Introductory Seminar In American Studies:
Perspectives on the Past & Theoretical Directions
Nancy L. Struna
1106 Holzapfel Hall
office hours, Mondays before class & by appointment (preferred)
Syllabus on the web: http://amst.umd.edu/People/Struna/AMST601fall07syllabus.htm
Course Description:
AMST 601 is the initial course of a two-course sequence introducing graduate students to some of the literature -- from the field, the discipline, and beyond -- that has shaped and reshaped Americans' Studies over time. In this course, we focus on the theories and paradigms, or conceptual frameworks, evident in scholarly work through the mid-1990s. By concentrating on the historiography of Americans' Studies and on the theoretical directions and assumptions of scholars, this course should help you to (a) understand the multiple directions, interactions, and intersections evident in the making of theories in American Studies; (b) prepare you for AMST 603 (Current Approaches to American Studies); and (c) facilitate your reading in literatures that proceed from this earlier scholarship and these theories.
This is a reading-intensive course, and I am well aware of the tension between "too much" (reading) and "too little" (depth of treatment) that will undoubtedly emerge as we proceed with considerable speed through many texts. One means of limiting this tension is for everyone to read and contribute (both comments and questions) in class discussions. At all times please feel free to think aloud, to challenge, to critique, and to offer alternative ways of looking and thinking. One point of any seminar is to think more broadly and differently about the material as the discussion proceeds. If any of us is not challenged to think differently, we shall all have fallen short of the possibilities.
Course Schedule:
Sept. 10 –- Americans on America Before American Studies
Janice Radway, "What's in a Name?," American Quarterly 51 (March 1999):1-32.
Lynn Weber, Understanding Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality. A Conceptual Framework (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2001), pp. 17-30, 73-92.
Francis Higginson, "A Short and True Description of New England" (1629)
http://www.winthropsociety.org/doc_higgin.php
Ben Franklin, Autobiography (1791), pp. 5-23 (top), 77 (begin at Passy) – 92
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Fra2Aut.html
Phillis Wheatley, Poems, which follow a memoir by Margaretta Odell
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/wheatley/wheatley.html
Judith Sargent Murray, "On the Equality of the Sexes (1790);
http://www.hurdsmith.com/judith/equality.htm
J. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Letter III: "What is an American?," from Letters From An American Farmer (1782)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/CREV/contents.html
E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), chs. I, II, IV, VIII;
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DUBOIS/cover.html
Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/TURNER/home.html
Zitkala-Sa, "Impressions of an Indian Childhood" (1900)
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/ZitImpr.html
then go to "entire work"
Eugene V. Debs, "The Martyred Apostles of Labor" (1898) & "Speech at Conference for Progressive Political Action" (1925)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1898/martyred.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1925/cppa.htm
Carl Sandburg, "Chicago," and others of the Chicago Poems (1916)
http://www.carl-sandburg.com/POEMS.htm
Emma Goldman, "A New Declaration of Independence" (1909) & "Was My Life Worth Living?" (1934)
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Essays/independence.html
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Essays/lifework.html
"Dear Miss Breed: Letters from Camp. . . " (1942-44), esp. "Life in Camp"
http://www.janm.org/breed/title.htm
Mitzi Uehara-Carter, "On Being Blackanese" (2000)
http://www.webcom.com/~intvoice/mitzi.html
NOTE: American Quarterly articles are available online through JSTOR via our library's Research Port.
Sept. 17 –- Part 1: It Was (N)Ever Thus: Locating Early American Studies
Perry Miller, Errand Into the Wilderness (1956; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. vii-15.
Roy H. Pearce, "American Studies as a Discipline," College English 18 (January 1957):179-87.
Henry Nash Smith, "Can ‘American Studies’ Develop a Method?" (1957) -- in Lucy Maddox, ed., Locating American Studies. The Evolution of a Discipline (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). Hereafter cited as Maddox, ed.
Murray G. Murphey, "American Civilization as a Discipline," Emory University Quarterly 23 (1967):48-61.
Gene Wise, "’Paradigm Dramas’ in American Studies: A Cultural and Institutional History of the Movement" (1979) -- in Maddox, ed.
Philip Gleason, "World War II and the Development of American Studies," American Quarterly 36 (1984):342-58.
Part 2: A History/Literature Synthesis: The Myth & Symbol "School"
Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950).
Barry Marks, "The Concept of Myth in Virgin Land," American Quarterly 5 (1953):71-76.
Leo Marx, "Machine in the Garden," New England Quarterly 29 (1956):27-42.
Bruce Kuklick, "Myth and Symbol in American Studies" (1972) -- in Maddox, ed.
Alan Trachtenberg, "Myth, History, and Literature in Virgin Land," Prospects 3 (1977):125-33.
