america adrift » American Studies

Teaching

Stuart Noble — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:31:14 +0000

Next semester I will be teaching my two obligatory seminars as required under my Ph.D. employment contract. I wanted to get these courses “out of the way” early on so that I won’t have work obligations hanging over me during my last year when I should be concentrating on my dissertation. Furthermore, it was recommended that I teach both courses during the same semester as teaching, I’m told, takes up so very much time. So here I go, two courses (BA and MA level) during semester two. I get a total of six to complete all my work obligations, take courses, do field work, publish something somewhere, and hand in a final dissertation. No sweat right? Bellow are the two course descriptions, starting with the MA, which are now published in the course catalog. I’m still working out syllabi, core texts, readings etc. so these descriptions are very much open texts. And just getting these down on paper, conceptualizing the courses and thinking through how they work within my own research agendas and how to translate that to provide meaning (and utility) for my students was hard work. And I’ve just scratched the surface. I’m sure I’ve made the right decision, for myself at least, to tackle my teaching early on and am excited about next semester and looking forward to the challenges. Your ideas and/or comments are always welcome.

“Picturing Obama: Visual Politics and Patriotic Culture in Contemporary US Society” (KA E10)

Photo-illustration by James Porto, New York Magazine

Starting from the question, “is Barack Obama the most visible president in history?” this course explores the role of visuality in U.S. patriotic culture, paying special attention to the ways that images function persuasively as political communication and how those images reflect ongoing contestations over participation and representation in American democracy. Through a “visual culture” approach the course provides an overview of the forms of media, cross-mediation and inter-textuality that constitute contemporary US visual culture. Working within a broad interdisciplinary framework from multi-methodological perspectives students will acquire skills for conducting interdisciplinary visual research in practice. Readings will include seminal works in American studies, semiotics and discourse analysis, rhetoric, political communication, cultural theory, geography of media, and contemporary theories in the visual arts.

With a focus on shifting understandings of nationhood, transnationalism, citizenship, democracy, identity, and representations of “American patriotism,” students will learn to critically analyze political images and connect them to broader socio-political and cultural debates. Who are the image makers and what are their agendas? How do various social actors interpret, appropriate and enlist these images? How do images interact in relation to other types of texts, memories and places? What constitutes the space of democratic deliberation and how do questions of access, power, race and identity shape the public sphere and inform American patriotic culture? How are images used for remembering and memorializing; confronting and resisting; consuming and commodifying; governing and authorizing; informing and imagining? The course will be divided between theoretical readings and in-class analyses of images contextualized around key themes in American patriotic culture.

Lady Liberty Calavera by Jose Pulido

“Border Crossings: Mexican-Americans in Contemporary US Popular Culture” (BA E10)

The main goal of this course is to offer a broad and comprehensive understanding of the Mexican-American experience as mediated in and through popular culture in the United States. The study of popular culture focuses on uncovering meaning from the wide range of cultural production, from highly produced entertainment (television, radio, film, magazines, etc.) to everyday life scenarios (family custom and ritual, language, identity, etc.). Today Hispanics constitute the largest ethnic minority in the United States with 1 in every 7 Americans claiming Hispanic or Latina/o origin. People of Mexican descent are by far the largest Hispanic group, roughly 65% of all Latinos, over 30 million people representing the fastest growing population in the US. Understandably, Mexican-American culture(s) claims an increasingly important position within popular US national (and global) culture represented by a diverse range of social actors from transnational media corporations to community artists and Chicano activists.

The course places the Mexican-American experiences in a comparative perspective whereby we will survey some of the general themes in US popular culture studies through the excavation of a variety of texts ranging from Hollywood films, TV sitcoms and various news media to literary texts, music, urban graffiti, muralist artwork and online social media. We will examine the influence popular culture has on forming identity, shaping culture and as a mode of revealing, producing and reproducing ideology and political struggle. It is intended that students will develop valid concepts and generalizations regarding the contemporary Mexican-American experience, an appreciation of Chicano media and artistic practices and an understanding of the tensions between dominant cultural producers and Chicano modes of self-representation.

Midweek Diary Rescue: Literary Edition

Daniel Logan — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:50:05 +0000

This week, due to time constraints and other nuisances, I have chosen to highlight Bent Sørensen’s excellent three part series on the Beat Generation, specifically, Beat ‘Others.’ It’s an interesting angle on an interesting movement; the role of women and colored people. In the course we had at U. of Copenhagen on American Literature and Culture in the 1950’s, in which we read On the Road and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and other unavoidable literature of that period, there was virtually no time spent on that subject: women and coloreds. The focal point of the course seemed to be the male non-conformist and his rebellion in different forms. Which is all good and well, and something that can be reasonably covered in a one-semester course, but there was always more ways of looking at this period, and the Beats in particular, which Bent does a good job of showing:

“Minor Characters”? Beat ‘Others’ 1

Beat ‘Others’, 2 – Racial Othering

In additional readings, I would like to highlight The Elegant Variation’s recommended list, found in the right side of their front page. I’ve found The Elegant Variation to be one of the most accessible and informative online resources for the avid reader. They carry some really interesting interviews and reviews, but also some different off topic elements from time to time. So definitely worth a look every now and then. Joseph O’Neill and his Netherland features prominently on their list; this novel keeps popping up on every fiction-related place I visit. Maybe that’s a sign. A friend of mine, who is not big on American literature, has been raving to me all the way from Glasgow for over 6 months that I need to read this one.

Thoreau at Walden at Containing Multitudes

Stuart Noble — Wed, 07 May 2008 08:22:00 +0000

The American Studies East Anglia blog has recently undergone a few minor changes, including a very cool banner and new blog title, Containing Multitudes.

A few days ago Graphic Adaptations of American Classics was posted, highlighting some very interesting new comic art, all of which are now cued on my Amazon wish list. But the most interesting for me was John Porcellino’s adaptation of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, which I’ve ordered for myself now and to share later with my son.

Containing Multitudes has an “exclusive account of the genesis of Thoreau at Walden by the book’s creator, John Porcellino” here.

Walden is such a dense, beautiful text, that almost every line in it could be fodder for pages of exploration. I tried to keep to the essence, and obviously there’s a lot that that couldn’t be included.

Both posts contain a wealth of links for further investigation. Perusing the Center for Cartoon Studies website I found another intriguing work they released, Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow. This too is on my short list.

Oh yeah, CM has also established a Facebook presence which you can find here.