SUNY Fredonia
Division of Arts and Humanities
AMST 202: Introduction to American Studies
Mission and Migration in American Culture
Fall 2005
Section 1: Fenton 166, MWF 2-2:50
Office: Fenton 265; MWF 1-2, TTh 9-12, and by appointment; 673-3856
E-mail: simon@fredonia.edu
Web Page: www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/
Blackboard Site: blackboard.fredonia.edu

About the Course Web Site

This web site is designed to help you get as much out of this course as possible--you can use it to find out how you will be graded, how to join and use the course listserv, what reading and writing assignments are due and when, what books are on reserve for your use in Reed Library, and how to use the world-wide web for research. Please take the time during and after the first week of classes to read this page carefully and to familiarize yourself with the other pages on this site. Please get in the habit of checking back to the course web site to keep track of any changes to the syllabus and to find advice on assignments, as well as to surf the ever-expanding list of links to interesting web pages related to the course. And please contact me anytime (see above for my coordinates) if you have ideas about how to improve this site or the course as a whole. I hope you enjoy taking this course as much as I enjoy teaching it!

I. Course Description

An introduction to the interdisciplinary study of American cultures, their historical development and contemporary status. Focusing on literary and cultural representations of specific aspects of the American experience, the course will examine the constructed nature of American self-perceptions and U.S. history. The course contextualizes U.S. cultures within the Americas and the global arena. Particular course emphasis is selected by the instructor.

This section of AMST 202 examines works in a variety of genres and media and from a variety of time periods and disciplines to track debates over the meaning, significance, and stakes of mission and migration in American culture. In the "mission" unit, we will consider relations between the Puritan errand, manifest destiny, the Cold War, and the war on terror. In the "migration" unit, we will examine issues raised by juxtaposing the experiences and legacies of slavery and internment camps alongside narratives of immigration, the great migration, and globalization. Throughout, we will consider the influence different notions of mission and migration have had on American identities, cultures, and politics.

This section is part of "The American Experience," an experimental sequence of courses for first-year Liberal Arts students, and should be taken alongside HIST 106 US History Since 1877 and POLI 120 American Politics.

II. Rationale

In AMST 202, students from a range of majors, minors, and concentrations interact, and the goals of the professional programs are integrated with specific course and general education goals. Achieving these goals (described in Section IV below) will require us to foster academic skills and intellectual habits of reading closely and carefully, thinking critically and creatively, listening actively and attentively, speaking thoughtfully and concisely, and writing clearly and analytically--skills and habits useful to everyone, but of particular importance to future teachers.

III. Textbooks. The textbooks adopted for this course are:

• Randall Bass and Joy Young, eds., Beyond Borders: A Cultural Reader
• Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom
• Joseph Skerrett, Jr., ed., Literature, Race and Ethnicity: Contesting American Identities
• Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right

IV. Course Objectives and Outcomes

The course has been approved for Part VIIIB of the CCC. As such, it provides an introduction to two disciplines: on the one hand, you will gain a firm footing in the practice of literary and cultural criticism, and on the other, you will become familiar with humanistic and interdisciplinary inquiry in the field of American Studies. Students will gain familiarity with a broad sweep of American literature, history, and politics, consider the ways in which a range of cultural forms respond to and help shape American identities, research the relevance of contrasting notions of mission and/or migration in the contemporary United States, and hone their critical thinking, discussion, and writing skills.

Specifically, this course is designed to enable students to:

• use a variety of sources and interdisciplinary methods to study American culture and definitions of nation;
• gain an awareness of multiple cultures, subcultures, and values within America;
• view events, texts, and representations within a cultural context and in connection to one another;
• examine the ways in class, gender, and ethnicity intersect with and complicate notions of an "American" identity;
• understand the ways in which concepts of American identity have repercussions on other cultures;
• develop an appreciation for historical documents and older literature as connected to contemporary experience;
• use print and electronic resources to locate and share relevant information;
• apply a critical reading of culture and texts to their daily lives.

V. Instructional Methods and Activities

The methods used in the classroom will include lecture, in-class writing, guided discovery, open discussion, cooperative group work, and other discussion- and team work-oriented activities.

