**This syllabus will be made available in alternative media by request**

Introduction

This course introduces students to the theories and methods often used by American studies scholars to write cultural criticism. In addition, it suggests that cultural criticism is a fundamental human activity that people do every day of their lives, even if they tend not to articulate the results of their analysis. Both scholarly and vernacular forms of cultural criticism share an interest in the social value of the meanings attributed cultural artifacts, whether they be books, bodies, or Boston baked beans. In addition, cultural critics are often astute observes of the processes by which meanings are made and the locations in which they operate. They must, therefore, examine cultural artifacts in historical and institutional contexts as well as in relation to specific groups and individuals.

AS 168 is designed to encourage students to think of themselves as practicing cultural critics. Students can expect to take a great deal of responsibility for their learning. Active participation in the course is required. Students will lead discussions of readings, write critiques of their peers’ work, and conduct interpretive research on a cultural artifact of their choice.

Required Readings

The following texts have been ordered at the Marvin Center bookstore:

Elaine Baldwin, et. al. Introducing Cultural Theory (1999)

Thomas McLaughlin, Street Smarts and Critical Theory (1996)

Constance Penley, NASA/Trek (1997)

Emily Martin, The Woman in the Body (2001)

Basil Johnston, Indian School Days (1989)

Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are (1994)

Additional required readings are available at Penn Press, 1919 Pennsylvania Ave. NW (202-331-8224).

Course Objectives

This course aims to:

1. provide students with an introduction to the theories and methods most often used by American studies scholars in contemporary cultural criticism.

2. familiarize students with a broad range of scholarly cultural criticism.

3. give students practice analyzing, interpreting, and contextualizing cultural artifacts.

4. help develop the high-level writing skills and strategies necessary to write advanced cultural criticism.

5. encourage students to think of themselves as practicing members of the American studies community

Assignments

3 short Readers’ Guides, 2 critical responses to peer drafts, and 1 Final Essay (with attendant process writing) weighted as follows:

