LECTURE 1: AMERICAN STUDIES
1. DEFINITIONS
AS is (1) a distinct interdisciplinary field that promotes a broad humanistic understanding of
American culture past and present; (2) encourages diverse disciplines to exchange ideas on
America, and (3) examines the ways American life relates to world society OR
AS is the sum total of disciplines focusing on the study and research of the (1) development of
the culture of the US, or what it was (HISTORICAL ASPECT), (2) systematic description
and analysis of the present condition of American culture (SYNCHRONIC ASPECT), (3)
interrelations of the discrete realms of American spiritual culture (SYNTHESIZING
ASPECT).
“American Studies is an ongoing debate, a continued formulation of questions and answers
relating to the very idea of what America might be, and the manners it could be studied, both
past and present.” (Christopher Moses)
“American Studies has thus emerged not as discipline, but as an arena for disciplinary
encounter and staging ground for fresh topical pursuits. It embraces America in a Whitmanish
hug, excluding nothing and always beginning.” (Stanley Bailis)
2. NEED FOR AS
IN THE US: self-definition; national identity; nationalism; American (liberal)
exceptionalism.
Cf. Gyula Szekfű, ed., Mi a Magyar? and the new version by the Institute of Habsburg
History; theories of Sumerian-Hungarian origins, etc.
OUTSIDE THE US: to understand what America is, and how it became what it is; AS
exported (Salzburg Seminar) and “enemy studies” vs. “if you don’t talk about, it does not
exist” (YDTIDE), the Communist approach.
QUESTIONS: Does understanding a culture help its decision makers in times of crisis? How
do European perceptions of America feed back into American culture? What explains antiAmericanism in the world? What/where is the difference between a culture expressing itself,
advertising itself, and exporting itself by force? Are we living in an age of globalization or
Americanization? Is America an European experiment that happens to take place elsewhere,
or something different?
3. FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS IN AS
BASIC DICHOTOMY: is or are? One America or many Americas? Cf. Whitman: “I am
large, I contain multitudes/Do I contradict myself?/Very well, then, I contradict myself”
INTER- AND MULTIDISCIPLINARITY (ID AND MD): immigration and multiculturalism
(BUT: multiculturalism in Canada and the US; the illegal immigration debate, etc.)
QUESTIONS: Are all area studies by nature ID and MD? Is there one “American Mind,” and
can you possibly “Close” it? (Commager and Bloom)?
NATURE AND INPUT OF AS ABROAD: Can and will AS scholars in the US learn from
people who look at their culture from the outside? Do other dominant cultures in the world
have such input? If yes, why; if no, why not?
5. THE PARADIGM SHIFT
FROM INTELLECTUAL HISTORY SYNTHESIS/THE MYTH AND SYMBOL SCHOOL
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explain American national identity and questions of American national uniqueness
method: to reduce questions of national identity to some essential singularities and
then to find the governing principles, myths, themes, symbols of American culture.
basic assumptions
o there is ONE American Mind, more or less homogeneous, it is a single entity
o New World, what distinguishes the American Mind is its location---Americans
are hopeful, innocent, individualistic, pragmatic, idealistic
o distinct themes are Puritanism, individualism, progress, pragmatism,
transcendentalism, liberalism, etc.
Sources/basic texts:
Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (1927)
F. O. Matthiensen, American Renaissance (1941)
Henry Nash Smith, The Virgin Land (1950)
Henry Steele Commager, The American Mind (1950)
David Potter, The People of Plenty (1954)
R. W. B. Lewis, The American Adam (1955)
Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden (1964)
TO MULTICULTURALISM
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recognize the different components of American culture and Americanness
method: MN and ID
basic assumption: America is multicultural and must be studied as such; there should
be no WASP elitism, and there is no dominant white culture
debate: maybe there is a dominant white culture after all; this is but the invasion of
“European cultural theory”
Sources/some basic texts:
Henry Nash Smith, “Can American Studies Develop a Method?” AQ 9, no. 2 (1957)
Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot (1963)
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (1980)
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (1987)
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America (1991)
Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror (1993)
LECTURE 2: AMERICAN STUDIES IN THE US
CULTURAL DEPENDENCE TO NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE
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City upon a Hill; “westward the course of empire takes its course;” BUT “What then is
this new man, the American?” (Crevecouer)
Cultural provincialism: Europe vs. America dichotomy and inferiority complex
“In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? Or goes to an
American play? Or looks at an American picture or a statue?” (Sydney Smith in the
Edinburgh Review, 1820)
COMING OF AGE
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Wof1812 and its strange conclusion and effect
Literature: “We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe.” (Emerson, The
American Scholar)
Language: “American must be independent in literature as she is in politics.” (Noah
Webster)
Democracy: Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)
revolt against the old order and the Old World: part of a reformer upheaval
feedbacks from the outside: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1834) 2
vols.; Kossuth quotes from 1851-52, etc.
