Introduction to American Studies

1. Introduction to American Studies TS English // Spring 2014:

2. Last Quarter… • Reading Practices! • Formalism – gives us a way of analyzing HOW TEXTS WORK. • A text’s meaning is a consequence of its use of language – comprised of many elements and strategies which work together in complex ways to give us what the text is “saying”. • Even if we incorporate an understanding of meaning as plural, then we can still see how a literary text mobilizes that meaning in complex and interesting ways, and how the form and the content work together to construct this meaning. • Ideology Critique – gives us a way of analyzing WHERE TEXTS COME FROM and WHAT THEY DO. • A text’s (and a language’s) meaning originates in the larger signifying order – the pool of shared, socially constructed meanings which we all access to make sense of our world. • In reproducing ideologies through language practices, texts participate in multiple forms of power, subjection, and protest which are also invested in the terrain of social meanings.

3. Intro to American Studies • What is “American Studies”? • An interdisciplinary conversation within the humanities/social sciences • English • Cultural Anthropology • Ethnic Studies • History • Political Science • Investigates the construction of U.S. cultural identity and community through intellectual history, culture, politics, etc

4. Legacy of American (Literature) Studies • From the English Dept Description of 250 (2008): • “Survey of the major writers, modes, and themes in American Literature from the beginnings to the present. Specific readings vary, but often included are: Taylor, Edwards, Franklin, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickenson, Twain, James, Eliot, Stevens, O’Neill, Faulkner, Hemingway, Ellison, and Bellow.” • Legacy of F. O. Matthiessen (The American Renaissance, 1941) • Period from about 1840-1865 • Sought to emphasize a small group of American Romanticists (Transcendentalists): Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville, Hawthorne

5. Legacy of American (Literary) Studies • Assess this claim. What can you say about its… • Logic? • Historical Framing? • Assumptions about writing and language? • “The writers of the American Renaissance (1840-1865) were the first to recognize the unique character of American identity and society, and were responsible for inventing the literary language that adequately reflects that unique character”

6. Legacy of American (Literature) Studies • From the English Dept Description of 250 (2008): • “Survey of the major writers, modes, and themes in American Literature from the beginnings to the present. Specific readings vary, but often included are: Taylor, Edwards, Franklin, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickenson, Twain, James, Eliot, Stevens, O’Neill, Faulkner, Hemingway, Ellison, and Bellow.” • These writers were given credit for uniquely recognizing the spirit of American identity and for developing, together, an American literary vernacular, and symbolic reference. • Many (Emerson and Hawthorne, in particular) described that American identity as descending directly from Puritan traditions and morality. • All were interested in specific questions about democracy and the experience of the individual in a democratic society.

7. Legacy of American (Literature) Studies • From the English Dept Description of 250 (2008): • “Survey of the major writers, modes, and themes in American Literature from the beginnings to the present. Specific readings vary, but often included are: Taylor, Edwards, Franklin, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickenson, Twain, James, Eliot, Stevens, O’Neill, Faulkner, Hemingway, Ellison, and Bellow.” • This account structured a particular narrative of American history and culture: • Puritan/Democratic Origins (18th C) • Transcendentalists (mid-19th C) • Realist/Modernist Descendents (late 19th-early 20th C)

8. Critical Reassessments • This centralized account has been challenged in a variety of ways over the years. • Challenge #1: This account of national identity emerges from an unrepresentative sampling of cultural production. • Puritan/Democraticwritings, Early colonial (women) writers, Sentimental Fiction, Sensational/Social Reform Novels, Slave narratives, Transcendentalism, Civil War romances, Pulp fictions, Regional fictions, Labor fictions, Feminist writing, Realism/Modernism, Urban protest novels, Social Realism, Detective fiction, [Postmodernism, Post-colonial fictions] • These exclusions beg the question, how would our account of American identity change if it were to incorporate these things? What would it mean to reincorporate marginal texts into our account of national identity?

