Peqod :: Classes - Columbia University Catalog of Classes

From its relative appearance in American homes (ca. 1950 - 1955) through the first decade of the 21st century television has remained (arguably) the most culturally, socially and politically determinative technology in American life. The exchanges that occur between the content of American television and its ever-broadening audience really shaped perspective on the American character and American values across fifty years. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine that the cultures of consensus and conformity that shaped the 1950s were in fact attainable in the absence of television. But, and at the same time, we must admire the creativity of shows like
Donna Reed
or
Wagon Train
that made certain that subtilty insured the advocacy for a more democratic America.

We begin with brief attention to the most immediate creative influences on early television: vaudeville, and radio. Across the semester we will then consider the evolution of the various technologies that shaped and reshaped the American experience of television. While our focus remains on creative content, we must also note the moments where television afforded new experiences of collective sympathy (JFK and MLK assassinations, the Vietnam War etc.) as well as collective failure (The Pentagon Papers, Iran Contra, Rodney King) and triumph (Civil Rights Movement across the American South, the moon landing etc.). We will also, of course, consider the full implications of television “events” that afforded news kinds national debate concerning the very soul of America: Roots, the final episode of M*A*S*H*, and The Day After)

Finally, we will conclude with discussion of HBO and the formative impress of unprecedented creative achievement: The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Mad Men; and, we must consider that during the early years of the 21st century these serial dramas represent a particular (and unprecedented) manifestation of American art and artistry.

Department: Film
W 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
Instructor: Ben Alexander
Info
3 points

Details

FILM GU4955

Global Medical Spanish

GLOBAL MEDICAL SPANISH

Department: Nursing
T 5 p.m.-6:20 p.m.
Instructor: Ana I Esteban Gonzalez
Info
1 points

Details

NURS N4961

Nations and Nationalisms

This seminar offers a critical overview of recent literature on the historical emergence of national identities and the creation of national states. We will examine a series of books that present new ways of problematizing the nation and its construction and consolidation. These works take novel approaches foregrounding gender, temporality, memory, religion, economic development, local affinities, networks, and empire, among other frameworks. Building on classic literature on the nation and its origins from history, anthropology, political science, and political economy, the texts covered in this course nevertheless suggest new conclusions about the foundations, conditions of emergence, and persistence of national states and national identities.

What is a nation? How are nations formed? What could the nation have been, what other forms could it have taken, and what other types of political organization could have provided the basis for group identification or the structure of global order? To what extent did regional identities, on one hand, and imperial or supranational identities, on the other hand, affect the development of specific nations and of the nation-state in general? Why does every national group implicitly deserve or possess a state? Why are those nation-states territorial? How do nation-states generate and maintain the allegiance of their citizens and instill or ascribe membership in a national group? How do nations police or depend upon the gender, racial, and class identities of their subjects?

This seminar also seeks to raise a set of other questions about historical method and craft. How do we write and think about nationalism today? With histories of the nation rightly challenged by transnational approaches, does the nation still constitute a meaningful unit of historical analysis, and if so, in what ways? How do we take account of the nation as a historical fact while acknowledging the nation as a construction? With more virulent forms of right-wing nationalism and nationalist populism on the rise around the world, on the other hand, how should national histories and mythologies be questioned, reframed, and undermined?

Drawing on this recent literature, this seminar will seek to propose provisional answers to these questions and others about the nation and nationalism. Texts examined will cover both classic works on the nation and new works that revise or supplement them, as well as works that take novel approaches. Part of the course will historicize earlier theories

Department: History
W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
Instructor: Samuel F Coggeshall
Info
4 points

Details

HIST GU4963