Vertiefungsseminar Leaders Lost in Their Legends American Presidents and the Shaping of Collective Memory Mi 10.30-12:00

This course will examine the tangled relationship between American politics and collective memory. The focus is on the presidency. It has long generated powerful images and complex emotions. Although the duties and the limits of this office were defined in the Constitution, it has been shaped both by forces of history and by the men who held it. To understand the central role of the president in American politics, the operation of the institutions of the modern presidency, and its symbolic impact this seminar will trace the rise of the executive branch, the erosion of Congressional power, and transformations of political culture. Against this background we will examine the emergence and development of presidential myths from the Early Republic to the present and analyse them in their historical and political contexts. Particular attention will be paid to image-crafting, to the role of the media, and the relationship between art and politics (with emphasis on reappearances of presidents in literature and films).   We will deal with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barrack Obama. Anglistik u.Amerikanistik (BA, PO 2013) Kernfach Universität Düsseldorf WiSe 2016/17 Uellenberg Klaus