History 502B –
Topics in American Cultural History
Syllabus and
Survival Guide
Fall
2002
Thursday
7:00 pm – 9:50 pm, Sierra Hall 198
Dr. Thomas W. Devine
Phone: (818) 677-3550
(office) (818) 773-2681 (home)
Email: tom.devine@csun.edu
The following books – listed in the order in
which we will read them – are available at the Matador Bookstore. Any other readings will be provided in
class.
To subvert the system and to save yourself
some money, you might consider buying used copies of the books. I would suggest the following web sites
where you are likely to find used or discounted copies at significantly lower
prices:
www.bookfinder.com;
www.half.com; www.alibris.com; www.abebooks.com
This course will examine the ways in which
different individuals and groups have exercised cultural influence in American
life and have contributed to what we call, perhaps somewhat awkwardly,
“American culture.” Through readings
and class discussion, we will be exploring how nineteenth and twentieth century
Americans understood, shaped, and participated in their worlds. The course will cover the period from
roughly 1820 through 1960. Though the
topics covered are quite eclectic – in fact, they are intentionally so – there
are certain themes that we will be revisiting during the course of the
semester:
You
will also have the opportunity to follow the historiography that has developed
around the topics we will explore.
Though the emphasis of the course will not be on historiographical
issues, I will introduce and we will all discuss scholarly controversies where
appropriate.
Requirements
Leading
Discussion
One
person will be responsible for leading the discussion each week. That person will compose a list of 8
questions that address the major themes and issues raised in the reading. The discussion leader will meet with me briefly
ahead of time to go over his or her questions.
Before the seminar begins, he or she will also provide each member of
the class 1) a copy of the questions and 2) a 2-page single-spaced précis of
the required reading. (I can handle the Xeroxing if you get your questions and
précis to me shortly before class.)
The discussion leader will also read the “supplementary reading” for his or her week and start the class with a 15-minute presentation summarizing the arguments in these readings and placing them in the context of the required reading. The following week, he or she will turn in an eight-page review essay that addresses the issues raised in the supplemental and required readings.
Select
a topic from the period covered in the course that you find to be of interest
and do some outside reading on it. I
would recommend a mixture of books and articles. Your choice of focus need not be directly related to the material
covered in the course. Indeed, this is
your opportunity to investigate a subject area that the course may
neglect. Then summarize your findings
in a ten-page essay. So as to prevent
you from putting this assignment off until the last moment, I will ask for a
written status report on your work at the mid-point of the semester. You might
conceive of this survey of the secondary literature as an entrée into a
possible Master Thesis or seminar paper topic, however, you are not to hand in
work that you have already prepared in conjunction with another class.
On one occasion during the semester, each person will bring a snack for the entire class to enjoy at the break. Optimally, this snack will be related in some way to that week’s topic.
Grading
Class Participation/Oral Presentation --50%
Review Essay [8 pages] --25%
Semester Project [10 pages] --25%
All grading will be done on the +/ –
system.
Course Format
This
is a seminar-style course in which active participation in the weekly
discussions is crucial to the class’s success.
Our meetings will be conversations – free, open, and informal exchanges
of ideas – and I expect everyone to take part.
Since the reading load for this course is relatively heavy, I have
deliberately minimized the writing assignments and other “busy work” to give
you time to complete the required reading and to think about it critically
BEFORE coming to class.
Attendance
Since
class meets only once a week, it is important, and it is expected, that you
will be at every session. Inevitably,
an occasion may arise when you are unable to attend. Out of fairness to your classmates who do attend every week,
however, each absence past the first two will adversely affect your final
grade. Also, given the heavy weight
placed on in-class discussion, any absence is likely to detract from your
participation grade. To make up for a
missed class, you may turn in a 2-page, single-spaced précis summarizing the
reading for the class you missed.
