AS110-AmericanCultures

AS-110AC The Business of America
Carlos Camargo Page 1 Summer 2003
AMERICAN STUDIES 110AS/AC
THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA:
MAKING MONEY, CITIZENS, & $EN$E
“To observe the character of a particular people we must examine the objects of its love.
And yet, whatever these objects, if it is the association of a multitude not of animals but
of rational beings, and is united by a common agreement about the objects of its love,
then there is no absurdity in applying to it the title of a “People.”
—St. Augustine, Civitas Dei
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter & to argue freely
according to conscience, above all liberties”
— John Milton
" After all, the chief business of the American people is business. …
Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of
existence. … American newspapers have seemed to me to be particularly
representative of this practical idealism of our people."
— Calvin Coolidge, “The Press Under a Free Government"
"The past is never dead; it's not even past."
—William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
“It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”
—William Jefferson Clinton
An Upper Division Course in American Studies &
Interdisciplinary Studies to fulfill
the American Cultures Requirement.
Instructor: Carlos F. Camargo
Department of English, UC-Berkeley
E-mail: camargo@learning.berkeley.edu
Dates: Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday (July 8 - Aug. 14, 2003)
Lecture: 10 AM - 12:30 PM
Location: TBD
URL: TBD --http://www-learning.berkeley.edu/Courses/AS110Sum02/index.html

TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................................................2
SYLLABUS & DETAILED COURSE OUTLINE ..................................................................................4
DESCRIPTION..................................................................................................................................................................4
INTELLECTUAL & CONCEPTUAL AIMS ..............................................................................................................4
COURSE CONTENT & STRUCTURE .......................................................................................................................4
BRIEF AS110-AC COURSE OUTLINE FOR JULY AND AUGUST 2003.........................................................5
INTER-DISCIPLINARY MODES OF INQUIRY COVERED IN COURSE: ...................................................5
REQUIRED TEXTS:........................................................................................................................................................6
DOCUMENTARIES AND FILMS (TO BE VIEWED INDEPENDENTLY BY STUDENTS):.......................................6
COURSE WORK REQUIREMENTS:..........................................................................................................................6
INTENDED INTERDISCIPLINARY LEARNING OUTCOMES .......................................................7
AMERICAN CULTURES PERFORMANCE & LEARNING OBJECTIVES .......................................8
PROLOGUE: HISTORICAL OVERVIEW & POLEMICAL BACKGROUND .....................................9
A Plausible Historical Materialist Fiction: Or, It’s the Economy, Stupid!........................................................................9
THE PAST AS A KEY TO THE PRESENT: HISTORICAL HOMOLOGIES?................................................9
INDUSTRIAL AND IMPERIAL TRANSFORMATIONS......................................................................................9
TOCQUEVILLEAN CALCULUS: SELF INTEREST RIGHTLY UNDERSTOOD?.................................... 10
FROM RES PUBLICA TO THE RETURN OF THE OLIGARCHS................................................................. 11
HISTORY’S REPETITION COMPULSION........................................................................................................... 12
WEEK ONE: JULY 8, 9, 10 ...................................................................................................................13
NATIONAL MYTHS, IDEOLOGIES & LIES—THE IDEOLOGICAL NATURE AND PROJECT OF
AMERICAN STUDIES................................................................................................................................................. 13
8 July, Tues.--Myths Of Regeneration: New Worlds, Virgin Lands, And Promise Lands............................................... 13
9 July, Wed.--Ideologies Of Critique: Instrumental Reason In Search Of New Frontiers.................................................. 13
10 July, Thurs.--Noble Lies?: Goodwill Towards Latin America--Better Dead, Than Red!............................................. 14
WEEK TWO: JULY 15, 16, 17................................................................................................................15
THE MAKING OF “AMERICANS”: IDENTITY FORMATION IN THE SHADOW OF THE
COMMODITY & U.S. RACIAL STATE................................................................................................................... 15
15 July, Tues.-- Historical Explorations: Ethnicity in the U.S. Racial State................................................................... 15
16 July, Wed.--Theoretical Explorations: Identity & Cultural Productions...................................................................... 16
17 July, Thurs.-- Writing The Nation, Writing The Self: The Politics Of Mobility In The World System....................... 16
WEEK THREE: JULY 22, 23, 24 ..........................................................................................................18
BIRTH OF A NATION & MANIFEST DESTINIES: PERSPECTIVES ON AMERICAN POLITICAL
DEVELOPMENT.......................................................................................................................................................... 18
22 July, Tues.-- The U.S. Constitution & The “Founding Fathers”: Anglo-american Imperial fantasies, imagined
Communities & the Development of American Politics................................................................................................... 18
23 July, Wed.—Foundations: Rules, Founders & Constitutional Institutionalism.......................................................... 19
24 July, Thurs.-- Patrician America: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”................................................................... 19
WEEK FOUR: JULY 29, 30, 31...............................................................................................................20
WE THE PEOPLE: TELLING STORIES OF NATION, SELF & OTHER .................................................. 20
29 July, Tues.—Approaches to American Historiography—Or, Who were our Romulus and Remus.............................. 20
30 July, Wed.—Giants In The Earth, Strangers In The Land & Other Huddled Masses............................................. 21
31 July, Thurs.—Gendered transitions: He said, she said, we said................................................................................... 21

WEEK FIVE: AUGUST 5, 6, 7 ...............................................................................................................22
AMERICANS: A COLLISION OF HISTORIES..................................................................................................... 22
22 July, Tues.—The New ‘Heroic Triad’: Re-inscribing the Nation in Red, White & Black ......................................... 22
23 July, Wed.-- E Pluribus Unum—One Out Of Many Or Many Out Of One............................................................ 23
24 July, Thurs.—Crisis of Triumphant Democracy—or, the Paradox of Plenty.............................................................. 23
WEEK SIX: AUGUST 12, 13, 14..............................................................................................................24
THE INTERNATIONALIZATION & MILITARIZATION OF THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDERLANDS
IN 20TH CENTURY ..................................................................................................................................................... 24
12 August, Thurs.-- Industrializing The Border: From Fordism To Flexible Accumulation Under Late Capitalism....... 24
13 August, Tues.--Technologies Of Mass Social Control: Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine................................................ 25
14 August, Wed.--U.S. Domestic & Foreign Policy In The Reagan-Bush I Era............................................................ 25
15 August, Friday--FINAL EXAM Due 5PM In Instructor Inbox Or Mailbox In Campbell................................... 25
MAKING BLACKS FOREIGNERS—OR, THE ONTOLOGY OF THE METAPHORS WE LIVE
BY ..........................................................................................................................................................26
Excerpted from: Kunal M. Parker, Making Blacks Foreigners: The Legal Construction of Former Slaves in Post
Revolutionary Massachusetts, 2001 Utah Law Review 75-124, 75-84 (2001)(116 Footnotes & Diacritics Omitted)......... 26
A CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY & ESSAY ON AMERICAN STUDIES ADAPTED FROM PROF.
T.V.REED’S WEBSITE.........................................................................................................................33
I. ON THE GENEALOGY OF AMERICAN STUDIES...................................................................................... 33
II. MYTH AND SYMBOL SCHOOL......................................................................................................................... 35
III. INTERPRETIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE, SEMIOTICS, AND MATERIAL CULTURE............................ 36
IV. LITERARY THEORIES & METHODS............................................................................................................. 40
V. THEORIZING DIFFERENCE & COMMONALITY: GENDER, SEXUALITY,
RACE/ETHNICITY, AND THEIR INTERSECTIONS...................................................................................... 42
VI. NEO-MARXISMS AND CULTURAL MATERIALISMS.............................................................................. 50
A CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MEXICAN AMERICAN & CHICANO HISTORY &
CULTURE.............................................................................................................................................53
LITERATURE................................................................................................................................................................. 53
MEXICAN AMERICAN POLICE RELATIONS................................................................................................... 55
MEXICAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS.................................................................................................................... 55
MUSIC............................................................................................................................................................................... 55
ORAL HISTORY............................................................................................................................................................ 56
ORGANIZATIONS....................................................................................................................................................... 56
POLITICS......................................................................................................................................................................... 56
REGIONS ........................................................................................................................................................................ 57
RELIGION ...................................................................................................................................................................... 63
REPATRIATION ........................................................................................................................................................... 63
RESISTANCE.................................................................................................................................................................. 63
SOCIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES........................................................................ 63
THEATER........................................................................................................................................................................ 64
WARTIME EXPERIENCES........................................................................................................................................ 64
WOMEN........................................................................................................................................................................... 64
YOUTH............................................................................................................................................................................. 65
A CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY ON NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS WITH A FOCUS ON
CALIFORNIA & THE NEW WEST.....................................................................................................66
CALIFORNIA TRADITIONAL STORIES.............................................................................................................. 66
CALIFORNIA NON-FICTION.................................................................................................................................. 66
WESTERN NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURAL, HISTORICAL & LITERARY TRADITIONS............... 69
THE SOCIAL LIFE OF COMMODITIES—OR, A CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF
CAPITALISM, CONSUMERISM, GLOBALIZATION & THE RISE OF WORLD MARKET
SYSTEMS...............................................................................................................................................74

THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA: MAKING MONEY, CITIZENS, & $EN$E
Syllabus & Detailed Course Outline
DESCRIPTION
This course traces and examines the social, economic, and political organization and
symbolic representation of the “Making of Americans” & U.S. Nationalism & Citizenship as
“the business of America” throughout the life-course of the Republic. The practical,
theoretical and methodological foci of this course are an interdisciplinary exploration of the
"American," as both subject and object of representation and analysis within and across
diverse U.S. literary and cultural traditions.
We will trace an analytical trajectory from conflict and contestation to cooperation
and integration among historical actors in North America and the Western Hemisphere,
keeping in mind that while conflict characterizes the history of the interactions among
historical agents & actors since the 16th century, the growing social interdependence and
economic integration of U.S. & global life in the 20th
century will also need to be analyzed
and theorized as we step into the 21st
.
Focusing on the cultural and social formations of Anglo-Americans, Native
Americans, and Mexican Americans in a dynamic contact zone (i.e. The “New” World), this
course also explores the continuities and discontinuities in popular and academic
representations of the “American” experience & mission from the disciplinary perspectives
of American & Cultural Studies, History, Geography, Sociology, and Political Science. Our
analysis of the “the business of America” as a discursive formation, a constellation of
metaphors and symbols surrounding the phenomenon and experience of life in the industrial
and post-industrial 20th
century United States (AMERICA=U$), will include a study of the
public policy, ethno-history, literary productions, and the filmic responses of diverse
“American” cultures in transition.
INTELLECTUAL & CONCEPTUAL AIMS
The course aims to introduce students to the interrelationship between diverse American
populations, cultural traditions, institutions, resources, and economic agents during the
process of North American economic development & integration from 1776 to the present
within the context of the U.S. polity. A thematic approach is adopted to explain the
“Business of America,” the principal focus being the influences that shaped the development
of social institutions, social identity, and business enterprises at various periods in American
social, cultural & economic history.
Concomitantly, the effects of the growth of big business, monopoly capital, labor and in
the mobility of other factors of production on the evolving nature of capitalist production
and distribution that have led to the ascendancy of the U.S. as “global hegemon” will also be
considered.
COURSE CONTENT & STRUCTURE
The course will consist of 45 contact hours and will be delivered using lectures,
independent student screenings of A/V materials on reserve and ad-hoc workshops.
Lectures will introduce the thematic, conceptual & chronological issues involved in
explanations of American nationalism, identity structures, social formations, economic
performance and business development. Attendance is compulsory.

BRIEF AS110-AC COURSE OUTLINE FOR JULY AND AUGUST 2003
n WEEK ONE: JULY 8, 9, 10
National Myths, Ideologies & Lies: The Ideological Nature &
Project of “American Studies”
n WEEK TWO: JULY 15, 16, 17
The Making of “Americans”: Identity Formation in the Shadow of the Commodity
& the U.S. Racial State
n WEEK THREE: JULY 22, 23, 24
Birth of a Nation & Manifest Destinies: Perspectives on American Socio-Political
Development
n WEEK FOUR: JULY 29, 30, 31
We the People: Telling Stories of Nation, Self & Other
n WEEK FIVE: AUGUST 5, 6, 7
Americans: A Collision of Histories
n WEEK SIX: AUGUST 12, 13, 14
The Internationalization & Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands in 20th
Century
INTER-DISCIPLINARY MODES OF INQUIRY COVERED IN COURSE:
fi Week 1: History, American Studies & Latin American Studies
fi Week 2: Comparative Ethnic Studies, Political Science & Literary History
fi Week 3: History, Political Economy, & Public Policy
fi Week 4: Historiography, Narratology and Comparative Ethnic Studies
fi Week 5: American History and Comparative Ethno-History
fi Week 6: Political Science, International Relations & Sociology

REQUIRED TEXTS:
These texts have all been selected for the opportunities they provide to examine
how and why "American National Identities" are (re) constructed under a wide range
of socio-historical conditions, as mediated by such factors as nativity, ideology,
gender, race/ethnicity, social class & religion.
n AS110-AC COURSE READER (available from Copy Central on Bancroft Ave)
n Edward Countryman. Americans: A Collision of Histories. New York: Hill &
Wang, 1996.
n Timothy J. Dunn. The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978-1992: Low-
Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home. Austin: CMAS Books, 1996.
n Ira Katznelson and Martin Shefter, eds., Shaped by War and Trade: International
Influences on American Political Development. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2002.
n Jon Gjerde, Editor. Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998. (Part of Major Problems in American History Series,
Thomas G. Patterson, Gen. Ed.)
n Frederick B. Pike. The United States and Latin America: Myths and Stereotypes of
Civilization and Nature. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1992.
n The Federalist Papers. Clinton Rossiter, ed., (New York: Mentor). Can be read &
downloaded on-line at <http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/federal/fed.htm>.
The definitive edition of the Federalist Papers is Jacob E. Cook. Wesleyan University
Press, 1961.
DOCUMENTARIES AND FILMS (to be viewed independently by students):
• Chulas Fronteras (1976): V/C #1304 (58 min.)
• Del mero corazon = Straight from the heart (1976): V/C #1303 (28 min.)
• Leaving Home / We Do the Work (1990s): V/C #2626 (60 min.)
• The Americanization of Emily (1964): V/C # TBD (117 min.)
• The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1988): V/C #999:252 (105 min.)
• The Global Assembly Line (1986): V/C #1580 (58 min.)
• The Nine Nations of North America (1987): V/C #1328 (70 min.)
COURSE WORK REQUIREMENTS:
A. A great deal of reading, some writing and constant thinking.
B. Six Critiques--Weekly 500-1000 word Critiques (reading logs) of one of the A/V
resources ON RESERVE at Moffitt Library or instructor-approved substitute
C. One Mid-term Exam: Week 3
D. One Final Exam: Week 6

INTENDED INTERDISCIPLINARY LEARNING OUTCOMES
A knowledge and understanding of
1. broad trends in American socio-economic & cultural development since
independence;
2. the changing nature of political and economic institutions;
3. the role of technology & business enterprise in the growth of the economy;
4. the relationship between markets, resources and the choice of technology;
5. how businessmen & citizens have sought to control their environment.
The intellectual skills to
1. abstract the essential features of the American Dream/American Creed, Liberal
Democratic Ideology and American socio-economic history
2. apply simple economic, historical and analytical reasoning to the processes of
social change and transformation;
3. frame structural, institutional & economic problems within their broader social,
political and historical context;
4. analyze the causes and consequences of the organizational & structural changes
that occur within American business enterprises, the burgeoning world system,
and American culture.
The practical skills to
2. engage in searches for published primary and secondary interdisciplinary material
on American Cultures and prepare comprehensive bibliographies and critiques;
3. critically review and synthesize published materials, cultural artifacts & specimens
of material culture on a range of issues in American Studies (e.g. civil society, arts
& letters, business, social, diplomatic and economic history;
4. research, prepare, and write analytical/critical essays incorporating both
quantitative and qualitative data.

American Cultures PERFORMANCE & LEARNING OBJECTIVES
GOAL: “Developing an Integrative & Comparative Understanding of America”, thus
by listening actively, reading critically & thinking diligently, students will be able to:
1. Obtain an understanding of early Native American society and culture. Concentrate on the cultural diversity
of the various tribes.
2. Obtain an understanding of the Native American experience with the early European settlers. Students
should be familiar with the motivations of the Europeans especially the concepts of mercantilism and
urbanism and the Native American response to their settlement.
3. Obtain an understanding of conflicting cultural values in early America. Concentrate on the class structure,
ethnicity, and religion.
4. Obtain an understanding of early family life. Concentrate on the relationship between husband and wife as
well as the nuclear and extended family unit.
5. Obtain an understanding of the system of slavery. Concentrate on both the slave experience during capture
and captivity as well as North America.
6. Obtain an understanding of society and culture during the American Revolution.
7. Obtain an understanding of the industry and ideology in the emerging nation. Concentrate on Hamiltonian
economic policy and its clash with Jeffersonian agrarianism.
8. Obtain an understanding of America's early American Native policy. Concentrating especially on the
removal policy.
9. Obtain an understanding of the westward movement. Concentrate on the impact this movement had on
American society and culture.
10. Obtain an understanding of pre Civil War immigration. Concentrate on who came, why they came and how
did the population already here respond to this recent immigrants. Obtain an understanding of the ante-
bellum reform movement. Concentrate on labor, temperance, education, abolition, and women's rights.
11. Obtain an understanding of plantation society. Concentrate on culture, community, and conflict.
12. Obtain an understanding of society and culture during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
13. Obtain an understanding of the Trans Mississippi community. Concentrate on the last frontier, family
relations and the Native American reaction to this final push west.
14. Obtain an understanding of the rise of big business and the new industrial economy. Concentrate on the rise
of big business and the rise of organized labor.
15. Obtain an understanding of the new immigration. Concentrate on who came, why the came and the conflict
between nativist and immigrant.
16. Obtain an understanding of black migration north after the Civil War. Concentrate on motivation for this
migration and the experience of blacks once they arrived in their new location.
17. Obtain an understanding of the birth of Metropolitism. Concentrate on the urban political machine and
progressivism.
18. Obtain an understanding of society and culture during World War I.
19. Obtain an understanding of social change and society in the 1920s. Concentrate on prohibition, the sexual
revolution, women's rights the red scare, and the rise of the Klan.
20. Obtain an understanding of the economic causations of the Great Depression and the eventual solutions to the
crisis. Concentrate on the role of the consumer, business and government in both the pending crisis and the
outcome.
21. Obtain an understanding of the impact that World War II had on society and culture. Concentrate on the
economy, impact on the family, women, minorities, and the policy of reconversion.
22. Obtain an understanding of the City/Suburb debate. Concentrate on the decentralization of the American
city.
23. Obtain an understanding of the government's role in the Post War economy. Concentrate on federal spending,
defense spending, social welfare expenditures, and energy policy.
24. Obtain an understanding of the Crisis in the Post Industrial, Postmodern City. Concentrate on both Social
(War protest, Civil Rights, women's rights, gay rights, riots) and Fiscal challenges.

