Further Light and Knowledge

gang,

as i mentioned in another thread, i'm teaching a social science / humanities course in the fall about how people around the world view the united states, and i could really use your help tracking down some primary sources. i've got some of the usual suspects (europeans) and the obvious non-europeans (marti, ho chi minh, mao tse tung) but really need more. if i can get my hands on it, i'm also going to use a bbc documentary about the u.s. foreign policy under bush to ease the class in, as a UK perspective may be more accessible to start.

from those of you with more experience in asia, africa and latin america, your help is espcially needed.

my criteria are simple:

1) non-u.s. people grappling with the meaning of "America" in their lives and their means of dealing with America in creating their own identities and social policies.

2) the sources can range from the academic to the political, from the poetic to the literary; cinema; visual art of any kind; pop culture; music; web sites; etc.

3) must be accessible to english-speakers on some level, as that will be the lingua franca of the class. visual imagery this is less an issue; but for text it's important.

use this forum to respond or write me directly at tormsbee@email.sjsu.edu

cheers

t

Is this from any historical period or just relatively contemporary?

_________________
The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller

any, but i'll be trying to move the class to focus on the period after the spanish american war, after we've spent some time getting a historical base. there's some great 19th cent. stuff including a mexican republican who went to texas to study america; his analysis is less erudite but in many ways more insightful than Toqueville's. there's also that middle-class british woman who toured around and kept a great journal wherein she mocks americans incessantly. i think the students will get a kick out of that

my current thinking is that I'd like to do 1/3 pre-spanish american war; and 2/3rds after.

but i'm doing all the research now, so that could change when it comes time to design the actual course.

For a Latin American perspective, see if Jorge Casta

Off the top of my head, one set of primary source books that were interesting on many levels and relevant to your inquiry were Slavenka Drakulich's books, two of which I was assigned by the same teacher in different European history classes (she apparently quite loved Drakulich).

The first one is How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, and the second one is Cafe Europa: Life After Communism.

It's been a while since I've read them, but my overall impression from the both of them is that I am rather critical of some of her analytical conclusions, but that they provide a revealing look at the way a white-collar, feminist Central European woman in the former Yugoslavia who looked longingly at Western advertising and propaganda reacted to it.

I just remembered a song from the 1980s that, although in Spanish, might be useful. Latinoam

Oh, yeah. He is brilliant. I agree to some extent about the agitprop thing--but mostly elegant (I take exception to the "cheap" )

In fact, I actually named my blog after him, in part--or after the book you mention. That was mainly for stylistic reasons because of how I hoped to structure it. He wrote a follow up in a similar style called The Book of Embraces that was really brilliant.

But yeah, he has a very common, sort of 70s Latin American leftist view of the United States that is almost cliched sometimes. One of the reporters at our paper interviewed him and did a review of Book of Embraces when it came out in the early 90s. She said he drank steadily the whole time and was quite surly throughout.

But I forgive him all because he writes like an angel.

(Plus, as a general rule, I just love Uruguayos.)

_________________
The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller

As one of those rare creatures that can be called American "leftists," I'll say that now you've got me very interested in his book. I'll have to get it now.

And yes, I'll hold that position against tha best of ya.

Oooh, a gauntlet has been thrown down! Where is Hank? Finally somebody to knock some sense into his liberterian ass!

_________________
The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller

Most of my readings, now that I look more closely, have been from domestic authors. Other than the two books I've suggested, I can't think of anything specifically written by non-North-Americans.

However, if you have room to squeeze in a domestic critical secondary source or two on the subject matter, I have a couple of books to recommend.

First, a fantastic book on the 1960s covering, specifically and pointedly, the very international nature of the spirit of '68, entitled 1968: Marching in the Streets, by Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins. It's sort of a chronological series of vignettes, month-by-month, walking you through 1968. For example, on p. 52 we learn about what's going on in Poland in March of 1968 and see a photograph of Polish student protesters. On p. 114, we are treated to a two-page vignette on what was going on in Belgrade. Much of it, of course, is in reference to the U.S.-Vietnam war.

I cannot stress how powerful of a book it is for impressing that international aspect of the era. Plus, it's gorgeous, easy on the eyes and filled with great photographs -- a bit of a break from the drier fare, and yet very informative and measured in tone. (You mentioned reading The Nation so you may recognize Tariq Ali's name from there.)

The second book I highly recommend, if you do happen to have a slot for a clear oppositionist secondary source that contains some articles by non-North-Americans, is a collection of essays entitled Pox Americana: Exposing the American Empire, edited by a pair of highly-respected American dissident professors.

The editors (and authors of several essays inside) are John Bellamy Foster, a respected professor of sociology right here at the U of Oregon (LB has taken several sociology classes and is considering choosing it as her major, but she has not taken a class with him), and the more well-known Robert W. McChesney, a communication professor from U of Illinois who is an outspoken and eminent media critic.

It is extremely well done and is light enough to be able to squeezed in in a week's or a week-and-a-half's reading (or shorter, depending on how much of it you use). As I said above, a lot of the essays are by non-North-Americans, and so could be used for your purposes. However, caveat: this is a book from an explicitly socialist small press, albeit a highly respected one -- Monthly Review Press, and I'm not sure how you'll feel about it. In case that doesn't bother you and you're interested, here's a sampling of the contained essays:

Kipling, the "White Man's Burden," and U.S. Imperialism by John Bellamy Foster, Harry Magdoff and Robert W. McChesney

Imperial Ambition, an interview of Noam Chomsky by David Barsamian

The Grid of History: Cowboys and Indians by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

U.S. Weakness and the Struggle for Hegemony by Immanuel Wallerstein

Other authors include Michael Klare, Peter Gowan, Joseph Halevi, Vanis Varoufakis, William K. Tabb, Samir Amin, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Bill Fletcher Jr., Sam Gindin, Barbara Epstein, Eleanor Stein and Bernardine Dohrn (gotta love our Weathermen-Underground-alumna-cum-law-professor).

Anyway, I've more than tipped my hand here. I'm one of those dirty dissidents. And a heathen one at that. But I tipped THAT hand long ago...

Let me know if you end up using 'em -- I'd love to hear how it turned out.

Aw, hell. I was going to be cool and put up images of the books, but I can't figure out the damned image function. Oh well.

The Book of the Embraces actually has several essays that fit well with what cumom wants to do; my copy is somewhere in the book-hell that is my basement so I can't find, it, but I can remember one about the effect of American TV on Latin American culture, and another one about Xmas traditions and how they don't make sense in the southern hemisphere.

you guys rock. any former Asian missionaries out there with stuff to add??