What’s Boston?
Boston University American and New England Studies Program
CAS AM 202, Spring 2015. Mondays, 5:00 to 8:00 PM. CAS 316.
Professor Daniel Bluestone, moderator, e-mail: [email protected].
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 11:00-1:00 PM, 226 Bay State Road, Room 104, 358-7332
Objectives: The weekly meetings of What’s Boston? provide a broad-ranging multi-disciplinary
approach to place as we explore Boston’s society, culture, environment, and economy. Sharing
in common the space and place of Boston the faculty presentations, readings, and discussions
will focus on aspects of Boston that are both contemporary and historical. Faculty from disparate
disciplines will use the common spatial frame of the city to layout different scholarly
perspectives on the simple question of our title: What’s Boston? The aim is to expand our
capacity for critically reflecting on and engaging Boston--and world beyond.
Format: Generally, each week two faculty will deliver lectures on their subject for about 40
minutes each. There will be time for questions and discussion after the lectures. After a short
break the class will divide into separate discussion sections to focus more closely on the reading
selections.
Course materials: The assigned essays for the course will be available for download from the
course web site.
Course assignments: Reading the essays for class, attending lectures, and participating in
discussion sections are required. Beyond that there are four assignments and no exams.
1) Two questions and three votes for favorite questions each week. First two questions, each
participant will submit two brief questions based on reading for the next class. The questions are
due by 5 PM on Friday and should be submitted as a thread in the Forum in the Discussion
Section of the course Blackboard site. Second, by Sunday at 8 PM everyone will Review and
Rate their three top choices for questions they personally would like to focus on in the discussion
sections for the coming week. They should assign a rating of 5 to their top question, a rating of 4
to their next favorite, and a rating of 3 to their third place choice. These questions will be used to
structure discussion section conversations. If the two emails are not submitted or not submitted
on time there will be an automatic reduction in the course grade.
25% of the course grade.
2) A three-page paper analyzing the reading and lectures from a single week of the course from
weeks two through five will be due on March 2nd. To expand the analysis the paper should
include at least one additional reading selection that is not part of the assigned reading and that
casts additional light on the material and subject.
12.5% of the course grade.
3) A three-page paper analyzing the reading and lectures from a single week of the course from
weeks six through eleven will be due on April 22nd. To expand the analysis the paper should
include at least one additional reading selection that is not part of the assigned reading that casts
additional light on the material.
12.5% of the course grade.
4) A final six-page research paper analyzing an aspect of Boston, using a multi-disciplinary
approach, and referencing a Boston-related image from the collection of the Museum of Fine
Arts, where we will visit on April 22nd. Research paper is due on at 5 PM on Friday May 8th.
50% of the course grade.
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WHAT’S BOSTON? CAS AM 202 / Spring 2015
LECTURE SCHEDULE AND READING
Week ONE
Monday 26 January
Course Introduction and Outline
Introduction to Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Boston
Week TWO
Monday 2 February
Geological Development and Human Settlement.
Prof. Lawford Anderson, Earth and Environment; Prof. Keith Morgan, History of Art and
Architecture
Jeremy Miller, “Boston’s Earthquake Problem,” Boston Globe, 28 May 2006.
William Lettis & Associates Inc. and Tufts University. “On Shaky Ground Risk of Liquefaction
Map.”
John McPhee, “Travels of the Rock,” The New Yorker, (26 February 1990), 108-114.
Jeffrey Klee, “Civic Order on Beacon Hill,” Buildings & Landscapes, 15 (Fall 2008): 43-57.
Week THREE
Monday 9 February
The Economy and Ethnography of Boston Food.
Prof. Kristen McCormack, School of Management; Prof. Merry White, Anthropology
Leon Neyfakh, “How New England Could Become Farmville Again,” Boston Globe, 21
November 2014.
Michael Pollan, “The Food Movement, Rising,” The New York Review of Books, 10 June 2010.
Birke Baehr, “What’s Wrong With Our Food System,” TedxNextGeneration Talk, August 2010
http://www.ted.com/talks/birke_baehr_what_s_wrong_with_our_food_system?language=en
Augusto Ferraiuolo, Religious Festive Practices in Boston’s North End: Ephemeral Identities in
an Italian American Community, (New York: SUNY Press, 2009), 1-82.
Hasia Diner, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 21-83.
Week FOUR
Tuesday 17 February
Urban Infrastructure, Pollution, and the Regional Eco-system.
Prof. Wally Fulweiler, Earth and Environment; Prof. Sarah Phillips, History
Robinson Fulweiler, “The Wheels on the Bus: The Nitrogen Story,” (September 2011).
Robinson Fulweiler, “Breathless: The Nitrogen Story Continued,” (November 2011).
Robinson Fulweiler, “No Smoke Detectors in the Sea: What are the Chemical Origins of Ocean
Dead Zones,” (February 2012).
