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The Making of Modern America: The United States Since 1920

The Making of Modern America: The United States Since 1920. The Making of Modern America Class times: Wednesdays11am and 12 noon Thursdays 10am Website: www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucraasm. Images of America?. Key concept: “American Exceptionalism”. Myth of New World : tabula rasa

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The Making of Modern America: The United States Since 1920

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  1. The Making of Modern America:The United States Since 1920

  2. The Making of Modern America Class times: Wednesdays11am and 12 noon Thursdays 10am Website: www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucraasm

  3. Images of America?

  4. Key concept: “American Exceptionalism” • Myth of New World : tabula rasa • A city on a hill: America as mission • Last Best Hope of Earth: democracy, secular mission • Leader of the “Free World”

  5. I have always believed that this anointed land was set apart in an uncommon way, that a divine plan placed this great continent here between the oceans to be founded by people from every corner of the earth who have a special love of faith and freedom. Ronald Reagan, 1981

  6. America is anti-Utopia achieved: the anti-Utopia of unreason ... the neutralisation of all values, the death of culture... America is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, Puritanism ... poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence ... the only country where quantity can be extolled without compunction. Jean Baudrillard,1986

  7. “America is a continent and a nation which has held in suspense all the extreme possibilities -- hopes and fears alike -- for the future of mankind under democracy, and continues to enact them for itself and for much of Europe and the rest of the world.” Marcus Cunliffe, "European Images of America", in Arthur M. Schlesinger and Morton White, eds., Paths of American Thought (Boston, 1963), p. 512.

  8. “It has been America’s fate not to have ideologies but to be one.” Richard Hofstadter, 1961

  9. Some key themes • Modernity v tradtionalism • Race (and where is class?) • Role of government • Conceptions of world role • Economic growth and its cultural impact • Democracy, participation and identity

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