AMS 201: Introduction to the Study of American Culture and Society
Spring 2014
Andrea Stone
Seelye 403
X3455
astone@smith.edu
W 2-4 and by appt
Michael Thurston
Seelye 416
X3385
mthursto@smith.edu
M 1-2, W 3-4 and by appt
Course Description
American Studies, simply put, seeks to understand the specific character of culture
in the U.S., where by “culture” we mean something like “a whole way of life.” In this
course, we will introduce the interdisciplinary field of American Studies by focusing
in turn on four intersecting areas of concern: media and the public sphere,
citizenship, the body as a site of labor and leisure, and the construction and
circulation of power through space. While we are separating them out for analytical
clarity, it is important to remember that they are in fact always interwoven,
interacting, and mutually constituting.
American Studies seeks to understand culture by eavesdropping on a wide variety
of cultural discourses and practices: politics, law, economics, literature, art, music,
advertising, media, popular culture, fashion, religion, and more. In this course, we
will combine careful scrutiny of such primary sources with attention to how
scholars have interpreted these and other sources. We will work to isolate the
“moves” by which interpreters of American culture perform their analyses and we
will try -- in written assignments and in class discussion -- to practice those moves
ourselves.
Books (available at Grecourt Bookstore)
Douglass, Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Davis, Life in the Iron Mills
Riis, How the Other Half Lives
Most readings for the course are posted to the AMS 201 Moodle site.
Schedule (still under construction; here are the first two units, which will take us to
Spring Break)
T (1/28)
Introductions
Unit 1: Media and the Public Sphere
Th (1/30)
Foster and McChesney, “The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to
Capitalism” (Monthly Review online)
T (2/4)
Th (2/6)
Bradford, from History of Plymouth Plantation;
Underhill, from Newes from New England;
Matt Cohen, from Networked Wilderness (Chapter 4,
“Multimedia Combat and the Pequot War”)
from Bay Psalm Book;
Eliot, from A Brief Narrative;
Glenda Goodman, “’But they differ from us in sound’:
Indian Psalmody and the Soundscape of Colonialism”
T (2/11)
Pamphlets and Broadsides; “Address of Abraham Johnstone, a Black
Man Hanged at Woodbury…New Jersey” (1797);
Robert A. Gross, “An Extensive Republic: Introduction,” History of the
Book in America, Vol. 2)
Th (2/13)
SSC visit; Jeannine M. DeLombard, “Apprehending Early African
American Literary History,” Early African American Print Culture;
continuing discussion of Johnstone
T (2/18)
Rally Day Speaker Event: talk by Amy Ellis Nutt
Meet in Neilson Browsing Room
Godey’s Lady’s Book;
Patricia Okker, from Our Sister Editors: Sarah J. Hale and
the Tradition of Nineteenth-Century American Women Editors
(Chapter 1, “Women Periodical Editors in the Nineteenth-Century
United States,” pp. 6-37).
Th (2/20)
Friday, 2/21: First Paper Due
Unit 2: Citizenship
T (2/25)
Full Text of the Naturalization Act of 1790 [PDF]
Shklar, “American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion” (1989) [PDF]
Th (2/27)
Douglass, Narrative of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
T (3/4)
Douglass, Narrative
Priscilla Wald, from Constituting Americans (Chapter 1,
“Neither Citizen Nor Alien: National Narratives, Frederick
Douglass, and the Politics of Self-Definition,” pp. 14-105)
Th (3/6)
Text of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act [available online from MAP]
Poems from Angel Island Detention Site [PDF]
Railton, “Chapter 1: What the Act Can Teach Us about Immigration
History and Laws” in The Chinese Exclusion Act: What it can teach us
about America (2013) [eBook]
T (3/11)
Ngai, “Introduction—Illegal Aliens: A Problem of Law and History”
and “Chapter 5: The World War II internment of Japanese Americans
and the Citizenship Renunciation Cases” in Impossible Subjects: illegal
aliens and the making of modern America [available as eBook]
Internment Camp Haiku [PDF]
Th (3/13)
Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots,” “The Ballot or the Bullet”;
Michelle Alexander, “Introduction” to The New Jim Crow: Mass
Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
Friday, 3/14: Take-home Midterm due
Note: Our class will travel to New York City for a tour of the Lower East Side and a
visit to the LES Tenement Museum on Sunday, April 20. Please reserve that date on
your calendar and please let your instructor know as soon as possible if you have a
conflict (another class or co-curricular activity) on that date so that you can work
out an alternative assignment.
Assignments
The main written work for the course includes:
 a short paper on American print culture, focused on materials in the Sophia
Smith Collection
 a take-home midterm exam
 a paper or alternative project on representations of the body
 a research paper on a topic developed in consultation with the instructor
 a final exam
In addition, there will be occasional informal writing assignments corresponding to
specific readings and activities. Because this class is something of a “lab,” in which
we try out ideas, methods, and interpretations, attendance and participation are
mandatory. Come to class having read the material and ready to ask questions,
hazard guesses, offer interpretations, and engage in dialogue.
Policies
Papers should be turned in by the deadlines given here and on assignment sheets.
Late papers will be penalized 1/3 letter grade per day late. Extensions will be given
only in cases of extreme circumstances; plan ahead so that you can complete work
on time and please do not request an extension on a paper for this course because
you have similar deadlines in other courses. Papers should be turned in as hard
copies unless you have spoken with me and received explicit permission to turn the
paper in as an electronic file. Please do not eat, text, web-surf, read or do homework
for other classes, knit, etc. in class. Please leave your laptop, tablet, phone, etc.,
packed up during class unless we are discussing a reading from Moodle (in which
case, please have only the reading open). If you have a disability that will affect your
capacity to do the work for this class, please be in touch with the Disability Services
Office (2071).