Honors 82
Looking for America: In Word, Image, and Symbol
Prof. Woodward
Spring Semester 2001
"We children lived and breathed our history...without knowing or believing any of it. For how can anyone know or believe stories she dreamed in her sleep, information for which and to which she feels herself to be in no way responsible? A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside her skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade and then another, can she locate the actual, historical stream, see the setting of her dreaming private life--the nation, the city, the neighborhood, the house where the family lives--as an actual project under way, a project living people willed, and made well or failed, and are still making, herself among them. I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers." --Annie Dillard, An American Childhood
The information flows freely in contemporary culture. We are deluged with words, images, and symbols that seek to define for us what is American and what is America. Is the America that we know the one that our parents and relatives know, the one that our friends know, the one defined by leaders in society, the one that holds out to all the American dream? How do we tell the story of America? Who tells the story? Who defines America?
This course will propose that the American media play a central role in defining our nation. We will examine the way in which the media--newspapers, magazines, books, television, the Internet, and photography--shape what we know and how we think about the nation. Drawing on a wide range of observers, we will study how the media define America, its people, and its culture. In assessing what we know about America through media eyes, we also will deal conceptually with the ways in which the "real America" may exist in folklore, folklife, and personal and family history, separate from and often unobserved by the media eyes.
The objectives of the course will be to stimulate you to think critically and creatively about America; to teach you the historical background of how media have presented the American scene; and to increase your awareness of how you and your families may fit into ideas of what America is.
REQUIRED READING
You can expect to be doing some heavy but enjoyable reading during the semester. The following books will be required reading for this course:
Meyrowitz, Joshua. No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Trachtenberg, Alan. Reading American Photographs: Images as History Mathew Brady to Walker Evans. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989.
Reader's Choice: This is an innovative approach to textbook selection:You will be required to choose your third major book for the course. You can buy a copy, or you can find a book in the library that may serve your purpose. You will be responsible for telling your classmates about the book and how you think it brings another perspective to understanding America. One of your three required short essays for the class also should be centered on the ideas coming from the book you choose.
Additional books will be placed on reserve in Cowles Library for your use. In particular, we'll be reading from Annie Dillard's An American Childhood early in the semester and in Duncan Emrich's Folklore on the American Land throughout the semester.
Class handouts also will provide other perspectives on our subject.
VIDEO COMPONENT
During the semester, we will watch several television programs concerning the American scene. The Public Broadcasting System series, "The American Experience," has provided insightful documentary assessments of America and its people. One program called "A Family Gathering," for example, shows how one young women came to grips with her Japanese-American heritage by making a documentary about it and the fate of her family in the Western United States during World War II.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
You will be required to attend class regularly, to participate in classroom discussions, to prepare brief credit/no credit discussion papers, to conduct oral history interviews, and to write four papers--three shorter analytical papers and a major research paper.
Paper No.1: The first paper should be 5-6 pages. In it, you should look for America in your hometown or home region. What characteristics there help shape your idea of what America is? How does your "home view" differ from the images you see in the American media? What "sense of place," if any, do you have about your hometown or home region?
Paper No. 2: 5-6 pages.This paper should evolve from "Reader's Choice" textbook that you choose for the semester. Draw on one or more ideas from the book, and, in your own words, provide an interpretive analyis of the materials--relating to the overall themes of the "Looking for America" course.
Paper No.3: 5-6 pages. After watching the PBS program, "A Family Gathering," doing assigned reading, participating in discussions, and, if possible, doing oral history interviews with family members, you'll be asked to relate some aspect of your family history to your understanding of America.
Major Paper: 20 pages plus bibliography and endnotes. There are many options for the major papers, but all papers should draw significantly on research in the media for the final project. It's acceptable to build on the ideas from one of your shorter papers. Or you might want to study a specific magazine in the way it has interpreted the American scene (for example, Jan Cohn's Creating America: George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post). You might want to study important documentary and news photographs to determine the imprint they have left on the American mind. You might want to see how a newspaper or a specific columnist defined America during a certain period. You might want to test the arguments of Joshua Meyrowitz's No Sense of Place by critically analyzing television coverage. You might want to study how advertising may or may not define our contemporary culture. You might want to relate your family history to the media world.
GRADING
Your semester grade will be determined by participation in classroom work/discussions and by your research and writing for required papers.
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS
During the semester, students will be urged to conduct oral history interviews with family members and/or other subjects of professional or personal historical interest. In class, we'll talk about both journalistic and oral history interviews so as to learn by comparison and contrast.
NOTEBOOK FOR OBSERVATIONS
During the semester, you also should keep a notebook in which you record your observations about the American scene. We'll be talking in class about the importance of observation, and we'll be working on your observational skills.
DISCUSSION PAPERS
To prepare for classroom discussion, you will be asked to write brief (1-2 page) papers relating to the assigned topic of discussion. The papers will receive a credit/no credit grade.