HUHI 7396 Harvey J. Graff
Summer, 1997 JO 3.104, 972-883-2776
Monday & Wednesday, 9:00-12:00 graff@utdallas.edu
Office Hours:
Mon./Wed. 1:00-2:00 and by appointment

DALLAS: THE COURSE

Dallas, we are told proudly and repeatedly, has no history! In typical constructions of the city's "origin myths," history(ies) represent(s) something negative or at least qualities or consciousness that are best avoided. Ahistorical and erroneous notions stand poorly in place of understanding that might prove useful in posing and attempting to resolve critical questions of Dallas's present and future(s). Whereas "new" or "sunbelt" cities are seen as exceptions to historical currents, sometimes but not always within a post-modernist vein, the case of Dallas is exceptional, sometimes extreme to the point of perversity and willful, costly ignorance. Many questions, across the intellectual and cultural compass--certainly across the arts and humanities--follow from this recognition. The course confronts both the question of Dallas' fear of the past and its revealing ahistoricity, the myths that develop in that situation, and the challenge of initiating serious research and reflection to revise the barren intellectual and creative landscape. The wide-ranging collective inquiry of the seminar is open to the explorations, approaches, and expressions of the creative arts, literary studies, and historical studies in interdisciplinary conceptualizations and combinations.

This course confronts the wasteland of Dallas studies across the range of the human sciences, from a historical foundation. Combining seminar and workshop formats, beginning with an inquiry into urban and community studies and history, we will then shift into the mode of a research seminar. Class members will select their research topics in consultation with instructor and colleagues in the class. Projects may be either individual or collaborative, and may stem from any field of interest within the scope of the School of Arts and Humanities graduate program.

Requirements:
regular reading, attendance, and participation--in one's own as well as one's peers research projects; oral reports on readings; preparation and presentation of a research project (format and form open for discussion)

Books: (ordered for the university bookstore and Off-Campus Books)
Recommended: *Other readings on Library Reserve

Bibliographies and chronologies and selected documents will be distributed in class

HUHI 7396 Harvey J. Graff
Summer, 1997

DALLAS: THE COURSE

Syllabus

M, 6/9 Introduction: The Phenomena of Dallas; Reading Signs of Cities; the Course
  • *William Sharpe and Leonard Wallock, "From 'Great Town' to 'Nonplace Urban Realm': Reading the Modern City," in Visions of the Modern City, ed. Sharpe and Wallock (Johns Hopkins, 1987), 1-50

  • Film: "Social Life of Small Urban Spaces" (55) and/or Dallas videos

  • Advance or background reading, especially if you lack any familiarity with U.S. history and/or the history of cities: any U.S. urban history survey text I recommend David Goldfield and Blaine Brownell, Urban America: A History 2nd ed. (Houghton Mifflin, 1990) or Jon Teaford, The Twentieth-Century American City 2nd ed. (Johns Hopkins UP, 1993)
W, 6/11 Cities and Communities in American History
  • *James Lemon, "Liberal Dreams and Nature's Limits: Great Cities of North America since 1600," Annals of the Association of American Geoqraphers, 86 (1996), 745-766
    Thomas Bender, Community and Social Change in America (Johns Hopkins UP, 1983 (1978)

    Quickly/skim: Raymond Mohl, ed., Searching for the Sunbelt (Tennessee, 1990; Georgia, 1993), or if you find an out of print copy,
    skim: Carl Abbott, The New Urban America. rev. ed. (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1987)

  • Film: "The City" (1939) (45)
M, 6/16 Late-Twentieth-Century Culminations: Post-Modern? Post-Urban?
  • *Sharon Zukin, "The Hollow Center," in America at Century's End, ed. Alan Wolfe (California, 1991), 245-261, 526-528

    Michael Peter Smith and Joe R. Feagin, eds., The Capitalist City (Blackwell, 1987): selections. All read Chs. 1,3,4,7; oral reports on Parts III, IV, V

  • Optional: Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power (California, 1991)
    or Zukin, The Cultures of Cities (Blackwell, 1995)

