Course Overview
This course will examine historical approaches to the emergence and dissemination of mass culture in the United States in the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Students will read works about the historical context, content, production, and reception of American mass cultural forms. They will also closely examine and analyze advertisements, posters, films, radio shows, music recordings, photographs, television programs, and web sites. Readings will include theoretical works on how these entertainment forms mediate and produce ideas about race, gender, class, and nation. In the process students will explore definitions of "popular," "mass," "consumer," "local," and "national" culture, and gain an understanding of the role the mass media played in shaping dominant and subaltern American ideologies. Requirements will include weekly response papers and a final historiographic paper.
In this seminar, students are expected to read a good deal each week and the weekly class sessions will consist of discussion of those readings.
Required Texts
Articles available online
Grading
Attendance is compulsory, and thus the participation grades of students who are absent without excuse mroe than once in the term will be reduced significantly.
Book Presentation and Short Essay - 15%
Mass Culture Object Presentation and Short Essay - 15%
Longer Research or Historiographic Paper - 50%
Class participation - 20%
Assignments
Book Presentation and Short Essay - (15% of Final Grade)
During the course of the term, each student will give one SHORT presentations on a monograph or a book of essays that relates to a particular week's readings. Students will sign up for the presentations at the beginning of the term; there will be two such presentations per class after the first week.
Short Essay
In the short essay, which will be due 9:00 a.m. the morning following teh the class during which you are giving your presentation, you will give me an essay that conveys the following:
1. The subject and thesis of the book.
2. Its relation to the other readings for that week and, if relevant, other readings we have done to that point in the term;
3. The critical response to the book (through book reviews), unless the book is too new to have had reviews appear yet.
It will be no longer than 1500 words, or about 5 pages, double-spaced.
Presentation
During class you will give an oral presentation based on your paper. The presentations are to be NO LONGER than 10 minutes. You will be (gently) cut off after 11 minutes. You job in that ten minutes is to explain to your classmates the three points listed above, ideally also outlining some directions class discussion might follow. You should NOT read your paper, but you should deliver its contents in an informal, yet organized and (ideally) engaging manner. You should practise delivering it several times, paying particular attention to time. Use family and friends as guinea pigs.
Mass Culture Object Presentation and Short Essay - (15% of Final Grade)
During the course of the term, each student will give one SHORT presentations on mass culture object (music recording, film, advertisement, etc.) that relates to a particular week's readings. Students will sign up for the presentations at the beginning of the term; there will be two such presentations per class after the first week.
Short Essay
In the short essay, which will be due 9:00 a.m. the morning following the class during which you are giving your presentation, you will give me an essay that conveys the following:
1. The production and reception context of the work (as far as you know);
2. Its possible meanings for its historical period;
3. Its relation to the other readings for that week and, if relevant, other readings we have done to that point in the term;
It will be no longer than 900 words, or about 3 pages, double-spaced.
Presentation
During class you will give an oral presentation based on your paper. The presentations are to be NO LONGER than 15 minutes, including the demonstration of the object. You will be (gently) cut off after 16 minutes. You job in that ten minutes is to explain to your classmates the three points listed above. You should NOT read your paper, but you should deliver its contents in an informal, yet organized and (ideally) engaging manner.
Research or Historiographic Paper (50% of Final Grade)
This is a longer essay assignment; it will be the major pieice of work produced by the studnet in the course. In this essay, the student will focus on a particular subject related to the course; the student will meet with me early in the term to determine the subject and approach. The topic may be chosen in relation to the broad subjects of the weekly class meetings, or another subject if the student wishes and I approve, as long as it falls within the purview of the course. The essay will be written taking one of two following forms:
Focus on primary sources: the student will rely mainly on a body of primary sources to write an essay. The paper will be about 6000-7000 words (18-20 pages) for undergraduates, about 8000 worlds (24-25 pages) for graduate students. I will help the student determine an appropriate body of primary sources on which to focus.
