University Curriculum Committee
Proposal for Course Change
1. Is this course a Diversity or Liberal Studies
Course?
Liberal
Studies
2. Course change effective beginning of what term and year?
(ex. Spring 2008, Summer 2008) See effective dates calendar.
3. College
Social & Behavioral
Sciences
X
Diversity
Both
Fall 2010
Politics & International
4. Academic Unit/Department Affairs
5. Current course subject/catalog number
6. Current catalog title, course description and
units. (Cut and paste from current on-line
academic catalog
POS 231
Show the proposed changes in this column. Please
BOLD the changes, to differentiate from what is not
changing.
/www4.nau.edu/aio/AcademicCatalog/academiccatalogs.htm ).
POS 231 POLITICAL SCIENCE
(3)
Analyzes contemporary issues in politics as
they interrelate with the humanities. May be
repeated for up to 6 hours of credit with
different content. AHI
POS 231 POLITICAL SCIENCE Politics and
the Humanities (3)
Analyzes Explores contemporary issues in politics
as they interrelate with the humanities as seen
through the lens of drama, novels, film, and
popular culture. May be repeated for up to 6
hours of credit with different content. AHI
7. Is this course required or an elective in any other plan (major, minor, certificate)? Yes
If yes, explain and provide supporting documentation from the affected departments.
.
No X
8. Does this change affect community college articulation?
Yes
No X
If yes, explain how in the justification and provide supporting documentation from the affected
institutions.
Is the course a Common Course as defined by your Articulation Task Force? Yes
If yes, has the change been approved by the Articulation Task Force? Yes
No X
No
If this course has been listed in the Course Equivalency Guide, should that listing
be left as is
or be revised
If revised, how should it be revised?
IN THE FOLLOWING SECTION, COMPLETE ONLY WHAT IS CHANGING
CURRENT
PROPOSED
Current course subject/catalog number
Proposed course subject/catalog number
Current number of units/credits
Proposed number of units/credits
Revised 8/08
Current Course Fee
yes
no
Current Grading Option*
Letter Grade
Pass/Fail
or Both
Current Repeat for additional Units
If subject or catalog number change
Move
or Delete
Proposed Grading Option*
Letter Grade
Pass/Fail
or Both
Proposed Repeat for additional Units
Current Max number of units
Proposed Max number of units
Current Prerequisite
Proposed Prerequisite
Current Co-requisite
Proposed Co-requisite
Current Co-Convene with
Proposed Co-Convene with
Current Cross List with
Proposed Cross List with
Do you want to remove this course from either the Liberal Studies Course list and or the Diversity
Course list?
Liberal Studies
Diversity
9. Justification for course change. Please indicate how past assessments of student learning
prompted proposed changes.
This course title was originally approved as Politics and Humanities but does not appear
correctly in the catalog and in the Liberal Studies course list. This is to correct catalog
version and to correct the liberal studies course listing.
10. Approvals
Department Chair/ Unit Head (if appropriate)/ Date
Chair of college curriculum committee/Date
Dean of college/Date
For Committee use only
For University Curriculum Committee/Date
Action
taken:
Revised 8/08
approved as submitted
approved as modified
POS 231
Politics and the Humanities
“The movies were the first medium of entertainment and cultural information to be
controlled by men who did not share the ethnic or religious backgrounds of the
traditional cultural elites: that fact has dominated their entire history, engaging them in
struggles on many fronts, and sometimes negating the apparent advantage enjoyed by
men who otherwise adhered faithfully to the proper capitalist values and conservative
political beliefs.” – Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America
“Documentaries...are just not my favorite kind of movie watching. The fact is I don’t
trust the little bastards. I don’t trust the motives of those who think they are superior to
fiction films. I don’t trust their claim to have cornered the market on the truth, I don’t
trust their inordinately high, and entirely undeserved, status of bourgeois
respectability.” – Marcel Ophuls, documentary filmmaker.
COURSE OVERVIEW
Throughout much of history, the arts have been used as a device for political
expression and influence. From Greek plays, Shakespearean drama, and Renaissance
painting, to television, rock, and rap, artists have sought to use the media of artistic
communication to reflect or shape or critique the political world in which they lived. In this
history, the motion picture was arguably the first truly “mass” medium — conducted as a
business of entertaining people (for a profit) with a technology that for the first time enabled it
to reach genuinely large numbers of people.
