University of Southern California
Master of Liberal Studies Program
Spring 2011, Tuesdays, 6:00 – 8:40 p.m.
3 units
LBST 537: Empire and Social Reform: American Writing, 1890-1917
East Asian Seminar Room DML 110C Doheny Memorial Library
University Professor Kevin Starr
California State Librarian Emeritus
Social Sciences Building (SOS) 175
Tel: (213) 821-2595
E-mail: kstarr@usc.edu
Course Description
In the late 19th and early 20th century, the United States came of age
as a world power. In international affairs, this new status expressed itself
through an expansion of naval power, the acquisition of overseas territories,
and the growing presence of the United States in worldwide diplomacy.
Domestically, this coming of age – this imperial mode – expressed itself in a
note of ascendancy entering American art and architecture, the completion
of a national railroad system, the rise of the American novel, the founding of
universities, museums, and libraries, and a general note of well-being and
enhanced self-regard in the American establishment.
These same years, however, witnessed an epidemic of violent
industrial strikes throughout the nation, the rise of socialism as a domestic
political force, the radicalization of numerous public intellectuals, the rise of
investigative journalism, and calls for reform throughout the system that
coalesced into the Progressive movement. In the Philippines, moreover, the
United States found itself bogged down in an insurgency lasting for nearly a
decade.
This course will explore the dualism of this era through a comparative
reading of important literary and historical texts with radically different
opinions as to the state of American public life, culture, and social justice.
This debate provoked much of the finest writing of this era. At the end of
this debate, moreover, the forces of triumphalism and reform had managed
to coalesce into a new American identity, a Progressively reformed nation
eager for a role on the world stage.
Course Instructor
The instructor holds a PhD in American Literature from Harvard
University and has had experience at various levels of government. Aside
from his scholarly publications, he has functioned as a journalist across forty
years of reportage and commentary.
Course Method
This course will be based on Required and Supplemental Readings. In
addition to class discussions, students will be asked to make at least three
reports on various supplemental titles, which will be agreed upon with the
instructor in advance. Readings will occur in thematic sequences.
Supplemental readings will be available on reserve in the Doheny Memorial
Library.
For the last three meetings, students will read a substantial section of
their research papers for discussion.
Required Reading
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888)
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of the Black Folk (1903)
William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890)
Henry James, The Ambassadors (1903)
Jack London, The Iron Heel (1907)
Frank Norris, The Octopus (1901)
Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Riders (1899)
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905)
Course Requirements (All Non-Required Reading on Reserve at DML)
* Denotes Required Reading
Meeting 1
Urban Prospects
The emergence of New York and Chicago as capital cities of wealth and
culture gave rise at the turn of the century to much speculation as to what
this brave new world of urbanism would bring. As far as New York City was
concerned, William Dean Howells, a Realist, was optimistic. Regarding
Chicago, Theodore Dreiser, a Naturalist, had a more divided opinion, as did
another naturalist, Frank Norris, regarding San Francisco.
*William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890)
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900)
Frank Norris, McTeague (1899)
Meeting 2
Urban Realities
The cities of the United States could be hostile, even brutal, and certainly
unfair places, crushing to the underclass. Even those with better
opportunities could find city life difficult. A photo-journalist, a novelist, a
settlement house director, and a muckraking reformer take a look at the
hardships of urban life.
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890)
Stephen Crane, Maggie, Girl of the Streets (1892)
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910)
Lincoln Steffans, The Shame of the Cities (1904)
Meeting 3
Upper-class Life
The upper classes of the nation were divided among those who knew where
their money came from and enjoyed making it, those who had long since
forgotten where their money came from but enjoyed spending it, and those
deciding what to do with the rest of their lives. Novelists, painters, and
architects found markets and themes in all three groups.
*Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905)
*Henry James, The Ambassadors (1903)
Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899)
John Singer Sargent, Paintings
H. H. Richardson, Architecture
McKim, Mead & White, Architecture
Meeting 4
Imperial Visions
Empire beckoned to the patricianate, civilian and military and combinations
thereof. The Ambassador of Great Britain to the United States, meanwhile,
was doing his best to assess just exactly what the nature of this new
American empire might be.
*Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Riders (1899)
Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon
History (1890)
Lord James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (1888)
Meeting 5
Social Darwinism
Was nature red in tooth and claw, as the English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson
suggested? Did the survival of the fittest of necessity imply the destruction
of the weak? And as far as winners were concerned, was an upper class
really necessary? A Stanford professor said yes. A utopian novelist,
however, had an alternative suggestion. Jack London, meanwhile, was
trying to sort his way through the contradictions.
