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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
It is no secret that the American Studies movement finds itself methodologically fragmented and that definitions of its uniqueness and its relationship to other disciplines are a matter of debate within the profession. It is also no secret that attempts to move beyond the “nationalcharacter” and “myth-symbol-image” approaches have fallen short of consensus. Innovations and new directions in other disciplines include approaches and methods we have considered our province and frequently seem to move us in new directions that further fragment our movement.
1. For selective discussion of issues, see Mechling, Jay, Merideth, Robert, and Wilson, David, “American Culture Studies: The Discipline and the Curriculum,” American Quarterly 25 (10 1973), 363–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mechling, Jay, “If They Can Build a Square Tomato: Notes toward a Holistic Approach to Regional Studies,” Prospects 4 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1979), 59–78Google Scholar; Mechling, Jay, “In Search of an American Ethnophysics,” in Luedtke, Luther S., ed., The Study of American Culture: Contemporary Conflicts (DeLand, Fla.: Everett Edwards, 1977), pp. 241–77Google Scholar; Luedtke, Luther S., “Not So Common Ground: Controversies in Contemporary American Studies,”Google Scholar in Luedtke, , ed., Study of American Culture, pp. 323–67Google Scholar; Sklar, Robert, “The Problem of an American Studies ‘Philosophy’: A Bibliography of New Directions,” American Quarterly 27 (1975), 245–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wise, Gene, “‘Paradigm Dramas’ in American Studies: A Cultural and Institutional History of the Movement,” American Quarterly 31 (Bibliography Issue, 1979), 293–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. Vartanian, Pershing, “The Voluntary American Studies Program: Strategies for Development,” American Quarterly 30 (Bibliography Issue, 1978), 410–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. Mechling, , “In Search of an American Ethnophysics,” p. 242.Google Scholar
4. For example, Smith, Henry Nash, Virgin Land (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1950)Google Scholar; Marx, Leo, The Machine in the Garden (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Lewis, R. W. B., The American Adam (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1955)Google Scholar; and Ward, John William, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1953).Google Scholar
5. Kuklick, Bruce, “Myth and Symbol in American Studies,” American Quarterly 24 (Fall 1972), 435–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kelly, R. Gordon, “Literature and the Historian,” American Quarterly 26 (05 1974), 141–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tate, Cecil F., The Search for Method in American Studies (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Wise, Gene, American Historical Explanations: A Strategy for Grounded Inquiry (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1973).Google Scholar
6. Kelly, R. Gordon, Mother Was a Lady: Self and Society in Selected Children's Periodicals 1865–1890 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Kelly, , “The Social Construction of Reality: Implications for Future Directions in American Studies,” paper delivered at American Studies Association, Minneapolis, 1979Google Scholar; Wise, , American Historical Explanations, “‘Paradigm Dramas’”Google Scholar; Luedtke, , “Not So Common Ground”Google Scholar; Sklar, , “American Studies ‘Philosophy’”Google Scholar; Mechling, , “Square Tomato,” “American Ethnophysics.”Google Scholar
7. Mechling, Jay and Williams, Merline, “Teaching Up,” Chesapeake American Studies Quarterly (01 1975, no. 5), p. 1.Google Scholar
8. Berger, Peter L. and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), p. 189Google Scholar. All citations in parentheses in the text are to this edition.
9. Schutz, Alfred, “The Frame of Unquestioned Constructs,”Google Scholar in Douglas, Mary, Rules and Meanings: The Anthropology of Everyday Knowledge (Middlesex, U.K.: Penguin 1973), p. 19.Google Scholar
10. In discussing socialization that is not gender-specific, I have elected, as the least confusing alternative, to refer to individuals as “he.” “He or she” and “he/she” are awkward and disrupt sentence clarity. To use the female pronoun throughout seems artificial and self-conscious. Recognizing the inadequacy of language, I have opted for simplicity.
11. Hamburg, David A. and Lunde, Donald T., “Sex Hormones in the Development of Differences in Human Behavior,” in Maccoby, Eleanor E., ed., The Development of Sex Differences (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1966), p. 15Google Scholar. “From this moment [birth] on, the child's maleness or femaleness is constantly reinforced. It is difficult, then, to determine the extent to which the child's learning of his sex role may be influenced by underlying biological predispositions.”
12. Gilligan, Carol, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1982), p. 6Google Scholar. Gilligan documents the inadequacy of existing psychological models of psychosexual development for describing the female experience.
13. Bardwick, Judith M., Psychology of Women: A Study of Bio-cultural Conflicts (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 158.Google Scholar
14. Ibid. p. 9.
15. Seward, Georgene H., “Sex Identity and the Social Order,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 139, No. 2 (1964)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, quoted in Bardwick, , Psychology of Women, p. 153Google Scholar. See also Williams, Juanita H., Psychology of Women: Behavior in a Biosocial Context, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1983), pp. 180–90Google Scholar. “The culture prompts her very early to become sensitive to the responses of others, and to evaluate herself accordingly. She learns to be and to behave in ways that will maximize for her the powerful rewards of love, admiration, and approval. But to the extent that her self-esteem and sense of self become dependent upon such rewards, she is dependent upon the presence of significant others for their delivery, and she fails to develop internal criteria for an evaluation and definition of her self. Thus, she remains tentative in outline so that she may adapt more easily to the man she marries whose personality is as yet unknown. While such an adaptation to a future contingency does not necessarily lead to conflict, it does represent, the deflection of considerable energy into the motivation to form affiliative relationships, within which her needs for positive response and affirmation of herself by others can be met” (p. 184).
16. Bernard, Jessie, Women and the Public Interest: An Essay on Policy and Protest (Chicago: Aldine, 1971), p. 171Google Scholar. See also Bernard, , The Future of Marriage (New York: Bantam, 1972).Google Scholar
17. Homey, Karen, “Inhibited Femininity: Psychoanalytical Contributions to the Problem of Frigidity,” in Kelman, Harold, ed., Feminine Psychology (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), pp. 73–4.Google Scholar
18. Slater, Philip, The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), p. 68.Google Scholar
19. Janeway, Elizabeth, Man's World, Woman's Place: A Study in Social Mythology (New York: Dell, 1971), p. 156.Google Scholar
20. Bart, Pauline B., “Depression in Middle-aged Women,” in Gornick, Vivian and Moran, Barbara K., eds., Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness (New York: New American Library, 1971), p. 164.Google Scholar
21. Bardwick, , Psychology of Women, p. 151.Google Scholar
22. Examples of gothic romances include novels by Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Phyllis A. Whitney, and Dorothy Eden, among others. For the function of formula fiction in culture see John, G.Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1976)Google Scholar. For modern gothic romances, see my doctoral dissertation, The World of Modern Gothic Fiction: American Women and Their Social Myths (University of Iowa, 1973)Google Scholar or my Women's Gothic and Romantic Fiction: A Reference Guide (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981).Google Scholar
23. Gilligan reports, for example, on a study that is clearly relevant to the fantasy experience of reading gothic romances. An experimental group of college students responded differentially by sex to the Thematic Apperception Test, especially in their fantasies of violence and aggression. Men saw more violent content in pictures that implied intimacy, while women read danger in scenes with suggestions of achievement or competition. “Thus, it appears that men and women may experience attachment and separation in different ways and that each sex perceives a danger which the other does not see—men in connection, women in separation” (In a Different Voice, p. 42)Google Scholar. For another analysis of the significance of attachment and nurturing in female development, see Chodorow, Nancy, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1978).Google Scholar
