The twenty-first century has confronted Americans with a number of circumstances and events that many have viewed as unprecedented, ruptures in the metanarratives that have traditionally structured their understandings of themselves, their communities, and their nation—the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the election of the country’s first Black president, the rise to power of Donald Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic, extraordinary climatic conditions, the extreme state of political polarization, and the unrelenting penetration of digital technologies into the social fabric. Our ambition in this seminar is to historicize the present by applying the tools and analytical frameworks of historical analysis to these events and a number of others that have shaped the US experience since the turn of the twenty-first century. Course materials will range from scholarly studies of the period to a range of video and print media, political speeches, essays and editorials, songs, and literary works.
- Enseignant.e: Andrew Diamond