The ‘Founders’ in Film and Fiction

Catalog description

We were told that George Washington never told a lie and confessed to his much chagrined father that he chopped 83 History down the fabled cherry tree. Was this the myth to inspire trust in the “Founding Fathers” and the infant democracy? Yet, the myths continue. For more than two centuries, the “Founding Fathers” have been a touchstone for American identity. Americans have expressed their fascination with the “Founders” not only in the political arena but also in the realm of fiction in works ranging from James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, The Spy, to the HBO series, John Adams, and the Broadway musical, Hamilton. What is the source of this fascination? But, most importantly, who were the “Founders” that have such a hold on the American historical imagination, and what did they actually stand for? The course will explore these questions by looking at the different ways that the “Founders” have been represented in film and fiction from their own time to the present. We will consider a variety of media, including novels, art, plays, films, and television. We will look at how these fictional portrayals reflected larger cultural changes and at the different political and social purposes they served. Would the musical glorification of Alexander Hamilton have been a hit during the Great Depression? We will also examine the extent to which these portrayals conformed to historical reality, using them to look more broadly at the relationship between history and fiction. What can fiction contribute to historical understanding, and what are its limits as a medium of historical representation? War in the American Imagination