The American Century, American Studies 303: 02 A Decade in American Culture Fall 2005 RAB 024

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1 The American Century, American Studies 303: 02 Ann Fabian A Decade in American Culture Fall 2005 RAB 024 M/W 5:35-6:55 afabian@rci.rutgers.edu Office hours: Thursday (and by appointment) This course is designed to give you an opportunity to work on culture in the United States between 1945 and We will explore major cultural and political developments of the period, including the dawn of the atomic age, the baby boom, the growth of suburbia, consumerism, McCarthyism and the domestic impact of the Cold War, the emerging Civil Rights Movement, the Beat Generation, teen culture, technology, television, comic books, and rock and roll. We will pay particular attention to changing ideas about family life, gender roles and sexuality, race relations and conflict between generations. We will also analyze how the preoccupations of the period were both expressed in and influenced by visual materials, popular culture and the mass media. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962) Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952) John Hersey, Hiroshima (1946) Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957) Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1990) Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV (1992) Edward Steichen, The Family of Man (1955) A collection of readings REQUIRED for this course is on electronic reserve through the library. You can access the materials through IRIS. For those of you who prefer a bound copy of the materials, one will be available for purchase from University Copy at the first two class meetings. These readings are marked with an * on the syllabus. There will be in-class assignments on this material. So please do the reading for the days assigned. I have provided the URLs for several short assignments available only on the WEB. These are marked with a ++ on the syllabus. Assignments: Three short papers, a midterm, and a one and half hour final. First Paper: A Report from the Archives. Details will be forthcoming in class, but in general, for these first papers, I will send each of you to the library to work on one issue of a popular magazine published between 1945 and Our library holdings are a little spotty, but we have good runs of Life Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and The Saturday Review of Literature. I will give each of you a specific week or month. Unfortunately, two of the most important magazines of the period Ebony and Playboy exist only on film and fiche, and since one point of this assignment is to get you to think about the material culture of magazines, we will not be able to use those. You will begin by summarizing the contents of the magazine, describing its mix of articles and advertisements and trying to imagine the audience to whom it was addressed. What seem to be the central concerns of readers? These papers are meant to be speculative and playful. (1000 words 15% of final grade) (Due September 21 st ) Second Paper: These papers are meant to be simple and serious. I will ask you to think about the way cultural historians use evidence and summarize and assess the arguments either in Lynn 1

2 Spigel, Make Room for TV or Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. (1000 words 15% of final grade) (Due October 19 th ) Third Paper: These papers are designed to give you the chance to produce your own cultural histories of the period. I imagine three options: history as LIVED (based on an oral history of the period), history as FOUND (based on a close analysis of a text, artifact, poem, or song from the period), and history as USED (based on references to events and ideas of the post-war period in popular culture and political discourse). I know this all may sound a little murky, but details will be forthcoming in class. For all options, you must use at least two secondary sources, and you must develop an argument that touches on at least one of the central themes of the course conformity and dissent, technology, family and gender relations, consumption, race relations, religion, popular culture, and history and memory. ( words 30% of final grade). (Due December 12 th ) Midterm: October 26th (15% of final grade) Final Exam: December 21 st at 12 noon. (20% of final grade) will focus on Invisible Man, Rebel without a Cause, and On the Road. Attendance and in class assignments (on Steichen and Carson) will account for 5% of final grade. Plagiarism: My policy on plagiarism is simple. Any work you submit and call your own, must be your own. If you use material from a book, an article, a friend or a website, you must acknowledge your sources. If you do not understand what it means to acknowledge sources, or if you do not know how to use or to cite web-based materials, or if an assignment is so poorly explained or so difficult that it tempts you to borrow materials and present them as your own, please come talk to me. Any plagiarized work will be reported to the Deans, and you will fail the assignment and possibly the course. I. The United States, the World and the Bomb 1. Wednesday September 7: Introduction: What s in a Decade? Screening: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, dir. William Wyler, 2hrs, 48 min) 2. Monday September 12: The American Century Read: *Henry Luce, American Century (1941) Screening: continue The Best Years of Our Lives 3. Wednesday September 14: The Atomic Century Read: Hersey, Hiroshima (Chapters 1-2) Screening: A is for Atom (14 minutes) (1953) 4. Monday September 19: Hiroshima Read: Hersey, Hiroshima (Chapters 3-5) ++Captain Richard P. Taffe, I m Not Afraid of the A-Bomb ( Screening: Duck and Cover (9 minutes) (1951) ff 5. Wednesday September 21: Coming Home *Carey McWilliams, Strange Homecoming, The Nation (30 December 1944). Screening: continue The Best Years of Our Lives Papers on magazines 2

