USA 300F Theories and Methods in American Studies: the 1920s
Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Toronto, Winter 2012
Tuesdays, 12-2 pm Sidney Smith 1074 tutorials: Tues. 2-3 and 3-4, SS 2128; Tues 4-5 US 148 with one screening scheduled outside this time (see syllabus)
Professor Elspeth H. Brown
Director, American Studies Program+ Centre for the Study of the United States (CSUS)
Munk Centre rm 326N; ph 946-8011; Elspeth.brown@utoronto.ca
office hours: Tuesdays, 2-3 in History Dept. common room, 2 nd flr SS; and by appt; please make an appointment by contacting the CSUS administrator, Stella, at csus@utoronto.ca
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Teaching Assistant: David Sworn, david.sworn@utoronto.ca
; office hrs and location TBA.
This course, required for majors and minors, explores a range of approaches to the field of American Studies. We will focus on how various scholars approach their objects of study (the methods part) as well as how scholars have interrogated the analytic categories that produce kn owledge, such as ‘race,’ ‘commodity,’ ‘the past’ (the theories part). In looking at sources, students will engage with a range of primary texts, including written, visual, aural, and material, and to develop useful methodologies in interpreting these primary texts. These methods will be drawn from several fields, but all share a common commitment to close readings as an approach.
The course will enable students to reflect critically on both interdisciplinary and discipline-based knowledge production, and to explore possibilities for new interdisciplinary approaches of their own design.
American Studies as an interdisciplinary field has a history that dates back to the 1930s, but we won’t be covering the history of American Studies as a practice or academic field in this class. Instead, in order to focus on the range of theories and methods currently at play in the field,
I have organized the empirical aspects of the course around a single decade: the 1920s. Using this one tumultuous decade as our focus, we address a subset of the numerous theories and methods currently shaping American Studies as a field. Each week will cover a different social, economic, or cultural formation central to the 1920s and will be approached through a combination of primary sources, secondary sources, theories (often via the device of the
‘keyword’) and methods. Over the course of the term, students will be able to cull from our work together a theories and methods “toolkit,” for use in your own research papers.
Method, according to the Oxford English Dictionary: “A way of doing anything, esp. according to a defined and regular plan; a mode of proced ure in any activity, business”--in other words, the how of American Studies. In this class we will focus on the following qualitative approaches: posing questions of primary sources; close readings; formal analysis; intersectional analyses; ethnography; and historical methods.
Theory, according to the Oxford English Dictionary: “systematic conception or statement of the principles of something; abstract knowledge, or the formulation of it.” Theories we will emphasize in this course: “gender,” “racial formation,” “diaspora,” and “commodity.”
Course goals: 1) to familiarize students with theories and methods as currently practiced in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies 2) to learn about the history, culture, and politics of the US in the 1920s; 3) to develop in-depth knowledge of at least one methodology and one theoretical approach to the interdisciplinary study of the past.
Course Format: The two-hour block will be a combination of lectures and discussion of the assigned readings. I encourage your active participation in both components of the course. You must bring your hardcopies of the week’s readings to class. There are also tutorials for the class,
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which meet after the lecture, for one hour each. These are required; the first one is September
21.
Expectations : I expect you to read the assigned material; to engage critically with the course readings, lectures, and class discussions; to ask questions and share your ideas concerning the course material. Students are likely to have a range of perspectives on the material, and I encourage a diversity of viewpoints, while encouraging all students to use the course materials to provide evidence for their arguments.
Course Web-site: the course has a web-site, on Blackboard, which I will be using to post course material, assignments, grades, announcements, etc. Please check it regularly, and feel free to use the discussion board as you wish.
Email, laptop, and phone policy: Please turn off all cell phone ringers in class; please do not use a l aptop to take notes; when you email me, please put ‘USA 300F’ in the subject line.
Required Screenings: There is one required screening outside of class on NEED DATE AND
LOCATION (Please don’t be late; otherwise the door may be locked!). The film is It , Clarence G.
Badger, dir., with Clara Bow, 1927 (72 minutes). If you prefer, you can also watch the It movie at the AV library in Robarts on your own time, or rent it (be sure to get the right copy, though, since there have been remakes).