PROLOGUE: HISTORICAL OVERVIEW & POLEMICAL BACKGROUND
A Plausible Historical Materialist Fiction: Or, It’s the Economy, Stupid!
THE PAST AS A KEY TO THE PRESENT: HISTORICAL HOMOLOGIES?
In order to understand how the rise of Monopoly Capital & Big Business, the rise of
large, national corporations, affected American society, we need to briefly compare America
in the 1870s with America in the 1920s. America in the 1870s was a nation of small farmers
and small businessmen who sold their goods and products to a local and regional market.
Americans believed that owning land and owning one's own business gave them freedom.
Not being dependent on others' for a job or one's livelihood made American free. In
addition, in the 1870s Americans believed that our society and economy was based on free
enterprise, free and open competition between small farmers and businessmen in a free
market. In such an economy, Americans were guaranteed higher quality goods and products
at lower costs. Few Americans in the 1870s could really imagine how quickly their economy
and way of life would change by the 1920s.
In the 1920s, America was a nation of large, national corporations, which dominated
a national market. The majority of Americans now lived in cities. Instead of owning their
own small farms and small businesses, Americans were increasingly employed by large
corporations. Instead of buying goods and products from people and companies they knew,
and could trust and depend on, Americans were forced to buy goods from large, powerful,
dominant corporations, which dominated their industries. In many industries, four or five
national corporations dominated the production and sale of goods. Instead of free enterprise
and free and open competition in a free market. These dominant national corporations
formed trusts or cooperated with each other to ensure higher prices and lower quality goods.
This cooperation between giant corporations allowed them to divide up the market for their
goods and no longer compete with each other to produce higher quality goods at lower
prices. By the 1920s, because these corporate oligopolies--several companies dominate and
control an industry--were so powerful they attempted to use their money and influence to
shape and control state and federal governments. As a result, many Americans since the early
1900s have questioned whether we are, in fact, a democracy when such large, powerful
corporations and interests can exert more power and control than most Americans.
INDUSTRIAL AND IMPERIAL TRANSFORMATIONS
How then was the American economy transformed from a nation of small farmers
and businessmen to a nation of powerful, dominant corporations who threatened to
undermine free enterprise and the free market and American's democratic control over their
government and society? Why didn't Americans choose to remain a nation of small
producers, serving local and regional markets? The answer lies in the same forces that are
now transforming the American national economy into a global economy in which giant
global corporations are threatening to undermine national companies and national
governments' control over their own economies.
But let's start with America in the 1870s. In order to understand the rapid growth of

the national economy we need to look at a specific industry, let's say shoe companies, for
example. In 1870, there were small shoe companies that produced shoes for the New
England, upper Midwest, the South, and the Western markets. These companies weren't
directly competing with each other. They were still making shoes using skill craftsmen to
make and finish the shoes. As a result of their dependence on skilled craftsmen and their
dependence on local and regional customers, these shoe companies did not produce a large
volume of shoes. They produced as much shoes as their customers needed and demanded.
Given the success of these regional shoe companies, why did some of them decide to try to
expand their market from their region to other regions in the 1870s and 1880s?
In the 1870s and 1880s, the railroads linked the country together. Instead of only
being able to ship goods to a local and regional market, railroads now made it possible for
shoe companies to ship and sell their goods outside their traditional regional markets. Even
though the railroad now made it possible for these shoe companies to sell their shoes to
other regional markets, they would have to find a way of paying for shipping their shoes and
still be able to sell their shoes at or below the costs of shoes charged by their other regional
competitors. How would these companies manage to still compete with their regional
competition in price and quality for shoes and pay for shipping and transportation?
TOCQUEVILLEAN CALCULUS: SELF INTEREST RIGHTLY UNDERSTOOD?
The larger question we must now ask is this: Why would these regional shoe companies want
to go through the bother of expanding their market and competing with other regional shoe
companies? They would have to produce more shoes and find a way of paying for the
additional costs of shipping their shoes? Why didn't they simply refuse to take the risk and
continue to make and market their shoes for their regional customers? The answer lies in the
promise of increased profits and control over the market for shoes. Those businessmen who
took the risks believed that they could make a lot of money by expanding their market for
shoes.
Having decided to take the risk, what would the New England shoe company have
to do to expand its market for shoes to include the Midwest and Southern regional markets
for shoes? The first thing the company would have to do is to greatly expand its production
of shoes? Should they hire more skilled craftsmen? No, because skilled craftsmen were very
expensive, and the New England shoe company couldn't compete and pay such high
salaries. Instead, the company buys builds new factors, buys new machinery, and hire
unskilled workers to mass-produce shoes on the assembly line. As you might guess, in order
to expand their markets for shoes, the New England company depended not only on the
railroad but on the new steam engines that now could power and run assembly lines for
production of shoes. But in order to build these new factories, buy new machines, and hire
large number of workers to run the assembly line, the New England shoe company needs a
good deal of money. Where is the company going to get the money and capital to invest in
these new factories and machinery?
In the 1870s and 1880s, American companies begin to aggressively take their once
privately owned companies public and sell stock, or shares in their company, to investors. In
this case, the New England shoe company is going to sell thousands of shares of stock to
investors and borrow thousands of dollars from banks. But selling stock and borrowing

money from banks is risky. The New England shoe company now not only has to pay the
interest on the money it borrowed, it must guarantee profits for its stockholders who
invested in the company expecting a good rate of return on their investment. In order to pay
off its debts and make a profit, the New England shoe company is going to have to rapidly
expand its market for shoes, trying to sell shoes to customers in the Midwest and the South
who have traditionally bought shoes from regional companies. In order to attract new
customers, the New England shoe company is going to have to try to sell its shoes for less
than its competitors, offer higher quality shoes, and spend thousands of dollars advertising
its shoes to new regional customers who have never bought shoes from them before.
There is, however, another problem facing the New England shoe company: What
will it do if its competitor, let's say, the Midwestern shoe company, builds new factories,
invests in new machinery, and expands its production of shoes? Can the New England shoe
company expand its market for shoes in the face of stiff competition from other expanding
regional shoe companies? It is at this point that the New England shoe company must pause
and rethink its strategy. For the most part, its new investment in factories and machines have
allowed it to expand and out compete other, smaller, more regional competitors who haven't
tried to expand their operations. As a result, the New England shoe company is now faced
with three or four other expanding, national shoe companies, all eagerly trying to expand
their market for shoes in order to pay off their debts and increase their profits in order to
keep their investors happy. What should the company do? Should it borrow even more
money, buy even more advanced equipment, and produce even more shoes, trying to drive
its competition out of business? It is at this point that the New England shoe company must
reassess the increased costs of competition. What happens its competitors decide to do
likewise and invest in even more advanced equipment? This ruinous competition between
expanding, increasingly national shoe companies could make it difficult for any of the
competing companies to profit and pay off their debts.
FROM RES PUBLICA TO THE RETURN OF THE OLIGARCHS
It is at this point that the New England shoe company decides to try to make a deal
with the remaining three or four large, national shoe companies. It will go to them and try to
convince them that further competition could ruin them all. Instead of this ruinous
competition, the remaining four or five companies should get together and make a deal; they
will agree to divide up the national market for shoes, selling shoes at a higher price and at
average quality, and not try to further encroach on each others' markets. In the late 1800s
and early 1900s, American companies in the oil, the meat, grain, and tobacco industries did
just this. They formed "trusts" and agreed to limit their competition with each other. As a
result, we get the rise of the oligopolies that have dominated American industry and business
ever since. Because they don't compete on the basis of price or quality of goods, these
companies compete with each other by using advertising to establish brand name loyalty.
And, of course, their power and size as well as their advertising dominance prevents other
regional or start-up companies from challenging these companies domination of an industry.
By the 1890s, many Americans worried about the increasing power of these trusts and
dominant companies to control the American economy. They worried that free enterprise
and the free market were increasingly things of the past. But in response to their critics,
corporate giants such as John Rockefeller argued that the trusts were more efficient, and
could produce more goods at a cheaper price than smaller, more competitive companies

could. Rockefeller claimed that the giant corporation would pass on its ability to produce
goods more cheaply and efficiently to the consumer in terms of lower prices.
HISTORY’S REPETITION COMPULSION
But is this true? Let's look at an example of an American industry dominated by an
oligopoly. After World War II, four companies increasingly dominated the American auto
industry: General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and American Motors. By the 1960s and 1970s,
the big three or big four collectively set prices for cars and together set quality standards. By
the 1970s, facing increasing costs for energy and materials to manufacture cars, the
American auto industry began to make high priced cars of very little quality, using
advertising to try to sell these cars to the American consumer. It worked for a while,
American were forced to buy low quality, high-priced cars. But then something happened.
By the mid-1970s the Japanese and German auto companies began to flood the American
market with lower priced, higher quality cars. These foreign companies began to directly
challenge the oligopoly created by the American auto companies.
At first, the American auto companies tried to use advertising and patriotism--telling
their customers to buy American, but this didn't seem to work. Because the American
companies didn't rise up and compete with these foreign competitors, one of them, Chrysler,
nearly went bankrupt. However, the government bailed out Chrysler by lending it billions of
dollars, fearing the political consequences of losing hundreds of thousands of American
jobs. By the early 1980s, the American auto industry was pressuring the federal government
to restrict the importation of Japanese and German cars into the United States. Owing to
their political and economic power, the American government put strict limits on imported
cars. But by the late 1980s and 1990s, Japanese and German car companies had discovered a
way around this maneuver by the American companies to try to maintain control of the
American automobile market. Japanese and German companies began to build
manufacturing plants in the United States and started producing hundreds of thousands of
cars in the United States. This development finally forced the American auto industry to
once again compete freely on the basis of price and quality. They could no longer use their
combined power to dominate the American auto market and undermine free enterprise and
free competition. As a result, Americans now could buy less expensive, higher quality cars.
But the story doesn't end here. Just as the growth of a national market caused many
smaller, regional companies to fail and go out of business, costing workers thousands of
jobs, the growth of a global economy is threatening to undermine many national companies,
who don't have the money or power to compete with global corporations. The movement of
Japanese and German auto companies to the United States is a larger example of the new
threat caused by globalization and increased global competition. The larger problem facing
America is this: If larger, national corporations threatened free enterprise and the democratic
control of the economy and society, how will giant global corporations threaten American
democratic control of their economy, society, and culture? Is globalization the inevitable
result of the same competitive forces that caused the growth of national markets and
industries dominated by national oligopolies? Americans have been debating whether large
national and global companies are a benefit or a threat to our society and economy
throughout the twentieth century. The debate will prove no less salient or relevant in the
21st
century if the Republic is to remain a Democracy rather than a Dream or a Nightmare.

