Prof. Lisa Henderson (UMass Amherst)
and Prof. Barry O'Connell (Amherst College)
UMass Registration: Spring 2002
Communication 397A
Amherst College Registration: Spring 2002
Colloquium 20
Lecture:
T-Th: 1:00 p.m. -- 2:15 p.m.
E-37 Machmer Hall, University of Massachusetts
Out-of-class screening (required): Monday, 3:35 p.m. -- 5:35 p.m.
(An additional screening will be added at Amherst College, place and time TBA)
Millions of people in this century have given and lost their lives in the name of nations and national identities. It is assumed that all individuals have a national identity and that such identities are essential and mutually exclusive. What makes the idea of the nation so compelling? This course examines different forms of belonging in the modern nation state, and the range of symbolic modes and genres for expressing (and refusing) belonging. What does it mean to be a national? What is the difference between nationality and citizenship? What rights and obligations does citizenship entail? The First Amendment guarantees the right of U.S. citizens to freedom of expression, at the same time that a range of institutions and strategies limit those rights. We will explore those limits, along with the literacies demanded by citizenship (including those which normative models of citizenship ignore). We will also consider the ways in which modes of communication affect how people imagine the communities to which they belong. We have developed this course in conjunction with CISA, the Five College initiative-Crossroads in the Study of the Americas.
Requirements: Please come to class prepared to discuss assigned readings, to raise questions where authors introduce concepts and analyses unfamiliar to you, and to discuss themes, examples, illustrations, clips etc. introduced in class sessions. Your written work will include, first, a “citizenship narrative,” developed in collaboration with a student colleague in the course, and take-home mid-term and final exams. On each exam, we will ask you to write a 5-8 page essay which integrates multiple course readings in response to one of several questions. Exam questions and instructions will be distributed and discussed in class well in advance of due dates. Guidelines for the citizenship narrative are attached, and student partners will be established immediately after the close of the add/drop period. Mid-term and final exams will be weighted equally (approximately 25% of course grade) and citizenship narratives will count for approximately 50% of your course grade. Please observe standard rules of academic honesty and integrity, particularly in citing secondary sources in your written work.
Course credit: Because “Citizenship in a Media Culture” is jointly offered by U-Mass and Amherst College, it is worth specifying the terms of course credit. All Amherst College students will receive full course credit, and U-Mass students will receive 4 credits. U-Mass students must sign the “Honors Colloquium” roster to enroll for the 4th credit, though you needn't be in the Commonwealth College to be eligible. Please see Lisa Henderson to sign the roster.
Policy on attendance: Participation is expected and attendance will be recorded on a sheet which it is your responsibility to sign at the beginning of each class. At U-Mass, one course grade step will be deducted (e.g. from A to AB) for each 3 unexcused absences beyond the first, and at Amherst, Hampshire, Smith and Mt. Holyoke, one step (e.g. from A to A-) will be deducted for each 2 unexcused absences beyond the first. (U-Mass and the Four Colleges have slightly different grade scales, with a greater grade point spread between each letter grade at U-Mass than at the Four Colleges.)
Texts: Course readings are collected in a packet available from Food for Thought Books on North Pleasant Street in Amherst. In addition, the following titles have been ordered at Food for Thought and placed on reserve in the Frost Library (AC) and the DuBois Library (UM).
Dorothy Allison, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (New York: Dutton, 1995).
Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker (New York: Riverhead, 1995).
Michael Patrick MacDonald, All Souls: A Family Story from Southie (Boston: Beacon,1999)
Dan Smith, The State of the World Atlas (Revised Edition) (New York: Penguin, 2001).
COURSE OUTLINE
SECTI0N 1: INTRODUCTION
Week 1
1/29 Course introduction; nuts and bolts. Who are we? Citizenship narratives by Barry O'Connell, Lisa Henderson and Carol Bonura.
1/31 Who are you? Students respond to the Stars and Stripes.