This course seeks to examine the ways in which that technology, both consciously and
unconsciously, affected the way many Americans came to understand their own political
world. We will do this particularly by an examination of the development and flowering of the
“classic period” in American cinema (1930-1945). We will examine how particular cinematic
techniques and styles of communication emerged in this period. We will examine a number
of films from that period to show how this “classic style” was used to transmit political ideas
and messages to audiences. And we will examine the impact of those messages on the way
we still view politics today.
As political scientists, we also want to examine these films as packages of political
ideas. What messages do the film industry and the films’ creators want to deliver to their
audiences? What real political crises were Americans of this generation confronted with and
how did films exacerbate/ameliorate, address/ignore, present/interpret, accentuate/suppress
those events?
Liberal Studies Information
1. Mission of Liberal Studies: The mission of the Liberal Studies Program at
Northern Arizona University is to prepare students to live responsible,
productive, and creative lives as citizens of a dramatically changing world. In
this class you will learn about the interaction of the social, cultural and political
worlds in the United States by understanding how the administrative are of
government works. This includes the administration of social programs,
Revised 8/08
recreation, criminal justice and other programs and how they shape American
society.
2. Distribution Block: This satisfies one of the courses required in Aesthetic and
Humanistic Inquiryin the LS requirements.
3. Essential Skills: The essential skill emphasized in this class is Effective Writing.
This is accomplished by the completion of three types of writing as noted below:
expository writing, critical writing, and creative writing.
THE NATURE OF A WRITING COURSE
This is a political science course. As such, we want to expand and advance our
knowledge of the political world. We will do this by viewing the world through the prism of
Hollywood movies, but we will see them not merely as art or entertainment, but as vehicles
for sending political messages back and forth between the producers of these films (the
corporate elites running the “studios” plus the writers and directors that create them) and the
consumers of these movies (the audiences, then AND now).
In “doing” this “political science” our main project will be developing effective writing
(and speaking) skills. We want to be able to hone your writing so that it presents political
analysis in clear, well-organized, thoughtful, and useful ways. To that end, you will work on
three different KINDS of writing: expository/explanatory, analytical/critical, and
creative/persuasive.
THE TEXTBOOK PROJECT
You may have noticed that there is no required textbook for this course. That does
NOT mean that you have no reading assignments (I have already organized several
reading assignments in the syllabus and additional materials are still being identified.) But I
would like to try something different in this class in which each of you contributes to a
collective textbook that would be “published” on our class site and then used by all of you.
Each of you will sign up for a topic that has some relevance to the study of political
ideas in the Great Depression-WW II years. I am open to other topics not included on my
suggested list, but these must be approved by me PRIOR to the end of the 1st week – and
only ONE student to a topic. You will write a long essay (5-8 pages) in which you “tell the
story” of this person/event/topic to an audience that you should presume is intelligent but not
especially knowledgeable about political history and ideas. The essay should be one that
can enable the reader to 1) understand what the event/person/topic is about, 2) explain why
the reader should care (what is “its” significance?), 3) discuss what controversies or
questions surround “it”, 4) demonstrate how “it” particularly played a role in the politics of its
time, and 5) speculate about what effect (if any) “it” has on current American politics or ideas.
Your essay need not deal with these concerns in this order. Indeed, a story teller can often
engage the reader in many different ways. But be a GOOD story teller and be sure to include
all 5 of those components in your essay.
STEP ONE – By the end of week one you should select one of the following topics (or
a topic of your own that is approved by me:
Revised 8/08
The 100 days
Bonus Marchers/Hoovervilles
NRA/NIRA/Blue Eagle
Wagner Act
The General Motors strike and the politics of labor in the 1930’s
The First New Deal
The Second New Deal
German-American Bund
America First/Charles Lindbergh
Father Coughlin
Huey P. Long (SHARE)
American Liberty League
Socialism in the US in the 1930s
Communism in America in the 30’s
The Harlem renaissance
Upton Sinclair/ Dr. Francis Townsend (EPIC)
Japanese-American internment camps
The flag salute cases
Ku Klux Klan/Black Legion
Race in the 1930’s
Feminism in the 1930’s
Lynching in the 1930’s
Smoot-Hawley Tariff
Works Progress Administration (WPA)
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
STEP TWO – By the end of the 2nd week you will submit an annotated bibliography
about your topic. This should identify 5-10 sources (no more than 3 can be online resources)
and indicate how each source will help your research. In short, you should have actually
LOOKED at the sources to confirm they will be useful to your research topic. (50 points)
STEP THREE – By the end of the 4th week you will submit your 1st draft of your essay.
