REGISTRATION FOR THIS CLASS IS CLOSED. This class is already in session.
We’ll look at six collective narratives we Americans tell ourselves regarding who we are as a country, examining in each case its origins, proponents, political and cultural uses, behavioral implications, and eventual fate. We will consider John Winthrop’s “City Upon a Hill,” Thomas Jefferson’s Preamble to the Declaration of Independence, “Manifest Destiny,” Theodore Roosevelt’s “Large Policy,” American “Exceptionalism,” and America the “Indispensable” Nation. Selected readings provided electronically. New remote course. Format includes lecture and discussion.
