Julia Mickenberg

In this class we will explore the major social movements and the political, cultural and intellectual developments of the 1960s, as well as their origins in the 1950s and earlier.  These include post-war liberalism; the Great Society and the War on Poverty; the New Left; the Free Speech Movement; the peace movement; the Civil Rights movement; nationalist and liberation movements among African Americans, Chicanos, Asian Americans, American Indians, gays and lesbians, and women; the youth movement and counterculture; the conservative movement; and the environmental movement.  Throughout, we shall seek to learn not only what happened, but also why it happened; moreover, as members of a university community, we will be attentive to the question of how political and social activity in the 1960s, activity inspired largely by young people in and around universities, has affected our lives today and our relationship to politics and civic life.

In the 1960s spirit of “participatory democracy” this class will be run as something of a cooperative enterprise.  Rather than working on the model of expert teacher and student receptacles-of-knowledge, as students you will be actively contributing to the course content through your own research and presentations to the class.  In other words, your active participation is essential to the success of the course.  If you were hoping for a more passive learning experience, you should look elsewhere.

Requirements

Formal presentation

Two 4-6 page papers

One eight-to-ten page paper requiring research and revision

Regular informed participation in on-line blackboard discussion and in-class discussion

Regular attendance is also mandatory

Possible Texts

Andrew Jameson and Ron Eyerman, Seeds of the Sixties

Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s

Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines, Takin’ It To the Streets: A Sixties Reader

Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Upper-division standing required. Students may not enroll in more than two AMS 370 courses in one semester.

Flag(s): Writing, Cultural Diversity

This course will trace the history of American childhood through children’s literature. Using selected texts from the colonial era to the present, we will use children's texts as lenses for understanding American culture and American cultural history more generally. Understanding how childhood and children’s literature have changed over time tells us a great deal about the ways in which the broader culture and society have evolved. It is easy to take children’s literature for granted: we’ve all read it, and, indeed, we all read it as kids. What could be simpler, more obvious, or less worthy of critical examination? This class will ask students to think critically about children's literature and to think about how these texts are informed by and also contribute to a broader cultural context.

Requirements

1. Participation (25%): Includes: attendance, active and informed participation in class discussions, two presentations, in-class writing and short (one page) out of class assignments

2. Two 4-5 page papers (20% each)

3. One 8-10 page research paper (35%)

Possible Texts

Ann Scott MacLeod, American Childhood: Essays on Children’s Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Steve Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (Norton Critical Edition)

Dr. Seuss, The Sneetches and Other Stories

Doris Gates, Blue Willow

Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

Alice Childress, A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich

Jean Luen Yang, American Born Chinese

Additional packet of readings

Upper-division standing required.  Students may not enroll in more than two AMS 370 courses in one semester.

Flag(s): Writing, Cultural Diversity

What does it mean to study culture through the lens of childhood? This course will focus on scholarship of a historical and/or literary bent, but also delve into sociology, politics, media studies, psychology, visual culture, performance studies, material culture, and other fields.  Drawing on a range of recent scholarship but also giving some attention to the development of this relatively young field, we consider such issues as the metaphorical configuration of the United States as an “infant nation” and the implications of this both for children and for nation-building; the late 19th and early twentieth centuries as the “age of the child”; psychoanalysis and children’s literature; the image of the child in visual culture; race, gender, and sexuality as experienced and constructed through children and childhood; the cultural implications of children’s clothing and material culture; modernism and the rise of the picture book for children; the history of American summer camps; Walt Disney, childrearing, and American national identity; and the politics of childhood. Students will write short response papers and blackboard postings, lead one discussion, present on one supplemental text and write a short review of it and write a final paper on a topic of their choosing 

Requirements

Participation (class discussion, response papers, blackboard postings): 25%

Leading discussion: 10%

Presentation and review of supplemental text: 15%

Final paper: 50%

Possible Texts

Kenneth Kidd Freud in Oz: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children’s Literature

Nicholas Sammond, Babes in Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Making of the American Child, 1930-1960

Nathalie op de Beeck, Suspended Animation: Children’s Picture Books and the Fairy Tale of Modernity

Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence: Performing Childhood and Race from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the New Negro Movement

Daniel Thomas Cook, The Commodification of Childhood

Katherine Capshaw-Smith, Children’s Literature of the Harlem Renaissance

Caroline Levander, Cradle of Liberty: Race, the Child, and National Belonging from Thomas Jefferson to W.E.B. DuBois

Margaret Higonnet, Pictures of Innocence: This History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood

Anne Arnett Ferguson, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity

Sarah Chinn, Inventing Modern Adolescence

Kathryn Bond Stockton, The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century

Description

This course will survey American cultural history from the Civil War to the present, emphasizing the variety of economic, political, demographic, and social forces that have shaped American cultural production; the variety of media and forms in which American culture is expressed (including literature, painting, photography, dance, architecture, film, advertising, childrearing practices, education, political speeches, architecture and the environment, music, fashion, theater and performance, scientific thought, athletics, political demonstrations, trials, museums, foodways, fairs and exhibitions); and the impact of race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and religion on American cultural expression. Finally, we will consider the trajectory of American cultural history in terms of the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world, both in terms of how Americans have imported traditions from other countries and in terms of how the U.S. has shaped broader processes globalization.

Requirements

Students are expected to attend class regularly and to complete all assigned readings. There will be three major exams, and short quizzes most days based on the assigned reading.

Possible Texts

Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers 

Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows

Federal Theater Project, Triple A Plowed Under

Mine Okubo, Citizen 13660

Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era

Van Gosse, The Movements of the New Left: 1950-1975

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Upper-division standing required.  Partially fulfills legislative requirement in American History.

Flag(s): Cultural Diversity

Description:

This course looks at Americans living abroad for political reasons from the 1920s-1950s: we will consider both individuals and groups who have visited and settled in other countries in search of a way of life that they believe will be more deeply fulfilling than life in the United States, or who were no longer able to live in the United States because of their political circumstances. The class will take into account a variety of primary and secondary sources, focusing on several different countries at various moments in the twentieth century, including France, the Soviet Union, and Mexico. We will explore the ways in which foreign experiences affected individuals’ perspective on the United States, social critiques of the U.S. that precipitated or resulted from expatriation, the ways in which foreigners responded to Americans in their midst, and Americans’ experiences of other nations. The course will also attempt comparisons across historical eras and geographical expanses. Within these dynamics, we will give special attention to the experiences of African Americans, Jews, and women, who experienced marginalization from the American mainstream and looked beyond U.S. borders for models of citizenship and selfhood. Assignments include a reading journal, close reading of a primary source in a social and historical context, a comparative essay, and a research paper, as well as a formal presentation.

Possible Texts:

Vilem Flusser, Exile and Creativity

Edward Said, Reflections on Exile

Nancy L. Green, Expatriation, Expatriates, and Expats: The American Transformation of a Concept

George Lamming, The Pleasures of Exile

Malcolm Cowley, Exile’s Return

Brooke L. Blower, Becoming Americans in Paris

Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society

Langston Hughes, I Wonder as I Wander

Katherine Ann Porter, Violetta the Virgin

Dorothy West, A Room in Red Square

Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment With Russia

Kate Baldwin, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters Between Black and Red

Daniel Soyer, Back to the Future: American Jews Visit the Soviet Union

Arthur Koestler, ed. The God That Failed or Darkness at Noon

José Limon, American Encounters: Greater Mexico, the United States, and the Erotics of Culture

Rebecca Schreiber, Cold War Exiles in Mexico

Gordon Kahn, A Long Way from Home

Ella Winter, Red Virtue

Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light 

Films: Paris Was a Woman; The Circus; Tina in Mexico; The Brave One

Upper-division standing required. Students may not enroll in more than two AMS 370 courses in one semester.

Flag(s): Writing, Global Cultures

This goal of this course is to provide you with practical tools for teaching your own college-level course in American Studies and related fields, and to introduce you to some of the larger issues around teaching in higher education. Topics covered will include: course development and design; pedagogical methods; creating effective assignments; leading discussion; lecturing; using writing as a teaching tool; testing and evaluation; integrating technology; guiding student research; advising and mentoring; balancing teaching and research; and motivating students’ learning. Throughout the course we will reflect upon the qualities of good teaching, and, in particular, good teaching of interdisciplinary material.

