First-Year Courses in American Culture (Division 315)

Fall Term, 1999 (September 8 - December 22, 1999)

Unless otherwise stated, the permission required for the repetition for credit of specifically designated courses is that of the student’s concentration or BGS advisor.

Courses in Ojibwa

A full sequence of Ojibwa cannot be guaranteed. Students must consult with the American Culture Program Office before undertaking Ojibwa to satisfy the College language requirement.

Section 001 – Politics and Culture of Race in Post-1945 U.S. Meets with Hist 196.003. Evening Meetings on Sept. 13 & Nov. 11, 7-10 P.M. Required As Part of First-Year Intergroup Relations Seminars (FIGS).

Instructor(s): Matthew Countryman (mcountry@umich.edu)

First-Year Seminar,

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course will examine how changing ideas of race and race relations have affected life in the United States over the past fifty years. Students will consider a wide range of texts – from government reports and historical analyses to novels, movies, and popular music – to understand the role that debates over the meaning of race have played in recent political, cultural, and social movements. The course will be divided into three units: (1) the changing meaning of race during World War II and its aftermath; (2) the rise and fall of the civil rights movement; and (3) race and current debates over affirmative action, multiculturalism, immigration, and the criminal justice system. Students will write a brief paper at the end of each unit and will also participate in the First-Year Inter-Group Seminars (FIGS) program.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Richard Cándida Smith (candidas@umich.edu)

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course will provide an introduction to the relation of cultural forms to their political, economic, intellectual, and social contexts. We focus on cultural processes and interactions in the United States in order to explore ideals, aspirations, conflicts, visions, and material realities that have defined American culture. While this is not a history course, we will examine how residents of the early Republic viewed the nature of social relationships. We will also look at nineteenth- and early twentieth-century efforts to make sense of industrial growth, national expansion, and urbanization. We will discuss contemporary ideas about race, the economy, and the government, and how those ideas might differ from those of earlier generations. We will think about how Americans have expressed their feelings about patriotism and war, race and national progress, the power of the local and the claims of the nation, as well as the privileged place given to domesticity as a solution to the moral problems of industrial capitalism.

The material to be covered is diverse and includes autobiography and essays, fiction, poetry, painting and sculpture, photography, parades and civic holidays, journalism, advertising, cinema and television. In addition to reviewing image content, we will analyze how professional and formal constraints set boundaries to what messages could emerge in different media at any historical moment. This combination of historical, theoretical, and institutional analyses will allow students to see cultural production as a dynamic process actively shaping and reshaping understanding of primary social differences within American society. The course will emphasize that cultural production is fluid and protean. Through a comparative analysis of forms, the students will see different regimes of representation overlapping with each other.

The course is organized around case studies that progressively allow for more complex analysis of cultural representation, production, consumption, and regulation. In each course segment, students study examples of cultural forms that have reinforced or undermined racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes. We will give attention to theories of stereotypes and provide a history of the images available for the construction of national, racial, and ethnic identities. An important part of this story is the history of images and conceptions of family life. We will see that racial and ethnic stereotypes have rested upon conceptions of various groups having deficient or decadent forms of family association. We will also examine debates over the responsibilities of cultural producers to use their work to transform the ways their audiences view the world.

Section 001 – A History of Childbirth in America: Early Republic to the Present.

Instructor(s): Chris Bass (cbass@umich.edu)

Credits: (3).

Lab Fee: Laboratory fee required.

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course will explore the history of childbirth in the U.S. from two different perspectives: the mother; and the person assisting with the birth. By exploring these two very different perspectives we will learn a great deal about the issues that have been, and continue to be, important to women giving birth. We will also focus on the factors that have influenced who has assisted birthing women over the past two hundred years. In addition, we will look at the medical, social, and cultural aspects of childbirth and how they intersect and influence one another. We will also explore gender and power dynamics in the birthing room and how socio-economic factors and race influence childbirth practices and experiences. The class format will focus primarily on discussion of weekly reading assignments with a few short lectures. There will be several short reaction papers, 2-3 pages in length. Students will also learn how to work with primary sources at the Bentley Historical Library which will result in a research paper. There will be a midterm and final exam.

