Work in Youngstown, Spring 2001

AMER 3701: Approaches to American Studies (course code 0262)
ENGL 4864: Selected Topics in American Literature (course code 1376) 
"If we regard truth as something handed down from authorities on high, the classroom will look like a dictatorship. If we regard truth as a fiction determined by personal whim, the classroom will look like anarchy. If we regard truth as emerging from a complex process of mutual inquiry, the classroom will look like a resourceful and interdependent community."
--Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach, 51

Prerequisites
For ENGL 4864: English 690, English 3701, or English 3702 

General Education Information
For students completing the "new" general education program, this counts as a writing-intensive course

Course goals
Over the next fifteen weeks, we'll explore the history, experience, and representation of work in the Youngstown area, using literature, visual images, artifacts, maps, and other resources. We'll focus on three key ideas:

  • In American culture, and specifically in the Youngstown area, work and class help to form individual and community identity but are also sources of conflict within the community.
  • Literature exists within a cultural framework, not as something separate from its culture but rather as a set of texts that are intimately involved with culture. 
  • Interdisciplinary analysis can yield rich, complex insights into representations, including literary texts, and into the processes of identity formation, cultural negotiation, and social change.
By the end of the semester, you should be able to demonstrate your understanding of these concepts in the following ways:
  • Write papers and complete projects that use specific information about work and class in Youngstown and discuss in concrete terms how they affect the formation of identity, moments of conflict, and community change.
  • Write about literature and other representations in ways that position them within their cultural context, making clear, specific links among texts and between representations, history, and theoretical concepts.
  • Develop thoughtful, insightful analyses of identity formation, cultural negotiation, and/or social change that draw on multiple kinds of representations (including literature), historical understanding, and theoretical models.
Texts
Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society, Volume Two, American Social History Project
Out of This Furnace, Thomas Bell
Literature, Class, and Culture, ed. Paul Lauter and Ann Fitzgerald 
 

Assignments

  1. Single Text analysis - Choose one reading from Lauter & Fitzgerald, and write an analysis that explains what the text says and how it conveys its ideas. 10%
  2. Text web - Match your literary text with at least three others from the same period, including at least one visual image and at least one artifact, and write an essay explaining how the texts relate to each other. 20%
  3. Adding history to the mix - Using the same four texts, write an essay that positions them within their historical setting. How does knowing the history enhance your understanding of the texts? 20%
  4. Family history paper OR History of a local problem - For this project, you'll either research the history of three generations of one family or explore the history of one problem related to work in the Youngstown area. Then write an essay that positions the history you've learned in the context of the materials and ideas you've learned about in class. 20% 
  5. Integrative Project - Choose a moment of cultural negotiation about work and class in Youngstown, and write an analysis that links texts, historical context, and the theoretical ideas that have formed the core of the course. On-line exhibit or illustrated paper. 30% 
Course Schedule
NB: Unless otherwise noted, readings are from the Lauter and Fitzgerald anthology

(The dates are linked to each day's entry in my course journal.  This link will take you to a PDF version of the complete journal.  Links below will take you to specific entries.)
 
Date Themes Assignments
January 16 Preliminary thoughts on work, class, literature, and interdisciplinary study   
January 18 Bring something - a text, an object, an image - to class that represents your experiences with work
January 23 Strategies for text analysis READ Dobler, "Field Trip to the Rolling Mill, 1950"; Davis, "Life in the Iron Mills"
January 25 READ Gogolak, "Inland and the Titanic"; Le Seuer, "I Was Marching"
January 30 Understanding interdisciplinarity
 
 

Reading other kinds of texts - artifacts

Text analysis due

READ On-line presentation on interdisciplinary analysis

February 1 Visit the Youngstown Historical Center for Labor and Industry. We will not meet as a class on February 1, but you should visit the museum on your own and tour the exhibits on the main and lower floors. 
February 6 Reading other kinds of texts - visual images

On course website, view Gropper painting, panoramic photos from 1908, 1905 photo, postcards, and Labor Day ad. 

Meet in Computer Lab

February 8 Interdisciplinarity in American Studies

Guest speaker: Dr. Nan Enstad

February 13 Class, work, and space Text webs due

READ Anderson, "Mining Camp Residents"; Joel, "Allentown"; Springsteen, "My Hometown"; Parini, "Playing in the Mines"; Bryner, "For Maude Callen"

February 15 In-class work with on-line map & photographs (map exercise); meet in computer lab

READ Linkon & Russo, Chapter One (handout)

February 20 Historical overview, Part I  READ from Who Built America?,  pp. 25-37, Chapter 2, Chapter 4
February 22 Comparing historical & literary approaches READ Part One of Bell
February 27 Connecting literature and history READ Part Two of Bell
March 1 Reading texts through history papers due

READ from WBA? pp. 274-294, 301-309, 323-342, 345-359

March 6 Labor and conflict READ from WBA? Chapters 8, 9, and 11
March 8 READ Parts Three and Four of Bell
March 13-15 SPRING BREAK   
March 20 Learning to tell stories - where do our stories about work come from? READ Garson, "McDonald's"
March 22 READ one oral history about the 1937 "Little Steel" strike (on reserve at Maag or from the archives at the steel museum)
March 27 Reading the conflicts Film: Struggles in Steel
March 29 READ Reed, "War in Paterson"; Stein, "It's War in Youngstown" (handout); Eisenberg, "Subway Conversations"; Barnwell, "More Than a Paycheck"; Childress, "In the Laundry Room"
April 3 Studying local materials READ Patchen, "The Orange Bears"; Local poets - handout; "Ten Years After," handout
April 5 Film: Steel Town
April 10 Finding ourselves in history Family history papers due- bring 3 copies
April 12 READ 2 other family histories
April 17 Telling our own stories - what's missing from the Youngstown story?

Tour the on-line exhibit about Youngstown (there's a link from the course website)
April 19 Our Youngstown stories - bring a text, artifact, or image that represents your experience of work and class in the Youngstown area 

Guest speaker: Bryn Zellers (local artist showing a film he made about Youngstown)

April 24 Planning & building websites Exhibit outlines due - bring 4 copies
April 26 Meet in computer lab
May 1 Going public Exhibit drafts due - bring 4 copies
May 3 Meet in computer lab
May 8 Finals week Final exhibits due, by 4 pm, in my box in the English Department