Eccezionalismo, identitŕ nazionale e interdipendenza : nuove sintesi italiane sulla storia degli Stati Uniti d'America

2009 ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
Daniele Fiorentino
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Key Words ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
American Imperialism ◽  
Dominant Society

- The essay examines some central concepts of U.S. history and culture through the analysis of three volumes published in Italy in 2008. The author uses the concept of American Exceptionalism in order to provide a closer reading of the books and a better understanding of the image of the United States offered today, as well as the place of U.S. history in Italy. Cultural Pluralism is an important framework in the historical and historiographical narratives. Touching upon other central ideals of American identity such as Manifest Destiny, the Frontier, and Internationalism, this essay deals with the issue of Imperialism and the reactions against it in the 19th and 20th centuries. Through the question of immigration, reference is made to multiculturalism and the processes that led toward a progressive integration of different minorities on the basis of models proposed by the dominant society. The essay thus recapitulates some of the most widespread stereotypes concerning ethnic groups and the construction of a new model of Cultural Pluralism.Key words: U.S. history, exceptionalism, American imperialism, immigration, cultural pluralism, Melting PotParole chiave: storia degli Stati Uniti, eccezionalismo, imperialismo americano, immigrazione, pluralismo culturale, melting pot

‘Smoked Yankees’, ‘Wild’ Catholics and the Newspaper ‘Lions’ of Manila

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Shott
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Scientific Racism ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Fault Lines

When the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, American troops battled Spanish forces in Cuba and across the Pacific in Spain’s longtime colony, the Philippines. There, American troops initially fought alongside Filipino rebels, but after the defeat of Spanish forces the United States annexed the islands and fighting broke out between the rebels and their new occupiers. American soldiers, including nearly 6,000 African Americans, struggled to understand their adversaries, employing varied conceptual frames that mixed scientific racism, the notion of Manifest Destiny, and American exceptionalism and that encompassed long-standing fault lines in American identity, including religion. The chapter draws material from diaries of soldiers, black and ethnic newspaper presses, and diplomatic sources to describe a potent but ephemeral mix of racialist thinking during and immediately after the Philippine-American War.

Deafness and Ethnic Identity: The Idea of a Deaf State and its Resonances with American Exceptionalism and Frontier Ideology

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Marion Rana
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Deaf Identity ◽  
American Nation

Abstract This article focuses on the nineteenth century as a pivotal time for the development of a Deaf identity in the United States and examines the way John Jacob Flournoy’s idea of a “Deaf-Mute Commonwealth” touches upon core themes of American culture studies and history. In employing pivotal democratic ideas such as egalitarianism, liberty, and self-representation as well as elements of manifest destiny such as exceptionalism and the frontier ideology in order to raise support for a Deaf State, the creation and perpetuation of a Deaf identity bears strong similarities to the processes of American nation-building. This article will show how the endeavor to found a Deaf state was indicative of the separationist and secessionist movements in the United States at that time, and remains relevant to Deaf group identity today.

3. American exceptionalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Deudney ◽  
Jeffrey W. Meiser
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
American Identity ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
Identity Formations

This chapter argues why we must think of the United States as an exceptional kind of nation with a very distinct past and an equally distinct set of capabilities. It first considers American difference and exceptionality before discussing the meaning of exceptionalism, the critics of American exceptionalism, and the roots of American success. It then examines the liberalism that makes the United States exceptional, along with peculiar American identity formations of ethnicity, religion, and ‘race’ and how they interact with — and often subvert — American liberalism. It also analyses the role of American exceptionality across the five major epochs of US foreign policy, from the nation’s founding to the present day. Along the way, the chapter explores notions of American liberal republicanism, anti-statism, state-building, militarism, capitalism and prosperity, immigration, federal internationalism, unipolarity, war on terrorism, and unilateralism.

“The Greatest Nation on Earth”

2017 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah K.M. Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Northern Mexico ◽  
Texas Revolution

Between 1820 and 1827 approximately 1,800 U.S. citizens immigrated to northern Mexico as part of that country’s empresario program, in which the federal government granted foreigners land if they promised to develop and secure the region. Historians have long argued that these settlers, traditionally seen as the vanguard of Manifest Destiny, were attracted to Mexico for its cheap land and rich natural resources. Such interpretations have lent a tone of inevitability to events like the Texas Revolution. This article argues that the early members of these groups were attracted to Mexico for chiefly political reasons. At a time when the United States appeared to be turning away from its commitment to a weak federal government, Mexico was establishing itself on a constitution that insured local sovereignty and autonomy. Thus, the Texas Revolution was far from the result of two irreconcilable peoples and cultures. Moreover, the role that these settlers played in the United States’ acquisition of not just Texas, but ultimately half of Mexico’s national territory, was more paradoxical than inevitable.

Orientalized Aztecs: Observations on the Americanization of Theatrical Dance

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-50
Author(s):  
K. Mitchell Snow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Policy ◽  
Ballets Russes

The opening decades of the twentieth century saw a passing fashion for “Aztec” dancing in the vaudeville theaters of the United States. Russian classical dancers Kosloff and Fokine tapped the orientalist currents of the Ballets Russes, adopting the Aztec as superficial signs of the American. Conversely, works by Shawn and film director Cecil B. DeMille, which served as points of reference for the Russians, represented a continuation of equally orientalist attitudes toward Mexico's past, forged during the realization of the United States’ policy of Manifest Destiny. The emergence of a cadre of trained dancers from Mexico, trained by students of Kosloff and Shawn, would bring a distinctively different perspective on the presentation of their heritage to the dance stage, one that was no longer based in the imagination of an expansionist America.

