North American Studies

Last Updated 13 Jan 2001

Center for North American Studies, C 141

Kalevantie 4, P.O. Box 607, 33014 University of Tampere, Finland
Tel. 03-215 7154 (Int. +358-3-215 7154), fax: 03-215 6980 (Int. +358-3-215 6980)
E-mail: NorthAmericanStudies@uta.fi
North American Studies Library C 102a Tue 13-15 Thu 13-15
 

Director of the Program: HIETALA Marjatta, Ph.D., M. Soc.Sc. Office hours: Tue 2-3pm, Wed 3-4pm, C106. Tel. 03-215 6539, E-mail: marjatta.hietala@uta.fi.

Docent for American and Canadian Studies: HENRIKSSON Markku, D.Soc.Sc., D. Lett., h.c., Professor of American Studies at the University of Helsinki. E-mail: markku.henriksson@helsinki.fi.

Fulbright Professor: TRUETT Samuel, Ph.D., University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. C115, Tel. 03-216 6534, e-mail:sam.truett@uta.fi

Program Coordinator: PASTO Sari. Office hours: Tue 12-13 and Thu 10-11, C 141. Tel. 03-215 7154, e-mail: sari.pasto@ uta.fi.

Lecturers: BATES Benjamin, Ph.D., HENRIKSSON Markku, D.Soc.Sc., KIVENHEIMO Pirkka, M.A., MIKKONEN Kai, Ph.D., OIKARINEN Jarmo, Ph.D., PICARD Robert, Ph.D., RANTONEN Eila, M.A., ROBERTSON David, Ph.D., TRUETT Samuel, Ph.D., VESALA-VARTTALA Tanja, PhD., WARGELIN Marianne, M.A., WIECK Carl, Ph.D.

N.B. Information below is given in the language of teaching. Lecture rooms are in the University Main Building if there is no other indication.
 

Set book examinations are to be taken on the examination days of the appropriate department:

NAM-1, NAM-2, NAM-7: Department of History
NAM-3: Department of English Philology
NAM-4: Department of Political Science and International Relations
NAM-5: During the fall term 2001, the book examination is to be taken on the examination dates of the Department of History (Oct 20, Nov 17 and Dec 15).
NAM-6: Department of Journalism and Mass Communication.

NB Book exam on North American Geography (NAM 2): Dunlop & MacDonald is no longer available at the library. Please read Boal & Royle.

CONTACT PERSONS

Basic Studies, 20 credits

NAM-1 Introduction to North American Studies, 3 credits.
Professor Auvo KOSTIAINEN, Ph.D., Department of History
NAM-2 History and Geography, 2-4 credits.
Professor Auvo KOSTIAINEN, Ph.D., Department of History
NAM-3 Language and Literature, 2-4 credits.
Professor David ROBERTSON, Ph.D., Department of English Philology
NAM-4 Law and Politics, 2-4 credits.
Professor Jukka PAASTELA, Ph.D., Department of Political Science and International Relations
NAM-5 Society and Culture, 2-4 credits.
Senior Lecturer Jarmo Oikarinen, Ph.D., Department of History
NAM-6 Mass Communication, 1-3 credits.
Professor Kaarle NORDENSTRENG, Ph.D., Department of Journalism and Mass Communication
NAM-7 Finnish-American Relations, 2-4 credits.
Professor Marjatta HIETALA, Ph.D., Department of History

Subject Studies, 20 credits: NAM-8, NAM-9, NAM-10

Professor Auvo KOSTIAINEN, Ph.D., Department of History

NAM-8 North American Research Seminar, 6 credits.
NAM-9 Classics of North American Studies, 4 credits.
NAM-10 Advanced Courses & Seminars on US and Canadian Cultures, 10 credits.

TYT-students (Open University): on the examination days of TYT.

