recent american history and pedagogy

American history is an exercise in country branding and national identity construction. Through a careful editorializing and curating of historical documents, events, and places, historians contribute to the shaping of American identity, ideology, and culture. Revisiting the process of history making shows how historians and history educators can encourage critical thought, shifting away from the use of historiography as propaganda toward a discursive process. Historians can define and interpret evidence in different ways based on their own historical and cultural context, and the influences of prevailing social norms.

American history has long been a myth-making process, rather than a discursive exercise. Westad (2007), Dudziak (2004) and Manela all points out how the United States has cultivated and crafted an identity based on the tenets of liberty, justice, and freedom. Yet in practice, the nation has been an exercise in exploitation, imperialism, and racism. "From its inception the United States was an interventionist power that based its foreign policy on territorial expansion," (Westad, 2007, 9).

As evidence, Westad (2007) cites examples from as early as Thomas Jefferson's intervention in African piracy, one of the earliest examples of American interventionism. The United States did go through periods of relative isolationism for its own self-interest, partly motivated also by international consternation of its ongoing practice of slavery long after the practice had been abolished in Europe.

Even when the United States claimed to be disinterested in global affairs, it viewed itself as having the "duty to assist" other nations in their pursuit of American values like liberty, anticollectivism, reason, science, and the free market (Westad, 2007). American interventionism led to the inevitability of the United States asserting itself as "the protector and balancer of a capitalist world system," (Westad, 2007, p. 15). Westad's (2007) analysis is not the typical one formulated by textbook writers who manipulate the historical record to suit the American brand identity.

Similarly, Dudziak reframes the Brown v. Board of Education ruling to show how the landmark Supreme Court case has been systematically taken out of context. A more accurate understanding of Brown v. Board of Education situates the decision within the broader historical, cultural, and even international context. As Dudziak points out, the international community had long been suspicious of American values given the rank hypocrisy evident in Jim Crow.

Brown was not just about the triumph of the justice system in securing equal rights; it was about protecting the reputation of America abroad during the critical Cold War era. Segregation was re-branded as being acceptable American activity to being "un-American," just as Communism was branded as "un-American" because of its collectivist implications and its insult to free market capitalism. These readings show how all historiography must be considered within its context, revisited and approached with a critical eye.

Brown showed how segregation became "grist for the Communist propaganda mills" and therefore "compromised the nation's cold war objectives," (Dudziak, 2004, p. 34). It was not about social justice so much as "self-interest" (Dudziak, 2004, p. 34). When learning history, it becomes important to resist the familiar tropes of identity construction and national identity branding. Educators can frankly frame historical discussions in ways that allow historiography to speak for itself,.