Description
In this course we will critically examine the development of the American corporation, the rise of American consumer culture, the development of advertising and promotionallism in modern and postmodern contexts, the emergence of multinationals and the relationships between American cultural products and the complex flows of globalization. By exploring the contested spaces of both promotional and consumption practices, the course will introduce students to material that seeks to complicate our often taken-for-granted assumptions about the increasingly global marketplace of culture and consumption.
AMST115
Selling the American Dream:
Brand USA © and the Global Marketplace
Course Description:
In this course we critically examine the development of the American corporation, the rise of American consumer culture, the development of advertising and promotionalism in modern and postmodern contexts, the emergence of multinationals and the relationships between American cultural products and the complex flows of globalization. By exploring the contested spaces of both promotional and consumption practices, the course will introduce students to material that seeks to complicate our often taken-for-granted assumptions about the increasingly global marketplace of culture and consumption.
This course will introduce you to the basic methods of interdisciplinary analysis that is central to American Studies. By focusing on a dominant feature of US culture and society, namely consumer capitalism, and linking it to a well-known concept, i.e. the American Dream, we examine the historical and contemporary dimensions of capitalist ideology and practices and the impact these have had on the structure of US society, democratic politics, the construction of race, gender and class, relationships of power, and the export of US products (especially those with which we are familiar in NZ).
Course Aims:
➢ to develop your awareness of American consumer culture and its global implications
➢ to enable you to recognize the means by which American consumer culture reflects, (mis)informs and shapes the concerns, values and anxieties that predominate in US society and throughout the world
➢ to introduce you to critical theory relevant to the study of American consumer culture
➢ to develop your skills in independent thinking and critical reading and writing
Required Reading:
• Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick (available at the UBS Bookshop for purchase)
• Naomi Klein, No Logo (available at the UBS Bookshop for purchase)
• Course reader (can be downloaded from Learn or ordered through Learn as a hard copy)
Films and Documentaries:
• You Can’t Take It With You (dir. Frank Capra, 1938)
• The Hudsucker Proxy (dir. Joel Coen, 1994)
• A Stop at Willoughby (episode from final season of Thirtysomething)
• Capitalism: A Love Story (dir. Michael Moore, 2009)
• I Love Lucy (selected episodes)
• Stepford Wives (dir.Franz Oz, 2004)
• The Persuaders (dir. Douglas Rushkoff, 2004)
• The Man on the Moon (dir. Milos Forman, 1999)
SAMPLE LECTURE SCHEDULE
Week One From Rags to Riches: A Brief History of the American Dream, Pt I
Reading: Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick (1868)
Week Two From Rags to Riches: A Brief History of the American Dream, Pt II
Week Three Selling the American Dream
Reading: ch. 10 from William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture; ch. 3 from Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures [reader] CS
Week Four Spreading the American Dream
Reading: extracts from Emily Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream [reader]
Week Five ReThinking the Hula Hoop: Consumer Sovereignty, The Cold War and The “Genius” of/in Corporate America
Reading: ch. 2 from Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way [reader]
Week Six Domesticated Dreams: 1950s American Suburbia
Reading: Jane F. Levey, “Imagining the Family in Postwar Popular Culture: The Case of The Egg and I and Cheaper By the Dozen,” Journal of Women's History 13 (2001); Lori Landay, “Millions Love Lucy: Commodification and the Lucy Phenomenon,” NWSA Journal 11 (1999) [reader]
Week Seven Technological (Re)Visions of American Suburban Dreams
Reading: Anna Krugovoy Silver, “The Cyborg Mystique: The Stepford Wives and Second Wave Feminism,” Women's Studies Quarterly 30 (2002); Bonnie J. Dow, “The Traffic in Men and the Fatal Attraction of Postfeminist Masculinity,” Women's Studies in Communication 29 (2006) [reader]
Week Eight Globalization and the Branded World
Reading: Naomi Klein, No Logo [available at UBS bookshop]
Week Nine Globalization and the Branded World
Reading: Naomi Klein, No Logo
Week Ten American Dreams, American Nightmares: Shape-Shifters and Monsters of US Popular Culture
Reading: ch.4 in Florian Keller, Andy Kaufman: Wrestling with the American Dream [reader]
Week Eleven Globalization and US Popular Culture: Media Flows and Counter-Flows
Reading: ch.3.1 Simon During, “Thinking Globalisation” from Simon During, Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction; John Hartley, “Television and Globalisation: National and International Concerns” in Glen Creeber, ed., Tele-Visions: An Introduction to Studying Television [reader]
Week Twelve In-class Test
Assessment
|
Essay 1
|
|
30%
|
1200-1300 words due 6 April 2012
|
|
Essay 2
|
|
35%
|
1200-1300 words due 18 May
|
|
Test
|
|
25%
|
75 minutes held in May
|
|
Tutorial Attendance and Participation
|
|
10%
|
|
For further information see
School of Humanities.
All AMST115 Occurrences
-
AMST115-12S1 (C)
Semester One 2012
Previous Year
Next Year