Robinson Fulweiler, “Bigfoot: The Nitrogen Problem; How You can Reduce the Size of your
Nitrogen Footprint,” (August 2012).
Steven M. Rudnick, "Remaking Boston Harbor: Cleaning Up After Ourselves," in Penna and
Wrights, eds. Remaking Boston: An Environmental History of the City and its Surroundings
(Pittsburgh, 2009), 56-74.
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Week FIVE
Monday 23 February
Spirit and Mammon, Worship and Work
Prof. Christopher Evans, School of Theology; Prof. Paul McManus, School of
Management
Howard Bryant, Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston (New York: Routledge, 2002),
13-22.
Additional reading TBA.
Week SIX
Monday 2 March
Designing With Nature in the City.
Prof. Lucy Hutyra, Earth and Environment; Prof. Beth Meyer, Landscape Architecture
and Dean, University of Virginia School of Architecture.
Pamela H. Templer, Jonathan W. Toll, Lucy Hutyra, Steve M. Raciti, “Nitrogen and Carbon
Export from Urban Areas through Removal and Export of Litterfall,” Environmental Pollution,
(2014): 1-6.
Anne Whiston Spirn, “Construction Nature: The Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted,” in William
Cronon, editor, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1995), 91-113.
Spring Recess
No Class
Monday 9 March
Week SEVEN
Monday 16 March
Boston’s Cinema and Literary Landscapes
Prof. Jonathan Foltz, English/Cinema & Media Studies; Prof. Hunt Howell, English
Film: The Departed (2006), directed by Martin Scorsese
Sigfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1960), 41-59.
Phillis Wheatley, “On Being Brought from Africa to America;” “To the Right Honourable William,
Earl of Dartmouth,” in Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
(London: Cox and Berry, 1773).
Week EIGHT
Monday 23 March
Health and the Healing Landscape
Prof. Harold D. Cox, School of Public Health; Prof. Lance D. Laird, School of Medicine
Seth Donal Hannah, “Clinical Care in Environments of Hyperdensity,” in Mary-Jo DelVecchio,
editor, Shattering Culture: American Medicine Responds to Cultural Diversity (New York:
Russell Sage Foundation, 2011),
Amy Rowe, “Honey Hadiths, and Health Day: A Spectrum of Healing in the Daily Life of Boston
Muslims,” in S. Sered, editor, Religious Healing in Boston: First Findings (Cambridge, MA:
Center for the Study of World Religions, 2001), 35-41.
Additional reading TBA.
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Week NINE
Monday 30 March
The Legal Landscape, Planning and Prosecution in the City
Prof. Madhu Dutta-Koehler, City Planning; Prof. David Rossman, Law School
Readings: “Crime in Boston;” “Police in Boston;” “Police and Race;” “Reform Efforts;” “Courts in
Boston,” Boston Globe and other sources.
Additional Reading TBA.
Week TEN
Monday 6 April
Community and Conflict in a Multi-Ethnic Metropolis.
Prof. Japonica Brown-Saracino, Sociology; Prof. Marilyn Halter, History
Marilyn Halter, "Tourists ‘R Us: Immigrants, Ethnic Tourism, and the Marketing of Metropolitan
Boston,” in Jan Rath, ed. Tourism, Ethnic Diversity and the City (Routledge 2006): 199-215).
Additional Reading TBA.
Week ELEVEN
Monday 13 April
Boston as a Site for Art
Prof.. Hugh O’Donnell, College of Fine Arts; Prof. Jonathan Ribner, History of Art and
Architecture.
Anne Higonnet, “Museum Sight,” in Andrew McClelland, editor, Art and its Publics:
Museum Studies at the Millennium (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 33-47.
Hilliard T. Goldfarb, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: A Companion Guide and
History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
Additional Reading TBA.
Weeks TWELVE Wednesday 22 April
Class Visit to Museum of Fine Arts in connection with Final Project
Jennifer L. Roberts, “Copley’s Cargo: Boy with a Squirrel and the Dilemma of Transit,” American
Art, 21 (Summer 2007), 20-41.
Week THIRTEEN Monday 27 April
Narratives of Everyday Life
Prof. Mary Beaudry, Archeology; Prof. William Moore, American and New England
Studies
Mary C. Beaudry, “Stories That Matter: Material Lives in 19th-Century Boston and Lowell,
Massachusetts, USA,” in Cities in the World 1500–2000, ed. by Adrian Green & Roger Leech,
(London: Maney Publishing, 2006), 249-268.
William D. Moore, “Masonic Lodge Rooms and their Furnishing, 1870-1930,” Heredom: The
Transactions of the Scottish Rite Research Society 2 (1993): 99-136.
William D. Moore, “Darius Wilson, Confidence Schemes, and American Fraternalism 18691926,” Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism (forthcoming).
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