American Icons
An Interdisciplinary Exploration of What America Means
Instructor: Bryant Simon
Office/Office Hours: Gladfelter 949; Thursday, 11AM-1PM
Contact Info: 1-2429; brysimon@templee.du
Course Description: This course looks at American Icons – the images, figures, and institutions that
represent American life and the fundamental ideas, myths, and contradictions association with the
nation.
Basic Course Questions:
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What is an icon?
How does something become an icon?
What power does an icon have?
How do icons – particular icons -- circulate?
What are the dominant or mainstream readings of an icon? How do icons generate
alternative readings/
How does the meaning of an icon change throughout history?
Requirements:
Course Schedule:
Week 1. Introduction American Icons and Iconicity
Jan. 17 – Introduction to the Syllabus
Jan. 19 – Some Intro Reading
Reading: Bruce Kuklick, “Myth and Symbol in American Studies”
Mark Kamp, From Christ to Coke: How Image Become Icon
Week 2. What American Means to Me
Jan. 24 – Thinking about the Idea of America – Itself an Icon
Assignment – In class writing. Write for five minutes on what America Means to Me.
Jan. 26 – Exporting our Ideas
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Assignment: You will need to communicate to students at the University of East Anglia, who will
also be taking a class on American Icons, “What America Means to Me.” To do this, you will need
to make a video postcard of an iconic image or place or thing (maybe the Liberty Bell or graffiti)
that represents how you see the US. You can do this on your phone or a camera with or without
voices or with PowerPoint. These will need to posted on the course web-site on wordpress.
Week 3. The Shining City on the Hill
Jan. 31 – Winthrop and the Notion of American Exceptionalism
Quote: http://www.bartleby.com/73/1611.html
Feb. 2 – Deploying the Notion
Sarah Palin and Winhrop: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-bacevich/sarah-palinand-john-wint_b_131700.html
Reagan:
http://www.originofnations.org/books,%20papers/quotes%20etc/Reagan_The%20Shining%2
0City%20Upon%20A%20Hill%20speech.htm
Week 3. - Statue of Liberty
Themes: Rights and natural rights, success narrative, individualism, immigration, and innocence.
Feb. 7 – Thinking about the Meaning of the Statue of Liberty
Readings:
1. Kathy Evertz, “Statue of Liberty” in Encyclopeida of American Studies available through the TU
Library electronically
2. Bernard Dard, “Liberty as Image and Icon” in The Statue of Liberty Revisited
Feb. 9 – Representing and Contesting Lady Liberty
Assignment: Find “alternative” – you define this -- representation of the Statute of Liberty. Post it
on Word Press
Week 4. Rocky – The Myth of America
Themes: Class, Classlessness, Mobility, Hard Work, and Masculinity, Race
Feb. 14 – Philly Style
Assignment: Watch Rocky I
Feb. 16 – Unpacking Rocky
Reading:
1 "'Rocky'" The New York Times. November 1, 1976.
2. Daniel Leab, “The Blue Collar Ethnic In Bicentennial America: Rocky,” from Hollywood’s
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America
Assignment: Blog on wordpress site about the movie and about how it represents Philly and what
Philly means. (Suggestion – go to the Art Museum and watch and think about people running up
the steps.)
Week 5. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Themes: Innocence, Redemption, Politics, and Myth of Equal Participation
Feb. 21 – Examine the Rockwell Image
Assignment – Study Rockwell
Feb. 23 – Mr. Smith
Watching: View Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Read: Rosales, Jean. DC Goes To The Movies: A Unique Guide To The Reel Washington.
