Current Approaches to American Studies: Course Calendar

The Course Calendar

[ description \| requirements \| readings \| calendar \| grading ]

# denotes item on reserve at McKeldin Library. * denotes items available in the AMST graduate student lounge for borrowing to photocopy.
DATE	TOPIC	ASSIGNMENT
Feb. 9	Course Introduction	READING: "Disturbing the Peace: What Happens to American Studies if you put African American Studies at the Center?" AQ 50 (Mar. 1998): 1-23 (mailed out to everyone preregistered).
PART I. BUILDING BLOCKS
Feb. 9	A Primer on Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism	READINGS: # Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse (Belknap, 1995), chs. 1 and 2; Robert Silhol, "Portrait of an Ideal Critic"; Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics, (Univ. California, 1977), chs. 1 and 2; Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, "In Search of the Postmodern," in Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations (Guilford, 1991), pp. 1-33; Joan W. Scott, "Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: Or, The Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism," Feminist Studies 14 (Spring 1988): 33-50; George Lipsitz, "Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and American Studies," AQ 42 (Dec. 1990).
Feb. 16	Theories of Racial Formation	READINGS: #Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (Routledge, 1994, 2nd Edit.)); Barbara Fields, "Ideology and Race in American History," in J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, eds., Region, Race, and Reconstruction (Oxford, 1982), pp. 143-177; Bonnie Thornton Dill, "Our Mothers' Grief: Racial-Ethnic Women and the Maintenance of Families," in Margaret L. Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins, eds., Race, Class, and Gender (Wadsworth, 1992), pp. 215-238; Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, "Color Blindness, History, and the Law," in Wahneema Lubiano, ed., The House that Race Built (New York: Vintage, 1998), pp. 280-288; Rhonda M. Williams and Carla L. Peterson, "The Color of Memory: Interpreting Twentieth Century U.S. Social Policy From a Nineteenth Century Perspective," Feminist Studies 24 (Spring 1998): 7-25.
Feb. 23	Post-Colonial Studies	READINGS: #Edward W. Said, Orientalism, (Vintage, 1979), Intro, Ch. 1 (Parts I-IV), Ch. 3 (Part IV); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (Verso, 1983, 1991), Ch. 1, p. 36, Chs. 3, 8; Frances R. Aparicio and Susana Chavez-Silverman, "Introduction," Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad (Univ. Press of New England, 1997), pp. 1-17; *Amy Kaplan, "'Left Alone With America': The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture," in Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism (Duke, 1993), pp. 3-21.
March 2	Border Studies	READINGS: Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands, La Frontera (Aunt Lute Books, 1987), read entire prose section and sample poetry; #Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (Beacon, 1993), entire; Donald Weber, "From Limen to Border: A Meditation on the Legacy of Victor Turner for American Cultural Studies," AQ 47 (Sept. 1995): 525-536. ASSIGNMENT DUE: Basic Class Webpage*
PART II: TOOLS AND PERSPECTIVES
March 3	bell hooks lecture, 4:30 p.m., Title and Place TBA
March 9	Transnationalism and a George Lipsitz Sampler	READINGS: #Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Politics, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Gordon & Breach 1994), Chs. 1 and 2; George Lipsitz, "Consumer Spending and State Project," in Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt, Getting and Spending (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 127-147; George Lipsitz, "Diasporic Noise: History, Hip Hop, and the Postcolonial Politics of Sound," Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism, and the Poetics of Place. (Verso, 1994), pp. 24-48; George Lipsitz, "Facing Up to What's Killing Us: Artistic Practice and Grassroots Social Theory" in Eliz. Long, ed., From Sociology to Cultural Studies: New Perspectives (Blackwell), pp. 234-257; George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness (Temple, 1998), Intro, Chs. 6 and 9; *Tricia Rose, "Orality and Technology: Rap Music and Afro-American Cultural Resistance," Popular Music and Society 13 (Winter 1989): 35-44.
March 11	Henry Louis Gates, Jr., lecture, 4:30 p.m., Title and Place TBA
March 16	Identity and Difference	READINGS: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Signifying Monkey (Oxford, 1988), Intro and Ch. 2; bell hooks, "Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination," "Challenging Sexism in Black Life," and "Revolutionary Feminism: An Anti-Racist Agenda," in Killing Rage, (Henry Holt, 1995), pp. 31-50, 62-76, 98-107; Marie Anna Jaimes Guerrero, "Civil Rights versus Sovereignty: Native American Women in Life and Land Struggles," in M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Mohanty, eds., Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (Routledge, 1997), pp. 101-121; Sonia Saldivar-Hull, "Feminism on the Border: From Gender Politics to Geopolitics," in Hector Calderon and Jose David Saldivar, eds., Criticism in the Borderlands (Duke, 1991), pp. 203-220; *James Clifford, "Identity in Mashpee," in The Predicament of Culture (Harvard, 1988), pp. 277-346.