FALL TERM 2000

• NAM-1
• Johdatus Pohjois-Amerikan tutkimukseen. Luennot 12 h (HENRIKSSON). Kurssin yhteydessä tentitään Henrikssonin Kotka ja vaahteranlehti, 1 ov. 1.-29.11. (29. tenttipäivä), ke 16-19, ls C7.
• NAM-2/NAM-5/NAM-10
• Gender, race and postcolonial analysis. Lectures 24 h, Thu 4-6pm, first meeting on September 14, Tulli room 450 (RANTONEN), 2 credits.(4 ETCS)
• NAM-3/NAM-10
• Narratives and Ideologies. Lectures 15 h, Mon 11-1pm, Oct 4-Nov 22, Pinninkatu 47, room 304 (VESALA-VARTTALA), 2 credits.(4 ETCS)Narratives are ideological through and through. Ideologies take narrative forms. And thinking in narrative terms is ideological in itself. Confused? You will be after this intensive course on narrative forms of thinking, knowing, and making sense. Sign-up sheet on the NAM-bulletin board.

Topics:
Introduction and Public Scandals as Narratives (the O.J. Simpson case and the Clinton-Lewinsky affair)
Personal Narratives (The Journals of Sylvia Plath)
Detective Story Narratives (Chandler, Mosley, Paretsky)
Prose Narratives (Twain, Wharton, Morrison, Carver)
Narrative Poems (Eliot)
Narrative and Religion (selected texts)
News Stories and Advertising (selected texts)
• NAM-3/NAM-10
• American Literature II 1900 to the present. Lectures 28 h, Thu 9-11am, Pyynikki room A022 (WIECK). 2 credits.(4 ETCS) Continues in the spring term.
• NAM-6/NAM-5
• Institutions of Mass Communications. Lectures 20 h, Tue 3-6pm, Sept 26-Nov 14, Lecture Hall A3  (PICARD) , 1 credit(2 ETCS).
• NAM-5/NAM-4/NAM-10
• Hispanic Frontiers in North America. Lectures 24 h, Wed 12-2pm, C7 (TRUETT), 2 credits (4 ETCS). First meeting on Sept 20.  In this course, we will examine the historical legacy of Spain in what is today the United States and northern Mexico, with a focus on frontier relations with other European (French, English, and Russian) empires in North America, native communities, and the formation of new colonial and native identities.  We will begin with the earliest Spanish exploration and settlement of the North American continent, move through 300 years of cultural exchange and conflict on the northern frontiers of New Spain, and end with the early years of Mexican rule after 1821.  We will focus mostly on what is today the southeastern United States (from Georgia to Louisiana) and the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (from Texas to California), but will explore this history within the broader hemispheric and global contexts of expansion, conflict, and transformation from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries.
• NAM-8
• Contested Landscapes: Culture, Power, and Place in North American History. Seminar 36 h, Tue 12-2pm, Pinni room 1093 (TRUETT), 3 credits (6 ETCS).  Landscapes, whether natural or created, are generally viewed by historians as little more than backdrops to the more pertinent political, economic, or social events of the past.  In this seminar, we will approach North American history from a spatial, or geographical, perspective, revisiting familiar historical themes such as colonialism, economic change, multiculturalism, and political power as they relate to the material world around us.  How have various cultures and generations of Americans carved out places and meaning for themselves within the rural, urban, industrial, and natural landscapes that they call home?  How, in turn, have these cultural and environmental spaces sustained and constrained human activity over time?  Drawing on such varied disciplines as geography, anthropology, economics, ecology, landscape architecture, and urban and regional planning, we will discuss new ways that historians can conceptualize culture, power, and place in the North American past.  Our approach will necessarily be eclectic, and will be more thematic than chronological, but familiar historical terrain we will "re-map" will include: the colonization of America, the transformations of capitalism, state-formation and the administration of space, landscapes of race, class, and gender, the growth of cities and suburbs, technology, labor, and the production of space, the rise of mass consumption, shifting ideas of "nature" and "artifice" in the modern age, and the material consequences of globalization and postmodernity.

