1
AMS 1B Spring 2017: Course Schedule & Reading List – Profs. Guenter, Jackson, Lo
Professors reserve the right to modify this calendar, with appropriate notice to students, to accommodate
learning objectives and unexpected contingencies.
Week
Date
1
1/30
Introduction
Introductions in seminar; Go over syllabi and
assignments; Start Geography Awareness Project.
2/1
Reconstruction: The Reconstruction
Amendments
Readings: Access 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
to US Constitution (can be found at Foner A-30);
Foner, ch. 15
2/6
The Ghost Dance
Assign Cultural Identity Paper.
Readings: Norton: Zitkala Ša 639-641, from
Impressions of an Indian Childhood 641-646, “The
Soft-Hearted Sioux” 647-651; Foner ch. 16
2/8
Immigration: Chinese and Japanese
Migration during the Exclusion Era
Readings; Norton: Sui Sin Far, "Mrs. Spring
Fragrance,” 521-531; Chinese Exclusion Act, at
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/exclusion.ht
ml; Canvas: “Poems and Portraits,” Wong Kim Ark
2/13
American Imperialism: Hawai'i,
Spanish American War, and the
Philippine-American War
Readings: Canvas: Queen Liliuokalani’s
"Abdication Speech"; “Annexation Protest,” Rudy
P. Guevarra, Jr., “Skin Stories, Wars, &
Remembering The Philippine-American War.”
Foner, ch. 17,
2/15
Realism and Naturalism as
Reactions, and the Growing
Influence of Formulaic Fiction
Readings: Norton: Mark Twain 98-101, “Notorious
Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” 101-103;
Mary Wilkes Freeman 437-438, “A New England
Nun” 439-446; Realism and Naturalism 548; Jack
London “From What Life Means to Me 563-565;
Stephen Crane 581-584, “The Open Boat” 584-600;
Jack London 627-628, “To Build a Fire” 628-639
2
3
Lecture Topics
Readings and Major Assignments
2
4
5
6
2/20
Great American Debates I: The
Perspectives of Booker T.
Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois
Readings: Norton: Booker T. Washington 447-449,
from Up from Slavery 449-457; W.E.B. Du Bois
531-532, from The Souls of Black Folks 533-542
2/22
Movies and the Making of American
Identities:
Geography Awareness Project due.
Birth of a Nation (film 1915):
http://www.hulu.com/the-birth-of-a-nation
2/27
Mobile Women & Independence on
Two Wheels
Readings: Norton: Charlotte Perkins Gilman 484485, “The Yellow Wall-paper” 485-497, Foner, ch.
18
3/1
EXAM I
3/6
The Great War, Women’s Rights,
and the Rise of Modernism
Readings: Norton: American Versions of
Modernism 663-666, Modernism Abroad and on
Native Grounds 666-668; T.S. Eliot 819-822, “The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 822-825; Susan
Glaspell 742-743, Trifles 743-752, Foner. ch. 19
3/8
The Harlem Renaissance
Readings: Norton: Langston Hughes 1037-1038,
and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “Mother to
Son,” I, Too,” “Mulatto,” “Song for a Dark Girl,”
“Democracy.” “The Negro Artist and the Racial
Mountain” 806-808; Zora Neale Hurston 939-940,
“How It Feels To Be Colored Me” 940-943, “The
Gilded Six-Bits” 943-951; Claude McKay 925-926
and selected poems 926-927, Foner, ch. 20
Bring Exam Books!!!
3
7
3/13
Jazz!
Cultural Identity Paper due.
Reading: Norton: Richard Wright 1060-1061 “The
Man Who Was Almost a Man” 1061-1069; Ralph
Ellison 1209-1211, from Invisible Man 1211-1221
3/15
Consuming Race: Freedom and the
Body
Assign California Government Project.
Canvas: James Allen, ed., Without Sanctuary:
Lynching Photography in America (excerpts)
Strange Fruit (audio),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs
Susannah Walker, Style and Status: Selling Beauty
to African American Women, 1920-1975 (Ch. 1:
“The Beauty Industry is Ours”: Developing African
American Consumer Citizenship in the 1920s and
1930s)
3/20
Mexican, Filipino Immigration &
Migrant Labor
Canvas: Carlos Bulosan, "America is in the Heart"
3/22
From the First to the Second New
Deal
Government Project due.
