AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
20th Century

* brief version. Rev. 12/26/94. For version containing bibliography for weekly topics,

click here.

Mr. Bannister Fall 1994 

This seminar will focus on the period since the 1910s, with reference to the concepts of "modernism" and "postmodernism." Drawing on materials from the social sciences, literature, religion, and popular culture, it will attempt to provide a context for understanding developments and controversies in these fields, rather than present a complete history of each . Attention will be given to both the social context in which ideas are generated and disseminated, and the internal structure of debates. Weekly meetings will generally include the presentation of two or three papers, and discussion of the readings done in common (see "PRIM." and "SEC."). Primary readings, where possible, will include autobiographical accounts of the intellectual development of representative individuals.

 Description: Although the syllabus is organized chronologically, a number of themes recur in suggested topics. The most important of these are:
 
(1) the nature and role of the social sciences (the rise of value free "objectivism" and the cult of the expert; Margaret Mead and the "culture concept; social science "documentary" in the 1930s; sociological attacks on consumerism and mass society in the 1950s; social science and race; and the feminist critique of social science).

(2) the debate over the literary "canon" (Cowley and modernism, New Humanists and Genteel Tradition, the Southern Agrarians and the "New Criticism", Modernism: Orthodoxy or Subversive?, multiculturalism and the "canon")


(3) the political and social functions of religion (Fundamentalism in the Scopes trial; Niebuhr and "Protestant Realism"; Black Muslims and Malcolm X; the emergence of the "Christian Right" in the 1970s-80s).

(4) the relation of "high" to "middlebrow" and "popular" culture, the cultural consequences of changing media (film, radio, TV) and consumerism.

(5) "conservative," "liberal," and "radical" social theory.

WEEKLY readings are deliberately kept to a minimum in the hope that you will (a) focus on the primary texts noted; and (b) explore through Tripod, Wilson search, and our rich collection of older periodicals for additional articles, reviews etc. FOR SUGGESTED READINGS FOR WEEKLY PAPER, SEE "BIBLIOGRAPHY" for Hist 137. Since the seminar is being given for the first time, additional suggestions are welcomed
 
I-IX MODERNISM
I. Defining Modernism: The Innocent Rebellion and the Assault on the Genteel Tradition
II. Literary Cross currents in the 1920s (Mencken, Middlebrow, Modernism)
III. The American South and the Return to Tradition in the 1920s
IV. Social Science from Control to Therapy
V. Consumerism and Mass Culture 1920s-1940s
VI. Celebrating the Masses: Culture and the Left 1930s
VII. Modernism as Orthodoxy: MidCentury "Consensus" :1940s-50s
VIII. African American Thought 1920s-1960s
IX. From "Old" to "New" Left
X. -XIII POSTMODERNISM
X. Defining Postmodernism
XI. The 1960s and Its Legacy
XII. Conservative Crosscurrents in 1970s-1980s
XIII. Varieties of Postmodernism: 1980s-1990s

The following titles have been order for the bookstore and are recommended for purchase (marked * on the syllabus).

May, Henry The End of American Innocence
Pells, Richard H., Radical visions and American dreams (1973)
Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return
Degler, In Search of Human Nature
Singal, Joseph , The War Within (1982),
Maren, Symbols of Ideal Life: Social Documentary Photography in America 1890-1950 (New York, 1989)
Graebner, William, The age of doubt : American thought and culture in the 1940s


Although there is no one satisfactory textbook, Douglas Tallack, Twentieth-century America (1991) is suggestive on a number of points and is thus cited among recommended (REC) readings where appropriate [Copy on Honors shelf]

 I. Background: Background: The Innocent Rebellion and the Assault on the Genteel Tradition


PRIM: R. Bourne, "History of a Literary Radical" [photocopy Binder)

G. Santayana, The Genteel Tradtion"[photocopy Binder)
V.W. Brooks, America's Coming of Age, ch. 1 "Highbrow and Lowbrow" [photocopy Binder)