3 Readers’ Guides @ 10% each à 30%

+ 2 critical responses to peer drafts @ 15% each à 30%

+ 1 Final Essay à 40%

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100%

Reading Schedule

Date	Reading
Jan. 14	First day of class
Jan. 16	Part 1. A Crash Course in Critical Theory Street Smarts and Critical Theory · Baldwin, et. al., “Culture and Cultural Studies” · McLaughlin, “Theory Outside the Academy”
Jan. 21	Cultural Artifacts and Performances · Baldwin, et. al., “Communication and Representation” · McLaughlin, “Cultural Theory and Activisim in the Southern Christian Anti-pornography Movement”
Jan. 23	· Laura Kipnis, “(Male) Desire and (Female) Disgust: Reading Hustler” in her Ecstasy Unlimited · Susan Bordo, “Reading the Slender Body” in her Unbearable Weight
Jan. 28	Cultural Politics · Baldwin, et. al., “Culture, Power and Inequality” · Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Exhibiting Jews” in her Destination Culture
Jan. 30	· Baldwin, et. al., “Politics and Culture” · bell hooks, “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination” in A Cultural Studies Reader (Grossberg, et. al.) · Robert Elliot Fox, “Becoming Post-White” in MultiAmerica
Feb. 4	Part 2. Cultural Coordinates Place/Space/Race as Ideology and Identity · Baldwin, et. al., “Topographies of Cultures” · Basil Johnston, Indian School Days (1^st half)
Feb. 6	· James H. Merrell, “His Land was Spoiled: The Settlers’ Invasion” in his The Indians’ New World · Basil Johnston, Indian School Days (2^nd half)
Feb. 11	Individual Consultation on Final Papers—Come with Topic, thesis, rationale, and list of sources.
Feb. 13	Time/History/The Future · Baldwin, et. al., “Culture, Time and History” · Andrew Ross, “Getting the Future We Deserve” in his Strange Weather · McLaughlin, “Stories of the New Age: Narrative, Healing and Transformation”
Feb. 18	· Kalí Tal, “That Just Kills Me: Black Militant Near-Future Fiction” in Social Text special issue on “Afrofuturism” · Alexander Weheliye, “Feenin’: Posthuman Voices in Contemporary Black Popular Music” in Social Text special issue on “Afrofuturism”
Feb. 20	Self/Body/Community · Baldwin, et. al., “Cultured Bodies” · Nancy Mairs, “Carnal Acts” and Barbara Rosenblum, “Living in an Unstable Body,” both in Staring Back · Emily Martin, Preface, Introduction, chs. 1-6 of The Woman in the Body
Feb. 25	· Martin, The Woman in the Body chs. 7-12 and Appendices 1 and 2
Feb. 27 Draft #1 Due	Part 3. Culture in Late Capitalist Society ‘Subcultures’ or Vernacular Uses of Mass Mediated Popular Culture · Baldwin, et. al., “Subcultures: Reading Resistance and Social Divisions” · Michel de Certeau, “Reading as Poaching” in his The Practice of Everyday Life · Constance Penley, NASA/Trek (1^st half)
Mar. 4	· McLaughlin, “Criticism in the Zines” · Penley, NASA/Trek (2^nd half)
Mar. 6	Peer Review #1—Come with written evaluation of assigned draft.
Mar. 11	· Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are
Mar. 18	Spring Break—No Class
Mar. 20	Spring Break—No Class
Mar. 25	· Clive Bloom, “Living in Technicolor: The Rules of Pulp” · D. B. McRae, “The Gravitomobile” · Paul Ernst, “The Incredible Formula”
Mar. 27	Unofficial Culture: Urban Legends, Sex, and Commodity Capitalism · Gary Alan Fine, “The Promiscuous Cheerleader,” and “Kentucky Fried Rat” in his Manufacturing Tales
Apr. 1 Draft #2 Due	Visual Culture: The Image · Baldwin, et. al., “Visual Culture” · Erika Doss, “The Art of Cultural Politics: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism” in Recasting America
Apr. 3	· Miles Orvell, “Weegee’s Voyeurism and the Mastery of Urban Disorder” in his After the Machine
Apr. 8	Peer Review #2
Apr. 10	Oral Presentation Workshop
Apr. 15	Visual Culture: The Built Environment · Mike Davis, “Fortress L.A.” · Clifford Clark, Jr. “Ranch House Suburbia” in Recasting America
Apr. 17	Part 4. Doing Cultural Criticism Presentations
Apr. 22	Presentations
Apr. 24	Presentations
Apr. 29	Presentations
Final Exam Date	Final Papers Due

Course Policies

Requirements for Written Work

BACKUP: You should make a backup disk or photocopy of all your work. Error or breakdown—your, mine, or the machine's—can happen. I will hold you responsible to have copies of your work.

DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP: All written work must be accompanied by a signed page with the following declaration: “I, [name], declare that I am the sole and original author of this work. This assignment was completed in compliance with the requirements of the course and The George Washington University’s Code of Academic Integrity.”

FORMATTING: All essays must be word processed in Times New Roman 12, and double-spaced throughout (except for identifying items). Print on one side of the paper only. Set left margins to 1. 75 inches and right margins to 1 inch. Do not justify the right side of the page. All pages must bear the name of the author, be numbered and stapled together. Do not include a separate title page, nor submit your essay in a cover of any kind. All papers must be neatly printed with a sufficient saturation level of ink to ensure easy legibility. Papers with text streaked by dirty print cartridges low on ink will not be accepted.

LATE PAPERS: The final grade of papers not submitted on the due date in class during the scheduled meeting time will be reduced 2/3 of a letter grade for each business day late. No assignments will be accepted more than three business days late.

Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism

Any act of academic dishonesty will be treated as a serious offense in this class. By turning in any assignment, students declare that they are the sole and original authors of their work and are in compliance with The George Washington University’s Code of Academic Integrity. Additionally they assert that they have properly credited any words and ideas not their own (whether those words and ideas originated in a published source, on the Internet, from a multimedia presentation, or from a fellow student). Students with questions about how to properly credit the work of others should consult with the instructor.