Carl Bode, "The Start of the ASA," American Quarterly 31 (1979):345-54.
Sept. 24 -- Broadening the Discipline: External Academic Influences
Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (1966; New York: Doubleday, 1972).
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed., 1970), pp. 35-76, 111-35.
Clifford Geertz, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture" & "Notes on a Balinese Cockfight," in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 3-30, 412-53.
Oct. 8 -- Rethinking the Possibilities for American Studies – Again!
R. Gordon Kelly, "Literature and the Historian" (1974) – in Maddox, ed.
Henry Glassie, "Meaningful Things and Appropriate Myths: The Artifact’s Place in American Studies," Prospects 3 (1977):1-49.
John G. Blair, "Structuralism, American Studies, and the Humanities," American Quarterly 30 (1978):261-81. OR
David Pace, "Structuralism in History and the Social Sciences," American Quarterly 30 (1978):282-97.
John Hope Franklin, "Ethnicity in American Life" (1971) & "The Land of Room Enough" (1981) in Race and History. Selected Essays 1938-1988 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), pp. 321-47.
David Brody, "The Old Labor History and the New: In Search of An American Working Class," Labor History 20 (Winter 1979):111-26. OR
David Montgomery, "To Study the People: The American Working Class," Labor History 21 (Fall 1980):485-512.
John Caughey, "The Ethnography of Everyday Life: Theories and Methods for American Culture," American Quarterly 34 (Bibliography 1982):222-43.
Tony Martin, Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts, and the Harlem Renaissance (Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1983), chs. 1-2.
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct. Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1985), pp. 11-52.
George Lipsitz, "Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and American Studies" (1990) – in Maddox, ed. OR
Alice Kessler-Harris, "Cultural Locations: Positioning American Studies in the Great Debate" (1992) -- in Maddox, ed.
Oct. 15 – Marxisms From the Sources
Karl Marx:
The Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1844)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm
The German Ideology (1845)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/index.htm
"Preface" of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
Value, Price & Profit (1865)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/index.htm
Antonio Gramsci:
From Prison Writings 1929-1935:
"Hegemony, Relations of Force, Historical Bloc" -- 12 subsections. Start at the index page and go down to the article; only the sections have links:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/editions/reader/index.htm
"Notes for an Introduction and an Approach to the Study of Philosophy and the History of Culture"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/editions/reader/q11-12.htm
From Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1929-35:
"The Intellectuals"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/editions/spn/problems/intellectuals.htm
"The State and Civil Society"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/editions/spn/state_civil/index.htm
Not required but helpful discussions and additional theorists:
Marxists Internet Archive
Louis Althusser internet archive: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/index.htm
Perry Anderson, In the Tracks of Historical Materialism (University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 9-55.
Alex Callinicos, The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx (London: Bookmarks Publications, 1996).
Hal Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, 4 vols. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976-1990).
Andrew Feenberg, Lukács, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 172-200.
Antonio Gramsci internet archive: http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/index.htm
Chris Harman, How Marxism Works (1979; London: Bookmarks Publications, Ltd., 6th ed., 2000)
http://www.comcen.com.au/~marcn/hmw/
C. L. R. James internet archive:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/index.htm
T. J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," American Historical Review 90 (June 1985):567-93.
John Molyneux, "What is the Real Marxist Tradition?," International Socialism 2 (July 1983).
http://www.marxisme.dk/arkiv/molyneux/realmarx/index.htm
Oct. 22 –- The Frankfurt School and Emergent Critical Theory
Theodor W. Adorno & Max Horkheimer, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1944)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/adorno.htm
Theodor W. Adorno, "The Culture Industry Reconsidered" (1991)
http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~cmnF93/culture_reconsidered.txt
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936).
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
Jurgen Habermas, "Theorems of Legitimation Crisis," from Legitimation Crisis, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), pp. 68-75.
http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/undergraduate/introsoc/legitcri.html
Douglas Kellner, "Critical Theory Today: Revisiting the Classics"
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellnerhtml.html
Idem., "Critical Theory and the Crisis of Social Theory," Sociological Perspectives 33 (1990):11-33.
http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kell5.htm
Idem., "The Frankfurt School"
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellnerhtml.html
See, also: http://filer.case.edu/~ngb2/Pages/Intro.html
Oct. 29 –- Historical/Cultural Materialism & Hegemony
Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (1977; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
E. P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present 50 (February 1971):76-135.
Idem., Making History. Writings on History and Culture (New York: The New Press, 1994), pp. 200-25.
Stuart Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing the Popular," in Raphael Samuel, ed., People’s History and Socialist Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 227-40.