VI. Evaluation and Grade Assignment

Preparation/Participation/Team Work (15%). Regular attendance and thoughtful participation are crucial to your enjoyment of and success in this course. If there is absolutely no way for you to avoid missing a class, you must contact me ahead of time or soon after your absence, preferably by email (see section VIII below for more on attendance policies in this course). Even more important than showing up on time, of course, is coming to class prepared and focused. I expect you to read what has been assigned for a given date at least once (and preferably more than that!), along with your peers' responses to it posted to the course listserv (see below), by the time we begin to discuss it in class. This is a discussion rather than a lecture course, after all; although I will provide some context and background for our reading, the bulk of class time will be spent in small- or large-group discussions and activities. Since it's difficult to make good contributions to discussions about a literary work if you haven't read it carefully or thought about it extensively, how well you budget your time outside of class will to a large degree determine how well you do in this class in general and how well you do on this portion of your course grade in particular.

Your grade for this segment of the course will be based on a combination of your attendance, the quality of your participation in class and on the class listserv (described below), and your preparation, effort, and improvement over the course of the semester. As there is no final exam in this course, think of my evaluation of your preparation/participation as a different but equally important method of assessing your overall performance in the course. Due to the importance of attendance and participation, more than two unexcused absences will hurt your preparation/participation grade and each non-emergency absence after the fourth will lower your final course grade by a full grade (e.g., with 5 absences a B+ will become a C+; with 7, it will become an E). Please see Section VIIIB below for definitions of excused and emergency absences; every absence, whether excused or unexcused, that is not due to an emergency will be counted toward your total for the semester.

Discussion Questions (20%). Detailed instructions for subscribing to and using your section's listserv (amst20201@listserv.fredonia.edu) are given below (see Section VIII), will be discussed in class, and are available elsewhere on the course web site, along with a troubleshooting guide, at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/amst202f05/listserv.htm. This listserv will be your space; I will keep my own input to a bare minimum. Although you may use the listserv in any number of ways, you must use it in the following way: over the course of the semester, you must post a number of sets of weekly discussion questions to the course listserv and come to each class having read and thought about your peers' questions. One set of discussion questions consists of three questions posted to the course listserv in a given week; only one set per week will count toward your total, no matter how many additional questions you may chose to post for extra credit. Hence, roughly every other week you should post a total of three questions that you believe would spark discussion either by midnight before Monday's class, by midnight before Wednesday's class, and/or by midnight before Friday's class. Questions must be directed toward upcoming readings; if you want to raise a question about a reading we've already discussed, find a way to craft a question that addresses a reading we're about to discuss along with the older reading. Advice on generating discussion questions can be found elsewhere on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/amst202f05/dq.htm.

Your grade for this segment of the course will be determined by the number of on-time sets of discussion questions you post to the course listserv. Since there are fourteen weeks when discussion questions are due in the semester, and since you are allowed seven missed weeks without penalty, 7 or more sets of discussion questions=A; 6=B+; 5=B; 4=C+; 3=C, 2=D; 1 or 0=F. The quality of your discussion questions will be factored into your preparation/participation/team work grade (see above).

Critical Essays (40%). You are required to write two 4-to-6-page critical essays, each worth 20% of your final course grade. You may write three and have the lowest grade dropped, plus gain extra credit on your preparation/participation/team work grade. For detailed information and advice on the critical essay, go to http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/amst202f05/ce.htm.

Your grade for this segment of the course will be determined by the coherence and validity of the paper's arguments, the effectiveness of the paper's structure in conveying your ideas and convincing your audience, and the quality of the paper's prose (including grammar, syntax, and punctuation).

Final Project (25%). I will provide detailed information and advice on the 7-to-10-page final project later in the semester at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/amst202f05/fp.htm.

B. Grading. All work during the semester will be graded on a letter basis (A=outstanding, B=good, C=average, D=bad, E=awful) and converted into a number for purposes of calculating final grades. I use the following conversion system (the number in parentheses is the "typical" or "normal" conversion, but any number in the range may be assigned to a given letter grade):

A+=97-100 (98); A=93-96.99 (95); A-=90-92.99 (91); B+=87-89.99 (88); B=83-86.99 (85); B-=80-82.99 (81); C+=77-79.99 (78); C=73-76.99 (75); C-=70-72.99 (71); D+=67-69.99 (68); D=63-66.99 (65); D-=60-62.99 (61); F=0-59.99 (55)

Your final grade is determined by converting the weighted numerical average of the above assignments into a letter grade, according to the above scale.

