This course is premised on two understandings: the first is that the past is accessible only in and through the narratives that we impose on the messiness of events; the second is that how the past is remembered shapes both the historical present and possible futures. During the quarter, we will examine dominant and insurgent histories of American political culture from post World War II to the present. Flash points will include the “Cold War” and the “war on terror,” the US –Vietnam War, and social movements on the left and right that call for a redefinition of America or, and more frequently, a return to and realization of the Enlightenment principles on which the nation was founded. Which principles and how they are interpreted tags one strand of this debate; another turns on the limitations of the principles themselves. We will draw upon fiction and film for accounts of these subjects and events as well as the “official histories” (eg., government documents, news reporting and other institutionalized memories) that they reinforce, complicate or contest. We will put these different histories in conversation with scholarship on historiography, cultural memory, loss, and trauma. Four questions will guide our studies: first, how does this text make sense of the past; second, what factors are likely to have influenced this interpretation; third, what other histories or scholarship does this text call to mind and on what terms; and fourth, what are the consequences of constructing history in this way. Required texts will include a hefty course packet, video and these likely novels: Le, The Gangster We’re All Looking For; Wideman, Two Cities; Yamashita, Tropic of Orange.