ENN 195.0926: Violence in American Art and
Culture (LEC 18047)
T 1-4.25 C-723
Justin
Rogers-Cooper, Ph.D
jrogers@lagcc.cuny.edu / jrcqueens@yahoo.com
office: M-120E
Office Hours: M: 2-3 PM; TH: 12-1 PM; or by
appointment
College Course Description
This course surveys the
depiction of various types of violence and the use of violence as a theme or
metaphor in North American literature, art, and popular culture. Emphasis is
placed on New York City as a laboratory and resource for researching
considerations of violence in poetry, drama, fiction, film and other visual art
forms as well as popular culture (e.g., lyrics, comic strips, advertising,
horror and suspense stories).
Section Description: A history of violence
This course will survey how art and literature
represent the complex causes and effects of violence in American history. We
will examine slavery, race riots, lynchings, urban riots, white supremacy,
factory labor, terrorism, state terrorism, and fascism. We will approach these
events through multi-disciplinary inquiries into collective behavior, crowd
power, economic crises, ethnic
identity, embodied racialization, and civil rights, particularly in the period
of US history spanning 1850-1940. We will study representations of violence in
literature, film, photography, and video, especially for how they provide us
with perspectives of morality, emotion, and justice. The course will emphasize
New York City wherever possible, though primarily through field trips to one or
two museums, and through a final project that involves documents from
LaGuadia’s mayoral archives on the Harlem riots of 1935, 1943, and 1964.
Course Goals
At the end of this course, students should be
able to:
* understand the historical context for
violent civil disorders
* define
the relation between civil disorder and the economy
*
identify the role of individual and
social emotions in framing violence
* identify
some major episodes of urban violence in American history
* analyze
how different media and narratives represent violence
* improve
their strategies for writing college essays
* improve their strategies for research and
critical thinking
Required Texts
Texts are available at the LaGuardia
bookstore. It is extremely important that you purchase these
texts and bring them to every class session for which they are assigned.
1. Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills; ISBN: 0935312390
($13.95)
2. Paul Lawrence Dunbar, The
Sport of the Gods; ISBN: 0451531779 ($6.99)
3. F. Scott Fitzgerald, May
Day; ISBN: 140994378X ($10.00)
4. Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here; ISBN: 045121658X ($15.00)
Total Cost: approximately
$46 (prices may be cheaper for used books)
If you plan to order from Amazon, order all
texts now. It is the responsibility of the student to have the text for class
on-time.
Course Blog
Course Requirements
Students will two essays that respond to
various course assignments, texts, and discussions.
Students will complete the readings and
participate in class discussions and workshops.
Students will post blogs when assigned.
Students will post comments to fellow
students’ blogs when assigned.
Students will write for in-class
assignments.
Students will save their work on a USB
drive/stick for any work they do in computer labs.
Assignments
Blog: Students will blog once a week.
The blogs will connect ideas, themes, scenes,
characters, situations, and/or events from the literary texts to those in the
films we watch. Blogs should be 250 words. Students should compose the blogs in
Microsoft Word and then copy/paste into a Blogger blog (instructions on how to
set up a blog will be in class). Blogs should be written for a general
audience, which means students must introduce the subjects and texts they plan
to discuss before they make their connections between them.
All blogs are due Friday at 5 pm.
Essays: Students will write
three five-page essays for this course.
The essays will create and support an
original argument about how violence works in two different kinds of media
(fiction, film, etc). The essays will compare and contrast how fiction and film
represent violence, how they explain its origin, and how they articulate
solutions. We will spend time in-class discussing the drafts through peer
review.
Final Exam: The final exam will
involve texts from LaGuardia’s mayoral archives.
The catch is that students must arrive at the
final exam after examining key documents from the archive before the exam
begins. The archive will have a folder for students beginning in the second
week of class. The folder contains three documents. Students will study the
documents and take notes about what they contain; they may even make copies and
bring them to the final exam. When they arrive at the final exam, they will
receive a fourth document from the professor. They will then write an essay
that explains the contents of the documents and their relationship to urban
violence, and connect them to key ideas and texts from class.
Grades
Blogs: 30%
Essays: 30%
Quizzes: 10%
Participation: 20%
Final: 10%
Classroom Expectations
Students must respect each other and the
professor at all times.
Students show that respect through active
listening and participation.
Students must silence all electronic devices
and refrain from texting during class. Students that text openly during class
will be asked to leave class.
Students will keep an open mind and will be
self-conscious about their communication.
Students will not eat hot smelly food near
the front of the class.
Attendance
Students that miss more than four hours of
class may fail the class.
