American Studies 1020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Signify, American Exceptionalism, Frederick Douglass

• School: Western University
• Department: American Studies
• Course: American Studies 1020
• Professor: Tom Cull

Document Summary

Americans: previously owned native land, somehow ended up in the government or the white man hands. Answer: the lack of light: are very rarely neutral, but they exist in hierarchal relationships e. g. one is better than the other. Traditional/radical: binaries help classify and understand things; help us understand our own culture and other cultures helps us classify. (e. x) virgin/whore dichotomy stereotypes of women in which exist in these two different type/polar opposite categories (e. x. (e. x) declaration of independence the merciless indian savages : was essential to the mythology of the nation, native americans were being erased from the nation itself, representation and how native americans are represented. Columbus presenting natives to queen isabella of spain: these representations are important to what we see as the other . Nature can actually show man how to live in harmony: e. x. Native americans can offer a mode; of a new kind of harmony/social.