Ateneo - UPO

This is a course on American Cultural Studies. It examines some key concepts in the culture of the United States by looking at how those concepts have circulated in in popular music. It assumes the centrality of black popular music in American cultural history, focusing in particular on the legacy of black feminist performers and on the function of popular music in the context of the social and historical turbulences of the postwar years.

Textbooks:

Craig Werner," A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America" University of Michigan Press; Revised edition, 2006

2) Angela Davis, "Blues Legacies and Black Feminism", New York: Random House 1998 (o Vintage 1999)

Selezione da:
From Bruce Burgett, Glenn Hendler, eds. "Keywords for American Cultural Studies" New York University Press, 2007.

Available at DISUM Library for daily check-out:

Robert L. Harris Jr. and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, eds. "The Columbia Guide to African American History Since 1939", Columbia University Press, 2009;

Benjamin Fagan, ed. "African American Literature in Transition, 1830-1850" Oxford UP Eds: Auburn University, Alabama

By attending class and completing the written and research assignments, students will:
1) acquire a basic literacy of key concepts in United States culture and in its history of race and race relations focused on the significance of popular music, and in particular of African-American music within the broader social and political landscape of the United States in the postwar years.

2)investigate the contested meaning of “freedom” as one of the quintessential keywords defining the American experience by looking at how music has engaged with it;

3)think and write critically about the relationship of music to cultural history, African-American history and the history of race relations and ethnicity by reading and researching for their assignments;
4) develop historical, material, and intercultural and knowledge and competence by participating in class discussion and by presenting in class their research and the assigned readings and listening exercises;d readings and listenings to class;

5) build the foundation for civic engagement and lifelong understanding of cultural differences, discriminatory practices, structures of inequality, but also the immense creative potential of music, language and inter-racial social practices by engaging the nation’s multi-ethnic and multi-racial past and present.

No specific pre-requisite. Interest for the subject of this class and for collaborative projects;
English B2 level.

Face-to-face and distance lessons; individual research activities led by the teacher and tutor, Dr. Stefano Morello; workshop activities guided by the tutor and/or the Professor.

Class presentation; class participation; final written short essay (2000 words)

Detailed program and syllabus will be available in September on DIR.
This class is conceived as an innovative, student-centered, hands-on educational project, and requires attendance. Non-attending students should contact the Professor for an alternative, ad-hoc program.

To reach an advanced level, the student must demonstrate:
(knowledge and understanding): know in depth the assigned material, demonstrating it through solid research, written and assigned presentations accurate, convincing, exhaustive, precise and written in a well-articulated prose in Italian and English;
(ability to apply knowledge and understanding): have acquired a deep awareness of historical and contemporary meanings of some of the central terms that structure the fields of American studies and cultural studies, their context of use and how their meanings have developed over time.; analytical reading skills; broad ability to apply the acquired research and analytical tools to research design and literary analysis; originality and critical thinking skills and methodological reflection.
(autonomy of judgment): knowing how to set up the research on databases, identifying the sources and objects relevant to the project; know how to select the information and data relevant to the project starting from a basic bibliographic research; know how to independently connect different texts, events, places and people in the context of the influence of popular music in the US; describe with sufficient precision how the concept of “freedom” developed in relation to political, social and intersectional terms, and how music was instrumental to such development.
(communication skills): to be able to present, with basic coherence and organicity, with a synthetic formulation, and through a logical and argumentative sequence, relevant considerations on texts, events, places, mutual influences and problems related to the main themes of class; demonstrate synthesis skills in relation to the materials studied and exhibited; expose the contents with the appropriate terminology, including specialist terminology; know how to write in a well-articulated prose in English a synthetic text on notion of “freedom” in American popular music. - (learning skills): knowing how to apply the methodological tools provided in class (for attending students) and make use of the materials on DIR and the essays provided in the exam bibliography (for everyone), in order to identify the thematic nuclei and the fundamental objects of study. Ability to carry out bibliographic research.