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| FALL 2008 TENTATIVE SYLLABUS Tuesday, Thursday 12:-00-1:15 Cavanaugh 411 Dr. Paul Mullins Office: Cavanaugh 413B; phone 317-274-9847 Office Hours: to be announced |
Course Outline The notion of popular culture has been taken to encompass almost everything in public space from everyday Medieval life to Janet Jackson's' ill-fated wardrobe malfunction. In this course we will approach popular culture as a body of widely shared and contested beliefs, practices, and material objects that presents ordinary social life’s extraordinary possibilities: the "popular" accents the potentially remarkable dimensions of "ordinary" practices, such as style, literature, and music. In this sense, popular culture mirrors real life, but it is a distorted and selective reflection that presents familiar realities in their most spectacular forms. Popular culture illuminates how we are all ordinary yet desire to be extraordinary or at least envision extraordinary possibilities within ourselves. |
| Few subjects provide a richer insight into contemporary popular culture than Elvis Presley. This course will devote little or no time to the minutia of Elvis biographies or the merits of Clambake. However, such discourses about Elvis Presley harbor many of the most pivotal currents of late-twentieth century Western society: class, racism, regional difference, sexuality, subcultural identities, materialism, and civil religion all routinely figure in public and private dialogue about Elvis. In this course we will probe popular culture by examining Elvis as a subject that has been constructed and contested in a wide range of forms since the mid-1950's. We will approach Elvis discourses as ways both mass and elite audiences talk about themselves and their society through Elvis symbolism. By studying Presley discourses this way, the course will probe underlying anthropological problems that the subject Elvis variously masks, redefines, and subverts. |
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The course should underscore how traditional anthropological insight can be amplified to dissect the social and political complexities of contemporary popular cultural phenomena like Elvis, examining popular cultural subjects including music subcultures, popular religion, and consumer culture. We will examine how Elvis discourses function within popular culture as rich anthropological intersections between facets of cultural identity such as regionalism, civil religion, consumption, and class tension and probe how such currents are part of many other popular cultural phenomena.
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The Facts of Life
Your final grade will be based on attendance (5%); two exams (15% each); a class presentation on a course reading (5%); an article review (15%); a web page analysis (15%); and a term paper (30%). The mid-term exam will be a take-home. The final is also a take-home. Participation in class discussion and attendance at lecture are key to comprehension, especially since we cover so much material in each weekly class meeting. All students who attend class and miss one or no class meetings will receive the full five points toward attendance. If you miss two class meetings one point will be deducted from your attendance score (i.e., you would receive four attendance points); miss three days and two points will be deducted from the final score, and so on. Documented illnesses will not count as absences in your final attendance score; all other absences should be discussed with me or they will be counted in the final attendance score. If you do not attend on the day your discussion presentation is scheduled, you will not receive any points toward the presentation grade; since this is 5% of your final grade, it is an ill-advised move to skip the discussion. |
| In addition to readings from the course's assigned texts, a group of required readings will be placed in the Anthropology office and as PDF's on my Oncourse page. We will discuss readings weekly in a classroom discussion led by students. You are responsible for reading each week's articles prior to their discussion in class; please let me know if you have any problems accessing readings online. Students will each present one of these readings to the class during the course of the semester, summarizing the article and examining its relevance to our thinking. You will be expected to know your presentation article thoroughly--a quick skim will not be sufficient--and be prepared to provide a set of questions and critiques to guide subsequent classroom discussion. I will require that you hand in an outline review of the article when you present, or you will receive only half credit for the presentation. You may elect to present a particular reading; readings will be assigned on a first-come, first-serve basis and can be requested before or after class or via email (email requests should suggest at least a couple readings in order of preference, since you may be beaten to your preferred article). You can check on available readings, the presentation schedule, or remind yourself of when you're presenting on the readings page. Otherwise, unassigned readings will be distributed to remaining students at random. You are encouraged to discuss your ideas about your presentation article with me prior to class. I am happy to discuss any paper during office hours, arranged times, or email if it will help clarify some thoughts, provide some background information on the paper or topic, or provide assistance structuring your ideas. |
The term paper will examine a popular cultural subject using the anthropological insights presented during the semester. You will be expected to produce a paper at least 15 double-spaced pages in length which refers to course readings and outside literature. Paper topics are due by October 2; any topics that are not approved at this time may be rejected at semester's end. Anybody who does not turn in a paper proposal October 2 will have a full letter grade deducted from the final grade on their term paper, so I strongly suggest turning in a proposal. The papers must draw on scholarly literature and popular literature (e.g., newspapers, MTV, etc.); regardless of eloquence, no postmodern musings without citations or structure will be acceptable. A detailed guide to preparation and format of the paper will be handed out in the early semester and is on the term paper page. Any papers that are not turned in by the due date will be penalized significantly.