VII. Bibliography. The following works may be found on reserve at the circulation desk in Reed Library (click here for the reserves list):

A. Contemporary References

• Homi Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration
• Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival?
• Michael Denning, The Cultural Front
• Ariel Dorfman, Other Septembers, Many Americas
• Niall Ferguson, Colossus
• Raul Fern‡ndez, ed., JosŽ Mart’'s 'Our America': From National to Hemispheric Cultural Studies
• Thomas Ferraro, Ethnic Passages: Literary Immigrants in Twentieth-Century America
• Coco Fusco, English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas
• Avery Gordon and Christopher Newfield, eds., Mapping Multiculturalism
• Farah Jasmine Griffin, Who Set You Flowin'? The African-American Migration Narrative
• Guillermo G—mez-Pe–a, The New World Border
• Anthony Hall, The American Empire and the Fourth World
• David Harvey, The New Imperialism
• Sam Haynes and Christopher Morris, eds., Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism
• Matthew Frye Jacobson, Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States
• --, Whiteness of a Different Color
• Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire
• Amy Kaplan, The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of American Culture
• -- and Donald Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism
• Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts
• Wahneema Lubiano, ed., The House That Race Built
• Lucy Maddox, ed., Locating American Studies: The Evolution of a Discipline
• Oscar Martinez, Border Peoples
• Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s
• Donald Pease and Robyn Weigman, eds., The Futures of American Studies
• Robert Pollin, Contours of Descent
• Mary Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940
• John Carlos Rowe, Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism
• --, ed., Post-Nationalist American Studies
• Ramon Saldivar, Border Matters
• Amritjit Singh and Peter Schmidt, eds., Postcolonial Theory and the United States
• William Spanos, America's Shadow: An Anatomy of Empire
• Helen Turner, ed., The Settling of North America
• Immanuel Wallerstein, The Decline of American Power

B. Classic References

• James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America
• American Social History Project, Who Built America?
• Jean Baudrillard, America
• Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad
• Richard Drinnon, Facing West
• Stephen Greenblatt, ed., New World Encounters
• Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People
• John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925
• Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny
• C.L.R. James, American Civilization
• Howard Mumford Jones, O Strange New World
• R.W.B. Lewis, The American Adam
• Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest
• --, The Unbroken Past
• JosŽ Mart’,Our America
• Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden
• Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness
• David Noble, The End of American History
• Gary Okihiro, Common Ground
• Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters
• Theda Perdue and Michael Green, eds., The Cherokee Removals: A Brief History with Documents
• Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence
• Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land
• Werner Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity
• Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror
• William A. Williams, Empire as a Way of Life
• Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

C. Key Journals

• African American Review
• American Literature
• American Quarterly
• MELUS
• Prospects

VIII. Course Schedule and Policies

A. Tentative Course Schedule. The following course schedule is subject to revision--please refer here regularly for updates to this schedule, notes on the texts, and suggestions for further reading. Please recall that you need to submit at least 7 sets of discussion questions to earn an A for that segment of your final grade (see Section VI). (Key: BB=Beyond Borders; LRE=Literature, Race, and Ethnicity.)

America Studies

M 8/29 Benedict Anderson, "The Concept of Nation: A Definition" [BB 481-484]; Film: Independence Day, continued
W 8/31 Joseph Skerrett, "Introduction" and "The Concept of This Book" [LRE 1-10]; Stuart Hall, "Ethnicity: Identity and Difference" [BB 228-240]; Film: Independence Day, continued
F 9/2 Randall Bass and Joy Young, "Introduction" [BB 1-11]; Mary Louise Pratt, "Arts of the Contact Zone" [BB 249-262]; Film: Independence Day, concluded

Mission

M 9/5 Labor Day: No Class
W 9/7 Hector St. John de CrŹvecouer, "What Is an American?" [LRE 24-36]; Benjamin Franklin, "Advice to Such as Would Remove to America" [LRE 38-43]; The Immigration Act of 1790 [LRE 36-37]
F 9/9 JosŽ Mart’, "Our America" [LRE 490-495]; Karima Kamal, "An Egyptian Girl in America" [BB 532-538]; Jessica Hagedorn, "Homesick" [LRE 496-498]

M 9/12 Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom xi-xxii, 3-28
W 9/14 Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny xi-xiv, 3-27
F 9/16 Thomas Jefferson, "The Declaration of Independence" [LRE 15-18]; Roger Williams, "A Key into the Language of America" [BB 275-291]

M 9/19 Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny 28-65
W 9/21 Robert Berkhofer, "The White Man's Indian" [BB 219-227]; Richard White, "The Middle Ground" [BB 262-275]; CRITICAL ESSAY I due no later than 5 pm
F 9/23 Reading Day: No Class