TURNER AND PARRINGTON
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Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History
(1893): what makes an American; cf. also the melting pot
Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (1927): an outcast of
Academia, he wrote about the creation of an “immensely usable past;” consensus in
the study of America
EARLY INSTITUTIONAL STAGE
Yale, 1933: the 1st AS course: American Thought and Civilization (Stanley T. Williams, LIT
and Ralph H. Gabriel HIST)
Whitney Grisworld: the 1st AS Ph.D. at Yale
1936-37: AS programs at GWU, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania (47 at B.A. level and 15
at Ph.D. by 1947)
1949: American Quarterly launched
1951: American Studies Association
1962: American Studies News => American Studies International
CONSENSUS: INTELLECTUAL HISTORY SYNTHESIS/MYTH AND SYMBOL SCHOOL
PARADIGM SHIFT: CONFLICT AND MULTICULTURALISM
AMERICAN STUDIES IN EUROPE
AS IN EUROPE BEFORE WORLD WAR II
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Travelogues, American democracy, natural beauty, economic and political Promised
Land: industrial developments, architecture, World Fairs (Zerkowitz on quality)
Lack of academic interest: history dull, now intellectual life, second-class literature
TuP: America’s rise to great power status at TuC => breakthroughs: D. H. Lawrence,
Studies in Classical American Literature (1923) and Sinclair Lewis NP in LIT (1930)
Rhodes Scholarship vs. Commonwealth Fund and Carnegie Endowment grants: twway traffic btw. GB and US
Immigration and immigrant feedback; immigrant literature: Thomas Bell, Out of This
Furnace (1941)
After World War I: Johan Huizinga (NL), Life and Thought in America: Stray
Remarks (1926): nice, but… (See also the HU: Dr. László Szabó); more interest
US popular culture enters Europe: Buffalo Bill, movies, etc.
Nazi Germany: enemy studies
AS AFTER WORLD WAR II
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Growing interest after the war: who are they, how do they function?
Norman Podhoretz: editor of Commentary, member of NY Jewish intelligentsia; in his
autobiography Making It (1967): “Does Finland have a great literature? Does
Afghanistan? Does Ecuador? Who knows or cares? But give Finland enough power
and enough wealth, and there would soon be a Finnish department in every university
in the world- just as in the 1950’s departments of American Studies were suddenly
being established in colleges where, only a few years earlier, it had scarcely occurred
to anyone that there was anything American to study.”
Sigmund SKARD, (Scandinavian) the “historic discrepancy between the position of
the US in the world and its place in the syllabuses and curricula seemed increasingly
intolerable.”
