ASCP. 81500 - African American Film GC: W,
6:30-10:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Massood, [94794] Cross listed with
THEA 81500 & FSCP 81000
This course is an introduction to African American filmmaking from the early
20th century to the present. We will start with effects and the "after" effects
of early films, such as D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, and the
responses to the film by a selection of African American filmmakers over time.
Throughout the semester, we will discuss the ways in which African American
directors and other film personnel have addressed issues of representation,
caricature, and stereotype through a variety of filmmaking styles and stories.
We will examine the attempts by different directors and film theorists to define
the parameters—or even the possibility—of a black film aesthetic or aesthetics
and discuss the different forms these attempts have taken over time.
Screenings throughout the semester will include a cross-section of films made
between 1900 to the present and will be comprised of films made by African
American filmmakers or other relevant films featuring black life and characters.
By the end of the semester, students will be familiar with the following: Oscar
Micheaux, race film production, the L.A. School of Filmmakers, blaxploitation,
"hood" films, and a variety of contemporary independent filmmakers.
Students will be able to analyze and discuss African American film and American
film in the context of a number of theoretical and aesthetic questions,
including: "What is black film?," "What is a black film aesthetic?," Where does
black film fit in Hollywood?," and "What have been the local and global effects
of black filmmaking?"
Required Texts: Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American
Image in Film. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1993.Paula J. Massood,
Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film.
Philadelphia:Temple Univ. Press, 2003. Valerie Smith, Representing Blackness:
Issues in Film and Video. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997.
(Smith). Manthia Diawara, ed. Black American Cinema. New York: Routledge,
1993. (Diawara) Supplemental readings available on reserve. (SUP)
Course
Requirements: Writing Assignments: 8–10pp. midterm essay on prearranged
topic; 10–15pp. final essay on topic of choice.
Discussion Questions: Each week, a student will be assigned to prepare and
present two questions to initiate class discussion on the scheduled reading and
screening. Participation/Attendance: Participation in class discussion
and class attendance are basic requirements for the course (attendance is
mandatory).
Syllabus available in the Certificate Programs Office (Room 5109)
ASCP. 81500 - American Political Thought
Founding-Present GC: T, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Diggins,
[94796] Cross listed with HIST 75600 & P SC 72100.
The study of American Political Thought begins with the Puritans of the
seventeenth century and concludes with the Pragmatists and neo-Pragmatists of
the twentieth century. Many in intellectual history and political philosophy see
a continuity running through American thought, others see ruptures and
revisions.
Considerable attention will be given to the American Founding, especially John
Adams and the Federalist authors and their solution to the problem of political
power through the countervailing mechanisms of power itself. That structural
founding was rejected by the New England Transcendentalists, and their critique
of power, interests, and the state will be considered.
The writings of Lincoln will be explored, as well as Melville's Billy Budd.
Topics in the late nineteenth century include Darwinism, Socialism,
Progressivism, Feminism, and the first school of Pragmatism, which hoped to turn
American thought toward science.
The consequences of the First World War on American intellectual life will be
discussed as well as the Lost Generation and the Old Left of the 1930s. In the
post-World War Two era readings and discussion will focus on the New Left of the
1960s, thinkers of the Civil Rights movements, and those of modern feminism.
A study of neo-conservatism will cover the 1980s and the era of Reagan, and the
European influence on American academic life will be covered, especially
poststructuralism, deconstruction, post-colonialism, Gramsci's idea of hegemony
and Nietzsche's of genealogy, and the conservative influence of Frederick Hayek
and Leo Strauss.
ASCP. 81500 - The Black Woman Novel in Post WWII
America GC: R, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Reid-Pharr, [94793]
Cross listed with ENGL 75700 & WSCP 81000.
In this course we will assess the work of that generation of Black American
female writers who gained prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. We will ask how
these women writing built upon a tradition of Black American literature
dominated by men, particularly Wright, Ellison and Baldwin.
Moreover, we will be especially concerned with the ways in which contemporary
black female fiction and poetry partakes in the cultural and ethical debates
engendered by the feminist and gay and lesbian movements.
