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SUSI Intellectual and Pedagogical Goals

Encounters and Intersections, Identities and Communities in America:
An Interdisciplinary Investigation

To think of the United States not as a single clear entity but rather as a shifting, often confusing collection of intersecting identities and communities: that is the approach of this year's Study of the U.S. Institute. We have chosen to speak of America rather than the United States in order to focus attention on the ways in which the national boundaries and borders are permeable and the United States is interlocked with the other countries and cultures in the American continents. This we hope will lead us to larger discussions of the ways in which encounters between and among communities and cultures over the history of North America have made American culture what it is today, and the ways these encounters continue to shape and shift American identity- national and cultural.

One of the central tensions defining the Institute every year concerns the difference between the elected political administration and the deeper and wider American population, society, and culture. This year is an election year, and a year of deep divisions within both the political environment and the larger population: a crisis of beliefs and action, of fear and hope, that simultaneously serves as evidence to examine and a means to study the ways the United States responds and adapts to periods of great stress.

This year is also unusual in that the balance of attention in the United States has shifted significantly from an inner-directed focus on issues of family, community and culture, to an outer-directed focus on the relationship of the nation to the globe. This trend began with the September 11, 2001 attacks, but it has grown deeper and more nuanced-and perhaps more divisive-in this election year.

But the view from within the United States is far different than the view from outside, as you'll no doubt see. So while this year you will find yourself immersed in political debate, it is far from all that Americans think, feel or believe. Music and food, love and family, neighbors and enemies, "us" and "them" : all these remain central to the American character.

As with each of our Institutes over the past decade, we will be choosing an interdisciplinary method: we will look at literature, art, politics, law, education, mass media, consumerism, music, geography, architecture and landscape. In these, and through their close study, we hope both to discover some of the interwoven strands of American culture, historical and contemporary, and to provide working methods for teaching American culture and life to an increasingly sophisticated student population throughout the world- your students, and your students' students- over the next years and perhaps decades. By intensive study of key documents and artifacts, we hope to provide an overview of American political and cultural life, and to allow you to delve as deeply as you desire into specific areas. All of this will be intermingled with close interaction with American people and their cultures: beginning with the streets of our own neighborhood, extending out to the rituals of America's 4th of July birthday party and its election-year political tumult, to the shopping malls and industrial parks and, eventually, to the wider geography of the continental United States.