AMS 205 Exam #1
What term refers to the "systematic study of the lifeworld and rituals of a particular community or people?
Ethnography
What is the notion of America's uniquely privileged status, its freedom from the constraints and downturns facing other polities
Exceptionalism
Who wrote Paradigm Dramas' in American Studies: A Cultural and Institutional History of the Movement?
Gene Wise
The strategy for analyzing a historical film involves 3 parts: the _______ (exploring the idea behind the film), the ______ (providing an overview of the characters and events, while highlighting the major deviations from historical records), the ______ (discusses the significance of the film and how it depicts the past)
Genesis, Synopsis, Judgment
What modern horror film by a Black director did we discuss as having gothic imagery not dissimilar to other gothic-influenced images and texts?
Get Out
What was the movie about Black Civil War soldiers that Robert A. Rosenstone writes is an example of good use of history on film?
Glory
Who photographed Mrs. Ella Watson?
Gordon Parks (1942)
Who painted American Gothic?
Grant Wood
Who was in their garden when they discovered arrowheads that reveal the presence of an extinct nation challenging the perception of American as new and white (anthropology)?
Henry David Thoreau
Who said "Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?" Why?
Herman Melville in Billy Budd to explain American studies as interdisciplinary
What term "involves the representation of history and our thoughts about it in visual images and filmic discourse"?
Historiophoty
What did Robert A. Rosenstone write?
History on Film/Film History
Who brought anthropological questions and methods on contemporary topics such as small-town social dynamics in the Deep South and the influence of the social system in Hollywood's movie production?
Hortense Powermaker
Who did a study of boxing in an African American neighborhood in Chicago, combining anthropological fleshing-out of rules and rituals with sociological investigation of racial and class dynamics?
Loic Wacquant
What term refers to "films that are not documentaries and are not necessarily historical in nature, but they may be set in any time period (including the present or the past, so long as it is not set in the future)"?
Mainstream drama
What is an Ustopia? Who coined the term?
Maragaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale, combines both utopia and dystopia
Who wrote The Handmaid's Tale?
Margaret Atwood
Who envisioned interdisciplinary collaboration between American anthropologists and historians in studying American civilization in a specific region between 1900-1914?
Margaret Mead
What state were the Freedom Summer workers going to register Black voters?
Mississippi
What is a critical approach dominant in literary studies in the mid 20th century particularly in the US. New Critics tended to characterize the literary text as self-referring verbal structure and were unwelcoming to alternative interpretive modes interested in history?
New Criticism
Puritans were English people who came to what is now the US for religious freedom. Where did they settle, predominantly and when?
Northeastern US, particularly what is now Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in the 1620s
What did Jack Kerouac write?
On the Road
What is the literary mode reaching as far back as Greek poetry of the 3rd century BCE that idealizes rural life as against the supposed disharmony and inauthenticity of urban conditions (Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden)?
Pastoral
Whose essay highlights the connection between physical geography and cultural topics in American studies?
Peter Coates
What did R.W.B. Lewis write?
The American Adam ("American Adam" is an individual emancipated from history and contributes to the history of ideas)
What was Henry Luce's magazine called? What does it discuss?
The American Century: compares US unfavorably to Britain during WWII
Armed struggle by 13 British colonies to free themselves from rule by London.
The American Revolutionary War?
What is the connection between the PBS documentary we watched for class and Miami University?
The Freedom Summer training took place on what is now Miami's Western Campus originally the Western College for Women
What did Leo Marx write?
The Machine in the Garden (broad focus on American studies)
What did Perry Miller write?
The New England Mind (Puritanism)
What animated sitcom featured an episode satirizing Puritan life?
The Simpsons
What was the name of the PBS documentary we watched for class that had to do with fighting for voting rights?
Training For Freedom
What is the name of the American spiritual movement of the early 1800s typified by the belief in the inherent goodness of people and nature?
Transcendentalism
What book needed rectified? Why?
Virgin Land (Smith portrayed Native Americans and woman as characters and objectifies them). Annette Kolodny's The Lay of the Land written for diverse perspectives
What did Henry Nash Smith write?
Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (American emotional and imaginative attitude towards the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains)
What film genre, which experienced a decline starting in the 1970s, is still of interest in AMS because of its exploration of US identity?
Westerns
What is the Myth and Symbol School?
name given to dominant tendency in American studies following WWII which sought to identify and examine intellectual or imaginitative schemas shared across America
In _______ studies (alongside the similar sub-discipline of film studies), a scholar might combine social sciences and the humanities to approach texts like Twin Peaks, Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black, Succession, and other similar works.
television
American Studies emerges from what three branches of influence in the movement to be interdisciplinary?
1. British cultural studies (explores social and cultural movements, artifacts, arts and entertainment) 2. American history (ways in which history, culture and society interact) 3. American literature (first focusing on frontier literature then later expanding to consider other eras and genres)
What three American academic fields saw development first?
1. Geography 2. History 3 Literary criticism
What did Vernon Louis Parrington write?
3-Volume work Main Currents in American Thought (V1 colonial era, V2 1800-1860, V3 America up to 1920 but died before published V3)
What did John Winthrop envision America as?
A city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us
Who is John Smith? What did he write about?
A solider and settler of Jamestown 1607 who chronicled his impressions and history of Virgina, NE and other areas. Wrote about the flora and fauna (nature of the region) so people could see the economic potential
What is dreaming America?
America was seen as almost a dreamscape and a heightened object to aspiration
What American Studies Association journal published only one article on film between 1953 and 1973 out of more than 400 articles?
American Quarterly
What did F.O. Matthiessen write?
American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman
Who is America named after?
Amerigo Vespucci
Who wrote our textbook?
Andrew Dix
What is the "non-hierarchical movement for racial justice in the US and beyond, founded in 2013 by 3 African American women?
Black Lives Matter (BLM)
What did Alan Trachtenberg write?
Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol (explores the physical construction of the Brooklyn Bridge)
What word, "as a term in literary studies refers to a body of fiction, poetry, drama, and other writing deemed worthy of serious engagement by scholars"?
Canon
American Studies first developed institutionally as a manifestation of ____ War politics, but has been contested in recent years.
Cold
What did de la Casas want to name America and after whom?
Columba after Christopher Columbus
Who directed "The Birth of a Nation?"
D.W. Griffith
When did the US declare and achieve independence?
Declared: 1776 Achieved: 1783
What did Benjamin Franklin write about?
Differed from Smith in his 1784 book where he was more realistic about the abundance of resources and talked about class, trade, and employment and addresses slavery
What are Cheaply priced, action-driven novels produced from the 1860s onwards to meet the demands of an emerging mass readership in the US with Westerns being the most popular?
Dime novels
Who photographed Native American communities?
Edward Curtis