US cultural diplomacy: USIA/USIS, Salzburg Seminar, Fulbright Program, SD
goodwill tours of jazz musicians, cultural programs on RFE and VOA
1950s: institutional framework created: BAAS (1955), first AS conference at
Cambridge (1952); but the first AMHIST Chair at Cambridge: only in the 1990s
1960s in the US and Europe: more interest, AS becomes part of curricula; Free
University, Berlin (JFK Insitute, 1963)
AS behind the Iron Curtain: YDTIDE; depended on E-W relations (cf. HU)
1996: ASA conference and AQ: internationalization (cf. Wangleitner)
AMERICAN STUDIES IN HUNGARY: LÁSZLÓ ORSZÁGH (1907-1984)
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love of languages: Greek, Latin, German, French and English
1926 Budapest Pázmány Péter University: Hungarian-German majors, plus English as
the third one
1927 became member of the Eötvös József Szakkollégium
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1930: New York Institute of International Education grant: Rollins College, FL., and
LOC
after graduation: teacher at Rákóczi Ferenc High School, then at ELTE
1946: he was asked to found and lead the English Department in Debrecen; founded
the Institute Library; BUT all Western European languages departments were closed
in 1950
Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Nyelvtudományi Intézete szótári osztály vezetője
1957-1968 head of the English Department at KLTE
several awards and academic honors: professor of literature; member of the Hungarian
Academy of Science
1979 in honor of his “bridge-builder” role in Hungarian-British cultural connections
he received the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (a Brit Birodalom
Tiszteletbeli Parancsnoka) title
Rm. 119; students: ANZ, ZKV, MJ, Lehel Vadon (Eger), etc.
(Hungarian Studies in North America: Bloomington, Indiana; Toronto, Canada; Princeton,
New Jersey; East European, now Harriman Institute at Columbia)
LECTURE 3: COHESIVE FORCES IN AMERICA:
VALUES, BELIEFS AND COLLECTIVE MYTHS
BACKGROUND
The major dilemma: the US is, or the US are?
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)
“I am large, I contain multitudes/ Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself.”
Richard Hughes, The Culture of Complaint (1993)
“There never was a core America in which everyone looked the same, spoke the same
language, worshipped the same gods and believed in the same things… American is
the construction of the mind, not of race or inherited class or ancestral territory.”
Jerry Adler in Newsweek (July 1996)
“The great centrifugal engine of American culture turns faster and faster, spinning off
fashions, slogans, ideologies, religious, artistic movements, economic theories,
therapeutic disciplines, cults and dogmas in fabulous profusion. Everyone’s identity is
politicized-not just in terms of race, ethnicity, religions and language… but also
gender, sexual behavior, age, clothing, diet and personal habits. To smoke in public is
a political act.”
Values, beliefs and myths are basic building blocks of all communities; they are indoctrinated
by certain forms of social, educational institutions; created by human beings who create
priorities and preferences; they cover a wide spectrum from abstract ideals such as justice,
freedom, and righteousness to anything that is desirable and useful; they are socially
conditioned and subject to constant change but expected to provide guidelines and stability.
VALUES: THE FOUR CORE VALUES
LIBERTY: certain guarantees for the individual against probable governmental oppression
(Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, 1791, the 14th amendment)
EQUALITY: all citizens enjoy identical political rights and the same chances to the attainment
of the American Dream (Declaration of Independence; 14th amendment)
DEMOCRACY: republicanism, limited government, checks and balances, constitutional
safeguards, participation and the willingness to make the system work (Washington’s decision
not to run after two terms, Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience)
INDIVIDUALISM: individual freedom, equality of opportunity, competition, material wealth,
hard work, self-reliance, etc.; cf. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (Paris, 1791; London,
1793): the13 virtues of self-perfection; the American Dream
BELIEFS
All communities develop a deeply-rooted SYSTEM OF BELIEFS by which the community
seeks answers to and explains basic ideas:
 nature and the universe, its creation and control
 man’s place in the universe
 communities: self-legitimizing stories of national origin and greatness
 position of the individual in a given community and society
 human nature and conduct
MYTHS
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Definitions of myth and ideology, orientation (past, present, future; and Orwell)
Means of construction: exaggeration, oversimplification, manipulative rearrangement
of things, stereotypes, etc.
Unifying myths vs. disuniting myths (melting pot vs. the disuniting of America)
Individual and collective myths: the American Dream and America’s Mission
Why myths and why so many?
Functions: explain, justify, foretell
THE AMERICAN DREAM
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individual success, material, spiritual or political
various versions (How many are there?)
automatism and justification
failure and its admission: Studs Terkel, American Dreams Lost and Found (1980)
its corruption at times of national crisis (Horatio Alger; Depression; Sixties; now?)
the outside push (cf. America’s image abroad)
AMERICA’S MISSION
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Combination of myths and ideologies about identity and place and role in the world:
What makes an American? + What should they do in the world?
