From Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of America to the Pilgrims’ settlement, from the Sons of Liberty to the Founding Fathers, the dominant stories of America’s cultural founding draw heavily from contradictory themes of finding, abandoning, and founding one’s roots. While American origin stories often thematize the loss, abandonment, or reestablishment of family and heritage, these foundational myths also tend to obscure the history of imperialism, racial oppression, violence, and exploitation that forms American political bedrock. Put another way, American origin stories have their own history of abandonment, neglect, and disownment.
Who are the abandoned children of America’s myth-making?
Who then are America’s founding fathers?
And is the U.S. a culture founded by (its) foundlings?
2018 Summer Session D 6 weeks
July 2 - August 10
Class #: 13390
Instructor: Cory Monique Merrill
http://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2018-summer-comlit-n60ac-002-lec-002