9. Critical Reassessments • Challenge #2: These inquiries begin with the assumption that there is an “essence” or stable core of American identity and framed their inquiry around which literary works “expressed” or “reflected” that identity best. • From a Post-Saussurean Linguistics perspective, we should be suspicious of expressivist claims about “essence,” given that we understand that identity is a product of systems of difference in language. • Instead we might ask: How (with what systems of difference) has this “essence” of American identity been produced in language? Why have particular accounts of this “essence” emerged at particular moments? What sets of differences have signifying this “essence”?

10. Critical Reassessments • Challenge #3: This line of inquiry tended to define this “essence” as a-historical and universal. The question of social differences is treated as historical variances in an otherwise unbroken national consciousness. • From an Ideology Critique perspective, we need to realize that this identity was produced by a complex (and contradictory) set of discourses that come from historically situated institutions, discourses, and media forms. This identity is historically constructed from specific social contexts. • This begs the question: What institutions, historical contexts and ideologies have gone into producing this identity? What has literature’s role been in this process? How has this American identity been produced historically through conflict and how has it changed?

11. Course Questions: • This class is structured around the following questions: • What is the history of U.S. nationalism and what are the topics/issues that are crucial to that history? What are the ramifications of arguing that nationalism is historical and produced through social processes? • What role has literature and the sphere of culture played in this history? In what ways have literary texts participated in the historical production of national consciousness? Conversely, in what ways have historical forms of nationalism influenced or played a role in the production of literary texts? • On the other hand, in what ways can we understand U.S. culture as a site of struggle which challenges the exclusions produced by the construction of nationalist identities, histories, and norms? In what ways do literature and culture critique or challenge dominant constructions of national consciousness?

12. Course Structure: Texts • Turn to your Schedule • Primary Texts: “The Archive” • Rather than reading these texts as “representative of a national essence” we will ask how they have produced “the differences that matter” in the formation of national identity. • Some texts (re)produce these nationalist ideologies, others suggest critical contradictions or alternatives to these ideologies • Secondary Texts: “The Conversation” • Articles from American Studies methodology. • “Keyword” entries attempt to explain why American Studies is interested in particular terms – what “conversations” surround ideas like “the modern” and “the domestic.”

13. Course Structure: Themes • Surveying “sites” of American national identity • Domesticity and “The Home” • The Question of Racialized Slavery • Cultural/Legal Constructions of Citizenship • Conceptual Frameworks for that identity • Historiography/Memory – What historical accounts have structured claims about American identity? What historical accounts challenge that identity? How do these histories produce nationalisms? • Identity and Difference –How has the nation been imagined as an identity and a community? What ideologies or terms have gone into that imagination? What are the differences that matter? • Culture – What is the role of culture (art, publishing, popular culture, etc.) in producing or contesting that identity?

14. Course Structure: Work • GOAL: “Independent” Work • NOT “isolated” work – you will be required to work in groups • NOT “all on your own” work – you can and should seek out help or guidance from Steph, myself, and each other • Think “self-starting” or “self-motivated” • Think “ready to be a college student in every way” • Organized, Ready to Manage Schedule Independently • Is Able to Identify and Pursue Independently-Defined Scholarly Interests • Has Initiative, Driven to Maintain Consistency of Work/Improve

15. Course Structure: Work • Your work this quarter will emphasize independently conceived engagements with both our course materials and the concept of American culture more generally. They will include: • Collective On-line Journal Entries • https://catalyst.uw.edu/gopost/board/curtish/36326/ • Wednesday Student Seminar • Research Project • In addition to that there will be a midterm and a final that will cover all of our class discussions, lectures, and readings. • Homework: • Read over the syllabus/schedule and see if you have any questions • Read Anderson and Hawthorne

16. Tips for Success • Don’t fall behind in the reading! • Take better notes! • Ask questions if you don’t understand the arguments! • Find your own interests and pursue them!