English 285 READING AND EVENTS SCHEDULE

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Chapter 1, Naming Names, Sept 12 - Sept 26
Chapter 2, Cold-War Sci Fi, Sept 27 - Oct 3
Chapter 3, The End of Ideology, Oct 5 - Oct 19
Chapter 4, The Organization Man, Oct 23 - Oct 26
Chapter 5, Feminists Are Communists, Oct 31 - Nov 2
Chapter 6, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Nov 7 - Nov 14
Chapter 7, Consensus and Dissensus, Nov 16 - Nov 21
Chapter 8, Conformity in the Universities, Nov 28 - Dec 6

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285 listserv archive
Ellona Wilner's undergraduate's bill of rights
Exam results
Alex Edelman's "tour" of 285
The English 285 Directory - who we were
Go to film screening schedule.
Listserv collage

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Key

H    = book to buy at House of Our Own Bookstore 
W    = reading on world wide web
B    = reading in bulkpack to buy at Campus Copy Center
HO   = photocopies to be handed out in class
***  = position paper due to papers@english by beginning of class

Thu, Sep 07

• Introduction to course content
• Introduction to PennMOO
• Introduction to course materials on web
• Introduction to our course listserv, "filreis285@english"

Chapter One: NAMING NAMES

Tue, Sep 12

• Historical overviews from Ellen Schrecker's The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (1994) (W)
  • "Communism and National Security: The Menace Emerges"
  • "The Growth of the Anti-Communist Network"
  • "The State Steps In: Setting the Anti-Communist Agenda"
  • "Congressional Committees and Unfriendly Witnesses"
  • "Blacklists and Other Economic Sanctions"
• Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States - Chapter 16, "A People's War?" (W)
• Richard H. Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy
• David Caute, "Guilt by Association & Thought Control" (B)
• Stanley Kutler, "The Agony of Beatrice B." (B)
• Mark Goodson, "If I'd Stood Up Earlier..." (B)
• Cedric Belfrage's "Fever Charts, 1948-1957" (B)
• Truman, Harry - excerpt from speech dated July 29, 1951 (W)
• "Is This Tomorrow?" and other communist takeover dramatizations (W)
• Cedric Belfrage, "I Appreciate Your Permission to Weep" (B)
• Arthur Miller's testimony before HUAC (B)
• McCarran Act, or Internal Security Act (1950) and its special way of outing those named in anticommunist testimony (W)
• Communist Control Act, 1954 - excerpts from the legislation (W)
• Introduction to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) (W)
• Why Lillian Hellman remains fascinating today
• Lillian Hellman's FBI file (W)
• The Hollywood Blacklist, by Dan Georgakas
• How to Learn From the Blacklist, by Walter Goodman (Feb. 1996) (W)
• Douglas, William O., "Judicial Treatment of Nonconformists" - from The Court Years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas (W)
• Hugo Black's dissenting opinion in Dennis v. U.S. (W)
• Irwin Kahn, "War of Words" (Daily Pennsylvanian editorial, 1952)
• Excerpts from trial transcript, including Eugene Dennis's opening statement and Louis Budenz' testimony about the "Aesopian Language Thesis" (W)
• Dalton Trumbo's essay on the Smith Act trials, "The Devil in the Book"
• Dr. Fred Schwarz, You Can Trust the Communists (to be Communists) (1960)
• Overstreet, Harry and Bonaro. The Strange Tactics of Extremism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1964. (Chapter 3, pp. 54-65) - A READING LESSON
• Al Filreis's essay about anticommunist language theory implied by the government's case in prosecuting Dennis (W)
  Supplemental readings for this session:
• OED definition of communism
• Overstreet, Harry and Bonaro, "Tactics and Stratagems: The United Front" - from the book What We Must Know about Communism (1958) (W)
• Glossary of oft-used terms in this course (W)