El tú como un “mask”: Voseo and Salvadoran and Honduran Identity in the United States

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Woods ◽  
Susana V. Rivera-Mills
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Central American ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Strategic Approach ◽  
American Spanish ◽  
Linguistic Attitudes

AbstractThis sociolinguistic study explores linguistic attitudes of Salvadorans and Hondurans living in the United States towards the use of voseo, a distinguishing feature of Central American Spanish. Using sociolinguistic interviews and ethnographic observations, the Central American experience in Oregon and Washington is examined regarding linguistic attitudes toward voseo and tuteo and how these influence Salvadoran and Honduran identity in U.S. communities that are primarily Mexican-American. Initial findings point to participants developing ethnolinguistic masks and an expanded use of tú as a strategic approach to integration into the established Mexican-American community, while at the same time maintaining a sense of Central American identity.

scholarly journals American Realism Versus American Imperialism

2004 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Campbell Craig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Imperialism ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Policy

This article reviews three recent books critical of America's new “imperial” foreign policy, examines whether the United States can properly be compared to empires of the past, and identifies three aspects of contemporary American policy that may well be called imperialist. It also addresses some of the main objections to recent U.S. foreign policy made by American realist scholars and argues that traditional interstate realism can no longer readily apply to the problem ofAmerican unipolar preponderance over an anarchical, nuclear-armed world.

scholarly journals Les relations canado-américaines : Nationalisme et continentalisme

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Balthazar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
British North America ◽  
History Of ◽  
Canadian Nationalism ◽  
Set Up ◽  
National Perspective

This paper's objective is to bring forth some elements which confirm the following hypothesis : Canada is consigned to continentalism, namely to economic and cultural integration with the United States though this fact is shrouded in a Canadian nationalism of sorts. The continentalist mentality is rooted in the history of British North America, inhabited mostly by refugees from America who have remained inherently "Yankees" in spite of their anti-americanism. The Confederation itself is based on a sort of complicity with the United States. More recently there were talks of a "North American nationality", and continentalism both cultural and economic has come to be seen as a 'force of nature" which the governments, at the most, put into a chanelling process. Still, it is possible for Canadian nationalism to exist provided it does not go beyond the threshold whence it would run headlong into the continental mentality. Canada has defined itself through an international or non-national perspective far too long for today's nationalism not to remain weak and poorly established. But the Americans whose "manifest destiny" has succeeded in spreading over Canada without even their having tried to hoist their flag there find it to their advantage to maintain some form of Canadian sovereignty. Canada as a "friendly nation" can be of use to Washington. That is why there are almost as many advocates for Canada's independence in the United States as there are north of the border. Canadian nationalism can thus further the interests of some Canadian elites without seriously prejudicing continental integration which can very well afford not to be set up into formalized structures.

City on a Hill: American Exceptionalism and the Elect Nation

2000 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 299-318
Author(s):  
J. R. Oldfield
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Elementary School ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Anthem ◽  
Pledge Of Allegiance ◽  
American Flag

Some years ago I was invited to spend a day in an elementary school in Columbia, South Carolina. The day began, as I imagine every day began, with the national anthem and the pledge of allegiance to the American flag. The children then sang a song, a ditty really, which began as it ended with the simple refrain: ‘I am special’. Later I was shown some of the work the class had been doing. Across the back of the room were pinned up the children’s attempts to answer a question that had been exercising me, namely what was special about the United States. Some of the responses were fairly predictable. America was special, one seven-year-old wrote, because it was a democracy. Others singled out freedom or liberty as their country’s unique virtue. One brave soul boldly asserted that America was special because Americans were rich, while another thought the secret had something to do with happiness.

Interpretative theories as roadmaps to constitutional identity: The case of the United States

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
OR BASSOK
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
American Constitution ◽  
Patient Protection ◽  
American National Identity ◽  
Constitutional Identity

AbstractAs long as the American Constitution serves as the focal point of American identity, many constitutional interpretative theories also serve as roadmaps to various visions of American constitutional identity. Using the debate over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I expose the identity dimension of various interpretative theories and analyse the differences between the roadmaps offered by them. I argue that according to each of these roadmaps, courts’ authority to review legislation is required in order to protect a certain vision of American constitutional identity even at the price of thwarting Americans’ freedom to pursue their current desires. The conventional framing of interpretative theories as merely techniques to decipher the constitutional text or justifications for the Supreme Court’s countermajoritarian authority to review legislation and the disregard of their identity function is perplexing in view of the centrality of the Constitution to American national identity. I argue that this conventional framing is a result of the current understanding of American constitutional identity in terms of neutrality toward the question of the good. This reading of the Constitution as lacking any form of ideology at its core makes majority preferences the best take of current American identity, leaving constitutional theorists with the mission to justify the Court’s authority to diverge from majority preferences.

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