Will's Reading

Click here to download a pdf of the reading for Will's unit on power.

All,



I tried to do a cool blog post about the materials I have found helpful in teaching about "power," but 'm not quite as clever as Pete and my attempt was a miserable failure. I'm pretty good at email, though, so here are some links to and attachments of readings that have been somewhat successful as aides in teaching the concept of "hegemony" to AMS 100 students.



Here is a link to a definition/introduction to the term from Cultural Theory: Key Concepts on Google Books, that I have students read first:



http://books.google.com/books?id=nyzORR-xYMIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Hegemony+Cultural+Theory:+Key+Concepts&source=gbs_similarbooks_s&cad=1#v=onepage&q=Hegemony&f=false



After reading that breif passage, I have them read from Gramsci's essay "Hegemony, Intellectuals, and the State", hoping that if thye undrstood that more approachable definition, that they might be able to pick out and understand some important concepts from the original. Here's a Google Books link to the piece:



http://books.google.com/books?id=LZ7mHdAVajYC&pg=PA210&dq=hegemony+intellectuals+and+the+state&hl=en&ei=F4GpS5fHOpv4MdGbzM4B&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=hegemony%20intellectuals%20and%20the%20state&f=false



Then I use the early days of rock and roll to talk about the way the "dominant/leading cultural group" (represented by big record labels and radio stations with their ties to big business and somewhat weaker ties to institutions like the governmnet and the church, as well as the general populous of middle-class adults, all of whose approval they relied upon to some degree) struggles and compromises with potentially threatening "suboridinate cultural groups" (here, musicians and consumers--often young people, and frequently from the working class and racial margins--with their heavily rhythmic, occasionally sexual music) in order to retain their position of power and cultural leadership.



I have attached a chapter form David Szatmary's book Rockin' in Time: A Social History of Rock and Roll that covers that period. I assigne this to students to give them the historical context and some background about the artists and the music business so they can exploreand discuss how the hegemony framework might be applicable to this situation.



Along with this information, I of course have them listen to music from some of the more prominent artists from the time including the working-class, black pioneers; the working class, southern, white musicians that grew up around the raw ingredients of rock and roll (black blues and gospel, as well as country music); and some middle-class, white pretenders hired by record copanies to cash-in on the new rock and roll sound.



Little Richard--Tutti Frutti, Good Golly Miss Molly



Chuck Berry--Maybellene, Johnny B. Goode



Pat Boone--Tutti Frutti, Ain't That a Shame



Elvis--That's All Right Mamma, Hound Dog, It's Now or Never



Jerry Lee Lewis--Whole Lot of Shaking Goin' On, Great Balls of Fire



Richie Valens-- La Bamba



(I provide a link to last.fm on my Blackboard site, but I don't think that will work for you guys, because you aren't in my class. Hopefully you've heard some of these songs.)



Now, if you read through all that, thanks. If not, don't sweat it too much; I think I get to explain some of my methods during our meeting tomorrow.



Later,



Will

Material on "Difference"

You can't attach files (other than image files) to Blogger posts, but I uploaded my outline to another site for you to download. Here it is:

Pete's Difference outline

It's a lecture/intro to the concept of "difference."

Primary and Secondary Sources
To watch the trailer for Ken Burns' Jazz, click here (it's basically the first five minutes of the series). Click on "Watch the video trailer" to view. RealPlayer required.

George Lipsitz's chapter on Jazz (secondary source) can be read at Google Books here.

Horace Tapscott's oral history of jazz in LA (primary source) can be found at Google Books here.

The Black Rock Coalition website is here.

Here's Maureen Mahon's essay on the BRC at Google Books

Here's Living Colour's video for "Cult of Personality":


Here's Fishbone's video for "Party at Ground Zero":


Here is a live performance of TV on the Radio's "The Wrong Way":

Possible Intro material

I was thinking about what to do to engage our students on the first day of AMS 100 in the fall, and what came to mind was El Vez. His work, as a homosexual, Mexican American Elvis impersonator, engages all of the big themes we came up with at our last meeting. And he's fun to watch. Here's a live video of his "Star Spangled Banner/C.C. Rider":


There's also this great clip from a documentary on Elvis impersonators, in which El Vez articulates in a minute and a half all of our themes: America, how culture works, power, and difference:


And for context, here's Elvis' performance of the "American Trilogy":

Concept Map from 3/10 Meeting

I took this photo of our concept map from the 3/10 meeting. I thought it would be useful to see how we started to work with topics and learning outcomes. Click on the photo for a larger version.

AMS 100 Redesign Plan (Working draft of 10 March 2010)

For March 24, follow the syllabus and post to the blog.

Course Units and Learning Outcomes:

America – Historical consciousness, problematizing norms - Liz

Culture – Understanding complexity, vocabulary, culture matters - Chris

Difference - Understanding norms not as natural but as socially and culturally constructed - Pete

Power - Difference and Inequality at the levels of the individual, group, nation, and world – Will

Closing - Niki and Stephanie

Note:

Cheryl will work with Registrar to change lecture to Mondays before 3pm or after 7pm, space lectures apart throughout the semester rather than frontloading all of them, and change MW sections to WF

Stephanie's Topics and Goals

Here are my topic ideas:

Culture: I present my students with several definitions of culture and we discuss the merits and limits of each. The goal here is not to arrive at an airtight definition (as if), but to get them thinking about what people actually mean when they invoke that concept, particularly the concept of “American culture,” and to understand that the meaning isn't fixed.

Power: In a Foucauldian sense, I suppose (sorry, he's on my desk at the moment)--I look for ways to make the normally invisible aspects of power visible and to give my students to tools to look critically at the discourses that prop up the order of things (yes, I told you it was Foucauldian).

I like power as a central concept for reasons similar to those that Pete brought up for the “race, class, gender” trinity; I'd like students to leave the class with the capacity to spot “naturalization” when it happens. I introduce a few power-related terms that I hope give them a few tools to do this; hegemony and normativity are the biggies.

Categories of difference: I think I got this straight off our AMS website at one point. Encompassed here are race, class, gender, sexuality, religious orientation, disability—which ones we emphasize the most probably depends to a large extent on the material that we choose.

I suppose a big goal here is to give them a vocabulary that allows them to talk meaningfully about these categories and how they create identity and experience, without resorting to essentialist ideas. I try to work against the tendency that some students have, once we start deconstructing and talking about social formations, to throw up their hands and decide that they have no means of talking about these categories without getting in trouble.