History
579 – Topics in American Cultural History
Syllabus
and Survival Guide
Spring
2007
Wednesday
7:00 pm – 9:50 pm, Sierra Hall 302
Instructor
Dr. Thomas W. Devine
Phone: (818) 677-3550 Email:
tom.devine@csun.edu
Office Hours:
The
following books – listed in the order in which we will read them – are
available at the Matador Bookstore. All
other readings will be provided in class or through electronic reserve. To
subvert the system and to save yourself some money, you should consider buying
used copies of the books. You are likely
to find used or discounted copies at significantly lower prices at the
following websites:
www.bookfinder.com; www.half.com; www.amazon.com.
Recommended:
Spirit of the Course
This course takes as
its premise that the popular arts deserve historians’ serious
consideration. Though dismissed by many
self-appointed critics as frivolous or ephemeral, popular art forms often
reveal much about the priorities, assumptions, mores, and values of the culture
that produced and consumed them.
Throughout the
semester we will be examining nineteenth and twentieth century
In this course, you will be learning not simply more history, but a different way of
understanding history and, in tandem, sharpening your own skills as a “cultural
critic” – skills that will allow you to become both a more sophisticated
student of history and a better informed observer of and participant in
American culture. In short, this course
seeks to increase not only your knowledge but also your critical and interpretive
abilities – to help you learn not only answers but better ways of asking
questions.
Themes
Though the material may seem rather eclectic to you –
What could Buffalo Bill, Tarzan, Amos’n’Andy, Lenny Bruce, and Superman
possibly have to do with one other? – there are certain themes that we will be
revisiting. Reflecting on the course content with the following larger themes
in mind will allow you to see the connections between what at first glance
might appear to be unrelated topics:
Grading
Class Participation --35%
Oral Presentation --10%
Analytical Essay --10%
CLICK FOR ANALYTICAL ESSAY QUESTIONS
Semester Project [Due May 19]* --25%
Final Essay [Due May 26] --20%
*-
But gladly accepted before May 19th
Explanation
of Requirements
Completing
the
There’s no getting
around it – this class requires a lot of reading. But, as a Masters level seminar, it is
supposed to. To succeed in this course,
you will need to complete the reading, but you will also need to have given it
some thought. Read with a pencil in hand
– take notes in the margins. Record
terms that are unfamiliar to you or that you don’t understand, points that you
find interesting or surprising, arguments with which you strongly agree or
disagree, methods of research or analysis that seem especially creative or
insightful (or misguided and silly), or ideas that connect to things we’ve
talked about in previous classes. Also,
read smart – don’t read every single word of the first 4 chapters and nothing
thereafter because you ran out of time. If you catch the argument the author is
making, don’t sweat all the details or supporting examples – skim over them and
get on to the next major point. It is
more important to have gotten the gist of an entire book than to master every
aspect of the first one-third of it.
Participation in
Discussion
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 based on the assigned readings – and I expect everyone to take part. I
will do my best to insure each student has ample opportunity to
contribute, but, ultimately, it will be up to you to make certain that you
remain an active participant rather than a passive observer.
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. (This exchange can also be
done via email.) Optimally, the discussion leader will have finished writing
the questions at least 24 hours before the seminar so I can distribute them to
everyone via email attachment. Your leading of discussion will not
receive a grade per se, but will be taken into account in the
calculation of your participation grade
Précis
One
person will be responsible for producing a single-spaced 2-page précis of the reading
each week. This assignment is meant to be a summary rather
than a review, though you may give an overall evaluation of the book in the
final paragraph. The person who writes the précis will provide each
member of the class with a copy at the beginning of the seminar. This
assignment, too, will not receive a grade per se, though in calculating
your participation grade, I will take into account the quality of and amount of
effort you appear to have put in to your précis. Please send me your précis as an email
attachment so I can post it on the web.
Oral Presentation
One
person will be responsible for giving a 15 minute oral presentation each
week. The presentation should elaborate on or critique the week's
readings. You may want to focus exclusively on a particular theme or
argument, the book or articles' take on a specific historiographical
controversy, or compare/contrast the author’s work to others who have written
on the topic. Alternatively, you might want to look at some primary
sources and see if they lead you to the same kinds of interpretations that the
author offers. I can provide you with both primary source suggestions and
historiographical background, so don’t hesitate to ask. Also, since this
course focuses on popular art forms, it seemed to me we should not just read
about movies, radio programs, music, comic books, and so on, but experience
them directly. Therefore, if the topic lends itself to doing so,
your oral presentation should feature a short audio-visual component that
will allow us to sample in some way the art form we have read about. (This
could entail showing a clip from documentary footage or from a movie discussed
in the reading; showing power point slides of contemporary
illustrations; playing an excerpt from a radio program, song, or
musical performance; displaying illustrations, etc.) At some point during
class, usually right after the break, you will have the floor to give your
oral presentation and to field questions from the class. At the end
of class, please provide me with a copy of your presentation notes.
Analytical Essay
This
3-page assignment will give you the opportunity to respond to a specific
question in a concise, tightly argued essay. At several points during the
semester I will hand out essay topics in class.
The essay will be due a week after I distribute the question. You need
only do one essay over the course of the semester, though if you do more than
one I will count the highest grade.
