(1865 - Present)
Part IV - America in the World Part V - Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n Roll, and Postmodernism
Papers and Basis for Grades Directions to "I" Drive
Dr. John Craig, History Department
SWC 212 J, Ext x2406, W 2:30-3:30, T/Th 12:30 - 2:30Dr. Richard Martin, Government
SWC 209 A, Ext. x2434, MW 11:00-12:00, T/Th 1:00 -2:30Dr. William Oman, Philosophy Department
SWC 003 C, Ext.x2380, MWF 11:30-12:30; W 1:30-2:30, Th 5:30-6:30Dr. Rachela Permenter, English Department
SWC 312 C, Ext x2358, W 9:00-12:00 T/Th 1:30 - 2:30Texts:
Cather, Willa. A Lost Lady.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening.
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward.
Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato.
Other reading materials will be provided in class, on the I-drive of the campus
network, and on this Web Page.
Links within this syllabus provide recommended sites for your perusal
unless specified as required.
Class Powerpoint presentations are available on the "I" drive if you
wish to review them:
Directions to "I" drive materials:
Oman: <My Computer> <Classwork on "I"> <Departments>
<philosophy> <Oman> <American Experience II>
Craig: <My Computer> <Classwork on "I">
<Departments> <history> <craig>
Permenter: <My Computer> <Classwork on "I">
<Departments> <english> <permenter> <Challenges 384>
Course Objectives:
This is an interdisciplinary course including American literature, history, philosophy, and politics, examining the roots of American institutions, values, and cultures, and their significance for the challenges confronting contemporary society. We shall focus our best efforts on an attempt to integrate our American experience with the problems that will face us in the next century.
The Future and the American Story:
"The Challenges of the American Experience" concerns an elusive topic: lived experience, the kaleidoscope, if you will, of conscious adaptations engendered not only in those who founded and lived in a certain country, but also in those who preceded those founders on both sides of the Atlantic and those who continue the "creation" of America. Many attempted to explicate that experiment in literature, law, religion, philosophy, theater and song, and many continually tried to change, sabotage, coopt, distort, monopolize and determine its spirit and its formal socio-political processes for a favored posterity.
Course Conduct:
The course will be taught by four faculty members. Many times the four will not be in complete agreement and will model how to disagree in a civil and productive fashion. In this course we learn from one another. Be prepared for active student/faculty involvement in discussions and discoveries.
Part I- Constitutional Crisis Galore
A. The impeachment trial of William Jefferson Clinton
B. The Imperial Presidency -- from McKinley to Clinton, Baum's The Wizard of Oz
Read "The Imperial Presidency" by Schlesinger (handout)
Part II - What Happened to the American Dream
A. Literary Visions of the Rich and Poor -- Realism and Naturalism: Frank Norris's McTeague and selections from films, Greed and Fargo. Read McTeague excerpts (handout). View clips from Greed.
B. (Th, Jan. 28) Social Darwinism, Andrew Carnegie,
Industrialization, "Robber Barons."
Read "Gospel of
Wealth" (required).
(T, Feb. 2) Labor
C. Sumner's & Peirce's comments on Social Darwinism
Read "required selections" under Sumner and under Peirce on Prof. Oman's "I" drive. Additional material is available as background in these folders.
(Campus Network "I" drive: On any campus computer, go to <My Computer> to <Classwork on "I">: Depts/Philosophy/Oman/Challenges)
D. (Th, Feb. 4) Cather's A Lost Lady and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
E. (Th, Feb. 11, T, Feb. 16) The Great Crash
and the New Deal. Handout from John Steinbeck, Grapes
of Wrath. Film clips.
See The Arts Project and FDR's 1st Inaugural Address,
1933
F. Political Consequences of Economic Change
Part III - Culture Wars[FrontPage Image Map Component]
A. (T, Feb. 23) Pragmatism and Social Action
Read about these topics on Dr. Oman's "I" Drive.[FrontPage Image Map Component]
B. (Th, Feb. 25 - Th, Mar. 18) Jim Crow, the
Shame of American Apartheid and
Civil Rights
(Link from U.S. Information Service. Required Reading.)
C. (T, Mar. 16) American Women: Lost and Found. Willa Cather, A Lost
Lady, Kate Chopin, The
Awakening, and Charlotte
Perkins Gilman, "The
Yellow Wallpaper." (Required
Reading off web)
For background, see "Women's Rights" on
Oman's "I" Drive
See Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" (Required Reading)
D. (T, Mar. 25) Native Americans: Displaced Persons in their Own Land. See "Anglophilia" on Oman's "I" Drive. Film Clips: Seneca Nation and Kinzua Dam, Crazy Horse, "Incident at Oglala," "Kanehsatake Resistance."