Graduate students are expected to complete all course requirements as outlined in the syllabus. In addition you will be required to complete a paper that is a minimum of 25 pages in length. You will be required to meet with me to discuss the topic prior to beginning the paper, and I will expect to meet with you each at least once during the preparation of the paper to read a draft at least three weeks before the paper is due.
| If you cannot complete an assignment on
time for any reason, you should contact me as soon as possible. I can always
be contacted before or after class, you can schedule an appointment, and I
check my email virtually everyday. Late assignments will be penalized a letter grade each day if you do not negotiate an extension with me beforehand. You may email me late assignments. You also can leave assignments in my mailbox in the Anthropology office in Cavanaugh Hall; you should ask a member of the office staff to mark the exercise with the date so that you are credited for turning it in on time. Even if you miss a due date, contact me so that you can complete a partial credit makeup: to miss any assignments is, at best, mathematically ill-advised.
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This syllabus includes deadlines for all assignments and test dates: it is your responsibility to know when assignments are due and tests are scheduled. There will not be any extra credit material. If you do not complete course work by semester's end you will not pass the course unless you have a substantial reason for tardiness. You can monitor your grades over the semester at Oncourse. You may log in as a guest, but you cannot access your grades unless you have a university password. |
All work in the course is conducted in accordance with the University’s academic misconduct policy. Cheating includes dishonesty of any kind with respect to exams or assignments. Plagiarism is the offering of someone else’s work as your own: this includes taking material from books, web pages, or other students, turning in the same or substantially similar work as other students, or failing to properly cite other research. Please consult the University Bulletin’s academic misconduct policy if you have any questions.
Please do NOT wait until well after a deadline to talk to me. Do NOT postpone talking to me if you are having any difficulty completing an assignment or you're having difficulty with the class.
All work in this course is intended to fulfill the University's Principles of Undergraduate Learning. The class focuses on critical, self-reflective thinking, integrates knowledge from a variety of disciplinary and sociocultural perspectives, examines social and cultural complexity, and probes the impact of knowledge on our everyday decision-making. Do let me know if the course does not satisfy any of the missions included in the Principles.
A- 89-91
B+ 86-88
B 82-85
B- 79-81
C+ 76-78
C 70-75
D 60-69
F 0-60
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The course has two required texts (In Search of Elvis: Music, Race, Art, Religion, referred to as ISE in readings listing; and Subculture: The Meaning of Style) and one recommended text ("Planet of the Apes" as American Myth), which are available locally in the campus bookstore and Indy's College Bookstore. These also can be purchased at online retailers: Campusi.com searches multiple online retailers for used or new copies. A link to searches for each book follows the citation below. |
Additional required readings are available on Oncourse, or they can be copied from originals in the Anthropology office; full citations and where you can find each week's readings are included in the reading schedule. Readings will be discussed in weekly discussions and included in test material, and they should be cited in your term paper. All course readings will be cited below as being available in ISE (i.e., In Search of Elvis), Hebdige (i.e.,Subculture), online with the link provided here, or on Oncourse. We are using several chapters out of Simon Frith's now out-of-print Sound Effects, which is also available at campusi.com for as cheap as you can photocopy a handful of chapters.
Readings for the review essay are on reserve are only available in the Anthropology office (two are online journal articles). You will be responsible for reading any one of these essays and preparing a written review of the paper. You may choose to use one of these review essay papers for your paper, but you will NOT be responsible for reading the essays that you do not choose for your review essay.
Online try searching for Chadwick, Hebdige, and Greene at campusi.com
Chadwick, Vernon (editor)
1997 In Search of Elvis: Music, Race, Art, Religion. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado. Search for an online copy at campusi.com
Hebdige, Dick
1979 Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Routledge, New York. Search for an online copy at campusi.com
Recommended Text:
Greene, Eric
1996 "Planet of the Apes" as American Myth: Race and Politics in the Films and Television Series. McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina. Search for an online copy at campusi.com
"Hell, they don't teach you anything nowadays." (Elvis, on school)
August 30
Ways to Think about a Polysemic Elvis
Why Elvis?: Elvis memory as our distorted mirror
Elvis, God or Devil?: complicating mass myth
Elvis Presley and Elvis the subject position
NO CLASS SEPTEMBER 6
September 13
An Elvis Primer: Biography, History, and Hagiography
Reading: Chadwick, "Introduction: Ole Massa's Dead, Long Live the King of Rock'n'Roll," in ISE; and Disney's Distorted Mirror http://www.transparencynow.com/Disney/kingdom.htm
September 20
Anthropology and Popular Culture: is there Culture in mass
culture?