Section 001 – The Dream Factory: Classic Hollywood Cinema, Movie Stars, and the Studio System.

Instructor(s): Liz Brent (esb@umich.edu)

Credits: (3).

Lab Fee: Laboratory fee required.

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course examines the classic era of Hollywood cinema: the filmmaking industry as producer of mass entertainment; market tie-ins; actors and directors as laborers; the production and marketing of movie stars; the “glamour factory”; the language of cinema; the Hollywood screen kiss; the glamour shot; the influence of the Hayes Code (censorship); auteurism (the film director as personality); from literature to film; classic narrative cinema; and more! Course requirements include four 5-page essays and weekly in-class writing.

The Films: Camille (1936); Gaslight (1940); The Philadelphia Story (1940); The Maltese Falcon (1941); Now, Voyager (1942); To Have and Have Not (1944); Notorious (1946); The African Queen (1951); On the Waterfront (1954); Rebel Without A Cause (1955); Psycho! (1961).

The Stars: Greta Garbo; Cary Grant; Marlene Dietrich; Jimmie Stewart; Ingrid Bergman; Humphry Bogart; Lauren Bacall; Bette Davis; Marlon Brando; James Dean; Kathryn Hepburn; Clark Gable; Claudette Colbert.

The Directors: Frank Capra; George Cukor; John Huston; Alfred Hitchcock; Howard Hawks; Elia Kazan; Nicholas Ray; and more!

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Tomas Almaguer

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course is designed as a broad overview of the major topics, themes, and methodologies in social science research in Latino Studies. The goal is to introduce students to the diverse experiences of different Latino groups, primarily Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans, in different regions of the country in order to critically assess similarities as well as differences in their historical and contemporary experiences in the United States.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Kwon

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Introduction to Asian American Studies will examine the nature of American culture and society through a specific study of one racial/ethnic group, Asian Americans. The Asian American experience reveals the dynamics of race relations and economic stratification in the USA as well as the continuing process of defining America and American. This course provides an introductory study of the experience of Asian immigrants and their citizen descendants in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The groups covered include Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Pacific Islander, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans as well as the heterogeneity within the various ethnic communities, such as gender, class, generation, and region. Topics for discussion will include international/domestic relations, immigration policy, ethnic literary expressions. The format of this introductory course is largely lecture with an emphasis on encouraging and incorporating student discussion and dialogue especially in applying their knowledge gained from this course to an analysis of contemporary American society.

Section 001 – Spiderwoman’s Children.

Instructor(s): Betty Bell (blbell@umich.edu)

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This is an introductory course to the historical and literary cultures of Native America. We will trace the evolution of the indigenous cultures of the United States through pre-contact oral literature, tribal colonization, and removal to the reservation, the creation of the Native American as American citizen, and explore native identity – as conceived by native writers and American popular culture – at the end of the 20^th century. We will rely, when possible, on the words of Native Americans to discuss “contact” between tribal peoples and EuroAmericans and the resulting “adaptations” in tribal culture and identity. In addition to literature, we will reply on film, documentary and popular, for the representation of native experience and to chart images of the American Indian. Students are not expected to have knowledge of native history or literature; the course is designed to provide an introduction to both. An advanced course, English 382, will be taught in Winter term. There will be two lecture sessions and one discussion section per week. Students will be required to keep a journal of their readings, to participate in discussion groups, and take a midterm and final.

Courses in Ojibwa

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Irving (Hap) McCue

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course is designed to give the conversational and cultural skills necessary to enable students to use Ojibwa in real life situations. The teaching methods are entirely inductive, and the role of writing is downplayed. There is considerable emphasis on teaching culturally appropriate behavior, and the simple conversational patterns of greetings, leave takings, introductions, table talk, etc.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Diana Linden

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: http://www.umich.edu/~hartspc/histart/fall99/230-001.html

See History of Art 230.001.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Anne Hermann (anneh@umich.edu)

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Women's Studies 240.001.