CENTRE FOR CANADIAN, US & LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Course : PhD
Course No. : AW653N
Course Title : Society and Culture in the United States
Course Type : Core
Course Teacher : Dr.Saumyajit Ray
Credits : 2
Semester : Monsoon
Contact hours : 2per week

Course Objectives

Processes like immigration and assimilation and institutions like family,church, schools,
political parties, the free market, and the mediahave firmly welded a “nation” like no
other. At the same time, social conflict rooted in racial and ethnic prejudice can still only
be resolved through federal intervention. The welfare state has grown in size and scope,
taking up responsibilities and creating entitlements as never before. Immigrants, for the
first time, have refused to learn English, forcing many states to declare English their
official language through popular initiatives.

As Americans debate who they are and what it means to be an American, the United
States continues to attract millions to its shores. Global terrorism has reopened the
question as to who was welcome to America and who was not.

It would be the aim of this course to explore how Americans of all hues, native and
immigrant, rich and poor, White and colored, Protestant and Catholic, Asian and Latino,
liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, and straight and gay, plan and work
to achieve their share of the American Dream.

Learning Outcomes

This course:
1. Intends to introduce students to American society and inculcate in them an
understanding of the various factors that helped shape it over time;
2. provides students with a wide choice of topics to work on for a doctoral degree in
United States Studies;
3. is meant to be an advanced level preparation in American culture and society for
PhD students regardless of the profession they choose.

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Evaluation Methods

1. Term paper (on a topic selected by the course teacher) of about 5000 words with
citation in the SIS Manual Style and accompanied by a Turnitin plagiarism report:
30%
2. Oral Examination based on the term paper and related topics: 20%
3. End Semester Examination: 50%

Course Content

Unit 1: “A Shining City Upon a Hill”: America's Christian beginnings

a. Jesus and the “Shining City” idea
b. The American Dream
c. A Protestant nation

Unit 2: From “immigrant” to “ethnic”: Issues in Immigration I

a. Waves of Immigration: Old, New, Newest
b. Select ethnic minorities: Irish, Italians, Hispanics
c. Reinforcing ethnic identity: Bilingual education and multilingual ballots

Unit 3:From “ethnic to “American”: Issues in Immigration II

a. A “nation” of immigrants
b. Theories of assimilation: Exclusive (Anglo-conformity, Cultural Pluralism)
andinclusive (Melting Pot, Amero-conformity)
c. Americanization: Nativism, “Official English” movement, New Nativism

Unit 4: “One nation under God”: The centrality of Christianity

a. The First Amendment: Church-state separation, freedom of religion
b. Christian America: Protestant churches (mainlineand evangelical), Roman
Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Mormons
c. The Christian Right: Organizations (Moral Majority, Christian Coalition) and
issues (school prayer, abortion, divorce, teenage pregnancy, homosexuality, same-
sex marriage)

Unit 5: “In God We Trust”: Religious minorities in America

a. A nation of religious minorities
b. Jews in America: American Judaism, counter-missionary activity, aliyah, the
Republican Jewish Coalition
c. Diasporic religious communities: Moslems , Hindus, Sikhs

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Unit 5: From “Negro” to “African-American”: Blacks in America
a. “White” supremacy: Slavery, segregation, the Ku Klux Klan, Confederate
symbols
b. Non-violent “Black” emancipation: Abolition, Civil Rights,
desegregation, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Black churches
c. Violent “Black” emancipation: Nation of Islam, Black Power, Black Lives Matter
d. Black Conservatism: Black Republicans, BLEXIT

Unit 6: From “commitment” to “companionship”: Exploring family, marriage, and

sexuality
a. American marriage: Traditional and modern
b. The American family: Functions, evolution, and relevance
c. Family and marriage in party politics

Readings

Basic Texts
1. Andersen, Margaret L. and Howard F. Taylor. 2006. Sociology: Understanding a
Diverse Society. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
2. Ashbee, Edward. 2002. American society today. Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
3. Foner, Eric. 2005. Give Me Liberty! An American History. New York, NY: W.W.
Norton Company, Inc.
4. Luedtke, Luther S., ed. 1992. Making America: The Society and Culture of the
United States.Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
5. Singh, Robert. 2003. Contemporary American Politics and Society: Issues and
Controversies. London: Sage Publications.