    See also the Core Bibliography

  • Film: "Mission Hill and the Miracle of Boston" (60)
W, 6/18 Late-Twentieth-Century Culminations: Post-Modern? Post-Urban?
  • Anthony D. King, ed., Re-Presenting the City (New York UP, 1996), Introduction and Chs. 1, 2, 9, 11

    Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park (Hill & Wang, 1992): selections: All read Introduction; choose other chapters by your interests for oral reports

  • Films: "Suburbs: Arcadia for Everyone" (55) and/or "Proud Towers" (55)
M, 6/23 Dallas History: A Long View
  • Patricia E. Hill, Dallas: The Making of a Modern City (Texas, 1996)

  • review Dallas historical chronologies provided in class
    *skim Southwestern Historical Quarterly; Legacies; Journal of Urban History; D Magazine; Texas Monthly, etc.
    See list of recent articles on Dallas history

  • Film: "Remember When" (90) or "Big D Back When" (60)

  • Note also for this and following weeks:
    William McDonald, Dallas Re-Discovered (Dallas Historical Society, 1978)

    William Black, "Empire of Consensus: City Planning, Zoning, and Annexation in Dallas, 1900-1960," Ph.D. Diss., Columbia University, 1982

    Darwin Payne, Big D: Triumphs and Troubles of an American SuperCity in the 20th Century (Three Forks Press, 1994)

    Recent articles
W, 6/25 Re-Searching Dallas, urban research, electronic research
  • See, eg., Harvey J. Graff, et al, Dallas, Texas: A Guide to the Sources of its Social History, to 1930 (Univ. of Texas Press Services, 1979), bibliographies and notes in Hill and other books, also bibliographies distributed in class and list of recent articles on Dallas history

  • Begin to visit and examine catalogues, indexes, and resources: Dallas Historical Society, Dallas Public Library, SMU, and other archives and libraries

M, 6/30 Race and Dallas
  • Jim Schutze, The Accomodation: The Politics of Race in an American City (Carroll/Citadel Press, 1986) and the campaign to suppress it

  • For reports and supplementary reading:
    *W. Marvin Dulaney, "Whatever Happened to the Civil Rights Movement in Dallas, Texas?" in Essays on the American Civil Rights Movement, ed. Dulaney and Kathleen Underwood (Texas A & M University Press, for the University of Texas at Arlington Webb Memorial Lectures, 1993), 66-95

    *_____ , "The Progressive Voters League," Legacies, 3 (1991), 27-35

    *William H. Wilson, "Private Planning for Black Housing in Dallas, Texas, 1945-1955," Proceedings of the Second National Conference on American Planning History 2 (1988), 67-84

    *_____, "Desegregation of the Hamilton Park School, 1955-1975," Southwestern Historical Ouarterly 95 (1991), 42-63

    *_____, "'This Negro Housing Matter': The Search for a Viable African American Residential Subdivision in Dallas, 1945-1950," Legacies 6 (Fall 1994), 28-40

  • Film: Dallas at the Crossroads (20)
W, 7/2 Research time; instructor available for consultation

M, 7/7 1963 and All That: Recent Past
  • *Warren Leslie, Dallas Public and Private (Grossman, 1964)

    Stanley Marcus, "What's Right With Dallas," Dallas Morning News, Jan. 1, 1964, Section 4, p. 2

    Robert Wallace, "What Kind of Place is Dallas?" Life, Jan. 31, 1964, pp. 67ff.

  • For reports and supplementary reading:
    *Robert B. Fairbanks, "The Good Government Machine: The Citizen's Charter Association and Dallas Politics, 1930-1960," in Essays on Sunbelt Cities and Recent Urban America, ed. Fairbanks and Kathleen Underwood (Texas A & M University Press for the University of Texas at Arlington Webb Memorial Lectures, 1990), 125-150

    *_____, "Metropolitan Planning and Downtown Redevelopment: The Cincinnati and Dallas Experiences," Planning Perspectives, 2(1987), 237-253

    *_____, "From Consensus to Controversy: The Rise and Fall of Public Housing in Dallas," Legacies, 1 (1989), 37-43

