History 47 Spring 1998
American Culture since 1880

Professor Robert Bannister

This course examines American intellectual and cultural history in its institutional and social setting from the 1880s to the present. Roughly equal attention will be given to the periods of Realism (1880s-1910s), Modernism (1920s-1950s), and Postmodernism (1960s-present), with examples from political and social theory, religion, literature and the arts.

The following books should be purchased by all members of the class:

Hollinger and Capper, The American Intellectual Tradition Vol. II.(third edition)
Shi, David E, Facing facts : realism in American thought and culture, 1850-1920 (1995).
Cooney, Terry A., Balancing acts : American thought and culture in the 1930s (1995)
Degler, Carl In Search of Human Nature (1991)
London, Jack, Martin Eden

Required readings should be read before the class meeting dealing with the topic. Required readings in addition to the above (as indicated on the syllabus) are available in binders on General Reserve under History 47, arranged alphabetically author. In addition to the required reading, you are expected to read at least one of the supplementary titles), book or article for your class presentation. Copies of most of the supplementary articles and book chapters are available in the Black file cabinet next to the photocopy machine on Level II of McCabe. Please return after use since they will not be replaced during the term. Some supplementary books are on reserve, although many have been left in the stacks for easier access. You should check Tripod since some are on Honors and some on General Reserve. During the term, you are also required to view three movies (videos) outside of class, as follows: "Margaret Mead: Observer Observed," "Rebel without a Cause"; "Interview with Malcolm X," also on Reserve at the Main Desk. These may be watched individually or at group screenings to be arranged. Although there is no single textbook, the titles by Shi, Cooney, and Steigerwald (chapter) provide general background. Douglas Tallack, Twentieth-Century America: The Intellectual and Cultural Context (1991) (Gen. Res) also provides a provocative survey of many of the major figures and movements to be considered in the course.

The formal work of the course consists of

* two written reports (6-8 double spaced pages) based at least in part on primary readings, one for the period before 1940, and one since 1940. The first of these papers is due by Friday, March 7; the second by Friday April 24, at the latest. Either may be expanded, or the two combined, for your term paper.
* an in-class oral report on one of the supplementary works, book or article to be presented at the relevant class.
* a term paper (12-15 pages) tracing a theme or themes in the work of two or more individuals or movements from different periods due by the date of the final examination
* a final exam

Grading in the course will be weighted as follows: two short reports and oral report together, 30%; term paper and final exam, 30% each; class attendance and participation, 10% . The overall grade will be lowered for more than three unexcused absences during the term.

WEEKS 1-4. FROM GENTILITY TO REALITY

Week 1. The Victorian Synthesis and the "Genteel Tradition" (January 20, 22)

Introduction: Intellectual History and "Cultural Studies"
The Genteel Tradition, the Columbian Exposition, and the "Incorporation of America"

REQ. Trachtenberg, Alan The Incorporation of America, ch. 7 [H47 Binder]
George Santayana, "The Genteel Tradition" H&C, 94-106
Shi, David E, Facing facts, ch. 1-2

SUPP. Burton Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism
Lears,T. Jackson, No Place of Grace, ch 1
Douglas Tallack, Twentieth-Century America , "Introduction"
Web Site: Columbian Exposition at: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/WCE/title.html
.

Week 2. Realism, Darwinism and the Challenge to Victorianism (January 27, 29)

Literature, Photography, and Architecture (Howells, Riis, Sullivan)
The Darwinian Revolution (and 'social Darwinism')

REQ. Shi, David E, Facing facts , chs. 2-3, 5-9
Degler, Carl In Search of Human Nature, chs.1-2
Hodge,"Systematic Theology," H&C, 5-12; Howells, "Pernicious Fiction," H&C, 25-28; Sumner, "Sociology, 29-38;
Alland, Jacob Riis [pictures only: Gen. Reserve]. See also Fileserver: H47 Photos

SUPP. Robert Bannister, Social Darwinism: Science and Myth , esp. Introd to paper edn. (1988)
Hawkins, Mike, Social Darwinism in European and American thought, 1860-1945 : nature as model and nature as threat. (Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Kaplan, Amy, The Social Construction of American Realism (1988)
Trilling, Lionel "Reality in America," Liberal Imagination
Trachtenberg, Alan The Incorporation of America, chs.4, 6

Week 3. A Scientific Culture: Antiformalism and the Origins of Social Science (February 3, 5)