Acts of scholastic dishonesty may result in an F for the course and additional disciplinary action.

Incompletes

Incompletes will not be given for frivolous reasons. If you do not complete an assignment you will receive no credit for that assignment and your course grade will reflect this. If there are specific attenuating circumstances, please contact me immediately.

A Word on Office Hours

My office hours are intended to be opportunities for students to come for one-on-one discussions about anything: from writing and research problems to problems with class dynamics. You just want to talk about ideas or something interesting you’ve read? Come on in. I like talking with students. I’ll do my best to make you feel comfortable. Please take advantage of this time.

Phone Messages

If you call my office and find that I am not available, please do not leave a voice mail message for me. Instead, send me an email outlining the problem. If it is a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, I’ll probably get back to you that day or the next. If it’s Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, you can expect a reply on Monday.

Policy for Human Dignity

All members of the class will be treated with respect. I do not believe that honest differences in passion, point of view, and politics must be erased to facilitate harmony. But throughout this class, thoughtful dialogue will replace aggressive confrontation and demeaning behavior whenever disagreements arise.

Reasonable Accommodations for Students with Documented Disabilities

Reasonable accommodations will be made for students with documented disabilities. Please contact the office of Disability Support Services (Marvin Center Suite 242; 801 21^st St. NW, Washington, DC 20052; Tel. 202-994-8250; V/TDD 202-994-8250; FAX 202-994-7610; dss@gwu.edu with any questions or requests for accommodations.

Cell Phones, Pagers, Recording Devices

Please turn off all cell phones or pagers before entering the classroom. If, in case of emergency, you must receive a call during class, please set the ringer on vibrate, rise quickly, exit the classroom, and answer the call outside the room. In no case may lectures or discussion be recorded on any kind of device without the explicit written consent of the instructor and other participants.

How to Survive AS 168

As you can tell from the syllabus, I’ve assigned a lot of reading for you to do this semester. Rest assured that it is my intention to see you succeed in this class. [1] Here’s what I need from you.

ü A commitment to read about an hour a day, every day of the week—7 hours in all for reading. Add 2 hours a week for writing or research. That’s 9 hours a week total.

ü A promise that you won’t try to prepare for class in one 7-hour marathon session, no matter how tempting it might be. Cognitive psychologists have established an inverse correlation between brain fatigue and ability to absorb information; critical thinking processes suffer as well. Attention and retention begins to decline even within the first hour.

ü Clear and open communication lines. Tell me when you’re having problems; let me help you design and implement a solution. Don’t wait and hope that things will get better on their own.

Here’s what I’ll offer you in return.

Ø The 7-hour reading limit will be sacrosanct. Keep a careful and honest time log: When you hit the 7-hour limit, put your book down, make a last note, and call it a week.

Ø An opportunity to talk about the readings in class in a supportive environment—every week. All kinds of questions will be welcomed.

Ø Short writing assignments that can be completed in two, separate one-hour sittings, and a procedure for doing them.

Ø A process for completing the final project that will make it easier to finish and more rewarding to work on.

Sound fair? Good. Here’s how we make it work.

Reading and Notetaking

In order to keep up the pace you’ll need to finish the assigned reading and to make sense of what you’re reading, you need a system—not only for taking notes—but also for the reading process itself. Here’s one.

Remember that the most abstract or conceptual point in a paragraph is usually either at the beginning of the paragraph or the end. That’s where you’ll find claims, interpretive statements, theses, conclusions—the stuff that the writer uses to get you to see what s/he wants you to remember. In between the beginning and the end you’ll find supporting material: examples, statistics, stories, explanations. So as you read, be sure you understand what the main point of the paragraph is. Underline the phrase that conveys the main point (and don’t underline anything else—too much clutter in your text will make it useless). Then, in the left margin write a few (and only a few) words that describe the content of the paragraph. Not every paragraph will demand such a note. Just the ones you want to remember. (You might make an index to your reading as you go. Write down the page number and the one or two word description label). In the right margin, make a brief comment now and again. Try to comment at least every other page. But don’t get too busy on the page.

