American Life and Culture: Fall 2007 Courses History 693G Syllabus American Beauty: Society, Culture and Music, 1945-1995

Course Description: American Beauty is a rigorous readings seminar that will examine the intersection of American culture, society, and politics from 1950 to 1995 as expressed and consumed by various audiences, theorists, and scholars. It is designed to help students construct a model for teaching cultural history and to apply intellectual tools to the study of popular culture. The popular rock band The Grateful Dead will be used frequently as a microcosmic example through which broader patterns can be illumined.

This course will pay special attention to individuals and movements that, at least initially, were viewed as outside the cultural mainstream. It will explore the essential tensions and dialogic relations emerging from ideals that challenged—even altered--the status quo, yet did so within a capitalist ethos that paradoxically reinforced hegemonic structures which cultural rebels sought to overthrow.

Enrollees should plan to attend a special tie-in symposium Unbroken Chain: The Grateful Dead and American Culture which takes place the weekend of November 16-17, 2007.

In this course we will try to answer several fundamental questions about American culture in the mid and late 20th century. Among them:

• Does popular culture provide an appropriate frame through which to view social change?
• What are the connections between politics, economics, society, and culture? Can these threads be separated, or are they inextricably woven?
• How can we assess the meaning of popular culture? How can we evaluate which forms are hegemonic, which are oppositional, and which are merely alternative expressions? What are the boundaries between active and reactive expression?
• How do groups and individuals manufacture identity? How does identity manifest itself culturally?
• Is culture a change agent, a mirror, or some combination of the two? What meaning (if any) can we attach to cultural expression?
• Given the complexity and pluralism of American society, how do we parse culture to assign it meaning?
• Does current cultural theory illumine understanding of American society or cloud it?

Readings and Music: HIST693G has three required texts:

Students will be asked to do a variety of reports, papers and presentations requiring supplementary reading and research. Each student will also lead the class discussion on a particular topic.

Students should seek to balance three ingredients in their presentations: historiography, theory, and praxis/examples. Written work will engage the relevant historiography more thoroughly than the oral presentations, and should take into account critical commentary offered by the class in response to the presentations.

The final “project” can take one of three forms, depending upon student interest. It could be:

• A formal research paper which uses the Grateful Dead as its focus in order to illumine an historical problem, and engages some of the questions which appear above.
• An analytical essay which assesses the use of cultural theory by historians, applies it to a specific problem, and illustrates the uses and abuses of critical cultural theory. It too should engage some of the questions which appear above.
• For teachers: A formal curriculum plan which outlines how they would teach a course in cultural history to either Advanced Placement or undergraduate students using a particular microcosmic example. (It could be the Grateful Dead, but need not be.) The plan should include a bibliography as well as a list of resources. Like the other options, it should engage some of the questions which appear above, though it would likely do so within the framework of specific lessons.

Topics and Assignments

For convenience—though it is a pedagogical and historical fiction—we will adopt a rough chronological approach to our exploration of American culture. Each period will be focus on four ‘theme’ areas: politics, economics, society, and culture. Please pay attention to politics and economic contexts. For the record, I am enough of a materialist to believe that these are essential in defining what is possible, probable, acceptable, tolerable, or beyond the pale in a given historical context. These things also play an important role in determining whether a given subculture will be considered—in Raymond Williams’ terms—as a hegemonic, alternative, or oppositional group.

Brackett=	The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader
During=	The Cultural Studies Reader
McNally=	What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

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Class of:

9/5	Introduction and Groundings: Chultural Icons, 'Decades' Histroy, and other Nonsense

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9/12	A Theory of Popular Culture
Read:	During, Part One Brackett, Chapters 1-7
Possible Presentations:	Marxism and Popular Culture: From Karl to the Frankfurt School Mass Culture Theory

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9/19	Towards a Theory of Leisure
Read:	During, Part Nine Brackett, chpts. 8-14
Possible Presentations:	Michel Foucault, Norbert Elias, etc and the Quest for Excitement Clifford Geertz and the Uses of Thick Description The Sociology of Leisure

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9/26	1950s: Society and Politics
Read:	During, chpts. 36, 37, 39 McNally, chpts. 1-2.
Possible Presentations:	By the Bomb’s Early Light: Cold War Thought and Fears The Way We Never Were: American Families in the 1950s Growing Up with Television: Media Messages in the 1950s Not Just a Black Thing: The Politics of Race in the 1950s Growing Up Absurdly Other Directed: Intellectuals, the Old Left, and the 1950s UFOs and Horror Flicks: The 50s On-screen?

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10/3	1950s: The Mainstream and the Rebels
Read:	During, chpts. 17, 18 Brackett, chpts. 21-26
Possible Presentations:	Raising Cain: The Impact of African Americans on White Culture Homeward Angel: The Beats’ Love/Hate Affair with American Society The Battle for the Soul of Rock: Rebels vs. the White-Bread/Well-Bred Alternatives Where the Girls Are: Gendered Popular Culture Images of the 1950s On the Razor’s Edge: Druggies, Queers, JDs, and Other 50s Cultural Opposition Modern Art: Innovation or Cold War Propaganda?

