Americans Abroad: U.S. Exceptionalism, Foreign Policy and the Literary Imagination

Americans Abroad: U.S. Exceptionalism, Foreign Policy and the Literary Imagination is a Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies course taught by Michele Hardesty.

This course requires prerequisites. This course is only open to students in Division II and Division III.

Course Description
The common stereotype of the "ugly American" has a literary history: the phrase derives from Eugene Burdick's and William Lederer's 1958 novel of the same name, and as a character the "American abroad" has an even longer history that goes back to the mid-19th century. This course will trace a genealogy of the "American abroad" in literature and film from just before the closing of the U.S. frontier in the late 19th century up to our own time. While the majority of the material we will examine in class is literary, we will be asking both literary and non-literary questions about these materials, focusing on how these texts create and contest a literary imagination of American exceptionalism. Authors include Margaret Fuller, Mark Twain, Henry James, James Baldwin, Graham Greene, Paul Bowles, and Joan Didion. The course will include frequent writing assignments, a class presentation, and a research essay. Prerequisite: one prior literature course.