SEC. *H. May, The End of American Innocence (entire book)
Rubin, Joan Shelley, "Henry F. May's The end of American Innocence," Reviews in American History, 18 (March 1990), 142-49
Daniel Joseph Singal, The War Within (1982), preface [or for longer version see his "American Modernism," American Quarterly 39 (1987)

REC. *Pells, Richard H., Radical visions and American dreams (1973) , ch. 1


Wertheim, Arthur Frank, The New York Little Renaissance : iconoclasm, modernism, and nationalism in American culture, 1908-1917 (1976) [McCabe NX511.N4 W47] [for comparison to May]

Discussion will focus both on the methodology of May's End of American Innocence (as well as the substance of his argument); and on recent developments in the field, especially the relation of "intellectual" to "cultural" history as it has developed in the past decade. For a brief discussion of the latter see the Introduction" to The Power of culture, ed. Richard Wightman Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears. (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1993)

General Literature. As introduction to the history and methodology of American intellectual History, you may wish to look at some of the following during the term


(1) History

J. Higham, "Rise of American Intellectual History," Am. Hist. Rev. 56 (1951), 453-71
_________, "American Intellectual History," Am. Q. 13 (1961)
R. Skotheim, "The Writing of Am. Histories of Ideas," J. Hist. I.25 (1964), 257-
___________, American Intellectual History and Historians (1966)

(2) Methodology (recent discussions only)


Bouwsma, William. "Intellectual History in the 1980s," J. Interdisciplinary History 12


Harlan, David, "Intellectual History and the Return of Literature," AHR 94 (June 1989), 581-609.


Hollinger, David, "The Return of the Prodigal: The Persistence of Historical Knowing," AHR 94 (June 1989), 21 [with reply by Harlan].


Russell Jacoby, "A New Intellectual History," American Historical Review 97 (Apr. 1992): 405-24 [on European]

(3) Overview histories: 20th century Intellectual History


Bender, Thomas, New York Intellect (1987)

Brookeman, Christopher, American culture and society since the 1930s (New York : Schocken Books, 1984.) [McCabe E169.1 .B79825 1984]

Commager, H.S. The American Mind [1890-1950] (1950) [vintage "progressive" or Whig version of 20th century thought]

Cotkin, George, Reluctant Modernism...1880-1900 (1992)

Perry, Lewis, Intellectual Life in America (1984)

Tallack, Douglas., Twentieth-century America : the intellectual and cultural context (London ; New York : Longman, 1991).

II. Literary Crosscurrents in the 1920s (Mencken, Middlebrow, Modernism)

PRIM. *Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return

SEC. Hollinger, "Knower and Artificer," American Quarterly, 39 (Spr,. 1987), 37-55

Rubin, Joan S. " Between culture and consumption," The Power of culture, ed. Richard Wightman Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears. (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1993)

SUGGESTED TOPICS

The 'New Humanists': Defending the Genteel Tradition
Henry L. Mencken: Conservative as Cultural Radical?
Middlebrow/High Brow Culture
Malcolm Cowley: The Road to Modernism

III. The American South and the Return to Tradition in the 1920s

PRIM.Twelve Southerners, I'll take my stand; the South and the agrarian tradition, (Gloucester, Mass. : Peter Smith , 1976, [c1930] , Introduction, ch 1 (Ransom), 2 (Davidson )

SEC. *Daniel Joseph Singal, The War Within (1982), chs. 7, 8, 10

FILM: "Inherit the Wind"

SUGGESTED TOPICS:

The Southern Agrarians

Regionalism: Howard Odum
Fundamentalism : From Scopes to Creationism

IV. Social Science from Control to Therapy

PRIM. W.F. Ogburn, Social Change, , pt 4, ch 1"The Hypothesis of Cultural Lag" pt. 5, ch. 5 "Suggestions for Better Adjustment" .
Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa chs. 1, 10, 14

SEC. *Degler, In Search of Human Nature , chs. 3-8

Graebner, William, The engineering of consent : democracy and authority in twentieth-century America (Madison, Wis.;University of Wisconsin Press, 1987) [McCabe HM291 .G659 198
J. Burnham, "The New Psychology: from Narcissism to Social Control," in Change and Continuity, ed. J.Braeman


 


FILM: Margaret Mead [video] (rough cut).


