HNUH268I

E Pluribus Unum, the motto on U.S. currency, is one way to describe how America sees itself as a nation. Yet, the United States has always been a country of disparate, converging cultural identities brought together through circumstance and movement such as colonization, immigration, and the transatlantic slave trade. Despite unifying notions such as the melting-pot metaphor and the Pledge of Allegiance, the American experience is one that features racial and ethnic tensions, varying in intensity depending on the geopolitical context of the moment. If we say we are American, where does that shared heritage align with individual identity and where does it diverge? With theories and tools drawn from Cultural Studies, Sociolinguistics, and Microhistory, this course will explore the construction of racial and ethnic differences to understand the dynamic nature of our heritage(s) and how it shapes our identities.