Professor: Chris Suh Fall 2019 Office Hours: TBD M. W. 2:30-3:45
History 385 Sounds of the Century: Understanding 20th Century US History through Popular Music
Course Description This course examines 20th century United States history through the lens of popular music, including blues, jazz, rock, R&B, disco, hip-hop and musicals. Thematically speaking, this course explores how our notions of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation are reflected in and produced by people’s interactions with music. Special attention is given to the relationship between popular music and social change as well as the role of popular music in shaping the United States’ relationship with the rest of the world.
Required Course Material
Readings Students are required to purchase two books
• Jack Hamilton, Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016) • Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of Hip-Hop Generation (New York: Picador, 2005)
All other readings will be available on Canvas.
Musical Material Because this is a course on music, you’ll be listening to songs for every class. You can listen to them by finding songs on Spotify [http://www.spotify.com/].
You will be watching a lot of video clips as well, and most of them are already available on Youtube. For those clips that are not available in the public domain, I will post them on Canvas.
Movies These movies will be made available online.
• Flower Drum Song (1961) • Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Grading:
Participation: 20% Attendance at class meetings and active participation in class discussions are critical components of the course.
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Ethnographic Essay Assignment (3-4 pages): 20% Find a music video of your least favorite musician on YouTube, look through the comments section for positive comments, and use these comments to write an ethnographic essay that explains why the fans find these artists appealing.
Take-Home Midterm Essay (4-5 pages): 25% Students will write an essay on the relationship between popular music and an American social movement of their choice: civil rights movement, women’s liberation movement, Asian American movement, Chicano movement, anti-war movement, etc.
Oral Presentation of Research Paper: 10% In the final two weeks of the class, each student will do a 10-minute presentation of the final project to the class. This is an opportunity to get group feedback on your project before you turn in your final research paper. Students in the audience are expected to actively listen to the presentations and will be also be graded based on their engagement during Q & A.
Final Research Paper (8-10 pages): 25% Building on the concepts, themes, and methods you have learned in the course, write an original research paper on the subject of popular music and US history that is not covered in this course. Students will identify a paper topic with the instructor by Nov. 11 at the latest.
Accessibility and Inclusion This course will make sure that all students feel welcome and receive the necessary accommodations to get the most out of their time in the classroom. This means that all members of the class—the students and instructor—will be respectful of others’ views, backgrounds, and goals. Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must register with the Office of Accessibility Services (OAS). Students should contact the OAS as early as possible in the semester to ensure they receive the necessary accommodations. In addition, students should feel free to contact me to let me know if there is anything I can do to facilitate their learning.
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Class and Reading Schedule (Preliminary) 8/28: Introduction
9/2: Labor Day (no class)
9/4: Taking Popular Music Seriously, Studying Popular Music Historically Reading: • John Storey, “What is Popular Culture?” in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (Harlow, England: Peason, 2001), 1-14. • Alex Ross, “Listen to This: A Classical Kid Learns to Love Pop—And Wonders Why He Has to Make a Choice,” New Yorker, February 16, 2004, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/02/16/040216fa_fact4?currentPage=all • Jonathan Yardley, “Pop Culture: The Academic Undiscipline,” Washington Post, June 13, 1988, D2.
Unit I: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Class in Popular Music
9/9: Race & The Question of Authenticity Reading: • Benjamin Filene, “Creating the Cult of Authenticity” in Filene, Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 47- 75
Music: • Listen to Leadbelly, “Governor O. K. Allen,” “Irene,” and “New York” • Watch: Leadbelly, March of Time newsreel (1935)
9/11: Gender & Sexuality Reading: • Hazel Carby, “‘It Just Be’s Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women’s Blues,” Radical America 20, no. 4 (1986): 9-24.
Music: • Listen to Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, “No Man’s Mamma Now” (1925); Bessie Smith, “Young Woman’s Blues” (n.d.); Ma Rainey, “Prove It On Me Blues”
9/16: Class Reading: • Daniel Cavicchi, “Introduction” and “Listening and Learning,” from Tramps Like Us: Music and Meaning among Springsteen Fans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 3-21, 108-133.
Music: • Watch Bruce Springsteen, “Born in the U.S.A.” on YouTube.
9/18: Race, Gender, Class and Nation in Hamilton the Musical Reading: 4
• Renee C. Romano, “Hamilton: A New American Civic Myth,” in Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past (2018), 297-323.
Music: • Watch Lin-Manuel Miranda Performs “Hamilton” at the White House, 2009.
9/23: Understanding Your Least Favorite Musicians and Their Fans
** Ethnographic Essay Assignment Due**
In class, we will discuss what you learned through this ethnographic exercise.
Unit II: Popular Music and Social Change 9/26: Rock & Roll and Racial Integration Readings: • Jack Hamilton, Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination, 1-85.
Music: • Watch Chuck Berry, “Maybelline,” live on American Bandstand (1955) • Stevie Wonder, “Happy Street,” a scene from Muscle Beach Party (1964) • Listen to Chuck Berry, “Sweet Little Sixteen” (1958)
9/30: Jazz, Soul, and the Civil Rights Movement Readings • Ruth Feldstein, “‘More Than Just a Jazz Singer’: Nina Simone’s Border Crossings,” in How It Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 84-112.
Music: • Watch Nina Simone, “Mississippi Goddam” (1963) • Read Langston Hughes, “Nina Simone,” New York Post, June 29, 1962.
10/2: Motown and Socio-Economic Mobility Reading: • Jack Hamilton, Just Around Midnight, 121-168.
Music: • Listen to Barrett Strong, “Money (That’s What I Want)” (1959) • Watch Martha and the Vandellas, “Dancing in the Street” (1964)
10/7: Musicals and Asian Immigration Reading: • Robert G. Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), 145-179.
Music: • Watch Flower Drum Song (1961) 5
• Read the Flower Drum Song fact sheet on Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, on American Musical Theater History, http://www.theatrehistory.com/american/musical025.html • John Kuo Wei Tchen, “Flower Drum Song: The Reviews Are In; Critics Clueless about Emergent American Sensibility,” AsianWeek, Dec. 13-Dec. 19, 2002.
10/9: Classical Music and Upward Social Mobility Reading: • Mari Yoshihara, “Class Notes,” in Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), 131-165. • Grace Wang, “Interlopers in the Realm of High Culture: ‘Music Moms’ and the Performance of Asian and Asian American Identities,” American Quarterly 61, no. 4 (December 2009): 881- 903.
Music: • Leonard Bernstein Presents Yo-Yo Ma to President John F. Kennedy, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the American people (1962). • Amy Chua, “The Violin,” and “How You Get to Carnegie Hall,” in Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011), 42-49, 121-136.
10/14: Fall Break (No Class)
10/16: Girl Groups and Sexual Imagination during the Cold War Readings: • Susan Douglas, “Why the Shirelles Mattered,” in Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Times Books, 1994), 83-98. • Cynthia J. Cyrus, “Selling an Image: Girl Groups of the 1960s,” Popular Music 22, no. 2 (May 2003): 173-193.
Music: • Watch The Shirelles, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” live (1964) • The Supremes, “Baby Love,” live, (1964) • Labelle, “Lady Marmalade” (1974) • Listen to The Shirelles, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” (1960)
10/21: Disco and Women’s Liberation Movement Reading: • Alice Echols, “Ladies’ Night: Women and Disco,” in Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture (Norton, 2010), 71-120.
Music: • Watch Helen Reddy, “I Am Woman (Hear Me Roar)” (1971) • Chaka Khan, “I’m a Woman (I’m a Backbone)” (1974) • Listen to Chaka Khan, “I’m Every Woman” (1978) • Donna Summer, “Bad Girls” (1979)
10/23: Rap as Social Protest Readings: • Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation 6
Music: • Watch Tupac, Speech at the Malcolm X Grassroots Meeting (1992) • Listen to N.W.A., “To Kill the Minority” (1988) • Public Enemy, “Fight the Power” (1989) • Tupac feat. Dramacydal, “Me against the World” (1995) • Rage Against the Machine, “Sleep Now in the Fire” (1999)
Unit III: Popular Music and the United States in the World
10/28: Jazz as Cold War Diplomacy **Take-Home Midterm Essay Due** Reading: • Penny Von Eschen, “‘Satchmo Blows Up the World’: Jazz, Race, and Empire during the Cold War,” Here, “There and Everywhere”: The Foreign Politics of American Popular Culture (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000), 163-178.
Music: • Listen to Dave Brubeck and Louis Armstrong, “The Real Ambassadors” (1962) and “Cultural Exchange” (1962)
10/30: Musicals and Transnational Families Reading: • Christina Klein, “Family Ties as Political Obligation: Oscar Hammerstein II, South Pacific, and the Discourse of Adoption,” in Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 143-190.
Music: • Watch selections from South Pacific (1958)
11/4: Rock ‘N’ Roll and Transsexuality across Borders Reading: • Joanne Meyerowitz, “‘Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty’,” in How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 51-97.
Music: • Watch John Cameron Mitchell, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
11/6: The British Invasion Reading: • Jack Hamilton, Just Around Midnight, 86-120, 246-276.
Music: • Watch The Beatles, Live on the Ed Sullivan Show (2/9/1964)
11/11: Japanizing “American” Music 7
Reading: • E. Taylor Atkins, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (2001), 19-44; 165-184; 209-219.
Music: • Watch Art Blakey and the Messengers, Live in Tokyo, 1961 • Akiyoshi Toshiko Piano Trio, live, 1958
11/13: Music at the US-Mexico border Reading • Deborah Vargas, Dissonant Divas in Chicana Music: The Limits of la Onda, 179-215
Music: • Selena, “Amor Prohibido” (1994) • Selena, “Dreaming of You” (1995)
11/18: Global Hip Hop Reading: • Sujatha Fernandes, “Made in Havana City,” in Fernandes, Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation (New York: Verso, 2011), 25-78.
Music: • Listen to Dabo, “Hitman” (2002) [Japan] • Anónimo Consejo, “El Mundo No Se Para” (2011) [Cuba]
11/20: K-Pop in the United States Reading: • John Lie, “What Is the K in K-pop? South Korean Popular Music, the Culture Industry, and National Identity,” Korea Observer 43, no. 3 (Autumn 2012): 339-363.
Music: • Psy, “Gangnam Style” (2012) • BTS, “DNA” (2017) • Elise Hu, “How Asian-Americans Found A Home In The World Of K-Pop,” https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/04/14/398255011/how-asian-americans- found-a-home-in-the-world-of-k-pop • “Crossing Cultures: Black K-Pop Fans in America,” New York Times, March 28, 2017, The Daily 360, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvgLUItrSVI
11/25: **student presentations**
12/2: **student presentations**
12/4: **student presentations**
12/9: **student presentations**
Exam Period (12/11-12/21): Research Papers Due