USA300H1 Lecture Notes - Frederick Jackson Turner, American Exceptionalism, Transnationalism
23 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
USA300H1 – Transnationalism
• Dissecting academic study in the United States
o Reall Farrish’s arguet: disiplies fored y istitutioal agle
▪ Geography reshaped, not by academic processes, but by external institutions:
governmental organizations, public funding for military research, etc.
o Pease: concerned with the structures that shape American Studies and their
consequences; implicating scholars into Aeria “tudies’ sis (so to speak)
o Transnationalism: a new methodology and ideology replacing other methodologies in
American studies, including previously significant approaches like post-colonialism
▪ The question of American exceptionalism in American Studies: defining
transnationalism in contrast to the backdrop of exceptionalism
• American exceptionalism a kind of Gordian knot in American Studies;
sense that American Studies inherently affirms exceptionalism
• American Exceptionalism and the emergence as American Studies
o Impulse to create American Studies: reaction to the undervaluing of American Lit
▪ University English departments highlight the European tradition, particularly
oe etered aroud British literature as well as Gera, Freh…
▪ During the early 20th century, desires emerged to embrace and institutionalize
American national traditions of art in the university and elsewhere
o During the 1950s: government funding directed towards the study of America in the arts
and in other venues of American Studies, leading to the founding of the discipline
▪ Ideology of the Cold War: freedom-granting capitalism as something unique to
the United States posed in opposition to Soviet authoritarian communism
• American meritocracy: capitalism posited to involve the securing of
monetary rewards for the morally deserving
• Characterization of the Soviet Union as a state guaranteeing their
citizens no rights, as the American constitution does for Americans
• What is American Exceptionalism?
o Exceptionalism a matter of presences (dominant middle class, liberalism, etc.) and of
absences (feudal hierarches, class conflicts, etc.)
▪ Notion of being American as equaling being the most free, the most x y z
▪ Catalogue of things that point to a unique and superior American-ness
▪ Belief in the existence of a distinct American self distinct from all other national
traditions; something globally unique about American-ness
• Implicit homogeneity to this exceptionalism: regardless of any
differences, American believe homogenously in x y z
o Shaping of American Exceptional-ness by something essential about America
▪ Something inherent about the making of America in the new world; the frontier
comme Frederick Jackson Turner, for example
▪ Articulation of American-ess refleted i Aeria’s greatest ids
• Hence the beginnings of American Studies: objects of study represent
distillations of an exceptional American-ness
• Pease: American Studies founded on, reproduces exceptionalism
o Radway: Aeria “tudies oes fro the war work of assertig Aeria ulture’s
exceptional qualities over those visible in the Soviet Union
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