AMST 601 Fall 2012 - UMD

12 Pages·2012·0.25 MB·English

by  Nancy L. Struna

AMST 601 Fall 2012

Introductory Seminar In American Studies:
Perspectives on the Past & Theoretical Directions

Nancy L. Struna
1106 Holzapfel Hall
email, [email protected] phone, 301-405-1357
office hours, Mondays before class & by appointment

Course Description:

AMST 601 is the initial course of a two-course sequence introducing graduate students to
some of the literature -- from the field, the discipline, and beyond -- that has shaped and reshaped
Americans' Studies over time. In this course, we focus on the theories and paradigms, or conceptual
frameworks, evident in scholarly work through the mid-1990s. By concentrating on the
historiography of Americans' Studies and on the theoretical directions and assumptions of scholars,
this course should help you to understand the making of theories in American Studies and, of
course, the making of American Studies before the turn of the century. Reading and thinking about
this "early" scholarship should also prepare you for the contemporary theories and literature that are
the focus of AMST 603 (Current Approaches to American Studies).

This is a reading-intensive course, and I am well aware of the tension between "too much"
(reading) and "too little" (depth of treatment) that will undoubtedly emerge as we proceed with
considerable speed through many texts. One means of limiting this tension is for everyone to read
and contribute both comments and questions in class discussions. At all times please feel free to
think aloud, to challenge, to critique, and to offer alternative ways of looking and thinking. One
point of any seminar is to think more broadly and differently about the material as the discussion
proceeds. If any of us is not challenged to think differently, we shall all have fallen short of the
possibilities.

Course Schedule:

Sept. 10 – Introductions, Theoretical Trajectories, Building to Critique
And Americans on America Before American Studies

Francis Higginson, "A Short and True Description of New England" (1629)
http://www.winthropsociety.com/doc_higgin.php + pdf

Ben Franklin, Autobiography (1791), pp. 5-23 (top), 77 (begin at Passy) – 92
1
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Fra2Aut.html

Phillis Wheatley, “Poems,” which follow a memoir by Margaretta Odell
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/wheatley/wheatley.html

Judith Sargent Murray, "On the Equality of the Sexes (1790);
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/murray/equality/equality.html

J. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Letter III: "What is an American?," from Letters From An American
Farmer (1782)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/CREV/contents.html

William Craft, "Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom" (1860)
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-
new2?id=CraThou.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=
all

E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), chs. I, II, IV, VIII;
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html

Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893)
http://xtf.lib.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=2003_Q3/uvaBook/tei/b000337236.xml

"The Lives of The Freedmen of Indian Territory: The Slave Narratives of Indian Territory" –
Freedmen = Estelusti
http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/estelusti.htm

Liliuokalani, "Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen" (1898)
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/liliuokalani/hawaii/hawaii.html

Onoto Watani (Winnifred Eaton), "A Half Caste," Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly 48 (Sept. 1899) in
pdf

Eugene V. Debs, "The Martyred Apostles of Labor" (1898) & "Speech at Conference for Progressive
Political Action" (1925)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1898/martyred.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1925/cppa.htm

Carl Sandburg, "Chicago," and others of the Chicago Poems (1916)
http://www.carl-sandburg.com/POEMS.htm and
http://xtf.lib.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=modern_english/uvaGenText/tei/SanChic.xml&chunk.id=d6&t
oc.id=&brand=default

Emma Goldman, "A New Declaration of Independence" (1909) & "Was My Life Worth Living?"
(1934)
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Essays/independence.html
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Essays/lifework.html

Alain Locke, "The New Negro" (1925)
http://books.google.com/books?id=kuiSuqS4J38C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+New+Negro%22+
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Locke&source=bl&ots=gGwdxpZPGc&sig=RhNzunwmNW9IydqRzNS5bm2jcY4&hl=en&ei=lR95TMrL
AcLflgel9vWvCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f
=false

"Dear Miss Breed: Letters from Camp. . . " (1942-44), esp. "Life in Camp"
http://www.janm.org/breed/title.htm

All read:
Roger Cohen, “Palen’s American Exception,” New York Times op-ed, pdf.
Janice Radway, "What's in a Name?," American Quarterly 51 (March 1999):1-32.
Lynn Weber, Understanding Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality. A Conceptual Framework (Boston:
McGraw Hill, 2001), pp. 17-30, 73-92.

Sept. 17 –-
Part 1: It Was (N)Ever Thus: Locating Early American Studies

All read:
Gene Wise, "’Paradigm Dramas’ in American Studies: A Cultural and Institutional History of
the Movement" (1979) – -- in Lucy Maddox, ed., Locating American Studies. The Evolution of a Discipline
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). Hereafter cited as Maddox, ed.