The monolith of Culture: retooling modernism's Cultural categories
Sentimental education and popular culture
Elvis or Shakespeare?: the complications of academic Elvis-ology
Reading: Frith, "Rock and Mass Culture," Oncourse; and Hebdige, "Subculture: The unnatural break."
September 27
The revolution will be on the radio: popular politics
Social protest and genre synthesis in popular music
Subaltern resistance and artistic bricolage
Grassroots and mass music: marketing culture? Sam Philips and the Colonel
Subculture and musical politics: the Sex Pistols, Grateful Dead, and subcultural
musical movements
Readings: Hebdige, "Style as Intentional Communication"; and Frith, "Youth," Anthropology office.
Term paper topic proposal due October 4
October 4
Horatio Alger with a drawl: Southern history and Southern
Culture
Jim Crow and racial construction: Reconstruction legacies
The Great Migration: Flight from Tupelo
Memphis: Sodom of the South
Fighting modernity: transition and tradition in Southern identity
Readings: Reed, "Elvis as Southerner," in ISE; and Pratt, "Elvis, or the Ironies of a Southern Identity"
October 11
"White Trash": Racializing Class in the South
Class, Kitsch, and Materialism in the Jungle Room
"So they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly": The South in popular culture
Readings: Sweeney, "The King of White Trash Culture: Elvis Presley and the Aesthetics of Excess," on Oncourse; and Campbell, "Elvis Presley as Redneck," in ISE
October 18
Synthesis in Popular Culture: Who Made the King?
Evangelicism and the Pentecostal South
I'm a Little Bit Country: Bluegrass, Country, and the Rockabilly Moment
Readings: Tucker, "Rethinking Elvis and the Rockabilly Moment," in ISE; Greene, "Planet of the Apes," in "Planet of the Apes" as American Myth: Race and Politics in the Films and Television Series, Anthropology office.
MID-TERM DUE Monday October 25
October 25
"I Want the Negro Sound": the contradictions of race
Transgressing Race: Rock-and-roll and Civil Rights
Black rhythm in the White South
Elvis as Racist: Thieving African-American musical tradition
Readings: Spencer, "A Revolutionary Sexual Persona: Elvis Presley and the White Acquiescence of Black Rhythms," in ISE; and Baskerville, "The Act of Signifyin(g) in Popular Music," on Oncourse.
November 1
Young and Beautiful: Video, Cinema, and the Aesthetics of
Popular Music
Hollywood Hillbilly: Cinematic Elvis
Youth Subculture and Video
Readings: Frith, "Youth/Music/Television," on Oncourse.
WEB PAGE ANALYSIS DUE NOVEMBER 8
November 8
Body as subject: The ambiguities of a heterosexual hepcat
Sexual liminality and taboo in Elvis
Living with Mama and the Memphis Mafia: Manhood and familial devotion in Elvis
myth
Elvis and Priscilla's 50 nights: sexual discipline and display
Readings: Frith, "Rock and Sexuality," Oncourse; and Cole, I am the Eye, You are the Victim: the Pornographic Ideology of Music Video (http://enculturation.gmu.edu/2_2/cole/index.html)
November 15
Dead Elvis: Elvis as Religion
Preserving the Body: media coverage of Elvis' death
Elvis is at the Burger King: tales of the resurrection
Readings: Rodman, "Elvis Space" Oncourse Gregory and Gregory, "When Elvis Died: Enshrining a Legend," in ISE
November 22
The Cult of Elvis: Civil Religion and Elvis Memories
A piece of the true cross: pilgrimage and the road to Graceland
Reading: Vikan, "Graceland as Locus Sanctus," Oncourse; and Harrison, Senatehouse Rock (http:www.shef.as.uk/~assem/1/harrison.html)
November 29
Elvis as Simulacra: the impersonators and Life after Death
Reading: Marcus, "Still Dead: Elvis Presley without Music," Oncourse; and Pattie, 4 Real: Authenticity, Performance, and Rock Music
(http://enculturation.gmu.edu/2_2/pattie.html)
