja, Rasmussen, Suisman, Taylor, Tick, Tucker, Wong, and others. Enrollment limited to 15 doctoral students in music. Non-music students, consortium students, and auditors only by permission of instructor; not open to permit students.

HOME