 


SUGGESTED TOPICS:


 


The "Culture concept" and Margaret Mead


William F. Ogburn, Cultural Lag, and the Recent Social Trends project


Childrearing: From Behaviorism to Dr. Spock


 


V.Mass Culture and Consumption 1920s-1940s


 


PRIM; Advertising Photopack [from R. Machand, Advertising the American Dream] ]


Robert and Helen Lynd, Middletown


 


SEC.Susman, Warren, Culture as history (1984) chs. 7, 8,


Tallack, Twentieth-century America ch. 1 "Cinema"


Lears and Fox ed. The Culture of consumption : critical essays in American history,1880-1980 ( New York : Pantheon Books, c1983) , essays by Lears, :From Salvation to Self-Realization," and Fox, "Epitaph for Middletown" \


 


SUGGESTED TOPICS


 


Advertising


The Movies


An American Community at the Dawn of the Consumer Age: Middletown


 


VI. Celebrating the Masses: Culture and the Left 1930s


 


PRIM. James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men [Walker Evans picturesand enough of text to get a flavor of the work]]


Mike Gold, "Why I am a Communist," "The Second American Renaissance," "John Reed" [binder]


 


SEC. *Richard Pells, Radical Visions, Radical Dreams cs. 2-8


Strange, *Maren, Symbols of Ideal Life: Social Documentary Photography in America 1890-1950 (New York, 1989)


Susman, Culture as History, pp. 150-83.


 


SUGGESTED TOPICS:


 


Proletarian Realism: (focus on Mike Gold and/or Joseph Freeman)


"Documentary" Photography: Margaret Bourke White


Social Science as "Documentary"


Hollywood and the Left


 


VII. Modernism as Orthodoxy: The 1950s "Consensus"


 


Prim: Trilling, "On the Teaching of Modern Literature,"from Beyond Culture (1961)


 


SEC.*Graebner, William, The age of doubt : American thought and culture in the 1940s (Boston : Twayne, 1990, c1991)[McCabe E169.1 .G698 ]


M. Dickstein, The Gates of Eden, ch. 2


Hodgson, Godfrey, America in our time (Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1976), ch. 4 "The Ideology of the Liberal Consensus"


 


SUGGESTED TOPICS:


 


Pop Sociology (Riesman, Whyte, Packard)


The "New Conservatives"


Reinhold Niebuhr and the "New Liberalism"


The Politics of Modernism: Defining the Canon


(a) Matthiessen :The Socialist as Modernist


(b) Trilling:Moralism and Modernism


 


VIII. Black and White : African Americans in and on American Culture 1920s-1950s (rev. 11/1/94)


 


PRIM. Frazier, E.F., " La bourgeoisie noire," in Bracey, John H., comp.The Black sociologists: the first half century.,]


Myrdal, American Dilemma, ch. 1


Ellison, Ralph [review of Am. Dilemma," from Shadow and Act ]


Martin Luther King, "Letter from Birmingham Jail" [primary binder]


 


SEC. Fullinwider, S. P.The mind and mood of black America; 20th century thought [by]( 1969.) [McCabe E185.82 .F8 , chs. 5-8


Dickstein, Gates of Eden,. ch. 6


 


SUGGESTED TOPICS


Social Science and African Americans: E.Franklin Frazier to Gunnar Myrdal


Mass Media and African Americans


(1) Film


(2) Radio


African -Americans and "Modernism"


