Theoretical Concepts for American Studies

Week 1: Theorizing American Studies

Natalia Cecire | n.cecire@sussex.ac.uk

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Christine "Xine" Yao, UCL

"The Cultural Politics of Unfeeling: Race, Affect, and Disaffection"

Week 1, 2 October 2019
5pm Jubilee 144

Image: William H. Johnson, Man in a Vest, 1939-1940, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum

1. Why theorize American Studies?
2. What will we do in this module?
3. How will this module be assessed?
4. How can you get the most out of this module?

1. Why theorize American Studies?

Virginia:

From "Martin Luther King Day"...
(third Monday in January each year)

...to "Lee-Jackson-King Day"??
~~real Virginia holiday 1984–2000~~
😱😱😱

L. Douglas Wilder, Governor of Virginia, 1990–1994

P. B. S. Pinchback, Governor of Louisiana, 1872–1873	L. Douglas Wilder, Governor of Virginia, 1990–1994

~~no African-American US governors from Reconstruction to the 1990s~~
😱😱😱

Illustration from Thomas Hariot,
A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588).
Hariot's depiction of abundant natural resources helped persuade people to found the permanent colony at Jamestown in 1607.

Mirrored political patterns

Cold War American Studies: promoting "the" American way of life

As many have observed, the American Studies Association was a product of a Cold War context that produced a desire to delineate what was exceptional about U.S. culture at a time when public debate was structured by the perceived opposition between the aggressive empire of the Soviet Union and the supposedly disinterested, democratic republic of the United States. (5)

—Janice Radway, "What's in a Name?," 1998

It was this interest in American exceptionalism, really, that led to the desire for an interdisciplinary method that would be equal to the notion of American culture conceived as a unified whole, a whole that manifested itself as a distinctive set of properties and themes in all things American, whether individuals, institutions, or cultural products. (5)

—Janice Radway, "What's in a Name?," 1998

Theoretical concepts help us notice patterns and connections.

Black Hawk held: In reason
land cannot be sold,
only things to be carried away,
and I am old.

Young Lincoln's general moved,
pawpaw in bloom,
and to this day, Black Hawk,
reason has small room.

—Lorine Niedecker, New Goose, 1946

Sauk leader Black Hawk (1767-1838).
Image from Thomas Loraine McKenney and James Hall, History of the Indian Tribes of North America, with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes, of the Principal Chiefs (Philadelphia: J. T. Bowen, 1848-1850).

Black Hawk held: In reason
land cannot be sold,
only things to be carried away,
and I am old.

Young Lincoln's general moved,
pawpaw in bloom,
and to this day, Black Hawk,
reason has small room.

—Lorine Niedecker, New Goose, 1946

Black Hawk held: In reason
land cannot be sold,
only things to be carried away,
and I am old.

Young Lincoln's general moved,
pawpaw in bloom,
and to this day, Black Hawk,
reason has small room.

—Lorine Niedecker, New Goose, 1946

Theory helps us think across disciplinary categories.

As a child, I didn’t know where I had come from. And when I was not desperately seeking to belong to this family community that never seemed to accept or want me, I was desperately trying to discover the place of my belonging. I was desperately trying to find my way home. (60)

—bell hooks, "Theory as Liberatory Practice," 1994

Imagine if you will this young black couple struggling first and foremost to realize the patriarchal norm (that is of the woman staying home, taking care of the household and children while the man worked) even though such an arrangement meant that economically, they would always be living with less. Try to imagine what it must have been like for them, each of them working hard all day, struggling to maintain a family of seven children, then having to cope with one bright-eyed child relentlessly questioning, daring to challenge male authority, rebelling against the very patriarchal norm they were trying so hard to institutionalize. (60)

—bell hooks, "Theory as Liberatory Practice," 1994

Theoretical thinking gives us power to analyze the world in which we live and work to correct injustice.

When our lived experience of theorizing is fundamentally linked to processes of self-recovery, of collective liberation, no gap exists between theory and practice. (61)

—bell hooks, "Theory as Liberatory Practice," 1994

2. What will we do in this module?

• How should we understand material goods?
• What is capitalism and how does it work?
• What is the difference between an object and its value?
• How do material resources shape social structures?

• How do individuals fit into larger social structures?
• How does culture mediate between individuals and social categories?
• How can we talk about emotions in ways that aren't merely personal?
• How do emotional structures support narratives of national belonging?

Pub quiz lecture; no seminar

• How is power organized?
• What brings people to comply with power?
• How does power operate at the level of the everyday?
• How do economic structures interface with structures of power?

3. How will this module be assessed?

Assessment

1. Portfolio: 70%
   • You will sign up to write four response papers over the course of the term (500 words each)
   • You choose the best three out of the four to submit as your portfolio
2. Keyword Essay (1,500 words): 30%

Why a portfolio of response papers?

• Four responses ensures coverage of a range of ideas from the module and distributes work across the term.
• Each response is an opportunity to grapple with the text on your own.
• Each individual response is fairly low-stakes, and you can throw out your least successful response.
• There's time to revise your responses after you've refined your understanding during seminar, i.e. the final submitted product can reflect your learning.

Why a keyword essay?

• An essay allows you to investigate one idea in greater depth than the responses offer.
• The essay is an opportunity to apply ideas from this module to concrete situations, texts, or cultural objects.
• The essay lets you focus on an aspect of American Studies that interests you and find a theoretical framework that gives you new insight into it.

Sign up for your response papers! (On Canvas, under "Assessment" on the front page.)

4. How can you get the most out of this module?

Reading scholarship can be like going to a party where you only know one person. You just have to keep showing up & remembering names until you know enough people to have fun.

Clueless, dir. Amy Heckerling, 1995.

Some tips:

• Respect the labor of reading.
• Context really helps.
• Use paratexts (titles, section headings, bibliographic info) to provide context.
• Distinguish between inductive and deductive reasoning.
• Distinguish between normative and descriptive accounts.
• Practice works. Learning is real.

DO THE READING!!

Writing is a technology for having bigger thoughts than we can hold in our heads all at once.

Reading complex texts is an advanced skill.

Reading easier texts is not an adequate substitute for reading hard texts.

Context really helps.

• When was this originally written?
• Where was this written, in what language?
• When was this particular translation done?
• To whom or to what is this text responding?
• What discipline(s) and intellectual tradition(s) inform it?

Properly formatted citations: not just some finicky convention for nerds!

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. New edition. London: Routledge, 2010.

[Chicago style, bibliography entry.]

Inductive reasoning: start with specific instances, draw a general conclusion from them.

Deductive reasoning: start with a general principle, use it to characterize particulars.

Descriptive: "this is how things are"

Normative (or prescriptive): "this is how things should be"

Practice works.

Learning is real.

😄

Questions?

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