AML 6027
Back to the Thirties
Fall 2009
Tuesdays periods 6-8 in TUR 4344
Susan Hegeman   

        
The recent global economic collapse has lately turned our attention back to the 1930s: are we headed for another Great Depression? Should we brace for double-digit unemployment? Will a new president offer us a new New Deal? Is John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) a prophet for our time? In the spirit of this mood of historical comparison, this course will also return to the 1930s and the scholarship it has inspired.

In an effort to refresh our understanding of this period, we will address both canonical and less familiar literary works and discuss a set of issues that have both historical and contemporary resonance, including the 1929 crash; homelessness, poverty, and its representation; the culture wars of prohibition and the Hollywood code; consumerism and mass culture; and the legacy of left cultural activism. 

Required Texts

The following books have been ordered for this class at Goering's Textbook Store (1717 NW 1st Avenue; Tel. 352-377-3703). If you purchase your books elsewhere,  please try to get the editions ordered for the class.

Michael Denning, The Cultural Front (Verso 1859841708)
Todd DiPastino, Citizen Hobo (Chicago 0226143791)
Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood (Columbia 0231110952)
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash 1929 (Houghton 0395859999)
Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (Harper 0061350176)
John O’Hara, Appointment in Samarra (Vintage 037571920)
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (Penguin 0143039431)
Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts and the Day of the Locust (New Directions 0811202151)
Nathanael West, A Cool Million and The Dream Life of Balso Snell (FSG 0374530270)
Richard Wright, 12 Million Black Voices (Basic Books 1560254467)

Required Films 
My Man Godfrey
Wild Boys of the Road
Baby Face
Sullivan's Travels

Course Requirements

  1. Attendance and active participation in the seminar is expected. You should be prepared to be called upon. You will also be asked to informally introduce the readings for a given week.
  2. You will hand in 25-30 pages of written work over the course of the semester. Depending on your needs and goals for the course, this may be in the form of three short papers of 8-10 pages in length, one long paper, or a long and a short paper. Students choosing to write one long paper should show me a prospectus of 1 page by Nov. 3. I recommend that advanced students working on extended projects related to the course material write one long paper. Students whose goals are to develop a strong familiarity with the course material should consider writing shorter papers.
 
Due dates
 
Course policy on Incompletes: I am willing to let students take Incompletes to have more time to complete a long final research paper. However, in the interest of not excessively prolonging the work of this course, I will accept seminar papers and grade them for full credit until the end of the spring 2010 semester. Students who turn in papers after this date will not receive an "A" in the course.

Academic Honesty Policy

You are required to review the university's Academic Honor Code and the Academic Honesty Guidelines, especially the discussion of plagiarism.  Plagiarism or any other form of academic dishonesty will result in an automatic failure of the assignment and the filing of a report in your academic file.

Students with Disabilities

Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office. Students must then show the Instructor documentation provided by the Dean of Students Office specifying what kind of accommodation they need.


 
Schedule of Classes and Readings


August 25 course introduction

1. the struggle between the state and the financial industry

That first age of banking oligarchs came to an end with the passage of significant banking regulation in response to the Great Depression; the reemergence of an American financial oligarchy is quite recent.—Simon Johnson, “The Quiet Coup” The Atlantic (May 2009)

Bill Wilson, "Krueger:  The Original Bernard Madoff?" BBC News, 13 March 2009
September 1 Galbraith
September 8 O’Hara


2. Rediscovering the Other Half

Like a dozen or so other cities across the nation, Fresno is dealing with an unhappy déjà vu: the arrival of modern-day Hoovervilles, illegal encampments of homeless people that are reminiscent, on a far smaller scale, of Depression-era shantytowns. “Cities Deal with Surge in Shantytowns” New York Times March 25, 2009

The pain of the recession is widespread, with a few demographics seeing their unemployment rates higher than at any point since the Great Depression. Heather Boushey, "Recession Still Plagues Workers" Center for American Progress, July 2, 2009

September 15 My Man Godfrey/Wild Boys of the Road
September 22 DiPastino
September 29 Wright
October 6 Hurston

 3. culture wars/the consolidation of cultural industries

“In Downturn, Americans Flock to the Movies” New York Times Feb 28, 2009

October 13 Doherty
October 20 Baby Face/Sullivan's Travels
October 27  West: Locust

4. populism/the popular front/the cultural front/the legacy of the thirties

 I suppose I started working on the Obama campaign in 1932. Stetson Kennedy

November 3 West: Cool Million
November 10 Denning
November 17 Steinbeck
November 24 no meeting
December 1 Steinbeck
December 8 no meeting





updated 8/31/09