Shaping the American National Identity: Reality and Myth of the Western Frontier

• Thesis title in Czech: Formování americké národní identity – realita a mýtus západní hranice
• Thesis title in English: Shaping the American National Identity: Reality and Myth of the Western Frontier
• Key words: Albert Bierstadt|Americká narodní identita|Americké umění|Frederick Jackson Turner|George Caleb Bingham|Indiánské války|Mark Twain|Teorie hranice|Zjevný úděl|Emanuel Leutze|John Gast|Asher Durand
• English key words: American Art|American National Identity|Frederick Jackson Turner|Frontier thesis|George Caleb Bingham|Indian Wars|Manifest Destiny|Mark Twain|Roughing It|Emanuel Leutze|John Gast|Asher Durand
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2020/2021
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: prof. PhDr. Martin Procházka, CSc.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 17.12.2020
• Date of assignment: 17.12.2020
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 05.01.2021
• Date and time of defence: 07.09.2021 09:30
• Date of electronic submission: 15.08.2021
• Date of proceeded defence: 07.09.2021
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: doc. PhDr. Mariana Machová, Ph.D.

Guidelines

The American westward expansion of the nineteenth century was seminal for the shaping of American identity. In 1893, American historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In his thesis, Turner formed the idea that the American democracy, individualism, self-reliance and the abandonment of the old European models were the products of the Western frontier.
In my BA thesis, I would like to discuss the significance of the Western frontier in the history of the United States and its impact on the emergence of the American national identity. Firstly, I am going to introduce the ideology of Manifest Destiny – the doctrine which justified the forceful appropriation of new lands by the United States of America. I will focus on the ways Manifest Destiny was reflected in the nationalistic paintings of the period – specifically, Albert Bierstadt’s landscape Among the Sierra Nevada (1868) and George Caleb Bingham’s genre painting The Jolly Flatboatmen (1846).
The second part of my paper will be dedicated to the analysis of the newly emerged American identity as described by the father of the American literature – Samuel Langhorne Clements. Mark Twain’s portrayal of the American national identity will be exemplified on his two novels – Roughing It and Innocents Abroad. While Roughing It can be seen as a critique of the American Manifest Destiny as it exposes the greediness and self-interest of the individuals at the frontiers, Innocents Abroad constructs the American identity as contrasted to the European one: the innocents’ discovery of the Old World results in the emergence of their national consciousness.
The final chapter of the thesis will explore the reality which hid behind the myth of the Frontier – in particular, the genocide of Native Americans and the devastation of the natural environment of the Western territories. The research of this topic will be based primarily on Dee Brown’s book on the Indian history of the American West Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

References

Bibliography

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 2006.
Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971.
Gleason, Philip. “The Melting Pot: Symbol of Fusion or Confusion?” American Quarterly 16, no. 1 (Spring, 1964): 20-46. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2710825

Heidler, David Stephen. Manifest Destiny. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003.
Leerssen, Joep. National Thought in Europe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006.
Marter, Joan. Frontier Art. Oxford University Press: 2011.
Robinson, Forrest G. The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Atheneum, 1992.
Smith, Anthony D. Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism. Cambridge: Polity, 2000.
Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.
Twain, Mark. The Innocents Abroad. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.
Twain, Mark. Roughing It. Newburyport: Gibbs Smith, 2017.