Life in America: The Reagan Years, A Webography

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.