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10/10	Cracks in the Consensus: The Early 1960s
Read:	During, chpts, 34, 35 Brackett, chpts. 27-37 McNally, chpts. 3-6
Possible Presentations:	The Folk Revival and the Folk Rebels Port Huron: The Birth of the New Left The Few and the Vocal: Anti-bomb, Anti-HUAC, and Anti Cold War Protests The Berkeley Free Speech Fight Freedom Singers: The Cultural Impact of Civil Rights Novelists against the Mainstream

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10/17	Place and History: San Francisco, Greenwich Village, and Middle America 1965-1967
Read:	During, chpts. 8-10, 26-27 Brackett, chpts. 38-46 McNally, chpts. 7-17
Possible Presentations:	Hippies: Real or Media Creation? Flowers in Your Hair: Creating the Summer of Love Pranksters and Acid Tests Death Culture? Warhol, The Factory, and Nihilism Hollywood Presents the Counterculture Diggers, Communards, and Politicos: The Varied Forms of Opposition in the mid-60s Was Hippiedom a White, Male Thing? How Did it Play in Peoria? Attitudes and Reactions to the Emerging Counterculture Bill Graham: Acid Rock Guru or Corporate Rock Shill? Pop Art: Oppositional or Cool Capitalism?

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10/24	From the Summer of Love to the Days of Rage: 1967-1972
Read:	Brackett, chpts. 47-56 McNally, chpts. 18-35
Possible Presentations:	Woodstock and Altamont: Age of Aquarius or Dante’s Inferno? Hell’s Angels: Counterculture or Fascists on Drugs? Drugs in the 60s: Minds Expanded and Blown Fringes I: The Black Panthers Fringes II: The Weather Underground Opposing the War: How Vietnam Polarized American Society and Culture The Whole World is Watching: Chicago, 1968 Campus Chaos: From Columbia and Cornell to Kent and Jackson State Poster Art and Consciousness Kinsey Reports vs. the 1960s: A Sexual Revolution?

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10/31	1970s: Identity Politics and Economic Distress
Read:	During, chpts, 19, 22-25 Brackett, chpts. 57-60 McNally, chpts. 36-40.
Possible Presentations:	Stonewall and Beyond: Gay Identity and Queer Theory Hard Hats/Hard Hearts: Backlash against Liberation Movements Representing Chaos: The Media, the Miseration Index, OPEC, and Stagflation Watergate and its Impact on Civic Life Natives and Latinos in the 1970s: Towards a Theory of Ethnicity The End of Victory Culture: American Uncertainty in a Post-Vietnam World Norman Lear’s American Worldview Amos n’ Andy to The Jeffersons: TV and Race

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11/7	Shifting Sands: From Rock to Disco and Punk in the 1970s
Read:	Brackett, chpts. 58, 61-65 McNally, chpts. 41-46
Possible Presentations:	Whither Blue-Collar America? Punk and Angst Studio 54: The Irony of Materialist Lust in an Age of Scarcity Disco: Gay and Racial Identity Pop Quiz: How Hollywood Represented the Vietnam War Delayed Subversion: Hollywood in the 1970s The 700 Club and the Rise of Televangelism Did CATV Ruin American Culture? The Impact of Gonzo and New Journalism

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11/14	Reinventing the Past: Ronald Reagan's America
Read:	During, chpts. 20-21 Brackett, chpts. 66-72 McNally, chpt. 47
Possible Presentations:	Ronald Reagan the Movie: How Popular Culture Shaped Reagan’s Worldview Deindustrialization: What Ever Happened to the Working Class? Fear of Falling: Middle Class Woes in the 1980s Backlash: The Media and the War against Feminism Selling Nationalism: Reagan and the Politics of Symbolism Back to the Future: Idealizing the 1950s/Trashing the 1960s in the 1980s Get Me a Rewrite: Changing Views on Vietnam Look it Up: Were the 1980s Really Better than the 1960s?

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11/16-17

Unbroken Chain Symposium

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11/28	Show Me the Money: The Commercialization of American Culture
Read:	During, chpts. 28-29 Brackett, chpts. 73-77 McNally, chpts. 48-49
Possible Presentations:	How MTV Changed American Culture Madonna and Camille Paglia: Feminist Power or Intellectual Fraud? The Conquest of Cool: How Advertising was Liberated by the 1960s Wanna Buy Rebellion? Marketing the Counterculture Not Everyone is Smiling: Early Rap, Hip-Hop, and Urban America Wounded in the Culture Wars The McDonalds Model: Welcome to Generica Media Representations of Wealth in the 1980s Deadheads in the 1980s: Why?

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12/5	Generations Collide: CLinton and Cultural Conflict in the 1990s
Read:	During, chpt. 11, 13-16 Brackett, chpts. 78-94 McNally, chpts. 50-54.
Possible Presentations:	Can White Boys Rap? Should They? Jerry’s Gone: Assessing the Dream Globalization and Cultural Content Do Americans Shop Too Much? Downloads and Sharing: Implications for the Future of Music Bellagio, Las Vegas and the Challenge of Simulacra Why the Smithsonian Hates Controversy Reinventing the 1960s in the 1990s

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12/12

Presentation of Projects and Wrap-Up

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