| [ description | requirements | readings | calendar | grading ] |
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| DATE | TOPIC | ASSIGNMENT |
|---|---|---|
| Jan. 28 | Course Introduction | READING:
*Mary Helen Washington, "Disturbing the Peace: What Happens to American Studies if you put African American Studies at the Center?"; AQ 50 (Mar. 1998): 1-23; *Audre Lorde, "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference," in Margaret Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins, eds., Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology (Wadsworth Publishing Co, 1992), 495-502. |
| PART I. BUILDING BLOCKS |
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| Feb. 4 | A Primer on Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism | READINGS:
*Toni Morrison, "Nobel Lecture," (Dec. 7, 1993); *Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (University of California Press, 1977), chs.1 and 2; Michel Foucault, "Truth and Judicial Forms," (1974), excerpt, http://foucault.info/documents/foucault.truthAndJudicialForms.en.html; Fredric Jameson "Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," (1991) http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm; *Craig Calhoun, "Habermas and the Public Sphere," in Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (MIT, 1992), 1-48; *Nancy Fraser, "Politics, Culture, and the Public Sphere: Toward a Postmodern Conception," in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman, eds., Social Postmodernism (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 287-312. Two of: *Robert Silhol, "Portrait of an Ideal Critic" (literary criticism); *Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., "The Challenge of Poetics to (Normal) Historical Practice," Poetics Today 9 (1988): 435-452 (history); *Joan Scott, "Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: Or, The Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism," Feminist Studies 14 (Spring 1988): 33-50 (feminist theory); *George Lipsitz, "Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and American Studies," AQ 42 (Dec. 1990), also in Maddox, ed., Locating American Studies, 310-331 (popular culture); *Steven Seidman, "Identity and Politics in a 'Postmodern' Gay Culture: Some Historical and Conceptual Notes," in Warner, ed., Fear of a Queer Planet (Minnesota, 1993), 105-142 (gay and lesbian studies). |
| Feb. 11 | Theories of Racial Formation | READINGS:
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (Routledge, 1994, 2nd Edit.); Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (Routledge, 2000), chs. 1-2; *W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (Penguin, 1989), chs. 2-3; *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. 18 | Post-Colonial Studies I | READINGS: Edward W. Said, Orientalism, (Vintage, 1979), Intro, Ch. 1 (Parts I-IV), Ch. 3 (Part IV); *Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, (Routledge, 1994), Introduction and Ch. 1; *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. |
| Feb. 25 | Post Colonial Studies II | READINGS:
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (Grove Press, 1967); *Frances R. Aparicio and Susana Chavez-Silverman, "Introduction," Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad (Univ. Press of New England, 1997), pp. 1-17; *Gayatri Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Nelson and Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271-313; * Gloria E. Anzaldua, "Toward a Mestiza Rhetoric," in Interviews/Entrevistas (Routledge, 2000), 251-280. |
| March 3 | Border Studies | READINGS: Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands, La Frontera, (Aunt Lute Books, 1987), read entire prose section and sample poetry; *Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Politics, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Gordon & Breach 1994), Chs. 1, 2; Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts (Duke University Press, 1996), read Chs 1-3 and at least one of the remaining chapters. |
| March 10 | Queer Theory | READINGS: William B. Turner, A Genealogy of Queer Theory (Temple, 2000), Introduction, Ch. 1 and Ch 4; Judith Butler, "Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory, and Psychoanalytic Discourse," in Nicholson, ed., Feminism/Postmodernism (Routledge, 1990), 324-340, and "Critically Queer," in Bodies That Matter, pp. 223-242; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Epistemology of the Closet," in Abelove, et al., The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, 45-61; E. Patrick Johnson, "'Quare' Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know About Queer Studies I Learned From My Grandmother," Text and Performance Quarterly 21 (Jan 2001): 1-25; Suzanna Danuta Walters, "From Here to Queer: Radical Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Lesbian Menace (Or, Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Fag?" Signs 21 (Summer 1996): 830-69. ASSIGNMENT DUE: Basic Class Webpage New Assignment: Wired Bibliography |
| PART II: CLAIMING, CONTESTING, AND COMPLICATING IDENTITY |
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| March 17 | The Possessive Investment in Whiteness | READINGS: David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (Verso, 1999), ch.1; George Lipsitz, Possessive Investment in Whiteness (Temple, 1998), Chs. 1 and 2; Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire (Duke University Press, 1995), ch. 4; 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; Johnella Butler, "Ethnic Studies as a Matrix for the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Common Good," in Butler, ed., Color-Line to Borderlands (University of Washington, 2001): 18-41. Journals Due |