T. J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," American Historical Review 90 (June 1985):567-93.
Houston Baker, "Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance" (1987) -- in Maddox
Gayatri Spivak, "Can the SubAltern Speak?," in Carey Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271-313.
Nancy L. Struna, People of Prowess. Sport, Leisure & Labor in Early Anglo-America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 165-90. [hand-out]
Nov. 5 – Poststructuralism & Postmodernism
Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol 1: An Introduction (1979; New York: Vintage Books, 1990).
Read one of:
Ferdinand Saussure, "Brief Survey of the History of Linguistics," from Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics (1910-11).
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/saussure.htm
Claude Levi-Strauss, "Structural Analysis in Linguistics and in Anthropology," from Structural Anthropology (London: Allen Lane, 1958).
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/levistra.htm
Roland Barthes, "Introduction," from Elements of Semiology (New York: Hill & Wang, 1964).
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/barthes.htm
Read one of:
Pierre Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital" (1983), in John Richardson, ed., Handbook of Research for the Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp. 241-58.
Jacques Derrida, "Linguistics and Grammatology," from Of Grammatology (1967; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).
http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/ofgramm.html
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), chp. 1.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm
Jean-Francois Lyotard, "The Postmodern Condition," in Jeffrey C. Alexander & Steven Seidman, eds., Culture and Society. Contemporary Debates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 330-41.
See, also: http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/postmodern.html
Nov. 12 – Emergent Cultural Studies
Richard Johnson, "What is Cultural Studies Anyway?", Social Text (Winter 1986/87):38-80; also in John Storey, ed., What Is Cultural Studies? A Reader (London: Arnold, 1996), pp. 75-114.
Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms," in Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, & Sherry B. Ortner, eds., Culture/ Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 520-38.
Idem., "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies," in David Morley & Kuan-Hsing Chen, eds., Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 262-75.
John Fiske, "Cultural Studies and the Culture of Everyday Life, in Grossberg, Nelson, & Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies, pp. 154-64.
Douglas Kellner, "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies"
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellnerhtml.html
idem., "The Frankfurt School and British Cultural Studies: The Missed Articulation"
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/frankfurtschoolbritishculturalstudies.pdf
See also, http://theory.eserver.org/
Transitioners (from BCS):
Cornel West, "The Postmodern Crisis of the Black Intellectuals," in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, & Paula A. Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 689-95.
Homi K. Bhabha, "The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: The Question of Agency," in Simon During, ed., The Cultural Studies Reader (1993; London: Routledge, 2nd ed., 2000), pp. 189-208.
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 1-40.
Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto," in During, ed., Cultural Studies Reader, pp. 271-91.
Angela McRobbie, "Post-Marxism and Cultural Studies," in Grossberg, Nelson, & Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies, pp. 719-30.
Nov. 19 – Feminisms
Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). OR
Hazel Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
Read three of:
Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1977), pp. 44-79.
Nina Baym, "Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Writers" (1981) – in Maddox, ed.
Barbara Smith, "Towards a Black Feminist Criticism" (1977), in Elaine Showalter, ed., The New Feminist Criticism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 168-85.
Sucheta Mazamdar, "General Introduction: A Woman-Centered Perspective On Asian American History," in Asian Women United of California, Making Waves. An Anthology of Writings by and About Asian American Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), pp. 1-22.
Angela McRobbie, "Shut Up and Dance: Youth Culture and Changing Modes of Femininity," Cultural Studies 7 (October 1993):406-426.
Esther Ngun-Ling Chow, "The Feminist Movement: Where Are All the Asian American Women?," in AAWUC, Making Waves, pp. 362-77.
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (1990; New York: Routledge, 2nd ed., 2000), pp. 1-43.
Chela Sandoval, "U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Practice of Oppositional Consciousness in a Postmodern World," Genders 10 (Spring 1991):1-24.
Biddy Martin & Chandra Mohanty, "Feminist Politics: What’s Home Got to Do With It?," in Shiach, ed., Feminism & Cultural Studies, pp. 517-39.
Beverley Skeggs, "Theorizing, Ethics and Representation in Feminist Ethnography," in Beverley Skeggs, ed., Feminist Cultural Theory: Process and Production (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 190-206.
SPECIAL NOTE -- For the final three weeks, please think about, in addition to content, the following questions:
Nov. 26 -- (Re)Theorizing Race & Ethnicity
Michael Omi & Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the U.S. (1986; New York: Routledge, 2nd ed., 1994). OR
David G. Gutierrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
Read three of:
Stuart Hall, "Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity," in David Morley & Kuan-Hsing Chen, eds., Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 411-40.
Farah Jasmine Griffin, "Who Set You Flowin'?": The African-American Migration Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 3-99.
