ENGL 491
Populism in literature, rhetoric, and visual culture
Dr Ken Hirschkop
Winter 2021, Wednesdays, 2.30-3.50
Hagey Hall 245
Email: khirschk@uwaterloo.ca
Virtual Office Hours: Tuesdays, 1:30-2:15; Thursdays, 4:00-4:30, or by appointment
Come see me at https://whereby.com/kenhirschkop
Description: Populism is a hot political topic these days, but populism is a matter of culture as well as politics. It’s in written and visual culture that our ideas of who ‘the people’ are – what constitutes them, what distinguishes them from elites, what unites them – gain shape and definition. In this course we explore how different kinds of culture – political statements, poetry, fiction, film, music, and even advertisements – have contributed to populism as a phenomenon in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Aims and Learning Outcomes
This course aims to
- Acquaint you with some basic concepts for thinking about contemporary populism in its various forms
- Show you how populism may be embodied and displayed in various kinds of culture: literary, rhetorical, visual, and musical
- Introduce you to the history of populist forms of speech in North America
- Introduce you to the problems of analysing the political resonance of cultural forms
By the end of the course you will
- Understand the complexities of populism as a political phenomenon
- Appreciate how phenomena like populism become embedded in cultural forms
- Be able to conduct a political analysis of cultural texts in a sophisticated manner
- Be able to conduct either a close reading of cultural works or a statistical analysis of a significant cultural dataset.
Course organization
You will usually begin each week by either watching a narrated PowerPoint I have put on LEARN or by doing some background reading. You will then examine some object texts we have put on Perusall, an annotation software program you can access as an external link from LEARN. In Perusall you will make comments in response to the instructions, to questions I pose, or in response to the responses of others. In the live session on Wednesday from 2:30 to 3:50 we’ll then discuss the object texts ‘in person’. So you could say that each week of work actually starts on Thursday (with new reading and stuff to analyse on Perusall) and concludes with the live class on the following Wednesday.
Assessment
Commentary and discussion 35%
Midterm examination 25%
Final Essay 40%
Commentary and discussion:
Form: Each week there will be a text on Perusall for discussion. There will be a minimum number of comments to make, depending on the type and number of texts we are discussing. We will usually also discuss the text as a class in our live session. Your participation in that discussion will also be assessed. If you are unable to participate in the live sessions, your contributions to Perusall discussion alone will be the basis for this mark.
Submission methods: Comment function on Perusall, contributions to class discussion in weekly live session.
Grading criteria: Comments will be assessed on the basis of their thoughtfulness, their relevance, and their contribution to the discussion. Contributions to our live discussions will be assessed using the same criteria. If you think something through, make an interesting and independent comment, and I think your view is nevertheless wrong, you’ll get a very good mark. So be bold: better to contribute. And contributing frequently, even if everything you say is not brilliant, is better than contributing rarely.
If you don’t submit the required number of comments, you will penalized (5% of the grade for this element of the course). But you don’t have to be in top form every week: if you submit comments every week, I will drop the marks for your ‘worst’ two weeks.
Midterm Examination
Form: There will be ‘take-home’ style exam in the period February 26 – March 1. You will be given three questions and you will choose two of them to answer. Answers should be in essay form, 1000 words each in length.
Submission method: Submission by midnight, March 1st , in a dropbox on the LEARN site
Grading criteria: Answers will be assessed according to: their focus on the question itself (do you actually answer it?); whether they demonstrate you have done all the reading; the clarity and interest of the answer.
Final Essay
Form: The final essay can take one of two forms: the close reading of one or a few related texts, or a ‘distant reading’, i.e., a digital tool analysis, of a dataset. In either case, the essay will be 3500-4000 words long, in scholarly format.
Submission Method: Final essays will be submitted electronically, in the appropriate LEARN dropbox by midnight, April 25th.
Grading criteria: The sophistication, inventiveness and persuasiveness of the analysis; the lucidity and elegance of the writing; the organization and presentation of the argument. In addition, ‘distant’ reading’ essays will be judge on how rigorously the data is collected and analysed.
Penalties for lateness: Essay: 3% for the first day and 1% each day following.
Week-to-week
Week 1 (Jan 11-15): What is Populism?
Class: Introducing ourselves
Background reading: Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), Chapter 1
Object texts (for comment and discussion on Perusall):
- Eugene Delacroix, ‘Liberty leading the people’
- American Declaration of Independence
Week 2 (Jan 18-22): Origins: Who are ‘the people’?
Class: discussion of Delacroix and Declaration of Independence
Background Reading: Pierre Rosanvallon, ‘Revolutionary Democracy’, in Democracy Past and Future (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). NB: Rosanvallon refers to events of the French Revolution; the Wikipedia entry on the topic might be worth a look.