This should in all respects be as nearly a finished draft as possible. A mere outline or “rough”
draft or incomplete essay will not be sufficient. Your essay needs to address follow the
guidelines noted above in the 2nd paragraph of this section. (150 points)
STEP FOUR—By the end of the 6th week you will submit your final draft. I will look to
see whether you have addressed any of my comments raised in your 1 st draft; whether you
have re-thought or re-organized your draft in new ways; whether you have successfully
engaged the five questions; and whether the writing itself is clean, clear, and stylistically
sound. (200 points)
CRITIQUING THE POLITICS OF MOVIES
It is also important to develop your ability to analyze or critically assess political ideas
and phenomena and, more broadly, to organize your ideas in such a way as to convince or
Revised 8/08
persuade the reader to take your viewpoint seriously. Your second written product is
intended to foster and enhance those skills.
Those who study film typically engage in a process called “close analysis”. This
involves a careful reading of a film or set of related films, often scene-by-scene or even
frame-by-frame, in order to examine hypotheses about the “meaning” or “intentions” of a film.
Because this course focuses on how films present social and political ideas of the 30’s and
40’s, you should select a hypothesis using the films of this course as your “source”. You
should then do a close analysis of that particular film or films to discover whether your
hypothesis is confirmed, presenting detailed evidence from the film and from other sources to
demonstrate the persuasiveness of your case. There will be numerous examples of this sort
of critical writing about film and politics in your reading that I hope will give you some ideas
about how to structure your paper.
The BEST papers will include all of the following elements:
 THESIS STATEMENT – You should express a coherent original thesis. You
should lay out the direction and intention of your main theme.
 ANALYSIS AND EVIDENCE – Your analysis should be logically consistent and
persuasive. Specific points should be developed in depth and supported with
appropriate evidence from the films and from political science sources. The
analysis should challenge and enlighten the reader.
 ORGANIZATION – Your essay should be coherent from beginning to end. All
your ideas should flow logically in an organized manner.
 MECHANICS – Your essay should be stylistically sound with syntax, grammar,
punctuation, usage and spelling errors at a minimum. Sources, whether directly
quoted or paraphrased, are cited correctly according to the in-text citation
format used in political science.
Here are a few examples to give you some idea of the sort of topics that would make
for interesting papers. But these are merely SUGGESTIONS – I look forward to your
thoughtful and original topics.
“Searching for a Political Voice in the Films of Frank Capra”
“Bad Women and Good Feminism – The Films of Barbara Stanwyck”
“Religious Imagery in Political Film”
“ A Comparative Analysis of the Typical ‘Voter’ in Depression-Era Films”
“Different Enemies—Different Times”
“The Agrarian Crisis – King Vidor vs John Ford”
“The Presidency in the Films of the Depression”
“The Use of the Past in Explaining the Present”
“Perceptions of Industrial Capitalism in MODERN TIMES and MEET
JOHN
DOE”
“The Environment – Friend or Foe in Dust Bowl Films”
“The Emergent Black in Depression Era Films”
“Creating an American Community in WW II Films”
STEP ONE – By the end of the 5th week you should select a topic for your
critical analysis paper. Feel free to discuss your ideas prior to making your final
selection, but all topics must be approved by me. Films will be “locked up” during the
week of the screening. At other times, you may have access to any of these films for
no more than 48 hours at a time. This will enable you to view (and re-view) films from
Revised 8/08
any part of the course. If you wish to schedule a personal viewing of the film on NAU
TV you may do this at ANY time other than “lock down” week. (50 points)
STEP TWO – By the end of the 8th week you should submit a 1st draft of your
analysis paper. I will be assessing this draft on all four of the writing criteria noted
above. (150 points)
STEP THREE – By the end of the 11th week you will submit your final analysis
paper. I will assess your final draft by these same 4 criteria, but in addition I will look
to see whether you have addressed any of my comments raised in your 1st draft;
whether you have re-thought or re-organized your draft in new ways; and whether the
writing itself is clean, clear, and stylistically sound. (200 points)
THE STORYBOARD
This is an exercise asking you to think and write about politics and films in an
imaginative and creative way. As we shall learn, a storyboard is a device many filmmakers
use to “lay out” their movie. On it, the filmmaker matches up dialogue and the sequence of
shots (that is, how the movie should look) as she intends to shoot it. For our purposes, you
should assume that you are shooting a short movie of about five minutes. It can be either
documentary in style or fictional, but you should have a political message as part of your film.