The Faradays:
Perry Miller, Errand Into the Wilderness (1956; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp.
vii-15.
Roy H. Pearce, "American Studies as a Discipline," College English 18 (January 1957):179-87.
Henry Nash Smith, "Can ‘American Studies’ Develop a Method?" (1957) -- in Maddox, ed.

Other:
Murray G. Murphey, "American Civilization as a Discipline," Emory University Quarterly 23
(1967):48-61.
Carl Bode, "The Start of the ASA," American Quarterly 31 (1979):345-54.
Philip Gleason, "World War II and the Development of American Studies," American Quarterly
36 (1984):342-58.

Part 2: A History/Literature Synthesis: The Myth & Symbol "School"

The Mollys:
Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1950). Or e-version at
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/hns_home.html

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The Faradays:
Ian Finseth, “PREFACE to the HyperText Version of Henry Nash Smith's
Virgin Land,” UVA 1994 etext
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/preface.html
Barry Marks, "The Concept of Myth in Virgin Land," American Quarterly 5 (1953):71-76.
Bruce Kuklick, "Myth and Symbol in American Studies" (1972) -- in Maddox, ed.
Leo Marx, "Machine in the Garden," New England Quarterly 29 (1956):27-42.

Sept. 24 --
Part 1: Broadening the Discipline: External Academic Influences

The Mollys:
Auguste Comte, “On the Positivistic Approach to Society,” from The Positive Philosophy.
Harriet Martineau, trans. & condenser (New York: D. Appleton &Co., 1854), Vol. 2, pp. 68-74, 95-
110.
Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (1966; New York:
Doubleday, 1972), pp. 19-128.

The Faradays:
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962; Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
nd
2 ed., 1970), pp. 35-76, 111-35.
Clifford Geertz, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture" & "Notes on
a Balinese Cockfight," in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 3-30, 412-
53.

All read: Renato Rosaldo, “Geertz’s Gifts,” Common Knowledge 13 (2007):206-10.

Part 2: Theoretical Turns, Multiple Methods, & "Others"

The Faradays:
R. Gordon Kelly, "Literature and the Historian" (1974) – in Maddox, ed.
Henry Glassie, "Meaningful Things and Appropriate Myths: The Artifact’s Place in American
Studies," Prospects 3 (1977):1-49.
John G. Blair, "Structuralism, American Studies, and the Humanities," American Quarterly 30
(1978):261-81.
John Hope Franklin, "Ethnicity in American Life" (1971) & "The Land of Room Enough"
(1981) in Race and History. Selected Essays 1938-1988 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1989), pp. 321-47.

The Mollys:
David Montgomery, "To Study the People: The American Working Class," Labor History 21
(Fall 1980):485-512.
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John Caughey, "The Ethnography of Everyday Life: Theories and Methods for American
Culture," American Quarterly 34 (Bibliography 1982):222-43.
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct. Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York:
A. A. Knopf, 1985), pp. 11-52.
George Lipsitz, "Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory,
and American Studies" (1990) – in Maddox, ed.
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, "Disability, Identity, Representation," in Extraordinary Bodies
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 5-18.

Oct. 1-8 – Marxisms From the Sources

Karl Marx -- All read for Oct. 1:
The German Ideology (1845) – just chapter 1
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/abstract.htm
Wage Labour and Capital (1847)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm
Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
Value, Price and Profit (1869) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-
profit/index.htm

Recommended at some point:
Capital, vol. 1
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm
Manifesto of the Communist Party (1847)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm
Daniel Berthold-Bond, Hegel's Grand Synthesis: A Study of Being, Thought, and History. New York:
Harper, 1993, pp. 81-91. Pdf
Ron Strickland, Youtube video on Base and Superstructure (2007),
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHcv45NORAM&feature=related
and historical materialism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjXAgBDSp2g&feature=related

Antonio Gramsci -- All read for Oct. 8
"Hegemony, Relations of Force, Historical Bloc," pp. 189-221 in David Forgacs & Eric J.
Hobsbawm , eds., A Gramsci Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2000); taken from
Prison Writings 1929-1935.

