Kurssin kuvaus

From the moment in 1992 when Republican Pat Buchanan described a “war going on in our country for the soul of America,” the culture wars have been a popular explanatory model for political fracture in the United States. Often comprising issues such as abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, racial politics, and pornography, the culture wars have tapped into deeply moral fissures about the composition of “Americanness” as an imagined community. The course will contextualize the culture wars into a longer history of battles about the meaning of “Americanness” while also focusing on their particular frontiers. Each week will be focused on a specific cultural conflict explored through cases and additional reading sources. The students will be exposed to different sides of the issue by reading first-hand materials coming from a variety of ideological positions.