The Making of Modern America The United States

The Making of Modern America: The United States Since 1920

The Making of Modern America Class times: Wednesdays 11 am and 12 noon Thursdays 10 am Website: www. ucl. ac. uk/~ucraasm

Images of America?

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”

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

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

“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.

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

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