SPRING TERM 2001

• NAM-2/NAM-5/NAM-10/NAM-7
• Finnish Immigration and Cultural History in NorthAmerica. Lectures, 24 h (WARGELIN), 2 credits (4 ETCS). Lecture hall C6, Wed 4-7pm, first meeting on Jan 24. This lecture course provides an introduction to the cultural history of Finnish immigrants who went to North America. Although all Finnish immigration will be examined, the primary emphasis will be on the immigrants who came between 1864 and 1935 and the cultural history of their descendants into the 1990 s.  Settlement patterns will be outlined and communities identified in both Canada and the USA. Individual as well as group responses to America will be explored. Finnish American labor history, social history, women s history will give the student concrete ways to understand 19th and 20th C. North American industrialization and urbanization. The course also provides an opportunity to become familiar with Finnish American popular, folk, and elite cultural responses to the American experience. Course will feature readings from Finnish American primary source materials. Class discussion will be encouraged.
• NAM-3/NAM-10/NAM-9
• Some Classic American Novels. Seminar 36h, Thu 11-1pm, Pyynikki room A 406 (ROBERTSON), 3 credits (6 ETCS).
• NAM-2/NAM-10
• The American West. Lectures 24 h (TRUETT), 2 credits (4 ETCS). Lectures 24 h. Lecture hall C7, Tue 12-2pm. First meeting on Jan 9.

In this course we will look at the overlapping histories of conquest, migration, cultural exchange, economic development, nation-making, and political contestation that have made the American West one of the most intriguing, widely-imagined, and significant regions of North America. The stories of the American West are familiar around the world. Who is not familiar with the tales of immigrants, refugees, and dream-seekers sailing west across the Atlantic from England, the Netherlands, Spain, and France? In popular movies such as Last of the Mohicans and Dances with Wolves, we have seen Indians and Europeans fight, trade, intermarry, and transform one another’s cultures on the American frontier. And a long tradition of western novels and films has made us all familiar with the epic migration of American soldiers, cowboys, mountain men, and women across the Great Plains into places like Montana, Arizona, California, and Texas. And finally, many of us are becoming aware of other westerners as well—the Indians who called the place home for centuries, the Chinese who migrated across the Pacific to work on the railroads and in the gold fields, the Mexican frontiersmen who migrated north instead of west, the Mormons and Cherokee Indians who were forced west by laws of exclusion, the African-American communities from the American South who searched for a new life west of the Mississippi River, and the various other immigrants from Asia, Europe, and Africa who came to call the West home.
In this class, we will discuss both the reality and the myth of the American West from the earliest migrations of Europeans west across the Atlantic in the sixteenth century to the present day. We will discuss the competition between empires and Indians over frontier space. We will look at the rise of a new national frontier that began with such enterprising individuals as Daniel Boone, and ended with the U.S.-Mexican War, and the subsequent annexation of places like Texas, Arizona, and California from Mexico. We will look at the bloody wars between Americans and Indians on the plains and in the American Southwest. We will examine how railroads connected the West to the rest of the nation, how new industries such as ranching, mining, and agriculture began to transform the western landscape, and how Indians, Mexican-Americans, and new immigrants began to create new western communities. We will look at the impact of the World Wars, the Great Depression, and the Cold War not only on western peoples but also on the popular image of the west. We will examine how railroads, migrants, workers, investment capital, military forces, and ideas drifted across the borders of the American West into places like Canada, Mexico, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim.  Finally, we will discuss the place of the American West at the beginning of the 21st century, both as a distinctive region, and a symbol of America’s larger relationship to the world.
• NAM-3/NAM-10
• Introduction to Contemporary American Literary Theory. Lectures 10h, Thu 12-2pm (MIKKONEN), 2 credits (4 ETCS). Pinninkatu 47, lecture room 301. First meeting on Jan 18.
• NAM-8
• North by Southwest: Borderlands and Border Peoples in the U.S. and Mexico. Seminar 36 h (TRUETT), 3 credits  (6 ETCS). Seminar room C137, Wed 12-2pm. Sign-up sheet on the NAM-bulletin board.

