U.S. and Them: America and the World in Conversation

Honors Core III: The Diversity of the Search

Fall 2001

Tuesday and Thursday, 2:40-3:55 pm

MAC 402

Instructors:

Dr. Donna Bowman Office: McAlister 310 Phone: 450-3631 Office hours: By appointment E-mail: donnab@mail.uca.edu

Noel Murray Phone: 513-2481 Office hours: By appointment E-mail: bear@conwaycorp.net

Description: What does our country look like from beyond our borders? How do our American experiences and values influence the way we see other countries, ethnicities, and nationalities? In this course, we will explore the dialogues, monologues and frequent conflicts between the American way of thinking and seeing, and other ways from other lands. Through literature, film, comics, travel writing, reporting, and other media, we will discover exactly what it means to stand in an American's shoes looking out and experience (perhaps for the first time) what it's like to be in someone else's shoes looking in. We will crisscross the boundaries of our land, assembling a collage of varied experiences, in order to get to know America better, inside and out.

Objectives:

• To step outside our site – our culture and upbringing – and see it from other points of view
• To learn some of the history of cultural interactions between the United States and other nations and regions
• To apply a transcultural analytic perspective to current international interactions
• To read with understanding in a variety of genres
• To acquire communication skills in written and spoken presentations
• To explore the implications of global cultural exchange and movement for the future

Texts:

Rob Kroes, If You’ve Seen One, You’ve Seen the Mall: Europeans and American Mass Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996)

Philip R. DeVita & James D. Armstrong, eds., Distant Mirrors: America as a Foreign Culture, 3^rd edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2001)

Requirements:

1. Attendance. More than four excused absences will affect your grade; more than two unexcused absences will affect your grade.
2. Participation. Our pursuit of ideas and answers is a group effort, and we will need everyone to listen, question, respond, and lead.
3. Listserv participation. Before each class period you must post a response to the previous class’s topic on the class e-mail listserv. This activity takes the place of the journal entries to which you are accustomed. Your writing, instead of disappearing into the black hole of your instructor’s office, will be sent to every other member of the class. All students, in turn, may reply to your e-mail with their own comments, answers to questions you’ve raised, agreements or disagreements, or any pertinent response – and all those replies will also be sent to the entire class. Posts are due at class time. On most class days, you will be given a topic or question to write about before the next class period.

The required weekly post is just the beginning of listserv participation. You are encouraged to use the listserv to pose questions, give answers to others, and generally ruminate on any topic related to the class. It’s a way to “keep the conversation going” outside of class time, and a way for you to help each other through some difficult but important ideas. The website for the listserv (general information, subscription options, archives) is http://l2.uca.edu/mailman/listinfo/usandthem. Send your postings to usandthem@l2.uca.edu(that’s an L before the 2). For further guidelines, see “Using the Class Listserv.”

4. Projects. Three projects, two individual and one group, will make up the largest part of your grade. The first, due September 18, will be an “ethnic autobiography.” The second, due October 23, will be an interview of a person from another culture. The third, due November 29-December 6, will be a group presentation based on your exploration of one of Central Arkansas’s subcultures.
5. Final exam. The exam will be a choice of essay questions designed to allow you to integrate information from various sections of the course.

Schedule of Classes:

