Note: You can view the final student projects from this course at this wiki.
AMS 10: Introduction to American Studies
Fall 2006
Instructor: Leslie Madsen-Brooks
Teaching Assistants: Stacy Jameson and JeeEun Song
e-mail: ljmadsen@ucdavis.edu
Office hours: 12:30-1:30 p.m. Monday and Wednesday, 2133 Hart Hall
Mailbox: 2134A Hart Hall
Course description
How do Americans imagine and create their communities? What can we learn about American communities’ habits, beliefs, and values by taking a close look at the places Americans live and the food they eat?
These questions will guide our exploration of American culture over the next ten weeks. In attempting to answer them, we will adopt an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on history, fiction, poetry, autobiography, film, photography, food studies, and more. In addition to engaging with a variety of course materials, you’ll be called upon to think about your relationship to your own communities, past and present.
This course requires you to think critically and imaginatively about the places, food, and material culture you encounter everyday. I hope you find the process both challenging and fun.
Course materials
My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki, available at Memorial Union bookstore
Course reader, available at Navin’s
Course requirements
The day-to-day requirements of this class are simple: do the required reading, reflect on it, and come to class prepared to engage in thoughtful discussion.
Attendance and participation
Your presence in lecture and section is very important. Participation in discussion section constitutes a significant portion of your grade: 15%. To receive an A for your participation, you must participate meaningfully in class every day. Merely attending class will earn you a C- for participation.
Class website
The class website, where I will post relevant course materials as well as lecture images and relevant internet links, is at http://introamericanstudies.blogspot.com. Should you have something you’d like to contribute to the website—by sharing your musings on readings, recommending resources related to the class, etc.—please e-mail them to me and I’ll post them for you. Such contributions, if meaningful, will count toward your participation grade.
Written work
I expect you to be ready to hand in your work at the beginning of class. Please use 12-point Times or Times New Roman font and staple your papers. Any assignment turned in after the beginning of class is late, and will be marked down one-third of a grade (e.g., B- to C+) for each day that passes (including weekend days) before you turn it in.
I take your writing very seriously, and I hope you do as well. I do not accept rewrites of graded assignments for a new grade. Upon request, I will schedule generous extra office hours to meet with students by appointment the days before a paper is due, so you will have ample opportunity to write a strong paper. Please note: I am not your editor or proofreader. I will help you craft a thoughtful argument and outline, and I’ll critique a paragraph or two, but I don’t read entire drafts. The same applies to your teaching assistants.
Quizzes
Your TAs and I may give simple quizzes on a day’s reading material. If it becomes apparent to us from your quiz scores or daily responses to the readings that you have failed to do several reading assignments, your participation grade will suffer. Students who do not read the material usually cannot make meaningful contributions to discussions.
Grading
Class participation: 15%
Practice paper: 15%
First paper: 25%
Second Paper: 25%
Final exam: 20%
Grades for each individual assignment will be posted on MyUCDavis. There are no opportunities for extra credit.
Resources
I will be available during my office hours to address your concerns with the class and assignments. I encourage you to come see me if you feel you have not been offered a chance to participate in class discussion, you are troubled by a particular assignment, you would like to talk more with me about an issue raised in class, or you have concerns about your performance in the course. Your TAs will also be happy to listen to such concerns.
I need to hear from anyone who has a disability that may require some modification of seating, assignments, or other class requirements so that appropriate arrangements may be made. Please see me after class or during my office hours.
Plagiarism
A student commits plagiarism not only if she turns in someone else’s work as her own, but also if she borrows others’ ideas or phrases without giving them credit. We can discuss this in class if anyone has any questions. Please note that any student who plagiarizes or cheats on any assignment may receive an F on the assignment or in the course and may be subject to academic discipline by the university.
I am interested in your thoughts and your creative and analytical work. Please share them with me!
Course Schedule
INTRODUCTION
Thursday, September 28: Margaret Atwood, “How to Tell One Country from Another”
IMAGINING AMERICAN COMMUNITIES
Tuesday, October 3:
- Robert Penn Warren, “Founding Fathers, Early Nineteenth-Century Style, Southeast U.S.A.”
- John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity”
Thursday, October 5:
- J. Hector St. Jean De Crèvecoeur, Excerpts from “Letters from an American Farmer”
- William Carlos Williams, “Voyage of The Mayflower” from In The American Grain
Tuesday, October 10:
- Louisa May Alcott, “Transcendental Wild Oats”
- View M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village before coming to class
Thursday, October 12: Class does not meet.
Tuesday, October 17:
- Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, excerpt from Farewell to Manzanar (reader)
- Lisa See, “The Mission Family Gets a Daughter-in-Law” (excerpt from On Gold Mountain)
Thursday, October 19: Thomas Frank, “Deep in the Heart of Redness” from What’s the Matter with Kansas?
EXPLORING AMERICAN PLACES
Tuesday, October 24: David Beers, “Invasion,” from Blue Sky Dream
Thursday, October 26: Case study: Lakewood
- D.J. Waldie, excerpt from Holy Land
- John M. Broder, “Lakewood Journal; 50 Years Later, a Still-Proud Suburb Is Starting to Fray,” http://tinyurl.com/lw8ma
- Practice paper due
Tuesday, October 31: Case study: Los Angeles
- Joan Didion, “Los Angeles Notebook”
- James Rojas, “The Enacted Environment: Examining the Streets and Yards of Los Angeles”
- Jimmy Santiago Baca, Excerpt from “Meditations on the South Valley” (XVII)
Thursday, November 2: Case study: Detroit
- “8 Mile – The Gates of Detroit,” http://tinyurl.com/hckby (Click on the “Detour” icon at bottom right to learn more. Continue to click it on each site until you’ve finished the tour of 8 Mile.)
- Detroitblog, “Wild Kingdom,” http://www.detroitblog.org/?p=287
- Kate Stohr, “In the Capital of the Car, Nature Stakes a Claim,” http://www.energybulletin.net/148.html
- Philip Levine, “Growth”
Tuesday, November 7: Medley of American voices and places
Read two of the following groups poems carefully, and skim the rest:
- Elizabeth Bishop, “At the Fishhouses” and “The Moose”
- Robert Lowell, “For the Union Dead” and Langston Hughes, “The South”
- Amy Clampitt, “Iola, Kansas” and “Portola Valley” and Jane Kenyon, “American Triptych”; “Main Street: Tilton, New Hampshire”; and “The Sick Wife”
- Garrett Hongo, “96 Tears” and Louise Erdrich, “Indian Boarding School”
A TASTE OF AMERICAN FOOD
Thursday, November 9:
- Robb Walsh, “Texas Barbecue in Black and White” from Cornbread Nation 2
- Langston Hughes, “Lunch in a Jim Crow Car”
- First paper due
Tuesday, November 14:
- Kathleen LeBesco, “There’s Always Room for Resistance: Jell-O, Gender, and Social Class”
Thursday, November 16: homework assignment from Jee-Eun
Tuesday, November 21: Janet Siskand,”The Invention of Thanksgiving: A Ritual of American Nationality”
Thursday, November 23: Thanksgiving. Class does not meet.
Tuesday, November 28:
- Harry Botsford, “Outdoor Hospitality: The Gentleman Plays with Fire,” from Esquire’s Handbook for Host
- Allen Salkin, “Pimp my Grill: Lavish Models appeal to a primal male urge” New York Times May 28, 2006
Thursday, November 30: No reading. Second paper due.
Tuesday, December 5: Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats (1st half of novel)
Thursday, December 7: Ozeki, MYOM (2nd half)
Wednesday, December 13: Final exam, 8 a.m.