A235, History of American Empire, Spring 2025

Our first writing assignment will interrogate “common knowledge” of American empire.  Our source base will be the searchable library catalog of your hometown, or of a nearby town.

Most local library catalogs are searchable; some require a library card.  If the latter is the case, then you can find an open library catalog for a nearby town.

Please search the library catalog for books about American empire and about the United States’ foreign relations with Greenland and Panama until you have a strong sense of what is available to the reading public in your hometown or nearby town.  You should be able to tell a lot about each book from its title, and from any capsule description provided in the library catalog — and, for any more recent books, by investigating the book’s publisher webpage.  Some books will be ideological drivel, based on nothing, and hopefully some seriously historical, based on archival research.

The immediate and central question is:  How much and what kind of “knowledge” does the library catalog make available to the reading public in your hometown?

To analyze the library catalog, you should ask crucial follow-up questions.  When were the books published — are they recent or outdated?  What do they think “empire” is?  What do the books associate “empire” with?  Do they compare American empire to other empires?  Do they deem the American empire to be rising or falling?  Do they look at American empire only from the inside looking out (the domestic), or also from the outside looking in (the foreign)?  Do they look at Greenland and Panama only from an American perspective, or also from Greenland and Panama perspectives, or even from Danish and Spanish perspectives?  Do they connect or disconnect Greenland to/from the Arctic?  Do they connect or disconnect Panama to/from Latin America?  Et cetera.

Finally, the hardest questions:  What is missing from the library catalog?  What do the books NOT enable the reading public to consider and think about?  What is made visible, and what are the blindspots?  Is American empire hidden?  Does Greenland exist?  Does Panama exist?

It should be obvious that there is no single right or wrong answer to this question, as library catalogs will vary from town to town.  Rather, you will be evaluated on your ability to develop a forceful yet nuanced argument structuring your analysis in response to the central question, to pinpoint main themes to organize your analysis into coherent paragraphs, and to provide specific evidence from the book titles and descriptions, the course readings so far, and your lecture notes.

Be sure to endnote/footnote the precise source of any quotations, derivative ideas, or uncommon facts.  There is no need to do any additional outside research.

Have fun with the catalog searching, and with the analysis.