SYLLABUS
WEEK ONE: JULY 8, 9, 10
NATIONAL MYTHS, IDEOLOGIES & LIES—THE IDEOLOGICAL NATURE
AND PROJECT OF AMERICAN STUDIES
Modes of Inquiry: American Studies and Latin American Studies
Weekly Critique #1: The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1988) V/C #999:252 ((105 min.)
Summary: On August 12, 1901, Gregorio Cortez, a young Mexican family man, shoots and kills a sheriff
in self-defense. For the next 11 days, he eludes an inflamed posse of 600 Texas Rangers in a 450 mile chase
across Texas. His manhunt captures the nation's interest and his eventual trial is tainted by the extreme
emotions of the country.
8 July, Tues.--Myths Of Regeneration: New Worlds, Virgin Lands, And Promise Lands
LECTURE THEMES:
• Nature Myths: Regeneration Through Violence & the Fusion of Opposites
• Stereotyping the Other: Wild People in Wild Lands
• Urban Pastorals: The Metaphorics of Nature vs. Civilization
• Frontier Mythology and the Poisoning of Hemispheric Relations
• American Ethno-genesis: The Racial State and Racial Formations in the U.S.
READINGS:
fi Frederick B. Pike, "Chapters 1, 2, 3, & 4," The United States and Latin America. Austin,
TX: University of Texas, 1992. pp. 1-153.
fi David J. Weber, "'Scarce More than Apes': Historical Roots of Anglo-American
Stereotypes of Mexicans in the Border Region," Myth and History of the Hispanic
Southwest. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1987. pp. 153-167.
9 July, Wed.--Ideologies Of Critique: Instrumental Reason In Search Of New Frontiers
LECTURE THEMES:
• Las Americas in the Age of New Imperialism
• From Arielism to Modernism in Nuestra America
• La Raza Cosmica: Hemispheric Visions in the Age of Roosevelt & Wilson
• American Babbits Confess: For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing
• Water and The Ecology of Power: Irrigation, Domination and Instrumental Reason
READINGS:
fi Frederick B. Pike, "Chapters 5, 6, 7," The United States and Latin America. Austin, TX:
University of Texas, 1992. pp. 154-257.
fi Donald Worster, "The Flow of Power in History: Wittfogel, Marx, and the Ecology
of Power," Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. New
York: Pantheon Books, 1985. pp. 22-60.

10 July, Thurs.--Noble Lies?: Goodwill Towards Latin America--Better Dead, Than Red!
LECTURE THEMES:
• The Good Neighbor Policy, 1933-1945
• The Owl of Minerva takes Wing at Dusk: Hot & Cold Wars in the Americas
• The North-South Divide: Dependency Theory & Politics of Development
• The U.S. as Latin America's Frontier: Latinamericanization of the Border
• Cultural Nationalism on the Border: A Theoretical Perspective on “Gringo” Justice
READINGS:
ﬁ Frederick B. Pike, "Chapters 8, 9, 10," The United States and Latin America. Austin, TX:
University of Texas, 1992. pp. 258-365.
ﬁ Alfredo Mirande, "A Theoretical Perspective on Gringo Justice," Gringo Justice. Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987. pp. 216-236.

WEEK TWO: JULY 15, 16, 17
THE MAKING OF “AMERICANS”: IDENTITY FORMATION IN THE
SHADOW OF THE COMMODITY & U.S. RACIAL STATE
Modes of Inquiry: Comparative Ethnic Studies, Political Science & Literary History
Weekly Critique #2: The Nine Nations of North America--MexAmerica (1987):
V/C #1328 (70 min.)
Summary: This episode concentrates on MexAmerica, defined as the area between Los Angeles, CA--
Houston, TX and Pueblo, CO--San Luis Potosi, Mexico. This region is not limited by political boundaries,
but is rather a state of mind, which is defined by power, water, money, and immigration. Through
conversations with European Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans one tries to sketch the
characteristics of this particular nation in North America.
15 July, Tues.-- Historical Explorations: Ethnicity in the U.S. Racial State
LECTURE THEMES:
• Racial Formations in the United States
• Ethic Options?: Race, Ethnicity and Identity
• Cultural vs. Political Citizenship within the U.S. Polity
• Constitutional Rhetoric and American Identity
• The Boundaries of Citizenship
• Race, Ethnicity & Nationality in the Liberal State
• Cultural Production as/and Identity Formation
• Discursive Formations: The Ontology & Ethics of the Metaphors We Live By
• Stratified Acculturation & Segmented Assimilation: American Identities &
Americanization Processes
READINGS:
fi Philip Gleason, "American Identity and Americanization," Harvard Encyclopedia of
American Ethnic Groups. pp. 31-58.
fi Martin N. Marger, "Patterns of Ethnic Relations: Assimilation and Pluralism," Race
and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Publishing Co., 1991. pp. 113-150.
fi Michael Omi and Howard Winant, "Racial Formation," Racial Formation in the United
States from the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge, 1994. pp. 53-76.
fi Michael Omi and Howard Winant, "The Racial State," Racial Formation. pp. 77-91.
fi Reed Ueda, "Naturalization and Citizenship," Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic
Groups. pp. 734-748.
fi Kunal M. Parker, “Making Blacks Foreigners: The Legal Construction of Former
Slaves in Post Revolutionary Massachusetts,” 2001 Utah Law Review (2001): pp. 75-
124, 75-84 (cf. pp. 27-33 of this document).

16 July, Wed.--Theoretical Explorations: Identity & Cultural Productions
LECTURE THEMES:
• Overview of American Autobiographical Practice
• Canonical vs. Ethnic vs. Immigrant Autobiography
• The Autobiographical Subject: Modern/Postmodern Selves
• Literary/Cultural Production and The Ethnicity School
• Critique of the Ethnicity School
• The Identity Fetishism of Liberal Pluralism
• American Subjectivities: Commodity Culture & Sources of the Self
• Melodramas of Beset Personhood & The Commodity Fix
:
READINGS
fi William Boelhower, "The Necessary Ruse: Immigrant Autobiography and the
Sovereign American Self," American Studies/Amerika studien 35.3 (1990): 297-319.
fi William Boelhower, "The Making of Ethnic Autobiography in the United States,"
Paul John Eakin, ed. American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect. Madison, WI: U
Of Wisconsin P, 1991. pp. 123-141.
fi Sau-ling C. Wong, "Immigrant Autobiography: Some Questions of Definition and
Approach," Paul John Eakin, ed. American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect.
Madison, WI: U Of Wisconsin P, 1991. pp. 142-170.
fi Fredric Jameson, "Conclusion: Groups and Representations, The Anxiety of Utopia,
The Ideology of Difference," Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1991. pp. 318-356.
fi E. San Juan, Jr., "Hegemony and Resistance: A Critique of Modern and Postmodern
Cultural Theory in Ethnic Studies," Racial Formations/Critical Transformations:
Articulations of Power in Ethnic and Racial Studies in the United States. Atlantic Heights, NJ:
Humanities Press, 1992. pp. 60-96.
17 July, Thurs.-- Writing The Nation, Writing The Self: The Politics Of Mobility In The
World System
LECTURE THEMES:
• What's at stake in defining a National Identity?
• Americanization as Rebirth: The more things change, the more they stay the same
• The Necessity of Invention: Narrative and History
• History and the Self: Narratives of Dislocation From Different Shores
• The Migratory Process & the Formation of “Ethnic Minorities”
• Migration & Americanization in Multicultural America
• Therapeutic Culture and Ethnic (de)Formation
• Postmodernism and the Bourgeois Narrative of the (Fragmented) Self
• A Different Mirror: Takaki’s Tempest & Other American Calibans
READINGS:
fi Sau-ling C. Wong, "The Politics of Mobility," Reading Asian American Literature: From
Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1993. pp. 118-165.
fi Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, "Metaphors of Self in History: Subjectivity, Oral

Narrative, and Immigration Studies," Immigration Reconsidered. pp. 254-290.
fi Paul Ong, Edna Bonacich, and Lucie Cheng, "The Political Economy of Capitalist
Restructing and the New Asian Immigration." The New Asian Immigration in Los
Angeles and Global Restructuring. Ong, Bonacich & Cheng, eds. Philadelphia, PA:
Temple UP, 1994.
fi Mario T. Garcia, "Americanization and the Mexican Immigrant, 1880-1930," From
Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America. Ronald Takaki, ed. New
York: Oxford UP, 1987. pp. 69-77.
fi Ramon Saldivar, "Race, Class and Gender in the Southwest: Foundations of an
American Resistance Literature and Its Literary History," Chicano Narrative: the
Dialectics of Difference. Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 1990. pp. 10-25.
fi Genaro M. Padilla, "The Mexican Immigrant as *: The (de)Formation of Mexican
Immigrant Life Story," Robert Folkenflik, ed. The Culture of Autobiography. Stanford,
CA: Stanford UP, 1993.

