Fall 2012

AMER 100: Music as Social Protest
Donaldson, R.

What do Woody Guthrie, James Brown, and Dead Kennedys have in common? Besides being great musicians, they all have used music as a way to challenge cultural, social, political, and economic conditions in the United States. In this class we will learn how different artists have brought music into social movements from the 1930s through the 1980s, and determine how they influenced the movements themselves and larger sociocultural trends in the process. By tracing the evolution of genres of music including folk, rock, funk, singer-songwriters, punk, and early hip-hop, we will also look at how styles of performance and the relationships between performers and audiences have shaped the ways in which music has been used as a tool for reform.

AMER 100W: America in the Twenties: 1919-1933
Donaldson, R.

Popular culture often portrays the 1920s as the "roaring twenties," when flappers bobbed their hair, jazz was all the rage, and everybody drank bathtub gin. Even Woody Allen's hit film from this past summer, Midnight in Paris, reinforces this narrative. While romanticizing a small facet of society, however, this interpretation omits other sectors of society such as industrial workers, struggling farmers, religious conservatives, African Americans who migrated to northern cities, romantic reactionaries, and progressive literary pundits. In this class we will study the 'long' 1920s (from the end of World War I to the beginning of the New Deal). from the perspectives of different social groups, examining how race, class, gender, and geography determined how Americans experienced this decade—a period marked by rapid social, economic, and cultural change. Through literature, film, oral history, art, music, and historical studies, we will trace how America transitioned from a producerist, agrarian nation to a modern, urbanized, consumer society. In the end, we will decide whether, as many historians argue, the twenties really did mark the beginning of the twentieth century.

AMER 100W: American Social History Through Dance
Kevra, S.

In this course, dance will be our focal point for understanding American history. Adopting a chronological approach, we will set about to answer a range of questions regarding race, gender and class. How do specific dance crazes reveal responses to political and cultural events and anxieties? For example, why was the waltz considered a dance so dangerous it inspired protest and outrage and hundreds of anti-dance pamphlets? Why were months long dance marathons all the rage during the Depression? In what ways have African dance movements found a permanent and ever evolving place in American dance?

Our texts will be a combination of historical readings related to dance and others related to broader social and historical issues. We will also look at images of dance, both photographic and moving pictures. However, to really understand dance, you have to move, feel the beat, dance the dances. To this end, we will have occasion to try out dances – from English Country Dances to Swing dance - taught by a variety of guest instructors. And along the way, you'll satisfy a writing requirement.

AMER 115F: Food for Thought
Kevra, S.

Writing in the 18th century, Brillat-Savarin proclaimed, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." One way to understand the making of America is to look at its relationship to food. While Europeans may not have found a land of gold and spices, they did, nonetheless, encounter a land of plenty. From the North Atlantic, with its cod-rich waters, to the Western Plains, where tens of millions of bison roamed, food would become the major pawn in the political strategies of states. Thirst for rum and an appetite for sugar would give rise to the slave trade. And revolution would rise from a tea-filled harbor. Even today, how and what we eat, how food is produced and distributed are central in social and environmental debates. This course is not meant to chart the complete history of eating in the Americas over the last five hundred years. Instead, in the true spirit of liberal arts, our exploration of food will involve a variety of disciplines: history, anthropology, sociology, religion, film studies, literature, to allow you to discover new fields, something crucial in your freshman year.

AMER 294: Music, Masculinity, and the Cold War
Lovensheimer, Jim

Based on the examination of musical texts as far-ranging as the songs of Hank Williams, modernist and neo-romantic concert music of the 1950s, and the 1983 musical La Cage aux Folles, this seminar is an investigation of constructs of masculinity in three main streams of American music from approximately 1950 through 1991: popular music, including rock, country, and pop music; art, or "classical," music; and musical theater. Through assigned readings, in-class presentations, discussions, and a substantial final research paper, we shall investigate both source and secondary materials in our exploration of the changing discourses, constructs, and representations of masculinity in American music during this fascinating, if volatile, period. Every class discussion will be supplemented with in-class video and audio examples. No technical knowledge of music is required.