Problems
I
appreciate that most CSUN graduate students are stretching themselves quite
thin, often working full time while taking classes at night. If you are feeling overwhelmed, find
yourself falling behind, or are having any problems outside of class that are
adversely affecting your performance in class, be sure to let me know. Do not wait until the end of the semester
when it will be too late. I am more
than willing to work with you to insure you “survive,” but I need to know you
are having difficulties. You will find
that as long as you keep me up to speed, I will be very sympathetic.
Discussion
Topics and Assignments
Schedule
29
Aug. Introduction
An
explanation of course objectives, mechanics, and procedures.
5
Sept. Religion
and American Culture: The Second Great Awakening
Nathan
O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity
1. R.
Laurence Moore, “Religion, Secularization, and the Shaping of the Culture of
Industry in Antebellum America,” American Quarterly 41, 2 (June 1989):
216-42.
2. Carroll
Smith-Rosenberg, “The Cross and the Pedestal: Women, Anti-Ritualism, and the
Emergence of the American Bourgeoisie,” in Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly
Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1985): 129-64.
3. William
G. McLoughlin, “The Second Great Awakening, 1800-1830,” chapter 4 from
McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reforms (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1980): 98-140.
4. John
H. Wigger, “Slavery and African-American Methodism,” chapter 6 from Wigger, Taking
Heaven by Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998): 125-150.
12
Sept. Class and American Culture:
Performance, Audience Response, and Working-Class Consciousness in Jacksonian
America
Lawrence Levine, High
Brow/Low Brow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1988), chapter 1.
Richard Butsch, The
Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750-1990 (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), chapters 3-4.
Elliott J. Gorn,
“‘Good-Bye Boys, I Die a True American’: Homicide, Nativism, and Working-Class
Culture in Antebellum New York City,” Journal of American History 74, 2
(September 1987): 388-410.
Supplemental Reading
1. David
Grimsted, “Gods, Gentlemen, and Groundlings,” chapter 3 from Grimsted, Melodrama
Unveiled: American Theater & Culture, 1800-1850 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1968): 46-75.
2. Richard
B. Stott, “Working Class Institutions,” chapter 8 from Stott, Workers in the
Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York City
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990): 211-246.
3. Michael Kaplan, “B’hoys Will Be B’hoys: Tavern Violence and the Creation of a Working-Class Male Identity” (chapter 1) and “Conclusion” from Kaplan, “The World of the B’hoys: Urban Violence and the Political Culture of Antebellum New York City, 1825-1860,” Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1996, pp. 147-204; 266-275.
4. Christine Stansell, “Women and Men,” chapter 5 from Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1982): 76-101.
19
Sept. P.T. Barnum and the
Legitimation of American Amusement
Required Reading
Bluford Adams, E
Pluribus Barnum, chapters
Selections from P.T.
Barnum, The Life of P.T. Barnum Written by Himself
Supplemental Reading
1. Neil
Harris, “The Operational Aesthetic” and “The Man of Confidence” from Harris, Humbug:
The Art of P.T. Barnum (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973): 59-89;
205-231.
2. James
W. Cook, “The Feejee Mermaid and the Market Revolution,” chapter 2 from Cook, The
Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2001): 73-118.
3. Constance
Rourke, “P.T. Barnum” from Rourke, Trumpets of Jubilee (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1927): 276-319.
26
Sept. From Jim Crow to Chris Rock:
The Origins and Legacy of Blackface Minstrelsy
Required
Reading
Robert
C. Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), chapters 2-3.
Alexander
Saxton, “Blackface Minstrelsy and Jacksonian Ideology,” American Quarterly
27 (1975): 3-28.
William
McFerrin Stowe, Jr., “Damned Funny: The Tragedy of Bert Williams,” Journal
of Popular Culture 10, 1 (Summer 1976): 5-13.
Justin
Driver, “The Mirth of a Nation: Black Comedy’s Reactionary Hipness,” New
Republic 224 (June 11, 2001): 29-33.
Supplemental Reading
1. David
R. Roediger, “Black Skins, White Masks: Minstrelsy and White Working Class
Formation Before the Civil War,” chapter 6 from Roediger, The Wages of
Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York:
Verso, 1991): 115-131.
