課程資訊
課程名稱
 美國戲劇、電影與文化中的藍調與爵士
The Meaning of the Blues: Popular Music in American Drama, Cinema, and Culture 
開課學期
 100-1 
授課對象
 文學院  外國語文學系  
授課教師
 王寶祥 
課號
 FL3192 
課程識別碼
 102 35730 
班次
  
學分
 2 
全/半年
 半年 
必/選修
 必修 
上課時間
 星期三9,A(16:30~19:15) 
上課地點
 普205 
備註
 本課程中文授課,使用英文教科書。修過戲劇或美史優先
總人數上限：30人 
Ceiba 課程網頁
 http://ceiba.ntu.edu.tw/1001blues 
課程簡介影片
 
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課程概述

課程編號:102 35730 美國戲劇、電影與文化中的藍調與爵士 班級: 教師: 王寶祥
The course explores the social, cultural, and political significance of two genres of popular music, jazz and blues, unique to the American culture, by means of studying plays, films, biographies, and the historical context in which they were created. The blues is not only a musical genre but also a state of mind embedded in the traumatic history of Black Atlantic and plantation slavery, and subsequently explored and exploited by Caucasians in the industrial North as the freed laborers migrated north. Jazz, a purely American invention, has become a way of life, and spawned far-reaching outgrowths throughout the world. The course draws on Houston Baker’s pioneering “vernacular theory” about the blues and its ideological and aesthetic ramifications and aims to enlighten students on the dark recesses of hidden history perceived in blues and jazz dramas and films.  

課程目標
 1. Students are expected to develop a comprehensive knowledge of the historical context of American slavery and gain a competent understanding of the theoretical and aesthetic framework growing out of such a context.
2. Students are expected to familiarize themselves with core dramatic texts and films dealing with the major recurrent themes of jazz and blues, and also focus on the interplay between performance, text, and context underlying the music.
 
課程要求
 1. be on time for class
2. preview, listening to assigned and related songs
3. read the required play before class
4. absolutely no phone ring in class, punishable by grade reduction
5. food and drinks are allowed as long as they don't smell too much and make noises, plastic bag is an absolute no-no. 
預期每週課後學習時數
  
Office Hours
 每週四 13:00~14:00 備註：  
指定閱讀
 Play texts by August Wilson (Ma Rainey), Edward Albee (Bessie Smith Is Dead), and Jack Gelber (The Connection) 
參考書目
 Baker, Houston. Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory.
U of Chicago P, 1987.

____. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1987.
Baker, Barbara. The Blues Aesthetic and the Making of American Identity in the
Literature of the South. Peter Lang, 2003.

Brown, Sterling. “The Blues as Folk Poetry.” O’Meally, Robert G. Ed. The jazz
cadence of American culture. New York: Columbia UP, 1998. ML3508 J38 1998
Davis, Francis. The History of the Blues : the roots, the music, the people. Cambridge:
Da Capo ; London : Kluwer Law International, 2003. ML3521 D36 2003
Gussow, Adam. “Fingering
Jones, Leroi. Blues People: Negro Music in White America.
Grouse, Leslie. Straight, No Chaser : the Life and Genius of Thelonious Monk. New
York: Schirmer Trade Books, 1998. ML417.M846 G68 1998
Margolick, David. Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, And An Early Cry For
Civil Rights. New York: Running Press, 2000. ML3477 M37z 2000

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New
York: Vintage Books, 1993. PS173.N4 M67 1992

Thomas, Lorenzo. “Authenticity and Elevation: Sterling Brown's Theory of the
Blues.” African American Review, Vol. 31, 1997
 
評量方式
(僅供參考)
    
課程進度
週次
日期
單元主題
第1週
 9/14  Sparrow and Motherless Child : Spirituals and Gospels, Route and Rootlessness 
第2週
 9/21  Hospital and Hospitality: Queen of the Blues and Edward Albee’s The Death of Bessie Smith 
第3週
 9/28  The Blues Aint Nothin But a Woman: Femininity and the blues (Mary Lou Williams to Dinah Washington) 
第4週
 10/05  “When the living is easy”: Ideology of a Lullaby from Porgy and Bess (1935) 
第5週
 10/12  作業在此!! Southern Comfort, Cold Comfort: Lynching, Billie Holiday, and the Bitter Taste of Strange Fruit (1939) 
第6週
 10/19  Shakespeare, Lenin, and Old Man River: The Case of Paul Robeson 
第7週
 10/26  Drug Culture, Improvisation, and Jazz in Jack Gelber’s The Connection (1959) 
第8週
 11/02  Blue in Green, Jew in Black: Charlie/Chan and Jewish Identification with Blackness/ Clint Eastwood’s Bird (1988) 
第9週
 11/09  Bebop Baroness at Stanhope Hotel: Nica Rothschild and Thelonius Monk 
第10週
 11/16  Bob Dylan’s Blues: protest songs in freewheelin’ times/ folk revival and voice of civil rights: Odetta, Pete Seeger 
第11週
 11/23  Mississippi Godamn: Nina Simone, Freedom Summer, and Black Radicalism 
第12週
 11/30  Fables of Faubus: Charles Mingus and Civil Rights Movement 
第13週
 12/07  John Coltrane and A Love Supreme (1964) 
第14週
 12/14  Jazz Poetry from Beat Generation to Black Mountain: Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Robert Creeley  
第15週
 12/21  Race records and race matters: August Wilson Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1982)  
第16週
 12/28  Slavery, Memory, and Migration in August Wilson Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1986) 
第17週
 1/04  oral presentation I 
第18週
 1/11  oral presentation II