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AMER 481

Theories of American Culture: An Ethnographic Approach

AMER 481 treats "American culture" not as a fixed thing to define but as something produced unevenly by forces like racial violence, militarism, neoliberal labor, and empire, and asks what different Americas those forces actually make. You'll read anthropology and ethnography alongside films, photography, music, and literary essays — from Nanook of the North through Baldwin and Woody Guthrie — and work through them in class discussion, a short essay, and midterm and final essays. It builds on the close-reading habits from earlier AMER courses but pushes you toward thinking like an ethnographer of everyday life, which is the lens most upper-level AMER electives and any serious thesis work will assume you have.

Credit3ECTS5FacultyFaculty of Humanities and LettersBölümAmerican Culture and Literature

Değerlendirme 100% — 4 adım

25%
40%
20%
15%
Midterm:Essay/written Midterm Quiz 25%
Final:Essay/written Final Essay (Proposal 10% + Final Paper 30%) 40%
Short essay In-class writing 20%
In-class participation Participation 15%

Haftalık müfredat 14 hafta

Hafta 1
Introduction: Screening: Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922, Revillon Frères)
Hafta 2
Studying Culture: Gupta, Akhil & James Ferguson (1997). “After Peoples and Cultures” in Eds. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology pp. 1-30. London: Duke University Press.
Hafta 3
Clock for Religion: Smith, Mark M (1997). “Time in African American Work and Culture” in Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery and Freedom in the American South, pp. 129-152. Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press. White, John (1983). “Veiled Testimony: Negro Spirituals and the Slave Experience”, Journal of American Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2: pp. 251-263.
Hafta 4
“Hard Times, Modern Times”: Barnard, Rita (1995). “Part I: Context” in The Great Depression and the Culture of Abundance: Kenneth Fearing Nathanael West and Mass Culture in the 1930s, pp.3-40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hafta 5
Framing America: Levine, Lawrence W. (1993). “The Historian and Icon: Photography and the History of the American People in the 1930s and 1940s”, in The Unpredictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History, pp. 256-290. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hafta 6
Broadcasting Nation: Hilmes, Michele (1997). “Radiating Culture”, in Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952, pp. 1-33. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Berg, Gertrude & Robert Harris (1954). “A Sad Day”, The Goldbergs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgiYXIUG5eg
Hafta 7
Class Revised: Jackson, Mark Allan (2008). “Busted, Disgusted, Down and Out: Documenting the Stories of America’s Agricultural Workers”, in Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie, pp. 48-92. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. Guthrie, Woody (1997). “This Land is Your Land”, This Land is Your Land: The Asch Recordings Vol 1. https://open.spotify.com/track/3ZjrfGcb3A2PMGA1vRNgSk?si=fa3098b6351641bb
Hafta 8
Screening: To be announced
Hafta 9
Radical Documentary: Scott, MacDonald (2013). “Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Sensory Ethnography” in American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary, pp. 634-679. London: University of California Press.
Hafta 10
An American Dream: Baldwin, James (2011). “Chapter One: Congo Square” in The Devil Finds Work: An Essay, pp. 12-74. New York: Vintage International.
Hafta 11
Cold War and Modern Art: Genter, Robert (2011). “Masculinity, Spontaneity, and the Act: The Bodily Ego of Jasper Johns” in Late Modernism: Art, Culture, and Politics in Cold War America, pp. 197-235. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hafta 12
Repositioning Identity: Diaz, Junot (1997). “Drown” in Drown, pp. 91-107. NYC: Riverhead Books. Caminero-Santangelo, Marta (2016). “The Caribbean Difference: Imagining Trans-Status Communities” in Documenting the Undocumented: Latino/a Narratives and Social Justice in the Era of Operation Gatekeeper, pp. 107-148.
Hafta 13
Queer Activism: Diedrich, Lisa (2016). “Doing Queer Love” in Indirect Action: Schizophrenia, Epilepsy, AIDS, and the Course of Health Activism pp. 17-44. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Berlant, Lauraen and Michael Warner, (1998). “Sex in Public”, Critical Inquiry 24: 547-566.
Hafta 14
Film Round Table Screening: To be announced

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