2. James
H. Dorman, “The Strange Career of Jim Crow Rice” Journal of Social History
3, 2 (1969-70): 109-22.
3. Erik
Lott, “‘Genuine Negro Fun’: Racial Pleasure and Class Formation in the 1840s,”
chapter 6 from Lott, Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American
Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995): 136-168.
4. Lawrence
W. Levine, “Black Laughter,” chapter 5 from Levine, Black Culture and Black
Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought From Slavery to Freedom (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1977): 298-366.
3
Oct. Victorian
America: The Development of Middle-Class Refinement
Required Reading
Karen Halttunen, Confidence
Men and Painted Women
Supplemental Reading
1. Barbara
Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860,” American Quarterly 18
(Summer 1966): 151-74.
2. John
F. Kasson, “Emotional Control,” chapter 5 from Kasson, Rudeness and Civility:
Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York: Hill & Wang,
1990): 147-81.
3. Ann
Douglas, “The Legacy of American Victorianism” and “The Domestication of
Death,” (introduction and chapter 6) from Douglas, The Feminization of
American Culture (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1977): 3-13; 200-226.
4. Katherine
C. Grier, “Quest for Refinement,” chapter 5 from Grier, Culture &
Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850-1930 rev. ed.
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997): 143-175.
10
Oct. History,
Myth, and National Identity: The Wild West in American Culture
Required
Reading
Joy S. Kasson, Buffalo
Bill's Wild West
Supplemental Reading
1. Richard
White, “Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill,” from The Frontier in
American Culture, James R. Grossman, ed. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1994): 7-65.
2. Richard
Slotkin, “Nostalgia and Progress: Theodore Roosevelt’s Myth of the Frontier,” American
Quarterly 33, 5 (Winter 1981): 608-37.
3. Paul
Reddin, “‘The Gladitorial Contest Revived’: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in
the United States, 1883-87,” chapter 3 from Reddin, Wild West Shows
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999): 53-85.
4. Thomas
L. Altherr, “Let’er Rip: Popular Culture Images of the American West in Wild
West Shows, Rodeos, and Rendezvous,” from Wanted Dead or Alive: The American
West in Popular Culture, Richard Aquila, ed. (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1996): 73-104.
17
Oct. Who
is “Black,” Who is “White,” and Why? – Race as a Cultural Construct in Late
Nineteenth-Century America
Required
Reading
Mark
Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson
Eric
J. Sundquist, “Mark Twain and Homer Plessy,” Representations 24 (1988):
102-28.
Keith Weldon Medley,
“The Sad Story of How ‘Separate but Equal’ was Born” Smithsonian
(February 1994): 104-117.
Supplemental
Reading
1. Vince
Brewton, “‘An Honour as well as a Pleasure’: Dueling, Violence, and Race in Pudd’nhead
Wilson,” Southern Quarterly 38, 4 (2000): 101-18.
2. Robert
Moss, “Tracing Mark Twain’s Intentions: The Retreat from Issues of Race in Pudd’nhead
Wilson,” American Literary Realism, 1970-1910 30, 2 (1998): 43-55.
3. Lee
Clark Mitchell, “‘De Nigger in You’: Race or Training in Pudd’nhead Wilson?
Nineteenth-Century Literature 42, 3 (December 1987): 295-312.
4. Susan
Gillman, “Racial Identity in Pudd’nhead Wilson and ‘Those Extraordinary
Twins’” chapter 3 in Gillman, Dark Twins: Imposture and Identity in Mark
Twain’s America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989): 53-95.
Madelon Powers, Faces
Along the Bar
Supplemental
Reading
1. Jon
M. Kingsdale, “‘The Poor Man’s Club’: Social Functions of the Urban
Working-Class Saloon,” American Quarterly 25, 4 (October 1973): 472-89.
2. Perry
Duis, “The Saloon in a City of Strangers,” chapter 6 from Duis, The Saloon:
Public Drinking in Chicago and Boston, 1880-1920 (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1983): 172-203.
