ENN 195: Violence in American Art and Culture
Justin Rogers-Cooper, Ph.D
jrogers@lagcc.cuny.edu / jrcqueens@yahoo.com
office: M-120E
M-R / MB64 / E107 / 1-4.25pm
College Course Description
This course surveys the depiction of various types of violence and the use of violence as a theme or metaphor in North American literature, art, and popular culture. Emphasis is placed on New York City as a laboratory and resource for researching considerations of violence in poetry, drama, fiction, film and other visual art forms as well as popular culture (e.g., lyrics, comic strips, advertising, horror and suspense stories).
Individual Course Description
This course will survey several key intersections between urban violence, group identity, collective behavior, crowd power, economic crises, and US racial conflict in particular. We will explore how these intersections and the context for the appearance of violence in works of literature, film, photography, and video. For our purposes in this limited Fall II session, we will focus on works of short fiction (novellas), one novel, one play, some occasional poetry, and several films and extended scenes from films. These texts act as examples of both “literary” and “popular” culture. The emphasis on New York City will occur primarily through a research assignment that involves documents from LaGuadia’s mayoral archives.
Course Goals
At the end of this course, students should be able to:
- understand the historical trajectory of violent civil disorders from the beginning of the US to the contemporary period
- be able to discuss the significance of urban locations in that violence
- be able to define different types of violence, explain why it works, and predict in what situations it could happen
- be able to identify the role of individual and social emotions in framing violence
- be able to identify some major episodes of urban violence in American history
- be able to analyze how different narratives (stories) represent violence through different forms of media (with literature and film in particular)
- be able to trace their reflections in a blog
- be able to incorporate research from LaGuardia’s mayoral archives
Course Texts
If you plan to order from Amazon, order after the first day of class. It is the responsibility of the student to have the text for class on-time.
Hanover, Or the Persecution of the Lowly, David Bryant Thorne
140685087X @10$
Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, Nathaniel West (one text)
0811218221 @10$ (check Amazon)
Little Scarlet, Walter Mosley
044619824 @14$ (check Amazon)
Fires in the Mirror, Anna Deavere Smith
082221329X @8$
Total Cost: @40$ (the prices here reflect new and not used books, however)
Assignments
Blog: Students will blog once a week.
The blogs will connect ideas, themes, scenes, characters, situations, and/or events from the literary texts to those in the films we watch. Blogs should be 250 words. Students should compose the blogs in Microsoft Word and then copy/paste into a Blogger blog (instructions on how to set up a blog will be in class). Blogs should be written for a general audience, which means students must introduce the subjects and texts they plan to discuss before they make their connections between them.
All blogs are due Friday at 5 pm.
Essays: Students will turn in two four-page essays for this course.
The essays will create and support an original argument about how violence works in two different kinds of texts (fiction, film). The essays will compare and contrast how fiction and film represent violence, how they explain its occurrence, and how they show its solutions. Since space is limited, students might concentrate on one scene of violence from the fiction and film. We will spend time in-class discussing the drafts through peer review.
In-Class Summary and Questions: After the class views segments from films and videos, two students will have the opportunity to summarize what the film and videos were about, to explain what the main subjects or characters were, and to offer some discussion questions.
One student will handle the summary, and the other student will handle the questions.
Final Exam: The final exam will involve texts from a small field trip to LaGuardia’s mayoral archives.
The catch is that students must arrive at the final exam after examining key documents from the archive before the exam begins. The archive will have a folder for students beginning in the second week of class. The folder contains three documents. Students will study the documents and take notes about what they contain; they may even make copies and bring them to the final exam. When they arrive at the final exam, they will receive a fourth document from the professor. They will then write an essay that explains the contents of the documents and their relationship to urban violence, and connect them to key ideas and texts from class.
Grades
Blog: 20%
Essays: 40%
In-class: 20%
Final: 20%
Classroom Behavior
Respect everyone, phones set to silent, no hot or smelly food, arrive on time.
