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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
An introductory and interdisciplinary examination of American political culture, particularly contemporary political thought and behavior. Although we will trace the development of our political culture from the nation's beginning to the present, a principal concern of the class will be the involvement of the mass media in recent political history. In short, we will attempt to come to terms with questions about the role and influence of mass communications in modern politics.
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3.00 Credits
At a meeting in 2003, R. Allen Stanford, accused multibillion-dollar Ponzi embezzler and president of Stanford International Bank, is said to have taken a "blood-oath" with the chief regulator of his Antiguan bank. When news of this oath broke in the fall of 2009 Stanford joined Bernard Madoff in the league of the most undignified "gentlemen" in American culture. Like Madoff, Stanford had committed a "capital crime" which robbed many and riveted the nation's attention. Like Stanford and many another "capital" criminals (Al Capone comes to mind), until his arrest Madoff enjoyed the welcome of society's elite and was generally regarded as a celebrity. "Capital Crimes" is thus about American culture's love affair with money. The course begins with Mark Twain's blistering satire The Gilded Age and moves through the current economic crises - which some critics like Paul Krugman and Kevin Phillips have referred to as coming at the tail end of America's second Gilded Age. Twain's satire was aptly called "A Tale of Today." In looking over the time between the two Gilded Ages, this course will try to construct a coherent account of the uneasy relationship between the period's major literary figures and its political and mercantile elite. We'll see if and how writers and artists who set themselves up as the voices of culture often share much in common with political and business leaders - both a Ponzi scheme and a political campaign are after all "fictions in progress" which require an audience and a fairly complete willing suspension of disbelief. In looking over material drawn from literature, film, television, news media, politics, and academia we'll try to measure the personal and cultural benefits and consequences associated with American culture's embrace of money, its hagiographic celebration of the CEO, its adoration of celebrity culture, and its elevation of the market as an idol.
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3.00 Credits
This course will begin with a children's tale from the 1880s, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, and examine how urban life has been depicted in American literature and culture. The course will trace the experiences of Mrs. Pepper and her five children as they move from life in a rural New England clapboard house to an urban Brownstone mansion in New York City through to Charles Bukowski's modern San Francisco rooming house madrigals and the down-and-out wanderings of his poet/barfly Henry Chinaski. Along the way we will ask a series of questions such as: Does urbanization thrive on a culture of poverty? Are today's gated communities a continuation of the brownstone mansion? Why do neighbors gentrify? Does the American Dream require vivid urban poverty? How has the global and American economic collapse, credit crisis, and mortgage meltdown changed our perception of slums, little brown houses, and brownstone mansions. Is there such a thing as "enough"?
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3.00 Credits
Latinos have long contributed to the social fabric of the region popularly known as "Chicagoland," which includes Northwestern and North Central Indiana. From food to sports to politics to the arts, Latinos have shaped and reshaped the local culture and formed vibrant communities. However, Midwestern Latinos have been marginalized by both local/regional approaches to history and by the field of Latino studies, which tends to focus on the east and west coasts and the U.S. Southwest. This interdisciplinary course will explore Latino communities from Chicago to South Bend to better understand how these communities fit into the broader Latino experience but remain uniquely Midwestern. Some of the questions that we will ask include: Why did Latinos settle in Chicagoland and Northern Indiana? Why do new migrants keep coming? How has gentrification affected urban Latino communities? How are individuals and organizations working to improve the lives of migrant workers in rural areas? How do Latinos contribute to the Chicago arts scene? The course will include several site visits to community organizations and cultural institutions throughout the region and will require students to collect an oral history from a member of one of the communities encountered in class.
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3.00 Credits
The American West is a region characterized at once by its physical setting, the historical processes that have occurred there, and the set of meanings American culture has ascribed to the region. It is home to a highly diverse set of peoples that have been interacting with one another for centuries. It is described by physical and political boundaries (the Mississippi River, the Pacific Ocean, and borders with Canada and Mexico), economic development (extractive industry, tourism), and by imaginative constructs (the "frontier," the "Wild West," and the mythic characters inhabiting such places). This semester we will use a variety of approaches to explore the American West from the mid-19th century through the late 20th century. We will focus on two specific themes: 1) the political, economic, social, and environmental relationships that have shaped the region; and 2) the cultural meanings and mythic representations people have attached to it. The Mythic West, far from separate and distinct, has always been intimately connected to real western people, places, resources, and politics. We will study how the American West and its images have developed together, often in tension with one another, and how they have created the West that we know today.
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3.00 Credits
In answering the question, "What was American modernism?" most literary critical perspectives might commonly be expected to focus on a modernity represented by the authors of the "lost generation" in the U.S., such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway. While a conventional understanding of American modernism might serve to underscore the importance of the stylistic, cultural and artistic contributions of these and other canonical moderns, such a view might also give little consideration to the significance of those modern American voices not ordinarily heard in such a context. This course poses the question, "What was American modernism?" to answer it by exploring its roots in two less conspicuous early 20th-century American modernisms: the Chicago Renaissance of 1912-1925, and the Harlem Renaissance of 1920-1929. In "engendering renaissance," these two moments suggest a literary birth and rebirth of modern American identity that questions its seemingly stable boundaries and borders, reconfiguring the idea of "American" within and opening the door to the larger and more varied cultural fabric that is modern America(s). By locating the rise of American modernism in the relation between these two literary moments, this course will broaden our understanding of the idea of "American" at this time by considering how it is created within a frame determined by the interplay of race, gender, class and nation. In this way, it seeks to deepen our understanding of U.S. American culture and the idea of "American in the early 20th century, while suggesting new ways to engage the global social and cultural challenges facing the idea of "American" in the 21st. Course Requirements: two 5-7 page papers, group presentation, several short in-class writing assignments Course Texts: Required texts may include Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"; Jose Martí, "Our America"; Henry Blake Fuller, The Cliff-Dwellers; Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie; Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark; Waldo Frank, Our America; Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio; Randolph Bourne, "Trans-National America"; Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery; W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice From the South; Jean Toomer, Cane; Jessie Fauset, Plum Bun; Nella Larsen, Quicksand & Passing
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3.00 Credits
A survey of Latino fiction, poetry, and other literary works.
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3.00 Credits
A review of selected contemporary Latino/a and Caribbean novels.
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3.00 Credits
In this course we will read a number of works, by both women and men, that may be described as feminist fiction. In so doing, we will raise issues about the relation of aesthetics to politics, the process of canonization, and aesthetic integrity. Ultimately, we will also be examining the place of women within American culture during the twentieth century - how it has changed and how it has remained the same. At the end of the course, students should feel that they have discovered a new body of exciting literature, as well as new ways of reading some of our best-known literature.
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3.00 Credits
An introduction to cultural studies using a variety of media: literature, film, and music.
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