American Writers Exploration Of Identity example essay topic

In the second keynote address, Deborah Madsen (soon to take up the Chair of American Literature at the University of Geneva) spoke on Americanisation and Exceptionalism, a talk stimulated by a recognition that globalization is not limited to economic forces in general or even capitalism in particular, and some fear its impact as they see it upon the USA itself. Fundamentalist Christian web sites already see globalization as a multicultural threat to American exceptional ist values. The exceptional ist tradition provides many Americans with a useful set of expectations as regards their relationships past and present with the outside world that can be expressed through a developed rhetorical vocabulary which continues to allow many Americans to consider themselves standing outside history. Such reactions address real cultural needs even while escaping into a mythical American dream experience that lies beyond everyday realities. While people of necessity live within real historical circumstances, exceptionalism provides a symbolic language that treats a dream as the true reality.

Of course most people do not directly relate with the world beyond their locality never mind beyond the USA. So it is locally, within their own lives that Americans of necessity work through their concerns. Modern Chinese-American writers such as Gish Jen in her books Mona in the Promised Land and Typical American are exploring ways in which the various generations explore the potentials and unexpected constraints and limitations offered them by identifying with the exceptional ist model of expectations, whether choosing to identify with mainstream or with other ethnic identities, initially negotiating their own version of the longstanding national preoccupation with E Pluribus Unum. When such choice, however, produces identities at odds with democratic values, confusion results, echoing perhaps Americans wider confusion within the wider world. Talk contrasted Mrs Peeves infamous 1882 doggerel rejection of multiculturalism, where it is the that is rejected in favour of the unum, with Mayor Guliannos September 21st 2002 speech praising American without which the unum is impossible. Chinese-American writers exploration of identity suggests that ethnicity is now far more than merely deconstructing the dead white male canon.

The WASP narrative may have been displaced by various ethnic strands but there remains a need to appreciate what multi-cultural narratives, cultural or merely literary, have had to struggle against, without which their preoccupations may seem merely personal or idiosyncratic. Two workshops followed: Approaches to Teaching American Popular Culture in Britain chaired by Neil Campbell (University of Derby) with Jude Davies (King Alfred's College), Simon Philo (University of Derby) and Alistair Keane (University of Derby) who sought to provide favours of the various AMATAS workshops that would highlight the teaching implications of the project. Neil Campbell kicked off with how students are encouraged to look at their surroundings in ways they may never have previously considered, to see which elements are local, national and from overseas, with a concern not for America as a distant place but as somewhere possibly influencing their local experience of their everyday surroundings. Seminal texts, British and American, are then introduced to encourage debate over the landscape as a repository of cultural forms and signs. The workshop has now not only been published both on the AMATAS website but as a free-standing volume (and both are well worth seeing).

Alasdair Keane based his workshop on students existing interest in popular music, with modern concerns placed in historical context, with popular music seen as having subversive qualities, challenging British conventions, at least with the arrival of rock n roll. One useful by-product of these workshops has been the students recognition that there are many different forms of American music, with some forms, such as race records only being fed back into the US mainstream via the Beetles, the Stones and Clapton, illustrating how music is dynamic, recycling sounds and attitudes not merely handing on a canon. Musical styles are now so recycled it may be impossible to discern a peculiarly American influence. Is the term Americanisation appropriate in an age of world music anyway?

Bibliography

AMATAS Conference on Americanisation and the Teaching of the Humanities January 17, 2003 University Of Central Lancashire, Preston; McDonalds, Co, New-York Times.