Albert Maltz, “The Happiest Man on Earth”
(Canvas)
Foner, ch. 21
9
3/273/31
SPRING BREAK!
10
4/3
The 1940s and the Construction of
Social Identity
Gerstle, American Crucible (excerpts on canvas)
4/5
World War II: The American
Dilemma and Japanese American
Internment
Foner, ch. 22; Norton: 1550-51 Art Spiegelman,
1552-1568 “Maus”; Canvas: All I asking for is my
body, “Reading the Question of Loyalty,” FDR's
"Four Freedoms"
4/10
EXAM 2
8
11
4
12
4/12
Populuxe: The Suburban Dream
Assign 2nd Paper: Use of Propaganda and
“Alternative Facts” in the Modern World.
Norton: Jack Kerouac 1313-1314, from Big Sur
1315-1319; Allen Ginsberg 1354-56; selected
poems 1356-1365, Foner ch 23;
4/17
The Cold War Heats Up: Gender,
Sexuality, and the Cold War
Pillow Talk (Film 1959),
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1zeb70_pillow
-talk-1959-full-movie_shortfilms, Foner, ch. 24
4/19
Civil Rights & Vietnam
Canvas: Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,”
MLK, Jr. “Beyond Vietnam,” “The American
Dream,” Huey P. Newton’s Women’s/Gay
Liberation Speech, Black Panther Party’s “TenPoint Program,” Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,”
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smt
ID=3&psid=4088
Lyndon Johnson's Resignation Speech,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-FibDxpkb0
(all links on Canvas)
13
4/24
Rebel Sport
PDF: Dave Zirin (Canvas), Foner, ch. 25
4/26
Great American Debates II:
Feminism
Lorna D Cervantes bio and poem “Highway 280” at
Poets.org,
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/80 ; poem
“Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway”
http://citedatthecrossroads.net/chst404/resources/rea
dings/poems-of-lorna-dee-cervantes/
Phylis Schlafley, The Phylis Schlafly Report,
November 1981 (PDF)
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique “Chapter
One: The Problem That Has No Name” (PDF)
5
14
15
FINAL
EXAM
5/1
Parental Advisory: Censorship,
Sexuality, and Gender Performance
in the Conservative Age (From Hip
Hop to Heavy Metal)
PDF: Antonia Randolph, “Don't Hate Me Because
I'm Beautiful_Black Masculinity and Alternative
Embodiment in Rap Music,” pp. 200-217.
“Cry Tough: Glam Metal on the Sunset Strip”:
http://www.eastofborneo.org/articles/cry-toughglam-metal-on-the-sunset-strip, Foner, ch. 26
5/3
Postmodernism
Norton: Literary Developments 1075-1083,
George Saunders, “The Semplica-Girl Diaries”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/15/t
he-semplica-girl-diaries, Foner, ch. 27
5/8
Globalization, Continued Migration,
Refugees, Transnational America
Canvas: GB Tran, Selections from Vietnamerica;
Norton: Maxine Hong Kingston 1506-1507, "No
Name Woman," 1507-1520; Julia Alvarez 1569 and
“Yo!, 1570-77; Junot Diaz 1665-1666, “Drown”
1666-1673
5/10
Reality TV, the Loss of Privacy, the
Need for Empathy
2nd Paper due.
PDF Guenter, “American Reality TV: A Genre’s
Evolution from Schadenfreude to Parody”; “The
Innovation of Loneliness” on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Bkr_udado&li
st=FLSvM2Jiff7dxGOetNobIZPQ&index=23
“The Power of Empathy” on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw&
list=FLSvM2Jiff7dxGOetNobIZPQ, Foner, ch. 28
5/15
Great American Debates III: TBD
Readings: TBD
5/22
FINAL EXAM: 12:15-2:30 PM
DON’T FORGET YOUR BLUEBOOKS!