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Long before the founding of the republic, Americans were telling stories to make sense of their experiences. These stories often follow deeply rooted and sometimes little-understood American characteristics, optimism, practicality, individualism, and a genial disregard for rules prominent among them. This course will explore the sources of these characteristics in American popular culture. We will survey the legends, tall tales, and popular stories that have both grown out of and shaped American life and culture. We will dissect the rhetoric and propaganda of American political figures, especially their exploitation of American myths. We will explore historic as well as contemporary cultural artifacts, among them the current American passport. One aim will be to make connections between early American popular culture and recent as well as contemporary popular culture.
We will examine legendary figures such as Davy Crockett, Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind, Johnny Appleseed, and John Bunyan as well as relatively recent re-creations of the gangster as a folk hero in Damon Runyon's Guys and Dolls, in the figure of Tony Soprano from the hit series The Sopranos, and in contemporary computer games. We will look at the American cowboy and his connections to the American gangster. We will explore popular images of marriage and the family in at least one popular T.V. show, "I Love Lucy," and in the well-known primary school series "Dick and Jane." We will hear Vietnam-era and civil rights movement protests from folks singers Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez. Students are encouraged to suggest aspects of American life and culture that they would like to have discussed.
Students should also purchase the following through the university bookstore or an Internet source:
- American Tall Tales, by Mary Pope Osborne (Alfred A. Knopf)
- Myths, Legends, and Folktales of America: An Anthology, by David Leeming, and Jake Page (Oxford University Press)
- A Treasury of Great American Scandals: Tantalizing True Tales of Historic Misbehavior by the Founding Fathers and Others Who Let Freedom Swing By Michael Farquhar (Penguin)
Recommended (not required):
- A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn (HarperPerennial)
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