Unit 1
1. Ashabranner, Brent K. 1993. Still a Nation of Immigrants. New York, NY:
Cobblehill Books.
2. Brooks, Charles A. 1919. Christian Americanization: A Task for the Churches.
New York, NY: Council of Women for Home Missions & Missionary Education
Movement of the United States and Canada.
3. Cullen, Jim. 2003. The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped
a Nation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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4. Frost, Bryan-Paul and Jeffrey Sikkenga. 2003. History of American Political
Thought. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
5. Gavit, John P. 1922. Americans by Choice. New York, NY: Harper & Bros.
6. Heimart, Alan and Andrew Delbanco, eds. 1985. The Puritans in America: A
Narrative Anthology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
7. Kennedy, John F. 2008. A Nation of Immigrants. New York, NY: Harper
Perennial.
8. Levinson, David and Melvin Ember, eds. 1997. American Immigrant Cultures.
9. Portes, Alejandro and Ruben Rumbaut. 1990. Immigrant America: A Portrait
Berkeley. CA: University of California Press.
10. Samuel, Lawrence R. 2012. The American Dream: A Cultural History. Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press.
11. Turner, Frederick Jackson. 2008. The Significance of the Frontier in American
History. London: Penguin Books.
12. Walker, Paul Robert. 2012. A Nation of Immigrants. New York, NY: Kingfisher
Press.

Unit 2
1. Bennett, William J. 1988. Our Children and Our Country: Improving America’s
Schools and Affirming the Common Culture. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
2. Crawford, James. 1991. Bilingual Education: History, Politics, Theory and
Practice. Second Edition. Los Angeles, CA: Bilingual Education Services.
3. Daniels, Roger. 1992.Comingto America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity
in American Life. New Delhi: Affiliated East-West Press Pvt. Ltd.
4. Duignan, Peter. 1998. Bilingual Education: A Critique. Stanford, CA: Hoover
Institution.
5. Edmonston, Barry and Jeffrey S. Passel, eds. 1994. Immigration and Ethnicity:
The Integration of America’s Newest Arrivals. Washington, DC: The Urban
Institute Press.
6. Fishman, Joshua A., et al. 1985. The Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revival:
Perspectives on Language and Ethnicity. Berlin: Mouton Press.
7. Glazer, Nathan and Daniel P. Moynihan. 1970. Beyond the Melting Pot: The
Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. Revised
Second Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
8. Lamm, Richard D. and Gary Imhoff. 1985. The Immigration Time-Bomb: The
Fragmenting of America. New York, NY: Truman Talley Books & E.P. Dutton.
9. Martinez, Ruben. 2004. The New Americans. New York, NY: The New Press.
10. Reimers, David. 1985. Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to
America. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
11. Sowell, Thomas. 1981. Ethnic America: A History. New York, NY: Basic Books.
12. Tucker, James Thomas. 2009. The Battle Over Bilingual Ballots: Language
Minorities and Political Access under the Voting Rights Act. Burlington, VT:
Ashgate Publishing Company.

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Unit 3
1. Adams, Karen L. and Daniel T. Brinks, eds. 1990. Perspectives on Official
English: The Campaign for English as the Official Language of the USA. (New
York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter.
2. Baron, Dennis E. 1990. The English-Only Question: An Official Language for
Americans? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
3. Gordon, Milton M. 1964. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race,
Religion, and National Origins. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
4. Hartmann, Edward G. 1948. The Movement to Americanize the Immigrant. New
York, NY: Columbia University Press.
5. Higham, John. 1988. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism,
1860-1925. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
6. Huntington, Samuel P. 2004.Who are We? America’s Great Debate. NewDelhi:
Penguin Books.
7. Kallen, Horace. 1956. Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea. Philadelphia,
PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
8. Knobel, Dale T. 1996. “America for the Americans”: The Nativist Movement in
the United States. New York, NY: Twayne Publishers.
9. Miller. John J. 1998. The Unmaking of Americans: How Multiculturalism Has
Undermined America’s Assimilation Ethic. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
10. Murray, Charles 2011. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.
New York, NY: Crown Forum.
11. Ray, Saumyajit. 2010. America’s Common Bond: Why English should be the
official language of the United States. Delhi: Reference Press.
12. Walzer, Michael.1994.What It Means To Be An American: Essays on the
American Experience. New Delhi: Affiliated East-West Press Pvt. Ltd.

Unit 4
1. Ahlstrom, Sydney. 1975. A Religious History of the American People. New York,
NY: Image Books.
2. Albanese, Catherine L. 1999. America: Religions and Religion. Third Edition.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishers.
3. Allitt, Patrick. 2003. Religion in America since 1945: A History. New York, NY:
Columbia University Press.
4. Butler, Jon. 1992. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
5. Dershowitz, Alan M. 1997. The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish
Identity for the Next Century. New York, NY: Little, Brown & Company
6. Dimont, Max I. 1978. The Jews in America: The Roots, History, and Destiny of
American Jews. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster
7. Hudson, Winthrop S. 1961. American Protestantism. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.

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 8. Hudson, Winthrop S. 1987. Religion in America: An Historical Account of the
Development of American Religious Life. Fourth Edition. New York, NY:
Macmillan.
9. Hulsether, Mark. 2007. Religion, Culture and Politics in the Twentieth-Century
United States. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
10. Neusner, Jacob. 2009. World Religions in America: An Introduction. Fourth
Edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
11. O’Toole, James M. 2008. The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America.
Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
12. Sachar, Howard M. 1992. A History of the Jews in America. New York, NY:
Vintage Books.
13. Sarna, Jonathan D. 2019. American Judaism: A History. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
14. Segers, Mary C. and Ted G. Jelen. 1998. A Wall of Separation? Debating the
Public Role of Religion. Lanham, MD: Rowman& Littlefield Publishers.
15. Wald, Kenneth D. and Allison Calhoun-Brown. 2011. Religion and Politics in the
United States. Sixth Edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman& Littlefield Publishers
16. Williams, Peter W. 1998. America’s Religions: Traditions and Cultures. Urbana,
IL: University of Illinois Press.

Unit 5
1. Arsenault, Raymond. 2006. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial
Justice. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
2. Chalmers, David M. 2000. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux
Klan. Third Edition. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
3. Foner, Eric and Joshua Brown. 2005. Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation
and Reconstruction. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf
4. Handlin, Oscar. 1957. Race and Nationality in American Life. Garden City, NY:
Anchor Books.
5. Joseph, Peniel E. 2006. Waiting ‘til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of
Black Power in America. New York, NY: Henry Holt & Company.
6. McVeigh, Rory. 2009. The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right Wing Movements
and National Politics. Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press.
7. Morris, Aldon D. 1984. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black
Communities Organizing for Change. New York, NY: The Free Press.
8. Sales, Jr., William W. 1994. From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X
and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Boston, MA: South End Press.
9. Sitkoff, Harvard. 2008. The Struggle for Black Equality. 25th Anniversary
Edition. New York, NY: Hill and Wang.
10. Stampp, Kenneth M. 1956. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum
South. Reprint 1989. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
11. Van DeBurg, William L. 1992. New Day in Babylon: The Black Power
Movement and American Culture. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press.

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 12. Williams, Hettie V. 2009. We Shall Overcome to We Shall Overrun: The
Collapse of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Revolt (19621968).
Lanham, MA: The University Press of America.

Unit 6
1. Amato, Paul R. et al. 2007. Alone Together:How Marriage in America Is
Changing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
2. Celello, Kristin. 2009. Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and
Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States. Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press.
3. Chauncey, George. 2004. Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate
over Gay Equality. New York, NY: Basic Books.
4. Farrell, Betty G. 1999. Family: The Making of an Idea, an Institution, and a
Controversy in American Culture. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
5. Gillis, John R. 1997. A World of Their Own Making: Myth, Ritual and the Quest
forFamily Values. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
6. Pinello, Daniel R. 2006. America’s Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7. Riley, Naomi Schaefer. 2013. ’Til Faith Do Us Apart: How Interfaith Marriage
is Transforming America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
8. Romano, Renee C. 2003. Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar
America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
9. Schuh, Thomas J. 2004. In Support of Same-Sex Marriage & Gay Rights in
America. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing.
10. Stacey, Judith 1996. In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the
Postmodern Age. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
11. Wiseman, Dennis G., ed. 2008. The American Family: Understanding its
Changing Dynamics and Place in Society. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas,
Publisher.
12. Wolfson, Evan. 2004. Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay
People’s Right to Marry. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

[N.B.: Journal articles and book chapters will be made available on request to the Course
Teacher.]