You will not actually shoot the film --NAU’s budget would not permit it :), but the storyboard
must be complete in every detail as if you WERE going to shoot it.
This will be a group exercise, so you will be evaluated on your cooperation with each
other and your contribution to each phase of the project as well in the draft and final version
of your storyboard.
STEP ONE: At the end of the 7th week you will form your project group. Each group
will be between 3 and 5 members. Feel free to explore ideas with various class members
before that deadline.
STEP TWO: At the end of the 10th week each group will present a shooting script of
its story. This would include the 1st draft of a script as well as all written shooting directions
(descriptions of the place, the scene, how characters/objects move, entrances and exits)
sufficient to provide a useful guide to your 5-minute movie. (100 points)
STEP THREE: During the day set aside for final exams each group will present their
complete storyboard. In addition to the physical storybook panels, each group should give a
brief oral presentation to the class, explaining the purpose of the film, how its ideas are
developed, and highlighting some of the filmic elements of your project. The completed
storyboard will be evaluated by a jury of your peers (3 students chosen randomly from the
class) and by me according to criteria that will be distributed to each of you. The peer review
will be worth (3 x 50 points) and my second review will be worth 200 points.
PARTICIPATION
This is a small class for a number of reasons not the least of which is to create an
opportunity to create a learning community of a workable size. Films are texts with no fixed
meanings. They invite the involvement and engagement of the audience, both individually
Revised 8/08
and collectively. Let’s take advantage of this medium and use our class meetings to actively
“think aloud” about politics and film.
Your participation in this class can involve any and all of the following activities:
Regular attendance at all classes and film sessions
Regular contributions to class discussions
Leading open discussions at the Thursday night film series
Working effectively within your storybook group
Being helpful in reviewing and critiquing your peers’ work
Facilitating in-class discussions where appropriate
I will evaluate your participation quarterly (4 x 100 points)
GRADING SCALE
A = 90% of total points possible
B = 80% of total points possible
C = 70% of total points possible
D = 60% of total points possible
Tentative Schedule of Assignments and Screenings
Check here regularly for updates
NOTE: All of the films will be screened during our Wednesday evening “lab” session. The
films will be “locked down” during their viewing week, but will be available through the Cline
Library media services department for your analysis at other times.
NOTE: In addition to the readings noted below, I have created weblinks (see the left hand
menu in Vista) for each of the films or topics. These are a few of the better online sources
that provide useful background or commentary on the films of that week. These are not
REQUIRED readings, but when you do your CRITIQUE paper you should sample some of
these critiques (especially for your targeted films) to give you a sense of what good criticism
looks like.