The course will have a particular focus on the work of Toni Morrison, Alice
Walker, Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, Nikki Giovanni and Octavia Butler and
will be supplemented with a heavy dose of secondary and critical texts.
Students will write one short review essay and a longer seminar paper.
ASCP. 81500 - Contemporary Multicultural American
Novel GC: R, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Tolchin,
[94792] Cross listed with ENGL 75400
From N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize winning House Made of Dawn (1968)
to Toni Morrison's Beloved (1988) and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of
Maladies (1999), both 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; and Oscar Hijuelos's
Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is similarly viewed as a breakthrough novel
for Cuban American writing . 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, as has a text appropriated by
Americanists from Canadian writing, Joy Kogawa's Obasan.
African American literature is further along in its development as a field of
study and possible authors include Walter Moseley and August Wilson.
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 - Historicity/the Atlantic World GC:
F, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Collins, [94790] Cross listed
with ANTH 71500.
ASCP. 81500 - Historicsm/Revivals 19Century Culture
GC: R, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Murphy, [94791] Cross listed
with ART 76010
The course will treat in an historical and theoretical way the related phenomena
of historicism and revivalism in 19th-century European and American
culture.
Largely lecture in format, the course will begin with a theoretical discussion
of the simultaneous rise, beginning with Romanticism, of "historical-mindedness"
and a concept of modernity. Readings and in-class commentary will address some
of the historical and epistemological reasons for which history became an
increasingly important preoccupation for writers, painters, architects,
designers and others at the precise moment that the "newness" and
distinctiveness of the modern age was announced.
Subsequent lectures will investigate the extent and implications of, as well as
the motivations behind, the series of revivals that were widely discussed on
both sides of the Atlantic during the nineteenth century. For instance, the
successions of neoclassical and medieval revivals of the first three-quarters of
the century will be addressed, paying attention to the ways in which the
material expressions of interest in the past functioned in relationship to
contemporary concerns about modernization in all of its forms.
The vernacular and colonial revivals (the latter in the US) of the last quarter
of the nineteenth century will also be discussed, and at the end of the
semester, we will consider the extent to which modernism—sometimes construed in
opposition to revivalism—nonetheless manifested an engagement with history.
Evaluation will be based on participation in in-class discussions, essay and
slide-based midterm and final examinations, and a short paper.
Recommended advanced reading: Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of
History (1994); Francis Haskell, History and Its Images (1993).
ASCP. 81500 - Rock Theory & Analysis GC: R,
2:00-5:00 p.m., Rm. 3491, 3 credits, Prof. O'Donnell, [94797] Cross listed with
MUS 84200
Open only to students enrolled in a doctoral program.
In this seminar we will critically explore the rapidly expanding subdiscipline
of rock theory and analysis. For our purposes, rock music will be loosely
defined as post-1965 rock 'n' roll.
We will examine the growing body of secondary literature comprised of close
analytical readings of specific rock songs, as well as the more ambitious
attempts to define the style through broad theoretical generalizations. Our work
will culminate in original analyses modeled on, and ideally expanding, the
existing literature.
ASCP. 81500 - Women & Family the 19th & 20thCenturies
GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Welter, [94795] Cross listed
with HIST 75500 & WSCP 81000.
ASCP. 82000 - African American History I GC: T,
2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Oakes, [94801] Cross listed with HIST
70200.
ASCP. 82000 - American Jewish History
(Colonial-WWII) GC: R, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Faber,
[94802] Cross listed with HIST 78900.
American Jewish History from the seventeenth century through the late twentieth.
Issues that will be examined include assimilation, political participation,
Judaism in the American environment, patterns of immigration to America and
adaptation to American society, communal institutions, antisemitism, and impacts
upon general American culture.
ASCP. 82000 - America in the
1970s-Interdisciplinary Perspectives GC: R, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3
credits, Prof. Dolan, [94028] Cross listed with ENGL 75400.
In 1982, when Peter Carroll published one of the
first histories of the United States in the 1970s, he called it It Seemed
Like Nothing Happened. Carroll may have meant his title to be taken
ironically, but for many early observers it captured something about that
cultural moment.
In the short term at least, the 1970s held almost no interest in its own right.