Reading: Carolyn Marvin, “Bad Attitudes, Unnatural Acts” (7 pp)
Week 2
2/4 Monday screening: Reassemblage (USA, 1982, Trinh T. Min Ha) and Black Is/Black Ain't (USA, 1995, Marlon Riggs)
2/5 Citizenship narratives continued.
2/7 Representation as symbolic practice.
Reading: David Morley, “Media, Mobility and Migrancy” from Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity (21 pp)
Recommended: Trinh T. Min Ha, “Naked Spaces-Living Is Round” (9 pp.); Marlon T. Riggs, “Notes of a Signifyin' Snap! Queen” (5 pp).
Week 3
2/11 Monday screening: from Amerika (USA, 1972-83, Razutis)
2/12 Representation as political practice.
Reading: John Tomlinson, “The Discourse of Cultural Imperialism” from Cultural Imperialism (33 pp); & James C. Scott, “False Consciousness or Laying It on Thick,” from Domination & the Arts of Resistance (pp TBA).
2/14 The state of the world.
Reading: Dan Smith, The State of the World Atlas (available at Food for Thought Books)
SECTION 2: THE QUESTION OF CITIZENSHIP
Week 4
2/18 No Monday screening.
2/19 No class - Monday schedule followed at U-Mass.
2/21 Citizenship and the state; Nations and nationalism
Reading: Wm. E Connolly, “The Ambiguity of Boundaries” (4 pp); J.M. Barbalet, “Theories of Citizenship” (10 pp)
Week 5
2/25 Monday screening: Yellow Tale Blues: Two American Families (USA, 1992, Tajima and Choy); Edward Said on Orientalism (USA, 1995, Media Education Foundation)
2/26 Reading: Katherine Verdery, “Whither `Nation' and `Nationalism'?” (9 pp); and Maria de los Angeles Torres, “Transnational Political & Cultural Identities,” (11 pp)
2/28 Aliens and Strangers
Reading: Aristide Zolberg, “Stranger Encounters” (15 pp); Jan Jindy Pettman, “Border Crossings/Shifting Identities “ (16 pp)
Week 6
3/4 Monday screening: Well-Founded Fear (USA, 2000, Robertson and Camerini)
3/5 Midterm exams due in class (no e-mail submissions, please!)
Language, symbolic practice, imagined communities.
Reading: American Immigration Lawyers Association, “About Immigration” (2 pp) and “The USA Patriot Act of 2001: Section-by-Section Summary: Immigration Provisions” (6 pp); American Civil Liberties Union, “USA Patriot Act Boosts Government Powers While Cutting Back on Traditional Checks and Balances” (4 pp); and from John Gabriel, “Border Guards, Bodyguards, Lifeguards” (15 pp)
3/7 Reading: Luis Alberto Urrea, Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life (53 pp)
Week 7
3/11 No Monday screening.
3/12 Reading: Ruth Shays and Jackson Jordan, in John Langston Gwaltney, Drylongso (19 pp); “Who Built the Pyramids: Mike Lefevre” in Studs Terkel, Working (8 pp); Kembrew MacLeod, “Authorship and African-American Culture” from Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership and Intellectual Property Law (28 pp)
In the remaining sessions of the course, we have assembled a variety of cases and contexts of citizenship. Sometimes, we lead with historical questions, other times with spatial or geographical ones, sometimes with theory or with the styles and practices of expressive culture. Each theme combines a variety of points of entry, along with attention to the symbolic and political meanings of representation.
SECTION 3: PANICS AND POLLUTIONS
3/14 Reading: Peter Brimelow, “Introduction” from Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster (22 pp); Lothrop Stoddard, “The Crisis of the Ages” from The Rising Tide of Color: Against White World-Supremacy (11 pp)
Week 8
3/18 through 3/21 Spring Break!
Week 9
3/25 Monday screening: Eyes on the Prize, Episode 2 (USA, 1986, Hampton)
3/26 Citizenship, whiteness, and social class, Part 1.