Thu, Sep 14

• Victor Navasky, Naming Names (W):
  • "A Note on Vocabulary" (W)
  • "Degradation Ceremonies" (W)
  • "The Social Costs" (W)
• Carl Bernstein, "The Case of Emily Geller" (W)
• Harvey Matusow - professional excommunist anticommunist witness (W)
• "Cohn and Schine in the Libraries" - an excerpt from Richard Rovere's book on Joseph McCarthy
• The story of Mason Goode by Vivian Gornick (from The Romance of American Communism
  Supplemental readings for this session:
• Matthew Cvetic and I Was a Communist for the FBI (W)
• Angela Calomiris, from Red Masquerade (W)

Thu, Sep 14, 8 PM

• Film: Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist
• Film: The Atomic Cafe

Tue, Sep 19

• ***Arthur Miller, THE CRUCIBLE (H)
• "WHY I WROTE "THE CRUCIBLE" An artist's answer to politics," by Arthur Miller.
• Richard Hayes, "Hysteria and Ideology in The Crucible", Commonweal 57 (February 1953)
• "Salem, 1950" by George Marshall (Masses & Mainstream, 1950)

Thu, Sep 21

• Arthur Miller, THE CRUCIBLE (H)

Mon, Sep 25

• Film: On the Waterfront
• A note on Big Jim McClain (1952)

Tue, Sep 26

• Discuss On the Waterfront
• "Elia Kazan and The Case for Silence" (W)
  Supplemental reading for this session:
• "Long, Bitter Debate From the '50's: Views of Kazan and His Critics", by Richard Bernstein (W)

Chapter Two: COLD WAR SCI FI

Wed, Sep 27

• Film: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Thu, Sep 28

• Discuss Invasion of the Body Snatchers
• Peter Biskind, "Pods and Blobs" from the book Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Fifties (HO)
  Supplemental reading for this session:
• Philip Morrison, a Cornell Professor of Physics, expresses doubts about atomic warfare and then faces a Congressional anticommunist investigating committee (SISS) in 1952 (W)

Tue, Oct 03

• ***Howard Fast, "The Martian Shop" (B & W)
• Howard Fast's "An Epitaph for Sidney"
• Fast, Howard - biographical profile by Alan Wald (W)

  For an interview with Alan Wald about the Radical Novel Reconsidered series, click here.

• Jack Finney, sci fi writer (W)

Chapter Three: THE END OF IDEOLOGY

Thu, Oct 05 - Readings in the End of Ideology

• ***Daniel Bell, excerpt from The End of Ideology, chapter 13 (B & W) (The conclusion is also available on the web.)
• Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Vital Center (1949) - brief excerpts (W)
• Overstreet, Harry and Bonaro, The Strange Tactics of Extremism
• Kristol, Irving, "Keep up with Ourselves" (W)
• Hodges, Donald Clark, "The End of 'The End of Ideology'" (W)
• Rousseas and Farganis, "American Politics and the End of Ideology" (W)
• Wrong, Dennis, "Reflections on the End of Ideology" (W)
• The 1988 Presidential elections & the end of ideology
• Daniel Bell and the "end of ideology" (W)
• Kennedy, John F. - at the End of Ideology (W)
• Tom Hayden on the "house of theory" (from a draft version of The Port Huron Statement, 1962)
• John Crowe Ransom - on the coolness of art and the danger of moral fervor (W)
  Supplemental reading for this session:
• "Turning 50 in 1950: Harvard Men Reflect on Lives Between the Wars"
• Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "The New Mood in Politics" (1960) (W)
• Brooks and Penn Warren, excerpts from the famous New Critical textbook Understanding Poetry (revised in 1950) (W)
• Richard Ohmann's "Teaching and Studying Literature at the End of Ideology"
• Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "Liberalism in America: A Note for Europeans" (1956) (W)
• "The Politics of Scholarship: Liberals, Anti-Communism, and McCarthyism" by Athan Theoharis (W)
• Did you know that Napoleon invented "ideology"?
• James Wechsler, "The Age of Unthink" - the Center takes on the Beats; be sure to read this excerpt from Kerouac's On the Road (W)
• Clellon Holmes on the Beats, 1952 (more on Holmes)

