2008 AM The Sixties

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 !Attention!

The reader is now available on Stud-IP.

Winter Term 2007/08

Lecturer: Christina Meyer

Office Hours: We 3:00-4:pm; A06 2-212b

Fon: 0441-798-4570

E-Mail: christina.meyer@uni-oldenburg.de



Comment

The aim of this seminar is to recover the turbulent “Sixties.” Among the topics: civil rights, television, youth culture, the university boom, JFK, the war in Vietnam, the Cold War, the ‘space race.’ The course is organized around, but not limited to, a number of key books and figures, and secondary studies on the era and its legacies. In addition to literary readings, the syllabus will include a variety of historical materials and a range of theoretical viewpoints. Likely authors include: Norman Mailer, Michael Herr, Tim O’Brien, Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme, John Barth, Noam Chomsky. Extensive class discussions of primary texts will be the norm (supported by secondary readings). A reader will be made available at the beginning of the summer term.

Prerequisites for participation (general): regular attendance, active participation, everybody: in-class oral presentation (approx. 10-15 minutes) Prerequisites for certificate: all of the above + final paper (10-12 pages, approx. 5000 words)

Starting on: April 07, 2008 Language in class: English


Syllabus

  • April 07, 2008 Organization


Part I: History

  • April 14, 2008 From the Fifties to the Sixties

Texts: Fredric Jameson, “Periodizing the 60s,” Social Text 9/10. The 60’s without Apology (Spring/Summer 1984): 178-209.

  • April 21, 2008 The Vietnam War – the U.S.

Texts: 1) Larry Heinemann, Paco’s Story (excerpts); 2) Michael Herr, Dispachtes (excerpts); 3) Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War (excerpts)

Presentation: “The Vietnam War, the Home Front, and the Legacies: An Overview”

  • April 28, 2008 The Vietnam War – Vietnam

Texts: 1) Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War (excerpts); 2) Duong Thu Huong, Novel Without a Name (excerpts)


Part II: Social Transformations

  • May 05, 2008 Social Movements I

Texts: 1) Beth Bailey, “Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America’s Heartland,” Journal of Social History 30.4 (Summer 1997): 827-856. 2) (optional): Jacob U. Gordon, “Black Males in the Civil Rights Movement,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 569. The African American Male in American Life and Thought (May 2000): 42-55.

Presentations: 1) “Black Panthers”; 2) “Women’s Liberation Movement”

  • May 19, 2008 Social Movements II

Texts: 1) Nella Van Dyke, “The Location of Student Protest: Patterns of Activism at American Universities in the 1960s,” Student Protest. The Sixties and After, ed. Gerard J. Degroot (London & New York: Longman, 1998) 27-36. 2) (optional): Sandra Hollin Flowers, “Coming of Age Under Protest: African American College Students in the 1960s,” Degroot 169-185.

Presentation: “The Rise (and ‘Fall’) of the Student Movement”

  • May 26, 2008 (Mass) Media – “The Whole World is Watching…”

Texts: 1) Thomas Stritch, “The Blurred Image: Some Reflections on the Mass Media in the 1960’s,” The Review of Politics 34.4. America in Change: Reflections on the 60’s and 70’s (October 1972): 206-219; 2) Marshall McLuhan, “Television: The Timid Giant,” The Sixties: Art, Politics and Media of our Most Explosive Decade, ed. Gerald Howard (1982; New York: Marlowe & Company, 1991) 399-412.

Presentation: “The Race in Space: From Sputnik to the Landing on the Moon”


Part III: Culture

  • June 02, 2008 Counter-Culture(s), Art, and Dissent

Presentation: 1) “Underground Comix”; 2) “Pop Art”

  • June 09, 2008 The Soundtrack of the 1960s

Texts: 1) Robert Somma, “Rock Theatricality,” The Drama Review 14.1 (Autumn 1969): 128-138. 2) (optional): Nick Bromell, “‘The Blues and the Veil’: The Cultural Work of Musical Form in Blues and ‘60’s Rock,” American Music 18.2 (Summer 2000): 193-221.

Presentation: “Rock’n’Roll, Free Jazz, Woodstock – Music of the Sixties”

  • June 16, 2008 Postmodern Writing: Counter-Narratives?

Text: Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (excerpts)

Presentation: “What We Talk about When We Talk about Postmodern Fiction”

  • June 23, 2008 Postmodern Writing, Counter-Narratives?