M 9/26 Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom 46-68
W 9/28 Red Jacket, "1805 Oration" [LRE 53-54]; Indian Removal Act of 1837 [LRE 50-52]
F 9/30 John Calhoun, from Speech [LRE 134-143]; The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo [LRE 133-134]

M 10/3 Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" [BB 484-489]; Mar’a Amparo Ruiz de Burton, from The Squatter and the Don [LRE 144-157]; Jack Jackson, "Comanche Moon" [BB 521-532]
W 10/5 Patricia Nelson Limerick, "Adventures of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century" [BB 489-503]; Lorna Dee Cervantes, "Poema Para Los Californios Muertos" [LRE 255-256]
F 10/7 Jane Tompkins, "At the Buffalo Bill Museum--June 1988" [BB 504-521]; "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez" [LRE 157-160]

M 10/10 Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny 66-111; Mark Twain, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" [LRE 168-178]
W 10/12 Fall Break: No Class
F 10/14 Fall Break: No Class

M 10/17 Film: Savage Acts: Wars, Fairs, and Empire
W 10/19 Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny 112-129
F 10/21 Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom 248-273

M 10/24 read carefully: Max Boot, "Savage Wars of Peace," Hoover Digest 3 (Summer 2002); Niall Ferguson, "America: An Empire in Denial," The Chronicle of Higher Education (28 March 2003); familiarize yourself with these sites: Named Campaigns: Indian Wars (U.S. Army Center of Military History); Hope and Memory, 1801-2004 (Adbusters); CRITICAL ESSAY II due no later than 5 pm
W 10/26 read carefully: Anthony Hall, from The American Empire and the Fourth World (xerox to be handed out); John Pilger, "The Warlords of America," Counterpunch 23 August 2004; familiarize yourself with these sites: Project for a New American Century; The American Empire Project
F 10/28 Lewis Lapham, "Who and What Is an American?" [BB 558-568]; Ishmael Reed, "America: The Multinational Society" [LRE 502-506]

Migration

M 11/7 Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom 114-137; W.E.B. Du Bois, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" [LRE 205-210]; Minstrelsy Music Cover [LRE 381]; Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Sympathy" [LRE 382]; Countee Cullen, "Incident" [LRE 232-233]
W 11/9 Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom 162-193; Songs from Gold Mountain [LRE 74-75]; Maxine Hong Kingston, "The Laws" [LRE 75-80]; Edith Maude Eaton (Sui Sin Far), "In the Land of the Free" [LRE 80-86]
F 11/11 "No Irish Need Apply" [LRE 73]; Abraham Cahan, "A Ghetto Wedding" [LRE 90-100]; Constantine Panunzio, from The Soul of an Immigrant [LRE 111-115]; Monica Krawczyk, "For Dimes and Quarters" [LRE 317-324]

M 11/14 David Henry Hwang, The Dance and the Railroad [LRE 210-232]; Diana Chang, "Saying Yes" [LRE 397]; Pat Mora, "Immigrants" [LRE 161]
W 11/16 Luis Valdez, Los Vendidos [LRE 256-264]; Stephen Sondheim, "America" [LRE 162-165]; Tato Laviera, "AmeR’can" [LRE 514-516]
F 11/18 Hanay Geiogamah, Foghorn [LRE 352-370]; Diane Burns, "Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question" [LRE 277-278]; Audre Lorde, "A Litany for Survival" [BB 745-747]; PROPOSAL for FINAL PROJECT due no later than 5 pm

M 11/21-F 11/25 Thanksgiving Break: No Classes

M 11/28 William Greider, "One World: Ready or Not" [BB 642-656]; Benjamin Barber, "Jihad vs. McWorld" [BB 656-671); Viewing Crash
W 11/30 Guillermo G—mez-Pe–a, "The '90s Culture of Xenophobia: Beyond the Tortilla Curtain" [BB 687-694]; Arjun Appadurai, from "The Heart of Whiteness" [LRE 516-527]--Class Cancelled: M/W readings to be discussed F, F/M readings to be discussed M
F 12/2 Eva Hoffman, from Lost in Translation: Life in a New Language [LRE 115-127]; Nicholasa Mohr, "The English Lesson" [LRE 298-308]; Lawson Fusao Inada, "Kicking the Habit" [LRE 308-311]; Gina ValdŽs, "English con Salsa" [LRE 312-313]; Amy Tan, "Mother Tongue" [BB 60-66]; CRITICAL ESSAY III due no later than 5 pm