WEEK THREE: JULY 22, 23, 24
BIRTH OF A NATION & MANIFEST DESTINIES: PERSPECTIVES ON
AMERICAN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT
Modes of Inquiry: History, Political Economy, & Public Policy
Weekly Critique #3: The Americanization of Emily (1964)--117 min.— MGM Comedy
Synopsis: A cynical American naval officer (Garner) first clashes with and then falls in love with his
idealistic British driver (Andrews), a war widow. After convincing her to enjoy life, he is selected by the
Navy's PR machine to become "the Unknown Sailor," the first man to die landing at Normandy on
D-Day. An often-brilliant and chatty script by Paddy Chayefsky with a 50s look & feel but a decidedly
60s sensibility. Starring: Julie Andrews, James Garner, James Coburn, & Melvyn Douglas. Original story
by William Bradford Huie.
22 July, Tues.-- The U.S. Constitution & The “Founding Fathers”: Anglo-american
Imperial fantasies, imagined Communities & the Development of American Politics
LECTURE THEMES:
• What, then, were these Americans? A Collision of Histories? A Crucible of Race?
• The Republican Mosaic: Natives, Citizens, Subjects, Foreigners & Slaves
• When does the U.S. Constitution follow the flag?
• The Constitution as Public Policy
• How Historians and Social Scientists Have Approached the Constitution
• A Public Policy Approach to the Constitution
• Constitutional Context: Political Pretexts and Economic Circumstances
• The Founders’ “Policy” Strategy: The Constitutional Institutionalism of Empire
• A Policy Map of the Constitution: Agency, Authority, & Process
READINGS:
fi The Federalist Papers, pp. 1-13, 21-24, 26, 28, 36-51 (Note: Can be read & downloaded
on-line at <http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/federal/fed.htm>.
fi Katznelson & Shefter, Shaped by War and Trade, pp. 3-23
fi Karen Orren & Steve Skowronek, “The Study of American Political Development,"
in Ira Katznelson and Helen Milner, eds. Political Science: The State of the Discipline,
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2002).
fi David Brian Robertson, “Chapter 1: The Constitution as Social Policy, “ Constituting
American Politics: The Framers and America's Political Destiny, Fall 2003. pp 1-30.
(Advance manuscript draft copy obtained from author.)

23 July, Wed.—Foundations: Rules, Founders & Constitutional Institutionalism
LECTURE THEMES:
• Deontology & Rules—Or, What You Can and Kant Do.
• “I/We“--Necessary Illusions and Discursive Formations: Origins-Anxiety,
Identity and Homemaking through Kinship, Sacrifice, Ideology & Polity
• Founding: (re)Writing the Rules, Rights & Institutions of the Social Compact
• Civil War: (re)Writing the Social Compact in Blood
READINGS:
fi The Federalist Papers, pp. 36-78, 84-85
fi Katznelson & Shefter, Shaped by War and Trade, pp.57-81
fi Katznelson & Shefter, Shaped by War and Trade, pp. 24-54, 82-110
24 July, Thurs.-- Patrician America: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”
LECTURE THEMES:
• The New Deal: (re)Writing the Social Compact
• The 1960s Transformation—Culture—Making Sense
• The 1970s Transformation—Economy—Making Money & Dumping Gold
• Cold War to Culture Wars: Making Citizens from Brown to Loving to Hardwick
• The Crisis in & The Politics of Representation: One man, one vote?
• Art and the Politics of Identity: Postmodern Pursuits, Play, Paranoia & Profit
• Public Art and Public Interest: American Kulturkampf
• Return of the Repressed: Electoral Politics & The Imperial Presidency
• Whither Cincinnatus?
READINGS:
fi Katznelson & Shefter, Shaped by War and Trade, pp. 113-133, 211-235
fi Frances K. Pohl, “From Cold War to Culture Wars” & “Public Art and Public
Interest,” Framing America: A Social History of American Art. New York: Thames &
Hudson, 2002. pp. 491-520.

WEEK FOUR: JULY 29, 30, 31
WE THE PEOPLE: TELLING STORIES OF NATION, SELF & OTHER
Modes of Inquiry: Historiography, Narratology and Comparative Ethnic Studies
Weekly Critique #4: Geronimo & The Apache Resistance (1988) V/C #1531 (58 in.)
Summary: Chiricahua Apaches tell their own story, a different story from the myths we have learned about
the Apaches and about Geronimo. Presents the issues of the clash of cultures and the rights to land.
29 July, Tues.—Approaches to American Historiography—Or, Who were our Romulus
and Remus
LECTURE THEMES:
• The Invention of Ethnicity— American Ethno-genesis & other Creation Myths
• American History=American Immigration History: Turner, Bolton, Higham,
Handlin, Bodnar & Portes
• Pilgrim’s Progress—Errand into the Wilderness
• Asylum to the World—Yearning to be Free
• Revolutionary Origins & the Crucible of Race—Red, White, Black, Brown, & Yellow
• (re)Peopling the New World—Colonialism, Migration, Conquest, Genocide & Guile
READINGS:
ﬁ Gjerde, Major Problems, pp. 1-27
ﬁ Ewa Morawska, "The Sociology and Historiography of Immigration,"
Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology and Politics. Virginia Yans-McLaughlin,
ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. pp. 187-238.

30 July, Wed.—Giants In The Earth, Strangers In The Land & Other Huddled Masses
LECTURE THEMES:
• Narrative Metaphorics: the Uprooted, the Transplanted, the Oppressed, the
Alienated, the Invented and the Diasporic
• Nationalism: Home of the Brave, Land of the Free?
• The Wages of Whiteness: Racism, Labor & the “White Man’s Burden”
• Gendered Tales: The maintenance of Separate Spheres and Consumption-qua-Freedom
• American Typologists: Emma Lazarus, Teddy Roosevelt & Randolph Bourne
• Americanization and Its Discontents
READINGS:
fi Orm Overland, “Homemaking in America” & “Contexts and Contests:
Where is Home and Whose Home Is It! “ Immigrant Minds, American Identities:
Making the United States Home, 1870-1930. (Urbana & Chicago: University of
Illinois P, 2000. pp. 1-53.
fi Gjerde, Major Problems, pp. 219-235.
31 July, Thurs.—Gendered transitions: He said, she said, we said
LECTURE THEMES:
• The American Empire Strikes/Writes Back: Antipodal & Oppositional Identities
• Beyond X: Cultural Pluralism, Multiculturalism & Post-Ethnic America
• The Other Responds—In a Different Voice
• Creating the Homeland: Immigrant & Ethnic Life in 20th Century America
• Reconstructing Gender through Immigration and Settlement
• Immigration and Gender
• Ethnography and Autobiographical Documentation— The Cultural Poetics of
Auto-ethnography
READINGS:
fi Betty Bergland, "Postmodernism and the Autobiographical Subject:
Reconstructing the 'Other'," Kathleen Ashley, Leigh Gilmore, and Gerald
Peters, eds. Autobiography and Postmodernism. Amherst, MA: U of
Massachusetts P, 1994. pp. 130-166.

WEEK FIVE: AUGUST 5, 6, 7
AMERICANS: A COLLISION OF HISTORIES
Modes of Inquiry: American History and Comparative Ethno-History
Weekly Critique #5:
1) Chulas Fronteras (1976) V/C #1304 (58 min.)
Summary: Features the music and culture of Mexican-Americans living in southern Texas, showing food
preparation, family life, dances, fieldwork, and other social activities.
2) Del mero corazon = Straight from the heart ((1976) V/C #1303 (28 min.)
Summary: A lyrical journey through the musings of the heart in he Mexican-American Nortena music
tradition. Various performers are shown in dancehalls and cantinas, presenting songs of passion and death,
hurt and humor, and the pleasures and torn dreams of love.
22 July, Tues.—The New ‘Heroic Triad’: Re-inscribing the Nation in Red, White &
Black
LECTURE THEMES:
• Our Countryman’s Project: NOVUS ORDO SECULORUM
• The War of Independence, the Constitution, & the establishment of a national
economy and the opening up of
• The Napoleonic Wars and commercial and industrial developments
• Tariffs, Technology and the American System of Manufactures
• Civil War and American Industrialization
• Big Business and the Trusts
• Egalitarian Fictions: Citizen, Soldier, Worker
READINGS:
ﬁ Countryman, “Part One,” Americans, pp. 3- 88

23 July, Wed.-- E Pluribus Unum—One Out Of Many Or Many Out Of One
LECTURE THEMES:
• Quo Vadis, Countryman?
• The Republican Mosaic: Citizen, Subjects, & Slaves as Factors of Production
• From A Different Shore?
• The Radicalization of The Other
READINGS:
ﬁ Countryman, “Part Two,” Americans, pp. 89-172.
24 July, Thurs.—Crisis of Triumphant Democracy—or, the Paradox of Plenty
LECTURE THEMES:
• American Caesars--Vini, vici, vidi: I came, I saw, I conquered!
• Accelerating Factor Mobility Transforms America: 1840s, 1880s, 1960s & Now
• New Wine in Old Bottles: Ethnic Patterns & Streams
• A House Burst Asunder
READINGS:
ﬁ Countryman, “Part Three & Coda,” Americans, pp. 173-241.