    *_____, "Dallas in the 1940s: The Challenges and Opportunities of Defense Mobilization," in Urban Texas: Politics and Development, ed. Char Miller and Heywood T. Sanders (Texas A & M University Press, 1990), 141-153

    *_____, "Responding to the Airplane: Urban Rivalry, Metropolitan Regionalism, and Airport Development, 1927-1954," in Technological Knowledge in American Culture: Science, Technology, and Medicine Since the Early 1800s, ed. Hamilton Cravens et al (Univ. of Alabama Press, 1996), 171-188

    *_____, "Planning, Public Works, and Politics: The Trinity River Reclamation Project in Dallas," in Planning the Twentieth-Century American City, ed. Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1996), 187-212

    *Martin V. Melosi, "Dallas-Fort Worth: Marketing the Metroplex," in SunbeIt Cities: Politics and Growth Since World War II, ed. Richard M. Bernard and Bradley R. Rice (University of Texas Press, 1983), 162-195

  • Dallas videos: City as Enterprise (15); Designing Dallas (15)
W, 7/9 Initial presentation of research projects.
  • Each class member will present for discussion and responses their anticipated subject and preliminary plan for research. This should include emerging questions and arguments or thesis; research design or strategy; bibliography and sources. Any supporting or illustrative materials should be distributed to all class members.

  • Brief research proposals (1-2 pages) due 7/7 or 7/9
M, 7/14 Research time

W, 7/16 Imagining Dallas?!
  • Dallas Institute for the Humanities and Culture, Imagining Dallas (Dallas Institute, 1982)

    *Ada Louise Hurtable, "Inventing American Reality," New York Review of Books, Dec. 3, 1992, 24-29

    *Thomas Bender, "The End of the City," Democracy, 3 (1980), 8-20

  • Reports/Optional:
    Philip Seib, Dallas: Chasing the Dream (Presswords, 1986)

    William Sharpe and Leonard Wallock, "Bold New City or Built-Up 'Burb? Refining Contemporary Suburbia," with responses and reply, American Ouarterly, 46 (1994), 1-61

    Alan Wolfe, ed., America at Century's End (Univ. of California Press, 1991)

    Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power and/or her The Cultures of Cities John Short, The Humane City (Blackwell, 1989)

    Dolores Hayden, Redeiqninq the American Dream (Norton, 1984) or her The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (MIT Press, 1995)

  • Dallas videos
M, 7/21 Research and writing time; instructor available for consultation

W, 7/23 Research and writing time; instructor available for consultation

M, 7/28 Final projects due in class; presentation and discussion of projects; class party
  • Final projects due at class time
*Library reserve

HUHI 7396 Harvey J. Graff

DALLAS: THE COURSE

Recent Articles*


Roger Biles, "The New Deal in Dallas," Southwestern Historical Ouarterly, 95 (1991), 1-19

Amy Bridges, various articles on political reform in Sunbelt cities that mention Dallas

W. Marvin Dulaney, "Whatever Happened to the Civil Rights Movement in Dallas, Texas?" in Essays on the American Civil Rights Movement, ed. Dulaney and Kathleen Underwood (Texas A & M University Press, for the University of Texas at Arlington Webb Memorial Lectures, 1993), 66-95

_____, "The Progressive Voters League," Legacies, 3 (1991), 27-35 Elizabeth York Enstam, "They Called It 'Motherhood': Dallas Women and Public Life, 1895-1918," in Hidden Histories of Women in the South, ed. Virginia Bernhard, et al (Univ. of Missouri Press, 1994), 71-95, among the papers from her book-length history of Dallas women in progress.

