CULTURE & EXPRESSION SPRING 2021
(RE)CONSTRUCTING AMERICA In 2020, the United States faced some of the greatest challenges in its history. • A pandemic killed over 300,000 people, disproportionately affecting the poor, women, and people of color, groups that also bore the brunt of its accompanying economic devastation. • Awareness of police shootings and mass incarceration made visible the extent to which American institutions have not lived up to the Declaration’s promise that in this country all people “are created equal,” sparking public demonstrations as well as resistance to the changes demanded by those who took to the streets. • As the climate crisis loomed, America’s participation, partnership and leadership in international agreements lapsed, prompting questions about our global capacity to address this existential threat. • Despite record numbers of citizens exercising their right to vote, and despite evidence of the unprecedented security of the 2020 election, distrust of long-standing institutions threatened to undermine a hallmark of US governance: the peaceful transfer of power. This crisis is the latest manifestation of deep division that continues to hamstring governance and shroud every political event in anxiety. How did we arrive at this moment? What can we do to meet its challenges? Our search for an answer to the first question leads us to examine threads in the American story that are often ignored, threads which, when recognized, help contextualize why the American commitment to pursuing a “more perfect union” has been called into question by so many. Each unit looks at a specific time in the past with an eye for its role in shaping the present. Unit I: Re-membering the American Story: Myths, Monuments, Bodies, Blood In this unit, we pose the question: To what extent are the issues we face today the fruit of choices made during America’s early formative moments, its ‘Founding,’ The Civil War, & Reconstruction? We aim to make connections between these moments and our current time by discussing the stories that define America, supplementing some that you know with others that may be less familiar. In “re-membering,” we invoke both memory and the act of reconstituting through the study of texts, objects, and bodily experience. Who counted as an American in these moments and how does this status bear on who counts now?