American Road Trip
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Going on the road is an archetypal American experience, the subject of countless poems, songs, movies, novels, and travel books. Throughout the country's history, native-born writers and visitors from abroad have hit the road in the hope that through direct experience they could come to a better understanding of the American character, our institutions and values, our towns and cities and natural landscapes. In this course we travel across the country with these writers, exploring such questions as: What is the "American way of life," and what are the distinctly American values, myths, and obsessions? Given the country's enormous cultural diversity, what does it mean to speak of a national identity? And why this love of movement and speed, this romance with the road?
