Star Wars: an American Myth

Catalog description

Myth has played an important cultural role in the creation of modern national identity, providing a venue to reflect the values held by a people, as well as impart them. In short, myths are a meaning-making exercise which assists in identity construction. While most modern nations reach into the distant past for their mythological source material, Americans are not able to do that with any relevancy. Arguably, George Lucas created an American myth which both built upon and replaced the "cowboy" myth, and this has found some resonance even beyond the geographical and cultural borders of the United States. This course will utilize an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of this American myth, to discover why this resonance is so powerful.