AMST 601 Fall 2009

Introductory Seminar In American Studies:

Perspectives on the Past & Theoretical Directions

Nancy L. Struna

1106 Holzapfel Hall

email, nlstruna@umd.edu phone, 301-405-1357

office hours, Mondays before class & by appointment

Syllabus on the web: at class Blackboard site

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 Americans' Studies and, of course, the making of Americans' 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:

Aug. 31 – Introductions, Theoretical Trajectory, Building to Critique

Sept. 14 – Americans on America Before American Studies

Francis Higginson, "A Short and True Description of New England" (1629)

http://www.winthropsociety.com/doc_higgin.php also website pdf

Ben Franklin, Autobiography (1791), pp. 5-23 (top), 77 (begin at Passy) – 92

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://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DUBOIS/cover.html

Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893)

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/TURNER/home.html

"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 Watanna (Winnifred Eaton), "A Half Caste," Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly 48 (Sept. 1899) website 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

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) website pdf

"Dear Miss Breed: Letters from Camp. . . " (1942-44), esp. "Life in Camp"

http://www.janm.org/breed/title.htm

All read:

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.

Richard Cohen, "Palin's American Exception," New York Times, September 25, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/opinion/25Cohen.html

Sept. 21 –-

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.

Murray G. Murphey, "American Civilization as a Discipline," Emory University Quarterly 23 (1967):48-61.

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.

Recommended at some point:

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).

The Faradays:

Leo Marx, "Machine in the Garden," New England Quarterly 29 (1956):27-42.

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.

Sept. 28 --

Part 1: Broadening the Discipline: External Academic Influences

The Faradays:

Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (1966; New York: Doubleday, 1972).

The Mollys:

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd 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.

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

All read:

R. Gordon Kelly, "Literature and the Historian" (1974) – in Maddox, ed.

John Caughey, "The Ethnography of Everyday Life: Theories and Methods for American Culture," American Quarterly 34 (Bibliography 1982):222-43.

David Montgomery, "To Study the People: The American Working Class," Labor History 21 (Fall 1980):485-512.

George Lipsitz, "Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and American Studies" (1990) – in Maddox, ed.

The Mollys:

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.

Tony Martin, Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts, and the Harlem Renaissance (Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1983), chs. 1-2.

Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct. Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1985), pp. 11-52.

Oct. 5-12 – Marxisms From the Sources

Karl Marx:

All read for Oct. 5:

The Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1844)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm

The German Ideology (1845) – just chapter 1

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/abstract.htm

Wage Labour and Capital (1849)

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

Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx1.htm

(This was also the Introduction in Grundsrisse, 1857)

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

For first half of Oct. 12

Antonio Gramsci (website pdfs):

All read:

"Hegemony, Relations of Force, Historical Bloc," pp. 189-221 in A Gramsci Reader;

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 Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1929-35,

pp. 210-264

"The Intellectuals" and "On Education," pp. 2-43 in Selections from the Prison

Notebooks, 1929-35

"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/

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

John Molyneux, "What is the Real Marxist Tradition?," International Socialism 2 (July 1983).

http://www.marxisme.dk/arkiv/molyneux/realmarx/index.htm

Oct. 12 -- 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

Theodor W. Adorno, "The Culture Industry Reconsidered" (1991)

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/SWA/Culture_industry_reconsidered.shtml

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.

Idem., "Communicative Ethics," from The Inclusion of the Other. Studies in Political Theory, trans. Andy Blunden (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), parts VIII and IX of Chapter 1.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/habermas/1998/communicative-ethics.htm

Not required but helpful:

Douglas Kellner, "Critical Theory Today: Revisiting the Classics"

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/ -- then on right, click essays

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/criticaltheorytoday.pdf

Idem., "Critical Theory and the Crisis of Social Theory," Sociological Perspectives 33 (1990):11-33. http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/criticaltheorycrisisofsocialtheory.pdf

Idem., "The Frankfurt School"

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/frankfurtschool.pdf

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

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas/

Oct. 19 –- Historical/Cultural Materialism & Hegemony

The Mollys:

Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (1977; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

The Faradays:

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.

All read:

Nancy L. Struna, People of Prowess. Sport, Leisure & Labor in Early Anglo-America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 143-89; and "The Prostitute, Liberty/Columbia, and the Sportsman: Counter-Identities in the Post-Revolutionary U. S." 2005.

Oct. 26 – Poststructuralism & Postmodernism

The Faradays:

Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol 1: An Introduction (1979; New York: Vintage Books, 1990).

The Mollys:

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," from Structural Anthropology (London: Allen Lane, 1958).

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/levistra.htm

Roland Barthes, "Introduction," from Elements of Semiology (New York: Hill & Wang, 1964).

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/barthes.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.

Jacques Derrida, "Linguistics and Grammatology," from Of Grammatology (1967; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).

