21G.221
Communicating in American Culture(s)
Spring 2019
In _Communicating in American Culture(s)_, bilingual students examine how various aspects of American culture—history, geography, institutions, traditions, values—have shaped dominant Anglo-American communication norms and responses to critical events in the world. In addition, you can expect to practice and strengthen your analytical and communication skills in a carefully scaffolded manner, starting with frequent short writing and speaking tasks and progressing to longer, more formal tasks.
Readings
- Gonick = Larry Gonick (2005). The Cartoon History of the United States . Collins Reference. ISBN: 9780062730985.
- Graff et al. = Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst (2016). They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing . W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN: 9780393617443.
- Stewart and Bennett = Edward C. Stewart and Milton J. Bennett (1991). American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective . Intercultural Press. ISBN: 9781877864018.
- Edward T. Hall and Mildred Reed Hall (1990). Understanding Cultural Differences . Intercultural Press, pp. 3–31. ISBN: 9780933662841.
- Annie Dillard (1987). An American Childhood . Harper & Row, pp. 147–149. ISBN: 9780060158057.
- Edward Schiappa and John P. Nordin (2013). Keeping Faith with Reason: A Theory of Practical Reasoning . Pearson, pp. 6–23. ISBN: 9781256807223.
- Colin Woodard (2011). American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America . Viking Penguin, pp. 1–19. ISBN: 9780143122029.
- Mugambi Jouet (2017). Exceptional America: What Divides Americans from the World and from Each Other . University of California Press, pp. 43–62. ISBN: 9780520293298.
- Robert Wuthnow (2008). “Religion” in Peter H. Schuck and James Q Wilson (eds.), Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation . Public Affairs, pp. 275–305. ISBN: 9781586486952.
- Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (2018). “Friday Black” in Friday Black . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, pp. 104–114. ISBN: 9781787476011.
- 18 · Martha Bayles (2008). “Popular Culture” in Schuck and Wilson, pp. 19–28
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗Historical OpenCourseWare
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.