3 6. Monday September 26: Universal Americanism American Actions: Guatemala, Iran, Korea, and Vietnam Read: Edward Steichen, The Family of Man ++ The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 1948) (In class writing assignment) II. Suburban America 7. Wednesday September 28: Building Post War America *Clifford E. Clark, Jr., Ranch-House Suburbia: Ideals and Realities from Lary May, ed., Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp Screening: Building the American Dream 8. Monday October 3: The Citizen Consumer Read: May, Coming Home (Introduction and chs. 1-4) 9. Wednesday October 5: The Postwar Vacation: the Highway, the Holiday Inn. the Hamburger, and the Cocktail Read: May, Coming Home (ch. 5-6) *John Cheever, The Sorrows of Gin (1953), from The Stories of John Cheever, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), Monday October 10: Blue Collar America Read: May, Coming Home (ch. 7-9 and comment on the new edition) Screening: The Honeymooners 11. Wednesday October 12: The Ads, the News Read: Spigel, Make Room for TV (pp. 1-10, 30-98) *George Lipsitz, The Meaning of Memory: Family, Class, and Ethnicity in Early Network Television from Lipsitz, Time Passages. Screening: Ozzie and Harriet 12. Monday October 17: And the TV Family Read Spigel, Make Room for TV (pp , ) Screening: I Love Lucy 13. Wednesday October 19: Men of the Lonely Crowd *William H. Whyte, How to Cheat on Personality Tests, from The Organization Man (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002 [1956]), pp Papers on May or Spigel 14. Monday October 24: One Nation under God *Read: Will Herberg, The Contemporary Upswing in Religion and The Religion of Americans and American Religion, from Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1955), pp Wednesday October 26: Midterm 3

4 III. Cold War Politics: Civil Wrongs/Civil Rights 16. Monday October 31: Cold War Politics Read: ++ Joseph McCarthy, Speech at Wheeling ( ++ The Final Letter from the Rosenbergs to Their Children ( Ellison, Invisible Man (Prologue and Chapters 1-3) 17. Wednesday November 2: Selling Secrets/Naming Names Read: Invisible Man (Chapters 4-7) ++ Lillian Hellman, I Cannot and Will Not Cut My Conscience to Fit This Year s Fashions ++ The World Was at Stake : Three Friendly HUAC Hollywood Witnesses Assess Pro-Soviet Wartime Films Screening: McCarthy, Death of a Witchhunter (45 min) 18. Monday November 7: Crisis of Liberalism Read: Invisible Man (Chapters 8-13) Screening: High Noon (1952, dir. Fred Zimmerman, 85 min.) 19. Wednesday November 9: Imagining African America Read: Invisible Man (Chapters 14-17) 20. Monday November 14: Changing the World Read: Invisible Man (Chapters 18-23) ++ Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ( ml) 21. Wednesday November 16: Representing and Remembering Emmett Till Read: Invisible Man (Chapters 24-Epilogue) *Ruth Feldstein, I Wanted the Whole World to See : Race, Gender, and Constructions of Motherhood in the Death of Emmett Till, from Joanne Meyerowitz, ed., Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), pp IV. Alternative Americas 22. Monday November 21: Elvis Presley Read: Kerouac, On the Road (Part One: Chapters 1-14) ++Allen Ginsberg, Howl ( 23. Wednesday classes meet on Tuesday November 22: The Sex Lives of Americans Read: On the Road (Part Two: Chapters 1-6) Screening: A Burning Desire 24. Monday November 28: Jazz (Guest Lecture: Justin Lorts, NYU) Read: On the Road (Part Two: Chapters 7-11; Parts Three and Four) 4

5 25. Wednesday November 30: Youth Gone Wild Rebel without a Cause (Screening outside class TBA or view on your own.) Read: *Wini Breines, The Other Fifties; Beats and Bad Girls, from Joanne Meyerowitz, ed., Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), pp Good Shall Triumph over Evil : The Comic Book Code of 1954 ( ++ Violent Death in Every Form Imaginable : A Senate Committee Report Assesses Crime and Horror Comic Books ( 26. Monday December 5 New York: the Capital of the Art World Read: *Harold Rosenberg, The American Action Painters in Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New (New York: Horizon Press, 1959). Read: Carson, Silent Spring (Chapters 1-9). 27. Wednesday December 7: Fall Out from the Fifties Read Silent Spring (Chapters 10-13) (In class writing assignment) 28. Monday December 12: Will we survive the American Century? George Bush, the Stepford Wives, and Imperial America Final Papers Due in Class Final Exam (December 21 st at 12 noon) on Invisible Man, On the Road, and Rebel without a Cause. 5