The National Imagination (Spring 2011)

What images make people think of the United States of America? Cowboys? The flag? And are there similar icons in other cultures that help define cultural identity? The National Imagination explores the concept of a national community as constructed and critiqued through literary and cinematic narratives, as well as other cultural texts. Our underlying premise is that national languages and cultures promote the identity of particular communities. We are interested in examining those subjective expressions of culture—images, symbols, narratives—that lead people to feel that they are members of the communities we call nations. We are also interested in discovering points of resistance to national identity. This iteration of the course examines Germany, France, and Japan. A photo of this Spring 2011 class was taken as part of Professor Bob Tobin\u27s ongoing class photo tradition