HW for March 10 - "Mappings" by J. W. Carmpton (75-82), cosmos vs. [or and?] landscape (pp. 83-85)

 Choose one or more of the following questions to comment on:

1. What did you learn of the history of maps from Jeremy W. Crampton's article?

2. According to Foucault, maps "think out" space (qtd by Crampton, anthology p. 77). Can you establish a relation between this thinking and what Yin-Fu-Tuan (anthology, p, 83-85) expresses about our ideas of cosmos?

3. Can you answer the question posited by Crampton on p. 77 about maps as performance: how have emerging practices of mapping challenged traditional authoritative mapping institutions?

A New and Accurate Map of Massahusetts Bay Colony (c. 1780)

HW for Feb 26 - What is an American and what are the cultural divisions within North America?

 1. Find topic sentences and/or keywords in the highlights of Crèvecoeur's letter III (anthology, pp. 63-67) and explain your choice in the context of those paragraphs.

2. From the nine "nations" (or cultural regions) of North America, defined by Joel Garreau (anthology, pp. 68-75), which arises your interest the most and why?

HW for the class of Feb 24 - Luther Standing Bear, "Nature" (anthology, p. 50-51) and Louis Owens, "The American Indian Wilderness" (p.52)

 Answer to any of the prompts (or more if you like)

1. To what does Luther Standing Bear attribute the difference between the "white" mind and the "Indian" mind? Do you agree

2. Below is the text of the 1964 Wilderness Act to which Louis Owens refers to in "The American Indian Wilderness". How is it problematic? How would you rephrase it?

3. Refer to the keyword "Indian" in Burgett and Hendler, Keywords for American  Cultrual Studies (2007) - see moodle. Is it what you expected to find there? Would you improve it or restructure it if you were commissioned with doing it?

Intersectionality

HW for Feb 19 - Peter Coates, "The Human and Natural Environment" (anthology, pp. 35-45)

 - Discuss the concepts of "Nature's nation" and "ecological imperialism" as stated in the essay and how they may complement or otherwise contradict each other.

- Comment on how you understand the following quote and whether you agree or disagre: "Environmentalism emerged from a mood that not only assailed the prevailing liberal democratic political system and its undeprinning capitalist ethos but also questioned the philosophical assumptions of Western industrial civilization." (anthology, p. 44, text page 24)

Painting: Albert Berdstatd, "The Last of the Buffalo", 1888

Bruce Burgett and Glenn Handler, Keywords for American Cultural Studies, 3rd edition, 2020

 

 

HW for Feb 17 - American Studies (based on Campbell and Kean 2016: American Cultural Studies)

 Write on either (or both) of the following prompts:

1. Continue the work on "keywords", now finding and defining those related to American Studies.

2. While Campbell and Kean state, in their intro, that the history of American Studies as a discipline (or perhaps a not-innocent branch of "area studies") is not within the scope of their book, test your curiosity by doing some research on the origins and turns of American Studies. [tip: there is a wealth of resources here, as indicated in a note by the authors: http://culturalpolitics.net/]