December 6
More Real than Real: The hermeneutics of Elvis
December 13
Course summary: Popular Culture, Anthropology, and Elvis
FINAL EXAM December 20
Reading Schedule
September 13
Chadwick, Vernon
1997 Introduction: Ole Massa's Dead, Long Live the King of Rock'n'Roll. In ISE, pp. ix-xxvi.
transparencynow
1999 Disney's Distorted Mirror. http://www.transparencynow.com/Disney/kingdom.htm
September 20
Frith, Simon
1981 Rock and Mass Culture. In Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock'n'Roll, pp.39-57.
Hebdige, Dick
1979 Subculture: The unnatural break. In Subculture, pp. 91-99.
September 27
Hebdige, Dick
1979 Style as Intentional Communication. In Subculture: The Meaning of Style, pp.100-112.
Frith, Simon
1981 Youth. In Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock'n'Roll, pp.181-201.
October 4
Reed, John Shelton
1997 Elvis as Southerner. In ISE, pp.75-92.
Pratt, Linda Ray
1992 Elvis, or the Ironies of Southern Identity. In The Elvis Reader: Texts and Sources on the King of Rock’N’Roll, edited by Kevin Quain, pp.93-103. St. Martin’s, New York.
October 11
Sweeney, Gael
1997 The King of White Trash Culture: Elvis Presley and the Aesthetics of Excess. In White Trash: Race and Class in America, edited by Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz, pp.249-266. Routledge, New York.
Campbell, Will
1997 Elvis as Redneck. In ISE, pp. 93-102.
October 18
Tucker, Stephen
1997 Rethinking Elvis and the Rockabilly Moment. In ISE, pp.19-28.
October 25
Spencer, Jon Michael
1997 A Revolutionary Sexual Persona: Elvis Presley and the White Acquiescence of Black Rhythms. In ISE, pp.123-142.
Baskerville, John D.
1994 The Act of Signifyin(g) in Popular Music: Elvis Presley as a Cultural Bridge. In Elvis+Marilyn: 2X Immortal, edited by Geri DePaoli, pp.117-129. Rizzoli, New York.
November 1
Frith, Simon
1993 Youth/Music/Television. In Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader, edited by Simon Frith, Andrew Goodwin, and Lawrence Grossberg, pp.67-83. Routledge, New York.
November 8
Frith, Simon
1981 Rock and Sexuality. In Sound Effects, pp.235-248.
Cole, Sheri Kathleen
1999 I am the Eye, You are the Victim: the Pornographic Ideology of Music Video. Enculturation 2(2) (http://enculturation.gmu.edu/2_2/cole/index.html)
November 15
Rodman, Gilbert B.
1996 Elvis Space. In Elvis after Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend, pp. 97-129. Routledge, New York.
Gregory, Neal and Janice Gregory
1997 When Elvis Died: Enshrining a Legend. In ISE, pp.225-242.
November 22
Vikan, Garry
1994 Graceland as Locus Sanctus. In Elvis+Marilyn: 2X Immortal, edited by Geri DePaoli, pp.150-167. Rizzoli, New York.
Harrison, Rebecca
1996 Senatehouse Rock. assemblage <http://www.shef.ac.uk/~assem/1/harrison.html>.
November 29
Marcus, Greil
1990 Still Dead: Elvis Presley without Music. In Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession, pp.179-203. Anchor, New York.
Pattie, David
1999 4 Real: Authenticity, Performance, and Rock Music. Enculturation 2(2) http://enculturation.gmu.edu/2_2/pattie.html
Review readings
You may choose any one of these readings for your review essay. These readings are on ERROL or can be directly linked to from this page. You are NOT responsible for reading articles that you do not choose to review. Visit the review guidelines page for full directions.
Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner
1999
Rap, Black Rage,
and Racial Difference.
Enculturation
2 (2). (http://enculturation.gmu.edu/2_2/best-kellner.html)
Forman, Murray
1992 Betrayal and Fear: Press Coverage of Canadian Skinheads. Canadian Journal of Communication 17(2). http://www.cjc-online.ca/viewarticle.php?id=82&layout=html
Marcus, Greil
1975 Presliad. In Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'N' Roll Music, pp.120-175. Plume, New York.
Radway, Janice A.
1984 The Readers and Their Romances. In Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, pp.46-85. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Weinstein, Deena
1991 Digging the Music: Proud Pariahs. In Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture, pp.93-144. De Capo Press, New York.
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Last updated March 11, 2008