Email etiquette
Emails are letters.
Attendance
Web-Attendance will be taken when the professor arrives to class. Arriving late counts as one missed hour. More than four missed hours subjects the student to failure. More than three missed hours requires that the student explain their absence to the professor in writing or in person. More than four missed hours will probably have implications on the student’s in-class grade.
Plagiarism
http://library.laguardia.edu/files/pdf/academicintegritypolicy.pdf
Course Schedule
Reading assignments are due on the day that they appear. Example: Students should read A Red Record for the class on Monday, January 9.
TH – 1/5: US Civil Wars: Revolutionary Violence, Slave Revolts, and The Civil War Draft Riots, 1863
Class Intro
Declaration of Independence
Constitution of the US
Slave Rebellions
From Imagined Communities
The Civil War Draft Riots
Film: from Ken Burns: The Civil War
Film: The Gangs of New York (DVD 476, LAGCC library)
All blogs are due Friday at 5 pm.
M – 1/9 : Lynching in America, 1893
Reading: from A Red Record (Handout)
Experiment and Failure of Reconstruction
Rise and Fall of the first KKK
Film: Within Our Gates (1919/1930)
TH – 1/12: White Supremacist Massacres and White Nationalism: 1898 and 1921
Reading: Hanover, Or the Persecution of the Lowly, David Bryant Thorne
140685087X
Race Riots, 1898-1921
film: from The Birth of a Nation (1915)
video: from Before They Die (2008)
All blogs are due Friday at 5 pm.
T – 1/17 – Dreams on Fire, 1939
PEER REVIEW: BRING THREE COPIES OF ESSAY DRAFT TO CLASS (25% of essay grade)
Reading: The Day of the Locust, Nathaniel West
0811218221
Great Depression
Hollywood
Film: from The Panic Is On: The Great Depression (PBS)
TH - 1/19 – Social and Individual Depression, 1933
Reading: Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathaniel West
Film: Our Daily Bread (1934)
All blogs are due Friday at 5 pm.
M - 1/23: US War and Double Victory, 1943
ESSAY ONE DUE
Reading: Darkness and Confusion, Ann Petry (handout)
1943 Harlem Riots
Double Victory Campaign
Video: from The War: Segregation, Its Impact
Video: from The War: African-American Troop Training
http://www.pbs.org/thewar/detail_5373.htm
last day to official withdraw 1/25
TH- 26: The Fire This Time, 1965
Reading: Little Scarlet, Walter Mosley (3-60)
Civil Rights Movement
Malcolm X
Violence and non-violence
0446198242
Film: Black Rebels (1960)
All blogs are due Friday at 5 pm.
M – 1/30 1965
Reading: Little Scarlet, Walter Mosley (60-160)
Watts Riot
Black Power
Black Panthers
Film: from Citizen King
Film: from The Black Power Mixtape
TH – 2/2 1965
Reading: Little Scarlet, Walter Mosley (160-220)
FBI assassinations (1968)
Film: Heat Wave (1965)
All blogs are due Friday at 5 pm.
M – 2/6: 1965
Reading: Little Scarlet, Walter Mosley (220-320)
War on Poverty, War on Drugs
Film: from Wattstax (1973)
TH – 2/9: Fires in the Mirror, 1991
PEER REVIEW: BRING THREE COPIES OF ESSAY TWO DRAFT (25%)
Fires in the Mirror, Anna Deavere Smith
082221329X
Neoliberalism
Crown Heights Riots
Film: Raising Crown Heights (1995)
All blogs are due Friday at 5 pm.
W – 2/15: 1991
ESSAY TWO DUE
Fires in the Mirror, Anna Deavere Smith
082221329X
LA Riots
Film: Crown Heights (2002)
NO BLOG DUE this Friday at 5 pm.
M - 2-20 FINAL EXAM
