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24 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Henry Nash Smith
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"Virgin Land"
1950 Myth and Symbol School -Concept of New Open territory -Didn't give an account of the Native Americans living on the continent already. -It wasn't a virgin land. -"Come to this free land with no one on it." -Vacant Continent -America's character comes from the frontier -Density=people and buildings, so in that way America was vacant |
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R.W.B. Lewis
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"The American Adam"
1955 Myth and Symbol School -Original Sin--American slavery -America as Garden of Eden--cultivating new land and starting creation all over again -Very masculine--no mention of American Eve -American Exceptionalism-America has a special history and a destiny. More special than any other place -Americans are adventurous and innovative -Favored by God -High and Low culture |
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Leo Marx
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"The Machine in the Garden"
1964 Myth and Symbol School -Industrialization imposing itself on the pastoral Ex. Camping with a stove; chopping down a tree with a chain saw -Expounded upon American Adam and Vacant land ideas |
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R. Gordon Kelly
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"Literature and the Historian"
1974 Myth and Symbol School -Autonomy of literature is to interpret instead of imposing history; "Climate of Opinion" -New criticism |
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Gene Wise
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"Paradigm Dramas in American Studies"
1979 Pre-institutional phase -Paradigm drama: Vernon Parrington in the 1910s and 1920s embodying American Studies in its barest essentials—“a single mind grappling with materials of American experience, and driven by the concentrated fury to create order from them” (300). Paradigm drama: the “intellectual history synthesis” (aka myth-symbol school) of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, seeking to identify (1) an “American Mind” in a (2) place of boundless opportunity, and focusing on (3) America’s “leading thinkers” to construct a story of (4) major themes running through all of American history. This paradigm (5) eschews the study of popular minds (306-307). Paradigm drama: “the ‘coming apart’ stage of American studies” beginning in the 1960s (312). American Studies as a parasite field (315) moving away from myths and toward material artifacts (314) and shifting away from the Northeast and moving toward diversification (319). Paradigm drama: American Studies in the late 1970s— 1) anthropological view of culture (culture is wherever found—not strictly high culture) 2) emphasis on studying social structures that control culture 3) reflexive temper 4) pluralistic 5) recovery of the particular (regional, ethnic experience, etc) 6) proportion rather than essence in evaluating Am exp 7) comparative quality (compare Europe and Am and other places) (331-332) -High v. Low Brow -References Parrington as concentrated fury |
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Giles Gunn
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"The Culture of Criticism and the Criticism of Culture"
1987 -American Symbolism promoted by Myth and Symbol School -Go beyond high culture; embrace actual culture -Hegemonic Ideas |
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Clifford Geertz
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"Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture"
-TURTLES. turtles. TuRtLeS. -Web metaphor -Semiotics—the study of signs and symbols as they circulate and signify within a cultural system -Thin v. Thick description |
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Raymond Williams
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“Hegemony,” from Marxism and Literature
* hegemony as power coursing through society that functions to maintain relations of domination and subordination * Hegemony as operating on levels that are subtle and usually not conscious (in other words, not as overt “manipulation” or “indoctrination”) * The phrase “reciprocally confirming.” What does this mean?--Women aren't talented in reading and writing therefore they shouldn't be educated vs. Women can't read and write because they aren't educated. * Hegemony as a form of domination that is internalized Williams says that dominant hegemony always needs to defend against counter-hegemony (112-113) -The notions of tradition are caricatures. We pick apart traditions to fit what is already happening. |
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Stuart Hall
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“Notes on Deconstructing ‘the Popular’”
1981 -Culture not as way of life, but way of struggle -Importance of containment, dominance, and resistance -State of Play: There is nothing inherent in anything. Everything is based on readers and their interpretation and a time frame. -Resistance v. containment. Dominant hegemony always resisting residual and emergent hegemony. -Culture tense inside itself; when two cultures intersect that creates a way of struggle |
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Philip Deloria
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He created methodology.
Interpreting texts (close analysis or close reading) Archive-building (gathering historical evidence) Institutional contextualization Using social theory (what are a few major types of social theory? Quer theory, race theory, gender theory, post-modern theory, post-colonial theory; globalization theory; psychoanalytic theory; Marxist theory; Critical race theory) -Whenever there are borders or power relations involved or maintenance or resistance of power these are intersections to study |
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John Crowe Ransom
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-Allegory of apples: Give the redest and biggest apple. How do you get both? The boy in allegory created a system to find the apple that was combined the redest and biggest when separately there were bigger and redder apples. It is relevant to interpretation for text because the world we live in is a result of compromises we make; examine compromises, conflicts, and patterns made while interpreting text.