A. (T, Mar. 30, Th, April 1) Affluence and Anxiety. Handout from Eisenhower, "Atoms for Peace" and film clips from Army-McCarthy hearings and various monster movies.
B. (T, April 6) Vietnam: Lessons Wrongly Learned, Lessons Never Learned
C. (Th, April 8) Kosovo
D. (T, April 13) Life in the 1950s
Part V - Sex, Drugs, Rock'n Roll, and Postmodernism
A. (Th, April 15) The Surfacing of the Underground: Beats and Counter-culture Literature. Excerpts from Kerouac, On the Road to film, Easy Rider. Naked Lunch (William Burroughs), Don't Look Back (Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues")
B. (T, April 20) Protest and Reaction-. Citizen Action and Populism, Vietnam and After; Social Change, Politics,and Music of the 60s.
C. (Th, April 22) Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. See Dr. Oman's I-Drive for outline.
D. (T, April 27) Postmodernism. Read "The Emergent Rules," Charles Jencks (class handout). See lyrics to "Closer to Fine" on Dr. Permenter's I-Drive.
E. (Th, April 29, T, May 4) The Rise and Fall of the New Conservatism. See Dr. Oman's I-Drive.
Writing Assignments and Grading
Students will be given the opportunity to choose from four sets of essay formats based upon the novels: (1) The Great Gatsby and A Lost Lady; (2) The Awakening; (3) Going after Cacciato, and (4) Looking Backward. Students will do THREE of the four assignments.
PAPER DUE DATES: Gatsby & Lady: Feb. 11
Awakening: Mar. 25
Cacciato: April 22
Backward: May 4
Late assignments will not be accepted. The three essays will contribute 15% of the student's grade per paper.
Papers: 45% of course grade
Midterm (Mar. 23): 25% of course grade
Final (Scheduled Date): 30% of course grade (Make no early plane reservations)
Attendance Requirement
: Three unexcused absences. Students with more than three absencesmay expect it to adversely affect their grades.
Paper Assignment: "The Awakening"
In what ways was Edna awakened? Interpret the ending in terms of that awakening. How do you think the novel relates to Sojourner Truth’s speech and to the article you read on Human Rights (webpage)? Discuss the novel in terms of the historical and political era and comment on how you think these issues do or do not present a challenge to America in the 21st century. Use at least four quotations as evidence in your argument and be sure to explicate some of the lines. (You may also want to take a look at the famous "Declaration of Sentiments" from the 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls if you are interested in leaning your essay toward historical considerations.)
Approximately 3
- 4 pp. with 12-pt. font.Study Questions on "The Awakening"
1. First, sketch some notes about the historical context of Kate Chopin’s America. What was the societal position of women at the end of the nineteenth century? What was the ethnic culture of New Orleans? Politically, what was the "mood" of the South at this time?
2. Chopin has Edna reading Emerson at one point in the novel and at another the narrator tells us,
There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligation added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to "feed upon opinion" when her own soul had invited her. (156)
Compare this to what you know about Emerson’s Self-Reliance. Relate this to the "first wave" of the women’s movement (1848-1920).
3. One major motif of the novel is of course the sea. What does the sea represent to Edna? To Chopin? Use the following quotations:
a. "The sight of the water stretching so far away, those motionless sails . . . made me think — without any connection I can trace — of a summer day in Kentucky, of a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean . . . the stretch of green before me, and I felt as if I must walk on forever without coming to the end of it" (30).
b. "She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude, which the vast expanse of water, meeting and melting with the moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself" (48).
c. "Sailing across the bay . . . Edna felt as if she were being borne away from some anchorage which had held her fast, whose chains had been loosening — had snapped the night before . . . leaving her free to drift whithersoever she chose to set her sails" (58).
d. "The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude" (189).
e. "The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace . . . She did not look back now, but went on and on, thinking of the bluegrass meadow that she had traversed when a little child, believing that it had no beginning and no end" (190).
4. Another motif is that of the bird. Why do you think Chopin calls her new home a "pigeon-house"? Consider these quotations:
a. "A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: `Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi!’" (5).
b. ". . . she called it `Solitude.’ When she heard it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing beside a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him" (44).
c. "A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water" (189).
5. Find the passages that reinforce the theme of awakening (use it as a motif as in questions 3 and 4).
6. Explicate the following quotations:
"Mother-women . . . they were women who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals" (16).
"In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being" (25).
"I would give my life for my children, but I wouldn’t give myself" (80).
Challenges of the American Experience 383
Part IV- America in the World