3. Mary
Murphy, “Bootlegging Mothers and Drinking Daughters: Gender and Prohibition in
Butte, Montana,” American Quarterly 46, 2 (June 1994): 174-94.
4. Elaine
Frantz Parsons, “Risky Business: The Uncertain Boundaries of Manhood in the
Midwestern Saloon,” Journal of Social History 34, 2 (Winter 2000):
283-307.
31
Oct. Manliness
and Modernity: Gender Roles and Cultural Crisis at the Turn of the Century
Required
Reading
John
F. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man
[Recommended:
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes]
Supplemental Reading
1. John
Higham, “The Reorientation of American Culture in the 1890s,” from Higham, Writing
American History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970)
2. Margaret
Marsh, “Suburban Men and Masculine Domesticity, 1870-1915,” American
Quarterly 40, 2 (June 1988): 165-86.
3. E.
Anthony Rotundo, “Body and Soul: Changing Ideals of American Middle-Class
Manhood, 1770-1920,” Journal of Social History 16 (Summer 1983): 23-38.
4. Elliott
Gorn, “Fight Like a Gentleman, You Son of a Bitch, If You Can,” chapter 6 from
Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1986): 179-206.
7
Nov. Assault on Victorianism:
The “New Amusements”
Required
Reading
Lewis
A. Erenberg, Steppin' Out
Supplemental
Reading
1. James
R. McGovern, “The American Woman’s Pre-World War I Freedom in Manners and
Morals,” Journal of American History 55 (September 1968): 315-33.
2. Kathy
Peiss, “Dance Madness,” chapter 4 from Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working
Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1986): 88-114.
3. David
Nasaw, “‘Laughter and Liberty Galore’: Early Twentieth-Century Dance Halls,
Ballrooms, and Cabarets,” from Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public
Amusements (New York: Basic Books, 1993): 105-119.
4. Elisabeth
I. Perry, “‘The General Motherhood of the Commonwealth’: Dance Hall Reform in
the Progressive Era,” American Quarterly 37, 5 (Winter 1985): 719-733.
14
Nov. Assault on Victorianism II:
Bohemian Intellectuals and the Modern Aesthetic
Required Reading
Christine
Stansell, American Moderns
1.
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The New Woman as
Androgyne: Social Disorder and Gender Crisis, 1870-1936,” in Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly
Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1985): 245-296.
2.
Henry F. May, “Radicals,” from part three of
May, The End of American Innocence: A Study of the First Years of Our Own
Time (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1959): 302-329.
3.
John Patrick Diggins, “The Lyrical Left,”
chapter 4 in Diggins, The Rise and Fall of the American Left (New York:
W.W. Norton, 1992): 93-143.
4.
William B. Scott and Peter M. Rutkoff,
“Bohemian Ecstasy: Modern Art and Culture,” chapter 3 in Scott and Rutkoff, New
York Modern: The Arts and the City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1999): 73-100.
21
Nov. Radio
and Race: Amos’n’Andy and Depression American
Required Reading
Melvin Patrick Ely, The
Adventures of Amos’n’Andy
Supplemental Reading
1. Joseph
Boskin, “The Radio Ear: The Odd-Couples Connection,” chapter 8 in Boskin, Sambo:
The Rise and Demise of an American Jester (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986): 164-97.
2. Susan
J. Douglas, “Radio Comedy and Linguistic Slapstick,” chapter 5 from Douglas, Listening
In: Radio and the American Imagination (New York: Times Books, 1999):
100-123.
3. Arthur
Frank Wertheim, “Relieving Social Tensions: Radio Comedy and the Great
Depression” Journal of Popular Culture 10, 3 (Winter 1976): 501-519.
4. Michele
Hilmes, “Who We Are, Who We Are Not: The Emergence of National Narratives,”
chapter 3 in Hilmes, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997): 75-96.
5
Dec. Assessing
Popular Culture: Opiate of the Masses or Backbone of Democracy?
Required Reading
Paul
R. Gorman, Left Intellectuals and Popular Culture In Twentieth Century
America
Supplemental
Reading
1.