Students that miss more than four hours of
class must confer with the professor.
If you are late twice it will count as one
absence.
If you do miss class, it is your
responsibility to keep up with our work.
Email another student to find out what was
missed.
Plagiarism and academic integrity
All work you submit must be your
own. You may not copy or paraphrase someone else’s words or ideas
without properly citing the source. All instances of plagiarism or academic
dishonesty will result in an “F” and possible action by the college.
http://library.laguardia.edu/files/pdf/academicintegritypolicy.pdf
Course Schedule
Reading assignments are due on the day that
they appear.
T 3.5: Revolutionary Violence and Slave
Revolts
Reading: N/A
Class Intro
Declaration of
Independence
The Constitution of the
United States
From David Walker’s Appeal
Film: “Scientific Racism: The Eugenics of Social Darwinism”
All blogs are due
Friday at 5 pm.
Essay One Assignment
T 3.12: Enslaved
Africans in America
Reading: Handout: Slave and Citizen (3-128)
Film: The Trail of
Tears
All blogs are due
Friday at 5 pm.
T 3.19: The
Rise of Factory Capitalism
Reading: Life in the Iron Mills (9-66)
Film: The Industrial
Revolution
Film:
Characteristics of Early Factory Girls
Film:
The Ghosts of Slater Mill
No Blog Due
T 3.25: Spring
Break
T 4.2: Lynching,
Race Riots, and Jim Crow
Reading: Handouts: “The
Lynching of Jube Benson,” Mob Rule in New
Orleans
Peer Review: Bring
Three Copies of Essay One Draft
The Civil War Draft
Riots
Rise and Fall of the
first KKK
Reconstruction
Film: from Ken Burns: The Civil War
Film: The Gangs of New York (DVD 476, LAGCC library)
Film: Black Wall Street
No
Blog due.
T 4.9: Ghosts in New York
Reading: The Sport of the Gods
(1-81)
Essay One Due
Film: Within Our Gates (1919/1930)
All
blogs are due Friday at 5 pm.
Essay
Assignment Two
T 4.16: Ghosts in New York
Reading: The Sport of the Gods
(81-138)
Film:
The Birth of a Nation
All
blogs are due Friday at 5 pm.
T 4.23: New
York in World War I
Reading: May Day
Film:
“World War I: Entry of the United States”
Film:
“Origins & Development of Trench Warfare”
Film:
“The Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918”
Film:
“Up South: African-American Migration in the Era”
Film:
“Unit 5: World War I: Treaty of Versailles”
Film:
“Unit 6: First Red Scare”
Film:
“Unit 7: Palmer Raids”
Film:
“Unit 8: Sacco and Vanzetti”
No Blog Due
T 4.30: Amerika
Reading: It Can’t Happen Here (15-71)
Essay
Two Peer Review
Film: “The White
House Coup”
Film:
“In Search of History: The Plot to Overthrow FDR”
Film: “War on the
Weak: Eugenics in America”
T 5.7 MUSEUM: Seeing the Civil War
Reading: It Can’t
Happen Here (71-149)
Meet at The
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Exhibition:
“Photography and the American Civil War”
No Blog due.
T 5.14 Amerika
Reading: It Can’t Happen Here (149-227)
Essay
Two Due
Film: “History of
Eugenics in America Part 1.”
Film
“History of Eugenics in America Part 2”
Film:
“Prescott Bush, Part I.”
Film: “History of
Eugenics in America Part 3”
Film:
“History of Eugenics in America Part 4”
Film:
“History of Eugenics in America Part 5”
Essay Assignment Three
All blogs are due
Friday at 5 pm.
T 5.21 New York in World War II
Reading: It Can’t Happen Here (227-286)
Meet at New York
Historical Society
Exhibition:
“World War II & NYC”
http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/wwii-and-nyc
All blogs are due
Friday at 5 pm.
T 5.28 Amerika
Reading: It Can’t Happen Here (286-330)
Film: “History of
Eugenics in America, Part 6”
Film:
“History of Eugenics in America, Part 7”
Film:
“History of Eugenics in America, Part 8”
No Blog Due
T 6.4: The
Harlem Riots
Reading: In
Darkness and Confusion, Ann Petry (handout)
Essay
Three Peer Review
1943
Harlem Riots
Double
Victory Campaign
Video:
from The War: Segregation, Its
Impact
Video:
from The War: African-American
Troop Training
http://www.pbs.org/thewar/detail_5373.htm
All blogs are due
Friday at 5 pm.
FINAL EXAM: TBA
ESSAY THREE DUE AT FINAL EXAM
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