It seemed to fall by inaction into the shadows of the decades that preceded and
followed it. If you were a liberal, the 1970s was the decade that betrayed the
advances of the 1960s; if you were a conservative, it was the decade that
delayed the achievements of the 1980s.
A succession of failed presidencies, perhaps unequaled since the years before
the Civil War, followed one after another as the decade limped to a close.
Guitar rock and rhythm & blues became bogged down by the bloat of their own
excessive industry, as recordings and radio became corporate beyond all
redemption. Perhaps most important, in the wake of America’s withdrawal from
Vietnam, the two sides of an emerging culture war dug in and prepared for an
ongoing conflict on the homefront that has obviously continued down into our own
century.
Following the lead of more recent scholarship on the period, this course will
attempt to examine the United States in the 1970s in its own right through the
use of both primary and secondary sources.
The course 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 and may consider the following specific
aspects of the period: birth control in Lawrence, Kansas; Sweet Sweetback’s
Baad Asssss Song and the heyday of the "blaxploitation" film; the
interrelationship of Father Daniel Berrigan’s "treason," the Moral Majority’s
"patriotism," and the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s advocacy; the golden age (or not)
of the TV variety show; the discourse of Watergate in print, sound, and image;
the birth of the Nuyorican Poets Café
and Ethnopoetics Movement; the establishment of rock criticism and the
construction of "classic rock"; what ecological activism did and did not have to
do with the popularity of self-actualization, meditation, and other organized
movements aimed at personal growth; the normalization of disco and the
discoization of normality; the emergence of multicultural women’s writing as a
distinct and prominent genre in U. S. literature; and the shift from an
industrial to a service-oriented economy. If we have time, we may even
spend a week on the long-forgotten swine flu epidemic.
Course requirements include class participation, an oral presentation of
original scholarship on U. S. society and culture during the period, and a final
paper that expands on the presentation.
ASCP. 82000 - American Music 1880-1930
GC: M, 2:00-5:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Graziano, [94803] Cross listed
with MUS 87000.
Music in America during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries was an
important part of our culture. As the nation experienced immense population
growth, there was a concomitant growth in the arts.
During the final decades of the nineteenth century, for example, major arts
organizations, such as the Metropolitan opera and Boston and Chicago symphonies
were founded. The first was dedicated solely to European music, while the latter
two programmed works by American as well as European composers. In other cities,
there were mammoth choral festivals that contributed to community participation
in the arts.
In New York, there was a burgeoning musical theater that thrived alongside
vaudeville and minstrelsy, which continued to attract mainstream audiences. And
popular song, much of it heard in theaters, mirrored the public’s fascination
with syncopation and African-American culture. During the early twentieth
century, these trends continued, culminating after the first World War in new
musical sounds in both cultivated and vernacular music.
This seminar examines the growth of cultivated and vernacular music in the
context of a changing American society. Questions to be discussed include
cultivation of an American/European style, the export of vernacular music, the
question of repertory choices, and the development of a distinct American style.
ASCP. 82000 - American Realism,
1850-1915 GC: T, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Dickstein,
[94799] Cross listed with ENGL 75200.
This course will examine the development of American realism from the 1850s
through World War I. It will focus on four overlapping forms of realism: the
moral realism of James, Wharton, Kate Chopin, and others, rooted in Hawthorne
and the English novel; the social realism of Howells, Crane, Dreiser, Norris,
and regional writers such as Sarah Orne Jewett; the transgressive or documentary
realism of progressive crusaders and muckrakers like Jacob Riis and Upton
Sinclair; and finally the visual realism of photographers like Mathew Brady,
Riis, Lewis Hine, and Walker Evans, painters like Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins,
Edward Hopper, and the Ashcan school, and early silent film directors such as
D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and King Vidor, whose work lies slightly outside
this period.
The course will trace the beginnings of realism in the carnage of Civil War, the
poetry of Whitman, the beginnings of photography, and the tremendous social
changes of the Gilded Age, including the influx of immigration, rapid
industrialization, and the growth of cities.
