View source for A History of US Urban Communities



'''USP I – History of US Urban Communities
Center Hall 119
Fall 2011'''

This course charts the development of urban communities across the United States both temporally and geographically. It examines the patterns of cleavage, conflict, convergence of interest, and consensus that have structured urban life. Social, cultural, and economic forces will be analyzed for the roles they have played in shaping the diverse communities of America's cities.

'''Readings (all others will be available on webct) –'''
1. ''Clybourne Park'' by Bruce Norris

Essay –All papers MUST develop a thesis that students will support through examples from readings and/or lectures along with their own observations. I will circulate one to two prompts several weeks prior to the assignment’s due date. Clybourne Park should serve as the essay’s foundation, thus much of the focus, but students need to incorporate at least 3 different readings that illustrate or support arguments within the paper. A good paper not does more than explain Clybourne Park, a good paper draws out themes from the class through the play and situates it within class readings. All papers must be submitted to turnitin.com and should be 4 – 6 pages. Due Monday, November 21 (Week IX- right before Thanksgiving).

'''Grading –
Section – 15%
Midterm – 30%
Final - 35%
Paper – 20%'''

Plagiarism – obviously will not be tolerated. Failure to submit your essay into turnitin.com will result in a failing grade. Students found guilty of plagiarism are automatically failed in the class and risk expulsion from UCSD.

Sections – Students may have ONE unexcused absence. Any absences afterward must be justified and DOCUMENTED (meaning if you are too sick to attend section you should have some sort of note from the health center or some authority) to your teaching assistant. Decisions regarding the legitimacy of absences beyond the one unexcused rests entirely with your TA. Again, contact your TA regarding absences in section. Three unexcused absences from section results in an automatic failing section grade.

'''Lectures'''

'''Week I – September 22 – October 2'''

Lecture 1 - Sept. 23 - Friday — Early MesoAmerican, South American, North American Indigenous communities – Tenochtitlan / Mission California / New England

Lecture 2 - Sept. 26 - Monday – Colonial Developments – Southern Colonial Cities –Jamestown / Charleston / New Orleans

Lecture 3 – Sept. 28 - Wednesday – The Development of Northern Cities and their Role in Independence –New York / Philadelphia/ Boston

Lecture 4 – September 30 – Friday - Making a Capital – New York/Philadelphia/Washington D.C.

Readings –

Monday - William Cronon – Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England — Chapter 4 – “Bounding the Land” - pages 54 – 81

Wed. - Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker – The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic – Chapter 7 – “A Motley Crew in the American Revolution, pages 211 – 247.

Friday - JB Jackson - The Nineteenth Century Rural Landscape: Court House, the Small College, the Mineral Springs, and the Country Store from Landscapes in Sight pages 139 – 149

'''Week II – October 3 – October 9'''

Lecture 5 – October 3 – Monday - The Developing Frontier – Transportation Infrastructure Cities in the Midwest/West – Pittsburgh / St. Louis/ Cincinnati

Lecture 6 – October 5 – Wednesday - The Environment and the Nineteenth Century City – Chicago / Seattle

Lecture 7 – October 7 – Friday - Nineteenth Century Infrastructure in the City – City Services i.e. Water, Sanitation, Schools, Police, Fire – Chicago/New York/Los Angeles

Readings –

Monday and Wed. - William Cronon - Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West –Chapter 2, pages 55 – 93.

Friday. - Luc Sante – Low Life – “Coppers” and “The Tiger”, pages 236 -277

'''Week III – October 10 – October 16'''

Lecture 8 – October 10 - Monday – The Civil War and Cities – New York / Memphis/ San Francisco

Lecture 9 – October 12 Wednesday – Political Machines and Reformers – Chicago/ New York/San Diego/Phoenix

Lecture 10 – October 14 Friday – Chinatown

Readings –

Monday/Wed. - Nayan Shah – Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown- Chapter 1 “Public Health and the Mapping of Chinatown” and Chapter 2 – “Regulating Bodies and Spaces”, pages 17 – 76.

Friday - John Kingsdale – “The Poor Man’s Club: The Social Function of the Urban Working Class Saloon”, pages 122 – 136 in American Quarterly, 1973.

Friday - Harold F. Gosnell – Machine Politics: Chicago Model – Chapter 2 – “You Can’t Lick a Ward Boss”, pages 27 – 51

'''Week IV – October 17 - 23'''

Lecture 11 – October 17 - Monday – October 12 –– Race, Gender, and Community in the Nineteenth Century City – San Francisco/New York/Los Angeles

Lecture 12 – October 19 – Wednesday - Gender in the Early 20th Century City – Homosocial/Heterosocial Spaces, the Gendered Economy/Workforce, Prostitution

Lecture 13 – October 21 – Monday –American Cities at the Twentieth Century’s turn – Progressivism, City Beautiful, and the Tenements – Chicago/New York/San Francisco

Readings –

Monday - Gwen Wright – Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America – Chapter 7 “Americanization and Ethnicity in Urban Tenements” pages 96 - 117

Wed/Friday - Christine Stansell – City of Women: Sex and Class in New York City, 1789 - 1860 – Chapter 3 “Women in the Neighborhood” pages 41 - 62, Chapter 5 “Women and Men”, pages 76 - 102