M 12/5 Gloria Anzaldśa, "La conciencia de la mestiza/Towards a New Consciousness" [BB 708-722]; Benjamin Alire S‡enz, "In the Borderlands of Chicano Identity, There Are Only Fragments" [BB 722-737]
W 12/7 Luis Alberto Urrea, "Across the Wire" [BB 350-363]; Thomas King, "Borders" [BB 37-47]
F 12/9 Sherman Alexie, "A Drug Called Tradition" [LRE 441-446]; Trey Ellis, "Guess Who's Coming to Seder" [LRE 505-510]; David Mura, "Secrets and Anger" [LRE 478-486]; wrap up course

see the news page for office hours during exam week
F 12/16 FINAL PROJECT due no later than 5 pm

B. Class Policies

1. Attendance. As stated in Section VI above, barring emergencies each absence after the fourth will lower your final course grade by a full grade. Be aware that absences due to emergencies are the only absences that will not be counted toward your total for the semester. Emergencies include but are not limited to death in the family, hospitalization or serious illness, and natural disasters; scheduled and unavoidable school-sponsored events (games, meets, performances, etc.) are also counted as emergencies for the purpose of this attendance policy. Besides emergencies, the only other absences that won't affect your participation/preparation grade are excused absences. Please notify the instructor over email, in advance if possible and, if not, as soon after the absence as possible, if you wish an absence to be considered as an emergency or excused absence; the decision will be made at the instructor's discretion.

2. Course Listserv and Blackboard Site. You are required to subscribe to your section's listserv and to read and think about your peers' observations and discussion questions before each class meeting. To subscribe to your section's listserv, compose an email message to listserv@listserv.fredonia.edu, leave the subject line blank, and write this exact command in the body of message: subscribe amst20201 Your Name. Please be sure to delete any signature or other text that may appear in the body of your message, as it will only confuse the very literal-minded machine that handles listserv subscriptions. Very soon after sending this message, you will receive an email from the machine that handles subscriptions asking you to confirm your subscription; please follow the instructions in this email carefully, as you are not subscribed to the listserv until you have done so. Soon after doing this, you will receive another email message from the machine that handles subscriptions informing you that you are indeed subscribed to your section's listserv and laying out basic information about the listserv. Save this message--it's very useful. Once you get this message, you will begin receiving messages from others who are subscribed to the listserv; you also will be authorized to send messages to them by composing a message to the machine that distributes messages to those who are subscribed to the listserv. To do so, simply send an email message to amst20201@listserv.fredonia.edu. It is highly recommended that you either save a copy of every message you send to the course listserv (many email programs automatically save all messages sent in a "sent mail" folder) or "cc:" yourself whenever you send a message to the listserv, as your listserv participation will be graded both quantitatively and qualitatively (see Section IV above) and it is possible that technical or human error could result in your messages being lost in transit, accidentally deleted, misfiled, or miscounted. In addition, you may enroll in the course Blackboard site during the first week of class and use it throughout the semester. To do this, use a web browser to get to blackboard.fredonia.edu/. Login using your network password. Then search for AMST20201 and click on the enroll tab. This will send an enrollment request to me and I will enroll you. You should receive a confirmation message within 24 hours of completing your part of the enrollment process. Please familiarize yourself with the college's "Computer and Network Usage Policy" (Undergraduate Catalog 2005-2007, pp. 216-221) and check with your instructor first before posting something to your section's listserv or on the course Blackboard site that is not directly related to the course.

3. Late Assignments. Late discussion questions and final projects will not be accepted or graded. Other assignments will be accepted and graded but will lose one-third of a grade per day late (e.g., a paper turned in two days past the due date that would have otherwise received an A- would be penalized two-thirds of a grade and thus receive a B). Only students who ask for an extension at least two days before the due date will be granted one; asking for an extension on the final project means that your final grade for the semester will be an incomplete (I), and that you must turn in your final project before the end of the following semester so that the I becomes a grade other than an E.

4. Plagiarism and Academic Integrity. To plagiarize is "to steal and pass off as one's own the ideas or words of another" (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary). SUNY Fredonia strongly condemns plagiarism and takes severe action against those who plagiarize. Disciplinary action may extend to suspension from privileges or expulsion from college. Please familiarize yourself with the college's "Academic Integrity Policy" (Undergraduate Catalog 2005-2007, pp. 212-215, see also p. 199) and check with your instructor if you have any questions about it.