History 364
From
Gilded Age to Jazz Age:
Aspects
of Modernity in American Culture,
1877-1919
Dan Beard,
Illustration
from Mark Twain's
A
Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)
Contents
Contents
1) Introduction
2) Learning Outcomes
3) Teaching and Learning
4) Written Exercises
5) Assessment
6) Sources
7) Electronic resources
8) Schedule of Michelmas Readings
and Seminar Topics
9)
Schedule of Lent Readings and Seminar Topics
Ñ
INTRODUCTION Ñ
Please read, and periodically re-read, these preliminary paragraphs. The
information provided needs to be understood, remembered and acted upon.
It is very important before you begin this course that you understand:
*Its intended Learning
Outcomes, that is the skills and knowledge you will be assisted to acquire
and develop over the year;
*The way in which your Teaching and Learning should enable you to
achieve those Learning Outcomes;
*The Methods of Assessment employed which will enable you and me to
judge how well during the year and by its end your Teaching and Learning
have enabled you to achieve the intended Learning Outcomes.
Return to Contents
1. Learning Outcomes
This two-unit, final-year, C Option Special Subject
course forms a very important part of your degree scheme. It builds upon skills
and knowledge you should have developed over your
previous two years of undergraduate study. You will also be studying two more
units, usually at least one and possibly two in History. Some of the intended
Leaning Outcomes of this course are particular to it; others are shared with
other units in History; and some may be common to the units you already studied
or are studying elsewhere.
By the end of this unit you should have secured the following Learning
Outcomes.
¨ You should be able with confidence to understand how and why historians define certain periods for detailed investigation, why they identify for study particular themes, and why and how interpretations and approaches may differ and change over time. You should be aware of the effect of current concerns on the way historians, including yourself, study the past and interpret issues, and you should be willing and able to use your understanding of the past to reflect upon the present. You should also be able to recognise the limits to what seems to be known and indeed to what, apparently, might be known about certain topics. You should thereby have matured your understanding of the discipline of History and its value.
¨ You should have obtained an extensive factual knowledge,
largely based on primary sources, of the cultural history of the
¨ Your ability to appreciate the distinction between primary and secondary sources should have been confirmed, and you should be able to locate for your use a wide range of primary and secondary sources. Moreover, you should have become aware of the need to understand the origins and contemporary purposes of primary sources before they can be critically used, and of the need to check your grasp of such records against the work of other historians, perhaps in order to interpret them correctly, perhaps in order to query what appear to be received views. You should also feel more competent in your evaluation and use of complex and sophisticated secondary sources. You should also be better able to make notes on the historical material you have read; to select and deploy historical information accurately and honestly; and to follow scholarly conventions correctly when citing primary and secondary material in notes and bibliographies. You should be more confident in addressing historical questions, in making your own historical judgements and in arguing analytically. You should thereby have developed sophisticated intellectual skills as a historian, qualities which are also transferable to the worlds of work and of lifelong learning, whether within or outside the historical profession.
¨ You
should have become more adept in reading quickly, critically and effectively;
in using detailed information and expressing complex arguments clearly,
persuasively, accurately and in good written English; in presenting similar
material orally in formal presentations and informal discussions; in working in
groups as well as alone; in using electronic information technology in your
research and writing; in offering and responding to constructive criticism; and
in managing your time properly. You should thereby have brought to a maturation a set of transferable practical skills which
should prove valuable in you career development.
The above Learning Outcomes are to be achieved in the following ways.
¨Seminars. The course is conducted primarily via weekly seminars of not less than two-hours duration. (Depending on the timetables of members of the class, it may be possible to extend some seminars). The class will convene on Monday mornings at 11:00 a.m., and will meet through Michelmas and Lent and the first two weeks of the Summer Term. Attendance is compulsory, because the seminar needs to work as a group. There is much content to the course, and we all need to learn from each other.
ªMost Monday morning seminars will be built around group presentations. We will divide the class into four or five groups or teams, and one group each week will be responsible for presenting the seminar’s context. I will be available to help with your presentation and you should consult with me before you begin the topic. Each team will be expected to provide handouts for the class, which may include bullet points of your presentation, statistical material and/or copies of visual material. The handouts must, however, include a selected bibliography for the topic. If you bring me the master copy before our meeting, I will make copies for the rest of the class. You are also encouraged to make use of the OHP (I can provide transparencies) and/or the computer facilities (e.g. web sites) at our disposal. You may also play tapes or videos, but you will need to tell me in advance, so that I can arrange the media. It is up to each team how to organise the presentation. Usually, each member will take a turn, but there are other models and you may wish to experiment.
ªEach group is likely to be responsible for one or two presentations in each of the Michelmas and Lent Terms.
ªThe group presentation should last for about 30 minutes. The group may wish to identify particular issues for the class to discuss. Class discussion (depending somewhat on the final size of the class) is likely to take two forms: small group discussion, as each of the other groups takes an issue secondly, general discussion of the issues. All members of the class will be expected to contribute to every session.
ªAs part of your weekly preparation, you will be expected to have considered the week’s reading questions, which you will be willing and prepared to discuss. This may include reading aloud and/or paraphrasing, but it will certainly require a cogent explanation of your ideas about the text and/or its context. You may or may not be called upon to discuss your conclusions in a given week, but don’t hesitate to bring them up as part of our discussion.
ªAs noted above, you—as an individual—will be involved in three or four presentations in the course of the year. You will be expected to submit a brief essay, which considers your presentation in relation to the week’s text and our ensuing discussion. This seminar paper should be around 1500 words in length and should be handed in one week after the seminar itself. The seminar papers will form a part of the assessment for paper 2 (see below), and the marking may reflect your general seminar contributions in the course of the year.
¨Additional
Seminars. In addition to the main weekly seminar, there
may be occasional one-hour seminars, held on Thursdays at 5:00. These will be arranged by group request and
may be used for closer focus on particular topics or texts, for passage analysis
exercises (see below), for film viewings, and for presentations by other
lecturers.
¨Prescribed Texts. Professional historians commonly use a mixture of primary and secondary sources in the writing of a piece of historical scholarship and you will be expected to do the same. Between the library and the world wide web, you have a vast archive of primary sources from the period at your disposal and you should try to develop your own understanding ‘first-hand,’ as it were, by using such material where you can. This should make you aware of the value and limitations of primary material. I have selected a number of texts which are central to the themes we address, and these are known as the Prescribed Texts. They will figure in Paper I of the examinations. Keeping up with the reading in this course will take a considerable amount of your time, but you are encouraged to do your own primary research in the library and on the web.
ªYou should read the Prescribed Texts carefully, noting date of publication, identifying writers or speakers etc., assessing the type and purpose of the source, considering content, style (including ‘genre’) and argument (implicit or explicit—there is always an argument). You should also consider any impact that the piece might have had, and/or its value in presenting a particular idea or set of ideas to both its present and past audiences. You should also be able to compare the text to others, both of its own type as well as to others from different media (e.g. paintings and novels).
ªI have tried to select as Prescribed Texts only items which are easily located and are relatively inexpensive. Though everything is available in the library, I suggest that you purchase the texts that we will be reading. I will make all of the shorter pieces available either as photocopies or as web sites.
¨Written Exercises.
Other than the final exams, these take five forms:
ªOne contexts, (or ‘topics’), essay. This should be about 2500 words, and should be chosen from the ‘contexts essays’ list. If you wish to write an essay on a topic not on the list, come and see me and we will probably be able to work something out. You may, if you wish, explore one of your presentation topics more fully. You would normally use both primary and secondary sources. Be wary of using general textbooks. At special subject level, even when using secondary sources you should expect to use research-based works, that is books or articles by scholars who are themselves drawing on primary sources.
This essay will be due on Friday of week 7, Michelmas term.
ªOne texts (or ‘sources’) essay. This essay will be based substantially on primary sources, and should be chosen from the ‘texts essays’ list. It should be about 2500 words, and should take the form of a critical appraisal of one or more of the texts. Part of your appraisal should, of course, take into account the secondary material on your chosen topic.
This essay will be due on Friday of week 6, Lent term.
ªOne Biography. Biography is among the most controversial genres in historical or critical writing, but it remains immensely popular and has great value. You may choose any figure from the period and consider how his or her life (and, where appropriate, the literary, visual or musical texts that s/he produced) was (or was not) representative of the period.
This essay
will be due on Friday of week 2, Summer term.
ªOne Seminar Paper. As noted above, you will write up one of your presentations, in about 1500 words. The essay will be largely impressionistic, and will consider the connections between your presentation and the week’s prescribed texts. You should clearly identify the topic or issue that your group addressed, convey the presentation’s salient points, and think about how they effected your understanding of the text. You might also reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of your group’s oral presentation, in light of the ensuing discussion. You should quote and cite specific passages from the week’s prescribed texts in order to make your meaning clear. A brief list of sources used should be also appended, as should any handouts which you used during the seminar (not to be counted in the word limit). The presentation bibliography must be appended as well.
This paper is to be submitted one week after the seminar.
ªPassage Analysis (‘gobbet exercise’). During the year there will be a number of passage analyses, i.e. 45/50-minute sessions, conducted in the form of written tests, in which you will comment on three short extracts (some of which will be visual). These exercises are to encourage you to read the texts, to contextualise them, and to think critically about them. The exercises will also help you to master the art of writing succinctly and will help to prepare you for the exam. I will advise you on how to handle them. You will be given some practice, and only one passage analysis exercise towards the end of the year will be formally marked.
How far these Teaching and Learning Strategies have succeeded in achieving the desired Learning Outcomes will be judged through appropriate methods of assessment. Since this is a two-unit or double-weighted course, at the end of the academic year two marks will be presented to the Board of Examiners. These will be based on two 3-hour unseen examinations taken in the Summer Term and on the related coursework done during the year. As is normal in History units, the examination counts as 2/3 and coursework 1/3. However, if an examination mark is higher than the coursework mark, and if all your coursework has been completed, the examination mark will stand—i.e. it will not be lowered by lower coursework.
¨Assessment Scheme:
ªPaper 1, the Texts or ‘Sources’ paper, will require you to answer three questions. Most of the questions will be in the form of passages, asking you to write succinct comments on short extracts (some of which will be visual) from the prescribed texts. Others may be essay questions related to the texts or questions of critical, historiographical or methodological nature. Coursework for this paper will be based on your texts essay (60%), the seminar paper (30%) and the passage analysis (10%). Your coursework mark will be altered by as much as two percent in either direction, according to your participation in group discussion.
ªPaper 2, the Contexts, or, ‘Topics’ paper requires you to answer three essay questions on the course’s main topics or themes. Coursework for this paper will be based on your Contexts essay (50%), and your Biography (50%). Your coursework mark will be altered by as much as two percent in either direction, according to your seminar presentations.
¨Coursework and Examination Essays. How far you have achieved many important
Learning Outcomes will be revealed by these essays. For more on the writing of essays, the
qualities sought, and on the mark scale used in Part II, please consult the
History Department’s Student Handbook.
ªIntellectual and Research Qualities. Essays should in general show your understanding of the nature of historical study. They should also demonstrate your familiarity with the relevant primary sources, your bibliographical and research skills, and your capacity to produce a well-focused and well-written argument in a persuasive manner and in good English. Adopt a questioning attitude towards your sources.
ª Qualities of Presentation. One intended Learning Outcome is that you should be able to produce written work to professional standards. Coursework essays must be word- processed, double-spaced, and with generous margins. You should include page numbers in order to facilitate comments on specific parts of the essay. A bibliography should be added of the books and articles consulted, listing primary sources before secondary, items in alphabetical order of author, giving details of author and title, place publisher and date of publication for books, or name of journal, volume number and date of publication for journal articles. Footnotes or endnotes, correctly referenced, should be used in order to refer to primary sources of information and also to secondary sources from which you have quoted or from which you have extracted specific ideas or unusual material. Printouts should be carefully checked and errors of grammar, spelling and punctuation corrected before submission: do not rely on computer spellcheckers. Untidy presentation obscures argument and will lead to the loss of marks. For all presentation questions, you would do well to consult William Kelleher Storey’s Writing History: A Guide for Students which is available in the library and for purchase. Finally, you should have someone, not your instructor or a family member, read your work before you turn it in. Another reader will catch mistakes and unclear or confusing passages that you will never see. This ‘peer editing’ process is crucial to good writing. All of your lecturers and instructors do it with their writing and you should too.
ªDeadlines and Extensions. The dates for the submission of written work are detailed on the Essay List and above. If there are compelling reasons you can ask for an extension, but do not presume that it will be granted. And please make sure that you ask in advance of the specified deadline. My schedule is very tight and it is tough to find time to mark essays that come in out of sequence from the others. It is also much easier to lose them. The Department will require medical notes or other official documentation to explain delays (or absences) through illness or personal problems. I have no authority to grant an extension beyond the Senate Deadline (5:00 p.m. on Friday of Week 3 in the Summer Term). for more on deadlines see your Student Handbook.
¨Presentational Skills and Group Work: The intended Learning Outcomes include the development of presentational skills and your capacity for group work. Seminar preparation, attendance and performance are all important:
ªQualities. Credit will be given to students who have prepared well, who have interesting, informed and relevant contributions to make to group discussions, who listen and respond to those made by others, who ask intelligent and pertinent questions, and who try to make and especially who succeed in making fluent and informative presentations.
ªAttendance. Since seminar attendance is compulsory, marks will be deducted for unexplained and/or unjustified absences. It is therefore essential in your own interests to keep me properly informed in writing.
♦A Note on Plagiarism: In October 2003 the University introduced a new code and penalties concerning plagiarism. You will not need reminding that plagiarism is a serious academic offence, which can lead to exclusion from the university. You are strongly advised to read the relevant section in your Student Handbook.
In order to meet this growing problem, essays handed in for this course will be checked electronically for instances of plagiarism. This check is intended to spot essays which were copied or purchased from electronic sources. This process will also spot essays which have copied material out of books, to the degree that those books are available electronically—and beware, most of them are. Essays which are found to be plagiarised will be handed over and made subject to the department’s review process, and then in some cases to the University’s disciplinary body.
In short, if you plagiarise an essay, you risk your academic future. Don’t do it.
¨Prescribed Texts:
*Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889) (Norton)
Robert W. Rydell, ed., The
Reason Why the Colored American is not in the
World’s
Columbian Exposition, (1893) (U. of Illinois, 1999)
*William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) (Norton)
*Edward Bellamy,
Looking Backward, 1887-2000 (1888) (
*Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905) (Norton)
*Owen Wister, The
Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902) (
*Charles Eastman, From the Deep Woods to Civilization:
Chapters in the Autobiography
of an Indian (1916) (U. of Nebraska, 1977)
*Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900) (Norton)
*Jacob Riis: How the Other Half
Lives (1893) (
*Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1901) (Norton)
*W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1905) (Norton)
*Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes (1914) (Penguin)
*Gertrude Stein, Three Lives (1905) (Penguin)
*John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers (1921) (Penguin)
Selected short readings on the web or in the course packet.
Jane Addams, Twenty
Years at
Willa Cather, My Antonia (1918)
________, Oh Pioneers! (1913)
Andrew Carnegie, Triumphant
Democracy (1886)
Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899)
Stephen Crane, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893)
Ellen F. Fitzpatrick, ed., Muckraking, Three Landmark Articles (1994/1903)
Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Herland (1915)
Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage (1915)
Frances Harper, Iola Leroy (1892)
William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890)
________, A Modern Instance (1882)
________, A Traveler From Altruria (1894)
Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona (1884)
________, A Century of Dishonor (1881)
Henry James, The Bostonians (1886)
________, The Ambassadors (1903)
Frank Norris, The Octopus (1901)
Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (1913)
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
________ with C. D. Warner, The Gilded Age (1873)
Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers (1925)
And many shorter pieces for aid in contextualisation available on the internet (see below).
¨Recommended General Texts:
Nell Irvin
Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The
Charles
Calhoun, The Gilded Age: Essays on the
Origins of Modern
Alan
Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of
Mary Beth Norton et. al., A People and a Nation (Sixth Edition)
¨Recommended Texts on Visual Culture:
Barbara Groseclose, Nineteenth-Century American Art (2000) (Chpts. 2, 4-6)
Erika Doss, Twentieth-Century American Art (2002) (Chpts. 1-3)
David Bjelejac, American Art: A Cultural History (2000) (Chpts. 6-7)
Barbara Haskell, The American Century: Art and Culture 1900-1950 (1999) (p. 11-129).
¨Recommended Theoretical Texts:
Hans Blumenberg, ‘The Concept of Reality and the Possibility of the Novel,’ in Richard D. Amacher, ed. New Perspectives in German Literary Criticism (1979)
Mattei Calinescu, ‘The Idea of Modernity,’ in Five Faces of Modernity (pgs. 1-92)
Louis A. Montrose, “Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture,”
in H. Aram Veeser, ed. The New Historicism 1986), 15-36.
ªBibliographic Resources at the
Two vital bibliographic resources
available on the LU Library web site are ‘
ªGeneral Sites for US History, 1877-1920:
Society of Historians of the
Gilded Age and Progressive Era,
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~shgape/internet/index.html
Robert Cherny's
"Websites for the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,"
http://bss.sfsu.edu/cherny/gapesites.htm
'The Gilded Page,' a collection of electronic
texts written by US authors or widely read by Americans between 1866-1901,
http://www.wm.edu/~srnels/gildage/giltext.html
Jim Zwick's ‘Anti-Imperialism in the United
States, 1898-1935’
http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/kipling/index.html
ªElectronic Archives:
At Cornell (mostly for journals):
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/
At
http://moa.umdl.umich.edu
The University of
http://xroads.virginia.edu
http://www.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/index.htm
A broad collection of American Art is available at the Smithsonian:
For a vast collection of European and American art, see:
http://www.abcgallery.com/index.html
_________________________________________
Schedule of
Part
1: Imagining Modern Technology/The Technology of the
Modern Imagination
Week 1: Modernity and/as Cultural Crisis
Week 2: The
Textual Production of Modernity
Week 3: Modernity
as Contested Ground, The World’s Columbian
Exhibition
Part
2: The Incorporation of
Week 4:
Incorporation and Interconnectedness
Part 3: The Limits of Domesticity
Week 7: Across
Class Boundaries
Part
4: Frontiers
Week 10: Taking
up the White Man’s Burden, The
Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War
Schedule of
Lent Term:
Part 5: Immigration and the City
Week 1: Sex and the City
Part 6: Drawing the Colour Line
Week 4: Making Blackness 1
Part 7: Modernist Perspective(s)
Week 10
Modernism as a Culture of Resistance (?)
Summer Term Revision Sessions:
Week 1: contexts
Week 2: texts
Part 1
Imagining Modern Technology/
The Technology of the Modern Imagination
Week 1
Course Introduction:
Modernity and/as Cultural Crisis
Required
A) HIST 364 Course Guide
B) Painter,
Standing at Armageddon: The
C) Trachtenberg,‘The Politics of Culture,’The
Incorporation of
Suggested
A) Mattei Calinescu, ‘The Idea of Modernity,’ in Five Faces of Modernity
B) Henry Adams, ‘The Dynamo and the Virgin,’ Chpt. 25 of The Education of Henry Adams (1905/18) at http://xroads.virginia.edu
_________________________________________
The
Textual Production of Modernity
Required reading:
A) Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1888)
B) J. R. Fleming, ‘Science and Technology in the Later Half of the Nineteenth Century,’ in Calhoun, ed. The Gilded Age (Chpt. 2).
For
1) In what ways might this story be described as ‘realistic’?
2) Why does Twain seem to be so obsessed with Walter Scott?
3) Be ready
to identify and discuss several examples of the ways that Twain describes the
differences between ‘medieval’
4) Is Twain trying to present an accurate picture of the past? Why or why not?
5) Can the Arthurians be trusted in their description of events? Can Hank? Can ‘M.T.’?
6) What is
wrong with
7) Why is there such an emphasis on technology? Was Twain a technophile or a technophobe?
7) What is the significance of Twain’s constant descriptions of clothing?
8) What is the relation between magic and technology? (e.g., Chpt. 21)
9) What terms does Hank use to describe the Arthurians? How does he treat them?
10) To whom does Hank Morgan compare himself? Who was the real ‘Henry Morgan’?
Suggested
Trachtenberg, Mechanization takes Command, The Incorporation of America, (Chpt. 2)
_________________________________________
Week 3
Modernity as Contested Ground: The 1893 World’s
Columbian Exposition
(note: You may wish to review Frederick Jackson Turner, ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’ which was presented at the exposition)
Required
A) First,
Read Trachtenberg, ‘The
B) Next, read Andrew Carnegie, ‘Wealth’ in The North American Review (June 1889) http://www.wm.edu/~srnels/gilded.html
C) Now read Henry Van Brunt, ‘The Columbian Exposition and American Civilization’ in The Atlantic Monthly 71 (May, 1893) at
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0071-83
D) Then visit the fair at these Columbian Exposition Web Sites:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/WCE/title.html and
E) Follow this with Simon Pokagon, The Red Man’s Greeting (1893, photocopy)
F) Finally, read Frederick Douglass, ‘Introduction’ to The Reason Why the Colored American is not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, (1893) at: http://www.boondocksnet.com/expos/columbian.html
For
Suggested
A) Chris Gair, ‘Whose
B) Doss, ‘The Gilded Age,’ Twentieth Century American Art, (Chpt. 1).
Part 2
The Incorporation of
Week 4
Incorporation and Interconnectedness
Student Presentation: The Growth of the Corporation
Required
A) William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)
B) Glen Porter, ‘Industrialization and the Rise of Big Business,’ in Calhoun, ed. The Gilded Age (Chpt. 1)
For
1) This story is composed of two main plots, a love plot and a business plot. Try to separate them, and be clear on how each of them progress. How do issues of responsibility and obligation lie at the centre of each plot? What brings them together?
2) How does this book establish itself as realistic? To what other forms of literature does it compare itself?
3) What examples does Howells give of illusion or artifice, and how are they valued?
4) What kind of literature does Reverend Sewell prefer? Why?
5) List the different traits of the elder Lathams and Coreys. What are their likes and dislikes? What kind of a person is Bromfield Corey? Silas Lapham?
6) How does the Corey’s taste differ from the Lathams?
7) How does aesthetic taste operate as a marker of class in this world?
8) For what is Silas responsible? Where does he think his obligations lie?
9) Should Penelope be ashamed of herself? Why or why not?
10) Do you feel sorry for Irene?
11) What happens to the paint company?
12) When does Silas ‘rise’?
13) Is this book critical of the corporation? How? List some examples.
Suggested
Trachtenberg, ‘Fictions of
the Real,’ The Incorporation of
_________________________________________
Week 5
The Labour Question
Student
Presentation: In what ways did workers try to shape their worlds between 1877-1917?
Required
A) Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 1887-2000 (1888)
B) Eric Arnesen, ‘American Workers and the Labor Movement in late Nineteenth Century America,’ in Calhoun, ed. The Gilded Age (Chpt. 3)
For
1) Why do you think that this story was so popular?
2) What would Andrew Carnegie have said about this book? Twain?
3) Who is narrating this story? Where is he and when is he writing?
4) What constitutes character in Boston 2000? In 1887?
5) Describe the emotional life of the Leete family.
6) Describe some of the other inhabitants of Boston 2000.
7) How and when does the ‘change’ come about?
8) Describe the technological world of Boston 2000.
9) What happens when it rains?
10) What if someone wants to walk in the rain?
11) Do people in Boston 2000 enjoy their work? How do you know?
12) What is ‘modern’ for Bellamy and when will it happen?
13) What is wrong with the C19? How does Bellamy use the parable of the carriage?
14) What is ‘the industrial army’?
15) How does Dr. Leete account for those who don’t cooperate with the system? How are offenders punished in Boston 2000?
16) What do women do in Boston 2000?
Suggested
Trachtenberg, ‘Capital and
Labour,’ The Incorporation of
Part 3
The Limits of Domesticity
Week 6
Genteel Gender
Student Presentation: How did gender roles
differ according to class?
Required
A) Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905) Book 1
B) Charlotte Perkins Gillman, selection from Women and Economics (1898)
C) Stacey
Cordery, ‘Women in Industrializing
For
1) Describe Lily’s world. How is it changing? How is Lily’s personal situation changing?
2) How do the women in this world get by? (be specific)
3) What are Mrs. Peniston’s values? What is their origin?
4) Who would be more at home in Lily’s world: Bromfield Corey, Silas Lapham or Hank Morgan? In Mrs. Peniston’s world?
5) Describe Lily. Is she comfortable in her world? Where are the rough spots?
6) Does Lily
fancy
7) Describe
8) Does Lily need to be more flexible? What rules does she live by? What causes her to act? Is she ‘the mistress of her own fate’?
9) If you could give her some advice, what would it be?
10) How would Gilman explain Lily’s plight? What is ‘sexual selection’?
11) Is Lily good at anything? How might it be rewarded?
12) What if a man was good at the same thing? How would it be rewarded?
12) Why do the men react as they do to the ‘tableaux vivants’?
13) Did Lily do anything wrong? What does she owe Gus Trenor? Should she have known better? Did she know better?
14) Does Wharton treat her attractive characters differently than does Howells? Why?
15) What is the difference between being spoken for and being spoken of?
16) Was there a ‘double standard’ for men and women’s sex lives? Is there still?
Suggested
Groseclose, ‘Portraiture,’ Nineteenth-Century American Art, (Chpt. 2), esp. 49-59.
_________________________________________
Week 7
Across Class Boundaries
Student
Presentation: What was ‘Feminism’?
Required
A) Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905) Book 2
B) Jane Addams, ‘The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements’ (1892)
C) Elaine Showalter, ‘The Death of the Lady (Novelist)’, in the Norton Critical Edition of The House of Mirth, 357-372.
For
1) Would you say that Bertha beat Lily at her own game, or are they playing by different rules?
2) Why doesn’t Lily use Bertha’s letters to restore her place in society? What would Bertha have done if the roles were reversed? What other opportunities does Lily pass up? Why?
3) Is Lily more like Bertha Dorset, or Mrs. Peniston?
4) How might Lily best use her skills to support herself?
5) Is Lily a good worker? Why or why not?
6) How do the other women in the hat shop treat Lily? Is their treatment of her fair?
7) How would Dr. Leete describe Lily’s problems?
8) What does Lily learn at Nettie’s house?
9) What is the ‘solidarity of life’?
10) What does she mean by shelter?
11) Why does she refuse Simon? Is he a positive or a negative character?
12) What happens to Lily in the end? Has she learned anything?
13) What is your opinion of Gerty after reading Addams? Of Carrie?
14) Would you call Jane Addams a ‘feminist’? Why or Why not? Edith Wharton?
Suggested
A) Charlotte Perkins Gillman, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (1888)
B) ________, Herland (1915)
D)
Part 4
Frontiers
Representing
the West
Student Presentation: The
Visual Culture of the West
Required
A) Owen Wister, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902)
(see particularly, ‘To the Reader,’ Chpts. 1-2, 6, 8, 12-16, 27, 36)
B) Brian W. Dippie, ‘Frederic Remington’s West: Where History meets Myth’ in Chris Bruce, ed., Myth of the West (photocopy)
C) Trachtenberg,
‘The
For
1) Who Was Owen Wister? What was his background?
2) What kind of a story is this? What do you think is its genre?
3) When does it take place? When was it written?
4) Why does Wister choose to write his story as a history?
5) Unlike Twain, Wister likes Scott. Why? How do we know?
6) Why does
he choose the West as his setting? Why
not
7) What are the book’s class and gender conflicts? How are they resolved?
8) What is the basis of character in this story?
9) What is ‘the game’ and what has it to do with the nation? Can you retell this episode with Trampas as the hero?
10) What is ‘quality’? Who has it and who doesn’t? How do we know?
11) Who recognises the Virginian’s ‘quality’? Why?
12) Why is Maggie so stubborn, and how does she get over it?
13) Does Maggie read too much? What does the Virginian think?
14) Which books does Maggie like? What are the Virginian’s favorites?
15) How does the judge justify lynching?
16) Analyse the final scene. What has happened? What are the images of continuity and change? Does Wister suggest a solution to the crisis of modernity?
17) What is a ‘reality effect’ and how does Dippie think that it helps us to understand Remington’s paintings? What is typicality?
18) What ‘reality effects’ are at work in Wister’s story?
Suggested
A) Groseclose, ‘The American West,’Nineteenth-Century American Art, (Chpt. 2)
C) Stephen Crane, ‘The Blue Hotel’ (1898)
_________________________________________
Week 9
The Myth of the ‘Open’ West
Student Presentation: Native
American Life in the West
Required
A) Charles Eastman, From the Deep Woods to Civilization: Chapters in the Autobiography of an Indian (1916)
B) Selected Native American Voices (photocopy)
C) Edmund J. Danziger, ‘Native American Resistance and Accommodation during the Late Nineteenth Century,’ in Calhoun, ed. The Gilded Age (Chpt. 8).
For
1) Who was Charles Eastman? When and where did he write this book?
2) How does he describe his boyhood?
3) How does his father describe the white man’s world?
4) What was Eastman’s first reaction to his father’s stories?
5) List a few examples of cultural conflict in the schools.
6) What was Eastman’s attitude toward the schools? Why might other writers differ in their accounts? In what ways was his experience typical? In what ways was it not?
7) Describe Eastman’s experience at university.
8) How would you describe Eastman’s social circle, both at university and later?
9) What is Eastman’s opinion of the Ghost Dancers? How does this influence his actions?
10) What happened at Pine Ridge? How did it effect Eastman’s attitude?
11) How did ‘science’ influence Eastman’s thought? How does he reconcile it with Native American culture?
12) What does Eastman mean by ‘machine-made religion’ (p. 141)? Did he turn away from Christianity?
13 How does
Eastman’s description of
Suggested
Nicholas Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (1932)
_________________________________________
Week
10
Taking up
the ‘White Man’s Burden’: The Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino
War
Student Presentation: How was
popular culture used to manufacture public consensus in favour of the war
effort?
Required
A) Rudyard
Kipling, ‘The White Man’s Burden’ (1898) and various
responses at: Jim Zwick's "Anti-Imperialism in
the
B) Frank Norris, ‘The Frontier Gone at Last’ (1903) (photocopy)
C) William Dean Howells, ‘Editha’ at http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/howells/editha.html
D) Theodore Roosevelt, ‘The Strenuous Life’ at http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/research/speech%20strenuous.htm
E) Joseph
A. Fry, ‘Phases of Empire: Late
For
1) Was American imperialism a break from earlier practices?
2) Do the concepts of formal and informal imperialism help you to understand American practice?
3) How do
earlier relations with the Native Americans help us to understand
4) Choose several responses to Kipling, and be prepared to discuss them with the group.
5) How does
Norris connect imperialism to
6) Is Norris for or against expansion?
7) How does
Suggested
A) The
Library of Congress' 'World of 1898' site at http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/
B) The Spanish-American War Centennial Website at http://www.spanamwar.com/
Thursday: Passage analysis
Lent Term
Part 5
Immigration and the City
Week 1
Sex and the City
Student Presentation: Urbanisation
Required
A) Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900)
B) Robert
G. Barrows, ‘Urbanizing
For
1) Describe
Carrie’s first impressions of
2) Why does she fancy Drouet? What do men like about Carrie?
3) Describe Carrie’s sister’s life. How does it compare to that which Carrie imagines for herself?
4) What is the significance of Carrie’s sister’s dream? What causes the dream?
5) Describe Carrie’s experience in the department store. Is this a convincing picture of the way that ‘consumer culture’ operates?
6) Why does Carrie go with Hurstwood?
7) Look closely at the scene where Hurstwood takes the money. Why does he do it?
8) Does Carrie have a plan? Does anyone in this book?
9) What do you think is Dreiser’s view of human nature? What causes human action? Does this differ from the views offered in The Rise of Silas Lapham or in The House of Mirth?
10) Compare Carrie’s first success upon the stage to Lily Bart’s experience in the tableaux vivants. Are they the same? Why do the men react as they do?
11) Why do people want to be celebrities, and how is this connected to ‘consumer culture’? What does Carrie want?
12) Who is Robert Ames and what are his ‘aims’ for Carrie?
13) Does Carrie fancy Robert? Why? What is Robert’s field of expertise?
14) Is Carrie immoral? Why did Dreiser have to change the ending?
15) If you could give Hurstwood some advice, what would it be?
16) How would you describe the language of this book?
17) Assess Carrie’s status at the book’s conclusion. Is this a story of triumph or of tragedy? What do you think Dreiser intended?
Suggested
A) The ‘City Sites’ electronic book, at http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/citysites/
B) Stephen Crane, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893)
C) ________, ‘The Blue Hotel’ (1893)
_________________________________________
Week 2
Immigrant Experience
Student Presentation: How did the ‘New’ Immigration effect Popular Culture?
Required
A)
Isreal Zangwill, The Melting Pot (1906) at:
http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/wsharpe/citylit/Melting1.htm
B)
Emma
Lazarus, ‘The New Colossus’ (1883) at: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/LIBERTY/lazarus.html
C)
Roger
Daniels, ‘The Immigrant Experience in the Gilded Age,’ in
Calhoun, ed. The Gilded Age (Chpt. 4)
Film (In Class): The Immigrant, Charlie Chaplin (1917)
For
1) Who was Emma Lazarus? How has her poem been used?
2) Does Lazarus’ poem agree with the intentions of those who built and raised the statue?
3) Who creates the meaning of public landmarks?
4) Why and with whom was The Melting Pot so popular?
5) What was TR’s response?
6) Does Zangwill’s play offer an example of the way difference might be part of a broader society? Or, is it purely assimilationist?
Suggested
Werner Sollors, ed., The Life
Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves (1906)
_________________________________________
Week 3
Visualising Reform
Student
Presentation: What were Populism and Progressivism?
Required
A) Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1893)
B) Paintings by the ‘Ashcan School’ at http://nmaa-ryder.si.edu/collections/exhibits/metlives/index2.html
C) Alan Trachtenberg, ‘Camera Work/Social Work,’ in Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Matthew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989) (Chpt. 4)
D) Photos by Lewis Hine at http://www.geh.org/fm/lwhprints/htmlsrc2/
E) Photos by Alfred Stieglitz at http://www.geh.org/fm/stieglitz/htmlsrc/index.html
For
1) How do Riis’ photos differ from Hine’s? Choose an example from each and be prepared to discuss them with the class.
2) What were the goals of the three photographers? Were they more similar or different? What were the painters trying to achieve?
3) How do Hine’s photos differ from Stieglitz’? Choose an example from each and be prepared to discuss them with the class.
4) Whose images are more ‘realistic’? Why? Do any of the views remind you of our other writers? Which ones?
5) How do the photos differ from the paintings? What are their contrasting ‘reality effects’? Be specific and be ready to offer examples.
6) How do the photos produce a reality that is different from the paintings? Are the paintings less realistic? Explain your opinion with specific examples.
7) What reactions were each set of images likely to inspire? What makes a picture effective? How do pictures make arguments? (again, be specific)
8) How did technological change effect the production and dissemination of visual images? How did that change the way people ‘saw’ (and see) the world?
Suggested
A) David
Leviatin, ‘Framing the Poor: The
Irresistibility of How the Other Half Lives,’ Introduction to
B) Doss, ‘Early-American Modernism: The Art of Everyday Life,’ in Twentieth-Century American Art (Chpt. 2)
C) W.R. Miller, Farmers and Third-Party Politics,’ in Calhoun, ed. The Gilded Age (Chpt. 11)
D) Ellen F. Fitzpatrick, ed., Muckraking, Three Landmark Articles (1994/1903)
Part 6
Drawing the Colour Line
Making
Blackness 1:
Student Presentation: How did life change for every day
African-Americans after the Civil War?
Required
A) Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1901)
B) Leslie H. Fishel, Jr., ‘The African-American Experience,’ in Calhoun, ed. The Gilded Age (Chpt. 4)
For
1) How does
the ‘free labour ideology’ help to structure
2) Why does he focus so insistently on struggle in chapter 3 and elsewhere?
3) What are
the similarities between
4) What is
5) Did
6) What does
7) Does
8) Describe the condition of the people of the ‘black belt.’ (Chpt. 7) How does this effect his programme?
9) How does
brick making work as a metonym for the entire
10) Why did the parents complain? (72)
11) What is
‘the gospel of the toothbrush’ and why is it important? What is it meant to tell you about the
12) What are the key points of the Atlanta Exposition Address? Why did the audience react as it did?
13) How do you think the ‘old colored man’ on page 97 reacted to the address?
14) Describe
15) Answer
the question about English servants on page 130. How would
16) Compare the book’s closing scenes to those that close Frederick Douglass’ slave narrative. Is there a connection?
Suggested
A) Houston A. Baker, Jr., ‘Booker T. Washington’s Mastery of Form,’ Norton edition, 239-249.
B) Louis R. Harlan, ‘Booker T. Washington in Biographical Perspective,’ Norton edition, 204-219.
Film Viewing: Thursday
D.W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation (1915)
_________________________________________
Week 5
Making Whiteness:
Student Presentation:
Representations of Race in/and Popular Culture
Required
A) Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes (1914)
B) Owen Wister, Appendix: ‘The Evolution of the Cowpuncher,’ (1895), in The Virginian (Oxford World’s Classics) 329-334.
C) D.W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation 1915
For
1) How does Tarzan end up in his jungle home?
2) Describe Tarzan’s parents. What marks their difference from the crew?
3) What does the name ‘Tarzan’ mean?
4) What has Tarzan inherited from his parents? Are character traits hereditary? What would Wister say?
5) Why is Clayton less noble that Tarzan? How do we know?
6) What are Samuel T. Philander and Archimedes Q. Porter meant to signify?
7) How does Tarzan learn to write his name?
8) Describe his first recognition of himself. How does he differentiate himself from the apes? From the Africans?
9) What marks the difference between Jane and Esmerelda?
10) How does Tarzan kill Kulonga?
11) Where does Tarzan get his knife? How does he use it?
12) What is more important, the knife or the book?
13) Does Terkoz have ‘honourable intentions’ toward Jane? Does Tarzan? How do we know?
14) Does Jane fancy Tarzan? Why? What happened during their night in the forest? Why does Tarzan give his knife to Jane?
15) Wherein lies character for Wister? What is the significance of landscape for both? How does wilderness shape character?
16) What are Tarzan’s experiences of ‘civilisation’? What is the ‘height of civilization’?
Suggested
A) Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors (1892)
B) Bret Harte, ‘The Heathen Chinee’ (1870)
D) Joel
_________________________________________
Making
Blackness 2:
Student
Presentation: How did African-Americans
Resist Oppression?
(You may wish to review The United States Supreme Court, Plessy v. Fergusson, 1896)
Required
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1905)
For
1) What is double consciousness? What is the veil? The colour line?
2) Look closely at the ‘Coming of John.’ List a few examples of the way that ‘doubleness’ structures this story. Where else in Souls…does ‘doubleness’ help Du Bois to make his point?
3) What kind of a text is this? Is it a history? A sociological study? A cultural analysis? An anthropology?
4) What are the bars of music about? The epigraphs?
5) What was ‘race’ for Du Bois?
6) What is ‘culture’ for Du Bois? What is its role? Is this view similar to Carnegie’s?
7) What was Du Bois’ problem with Booker T. Washington? Which writer do you find more persuasive?
8) Is Du Bois fair to
9) What is the ‘talented tenth.’ Does Du Bois have a point? Why or why not?
10) How Does Du Bois’ experience of the ‘Black Belt’
compare to
11) How does this book produce its sense of a break with the past? Is it a tragedy? A triumph? An opportunity? What was ‘progress’?
12) Who was Du Bois’ audience?
For whom was
13) Why does Du Bois give so much attention to the ‘sorrow songs’?
14) How does the book conclude? What is its final tone?
Suggested
A) Dickson D. Bruce Jr., ‘W.E.B. Dubois and the Idea of Double Consciousness,’ in the Norton Critical Edition of Souls…
B)
D) Shamoon Zamir, ‘The Sorrow
Songs’/’Song of Myself’: Du Bois , the Crisis of Leadership, and prophetic
Imagination,’ in the Norton Critical Edition of Souls…
Part 7
Modernist Perspective(s)
Week 7
The Limits of Realism
Required
Gertrude Stein, ‘Q. E. D.,’ Appendix to Stein, Three Lives (1905) (Penguin Edition, 201-262.)
