Discipline: Humanities Degree Credit  [X]
Non Credit  [ ]
Nondegree Credit  [ ]
Comm Service  [ ]
 

Riverside Community College District
Integrated Course Outline of Record

Humanities 16


COURSE DESCRIPTION
16 Arts & Ideas: American Culture Units: 3.00
 
Prerequisite(s): None.

Advisory: Qualification for English 1A
An interdisciplinary survey of the cultural movements in art, architecture, literature, music, philosophy, and religion of American culture. American culture is studied in the context of American political culture, economic and industrial transformation, and the changing shape of American society. American arts and ideals are examined from the colonial period through the present. 54 hours lecture.
 
SHORT DESCRIPTION FOR CLASS SCHEDULE
An interdisciplinary survey of the cultural movements in art, literature, philosophy, and music of American culture.
 
ADVISORY ENTRY SKILLS
Before entering the course, students will be able to:
  1. Critically discuss and analyze primary and secondary texts, recognizing key ideas and responding in both oral and written form;

  2. Analyze, synthesize, and evaluate concepts studied in primary and secondary texts using intermediate to advanced critical thinking skills;

  3. Compose developed, unified, stylistically competent writing assignments and adjust writing to the target audience with intermediate to advanced skill.
STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES
 Upon successful completion of the course, students should be able to:

Define key terms of American culture in a philosophical perspective, providing a basis for their interpretation and evaluation.

Identify movements in American art, music, literature, and popular culture and describe how these movements relate to one another and to the evolving structure of American society.

Interpret primary texts as representations of the time period and controversies which produced them.

Analyze recurring American cultural problems throughout American history and across the social classes and geographical regions which produced them.

Describe how the arts in American culture provide a critical perspective on American ideals and their realization throughout American history.

Demonstrate methods for critical assessment and personal aesthetic judgments of American culture.
 
COURSE CONTENT
  TOPICS
 

Instructor’s approach to the course may be chronological or thematic.  All sections should treat at least three art forms from the following:  art & architecture; literature; philosophy and religion; music; and each genre treated will be studied through at least two chronological movements.  All sections should devote at least 50% of class time to pre-20th century movements.

  1. The Colonial background of American culture
    1. Protestantism and the Puritan founding
    2.  Indigenous and African roots of American culture
  2. Early American political debates
    1. Politics of difference and concepts of liberty
    2. The Declaration of Independence and debates regarding the Constitution
    3. paradoxes of freedom and slavery  and the status of women
  3. The early national period
    1. Perspectives on the wilderness and American society
    2. 19th century American painting
    3. The Transcendentalist critique of American culture
  4. The Civil War and the gilded age
    1. Critical perspectives on changing political and commercial culture
    2. Slave narratives
    3. Women and American culture
  5. The changing shape of American society
    1. African Americans following
    2. The changing lives of American women
    3. Working class culture
  6. The early 20th century
    1. American culture and its European roots
    2. Modernism in American literature
    3. Regionalism in American culture
    4. The Depression
  7. The role of the U.S. in the World Wars
    1. The impact of the world wars on American culture
  8. New technologies in art and culture
    1. American film, radio, TV and American culture
    2. American popular musics:  blues, jazz, rock and roll
    3. Pop art and the commercialization of American Culture
  9. The emergence of a multi-cultural U. S.
    1. The diversity of American society as seen through art and literature
  10. American art:  the Hudson River school and American attitudes toward nature and the environment; the Ashcan school and American urbanism; Abstract Expressionism; Expatriate artists and the European roots of American culture; Pop Art and the commercialization of American culture; Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and American modernist architecture.
  11. American literature:  colonial literature and the role of religion in American culture; the literature of American politics: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and their ongoing role as ideals in American politics; Transcendentalism and early 19th century critiques of American culture; American realism and regionalism in the arts; American modernism.
  12. American philosophy & religion:  the Puritan founding of American culture; the Great Awakenings; social Darwinism and the evolution of American economic culture.
  13. American music:  American religious music; Stephen Foster & early American folk song; classical music in America; folk, blues, jazz and rock and roll.
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION
 Methods of instruction used to achieve student learning outcomes may include, but are not limited to:

  • Class lectures/discussions/demonstrations on the arts in American history.
  • Videos/films/slides/audio tapes on American writers, poets, painters.
  • Pair and small group activities/discussion interpreting classic works of American art in light of American political, economic & social history.
  • Reports and papers placing American art into its historical context.
  • Guest lecturers addressing specific American artists and artistic accomplishments.
  • Field trips to museums, plays, musical performances and architectural sites.
  • On-line instruction drawing on the resources of American history and culture on the internet.
 
METHODS OF EVALUATION
 Students will be evaluated for progress in and/or mastery of learning outcomes by methods of evaluation which may include, but are not limited to:

  • All students will write a minimum of 3000 words of formal interpretive prose.
  • Oral reports/presentations/performances on American artists and their work in relation to American political, social and economic history.
  • Quizzes/examinations placing American artists and their work in the context of American history.
  • Written assignments exploring the range of interpretation of key works in American cultural history.
  • Class and individual projects exploring key works in American culture in depth.
  • Final examination providing an overview of American history and culture from the colonial period to the present.
  • All students will write a minimum of 3000 words of formal interpretive writing.  
  • Essay assignments shall emphasize the interrelationship of arts and ideas in American culture with the formative political, social and economic developments of American history and culture.
  • Possible topics include Jefferson’s influence on American political ideals; views of changing patterns in American labor in Benjamin Franklin and Herman Melville; the changing status of American women as seen in the Seneca Falls Convention and Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Racism and Civil War as experienced by Herman Melville and Walt Whitman; the evolving status of African American life as seen by Frederick Douglass and authors of the Harlem Renaissance; the Civil Rights movement as seen in Letter From a Birmingham Jail; American feminism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
ASSIGNMENTS

Required Reading Assignments


Required Writing Assignments


Other Outside-of-Class Assignments
 
COURSE MATERIALS
 All materials used in this course will be periodically reviewed to ensure that they are appropriate for college level instruction. Possible texts include:

  • McMillen, Neil. A Synopsis of American History. 8 ed. New York: Ivan Dee, 1997.
  • Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Perennial, 2003.
  • Hughes, Robert. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America. New York: Knopf, 1997.
  • McMichael, George. Concise Anthology of American Literature. New York: Macmillan, 1997.
  • The majority of class readings will be drawn from primary texts which may include, but are not limited to, John Winthrop, the Declaration of Independence, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsburg.

    Written texts will be complemented by appropriate images from American painters and musical texts from the history of American music.

05/06
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