Janet M. Davis

AMS 310 is an introductory course in American Studies—the interdisciplinary study of American culture and society. We will begin our journey by considering some of the critical transformations—both physical and ideological—that World War II brought to American society and culture.  Filled with televisions, cars, suburbs, malls and chain stores, the landscape that we know so well today came of age during this period.  Throughout the course, we will analyze how communities, broadly defined by differing variables like age, geography, gender, race, ethnicity, class and/or political persuasion, have wrestled with questions about identity, inclusion and exclusion in modern America. While the course will proceed chronologically, I have organized these topics around three separate themes: consumerism, youth culture, and multiculturalism.                 

Requirements

First exam (in-class): 20%

Second exam (in-class): 30%

Final exam (cumulative, 3 hours long): 50 %.

In addition to the graded assignments, regular attendance is expected.

Possible Texts

Clara Marie Allen and Constance Bowman Reid, Slacks and Calluses: Our Summer in a Bomber Factory

Mary Brave Bird, Lakota Woman

Elva Treviño Hart, Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi

Partially fulfills legislative requirement in American History.

Flag(s): Cultural Diversity

Description: This is a lecture course on postwar American culture and society with special emphasis on the 1950s and 1960s. Issues to be discussed include the domestic impact of the Cold War, the effects of McCarthyism on politics and the entertainment world, the problems of affluence in the 1950s, the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, the cultural relationships between the United States and the rest of the world, as well as conflicts between blacks and whites, the middle class and blue-collar workers, men and women, parents and children. The lectures will deal primarily with cultural and intellectual history, while the reading draws heavily on novels, journalism and social criticism.  Therefore, no one should enroll in this course who has not already taken at least one, preferably upper-division, course in 20th century American history.  Nor should anyone take the course if they are unfamiliar with trends in modern American literature, art, music, and movies.  In addition, since students will be asked to write two 10-15 page papers (there are no exams) based on the reading, you should not register for the course if you are unaccustomed to writing in-depth analytical essays, especially about novels.

Texts: Partial List, All Required:   

• Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
• John Updike, Rabbit Run
• Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
• Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
• Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night
• Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II

Description

In 1682, the first American bestseller was published. Audiences in the American colonies and in England devoured Mary Rowlandson’s breathless account of her harrowing experiences as a captive of the Narragansett and Nipmunk Indians during King Philip’s War in The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.  Taking a long, historical view, this course explores the evolution of American popular culture and its relationship to national consolidation (and at times, disunion) over the last 330 years. Starting with oral, religious, print, and live performance traditions during the colonial, early national, and antebellum periods, this course will consider the cultural impact of new technologies such as steam power, the railroad, photography, recorded sound, celluloid, the electronic transmission of moving images (i.e. television), and the internet.  Throughout the semester, we will stress the centrality of race, gender, and class in shaping the production and content of popular culture, modes of popular representation, the composition of popular audiences, and types of reception.

Requirements

Creative Think Piece:                                     10%

5 Short Papers (1-2 pages each):                   20%

First Draft of Final Paper (10-15 pgs):             5%

In-Class Presentation of Final Project:             10%

Final Paper (10-15 pages):                             35%

Discussion:                                                    20%

Possible Texts

Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola, ed., Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives 

P.T. Barnum, The Life of P.T. Barnum, Written by Himself

Ken Emerson, Doo-dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture

W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk

Paula Marantz Cohen, Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth

Tiny Kline, Circus Queen and Tinker Bell: The Life of Tiny Kline

Susan Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination

Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday

Aniko Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube: Sixties Television and the Youth Rebellion

Upper-division standing required. Partially fulfills legislative requirement in American History.  Students may not enroll in more than two AMS 370 courses in one semester.

Flag(s): Writing, Cultural Diversity

Description

AMS 310 is an introductory course in American Studies—the interdisciplinary study of American culture and society. We will begin our journey by considering some of the critical transformations—both physical and ideological—that World War II brought to American society and culture.  Filled with televisions, cars, suburbs, malls and chain stores, the landscape that we know so well today came of age during this period.  Throughout the course, we will analyze how communities, broadly defined by differing variables like age, geography, gender, race, ethnicity, class and/or political persuasion, have wrestled with questions about identity, inclusion and exclusion in modern America. While the course will proceed chronologically, I have organized these topics around three separate themes: consumerism, youth culture, and multiculturalism.                 

Requirements

First exam (in-class): 20%

Second exam (in-class): 30%

Final take-home exam: 50 %.

In addition to the graded assignments, regular attendance is expected.

Possible Texts

Clara Marie Allen and Constance Bowman Reid, Slacks and Calluses: Our Summer in a Bomber Factory

Mary Brave Bird, Lakota Woman

Elva Treviño Hart, Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi

Partially fulfills legislative requirement in American History.