WEEK SIX: AUGUST 12, 13, 14
THE INTERNATIONALIZATION & MILITARIZATION OF THE U.S.-
MEXICO BORDERLANDS IN 20TH CENTURY
Modes of Inquiry: Political Science, International Relations & Sociology
Weekly Critique #6: Leaving Home / We Do the Work (1990s) V/C #2626 (60 min.)
Summary: Examines the Mexico-U.S. Free Trade Agreement by looking at how workers on both sides of
the border have been affected by the maquiladora program. Economists, free trade advocates, and Latino
community leaders debate our free trade future.
12 August, Thurs.-- Industrializing The Border: From Fordism To Flexible Accumulation
Under Late Capitalism
LECTURE THEMES:
• Desert Capitalism: Labor and Monopoly Capital in Agribusiness & Manufacturing
• Integrating the Mexican Border Economy
• The Border Industrialization Program: The Maquiladora Industry
• NAFTA's Effect on the Western Industrial Corridor
• Global Economic Restructuring and World Systems Theory
READINGS:
fi Kathryn Kopinak, "Thirty Years of Mexican Maquiladoras," Desert Capitalism:
Maquiladoras in North America's Western Industrial Corridor. Tucson, AZ: University of
Arizona Press, 1996. pp. 7-27.
fi Kathryn Kopinak, "Implications of Economic Restructuring for Regional
Development," Desert Capitalism. Tucson, AZ: U of Arizona Press, 1996. pp. 28-48.
fi Kathryn Kopinak, "Heterogenous Maquila Development and Corridor Integration in
Crisis," Desert Capitalism. Tucson, AZ: U of Arizona Press, 1996. pp. 181-202.

13 August, Tues.--Technologies Of Mass Social Control: Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine
LECTURE THEMES:
• The Iron Cages of the Bureaucratic State: Militarization & Law Enforcement
• The Pacification of the Border Region, 1848-1918
• Border Enforcement as Labor Control, 1918-1977
• The Border Patrol
• Low-Intensity Conflict: "A War for All Seasons’
• The INS during the Carter & Reagan Administrations, 1978-1988
• U.S.-Mexican Collaboration in Immigration Enforcement
• Human Rights Issues on the Border
READINGS
ﬁ Timothy J. Dunn, "Chapters 1, 2, & 3," The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border,
1978-1992: Low -Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home. Austin, TX: CMAS Books,
1996. pp. 1-102.
14 August, Wed.--U.S. Domestic & Foreign Policy In The Reagan-Bush I Era
LECTURE THEMES:
• The War on Drugs, 1981-1992: Drug Enforcement in the Border Region
• U.S.-Mexican Collaboration on Drug Enforcement
• Implications of the Militarization of the U.S. Mexico Border
• El Corralon: The Banality of Evil in U.S. Immigration Prisons on the Border
• LIC Doctrine Comes Home 1: The Los Angeles Riots of 1992
• LIC Doctrine Comes Home After 9/11: Paradigm for Bush fils’ War on Terror?
READINGS:
ﬁ Timothy J. Dunn, "Chapter 4, 5 & Appendices," The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico
Border, 1978- 1992: Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home. Austin, TX: CMAS
Books, 1996. pp. 103-197.
15 August, Friday--FINAL EXAM Due 5PM In Instructor Inbox Or Mailbox
In Campbell.

MAKING BLACKS FOREIGNERS—OR, THE ONTOLOGY OF THE
METAPHORS WE LIVE BY
Excerpted from: Kunal M. Parker, Making Blacks Foreigners: The Legal Construction
of Former Slaves in Post Revolutionary Massachusetts, 2001 Utah Law Review 75-124,
75-84 (2001)(116 Footnotes & Diacritics Omitted).
How might one conceive of African-American history as U.S. immigration history, and with
what implications for our understanding of immigration itself? The historiography of U.S.
immigration has been heavily invested in producing an idea of immigrants as individuals who
move from "there" to "here," with both "there" and "here" taken to be actually existing
territorial entities. Even a cursory inspection of the titles of vastly different immigration
histories--Oscar Handlin's The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made
the American People, Ronald Takaki's Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian
Americans, and Roger Daniels' Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity
in American Life--testifies to the centrality of spatial movement in historians' understanding
of immigration. Over the years, African-Americans have been represented differently
depending upon the kinds of spatial movement that immigration historians have elected to
valorize.
To avoid any confusion, I should make it clear that I am not suggesting that historians have
written immigration histories that are organized thematically around spatial movement.
Rather, I am drawing attention to the fact that spatial movement has featured prominently in
historians' understanding of how an immigrant comes to be an immigrant.
Until recently, African-Americans tended to fare poorly within the historiography of U.S.
immigration because of the weight immigration historians placed on voluntarism in spatial
movement. As it emerged in the 1920s, the "Whiggish" historiography of U.S. immigration
celebrated the figure of the immigrant as an individual who "chose" to move from "there"
(the Old World) to "here" (the New World) in search of freedom, opportunity, and so on.
Not surprisingly, this construction of the figure of the immigrant completely erased the
African-American experience from immigration histories. Although subsequent immigration
histories dropped the awkward "Whiggish" focus on the immigrant's quest for freedom and
opportunity, the emphasis on voluntarism in movement persisted. Most immigration
histories displayed a certain discomfort with representing the African-American experience
as an immigrant experience.
Under the pressures of liberal multicultural inclusiveness, there has been in recent years a
concerted scholarly attempt to link African-American history to U.S. immigration history by
underplaying the requirement that an individual move voluntarily from "there" to "here" in
order to qualify as an immigrant, and by emphasizing the simple fact that African-Americans
moved from "there" (Africa) to "here" (the New World). This fact--the brute fact of spatial
movement--is taken to be the key to representing African-Americans as bona fide
immigrants. Thus, in his general overview of the history of immigration to the United States,
Roger Daniels represents African-Americans as immigrants by asserting that "the slave trade
was one of the major means of bringing immigrants to the New World in general and the
United States in particular." In other words, while contemporary immigration historians have

abandoned the focus on voluntarism in movement, which is an entirely salutary advance in
our understanding of immigration, they have retained a view of immigration as a spatial
movement from "there" to "here."
It is relatively easy to trace this specific linking of African- American history to U.S.
immigration history to the pressures of liberal multicultural inclusiveness. Ideologues of
liberal multiculturalism have placed immigration--understood as a spatial movement from
"there" to "here"--at the heart of what they view as a robust American multiculturalism. For
example, in a tract entitled What it Means to Be an American, Michael Walzer asserts:
This is not Europe; we are a society of immigrants, and the experience of leaving a
homeland and coming to this new place is an almost universal "American" experience. It
should be celebrated. But the celebration will be inauthentic and hypocritical if we are busy
building walls around our country. Whatever regulation is necessary--we can argue about
that--the flow of people, the material base of multiculturalism, should not be cut off. In this
rendering, immigration--described in resolutely voluntaristic terms as "the experience of
leaving a homeland and coming to this new place"--is viewed as the "material base" of a
thriving American multiculturalism. Immigrants bring distinctive cultural identities with
them when they move from "there" to "here." Not surprisingly, if African-Americans are to
participate on equal terms alongside others in a multicultural order founded upon
immigration, they must also claim--or have claimed for them--"the experience of leaving a
homeland and coming to this new place." This is something that a focus on the brute fact of
African- Americans' movement from Africa to the New World--their lack of voluntarism in
this movement notwithstanding--can readily accomplish.
The problem with this particular linking of African-American history to U.S. immigration
history is that it simply reproduces the dominant historiographical view of immigration as a
spatial movement of individuals from "there" to "here." In so doing, it completely misses the
highly significant ways in which African-American history can compel a radical rethinking of
immigration itself. Through an examination of a fragment of African-American history--the
debates surrounding the proper legal construction of emancipated slaves in the context of
poor relief administration in late eighteenth century Massachusetts--this Article attempts just
such a rethinking.
At this juncture, one might well ask why it is at all necessary to rethink the dominant
historiographical view of immigration as the spatial movement of individuals from "there" to
"here." After all, this view of immigration has a venerable lineage, sits comfortably with
celebrations of liberal multiculturalism, and corresponds to our sense of what immigration is
"really" all about. I would argue that such a rethinking is imperative because this view of
immigration fetishizes territory in ways that feed into, and ultimately enable, pernicious
contemporary renderings of the problem of immigration, the solution to the problem of
immigration, and, perhaps most important, influential legal-theoretical justifications of the
solution to the problem of immigration.
The contemporary American state's construction of both the problem of immigration and its
solution reveals the extent of this fetishization of territory. Within official discourses and
practices, the problem of immigration is that unwanted immigrants come "here;" the
solution to the problem lies in keeping unwanted immigrants "there." Accordingly, the state