Semester Project
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
recommend drawing on a variety of books, book chapters, and journal
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. After your reading has made you an “expert”
on your topic, compose a 10-12 page
essay assessing the various sources you have consulted and offer and defend
your own thesis pertaining to your topic. So as to prevent you
from putting this assignment off until the last moment (and confronting the
dreaded “incomplete”), I will ask for a tentative bibliography with brief
annotations at the mid-point of the semester.
I will gladly critique drafts of this assignment.
Final Essay
In a double-spaced
10 page essay due at the end of the
semester, you will answer a question that will be directly related to the major
themes of the course. In responding, you
will draw only from material in the assigned reading; no outside reading or
research will be necessary.
Bringing
Food
On one occasion during the semester,
each person will bring a snack for the entire class to enjoy at the break.
Optimally, your culinary contribution will be related in some clever way to the
week’s discussion topic. I can refrigerate or store the food for you if you
need me to -- just give me advance notice.
Creativity and imagination in the selection of what to bring will be
duly noted.
Surviving
History 579…
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
Jan. 31 “Bowery
B’hoys and Gallery Gods” – Performance, Audience Response, and Working-Class
Consciousness in Jacksonian
Lawrence
Levine, “William Shakespeare in America,” Chapter 1 from Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural
Hierarchy in
Richard
Butsch, The Making of American Audiences:
From Stage to Television, 1750-1990
(
Bruce A. McConachie, “‘The Theatre of the Mob’
: Apocalyptic Melodrama and Preindustrial Riots in Antebellum New York,”
Bruce A. McConachie and Daniel Friedman, eds.,
Theatre for Working-Class Audiences in the United States, 1830-1980 (
Click here for more on the Astor
Place Riot
Interview
with Bruce A. McConachie on the Astor Place Riot
Feb. 7 From
Jim Crow to Chris Rock: The Origins and Legacy of Blackface Minstrelsy
Robert Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century
John W. Finson, The Voices That Are Gone: Themes in Nineteenth-Century Popular Song,
Chapter 5.
Ken Emerson, Doo~Dah:
Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture, [Selections]
David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness
Recommended Film:
Spike Lee’s
“Bamboozled” (2000)
Click here for more on Stephen Foster
Feb. 14 P. T. Barnum and the Rise of “Democratic
Amusements”
P.T. Barnum, The Life of P.T. Barnum, Selections [Hard copies available outside
624 Sierra Tower]
James Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing With Fraud in
the Age of Barnum, Chapter 2.
Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P.T. Barnum,
Chapters 3, 8.
Barnum-related web sites:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA02/freed/Barnum/barnum.html
http://www.ptbarnum.org/ptlinks.html
http://www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/
Feb. 21 History,
Myth, and National Identity: The Wild West in American Culture
Joy S. Kasson, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West
John H. Monett,
“There is No Place for General Custer and Buffalo Bill in the New Western
History!”
Journal
of the West
36,2 (April 1997): 6-8.
Buffalo
Bill-related web sites:
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/buffalobill.htm
Feb. 28 Who
is “Black,” Who is “White,” and Why? – Race as a Cultural Construct in Late
Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead
[Complete text and
related primary documents available on the web at: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/wilson/pwhompg.html]
[Also available in hard copy
in the box outside Dr. Devine’s office]
Eric J.
Sundquist, “Mark Twain and Homer Plessy,” Representations 24 (1988): 102-28.
Browse through some of the contemporary reviews of Pudd’nhead Wilson at:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/wilson/pwrevshp.html
Bibliography of Pudd’nhead
http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl413/pwbib.htm
Mar. 7 “Gone Primitive” – Changing Conceptions of
Masculinity at the Turn of the 20th Century
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes
“Reading Tarzan of the Apes with a
Critical Eye”
Optional
Theodore Roosevelt, “The Strenuous
Life”
Harry Stecopoulos, “The World According to
Normal Bean: Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Popular Culture”
Mar. 14 “The Greatest Show on Earth:” Industrialization,
Modernization, and the Circus
Janet Davis, The Circus Age
Mar. 21 “We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!” –
The Movies in the Age of Innocence
Paula Marantz Cohen, Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth
Mar. 28 “Tough
Guys in a World of Chance:” The Modern Detective Story and American Culture
between the Wars
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
[Recommended but not required
is The Maltese Falcon, the definitive
film version of Hammett's novel, released in 1941 by Warner Brothers, directed
by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart.]
Apr. 4 SPRING
BREAK
Apr. 11 Radio and Race: The Ambiguous Legacy of
Amos’n’Andy
Melvin Patrick Ely, The Adventures of Amos’n’Andy
Apr. 18 The
Medium and the Message: Television and The Cold War
Thomas Doherty, Cold War, Cool Medium: Television,
McCarthyism, and American Culture
Recommended Film:
Point of Order
Apr. 25 “Blurring the Lines:” Rock’n’Roll’s
Challenge to Cultural Hierarchies
Michael T. Bertrand, Race, Rock, and Elvis
Recommended Films:
Elvis 1956, That Rhythm, Those Blues
May 2 “Laughing through the Fear:” Cold War Humor
from Mad Magazine to Dr. Strangelove
Stephen E. Kircher, Revel with a Cause: Liberal Satire in
Postwar
May 9 Cinematic
Proletarians? – American Workers on the Silver Screen
John Bodnar, Blue-collar
May 16 “A New and Threatening Medium:” Comic Books
and Cold War
Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation