(Cultural Studies)
Instructor: Günter Lenz, Harris Fellow
Schedule: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 2 – 4pm
Syllabus:
09/22 Introduction
"New Americanists": Imperialism, Postnationalism, and Minority Discourses
09/27 Amy Kaplan, “‘Left Alone With America‘: The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture,“ in Amy Kaplan, Donald E. Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993), 3-21.
09/29 Paul Lauter, "American Studies and Ethnic Studies At the Borderlands Crossroads," From Walden Pond to Jurassic Park: Activism, Culture, and American Studies (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2001), pp. 119-38, notes 264-69.
(1) Diasporas: The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity
10/04 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993), pp. 1-19, 29-40, notes 225-30.
10/06 James Clifford, “Diasporas“ (1994), Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997), pp.244-77, ref. 369-91.
10/11 Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998, orig. 1991).
10/13 Charles Johnson, Middle Passage, cont.
Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River (New York: Vintage Books, 1993).
10/18 Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River, cont.
(2) Cultural Hybridities and Border Discourses: Chicano/a Culture and Literature between Mexico and the United States
10/20 Néstor García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995, Spanish orig. 1989), pp. 1-11, 206-81, bibliography 283-90.
10/25 Juan Bruce-Novoa, "Dialogical Strategies, Monological Goals: Chicano Literature," in Alfred Arteaga, ed., An Other Tongue: Nation and Ethnicity in the Linguistic Borderlands (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1994), pp. 225-45.
Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, "Chicana Literature from a Chicana Feminist Perspective," in María Herrera-Sobek, Helena María Viramontes, eds., Chicana Creativity and Criticism: New Frontiers in American Literature (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), pp. 213-19.
10/27 Seminar Essay Topic Due.
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987).
11/01 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, cont.
Alfredo Véa, Jr., La Maravilla (New York: Penguin Plume Books, 1994).
11/03 Alfredo Véa, La Maravilla, cont. (NB: This session will have to be rescheduled on 11/02 or 11/07 due to the Convention of the American Studies Association in Washington, DC.)
(3) Transculturations: Popular Culture – The "Americanization" of Europe and the "Europeanization" of American Culture
11/08 Rob Kroes, If You've Seen One, You've Seen the Mall: Europeans and American Mass Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996), ch. 1, "American Culture in European Metaphors: The West as Will and Conception," pp. 7-42, notes 180-84; ch. 9, "Americanization: What Are We Talking About?," pp. 162-71, notes 189.
11/10 Richard H. Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997), ch. 9, "Mass Culture: The European Reception," pp. 235-43, 253-62, notes 389-92, 395-97; ch. 11, "The Europeanization of American Culture," pp. 278-91, 313-24, notes 401-404, 410-13.
11/15 Richard H. Pells, Not Like Us, ch. 6 ("Disneyland in Paris"), pp. 306-13, notes 409-10.
Stephen F. Mills, "The Question of Boundaries between Interacting Cultures: A Popular Culture Perspective," in Günter H. Lenz, Klaus J. Milich, eds., American Studies in Germany: European Contexts and Intercultural Relations (Frankfurt/M., New York: Campus, 1995), pp. 159-76.
Miles Orvell, "Understanding Disneyland: American Mass Culture and the European Gaze," in Rob Kroes, Robert W. Rydell, Doeko F.J. Bosscher, eds., Cultural Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in Europe (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1993), pp. 240-53.
11/17 David Ellwood et al., "Questions of Cultural Exchange: The NIAS Statement on the European Reception of American Mass Culture," American Studies International 32 (Oct. 1994), 32-44.
Richard H. Pells, Not Like Us, ch. 12, "The Globalization of Western Culture," pp. 325-34, notes 413-15.
Wolfgang Welsch, "Transculturality: The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today," in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, eds. Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World (London: Sage, 1999), pp. 194-213.
Toward a Dialogics of Transcultural American Studies
11/22 John Carlos Rowe, “Postnationalism, Globalism, and the New American Studies“ (1998), in Donald E. Pease, Robyn Wiegman, eds., The Futures of American Studies (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2002), pp. 167-82.
Günter H. Lenz, “Toward a Dialogics of International American Culture Studies: Transnationality, Border Discourses, and Public Culture(s)“ (1999), in Donald E. Pease, Robyn Wiegman, eds., The Futures of American Studies, pp. 461-85.
11/24 Thanksgiving.
11/29 Seminar Essay Due.
Donald E. Pease, “Postnational Politics and American Studies,“ 49th Parallel: An Interdisciplinary Journal of North American Studies, Issue no. 8 (2001),
http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/back/issue8/pease.htm.
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, "Crossroads of Cultures: The Transnational Turn in American Studies – Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, November 12, 2004," American Quarterly 57/1 (March 2005), 17-57.
