Midterm Examination Prompt
National identities are made, not
born. They spring not fully formed from
the physical landscape that we inhabit and traverse, but rather emerge in fits
and starts from the collective imagination of a cohort of people who imagine
themselves as a unified group based on shared values, shared experiences,
etc. It is in this respect that, in his
book Imagined Communities: Reflections on
the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983), Benedict Anderson proposed “the following definition of the
nation: it is an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently
limited and sovereign.” Anderson goes on
to explain that the “nation”
is
imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know
most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds
of each lives the image of their communion . . . . The nation is imagined as limited
because even the largest of them encompassing perhaps a billion living human
beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations . . .
. It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in
which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the
divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to maturity at a stage
of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion
were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and
the allomorphism between each faith's ontological claims and territorial
stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage
and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state. Finally, it is imagined as a community,
because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail
in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.
(5-7)
If we accept Anderson’s concept of the
nation-as-imagined-community, then what image of “American-ness” (i.e.,
American national identity, or America-as-imagined-community) in the 1980s has
emerged through our discussions and examinations of the primary course readings
so far? (Include in your essay response
references to at least the four primary texts that we have examined to this
point in the term, including: Robert
Collins, Transforming America: Politics
and Culture During the Reagan Years;
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s
Tale; Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary; and George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture.) In what ways is “history” (as an object, as a
field of study, as a text) implicated in and/or responsible for the “imagining
of America” as a nation, as a collective?
In what ways is “literature” (as an object, as a field of study, as a
text) implicated in and/or responsible for the “imagining of America” as a
nation, as a collective? In what ways is
“Scripture” (as an object, as a field of study, as a text) implicated in and/or
responsible for the “imagining of America” as a nation, as a collective? In what ways is “theology” (as an object, as
a field of study, as a text) implicated in and/or responsible for the
“imagining of America” as a nation, as a collective? In what ways is “art” (as an object, as a
field of study, as a text) implicated in and/or responsible for the “imagining
of America” as a nation, as a collective?
(Think specifically about the Barbara Kruger piece included above and
available—in full color—on the course Weebly site.)
On a related note, in what ways is the
image of America-as-nation “limited” (in Anderson’s sense of the term) by
history, literature, Scripture, and/or theology? Do you, for example, agree with historian
Robert Collins who, in his book Transforming
America, argues that “[Ronald] Reagan . . . defined the contours and
direction of the new political mainstream in the 1980s”? If you agree with Collins, then what were the
salient features of this “new political mainstream”? In what ways was (Was?) Reagan responsible for
the implementation of that political order and in what ways did that political
order limit our understandings of America-as-imagined-community? In other words, what kind of “community” did
Reagan “imagine” and in what ways did he work to establish and limit this image
of “American-ness”? What does the idea
of “sovereignty” mean within 1980s America?
What role (if any) does it play in the collective imagining of ourselves
as a unified community?
This
examination is primarily designed to challenge you to exercise your
higher-order critical thinking skills (i.e., analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation) in thinking across the required readings for the course and in
building a strong response to the prompt above.
I do not expect you to respond to each and every question that I pose in
the prompt, though I do expect your response to reflect a solid and
comprehensive understanding of the larger concepts and ideas addressed
throughout the prompt. This take home
midterm examination can be discussed among your peers without those discussions
being considered plagiarism (as long as each of you author your own written
response to the prompt). The midterm
examination should be typed, double-spaced, and printed with 1” margins on all
sides of the page; it can also be
printed either single-sided or front-to-back.
There is no maximum page length, but I would expect that you will write
a minimum of five pages. The midterm
examination is due on Thursday, March 3, 2011, at the beginning of class. Please let me know if you have any questions
regarding this assignment and happy writing!
Works
Cited
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined
Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised ed.
London: Verso, 1991. Print.
Collins,
Robert M. Transforming America: Politics
and Culture During the Reagan Years.
New York: Columbia UP, 2009.
Print.