This course will introduce students to the practice of cultural studies through an examination of texts that identify, evaluate and in both cases construct a cultural history of the US from the late 1940’s into the 1960’s. We will pay particular attention to representations of those subjects and events that worked to define the post war years for Americans who lived them and for future generations. Collectively, they address: ongoing efforts to identify and contain communism abroad and at home; the emergence of growth of the Civil Rights movement; the formation of homophile organizations; Kinsey’s “sexual continuum”; narrow definitions of femininity, masculinity and sexuality, along with the policing of sexual deviance; the nuclear family as a lynch pin in national security and a toxic formation; white surburban flight and urban decay; youth culture and juvenile delinquency; homogenization and imperiled individualism. Because the practice of cultural studies demands attention to how texts are composed, the historical conversations that they engage, and the material consequences of the realities that they construct, this course requires close reading in and across such fields as: literature, film, journalism, social science, government, and criticism. A course packet and films supplement required novels: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Students are expected to actively engage in class discussions, participate in a group presentation, produce 6 page-length critical responses to assigned readings, and a final paper or project.