In this seminar, we will explore the histories of the American Southwest and Mexican North from a transnational perspective.  In traditional U.S. and Mexican history classes, these regions fall to the margins of radically different national narratives.  By contrast, this seminar places the American Southwest and Mexican North at the crossroads of a larger North American narrative, in which borderlands and border people play a central role.  We begin by briefly examining the colonial legacy of the American Southwest and Mexican North, when both regions were part of New Spain's northern frontier.  We will then explore how this colonial frontier was transformed into a borderlands between nations-a place divided by national borders, and yet connected by new transnational pathways of migration, culture, and economic development.  We will progress chronologically through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but will take thematic detours to examine such issues as nationalism and frontier revolt, border "banditry," Indian-white relations, the romantic Southwest, dispossession and resistance, capitalist development and immigration, labor conflicts and the Mexican Revolution, racial, gender, and ethnic identities, diplomatic and military relations, free trade and its discontents, and transnational ecological changes.
• NAM-6/NAM-10
• Media Law and Ethics, (BATES). Tue 10-12 Attila B275, 16.1.-

Media Law and Ethics will examine the foundations prompting the development of media law and regulation, and give an overview of media law and policy in the US and the EU. The course will also address related information policy issues (for example, libel, privacy, copyright, and access to media), and the ethical issues arising from a conflict of legal, social, political, and economic forces within the media. The course will combine lectures with some discussion.
• NAM-2/NAM-5/NAM-10
• Global Environmental Problems: Global Warming and Pollution. Some Examples from the U.S. Lectures 24 h (BIEDER), 2 credits (4 ETCS).Lecture hall C6, Mon 10-12am. First meeting on Jan 15.

This course is about global warming. The subject and its causes and effects are mired in controversy. At risk, according to many international scinetists may be numerous cities, island nations, coral reefs, fauna and flora, democracy, and life itself. The impact of human populations have lead to great changes for the biosphere; population growth, deforestration, potable water supplies, ocean warming and greenhouse gasses all pose long term problems for the future. Thus global warming may be the greatest problem the world faces in the twenty-first vcentury and will require that it be addressed at local, regional, national, and international levels.
In this course, we will discuss what global warming is and then explore its history starting with scientific discoveries in eighteenth-century France. We will also look at the contributions of the Industrial Revolution and post-revolution technology to global warming. Finally we will consider the contemporary politics of global warming—including U.S. resistence to measures for curbing global warming as put forth by other nations—and scenarios for the future as spelled out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
• NAM-2/NAM-5/NAM-10
• Yhdysvaltain mustan musiikin kulttuurihistoria. Luennot 24 h, (KIVENHEIMO), 2 ov (4 ECTS). Ensimmäinen tapaaminen 30.1. Opetus järjestetään kolmen viikon periodeissa: ensimmäisellä viikolla ma 17-21, ls D17 ja ti 17-21 ls A3; toisella viikolla ma 17-21 ls D17; kolmannella viikolla ei opetusta järjestetä lainkaan.

Luennolla tarkastellaan Yhdysvaltain mustan väestön keskuudessa syntyneiden musiikkityylien (mm. negro spirituaalit, gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm & blues, soul, funk ja rap) merkitystä mustalle amerikkalaiselle identiteetille ja sen historialliselle muutokselle orjuuden ajasta nykypäivään.
• NAM-2/NAM-10
• History of the Cold War. Lectures 12 h (OIKARINEN), 1/2 ov. An intensive course in April-May, time and place will be announced later.
• NAM-6/NAM-10
• Current Issues in US Broadcasting. Lectures 16 h (STAVITSKY), 1 ov (2 ECTS). This is a period of enormous change for U.S. electronic media organizations. The transition to digital broadcasting, reforms in regulatory policy, competition from new media, and new conceptions of journalism are resulting in challenges for broadcasters and opportunities for media consumers. This course will examine the current climate in U.S. broadcasting and telecommunication, and feature examples of new programming forms. Feb 13 lecture hall A 202a (Attila building) at 8am-12pm, Feb 14 Lecture hall A4 (Main building) at 8am-12pm, Feb 15 and Feb 22 lecture hall D16 (Main building) at 9am-1pm.
• NAM-6/NAM-10
• Mediation and Culture. Lectures 15 h (LOWE), 1 credit (2 ECTS). This course investigates relations of mediation and culture from a critical point of view. Topics include American versus European approaches to broadcasting in cultural terms, implications of the Americanization of European media content and organization, and popular cultural products connected with youth culture. Requirements: attendance and an essay. Feb 7, 21, 28, March 7 lecture hall A4 at 9am-12pm, and April 14 at 2-5pm (place for this meeting will be announced at the class).

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