Robert B. Fairbanks, "The Good Government Machine: The Citizen's Charter Association and Dallas Politics, 1930-1960," in Essays on Sunbelt Cities and Recent Urban America, ed. Fairbanks and Kathleen Underwood (Texas A & M University Press for the University of Texas at Arlington Webb Memorial Lectures, 1990), 125-150

_____, "Metropolitan Planning and Downtown Redevelopment: The Cincinnati and Dallas Experiences," Planning Perspectives, 2 (1987), 237-253

_____, "From Consensus to Controversy: The Rise and Fall of public Housing in Dallas," Legacies, 1 (1989), 37-43

_____, "Dallas in the 1940s: The Challenges and Opportunities of Defense Mobilization," in Urban Texas: Politics and Development, ed. Char Miller and Heywood T. Sanders (Texas A & M University Press, 1990), 141-153

_____, "Responding to the Airplane: Urban Rivalry, Metropolitan Regionalism, and Airport Development, 1927-1954," in Technological Knowledge in American Culture: Science, Technology, and Medicine Since the Early 1800s, ed. Hamilton Cravens et al (Univ. of Alabama Press, 1996), 171-188

_____, "Planning, Public Works, and Politics: The Trinity River Reclamation Project in Dallas," in Planning the Twentieth-Century American City, ed. Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1996), 187-212

Michael Q. Hooks, "The Role of Promoters in Urban Rivalry: The Dallas-Fort Worth Experience, 1870-1910," Red River Historical Review 7 (1982), 4-16

Martin V. Melosi, "Dallas-Fort Worth: Marketing the Metroplex," in Sunbelt Cities: Politics and Growth Since World War II, ed. Richard M. Bernard and Bradley R. Rice (University of Texas Press, 1983), 162-195

William H. Wilson, "Adapting to Growth: Dallas, Texas, and the Kessler Plan, 1908-1933," Arizona and the West 25 (1983), 245-260

_____, "Private Planning for Black Housing in Dallas, Texas, 1945-1955," Proceedings of the Second National Conference on American Planning History 2 (1988), 67-84

_____, "Desegregation of the Hamilton Park School, 1955-1975," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 95 (1991), 42-63

_____, "'This Negro Housing Matter': The Search for a Viable African-American Residential Subdivision in Dallas, 1945-1950," Legacies 6 (Fall 1994), 28-40

* See also Legacies, published by the Dallas Historical Society and Dallas County Heritage Society. Three Forks Press recently published a selection of articles, ed. Michael Hazel.

HUHI 7396 Harvey J. Graff

DALLAS: THE COURSE

Core Bibliography for Urban History/Urban Studies*


History

Thomas Bender, Community and Social Change in America (Johns Hopkins UP, 1983 (1978)

Carl Abbott, The New Urban America. rev. ed. (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1987)

_____, The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West (Arizona, 1993)

Arnold Hirsch and Raymond Mohl, eds., Urban Policy in 20th Century America (Rutgers UP, 1993)

Raymond A. Mohl, ed., Searching for the Sunbelt (Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1990, Univ. of Georgia Press, 1993)

Randall M. Miller and George E. Pozzetta, eds., Shades of the Sunbelt (Green- wood, 1988)

Robert B. Fairbanks and Kathleen B. Underwood, eds., Essays on Sunbelt Cities and Recent Urban America (Texas A&M UP, 1990)

Richard M. Bernard and Bradley R. Rice, eds., Sunbelt Cities (Univ. of Texas Press, 1983)

Michael B. Katz, ed., The "Underclass" Debate: Views from History (Princeton VP, 1993)

Jon Teaford, Cities of the Heartland (Indiana UP, 1993)

Deborah Dash Moore, To the Golden Cities [Miami, LA] (Free Press, 1994)

John Findlay, Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture (California, 1992)

Sam Bass Warner, The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City (Harper and Row, 1972)

Eric Monkkonen, America Becomes Urban (California, 1988)

David Goldfield and Blaine Brownell, Urban America: A History 2nd ed. (Houghton Mifflin, 1990)

Jon Teaford, The Twentieth-Century American City 2nd ed. (Johns Hopkins UP, 1993)

James Lemon, Liberal Dreams and Nature's Limits (Oxford, 1996)

Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silvers, eds., Planning the Twentieth-Century City (Johns Hopkins, 1996)

Harold L. Platt, City Building in the New South: The Growth of Public Services in Houston, Texas, 1830-1915 (Temple, 1983)

