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Part One: Approaching Political Fiction
Week 1. 27/9/10: What is the purpose of this module?
This lecture will give you a clear sense of what the module is about - and what it
is not about. It will help you accurately frame your expectations and activities
over the next months. The sources below are meant to give you a taste of what
is to come, so it would be a good idea to take at least a cursory look at a
selection to help you begin to appreciate the kinds of approaches with which you
will need to become familiar.
Murray Edelman, From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political
Conceptions (1995)
Steven Fielding, ‘David Hare’s fictional politics’, Political Quarterly, 80:3 (2009)
PDF
Steven Fielding, ‘Dramatising New Labour’, broadcast on Radio 4, 17 July 2010,
CD copy available from me
Daniel P. Franklin and Michael J. Baun (eds), Political Culture and
Constitutionalism.
A Comparative Approach (1995)
Christopher Harvie, The Centre of Things. Political Fiction in Britain from Disraeli
to the Present (1991)
Catherine Johnson and Gemma Rosenblatt, ‘Do MPs have the “Right Stuff”?’,
Parliamentary Affairs, 60:1 (2007) PDF
Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor (eds), Hollywood’s White House: The
Presidency and Film and Television (2003)
Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica. The Politics and Ideology of
Contemporary American Film (1988)
Jeff Smith, The Presidents We Imagine (2009)
Politics, Literature, and Film section of the American Political Science Association
website: http://www.apsanet.org/~politicsandlit/
Jesse Walker, ‘Mr. Showbiz Goes to Washington’, Reason Magazine, June 2004:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/29164.html
Week 2. 4/10/10: What are the problems with political representation?
The module takes place during a ‘crisis’ in established representative politics.
The lecture will survey how political representation has been analysed
theoretically and historically, grounding its account in the experience of the US
and UK. It will in particular focus on explanations of this ‘crisis’ and suggest the
extent to which political representation is an inherently flawed exercise –
something that has been explored in fiction, past and present.
Theory
Gideon Baker. ‘Revisiting the concept of representation’, Parliamentary Affairs,
59:1 (2006) PDF
David B. Hill, ‘Political Culture and Female Political Representation’ The Journal
of Politics, 43:1. (1981) PDF
L. Marin, On Representation (2001)
Hanna Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (1967)
A. Przeworski et al, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (1999)
History
Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Labour, 1920-24 (1971), introduction
Steven Fielding, ‘Rethinking the “rise and fall” of two-party politics’, in P.
Addison and H. Jones (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British
History, 1939-2000 (2005)
Steven Fielding, ‘Not an unmixed blessing’. The place of ‘party’ in British politics,
c. 1910-40’ (2007) PDF
Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People. The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in
England and America (1988)
James Vernon, Politics and the People. A study in English political culture (1993)
‘Crisis’
Margaret Canovan, ‘”People”, politicians, populism’, Government and Opposition,
19:3 (1984) PDF
Margaret Canovan, Populism (1981)
Joseph Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism. The Press and
the Public Good (1997)
Russell J. Dalton and Martin P. Wattenberg, ‘Unthinkable democracy: political
change in advanced industrial democracies’, in Russell J. Dalton and Martin P.
Wattenberg (eds), Parties without Partisans (2000)
James S. Fishkin, The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy (1995)
Colin Hay, Why We Hate Politics (2007)
Catherine Johnson and Gemma Rosenblatt, ‘Do MPs have the “Right Stuff”?’,
Parliamentary Affairs, 60:1 (2007) PDF
R. Katz & P. Mair 'Changing models of party organisation and party democracy:
the emergence of the cartel party', Party Politics, 1:1 (1995)
P. Mair 'Party organisations: from civil society to the state', in R. Katz & P. Mair
(eds), How Parties Organise (1997)
Cas Mudde, ‘The populist zeitgeist’, Government and Opposition 39:4 (2004)
PDF
Charles Pattie, Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley, Citizenship in Britain (2004)
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone (2000)
Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in America (1987)
P. Webb 'Party organisational change in Britain: the iron law of centralisation' in
R. Katz & P. Mair (eds), How Parties Organise (1997)
Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, entry for ‘Political representation’:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/political-representation/
Hansard Society: http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/
Week 3. 11/10/10: Why should anyone interested in politics study
fiction?
There are still some who think ‘politics’ is just about parties, policy-making and
parliaments; there are others who now conceive of ‘politics’ so widely the term
almost loses a precise meaning. This lecture will look at how an increasing
number of academic now use fiction; the case for referring to fiction to better
understand attitudes to politics; and the general case that art can construct such
attitudes.