The Faradays:
"The Art and Science of Politics, " pp. 222-245 in A Gramsci Reader.
"The State and Civil Society," in Quinton Hoare & Geoffrey N. Smith, eds., Selections from the
Prison Notebooks, 1929-35 (International Publishers Co., 1971), pp. 210-264
"The Intellectuals" and "On Education," pp. 2-43 in Selections from the Prison
Notebooks, 1929-35
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"The Study of Philosophy," pp. 321-377 in Selections from the Prison Notebooks

Not required but helpful discussions and additional theorists:
Marxists Internet Archive http://www.marxists.org/
International Gramsci Society http://www.internationalgramscisociety.org/
Louis Althusser internet archive:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/index.htm

Perry Anderson, In the Tracks of Historical Materialism (University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 9-
55.
Alex Callinicos, The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx (London: Bookmarks Publications, 1996).
Hal Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, 4 vols. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976-
1990).
Andrew Feenberg, Lukács, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1986), pp. 172-200.
Antonio Gramsci internet archive: http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/index.htm
Chris Harman, How Marxism Works (1979; London: Bookmarks Publications, Ltd., 6th ed.,
2000)
http://www.comcen.com.au/~marcn/hmw/
C. L. R. James internet archive:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/index.htm
esp. “Dialectical Materialism and
the Fate of Humanity”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/diamat/diamat47.htm
Black Power (1967)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1967/black-power.htm

Part II, Oct. 8 -- The Frankfurt School and Emergent Critical Theory

All read:
Theodor W. Adorno & Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception” (1944)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/adorno.htm

The Mollys:
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936).
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of
Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (1962; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 1-5, 27-43,
151-75, 181-235.

Not required but helpful:
Theodor W. Adorno, "The Culture Industry Reconsidered" (1991)
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/SWA/Culture_industry_reconsidered.shtml
Douglas Kellner, "Critical Theory Today: Revisiting the Classics"
http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/criticaltheorytoday.pdf
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Idem., "Critical Theory and the Crisis of Social Theory," Sociological Perspectives 33
(1990):11-33. pdf
Idem., "The Frankfurt School"
http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/frankfurtschool.pdf
Ron Strickland on the Frankfurt School on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ULLZm_x_YE

See, also:
http://filer.case.edu/~ngb2/Pages/Intro.html
and
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas/

Oct. 15 –- Historical/Cultural Materialism

The Faradays:
Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (1977; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
Special Note: all read section II.

The Mollys:
E. P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," Past
and Present 50 (February 1971):76-135.
Idem., Making History. Writings on History and Culture (New York: The New Press, 1994), pp.
200-25.
Stuart Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing the Popular," in Raphael Samuel, ed., People’s History and
Socialist Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 227-40.
T. J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities,"
American Historical Review 90 (June 1985):567-93.
Houston Baker, "Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance" (1987) -- in Maddox
Gayatri Spivak, "Can the SubAltern Speak?," in Carey Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg, eds.,
Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271-313.

Oct. 22–29 – Poststructuralism & Postmodernism

Oct. 22 -- All read:
Ferdinand Saussure, "Brief Survey of the History of Linguistics," from Third Course of Lectures on
General Linguistics (1910-11).
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/saussure.htm
Claude Levi-Strauss, "Structural Analysis in Linguistics and in Anthropology," chp. 2 from
Structural Anthropology (London: Allen Lane, 1958).
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/levistra.htm
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Claude Levi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth,” chp 11 from SA pdf
Roland Barthes, "Introduction," from Elements of Semiology (New York: Hill & Wang, 1964).
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/barthes.htm
idem., “The Death of the Author” (1967-8).
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/barthes06.htm
Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (1966),
from Writing and Difference, ed. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). Pdf and
http://hydra.humanities.uci.edu/derrida/sign-play.html

Oct. 29
The Mollys:
Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol 1: An Introduction (1979; New York: Vintage Books,
1990). Special note: all read Part Four

The Faradays:
Michel Foucault, “The Archaeology of Knowledge” (London: Routledge, 1972), chp. 1.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/foucault.htm
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1991), chp. 1.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm
Pierre Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital" (1983), in John Richardson, ed., Handbook of Research
for the Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp. 241-58. pdf
Jean-Francois Lyotard, "The Postmodern Condition," in Jeffrey C. Alexander & Steven
Seidman, eds., Culture and Society. Contemporary Debates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), pp. 330-41. pdf

See, also:
Jacques Derrida, “Fear of Writing” (youtube) and excerpt from “Différance”
Stanford Presidential Lectures, “Jacques Derrida – Deconstruction.”
John Lye, “Elements of Structuralism,” “Some Post-Structural Assumptions,” “Some Factors
Affecting/Effecting the Reading of Texts,” “Différance”
Roger Jones, “Post Structuralism” http://www.philosopher.org.uk/poststr.htm
Daniel Chandler, “Intertextuality,” in Semiotics for Beginners
Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, excerpts from Postmodern Theory. Critical Interrogations.
Francois Cusset, French Theory. How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual
Life of the United States, trans. Jeff Fort (2003; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), ch.
3, 4, 5, 12.