devotes a significant portion of its energies to erecting fences to keep potential immigrants
out, to patrolling its territory to weed out immigrants who have entered without its
permission, to restricting resident immigrants' access to welfare on the theory that others will
be discouraged from coming, and so on.
But the fetishization of territory also underpins influential legal- theoretical approaches to
immigration that justify the contemporary American construction of the problem of
immigration and its solution. Within these approaches, precisely because the immigrant is
imagined as moving spatially from "there" to "here," the immigrant's claims upon the
community--whether these consist of claims to enter and remain within the territory of the
community or claims upon the resources of the community once within the territory of the
community--might safely be deemed inferior, less deserving of recognition, or more
susceptible to rejection.
It is worth exploring how the sense of the immigrant as one who moves spatially from
"there" to "here" translates into the conviction that the immigrant's claims upon the
community are susceptible to rejection. For the most part, we are not dealing here with
explicit, crude, or vulgar nationalist arguments that might be dismissed out of hand. Rather,
essential to this act of translation is the sense that the immigrant comes "here" as one who is
already a member of an actually existing, legally recognized, territorial community. Unlike
members of the community "here" who have no other community in which to turn,
immigrants can always go "there" if refused admission "here;" always draw upon resources
"there" if denied claims upon resources "here;" and always participate "there" if barred from
participating "here." The possibilities assumed to be available to the immigrant "there"--
typically, the country from which the immigrant comes--permit, sanction, and otherwise
enable us to mark the immigrant's claims "here" as inferior to the claims of citizens.
Of course, given the vast resource differences that exist among the various countries in the
contemporary world, any sense of comfort that we derive from knowing that immigrants can
always levy claims upon their countries of origin is suspect. Nevertheless, this sense of
comfort continues quite persistently to animate both the constitutional law of immigration
and influential theoretical approaches to immigration. It rests upon some sense of the
formal, legal equivalence of territorial states. In a world carved up into actually existing,
mutually exclusive, and legally equivalent territorial states--a world in which memberships
and places are represented by passports, all of which look alike, even if the memberships and
places they represent do not--it remains possible to refuse the immigrant's claims uponthe
community on the ground that every immigrant carries some passport that represents some
country, a real place where the immigrant can levy his claims, even if everyone knows that
those claims are likely to be frustrated there.
The idea that immigrants' claims upon the community might be refused at will on the
ground that immigrants are citizens of another country has always informed the
constitutional law of immigration. Within the register of the "plenary power doctrine" that
underpins the constitutional law of immigration, the refusal of immigrants' claims has often
adhered to the following logic. Precisely because immigrants are citizens of other countries,
in all matters involving immigration, courts may safely transpose the redress of immigrants'
claims from the realm of constitutional law to the realm of foreign relations. In this latter
realm, the countries to which immigrants belong may be expected to take up immigrants'

grievances with the United States. Accordingly, in Chae Chan Ping v. United States, a late
nineteenth century case widely viewed as having inaugurated the "plenary power doctrine,"
the United States Supreme Court rejected the plaintiff's constitutional challenge to the first
Chinese exclusion laws inter alia on the ground that China--the country to which the plaintiff
belonged--could argue on the plaintiff's behalf in the arena of government-to-government
relations. Other examples of judicial invocations of the protections that immigrants allegedly
derive from their countries of origin as a basis for denying their claims in American courts of
law could be cited, but are unnecessary for present purposes.
This constitutional abdication of responsibility for safeguarding immigrants' claims upon the
community finds its analogue in influential theoretical approaches to immigration that derive
comfort from the fact that immigrants come from some other country in order to justify
their representation of immigrants' claims upon the community as inferior. First, proceeding
from the view that "[t]he primary good that we distribute to one another is membership in
some human community," Michael Walzer has famously argued that territorially constituted
communities--by which he means countries--are not morally bound to admit strangers into
their territory because their own associational activities take precedence over strangers'
claims to admittance. However, the fact that Walzer assumes everyone to possess
membership in "some human community" betrays his conviction that strangers refused
admittance have some country to which they can return. This conviction is then further
revealed in Walzer's recognition that the claims of refugees might be entitled to special
consideration precisely because they have no country to which they can return: "Might not
admission, then, be morally imperative, at least for these strangers, who have no other place
to go?" Second, at the opening of her work on American citizenship, Judith Skhlar asserts
that immigrants' claims for recognition of their historic suffering are less deserving of her
attention than the claims of natives precisely because immigrants come from other countries:
"The history of immigration and naturalization policies is not, however, my subject. It has its
own ups and downs, but it is not the same as that of the exclusion of native- born
Americans from citizenship." The idea here is that because immigrants--unlike natives--come
from somewhere else, a real place where they can levy their claims, the claims of natives to
citizenship take precedence over the claims of immigrants to citizenship. Finally, Peter
Schuck argues that immigrants who fail to naturalize reveal a lack of commitment to
American civic life that ultimately robs their welfare claims of legitimacy. In his view,
immigrants' welfare claims are marked as inferior precisely because immigrants cling to the
countries from which they come. As suggested by these legal-theoretical approaches to
immigration, the understanding of the immigrant as one moving in space from "there" to
"here"--with both "there" and "here" imagined as actually existing territorial entities--
becomes critical to justifying a denial of the immigrant's claims "here." The fragment of
African- American history explored in this Article seeks to challenge this understanding of
the immigrant.
In late eighteenth century Massachusetts, the system of poor relief administration came
closest to regulating what we recognize today as immigration; it sought to secure territorial
communities against the claims of outsiders. Within this system, just as under contemporary
immigration regimes, individuals were seen as moving in space from "there" to "here. "
"There" and "here" were taken to be actually existing territorial entities, typically towns. The
fact that an individual came from some town community ("there") became critical to how
the town community he had entered ("here") would deal with his claims. Legal responsibility

for the recognition of the individual's claims lay with the town community from which he
came; accordingly, an individual's claims could be refused "here" because they could be
made--indeed properly belonged--"there."
As they emerged from slavery in the late eighteenth century, African- Americans threw this
entire system into a crisis. While they had been slaves, African-Americans had been the legal
responsibility of their masters. As subjects of claims, enslaved African-Americans were thus
invisible to the town communities in which they lived and worked. When they emerged from
slavery, however, African-Americans suddenly surfaced as subjects of claims who came from
no place in particular; there was simply no actually existing territorial entity upon which to
pin the legal responsibility for their support. African- Americans were "here" without having
come from "there."
How were the claims of these new subjects to be handled? While racial ideology had
everything to do with how the claims of African-Americans were handled, this racial
ideology acquired significant form through a strategy, the logic of which was determined
within the framework of a system of poor relief administration that rested upon a view of
individuals moving in space from "there" to "here." In entirely brazen attempts to refuse
legal responsibility for the claims of former slaves, town communities sought to represent
former slaves as "foreigners;" they assigned "foreign" geographic origins to former slaves.
Former slaves thus came to be represented as coming from territorial entities outside
Massachusetts, typically from a place called "Africa," so that town communities would not
be burdened with the legal responsibility of recognizing their claims.
The problem that African-Americans emerging from slavery posed for the system of poor
relief administration--and the geographic origins that town communities assigned to former
slaves in order to deal with the problem--exposes the fetishization of territory underlying the
dominant understanding of immigration as a process of spatial movement from "there" to
"here." From it, we can draw two important conclusions. First, the fact that immigrants
move in space from "there" to "here"--such that the problem of immigration and its solution
come to be imagined in territorial terms--might not be the critical fact about immigrants. If
the African-American experience in late eighteenth century Massachusetts is taken as a guide,
the problem with immigrants is revealed to be not so much the fact that they simply show
up "here," but the fact that they emerge at given moments as legally visible subjects of claims
on what we might think of as a "landscape of claims." This landscape of claims does not
necessarily correspond to the territory of the community. It corresponds rather to the public
register within which individuals are legally recognized (and thus become legally visible) as
subjects of claims upon the community. As long as they were slaves--and thus the legal
responsibility of their masters-- African-Americans did not pose a problem to the town
communities in which they lived and worked. This was precisely because they were legally
invisible on the landscape of claims. African-Americans became a problem for town
communities-- communities they had physically neither left nor entered--only once they were
no longer slaves, no longer the legal responsibility of their masters, and thus legally visible on
the landscape of claims.
Understanding the problem of immigration as one of managing immigrants' legal visibility
on the landscape of claims--rather than as one of managing territorial boundaries--draws
attention to the role of the state in constantly making immigrants legally invisible on the

landscape of claims. Understood this way, keeping immigrants outside the territorial
boundaries of the community appears to be only one--albeit an extremely important one--
among various strategies of rendering immigrants legally invisible as subjects of claims.
Other viable strategies include resolutely maintaining millions of immigrants in a state of
"illegality" so that they do not dare articulate claims upon the community, simply refusing to
recognize "legal" immigrants' claims for welfare, and so on.
Second, and more important, the state's invocation of the immigrant's coming from an
actually existing territorial entity outside the territorial boundaries of the community as a
basis for refusing the immigrant's claims upon the community is revealed with breathtaking
clarity as the pure effect of a prior desire to refuse the immigrant's claims upon the
community. Although African- Americans had in fact come from slavery, town communities
assigned them geographic origins outside Massachusetts--in a place called "Africa"--with a
view to representing them as "foreigners" who were the legal responsibility of "somewhere
else." The object was purely to deny legal responsibility for former slaves. This assignment
of geographic origins to African-Americans should be read not as underscoring a basic
mismatch between former slaves and the immigrant who "really" comes from "somewhere
else," but rather as underscoring the politics routinely underlying the construction of the
"somewhere else" from which the immigrant supposedly comes. The point is that the state
invokes immigrants' origins in some place outside the community when--and insofar as-- this
invocation serves to justify refusing the immigrant's claims upon the community. If there is
an acceptance that the state invokes the "there" from which immigrants come to justify its
refusal of immigrants' claims--which is not to deny that immigrants do "in fact" come from
outside the territorial boundaries of the community--there might at least be a revision of
influential theoretical approaches to immigration that uncritically invoke immigrants' places
of origin as a basis for justifying a refusal of their claims upon the community.
There have, of course, been some attempts to link African-American history to immigration
history through a focus on the legal construction of free blacks, most notably in the
extremely valuable work of Gerald Neuman. In his excellent survey of immigration
restriction in the early Republic, Neuman describes (1) the ways in which several antebellum
states, both free and slave, barred the entry of free blacks and (2) the ways in which the slave
states sought to compel free blacks to leave slave territory on pain of incurring more or less
horrific penalties, including re-enslavement. However, Neuman operates with precisely the
territorially-driven understanding of immigration as a spatial movement from "there" to
"here" that this Article eschews. For his purposes, "a statute regulates immigration if it seeks
to prevent or discourage the movement of aliens across an international border, even if the
statute also regulates the movement of citizens, or movement across interstate borders, and
even if the alien's movement is involuntary." Not surprisingly, Neuman does not seek to
advance our understanding of immigration through an exploration of African-American
history in the way that is attempted here. By contrast, historians who have written about the
free black experience in the antebellum United States have for the most part focused on
themes such as race, the preservation of slavery, and so on without seeing the free black
experience as a particular species of immigrant experience that might afford a critique of the
pernicious fetishization of territory that underlies the contemporary construction of
immigration.