Focus on historiography: the student will write a historiographical essay identifying major contributions to a particular subject and analyzing the approaches and methods the scholars in question have used, taking into particular account any theoretical perspectives that arise from the readings that we have done. The paper will be about 6000-7000 words (18-20 pages) for undergraduates, about 8000 worlds (24-25 pages) for graduate students. The student will determine an appropriate body of literature on which to focus using the bibliographical aids listed on the course web page and with my help.
The paper will take its shape over the course of the term, following a number of deadlines:
Week of January 22, 2007: Individual meetings to discuss paper topics
February 6: Paper proposal, with bibliography:
Describe, in 1-2 pages, the general problem you will investigate and the specific sources you will use, including a bibliography, formatted properly according to Chicago style.
Include a provisional title
The proposal must convince its reader that the project is both interesting and feasible
Write your proposal imagining your audience to be a fellow honours or graduate student in history, but in a different field (so does not necessarily understand the context)
Convey a clear sense that you know what to do and how to achieve it in the time available
Late March-early April: A draft for circulation in class (no less than 10 pages), due electronically by 10 am the Sunday preceding the scheduled discussion.
April 2007: Final version of the paper due.
Schedule
Use textbook chapters as background reading for each week. All assigned readings are available online. You are expected to print out the item so that you will have it with you in class.
Jan 9. Course Introduction
Jan. 16. Mass and Popular Culture: Definitions
Forum, American Historical Review 97 (December 1992):
Lawrence W. Levine, "The Folklore of Industrial Society: Popular Culture and Its Audiences," 1369-1399.
Robin D. G. Kelley, "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Folk'," 1400-1408.
Natalie Zemon Davis, "Toward Mixtures and Margins," 1409-1416.
T. J. Jackson Lears, "Making Fun of Popular Culture," 1417-1426.
Lawrence W. Levine, "Levine Responds," 1427-1430.
Jan 23. Research Methods: Texts, Producers, Audiences
George Lipsitz, "The Meaning of Memory: Family, Class, and Ethnicity in Early Network Television," in Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 39-75.
Kathy M. Newman, "Washboard Weepers: Women Writers, Women Listeners, and the Debate over Soap Operas," in Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1935-1947 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
Lizabeth Cohen, "Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots: The Experience of Chicago Workers in the 1920s," American Quarterly 41 (March 1989), 6-33.
Susan Schmidt Horning, "Engineering the Performance: Recording Engineers, Tacit Knowledge and the Art of Controlling Sound," Social Studies of Science 34 (October 2004), 703-731. (there doesn't seem to be a permanent link to this article: just search by author or title in Sage: Sociology Full-Text Collection)
Optional: Aniko Bodroghkozy, "'Don't Know Much About History': What Counts as Historical Work in Television Studies," Flow (November 2006), with comments.
Presentations:
Jacob L.: George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990).
Alex: Kathy M. Newman, Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1935-1947 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
Jan. 30 Cinema, Modernity, Class
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936), in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1985), 217-251.
Tom Gunning, "The Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)credulous Spectator," in Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, ed. Linda Williams (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 114-133.
Miriam Hansen, "Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship," Cinema Journal 25 (Summer 1986), 6-32.
Steven J. Ross, "Struggles for the Screen: Workers, Radicals, and the Political Uses of Silent Film," American Historical Review 96.2 (1991): 333-367.
Kathleen Moran and Michael Rogin, "'What's the Matter with Capra?': Sullivan's Travels and the Popular Front," Representations (Summer 2000), 106-134.
Optional: Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, The Complete Correspondence, 1928-1940, ed. Henri Lonitz (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), excerpts from letters.
Presentations:
Dawn: Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994).
Marie: Steven J. Ross, Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Show and tell: Peter.
Feb. 6. Class Cancelled
Feb. 13. Music, Race, and Commerce
Theodor W. Adorno, "On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening" (1938), in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, edited by Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum, 1982), 270-299.