Required Reading, Viewing, and Listening
The reading is a combination of books and assigned articles and excerpts, both primary and secondary sources. In some weeks you will be asked to listen to sound clips and view film clips as part of your preparation. You are asked to read/view/listen to these materials in advance of each class. Please bring the assigned readings to both lecture and tutorial.
The books are available at the University of Toronto Bookstore as well as in Robarts Library, on reserve. The chapter of the Dumenil book due for week 2 has been scanned and is available as a
PDF, in case you want to wait a few weeks before dealing with the bookstore lines. The assigned articles and excerpts are available on-line through the Blackboard web-site, indicated by week.
These readings can be downloaded as PDFs. You must download and print the electronicallyassigned material and bring it to class . There is no paper, copy-shop, bound reader for this course.
Books for Fall 2010 term (listed in chronological order in term s of when we’ll read them):
Anzia Yesierska, The Bread Givers (with Alice Kessler-Harris) 3rd ed. Published/Created: New
York: Persea Books, c2003. Originally published 1925.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
Assignments: (I will hand out full directions in class)
Assignment #1: due Jan. 31. This assignment is either a 2 pg. outline and precise of one of the keyword readings OR a short assignment that asks you to do some writing concerning metaphor.
Assignment #2: Image/Keyword Analysis: 4 pgs, due March 6 th .
Paper: There is one 10-page paper due on Friday, March 30. This paper will require you to select an unusual object from the 1920s, one that would not normally be indexed in any sort of conventional history of the period, and to describe and analyze it using the theories and methods you’ve learned in the class. You MUST choose an object for which your research and analysis will dovetail with what we have covered in the class. This paper will have some related deadlines throughout the term, including a 200 word proposal due Feb. 14.
Quizzes: There will be three over the course of the term, designed to test your grasp of the assigned reading. I will drop the lowest score, so that you’ll have two quizzes ‘count’. I may do these on Blackboard or in class; I will let you know.
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Test: There will be one test in the course, on the last day of class. It will be one hour’s duration and will cover all the material we’ve covered over the term.
Participation: this means not just coming to class, but also asking and answering questions, as well as discussing the material with the class. Anyone who comes to class regularly will certainly get a ‘C’ mark here; if you wish a higher mark, then please do engage verbally. If you are shy, and want to work on how to be able to participate more effectively, please see me and we can strategize together.
Extra Credit: in an effort to encourage you to take from class and work to engage with the scholarly community in American Studies at the University of Toronto, I will offer an extra 1% mark on top of your final average if you attend an American Studies event and write a 500 word analysis of the event that summarizes the event (200 words) and analyzes it in relationship to the themes and readings covered in class. You can do this twice. Events will be announced on BB.
Course Requirements:
In addition to fulfilling the assignments above, students are expected to
1) attend the classes. You can miss one of each for any reason, but after that point your grade for the course will suffer (see the policy on BB site). I will do my best to make it worth your while. If you decide it’s not, for whatever reason, then please come see me, or drop the course early, as opposed to being ‘on the books’ but never showing up.
2) participate actively in class discussion in an informed manner. Be prepared for me to ask you directly your viewpoint about the reading, or material we are analyzing together. Bring your materials to class.
Assignment weights :
Assignment #1: 10%
Assignment #2: 15%
Paper: 25%
Quizzes: 10%
Test: 20%
Participation+Attendance: 20% [both lectures and tutorials; attendance taken at both]
Grading scheme : A+=87-100; A=84-86; A-=80-83; B+=77-79; B=74-76; B-= 70-73; C+=67-69;
C=64-66; C-=60-63; D+=57-59; D=54-56; D-=50-53; F=49 or below.
Other Details/the "fine print":
1. Handing work in: please turn work in to David at the tutorial. Late work will be marked down 3 points per day late, or 1/3 letter grade, not including Sat. and Sun. Work turned in more than seven days (not including Sat. and Sun.) after the due date will not be accepted. Deadline extensions will be made only when students present David with compelling reasons for their inability to meet the deadline, with satisfactory documentation (eg., death in the immediate family; hospitalization, etc.). If for some reason you don’t come to class to turn your work in, bring it to
Stella, the admin ass’t in American Studies/CSUS at the Munk Centre, 326N.
2. Test make-ups: there will be none unless the student can provide evidence of a true emergency, with satisfactory documentation. Under no circumstances will I schedule a make-up for a student who fails to contact me within 24 hours of a missed test. There will be no quiz makeups at all, since you will be able to drop one anyway with no penalty.