Jack London, Call of the Wild (1903)
Jack London, The Sea Wolf (1904)
*Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
*Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888)
Meeting 6
Corporations
With some flourish, the modern corporation was announcing its coming of
age. Among other things, it could promise a consumer’s paradise. But at
what cost? Was it fair, asked Frank Norris, that the ranchers be crushed by
Southern Pacific Railroad? And was it fair, asked Ida Tarbell, for oil
companies to subvert the political processes of the nation?
The Montgomery Ward catalog
Frank Norris, The Octopus (1901)
Ida Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company
(1904)
Meeting 7
Radical Rejections
Tell me about! Mother Jones replied. Strikes were being broken by state
militias, and children were being sent to work in factories long before they
were ten years of age. A New York-based radical looked to European
radicalism for the answer. A Southern California-based reporter chronicled
the violence that was already erupting. Jack London, a self-proclaimed
socialist, envisioned a nation under the total control of what would later be
described as the military-industrial complex, followed by a revolt of the
masses.
Mary (Mother) Jones, Autobiography (1925)
Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays (1911)
Louis Adamic, Dynamite (1931)
*Jack London, The Iron Heel (1907)
Meeting 8
Working People
Who were these working people being called upon to rise up in reform, even
revolt? What were their hopes and dreams? Were the odds fatally stacked
against them? And was there any escape? Upton Sinclair and Hamlin
Garland saw no way out? Jack London, himself of working-class origin,
chronicled the escape of a working-class couple from the debilitating
confinements of class.
*Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)
Jack London, The Valley of the Moon (1913)
Hamlin Garland, Main-Traveled Roads (1891)
Frank Norris, McTeague (1899)
Edwin Markham, The Man With a Hoe and Other Poems
(1899)
Meeting 9
Race Matters
Native Americans and African Americans, meanwhile, were in a doubly,
triply, complicated condition, compounded by racial prejudice. A writer from
Amherst, Massachusetts, bravely chronicled the systematic destruction of
the country’s indigenous peoples. An African American writer with a Harvard
PhD looked to the resilience and inner strength of his people. A practicalminded educator, meanwhile, suggested the techniques through which
progress could be made.
Booker T. Washington, The Future of the American
Negro (1899)
*W. E. B. DuBois, Souls of the Black Folk (1903)
Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor (1881) and
Ramona (1884)
Meeting 10
Cultural Criticism
Left, right, and center, intellectuals working in non-fiction sought to
encapsulate and dramatize the contradictions and transitions of their era and
in doing so inaugurated a one-hundred-year-long debate.
Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (1909)
Van Wyck Brooks, The Wine of the Puritans (1909)
*George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United
States (1920)
Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism (1919)
Paul Elmer Moore, Shelbourne Essays (1904-1921)
Meeting 11
A Philosophy of History
Among these cultural critics were two very distinguished philosophers and
one very philosophical historian adding their interpretations. The result: a
classic of American philosophy, an autobiography, and a tour de force of
philosophically influenced social criticism that remain to this day
summarizing statements for a debate that had ended the 19th century,
begun the 20th, and remains with us to this day.
William James, Pragmatism (1907)
*Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Josiah Royce, Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other
American Problems (1908)
Meeting 12
Presentation of Research Topics
Meeting 13
Presentation of Research Topics
Meeting 14
Presentation of Research Topics
Meeting 15
Presentation of Research Topics
In these meetings, students will present a well-organized verbal version of
their research paper in progress. Students should discuss their research,
their formulation of the issues, the social, cultural, and biographical
perspectives involved, and their tentative conclusions.
THE FINAL PAPER WILL BE DUE ON THE LAST DAY OF CLASS.
Grades
Grades will be based on 3 Oral Reports with submitted written reports and
contribution to class discussion (50%) and Final Paper (50%).
Statement for Students with Disabilities
Any student requesting academic accommodations based on a disability is
required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each
semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be
obtained from DSP. Please be sure the letter is delivered to me (or to TA) as
early in the semester as possible. DSP is located in STU 301 and is open
8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. The phone number for DSP is
(213) 740-0776.
Statement on Academic Integrity
USC seeks to maintain an optimal learning environment. General principles
of academic honesty include the concept of respect for the intellectual
property of others, the expectation that individual work will be submitted
unless otherwise allowed by an instructor, and the obligations both to
protect one’s own academic work from misuse by others as well as to avoid
using another’s work as one’s own. All students are expected to understand
and abide by these principles. Scampus, the Student Guidebook, contains
the Student Conduct Code in Section 11.00, while the recommended
sanctions are located in Appendix A:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/publications/SCAMPUS/gov/. Students will be
referred to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards
for further review, should there be any suspicion of academic dishonesty.
The Review process can be found at: http://www.usc.edu/studentaffairs/SJACS/.