HUM 450 California Culture
AMST 450 California Culture
Welcome to the course. I have posted separately the Grading Policy, Marks, Requirements. That's required reading.
When I say we're going to study California "culture," I'm using the word in two ways.
First, California is, as ever, a hotbed of "culture" -- people writing, thinking, talking, breaking new ground. I'm going to plunge you into their midst. Whenever, in recent years, I've brought in a published author to talk off-the-record about their books, it's been unexpectedly exciting, even when the topic was one that I didn't think the class was much interested in beforehand. The author comes in, totally excited about their subject, and their passion is contagious. People go to bookstores to see writers read. Here, they're on our turf, and you get to cross-examine them, find out what makes them tick, even protest and rebut if you wish, with me there providing you moral support. Or, you can watch while I do that to them, jumping in when you wish. It's made for such memorable classes that I'm trying much more guest visits this term. WARNING: author's schedules being what they are, sometimes it will screw up. Are you willing to take a bit of a gamble with me? (It's a murderous amount of paperwork and phone calls for me, but I think it's worth it.)
My second use of the word "culture" in the course title: culture in the sense of "ethnicity."
This part of the course could very well be called, "What you need to know to live and to work in the new cosmopolitan California." We'll discuss that topic as we encounter a variety of films and creative works related to some of California's, and America's most rapidly growing ethnic cultures. When you think about what gives California its flavor, and its unique place in the modern world, perhaps the first thing is, the interplay of ethnicities.
If we mean California "culture" in the sense of what gives a place its special flavor, we'd have to say "ethnicity," but also -- our other recurrent topic -- California "spirituality." Part of California has always been, the spiritual cult of the land itself: the "Promised Land," the fabled climate and landscape. This passion, which you can find in everything from Beach Boy songs to the high art of John Cage, has led to a famous and influential spiritual relationship with the land, a Zen like ecological mysticism. California means, all over the world, a certain kind of avant-garde religion -- sometimes profound, sometimes flakey, but always provocative. We'll do a museum project on this spiritual topic vital to California's culture. Some of our authors are sure to tackle it as well.
Here's are two actual museum papers as samples (paper one and paper two), reprinted by permission of their authors. They received As because of the care their writers took at the museum -- and because of the prose skills! Some people get so interested in the artwork that they forget I'm not giving you a mark on whether you respond to art, but on how well you argue a case in writing. That's the valuable real-world skill we're practicing. I'm looking for the way you put across your argument by quoting the book, doing professional citations, using simple active verbs, and all the other techniques in Break Your Writer's Block.
Americans in general have had a religious attitude to the countryside from the start, which led us to pioneer in the ecology movement, and in a related form of art. This religious, mystical current, "natural supernaturalism," will be the subject of our museum visit. It's inseparable from "getting in touch with yourself" -- the most practical part of which is Time planning. We'll work on that too, with a nationally known expert, Dr. Jacob Needleman. I hope he'll be available to speak.
There it is: put together the amazing wealth of ethnicities with a spiritual cult of the beautiful land and an enthusiasm for religion and starting your life over fresh, and you're at the heart of the modern California culture. It all fuels our writers and artists, and we'll encounter them as well, in the flesh.
The Era of the Pacific
California has led the rest of America into the "Era of the Pacific" -- an ocean that washes Latin America no less than Asia and the Pacific Islands. Since 1980 America does more trade with the Pacific Rim than with the Atlantic. America's face has turned towards the Pacific.
One special focus this term will be works related to ethnic and racial minorities. Get in touch with your roots! Many people have, in this course, and then have gone on to take more advanced courses in the School of thnic Studies.
We'll also do the Jews, since your professor has, um, special expertise there, and Jewish culture has been omnipresent in American film, literature, art and mass media since World War Two. (Not to mention education!)
Beyond Guilt Trips
But in the course of discussing ethnicity we'll talk at length about what it means to be a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant), because, in recent years they've been the most outrageously bashed of any group, particularly in the academic world. (There will be no self-criticism papers assigned here! A student showed me one she'd had to write, last semester, accusing herself of various social sins -- shades of the Maoist Cultural Revolution.) We'll try to cut through the guilt trips and rhetoric aimed at them, to help encounter how it feels to be a WASP in California now -- the New WASPS. In this introductory overview, we'll touch on differences between WASP and Irish cultural predispositions, on Italian American culture, and the German American ethnicity, sometimes called "the hidden ethnicity." We always deconstruct the stereotypes, banish guilt.
HOW HAS THIS PROFESSOR BEEN EVALUATED BY STUDENTS?
During the past fifteen years over 2500 students have, after Prof. Leonard's classes, filled out anonymous computer evaluations administered by SFSU, given to the professor only after the marks have been mailed. They are kept on departmental file. In answer to ten specific questions like "Was his grading fair?" "Was he available at stated office hours?" "Did he know his subject?" and so on, replies have averaged, with amazing consistency, about 80% "excellents", 17 percent "very goods," with 1 percent "good," 1 percent "poor" 1 percent "no opinion."
Leonard is the best professor I've had. Inspiring. Open minded. Fair. California Culture class is extremely important, more students should take it.
Professor Leonard is one of those professors that makes students [aspire?] to another level.
Helpful information for the "real" world. Well worth the price of admission!
Great helpful hints and feedback on writing skills!
I truly feel that I have learned more from California culture than in any other class I have taken at SFSU. The course is extremely relevant to my life and academic career. My writing and critical think skills have been improved greatly.
This course has colored my thinking in nearly everything I do. As a cinema major it has colored the way in which I view films and analyze characters. It has improved my writing skills by tenfold and given me an extremely broad view of cultural diversity and the ways in which we all relate to each other. One of the best classes I have ever taken. Mr. Leonard offers and accurate perspective of the world around us.