Politics and fiction
Murray Edelman, From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political
Conceptions (1995)
James F. Davidson, ‘Political science and political fiction’, American Political
Science Review, 55:4 (1961) PDF
Joseph J. Foy (ed), Homer Simpson Goes to Washington (2008)
Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (1999)
Colin Hay, Political Analysis (2002)
G. Negash, ‘Art Invoked: A Mode of Understanding and Shaping the Political’,
International Political Science Review, 25:2 (2004) PDF
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movies as Politics (1997)
Maureen Whitebrook, ‘Politics and Literature?’, Politics 15:1 (1995)
Maureen Whitebrook, ‘Only Connect: Politics and Literature 10 Years Later,
1982-92’, PS: Political Science and Politics, 26:2 (1993) PDF
Catherine Zuckert, ‘Why political scientists want to study literature’, PS: Political
Science and Politics 28:2 (1995) – part of symposium on political scientists and
novels and film PDF
International Political Science Review, 12:1 (1991) Special Edition on The Politics
of Art E-JOURNAL
Fiction as embodying political ideas
Staci L Beavers, ‘The West Wing as a Pedagogical Tool’, PS: Political Science and
Politics, 35:2 (2002) PDF
Robert W. Gregg, International Relations on Film (1998)
Michael Hanne, The Power and the Story: Fiction and Political Change (1996)
Anthony Hutchison, Writing the Republic. Liberalism and Morality in American
Political Fiction (2007)
S. Ingle, ‘Politics and literature: means and ends on Koestler’, Political Studies
47:2 (1999) PDF
James L. McDowell, ‘From “Perry Mason” to “Primary Colors”: using fiction to
understand legal and political systems’, Legal Studies Forum 24 (2000) PDF
Rodney Smith, ‘Political parties in contemporary Australian fiction’ (2002),
available from www.arts.anu.edu.au/sss/apsa/Papers/smith.pdf
Cynthia Webber, International Relations Theory. A Critical Introduction (2001)
Maureen Whitebrook (ed), Reading Political Stories: Representation of Politics in
Novels and Pictures (1991)
John Whalen-Bridge, Political Fiction and the American Self (1998)
Peter Woodcock, 'The Polis of Springfield: The Simpsons and the Teaching of
Political Theory', Politics, 26:3 (2006)
Catherine Zuckert, ‘On Reading Classic American Novelists as Political Thinkers’,
The Journal of Politics, 43:3 (1981) PDF
The collapsing bounds of the ‘political’
J. Adams, ‘Art in social movements: Shantytown women’s protest in Pinochet’s
Chile’, Sociological Forum 17:1 (2002) PDF
Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (1985)
Paul Kahn, The Cultural Study of Law (1999)
Elly A. Konijn and Brad J. Bushman, ‘World leaders as movie characters?
Perceptions of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam
Hussein’, Media Psychology, 9 (2007) PDF
Robert Lipkin, Constitutional Revolutions (2000)
Michael Saward, ‘The Representative Claim’, Contemporary Political Theory, 5:3
(2006) PDF
John Street, ‘Celebrity politicians: popular culture and political representation’,
British Journal of Politics an International Relations, 6:4 (2004) PDF
Darrell M. West and John M. Orman, Celebrity Politics (2003)
Liesbet van Zoonen, Entertaining the Citizen. When Politics and Popular Culture
Converge (2005)
Politics, Literature, and Film section of the American Political Science Association
website: http://www.apsanet.org/~politicsandlit/
Week 4. 18/10/10: What are the origins and development of the
‘political’ novel?
This lecture looks at how political fiction – which once meant just meant novels –
used to be interpreted. It was seen largely in literary terms – and apart from the
seminal works of Benjamin Disraeli – political novels were generally seen to be
bad literature. This classic view of the subject continues to exert its influence
and the lecture explores ways in which political novels can differ from other
kinds of political fiction.
Robert Blake, Disraeli (1966), ch. 9
Joseph L. Blotner, The Political Novel (1955)
Joseph Blotner, The Modern American Political Novel (1966)
R. Carnell, Realism, Partisan Politics and the Rise of the British Novel (2006)
Michael Flavin, Benjamin Disraeli: The Novel as Political Discourse (2005)
Sharon M. Harris, ‘Introduction: literary politics and the political novel’ in Sharon
M. Harris (ed), Redefining the Political Novel (1995)
John Halpern, Trollope and Politics (1977)
Christopher Harvie, The Centre of Things. Political Fiction in Britain (1991)
Irving Howe, Politics and the Novel (1957)
Irving Howe, ‘The idea of the political novel’, in Irving Howe (ed), Politics and
the Novel (1987)
Townsend Ludington, ‘The Idea of the Political Novel’ in Harish Trivedi (ed), The
American Political Novel. Critical Essays (1984)
Gordon Milne, The American Political Novel (1966)
J.A. Morris, Writers and Politics in Modern Britain (1977)
Morris Edmund Speare, The Political Novel (1924)
Week 5. 25/10/10: What can political fiction tell us?
The significance and role of fiction in creating or reflecting political ideas is very
much up for debate. The lecture outlines some of the issues raised by using
them – issues that will already have been tackled in workshops. It will in
particular focus on the debate about what impact film has on audiences and the
role played by genre in structuring any work of fiction.
