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American Dream: Exploring Class in the U.S. >> Content Detail



Study Materials



Readings

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This section features the required books as well as a listing of specific readings and films by session.



Required Books


Amazon logo Terkel, Studs. Working [1974]. New York, NY: New Press, 1997. ISBN: 9781565843424.

Amazon logo Alger, Horatio. Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward [1867/8]. Reprint ed. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 1985. ISBN: 9780140390339. The e-texts are also available at Project Gutenberg: Ragged Dick, Struggling Upward.

Amazon logo Hamper, Ben. Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line. Reprint ed. New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing, 1992. ISBN: 9780446394000.

Amazon logo Rodriguez, Richard. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez: An Autobiography. Boston, MA: D. R. Godine, 1982. ISBN: 9780879234188.

Amazon logo Sittenfeld, Curtis. Prep: A Novel. New York, NY: Random House, 2005. ISBN: 9781400062317.

Amazon logo DeParle, Jason. American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare. Reprint ed. New York, NY: Penguin, 2005. ISBN: 9780143034377.



Readings and Films by Session


SES #TOPICSFILMSREADINGS
Introduction
1Talking about class: Expanding inequalities in the 21st century(no film)

Class Matters, a special series by The New York Times .

Dash, Eric. "Off to the Races Again, Leaving Many Behind." The New York Times, April 6, 2006.

DePalma, Anthony. "15 Years on the Bottom Rung." The New York Times, May 26, 2005.

Johnston, David Cay. "Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind." The New York Times, June 5, 2005.

Scott, Janny, and David Leonhardt. "Shadowy Lines That Still Divide." The New York Times, May 15, 2005.

Wessel, David. "As Rich-Poor Gap Widens in U.S., Class Mobility Stalls." The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2005.

2Studs Terkel's WorkingPeople Like Us

Working. Introduction, Books 3, 5 (skip the third section), 8, and 9 (pp. 521-543 only).

People Like Us. PBS.

3

Anthropology, narrative, and social class

Doing "auto-ethnographies"

American Tongues

Amazon logo Reed-Danahay, Deborah. "Introduction." In Auto-Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social. New York, NY: Berg, 1997. ISBN: 9781859739754.

Ewick, Patricia, and Susan Silbey. "Subversive Stories and Hegemonic Tales: Toward a Sociology of Narrative." Law and Society Review 29, no. 2 (1995): 197-226.

American Tongues. Directed by Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker, 1987.

Theorizing class: Competing frameworks
4Theories of class - Part I: Marx and Weber(no film)

Amazon logo Williams, Raymond. "Class." In Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society [1976]. Revised ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 60-69. ISBN: 9780195204698.

Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party.

Amazon logo Weber, Max. "Class, Status, Party." In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology [1905]. Edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York, NY: Routledge, 2007. ISBN: 9780415436663.

Amazon logo ———. "The Spirit of Capitalism." In The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New ed. Translated by Stephen Kalberg. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2002. ISBN: 9780631230816.

5Theories of class - Part II: Bourdieu and post-structuralism(no film)

Amazon logo Bourdieu, Pierre. "The Aristocracy of Culture." In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 11-96. ISBN: 9780674212770.

Amazon logo Gibson-Graham, J. K. "Class and the Politics of Identity," and "Towards a New Class Politics of Distribution." Chapters 3 and 8 in The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 1996. ISBN: 9781557868633.

6Intersecting identities: Class, race, and genderParis is Burning

Amazon logo Ortner, Sherry. "Reading America: Preliminary Notes on Class and Culture." In Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. Edited by Richard G. Fox. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780933452787.

Gregory, Steven. "The Changing Significance of Race and Class in an African-American Community." American Ethnologist 19, no. 2 (1992): 255-274.

Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston, 1992.

Narratives of class in the U.S.
7Searching for the American dream: Narratives and counter-narratives of upward mobilityModern Times

Alger, Horatio, Jr. Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward. Especially pp. 3-132 (it's very quick reading) as well as the oral history selections.

Amazon logo Holt, Hamilton, ed. The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves. New York, NY: Routledge, 1999. ISBN: 9780415925105.

Modern Times. Directed by Charlie Chaplin, 1936.

8Class and race in black women's auto-biographies from the 1930s and 1940s(no film)

Amazon logo Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Track [1942]. New York, NY: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006, chapters 1-4, 8, 9, and 12. ISBN: 9780060854089.

Amazon logo Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1980, introduction, chapters 1-5, 7-10, 15, 18, 23, 25, and 28. ISBN: 9780553139044.

9The post World War II middle classThe Graduate

Amazon logo Mills, C. Wright. White Collar: The American Middle Classes [1951]. 50th anniversary ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002, chapters 4 and 10-12. ISBN: 9780195157086.

Amazon logo Cheever, John. "The Worm in the Apple," and "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill." In The Stories of John Cheever. New York, NY: Vintage, 2000. ISBN: 9780375724428.

The Graduate. Directed by Mike Nichols, 1967.

10On the American Assembly Line: A vanishing industrial working class?Roger and Me

Hamper, Ben. Rivethead.

Roger and Me. Directed by Michael Moore, 1989.

11The Worlds of the richBorn Rich

Sittenfeld, Curtis. Prep: A Novel.

Born Rich. Directed by Jamie Johnson, 2003.

12Up and down: From climbing the social ladder to a fear of falling(no film)Rodriguez, Richard. Hunger of Memory.
13Welfare and the politics of the U.S. "underclass"When the Levees Broke

DeParle, Jason. American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and A Nation's Drive to End Welfare. (Selections)

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Directed by Spike Lee, 2006.

Conclusion
14The politics of red and blue, rural and urban, and a widening social gap(no film)(no readings)

 








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