ENN 195.0962: Violence in American Art and
Culture (LEC
79084)
M 1-3.15
B-A05 W 1-2
E-225
Justin Rogers-Cooper, Ph.D jrogers@lagcc.cuny.edu / jrcqueens@yahoo.com
office: M-109A Office
Hours: M: 9.30-10.30 AM; W: 9.30-10.30 AM
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).
Section Description: The Rise of Urban Riot
Culture
This course will probe how art and literature
represent the complex causes and effects of major selected rioting in American
history. We will focus especially on the rise of urban riot culture in the
industrial age following the Civil War through World War II. Our studies will
take us from the 1837 Bread Riot in New York to the eruption of simultaneous
rioting across the United States in the depression-hit 1870s. From there we’ll
read how novelists reacted to those riots with sensational and dystopian novels
about the implosion of New York City from angry riots, and then into F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s rendering of World War I-era Red Scare riots in New York. We’ll
conclude with a sustained inquiry into the waves of Harlem riots from
1933-1964, which will take us into LaGuardia’s own mayoral archives, where
we’ll conduct original primary research on why previous generations of New
Yorkers took to the streets with looting in protest over racial discrimination
and the cost of living.
We will approach these events through multi-disciplinary
inquiries into collective behavior, crowd power, economic crises, ethnic and
racial identity, and civil rights. We will discuss representations of riot violence
in literature, film, photography, and video. The course will emphasize New York
City wherever possible, though primarily through field trips to one or two
museums, and through a final project that involves documents from LaGuadia’s
mayoral archives on the Harlem riots of 1935, 1943, and 1964.
In the wake of the recent Ferguson Riots in
Missouri, these texts and this class are as important today as ever. When this
class is over, you’ll understand how riot culture has always played a major
role in public struggles over competing notions of ethics, emotion, and justice
– a concept we’ll examine as ‘the moral economy of the crowd.’
Course Goals
At the end of this course, students should be
able to:
*
understand the historical context
for violent civil disorders
*
define the relation between riot culture and the economic
conditions
*
identify the role of individual and social emotions in violent behavior
*
study a few major episodes of urban violence in American history
*
analyze how different media and narratives represent violence
*
improve their strategies for writing college essays
*
improve their strategies for research and critical thinking
Required Texts
Texts are available at the LaGuardia bookstore.
It is extremely important that you purchase these texts and bring
them to every class session for which they are assigned.
1.
Donnelly, Caesar’s Column. ISBN: 1406825662 (New in Bookstore:
$29.99/Amazon: Used from $6.92)
2. F. Scott Fitzgerald, May Day; ISBN: 140994378X (New in Bookstore: $10.00/ Amazon: Used from
$0.14)
3. Course Packet, NEKO Copy Center ($25)
Total Cost: All Costs with New
Texts: $65. Costs with Used Texts: from $32.
If you plan to order from Amazon, order all
texts now. It is the responsibility of the student to have the text for class when
we read them.
NOTE:
The texts in the course packet are available online in the public domain. I
have provided links for them on our blog. In the past, however, students have
chosen to print out these texts on their own, and some have reached printer
limits and/or paid for the printing themselves. It’s expensive to print out at
home and there are over 160 pages-316 pages to print (depending on if you use
both sides). Many students have been upset they didn’t have the option of
buying cheaper print-outs. That is why I’ve made the packets at NEKO Copy
Center. There are 15 packets there. I advise students to buy the packets so
that they’ll have almost all the major readings for the course conveniently
ready. At the same time, I realize financial pressures are real for some students.
Whatever method you choose, *you must
do the reading*!
Course Blog: TBA
Course Requirements
Students will write two 3-4 page essays that
respond to various course assignments, texts, and discussions.
Students will read the required texts and participate
in class discussions and workshops.
Students will post short blogs when assigned.
Students will post comments to fellow students’
blogs when assigned.
Assignments
Blog: Students will blog once a week. The blogs
will connect ideas, themes, scenes, characters, situations, and/or events from
the readings or visual materials. Blogs should be 200 words. Students should consider
composing their 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 by 5 pm.
Essays: Students will write two 3-4 essays for
this course.
The essays will create and support an original
argument about how violence works in two different kinds of media (fiction,
film, etc). The essays will compare and contrast how fiction and film represent
violence, how they explain its origin, and how they articulate solutions. We
will spend time in-class discussing the drafts through peer review.
Final Exam: The final exam will
involve texts from LaGuardia’s mayoral archives.