3. Citing sources: follow guidelines spelled out in course web-site. At 3 rd year, you should know how to cite sources, using a course’s guideline (I use the Chicago Manual of Style, and an abridged 2-page sheet is available on the course website). We will mark off for failure to cite sources properly.
4. Papers: writing is a critically important skill, and central to what we do in the field of
American Studies. I pay close attention to grammar, punctuation, style, and citation formats. If you need help with your writing, I am more than happy to work with you, and I also urge you to take advantage of the resources at your college for writing. For further tips on writing, as well as a list of resources on writing at U of T (including writing centres), see http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/index.html
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5. Plagiarism is, basically, the act of using the ideas or words of another person as one's own original work, and is therefore a gross form of cheating. The way to avoid plagiarism is, in part, to learn how and when to cite your sources. Please consult and familiarize yourselves with policies concerning plagiarism at U of T. There are other rules of academic conduct all students must familiarize themselves with, such as not handing in a paper for a class when you've already submitted the same paper to another class for credit. For further information, see http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/plagsep.html
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6. Accessibility Needs: The University of Toronto is committed to accessibility. If you require accommodations for a disability, or have any accessibility concerns about the course, the classroom or course materials, please contact Accessibility Services as soon as possible: disability.services@utoronto.ca or http://studentlife.utoronto.ca/accessibility .
WK 1: Introduction to the course Tues. Jan. 10
What is this course all about? Go over syllabus. Meet the Teaching Assistant, David.
Extra credit opportunity : Friday, January 13, 2-4 pm Room 208N, Munk School of Global Affairs
RICK VALELLY “Veto-Proofing African-American Citizenship: Judicial Review and the Strategic
Origins of the U.S. Constitution's Citizenship Clause.” Rick Valelly is Claude C. Smith '14
Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College, a well-known U.S. liberal arts college located near Philadelphia. He is author of The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black
Enfranchisement (University of Chicago Press, 2004), which won several professional awards.
He is very active in the American Political Science Association. At Swarthmore, Valelly teaches courses on Congress, the U.S. Presidency, political parties, and elections. To register for this event, please go to: http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/Events.aspx
WK 2: 1919 and After: the Coolidge Era Tues. Jan 17
•Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper, America Culture and Society in the 1920s (1995), 3-14.
•Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Second Edition, Volume 2 , 2nd ed. (W.
W. Norton & Company, 2008), 722-727.
•METHODs: a) Historical methods: Mary Lynn Rampolla, “Working With Sources,” from A
Pocket Guide to Writing in History (2004), 5-21; and b) visual culture methods #1: John Berger,
Ways of Seeing , (1973), ch.s 1 and 7.
Tutorials begin meeting this week
Assignment (due in tutorial, Jan. 17) : visi t the Library of Congress’ digital collection “Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy” at the following URL: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/coolhome.html
. Browse the collection. Choose one artifact from any media and be p repared to discuss it in class through the lens of this week’s readings. What questions would Dumenil ask of this document, do you think? What about
Rampolla, or Jenkins? How might historians differ over their interpretation of this document, and why? Print out the document if possible and bring it to lecture and tutorial; if it is a sound recording or moving image, put it on the blackboard site on the Sept. 21 Assignment Blog. If we have time, we will discuss some (but probably not all) examples in lecture; surely some will be covered in tutorial.
Further directions for Assignment #1, due two weeks from today, will be available.
WK 3: Commodity Chains and Market Empires: Ford Tues. Jan. 24
•Robert Lloyd Kelley, The Shaping of the American Past , 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J:
Prentice-Hall, 1986), 539-541 AND John A Garraty, A Short History of the American Nation , 6th ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 424-425.
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•Henry Ford, My Life and Work , in collaboration with Samuel Crowther (Garden City, NY:
Garden City Publishing Co., 1926): 64-90; 103-115.
•View: two clips from a documentary about Ford, available via YouTube, courtesy of Prof.
