Introductory description

This module explores the history of the United States (1929 to the present) through the rise of the culture industries; the production, censorship and consumption of literature, theatre, music, film, radio, art, television, sport, fashion, advertising, gaming and social media; and the ways in which individuals have sought to resist or reformulate dominant national discourses through cultural production and critique.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

1. Lost Generations
2. The Gangster as Tragic Hero
3. The Women Who Ran Hollywood
4. The Fear of the Dark
5. Seeing Red in the Blacklist
6. Wenches with Wrenches and Men in Grey Flannel Suits
7. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
8. Backlash
9. Franchise: Culture's End Game/Game Over

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the formation of American culture in the early twentieth century and its development through the twenty-first century.
• Communicate ideas and findings, adapting to a range of situations, audiences and degrees of complexity.
• Generate ideas through the analysis of a broad range of primary source material.
• Analyse and evaluate the contributions made by existing scholarship related to the history and theory of culture.
• Act with limited supervision and direction within defined guidelines, accepting responsibility for achieving deadlines.

Indicative reading list

• Christine Acham, Revolution Televised (2004)
• Rebecca Arnold, The American Look (2009)
• Eric Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight (2004)
• Mary Beltran, ed., Mixed Race Hollywood (2008)
• Alexandre Bohas, The Political Economy of Disney (2016)
• Douglas Brode, Leah Deyneka, ed., Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars: an Anthology (2012)
• Emily Carman, Independent Stardom (2015)
• Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (1937)
• Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
• Jeff Chang, Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-hop Generation (2007)
• Shilpa Davé, Leilani Nishime, and Tasha Oren, ed., Global Asian American Popular Cultures (2016)
• Mike Davis, City of Quartz (1998)
• Vine Deloria, Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1970)
• Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
• Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are (1995)
• Susan Faludi, Backlash (1990)
• Edna Ferber, Giant (1952)
• Aaron Fox, Real Country (2004)
• Ben Fritz, The Big Picture (2017)
• William Graebner, The Age of Doubt (1991)
• Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest (1929)
• Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape (1977)
• Elizabeth Hawes, Fashion Is Spinach (1938)
• Lillian Hellman, Scoundrel Time (1976)
• Ernest Hemingway, Farewell to Arms (1929)
• Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues (1956)
• Klaus Honnef, Andy Warhol: Commerce Into Art (2005)
• bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1982)
• Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1990)
• David Kaufman, Jewhooing the Sixties (2012)
• M. Alson Kibler, Rank Ladies: Gender and Cultural Hierarchy in American Vaudeville (2009)
• Clayton Koppes and Gregory Black, Hollywood Goes to War (1990)
• Naomi Klein, No Logo (2000)
• Tony Kushner, Angels in America (2007)
• Robert and Helen Lynd, Middletown (1929)
• Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance (1994)
• Eric Lott, Love and Theft, Blackface Milstrelsy and the American Working Class (rev. 2013)
• Dwight MacDonald, Against the American Grain (1962)
• Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream (1986)
• Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men (2005)
• Johnny Morgan, Disco (2011)
• Alan Nadel, Containment Culture (1995)
• Victor Navasky, Naming Names (1980)
• Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders (1957)
• Fred Pasley, Al Capone: Biography of a Self-Made Man (1930)
• Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (1986)
• Kathy Peiss, Zoot Suit (2011)
• Catherine Ramirez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit (2009)
• Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon, Stan Lee and the Rise of the American Comic Book (2003)
• Michael Rogin, Ronald Reagan, The Movie, and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (1988)
• George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American (1993)
• Nancy Lynn Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers' Wars (1982)
• Bobby Seale, Seize the Time (1996)
• Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts (1928)
• Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, Shaded Lives: African-American Women and Television (2002)
• Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, ed., Watching While Black (2012)
• J.E. Smyth, Nobody's Girl Friday (2018)
• Susan Sontag, On Photography (2002)
• Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1985)
• Lynn Spigel and Michael Curtin, ed., The Revolution Wasn't Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict (1996)
• Melanie Swalwell, Helen Stuckey and Angela Ndalianis, ed., Fans and Videogames : Histories, Fandom, Archives (2017)
• Studs Terkel, Hard Times (rev. 2005)
• Susan Ware, Holding Their Own (1982)
• Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955)
• William Whyte, The Organization Man (1956)
• Crystal Brent Zook, Color By Fox: The Revolution in Black Television (1999)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.