The following is what your annotated paragraph might look like. The text is from William Burrows, This New Ocean, an excellent history of the Space Race in the Twentieth century, p. 4. One thing to note: Burrows is fond of using his conclusions as transition sentences, heading the next paragraph. So I’ve moved the first sentence of the next paragraph to the end here, for demonstration.

Paragraph Description

Text

Comments:

Conflicting Themes in Space History

The story of the first space age is set in a cauldron whose soup is laced with altruists and scoundrels, visionaries and parasites, heroes and naves. It is the story of political ideologies that fought relentlessly above the atmosphere, as they did on the planet beneath it, in a dangerous duel for global supremacy that was more illusion that serious possibility. Using space to help humanity communicate, forecast the weather, and accomplish other beneficial things, and traveling there for the ultimate adventure and refuge, was the central core of the idea. It was the great philosophical driving force, the engine, that seemed to make a presence in space imperative. Yet space could be reached only by rockets and the shame of it was that rockets were conceived and reconceived time and again, expressly to wreak unparalleled destruction and kill large numbers of the very people whose enlightenment and salvation they promised.

Space is a Cold War battleground, literally and figuratively

How could space be a refuge?

Inherent paradox of space travel

Notice both the secular and religious terms for transcendence

Remember, though, that the key to reading quickly and well is to keep moving and look for the big picture, namely the narrative and/or thematic line holding the facts together.

OK, so you’ve been reading for 45 or 50 minutes, and you made it through 16 pages. Skip to the end of the section or the end of the chapter, if you’re close, and scan the ending. What’s the author’s walk-away point? The one s/he wants to remember? Got it? Good. Now, before you leave, write a brief paragraph that summarizes the main idea of the section you read today. When you come back to your reading tomorrow, you’ll use this paragraph to refresh your memory. Such a paragraph written for the first 18 pages of Burrow’s book might look like this: The idea of challenging gravity, the “force that holds [humankind] to Earth” (p. 3) has a long history—over 2000 years. Daedalus, Leonardo da Vinci, Lucian, Copernicus, and Tsiolkovsky all used the idea of leaving the earth to challenge established ideas and express aspirations for transcendence. Rockets had some of their origins in Chinese alchemy; they were used for warfare from the very start. The adventures of Columbus and the findings of Copernicus and Kepler inspired people to imagine voyages of discovery in the heavens.

Notice how I tried to express the main themes of the section, and convey some of the narrative line that substantiates it. I’ve established that this idea is a fundamental part of the way human beings think about themselves, their societies, and their hopes for the future. Be sure that you end each reading session by writing this summary paragraph.

With this technique, you should be able to assemble functional notes in a reasonably timely fashion.

Now, reading is the first step, if the most time consuming one, in your work this semester. In order to consolidate the information in the texts, and develop a deeper understanding of the course materials, you need to write about it in a more structured setting.

As I promised earlier, the Readers’ Guides’ are designed so that you can finish them in two one-hour sittings. But the two-hour promise is contingent on you having done 7 hours of reading, annotation and summary. You will not be able to complete the writing assignments in two hours if you need to read or re-read the texts.

Readers’ Guides

Three times this semester, you’ll write brief Readers’ Guides. These Guides will be opportunities for you to encapsulate the readings for the week, as well as think-on-paper about how they might facilitate your work as a cultural critic.

Besides your name and other identifiers, each Readers’ Guide should contain the following numbered and titled sections:

1. PUBLICATION DATA: Author(s), title(s), and publication data (include source and year of publication) on each of the readings covered in the Guide.

2. DESCRIPTIONS: A brief description of each of the readings covered. Convey the main argument of the work, and discuss a few of the most interesting pieces of evidence. 100 words per reading.

3. DISCUSSION: A well-organized short essay discussing the implications of the reading for your work as a cultural critic. Here you might link the insights of the readings to your own project, critique the limits or logic of ideas, relate the reading to other readings in the course in order to shed new light on both, or show how the reading enables you to reconsider familiar cultural artifacts. 300-400 words maximum.