Antiformalism: Philosophy and Law (Peirce, James, Holmes)
Sociology and The Socialization of Authority: Ward, Ross, Cooley

REQ. Shi, David E, Facing facts , ch. 4
H&C, Am. Intell. Trad. Peirce, "The Fixation of Belief," 14-24; James, "The Will to Believe, " "What Pragmatism Means," 74-87, 112-22; Holmes, "Natural Law," 123-26; Ward, "Mind as a Social Factor," 39-47

SUPP.
Hollinger, David "The Problem of Pragmatism," Journal of American History 67 (1980), 88-107
Douglas Tallack, Twentieth-Century America , pp. 147-52
Cornell West, The American Evasion of Philosophy (1989)
Diggins, John P. "The Socialization of Authority," Social Research 46 (1979), 454-86.
Graebner, William, The engineering of consent : democracy and authority in twentieth-century America (Madison, Wis.;University of Wisconsin Press, 1987) [McCabe HM291 .G659 1987

Week 4. Outsiders:Dissident Uses of Social Science (February 10,12)

Jane Addams and Charlotte P. Gilman
African American Thought: W.E.B. Dubois

REQ. Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism, ch. 4 [Gen. Reserve]
H&C, Am. Intell. Trad.: Addams, "The Subjective Necessity," 155-60; Dubois, "Of the Sons," 142-54; Gilman, Selection from Women and Economics, 54-60.

SUPP. Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres (1982)
Bulmer, M. "W.E.B. Dubois as a Social Investigator," in Bulmer, Martin and Sklar, Kathryn, eds. The Social survey in historical perspective, 1880-1940 ( Cambridge University Press, 1991)[ HN29 .S645 1991]
Fullinwider, S.P. Mind and Mood of Black America, ch. 3 (on Dubois)

Week 5. Consumerism, Naturalism, and Mass Culture (February 17, 19)

Dreiser and Veblen
London, Martin Eden

REQ Shi, David E, Facing facts , chs. 10-12
Veblen, T. Selection from Leisure Class, H&C, 127-41
Dreiser, Sister Carrie, ch. 1 [H47 Binder]
Jack London, Martin Eden

SUPP.Rachel Bowlby, Just Looking chs. 1-2, 4
John P. Diggins, The Bard of Savagery
Harris, Neil "The Drama of Consumer Desire," in Cultural excursions : marketing appetites and cultural tastes in modern America (Chicago, 1990) [ S McCabe NX180.S6 H325 1990]
Wilson, Christopher, Labor of Words, Introd., ch. 4.

WEEKS 6-10 MODERNISM, SCIENTISM, AND THE SEARCH FOR AUTHORITY 1910-1950S

Week 6. The Innocent Rebellion, Cosmopolitanism and the Origins of American Modernism (February 24, 26)

Henry Adams: The First Modern
Bourne, Brooks and Cowley: Redefining the Canon

REQ. Shi, David E, Facing facts , chs. 13, Epilogue
Daniel Singal, "American Modernism," American Quarterly 39 (1987)[H47.binder]
D.A. Hollinger, "Ethnic Diversity, Cosmopolitanism, and the Emergence of the American Liberal Intelligentsia," American Quarterly (1975) [H47 Binder]
Bourne, "Transnational America," "Twilight of Idols," H&C, 170-88.
Adams, "Dynamo and the Virgin, "H&C, 88-92

SUPP. Casey Blake, Beloved Community
Malcolm Cowley Exile's Return, esp. chs. 1-5, 8, Epilogue
Heller, Adele and Rudnick, ed. 1915: The Cultural Moment (1991)
R. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace, ch. 7
Douglas Tallack, Twentieth-Century America , pp. 152-65

*for a semi-autobiographical account of Bourne's intellectual development see his "History of a Literary Radical" (1919)

**for a very useful chronology , see Modernism Timeline (University of Washington)

Week 7. Scientism, Experts, and the Rise of Advertising. (March 3, 5)

Behaviorism, Scientism, and the Rise of the "Expert"
Advertising

REQ. Ogburn, "The Folkways of a Scientific Sociology" [H47 binder]
Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World, chs. 1-2 [H47 Binder]
Advertisments [xerox pack and Fileserver: H47 Photos]

SUPP. R. Bannister, Sociology and Scientism (1987), Preface, chs. 8-11 Epilogue.
J. Burnham, "The New Psychology: from Narcissism to Social Control," in Change and Continuity, ed. J.Braeman
Barbara Ehrenreich and Diedre English, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of Advice to Women
Marchand, Roland, Advertising the American dream : making way for modernity, 1920 -1940 (1985). HF5813.U6 M26 1985.