'''Week V – October 24 - October 30'''

Lecture 14 – October 24 - Monday - Midterm

Lecture 15 – October 26 – Wednesday - Making Community in the Lonely City – Ethnic Enclaves / The Great Migration

Lecture 16 – October 28 – Friday - New Communities in Formation – Sexuality and Social Spaces – New York/San Francisco/Los Angeles

Readings:

Wed. - Kathy Peiss – Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn of the Century New York — Chapter 3 - “The Coney Island Excursion”, pages 115 - 138

Friday - George Chauncey – Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890 – 1940 - Chapter 2 “The Fairy as an Intermediate Sex” pages 47-64, Chapter 9 – “Building Gay Neighborhood Enclaves: The Village and Harlem”, pages 227 - 267

'''Week VI – October 31 – November 5th'''

Lecture 17 – Monday – October 31 – The Great Depression – New York / Los Angeles

Lecture 18 – Wednesday – November 2– WWII and the West – San Diego/Los Angeles/Oakland

Lecture 19 – Friday – November 4 – Early Suburbanization and Segregation – 1900 – 1945

Readings –
Monday – Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, Preface and Introduction.

Wed. - Luis Alvarez – “Zoot Violence on the Home Front: Race riots and Youth Culture during World War II”, in ed. Rivas-Rodriguez Mexican Americans and World War II, pages 141 – 175.

Wed.- Charlotte Brooks- “Twilight Zone between Black and White” pages 1655 – 1687 in the Journal of American History (2000)

Friday - Gwen Wright – Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America – Chapter 6 – “Victorian Suburbs and the Cult of Domesticity”, pages 96 – 113.

'''Week VII – November 7 – November 13'''

Lecture 20 – November 7 – Monday - Suburban Expansion Post 1950

Lecture 21 – November 9 – Wednesday – – Urban Renewal, Public Housing and Creating a “Second Ghetto” – Chicago / Detroit

November 11– Friday – Veterans Day – No Class

Readings:

Mon - Kenneth Jackson – Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States – Chapter 1 – “Suburbs as Slum” Chapter 2 -“The Transportation Revolution and the Erosion of the Walking City”, pages 12 – 44

Wed. - Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940 -1960 – Chapter 2 – “An Era of Hidden Violence” – pages 40 – 68.

Friday - Charlotte Brooks – Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California – Chapter 7, “Becoming Equally Unequal: The Fight for Property and Housing Rights in Postwar California”, pages 159- 193.

'''Week VIII – November 14 – November 20'''

Lecture 22 – November 14 - Monday – Civil Rights/Integration – Chicago/San Francisco/ Los Angeles

Lecture 23 – November 16 - Wednesday – Urban Discontent –Black Power/Chicano Movements in the City – Chicago/Los Angeles/Oakland

Lecture 24 – November 18 – Friday – The Sunbelt – Atlanta/ Orange County / Charlotte

Readings -

Monday - Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America – Chapter 9 – “The Trial of Huey Newton” pages 205 – 240.

Wed. - Bruce Schulman, The Seventies – Chapter 8 “The Minutemen are Turning in their Graves: The New Right and the Tax Revolt” - pages 193-217

Friday - Eric Avila, “Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Film Noir, Disneyland and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary”, Pages 3 – 22 in the Journal of Urban History (2004)

Friday - Bruce J. Schulman – The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics – Chapter 6 - “This Ain’t No Foolin Around”: Rebellion and Authority in Seventies Popular Culture”, pages 144-159**

'''Week IX – November 21 – November 27'''

Lecture 25 – November 21 - Monday – Deifying Suburbia – The Disneyland Effect – Anaheim/ Seattle
Paper Due

No Class Wednesday November 23 – Friday 26th …. Happy Thanksgiving

Readings –

Monday - Matthew Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South, “Introduction”, pages 1- 19.

Wed. - Bruce J. Schulman – The Seventies –Chapter 7 – “Battles of the Sexes: Women, Men, and Family”, pages 159 - 189

'''Week X – November 28 – Dec 4'''

Lecture 26 – November 28 – Monday – Post War Struggles – Public School Conflicts– Charlotte / New York

Lecture 27 – November 30 – Wednesday – Sexuality in the Post War city – New York/San Francisco/Los Angeles

Lecture 28 – December 2 – Friday – Neoliberalism, Public Housing and Homeownership, 1970 – 2000

Readings-

Monday - Rochella Thorpe, “‘A House Where Queers Go’: African-American Lesbian Nightlife in Detroit, 1940-1975,” in Lewin, ed., Inventing Lesbian Cultures in America, 40-61.

Wed. - Alexander Von Hoffman – “High Ambitions: The Past and Future of Low-Income Housing” Housing Policy Debate, Vol. 7, Issue 3: 1996, pages 423 – 446

Wed. - Wed - Robert Self, “The Politics of the Tax Dollar in California” in Kevin Kruse, ed. The New Suburban History, pages 144 – 160.

Friday - Joel Garreau, Edge Cities: Life on the New Frontier – Chapter 8 – “Southern California: Community” pages 265 – 301.

Final 12/07/2010 – Wed – 8 am to 11 am – Room TBA