I feel that Professor Leonard could have reiterated that we need to remind him that wasn't speaking from the heart. I think that his "adult course" was too flip and assuming. I felt that this was too raw of an introduction of ideas and topics to some people in the course and is damaging as their only exposure to the ideas.
Prof. Leonard's teaching skills were a tremendous learning experience to me. I learned a great deal from him and would take him in the future.
Fan-fuckin-tastic class! Only suggestion is to share papers of students willing to be heard earlier in class. Only class I will remember and apply to my life on a daily basis. Leonard, I hate to toot your horn but you are the man! Few teachers have the chutzpah to say what they think and not apologize. I left class thinking and wanting to learn more. Thanx, thanx, and thanx again. Good luck in your future work! I grew up in a family of teachers and I learned real teachers are few and far between. Be proud to be one of them. May you always walk in beauty!
This has been an extremely enjoyable class --I'm sorry to see it end. I really appreciate the way that the class was structured to make us more of a community than a classroom of students. Coming to class was always a great experience in an environment so conducive to learning. I feel as though I've learned things that have been applicable to my everyday life. The class was a success! Thank you. Expect to see me in your future classes...
METHODOLOGY: INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES
"Tell me what you like and I'll tell you who you are."
The Interdisciplinary Humanities department is not the philosophy department. We believe that when certain subjects or cultures flower into art objects, you can understand the subject better by considering those objects -- not just by reading essays.
If you've never taken a course in this department before, you may be puzzled for a while, before you get the hang of it. To start, consider what John Ruskin said: "Tell me what you like, and I'll tell you who you are." You know this already. A lot of people will tell you, in all honesty, "I'm... a Christian... sort of a spiritual person." And where did you spend your vacation, Mr. Christian? "Vegas." What you like reveals more about who you really are, down there in your gut values, than what you claim about yourself -- even when you believe what you're claiming. When we study art objects, we're studying, exactly, what cultures liked -- and sometimes it tells a lot about them. (There are some supposedly Christian cultures, in fact, whose art is closer to Vegas.) In this department we study a culture's history and its philosophy, but we're careful to take a long look at what it likes. For that reason we'll look at carefully selected samples of both high art and popular art in this course. Popular art is very revealing. What people are willing to pay money for and admire just for fun without having it assigned can tell a lot about them!
Although we originally conceived this course as a more advanced companion to other courses I teach on this topic, the difficulties of getting into any course at SFSU these days means that students take courses out of sequence, whenever they can get them. So this will be an appropriate course for beginners. Anyway, the field's so new almost everyone's a beginner. A lot of what we do in here is the basic job of learning to decipher the works. What's a shiksa, what's a shmuck? Or a coyote or a pollo -- and who is La Migra? When a Japanese American writer refers to his issei father or his happa child, what does he mean? Until you know, you can't begin to enjoy his story.
We'll pay attention to the specialized language the different cultures use, and their slang. Sometimes it reveals their interests. For instance, there are no theological curses in Chinese, but Latin American Spanish abounds in them. I'll often ask you, as a short assignment, simply to tell me what words you found hard to understand in some work, and then we'll try to get them explained. You'll discover that many words exist in languages which can't be translated, because they're based on values another culture doesn't share.
The Class as Think Tank
Since you live in San Francisco, in the thick of the action, you may know more than any professor back at Yale knows about this. The years when this class has really worked, the students began to realize they were more like a think tank than a class. You really have a lot of information which America wants to know about. I'll help you educate each other.
Some of these groups have so recently begun to produce a nationally-known literature or art, no-one knows who their "classics" will be. I'm going to ask your help deciding that. I'll often ask you (as another typical assignment) to read a bunch of new writers and tell me who moved you, who you think deserves to be more widely known. This is a great time to be studying this: the professors haven't got it All Figured Out, there's plenty of room for original ideas and opinions.
THE MANNER OF THE COURSE
The course's style is what the University officially terms "evolutionary": the course evolves with the students' interests. Starting with the questionnaire today I'll work at knowing your individual intellectual goals, then I'll alter the course to help you reach them. I also want to be careful not to leave people behind.
I'll announce such changes well ahead of time in class, which is one reason attendance is required. If you're forced to miss a class, it's your responsibility to inquire if you missed any such updates or assignments.
After I've read what you've written about yourselves -- by next week, say -- you'll get not a schedule but a "probable order of topics to be discussed." At the course's beginning we'll stick to it fairly closely; as your interests emerge and I tailor the course to you, we'll refer less and less to the "probable order" sheet. Each class catches fire on certain topics and I try to help the class's interests unfold. Now that probably sounds good, but be aware, folks, we'll pay a price: less clarity to the course outline. You may bring a book to class and find out we're not getting there till next week. (The reading list, by the way, is kept at the Bookstore in the book beside the aisle my orders are in; and on the shelves themselves.)
I let your inquiry, your understanding set the pace. The price we pay for freedom and flexibility will be a lack of comforting structure. Or I may decide we have to slow down and let everybody catch up. Some students are from departments in which even the advanced courses are all geared to pre-printed readers. You could be disconcerted.
And we're going to bring authors in, on top of all that! It'll be great, but it'll use your talent to "go with the flow."
Speaking generally, in the humanities, we don't tell you what the answers are, we tell you what the big questions are. There's no one answer for all conditions -- everyone comes up with a different answer to fit their own. You'll be encouraged to think for yourself. If you've only taken lower-level courses or non-humanistic courses you may at first be surprised at the amount of freedom granted you. If you are only comfortable in a highly structured environment you may decide this course is not for you.
If, however, you're interested in developing your personal philosophy and working on personal projects, this course is very much for you. If you're generally curious about the people you see around you, and what America is evolving into, this course is for you.