As an example of the kinds of questions that make for good short essays, consider the following:

A. Baldwin, et. al., argue that bodies are not just physical objects, but cultural artifacts capable of bearing meanings that profoundly affect one’s sense of identity or place in society. What kinds of bodily characteristics carry the most weight in our society? Which carry the least? In what ways can people redefine the meaning(s) of their bodies? What are the limits of such redefinitions?

B. George Lipsitz suggests that the music of Los Lobos represents a potentially liberating hybrid form of cultural expression. What is the theoretical value of hybridity? Its cultural or political value? In what ways in Los Lobos music liberating? From what? Why do so many cultural critics look to popular culture for liberation.

If you hadn’t noticed, the Readers’ Guides are models of the writing tasks you’ll use to compose the sections of your final essay that establish the theoretical, cultural, and historical contexts of your chosen artifact. In addition, they enable you to practice seeing and building credible interpretations of your artifact and to anticipate possible objections to your arguments.

The Writing Process

Here’s the process for writing that I recommend. Break your 2-hour writing commitment into two one-hour sittings. During the first sitting, you need to discover what you find interesting, frame it as an answerable question, and develop a pretty good sense of what your answers are. This you can do in one hour. But you can’t do it just by thinking about it. You’ve got to write during this first hour. Here’s a schedule for the 1^st hour:

First One-Hour Writing Session

§ Minutes 1-5: Brainstorm: Make a list of single words about which you might write.

§ Minutes 6-15: 2^nd Level Brainstorm: Choose 2 or 3 of those words and make sub-lists. Try to develop contrasts, similarities, complements,

§ Minutes 16-30: Free-Writing: Choose one of these list/sub-lists. Write for 10 minutes about this list. Don’t try for paragraphs or good sentences, don’t pause to think of a word. Just keep writing without censoring yourself. Or, Write as many declarative sentences about the topic as possible.

§ Minutes 31-45: Analyze your free-writing. Circle suggestive phrases, words, sentences, or examples. Think about what you might have meant by this or that phrase—make annotations on your free-writing. Think of examples you might use, and write them down.

§ Minutes 46-60: Focused Free-Writing: In nutshell fashion write down the main points of your exploratory essay. You may not get all of them, but you can add more later. Try to get at least one good paragraph that conveys the gist of your essay. Write a tentative title for your paper—make it descriptive and a little jazzy. Write potential walk-in and walk-away sentences.

§ TAKE A BREAK

During the second hour you need to produce a short paper. While you were open to all ideas during the first hour, you need to commit to a few good solid ideas in this second hour. What are your best points? How can they be developed? Don’t strive for breadth; rather teach your reader something interesting about the topic. Mostly you want to make positive points about what you’ve got to say rather than simply responding to the readings.

Second One-Hour Writing Session

¨ Minutes 1-5: Re-read your focused free-writing. Make any additional notes as they come to you.

¨ Minutes 6-35: Write a draft. Get the main ideas on paper in order. Install the examples and explanations in the right places.

¨ Minutes 36-45: Analyze your draft. Make your assertions clear. Check to see that your examples and explanations mean what you think they do. Check to make sure that you’ve drawn a conclusion at the end of each main point.

¨ Minutes 45-60: Polish the draft. Refine the title. Make sure that you have a beginning that introduces your topic, a middle that explains a set of points, and a conclusion that tells the reader what to think about you’ve written. Be sure that you have good walk-in and walk-away sentences.

[1] To be clear, my definition of “success in the class” is not “to get an A.” I define success as passing the class, becoming grounded in the fundamentals of the topic, and developing intellectual skills such as reading, writing, interpretation, explanation, and presenting ideas.

ERIC DROWN
Home	Curriculum Vitae	Dissertation Abstract	Publications	Book Project	Teaching Philosophy	Course Syllabi	Student Comments	Student Writings	For Current Students

American Studies 168/Spring 2003

The George Washington University

Eric Drown, Assistant Professor

Cultural Criticism in America

Introduction ……………………………………………………………….1

Assignments ………………………………………………………………2

Reading Schedule ……………………………………………………..2 - 4