SPRING BREAK (March 10, 12)

Week 8. Literary Crosscurrents in the 1920s (March 17, 19)

Mongrel Manhattan: Multicultural Modernism (including Harlem Renaissance)
Primitivism and Relativism: Margaret Mead and the Triumph of "Culture"

REQ. Douglas, Ann, Terrible Honesty (1994), chs 1-2, ch 8 and Epilogue.
Degler, In Search of Human Nature, chs. 3-8
H&C Margaret Mead, Selection from Coming of Age in Samoa , 197-204.

FILM: "Margaret Mead:Observer Observed" [video]

SUPP. Douglas, Ann, Terrible Honesty (1994)
Huggins, Nathan The Harlem Renaissance
Baker, Houston A., Modernism and the Harlem renaissance ( 1987)
De Jongh, James, Vicious modernism : Black Harlem and the literary imagination (Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 1990) [ McCabe PS153.N5 D4 1990]
Tallack, Douglas Twentieth-Century America , pp. 165-76

Week 9. Documentary and the Revival of the American Left (March 24, 26)

Documentary Expression
From the "Old Left" to the New Left" (including the End of Ideology (Daniel Bell)

REQ. Cooney, Terry A., Balancing acts : American thought and culture in the 1930s (1995).
H&C, Am. Intell. Trad. Meridel Le Sueur, "I Was Marching,' pp. 224-30; Daniel Bell, "The End of Ideology," 293-99; Chambers, from Witness, 270-83; Mills, selection from The Sociological Imagination, 300-07.
James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men [Walker Evans pictures only]; and Margaret Bourke-White, You Have Seen Their Faces [pictures only] [Both General Reserve]

SUPP. Daniel Bell, "The Mood of Three Generations," The End of Ideology
Richard Pells, Radical Visions, Radical Dreams
Curtis, James , Mind's Eye, Mind's Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered (1989)
Stange, Maren, Symbols of Ideal Life: Social Documentary Photography in America 1890-1950 (New York, 1989)
Stott, William, Documentary Expression
Douglas Tallack, Twentieth-Century America , pp. 176-82

Week 10. Modernism as Orthodoxy: Anxiety and Consensus" in the Forties and Fifties (March 31, April 2)

"New (Deal) Liberalism", Modernism and the Critique of "Mass Culture"
Modernism and the Movies (inc. history of Movies 1900-1970s )

REQ.
H&C, Am. Intell. Trad.Tugwell, from Battle for Democracy, 218-23; R. Niebuhr, selection from Children of Light, 255-262; Greenberg," Avant Garde and Kitsch," 245-54

FILM "Rebel without a Cause"
"Inherit the Wind" [recommended. Also week 13]

SUPP. (a) On social/political thought
Gorman, Paul R., Left intellectuals & popular culture in twentieth-century America (1996).
Graebner, William, The age of doubt : American thought and culture in the 1940s (1991)
Pells, Richard The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age (1985)
Tallack, Douglas Twentieth-Century America , ch. 6
Whitfield, Stephen J. , The Culture of the Cold War (1991)

(b) on movies
May, Lary, Screening out the Past
Sklar, Robert. Movie-Made America (New York, 1975), chs. 1-4.
Douglas Tallack, Twentieth-Century America , ch. 1

WEEKS 11-14. POSTMODERN AMERICA

Week 11. The Sixties Roots of Postmodernism (April 7, 9)

Defining "Postmodernism"
The 1960s and the Roots of Postmodernism: The Counterculture (Goodman)

REQ Steigerwald, The Sixties, ch. 6 [Gen Res.]
A. Huyssens, "Mapping the Postmodern" [H47 Binder]
Lionel Trilling, "On the Teaching of Modern Literature,"H&C, 316-30; Sontag, "Against Interpretation," H&C, 360-67.

SUPP.