Texts: 1) Donald Barthelme, Snow White (excerpts); 2) Christian S. Berkemeier, “Short Fiction in the 1960s: Donald Barthelme and Postmodern Parody,” The Sixties Revisited: Culture, Society, Politics, eds. Jürgen Heidekind, Jörg Helbig and Anke Ortlepp, American Studies Monographic Series 90 (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2001) 237-246.

  • June 30, 2008 Postmodern Writing, Counter-Narratives?

Texts: 1) John Barth, Lost in a Funhouse (excerpts); 2) John Barth, “The Literature of Exhaustion,” Surfiction: Fiction Now… and Tomorrow, ed. Raymond Federman (Chicago: The Swallow Press Inc., 1975) 19-33.

  • July 07, 2008 Round-up


Reading Requirements/Suggestions

  • Altbach, Philip G., and Robert Cohen. “American Student Activism: The Post-Sixties Transformation.” The Journal of Higher Education 61.1 (Jan./Feb. 1990): 32-49.
  • Anderson, Terry H. The Movement and The Sixties. New York & Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.
  • Bailey, Beth. “Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America’s Heartland.” Journal of Social History 30.4 (Summer 1997): 827-856.
  • Bao Ninh. The Sorrow of War. Trans. Phan Thanh Hao. Ed. Frank Palmos. New York: Riverhead Books, 1993.
  • Barth, John. Lost in the Funhouse. Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice. 1963. New York: Anchor Books, 1988.
  • ---. “The Literature of Exhaustion.” Surfiction: Fiction Now… and Tomorrow. Ed. Raymond Federman. Chicago: The Swallow Press Inc., 1975. 19-33.
  • Bercovitch, Sacvan, gen. ed. Prose Writing 1940—1990. Cambridge, UK, et al.: Cambridge UP, 1999. Vol. 7 of The Cambridge History of American Literature. 8 vols. to date. 1994-
  • Bibby, Michael, Hearts and Minds: Bodies, Poetry, and Resistance in the Vietnam Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1996.
  • Bodroghkozy, Aniko. “Reel Revolutionaries: An Examination of Hollywood’s Cycle of 1960s Youth Rebellion Films.” Cinema Journal 41.3 (Spring 2002): 38-58.
  • Boorstin, Daniel J. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Rev. Ed. 1961. New York: Atheneum, 1987.
  • Boyer, Paul S., Clifford E. Clark, Jr. et al., eds. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Concise 4th ed. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
  • Brodkin, Karen. “Once More into the Streets.” Signs 25.4. (Summer 2000): 1223-1226.
  • Bromell, Nick. “‘The Blues and the Veil’: The Cultural Work of Musical Form in Blues and ‘60’s Rock.” American Music 18.2 (Summer 2000): 193-221.
  • Caputo, Philip. A Rumor of War. New York: Ballantine Books, 1977.
  • Chester, J. Pach, Jr. “TV’s 1968: War, Politics, and Violence on the Networking Evening News.“ South Central Review 16.4. Rethinking 1968: The United States & Western Europe (Winter 1999/Spring 2000): 29-42.
  • Chomsky, Noam. Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture. Boston: South End P, 1993.
  • Corrigan, Timothy. A Cinema Without Walls: Movies and Culture After Vietnam. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1991.
  • Costello, Donald. P. “From Counterculture to Anticulture.” The Review of Politics 34.4. America in Change: Reflections on the 60’s and 70’s (October 1972): 187-193.
  • Culbert, David. “Television’s Visual Impact on Decision-Making in the USA, 1968: The Tet Offensive and Chicago’s Democratic National Convention.” Journal of Contemporary History 33.3 (July 1998): 419-449.
  • Degroot, Gerard J., ed. Student Protest. The Sixties and After. London and New York: Longman, 1998.
  • Duong Thu Huong. Novel Without a Name. Trans. Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson. New York et al.: Penguin, 1995.
  • Fairclough, Adam. “Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Vietnam War.” Phylon (1960-) 45.1 (1984): 19-39.
  • Feuer, Lewis S. “Student Unrest in the United States.“ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 404. American Higher Education: Prospects and Choices (November 1972): 170-182.
  • Gitlin, Todd. Sixties: Years of Hope – Days of Rage. Rev. Ed. New York et al.: Bantam Books, 1993.
