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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 Through a careful editorializing and curating of historical documents, events, and places, historians contribute to the shaping of American identity, ideology, and culture.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...
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…
American Ethnic Literature Analyzing the Nature of American Ethnic Literature America has a distinct history: like ancient Rome, its inhabitants have come from all over and few of them can truly say to be natives of the place. This fact alone makes American Literature a compelling label: what makes American Literature American? This paper will attempt to answer the question by showing how many ethnicities have converged in one nation allowing various
In this regard, Frye notes that, "The social changes appeared most profoundly to the majority of citizens not in the statistics of gross national product or the growth of technological inventions but in the dramatic occupational changes that faced fathers and sons and mothers and daughters" (1999, p. 4). The innovations in technology that followed the Industrial Revolution also served to shift the emphasis on education for agricultural jobs to
African-American Literature The Implications of African-American Literature Social Economic Environmental Cultural How African-American Literature Has Changed -- Across the Genres Slave Narratives and Biographies Novels African-American Literature and Its Impact on Society Literature is very important. Many people love to read, and still others love to write. Together, they make a winning combination. Literature is often studied, but one aspect of it has been getting very little attention. African-American literature has often times been ignored, or been only selectively
Hispanics and 40,375,000 African-Americans live in the United States and the respective percentages of these population groups are projected to continue to increase well into the foreseeable future. The purpose of this study was to provide descriptions of these two cultures and why they are of interest as well as a comparison of similarities and differences related to time orientation, communication, physical and mental health, group relationships, and perceptions
Popular Culture Folk culture refers to the collection of "songs, tales, proverbs, jokes" that reflect a specific segment of society -- and can often refer to the expressions of marginalized groups like African-Americans. Popular culture is more mainstream, and is fabricated and consumed by the dominant culture. It would include newspapers, magazines, and books propagated throughout a country, as opposed to folk culture, which would be localized (either geographically or, if
References Atkinson, R.C. & Shiffrin, R.M. (1968). "Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes." in, Spence, K. & Spence, J. (Eds), Advances in the Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 2(1): New York: Academic Press. Bailey, a.J. (1986). Policy making in schools: Creating a sense of educational purpose. Balshaw, M. (1991). Help in the classroom. London: David Fulton Publishers. Campbell, J., Kyriakides, L., Mujis, D. & Robinson, W. (2004). Assessing teacher effectiveness: Developing