Reading films or novels
Roland Barthes, ‘Death of the author’, Image, Music, Text (1977) or
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/barthes06.htm
John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies
(1998), part 1
James Monaco, How to Read a Film (2000), ch. 1
Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing about Film (1998)
Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing about Literature (2008)
John Sutherland, How to Read a Novel (2006)
Impact on audiences
William C. Adams, Allison Salzman, William Vantine, Leslie Suelter, Anne Baker,
Lucille Bonvouloir, Barbara Brenner, Margaret Ely, Jean Feldman, Ron Ziegel,
‘The Power of The Right Stuff: A Quasi-Experimental Field Test of the
Docudrama Hypothesis’, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 49:3 (1985) PDF
John C. Besley, ‘The role of entertainment television and its interactions with
individual values in explaining political participation’, The Harvard International
Journal of Press/Politics, 11:2 (2006) PDF
John Bodnar, Blue-Collar Hollywood: Liberalism, Democracy, and Working People
in American Film (2003)
Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Film Theory and Criticism (2004)
Steven R. Brown, ‘Political Literature and the Response of the Reader:
Experimental Studies of Interpretation, Imagery, and Criticism’, American
Political Science Review, 71:2. (1977) PDF
Andrew C. Butler et al, ‘Using popular films to enhance classroom learning’,
Psychological Science 20:9 (2009) PDF
Lisa D. Butler, Cheryl Koopman, Philip G. Zimbardo, 'The Psychological Impact of
Viewing the Film "JFK": Emotions, Beliefs, and Political Behavioral Intentions',
Political Psychology, 16:2 (1995) PDF
Darren W. Davis and Christian Davenport, ‘The Political and Social Relevancy of
Malcolm X: The Stability of African American Political Attitudes’, The Journal of
Politics, 59:2 (1997) PDF
William R. Elliott and William J. Schenck-Hamlin, ‘Film, politics and the press:
the influence of All The President’s Men’, Journalism Quarterly 56:3 (1979)
Franklin Fearing, ‘Influence of the movies on attitudes and behavior’, Annals of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 254 (Nov., 1947) PDF
S. Feldman and L. Sigelman, ‘The politics of prime time television: The Day
After’, The Journal of Politics 47:2 (1985) PDF
David Graham & Associates Ltd, The Amazing Mrs Pritchard. Report on Audience
Figures (2007) PDF
Paul Grainge (ed), Memory and Popular Film (2003)
Jostein Gripsrud, ‘Film audiences’ in John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds),
The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (1998)
S. Harper and V. Porter, ‘Moved to tears: weeping in the cinema in postwar
Britain’, Screen, 37 (1996)
Ruth Inglis, ‘An objective approach to the relationship between fiction and
society’, American Sociological Review 3:4 (1938) PDF
Silvo Lenart and Kathleen M. McGraw, ‘America watches "Amerika:" Television
Docudrama and Political Attitudes’, The Journal of Politics, 51:3 (1989) PDF
Paula Marantz Cohen, Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth (2001)
R. Lance Holbert et al, ‘”The West Wing” as endorsement of the U.S. Presidency:
expanding the bounds of priming’, Journal of Communication, 53:3 (2003) PDF
R. Lance Holbert, ‘A typology for the study of entertainment television and
politics’, American Behavioral Scientist, 49:3 (2005) PDF
R. Lance Holbert et al, ‘The West Wing and depictions of the American
Presidency: expanding the dimensions of framing’, Communication Quarterly,
53:3 (2005) PDF
Steven Neale, Genre and Hollywood (2000)
Michael Pfau et al, ‘Influence of prime-time television programming on
perceptions of the Federal Government’, Mass Communication & Society, 4:4
(2005)
Kay Richardson, ‘The dark arts of good people. How popular culture negotiates
“spin” in NBC’s “The West Wing”’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 10:1 (2006) PDF
Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica. The Politics and Ideology of
Contemporary American Film (1988)
Jeffrey Richards and Dorothy Sheridan, Mass Observation at the Movies (1987)
Steven J. Ross (ed), Movies and American Society (2002)
Jeffrey Sadow, ‘An Experiment on Cinema’s Effect on Political Attitudes’, Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association,
2004:
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/6/7/8/7/p67
879_index.html
Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies. An Introduction (1990), ch. 4.
Liesbet van Zoonen, ‘Audience reactions to Hollywood politics’, Media, Culture &
Society, 29:4 (2007) PDF
Significance of genre
Barry Keith Grant (ed), Film Genre Reader (1986)
Jonathan Munby (ed), Public Enemies, Pubic Heroes. Screening the Gangster
Film (1999), introduction
Steven Neale, Genre and Hollywood (2000)
Mike Chopra-Gant, Hollywood Genres and Post-War America: Masculinity, Family
and Nation in Popular Movies and Film Noir (2006), ch. 1
Tom Ryall, ‘Genre and Hollywood’ in John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds),
The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (1998)
Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres (1981)