  • Goldman, Albert. “The Emergence of Rock.” Repr. from New American Review 3 (1968). The Sixties: Art, Politics and Media of our Most Explosive Decade. Ed. Gerald Howard. 1982; New York: Marlowe & Company, 1991. 343-354.
  • Gordon, Jacob U. “Black Males in the Civil Rights Movement.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 569. The African American Male in American Life and Thought (May 2000): 42-55.
  • Jameson, Fredric. “Periodizing the 60s.” Social Text 9/10. (Spring/Summer 1984): 178-209.
  • Heidekind, Jürgen, Jörg Helbig and Anke Ortlepp, eds. The Sixties Revisited: Culture, Society, Politics. American Studies Monographic Series 90. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2001.
  • Heinemann, Larry. Paco’s Story. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986.
  • Herr, Michael. Dispatches. 1968. New York: Avon Books, 1977.
  • Hood, Ralph W., Jr., Ronald J. Morris et al. “Martin and Malcolm as Cultural Icons: An Empirical Study Comparing Lower Class African American and White Males.” Review of Religious Research 36.4 (June 1995): 382-388.
  • Howard, Gerald, ed. The Sixties: Art, Politics and Media of our Most Explosive Decade. 1982; New York: Marlowe & Company, 1991.
  • Hunt, Andrew. “‘When Did the Sixties Happen?’ Searching for New Directions.” Journal of Social History 33.1 (Autumn 1999): 147-161.
  • Hy V. Luong, ed. Postwar Vietnam: Dynamics of a Transforming Society. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; Landham, New York et al.: Roman & Littlefield, 2003.
  • Martin, Bill. “Continuity and Discontinuity in the Politics of the Sixties Generation: A Reassessment.” Sociological Forum 9.3 (September 1994): 403-430.
  • McLuhan, Marshall. “Television: The Timid Giant.” The Sixties: Art, Politics and Media of our Most Explosive Decade. Ed. Gerald Howard. 1982; New York: Marlowe & Company, 1991. 399-412.
  • Pütz, Manfred. The Pitfalls The Story of Identity. American Fiction of the Sixties. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979.
  • Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. London: Vintage, 2002. (excerpts)
  • Reed, Harry A. “Martin Luther King, Jr.: History and Memory, Reflections on Dreams and Silences.” The Journal of Negro History 84.2 (Spring 1999): 150-166.
  • Saul, Scott. Freedom is, Freedom ain’t: Jazz and the Making of The Sixties. Cambridge, MA & London, England: Harvard UP, 2003.
  • Schnore, Leo F. and Vivian Zelig Klaff. “Suburbanization in the Sixties: A Preliminary Analysis.” Land Economics 48.1 (1972): 23-33.
  • Small, Melvin. “The Doves Ascendant: The American Antiwar Movement in 1968.” South Central Review 16.4. Rethinking 1968: The United States & Western Europe (Winter 1999/Spring 2000): 43-52.
  • Smith, Patricia Juliana, ed. The Queer Sixties. New York and London: Routledge, 1999.
  • Somma, Robert. “Rock Theatricality.” The Drama Review 14.1 (Autumn 1969): 128-138.
  • Spates, James. “Counterculture and Dominant Culture Values: A Cross-National Analysis of the Underground Press and Dominant Culture Magazines.” American Sociological Review 41.5 (October 1976): 868-883.
  • Spigel, Lynn and Michael Curtin, eds. The Revolution Wasn’t Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict. New York & London: Routledge, 1997.
  • Staub, Michael E. “Black Panthers, New Journalism, and the Rewriting of the Sixties.“ Representations 57 (Winter 1997): 52-72.
  • Stritch, Thomas. “The Blurred Image: Some Reflections on the Mass Media in the 1960’s.” The Review of Politics 34.4. America in Change: Reflections on the 60’s and 70’s (October 1972): 206-219.
  • Woods, Randall Bennett. “LBJ, Politics, and 1968.” South Central Review 16.4. Rethinking 1968: The United States & Western Europe (Winter 1999/Spring 2000): 16-28.
  • Wyatt, David. Out of the Sixties: Storytelling and the Vietnam Generation. Cambridge, England et al.: Cambridge UP, 1993.
  • Zak, Albin J. “Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation ’All along the Watchtower.“ Journal of the American Musicological Society 57.3 (Autumn 2004): 599-644.
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