The Myth of America and Its Classical Foundations
November 26 – December 17, 2022
$350/person
It is clear now that the United States no longer has a national narrative, an origin story, that we can all embrace. As we approach the 250th birthday of the United States, it might be useful to try to see how we arrived at this uncertain and anxious time.
Any study of classical Greek myth reminds us that while myths are seldom factually true, they reveal the deeper truths that give a civilization its coherence and its understanding of itself.
We'll start by examining a number of Greek myths, then turn to some analogous myths in Native American culture, before beginning our exploration of the Myths of America, beginning with Pilgrim Rock and Virginia's Jamestown.
Now that America's national mythos has broken down into mutually incomprehending factions, with conestoga wagons and Laura Ingalls Wilder on one side, and the 1619 Project on the other, it is essential that we understand how we came to this pass and to formulate, carefully, how we might find our way through to a new consensus understanding of the American project.
Clay's Notes
I'm very excited about this course. As I try to make sense of my own reading and writing over the past two or three years, I see that we are now no longer one nation with a common set of values and purposes, but at least two distinct nations, rural red and urban blue. We inhabit the same continent but we see the world in fundamentally different ways. Everyone agrees that America is a special nation among nations, but just what now unites us or holds us together is no longer certain.
The humanities—to which I have given my whole life—don't have answers to these questions, but they can get us into a greater understanding of the historical forces, political movements, and social dynamics that have brought us to this crisis of civilization. I'm intending to use pieces from John Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks, from James Welch's Fools Crow, from Jean Houston's The Hero and the Goddess, and more to explore this fascinating and troubling subject.
So the best way to begin is to pick up a compendium of Greek myths--or search them out online, beginning with the Judgment of Paris that set off the Trojan War. And to read Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which unpacks the structure of the hero story that has been so central to the American experiment.
See you soon.
Class Schedule
Class sessions will be held via Zoom on Saturday mornings for four weeks, November 26 – December 17, 2022 (time TBD).
Optional Zoom office hours Wednesday evenings.