(1) Ralph Ellison


(2) Martin Luther King: from Crozier to Birmingham


 


IX. From "Old Left" to the New


 


PRIM. Daniel Bell, "The Mood of Three Generations," The End of Ideology


 


SEC. Dickstein, Gates of Eden, ch. 3


 


SUGGESTED TOPICS:


 


The Old Left": the New York Intellectuals


Daniel Bell and The End of Ideology


"New Left"


(1) C.W. Mills the Texas Trotsky


(2) Marcuse and the Freudian Left


 


X. Defining Postmodernism


 


Readings: Berman, Marshall, All that is solid melts into air : the experience of modernity (New York : Simon and Schuster, c1982) [McCabe CB425 .B458 ] pp. 15-35, 291-347


 


Gergen, Kenneth, The Saturated Self (1991) , ch. 5


 


Harvey, David, The condition of postmodernity : an enquiry into the origins of cultural change ( Blackwell, 1989) [McCabe Honors Arth 164: Modern Art], pts 1, 4 = pp. 1-65, 327-59


 


Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism " ch. 1.


 


Jencks, Charles ed"in The Post-Modern reader / edited (New York : St. Martin's Press, 1992) [Canaday B831.2 .P67 1992] especially . Jencks, "Post Modernism--the Third Force," Rose , Margaret " Defining Postmodernism,"


 


Tallack, Twentieth-century America , "Conclusion"


 


Suggested Topic:


 


Using as many of the above readings as possible, each member of the seminar is asked to write a brief (3pp) paper in which all or some of the following are considered:


 


1. Defining "postmodernism". Agreements, disagreements, difficulties?


 


2. Relation of "postmodernism" to "modernism," including different definitions of the latter in discussions of "postmodernism . "


 


3. Intellectual, social, economic/technological roots of "postmodernism." Meaning of "cultural logic of late capitalism" (Jameson).


 


4. Examples of "postmodernism" in different fields: literature and literary criticism, film, arts and architecture, social/political theory, feminism (note especially how the Jencks reader is structured).


 


5. Relation of "postmodernism" to debates over "multiculturalism, "P.C. etc.


 


XI. The 1960s and Its Legacy


 


PRIM. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, chs. 1,


Leslie Fiedler, "The New Mutants, " Partisan Review , 1965


Susan Sontag, "Against Intrpretation," "Camp"


 


SEC. Dickstein, Gates of Eden, chs. 7, 9


Huyssens, "Mapping the Postmodern."in Jencks, Charles, Post-Modern Reader


 


SUGGESTED TOPICS:


 


Paul Goodman and the Origins of the Counterculture


Roots of Post Modernist Literary Criticism:


 


(1) Susan Sontag


(2) Leslie Fielder.


Cultural Consequenes of TV: Marshall McLuhan to MTV


 


XII.Conservative Crosscurrents in 1970s-1980s


 


PRIM. Barzun, "Three Enemies of Intellect," House of Intellect, ch. 1


Bloom, Closing of the American Mind , Introd. "Our Virtue"


E.O. Wilson, "Altruism"


 


SEC. Bell, "The Culture Wars "1965-92, Wilson Quarterly (summer, 1992)


*Degler, In Search of Human nature, chs. 9-Epilogue


 


The "Religious Right"


Sociobiology: Radical, Liberal or the Same old "Social Darwinism


Cultural Conservatism from Barzun to Bloom


 


XIII. Postmodernism and the Multicultural Debate


 


Read: Hayden White, "The Politics of Historical Interpretation," Critical Inquiry 9 (Sept 1982), 113-31


Barth, "The literature of replenishment in Jencks, Postmodern Reader


Arac, Jonathan, "Postmodernism, Politics and the Impasse of the New York Intellctuals," in Critical Genealologies (1987) "


 SUGGESTED TOPICS:

History and Postmodernism


Postmodernism and Literature


Postmodern Social Science /SocialTheory