Tue, Oct 10

• ***Ellison, Invisible Man (H)

Thu, Oct 12

• Ellison, Invisible Man (H)
• A chapter summary of the novel (W)
• Irving Howe, "Black Boys and Native Sons" (a 1963 essay about Wright, Baldwin, and Ellison)
• Lloyd Brown's negative review of Invisible Man
• Irving Howe review of Invisible Man - published in The Nation May 10, 1952 (W)
• Thomas H. Schaub's American Fiction in the Cold War on Ellison's early leftist reviews in relation to later writing
• The murder of Mack Parker as presented to the readers of the Chicago Defender on May 16, 1959
• Photograph of Emmitt Till, murdered for allegedly whisting at a white woman in Money, Mississippi
• Saul Bellow's review of Invisible Man (W)
  Supplemental reading for this session:
• A fine position paper on Invisible Man, by Dave Markowitz (10/95)
• John Corry, "Profile of an American Novelist, A White View of Ralph Ellison" - published in Black World (December 1970--a special Ralph Ellison issue) (W)
• (For more on Irving Howe, see Daniel Bell's asssessment of Howe's Dissent in The End of Ideology.)

Fall Break Thu, Oct 19

• ***John Cheever, "Goodbye, My Brother" (B & W)

Chapter Four: THE ORGANIZATION MAN

Sun, Oct 23, 8 PM, BH 226

• Film: Executive Suite (1954)

Tue, Oct 24

• ***Whyte, William, The Organization Man
• Discuss Executive Suite
  Supplemental reading for this session:
• "You're NOT just one of a crowd" - an advertisement of The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S. (be patient: large-ish .gif file) (W)

Thu, Oct 26

• ***Louis Auchincloss, "The Power of Suggestion" from the collection of stories, Powers of Attorney (B)
  Supplemental reading for this session:
• Review of The Collected Stories of Louis Aucincloss (W)

Chapter Five: FEMINISTS ARE COMMUNISTS

Tue, Oct 31

• ***Betty Friedan, THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE (chaps 1,2,3,5,7,10) (H)
• Betty Friedan's "secret communist past"
• Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound (pp. 3-20; 79-161) (H)
• The OED definition of the word mystique
• Newsweek on women, March 7, 1960
• "Books for the Family", 1946 advertisement from Harper's
  Supplemental reading for this session:
• "A Liberal Trade-in," ad for Ohrbach's (W)
• "The Iron Curtain Look Is Here!" (Life, 1952) (W)
• "Women--Russia's Second Class Citizens" (Look, 1954) (W)
• A Santa Fe railroad ad celebrating women in wartime railroading
• Linda Allen's song, "Rosy the Riveter--Revisted" (W)

Wed, Nov 01

• Film: All about Eve

Thu, Nov 02

• Discuss All about Eve
• Continue discussing Friedan and May

Chapter Six: THE TRIUMPH OF THE THERAPEUTIC

***Tue, Nov 07 - Readings in the Triumph of the Therapeutic

• Knight, John, The Story of My Psychoanalysis - "Talking it Out" (a chapter) (W & B both)
• Philip Rieff, "Politics & the Individual," an excerpt from Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (W & B both)
• Sigmund Freud, "Civilization and Its Discontents", an excerpt
• Allen Ginsberg and his psychiatrist
• Russell Kirk on Freudianism circa 1959
• Harry A. Overstreet, "The Play of Politics on the Mind" from the book The Mature Mind (1949) (B)
• An excellent position paper on Overstreet's "The Play of Politics"
• Peter Viereck, The Unadjusted Man - two chapters (W)
• Irving Howe on how Americans "personalize everything"
• example of the "triumph" from recent years: John Rocker (Braves pitcher) pathologized (January 2000)
• Freud's couch
• Sidney Finkelstein, "Psychoanalysis and the Arts" (published in the Communist Masses & Mainstream, August 1951) (B)
  Supplemental reading for this session:
• Laswell, Harold D. - a brief bibliography (W)

