America Unit (Liz)

Engage!
Watch Bill Maher “Michael Jackson is America” clip (available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efBKINY58Ho)

Primary
Read Frederick Jackson Turner’s “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (available at: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/TURNER/
Another possibility: Randolph Bourne’s “Trans-National America” (available at: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Bourne.html)

Secondary
Read Richard Horwitz’s “Introduction” to American Studies Anthology

Reflect
Not sure of assignments just yet but this could easily be something that critically examines the three cultural texts above using key vocabulary/terms/theories from the texts (I’m thinking of a variety: America/n/ism, myth & symbol, essentialism, American Exceptionalism, trans-national(ism), cosmopolitanism, frontier, roots & routes, geographic, (geo)political, symbolic, etc.) Horwitz’s ending discussion of “culture” might be a good segue into the next unit on “Culture.”