Ronald M. Radano, "Denoting Difference: The Writing of the Slave Spirituals," Critical Inquiry 22 (Spring 1996), 506-544.
Ruth Feldstein, "'I Don't Trust You Anymore': Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s," Journal of American History 91 (March 2005), 1349-1379.
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, edited by William Eric Perkins (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 117-158.
Presentations:
Peter: Ronald M. Radano, Lying Up a Nation: Race and Black Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
Show and Tell: David, Jacob L.
Paper proposal due.
Reading Week - Feb. 19-25
Feb. 27 Broadcasting, Local and National
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 22-36.
David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991), 6-15.
Derek W. Vaillant, "Sounds of Whiteness: Local Radio, Racial Formation, and Public Culture in Chicago, 1921-1935," American Quarterly 54 (March 2002), 25-66.
Steven D. Classen, "Standing on Unstable Grounds: A Reexamination of the WLBT-TV Case," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 11 (March 1994), 73-91. (download from the journal page)
Lynn Spigel, "Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11," American Quarterly 56 (June 2004), 235-270.
Presentations:
Jacob T.: Lynn Spigel, Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).
Rob: Steven D. Classen, Watching Jim Crow: The Struggles Over Mississippi TV, 1955-1969 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004).
Show and tell: Nancy, Dawn.
Mar. 6. Visual Culture
Jurgen Habermas, "The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964)," New German Critique 3 (Autumn 1974), 49-55.
Allan Sekula, "The Body and the Archive," October 39 (Winter 1986), 3-64.
James Curtis and Sheila Grannen, "Let Us Now Appraise Famous Photographs: Walker Evans and Documentary Photography," Winterthur Portfolio 15 (Spring 1980), 1-23.
Robert B. Westbrook, "'I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl That Married Harry James': American Women and the Problem of Political Obligation in World War II," American Quarterly 42 (December 1990), 587-614.
Presentations:
James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).
James Curtis, Mind's Eye, Mind's Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989).
Mar. 13. Consumer Culture and Advertising
William Leach, "Transformations in a Culture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890-1925," Journal of American History 71 (September 1984): 319-342.
Roland Marchand, "The Consumption Ethic," Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), excerpt.
Jean-Christophe Agnew, "Coming Up for Air: Consumer Culture in Historical Perspective," in Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, edited by Lawrence B. Glickman (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 373-397.
Thomas Frank, Chapter 1, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
Optional: Joan W. Scott, "The Evidence of Experience," Critical Inquiry 17 (Summer 1991), 773-797.
Presentations:
Joyce: Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
David: Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
Show and Tell: Lucie.
Mar. 20. Print, Performance, and Sports
David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991).
James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), excerpt.
John F. Kasson, "The Manly Art of Escape," in Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001).
Joanne Meyerowitz, "Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946- 1958," Journal of American History 79 (March 1993), 1455-1482.
Presentations:
Lucie: John F. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001).
Nancy: Susan J. Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Times Books, 1995).
Show and Tell: Rob.
Mar. 27. American Mass Culture and the World
Melani McAlister, Introduction, in Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000 (Berkeley: : University of California Press, 2001).
Brian T. Edwards, "Introduction: Morocco Bound, 1942-1973," in Morocco Bound: Disorienting America's Maghreb, from Casablanca to the Marrakech Express, 1-25. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
Melani McAlister, "One Black Allah: The Middle East in the Cultural Politics of African American Liberation, 1955-1970," American Quarterly 51 (September 1999), 622-656.
Penny M. von Eschen, "Enduring Public Diplomacy," American Quarterly 57 (June 2005), 335-343.
Presentations:
Sylvia: Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000 (Berkeley: : University of California Press, 2001).
Mark: Penny M. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006).
Show and tell: Sylvia.
Apr. 3 Discussion of Paper Drafts
Apr. 10 Discussion of Paper Drafts
Apr. 17. Final Drafts due