We'll consider the intellectual impact of the ideas of Darwin and the French
naturalists, as well as the simultaneous emergence of American pragmatism in the
writings of William James.
The major emphasis will be on works by novelists, painters, photographers, and
filmmakers as well as their own theoretical statements, but there will also be
readings from Lewis Mumford, The Brown Decades; Alfred Kazin, On
Native Grounds; Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America and
Reading American Photographs; Eric Sundquist (ed.), American Realism: New
Essays; Amy Kaplan, The Social Construction of American Realism;
Walter Benn Michaels, The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism;
Michael Bell, The Problem of American Realism; Miles Orvell, The Real
Thing; David Shi, Facing Facts, and other secondary works.
ASCP. 82000 - Mod/History of America
Between the Wars GC: T, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. GSUC3421, 3 credits, Prof.
Bletter, [94798] Cross listed with ART 87500.
The Machine Age in America 1918-1941
(1986) will form the core of a critical discussion that will differentiate, more
clearly than this publication, between the social underpinnings of the
free-wheeling twenties and the Depression-era thirties.
It will also attempt to define the flowering of the American skyscraper in the
twenties as a phenomenon of the Jazz age rather than the "Machine Age."
The course will expand H.-R. Hitchcock’s layered historical model to deal with
the avant-garde, the historicizing Beaux-Arts, as well as popular commercial
styles (Art Deco and Streamlined Moderne). Further, it will explore
institutional structures such as the Metropolitan Museum’s and MoMA’s influence
on architecture and crafts together with the newly conceived profession of
industrial design.
The impact of exhibitions (Chicago Century of Progress, the 1939 New York
World’s Fair) will be examined for their projection of a synthesized modernity.
Sheldon Cheney’s Art and the Machine will be contrasted with Lewis
Mumford’s critical stance against technology. Among the individuals to be
discussed are architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Eliel Saarinen, Hugh Ferriss,
Raymond Hood, Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, and Julia Morgan; industrial
designers Norman Bel Geddes, Raymond Loewy, Walter Dorwin Teague, Donald Deskey;
and artist-designers Eva Zeisel, Frederick Kiesler, and Isamu Noguchi.
It will conclude with the influx of European Modernists in the thirties and the
conflict this created for many American practicioners.
A research paper based on the seminar presentation of the student’s choice is
required.
Auditors permitted.
Preliminary Reading: Richard Guy Wilson et.al., The Machine Age in
America (Brooklyn Museum/Abrams, 1986). Lisa Phillips, et.al., High
Styles: Twentieth-Century American Design (Whitney Museum/Summit, 1985):
first three essays by Hanks, Gebhard, and Bletter.
ASCP. 82000 - Social Movements in the
US GC: W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Fox Piven, [94804] Cross
listed with P SC 72410, SOC 84600 & WSCP 81000.
This course has two main parts.
We will begin with an examination of the major theories which purport to explain
the origins of movements, the forms they take, and their consequence. We will
give particular attention to the understandings of power implicit or explicit in
different perspectives on movements and their impact.
I will use this occasion to discuss what I think is a distinctive perspective on
power and movements which I am developing in connection with my own work.
The second part of the course is empirical. We will look at a series of American
protest movements, which, in complex ways, altered the patterns of American
politics, and may have also changed American political institutions.
In particular, we will focus on the 19th century movement for
emancipation, 19th and 20th century labor protests, black
protests, some of the "new social movements" (including the movements that focus
on sexual behaviors and gender identities which have become so important in
American politics), and the emerging protests here and elsewhere associated with
globalization.
The requirements for this course include regular participation in discussion,
which means timely completion of reading assignments. Your grade will be based
on your participation in class, and on a final take-home exam. If you prefer to
do a research paper, please discuss this with me. If I agree, I will be
available for consultation about your topic and sources.
The reading list is too extensive to be covered in a one semester course. It
will be provided as a biographical resource for you. I will single out a
reasonable set of selections in advance of each discussion.
Most of the readings, and all of the readings to be discussed, will be available
on reserve.
My office hours are on Wednesdays, from 2:00 to 4:00. I am usually available
again after class if someone needs to talk with me. (If you don’t flag me, I may
go home.)