American exceptionalism

It is hard to pinpoint the beginning of American writing, the exact time it separates from European culture and gains its distinct character. Despite the nationalistic texts written by Ralph Waldo Emerson or Walt Whitman, American literature was not treated as independent tradition for a long time. Even in American schools when national authors were discussed they were always somehow fused with British ones until the end of the 19th century. Within the literature of The United States we can…

homogenizing it, proponents of the Long Movement “do not account for the transformations in African Americans’ consciousness and identity.” To Harlemites, “freedom” meant autonomy economically and socially, whereas in the South, it meant acceptance and integration into Southern society . These different definitions also served to highlight the difference in tactics used by both groups of African Americans. Though not a Negro mecca as it was portrayed to be, Harlem was safer and “proffered them…

the nation's Manhattan Project that created the Atomic Bomb, Los Alamos, New Mexico. Wernher von Braun, civilian, selected to be in charge of the nation's Missile Program that created the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that propelled Americans to the Moon, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville,…

Following the historical period of Puritan American literature, a new literary movement during the mid 18th century to the early 19th century from Europe introduced a new school of thinking in literature. The Age of Enlightenment sprouted new ideas concerning philosophical ideas of liberty and freedom. Enlightenment literature also explored the concepts of democracy and reasoning. The central ideas of Enlightenment literature surrounded itself, in a sense, as a rejection of religion,…

The American dream is essentially a united conception that we share, however access to this dream has come into question. At the heart of the American dream is the idea of American exceptionalism, the philosophy that visualizes America as the leader of the world, the epitome of civilization, the center of social and political benefits brought by our superior democracy and the personal liberties it stands for. People wrongfully assume that being an American benefits all americans equally, but…

American Neoclassical painter, John Trumbull was commissioned in 1820 to paint, “Surrender of Lord Cornwallis.” This is one of the two paintings on this subject matter. The painting was placed in 1826. One of the first things you notice are the black clouds of smoke concluding the final campaign, which drove the surrender of the British at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781 after eight years of war; thereby, ending the Revolutionary War making America a free and independent nation. Cornwallis was…

brand of Social Darwinism, referred to as American Exceptionalism, to justify these acquisitions. This heightened American patriotism and American perceptions regarding race and loyalties, which, in turn, led to fears of conflicting German American loyalties during World War 1. German Americans were specifically singled out because German Americans had particularly close ties to their mother country and German Americans…

In the following readings of Guarneri’s, America Compared, the essay writers: Bergquist and Jordan, discuss the Atlantic System; Palmer and McFarlane discuss the American Revolution. Charles Bergquist, in his essay The Paradox of Development in the Americas, illustrates how the distribution of slave and free labor within the Atlantic economy produced different New World winners and losers in the short and long run. Race, climate and culture are essential to understanding the different…

different form, in the early 1900’s there was The Great Gatsby in book form, that showed the American Dream and materialism has stemmed from it but now that we have the capabilities to produce realistic visual depictions people are weary of accepting cinematic depictions as credible. In recent years there have been a number of movies that have shared a number of flaws with the thinking that has been bred from the American Dream, including the 2015 film “The Bling Ring”. At first glance- probably…

that I clearly remember. Because King devoted his whole life to end segregation in the U.S., the Stone of Hope is dedicated to him. What’s interesting is that the Stone of Hope was the very first monument on the National Mall in honor of an African-American person and a person who is not a U.S. President. While many people love the Stone of Hope sculpture, others say it is a failure and should be remove because of how Martin Luther…