Week 6. Sitting Bull
Themes: Native Americans, West, imperialism
Feb. 28 – Wild West Shows (What is the meaning of the West to the rest of the Nation?)
readings:
1. L. G. Moses, Wild West shows and the images of American Indians, 1883-1933, chapter 2
(Albuquerque, NM : University of New Mexico Press 1996)
2. Joy S. Kasson, Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History chapter 5:
‘American Indian Performers in the Wild West’
Watch: Thomas Edison’s footage of the Wild West Shows on Youtube: http://tinyurl.com/6l5zyry
Feb. 23 – Sitting Bull
3. Excerpt from RM Utley, Sitting Bull: The Life and Times of an American Patriot
Find, post, and annotate an image of Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill photo - William Notman
Week 7. Route 66
themes: Freedom, mobility, space, frontier, travel, automobiles, road trip, individualism, escape,
westward expansion / eastward expansion
Feb. 28 – The Road in American Life
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readings:
1. Andrew F. Wood (2010): “Two Roads Diverge: Route 66, “Route 66,” and the Mediation of
American Ruin,” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 27:1, 67-83
2.Roy Eyerman and Orver Lofgren, ”Romancing the Road: Road Movies and Images of Mobility,”
Theory, Culture, Society (1995) 12:5
Viewing: Flickr route 66 photo pool. http://tinyurl.com/68vdjek
Also, images in Michael Karl Witzel, Gyvel Young-Witzel, Legendary Route 66: A Journey
Through Time Along America's Mother Road (Voyageur Press, 2007). See p 220 onwards.
http://tinyurl.com/6h68gqw
March 1 – Find a Representation of the Road in American Life.
Assignment – Find this image or film clip – is the road a place of freedom or a trap? How does this
speak to the larger promise of America?
Possible examples – Bob Hope movies, Easy Rider, On The Road, Thelma and Louise, Bob
Seeger, “Turn the Page,” Jackson Brown, “The Road”
Week 8-9 Disneyland and Mapping America
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themes: community, belonging, nostalgia utopianism, and anti urbanism,
March 13 – Learning about America from Disneyland
readings:
1) Marling, Karal Ann. “Disneyland, 1955: Just Take the Santa Ana Freeway to the American
Dream.” American Art 5:1-2 (1991):169-207.
2) Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere, pp. 185-187 [on the image of American small town];
218-222 [on Disney’s Main Street U.S.A.]
3) Goldberger, Paul. “Mickey Mouse Teaches the Architects.” New York Times Magazine, 22
October 1972, 40-41, 92-99.
4) George Lipsitz, “The Making of Disneyland”
March 15 – Talk about the Assignment
Assignment:
GROUP ASSIGNMENT: Create an alternative Disneyland (THIS IS FROM THE UNC-Sydney
Project)
Disneyland was both a personal and a corporate vision of ”lands” or zones of
amusement that spoke to the desires and values of its anticipated visitors.
Your assignment is to create an alternative Disneyland with its own distinctive lands or
entertainment zones.
What do we mean by alternative? It might be alternative in terms of region, historical moment,
anticipated visitors, values—or a combination of these. For example, you might imagine a
Disneyland shaped by a different regional culture (the American south or southwest or a
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northeastern city), or the experiences of a different group (African Americans, Italian Americans,
Japanese Americans, LBGT Americans) or reflecting a different historical moment (such as now),
located and related to a different place within or outside the United States.
Each group must create a map of the location and layout of its Disneyland, and explain their design
and spatial organization. This will involve developing themed lands, rides & a script for one of
those attractions or rides, events, souvenirs and food. (Historical maps, guidebooks, past attractions
and rides, and scripts for rides, are all available online)
Week 9. Disneyland Part II
March 20 – Disneyland Group Work in Class
March 22 – Presentations of Disney Maps
Week 10. Barbie
themes: gender, body, consumption, multiculturalism, performativity, race, childhood & innocence,
and global commerce
March 27 – Thinking about Barbie
1. Reading: M.G. Lord, Forever Barbie, pp. 6-10 [situates Barbie as an icon and provides vey
brief history]
2. Marc Levinson, The Box, pp. 264-267 [globalization and its implications for understandings
of America and American icons]
March 29 – Alternative Barbies
Readings:
1. Erica Rand, Barbie’s Queer Accessories, pp. 65-78 [placing the “diversification” of Barbie
against the backdrop of Mattel’s exploited multinational labor force.]