For
1) Who in this story actually knows what is going on?
2) In what way is this story ‘realistic’?
3) Who or what drives the action?
4) Explain Adele’s reaction to Helen’s kiss. Is it Helen’s lesbianism, or passion in general, that puts Adele off?
5) What is Adele’s ‘moral sense’? How is it ‘middle class’? Does it change?
6) What would it mean to describe Helen’s moral sense as ‘bohemian’? How does this differ from the middle-class, or bourgeois, sense represented by Adele?
7) Does Adele ‘over-read’ Helen? Is Adele being fair? Is Helen being honest? Is this kind of uncertainty and over-analysis typical of ‘real’ love relationships?
8) Is language ever adequate to express the emotional turmoil of something as complex as a love relationship? How is this complicated by a relationship that simply ‘isn’t spoken of’? Why do you think Stein refused to publish this story?
9) Why is Adele’s experience with the Spanish Girl ‘very perfect’?
10) What does the ‘modern situations’ passage on page 218 mean?
Suggested
_________________________________________
Week 8
The Avant Garde
Required
A) First, read Gertrude Stein, ‘Melanctha,’ in Three Lives (1905), and then
B) Attend ‘The Virtual Armory Show’ at http://xroads.virginia.edu
C) Now read Kenyon Cox, ‘Cubists and Futurists are Making Insanity Pay,’
New York Times 1913 (photocopy)
D) Finish with e. e. cummings, ‘The New Art’ (1913) (photocopy)
For
1) Try reading several passages from ‘Melanctha’ aloud. Concentrate on the rhythm, the feel and the sound of the words rather than on the meaning. Does this produce a different experience than simply reading to yourself?
2) Many critics have argued that Melanctha is a rewritten version of Q. E. D. Do you agree? Is this a more effective way to show that we can never really know the mind of another, or even of our own multiple and fleeting emotions and ideas?
3) List several examples of events and characters that parallel those in Q. E. D. Who has ‘middle class’ values and who is the passionate one? Who is narrating?
4) Why might Stein have revised her story in such a manner?
5) What do you think of Stein’s portrayal of African Americans? Was she a racist?
6) Look at Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. Can you spot the nude? Why were people so upset by this painting?
7) Why was the Armory Show so well attended?
8) Look at the Matisse paintings. Do you agree with Kenyon Cox’s assessment?
9) Why was Cox so upset?
10) Look at the American paintings. How do they compare to those by the Europeans?
10) How does cummings defend the new art? How does he connect Stein to the world of the paintings?
11) Who do you find to be more persuasive, Cox or cummings?
Suggested
A) Doss, ‘Avant-Garde Art and Experimentation,’ Twentieth-Century American Art Chpt. 3.
B) Miles Orvell, ‘Not Realism, but Reality Itself,’ Chpt. 7 of The Real Thing
_________________________________________
Over There
Student Presentation: How was
popular culture used to manufacture public consensus in favour of the war
effort?
Required reading:
John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers (1921), parts 1-4.
For
1) Be ready to name and describe each of the three soldiers. What are their goals? Why did they enlist? How do they feel about ‘the cause’?
2) What is the goal of the soldiers’ training? Is it successful?
3) List several examples of popular culture in this story.
4) Why does Dos Passos use so much popular culture in his book? What ‘reality effect’ is thereby produced?
5) Why does Dos Passos use so much nature imagery in a section called ‘Machines’?
6) How does music structure Andrews’ experience of training camp? What kinds of music does he like? What kind does he write and play?
7) Explain Chrisfield’s reaction to the dead German (pgs. 124-125)
8) Why does Andrews think that it is Chrisfield who most matters? (p. 139)
9) What are the ‘Y men’ and what do they do?
10) Who is
11) Is there a way out of The Machine?
12) How and when does Andrews re-discover himself?
_____________________________________
Week 10
Modernism as a Culture of
Resistance (?)
Student
Presentation: How does 1919 signal the
close of an era?
Required reading:
John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers (1921), parts 5-6.
For
9) Why does Andrews switch from the ‘Queen of Sheba’ to ‘John Brown’?
10) Analyse and be prepared to discuss the book’s final image. What will happen to Andrews? To his music? Chrisfield?
_________________________________________
¨Essay 1. Contexts (Due Michelmas, Week 7):
1) To what degree did disaster (i.e. The Chicago Fire, the San Francisco
Earthquake, The Titanic, 1918 Influenza Epidemic, etc.) shape the history of
the
2) How did the railroad shape the history of the
3) How did workers resist the growing power of the corporation between 1870-1920?
4) What were the crucial issues and strategies in women’s politics between 1870-1920?
5) How did African Americans resist oppression between 1870-1920?
6) What were the crucial issues and strategies in Native-American politics between 1870-1920?
7) What was Progressivism, and is it a useful term?
8) To what degree is popular culture important in understanding the Spanish-American War?
9) How were the progressives and populists similar and how did they differ?
10) To what degree was the Frontier ‘closed’ in 1893?
11) What were the crucial issues and strategies in resisting entrance to the Great War?
12) Was there a ‘cultural crisis’ between 1870 and 1920?
13) Who supported Chinese exclusion, who opposed it, and why?
14) Focussing on one or two specific groups, why did the ‘new’
immigrants go to
15) How did immigration effect urban politics between 1870-1920?
¨Essay 2. Texts (Due Lent, Week 6):
1) Compare the fictional life of Carrie Meeber to that of Lilly Barton, Antonia Shimerda or Iola Leroy. What do the stories of these fictional women tell us about the way that gender was effected by race, ethnicity and class at the turn of the last century?
2) How did Realism and Naturalism deal with the problem of human agency, and what does that suggest about the broader context? (you might, for instance, discuss Crane’s Maggie… or Norris’ The Octopus, vs. Howells’ The Rise of Silas Lapham.)
3) What role did visual representation play in the reform movements of the period?
4) How did technological change effect cultural production between 1870-1920?
5) How and why do the immigrant horizons sketched by Anzia Yezierska and Willa Cather differ?
6) How did Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s writing challenge earlier notions of women’s politics?
7) How did Anti-Imperialists debate and describe
8) In what ways does Dos Passos’s version of the Great War differ from the official?
9) Choose two or three (literary, musical or visual) texts and examine the means and the stakes of their own particular ways of producing modernity (you might, for instance compare texts by Twain, Remington and DuBois)
10) How and in what ways do the utopias produced by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edward Bellamy differ? Is one more incisive in its critique than the other?
11) How did ‘others’ (women, Native Americans, etc.) challenge the frontier vision of Wister, Remington, Roosevelt and Turner?
12) From the Ashcan School to the Armory show. Describe the similarities and differences in the approaches to visual representation associated with these terms, especially in terms of their ‘modernity.’
14) Aesthetics, politics or both? How do you untangle and explain the critics’ reactions to the 1913 New York Armory Show?