Daniel Mitchel, UCLA. See “Working at Ford in the 1920s, Part 1” (4:23 minutes) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtYRLtT8bvY&NR=1 and “Working at Ford in the 1920s, Part
2” (7:05 minutes) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Re-yUnO-Hk&feature=related
•Elizabeth Esch, "Shades of Tarzan!": Ford on the Amazon,” Cabinet Magazine issue on
Failure, Issue 7 Failure Summer 2002. Please read on-line at: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/7/shadesoftarzan.php
•KEYWORD: “commodity” and “commodity fetishism.” Read Karl Marx, “The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secrets,” from in Capital , vol. 1, 163-177 (Penguin classics edition, 1990).
•METHOD: Commodity Chain Analysis. Read Ian Cook et al, “Follow the Thing: Papaya”
Antipode (2004), 643-664. I include this reading not because I am interested in getting you to think about papayas, but because I want you to think about the method that Cook outlines here.
What would a co mmodity chain analysis of a 1920s ‘Model T’ look like? Read Cook for method and writing style. Think ahead to your final paper —would this method work for you? What object would you need to choose, and how would you research it?
•Advice: get a head start on next week’s novel.
Further directions for the final paper will be available. Start thinking about what your object/image/text will be.
WK 4: Immigration and Diaspora Tues. Jan. 31
Anzia Yesierska, The Bread Givers (with Alice Kessler-Harris) 3rd ed. New York: Persea
Books, c2003. Originally published 1925. (This is a novel).
•KEYWORD: James Clifford, “Diaspora,” Cultural Anthropology , vol. 9, no. 3 (Aug. 1994),
302-338.
METHOD: New Historicism (discussion in lecture).
Assignment #1 due in class today; details on Assignment #2 available.
Quiz on WKS 2, 3, and 4 today.
Extra credit opportunity : 2 events having to do with trans studies and trans history on Jan. 31; a lecture on the global history of creationism on Feb. 1; see http://www.utoronto.ca/csus/Speakers-
2011-12.html
WK 5: The Modern Girl Around the World Tues. Feb. 7
•John H. Adams, Jr. "Rough Sketches: A Study of the Features of the New Negro
Woman," from The Voice of the Negro (August 1904) 324-326.
•Inez Hayes Irwin, “The Making of a Militant” (1926) and Phyllis Blanchard, “The Long
Journey” (1926) all reprinted in Showalter, ed. These Modern Women .
•Lynn Dumenil, “The New Woman,” in A Modern Temper (1995), selections.
•Shelley Stamp, “Spare Us One Evening: Cultivating Cinema’s Female Audience,” in
Movie-struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture After the Nickolodeon (2000), 10-40
•KEYWORD: “Gender.” Peggy Pascoe, “Gender” (encyclopedia entry) and Joan Scott,
“Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” from Gender and the Politics of History
(1988), 28-52. What is Scott’s definition? Come to class prepared to discuss.
Extra credit opportunity: a lecture on public broadcasting in the US and Canada, Feb. 10 th . See http://www.utoronto.ca/csus/Speakers-2011-12.html
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WK 6: Modernism + Visual Art Tues.
Feb 14
•Paul Strand, “Photography,” and “Photography and the New God,” reprinted in Alan
Trachtenberg, ed., Classic Essays on Photography (New Haven: Leete’s Island Books, New
Haven CY, 1980), 141-151.
•Sharon Corwin, “Picturing Efficiency: Precisionism, Scientific Management, and the
Effacement of Labor,” Representations v. 84 (Autumn, 2003): 139-165.
•Marianna Torgovnick, “Defining the Primitive,” from Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects,
Modern Lives (1990), 3-41.
•METHOD: formal analysis of visual images: Elspeth H. Brown, "Reading the Visual
Record," in Ardis Cameron, ed. Looking for America: An Historical Introduction to the Visual in
American Studies, 1900-2000 (Blackwell, 2005), 362-370.
•KEYWORD: “Modernism” (in lecture).
Assignment Due: hand in to David a 200 word abstract of the proposed paper and object, in which you indicate your methodology, keyword, and preliminary sources. In other words, you must select your object/image/text by this time. Questions to consider: Do you have a research plan or agenda? What analytic and methodological approaches will you take? These and other questions may be asked of you; time permitting, you may be asked to tell the tutorial section what your object/image/text is.
[break, Feb. 21; no class]
WK 7: Nativism, Immigration Restriction, and the Rise of the Second Klan Tues. Feb. 28
•Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Second Edition, Volume 2 , 2nd ed.
(W. W. Norton & Company, 2008), 739-746 AND Moss excerpt, pp. 164-170.