Nov. 5 – Emergent Cultural Studies

All read:
Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies," in David Morley & Kuan-Hsing
Chen, eds., Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 262-75.
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Douglas Kellner, "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies" pdf

The Faradays:
Richard Johnson, "What is Cultural Studies Anyway?", Social Text (Winter 1986/87):38-80; also
in John Storey, ed., What Is Cultural Studies? A Reader (London: Arnold, 1996), pp. 75-114.

Transitioners (from BCS):
Cornel West, "The Postmodern Crisis of the Black Intellectuals," in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary
Nelson, & Paula A. Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 689-95.

The Mollys:
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1993), pp. 1-40.
Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto," in During, ed., Cultural Studies Reader, pp. 271-91.
Angela McRobbie, "Post-Marxism and Cultural Studies," in Grossberg, Nelson, & Treichler,
eds., Cultural Studies, pp. 719-30.

Nov. 12 – Feminisms

The Faradays:
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands LaFrontera. The New Mestiza (1987; San Francisco: Aunt Lute
Books, 3rd edition, 2007). Special note: all read chp. 7.

The Mollys
Mary P. Ryan, “The Power of Women's Networks: A Case Study of Female Moral Reform in
Antebellum America,” Feminist Studies 5 (Spring 1979):66-85.
Barbara Smith, "Towards a Black Feminist Criticism" (1977), in Elaine Showalter, ed., The New
Feminist Criticism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 168-85.
Sucheta Mazamdar, "General Introduction: A Woman-Centered Perspective On Asian
American History," in Asian Women United of California, Making Waves. An Anthology of Writings by
and About Asian American Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), pp. 1-22.
Esther Ngun-Ling Chow, "The Feminist Movement: Where Are All the Asian American
Women?," in AAWUC, Making Waves, pp. 362-77.
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (1990; New York: Routledge, 2nd ed., 2000), pp. 1-
43.
Chela Sandoval, "U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Practice of Oppositional
Consciousness in a Postmodern World," Genders 10 (Spring 1991):1-24.
Biddy Martin & Chandra Mohanty, "Feminist Politics: What’s Home Got to Do With It?," in
Shiach, ed., Feminism & Cultural Studies, pp. 517-39.
Beverley Skeggs, "Theorizing, Ethics and Representation in Feminist Ethnography," in
Beverley Skeggs, ed., Feminist Cultural Theory: Process and Production (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1995), pp. 190-206.
Maxine Baca Zinn & Bonnie Thornton Dill, "Theorizing Difference from Multiracial
Feminism," Feminist Studies, 22 (Summer 1996):321-31.
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SPECIAL NOTE --
 For the final weeks, please think about, in addition to content, the
follow ing questions:
How did the authors theorize/frame a given concept?
 What were the likely theoretical influences on their work; what were their
intellectual connections to prior theories?
"How far" from prior framings in Americans' Studies had they moved, and "how

far" from our contemporary framings do they appear to be?

Nov. 19 -- (Re)Theorizing Race & Ethnicity

The Mollys:
nd
Michael Omi & Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the U.S. (1986; New York: Routledge, 2
ed., 1994). Special note: all read chp. 4.

The Faradays:
Stuart Hall, "Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity," in David Morley &
Kuan-Hsing Chen, eds., Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1996),
pp. 411-40.
Farah Jasmine Griffin, "Who Set You Flowin'?": The African-American Migration Narrative (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 3-99.
Ramon Gutierrez, "Community, Patriarchy and Individualism: The Politics of Chicano
History and the Dream of Equality" (1993) -- in Maddox, ed.
Gary Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1994), pp. 148-75.
Greg Sarris, Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993), pp. 1-13, 51-76.
Regina Austin, “’A Nation of Thieves’: Consumption, Commerce, and the Black Public
Sphere,” Public Culture 7 (1994): 225-48.
George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican-American. Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles,
1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 3-16, 227-69.

All read:
Mary Helen Washington, "'Disturbing the Peace: What Happens to American Studies If You
Put African American Studies at the Center?" Presidential Address to the American Studies
Association, October 29, 1997, " American Quarterly 50 (March 1998):1-23.

Nov. 26 -- (Re)Theorizing Gender & Sexuality

The Faradays:
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990; London: Routledge,
10