AMST  630                                                Fall 2005

 

Seminar in American Studies: 
Popular Culture

 

 

Nancy L. Struna

Office:  2103 Holzapfel

Phone, 301-405-1357

Email: nlstruna@umd.edu

 

Office hours: Tu, 1:30-3:50 & by appointment

 

 

Course Description:

 

            In many ways, this seminar is a hybrid.  The topic, popular culture, has drawn scholars from many fields and embraces multiple practices, many of which have literatures so extensive that each could be the subject of a specific course.  The way I have structured the course is also a hybrid; it combines communal readings with the opportunity for original individual research.  Finally, the cultural studies approach evident in the selected readings and subtopics is itself a hybrid theoretical construction that draws from both poststructuralism and cultural/historical materialisms.

 

            The assigned readings are intended to link theory and research and to provoke ideas and possibilities.  Each seminar member will also contribute a research article or chapter or two from which her/his research interests build, so that we all are better able to assist in the construction of each otherÕs research project.  All of us will also engage fully in what I hope will become an intellectual community, and you will complete an original piece of research suitable for a thesis/dissertation chapter or an article with the potential for publication.

 

 

 

Course Schedule:

 

Sept. 1 – Introductions

 

Sept. 8 -– Possibilities:  So What Is Popular Culture?

Read:

Peter Burke, ÒThe Discovery of the People,Ó in Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York:  Harper & Row, 1978), pp. 3-22.

Lawrence Levine, et. al., AHR Forum, ÒThe Folklore of Industrial Society:  Popular Culture and Its Audiences,Ó American Historical Review 97(December 1992):1369-1430.

            Stuart Hall, ÒNotes on Deconstructing the Popular,Ó in Raphael Samuel, ed., PeopleÕs History and Socialist Theory (London:  Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 227-40.

            Jane S. Becker, ÒIntroductionÓ & ÒThe Domestication of Tradition,Ó in Selling Tradition.  Appalachia and the Construction of An American Folk, 1930-1940 (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 1-40.

            Kevin Glynn, ÒThe Genealogy of Tabloid Television,Ó in Tabloid Culture.  Trash Taste, Popular Power and the Transformation of American Television (Durham, NC:  Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 1-45.

            George Lipsitz, ÒDiasporic Noise. . .Ó & ÒÕThe Shortest Way ThroughÕ. ..,Ó in Dangerous Crossroads.  Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place (London:  Verso, 1997), pp. 24-68. 

            Juan Flores, ÒIntroductionÓ & ÒÕpueblo puebloÕ,Ó in From Bomba to Hip-Hop.  Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity (New York:  Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 7-29.

 

 

Sept. 15 – Theorizing Cultural Production, I

         Read:

            Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (New York:  Columbia University Press, 1993).         

            Raymond Williams, The Sociology of Culture (1981; Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1995).

 

 

Sept. 22 – Theorizing Cultural Production, II

 Assignment:  Review either/both of last weeks works in light of our class discussion of them and then work through what you consider to be significant implications for your own project.  Come prepared to discuss these implications in class

 

 

Sept. 27 – Constructing Identities

Read:   

Juan Flores, From Bomba to Hip Hop.  Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity (NY:  Columbia University Press, 2000)           OR

Imani Perry, Prophets of the Hood:  Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (Durham, NC:  Duke University Press, 2004)

                       

             Articles from seminar members

 

             Initial research proposal with tentative bibliography due.

Oct. 6  -- Power & Politics

Read: 

            Herman S. Gray, Cultural Moves.  African Americans and the Politics of Representations (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2005).                   OR

            Sharon Zukin, Point of Purchase.  How Shopping Changed American Culture (NY:  Routledge, 2004).

           

             Articles from seminar members

 

 

Oct. 13 –- Trauma, Contesting Identities, & National Memory

Read:

Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories. The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

 

Articles from seminar members

 

Research update due.

 

 

Oct. 20 –- Articles from seminar members

 

 

Oct. 27 –- Student research

 

Nov. 3 -- Student research

 

Nov. 10 –- Student research

 

Nov. 17 –- Student research

Email progress report by this date.

 

Nov. 24 -– Thanksgiving

 

Dec. 1 – Presentations & comments

 

Dec. 8 – Presentations & comments

 

Dec. 15 – Presentations & comments

 

 

 

Course Requirements:

 

1.  Weekly, insightful participation in the discussions (30% of course grade).

2.  Provide a written and oral comment/critique of another studentÕs research project (10%).

3.  Complete a relatively Òmature draftÓ of a potentially publishable scholarly article or a dissertation/thesis chapter (c. 25-35 pages, typed, double-spaced, footnotes or endnotes; due January 26, 2006; 60%).