James A. Dator |
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Jonna Eagle |
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F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ann Patchett: The Question of America |
Mark Helbling |
Craig Howes |
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Deane Neubauer |
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Joseph Stanton |
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Manfred Steger |
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Mari Yoshihara |
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Alternative Visions of America's Future For most of her history, America’s citizens have agreed upon the basic purpose and direction of American society. The goal has been to modernize, industrialize, develop and progress, and it is fair to say that until recently, Americans shared a sense of social purpose. Now that sense is shattered, with a number of alternative visions jostling for primacy. We will consider the reasons for the loss of a single-purpose, the bases of the alternatives, and employ the emerging discipline of future studies to assess the likelihood and consequences of America’s alternative futures. |
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American Melodrama In this seminar, we investigate the history of melodrama in American film and culture, exploring its status as a mode of cultural production with relevance to American political discourse. Looking at melodrama from the late nineteenth century to the present—with a focus on cultural heroes such as Buffalo Bill Cody, John Wayne, and Rambo—we consider the significance of melodrama as it has served to recast historical aggressors as innocent victims, offering the spectacle of their righteous retributive violence as popular entertainment. |
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F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ann Patchett: The Question of America The question of America—the American experience—has played a central role in American literary production. For this reason, the novel has been not only "a bright book of life," as D.H. Lawrence claimed, but has also provided a searching insight into how Americans have understood, imagined, and constructed their identity as a people. This seminar will present the work of several American writers to examine how their work illustrates and illuminates the American people. |
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Slow Lives: Micro-Traditions in American Biography This presentation examines the varied practices of life writing for and/or about subjects in small or isolated American communities. Such local histories focusing on individual citizens and families were a major component of the publishing industry during the 19th and 20th centuries. This seminar will address questions such as who selected a given region, who framed the subject, and were the biographers members of the community being depicted? Answering these and other questions allow us to consider issues of national character and public sentiment, and implied contrasts between urban and rural, cosmopolitanism and homogeneity, and various conceptions of cultural pasts and presents. |
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Changing Character of American Politics: Version 2.0 This presentation documents the significant shifts taking place in American politics. The discussion will consider the factors pushing these shifts since the beginning of the Reagan presidency, including changing demographics, the changing job structure in the U.S., the role of money in the political process, changes in media (most especially the creation of a "cable culture"), and the increased vulnerability of the U.S. as it becomes more interdependent with global dynamics. |
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Edward Gorey’s Dangerous Alphabets Edward Gorey warped the alphabet-book genre by melding it with various other genres—including the murder mystery, the cautionary tale, and the animal book. Gorey, arguably the greatest of all American picture-book makers, created works that were commonly multi-layered parodies. This lecture examines the combination of playfulness, obsession, and artistic elegance evident in Gorey’s delightfully bizarre alphabetic picture books. |
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American Empire or American Decline? After the fall of Soviet Communism in 1991, the United States emerged as the world's only "hyper-power," and the Clinton administration used American’s position to work with international economic institutions like the IMF and the WTO to liberalize and integrate the global markets. After the attacks of 9/11, however, the Bush administration’s hard-power approach in pursuing its "Global War and Terror" tarnished the image of the United States around the world. The recent devastating financial crisis, combined with the rise of countries such as China, India, Brazil, and Russia, presented a serious challenge to the new Obama administration. Is America on the decline or is it merely hitting a bump on the road to recovery? Will the 21st century see the continued dominance of the "American Empire" or will the United States decline in relation to its new challengers? This presentation will provide background information and offer some responses to these crucial questions of our global age. |
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Deconstructing the Asian American "Model Minority" Myth Since the 1960s, Asian Americans and Asian immigrants have often been referred to as America's "model minority." According to this "model minority" narrative, Asians have attained high academic achievements and socioeconomic success through their strong work ethic and family values. While not entirely false, the "model minority" narrative has had contentious meanings in the context of America's race and class relations in the civil rights era and beyond. In this seminar, we will examine how this "model minority" narrative came into being, how the narrative has been used and by whom, what the narrative reveals and conceals about the Asian American population, and how Asian Americans themselves have addressed this dominant image prescribed onto them. As a case study, we will give a close look at the place of Asians and Asian Americans in higher education and the field of Western classical music. |
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