| March 24 | SPRING BREAK | |
| March 31 | Claiming Identity(s) | READINGS: *Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Signifying Monkey (Oxford, 1988), Intro and Chs. 1 and 2; Farah Jasmine Griffin, Who Set You Flowin'? (Oxford, 1995), Intro and Chs 1 and 3; Rosemarie Garland Thompson, "Theorizing Disability," in Extraordinary Bodies (Columbia University Press, 1997): 19-51; David Lionel Smith, "What Is Black Culture?" in Lubiano, ed., The House That Race Built (Vintage, 1998), 178-194. Two of: Toni Morrison, "Home," in Lubiano, ed., The House That Race Built, 3-12; 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; George Chauncey, Gay New York (Basic Books, 1994), Introduction, 1-29; 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 |
| April 7 | Gender Trouble | READINGS: Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, chs. 4-5 or Patricia Hill Collins, Fighting Words: Black Women & the Search for Justice, Part 3; Susan Stanford Friedman, Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter (Princeton, 1998), ch. 1; Chandra Talpade Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," in Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders (Duke, 2003): 17-42; Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization (University of Chicago, 1995), ch 5 and Conclusion. Two of: Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture 7 (1994): 107-146; bell hooks, "Challenging Sexism in Black Life," and "Revolutionary Feminism: An Anti-Racist Agenda," in Killing Rage, (Henry Holt, 1995), pp. 62-76, 98-107; 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. 239-263. ASSIGNMENT: Annotated Bibliography of Websites pertinent to your syllabus topic--mounted on your Webpage. |
| April 14 | Complicating Identity(s) | READINGS: Kandice Chuh, Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique (Duke, 2003); 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; Robin D.G. Kelley, "'We Are Not What We Seem': Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," J.Am.Hist (June 1993): 75-112. One of: Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, chs. 10-11; James Clifford, "Identity in Mashpee," in The Predicament of Culture (Harvard, 1988), pp. 277-346; Neil Gotanda, "Tales of Two Judges: Joyce Karlin in People v. Soon Ja Du: Lance Ito in People v. O. J. Simpson," in Wahneema Lubiano, ed., The House that Race Built (New York: Vintage, 1998), 66-86. ASSIGNMENT: Journals Due |
| PART III: ADVOCACY AND ACTION: LOCAL, NATIONAL, GLOBAL |
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| April 21 | Global Politics | READINGS:
Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed (University of Minnesota, 2000); Chandra Talpade Mohanty, "Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism," in Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders (Duke 2003): 43-84; Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, ch. 12. Two of: Angela Davis, "Interview with Lisa Lowe," in Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd, eds., The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital (Duke University Press, 1997): 304-323; 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; 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; T.V. Reed, "Heavy Traffic at the Intersections: Ethnic, American, Women's, Queer, and Cultural Studies," in Butler, ed., Color-Line to Borderlands, 273-292; Chandra Talpade Mohanty, "'Under Western Eyes' Revisited," in Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders, 221-251; Cherrie Moraga, "From Inside the First World, Foreward, 2001," in Moraga and Anzaldua, eds., This Bridge Called My Back, (2002 edit), xv-xxxiii. ASSIGNMENT: Annotated Bibliography of Five Key Sources for your Syllabus Project--mounted on your Webpage. |
| April 28 | 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; Eric Bates, "Private Prisons,"The Nation (Jan. 5, 1998); Paula Park, "Two Dead in Ohio,"City Paper, 17 April 98; Eric Schlosser, The Prison Industrial Complex, Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1998 (be sure to read all three parts); Patricia McConnell, "Sing Soft, Sing Loud," Sing Soft, Sing Loud (Logoria, 1995), 59-71; Manning Marable, "Beyond Racial Identity Politics: Toward a Liberation Theory for Multicultural Democracy," in Beyond Black and White (Verso, 1995): 185-202. |
| May 5 | Fighting Back: Blues Reconstruction | READINGS:
Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! (Beacon, 1997), Ch. 2; Clyde Woods, Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta (Verso, 1998); Stephen Gregory, Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community (Princeton University Press, 1998), chs. 1 and 5; Iris Marion Young, "Political Responsibility and Structural Injustice," (Kansas, 2003). ASSIGNMENT: Journals Due |
| May 12 | Public Intellectuals | READINGS: Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, Freedom Bags (Videorecording, on reserve at NonPrint Media in Hornbake); Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place (MIT, 1995), read Part I and 2 chs from Part II. ASSIGNMENT DUE: Final Course Syllabus--mounted on your Webpage |
| May 19 | FINAL DUE DATE for Syllabus Project (please turn in hard copies of syllabus, accompanying essay, and any remaining journals--by 4 pm) | |