DATE	TOPIC	ASSIGNMENTS
Thursday, August 16	Introduction
Section I: Looking Across the Borders 1. Europe
Tuesday, August 21	France	Readings:  Adam Gopnik, “Endgame,” The New Yorker, 1998 Denis Lacorne, “The Barbaric Americans,” both in Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2001
Thursday, August 23	Germany and Russia	Readings: Peter Schneider, “A Hero with a Blind Spot” Yuri Levada, “After the Thaw,” both in Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2001
Tuesday, August 28	De Tocqueville on the American Individual	Reading: Alexis De Toqueville, excerpts from Democracy in America, Section 2: “Of Individualism in Democratic Countries” “That the Americans Combat the Effects of Individualism with Free Institutions” “Of the Uses Americans Make of Public Associations” “How the Americans Combat Individualism By the Principle of Self-Interest Rightly Understood” at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/toc_indx.html
Thursday, August 30	What’s happened to De Toqueville’s America?	Readings:  Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/assoc/bowling.html Nicholas Lehman, “Kicking in Groups,” at http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96apr/kicking/kicking.htm
Tuesday, September 4	Inventing America	Reading: Kroes, Chapter 1: “American Culture in European Metaphors”
Thursday, September 6	Culture Shock	Readings:  Herve Varenne, “America and I” (pp. 75-83) Andre Toom, “A Russian Teacher in America” (pp. 122-138), both in DeVita and Armstrong
Tuesday, September 11	American Ads	Reading: Kroes, Chapter 4: “Advertising: The World of Disjointed Attributes”
Thursday, September 13	American Bodies	Readings:  Horace Miner, “Body Rituals Among the Nacirema” (pp. 27-31) Geoffrey Hunt, “Learning to Hug: An English Anthropologist’s Experiences in North America” (pp. 162-176), both in DeVita and Armstrong
Tuesday, September 18	Innocents Abroad	Viewing: Whit Stillman, Barcelona (part I) PROJECT #1 DUE!
Thursday, September 20	Foreign Relations	Viewing:  Barcelona (part II) Reading: Allister Sparks, “A View of Rome from the Provinces,” Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2001
2. The Middle East
Tuesday, September 25	Anti-Americanism	Readings: Fouad Ajami, “Stranger in the Arab-Muslim World,” Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2001
Thursday, September 27	American Images of Islam	Reading: Edward Said, Covering Islam (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), “Islam and the West” (pp. 3-32)
Tuesday, October 2	Women in the Islamic World	Reading: Geraldine Brooks, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women (New York: Doubleday, 1995), pp. 55-75 Rahel Wasserfall, “Gender Encounters in America: An Outsider’s View of Continuity and Ambivalence,” DeVita and Armstrong 2^nd edition (handout)
Thursday, October 4	Comix Journalism	Reading: Joe Sacco, selections from Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde
3. Asia
Tuesday, October 9	China and Communism	Readings: Honggang Yang, “Neighborly Strangers” (pp. 95-101), in DeVita and Armstrong Excerpts from Arkush and Lee, eds., Land without Ghosts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 259-279
Thursday, October 11	Chinese Travelers, Willing and Otherwise	Readings:  Excerpts from Arkush and Lee, pp. 209-212, 219-226, 281-298 Viewing:  Tsui Hark, Once Upon a Time in China (excerpts)
Tuesday, October 16	Japan/Phillippines	Readings: Yohko Tsuji, “Encounters with the Elderly in America” (pp. 84-94) Amparo B. Ojeda, “Growing Up American: Doing the Right Thing” (pp. 44-49), both in DeVita and Armstrong Viewing:  Frank Capra, Know Your Enemy: Japan
Thursday, October 18	Vietnam	Reading: Kroes Chapter 6, “Mediated History: The Vietnam War as a Media Event”
Section II: Looking Within
Tuesday, October 23	Superman and the Immigrant Experience	Reading: Selections from Superman comics PROJECT #2 DUE!
Thursday, October 25	Immigrant Stories	Readings: Jade Snow Wong, “A Chinese Evolution” Czeslaw Milosz, “A Polish Poet in California” both in Thomas C. Wheeler, ed., The Immigrant Experience: The Anguish of Becoming American (New York: Dial Press, 1971), pp. 107-131, 193-210.
Tuesday, October 30	America’s Natives	Reading: Heizer and Kroeber, eds., Ishi the Last Yahi: A Documentary History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 91-116 Emanuel J. Drechsel, “A European Anthropologist’s Personal and Ethnographic Impressions of the United States” (pp. 177-197), in DeVita and Armstrong
Thursday, November 1	From the Reservation	Readings:  Crozier-Hogle and Wilson, Surviving in Two Worlds: Contemporary Native American Voices (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), pp. 112-131 Ian Frazier, On the Rez (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2000), Chapter 1
Tuesday, November 6	Our Neighbor-Twin: Canada	Reading: Anthony DePalma, Here: A Biography of the New American Continent (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), pp. 233-257.
Thursday, November 8	Our Neighbor-Stranger: Mexico	Reading: Ibid., pp. 139-163.
Tuesday, November 13	Others Inside Our Borders: African-Americans	Reading: John L. Gwaltney, Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America (New York: Random House, 1980), pp. 236-287
Thursday, November 15	Hispanics	Reading: Roberto Suro, Strangers Among Us: How Latino Immigration is Transforming America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), pp. 77-106
Tuesday, November 20	Cultural Elites	Reading:  Kroes Chapter 2, “High and Low: The Quest for Cultural Standards in America”
Thursday, November 22		NO CLASS – THANKSGIVING BREAK
Tuesday, November 27	Music	Reading: Kroes Chapter 8, “Rap: The Ultimate Staccato Culture”
Thursday, November 29	Presentations	PROJECT #3 DUE!
Tuesday, December 4	Presentations
Thursday, December 6	Presentations and Wrap-Up
FINAL EXAM: THURSDAY, DEC. 13, 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM!