Contemporary North American Culture
Code
711121006
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Línguas, Culturas e Literaturas Modernas, Secção de Estudos Ingleses e Norte-Americanos
Credits
6
Teacher in charge
Teresa Botelho da Silva
Weekly hours
4
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
a) To master adequate knowledge of contemporary North-American culture, with special focus on the impact of the 1950s and 1960s on present events and experiences.
b) To contextualize the internal debates those shaped the answers to internal crises, and identify cultural, social and aesthetic trends in the period under examination.
c) To be able to read critically relevant primary sources (essays, press reports, films and personal memoirs).
d) To organize and produce a small research project on a topic of the syllabus.
Prerequisites
Non Applicable.
Subject matter
1- The United States at the end of WWII
2- Great Expectations: The United States in the 1950s
2.1. Optimism and anxiety in the era of abundance
- Internal and external dimensions of the Cold war
-The Affluent Society and the Baby Boom
-The new American Sociology and the fear of conformity
-Mass culture and its critics
-Back to the past: images of the feminine in the 50s
2.2. Fractures and dissent in the silent decade
-The African-American awakening: from Montgomery to Little Rock
-Dissidents of Affluence- beats, hipsters and suburban rebels
-Theatre and Cinema in the 1950s
3. Hope and Discord in the 1960s
3.1. A time of Consensus
- Kennedy and the New Frontier
-The Cold War revisited
-The reconfiguration of the racial problem
-The Other America and the Great Society Project
3.2. A time of Conflict
-The Quagmire of Vietnam
-Counter culture and new sensibility
-Pop Art, and 60s cinema
-The name of the problem: feminism reborn
- Witnessing reality: the old and new journalism
-Integration and separation; African-American crossroads
- Stonewall and other liberations: the politics of identity.
Bibliography
CHAFE, William The Unfinished Journey:America Since World War II (6th revised Ed.) New York: Oxford University Press 2007.
CHAFE, William/ Harvard Sitkoff (ed) A History of Our Time: Readings in Postwar America. (7th revised Ed.) New York: Oxford University Press 2007.
BIGBSY, Christopher (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006.
HOGSON, Godfrey More Equal than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press 2006. FIELD, Ron Civil Rights in America 1865-1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002.
Teaching method
Exposition of the basic concepts of the syllabus, complemented by class discussion of the primary sources under discussion.
Tutorial supervision of critical research projects for oral presentation, on one of the topics of the syllabus.
Evaluation method
Organization of a short research project for oral presentation (40%).
Writing of a test comprehending two short essays (60%).