 Heritage:
Western heritage: Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman, Germanic, European
New World heritage: the civil religion, belief in the American way and uniqueness
Modern heritage: challenges of transformation and successful responses
Pluralistic heritage: diversity in population and ideas
 Identity: frontier, melting pot, salad bowl, multiculturalism (and the dual attitude
towards American citizenship)
 Mission:
Continental (19th century): City upon a Hill, the American Eden (second Great
Awakening), Manifest Destiny, Monroe Doctrine
Global (20th and 21st centuries): Making the world safe for democracy; the problems
of evolution and revolution (cf. 1956)
LECTURE 4: DISRUPTIVE FORCES IN AMERICA:
CENTRIFUGAL FORCES IN AMERICAN CULTURE
BACKGROUND
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THE major dilemma: the US is, or the US are?
Boiling pot: Oscar Jaszi, The Dissolution of the Hapsburg Monarchy (1929):
describes centripetal and centrifugal forces at play; conclusion: the Monarchy
dissolved, and was not broken up; does this apply to the US, too?
Centripetal Forces: forces of cohesion: beliefs, values and myths of American
otherness (individual and collective); American identity, assimilation of immigrants (if
and when) [P1: Progress; P2: map]
Centrifugal Forces: forces that work against cultural cohesion: race, ethnicity, class,
gender, regionalism, religious diversity, countercultures, etc.
RACE AND ETHNICITY
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Race supposedly biological, ethnicity cultural, but BOTH are social constructs
Confusion: Hispanic/Anglo-Saxon race, Jews as racial or ethnic group
Race and racial divisions of the world [P3 and P4 from Hunt]: biological, but race
mixing (miscegenation) and passing
Ethnicity: language, culture, religion: a more narrow category; cf. modern Nationalism
Core America: “Bible-based, religious and political ethnocentrism” (WASP
superiority complex): which groups do NOT fit and why (different levels of
whiteness); cf. stereotypes in Canadian Bacon
Racial and/or ethnic acceptance: success of assimilation (but cf. Melting Pot to
Multiculturalism: the two-way street) vs. sterotypes
CLASS
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Is there class in America? If “all men are created equal,” can there be class in
America?
Classlessness and DofI, equality opportunity; some European evil (like poverty,
slums): “social stratification”
Class (20th century): Marxist overtones: history as constant class struggle, revolution
as a driving force, no middle class, only oppressors and oppressed (Marx and Engels,
The Communist Manifesto, 1848)
sg. negative in America; Marx: no middle-class: LBJ: “everybody middle-class”
W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth. A Non-Communist Manifesto (1962)
1960s: paradigm shift, conflict histories: consciously use class in Marxist sense
(“radical” histories, Howard Zinn, etc.)
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
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Discrimination and segregation: CRMs (Afro-American, Hispanic, Native American)
1964/1965: Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act: also AA
AA: reverse discrimination or social justice?
Beneficiaries of AA
Challenges to AA: Bakke (1979) and on: Why does the SC uphold it every time?
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
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Part of multiculturalism: non-offensive code of behavior and use of language: the
other extreme to ethnocentrism; 1990s (AFTER the Cold War)
Spouse, chairperson, womyn, herstory, chronologically gifted, visually challenged…
Parody: James Finn Garner, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. Modern Tales for
Our Life and Times (1994) became #1 bestseller; PC dictionary from National
Lampoon team, etc. [The Three Little Pigs]
AA and PC: guilt complex or honest attempt to offer reconciliation? Multicultural
America or the disuniting of America/the closing of the American Mind?
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
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Legal (LI) and illegal immigration (II): law vs. economic interest => law vs. moral
commitment
Illegal immigrants: 12-20 m; total no. of immigrants: 34-40 m; pop: 300 m
II: typically Latin American, esp. US-Mexican issue
Militarizing the border, incl. barbed wire fence (cf. Communism) and KKK revival
(armed vigilante groups) [P5: Davis-Chacon cover]
II and their CRM: 14th amendment, marches, legislation, unions, “day without
immigrants,” etc. vs. the legal issue of violating the same laws
Can you demand citizen’s rights in a country where you are staying illegally? If not,
why in America? (Simpson-Rodino Act, 1986)