Reading: Dorothy Allison, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (a pamphlet-sized book available at Food for Thought)
In-class screening: Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (UK, 1996, DiFeliciantonio and Wagner) Note: the in-class screening is a complement to Allison's book, not a substitution for it.
3/28 Citizenship, whiteness and social class, Part 2.
Reading: Michael Patrick MacDonald, All Souls: A Family Story from Southie (available at Food for Thought) (pp TBA)
Week 10
4/1 Monday screening: Six Degrees of Separation (USA, 1993, Schepisi)
4/2 Citizenship, whiteness and social class, Part 3. Continue discussion of Allison, MacDonald and Six Degrees.
SECTION 4: CITIZENSHIP, POLITICAL DISCOURSE AND THE LEGACY OF U.S. ANTI-COMMUNISM
4/4 Part 1: Reading: Ellen Schrecker, “`A Good Deal of Trauma: The Impact of McCarthyism,” from Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (58 pp)
Week 11
4/8 Monday screening: Guilty By Suspicion (USA, 1991, Winkler)
4/9 Citizenship Narratives due in class
Part 2: Reading: John D'Emilio, “The Homosexual Menace: The Politics of Sexuality in Cold War America” (15 pp); “The 81st Congress Senate Documents. Second Session. No. 241. Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government” (8 pp)
SECTION 5: SEXUAL CITIZENSHIP
4/11 Part 1: Sexual belonging and the state
Reading: Bowers v. Hardwick et al (U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding Georgia anti-sodomy statute, 1986) (10 pp); The Defense of Marriage Act (1996) (1 p); Vermont State Supreme Court decision equalizing same-sex rights and benefits (1999) (1 p); Michael Warner, “The Ethics of Sexual Shame” from The Trouble With Normal (22 pp)
Recommended: Scott Tucker, “There's No Place Like Home: Straight Supremacy, Queer Resistance and Equality of Kinship” from The Queer Question: Essays on Desire and Democracy (44 pp)
Week 12
4/15 Monday screening: Save the Last Dance (USA, 2001, Carter)
4/16 Part 2: Sexual representation
Reading: Lisa Henderson, “Feminism, Sexuality, Media Studies” (8 pp); Alexander Doty, “There's Something Queer Here” (20 pp)
4/18 Part 3: Keeping the sex in “sexual citizenship”
Reading (choose any 2): Dorothy Allison, “A Lesbian Appetite” (14 pp); Essex Hemphill, “Miss Emily's Grandson Won't Hush His Mouth”(7 pp); Allan Berube, “Intellectual Desire” (23 pp); Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” (8 pp).
In-class screening: excerpts from Queer as Folk (UK, 1999); Untitled (How Does It Feel?) (music video) (USA, 2000, D'Angelo)
SECTION 6: LOS ANGELES: THE FUTURE? UTOPIA OR NIGHTMARE?
Week 13
4/22 Monday screening: Blade Runner (USA, 1982, Scott)
4/23 Reading: David Harvey, “The Condition of Postmodernity,” Part IV from The Condition of Postmodernity (23 pp)
4/25 Reading: Edward Soja, “It All Comes Together in Los Angeles” from Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (27 pp)
Recommended: Edward Soja, “Taking Los Angeles Apart: A Postmodern Geography” from Postmodern Geographies, as above (33 pp)
SECTION 7: BEYOND THE NATION-STATE?
Week 14
4/29 Monday screening: The 7 Train (USA, 1999, Park and Takagi)
4/30 Part 1: Reading: Iris Marion Young, “Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship” (27 pp)
5/2 Part 2: Reading: Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker.
Week 15
5/6 No Monday screening
5/7 Continue reading Native Speaker.
5/9 Finish reading Native Speaker.
Week 16
5/13 No Monday screening
5/14 Final exams due by 2:15 pm in Barry O'Connell's or Lisa Henderson's office (no e-mail submissions, please!) (Note: Because the Amherst College semester ends on 5/9, we will not be holding a regular class session today. Barry O'Connell, Lisa Henderson and Carol Bonura will be available in their offices during the class period.)