Requirements1.    Students will design two courses: First, an AMS 311S course that assumes a class of 30 students or fewer, that focuses on a topic of your choosing, and that makes writing a central component of the course. Second, an Introduction to American Studies course that is geared to a class of 100 students or more. Both syllabi should be posted on blackboard by Tuesday, May 3 for discussion at our final class meeting on Thursday, May 5.2.    Interview an American Studies faculty member about teaching and observe at least one of that professor’s undergraduate classes. Also (with permission) attend one class taught by a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers.3.    Microteaching: Prepare one 30 minute lecture, which we will videotape and go over. Plan to invite several guests.4.    Lead class discussion of readings for one hour of 3-hour period (sign up first class period)5.     Formulate and refine a philosophy of teaching6.    Smaller assignments throughout the semester (see below)7.    Regular attendance and informed participation in class discussionPossible TextsPeter Filene, The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College InstructorsPacket of Additional materials from Speedway CopiesBarbara Gross Davis, Tools for Teaching (available in co-op or as e-book)John C. Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the ClassroomRecommended:Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross, Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College TeachersMcKeachie’s Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers. Useful on-line resources:UT Center for Teaching and Learninghttp://www.utexas.edu/academic/ctl/

Description

This course will survey American cultural history from the Civil War to the present, emphasizing the variety of economic, political, demographic, and social forces that have shaped American cultural production; the variety of media and forms in which American culture is expressed (including literature, painting, photography, dance, architecture, film, advertising, childrearing practices, education, political speeches, architecture and the environment, music, fashion, theater and performance, scientific thought, athletics, political demonstrations, trials, museums, foodways, fairs and exhibitions); and the impact of race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and religion on American cultural expression. Finally, we will consider the trajectory of American cultural history in terms of the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world, both in terms of how Americans have imported traditions from other countries and in terms of how the U.S. has shaped broader processes globalization.

Requirements

Students are expected to attend class regularly and to complete all assigned readings. There will be three major exams, and short quizzes most days based on the assigned reading.

Possible Texts

Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers

Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows

Federal Theater Project, Triple A Plowed Under

Mine Okubo, Citizen 13660 

Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era

Van Gosse, The Movements of the New Left: 1950-1975  

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Flag(s): Cultural Diversity

Upper-division standing required.  Partially fulfills legislative requirement in American History.

Description

                  In this class we will explore the major social movements and the political, cultural and intellectual developments of the 1960s, as well as their origins in the 1950s and earlier.  These include post-war liberalism; the Great Society and the War on Poverty; the New Left; the Free Speech Movement; the peace movement; the Civil Rights movement; nationalist and liberation movements among African Americans, Chicanos, Asian Americans, American Indians, gays and lesbians, and women; the youth movement and counterculture; the conservative movement; and the environmental movement.  Throughout, we shall seek to learn not only what happened, but also why it happened; moreover, as members of a university community, we will be attentive to the question of how political and social activity in the 1960s, activity inspired largely by young people in and around universities, has affected our lives today and our relationship to politics and civic life.

                  In the 1960s spirit of “participatory democracy” this class will be run as something of a cooperative enterprise.  Rather than working on the model of expert teacher and student receptacles-of-knowledge, as students you will be actively contributing to the course content through your own research and presentations to the class.  In other words, your active participation is essential to the success of the course.  If you were hoping for a more passive learning experience, you should look elsewhere.

Requirements

Formal presentation

Two 4-6 page papers

One eight-to-ten page paper requiring research and revision

Regular informed participation in on-line blackboard discussion and in-class discussion

Regular attendance is also mandatory

Possible Texts

Andrew Jameson and Ron Eyerman, Seeds of the Sixties

Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s

Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines, Takin’ It To the Streets: A Sixties Reader

B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice

Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity

Flag(s): Writing, Cultural Diversity

Upper-division standing required. Students may not enroll in more than two AMS 370 courses in one semester.