Flag(s): Cultural Diversity

coming soon

350R

This course partially fulfills the Legislative Requirement in American History and is also a writing component course.

Course Scope: A wandering pig played a central role in creating a bicameral legislature in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1644.  According to John Winthrop, the colony’s first governor, “There fell out a great business upon a very small occasion”:  a poor widow and a wealthy merchant went to the General Court regarding the disputed ownership of a stray sow.  Although popular sympathies rested with the widow, the Court ruled in favor of the merchant, thus prompting the Court’s assistants and deputies to divide formally into two distinct legislative houses in order to make the colony’s government more representative. This is but one example of the central—if hitherto unrecognized—role that animals have played in shaping the course of American history. This interdisciplinary upper-division undergraduate seminar explores the place of animals in the social, cultural, economic, and political life of the United States. Topics of discussion include animals in entertainment; hunting; vegetarianism; changing cultural attitudes about nature; wandering animals and property rights;  animals and evolutionary theory; the rise of the animal welfare and animal rights movements;  laboring animals and the nation’s move to a motorized economy; animals and war; the growth of pet keeping as a cultural practice and big business; factory farms; the rise of veterinary science; zoos; and more.

Course requirements:  Mandatory class attendance and completion of all reading and writing assignments. Each student will serve as a discussion leader for one class; each student will also write weekly response papers and/or study questions; each student will prepare a class presentation based upon h/her research work, and will submit a final research paper of ten-fifteen pages in length on a topic relating to the course material of his or her choosing.

TENTATIVE Reading List (will be modified):

Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

James Turner, Reckoning with the Beast

Jennifer Price, Flight Maps

Steve Baker, The Postmodern Animal

Susan Jones, Valuing Animals: Veterinarians and Their Patients in Modern America

Ingrid Newkirk, Free the Animals: The Story of the Animal Liberation Front

Laura Hillenbrandt, Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Gregg Mitman, Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film

Elizabeth Hanson, Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos

Description

AMS 310 is an introductory course in American Studies—the interdisciplinary study of American culture and society. We will begin our journey by considering some of the critical transformations—both physical and ideological—that World War II brought to American society and culture.  Filled with televisions, cars, suburbs, malls and chain stores, the landscape that we know so well today came of age during this period.  Throughout the course, we will analyze how communities, broadly defined by differing variables like age, geography, gender, race, ethnicity, class and/or political persuasion, have wrestled with questions about identity, inclusion and exclusion in modern America. While the course will proceed chronologically, I have organized these topics around three separate themes: consumerism, youth culture, and multiculturalism.                 

Requirements

First exam (in-class): 20%

Second exam (in-class): 30%

Final take-home exam: 50 %.

In addition to the graded assignments, regular attendance is expected.

Possible Texts

Clara Marie Allen and Constance Bowman Reid, Slacks and Calluses: Our Summer in a Bomber Factory

Mary Brave Bird, Lakota Woman

Elva Treviño Hart, Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi

Partially fulfills legislative requirement in American History.

Flag(s): Cultural Diversity

COURSE DESCRIPTION

AMS 370/HIS/WGS: “American Popular Culture: 1682-Present”
Fall 2010
Professor Janet M. Davis

This course fulfills a Writing Flag and the Cultural Diversity in the United States Flag.

In 1682, the first American bestseller was published. Audiences in the American colonies and in England devoured Mary Rowlandson’s breathless account of her harrowing experiences as a captive of the Narragansett and Nipmunk Indians during King Philip’s War in The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.  Taking a long, historical view, this course explores the evolution of American popular culture and its relationship to national consolidation (and at times, disunion) over the last 330 years. Starting with oral, religious, print, and live performance traditions during the colonial, early national, and antebellum periods, this course will consider the cultural impact of new technologies such as steam power, the railroad, photography, recorded sound, celluloid, the electronic transmission of moving images (i.e. television), and the internet.  Throughout the semester, we will stress the centrality of race, gender, and class in shaping the production and content of popular culture, modes of popular representation, the composition of popular audiences, and types of reception.


Tentative Reading List (Will Likely Change!):

Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola, ed., Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives
P.T. Barnum, The Life of P.T. Barnum, Written by Himself
Ken Emerson, Doo-dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk
Paula Marantz Cohen, Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth
Tiny Kline, Circus Queen and Tinker Bell: The Life of Tiny Kline
Susan Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination
Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday
Aniko Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube: Sixties Television and the Youth Rebellion

Lectures, discussion, reading, and research on selected topics in the field of history.

May be repeated for credit when the topics vary.

Designed for History majors. 

History 350L and 350R may not both be counted unless the topics vary.

Course carries Writing flag.