AST2940

The American experience: faith, freeways, success and consumption

I Mylchreest

8 points
* Two lectures and one tutorial per week
* First semester
* Clayton and Peninsula

Objectives Students completing this subject will be familiar with the social history of the American people and will have used a range of primary and secondary texts, and various disciplinary perspectives to achieve that understanding.

Synopsis This subject will examine the experience of ordinary Americans and the many roles they have played - slaves, masters, immigrants, workers, farmers, parents, believers, consumers, fans and objects of desire. Topics include American religious zeal, plantation life in the Old South, guns and violence, the meaning of the culture wars, and impact of television on baseball and other cultural pursuits.

Assessment Tutorial paper (1000 words): 20%
* Long essay using some primary sources but resting mainly on secondary sources (3000 words): 40%
* Examination (2 hours): 40%

Prescribed texts

Blassingame J The slave community: Plantation life in the Antebellum South OUP, 1979
Douglass F Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, a slave Bedford Books, 1993
Dreiser T Sister Carrie Norton, 1991
Scott Fitzgerald F The Great Gatsby Penguin, 1950
Jacobs H Incidents in life of a slave girl Harvard U P, 1987
Postman N Amusing ourselves to death Methuen, 1985
Whitfield S A death in the Delta Johns Hopkins U P, 1988

Recommended texts

Butterfield F All God's children: he Bosket family and the American tradition of violence Avon, 1995
Davis M City of quartz Verso, 1990
Hatch N The democratization of American Christianity Yale U P, 1989
Hunter J D Culture wars: The struggle to define America Basic Books, 1991
Hundley Jr., N The great thirst: Californians and water U California P, 1992
Jackson K T Crabgrass frontier: The suburbanization of America OUP, 1985
Limerick P N The legacy of conquest Norton, 1987
Tucher A Froth and scum: Truth, beauty, goodness and the ax murder in America's first mass medium UNCP, 1994