Object text (for comment and discussion on Perusall)
- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part Three, Chapters 1-6
Week 3 (Jan 25-29): American populism - politics
Class: discussion of Rosanvallon, Tolstoy
Background lecture: Narrated Power Point on Learn
Object texts (for comment and discussion on Perusall)
- William Jennings Bryan, ‘Cross of Gold’ speech
- Kenneth Burke, ‘Revolutionary Symbolism in America’
Week 4 (Feb 1-5): American populism - poetry
Class: Discussion of Jennings Bryan, Burke
Background Reading: Mudde and Kaltwasser, Chapters 2-3
Object texts (for comment and discussion on Perusall:
- Excerpts from Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
- Excerpts from Carl Sandburg, ‘The People, Yes’, Prologue, 14-22, 24-5, 28, 29.
Week 5 (Feb 8-12): Populist film
Class: Discussion of Whitman, Sandberg
Object texts
- Frank Capra, Meet John Doe (1941)
Reading week
Week 6 (Feb 22-26): Populist painting
Class: discussion of Capra
Background reading: Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction.
Object texts (for comment and discussion on Perusall)
- Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry Murals
- Thomas Hart Benton, America Today
- Aaron Douglas, Aspects of Negro Life
Week 7 (March 1-5): Populist music
Class: Discussion of murals
Object texts (for comment and discussion on Perusall)
- Woody Guthrie, ‘This Land is Your Land’, ‘Talkin’ Dust Bowl Blues’, Pretty Boy Floyd’, ‘Pastures of Plenty’
- Pete Seeger, ‘The Banks are Made of Marble’
- Aaron Copland, ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’, Appalachian Spring
Week 8 (March 8-12): Recent Left populism
Class: discussion of Guthrie, Seeger, Copland
Background reading: Excerpts from Thomas Frank, The People, No (New York: Henry Holt, 2020).
Object texts (for comment and discussion)
- Michael Moore, Roger and Me (1989)
Week 9 (NB: March 17-26): Populism, race and ethnicity
Class: discussion of Roger and Me
Background Reading: Mudde and Kaltwasser, Chapter 4
Object texts (for comment and discussion): TBD
Week 10 (March 22-26): Suburban populism
Class: discussion of TBD
Background Reading: Mudde and Kaltwasser, Chapters 5 and 6
Object texts
- Ram Truck Ads: Super Bowl Ad February 2013; Way of Life: Agriculture (2019)
Week 11 (March 29-April 2): Canadian populisms (Prairie Populism, Ford Nation)
Class: discussion of advertisements
Background Reading: David Laycock, ‘Populism and the New Right in English Canada’, in Francisco Panizza, Populism and the Mirror of Democracy (London: Verso, 2005), 172-201.
Object texts (for comment and discussion):
- Speeches by Don Cherry and Rob Ford, on the latter’s swearing-in as Mayor of Toronto (December 7, 2010): https://nationalpost.com/posted-toronto/audio-don-cherry-rob-ford-at-city-hall
Week 12 (April 5-13): Final Conclusions
Class: discussion of Canadian populism/Essay workshop
Additional Information
Intellectual Property
Students should be aware that this course contains the intellectual property of their instructor, TA, and/or the University of Waterloo.
Intellectual property includes items such as:
- Lecture content, spoken and written (and any audio/video recording thereof);
- Lecture handouts, presentations, and other materials prepared for the course (e.g., PowerPoint slides);
- Questions or solution sets from various types of assessments (e.g., assignments, quizzes, tests, final exams); and
- Work protected by copyright (e.g., any work authored by the instructor or TA or used by the instructor or TA with permission of the copyright owner).
Course materials and the intellectual property contained therein, are used to enhance a student’s educational experience. However, sharing this intellectual property without the intellectual property owner’s permission is a violation of intellectual property rights. For this reason, it is necessary to ask the instructor, TA and/or the University of Waterloo for permission before uploading and sharing the intellectual property of others online (e.g., to an online repository).
Permission from an instructor, TA or the University is also necessary before sharing the intellectual property of others from completed courses with students taking the same/similar courses in subsequent terms/years. In many cases, instructors might be happy to allow distribution of certain materials. However, doing so without expressed permission is considered a violation of intellectual property rights.
Please alert the instructor if you become aware of intellectual property belonging to others (past or present) circulating, either through the student body or online. The intellectual property rights owner deserves to know (and may have already given their consent).
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Important notes
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Mental Health Support
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On Campus
Due to COVID-19 and campus closures, services are available only online or by phone.
- Counselling Services: counselling.services@uwaterloo.ca / 519-888-4567 ext. 32655
- MATES: one-to-one peer support program offered by the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association (WUSA) and Counselling Services
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Full details can be found online on the Faculty of Arts website
Download UWaterloo and regional mental health resources (PDF)
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For more information about the purpose of territorial acknowledgements, please see the CAUT Guide to Acknowledging Traditional Territory.
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