Elena Razlogova

Introduction to Theories and Methods in American Studies

Sample Syllabus

Description

This class will teach students how American Studies scholars think, argue, research, and write. Students will trace the changing definition of American Studies as a field of study, from the "myth and symbol" school to projects spanning both American continents. They will study their field's relationship to twentieth-century social movements and related theoretical categories, including Marxism, cultural studies, and class; feminism, gender, and sexuality; and anticolonialism, postcolonialism, race, and ethnicity. Finally, they will learn the basic archival and ethnographic research techniques underlying interdisciplinary research methods in American Studies. Students will also define an American Studies topic, research it, and write an analytical essay of 10-12 pages.

Requirements and Grades

Class participation - 10%

2-3 page essay - 10%

6 one-page reports - 30% (5% each)

First draft of essay - 15%

Final draft of essay - 35%

Readings

Kate L. Turabian, John Grossman, and Alice Bennett, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations , 6th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996),

Martha C. Howell and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001).

Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, Ethnography: Principles in Practice , 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).

Articles available on electronic reserve and through online databases.

Syllabus

Week 1. Introduction

Due: Come up with your own working definition of "American Studies."

Week 2. The History of American Studies, 1920s-1970s

Readings:

John William Ward, "The Meaning of Lindbergh's Flight," in The National Temper , ed. Lawrence W. Levine and Robert Middlekauff (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 297-308.

Gene Wise, "'Paradigm Dramas' in American Studies: A Cultural and Institutional History of the Movement," American Quarterly 31 (1979): 293-337.

Alan Trachtenberg, "Myth and Symbol," Massachusetts Review 25.4 (1984): 667-73.

Ann Fabian, "Back to Virgin Land," Reviews in American History 24 (September 1996): 542-53.

Week 3. The History of American Studies, 1970s-Present

Readings:

George Lipsitz, "Listening to Learn, Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and American Studies," American Quarterly 42 (1990): 615-36.

Linda K. Kerber, "Diversity and the Transformation of American Studies," American Quarterly 41.3 (September 1989): 415-431.

Janice Radway, "What's in a Name?" American Quarterly 51.1 (1999), 1-32.

Alan Wolfe, "Anti-American Studies," New Republic (10 February 2003), 25.

Due: Three-page essay describing your own approach to American Studies in relation to the history of the field.

Week 4. Sample American Studies Essays

Readings:

Lizabeth Cohen, "Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots: The Experience of Chicago Workers in the 1920s," American Quarterly 41 (March 1989): 6-33.

Janice Radway, "Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies: The Function of Romance Reading," in Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies , ed. Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 465-486.

Robin D. G. Kelley, "Kickin' Reality, Kickin' Ballistics: Gangsta Rap and Postindustrial Los Angeles," in Droppin' Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture , ed. William Eric Perkins (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 117-158.

Due: One-page project proposal.

Week 5. Varieties of Sources: Texts, Things, Actions

Readings:

Texts: Cathy N. Davidson, "Introduction: Towards a History of Books and Readers," American Quarterly 40 (1988): 7-17.

Things: Clifford E. Clark, Jr., "House Furnishings as Cultural Evidence: The Promise and Peril of Material Culture Studies," American Quarterly 43 (1991): 73-81.

Actions: Clifford Geertz, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture," in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 1-30.

Due: One-page analysis of a textual or material source you'll use for your project, to be presented in class.

Week 6. Varieties of Sources: Visual and Aural Evidence

Readings:

Film: Vivian C. Sobchack, "Beyond Visual Aids: American Film as American Culture," American Quarterly 32 (1980): 280-300.

Images: Rosalind E. Krauss and Hal Foster, eds., "Visual Culture Questionnaire," October 77 (Summer 1996): 25-70, selections.

Sounds: Regina Bendix, "The Pleasures of the Ear: Toward an Ethnography of Listening," Cultural Analysis 1 (2000).

Due: One-page analysis of a visual or aural source you'll use for your project, to be presented in class.

Week 7. Research Methods: Archival Research

Meet at the library for a tutorial.

Readings:

Howell and Prevenier, From Reliable Sources , selections.

Joan W. Scott, "Experience and the Disciplines of Proof," in Questions of Evidence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion across the Disciplines , ed. James Chandler, Arnold I. Davidson, and Harry Harootunian (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 363-387.

Week 8. Research Methods: Ethnography

Readings:

Hammersley and Atkinson, Ethnography: Principles in Practice , selections.

James Clifford, "On Ethnographic Authority," in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988): 21-54.

Due: One-page annotated bibliography including relevant archival sources.

Week 9. Research Methods: Online Research

Meet in the computer lab.

Readings:

Howell and Prevenier, From Reliable Sources , selections.

Due: One-page report on fieldwork you have conducted for your project.

Week 10. Marxism, Cultural Studies, and Class

Stuart Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing 'the Popular,'" in People's History and Socialist Theory , ed. Raphael Samuel (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 227-39.

Michael Denning, "'The Special American Conditions': Marxism and American Studies," American Quarterly 38 (1986): 356-80.

Richard Johnson, "What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?" Social Text 16 (Winter 1986): 38-80.

Due: One-page outline of your final paper.

Week 11. Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality

Joan W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," in Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 28-50.

Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality," in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality , ed. Carole S. Vance (New York: Pandora, 1989), 267-319.

Judith Butler, "Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire," in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990): 1-34.

Week 12. Anticolonialism, Postcolonialism, Race, and Ethnicity

Barbara J. Fields, "Ideology and Race in American History," in Region, Race, and Reconstruction , ed. J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 143-77.

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," in Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003): 17-42.

Amy Kaplan, "'Left Alone With America': The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture," in Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 3-21.

Week 13. Beyond the Cultural Turn

Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Avery Hunt, "Introduction," in Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture , ed. Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Avery Hunt (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1999).

George Steinmetz, "Introduction: Culture and the State," in State/Culture: State Formation After the Cultural Turn , ed. George Steinmetz (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).

Gerald Owen, "Modernism a Beneficiary of War in Iraq: Postmodernism Succumbs to a Friendly Takeover," National Post (Canada) (2 August 2003), Sec. Review, Ideas; A25.

Emily Eakin, "The Latest Theory Is That Theory Doesn't Matter," New York Times (19 April 2003), sec. D, 9:1.

David Lodge, "Goodbye to All That," New York Review of Books 51.9 (27 May 2004). (Review of Terry Eagleton, After Theory )

Week 14. Draft presentations.

Due: First drafts of final essay.

Week 15. Draft presentations continued.

Exam Week. Final draft due.