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Omi and Winant
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"Racial Formation in the United States"
-Race is socially constructed -The term “racial formation”: “the process by which social, economic, and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories, and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings” (61). -76—The state (or government) as racially oriented (even when it seems like it’s not) -82—the state is always in a contest with racial social movements, and between the state and movements there exists an “unstable equilibrium” |
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Barbara Christian
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"The Race for Theory"
-Poetry, stories, jokes, etc. can be social theory -You have to use hermeneutics in relation to the poetry etc. to make it social theory. -Unpack the “hieroglyph” and find meaning. -Literary criticism is promotion as well as understanding. -Don't create a social theory or write on it just to write on it because often social theory pieces become prescriptive instead of descriptive |
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Joan W. Scott
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“Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis”
1986 Scott’s two-part definition of gender: * (1067) Gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between sexes * Gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power |
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R.W. Connell’s
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“Gender as Structure of Social Practice”
1995 -Gender v. Sex -Varying levels of masculinity -Hegemonic Masculine Men, Non-Hegemonic Masculine men, Women |
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Judith Butler
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Gender Trouble
1990 -Sex is also culturally produced -Woman is an unstable category: no one can agree on what or who represents women. -There is no reason to believe that gender should be limited to two. Isn’t it conceivable that there could be more? -Each person relates to their own unique body |
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Amy Kaplan
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"Cultures of United States Imperialism"
1993 -p. 14-15: She says the myth-symbol school was all about consensus and the polyvocal turn thought it was all about dissensus, but the polyvocal turn has its unsuspected consensus in its implicit agreement that American Studies should be confined to what is inside the US’s borders. * Kaplan says when we look at what happens beyond the US’s borders, it’s a story of US imperialism Her main point: the study of US culture needs to be tied to the study of global culture * 11: three absences --absence of culture from the study of US imperialism --absence of empire from the study of US culture --absence of the United States from the postcolonial study of imperialism 14: Imperialism abroad is a negotiation of domestic cultures; and domestic cultures shape how imperialism takes place * Example of 9/11: US’s unification through Span-Am War |
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Gloria Anzaldua
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Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
1987 -3—the difference between borders and borderlands (major take-away point) -6—Anglos illegally take Texas -3—the land was Mexican once and will be again -Borders are political; Borderlands are cultural, though both are imaginary lines created by people. |
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Paul Gilroy
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The Black Atlantic
1993 -4—African American exceptionalism fades in favor of coalitional politics combining anti-racism and anti-imperialism -Trading slaves with America; raw material to England; Beads and stuff to Africa for slaves; Triangle. - |
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Joseph Hardt and Antonio Negri
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"Empire"
2000 In tandem with global capitalism, there has emerged a new form of planetary relations 4-5—emergence of a supra-national form of world government called Empire 9—unitary power structuring everything 15—Empire as oriented toward peace |
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John Carlos Rowe
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"Post-nationalism, Globalism, and the New American Studies"
2000 -Post-nationalist American Studies: Transnational turn--looking at America beyond it's borders -The new American Studies critiques US imperialism but also engages in intellectual imperialism -“the new American Studies” and the “contact zone” |
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Michael Berube
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"American Studies without Exceptions"
2003 -Universities are now corporatized, becoming “corporate multiversities -During the Cold War, the US state was interested in helping American Studies thrive because American Studies argued that America was great (hence, the best nation to be the most powerful) -Berube’s suspicion that transnational American Studies is now being bankrolled by multinational corporations and supporters in government. |
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Jon Smith and Deborah Cohn
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"Uncanny Hybridities,” in Look Away! The U.S. South in New World Studies
1—The US South as a colonized space 2—US South as part of a hemispheric post-plantation system 4—US South: overlap btn English conquest and Af diaspora 6—Need to recognize US South as colonized space but also one offering its own oppression 15—Goals: * Southernists should give up false sense of borders * Americanists should see the South as the New World paradigm (post-plantation) * postcolonialists use South to rethink first/third world binarism * Identity should be conceived of as contingent, performative |
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Winfried Fluck
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“A New Beginning? Transnationalisms”
2011 367—there are two basic paradigms of transnationalism at work in American Studies today: aesthetic transnationalism and political transnationalism 368—Final 10 lines describe aesthetic transnationalism 369—“In aesthetic transnationalism, the word transnationalism is basically a code word for an America reinvigorated by an aesthetic plenitude made possible by cultural flow and exchange.” 372—One version of political transnationalism: “To link up with these groups [outside the US] via transnational studies can thus strengthen social movements for political and social chance by adding new political actors.” 374—The second version of political transnationalism: “The state of exception has created a man of exception, the outsider ‘in-between’ nation-states who has managed to transform trauma into a source of disinterpellation, and in doing so, has been able to envision a new international communality constituted by ‘transnational’ subject positions.” |
