BTAN33001BA-K3, BTANL33001 & BTAN1070MA:
INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN STUDIES
BA 3RD YEAR AMERICAN TRACK AND TEACHER TRAINING MA
Time: TUE 14-16
Place: Lecture Hall II
Tutor: Tibor Glant
Office hours: MON 13-14 & TUE 16-17, and by appointment (120/2; ext. 22507;
tglant@unideb.hu)
DESCRIPTION OF COURSE
These lectures offer a general overview of the most significant aspects, general and specific, of
American culture and provide a conceptual as well as theoretical framework for further study and
research. Topics for discussion include: the concept and major areas of American Studies as a
field of inquiry, questions of inter-and multi-disciplinarity and methodology; institutional history:
major “paradigm moments” shaped by the double forces of social change and change in theory;
major themes in American cultural history; cultural stability; American beliefs and values, myths
and ideologies; the multicultural challenge in America past and present; regionalism; American
religions; women in US history; legal and illegal immigration, and so on. These lectures also
introduce alternative approaches to the “single culture” approach by expanding the scope of
inquiry to include issues of ethnicity, race, gender, class, region, religion and ideology. Video
materials will be used extensively to illustrate certain key ideas and points.
Please note that this course is also taught in the English Teaching MA and in the part-time BA
programs under different course codes.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
The course ends with an exam in the winter examination period. Exam dates will be agreed upon
in the second half of the course. Please note that the video materials, lecture notes, and
powerpoints used in class will also be part of the exam. Should you miss any class it is your
responsibility to get hold of, and watch, the related videos. Please note that this course lays the
foundation for subsequent American Studies courses (especially in the Masters program) and will
be treated accordingly. It is strongly recommended that you read the assigned texts for the
individual lectures.
RULES OF THE GAME
The course ends in a written exam offered on three separate occasions in the exam period. It
opens with a text recognition test and if you fail it, you fail the whole exam. Anyone using
wikipedia materials will automatically be failed (esp. on accounts of race and folklore). Please
note that the course has been reworked (cf. 2012) with new topics and readings introduced.
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
Week 1 (SEP 16): Orientation and introduction.
Week 2 (SEP 23): American Studies: prevailing models and directions: the paradigm shifts;
methodology; inter-disciplinarity and multi-disciplinarity in AS; history of AS
Week 3 (SEP 30): American Studies in Hungary: pre-AS studies of the US, AS programs in
Hungary; the legacy of Professor László Országh. AS in Hungary, Hungarian Studies in the
USA.
Week 4 (OCT 07): Key American values, icons, myths, and ideologies: values, social norms,
institutions; belief systems: myths and ideologies of American uniqueness, destiny and identity;
ethnocentrism. The myth structure in American culture: major social myths; key American icons.
Week 5 (OCT 14): Negotiating Democracy: democracy as a negotiated process, the American
tradition of social and political protest; Lakoff and framing; case study: the Vietnam War
Week 6 (OCT 21): Sources of Conflict: race, ethnicity, class, gender: Unity vs. diversity; or,
centripetal and/vs. centrifugal forces in American culture; the ethnic, racial and class composition
of American society: from the melting pot through cultural pluralism to the boiling pot; concepts
and varieties of a “core” America; Affirmative Action, Political Correctness.
Week 7 (OCT 27-31): reading week, no classes
Week 8 (NOV 04): guest lecture or TBD
Week 9 (NOV 11): Women in American Society and the Sex Debates: the historical role of
women in American society; sexual revolutions; LGBTQ in the US and Hungary; the sexual
counterrevolution.
Week 10 (NOV 18): Religion and Civil Religion in the US: the religious nature of American
culture, the role of religion in American history: the three Great Awakenings and the matter of
church and state; Material Christianity and the American Jesus
Week 11 (NOV 25): American folklore: what is AMERICAN about American folklore; oral,
customary, and material folklore in the US: made in the USA or imported?
Week 12 (DEC 02): Legal and Illegal Immigration: migration and immigration, conceptual
and legal framework of immigration, terminological traffic jams, illegal immigration and the
draw factor of the American Dream.
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Week 13 (DEC 09): The American West: as a cultural region, a storehouse of icons, myths of
the American West; folklore and musical traditions, the West in art, especially painting,
photography, and sculpture.
Week 14 (DEC 16): The American South: The Southern Culture of Honor and the Myth of
the South & the Civil War and American Memory: the myth of the South and its Culture of
Honor, music fro the South, as well as the Northern and Southern takes on the Civil War as well
as the way it continues to haunt Americans.
REQUIRED READINGS
Week 2: Cultural Theory website on AS: http://culturalpolitics.net/cultural_theory/genealogy
AND Jane C. Desmond and Virginia R. Dominguez, “Resituating American Studies in a Critical
Internationalism,” American Quarterly 48/3 (1996), 475-90. AND Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
The Disuniting of America. Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York and London: W.W.
Norton, 1992), 9-20, 119-138.
Week 3: Abádi-Nagy, Zoltán. “Anglisztika-amerikanisztika a mai Magyarországon,” in Tibor
Frank and Krisztina Károly, eds. Anglisztika és Amerikanisztika. Magyar kutatások az
ezredfordulón (Budapest: Tinta Könyvkiadó, 2009), 13-31. Virágos, Zsolt, ed., Országh László
válogatott írásai (Debrecen: Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó, 2007), 15-46. AND Glant, “Travel
Writing as a Substitute for American Studies in Hungary” HJEAS 16/1-2 (2010), 171-184; and
Amerika, a csodák és csalódások földje (Debrecen: Debreceni Egyetemi kiadó, 2013), 141-171.
Week 4: US myths handout (word document in course packet)
Week 5: Protest tradition, Winter Soldier; Irwin and Debi Unger, eds., The Times Were A’ Changin’.
The Sixties Reader (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998), chapter 10 AND Lakoff, Don’t Think of an
Elephant! (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea/Green Publishing Co., 2004), Chapter 1.
Week 6:
Paul Fussell, Class. A Guide Through the American Status System (New York: Touchstone,
1992): Chapter 2: “An Anatomy of the Classes,” 24-50. AND Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S.
Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale UP, 1987), Chapter 3.
Week 8: TBA
Week 9: Unger, Times Were A’ Changin’, chapter 7. AND Glant, “Against All Odds: Vira B.
Whitehouse and Rosika Schwimmer in Switzerland, 1918,” in American Studies International
XL/1 (2002), 34-51. Recommended website:
http://digital.mtsu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/women
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Week 10: Robert J. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America” YR2 AmCiv readings, Text: J1 AND
Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 3-16, 291-303.
Week 11: Jan Harold Brunvand, The Study of American Folklore. 4th ed. (New York and London:
W.W. Norton, 1998), 3-47, 114-121, 136-154, 345-367, 390-394, 405-435.
Week 12: Justin Akers Chacon and Mike Davis, No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State
Violence on the U.S.-Mexican Border (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006), 191-225, 287-93.
Week 13: Catherine Gouge, “The American Frontier: History, Rhetoric, Concept,” Americana
6/1 (2007) at: http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/spring_2007/gouge.htm
AND Steiner, Michael. “From Frontier to Region: Frederick Jackson Turner and the New
Western History,” Pacific Historical Review 64/4 (1995), 479-501.
Week 14: Will Kaufman, The Civil War in American Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2006), chapters 3, 4, and 7.
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