Section A05: Fear in the Making of the Americas
This seminar examines how fear becomes a guiding principle of culture and how the roles individuals, media and state institutions play in the cultural production and maintenance of fear.
Fear as a cultural force in the Americas has deep historical roots. Modern "American Nations" have based their power to imagine themselves as nations from fear-fueled public trials, insular immigration policies, and on the discipline and surveillance of potentially dangerous citizens. This seminar explores how fear has been exploited in order to justify the exclusion of citizens who come to be defined as dangerous.
The seminar focuses primarily on how fear works in the United States, but it also looks at similarities between fear in the United States and how fear has shaped the national imaginations of Canadians, Mexicans, and Columbians. The seminar will ask students to examine how fear motivates not only different forms of exclusion and different conceptions of identity but also how fear forces a redefinition of laws, the role of the state and an individual's place in the world.