March 23	SPRING BREAK
March 30	The Possessive Investment in Whiteness	READINGS: George Lipsitz, Possessive Investment in Whiteness (Temple, 1998), Chs. 1 and 2; bell hooks, "Killing Rage," in Killing Rage (Henry Holt, 1995), pp. 8-20; Richard Dyer, White (Routledge, 1997), Chs. 1-2; James Baldwin, "White Man's Guilt," in David Roediger, ed., Black on White (Shocken, 1998), pp. 320-325. ASSIGNMENT: Annotated Bibliography of Websites pertinent to your syllabus topic--mounted on your Webpage.
April 6	Queer Theory	READINGS: Steven Seidman, "Identity and Politics in a 'Postmodern' Gay Culture: Some Historical and Conceptual Notes," and Phillip Brian Harper, "Eloquence and Epitaph: Black Nationalism and the Homophobic Impulse in Responses to the Death of Max Robinson," in Michael Warner, ed., Fear of a Queer Planet (Univ. of Minnesota, 1993), pp. 105-142, 239-263; Judith Butler, "Critically Queer," in Bodies That Matter, pp. 223-242; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Epistemology of the Closet," in Abelove, Barale and Halperin, eds., The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (Routledge), pp. 45-61; Lisa Duggan, "Queering the State," Social Text 39 (Summer 1994): 1-14; Donna Penn, "Queer Theorizing Politics and History," Radical History Review 62 (Spring 1995): 24-42; *Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, "What Does Queer Theory Teach Us About X?" PMLA 110 (May 1995): 343-349.
April 13	Globalization and Internationalization	READINGS: #Basch, Schiller, and Blanc, Nations Unbound, (Gordon and Breach, 1994), Chs. 5-8; Fredric Jameson, "Notes on Globalization as a Philosophical Issue," in Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, eds., The Cultures of Globalization (Duke, 1998), pp. 54-77; Jane C. Desmond and Virginia R. Dominguez, "Resituating American Studies in a Critical Internationalism," AQ 48 (Sept. 1996): 475-490; *Aihwa Ong, "The Gender and Labor Politics of Postmodernity," in Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd, eds., The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital (Duke, 1997), pp. 61-97.
PART III: APPLICATIONS AND COMPLICATIONS
April 20	Complicating Identity	READINGSS: #Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Univ. Minnesota, 1993; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, "African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race," Signs 17 (1992); Rhonda M. Williams, "Living at the Crossroads: Explorations in Race, Nationality, Sexuality, and Gender," in Lubiano, ed., The House that Race Built (Vintage, 1998), pp. 136-156; Elsa Barkley Brown, "Womanist Consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the Independent Order of Saint Luke," Signs 14 (Spring 1989): 610-633; Kevin J. Mumford, "Homosex Changes: Race, Cultural Geography, and the Emergence of the Gay," AQ 48 (Sept. 1996): 395-414.
April 27	Advocacy in American Studies	READINGS: Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! (Beacon, 1997), Chs. 1 and 2; Angela Y. Davis, "Race and Criminalization: Black Americans and the Punishment Industry," in Lubiano, The House that Race Built (Vintage, 1998), pp. 264-279; Angela Y. Davis, "Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex," Color Lines; Patricia McConnel, "Creativity Held Captive," in Guidebook for Artists Working in Prisons (Utah Art Council, 1994), pp. 1-20; Eric Bates, "Private Prisons," The Nation (Jan. 5, 1998); feature article on Prisons, City Paper (1998). ASSIGNMENT DUE: Annotated Bibliography of Five Key Sources for your Syllabus Project--mounted on your Webpage.*
May 4	Paradoxes of Modern Cultural Identity(s)	READING: #Chris Wilson, The Myth of Santa Fe (University of New Mexico, 1997)
March 6	Janice Radway lecture, 3 p.m. (title and place TBA)
May 11	Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity	READINGS: #Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Duke, 1996); Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., "Representing Multiple Viewpoints and Voices," in Beyond the Great Story, Ch. 7; Chela Sandoval, "U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World," Genders 10 (Spring 1991): 1-24.
May 18	Beyond Black and White	READING: #Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Univ. California Press, 1997). ASSIGNMENT DUE: Final Course Syllabus--mounted on your Webpage:
May 21	FINAL DUE DATE for Syllabus Project (please turn in hard copies of syllabus and accompanying essay--by 4 pm)

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