Eric Lott, "White Like Me," in Amy Kaplan & Donald Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 474-95.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "The blackness of blackness: a critique of the sign and the Signifying Monkey," in Black Literature and Literary Theory (1984; London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 285-321.
Ramon Gutierrez, "Community, Patriarchy and Individualism: The Politics of Chicano History and the Dream of Equality" (1993) -- in Maddox, ed.
Gary Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), pp. 148-75.
Greg Sarris, Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 1-13, 51-76.
Shifra M. Goldman, "The iconography of Chicano self-determination: Race, ethnicity, and class," Art Journal 49 (Summer 1990):167-73.
France Winddance Twine, "Brown-Skinned White Girls: Class, Culture, and the Construction of White Identity in Suburban Communities," in Ruth Frankenberg, ed., Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 214-42.
Eventually:
Mary Helen Washington, "'Disturbing the Peace: What Happens to American Studies If You Put African American Studies at the Center?" Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, October 29, 1997, " American Quarterly 50 (March 1998):1-23.
Dec. 3 -- (Re)Theorizing Gender & Sexuality
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990; London: Routledge, 1999).
Read three of:
Joan Wallach Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," in Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 28-50.
Idem., "Deconstructing Equality-Versus Difference: Or, The Uses of Postructuralist Theory For Feminism," Feminist Studies, 14 (Spring 1988), pp. 33-50.
Elizabeth L. Kennedy & Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold. The History of a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 29-66.
Audre Lorde, "The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power," in Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, & David M. Halperin, eds., The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 339-43.
George Chauncey, Jr., Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), pp. 271-99.
Gail Bederman & Catharine R. Stimpson, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 1-44.
Kevin J. Mumford, "Homosex Changes: Race, Cultural Geography and the Emergence of the Gay" (1996) -- in Maddox, ed.
Suzanna Danuta Walters, "From Here to Queer: Radical Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Lesbian Menace . . .", Signs (Summer 1996):830-69.
Dec. 10 -- (Re)Theorizing Class & Culture, and Concluding Thoughts
Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels. Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1994)
OR
Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal. Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Read three of:
Sean Wilentz, "Artisan Republican Festivals and the Rise of Class Conflict in New York City, 1788-1837," in Michael H. Frisch & Daniel J. Walkowitz, eds., Working-Class America: Essays on Labor, Community, and American Society (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), pp. 37-77.
Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 1-42.
Robert Blair St. George, "Artifacts of Regional Consciousness in the Connecticut River Valley, 1700-1780," in St. George, ed., Material Life in America 1600-1860, pp. 335-56.
James Clifford, "On Ethnographic Authority," in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 21-54.
Paul Groth, "Frameworks for Cultural Landscape Study," in Paul Groth & Todd Bressi, eds., Understanding Ordinary Landscapes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 1-21.
Vincent G. Harding, "Healing at the Razor's Edge: Reflections on a History of Multicultural America," Journal of American History 81 (Sept., 1994): 571-84.
Cheryl J. LaRoche & Michael L. Blakey, "Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground," Historical Archaeology 31 (3):84-106.
Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988), pp. 171-242.
Lisbeth Cohen, "Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots: The Experience of Chicago Workers in the 1920s," American Quarterly 41 (March 1989):6-33.
K. Scott Wong, "The Transformation of Culture: Three Chinese Views of America" (1996) -- in Maddox, ed.
Maura I. Toro-Morn, "Gender, Class, Family, and Migration: Puerto Rican Women in Chicago," Gender and Society 9 (Dec. 1995): 712-26.
Additional notes on readings:
1. Three copies of all of the book chapters and journal articles (minus online pieces and AQ available through JSTOR) will be kept in Holzapfel 2105 on one of the shelves. You may sign out a piece or pieces to copy, but please do not keep materials out longer than 4 hours. Books that are listed first for any given week have been ordered for the bookstores and will also be in our libraries.
2. Two supplementary texts that you may wish to read are: Ben Agger, Critical Social Theory: An Introduction (NY: Westview Press, 1998) and Madan Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism & Postmodernism (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993). There are many other overviews of social and cultural theories as well.
Course Requirements:
1. Weekly, insightful participation in the discussions (30%).
2. Summaries of the major arguments/points of the books and articles you read on an "every other week" cycle (or once every two weeks beginning in the 3rd week); emailed to members of the class. Be sure to include, also, questions about things you do not understand, both about a particular reading and about relationships among readings (30%).
3. A synthetic essay that explores a topic of your choosing (and negotiated with me) that illuminates some aspect of theory significant within American Studies. (40%; 12-15 pages, min.; due 12/15). A helpful starting website, with many links, is TV Reed’s "Theory and Method in American/Cultural Studies: A Bibliographic Essay" -- http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~amerstu/tm/bib.html