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Description
This course will examine historical approaches to the emergence and world
dissemination of mass culture in the twentieth century. Students will
compare case studies of mass culture in the United States with work done
on other world regions, including radio in Weimar Germany, jazz in 1920s
China, and television in 1980s India. Reading will also include theoretical
work on the relationship between the mass media, gender, race, and national
identity in the global context. In the process students will explore
definitions of mass, local, and global culture, and the currents of cultural
influence flowing both to and from the United States.
Readings
We'll be reading one book and two articles per week (see assigned books below). All articles will be available online in pdf.
Reference works you might find useful:
The Oxford English Dictionary
Webster's Third New International Unabridged Dictionary
Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Susan Hayward, Key Concepts in Cinema Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 1996)
More Reference: History and Cultural Studies
Requirements
Class participation - 25%
Introduction to one week's readings - 20%
Book review (5 pages) - 20%
8-10 page final paper - 35%
Note: Missing class more than once is unacceptable. If you have to miss class once, you need to write a 5-page review of the book or a 3-page review of articles discussed in class during your absence. The paper will be due on the following class meeting. Your grade percentages will be adjusted accordingly.
6/8 Introduction
6/10 Lawrence W. Levine, "The Folklore of Industrial Society: Popular Culture and Its Audiences," American Historical Review 97 (December 1992): 1369-99.
Robin D. G. Kelley, "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Folk,'" American Historical Review 97 (December 1992): 1400-08.
Natalie Zemon Davis, "Toward Mixtures and Margins," American Historical Review 97 (1992): 1409-16.
T. J. Jackson Lears, "Making Fun of Popular Culture," American Historical Review 97 (December 1992): 1417-26.
Lawrence W. Levine, "Levine Responds," American Historical Review 97 (December 1992): 1427-30.
6/15 Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
Class Presentation: Alan Brody, Rebecca Forrest, Holly Salyers.
6/17 Tom Gunning, "The Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)credulous Spectator," in Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, ed. Linda Williams (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 114-133.
Miriam Hansen, "The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism," Modernism/Modernity 6.2 (April 1999): 59-77.
Class Presentation: Pete Balas, Louisa Porzel.
6/22 No class.
6/24 Andrew F. Jones, Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001).
Scott DeVeaux, "Constructing the Jazz Tradition: Jazz Historiography," Black American Literature Forum 25.3 (Fall 1991): 525-560.
Class Presentation: Kelly Harasek, Marty Clark, Chrissy Steury.
6/29 Kate Lacey, Feminine Frequencies: Gender, German Radio, and the Public Sphere, 1923-1945 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).
Class Presentation: Rikk Mulligan, Jessie Emch.
7/1 Robert W. McChesney, "Communication for the Hell of It," Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 40 (Fall 1996): 540-552.
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936), in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1985), 217-251.
Class Presentation: Aaron Sacks, Amy Markey.
7/6 Book Review Due
Hermano Vianna, The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music & National Identity in Brazil, ed. and trans. John Charles Chasteen (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
Class Presentation: Andrew Mills, Steven Hirsh.
7/8 Emília Viotti da Costa, "The Myth of Racial Democracy: A Legacy of the Empire," in The Brazilian Empire: Myths & Histories, Rev. ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 234-246.
Robin D. G. Kelley, "A Sole Response," American Quarterly 52.3 (September 2000): 533-545.
Class Presentation: Richard Carroll, Frank Cerutti.
7/13 Timothy Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996).
Class Presentation: Buckner Payne, Will Hottel.
7/15 Jean-Christophe Agnew, "Coming Up for Air: Consumer Culture in Historical Perspective," in Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, ed. Lawrence B. Glickman (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 373-397.
Timothy Burke, "Eyes Wide Shut: Africanists and the Moral Problematics of Postcolonial Societies," African Studies Quarterly 7.2-3 (Fall 2003).
Class Presentation: Corie Tarbet, Sean Fitzimmons.
7/20 Purnima Mankekar, Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999).
Class Presentation: Nelly Swonger.
7/22 Final Paper Due
Gyan Prakash, "Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism," American Historical Review 99 (December 1994): 1475-80.
David Culbert, "Television's Visual Impact on Decision-Making in the USA, 1968: The Tet Offensive and Chicago's Democratic National Convention," Journal of Contemporary History 33.3 (July 1998): 419-449.
Class Presentation: Olivia Ryan.
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