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

Helpful additional readings at: http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/postmodern.html and

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. 2 – Emergent Cultural Studies

All read:

Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms," in Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, & Sherry B. Ortner, eds., Culture/ Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 520-38.

Idem., "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.

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.

Douglas Kellner, "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies"

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalmarxism.pdf

See also, http://theory.eserver.org/

Transitioners (from BCS):

Homi K. Bhabha, "The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: The Question of Agency," in Simon During, ed., The Cultural Studies Reader (1993; London: Routledge, 2nd ed., 2000), pp. 189-208.

The Mollys:

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.

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. 9 – Feminisms

The Mollys:

Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands LaFrontera. The New Mestiza (1987; San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 3rd edition, 2007).

The Faradays:

Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1977), pp. 44-79.

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.

SPECIAL NOTE -- For the final weeks, please think about, in addition to content, the following 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. 16 -- (Re)Theorizing Race & Ethnicity

The Faradays:

Michael Omi & Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the U.S. (1986; New York: Routledge, 2nd ed., 1994).

The Mollys:

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.

Eric Lott, "White Like Me," in Amy Kaplan & Donald Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 474-95.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "The blackness of blackness: a critique of the sign and the Signifying Monkey," in Black Literature and Literary Theory (1984; London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 285-321.

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.

Shifra M. Goldman, "The iconography of Chicano Self-determination: Race, ethnicity, and class," Art Journal 49 (Summer 1990):167-73.

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. 23 -- (Re)Theorizing Gender & Sexuality

The Mollys:

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990; London: Routledge, 1999).

The Faradays:

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

Idem., "Deconstructing Equality-Versus Difference: Or, The Uses of Postructuralist Theory For Feminism," Feminist Studies, 14 (Spring 1988), pp. 33-50.

Elizabeth L. Kennedy & Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold. The History of a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 29-66.

Audre Lorde, "The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power," in Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, & David M. Halperin, eds., The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 339-43.

Gail Bederman & Catharine R. Stimpson, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 1-44.

Kevin J. Mumford, "Homosex Changes: Race, Cultural Geography and the Emergence of the Gay" (1996) -- in Maddox, ed.

Suzanna Danuta Walters, "From Here to Queer: Radical Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Lesbian Menace . . .", Signs (Summer 1996):830-69.

Nov. 30 -- (Re)Theorizing Class & Culture

The Faradays:

Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts. On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).

The Mollys:

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (1979; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 1-7, 97-124, 169-75, 230-59.

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

Paul Groth, "Frameworks for Cultural Landscape Study," in Paul Groth & Todd Bressi, eds., Understanding Ordinary Landscapes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 1-21.

Robin D. G. Kelley, “’We Are Not What We Seem’: Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South,” Journal of American History 80 (June 1993):75-112.

Cheryl J. LaRoche & Michael L. Blakey, "Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground," Historical Archaeology 31 (3):84-106.

Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988), pp. 171-242.

Maura I. Toro-Morn, "Gender, Class, Family, and Migration: Puerto Rican Women in Chicago," Gender and Society 9 (Dec. 1995): 712-26.

Recommended:

Sean Wilentz, "Artisan Republican Festivals and the Rise of Class Conflict in New York City, 1788-1837," in Michael H. Frisch & Daniel J. Walkowitz, eds., Working-Class America: Essays on Labor, Community, and American Society (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), pp. 37-77.

Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 1-42.

Dec. 7 -- Recap, Remaining Questions, Sharing

Additional notes on readings:

Two supplementary texts that you may wish to read are: Steven Seidman, Contested Knowledge. Social Theory Today (Boston: Blackwell Publishing, 4th edition, 2008) and Madan Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism & Postmodernism (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993). There are many other overviews of social and cultural theories as well.

In addition to the citations on this syllabus, a helpful website, with many links, is TV Reed’s "Theory and Method in American/Cultural Studies: A Bibliographic Essay" -- http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~amerstu/tm/bib.html

Course Requirements:

1. Lead one week's discussion (exploration of main points, critique, raising significant questions) of the readings. I encourage you to provide an introduction to the session, but, please, no lectures! (20%)

2. Summaries, critiques, commentaries -- this requirement (30% of final grade) has two parts:

A. Four book critiques (to include brief summary of main points) using the template uploaded to our course website. These should be uploaded at least a full day before the discussion of the book.

B. Each student will serve as the recorder, summarizer, and commentator on a class discussion. You should aim to produce a written record of major points, debates, significant questions asked, methodologies, etc. -- both within the class and among authors -- and end with an attempt to "make sense" of the session. This, too, should be uploaded by the Friday after a given class.

3. Weekly, insightful participation in and contribution to the discussions, based on your weekly readings. (20%)

4. A final synthetic essay that focuses on ways in which/how/why the theoretical perspectives and methodologies we discuss might bear on your research interests. Consequently, from day 1, consider what might be relevant, useful, helpful, etc. from a given week's readings, as well as what likely will not be relevant, etc. (30%, 12-15 pages, minimum; due 12/14/09)