Ronald H. Bayor, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta (North Carolina, 1996)

Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inesuality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, 1996)

Social Science

Ira Katznelson, Marxism and the City (Oxford UP, 1992)

David C. Ferry and Alfred J. Watkins, eds., The Rise of the Sunbelt Cities (Sage, 1977)

David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Basil Blackwell, 1989)

_____, The Urban Experience (Johns Hopkins UP, 1989 [19851), among his works

Sharon Zukih, Landscapes of Power (Univ. of California Press, 1991)

_____, Loft Living (Johns Hopkins UP, 1982)

_____, The Cultures of Cities (Blackwell, 1995)

Mike Davis, City of Quartz [Los Angeles] (Verse, 1990)

Joe R. Feagin, Free Enterprise City: Houston in Political and Economic Perspective (Rutgers, 1988)

Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (Routledge, 1996)

Anthony D. King, ed., Re-Presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital and Culture in the 21st Century Metropolis (NYU Press, 1996)

Rob Kling, Spencer Olin, and Mark Poster, eds., Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County Since 1940 (California, 1991)

A. Portes and A. Stepick, Edge City [Miami] (Univ. of California Press, 1993)

Charles Rutheiser, Imagineering Atlanta: The Politics of Place in an American City (Verse, 1996)

Larry Sawers and Wlliam K. Tabb, eds., Sunbelt/Snowbelt (Oxford UP, 1984)

Michael Peter Smith, ed., After Modernism: Global Restructuring and the Chanqing Boundaries of City Life (Transaction, 1992)

Paul E. Peterson, ed., The New Urban Reality (Brookings, 1985)

_____, City Limits (Univ. of Chicago Press)

Edward Soja, Postmodern Geoqraphies (Verse, 1989)

Jerry Kearns and Chris Philo, eds., ellinq Places (Pergamon, 1993)

James Duncan and David Ley, eds., Place/Culture/Representation (Routledge, 1993)

National Research Academy, Urban Change and Poverty (National Academy Press)

Christopher Jencks and Paul E. Peterson, eds., The Urban Underclass (Brookings, 1991)

John H. Mollenkopf, The Contested City (Princeton UP, 1983)

Roger Friedland, Power and Crisis in the City (Schocken, 1983)

Manuel Castells, The Urban Question (Edward Arnold, 1977 [1972]

_____, The Informational City (Blackwell, 1989) and other works

Ulf Hannerz, Exploring the City (Columbia UP, 1980)

M. Gottdiener and A. P. Lagopoulos, eds., The City and the Sign (Columbia, 1986)

M. Gottdiener, The Social Production of Urban Space (Univ. of Texas Press, 1985)

_____, The Decline of Urban Politics (Sage, 1987)

_____, The Theming of America: Dreams, Visions, and Commercial Spaces (Westview, 1997)

Edward Krupat, People in Cities (Cambridge UP, 1985)

Lloyd Rodwin and Robert M Hollister, eds., Cities of the Mind: Images and Themes of the City in the Social Sciences (Plenum, 1984)

Michael Pagano and Ann Bowman, Cityscapes and Capital: The Politics of Urban Development (Johns Hopkins UP, 1995)

Robert Fitch, The Assassination of New York City (Verse, 1993)

Roger Silverstone, ed., Visions of Suburbia (Routledge, 1997)

Allen J. Scott and Edward W. Soja, eds., The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Century (California, 1996)

Michael J. Dear, et al., ed., Rethinking Los Angeles. Sage, 199

Catharine R. Stimpson, et al, eds., Women and the American City (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981)

Elizabeth Wilson, The Sphinx and the City (Univ. of California Press, 1991)

Dolores Hayden, Redeigninq the American Dream (Norton, 1984)

_____, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (MIT Press, 1995)

Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (MIT Press, 1996)

Robert Twombly, Power + Style: A Critique of Twentieth-Century Architecture in the United States (Hill and Wang, 1995)

Nan Ellin, Postmodern Urbanism (Blackwell, 1996)

Sage Publications, Urban Affairs Annual Reviews