American Studies 334
Urban America
Roger Williams University
GHH 108
M, Th  3:30 - 4:50
Spring, 2011
Michael R. H. Swanson, Ph. D
Office: GHH 215
Hours: T, Th 9:00-10:30
M, W 1:00-2:00
Phone:   (401) 254-3230
E-mail:  mswanson@rwu.edu
Index
For Monday, April 18   Serious Thinking about the City Projects
I haven't been mentioning this much the past two weeks, but I hopw that hasn't meant you haven't been thinking from time to time about what you'd like to be doing for your particular part of your city project.  Quoting Myself: 

I expect no two groups to investigate their cities the same way.  In fact, I would be rather disappointed if the presentations look like clones of each other.  If we’ve learned nothing else, we should have learned that each bit of Urban America has unique characteristics of its own.  That, coupled with the fact that are groups vary considerably in size, should lead to considerable differences in presentations.  Below are some ideas some of you might wish to pursue.  The list is not inclusive.  There are other things which some of you might choose to pursue.  I’d like to have a mix of things for each city, variety is the spice of life.  So here are a few ideas

The thing I'm quoting myself from is the document beh8ind the button/bar immediately below.
Think you might like to use a blog for your project?  Wordpress provides free software and wordpress.com  provides free hosting.
So does Google's Blogger
For Thursday, April 21
Read,

In Ray Suarez, The Old Neighborhood: 
What We've Lost in the Great Suburban Migration:  1966-1999

1.  "What we lost"  pp.  1 - 27
2.  "The Persistence Significance of Race"  pp. 122 - 157
I have many reasons why I think reading these chapters are crucial.  For one thing, we're just coming off reading Studs Terkel, and we've seen the way race reverberates in that book.  A few years ago when we showed Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.  If you haven't seen it, make an effort to do so.  It very much illustrates the theme of Suarez' book.  Since the election of 2008, race has been part of the background noise in the political sphere, and in that regard, suarez is as pertinent now as it was when he wrote it.