Hist 72200 - Readings in U.S. Cultural History: Culture, War, and Culture Wars CUNY Graduate Center Spring 2016 Th 2-4pm Rm. 6114 Prof. David Waldstreicher [email protected] Office hrs. (Rm 5111) Th1-2 & by appt.
This course ranges broadly across U.S. history from the colonial period to the present. This year’s theme is “culture wars” as an approach and as a problem in understanding the place of culture, and war, in U.S. history.
During the mid to late twentieth century historians came to see culture, in the form of ideals or ideologies, myths, and rituals, as what held the American nation together. More recently they are at least as likely to trace the roots and evolution of conflicts that are understood in terms of cultural differences. Similarly, US history and culture has been seen as profoundly shaped by war-inspired consensus – or on the other hand marked by divisive wars that were caused by essential conflicts that were at least in part cultural and which in turn exacerbated conflict. What does it mean to characterize the culture of particular eras and as marked by war, by war’s aftermath, or by culture war? What is the relationship between how Americans see their culture(s) -- or culture itself -- and how they answer these questions? How have international contexts shape the vicissitudes of cultural conflict, consensus, and a long succession of wars? Is war an appropriate metaphor -- or is it a euphemism -- for the work of culture in a country made by war? Does the analysis of culture as conflict akin to war, or as unifying like war, and of wars’ cultural dimensions helpfully inform narratives of history, of politics, and of real wars in the past? Finally, what was and is the role of memory in a culture and history periodized by wars?
Each student will also lead or co-lead one or two sessions of the seminar. In addition to active participation, students will be expected to present to the seminar at the end of term a version of their 15-20pp. term paper or project that (1) charts scholarly developments in one subfield and period of cultural history and (2) brings to the seminar a primary source that may be especially useful to teachers or curators or citizens in the future. Books with a + are available electronically through the CUNY or NYPL library systems; articles and book chapters will be available on Blackboard February 1 Introduction
For background on US cultural history the following works are highly recommended: David Brion Davis, “Some Recent Directions in American Cultural History,” American Historical Review 73 (February 1968), 696–707. Richard Slotkin, “Introduction: The Significance of the Frontier Myth in American History,” Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in 20th-Century America (1992), 1-27. Anne Norton, 95 Theses on Politics, Culture and Method (2004), 1-13. William H. Sewall, “The Concept(s) of Culture” in Sewall, Logics of History (2005), 152-74. James W. Cook and Lawrence B. Glickman, “Twelve Propositions for a History of U.S. Cultural History” in Cook, Glickman and Michael O’Malley eds., The Cultural Turn in U.S. History (2008), 3-57 Jean-Christophe Agnew, “Main Currents in American Cultural History” in James Banner ed., A Century of American Historiography (2010), 39-51. +Lawrence Glickman, “The ‘Cultural Turn’” in Eric Foner and Lisa McGirr eds., American History Now (2011), 221-41. Michael Denning, “’So-Called Cultural Histories’: Cultural Studies and History in the Age of One World” in Paul Smith ed., The Renewal of Cultural Studies (2011), 133-42.
I Real War & Culture War in Early America: Names, Rumors, Religion, Propaganda,Counterculture February 8 Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philips War and the Origins of American Identity (1998) James H. Merrell, “Second Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians,” William and Mary Quarterly 69 (2012), 451-512
February 15 Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas (1996) Steven Prothero, Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (Even When they Lose Elections): The Battles that Define America from Jefferson’s Heresies to Gay Marriage (2016), selections.
Feb. 22 +Gregory Evans Dowd, Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier (2015) Joshua Piker, “Lying Together: The Imperial Implications of Cross Cultural Untruths,” American Historical Review (Oct. 2011), 964-86. Philip J. Deloria, “From Nation to Neighborhood: Land, Policy, Culture, Colonialism and Empire in U.S.-Indian Relations” in Cook et al eds., The Cultural Turn in U.S History (2008), 343-82.
March 1 Bernard Bailyn, “The Index and Commentaries of Harbottle Dorr” (1973) Staughton Lynd, Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism (1968; 2nd ed. 2009), through ch. 3.,p. 99. Francois Furstenberg, “Beyond Slavery and Freedom: Autonomy, Agency, and Resistance in Early American Political Discourse.” Journal of American History 89 (2003), 1295-1330. +Russ Castronovo, Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks, and Revolutionary Communications in Early America (2014), Introduction and ch. 1 (pp. 3-55). +Robert G. Parkinson, Introduction, ch. 9, and Conclusion, The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution (2016), 1-25, 581-673.
II Prewar, Postwar, Civic War: Violence, Memory, and the Popular, Long 19th Century style March 8 Read either +David Grimsted, American Mobbing: Toward Civil War, 1828-1861 (1998), OR +Mary P. Ryan, Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in Nineteenth-Century America (1997) Staughton Lynd, Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism, ch, 4-5 and conclusion, pp.100-75. Cedric DeLeon, “Vicarious Revolutionaries: Martial Discourse and the Origins of Mass Party Competition in the United States, 1789–1848,” Studies in American Political Development 24 (April 2010), 121–141. (Optional): David Waldstreicher, “Minstrelization and Nationhood: Backside Albany, Backlash, and the Wartime Origins of Blackface Minstrelsy” in Nicole Eustace and Fredrika J. Teute eds., Warring for America: Cultural Contests in the Era of 1812 (2017), 29-55.
March 15 +Elaine Frantz Parsons, Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan During Reconstruction (2016) Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture 7 (Fall 1994), 107-146. Nina Silber, “Reunion and Reconciliation, Reviewed and Reconsidered,” Journal of American History 103 (June 2016), 59-83 (Optional): Elaine Parsons, “The Cultural Work of the Ku Klux Klan in U.S. History Textbooks” in Carole Emberton and Bruce Baker, Remembering Reconstruction (2017), ch. 9
March 22 Pamela Haag, The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture (2015)
March 29 No Class SPRING BREAK
III. Empire as Culture, Home and Abroad April 12 Jackson Lears, Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America (2009) Amy S. Greenberg, “Marshaling the Imaginary, Imagining the Martial: What is at Stake in the Cultural Analysis of War?” in Jimmy L. Bryan ed., The Martial Imagination: Cultural Aspects of American Warfare (2013), 219-33.
April 19 +Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940 (1997) Robin D. G. Kelley, “The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm X and Black Cultural Politics During World War II” in Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class (1994), 161-82. Brooke Blower, “V-J Day, Times Square” in Blower and Mark Philip Bradley ed., The Familiar Made Strange: American Icons and Artifacts after the Transnational Turn (2016), 70-87.
IV. Postwar or Endless War Culture ? April 26 Andrew Friedman, Covert Capital: Landscapes of Denial and the Making of U.S. Empire in the Suburbs of Northern Virginia (2013) Penny Von Eschen, “Duke Ellington Plays Baghdad: Rethinking Hard and Soft Power from the Outside In” in Manisha Sinha and Von Eschen eds., Contested Democracy (2007), 279-300.
May 3 Christian G. Appy, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and our National Identity (2015) Robert O. Self, “Last Man to Die: Vietnam and the Citizen Soldier,” All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy since the 1960s (2012), 47-74 Jon Wiener, “Radical Historians and the Crisis in American History, 1959-1980,” Journal of American History 76 (1989), 399-434.
May 10 Elaine Tyler May, Fortress America: How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy (2017) Nikhil Pal Singh, Race and America’s Long War (2017), selections
May 17 [makeup class] Papers due; 10-15 min. presentation of research projects