3. Inderpal Grewal, “Traveling Barbie,” pp. 806-810 [also on Mattel and globalization, but
more theoretically challenging]
4. Erica Rand, Barbie’s Queer Accessories, pp. 151-155 [on the potential of appropriating
Barbie; uses explicit comparison to other icons like the American flag. For an extended
analysis of queer, ACT-UP style appropriations of Barbie and Ken, use pp. 151-162]
text/media: From Forbes Magazine “Barbie-Inspired Art” and “In Pictures: Barbie Art,” with
particular discussion of Warhol’s images of Barbie, Marilyn Monroe, and Jackie
Week 10 -- McDonald’s
Themes: fast food nation, freedom, informality, glocal, export, export of obesity,
April 3 – The Making of an Icon
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1. George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society (a theory about
McDonald’s and its impact)
2. Short History of McDonald’s
April 5 – Traveling Icons
2. James Watson, Golden Arches East, essay on china
4. Greg Crister, Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, chapter two,
“Supersize Me”
text/media:
Assignment: Think about Golden Arches East. Use newspaper sources, on-line sources, scholarly
articles, and develop an idea of currency. How is McDonald’s used and understood in one part of
the world or even one part of the US? Represent your thoughts in an essay or a PowerPoint or a
poem or song?
[Critique an image of McDonald’s Definitions, Urban Dictionary.com
Powerpoint – Images of McDonald’s Around the World
Morgan Spurlock, Super-Size Me
]
Week 13. Mohammed Ali
themes: black nationalism, ~& critique body, black violence, war and anti war, nation of Islam,
sport as export, institutionalisation of icons
April 5 – Thinking about Race and Sports
readings: See an overview of race and sports in America,
http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/davis-on-race-and-sports-in-america.html
David Wiggins, "The Notion of Double Consciousness"
April 7 – Thinking about Ali
2. David Remnick, on ALI from New Yorker
3. “The Thoughts of Muhammad Ali in Exile, c. 1976
4. Clips from “When We Were Kings”
Week 13– The Western
April 12 -Guest Lecture: Lauric Guillaud, University of Angers
Students Projects – Think here of Sitting Bull, Route 66, and Disney.
April 14 –
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Pick one of the following films: Winchester '73 (for masculinity), High Noon (for the anticommunism allegory), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (for the Western myth), McCabe and
Mrs. Miller (prostitution, gambling), My Darling Clementine (vigilantism), Stagecoach (the outlaw
anti-hero), They Died With Their Boots On (made on the eve of US entry into WWII, for wartime
sacrifice).
Readings: (these are for now placeholders):
3. “Frontier and Folk Heroes,” in Encylopedia of American Studies
4. Louis Warren, “Buffalo Bill Meets Dracula: William F. Cody, Bram
Stoker, and the Frontiers of Racial Decay,” American Historical Review,
107 (October 2002), 1124-1157.
5. Andrew C. Isenberg, "The Code of the West: Sexuality, Homosociality,
and Wyatt Earp," Western Historical Quarterly, 40 (Summer 2009), 139157.
Week 14 . Elvis – Death of a Dream
Themes Graceland as dream object, consumable object, American dream / corrupted, race,
appropriation / adaptation, freedom, rebellion, work / not working, trap, celebrity & commodity
waht happens to a dream
April 19 – Thinking about Elvis
Reading:
Erkia Doss, Elvis Culture
Rock and Roll Illustrated History of Rock and Roll
“Elvis Presley and Racism,” http://www.elvis.com.au/presley/elvis_not_racist.shtml
April 21 –
Listen: Gillian Welch, “Elvis Presley Blues,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FM8ui2ByUI
Warren Zevon, “Porcelain Monkey,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NyMfZnkLpk
Interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone, November 5-December 10,
1987; Kurt Loder, Rolling Stone, December 6, 1984
text/media: Springsteen on Elvis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FM8ui2ByUI
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