It should be pointed out at this juncture that this Article cannot pretend to capture the full
complexity of the African-American experience of emancipation in late eighteenth century
Massachusetts. Fortunately, it is possible to refer the reader to Joanne Melish's brilliant
intellectual, social, and cultural history of the "problem of emancipation"--and the
corresponding development of racial ideology--in late eighteenth century New England.
Among other things, Melish argues convincingly that, decades before the full-scale
emergence of the colonization movement, the successfully realized desire to rid New
England of slavery was accompanied by the less successfully realized desire to rid New
England of those who had formerly been slaves. White New Englanders were never able to
remove black New Englanders from their midst. However, they were able to enact their
rejection of black New Englanders in all sorts of ways; the attempt to assimilate emancipated
slaves to the legal status of "foreigners" was one such way. . .
Kunal Parker--Associate-Professor of Law, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State
University. This Article was written while I was a Visiting Research Fellow at the American Bar
Foundation (1999-2000). Earlier versions of this Article were presented at the Speaker Series at the
American Bar Foundation (Spring 2000) and the Annual Conference of the Law and Society Association
(May 2000). I would like to thank (1) the audiences at the American Bar Foundation and the Law and
Society Association Annual Conference for their reactions to the Article and (2) Nicholas Blomley, Indrani
Chatterjee, Ruth Herndon, Bonnie Honig, Ritty Lukose, Patricia McCoy, Mae Ngai, Joanne Melish,
Annelise Riles, James Sidbury, Christopher Tomlins, and Leti Volpp for their comments on earlier drafts of
this Article. I would also like to acknowledge both the financial support of the American Bar Foundation
and the Cleveland- Marshall Fund and the research assistance of William Knox. Special thanks go to the
personnel of the Massachusetts Archives (especially Stephanie Dyson) and to Elizabeth Bouvier of the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives.

A CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY & ESSAY ON AMERICAN STUDIES
ADAPTED FROM PROF. T.V.REED’S WEBSITE
URL: <http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~amerstu/tm/bib.html>
I. ON THE GENEALOGY OF AMERICAN STUDIES
This historical overview section lists books and articles that trace the rise of American Studies (henceforth
AS) as a discipline or interdiscipline, in terms of its theoretical concerns and/or its institutional contexts.
Recent theory has reminded us that origin stories are powerful determining forces, and thus these (and my)
tales of the growth and development of the discipline should be read both for what they say and for what
they may leave out, read both for their truths and their partialities.
Wise, Gene, ed. "Some Voices in and Around American Studies." American Quarterly 31 (1979): 338-406. As
part of a special section of the 1979 bibliographic issue of American Quarterly entitled "The American
Studies Movement: A Thirty Year Retrospective," fourteen scholars reflect on the history, and future of
American Studies, including reflections on theory and method from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
---. "'Paradigm Dramas' in American Studies: A Cultural and Institutional History." American Quarterly 31
(1979): 293-337. Wise traces the rise of American Studies from its mythic origins with Vernon Parrington
in mid-west exile and Perry Miller in "darkest Africa," up to the late 1970s. He identifies a series of major
"paradigm moments" in the development of the field, shaped by an interplay of social change and changes
in theory. The essay is stronger on institutional history than on analyzing theoretical tendencies, but is
suggestive regarding the latter area as well. His footnotes, especially the first two, provide a guide to
further reading on the history of AS.
Susman, Warren. Culture as History. NY: Pantheon, 1984. A number of Susman's pieces on American
intellectual and cultural history illuminate the development of AS, but his essay on "The Culture of the
Thirties" is particularly important. While only tangentially treating AS, Susman's observation that the
anthropological notion of "culture" became an obsessive concern of Americans during the depression
crisis is very suggestive vis-a-vis the rise of the AS movement. But for a critique of Susman's exaggeration
of the conservatism of the thirties, see below Michael Denning, "American Culture and Socialist Theory."
Bercovitch, Sacvan, and Myra Jehlen, eds., Ideology and Classic American Literature. NY: Cambridge University
Press, 1988. Contains reassessments of their work by important pioneers of AS theory and method
including Henry Nash Smith, Leo Marx, Richard Slotkin, and Alan Trachtenberg, as well as essays by a
younger generation of scholars, including Houston Baker, Carolyn Porter, Donald Pease, Michael Gilmore,
Jane Tompkins, Jonathan Arac, and Myra Jehlen, that exemplify work in the 1980s that blended feminist,
neo-marxist and post-structuralist theories and methods.
Reising, Russell. The Unusable Past: Theory and the Study of American Literature. NY: Methuen, 1986. Offers a
history and critique of major theories of an American literary and cultural tradition, from Perry Miller to
Sacvan Bercovitch, including such figures of importance to AS as Leo Marx, F.O. Matthiessen, D.H.
Lawrence, and R.W.B. Lewis.
Denning, Michael. "'The Special American Conditions': Marxism and American Studies," American
Quarterly38 (1986): 356-380. In the course of arguing against American "exceptionalism" (our alleged lack
of class struggle etc.), Denning introduces main currents in neo-marxism and surveys marxian studies of
American culture. He argues that AS theory and practice has often been a weak alternative to marxian
thought and has suffered from lack of a full encounter with it. Footnotes constitute an important
bibliography on marxism and AS.
Cowan, Michael. "Boundary as Center: Inventing an American Studies Culture." Prospects12 (1987): 1-20.
Cowan's "state of the discipline" address as outgoing ASA president is a seriously playful account of major
turning points in AS, treating AS scholars as a culture, and pointing out some of the contradictions of
being an established anti-disciplinary, anti-establishmentarian discipline.

Kerber, Linda. "Diversity and the Transformation of American Studies." American Quarterly 41 (1989): 415-
431. Also delivered as a president's address to the ASA (Miami 1988), this piece is a lively, nuanced defense
of diversity in America and in AS. Told via a narrative about the changes in AS scholarship Kerber has
noted during her lifetime, this speech is aimed at countering conservative calls during the Reagan era for
what she sees as a narrowly monocultural and largely uncritical vision of our past and future. It is also
aimed at putting questions of power, which Kerber sees as deflected by more abstract discussions of
cultural "difference," at the center of AS scholarship and debate.
Davis, Allen F. "The Politics of America Studies." American Quarterly 42 (1990): 353-374. Another
"presidential address" to the ASA (Toronto, 1989), this piece uses a story about a struggle for power
within the ASA during the late 1960s and early 70s (between radicals and more traditionalist forces) to
characterize the complex relations between the ASA as organization, the interdiscipline as a whole, and the
wider forces of change and constancy in the society.
Gunn, Giles. "American Studies as Cultural Criticism, " in The Culture of Criticism and the Criticism of Culture.
Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987. A thoughtful, brief history of AS that attempts to show
thepolemical nature of the myth and symbol school, and how recent work by Clifford Geertz, Alan
Trachtenberg and others has extended and clarified without really superseding the work of the myth and
symbol school.
Berkhofer, Robert F. "A New Context for a New American Studies?" American Quarterly 41 (1989) 588-
613. A sophisticated survey of how recent developments in social and intellectual history, and literary and
cultural theory, are reshaping AS, with special reference to how relations between "texts" and "contexts"
are constructed by various theoretical postures.
Lipsitz, George. "Listening to Learn, Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and American
Studies." American Quarterly 42 (1990): 615-636. A brilliantly lucid introduction to the key tools recent
European cultural theory has to offer AS; sorts the useful from the merely pretentious among post-
structuralists, neo-marxists, semioticians, etc. and relates their work to developments in scholarship about
popular culture in the US.
Lauter, Paul. "'Versions of Nashville, Visions of American Studies': Presidential Address to the ASA.
October 27, 1994." American Quarterly 47.2 (June 1995): 185-203. President Lauter uses Nashville, with its
range of resonances moving from the conservative Southern agrarian literary critics to Civil Rights workers
of the Nashville movement, as the backdrop for a plea for a more publicly engaged version of American
Studies, one deeply involved in political struggle at all levels.
Porter, Carolyn. "'What We Know that We Don't Know': Remapping American Literary Studies." American
Literary History 6.3 (1994):467-526. While focused on the construction of the "field imaginary" of
"American literature," this essay is directly relevant to those seeking an American Studies that displaces
exceptionalism and re-places the U.S. in larger transnational flow of cultural exchanges.
Kaplan, Amy. "'Left Alone with America': The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture," in
Cultures of United States Imperialism. Edited by Kaplan and Donald Pease. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1993. Beginning with a re-reading of Perry Miller's errand into the heart of darkness, Kaplan
succinctly and brilliantly lays out the ways in which American culture studies have avoided the fact of the
United States empire. She demonstrates how that evasion has impoverished our understanding of not only
U.S. imperialism but also of the interacting force of empire on our domestic cultural productions.
Desmond, Jane, and Virginia Domínquez. "Resituating American Studies in a Critical Internationalism."
American Quarterly 48 (September 1996):475-90. Strong, lucid argument for a rethinking of American
Studies institutionally and intellectually in relation to other "area studies" in order to better locate the field
in the larger terrain of a self-critical trans- and inter-nationalism that undercuts American exceptionalism.
Janice Radway, "What's in a Name?" Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, 20
November, 1998 Radway raises key questions about the history and future of the interdiscipline by
focusing on the name 'American Studies' itself, and by exploring alternative names that highlight current

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