The idea here is that students will arrive for
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 Blogs: 30% Essays: 20% Quizzes:
10% Participation: 20% Final: 10%
Classroom Expectations
Students must respect each other and the
professor at all times.
Students show that respect through active
listening and participation.
Students must silence all electronic devices
and refrain from texting during class.
Students will keep an open mind.
Students will not eat hot smelly food near the
front of the class.
Student Rules: Add these to the syllabus on
first day of class.
Attendance
Students that miss more than four hours of
class may fail.
Students that miss more than four hours of
class must confer with the professor.
If you are late twice it will count as one
absence.
If you do miss class, it is your responsibility
to keep up with class work; email another student to find out what was missed
or check the course blog.
Plagiarism and academic integrity
All work you submit must be your
own. You may not copy or paraphrase someone else’s words or ideas
without properly citing the source. All instances of plagiarism or academic
dishonesty will result in an “F” and possible action by the college.
http://library.laguardia.edu/files/pdf/academicintegritypolicy.pdf
Course Schedule
Reading assignments are due on the day that
they appear.
All blogs are due Friday by 5 pm.
Module One: City of Hunger
M 9.8: Introduction: City of Riots
All blogs are due Friday by 5 pm.
Essay One Assignment
W 9.10: Prophecies
of Urban Chaos
All blogs are due Friday by 5 pm.
M 9.15: A Bread
Riot in New York
Reading: Headley
–Bread Riot 1837 (14 pages)
Video: The Industrial
Revolution
Video: The Civil War Draft Riots (PBS)
Module
Two: The 1877 General Strike
W 9.17: Urban Chaos Goes Viral
Reading: Headley Great Riots, 1877 (1/2 @ 56
pages)
All blogs are due Friday by 5 pm.
M 9.22: Urban Chaos
Goes Viral
Reading:
Headley Great Riots, 1877 (56 pages)
W 9.24: No Class
All blogs are due Friday by 5 pm.
Module Three: The
Future Disasters
M 9.29: The Destruction of Gotham
Reading: The Destruction of Gotham (@25% of text)
W 10.1: The Destruction of Gotham
Reading: The
Destruction of Gotham (@25% of
text)
All blogs are due Friday by 5 pm.
M 10.6: The Destruction of Gotham
Reading: The
Destruction of Gotham (@25% of text)
Peer
Review: Bring Three Copies of Essay One Draft
W 10.8: The Destruction of Gotham
Reading: The
Destruction of Gotham (@25% of text)
NO
BLOG THIS WEEK
M 10.13: College Closed
W 10.15: Gotham Collapses
Reading: Caesar’s
Column (17%)
Essay One Due
Essay Assignment Two
M 10.20: Gotham
Collapses
Caesar’s Column (17%)
W 10.22: Gotham Collapses
Caesar’s Column (17%)
All blogs are due Friday by 5 pm.
M 10.27: Gotham Collapses
Caesar’s Column (17%)
W 10.29: Gotham Collapses
Caesar’s Column (17%)
All blogs are due Friday by 5 pm.
M 11.3: Gotham Collapses
Caesar’s Column (17%)
Module Four: New
York’s Red Scare
W 11.5: Global War and Native Panic
Reading: May
Day (33%)
All blogs are due Friday by 5 pm.
Film: “The Espionage Act of
1917 and Sedition Act of 1918”
Film: “Unit 6: First Red
Scare”
M 11.10: Attacking Communists
Reading: May
Day (33%)
Film: “Unit 7: Palmer Raids”
Film: “Unit 8: Sacco and
Vanzetti”
W
11.12: White Man’s City
Reading: May
Day (33%)
Film: Black Wall Street
All blogs are due Friday by 5 pm.
Module
Five: The Harlem Riots
M 11.17: The 1933
Harlem Riot
Reading: TBA
Essay Two Peer Review
W. 11.19: The
1943 Harlem Riot
Reading:
TBA
All blogs are due Friday by 5 pm.
M 11.24: The
1943 Harlem Riot: Double Victory Campaign
Reading: In Darkness and
Confusion, Ann Petry (handout)
Video: from The War:
Segregation, Its Impact
Video: from The War:
African-American Troop Training
Essay Two Due
W 11.26: The
1964 Harlem Riot
Reading: TBA
All blogs are due Friday by 5 pm.
M 12.1 The 1964 Harlem Riot
Reading: TBA
NO
BLOG DUE
W
12.10: Final Exam (In-class essay) on Harlem Riots
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