Great American Myths: Nation-Building and Identity Politics in the United States of America

• Thesis title in Czech: Velké americké mýty: Budování národa a politika identity ve Spojených státech amerických
• Thesis title in English: Great American Myths: Nation-Building and Identity Politics in the United States of America
• Key words: Spojené státy americké|mýtus|politický mýtus|občanské náboženství|národní identita|demytologizace
• English key words: the USA|myth|political myth|nation-building|civil religion|national identity|demythologization
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2018/2019
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Mgr. Pavla Veselá, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 11.09.2019
• Date of assignment: 11.09.2019
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 18.09.2019
• Date and time of defence: 09.09.2021 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 13.08.2021
• Date of proceeded defence: 09.09.2021
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: David Lee Robbins, Ph.D.

Guidelines

This thesis attempts to analyze ‘the Great American Myths,’ the popular and potent core narratives of US-American nationhood that have been employed and referred to as the building blocks in the construction of the national identity. The origins of these myths are traceable to the early days of the plantation of America`s lands by the colonists from Europe; while in the forging of the United States as a state and nation, these narratives received an even greater resonance. It would be misleading, however, to consider such myths as the props of the past, since these foundational stories, visual imageries, and cultural rituals are not in their essence something stationary; on the contrary, the endurance and monolithicity of these constructs are explained by the high degree of their adaptability and variability depending on historical, social, and other accompanying contexts. The fact that these popular narratives that America tells itself and about itself to this very day serve as points of reference in contemporary discussions of US identities makes this analysis even more relevant.
The objective of this work, therefore, is to engage in the archeology of the intricate histories and semantics of the US-American national myths. This will be attempted within the framework put forward by Heike Paul, who distinguishes between several facets of a particular myth: the national, subnational, and transnational dimensions.
By proclaiming in The Declaration of Independence the nascent nation to be an independent political and cultural entity, and, moreover, a ‘product of the mind’, the Founding Fathers launched the project of constructing a unified national identity through the power of the state machine. This nation-building enterprise is what constitutes the national perspective, which will be addressed through the analysis of the country`s formative historical events as well as selected political, literary, and sociological documents.
The authoritative/authoritarian voice of national myths produced to create a seemingly coherent uniform monoculture are exceeded in amplitude by the voices from the margins: various immigrant and/or minority groups (African Americans, Native Americans, women, the working class, etc.) and individual writers; those whom Malcom X once called “the victims of Americanism,” those with ‘double consciousnesses’ whose self-concept, a set of beliefs about oneself, has been shaped principally by the workings of the country`s dominant ideology. These voices speak from the subnational perspective, articulating their experiences primarily in works of literature and pieces of political and sociological writing.
The more recent transnational approach towards myth will place the US in the context of the world community. This approach is informed by the tendency of myth to encroach on the transnational space, thus surpassing national boundaries, as well as by the fact that the United States of America is not a self-contained entity which exists outside the international agenda, but a fiercely competitive player in the world`s political and social arena. Under focus within this framework is the way America, a nation among other nations, signifies on the global stage, and how American myths have influenced and have in turn been influenced by the world`s events.
Following John Winthrop’s rhetoric, America to this day remains perhaps the only ‘city’ on this lofty hill out there: it plays a substantial role in the world affairs, and the eyes of all people are upon it. For this reason, it is of particular interest to look at the United States with a clear vision.

References

Bibliography
Primary sources
Bradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation. Rendered into Modern English, Introd. by Harold Paget. Mineola: Dover, 2006.
Crèvecoeur, Hector St. John de. Letters from an American Farmer. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1912.
"Declaration of Independence." World Digital Library. https://www.wdl.org/en/item/2705/. Accessed 18 June 2019.
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Mineola: Dover, 1994.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Self-Reliance." "Success." “Race.” English Traits: The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Centenary ed. Vol. 5. Boston: Houghton, 1876.
Smith, John. "The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. 1624." The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580-1631) in Three Volumes. Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1986.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Vol. 1. Ed. Daniel Boorstein. New York: Vintage, 1990.
Winthrop, John. “A Model of Christian Charity.” Baym, Nina, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 4th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1994.

Secondary sources
Barthes, Ronald. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: The Nonday Press, 1972.
Grandin, Greg. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019.
Heyking, John von. Weed, Ronald L. Civil Religion in Political Thought: Its Perennial Questions and Enduring Relevance in North America. Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010.
Hughes, Richard T. Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories that Give Us Meaning. Foreword by Robert N. Bellah. New foreword by Molefi Kete Asante. Second Edition. Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2018.
Kelsey, Darren. Media and Affective Mythologies: Discourse, Archetypes and Ideology in Contemporary Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Paul, Heike. The Myths that Made America. Clausen & Bosse, 2014.