Week One (Jan. 14-18)—How to “Read” a Movie
READINGS: Louis Giannetti, Masters of the American Cinema, “Art, Industry,
Audience”
E. Ann Kaplan, “Classical Hollywood Film and Melodrama”
Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own, Introduction and Chap. 6
Robert Ray, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, “The
Culmination of Classic Hollywood: Casablanca
FILM: Casablanca (1942) DVD 2590
Week Two (Jan. 22-25)—The Triumph of Comedic Anarchy
READINGS: Charles Maland, American Visions ,“Chaplin: The Tramp Turns
Social”
Frank Friedel, “The New Deal in Historical Perspective”
Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America, “The Golden Age of Turbulence and
the Golden Age of Order”
FILMS: Modern Times (1936) DVD 895
Duck Soup (1933) DVD 2191
Revised 8/08
Week Three (Jan. 28-Feb. 1) – Desperate Men in Desperate Times
READINGS: Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System, Chap. 1
Andrew Bergman, We’re in the Money, “The Gangsters”
Alex Liechtenstein, “Good Roads and Chain Gangs in the Progressive
South”
FILMS: I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)
The Public Enemy (1931)
Week Four (Feb. 4-8) – The Politics of Film Censorship
READINGS: Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Censored, Chap. 6
Richard Maltby, “Baby Face or How Joe Breen Made Barbara Stanwyck
Atone for Causing the Wall Street Crash”
The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 with all Appendices
FILM: Baby Face (1933) pre and post code DVD 2361 (part of set)
Week Five ( Feb. 11-15)—The Communitarian Response
READINGS: Colin Schindler, Hollywood in Crisis, “The Blue Eagle,--March 1933 to
November 1936”
FILMS: Our Daily Bread (1934)
Wild Boys of the Road (1933)
Week Six (Feb. 18-22)—The Fascist Response
READINGS: Robert McConnell, “The Genesis and Ideology of Gabriel Over the White
House”
Peter H. Amman, “Vigilante Fascism: The Black Legion as an American
Hybrid”
FILMS: The Black Legion (1937)
Gabriel Over the White House (1933)
Week Seven (Feb. 25-Feb. 29)—The Documentary Impulse: Defending the NEW DEAL
READINGS: Robert L. Snyder, Pare Lorentz and the Documentary Film, “The Plow
That Broke the Plains” and “The River”
Richard Dyer MacCann, The People’s Films, “Pare Lorentz: A Bold
Beginning”
Charles Wolfe, The Poetics and Politics of Nonfiction, “The New Deal
Documentaries”
FILMS: The Plow that Broke The Plains
The River
Power and the Land
Week Eight (Mar. 3-7)—The Depression Meets the Classic Style
Revised 8/08
READINGS: Charles Maland, American Visions, “John Ford: The Family and the
Modern World”
Vivian C. Sobchak, “The Grapes of Wrath(1940): Thematic Emphasis
through Visual Style”
FILM: Grapes of Wrath (1940) DVD 1102
Week Nine (Mar. 10-14) – One Man’s Vision: The Populism of Frank Capra
READINGS: Charles Maland, American Visions, “Frank Capra: Filmmaking and
Commitment” (Part 1)
Louis Giannetti, Masters of American Cinema, “The Individualist
Mystique: The Cinema of Frank Capra” (Note: This can be found about halfway through the
Giannetti reading that begins with “Art, Industry, Audience”
FILM: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
Week Ten (Mar. 24-28) – Capra and The Possibilities of Liberal Democracy
READINGS: Charles Maland, American Visions, “Frank Capra: Filmmaking and
Commitment” (Part 2)
Brian Gallagher, “Speech, Identity, and Ideology in Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington”
Sam B. Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance, “Gender and American
Character: Frank Capra”
FILM: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) DVD 2591
Week Eleven (Mar. 31-Apr. 4)—Capra and The Dark Side of Populist Democracy
READINGS: Charles Lindholm and John A. Hall, “Frank Capra Meets John Doe”
Glenn A. Phelps, “Frank Capra and the Political Hero: A New Reading of
“Meet John Doe”
FILM: Meet John Doe (1941)
Week Twelve (Apr. 7-11) ---Democratic Propaganda :_Capra Goes to War
READINGS: Thomas Cripps and David Culbert, “The Negro Soldier(1944): Film
Propaganda in Black and White”
FILM: Selections from Frank Capra’s WWII: Why We Fight
Week Thirteen (Apr. 14-18)—Explaining Why We Fight
READINGS: Clayton Koppes and Gregory D. Black, “What to Show the World: The
Office of War Information and Hollywood, 1942-1945”
Robert Ray, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, “Classic
Hollywood’s Holding Pattern: The Combat Films of World War II”
FILM: Destination Tokyo (1943)
Tarzan Triumphs (1943)
Week Fourteen (Apr. 21-25)_-- Small Town Iowa Goes to War
READINGS:
FILM: The Fighting Sullivans (1944) DVD 45
Revised 8/08