Wed, Nov 08

• Film: Rebel without a Cause starring James Dean
• Key lines from the Rebel screenplay
• Rebel gossip

Thu, Nov 09

• Discuss Rebel without a Cause
• Harriet Eager Davis, "How Not to Raise Our Children", Parents Magazine, August 1945
• poster for the teenpic Teenage Crime Wave
• Gays in government, from the floor of the House of Representatives, 1951

Mon, Nov 13

• Film: The Caine Mutiny

Tue, Nov 14

• Discuss The Caine Mutiny
• Wouk, Herman, The Caine Mutiny, from the play and novel; and a somewhat negative review (W)

Chapter Seven: CONSENSUS AND DISSENSUS

Thu, Nov 16

• ***Mary McCarthy, "The Appalachian Revolution" (B)
  Supplemental reading for this session:
• McCarthy, Mary - Was she an anti-communist? (W)
• McCarthy, Mary - on "women's lib"

Mon, Nov 20

• Film: Twelve Angry Men

Tue, Nov 21

• Discuss Twelve Angry Men

THANKSGIVING

Chapter Eight: CONFORMITY IN THE UNIVERSITIES

Tue, Nov 28

• ***Samuel Yellen, "The Mystic Presences" from The Passionate Shepherd: A Book of Stories (1957) (B)

Thu, Nov 30

• Ellen Schrecker, McCarthyism & the Universities (HO)
• Kerr, Clark, "Avoid Total Involvement" - excerpt from speech (W)
  Supplemental readings for this session:
• The anticommunist film, Runaway Daughter (1953) (W)
• Hoge and Hoge, "The Return of the Fifties?: Values Trends at the University of Michigan, 1952 to 1989" (W)
• Raymond Allen, "Communists Should Not Teach in American Colleges" (1949) (W)
• Anticommunism at Columbia University, 1953 (W)

Tue, Dec 05

• ***Gerald Graff, Beyond the Culture Wars (pp. 3-52; 105-170)
• Sample position paper on Graff (12/95)
• Robert McNamara on the legacy of the red-baiting of the "China hands" in the making of Vietnam policy - from In Retrospect (1995) (W)

  "[I]ll-founded judgments were accepted without debate by the Kennedy Administration, as they had been by its Democratic and Republic predecessors. We failed to analyze our assumptions critically, then or later."

  
  Supplemental readings for this session:
• Filreis, Alan, review of Gerald Graff's Beyond the Culture Wars (with special connection to 1950s-style anticommunism) (W)
• Response to Filreis on Graff (W)

Wed, Dec 06 - 6:30 PM, Room 108, Van Pelt College House

• Film: Making Sense of the Sixties Part 1
• Film: Berkeley in the Sixties
• Berkeley Free Speech Movement, 1963-64 - a narrative summary by David Burner
• "See Jane Run": A student fleeing from mounted police during an anti-war protest, c. 1970 (photograph captioned: "We're the people our parents warned us against. See Jane Run. Run Jane Run" - mocking the ubiquitous early reader books on which sixties-era student protestors were raised in the fifties)
• Mario Savio in 1995
• Mario Savio, obituary, Nov. 1996, New York Times
• Mario Savio, 1988 speech
• Mario Savio, obituary, Nov. 1996, San Francisco Chroncile
• Notes from the Savio memorial service, 12/8/96
• Mario Savio's Pages compiled by anya@mail.hooked.net
• William Kunstler's legacy
• Phil Ochs - select quotations
• Phil Ochs, I'm Gonna Say It Now
• Photographs, posters, and other visual documents from anti-war protests in the sixties
• The Legacy of McCarthyism

Thu, Dec 07

• Final Words

TBA

• Take-home "personalized" final exam

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