Robert Frank’s “Detroit” from les Américains

The South in Modern American Politics & Culture
Boyd, T.
AMER 100 – 01, MWF 10:10-11:00
AMER 100 – 02, MWF 11:10-12:00
This course will study the role that the former Confederate states have played in the shaping of contemporary American politics and culture since World War II. In 1945, the South was viewed as a distinct region within America: far more rural, far poorer and with an apparently entrenched system of racial segregation, the South was looked on by many in the rest of the United States as hopelessly backward. In recent years, however, southern politicians and southern cultural traditions have become ever more influential in national affairs. In this course, we will therefore consider how this transformation came about. Using a combination of political speeches, films, music and literature, we will first examine the main pillars of southern culture as it existed up until the 1950s; secondly we will look at the confrontation between the South's traditional culture and the nation during the postwar years and the civil rights movement; finally we will then look at the question "how southernized has American politics and culture become since the 1970s?" Throughout the course, we will be looking at just what it is that causes political and cultural attitudes to change, an issue that remains of great importance for understanding American society.

American Social History Through Dance
Kevra, S.
AMER 100W – 01, MWF 1:10-2:00
AMER 100W – 02, MWF 12:10-1:00

Social history examines the lives of everyday people as a means for understanding their history and culture. We may look at material objects, such as cookbooks to understand how a generation fed itself. Or trends in fashion can offer a window into class differences. 

In this course, social dance will be our focal point for understanding American identity. Dance trends offer historical moments for understanding issues related to race, gender and class.  Adopting a chronological approach, we will set about to answer a range of questions. For instance, how do dance figures in colonial dances bear the mark of the countries from which they originated? And how does their transplantation onto American soil contribute to visible displays of democracy on the dance floor in a move away from the more regimented and symbolic choreography of court dances? How do specific dance crazes reveal responses to political and cultural events and anxieties? What influence has the African American community had on dance in this country?

Our texts in this course will be a combination of historical readings related to dance and others related to broader social issues. We will also look at images of dance, both photographic and moving pictures. Literary works will also help us to understand attitudes towards dance.  In addition, to really understand dance, which, after all, is a kinesthetic activity, you have to move, feel the beat, dance the dances. To this end, we will have occasion in and outside of class to try out dances.

Because this is a writing seminar, we will dedicate a number of classes (or portions of classes) looking at how to improve your writing. Topics will range from 1) remedies for wordiness 2) word choice 3) organization 4) getting starting writing a paper 5) how to conduct research 6) punctuation 7) transitions and more. Peer review and on class reflections on writing will figure prominently.

Topics will include:

• Indigenous dances of North America
• Colonial dances brought across the Atlantic and how those dances were focal to community life.
• Christian attitudes towards dance (and reactions against it in the folk record, literature, correspondence and religious writings.)
• Victorian and Ragtime Era Couple Dances
• African Rhythms on American Soil: Tap Dancing, the Ring Shout, Animal Dances
• Swing Dancing - 1920s Harlem Lindy Hop and the eventual marketing of black dancing to white youths
• Square Dancing
• Rock and Roll
• The contra dance hippie dance revival of the 1960s in New England
• 1970s Disco
• 1980s Break Dancing and Hip hop
• The current ballroom dance craze
  

Culture Wars in 20th Century America
Boyd, T.
AMER 115F, MWF 2:10-3:00
The idea that there is an ongoing "culture war" in 21st century American politics is firmly established in media coverage of contemporary political debate. Broadly speaking, the term "culture war" has come to mean a politically polarized discussion over a moral or cultural issue in which observers divide into at least two groups, each accusing the other of seeking to impose "un-American" values on the nation. In 2008, such "culture war" issues would include gay marriage, abortion, gun control, stem cell research and a host of other concerns. In such discussions, questions of economic self-interest, often assumed to be the driving force behind an individual person's political behavior, play either a minor or insignificant role in the debate. As a result, there is also a continuing discussion within American society as to whether these "culture wars" are an important and substantial part of political discourse, or a distraction from what people's "real concerns" ought to be.

This course will consider three major instances from the 20th Century where the politics and rhetoric of "culture war" were particularly evident. By considering how these instances came about, how they were seen by the participants on both sides and how they have been remembered in popular culture, it will be possible to better understand the roots and nature of today's politically charged cultural debates. The three instances in question are the Scopes Trial of 1925, the Kinsey Reports of the 1940s and 1950s and the debate over Gun Control in the 1990s. To understand these three case studies, this course will look at not just historical accounts of each, but also the ways they were viewed by observers at the time as well as how the issues raised in each were subsequently portrayed in film, music and popular culture since then. There will be one paper due on each of the three topics, as well as work with primary sources related to them in the Vanderbilt Library.   

Radical Traditions in America, 1776-present
Gerstle, G.
AMER 294, Tuesday 2:35-5:05 p.m.
This course examines the varieties of radical traditions in American history and their significance for American politics and culture.  The course begins with the American Revolution and radical figures such as Tom Paine.  It explores republicanism as a radical tradition through the first hundred years of America’s existence and then explores the variety of radical ideologies that emerged out of America’s encounter with industrialization—the utopian socialisms of the mid-nineteenth century that focused as much on sexual emancipation as on the collectivization of property; the Marxist inflected ideologies of anarchism, socialism, and communism and their influence (or lack thereof); and such homegrown radicalisms as Edward Bellamy’s Nationalism and the Populism of southern farmers. The course probes as well feminism and black nationalism as radical ideologies and, in the post-World War II period, examines the history of the New Left.   The course, finally, takes looks at radicalisms of the right, ranging from groups such as the Southern Agrarians who rejected modern industrial and consumer society to libertarian groups such as Ayn Rand and her followers who advocated radical individualism.  Students in the course will read both primary and secondary texts, history and literature, on these topics and will be asked to study these radicalisms both on their own terms and in terms of how they have influenced broader patterns in American politics and culture.