15) What can we learn from the close analysis of African-American women’s blues?
16) What were the connections between vaudeville and the early cinema?
17) How did African Americans react to the caricatures of the minstrel stage?
18) Is highbrow/lowbrow a useful distinction when considering expressive culture between 1870-1920?
19) What does the Chicago Exposition (1893) tell us about its broader historical moment?
¨Essay 3. Biography (Due Summer, Week 2):
Choose anyone that you would like to know more about, and then discuss how and to what degree that person—and the texts associated with him or her—is representative of the period.
_________________________________________
Ñ SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Ñ
This is a brief a bibliography of (mostly) secondary sources that may be of help
to you. It is in no way complete and is not meant to replace your own work with
the bibliographic sources listed above.
*Asterisks denote books and articles that I find to be particularly useful.
¨Modernity and Cultural History
Armstrong, Tim, Modernity, Technology and the Body
*Berman, Marshall, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
Haskell, Thomas, The Emergence of Professional Social Science: The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Authority (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1977).
*Lears,
*________, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities" in The American Historical Review vol. 90, no. 3 (June 1985)
*Lyotard, Jean-Francois The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1984)
Marx, Leo, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal…
* Payne, Michael, ed., A Dictionary of Critical and Cultural Theory
Poster, Mark Cultural History and Postmodernity
Ross, Dorothy, Modernism in the Human Sciences
* Toews, John E., "Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience," in The American Historical Review, vol. 94; no. 3 (June 1989): 879-907.
White, Hayden, Metahistory
¨Modernity and the West
Calloway, Colin (ed.), Our Hearts Fell to the Ground: Plains Indians' Views of How the West was Lost.
Coleman, Wm., Voices of
*Cronon, Wm., Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
*Cronin, Wm., et. al. (eds.) Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past
Hoxie, Frederick E., et. al. (eds.), American Nations: Encounters in Indian Country from 1850 to the Present
Kilcup, Karen (ed.), Native American Women's Writing: An Anthology
*
*________, "Making the Most of Words: Verbal
Activity and
Maurer, Evan M., et al. Visions of the People: A Pictorial History of Plains Indian Life
Mintz, Steven (ed.), Native American Voices
Nobles, Gregory H., American Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest
Prucha, F. P., The Great Father: The
*Slotkin, Richard, Gunfighter
Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century
*________, The Fatal Enviornment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (1985)
*Smith, Henry Nash,
Utley, Robert M., The Indian Frontier of the American West 1846-1890
Utley, Robert M., The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull
White, Richard, It’s Your Misfortune and None of my Own: A New History of the American West
Worster, Donald, Under
Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West.
¨Modernity, Culture and Class
*Bjelajac, David, American Art: A Cultural History
*Sarah Burns, Inventing the Modern Artist:
Art and Culture in Gilded Age
*Alfred D.
Gebhardt, Nicholas, Going for Jazz: Musical Practices and American Ideology
Halliwell, Martin, Modernism and Morality: Ethical Devices in European and American Fiction
*
May, Henry F., The End of American Innocence (1959).
*Montgomery, David, The Fall of the House of Labor
Cowan, Ruth Schwarz, A Social History of American Technology
Scott, William and Peter
*Rydell, Robt., All the World's a Fair
Sklar, Martin, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism
David O. Stowell, Streets, Railroads and the Great Strike of 1877 (1999)
*Trachtenberg, Alan, The
Incorporation of
*Wiebe, Robert, The Search for Order (1967)
¨Popular and Elite
Crunden, Robt. M., Body and Soul: The Making of American Modernism
Glickman,
*Hofstadter, Richard Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944)
Kasson, John Amusing the Millions:
Leach, William Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (1994)
*Lears, T.J. Jackson and Richard W. Fox, The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History 1880-1980 (1983)
________, "Transformations in a Culture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890-1925," Journal of American History, 71 (Sept. 1984)
*________, Fables of
Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in
________, "Making Fun of Popular Culture," in the American Historical Review vol. 7, no. 92 (1992). 1417-1426
*Levine, Lawrence, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The
Emergence of Cultural Authority in
*
________, "The Social Analysis of Economic History and Theory: Conjectures on Late Nineteenth-Century American Development, in American Historical Review 92 (Feb. 1987), 69-95
* Marchand, Roland Advertising the American Dream
* Orvell, Miles, The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in
American Culture, 1880-1940. Chapel Hill:
Rosenzweig, Roy Eight
Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an
Jones, Gareth Stedman "Class Expression versus Social Control: A Critique of Recent Trends on the Social History of 'Leisure,'" in History Workshop 4 (Autumn 1977): 163-170.
¨Realism
*Kaplan, Amy The Social Construction of American Realism (1998)
Mizruchi, Susan L "History in American Literature," Chpt. 1 of The Power of Historical Knowledge: Narrating the Past in Hawthorne, James, and Dreiser (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). 3-40
*Orvell, Miles, The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in
American Culture, 1880-1940. Chapel Hill:
¨Naturalism
*Howard, June, Form and History in American Literary Naturalism
*
*Michaels, Walter Benn, The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism: American Literature at The Turn of the Century (1987)
Seltzer, Mark, Bodies and Machines (1992)
¨Feminism
*Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures
*Nancy Cott, The Grounding of American Feminism
Barbara L. Epstein, The
Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century
Estelle Freedman, "Separatism as Strategy:
*Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements
Ryan, Mary P., "Gender and Public Access:
Women's Politics in Nineteenth-Century
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll Disorderly Conduct:
Visions of Gender in Victorian
*Kathryn Kish Sklar,
"
¨Masculinity
*Bederman,
Gail Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in
the
Berger, Maurice, et. al., Constructing Masculinity
Carby, Hazel Race Men (W.E.B. DuBois Lectures)
*Kimmel, Michael Manhood in
Putney, Clifford, Muscular Christianity:
Manhood and Sports in Protestant
Stevens, Hugh, and C. Howlett, Modernist Sexualities
White, Kevin The First Sexual Revolution
¨Whiteness
Valerie Babb, Whiteness Visible: The Meaning of Whiteness
Daniel Bernardi, The Birth of Whiteness
*Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: Southern Segregation, 1890-1940 (1998)
Matthew Frye Jacobson, The Meaning of Whiteness
*R. G. Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (1999)
George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From Identity Politics
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
*David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness
Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race
*Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore
*________, Iron Cages: Race and Culture in
C19
¨Blackness
Barrett, Lindon, Blackness and Value: Seeing Double
Brody, Jennifer Devere Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture
Curtis, Susan, The
First Black Actors on the
* Lewis, David Levering, W.E.B. Dubois, Biography of a Race
Favor, J. Martin, Authentic Blackness: The Folk in the New Negro Renaissance
*
Mills, Charles W., Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race
O'Malley, Michael, "Specie
and Species: Race and the Money Question in Nineteenth-Century
Schechter, Patricia
A., Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880-1930