(a) Postmodernism

Douglas Tallack, Twentieth-Century America , ch. 8, Conclusion
Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air (1982)
Gergen, Kenneth, Saturated Self
Jencks, Charles, What is Postmodernism?
Kaplan, E. Ann., Rocking around the clock : music television, postmodernism, and consumer culture (New York : Methuen, 1987) [McCabe PN1992.8.M87 K36 1987

(b) Counterculture

T. Roszak, The Making of A Counterculture
Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe
R. King, The Party of Eros
Douglas Tallack, Twentieth-Century America , ch. 5
*for an interesting Web site see "The Sixties Project" (Jefferson Village), especially the collection of syllabi . See also a detailed chronology of the 1960s.

Week 12. Protest in the 1960s (April 14, 16)

Martin and Malcolm: Black Protest in the 1950s-1960s
The Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism

REQ.
H&C, Am. Intell. Trad.Myrdal, from American Dilemma," 235-43; Smith, from Killers of the Dream, 263-69; Malcolm X, from "The Bullet or the Ballot?", 368-75; Martin Luther King, "Letter from Birmingham Jail," 331-39; Thomas Kuhn, Selection from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 351-59.; B. Friedan, selection from The Feminine Mystique , 340-46; E. Fox Keller, "Gender and Science:1990,"401-17; Butler, from Gender Trouble, 418-24

FILM: "Malcolm X Interview", October 1963
Also recommended: Malcolm X, "Make It Plain" [ S McCabe Video BP223.Z8 L577623]

SUPP.

(1) on African American Thought

Dickstein, Gates of Eden, chs. 4, 6
Franklin, Robert Michael, Liberating visions : human fulfillment and social justice in African-American thought ( Minneapolis, MN : Fortress Press, c1990) S McCabe E185 .F8265 1990)
S.P. Fullinwider, The Mind and mood of Black America
Douglas Tallack, Twentieth-Century America , ch. 7

(2) on Feminism

Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, chs. 1-3.
Whelehan, Imelda, Modern feminist thought : from the second wave to "post-feminism" (New York : New York University Press, 1995) [HQ1190 .W47 1995]
Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Thought (1989)


Week 13. Conservative Cross Currents 1920s-1980s (April 21,23)

The Search for Roots: Fundamentalism, New Humanism, Agrarians
Conservative Backlash: 1970s-1980s (inc. Sociobiology )

READ: Degler, In Search of Human Nature, chs. 9-13, Epilogue;
H&C, Am. Intell. Trad.Henry Louis Mencken, "The National Letters,"189-96; John Crowe Ransom, "Reconstructed but unregenerate," 205-17; B.F. Skinner, selection from Beyond Freedom and Dignity, 284-92
Bloom, Closing of the American Mind , Introd. "Our Virtue" [H47 Binder]

SUPP. Ron Lora, Conservative Minds in America [Gen. Reserve]
George Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement in the U.S since 1945 (1976)
Howard L. Kaye, The Social Meaning of Modern Biology (1986)

Week 14. Multiculturalism and Postmodernism in the 90s (April 28, 30)

After Multiculturalism (discussion of Hollinger, Post Ethnic America)
The Postmodern Condition (discussion of Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity)

REQ. Appiah, from In My Father's House, H&C, 425-36; Walzer, "What Does it Mean to Be American," H&C, 437-49
Hollinger, David "Post Ethnic America" [H47: Binder]

SUPP. Bell, "The Culture Wars "1965-92, Wilson Quarterly (summer, 1992)
Hollinger, David A., Postethnic America : beyond multiculturalism (New York : Basic Books, c1995 [Gen. Res]
Harvey, David, The condition of postmodernity : an enquiry into the origins of cultural change (Blackwell, 1989) [McCabe Honors Arth 164: Modern Art
James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America ( 1991).
Who Won the Culture Wars? See Chronicle of Higher Education symposium, 1998
General Studies. The following may be useful for general intellectual background for the period 1880-present. All are on the American Intellectual History Honors shelf.

Crunden, Robert, From Self to Society
Hoffman, Frederick , The Twenties
H. M. Jones, The Age of Energy
May, Henry, The End of American Innocence
Oleson, J. and Voss, eds. The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America 1860-1920 (1979)
Perry, Lewis Intellectual Life in America,
Susman, Warren I. Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the 20th Century (New York, 1984)


FILESERVER AND WWW. Materials for the course are contained in the folder Hist47 on ServersEN>Data and Software>Classes>SocialScience>History>Bannister. Go in as "Guest." A copy the syllabus with links to some related materials is at URL http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/H47.html. See also History Department Home page at: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/