•Mae M. Ngai, "Nationalism, Immigration Control, and the Ethnoracial Remapping of
America in the 1920s,” OAH Magazine of History (July, 2007), 11-15.
•Excerpt from Hiram Wesley Evans, “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism,” North American
Review 223 (March-May 1926, 2 pp.)
•Nancy MacLean, “The Class Anxieties of the Ku Klux Klan,” reprinted in Major Problems in American History, 1920-1945 , originally published in MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry
(Oxford University Press, 1994).
•METHOD: Ethnography. Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, “What is
Ethnography?” from Ethnography: Principles in Practice (2007), 1-19. This is not a historical piece, but since the ethnographic method was central to 1920s urban sociology, I am including it in this week.
Quiz on WKS 5, 6, and 7 today
WK 8: Harlem/”New Negro” Renaissance Tues March 6
•John A Garraty, A Short History of the American Nation , 6th ed. (New York:
HarperCollins, 1993), 421-422.
•James Weldon Johnson, ch. 13, “the trek northward…” in Black Manhattan (1930), 145-
159; see bio blurb on Johnson as well, from David Levering Lewis.
•Alain Locke essay: “The New Negro” (1926); read bio note by David Levering Lewis.
•Langston Hughes: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1926, poem); “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mou ntain” (essay, 1926).
•Chad Heap, “The Negro Vogue: Excursions into a ‘Mysterious Dark World,’ in Slumming:
Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940 (Chicago, 2009), 189-230.
•KEYWORD: “racial project/racial formation” Michael Omi + Howard Winant, Racial
Formation in the US (1994), 53-63.
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Assignment Due : image and keyword: this 4 page assignment asks you to do a close reading of a visual image (to be provided to you on the Blackboard website) and to analyze the image using the concepts set out in the Omi+Winant reading. The methodology to be used is outlined in Brown,
“Reading the Visual Record,” assigned in WK 5. Further details will be available in class.
WK 9: Black Modernities Tues. March
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•Langston Hughes, “Red Silk Stockings” (1927); “Ruby Brown (1927); “The Weary Blues”
(1926); “Elderly Race Leaders” (published 1958); also read bio note by David Levering Lewis.
•Bessie Smith “St. Louis Blues”; “Careless Love Blues”; “Reckless Blues”(audio recordings on blackboard all c. 1925; see lyrics printed out on BB)
•“Sissy Blues” (by Thomas Dorsey, this recording Ma Rainey; listen on BB and see lyrics)
•Davarian Baldwin, “The Sporting Life: Recreation, Self Reliance, and Competing Visions of Race Manhood ,” in Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban
Life (Chapel Hill: UNCP, 2007), 193-232.
•“If You See My Saviour”: listen to two renditions on Blackboard by Tommy Dorsey (this recording made early1930s) and by Mahalia Jackson
•METHOD: queer readings: Shane Vogel, “Closing Time: Langston Hughes and the
Queer Politics of Harlem Nightlife” in The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality,
Performance (Chicago, 2009): 104-131.
WK 10: Prohibition and Gangsterism
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Tues. March
•Robert Lloyd Kelley, The Shaping of the American Past , 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J:
Prentice-Hall, 1986), 559-562.
•John Landesco, "Organized Crime in Chicago," in The Illinois Crime Survey (Chicago:
Illinois Association for Criminal Justice in cooperation with the Chicago Crime Commission,
1929), selections.
•David Ruth, Inventing the Public Enemy: The Gangster in American Culture (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996), selections.
•recommended: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Prohibition (2011) http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/
Screening : Wednesday March 21, 6-8pm, Robarts Library, 3rd floor, Media Commons Theatre.
IT, directed by Clarence G. Badger (Famous Players-Lasky Corperation, 1927), 72 minutes.
WK 11: The Acids of Modernity
March 27
Tues.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
Lynn Dumenil, “The Acids of Modernity,” in A Modern Temper (1995), 145-200.
Quiz on WKS 8-11 today
Paper Due : Friday March 30th , 4 pm : drop off hard copy no la ter than this date to David’s attention at the reception in the Munk School. Of, if you have finished it early, bring it to class on
Tuesday the 27th th .
WK 12: Wrap Up/Term Test
Hour one: wrap up; Hour two: test.
Tues. April 3
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